Transplanting a Seattleite

OK, first things first. There’s a really complicated rape in this book. And the whole existence of the main character is a quite epic consent violation. This thing needs a lot of information provided on the tin that I didn’t look for in advance. Given the time frame it was written, this is not hugely surviving, and I’m still uncertain whether I will read any of the subsequent novels, but I am for sure going to take a good hard look at a lot of spoiler ridden reviews first.

SPOILERS!

Here is my contribution.

I’ve been working through kindle unlimited backlog selections, with mixed to negative results. After Nourse’s _The Bladerunner_ (DNF), I decided to look around for medical science fiction written by women with women viewpoint characters. Oh look! Here’s one!

Cherijo Grey Veil is nominally the daughter but actually the modified clone of her “father”, Joseph Grey Veil. She learns about how she came into existence, is completely appalled, and plots her escape. Little does she know that the recently deceased Maggie, the closest thing she had to a maternal figure, and her “father”, both know that she has learned all this stuff, and in fact her “escape” is part of a continuation of her tightly controlled existence.

Cherijo goes to a frontier planet and gets a job working as a doctor in an understaffed colony. She meets Kao, who Chooses her, and a variety of other people including the extremely problematic linguist / Terran / all around oddball Duncan Reever. Nominally Reever will become her rapist, but he’s under the control of an infecting sentient species called The Core at the time, so it’s honestly as much a violation of him as it is of her. I did mention that it was a very complicated rape. Good news, Cherijo’s immune system takes out every last Core particle that infects her. The rest of them try to have her convicted of murder, but she points out that they killed even more sentients than she killed Core so everyone withdraws their charges.

Then Dear Old Dad and the League that Terra belongs to decides that Cherijo doesn’t count as sentient herself, because of the manner in which she came into existence (neither natural nor an authorized pathway) and because she has been under the control of her creator (Joseph) her entire life. Kao is at death’s door, but his Clan has come to claim him and protect her. Kao’s last words are delivered via Reever, and Cherijo gets off of K2 and even gets to stay with her cat, her Chakacat friend, and the pilot who she hired to take her to K2. This, however, leads to a breach between the League and his people, and the book ends with an absolute wild price on Cherijo’s head and anyone who helps her. This in no way slows down her adoptive Clan, but definitely complicates everyone’s life.

All through this, Cherijo is busy being a doctor as a way of ignoring her awful, lonely life. By the time she’s on the Clan’s ship, tho, she’s being bullied into taking better care of herself much more effectively. An empath on K2 tried to do this, but for a variety of reasons it kept going weird.

Oh, and Cherijo gets a message from the deceased Maggie, and then further subliminally embedded messages and all kinds of other weirdness. Clearly, the next few books are going to get successively nuttier, if this beginning is any indication.

So many problems here! First off, that rape. Second, the powerful father who is so ludicrously powerful. It really teeters between believable and not. His contribution medically was to make it so no one ever really needed an organ from anyone else (and thus no rejection issues), so you can kinda see why people are willing to remunerate him so extensively. And it’s also clear he’s ludicrously good and manipulating people albeit more by being a bully than by being charming. I came her for medical SF, and what I got was Chosen One in multiple flavors. Off to read reviews of book 2!

ETA:
Interesting review of what I just read — no real arguments with the summation here, altho obviously, we have different feelings about SF in general.

https://www.thebooksmugglers.com/2010/09/guest-dare-stardoc-by-s-l-viehl.html

ETAYA:

OK, as expected, this thing gets increasingly unhinged for another 9 books before having some kind of time travel event and ending. I’m … not that interested. I mean, twenty years ago, there’s a decent chance I would have absolutely devoured this thing but no. Not right now. Off to go find more medical SF that is a little less frenetically complicated!

Apparently, this is an effort to depict something like celiac disease, but in a fantasy context. And wow, is it a complicated story.

SPOILERS!

One of the noble (?) / ruling families of Damaria sends their dutiful (but often ill) daughter Duchess Bianca off to neighboring Gildenheim to marry the heir apparent, Prince Aric. He’s not there to meet her when she falls off the gangplank while wearing impractical clothing, so she’s hauled out of the water and introduced to Varin, who looks suspiciously like an older version of Aric.

