Reviews and Comments

I looked it up, "Who Fears Death" isn't a debut novel, but it feels like a debut novel in the best possible way. It's emotionally raw, and slightly unfinished in the sense that you can feel the author poured all her ideas and feelings and all the themes she wanted to explore into this book to the point she couldn't possibly get to all of them. The result is something that's brimming with creativity and life. While the book reads mostly like something targeted at a YA audience, it's frank and direct in its discussion of sex and female sexuality in a way that you wouldn't expect to see outside of adult literature, but it lends a lot of power to the story overall. This is something that matters to the author, and you can tell.

The setting in which magic exists next to the left-over technology from an implied pre-apocalyptic society is very well-developed. Especially the magic system is well-thought-out to the point that I wonder if it's based on a real belief system. It reminds me a bit of the books on witchcraft in Africa I read back when I studied anthropology.

For me, the only real flaw of this book - and this feels like a downside of the same creative force that makes it so enjoyable - is that the second half of the book takes on a bit of road trip plot with way too many stops. While they're all interesting individually, they are too loosely connected and the story loses much of its momentum in this section. It makes me wish that Nnedi Okorafor had had a very stern editor who could've put their foot down and forced her to kill her darlings.

I've seen that she's still a very productive author, and purely based on the covers and descriptions her new books seem to be a bit more mainstream YA fantasy fare. I'd like to pick those up to see what I think as well, but I'm a bit apprehensive. I'd be surprised if they contain the same raw, frank emotional force as Who Fears Death, as that is, admittedly, not its most sellable quality. But I can't imagine Okorafor's work not suffering from sanding down those rough edges.

After Sunshine, I'm returning to the McKinley writing I enjoy - her fairy tale re-tellings.

While I missed the darkness of Deerskin, it's a perfectly well done version of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. There's a bit of coming of age, there's a bit of romance. I liked that all three sisters had a really good relationship. It was enjoyable and there isn't much more to say about it. That may be because of the source material, of course. Beauty and Beast was written by Barbot de Villeneuve to educate young French noblewomen on virtue (as far as I know), while Deerskin comes from the oral tradition of German mothers telling terrifying tales so their children would stay out of the woods. And even within that category it is one of the Grimms' more horrifying fairytales. Disney isn't going to adapt that one, you can be sure. (I wonder if Beauty being a bookish girl, and the giant library inspired the Disney version, or if this was already a thing in the original story. I can't quite remember.)

McKinley also wrote another book based on this fairytale - Rose Daughter - which I'm learning from reviews is a little bit more complex. I loved reading Angela Carter's different versions of this tale in her story collection, and comparing them, so I'm super curious about that.

I've already written a review of another one of Robin McKinley's books, Deerskin. I loved that book, it was psychological, metaphorical, immediate, disgusting, cathartic and very introspective. Logically, I expected something similar from Sunshine. The premise seemed to promise that as well; A vampire and a human are locked together in a room. He hides in the shadows, she moves with the spot of sunlight falling through the window. But as night falls... I expected a tense, intense, slow thriller. Will she die? Will she convince the vampire to let her live? Who locked them in this room together and why? I looked forward to that story.

It wasn't that. It was that for like, the first chapter, and then it became something entirely different. In a sense, it isn't really fair to resent a story for not being what you wanted it to be. Sunshine isn't bad, it just really isn't my jam. Action-adventure urban fantasy isn't really my favorite to begin with, but when it's a monster mash like this... I'm never really a fan of the types of books that mix all the traditional monsters. Vampires and werewolves still works, but when you start adding demons and pixies and sorcerers... I don't know, it works for comedies (though, maybe this was more intended as a comedy?), but if you want your story to be scary, it's too unfocused. The creepiness of each monster doesn't add up and becomes greater than its parts, they each just kind of lose what makes them uniquely frightening, in my opinion. Few people are actually scared of vampires or werewolves, we tend to be scared of what they represent, our primal animalistic side, a toxic love... The underlying themes that suffuse a good monster story. And you can't properly build those themes when you mash your monsters together. I also didn't really like the main character's narration that much. Sunshine is very snarky, but either she, or Robin McKinley isn't quite funny enough to pull it off. Again, in my opinion.

Anyway, I tried to meet it where it's at. Hell, I finished it. But it wasn't what I was looking for, and I am still kind of sad I didn't get the gloomy, introspective, slow-paced vampire thriller I was hoping to read.

Warning: Extremely Vague Spoilers

It’s clear to see why The Fifth Season won a Hugo award and became immensely popular. Jemisin is an amazing world-builder and extremely good at plotting. She knows exactly at what pace to reveal the mysteries of her world to make her readers desperate to find out what happens next. The culture and history of her world are shaped by the titular “fifth seasons” years-long periods of environmental disasters, which is a great concept, and her orogenes are a really cool half-magic, half-science twist on typical elemental magics. She also manages to do something that was once thought impossible: create fantasy-cursing that sounds both thematic and natural.

