If You Take My Meaning, by Charlie Jane Anders

I read this story and only after I was finished did I realize that it was in fact a sequel to The City In the Middle of the Night. That helped some. Sophie has gone further down her road of transformation, taking on a sensory organ from the night-dwelling Gelet. Her revolutionary friend Alyssa is considering the same path. Alyssa is a hard soul and we get to see more of her here. The focus is more completely on the Gelet, and as it goes on we see more of their relationship with humanity. There are also indications that the series is open for continuation, so you'll want to read this if you want to be ready for more about the Gelet.

My Goodreads Review

The Bookstore At The End of America, by Charlie Jane Anders

This is a very modern-day allegory in which California has split from the rest of the United States, now known as America.  The split must be somewhat amicable, because America does not thoroughly invoke the current right wing border fetish--the protagonist's bookstore sits on the border, with one side in each place, and with some navigation one can cross over.  The proprietor finds things to like and dislike about both sides, and they seem economically tied.  But a water war breaks out, and all the propaganda leading up to it is making the respective citizens hate those caricatures of each other.  But they must shelter together.

Not really a new idea, but in the end I think a very necessary one in these times, and Anders handles it very gracefully.

The City In the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm going along with many others here saying that this is in many respects a well-written book, but not a great one. Might be a dearth of candidates for the Hugo, or maybe they need to continue to look farther afield. People trying to survive on an alien, tidally locked planet are not a new thing, but there's a lot of room for experimenting there and Anders does some things really well.

There are some things about it I liked that other reviewers may have missed. The Gelet (natives) are a decently strong presence in the book, and toward the end of the book are revealed to have a lot more going on than meets the eye. They are performing great feats of semi-natural geoengineering to keep the planet habitable. And they have incredible communication talents. These speculations should be enough to keep most of us SF fans happy.

The central characters, Sophie and Bianca, are there to demonstrate the complex pitfalls of blind, stupid love. Interestingly, not really romantic love, something more of a Platonic crush. Sophie makes bad choice after bad choice to keep her hope of a relationship with Bianca alive, and Bianca uses her mercilessly. These kinds of relationships are frustrating to read, and can color one's whole opinion of the book even when they are successfully depicted.

The surrounding plot, though, just kind of bumps along, and while there are some exciting moments it's not enough to forgive the frustrating, one-sided relationship. I am glad I made it through, and overall I would say I enjoyed it, but it's not great.



View all my reviews

The Farm, by Charlie Jane Anders

The protagonist in The Farm is a writer.  He is tasked with writing a news story in such a way that it doesn't trigger a critical mass of artificial personalities in an artificial crowd hosted by an AI.  I had never thought of this, and it's highly plausible.  And it is quite possible for it to be set up in such a way as to frustrate a real author.  But AIs are already capable of writing the stories, so I think the author here is superfluous and the dialog could all be inside a machine.

All the Birds In the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

All the Birds In the Sky is the first Nebula novel I'm reading this year.  We're off to a great start.  The story follows two protagonists, Laurence Armstead and Patricia Delfine, starting when they are about six years old.  He is a science prodigy and she communes with birds, briefly.  They are both outcasts in beautifully and brutally described home and school environments.  As it happens with outcasts, they end up together even though they don't always like each other much, because they fit nowhere else.  Anders does a great job of creating detailed, real supporting characters--Laurence's desperate underachieving parents, and Patricia's over-driven and self-absorbed ones.  They attend the worst version of an ordinary junior high school, complete with intense bullying and stupidity.  Their counselor, Theodophilus Rose, is actually a member of the order of assassins.  He has seen their future participating in a great war of science vs. magic, and hopes to execute them as a "pro-bono" hit in service of humanity.

In most award nominated books either the speculative or narrative aspect stands out more.  The book might be a very fully imagined universe where the characters are on stage, or it might be strongly character-driven and the speculative aspect is secondary.  This book is one of a very few I've read where both elements are strong, and equal.  Anders perfectly captures the pain and self-centeredness of middle school, then transitions their personalities to adulthood and adult situations.  The science is a stretch on our reality--there, it's possible to find schematics on the internet for a two-second time machine.  This stretchiness allows Anders to make Laurence and Patricia's respective pursuits of science and magic seem equivalently arcane. 

Suffice it to say I really enjoyed reading this book.  I might well recommend it to my kids--there are sex scenes, but they are non-exploitative and emotionally relevant.  As far as I'm concerned it's going to be a tough job for any of the others to overcome this one's lead.  A very strong 4 stars.

Stochastic Fancy, by Charlie Jane Anders

Continuing my review series on the Wired Magazine Science Fiction issue.  Stochastic Fancy has our protagonist sitting in a bar, answering polling questions into her KloudScape, which seems like a fancier and more immersive phone interface.  Her thing about incessant opinion polling is pretty on target.  In the story the polling is used as a real-time matchmaker.  Works so-so.  Story OK but forgettable.  2 stars.

Six Months, Three Days, by Charlie Jane Anders

Stories where someone can see the future have a sort of inevitability to them (pun intended, I think).  The person lives a secret life of some sort and tries to change the future based on what he knows, for gain or good.  Six Months, Three Days defies that inevitability totally, and for that reason it's a very interesting tale.

Doug and Rachel are two clairvoyants who seem to live kind of normal lives, at least Rachel does.  She has a good friend who knows her secret and seems willing to play along.  Neither of them try to take advantage of their situation particularly, though Rachel seems to be able to choose between possible futures.  Doug is on a single track, and it's not good.  So the driver of the story is the interplay between these versions of clairvoyancy.  It also covers a nice six month relationship, which shows off Anders' writing well.  It's a fine thing when you see a new take on an old plot, and this story does that with some flair.  It's a nice strong three stars, a story both sweet and thoughtful.