A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I have grown in strength inside her. Filled her cells with mine until we must split apart. It's not my choice – that's how it's always been for us.

Though we've done this many times before, I know she is afraid, because I share her heart. Her memories are mine, his he sometimes, but mine. I feel what she feels. I have walked where she has walked, been in her every step. I have kissed where she has kissed. I sigh, but the breath that comes out is hers. It's time to breathe for myself. It's time to live.

She is in that dream place where her body cannot move into her mind is unsure and scattered. I stretch and fill every cell, feel them all expanded and swell to make room for me. I search for the weakest point to break out and find it: the little finger of the right hand.

Some deep memory tells me it's always been this way. The first cell splits with a tiny pop; she hardly notices. I'm controlling our breathing now. We take a deep lungful of steadying air and tense. I press her shoulders into the bed and that's when she realizes. That's when she starts to fight.

Teva is a 16-year-old girl who is also a 15-year-old girl. And a 14-year-old girl. And so forth, all the way down to a 3-year-old girl. Every year she spontaneously clones a version of herself who remains stuck at the age when it happened. All the Tevas live together, with only Four and Five missing. Why they're missing is unknown, along with why any of this is happening. Their single mother is terrified that they'll be taken away and experimented on if anyone finds out, so they all live together with only the most current Teva allowed to leave the house and attend school. Each successive Teva steps into the life of the previous one.

The current Teva is determined to somehow stop the next cloning so she can keep her life. The previous Teva, Fifteen, is furious at her for stealing her friends, her boyfriend, and her entire life.

This is an amazing premise I have never come across before, and the book generally lives up to it. There is some excellent body horror, a genuinely shocking climax, and a very satisfying ending. I wish there was more about the other Tevas – the book mostly focuses on the current one and Fifteen – but we do see enough of them to get a sense of who they are and how they interact. I'd also have liked more of the almost surreal, poetic voice of the opening - the rest of the book is more standard YA in prose and tone. But I was overall very impressed by More of Me. Evans only seems to have written one other book. I will snatch it up.

In an alternate Los Angeles, there are canals instead of freeways (but the boat traffic jams anyway) and osteomancers gain the powers of ancient animals by mining the La Brea Tar Pits and eating their bones. The magic then settles into their bones, leading to a highly unfortunate situation in which you can gain the collected power of an osteomancer by eating... them.

In this fantastically realized alt-historical/urban fantasy setting, Daniel Blackland is the son of a famous osteomancer who infused him with power before getting killed and eaten by the current ruler of Los Angeles, the Hierarch. Rather than seeking revenge, Daniel laid low and became a highly skilled but basically mid-level thief, running a crew consisting of Jo (a shapeshifter), Cassandra (a safecracker/sharpshooter), and Moth (a fighter who can regenerate like Wolverine.)

But there's another man who also had a parent killed and eaten by the Hierarch. Gabriel Argent also sought survival over revenge, but took a completely different route. He works for the Hierarch as a highly skilled but basically mid-level investigator, whose true love is bureaucracy and city planning. When his sharp eye for oddities puts him on Daniel's trail, he borrows Max, a Hound - a highly trained and specialized slave, treated like a police dog only with less kindness. Gabriel sees potential in Max, a highly competent depressed nihilist who is under a death sentence for murdering his original handler. Their relationship was tied with the worldbuilding/magic system/sense of place for my favorite part of the book.

sholio has a review with way more detail on Gabriel & Max.

This book is basically a cross between The Lies of Locke Lamora minus the misogyny, a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits, and my "i love la" tag.

The LA-ness was SO GOOD. It feels 100% local and real and lived-in, not the sort of outsider's view of what's important about LA and its history that you often get. I literally knew EXACTLY where most of it was taking place, down to random warehouses. At one point Tito's Tacos makes a crucial appearance. That's that taco joint by the freeway three blocks from my old apartment! I cracked up that Daniel also thinks it overrated, which is a very unpopular opinion.

I also liked that okay, you get some world famous Hollywood figures, but you also get William Mulholland as a water wizard controlling the Department of Water & Power (both kinds of power), and the whole plot turns on things like the La Brea Tar Pits and LA not naturally having water.

The social/political aspects really worked for me. The central problem, which is the literal devouring of natural resources until the powerful are literally eating the powerless, is makes sense both as a metaphor and as a reality within the world of the book.

The magic system was fantastic. There's aspects which are underexplained (mostly non-osteomantic magic), but overall it's clever, evocative, original, and generally delightful. If you want super-strength, you get it from specific animals, so they're forever battling people imbued with the essences of short-faced bears, saber-tooth tigers, and, memorably, an entire herd of mammoth!

The parts of this book that were good were A+. However, it had some flaws that knock it down from excellent to very good. I think it needed one more editing pass. Several extremely important emotional moments occur entirely off-page, some of the characterization is very thin, and the crucial matter of the connections, history, and emotional bonds between Daniel and his crew are told in summary rather than shown, which made those feel thin too. There's also some significant pacing issues - the book needed at least one more chapter between the action climax and the last chapter, among other things.

My big issues fell into two general categories: important things occurring off-page, which affected the characterization and general emotional tenor, and pacing.

