Loki's Ring by Stina Leicht

 Another space opera!  More spaceships, ship AIs (and other artificial persons) as characters, an interstellar crisis, even a ring world.

This one took me a long time to read, and I wasn't sure why.  The writing was good, the characterizations were distinct and consistent, characters were sympathetic, there was lots of action and clear stakes.  So why did I keep putting it down and not getting back to it for days?  Why did I find Doppelganger more gripping?

I think the first reason is the most important, and I'll simply make it by gesturing at the world around me.  If you're reading this in years to come, remember what the first month or two of the Trump II administration was like.  It's hard to concentrate.

The second reason didn't strike me until after I finished the book.  When I thought about the story I'd just read, I realized that at its heart, Loki's Ring is women's fiction.  The central conflict is not between the Norton Alliance and the TRW.  The struggle that drives the book is not Gita's need to rescue her AI daughter.  The mystery is not why illicit miners were trying to harvest something from the surface of Loki's Ring, and the horror is not the dastardly virus liberated by their efforts.  No, the central conflict of the book is internal to Gita:  she has to come to terms with the fact that there was no way to prevent the tragedy that she is haunted by, and she needs to reconcile with her family (including her AI daughters) and her estranged former partner. The mystery is exactly what happened (before our story begins) and how it has affected each character.  The true struggle is for personal growth.  

In other words the space opera elements are merely trappings, in the same way that Calamity by Constance Fay is a romance, even though it features spaceships and scrappy space adventurers and an interstellar villain volcano lair. 

Then it all made sense.  Loki's Ring didn't grab me because while there's nothing in the least wrong with women's fiction, it's not the kind of story that I generally read, and is not the kind of story that generally grabs me.

I have to admit that I don't really understand how all of this works from a writerly perspective.  I mean,  a space opera (or a mystery) without romantic elements or personal dilemmas or character growth would probably be dull.  So why does a romance (or woman's fiction) leave me cold? What makes a story something that I find compelling?   The stakes can't be purely personal?  Hm....maybe that's it.  While the events in Loki's Ring include dramatic escapes from wrecked spaceships, alien attacks, and at least one big spaceship fight -- that's not what *matters* to the characters. What matters is dealing with their colleague's agoraphobia.  Reconciling with their estranged friend.  Letting down their family.  Bringing themselves to say that they're sorry.  Admitting that they were wrong.  You know, the actually important stuff that everyone has to deal with in life.

Hmmm...learning by reading continues.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Klein was inspired to write this book by the unnerving experience of being repeatedly confused with Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth.  Both women are authors of a certain age who have written "thinky" books, both women are Jewish, both are named Naomi. 

Klein, of course, is best known for her books No Logo and Shock Doctrine. She is also Canadian leftist 'royalty', being the daughter of feminist icon filmmaker Bonnie Sherr Klein, sister of author and former think-tank director Seth Klein, and wife of progressive NDP activist Avi Lewis (who is himself the grandson of former NDP leader David Lewis and son of NDP icon Stephen Lewis). 

Naomi Wolf, on the other hand, has taken a turn since her feminist days.  As a popular meme goes "If your Naomi be Klein, you're doing just fine.  If your Naomi be Wolf... oh buddy. Oof."  Wolf has gone full conspiracy-theorist anti-vax MAGA.

Klein is at no risk of following in Wolf's footsteps, which is one reason why she became somewhat obsessed with the path taken by her shadow-self, her doppelganger.  How had this once feminist become a regular on Steve Bannon's radio program? What prompted Wolf to start ranting about 'freedom' when faced with vaccine requirements?  Why had Wolf transformed from an advisor to the Clinton administration to a MAGA hanger-on? 

I think that Doppelganger is strongest when it addresses this specific issue.  Why did Wolf and a whole swath of others move towards health conspiracy theories?  Q-Anon?  MAGA politics?  

Two factors in particular struck me.  

