On book recommendations, and The Green Rider

The best books, I think you’ll agree, are those recommended by a good friend. Two of my best “book friends” stretch the whole way back to high school. One was possibly the best English / French teacher a girl could ever ask for. The other was my friend Renée. She will have my undying gratitude for introducing me to such gems as the Redwall series, endless afternoons watching LOTR, and Green Rider by Kristen Britain.

Firstly, let me say, if you’ve never read Green Rider, do so now. You won’t regret it. Secondly, I must admit that after reading the fourth book in the series, I not only thought it was the finale, but it was so awful I was grateful l didn’t have to read any more.

Fast-forward a few years and Renée, always to be counted or for reliable book news, informs me that there are, in fact, now two more books in the series. She also informs me that they are actually really good and that I must read them immediately. With most other people I might be hesitant, but this is Renée, and by this point I’m used to doing what she tells me, so l immediately downloaded Mirror Sight onto my Kobo and sat down to begin.

Since it has been such a long time since I revisited the series, however, I decided that I would actually go back to the beginning and read through them all again (skipping # 4!), before starting the new installments. So over the next week or so I’ll be posting quick reviews of the first three books; Green Rider, First Rider’s Call, and The High King’s Tomb, before moving onto the two new books in the series: Mirror Sight and Firebrand.

What books have you discovered because of the recommendation of a friend?

Company Town – Review

 

Company Town by Madeline Ashby is a surprising, fantastically original work of urban science fiction. Set in a futuristic rig town off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, it revolves around Hwa, a young, half Korean woman who is one of the few people left in her world who are wholly unaugmented. As a pure organic without any of the benefits of a tech upgrade, and who has a potentially debilitating condition with a conspicuous disfigurement, we might expect Hwa to be weak or downtrodden. Instead Ashby has given us a character with enough determination – and stubbornness – to hack out a role for herself in a world where she is always at the disadvantage.

Hwa, thanks in part to her hard-won strength and fighting skills, and thanks in part to the fact that as a pure organic she is unhackable, is assigned by Daniel, her new boss, to be the personal bodyguard of Josh, the heir-apparent to the giant corporation that now owns her town. Together Hwa, Josh and Daniel fight to keep Josh safe while introducing him to the real life outside his privileged bubble, and attempting to solve a three-year-old mass murder, catch a serial murderer, foil the plots of despotic fathers and humanity’s heirs, and even fall in love. The climax and resolution are unexpected – a true plot twist. And they make you re-evaluate everything that went before.

If that sounds like it’s a lot to fit in one book, then you’re right – it is. At times the plot feels crowded and a wee bit hectic. There are some threads that are unnecessary and distracting. You should still read it – I promise you won’t be disappointed.

One of the many excellent features of Company Town was the impressive, but not oppressive, world building. It was rich, and detailed, and it all fitted seamlessly together. There is enough detail about the world to make sense of it, but not enough to be distracting.

The best books make you look at the world around you from a different perspective, and challenge even your most basic preconceptions about reality. Good speculative fiction does this more than most, stripping away the mundane and the familiar until all you’re left with is the stark framework of humanity and its beliefs and quirks and madnesses. Reading Company Town encourages us to confront some of the most pressing questions today’s society is grappling with.

What makes someone succeed? Is it what they’re born with – looks, privilege, money, talent – or is it determination and hard work? What if that hard work comes in the form of creating technical enhancements to make our minds and bodies more efficient?

Should the sex trade be legal? Do we currently care more about the appearance of morality than about keeping those involved in the sex trade healthy and safe?

What is the role of corporations in our world? Do they have the same rights as people? Do they get to determine the course of our existence just because they are more powerful than we are as individuals?

What does it mean to be human?  Are AI’s persons? Are we somehow less human if we are genetically modified before we are even born? Will technical enhancements make us more machine and less human? What really makes us us?

Company Town ended on a cliff-hanger, with a lot of the plot unexplained, and there is most definitely more story for Hwa to tell. Hopefully we get a follow-up.

 

 

Where are all the female authors?

This evening I decided to conduct a wee experiment. I was going to take a picture of all the speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, alternate history, horror) books I owned that were authored by men, and then I was going to take a picture of all the speculative fiction books I owned that were authored by women. The pictures below are the result:

 

That’s men on the left, and women on the right. Now, a few notes on my “methodology”: This only represents the speculative fiction portion of my library and only includes my physical books. In other words, literary fiction, thrillers, mysteries, and non-fiction books are not included, and nor are my ebooks. I’m fairly sure that the split along gender lines would be roughly the same.

I have to admit to being a bit shocked at just how few female-authored sci-fi and fantasy books I own. I mean, I knew there was an imbalance, but having it presented visually made the rather dire situation on my bookshelf strikingly obvious. I even had to pop in a picture of a rather dapper bunny rabbit just to make the books a little less lonely.

What makes this sad state of affairs even worse is that is also completely avoidable. There have always been fantastic female speculative fiction authors, and now every year there are more and more truly excellent women authors being published in sci-fi, fantasy and beyond. And so I have decided that it is time for some affirmative action.

Now, I don’t want to suggest in any way that the only reason to read books by female authors is because they are written by women. They are excellent books that deserve to be read on their own merits. However, it’s a sad fact that I am stuck in a rut of (usually excellent) speculative fiction books written by white men. Many of these books feature strong female protagonists, and that is worth celebrating, but we also need to celebrate women telling our stories in our own voices.

My task for the rest of this year is simple: read only (mostly) books written by women. I’m going to alternate new books from 2016-2017 with older reads that have either been on my backlist for far too long, or that I really need to reread. Ideally, to broaden my experience even further,  as many of these books as possible will be from outside the US (just because that’s where most of the books I already read are written) or by women of colour. I would appreciate any and all suggestions you might have for me!

The first book on my list is Company Town by Madeline Ashby. The protagonist is also a woman, and (bonus points) Madeline is Canadian, and the book is set in Canada.