The Left Hand of Darkness
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Publication Date: 7/1/00
Publisher: Ace

Blurb (GR): On the planet Winter, there is no gender. The Gethenians can become male or female during each mating cycle, and this is something that humans find incomprehensible.

The Ekumen of Known Worlds has sent an ethnologist to study the Gethenians on their forbidding, ice-bound world. At first he finds his subjects difficult and off-putting, with their elaborate social systems and alien minds. But in the course of a long journey across the ice, he reaches an understanding with one of the Gethenians — it might even be a kind of love.

Review:
"The Left Hand of Darkness" turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise for me. I do not read science fiction often and had to abandon my last attempt ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy") for its utter stupidity, but this book was a sci-fi of a completely different sort. It wasn't just another novel about green aliens or space travel, it was an extremely clever and deep exploration of gender.

Genly Ai is an emissary of the Ekumen (a union of human worlds) to planet Gethen, or Winter (called so for its extremely cold climate). His mission is to convince inhabitants of the world to join the rest of humanity in exchange of ideas and technology. However Genly is met with some reserve as the decision to join is hindered by alien to him intricacies of Gethenian politics and culture. What makes Gethen so unique and thus so hard for Ai to understand is that it is inhibited by the race of ambisexual (hermaphroditic) beings. All Gethenians have an ability to be both male and female. Most of the time their sexualities lay dormant and awaken only a few days a month during a period called kemmer (mating period). At the time of kemmer each Gethenian can become either male or female. The choice of gender is always incidental. Between the kemmers Gethenians are asexual. This sexual peculiarity makes Gethen quite a subdued race - its inhabitants are not assigned any gender roles, they are not sexually driven or sexually frustrated, they are less violent and ambitious. As the story progresses, Genly learns to understand this strange world a little better and even finds love.

I was extremely impressed by Le Guin's imagination. The world of Gethen was thoroughly detailed and very well realized. Everything about Gethen - the direct effects of Winter's climate and Gethenians' ambisexuality on the social and political order, science, philosophy and even folklore - were developed in the most remarkable way. I was also amazed at how skillfully Le Guin presented romance in the story, because as you can imagine a love story between a man and an ambisexual being (or between two ambisexuals) can go horribly wrong in less talented hands.

My only reservation about the book was the language. It took a few chapters to get used to a huge amount of Gethenian words, names and concepts. At times I had to reread some passages to understand them, because they seemed a little too densely written (my recent obsession with YA literature might be blamed for the softness of my brain too I suppose). But this wasn't so overwhelming as to spoil the reading experience for me.

Highly recommended to those who enjoys quality science fiction.

5/5 stars

The Stars My Destination
Author: Alfred Bester
Publication Date: 1956
Publisher: Vintage

Blurb(GR): In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men - and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive. The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction.


Review:
I think that this book pretty much just blew my mind.  I mean, am I crazy, or is this one of the most profound things ever written?

"You pigs, you.  You goof like pigs, is all.  You got the most in you and you use the least.  You hear me, you?  Got a million in you and spend pennies.  Got a genius in you and think crazies.  Got a heart in you and feel empties.  All a you.  Every you….”

Alright, you probably have to read the book to appreciate that, and you should!  Can I entice you further by saying that an android delivers the meaning of life in a radiation fueled moment of lucidity, before collapsing, about five pages before that speech?  How about the fact that this book contains an evil millionaire, an albino with abnormal perception, a gorgeous telepath, a radioactive courier, a slick super spy, a cold-hearted, red-headed jailbird, and a bionic psychopath bent on revenge?  Okay, I am pulling out my very last card.  Wait for it…

The Count of Monte Cristo…in space.  That’s right!  Except in this version, he finds enlightenment and awakens humanity in the end. 

I could see the comparison between these two masterpieces right away, but at first everything seemed to be happening much too fast.  How could he cram the years and years of slowly simmering vengeance of Edmund Dantes into a paltry two hundred pages?  But then I started thinking.  This is the future:  where teleportation makes
travel instantaneous; where the body and mind can be upgraded with hypno-learning and a little re-wiring; where information can be gained with the latest psychological coercion techniques.  In short, this is a world where patience is no longer required for revenge.  Like Dantes, Gully is a simple man awakened to all of his great potential by a fiery need for vengeance.  But Gully is ten times more impulsive and rash than Dantes ever was; he kills indiscriminately and without conscience.  And when he begins to awaken, he wakes up completely.

