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Despite his obvious irrelevance, I tens to enjoy Klosterman, even if he makes his living inventing cultural comparisons (sample potential Klosterman essay I just thought of: Charles in Charge was literally more important than Tom Petty) that don't really mean anything. So he comes up with thought experiments and spends thousands of words saying “we don't really know.” So this was fun to read, but ultimately without a point beyond “the future will prove many contemporary ideas wrong, and some silly things right.” This is the nature of the future evaluating the past, so...sure?
I am choosing not to review this; it was a pretty good Dude Fantasy with some interesting ideas, some that fall apart under scrutiny. I got it on impulse when I got an amazon rec without researching (I usually research about everything I read).
I am disappointed to learn that the author is a vocal Sad Puppy and it honestly destroys anything charitable I was willing to think about his casually misogynistic Bros Kill Dudes and Monsters book.
There are good parts of this book–it won a Pulitzer (overturning the committee, as it would 13 years later to deny Gravity's Rainbow, so, grain of salt), and some of the descriptions of pain and fatigue of the politickLing life are very evocative and telling.
Overall, though, politically it's detestable, and even if I agreed with it, its lionization of Senators Doing American Things with honor and dignity is incredibly stupid, especially considering the outcome–reasonable people disagree, but one senator, a shouting, unhinged lunatic, is without nuance and exists to be castigated by absolutely everyone, as does the mustache-twirling villain (?) of the piece. The others don't see real consequences of their actions–well, they do, and feel bad about it, which absolves them.
Overall it's a portrait of the special glory of American Politics, unironically, which is a joke considering that the President blackmails a principled Senator to death.
FOREIGN RELATIONS: This is a book about the dangers of being too soft on the Soviets, a bold and shocking position to take in 1959 (it wasn't), and the jeered strawman slogan is “I would rather crawl on my knees to Moscow than die under an atom bomb!” Which....I would? We all should? Nuclear war isn't just killing people. It's total ecological devastation of all species and their futures, and the destruction of earth. I think being reasonable with the Russians–demonic beings that crave only America's total destruction–should have been a goal of foreign relations, not a derided plea from unreasonable cowards.
Of course, the foreign relations here aren't exactly nuanced. The British ambassador–the only Brit, as the other ambassadors are the only ones of their nationality–is a distant, quippy artistocrat, the Indian ambassador is a nosy, craven appeaser, the Russian ambassador is a hostile and shitty ambassador with no pretense of diplomacy with the US.
At the end of the day, the honorable men make honorable stands. I think the Senate has one woman, one Latino (maybe) and one Hawaiian guy, from Hawaii, but otherwise it's all men, all white, all paternalistic as hell. When the handsome, too-perfect young Senator has a crisis, his wife, to whom he has been emotionally distant for like a decade, is narratively chastised for being upset by his continued failure to open up to her, rather than supporting him unequivocally as he continues to lie to her in the face of anonymous threatening agents. Women exist as wives to support husbands. They may do so intelligently and compassionately, but men are at the forefront.
Overall there are no other people of color. There is surprising sympathy for a probably-gay man whose wartime affair is revealed, but not denounced (although it's in such oblique language it's a little “too awful to mention), although he isn't happy about the consequences.
It strikes me that the hero of the final stretch of the book–a tart, straight-talking Illinois senator who is the President's old rival–denounces the current state of America. You know, the golden age we're supposed to hearken back to?
Do you want a war, Senator?” Of course he didn't want a war; he just wanted an end to this flabby damned mushy nothingness that his country had turned herself into. And he particularly wanted an end to the sort of flabby damned thinking that the nominee and his kind represented—the kind of thinking, growing out of the secret inner knowledge that a given plan of action is of course completely empty and completely futile, which forces those who embark upon it to tell themselves brightly that maybe if the enemy will just be reasonable the world will become paradise overnight and everything will be hunky-dory. It was quite obvious to Senator Knox that the enemy would never be reasonable until the day he could dictate the terms of American surrender, and it was with an almost desperate determination that he returned again and again to the task of trying to make this clear to his countrymen. It was doubly frustrating because it was quite obvious that his countrymen knew it. They knew it, but they didn't want to admit they knew it, because that would impose upon them the obligation of doing something about it, and that might bother them, and they didn't want that.”
COME ON.
I'm hesitant to be too hard on this book, or too soft. Rating was a tough call. I like a lot of the ideas and presentation here, but I would say there are two major weaknesses at play; one is a huge “show don't tell” problem; maybe 30% in there is a “then there was a trial and sentencing, and several months later....” As well as a “we talked for four hours” that purports to neatly elide relationship-building between Danny and his beau.