The first is that at the core of most of these conspiratorial beliefs is a fear rooted in reality.  For example, during the pandemic one of the anti-vax talking points was that the vaccines were a tool of Big Pharma, being rolled out to maximize profits.  Leaving aside their "arguments" about the vaccine's dangers, Big Pharma is in fact fucked.  We need look no further than the contemptible Martin Shkrelli (2015's most punchable man), who raised the price of a critical antiparasitic drug from $13.50 to $750.00 a pill.  And during the pandemic, as Klein points out, we could have cancelled patents on the COVID-19 vaccines and rolled out a global low cost vaccination program to protect lives around the world while simultaneously reducing the virus' ability to mutate. Instead we protected corporate profits. 

Anti-vax anger at Big Pharma is not wrong.  

Similarly,  Wolf amongst others railed against vaccine passport apps as being an intolerably oppressive Big Brother tracking tool designed to first track everyone and then imprison them.  The riposte of the sane was something like "Just wait until they find out about cell phones."  Klein's response: "They know about cell phones."  In other words, smirk all you like but we all carry an unparalleled surveillance device in our pockets.  We're just mostly being surveilled by unchecked corporations who can and do do anything they like with our data.  (The "mostly" is because of course we've all decided to politely ignore Edward Snowden's revelations about the reality of unrestricted government data capture.)

Anti-vax anger at surveillance is not wrong either.

In both of these cases (and in so many more), the problem is not that conspiracy theorists are afraid and angry at things that are happening in society.  The problem is that they direct their fear and anger towards invented targets, twisted mirrors of the real causes, because their invented targets are easier to understand, easy to demonize, and are less threatening to oppose than the real forces that are causing danger or real harm. 

The second point that really struck me about Klein's description of the attraction of the shadow world is that the shadow world of conspiracies is very welcoming.  When Naomi Wolf first wanted to say something on Bannon's program, she was eagerly accepted into the fold.  "Look, this  feminist and former Democrat wants to talk to us about <insert mild conspiracy theory here>."   Wolf was listened to instead of challenged and received lots of validation (and new social media followers), and step by step she went deeper and deeper into MAGA world.  Similarly, Klein notes that callers to Bannon's phone-ins are treated gently, encouraged and supported in whatever they choose to talk about, and generally welcomed with open arms.

Contrast this experience to Wolf being publicly humiliated by an interviewer who discovered errors in her 2019 book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love.  (The errors were profound and real: Klein points out that Wolf has never been a meticulous researcher, but I think her publisher also has a lot to answer for.)  Contrast also the stereotypical world of the left, where the People's Front of Judea will fight to the death the heresies of the Judean People's Front (in preference to effectively opposing the Romans of course).  Or to to take a personal example, look at Doppelganger itself, which has an entire chapter pointing out that Hitler's Germany and its final solution was simply a darker doppleganger of Western societies and their "Indian Reservations" and  their Boer War concentration camps, and their anti-Semitic laws.  (My emotional reaction: in this broken and nasty world we live in, isn't there anything we can celebrate? Not even defeating the actual Nazis?)  Or another personal example:  a statement on the Wild Bird Trust website about the harm done by white environmentalists by creating a bird sanctuary at Maplewood Flats without the knowledge or consent of the Tsleil-Waututh people -- in a world in which it feels miraculous that Maplewood Flats exists as a natural area at all. (It's a near-impossibility to preserve any natural area seen as having "economic value".)

The 'left' is not a welcoming world.  Maybe because reality isn't.  Maybe because we really do share a very dark history, and there is much pain for which real amends have never been made (and probably never can be truly made).  Maybe because we are collectively too often genuinely powerless, and it is the only the battles against the Judean People's Front that seem winnable.

Klein, like any good activist, ends her book with a call to action.  She asks us to work together with real people in the real world, where we can see and feel their totality, and can perhaps learn to work with people we don't 100% agree with.  

But as I finished the book all I could think was how much easier it is to shitpost than it is to understand or act.  And that every one of us is vulnerable to the temptation to seek simple answers to complex problems.  

What makes a book 'cozy'? In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

 I've been describing my WIP as a "cozy space opera" as I've been pitching it recently.  This is mostly a marketing decision, given the success of Becky Chambers, Victoria Goddard, T.J. Klune, and others.  

