2022 read #30: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho.

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

159 pages

Published 2020

Read June 19

Rating: 4 out of 5

A thoroughly enjoyable slice of queer adventure fantasy. Bandits displaced by war try to make a living in a land where colonialist outsiders have gained the ascendancy. Nuns with metaphysical powers pick through the rubble of abbeys destroyed by the warring factions. Sacred relics spill into the black market. It has that delightful queer D&D vibe I’ve been craving ever since Legends & Lattes, but efficiently builds around it a fascinating setting I'd be happy to explore further someday.

2022 read #29: Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg.

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

330 pages

Published 2018

Read from June 9 to June 19

Rating: 5 out of 5

I can feel it within the whorls and innermost arrangement of my being: this book has changed me.

I’ve wanted to write something like this book for a very long time. For at least a decade now I’ve been planning, however desultorily, a low fantasy novel about a gender-expansive rogue (most likely a trans man, or a person we might assign to that category within our current taxonomy of gender) whose heists and contacts within the underbelly of a London-esque city bring him to the forefront of a proletariat revolution against the aristocrats and capitalists of an early modern England analogue.

From a nearly identical starting point, Rosenberg, using Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess as our entry into historical 18th Century London, has produced a work of revolutionary reality and queer intensity that I could never dream of matching, a metafictional masterpiece all the more urgent as our modern forces of fascism and vulture capitalism slouch toward genocide and the destruction of our biosphere. It is a radical document of liberation, an illustration of the historical roots and modern-day reach of the Western commodification of person and existence.

By our very queerness, we reject and disrupt the capitalist commodification forced upon our bodies. I don’t have the grounding in academic thought that Rosenberg lavished upon this novel, but this is a truth I feel within my mitochondria.

2022 read #28: Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

165 pages

Published 2003

Read from June 7 to June 9

Rating: 4 out of 5

Like Ellen Meloy's The Anthropology of Turquoise, this book is a collection of personal essays on a series of related topics, and not so much the didactic natural history book implied in the title. Wall Kimmerer's moss-linked essays are informative and personal in equal measure, using the personal to illuminate the scientific in deft ways. At times, like when Wall Kimmerer draws a link between the resiliency of mosses and the rhythms of human life, it's brilliantly moving; at others, like when she describes the efforts of some rich asshole to rip up an Appalachian hillside to create an artificial facsimile of an Appalachian hillside, it's perfectly infuriating.

There's a certain melancholy to reading books of natural history written so long ago. Unlike many books of this time (and especially books from the 1990s and '80s), Moss doesn't end with a coda of hopefulness. There's no inspiring epilogue to rouse us to fix the ruin capitalism has wrought on our biosphere. Instead, Wall Kimmerer offers two bleak ruminations on the destruction of the Pacific Northwest rain forest, which linger in the mind even as she caps off the book with a glimpse of the strange, hidden glimmer of Goblin Gold moss, making the most of its specialization for low-light environments. It's sad to think that our imperialist impact on the environment has only worsened in the last two horrific decades. But the magic of Goblin Gold seems like a fitting coda for our bleak times, a bit of light to cling to.

2022 read #27: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

121 pages

Published 2020

Read from June 6 to June 7

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The very best short stories are delicate constructs that say more with a handful of deftly-rendered scenes than some novels manage to express in their entirety. This novella is a dazzling puzzlebox that folds over itself in intricate short story intimacy for its entire length. At a wordcount where some fantasy tomes are just barely finding their footing, Empress builds a breathing, hauntingly familiar yet bewilderingly magical world, populates two generations of memorable characters, strikes an ideological sword into the heart of monarchy, and does so with brilliant aplomb. Nghi Vo makes it all feel effortless. An amazing work.

2022 read #26: The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner.

The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner

99 pages

Published 2021

Read from June 5 to June 6

Rating: 4 out of 5

As far as I know, the only gothic novel of any sort I've read before this was Monica Heath's Dunleary, a trashy and deeply misogynistic morality tale that did nothing to encourage me to seek out more of its ilk. My partner R has the same soft spot for "women running away from a house" books that I harbor toward crappy midcentury pulp, however, and slowly I've grown more intrigued about the genre. When I learned that a certain indie press had published a modern queering of gothic horror, I just had to give it a try.