The second is the really generic nature of the threat, its presentation, and, well, everything about it–the cackling malice of the 11th-hour adversary, the weak fellow-powered teens, the wise old POC mentor and use of Native American setting for vision quests.
The real strength here is Danny's genuine insight into the problems and traumas of others, and the way he interprets and reacts to it. He sees several situations in which the right thing to do is not at all black and white. So his encounter with a helpful note-leaving Satanic stand-in is shockingly free of nuance.
I'm pleased with the angle of a gay character without gayness being his central issue or driver of the plot, and pleased to see it more lately. I would devour a second book now if it existed, which is partly why I'm inclined toward softer feelings.
BTW, I bought this on Amazon. The formatting isn't great, and it needs at least one more pass with a copyeditor.
Okay. So. Much like Revelation Space, this was excellent and gripping, but I'm at the end still not really sure why things happened.
Amazing first chapter. Chasm City has a lot of potential. I wish we saw more of the Melding Plague and more noir of the city–it was mostly just a boring Running Man for the time we were there, and no matter how hard a place it is, Tanner seemed to get through it effortlessly.
The flashbacks were way more interesting than the present–there was one notable flashback that was more than a book's worth of fascinating exposition, and hopefully something AR explores in the books to come.
Say it with me now, Nameless Ones: What can change the nature of a man?
I love this series and I love Mallory, who spent two books being a necessary killjoy for her friends. I was a little less swept away by the romance here–it works, I just didn't get as much of a sense of Hope–she's very Jess imo–as I did of all our other girls. But I'm happy everyone is happy. Yes, I mean it. We need more lesfic series like this. I had to excitedly tell my wife “[SPOILER!]” and she was like “I'm very happy for them.”
I would like 3 more books in the series. Hunter and Sam need to get married.
I'm so torn. On the one hand, this is better than 99% of the stuff that's out there. It's fun and sexy, and the real affection and friendship is wonderful. The dialogue is outstanding. I really love these people.
But just like Kiss the Girl, the plot contrivances are honestly absurd. A breakup precipitated when the MC hears her girlfriend CALLING INTO A RADIO SHOW. IN 2015. (Or thereabouts, right? They have iphones. It's statistically impossible that this would happen and that it would be heard.) There's really no need for contrived, dramatic obstacles! The personalities of the characters are enough!
It's honestly embarrassing, plot-wise, and the dehumanization of The Ex as basically an object to cause trouble is sort of depressing in a book all about women (it reminds me of throwaway Rival Women in heterosexual romances).
Hunter and Sam are wonderful, if both a little too perfect, and I was oddly touched by Hunter's family drama. Stuff like Sam's lovable old folks are well-worn ground, but still warm and funny to me, considering. It's really mediocre plotting, really outstanding characters. Lesbian romance is so sparse and generally bad (like everything is bad, not specific to lesbian romance) that I hate to ding this. The main couple has sex reasonably early on–this is the worst offense I can think of in F/F romance; very long drawn-out will they or won't they that EVENTUALLY ends in them getting together. Navigating the creation of a relationship rather than resolving a tension is more interesting in any case.
M Brayden. You do good work. Just ask yourself “Could this literally ever happen to human beings in the 21st century?”
Torn. I liked The Razor's Edge better, but this was very good. Philip is alarmingly stupid, and the narrator knows it and knows Philip's decisions are bad, but it still could get very frustrating to read. I think there's a certain fascination in this era of modernist literature with people's bad thoughts–Philip openly (to himself) wishes for his uncle to die so he can inherit his money, for instance. I think it's intended to be a universally recognizable experience, but I think bad stuff and don't generally wish for the death of others. Ditto his terrible behavior toward women. He makes the same mistakes over and over again to the point where I, a person who has made the same mistakes with women over and over again, was like, come on, even I cut my losses at a certain point.
This is higher than I otherwise might have rated it because the dialogue was genuinely witty and real, and they made a pretty cute couple. I'm helpless in the face of that. B also has a more solid reason than the average heroine to fear commitment–and that storyline was woven in nicely.
I have to roll my eyes at stuff like being trapped in an elevator together–come on, the two have great chemistry, there's no real reason for contrived meetings. But just seeing them bounce off each other is worth it. They're business rivals, but almost never antagonistic, despite the blurb–and it's a very believable growth of a relationship.
Do people really do the fictional SHUT IT DOWN thing so blatantly IRL? I ask because I can get hurt every day of the year and still want to commit ten minutes ago.
IDK. Really three stars. Good characters elevate it. More series like this.