There is _so_ _much_ _suspicious_ death in this environment. The Queen died surprisingly recently, but Aric’s dad died when he was little. Varin was the Queen’s kid from before she was Queen and can only inherit the crown if there are no legitimate heirs. I mean, it’s pretty freaking obvious just how dangerous this situation is, and the fact that Bianca’s apothecary is part of the group accompanying her makes it all even more obvious.

But, you know, it takes a while to develop all the details. Fortunately, despite being such horrifying people, apparently Bianca and Tatiana’s parents managed not to completely mess up their kids, and once Bianca and Tatiana are geographically distant from the ‘rents, they set all to rights.

I applaud own voices and including disability in romantasy, and I applaud having sapphic characters and I _really_ applaud that the head of the guard for both Aric and Bianca are women. There are a lot of powerful women in this book, which is great. But all that said, there is just so much Big Misunderstanding in the first few chapters that it is intensely painful to grind through, and everyone is dripping with attachment problems which contributes to the slog. But I did finish it, so there’s that. Partly because there’s not much else to do today, since it’s too hot out to do anything. I got it through kindle unlimited, and if you like some fairly transparent intrigue, and lots of forgiveness and people being relieved to finally experience real emotional validation in their lives and the occasional appearance of a chaotic magic user with a heart of gold, well, maybe give this a try. I really am happy at the volume of powerful women in this book.

The third Preiti / Mossa book, and now that they are together they are having problems.

HEY THERE ARE ALWAYS SPOILERS HERE! You’ve been warned.




Where was I?

Oh! Some friends from student days are having difficulty. One, Villette, is up for a donship and subjected to underhanded attacks and gossip. The second, Pretanj, Villette’s cousin, is taking it seriously and knowing a little about what happened to Preiti in the previous books, asks for Preiti’s help, as she does not want to go the Investigators. Preiti attempts to interest Mossa, who says no very strenuously and is generally behaving either weirdly, or like someone with attachment issues, severe bouts of depression and burnout. So probably choice B. In any event, Preiti and Pretanj travel to Stortellen, and Preiti gets a detailed view of what a university other than Valdegeld is like. Villette’s amazing, and has invented something that you pop into your nose and now you don’t need an atmoscarf any more.

Preiti meets a whole lot of friends, coworkers and randos around Villette in or adjacent to Stortellen. Lots of fun getting to know a bunch of stereotypes of academe and other hangers on. So many reasons someone might hate a very successful young academic like Villette! Mossa eventually shows up (I mean, it says so on the tin so we are not particularly surprised) and probably only Preiti is surprised by how long she’s been there and wooo is she mad! Fair, tho.

Their relationship and the case advances, and the friendship between Preiti and Pretanj increases and Villette starts to perceive the danger and we have further evidence of the incompetency and/or evils of academic institutions that really ought to have been supportive and sensible and most definitely are not.

It’s an enjoyable read, but I probably would not start with this book. The tales set along the rails of Giant are a great deal of fun, and the language play Malka Older engages in gets better on each outing.

Recently, YT recommended a Space Maker video to me that was in the Netherlands. The idea of an American helping a Dutch family declutter was so astonishing, that I gave it a try, and then the woman helping out was so shockingly kindle and gentle and deliberate and collaborative — not necessarily things one associates with the decluttering industry — that I watched it a lot longer than I usually watch videos.

I figured I’d see if she had a book out, because books are much more my thing than videos and indeed she does. It is exactly like the video I watched most of. This isn’t really a tips and tricks book. It has a number of familiar features to it (clear containers and labeling things, and doing maintenance once the system is in place). There are lots of organizer books out there that offer decluttering advice and lots of decluttering books out there that offer organizing advice; this one is unusually seamless. I particularly like how she advocates for saving all the organizers you find along the decluttering journey, and all the home decor and treasures as well to use for decorating at the end. It’s very much my process, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it described in a way so similar to mine.

The multiple passes feels exactly like me as well, and again, it’s not what I’m used to seeing. It also helps that she is very specifically not a minimalist and not advocating for minimalism.