Jemisin wants to do more than just write an exciting book though, she has a message, a two-fold one at that. She’s clearly both inspired by climate disasters in our world, as well as (racial) oppression. I say racial, because while the orogenes aren’t a one-on-one for an actual real-life group, there’s hints (like the slightly-on-the-nose slur for them being “rogga”) that she was inspired by the oppression of Black people. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, I’m always happy when an SFF author sees the potential in their fictional world to dissect and analyze our real world. I think especially fantasy is deeply underutilized in that respect. However, I am disappointed in how she went about it. While I’m fully aware how white and arrogant this sounds; I think she could’ve done better.
A review on Goodreads, by Nick Imrie, really put it better than I could “…I can't help but feel that the rape, torture, slavery and abuse are all set-dressing, while the real visceral oppression is here in the social snubs, slights and slurs. In the world of The Fifth Season rape is quotidien but being called rogga is unforgivable.” Harsh, but I think she really managed to identify what bothered me so much about her treatment of oppression in this book. It seems like the most visceral feeling moments of cruelty and bigotry are the ones she’s actually likely to have experienced herself, rather than the ones that are actually the worst.

The orogene characters in this book do terrible things, they kill people accidentally and on purpose, allies and enemies, sometimes one, sometimes many. The guilt they experience over this is minimal, and often they halfway justify it by making the argument that the people they killed all contributed to the oppressive system under which orogenes are forced to live (which, admittedly, is truly horrific). Jemisin seems to agree. I get the sense that we’re supposed to see this world as irredeemable because of the bigotry and cruelty of its inhabitants. And I understand that part of the genre conventions of these types of books is that Life is Cheap, but if you’re trying to make a point about oppression, it’s hard for me take it both ways. I can’t both sympathize with a character’s anger over being called a slur, ignore their comparative stoicism over being cast out from their family, and then excuse them semi-accidentally on purpose wiping out an entire village. The actions in this book aren’t afforded their proper emotional weight, in my opinion.

Within the logic of the world she created, orogenes have demi-god levels of power and are fully capable of accidentally killing people, even as infants. They are also undeniably people, despite their danger, but it’s easily understandable why regular folk would hate and fear them. Now, as I said, Jemisin is an amazing plotter. I have no doubt she realized this, and already has an answer in store, (I’ve read the first fifty pages of the second book, and I’m placing my bets on “ancient indigenous knowledge on orogenes that was lost during Sanzed colonialism”) which disappoints me a little. It feels pretty cliché to compare her to Octavia Butler, the only other Black female sci-fi author people are likely to have heard of, but it was one of her greatest strengths as a writer that she always fully engaged with these types of moral dilemmas. She never let her characters take the easy way out and discover some kind of ancient, lost third option. I just don’t trust Jemisin to do the same. (Though I’m prepared for her to embarrass me on this front. I have underestimated her before.)

I feel like Jemisin wants to use this book to pose us a question, except she has already scribbled in the answer. She wants to portray morally gray characters, but we never actually doubt who she considers “the good guys”. And she seems to be unable to go beyond her own experiences to truly confront the horrors of the world she created.

And that’s what could have taken this book from “good” to “great”, in my opinion. And, in all honesty, if this wasn’t a Hugo winner, I wouldn’t have scrutinized it to this extent. For me, it became a victim of its own high expectations.

So, conclusion.

Should you read this book? Honestly, yes. Am I going to read the rest of the series? Yes, I need to know how this ends. Am I bit disappointed? … Yeah, sadly.

Cynthia Voigt is one of those authors whose work more or less became an integral part of my personality. I discovered her series on the Tillermans around thirteen years old, and read and re-read these books throughout my teens, deeply identifying with the protagonists and their coming-of-age struggles.

“The Runner” was never my favourite, but it was still nice to revisit, now that I have some adult perspective.

In other Tillerman-books, Bullet is already a background character. The uncle who died tragically in Vietnam but left a deep impression on the people who knew him in his short life. In this book we actually get to meet him. In the earlier books, Bullet is understandably placed on a bit of a pedestal by the characters, but I don’t know if this story does a good job of taking him off of it. He’s presented as an extremely talented athlete, very intelligent (though he squanders it) and well-liked by the other students, even if he doesn’t like them. Quite unrealistic, considering his personality. He’s a tough character to like for the reader. He’s very angry, and it’s not pleasant to spend a lot of time in his head with his thoughts. His philosophy of hard work and extreme self-reliance seems attractive at first, but reading between the lines, it doesn't seem to make him any happier. It’s easy to empathise with this anger at first. His cold, authoritarian father is straight-up abusive, has already chased off his older brother and sister, and strains his relationship with his mother. Bullet himself would also rather risk his life in Vietnam than staying on his family’s farm, even if this means he could avoid conscription. He seems to love the farm itself but can’t stand staying a second longer than he has to. This anger seeps through his entire personality and life. He’s arrogant, self-isolating and holds contempt for nearly everyone in his life. He holds contempt for the jocks who beat up a black guy in his recently racially integrated high school. He holds contempt for the hippie students, who protest against the war and in favor of racial equality. He holds contempt for the teachers who try to get through to him. He holds contempt for his sister’s boyfriend, who is a shameless cheater, and he holds contempt for his sister for running off with a guy like that in the first place. Oh, and he also holds deep contempt for black people, because he’s racist. The narrative makes it clear that he was raised with racist beliefs, but he has no desire to divest himself of them. He resents any attempts at changing his mind because he seems to view it as yet another external force trying to control him, just like his father. It’s one of the cases in which his strong will becomes a form of stubbornness that doesn’t actually benefit him. What does seem to reach him, however, is that the only two people in the entire book who can meet his incredibly high standards are both black.

In the lack of value he places in achievement, relationships and even his own life, I think I can recognize a particular strain of teenage depression. Something that he might have grown out of, eventually, in the same way that his interactions with black people in this book may have eventually led him to let go of his racism. The real tragedy is of course that he never gets to be that person. We don’t know if he could’ve, would’ve reached his full potential, because he dies off-screen in a senseless war.