Laith

My god does this book sneak up on you. I’ve heard people describe it as a thriller, or a tragedy, but I think they’ve got it wrong — this is horror, plain and simple. Not cheap horror either; this is slow-burn dread buried in technological distrust, the mechanics and foreshadowing ingeniously concealed in all too mundane complaints about modern life: corrosive internet culture, billionaires, mass surveillance. It all builds to a sudden moment that flips your perception of every character on its head and furnishes one of the blackest endings I have ever read.

The real star of this show is Robert Lemoine. He’s so inconspicuous, so little of his interior life revealed to the reader compared to the others, that he just slips under your radar. Sure, he’s a little creepy from the start — the drones, the surveillance — but we are so accustomed to the impression of the ineffective, undeserving billionaire that we write him and his cartoon villainy off as just another obnoxious caricature. Somewhere along the line, though, you begin to realize that he is not an obnoxious caricature, that he did not stumble into money, and that he is instead cut from a more sinister cloth: the high-functioning sociopath. Once you realize he’s the only character actually playing the game, his every prior action becomes laced with sinister intention, and you begin frantically recontextualising everything — characters you’ve spent the whole book rooting against you are now desperately hoping will succeed.

The book follows Mira and Shelley, two leaders of the titular Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that grows crops on vacant land, scrounging and sometimes stealing what they need. Mira identifies an opportunity to bring the group into solvency: a landslide in southern New Zealand has cut off the town of Thorndike, leaving a large farm abandoned. But Lemoine has his eyes on the property too, hoping to buy it for an apocalypse bunker, and when he catches Mira scoping the farm he offers her funding and use of the land.

A significant portion of the book is spent familiarising us with the Birnam Wood cadre: Mira, the charismatic but unappreciative leader; Shelley, a disgruntled functionary who wants to leave but won’t confront Mira about it; and Tony, the self-righteous founder who returns from abroad to find himself alienated from the group. Each is a purposely grating caricature of a self-absorbed, liberal-minded eco-warrior. You’d be forgiven for putting the book down at the midway point — by then you’ll be thoroughly fed up with these unpleasant characters and the heavy-handed social commentary they spew. But that irritation is precisely the point. They are the cover.

The last quarter of the book is blindingly incandescent and impossible to put down, in the vein of Fargo + The Beast in Me — a slow, dreadful burn culminating in an absolutely unhinged finale. My only caveat (and it's a fairly major one) is that it takes a long time to get there; I really had to slog through the first 50–60% of the novel. If you choose to read Birnam Wood, please do not put it down halfway. That’s all I can say.

Heat 2 is unique in that it's usually books that are turned into movies, and here is something that should have been a movie presented as a book. A common adage is that books are movies in your head, but I find myself unable to review this as a book because I didn't really read this so much as watch it. As a massive fan of Heat (1995), this was so visual for me, it felt like I was watching Val Kilmer, Pacino, and De Niro doing their thing. I think that might be the highest praise I can give this book.

It is structured a lot like a movie: it has three acts, there is conflict in every "scene," and it felt closer to a screenplay than your typical book. I did listen to a good chunk of the book and the sensation of "watching" was probably egged on by Peter Giles' raspy narration and purposeful impressions. I can't tell whether or not the "watching sensation" is because of the quality of the prose considering how much attachment I had towards these characters before I ever cracked the cover.

That said, as a piece of writing I'd call this quality, and I think someone who hasn't seen Heat would be sucked right in. As the story builds, particularly the prelude portions, there is palpable tension that sinks right into your gut. There were moments where I had to take a break because of how anxious it was making me.

I cannot wait for the film adaptation. I generally recommend this to fans of the film. It gets a de facto 5 stars.