Her short set of rules starts (inevitably) with “don’t Buy Anything … Yet” and then moves to one I particularly love, “Don’t Make Decisions Based on Guilt (No Shoulding!)”. She expands on what Shoulding is, and I love every bit of her exposition. She has a gentle sense of humor throughout the book, and gently encourages being more light hearted about all of this as well. An example: in the oath she offers at the beginning, she includes, “Finally, I promise to take back all the mean things I will say about April in the During.” That’s solidly light-hearted.

In addition to the “multiple passes”, she clearly states: “It’s Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better”. The reality of moving things out the door is that there will be staging areas and piles of things. So, so, so true. Throughout the book, she develops “Declutter Therapy”, quite a lot of which involves the feelings and thoughts triggered by the objects being sorted. The “multiple passes” are crucial to this, by first prompting those thoughts and feelings and allowing however much time is needed to process that (by keeping things until ready to let them go, or by choosing to display them as a beloved and treasured object that connects us to those thoughts and feelings). Tandy has a clear program of curation of self through curation of what one owns.

The “Compass Question” is a really nice construct. Our latest round of decluttering had a weirdly specific question that may count as a “Compass Question”: do I really want to move this again? We’re planning a move in a couple years, and also there’s a certain amount of movement going on within the house (away from basement walls and then in a couple months back to the basement walls, for an insulation project, and out of the third floor for renovation and then back). Anything we don’t care enough to move all those times in the coming months / years is something I can get rid of now, especially since FB Marketplace is working so well for me currently.

I kinda love her idea of a “Coffee and Clutter” date. For me, more likely to be a phone chat, but in person sounds fabulous.

She has a nice list of How to Get Started Options, and good descriptions of them. It’s a clever way to organize a broad range of strategies that appear (some, most or all) in other decluttering / tidying books. I’m less impressed with her “Easy Eight”, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s an 8 item list. Yeesh. I do like her idea of putting all duplicates in one place, and essentially building a “store”, at least for the “During”.

A bunch of the usual tips and tricks do make appearances in this book (speed decluttering = pomodoro) but mostly packaged up as part of something that is designed to deal with particular problems that tend to bog one down. It’s nice to see the context. The context of Declutter Therapy also helps provide context for why she is very okay with Maybes.

As is common in decluttering books, the question of Sell vs. Donate arises, and she very gently pushes hard towards donation, and then follows that up with, only donate what is “free of stains, holes, rust, tears and general damage”, urging checking donation center guidelines and noting that shelters will sometimes take more than donation centers. She also mentions checking local recycling options. No mention is made of Buy Nothing groups or FB Marketplace, which is a little surprising, as the publication date is 2024.

It’s a short book, and extremely enjoyable to read. I highly recommend it to people who like to read decluttering books, to anyone who feels in need of a little decluttering motivation, and also to people who are curious about the intersection of people and stuff. This is an unusually good window, written in a very appealing way.

AHOY THERE KRIKETS! There might be spoilers ahead.

Anyway.

This is the second book in a series in which young women from Earth are grabbed by people from the UC and then complicated things happen. The women help free powerful AIs embedded in powerful armed spaceships from their Tecran masters, and even more complicated things happen. Michelle Diener reminds me a lot of Jenny Schwartz (if I were to learn they were in fact the same person, I would be utterly unsurprised and totally satisfied, altho I actually do not believe they are).

I don’t normally like women in jeopardy books, especially ones where the women keep being put in jeopardy, but honestly, I’m really enjoying this version of it. Especially Chapter 40 in Dark Deeds, in which Fee (short for Fiona) goes out for a walk in the market trying to get kidnapped by the same people who kidnapped Hal (the person she has a Thing with). First, her previous bodyguards snatch her. She explains what she is doing and carries on. Then some rando grabs her and dumps her and leaves. She removes herself from that location, because she’s pretty sure that’s the wrong person, but she can always put herself back there as needed. She finally gets grabbed by the person she was angling for. And I’m sitting here laughing my ass off about the whole thing. Apparently, women in jeopardy who give better than they get are something I truly enjoy.

