like ships in the night

The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: speculative fiction

Review: Imagine that you found your soulmate, but that they were in a parallel universe and you could only communicte via email due to a "glitch" in whatever it is that keeps one universe separate from another.

Well, if you're Bee (from our universe) and Nick (whose universe has much better ecology, among other things), you eventually decide that each should seek out the other's doppelganger in their own universe.  And then you spend a lot of time soul-searching about whether that's the right thing to do, whether either should tell anyone the whole truth, and a whole lot of other things.

Bee and Nick alternate chapters, with some of their email exhanges at the end of each chapter.  The writing is very British, and this American reader had trouble sometimes knowing whether Nick (in the parallel universe) was using slang that we don't have here, or just slang that I didn't know (they also have slightly different grammar rules in the parallel universe?).

This was something of a roller coaster read, dragging in the middle as Nick and Bee go back and forth a lot while they try to figure out a way to be together, then speeding up and almost seeming like a thriller, then slowing back down, before finally reaching a very feel-good conclusion.  Despite these inconsistencies, both Nick and Bee come across as fully-realized characters, and the conclusion feels neither unearned nor overly convenient, but rather hopeful, verging on heart-warming.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

unevenly paced

Femlandia by Christina Dalcher

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: speculative fiction

Review: Here's the thing: The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper is the absolute gold standard for books about all-female societies.  Dalcher's latest has something to add to the genre, but frankly I'm not sure that a book will ever be written that measures up.

One issue that seems to always crop up in books of this type is the somewhat obvious: "What do we do with the men?" and its corollary: "How do we procreate?"  It is this question that frequently drives the narrative tension in the book, as the main character first uncovers the big secret and then wrestles with her own morality over what to do about it.

Femlandia follows in this mold, although Dalcher throws in a few twists of her own, making this a novel both about female-only societies and one about cults.  Miranda Reynolds, like Dr. Jean McLelland of Dalcher's debut novel, Vox, is a woman who takes immediate (and possibly reckless) action as soon as she's decided which is the right path.  This rush to action creates an unevenly paced narrative, as things move along at a nice dramtic pace for the first 3/4 of the book, and then the action in the last quarter plummets off a cliff.  Although I give Dalcher a lot of credit for pulling up the reins for a well-done epilogue.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

creative derivative

A Gentle Tyranny by Jess Corban

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: feminist speculative fiction

Review: This book is what you would get if you combined the gender-segregated society of Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country with the capital extravagnce and high stakes competition of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games.  Which is to say that this book is more than a little derivative.  Is it still worth reading?  Yes.

Corban takes the ideas behind these two books and runs with them, adding in descriptions of the jungle setting that are beyond lush.  Reina's naivete at the beginning of the book was troublesome to me, but Corban places her in situations that force her confront her own lack of knowledge and gives her the motivation to overcome it.  Reina's growth is realistic and believable in a way that many authors can't pull off.  And we learn that her ignorance isn't entirely due to her sheltered upbringing or her own passivity.  There are things in her society that are just not talked about, and which will probably turn out to be its downfall.  We'll have to wait for the sequel to find out, though.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

doesn't deliver

The Fortress by S.A. Jones
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
Genre: speculative fiction
Review: Jonathon is deeply in love with his wife.  Truly, he thinks she's amazing and the best thing that ever happened to him.  But that doesn't stop him from participating in what amounts to a rape culture in his high-powered corporate world.  Did he himself ever actually rape one of the "poodles" (as female junior analysts are called) in his office?  It doesn't seem so, but he certainly engaged in activity where "consent" was not exactly voluntarily given.  And, as is pointed out to him, he doesn't do anything to stop other women from being raped either, even though he's fully aware of what's going on around him.  When his wife finds out, she kicks him out and agrees to take him back only if he does a year as a supplicant at The Fortress, a nation-state ruled by the all-female Vaik.

The Vaik play by their own rules, the most important of which seems to be that the men who live with them can never say no, to any of them, about anything.  Shockingly, Jonathon doesn't find it hard to "submit" to their will when they slip out of their diaphanous gowns, although he does struggle with the rule against asking any questions.  Somehow, the rules, and the hard physical labor are supposed to reform him into being the kind of man who doesn't objectify every woman he sees.  How that's supposed to happen when women are propositioning him regularly is unclear, but the system does make him submissive, even to the point of doing things that violate his own moral code, which may not be exactly what his wife had in mind.

Where this book really fails, though, is in helping the reader understand how these changes happen, or even how they're supposed to happen.  Jonathon moves rocks to learn to control his emotions, yes, and is able to move rocks in his mind to simulate the control even when there are no actual rocks to hand, and he wears a technically advanced piece of clothing that fits him like a glove and, we are told repeatedly, leaves very little to the imagination.  But the remainder of the Vaik's program is left to the reader's imagination.  We are told that it works, not shown how it works, which makes the results not entirely believable.

I wish I could recommend this book.  The premise is really interesting, which is why I read it in the first place.  Unfortunately, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in advance of it's US release in exchange for this review.