But what does it mean for a book to be cozy?  As far as I know, the term is derived from the "cozy mystery" subgenre.  In a cozy mystery, there may not even be a murder (Alexander McCall Smith).  And I don't think I can improve on the description of a cozy mystery I created for that review:  "There are no graphic descriptions or upsetting details,  you probably didn't get to know the person well or at all before they were "struck down", and you get the distinct impression that a murder occurred only to  give the detective an excuse to poke about, ask questions, and solve a puzzle."  The only thing missing is perhaps that cozies are often series, which means that there is a recurring cast of often quirky characters who help or hinder the heroine.  (Because it is generally a heroine, isn't it?)

So what makes for cozy SF?  I think it comes down to a protagonist is who is flawed but fundamentally decent and relatable, a world that is in at least some ways fair (effort is awarded, villains and plotters can be overcome, most folks are decent and trying to do the right thing, competence is important and appreciated) , there is often a "found family"of characters who love and support one another, personal relationships are an important part of the story, and the stories are generally LGBTQ+ friendly.  Of course there is also a happy ending.

Is In the Lives of Puppets cozy?  On the negative side, to quote the book itself: "Most unfortunately, in the lives of puppets there is always a 'but' that spoils everything".  In this case, the 'but' is the setting.  It's a post-apocalyptic world where all humans except our protagonist have been exterminated by robots.  Post-apocalyptic worlds are not particularly cozy.  Another fly in the ointment -- does it have a happy ending?  Without getting into details, the answer is "yes, but" because whatever else happens, our protagonist remains not only the only human, but almost certainly the very last human who will ever exist.  So even though there are triumphs and the protagonist achieves a number of goals, the happy ending is shaded.  As is the happy ending itself, even on the face of it, because the happiness comes with losses too.

On the positive side, the story is fundamentally a retelling of a fairy tale (Pinocchio), there is a quirky cast of characters (including an over-eager vacuum modelled after the author's Roomba), one of the antagonists becomes an ally, and characters choose good over evil.  

Do I recommend the book?  "Yes, but" again. Yes, I'm not sorry I've read this.  Yes I enjoyed it.  Yes I think it was well-done.  Yes, I think it was an overall positive experience, and no, I don't think there are any glaring flaws (even though there was a bit of inconsistency in the characterization of the supporting cast towards the end).  The only "but" is a relatively minor one, really.  "But I'm not going to rush out and read everything else TJ Klune has written."  The "but" to that "but" is that's a pretty high bar for an author new to me to cross.  

And now for a break in the routine....

 By reading some straight SF, not space opera!  Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton takes place in the United States of America in 2065, as a genocidal war breaks out between Humanists and the Federals.  

Humanists are ordinary people who are violently opposed to the existence of cyborgs:  humans with  neurological implants, embedded enhancements to their musculature, live contact with infospace, nanobots running through their bloodstreams to repair physical damage, etc. etc.  The Federals are the same-old, same-old folks who may or may not be enhanced (depending on their personal financial circumstances or their military enlistment status), who live in or run everyday society of 2065.  

Our hero Mal is an independent AI who inadvertently wanders into the conflict between the two types of monkey when he downloads himself into the neurological implant of a recently deceased Federal soldier to see what it's like to live in meatspace -- and gets trapped when his link to infospace goes down.

The cover calls this book "darkly comic", which pretty much covers Mal's adventures incompetently pretending to be human as he first collects a posse of misfits, and then tries to escape with them across Humanist lines back to Federal infospace while Bad Things happen all around.  Well-written, funny, gripping and thought-provoking, even if I refuse to believe that a game of Guess the Cube Root of the Square of the Output of the Random Number Generator would be any more fun than the base game of Guess the Output of the Random Number Generator for a bored AI trapped in the head of a sleeping host human.

What I've been reading: Space Opera Edition II

As I continue to read modern space operas, I'm noticing (perhaps belatedly) some strong general themes:

• Written by women
• Usually include banter/smartasses/clever dialog
• Strong female leads
• Lots of queer characters and queer relationships
• Romance is common, as are found families, scrappy space rebels (think Harrison Ford), and AIs

Now on to more detail about my most two latest reads: Full Speed to a Crash Landing and The Floating Hotel.  Firstly, I'd have to say that these two are among the best of my most recent batch (which includes Calamity, Cascade Failure, Barbary Station, Finder, and Under Fortunate Stars from Space Opera I).  

