Alex

I chose this book based on a recommendation by [a:Robert Sapolsky 18456867 Robert Sapolsky https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] on the Ezra Klein Show because it “taught him how to think in a whole new way.” As someone with absolutely no prior knowledge of higher math or chaos science beyond Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, I think I may have missed that insight. The book is focused on the people involved in creating chaos science and their personalities, discoveries, and challenges. All the people featured seemed real, and their drive to discover and share their knowledge was inspiring. I don't regret reading the book, but I do feel a little dazed and confused by the whole thing.

This should be required reading for US citizens. I feel ashamed that I didn't know how deliberate our government was in denying full citizenship to African Americans. Have I written that as an intro to a review before? Probably. This seems to happen a lot.

The premise of this book is that there is a myth in the USA that racism and racialized outcomes come out of many small individual decisions. That segregation came from everyone just making little moves away from each other and towards their own race. This myth is bullshit. Segregation in housing (and employment, and education, and and...) was the result of deliberate and ongoing efforts by the US government to deny true integration from the end of Reconstruction through to the end of the 20th century and today.

It's hard to deny the truth of this book. The author backs up every assertion with so many examples that it is honestly hard to read. Both because of how unjust all of this history is, but (I am ashamed to say this) also because it is boring. I confess I didn't read every page of this very important book but I have already recommended it to half a dozen people in the few weeks since I picked it up.

Key takeaways for me:

* The greatest wealth creator in the 20th century was the housing market, enabled by long term mortgages backed by the FHA and VA. These were denied to African Americans and therefore the average white family today has over 25 times as much wealth as the average black family. This push towards home ownership was prompted by anti-communist sentiment based on the idea that the if people owned homes the more invested they would be in maintaining the status quo.

* All of the New Deal policies were explicitly designed to perpetuate racial inequality.

* Zoning of every kind has been used to stop residential integration.

“This sword is made for only one purpose, to kill. It will only be as good or evil as the one who wields it.”

Redwall is the series that made me a fantasy reader, as many other reviewers have echoed. It is, for me, the template for a medieval-style hero story and I devoured it as a child. I'm reviewing it now after re-reading it in my late thirties with my own two children and I have to say the magic is still there.

The narrative engine of this story is strong. The characters are well constructed, even if they are generic: The wise old gatekeeper, the anointed warrior, the practical damsel, etc. And those characters are embedded in a solid and time-tested plot in which evil comes to town to conquer and is, after some ups and downs, soundly defeated by the hero.

If this book had just the plot and the characters, it would still be a very good one, but what makes it so special is the writing. I've read many books with my kids, and while there are other books that are just as exciting - Harry Potter, City Spies, etc. - almost nothing I've read with them are as richly rendered as Redwall. Here's an example:

“The new day dawned in a haze of soft sunshine. It crept across the countryside suddenly to expand and burst forth over all the peaceful woods and meadowland. Blue-gold tinged with pink, each dewdrop turned into a scintillating jewel, spiders' webs became glittering filigree, birdsong rang out as if there had never been a day as fresh and beautiful as this one.”

It goes without saying that juvenile fiction is written for children, but there are too many writers in the genre who simplify their prose to the point that it almost seems as if their works are written by children. We become great readers only when authors challenge us with complex metaphors, rare and specific vocabulary, or obscure references. Sometimes those challenges require resolution, as when my kids ask me for the meaning of a word, but sometimes they can just wash over us and context fills in the meaning. This is how we learn new words and the beauty and complexity of the English language.

Not only are Jacques' descriptions beautifully written, but he manages to write character dialogue in such a way that each character truly has their own voice. The patterns of speech are widely varied, from the long-winded Abbot to the terse Sparra Queen. The author also manages to perfectly walk the fine line that is writing phonetically so that accents come through clearly. This will of course be personal to ever reader, but I challenge anyone to read Ambrose Spike's lines without a Devon accent! Or Basil Stag Hare as anything but the classic voice and accent of an English officer trained at Sandhurst.

There is always so much more to say about a great book (and series) like this, but I'll leave it off for now. I'm not yet sure if I'm going to be reading the next book with my kids or not, but I hope I do because I remember how much fun I had with these stories way back when.

Half of this book seems is endless battle descriptions and the rest seems to be trying to itself up as a bridge to whatever comes next in the series re: a new generation of characters. I couldn't be less interested.

For me, this series can be broken into a few distinct sub-series:

* Books 1-3: The Change and Immediate Aftermath - These are by far the most interesting/thought-provoking of the series. Imagine modern technology suddenly disappears? How do people cope? What institutions and norms emerge and how do they appear to our better/more base natures?

* Books 4-9: The Changelings Take Control - Rudi, Matti, and co. explore North America and discover a whole new world. The conflict simplifies to an alliance of Good vs. a literal demonic Evil, which is fun but a bit basic.

This last book sets us up for whatever comes next but I just don't care. The duality of Good vs. Evil has slowly gotten simpler and less nuanced over the course of the CUT arc to the point that I am just not interested anymore. Devil = bad... Sure, whatever. Maybe I'll continue on at some point but for now, I'm done with the world of the Emberverse.

The story gets more epic, more supernatural, and a little less easy for me to care about. I still enjoyed this one and certainly plan to continue my marathon binge of it but I would very much like to go back to Clan Mackenzie and their druidic neoceltic utopia for a while and focus less on this grand battle of Good vs Evil.