This book contains one of the most colorful, interesting casts of characters that I have ever come across.  I can definitely see that Alfred Bester had a history in comics; many of these characters seem like comic book heroes in the making.  I can also see that this was written in the 1950’s.  It’s nice that he could envision women fighting against their oppression, but I am a little sad that he saw the double standard placed on women continuing for
hundreds of years.  Also, I can almost see him delighting in his own progressiveness when he repeatedly describes Robin Wednesbury as a gorgeous “negro girl,” more times than he describes the race of anyone else in the book
(stick it in your eye, racist pigs!).  But it comes across as a bit glaring to someone raised in the Sesame Street, avoid mentioning race at all costs generation.  Some of the technological advances that he envisioned are quite a hoot as well.  For example, he imagined that teleportation would end the need for communications systems:

”In an age when communication systems were virtually extinct – when it was far easier to jaunte directly to a
man’s office for a discussion than to telephone or telegraph – “

I think that he severely underestimated the lengths that people will go to to avoid speaking face to face.

Perfect Musical Pairing

Tool – Lateralus

I’ve seen these guys twice in concert, and I love them for their sweeping, dynamic, ten minute long songs.  They put on quite a show – with crazy mind-bending imagery and clothes (or lack thereof).  Their shows always make me feel like I would probably be getting more out of them if I were on mind altering drugs of some sort, which isn’t really a
good thing for me (huge fan of reality and lifelong abstainer).  The ending of this book makes me feel almost the same way – it’s just a little bit too “out there” for me to fully appreciate, but I still found it incredibly moving.  This
song is all about transcending our basic, human selves.

4/5 Stars

The Age of Innocence
Author: Edith Wharton
Publication Date: 1920
Publisher: D. Appleton and Company

Blurb(GR): Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.”

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion,
Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.


Review:
The title of this book is now one of my favorites of all time.  At first glance, it seems so dry, so suggestive of sweeping historical detail.  It made me think of the fond memories of an age gone by – how quaint, how rosy-hued and idealistic it all was.  Summoning the vague ideas that I had about 1920’s New York, I pictured smoky clubs and laughing ladies in fur-lined cloaks and peacock feather hats.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever come across another title so seemingly innocuous, yet so absolutely loaded with darker meaning.  Shouldn’t there be some quotation marks or italicizing in there?  Shouldn’t she have warned us?

But she doesn’t, and this book is all the more devastating for it.  The beginning had me laughing along with how ridiculous it all was – the gardenia in the buttonhole, the fashionably late arrival, the opera translated within an inch of its life, the fiancé waiting in all her cosseted “perfection”.  She lured me in with these little witty and darkly humorous asides.  How silly!  And then, just when I was getting comfortable, she twisted all those details into something stifling and malevolent and tenacious.  She’s violent with her readers, but her blows aren’t passionate or frenzied.  Rather, they are given out systematically, calmly, and with absolute precision.

This is how to write a love triangle.  My god!  I honestly don’t think I will ever read a more vivid and lacerating portrayal of the guilt, inner conflict, and yearning of it all.  These three characters are so fully realized and exposed to the reader, yet within the world of these pages, they are neatly sectioned.  They are sequestered inside of their own thoughts and feelings.  They do not see each other at all.  We are given the best/worst seat in the house, and it’s painful, but always absolutely compelling.

May is sheltered and grown in a tiny space, like some sort of delicacy.  She is preserved and wrapped, like a present, for Archer to unwrap – an offering to his male vanity.  But is that all that she is?  Archer constantly assumes that she is child-like and vacant, with no hidden depths.  But then, she has unexpected moments of shrewdness and lucidity.  I think that she has more insight than he knows.  She is very much a product of her environment and she has learned to navigate its roads.  She has learned to succeed in her role.

Unlike May, Ellen is given experience and perspective in childhood. Her eyes have been opened by her eccentric upbringing and the bad marriage that she’s run away from.  She’s realistic to the point where she’s almost lost the ability to be romantic.  Does she love Archer?  I still don’t know.  She sees the reality of their relationship so much more clearly than he does, and I think that holds her back.

Archer is given center stage in this drama and so he is the most visible to us.  In the beginning, he is the favored son, almost worshipped by his mother and sister.  His every need is cared for; his whole life set out before him.  But when Ellen arrives – a color photo in a sea of black and white – he suddenly begins to see his society as an outsider.  Without even intending to, she jars him out of his set course.  She makes him examine his own thoughts.  But his transition isn’t instantaneous and complete: he regresses to his earlier state of complacency when she’s not around.  Or at least, he tries to.  He's idealistic and romantic in his innocence, hoping for impossible things.

And then there’s a fourth main character: society.  Acting as a single, terrifying tribe, they collude to set trends, make rules, and excise bad elements.  They are a “society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant,” but as a result they also eschew learning, experience, and perspective.