Neither of these two books has any obvious "writerly" flaw, both were engaging, and neither was too long.  

Quick competent fun = +++

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (published 2024)

This one had intrigue, banter/smart ass comments, and a hint of romance (or at least passing lust).  So, in some ways it's a mirror of Calamity by Constance Fey.  But Calamity is a romance and Full Speed is a sexy space heist.  Full Speed is told in the first person, by an unreliable narrator, and is about a galactic salvager/scavenger who is rescued as she's running out of air by an official government salvage crew who's come to investigate the wreck that she's plundering.  

Parallels with my work:  banter, spaceships

The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (published 2024)

Can I complain that a book isn't what I expected if it delivers exactly what's on the tin?  I ordered this after reading its Amazon preview pages, and thought that it was going to be about Carl, the abused orphan from a terrible mining planet who is kindly taken in by the staff of a luxury hotel spaceship (the Grand Abeona). Instead, the book is fundamentally about....drumrollllll....the hotel itself.  

Each chapter follows a different character (although Carl, who becomes manager, does get a few), and together the characters' stories tell us about the Galactic Empire that the hotel traverses and gradually, all about the hotel itself.   At the heart of the book is a mystery, which creates an overarching plot that emerges from the individual character's stories.

I thought the book was very well done.  It was engaging, had well-developed and believable characters, and the overall conceit was well-executed in that the many threads came together to build to a "surprising but inevitable" conclusion (which is the goal of a mystery plot!)

This is advertised as a cozy and I can see why:  Carl (and the culture of the ship) is kind, you can describe the collection of characters as a found family, and the premise of a luxury interstellar floating hotel staffed by waifs who love their work is fundamentally sweet.   But there is a dark heart here: an oppressive Galactic Empire with a sadistic agent who uses torture as a tool.  I find it hard to categorize any book that includes torture as cozy, even if the perpetrator eventually faces consequences (albeit for murdering a colleague, not for the torture itself).

Parallels with my work: oppressive Galactic Empire, spaceships, most characters are decent and doing their best

What I've been reading: Space opera edition

 As I've been preparing to seek an agent to represent my cozy space opera, I've been reading recent books in the genre both to understand the current marketplace and to find "comp titles" that I can use for my query.  Here are some of the books I've read recently:

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee  (published 2016)

Rebellion. Heresy. Interplanetary War.  A brilliant undead general released from storage/captivity and assigned to help our protagonist triumph in an otherwise hopeless battle.   Lots of intricate world-building and factional strife. Military SF with calendrical magic. 

Parallels with my book:  honestly?  spaceships.  

Barbary Station by R. E. Stearns (published 2017)

Lesbian space pirates.  That's probably enough to entice most potential readers of this book to open its covers.  When you discover that the lesbian couple in question are seeking to join the space pirates because of their overwhelming student debt...well, slam dunk for reader identification for most Gen Zs. Add in corporate bad guys and a struggle to prove yourself to the pirates while simultaneously trying to save innocents in a battle against a malevolent AI -- all the adventure boxes have been ticked.  The book does have its flaws, though.  From a writerly perspective, I found that the writing has weak POV. Weak POV weakens a reader's engagement with the characters, which I believe is what's behind statements like "I started losing interest" and "For some reason I just never connected" in the top Goodreads reviews.

Parallels with my work:  relationship between the two main characters is critical to the story, as is a powerful AI.

Cascade Failure by L.M. Sagas (published 2024)

Banter.  Smart ass perspectives.  Clever observations.  All things that should really have enhanced this adventure story about a Guild deserter who hitches a ride on a spaceship and ends up working with its crew to save the universe from a planet-killing conspiracy.  The book has a lot of action, plot twists, a found family, and fun characters, but the author is a bit too much in love with the clever things her characters say, think, or do -- sometimes to the point where it interferes with the story.  The voices of the various character are also not always distinct, which can be confusing.

Parallels to my book: space opera, intelligent spaceship as a major character, banter.