A group of interstellar travelers, ordinary people, find themselves stranded after their starship suffers a warp-drive malfunction and disintegrates way off course. The scant survivors are stranded on a barren planet with no hope of rescue; equipped with dwindling resources and no sure method of obtaining more, the survivors band together to overcome the odds and tame the vast wilderness for future generations. All but one survivor, that is. The narrator has done the math: if thirst doesn't kill them, hunger will, and if hunger doesn't kill them, then in a few generations, inbreeding will; they are doomed. The narrator decides she'd rather die with dignity, opting to flee from the others as it becomes increasingly clear that they intend for her to carry out the mission of populating the planet whether she wants to or not.

There's no way to get around it, this is an unpleasant book to read. I'll be upfront, whether you find some enjoyment in this will hinge entirely on how much you buy into the premise and the prose because it's unlike most other books I've read. We Who Are About To is delivered as a transcript of an audio diary, with all the weird punctuation, ramblings, and cut off thoughts that go along with such an idea. It's not comfortable to be locked into the perspective of a suicidal pessimist who by the end of the novel is/is going insane. Opinions are generally split, some people hate it and others think it's a work of genius that plays by its own rules- I'm not sure which camp I personally fall into because I while didn't hate the prose I do agree that it's a bit boring and difficult to read. But I give it a pass because so much of what's "wrong" with the book is clearly by design.

We're going to get into spoiler territory now. Because I buried the lede, while our narrator flees the group seeking to survive on rations and eventually transition to death in her own time she is not left unmolested. The surviving men of the group track her down, aiming to impregnate her on their return so they can begin their colonization attempt. She resists, brutally murdering her pursuers and returning to the camp where she kills the remaining survivors, her fellow women and a 12 year old child. Left alone she begins to lose her grasp on sanity, suffering hallucinations she is haunted by her victims and specters of her past. Weak from hunger she kills herself, the final line "well it's time".

It's odd to characterize a Novella as a slow burn, but that's what this is. It's a slow, cold, burn- and a lot of that has to do with the narration, how seemingly detached her perspective is from the present moment. Given the narrative device (the transcription of an audio diary) at nearly all times it is a story told from hindsight- it lends a reflective element and psychological edge to even the most horrifically violent moments. Initially told with only a slight delay between event and transcription there is a significant shift towards the midpoint where most of the story is being back-filled, given color by the time that has passed since the narrator committed herself to the project of dying.

So much of the second half of the book is devoted to the ennui the Narrator experiences, to her and to the reader it is torturous to get through. This is of course by design, while this is not the first book to explore boredom as torture it is one of the few (if not the only) that turns into a slog to prove its own point. It's really quite bleak by the end and as we're increasingly left alone with the narrator and her thoughts you can't help but to ruminate on the hopeless realities at play. Whether it's the narrator philosophizing with her past self or reflecting on the morals of her actions, you get a visceral sense of their absolute desolation by the time you reach the final page.

This is hailed as "Feminist Science Fiction" and I get that label, but I more so saw this as a reflection on this genre and these types of stranded/colony stories writ large. I think it's totally a matter of time and progress that I don't find this all that feminist, to me the narrator's desire for bodily autonomy and outright refusal to be raped/impregnated is more of a cut and dry "you shouldn't do that to people AND of course she gets to make that decision" sort of thing; that probably wasn't the prevailing sensibility in 1975- particularly within the conventions of Sci Fi. More-so I saw this as commentary on the types of books in this genre that would largely forgive the delusion of the group, the manifest destiny impulse that causes them to shed their civilized clothes and rush in beastly and feudalistic directions. If you asked me what I found most feminist about the book id say it's Russ' outlook on the point of living and reproducing, the break from the mainstream view that the reason we exist is to reproduce, because that's patently not the point of living to the narrator. She views reproduction as a means to perpetuate and mend our present mode of civilization, that to reproduce means choosing to continue life as it is it; if that life is not worth living, neither is reproduction.

I think this is a worthy if difficult read, difficult because of the style but also because of the content. It will leave you grappling with quite a bit or it may put you off entirely. It came highly recommended to me, so despite rather liking it, I thought I would love it and I didn't.