The ending is intense, and made me question my own much touted love of sad and ambiguous endings.  Quite a feat.  I think that it can be interpreted in a couple of ways.  If you’ve read this book, please comment because I’d love to have a discussion about it.

*Spoilers Below!*
Archer seems to have fallen back into his old groove, but he feels that he’s missed out on “the flower of life.”  When he’s given an opportunity to see Ellen once again, he resists, thinking that the memory of his association with her will be more vivid and real if he doesn’t see her again.  Has he simply become complacent, or does he finally see things as they really were?  Reflecting on his son’s attitudes, he thinks,

“The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they’re going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn’t.  Only, I wonder – the thing one’s so certain of in advance: can it ever make one’s heart beat as wildly?”

I’d like to think that he’s realizing there that maybe he didn’t miss out on the flower of life: he had passion and sadness and powerful feelings.  Maybe the flower of life is more about the wanting, not the getting.  His mind is so obviously opened and broadened by his experience with Ellen, even if they are never meant to be, and he now sees his idealistic visions of freedom from society realized (at least somewhat) in his children. In the end, he isn't courageous enough to reach for more.
*End Spoilers*
This is some of the most breath-stealing, gorgeous writing I’ve ever read and I am now very happy that I have an old, battered, highlighted and written-in copy from a library book sale, because I dog-eared the life out of this thing.  

Perfect Musical Pairing

Mendelssohn – Wedding March (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Joyous, grand, lively, triumphant…structured, traditional, confined, false…I’ll never hear this damn song the same way again. 

5/5 Stars

Tigana
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publication Date: 1/1/1990
Publisher: Roc

Blurb (GR):  Eight of the nine provinces of the Peninsula of the Palm, on a world with two moons, have fallen to the warrior sorcerers Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior. Brandin's younger son is slain in a battle with the principality of Tigana, which the grief-stricken sorcerer then destroys. Years later, a small band of survivors, led by Alessan, last prince of Tigana's royal house wages psychological warfare, planting seeds for the overthrow of the two tyrants. At the center of these activities are Devin, a gifted young singer; Catriana, a young woman pursued by suspicions of
her family's guilt; and Duke Sandre d'Astibar, a wily resistance leader thought dead. Meanwhile, at Brandin's court, Dianora, his favorite concubine and--unknown to anyone, another survivor of Tigana--struggles between her growing love for the often gentle tyrant and her desire for vengeance. Gradually
the scene is set for both conquerors to destroy each other and free a land.

Review:
While reading this book over the past month, I thought a lot about the differences between youth and adulthood, between young beliefs and mature ones.  And I think that maybe our youth is the only time that we can hold simple, firm convictions.  Maybe it’s the only time that it’s possible to believe completely that love will conquer all, or that there are good guys and bad guys, or that if we try hard enough, we can achieve anything we dream about.  In our youth, we can say things like, “I would never…” and feel completely certain that it’s true.  I think that a lot of maturing into an adult involves being proven painfully wrong, again and again.

I feel like I lost a bit of my youth while reading this book.  Don’t get me wrong; I loved it.  It’s going on my favorites shelf and I’ll probably re-read it dozens of times.  But I hate it a little bit too, because it has now rendered so many of my favorite fantasy novels (some that I used to even consider grey and nuanced) flat and simplistic by comparison. 

This is the most adult fantasy novel I’ve ever read.  And I don’t just mean that in the sense that it contains sex, violence, and heads exploding like rotten fruit.  I mean that in the sense that nothing in this book is black and white, nothing is simple, nothing is held sacred.  Fantasy used to be a genre where I could sometimes comfortably escape into a few simple ideals, but this book has proven to me that even a fantasy novel can be gritty and realistic.  And now I feel like nothing less will do.

If this were a typical fantasy, it would be about a rag-tag band of comrades coming together to make a long journey and reclaim their home from the curse of some distant, evil goliath.  The foes battled along the way would be disposable creatures – orcs, giants, spiders, dragons – beings that are murdered with little compunction.  The final battle would end in a massive celebration and all would be right with the world.

But this is not a typical fantasy.  This book is about an entire generation robbed of its very identity.  It’s about the
children born to the losing side of a great war, and the terrible legacy that they must bear.  It’s about collateral damage – not just faceless creatures, but people with homes and families, friends, the one you love, yourself.  It's about how a fight for peace can necessitate horrible violence.  It’s about the never-ending nature of war. 

It’s about this:

“The lesson of her days, Dianora thought, was simply this: that love was not enough.  Whateverthe songs of the troubadours might say.  Whatever hope it might seem to offer, love was simply not enough to bridge the chasm in her world.”

And this:

“’The land is never truly dead.  It can always come back.  Or what is the meaning of the cycle of seasons and years?’  She wiped her tears away and looked at him.