I got up earlier than usual because A. had her annual today. It went fine. The usual concerns about is she getting enough calcium, a mild concern about the vitamin K supplement we give her because of occasional nose bleeds and the picky eating means probably not enough vitamin k from veggies. I checked; the supplement is in mcg and the recommended max is in mg, so we are for sure in the green. No worries. One shot, for meningitis. We even got her to school in time!

I walked with M.

I finished reading Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief for book group, which is now delayed until next week. Orlean is usually fun, and this is no exception. I have no idea why I never read it before, but it is absolutely hilarious to think of Laroche, who is really only a few years older than me, and given the time frame of the book and Laroche’s get rich quick obsession and obsessions in general and what was going on in my life in those years, the whole thing just struck me as absolutely hilarious. But then again, doesn’t everything about Florida feel hilarious, once you’ve got a little distance from it. In the moment, not hilarious at all, mostly infuriating.

I do find it a little astonishing that I’m in Florida twice a year, for a week or more at a time, almost every year and that’s been true for over a decade now. Not how I really expected my life to go, but it’s nice to get more historical background and more of a sense of place for more of the state. My perspective on Florida has been very Central Florida centric (Disney, obviously, but also The Villages), with little appendages for Cocoa Beach and Sarasota. My interest in doing anything else in Florida is not non-existent, but nearly every other vacation idea has more appeal. Still, it’s nice to read about. It’s also nice to get some breadth and depth on people and orchids (and bromeliads and ferns and and and), because that’s popped up in JAK a bunch, and much less commonly in people I’ve encountered in my life and it’s always a little confusing, the intensity that people have about certain plants, and that they expect me to somehow share it? Or be impressed by it? It’s good to have some detailed background.

I made apple crips. Yummy.

I’m going to try to go to bed early, because I have a bunch of driving to do tomorrow and I’m already tired.

ETA:

I also read Casey Blair’s Consider the Dust, which is probably a novella? It’s a ton of fun, the story of friends or rivals or who really knows, and what happens when they reunite after more than a year apart and a whole lot of changes and growing up and yet somehow no changes at all. It has a great sense of humor, and wonderful fight scenes and the incisive political commentary isn’t too heavy handed. Loved it!

There are three books and one novella: Slouch Witch, Star Witch, Spirit Witch and Sparkle Witch. This urban romantasy trilogy+ from 2017 has been picking up recs lately, which is how I stumbled across it (SBTB is where I ran across mentions).

There are a lot of the normal aspects of urban fantasy: young woman, out on her own, struggling, but with significant Powers that she encourages people to underestimate. It’s a little weird in that as near as I can tell, we never hear anything about her family of origin, and only late in the series do we get even the tiniest glimpse into her pre-Order life. Generally, trauma background associated with family of origin is the norm in urban fantasy so I was kind of expecting that but it never happened.

While the tone is light hearted, and our heroine has stable friendships with Eve and Iqbal, Ivy is so relentlessly pragmatic that the reader is left with a lot of questions. Her friend Eve

HEY SPOILERS!

has to go away on Order business, and Ivy is looking after her apartment and familiar. Two other Order witches break in, and Ivy defeats them in combat and — I really cannot emphasize enough how shocking this is — leaves them tied up on the floor of Ivy’s apartment for three days, giving them food, water, and letting them use the loo only once or twice per day.

That is NOT OK.

It did not, however, stop me reading the series, and I’m not sure anyone else even clocked how appalling this behavior really is. I mean, I get that she didn’t know who to trust, her options were limited and the possibilities were dire. And also.

Anyway. Ivy obviously does have a lot of trauma, and some of it has to do with the Order having done her dirty. Her ex-boyfriend pushed his cheating onto her and she got kicked out, and things don’t really improve over the course of the series. By Book Two, the head of the Order is asking her to save everyone from the necromancer by using a spell almost certain to kill her (it doesn’t).

But they are fun books (see light hearted tone above). Ivy has a system — drive the taxi enough to pay her bills and no more, and then spend the rest of the time on the couch curled up in a duvet, while continuously honing her magical skills to make her life easier for her. A really pragmatic and excellent strategy. By the time Raphael Winter from the Order tears through her life, she’s more than able to keep up with him, using those magical skills to compensate for the inevitable effects of that much time spent sitting and lying down.