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change is a bit of mixed bag, a piece of journalism that was better received by its contemporaries than it has a right to be by the modern reader. This is a not-quite comprehensive overview of US interventionist actions that resulted in regime change starting with Hawaii (1893) and concluding with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (2003). While still a critical piece this trades away a lot of the nuance and depth surrounding these subjects for the sake of accessibility.

Overthrow is more of an introductory text than anything else: the prose is exceptionally clear, well paced and easy to understand. Read this for the names, the dates, and a basic understanding of the motivations behind why our country raises its sword. I'll give Kinzer credit because he's generally evenhanded and calls the play correctly when it comes to the "why", naming the big 2 motivations clearly: capitalist interest and missionary/paternalist racism. For nearly 150 years the US opinion of much of the rest world has been that it is uncivilized and in desperate need of democracy and high yield explosives; that is the main take away here. He correctly points out that in most cases of US intervention we have overthrown governments that had principals similar to ours and replaced them with autocratic regimes that made us less safe in the long run, those changes made to serve the purposes of capital and not the people.

However, the closer he gets to contemporary events, the less reliable the commentary. Generally this is true of most things as they are divorced from hindsight and the facts get obscured by the fog of war. In the case of Overthrow, it means Kinzer is unwilling to totally criticize US overreach in Iraq and does not contemplate theoretical alternatives to the status quo (going as far as to suggest military rule of Afghanistan). This text is deeply guilty of oversimplifying geopolitics, (which is admittedly a grossly complex subject) leading the reader to make many systemic assumptions about the way the world works which go largely unchallenged. In the interest of tying up each chapter with a bow, Kinzer provides summaries and counterfactuals that I'll generously describe as shallow and un-nuanced. A common thread across the whole book is that some interventions were worth it, taking sides without really explaining why or how he arrived at his conclusions.

There is one major sticking point that needs to be addressed: the complicity of American press and media conglomerates in all of these events. A true ironic chord is struck as Kinzer takes time to highlight the role of propagandist journalism in much of the Latin American coups of the 20th century while personally participating in that same system in his professional journalistic career. It's plain that Kinzer wants to support some of the interventions mentioned in this book, and that carries over to his more modern reporting on current imperialist interventions (Syria, Ukraine) for the NYT. He has written extensive pieces that defend practices/abuses perpetrated by all manner of autocrats- at a minimum he is guilty of lacking skepticism in his coverage. Whether he sides with Washington, or Moscow, or Damascus he does take sides in the press, and he does it at the behest of a media conglomerate which profits from upholding the status quo. As in the case of the US occupation of Nicaragua the media's choices of topics and issues, the unquestioned premises on which that coverage rests remains in the hands of corporate interests and are constrained to reinforce the state's ideology.

If you don't know why Hawaii is a state, or that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens then this is a book you should read, but I don't recommend that anyone stop here, particularly if they are interested in the subject of imperialism or US covert actions.

A common adage is that books are movies in your head, but I find myself unable to review this as a book because I didn't really read this so much as watch it. Heat 2 is unique in that it's usually books that are turned into movies, and here is something that should have been a movie presented as a book. As a massive fan of Heat (1995) this was so visual for me, it felt like I was watching Val Kilmer, Pacino, and De Niro doing their thing. I think that might be the highest praise I can give this book.

I can't tell whether or not the "watching sensation" is because of the quality of the prose considering how much attachment I had towards these characters before I ever cracked the cover. It is structured a lot like a movie, it has three acts, there's conflict in every "scene" and it felt closer to a screenplay than your typical book. I did listen to a good chunk of the book and the sensation of "watching" was probably egged on by Peter Giles raspy narration and purposeful impressions.

That said, as a piece of writing I'd call this quality and I think someone who hasn't seen Heat would be sucked right in. As the story builds (particularly the prelude portions) there is palpable tension that sinks right into your gut, there were moments where I had to take a break because of how anxious it was making me.

I cannot wait for the film adaptation, I generally recommend this to fans of the film. It gets a de facto 5 stars.