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Culture Consumption: September 2019

Hi, lovelies. Here’s my month in books, movies, games, and podcasts.

Books

I really enjoyed The RavenTower by Ann Leckie (which I discussed here), a beautiful and fascinating fantasy novel about a world in which gods are able to directly interact with humanity and all the power structures that come from such interactions.

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere #1) by Meg ElisonAnother phenomenal read was The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison. The story is a set in an apocalyptic world in which the population has been decimated by an illness that was particularly hard on women and children. The result is a world in which children are nonexistent, women are rare, and most men rove around in gangs claiming the few women left as slaves. The midwife — whose diaries have been preserved by a future society — survives by pretending to be a male and issues what little help she can to the women she meets in the form of contraceptives and medical care.

There is a certain bleakness that tends to come out of this kind of storyline — much of the worst of humanity is revealed. And yet, this book doesn’t fully dwell there. For all the awful things that happen, there are people who are trying to help or at the very least trying to just survive without doing harm. Interesting cultural structures crop up, which reverse power roles and people are capable of trust and be good to one another, if they try hard enough. This is, in the end, a story of hope in a brutal world — and it moved me to tears several times. I loved it.

Locus by Jason BayaniI also read a lot of poetry this month. One of my favorites was Locus by Jason Bayani, which draws on his heritage and cultural experience to delve into the fragmented identities of Pilipinx Americans. Blending memoir and lyricism and inspired by hip-hop and DJ culture, these poems do powerful work in recovering the voices of silenced communities, reflecting on the importance of family and community in tying us to ourselves.

I met Bayani at a reading he was doing and was fortunate to be able to have a moving conversation with him for the New Books in Poetry podcast, which I should be able to share soon.

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Book Love: The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

I adored Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series, with the first book Ancillary Justice being one of my favorite reads in 2015. One of the things I loved about these book is how the author was able to shape cultures that felt vivid and complex, exploring the power structures that exist and the various nuances of custom, belief, and prejudice within those societies — and this is something she does equally well in her first foray into fantasy, The Raven Tower.

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16 of My Favorite Reads from 2018

It was a great reading year for me. The vast majority of the 63 books I read in 2018 were excellent, beautifully written, and/or just plain fun — and this could potentially be a much longer list, if I were to include every book that I enjoyed reading last year.

Fiction

freshwater by akwaeke emezi

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emzi

Connected to gods and spirit, Ada navigates her life with a sense of fractured self. Emzi’s debut novel is stunning from top to bottom. Ada’s story is heart wrenching. The writing is lush, vivid, and lyrical. It’s the kind of writing to sink into and get lost in. This book haunts me in the best of ways. (Full review.)

All Systems Red - Martha Wells

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Reading the 2018 Hugos: Provenance by Ann Leckie

Provenance by Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books, starting with Ancillary Justice, is at the top of my list best trilogies that I’ve ever read. I loved the intricate intergalactic universe she created along with the characters who roam it.  I’m pretty much down to read anything Leckie writes at this point.

Provenance is set in the same universe (an instant draw for me), but it’s focused on a different region of the galaxy, primarily set on a planet called Hwae, which has their own unique conflicts and cultural values. There is a strong focus on family as a political construct, as well as a passion for “vestiges,” or cultural artifacts that provide a level of prestige on the owner.

Driven by the need to impress her politically motivated mother, she embarked on a dangerous and desperate scheme — to bring a criminal out of imprisonment so that e can reveal the location of some stolen vestiges. Of course, nothing goes according to plan. The person she broke out claims to be someone else entirely. She quickly devises a new plan, but her ship home gets stopped by an ambassador with a gripe and once she does make it home, she’s greeted by political turmoil. Things only get stranger and more dangerous from there.

I don’t want to say much more than that — vestiges play a large role in storyline, as does the question of whether they are valid or forgery It’s twisty story with many, many threads from seemingly dissimilar occurances that all somehow come together in the end.

Ingray, at first, seems a bit frivolous. Her plan is absurdly risky and has cost her much in it’s execution to only have it fail. However, she’s a person who proves herself capable of thinking her way through just about any crisis (with only a little panic in the interim). Her plans are wild and sometimes foolish, but they also tend to work. She’s also really compassionate toward other people, helping who she can despite the risk to herself. It makes her lovable.

She makes some interesting allies throughout her journey — most notably, Garal Ket, the prisoner who may or may not be who she was seeking, and Captain Tic Ulsine, who ran away from his life on Geck by making off with a few of their ships. Both of these characters are clever and entertaining in their own unique ways.

On the whole, I would say that Provenance is a lighter romp than the Radch trilogy, the elements driving it more down-home with several iterations of family and family conflict being at center. A lot of the characters motivations are the result of the desire to fit in with family or the rejection of family along with the formation of new families. It’s impressive how Leckie is able to bring so many threads together into such an interesting story. It’s brilliantly done.

Provenance is nominated for Best Novel. All my Hugo related posts are under the 2018 Hugos tag and you can check out the complete list of nominated creators and works here.