C

Yesteryear is nothing more than an effigy to the tradwife influencer. It’s a humiliation ritual where every bad thing that happens to its main character, Natalie, happens because she deserves it instead of coming from a natural evolution of the characters around her. At no point does it feel it understands the appeal of the tradwife movement and Christianity, or the thought process of those who find it appealing, and is incapable of making any meaningful critique of it as a result. The prose is clumsy and has the stink of late millennial humor to it (there is an honest to god “record scratch” line early on and it doesn’t get much better from there), and the narrative feels as if it's cobbled together from stereotypes and cliches of the characters and their ideologies instead of coming from a place of experience or even basic research. Worst of all, the author’s true beliefs constantly slip through Natalie’s voice as well as many of the supporting casts’, many of whom have no business sharing these beliefs. Actually no, the true worst part was the twist that invalidates the entire premise of the book. The fact that this got a movie deal before it was even published reeks of insincere virality.

I understand what Parable of the Talents is doing. I think it offers good criticism of American (more specifically, white Christian American) culture, politics, and religion. I also despise this book.

Octavia Butler’s follow up to Parable of the Sower is pretty much exactly what I expected, and feared it would be: more Parable of the Sower. It’s more unnervingly accurate predictions about modern USA, more abhorrent violence (particularly against women), more side characters that have zero personality to them, and more pseudo-intellectual drivel that is supposed to be taken as some newfound enlightenment. But by far my biggest gripe is how repetitive it all is. The edition that I read had an interview with Octavia Butler at the end, in which she said she had rewritten the first 150 pages of this book multiple times because she struggled to figure out where the story needed to go. Boy it sure as hell shows. It is abysmally slow, and retreads plot points over and over again. There had to be five or six conversations between Lauren and Bankole about leaving their settlement for a safer community to raise their unborn child in, and each time it ended with the same conclusion that they will stay. It got to a point where I just started skipping paragraphs and eventually entire pages until I found something new or interesting to read. To make matters worse, this is an overly verbose novel that is structured like a diary. Almost every entry starts by telling what major story event is to happen, and then prattles on for pages with setup for the event that we already know is going to happen. If I were to reduce this book to the sentences that actually move the plot forward or provide the thematic material to ponder, I could probably get this book down to about 50% of its length or less.

I’m no stranger to brutal depictions of violence and hatred in my books, but this book crossed my line. It’s not so much the descriptions themselves about the rape, murder, and torture that happens to everyone in this book, it’s the sheer prevalence of it all. Before the big invasion of Acorn and creation of the concentration camp, I was already numb to overexposure of all of it and stopped caring to read about how so-and-so was raped by a group of bandits and their children were sold into sex slavery like the last three characters that were introduced.

Talents’ most prominent critique is the one on the nature of religion, and how it is used by the people in power to justify the worst, most inhuman acts imaginable. This is primarily done through the lens of Christianity. But I don’t see why Lauren’s new religion of Earthseed wouldn’t be susceptible to the same forces when it becomes such a popular movement by the end of this book. I also don’t think it’s remotely profound to catch on so quickly via the internet to the point where universities and politicians are supporting and following it. This shit sounds like what an 18 year old would find deep, because it was written by one in-universe.

I genuinely did not want to continue this book past the first 70 pages, and I don’t feel like my efforts to finish were worth it. Every single one of the characters suck. Lauren is an insufferable know-it-all, her brother Marc is a manipulative coward who is willingly blind to the atrocities his church committed, her daughter Larkin is an unfortunate product of her upbringing, but is still kind of a moron well into adulthood, and everyone else is nothing more than fodder for the story to happen. This is a thoroughly unenjoyable book to the point that I don’t care about its broader meaning.

Science Fiction is at its best when it is used to challenge commonly accepted beliefs and societal norms, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it done better than in The Left Hand of Darkness. This book is challenging and rewarding in both its lexicon (real and fictitious) and its examination of sex and gender, and how that shapes and is shaped by our environment and culture. In addition, it is also one of the most believable stories about first contact, with a fully realized and complex world that feels as alien in the beginning as it does familiar by the end. The way the story and world are presented through multiple points of view interspersed with mythic parables does a fantastic job of revealing the intricacies of life on the planet Winter, the differences between each nation’s perspective on life and that of the envoy’s union of planets, and how each character perceives the other and the events that they are caught up in. This book should be on everyone’s reading list, science fiction fan or not.

Imagine this: the year is 2025. The newly elected president, who promised job opportunities and an end to high crime, is stripping the remaining rights of workers away. Highly skilled workers can barely make ends meet, and do whatever work they can from home or via teleconferences. Food and water prices have skyrocketed, and the value of the dollar has declined in tandem. The US’ space program has been defunded and sold off to private corporations. California is on fire, and measles has broken out. But enough about real life, I’m talking about Octavia Butler’s 1993 book: Parable of the Sower.