His expression in the darkness was much too sad for a moment such as this.  She wished she knew a way to dispel that sorrow, and not only for tonight.  He said, ‘That is mostly true, I suppose.  Or true for the largest things.  Smaller things can die.  People, dreams, a home.’”

And this:

“He carried, like baggage, like a cart yoked to his shoulders, like a round stone in his heart, images of his people, their world destroyed, their name obliterated.  Truly obliterated: a sound that was drifting, year by year, further away from the shores of the world of men, like some tide withdrawing in the grey hour of a winter dawn.  Very like
such a tide, but different as well, because tides came back.”

The “heroes” are deeply flawed – capable of violence, enslavement, and the sacrifice of thousands of their own people in battle in the pursuit of their goal.  The “villain” is a very grey character and in the end, is just a man.  A man with too much power perhaps and too much grief, but still a man, capable of feeling great love and deserving of sympathy.

The relationships are intense and heartbreaking and I wept ugly tears more than once.  I love that we get to see the conflict through the eyes of the long-toiling Baerd and Alessan, but also through the eyes of the youthful and naively passionate Devin. And we get to see Devin mature in all the hardest ways
possible:

“Devin suddenly felt as if he could not bear it anymore.  Alessan’s quite acquiescence was as a final blow in his own heart.  He felt torn open, wounded by the hard truths of the world, by the passing of things.  He lowered his head to the windowsill and wept like a child in the presence of something too large for his capacity.”

Dianora broke my heart the most though, with her systematic destruction of her own self, her own happiness,
all in the name of this terrible legacy:

”She stopped and looked down at the flowers, their fragile petals shaken by the breeze; but her thoughts were back with Brandin’s fairy tale of the far away princess born under summer stars, cradled on such flowers. 

She closed her eyes then, knowing that this would not do.  And slowly, deliberately, searching out pain as a spur, a goad, she built up a mental image of her father riding away, and then of her mother, and then of Baerd among the soldiers in the square.  When she opened her eyes to go on there were no fairy tales in her heart.”

Obviously I loved the writing.  If I could find a way to include five or six more quotes in this review, I probably would.  His prose is powerful and lyrical and incredibly evocative.  This is a real, heavy duty, dense, you’re-going-to-need-to-look-at-that-map kind of fantasy and I hesitate to recommend it to those who only enjoy the “lighter” fantasies.  However, I think that if you enjoy capital F Fantasy even a little bit, this book is definitely not to be missed.

Oh, okay.  One more quote.

“His intelligence stretched her to the limits, and then
changed what those limits were."

5/5 Stars

The Blind Assassin
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publication Date: 9/5/00
Publisher: Anchor

Blurb (GR): The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

Review:
I have to admit, I often do not get Margaret Atwood's books. But I am pretty sure I got The Blind Assassin. Otherwise how can I explain the feeling of sadness that is overwhelming me right now?

It's so hard to express what exactly this book is about - any synopsis you read doesn't do it justice and explains nothing. Mine probably will be as misleading and pointless as all others. The Blind Assassin is a puzzle of a story, with multiple tales within tales. It starts with the main character, Iris, telling us of the day when her sister Laura drove off a bridge, then shifts to Laura's posthumously published novel The Blind Assassin about two unnamed lovers who meet clandestinely and in which the man entertains his lover with pulpy science fiction stories, mostly about a blind assassin and a sacrificial virgin who fall in love against all odds. Then the story shifts again to Iris who, now an old woman, recalls her early years and the events leading to Laura's death. What is it all about I wondered? Why did Laura die? Why novel within a novel? Who are these secret nameless lovers? I didn't understand the significance of Laura's The Blind Assassin for a while - awful sci-fi junk and all, and yet it turned out to be the most symbolic, the most intimate piece of (bad) fiction I have ever read.

Atwood always writes about women and this novel is no exception. Ultimately, The Blind Assassin is a story of two young sisters who were unlucky to be born at a wrong time when women were expected to be wholly satisfied with shiny things and not much else. There is plenty of stories that explore submissive status of women in this world, the constraints they live under, but this one, I am sure, will stick with me for a long time. IDK how she does it, but Atwood writes it so well - these two girls raised not to be independent, who, although they are full of life and vigor, are locked inside the prison of their own home. It doesn't really matter if they dare to escape their golden cages or not. They are powerless, either outwardly or inwardly.

I know I am rambling here. I find it difficult to rave and explain what I loved about The Blind Assassin. It's just I am so full of feelings right now - of understanding and compassion for Iris and Laura's plight, of frustration over their weaknesses and pride over their moments of strength. Not many books can make me feel so much.

5/5 stars