Calamity by Constance Fey (published 2023)

Constance Fay does a better job with the banter: it amuses the reader and enlivens the book without ever slowing down the action or getting in the way of the story.  Calamity is a romance about a down-on-her-luck spaceship captain forced to take a dubious commission from an influential Family, along with accepting that Family's handsome son as her security chief.  Deception and adventure follow, along with lots of steamy scenes, most of which have nothing to do with the secret villain volcano lair that they uncover.

Parallels to my book: space opera, romantic themes, banter.

The Terraformers by AnnaLee Newitz (published 2023)

AnnaLee Newitz does not write space opera.  Or at least her previous two novels (Future of Another Timeline and Autonomous) each take place on a future Earth and are "time travel" and "AI" books respectively.  This one is not space opera either: it takes place in a far future on a single distant planet being terraformed by an all-powerful corporation for human use. It draws a bit from the Kim Stanley Robinson school of SFF, in that the book is not really a narrative about one set of characters that has a beginning middle and an end.  Instead it is the story of a civilization (or interlocking civilizations) developing on a planet over the long centuries that it takes for the planet to be altered into the form desired by its "owners".   I have trouble with this kind of book.  It's a great forum for exploring ideas, but no matter how skilled the author I tend to lose engagement when one set of characters vanish and the next appear. 

Parallels to my book:  unusual romantic relationship (intelligent cat and an intelligent train).  

Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings (published 2022)

Very interesting premise: a spaceship unexpectedly and disastrously trapped in a space rift discovers that they are not alone.  Trapped alongside them is the Jonah, the ship whose heroic crew legendarily rescued humans and Felen from a permawar 152 years ago.  How can this possibly be?  The novel explores issues of history and heroism as it unravels the future (and maybe the past) of the unexpectedly mundane and frustrating real people who need to work together to address the current crisis.  Flaws?  Maybe I'm spoiled by Connie Willis's Blackout / All Clear, but Under Fortunate Stars never addresses the possibility/fear that actions taken in the present could alter actions recorded in history or talk about what that could mean.

Parallels to my book: not very many.  spaceships?

Finder by Suzanne Palmer (published 2019)

Intergalactic fixer turned repo man Fergus Ferguson is looking for a stolen spaceship so that he can return it to its rightful owners.  Instead, from page 1 he's thrown into a civil war as competing factions within this remote (and somewhat bizaare) human habitat struggle for power within their fractured society, all while being watched over by enigmatic aliens who might just intervene.

Parallels to my book: space opera. spaceships. enigmatic aliens. Characters with alliterative names.  Characters who mean well and try to do the right thing through a facade of toughness. 

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (published 2023)

A thoroughly brainwashed teenager on an isolated space station does her impressively accomplished best to forward the aims of the awful leader of her awful society -- until her beloved brother cracks and flees.  Or did he?  

This book skillfully immerses you in the mind of a fanatic teen, doing the difficult work of drawing a sympathetic portrait of an unsympathetic character.  It does so to help you truly understand the depth of the trauma that formed her, and to show you her character arc of learning and growth.   2024 Hugo Award winner for best novel. 

Sadly, when I mentioned this as a "good book that I've read recently" to the agent most interested in my novel, her response was "brave choice".  Sigh.  I like writing hopeful books about basically good people, but that's not the only way to help create a better future.

Parallels to my book:  MC who likes to follow the rules, but who learns and grows. Repressive society.  Redemptive arc.

A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers (published 2022)

The most recent novella by the top current author for "found family", "hopecore", and "cozy SFF" books.  Follows the wanderings of an itinerant "tea monk" and their robot companion as the two of them search for answers to the question "what do people need?" .  Set in a distant future that is long past the fossil fuel era.

Parallels to my book:  positive message, fundamentally good characters,  optimistic.

Sexton Blake: The World-Shakers (by Desmond Reid aka Rex Dolphin)

 Sexton Blake starred in thousands of pulp stories published (or produced) in the UK between 1893 and 1978.  The World-Shakers dates to 1960, when Blake's main competitor for readers was James Bond.  

What did I think?  

Sexton Blake is to James Bond as James Bond is to War and Peace.  

Recommended for manly men with square jaws and for those whose sense of irony is stronger than their feelings for literature.  10/10 for having a villain who resides in a secret volcano lair.