In Book 1, they hunt for missing items.
In Book 2, they hunt for a necromancer, while Ivy participates in her favorite reality TV show, Enchantment, starting as a runner and winding up as a contestant.
In Book 3, Ivy can now see Dead People (see: survived sucking the magic out of a necromancer), and the Dead People want to be released from curses. Tens of thousands of Dead People. But first, Rafe and Ivy have to figure out who is killing witches and how.
In Book 4, Rafe sends Ivy out to be an elf (or Santa) for the Order, but she has to abandon that for the more important task of finding the Angel that’s gone missing from the Order’s Christmas Tree.

Throughout, Ivy’s ex, Tarquin, keeps turning up like a bad penny (what does that mean, anyway). The head dude of the Order keeps getting personally involved in … everything. Ivy keeps having to fix … everything. Everyone could use a helluva lot of therapy, but it’s all mostly good-natured and entertaining, altho probably especially the scene where Ivy and Rafe go to have dinner with Rafe’s parents.

Throughout the series, Ivy and her friend Iqbal are wildly capable and intelligent, but also continuously disorganized, indecisive, late and making excuses for themselves and others. Yes, pretty clear cut description of adult, undiagnosed or at any rate untreated ADD. Ivy’s friend Eve, and love interest Rafe are compliant, hardworking, intelligent but not as intelligent or as capable as Ivy and Iqbal. Eve and Rafe are orderly and fit. If you are looking for humorous depictions of neurodiversity in romantasy, these are plausible choices.

I’m on the fence about whether I’d recommend them. There are definitely issues. But I’m pretty sure that if you’ve read this far, you have a good sense of at least some of them.

This is the second in the Rocky Start trilogy, and if the first book was weird, this one is so much weirder. I do not recommend starting with this book.

But it’s a good one! SPOILERS FOLLOW!

In the previous book, Darius very conspicuously failed to listen to Poppy at a key moment, when she was extremely clear and Darius and Poppy both suffered as a result and honestly, Darius learned nothing from the incident, but I went into this book really wanting to know what Poppy was going to do about it. Good news! Poppy dumped Darius. It wasn’t instantaneous, and she did a thorough job of establishing Darius’ character before dumping him. He really was committed to not listening to her. It was well-written, believable and I adored Poppy through the whole thing. Just amazing. The switcheroo with Mei and Marley and was fun, too, and it’s being developed slowly and I’m looking forward to seeing more in the final book.

We find out that Herc did not pay up as promised, but Max puts some pressure on him and gets him to do at least some of what he promised. So that was nice.

Someone rolls into town in a Cybertruck, which gets hacked and then dumped in the Little Melvin. That was fun. Tell us what you really think, Crusie/Mayer.

Poppy and Rose continue to clean up around the shop and Find Things. That is extremely enjoyable.

All in all, a very good outing, altho a bit grisly at times.

I’m hoping that we get some kind of closure with Herc in the third book. And given Betty’s comment about the Witches, I would not be surprised to see more of them, too. It’s been a really fun ride, tho.

Back in September, I started reading Jenny Schwartz novels via kindleunlimited.

https://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/2277975.html

I started sort of in the middle of a series. I refer to a certain segment of my reading as “trashy” and I mean that with love and respect. I co-opt the heck out of that term. It is reading purely for pleasure. For me, it isn’t fun if it aligns poorly with my values, so it can’t have people doing things I regard as evil. And it isn’t fun if the characters are tormented excessively, or if the end of the book is unsatisfactory, altho that’s a flexible term if I trust the author and it is a series entry and I expect satisfaction in a future book. Don’t abuse my trust!

Jenny Schwartz writes contemporary-ish paranormal romance, fantasy and science fiction in a range that includes near-ish term and far future. While the romance is much more front-and-center in some books than in others, dyadic relationships seem to always be present, generally in the context of a larger chosen family. Schwartz’ characters talk explicitly about the importance of empathy. The main characters often have cut ties with their family of origin. Generally, one or more members of the family of origin (a parent and/or a sibling) are also dead, even tho the character is of an age where that is not expected. In several books, a character has made a really major life change in the immediate wake of a failed romantic relationship, and is isolated in a context in which she doesn’t know anyone well.