It really is shocking, and one of the first things I noticed when reading this book, just how accurately it predicted the future 30 years after it was originally published. Butler’s world, once a warning, is essentially our reality now. This book is more of a must-read now than it was back then… is what I feel like I should be saying, but this is not the ray of light in dark times that I was hoping this story of finding community and greater purpose would turn out to be by its ending. I actually find this book more pessimistic about the human condition than reality, and it really comes down to how humanity outside of Lauren’s immediate community is portrayed.

In the spring of 1992, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo was laid siege by Serbian secessionist forces. This siege lasted for nearly four years, and is still the longest siege in modern history. Over 5000 civilians were killed during the siege, averaging 3.8 deaths a day. The city was shelled by artillery from the surrounding mountains daily, and any living creature was target practice for snipers. Food, water, and medicine were nowhere to be found, and moonshine and cigarettes became the currency to use for supplies from the black markets that arose. Despite these conditions (which I would argue are even worse than the conditions seen in Parable of the Sower, as Bosnian winters are cold on top of the resource scarcity), civilization carried on. University students still got their degrees, the newspaper still published out of its bombed out building; even public transit still ran in some capacity. While theft, rape, and murder no doubt happened in these conditions, this did not consume the people of Sarajevo like it does to the people of California in this book. I swear, every unnamed character in Sower is either a thief, rapist, or other violent criminal, or the victim of one. Society cannot, and does not function like this in the absence of stable government. And this depiction of the poor masses self destructing undermines many of the better parts of the book.

I really liked the first half of Sower. The walled neighborhood that Lauren lived in was a good metaphor for the middle class. They were “safe” in their community, but had it just as bad as anyone else. The residents were almost all highly skilled workers, and Lauren’s dad was a strong leader as the reverend for the local church, but none of that meant anything when they could barely make ends meet any more than the people outside the walls. Reverend Olamina offered some wise quotes about teaching instead of instilling fear as a call to action, and how freedom is dangerous, but too precious to sacrifice for safety. The philosophy of Earthseed that Lauren forms throughout the book starts out promising, attributing abstract concepts of the world (particularly change) to God and offering a physical heaven among the stars as a greater purpose than mere survival. I was really hoping that finding religion and creating community as a means of resistance against oppressors and a bleak future would be the kind of optimistic outcome that was being set up. But Lauren’s neighborhood isn’t destroyed by a higher power. It’s consumed in a selfish and short-sighted attack by those who envy their neighbor and want to destroy them so that they too must suffer. It’s destroyed by the poor, unnamed masses. It would’ve been a great metaphor for the type of people who believe life is a zero sum game, but this harmful mentality is not defeated by the end of the book.

In fact, the book doesn’t feel like it ends positively, or at all. The final chapter is the ragtag followers of Lauren settling down on some remote land, and it not only feels a little cultish, but the characters even acknowledge how their future is just as bleak as it was before they lost everything. I wouldn’t even consider them followers of Earthseed, as many of them said their own form of prayer for the dead they lost along the way instead of one unifying mantra. Questions raised about why continuing to live and spread life in such an abhorrent world don’t feel like they were fully answered by the end, and the sheer amount of violence depicted throughout the book feels pretty distasteful as a result (and I say that as a fan of James Ellroy). Maybe the sequel provides that conclusion I’m looking for, but there was also a third sequel that was to be written that unfortunately died with Octavia Butler, so I’m a bit hesitant to continue to look at this pessimistic world when I already live in one that’s bad enough.

The Mars Volta is one of my favorite bands of all time, and their debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, is still my favorite of their discography. I can't believe I didn't find this companion book earlier.

This companion book is an expansion on the story of the album, in which a man overdoses on rat poison and morphine, and has grand visions during his coma, before waking up and committing suicide. Much like the lyrics (which are interspersed through this book in sections that serve as intermissions between passages), the prose is incredibly cryptic and the narrative abstract. It simultaneously provided a lot of context behind many of the songs, and left me with even more questions. As a fan, this is everything I could've asked for. But as a reader, this does feel a bit amateur.

While the opening of this story is incredibly vivid and poetic in its description, the middle section of this story is wildly inconsistent. It often feels like a first draft, with poor grammar and spelling making an already hard to read story even harder. The POV of the narrator also shifts around frequently, but their voices blend together to be indecipherable. And I wouldn't say the comatose dream of Cerpin Taxt has no purpose to the narrative (this isn't an "it's all a dream" story), but it does stray far into unreality to a point where it feels like it's too far removed from the psyche of Cerpin.

Despite the heavy connection to its source material, I do think this story can stand on its own. It may lack the brilliant cacophany of sound that the instrumentals bring to compliment the cryptic lyrics of the album, but it makes up for it with a unique voice that may take a couple re-reads to fully appreciate its ability to paint a mental picture.

There’s only so much foul description of dirty Mexicans and spooky Orientalism that I can take before it ruins a decent story about a buried horror that humans should have never disturbed.