Wagner's prose atmospherically unfurls a gothic tale that fits comfortably within the expected parameters of "woman running away from the house" horror: buried family secrets, repressed memories, half-forgotten tragedies, all breathing malevolent life into a once-magnificent manor house in a remote corner of 1920s Oregon. Wagner doesn't shy away from the racist underbelly of Oregon's white elites. Slight spoilers: The forbidden love that awakens between our narrator and her brother's new bride is stirring and far more believable than the so-called romance at the center of Dunleary. Everything is better when it's gay.

2022 read #25: Beasts Before Us by Elsa Panciroli.

Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution by Elsa Panciroli

300 pages

Published 2021

Read from June 2 to June 5

Rating: 4 out of 5

Continuing my informal read-through of the current boom in pop paleontology books with a fun entry chronicling the evolution of synapsids. From their Carboniferous origins to the Anthropocene extinction crisis instigated by one synapsid species in particular (ourselves), Beasts delivers a light and readable rundown of major milestones and interesting details. It marks the first time I've seen the term "chonky boi" utilized in a scientific context. It also delineated the definition of our ancestral synapsid group (and demonstrated why the term "mammal-like reptile" is a misnomer) better than any material had ever done for me before. (In short, mammals didn't evolve from reptiles; synapsids and diapsids both diverged from a shared amniote ancestor, so calling synapsids "mammal-like reptiles" is inaccurate in several ways.)

At times Panciroli treads closer than I'd like to scientific biography, but even this is important because it led to the spectacle of multiple negative Amazon reviews from fragile white men crying about how "political" Panciroli is. Panciroli dares to acknowledge how Western science arose from the exploitation of colonialism, and further dares to be honest about how vile certain prominent white male scientists were. To the delicate sensibilities of these white male reviewers, being honest and truthful about history is unwarranted and (horrors!) political, with the implication that quietly burying and ignoring the continuing realities of colonialism (to the benefit of no one but themselves) is merely proper and objective writing. These Amazon reviews encapsulate a microcosm of fascist brain-rot, and for that I'm happy Panciroli took the time to explore the lives of past scientists.

Overall, I'd say Beasts Before Us tantalized me about mammal origins more than it taught me, but that's to be expected -- it's a pop science book, after all. I'm jonesing for a fuller (and more lavishly illustrated) tome. Alas, this is one of vanishingly few books I've ever seen devoted to synapsid evolution. I'm not sure where to get my fix from here.

2022 read #24: Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta.

Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta

405 pages

Published 2021

Read from May 16 to June 1

Rating: 3 out of 5

A tale of sapphic love and giant robots and swordfighting! What's not to love? I didn't expect this book to become an enduring favorite of mine, but the cover art is amazing and that summary is hard to resist, even if giant mechas are about as far from my personal special interests as you can get and still be in SFF territory.

As with many YA books I've read over the years, my primary dissatisfaction with Gearbreakers is the plain fact that I'm not its intended audience. Every single character is an angry, aggressive goblin of pure chaos energy. One or even two characters like that would be plenty for me, but it was literally everyone on both sides of the conflict, whether they were the totalitarian city-state's highly trained "Windup" pilots or the scrappy titular Gearbreakers who bring down mechas from the inside with superpowered energy gloves. There are worthwhile themes of trauma and how battling against monsters can, through incessant violence, turn us into monsters, but it was hard to tell apart any of the secondary characters. Everyone roughhouses everyone else, everyone insults each other and chases others around for insulting them, and every single character pauses in the midst of battle to offer some dry quip or snarky remark. Classic YA fare.

Gearbreakers picks up considerably once our two leads finally meet up. It took me two weeks to get through the first half of this book, but only a couple days to finish it from there. Part of this had to do with going on a weeklong roadtrip and camping adventure, which led directly into a weeklong process of moving apartments with my partner R, all of which left precious little time for reading. But still.