I have now read all three Pax Galactica books, all 5 of the Xeno-Archaeologist books, the first of the Delphic Dame books, the first two “Old School”, the three “Uncertain Sanctuary books” and the two “Hidden Sanctuary” books.

Schwartz has an author website: https://authorjennyschwartz.com/

It is up-to-date, but somewhat minimalist by choice. She is a self-published author who writes prolifically. As with many genre authors, if you find them many books into their career, reading “forward” on the author timeline is a different experience than reading “backward”. As an example, I read “Snow Crash” by Stephenson and it was okay. I read “Zodiac” and loved it. After finally getting a copy of “The Big U”, I could see why the author was reluctant to allow it to be republished (altho I still enjoyed it). But reading his post-“Snow Crash” work left me largely bored and disengaged. (Altho maybe I should revisit that. Some Day.) More typically, when I encounter a prolific romance author mid-career and read forward until I run out, enjoying it immensely, when I read backwards, I hit older attitudes and tropes that horrify me. (This even happens with JAK, altho at this point, I’m so fascinated by the process of absorbing the total body of JAK’s work, that I find even the obnoxious books fascinating.) While I am not yet halfway through this author’s work, it seems clear that reading backwards is going to be in a direction of MF dyadic relationships in which I kinda dislike the man, edging into out and out rooting for her to ditch him and find a new partner.

In the Nora series, and in the most recent Pax Galactica series, Schwartz’s depiction of alien AI in the context of her front-and-center emphasis on empathy produces characters who are strongly connected to the woman protagonist, but not romantically. While I am only one book into the Delphic Dame series, a similar dynamic is developing there as well. The AI characters provide a lot of information to advance the plot, substantial resources and power, emotional connection and unyielding support. When the man in the dyad is lacking, his lack is more than made up for by the AI and/or in the relationship with the AI. Fortunately, the men in general do not seem to feel emotionally threatened by the AI (altho they are often extremely suspicious / skeptical), and over time they also connect emotionally producing a somewhat oddball, but endearing (and not kinky) triad.

Schwartz develops more characters than that humanoid dyad and ambulatory AI. These characters often appear in books of their own later / earlier in the series.

Characters in Schwartz books have gardens (the ones in space especially so!) and they eat fresh, home cooked food with enjoyment. The women protagonists enjoy preparing food to eat later, and they enjoy figuring out what they and the people they care about need to eat and drink to thrive and that process is an important component of the storytelling. I cannot emphasize how much I love this.

Characters in Schwartz books need nurturing, and they want to nurture others. Orphan characters appear in at least two series. The protagonists bond over their efforts to effectively parent children whose biological parents have died traumatically. While dealing with major problems of their own, they prioritize ensuring the safety and support of these children, and that extends to ensuring they have a larger network of caring adults involved in the child’s life that are also prioritizing the care and support of the children.

Characters in Schwartz books talk explicitly about difficult periods in their lives before the story begins, and have difficult, emotional conversations about earlier choices that led them to the Now of the book. They mostly make an effort to be validating and emotionally supportive through expressions of love and support, through non-sexual comforting touch and through acknowledging the difficulty of those earlier periods. But they also push each other to consider the “bad guy’s” point of view in those earlier conflicts and to consider what the protagonist did to contribute to that earlier conflict, as well as alternate roads not taken, and how lessons from those earlier painful episodes might contribute to better solutions in the present and future within the storyline. If you are thinking, hey, walkitout is describing bildungsroman, you are not wrong.

As my friend K noted, there’s a lot about this author’s work that is 100% what I love in pleasure reading. (I mean, if you go look at that list up there, it’s 15 books in a little over a month so, yes, obviously, either I love reading this stuff or I truly hate myself and I don’t hate myself.) If you think that this is a thing you might like, I highly recommend. If you read this and go, why on earth would anyone read anything like that, well, find something else I guess.

This 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_.