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walkitoutThis is the first book in the Menopausal Superheroes series, and it’s worth pointing out that the ending is at least cliffhanger-adjacent. It’s not _so_ cliffhanger that it’s intolerable to stop at the end (OMG she’s dangling from a tree that is coming out by the roots over a deep canyon!), but it doesn’t feel like closure. That could be a good thing — there are multiple books in the series already out so more to read! Or it could be a less-than-great thing.
There are multiple women characters occupying a spectrum from gleefully evil through complicatedly evil and into different flavors of well-meaning but often annoying and ineffective, well-meaning bull in a china shop, etc. There are not very many male characters — one woman has two young sons, and another character is married to a man who appears on page. Other men exist in this book, but tend to be off-page (another husband, an ex-husband, etc.).
Hey, Spoilers! Get lost if that’s a problem!
There’s a mad scientist (complicatedly evil character), who is Asian. She does biological science-y stuff (glowing animals, type of thing) and starts making soaps, lotions, teas, woo woo stuff to help people with stuff that Western Medicine is bad at. But the stuff she makes has weird effects on some of the people who use it, so Cindy Liu, Mad Scientist, is the origin story for our various women developing superpowers. There’s a ton of really great stuff going on here, over and above Menopausal Women! First, the whole soaps/lotions/teas/coop/anti-Western Medicine thing is presented from a ton of different perspectives, through the eyes of the characters. That whole element of our culture gets a lot of authorial menace or authorial support if present at all in fiction; here, it gets wild-validation from the author (It Definitely Does Stuff), but the emotional and judgement type responses by various characters are just all over the place. I really liked that.
Linda, the Hispanic woman married to an on-page man, David, uses a soap and it turns her into a man. Once it is clear the change is permanent, she uses the name Leonel, buys clothes, gets her hairstyle adjusted, etc. The responses of her adult children and grandchildren are complicated and presented as complicated, and the adjustment in the marriage likewise. All that was great. But what a weird take on transitioning. It isn’t just involuntary, either — Leonel is over a foot taller than Linda was, and extremely buff. This is a fantasy, and there’s latitude for doing this. It’s just so weird. Linda’s perspective on having a penis is very hilarious. And if you are having, But You’re Deadnaming Leonel! Welp, not really. If you are looking for trans representation in fiction, this probably is not it, but it is a really interesting take on transitioning, identity, involuntarily looking a certain way to the world when you really, really, really don’t feel that way, etc.
Will I read more in this series? I honestly don’t know. The author was on a panel at RavenCon — I don’t know if I ever would have heard of her otherwise, and I stopped and chatted with her in Author Alley. She’s nice, and smart and had a really interesting perspective on writing that I was glad to hear, both in the panel and in our conversation. I inflicted my question about reuse in writing, intentional or otherwise, on her and she was a good sport about it, saying that when she is writing she is also thinking about and chewing on things in her own head and so those will naturally tend to come out in the books she is writing while she is thinking about those things. Very insightful, and obvious only in retrospect.
If you are thinking of going to a con, and you see that she will be on panels there, go and listen to her! She’s great. And if you think these books sound fun, give them a try. The first one was enjoyable, and while I read it slowly (because I was really trying to attend to a lot of details in how the book was put together), I think it would be a fast read for most readers. The chapters are short so the book is easily interrupted and then picked up again (thank you, Ms. Bryant!!! That’s what our lives are like!). The characters are drawn crisply but with compassion and nuance, so you’re never going, but who is Patricia again? You know. The voice shifts from one character to another by chapter, and that works very smoothly for the most part.
The nature of the story is not exactly like, but is reminiscent of, James Alan Gardner, especially _They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded_ / _All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault_ (Sparks and Darks), with a sprinkling of _Commitment Hour_.
There are multiple women characters occupying a spectrum from gleefully evil through complicatedly evil and into different flavors of well-meaning but often annoying and ineffective, well-meaning bull in a china shop, etc. There are not very many male characters — one woman has two young sons, and another character is married to a man who appears on page. Other men exist in this book, but tend to be off-page (another husband, an ex-husband, etc.).
Hey, Spoilers! Get lost if that’s a problem!
There’s a mad scientist (complicatedly evil character), who is Asian. She does biological science-y stuff (glowing animals, type of thing) and starts making soaps, lotions, teas, woo woo stuff to help people with stuff that Western Medicine is bad at. But the stuff she makes has weird effects on some of the people who use it, so Cindy Liu, Mad Scientist, is the origin story for our various women developing superpowers. There’s a ton of really great stuff going on here, over and above Menopausal Women! First, the whole soaps/lotions/teas/coop/anti-Western Medicine thing is presented from a ton of different perspectives, through the eyes of the characters. That whole element of our culture gets a lot of authorial menace or authorial support if present at all in fiction; here, it gets wild-validation from the author (It Definitely Does Stuff), but the emotional and judgement type responses by various characters are just all over the place. I really liked that.
Linda, the Hispanic woman married to an on-page man, David, uses a soap and it turns her into a man. Once it is clear the change is permanent, she uses the name Leonel, buys clothes, gets her hairstyle adjusted, etc. The responses of her adult children and grandchildren are complicated and presented as complicated, and the adjustment in the marriage likewise. All that was great. But what a weird take on transitioning. It isn’t just involuntary, either — Leonel is over a foot taller than Linda was, and extremely buff. This is a fantasy, and there’s latitude for doing this. It’s just so weird. Linda’s perspective on having a penis is very hilarious. And if you are having, But You’re Deadnaming Leonel! Welp, not really. If you are looking for trans representation in fiction, this probably is not it, but it is a really interesting take on transitioning, identity, involuntarily looking a certain way to the world when you really, really, really don’t feel that way, etc.
Will I read more in this series? I honestly don’t know. The author was on a panel at RavenCon — I don’t know if I ever would have heard of her otherwise, and I stopped and chatted with her in Author Alley. She’s nice, and smart and had a really interesting perspective on writing that I was glad to hear, both in the panel and in our conversation. I inflicted my question about reuse in writing, intentional or otherwise, on her and she was a good sport about it, saying that when she is writing she is also thinking about and chewing on things in her own head and so those will naturally tend to come out in the books she is writing while she is thinking about those things. Very insightful, and obvious only in retrospect.
If you are thinking of going to a con, and you see that she will be on panels there, go and listen to her! She’s great. And if you think these books sound fun, give them a try. The first one was enjoyable, and while I read it slowly (because I was really trying to attend to a lot of details in how the book was put together), I think it would be a fast read for most readers. The chapters are short so the book is easily interrupted and then picked up again (thank you, Ms. Bryant!!! That’s what our lives are like!). The characters are drawn crisply but with compassion and nuance, so you’re never going, but who is Patricia again? You know. The voice shifts from one character to another by chapter, and that works very smoothly for the most part.
The nature of the story is not exactly like, but is reminiscent of, James Alan Gardner, especially _They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded_ / _All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault_ (Sparks and Darks), with a sprinkling of _Commitment Hour_.