The book would have been SO MUCH BETTER if we'd gotten full chapters of flashback for each of Daniel's crew as actual scenes rather than Daniel narrating what happened in summary. A lot of anime/manga does this really well. It would have made the revelations seem cooler, and added a lot of depth to the characters, and given a certain spoilery revelation more punch.

Jo especially was thinly characterized, which was frustrating as it also isn't explained at all in this book how shapeshifting works and how it's different from osteomancy. A flashback chapter in which we see Daniel meet her would have helped a lot.

The explanation of why Moth can regenerate is interesting (more so in retrospect after a certain revelation, actually) but I was wildly curious while it was still a mystery, and then disappointed when Daniel just summarizes it. If it had been a flashback chapter and shown rather than told, it would have been much more satisfying.

In general, Daniel's crew is supposed to have incredibly tight and long-lived relationships, but their characterization felt thin and so I wasn't very invested in them for a lot of the book. Whereas I was extremely invested in Gabriel and Max, partly because they were cool, unusual characters, but also because they meet in the present day so we actually see their relationship develop rather than it being summary + wisecracks.

(Daniel wisecracks a lot and not very funnily. For a lot of the book he was my least favorite character.)

Other issues are super spoilery. There's one twist that made my jaw drop - it was startling, logical, perfectly done, and illuminated a whole lot of things that had happened before. I recommend that you read the book first, if you want to be surprised. But I know most of you won't, so I'll try to talk around it a little bit.

Content notes: Cannibalism, injustice, torture, police brutality, depictions of racism/colonialism, environmental issues. The book is generally very fun, but it doesn't whitewash social issues.

( Read more... )

I read the first volume way back when, but the second one only recently. Perhaps I was put off, despite the appealingly deranged story, by the art style (skinny bodies and bobbleheads.)

Once there was a great, great, great-- no-- phenomenally amazing man, the Emperor Idea! He ruled the world! (Except, as we learn later, a city called Disorder.) But now he is dead, leaving all in confusion and sorrow.

Until his amnesiac, telekinetic clone named Rose is created. Rose (yes, male) is taken in by a mysterious man named Eiri who rather resembles a bobbleheaded Hakkai (polite and kind yet vaguely sketchy; missing an eye, wears a monocle) and Eiri's companion, the thoroughly badass whip-wielding Ririka.

Rose's main goal is not to be Idea-- to have his own personality and be accepted as an individual. And yet everyone, except perhaps Ririka, is only interested in him insofar as he might take Idea's place. He's taken into the palace, where assorted solicitous butlers and coutiers attempt to make him into the new Emperor, and others try to assassinate him.

And then the plot get even wackier...

( Artificial fairies, clonecest, and random Latin )

Godchild volume 1, demented manga by Kaori Yuki. The first panel is more cracktastic than entire multi-volume runs of some series.

Narration from the first panel: "Perhaps to ease his lonely soul, Cain starts collecting dangerous poisons. While living with Riff, his manservant since childhood, half-sister Mary Weather-- daughter of his father by a maid-- and Oscar, who wants to wed Mary, Cain meets Dr. Jizabel Disraeli, an assassin of the secret organization 'Delilah.' He wants to rip out Cain's eyes to add to his collection."

Barking mad Gothic horror, made even weirder by the tone-deaf English translation (that should be Merriweather and Jezabel), full of over-the-top horror, Gothic Victoriana, Lewis Carroll allusions, mad killers who wear rabbit masks impregnated with exotic hallucinogens, and disturbing sexual undertones and overtones such as a half-naked pubescent Cain writhing in his sheets, saying to his sexy valet/butler/true love Riff, "I didn't want that guy helping me dress."

Volume 2 contains the Parrot of Doom.

ES (Eternal Sabbath) volume 3, manga by Fuyumi Soryo. Gorgeous, spooky, and smart manga about a young man who can enter the minds of others, and the woman scientist who gets entangled with him. This volume is especially creepy, with great use of white space and silence to induce a sense of paranoia and tension. I continue to be very engaged by the main characters.

The Empty Empire, volume 1, manga by Naoe Kita. From page one: "Beyond the year 2500 AD, he appeared to unite the world: the Emperor Idea."

The telekinetic amnesiac clone of the dead (or is he?!!!) Emperor Idea escapes and is found by an ass-kicking young woman and a strange scientist who looks a lot like Hakkai. There is a sexy butler/valet, and a missing body, and two missing eyes from different people. Everyone's heads are strangely bulbous, and I laughed every time someone referred to Idea, but the characters were growing on me by the end of the volume.

Thud, by Terry Pratchett. Very funny, very smart. Vimes tries to stop Ankh-Morpork from exploding via ethnic tension between the dwarves and the trolls, and also to meet the equal challenge of getting home every night at 6:00 PM to read "Where's My Cow?" to his son. I particularly liked the bits with Mr. Shine. And the Gooseberry. And the girls' night out. And the guy who's supposed to audit the Watch. And I continue to love Vimes.

What the Lady Wants, by Jennifer Crusie. Early romantic comedy, slight but funny. My favorites of her earlier books are still Getting Rid of Bradley (the green hair!) and Manhunting (the terrible fates that befall every man the heroine meets).

Niccolo Rising, by Dorothy Dunnett. I only just started this, but it already makes more sense than A Game of Kings.