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Title: Skin
Author: Kathe Koja
Published: Delacorte Press, 1993
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 317,690
Text Number: 1100
Read Because: fan of the author, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: A metalworker meets an improv dancer, beginning an intense and volatile collaboration. This premise (reminiscent of Kiernan's novelist protagonists and Brite's Drawing Blood) is something I read a lot of in my 20s and now feels dated in a lovable, nostalgic way. The cliquey underground art scene exacerbates that feeling; it's a stylized atmosphere, excessive and obsessive, a fantasy of what True Art might be. Meanwhile the escalation into bodily transformation almost does this a disservice, because it's a relatively realistic depiction of extreme body modification which isn't as unsettling or strange as Koja can be and so fails to deliver on the promise/threat of transformation. Abuse and manipulation within/around the central relationship turns out to be the more dangerous, but I wish the writing of the later reveals were stronger. This has the vibe I expect from the 1990s period of Koja's work—those terse, teeming sentences; the intense and grimy atmosphere—so I was destined to enjoy it and expect I'll like it more on reread when I know how to set my expectations. But I still wish that the weirdness of The Cipher transferred fully into the stronger interpersonal dynamics of Skin—I'd love for this to take a step further into truly bizarre.
Title: Survivor (Patternmaster Book 3)
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Published: 1978
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 317,875
Text Number: 1101
Read Because: fan of the author
Review: On an alien planet, a woman uses her past experiences adapting to new societies to help human settlers survive native conflicts. I didn't read this for a long time, despite having read all of Butler's other work, out of respect for her wish to bury the book; Gerry Canavan's remarkable biography of Butler changed my mind—particularly discussions of her self-critical nature and the degree to which it stymied her work. In that context, it's no surprise that Survivor is fine. It's better, honestly, than her weakest novels (compare the clumsy, near-grimdark, borderline-boring Clay's Ark in the same series) and the writing is on par for Butler (read: more serviceable than phenomenal). The only thing that really sets it apart from the rest of her work is that it takes place on an alien planet. Butler called it her "Star Trek novel" and, no, the premise isn't groundbreaking, and yes, the science is fuzzy. (Some context, perhaps, for the intricate, plot-central means of interspecies reproduction in the Lilith's Brood series?) But this doesn't weaken the sociological elements of the worldbuilding and it's prime Butler thematically: a layered exploration of what it means to adapt to/be adopted into another culture, obsessed, as Butler always is, with the fuzzy borders between agency and complicity.
My positive response to this is in part that it's perfectly adequate Butler, and in part that "adequate Butler" is phenomenal, and in part because this is—finally, for real this time!—the last of her novels for me to read, so I'm celebrating (and mourning) her work entire.
Title: The Seep
Author: Chana Porter
Published: Soho Press, 2020
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 318,085
Text Number: 1102
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: All seems well after a gentle, microscopic invasion of aliens brings world peace and strange new biologies—until Trina's wife expresses the desire to be baby again. The soft apocalypse is a fascinating concept, but identity/experience through biology or through alien symbiosis are Trina's wife's journey; Trina, meanwhile, is concerned with the narcotic interdependence of the alien symbiosis and:
True—but not revelatory, and not finely rendered. The tone vacillates between these transparent emotional/thematic statements and a sardonic (bordering on farcical) humor, a combination which feels very millennial; it reads easily and is blessedly constrained to novella length, but lacks meaningful nuance or incisive exaggeration. The comparison is a borderline spoiler (for the other book), but this reminds me of Newman's Planetfall conceptually and I wish it shared that book's tone: a sense of wonder, a more evocative and intimate alien strangeness, would bring welcome balance even if this retained its humor, and would make for a more complex study of the ambiguous morality of an apocalypse by way of utopia.
Author: Kathe Koja
Published: Delacorte Press, 1993
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 317,690
Text Number: 1100
Read Because: fan of the author, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: A metalworker meets an improv dancer, beginning an intense and volatile collaboration. This premise (reminiscent of Kiernan's novelist protagonists and Brite's Drawing Blood) is something I read a lot of in my 20s and now feels dated in a lovable, nostalgic way. The cliquey underground art scene exacerbates that feeling; it's a stylized atmosphere, excessive and obsessive, a fantasy of what True Art might be. Meanwhile the escalation into bodily transformation almost does this a disservice, because it's a relatively realistic depiction of extreme body modification which isn't as unsettling or strange as Koja can be and so fails to deliver on the promise/threat of transformation. Abuse and manipulation within/around the central relationship turns out to be the more dangerous, but I wish the writing of the later reveals were stronger. This has the vibe I expect from the 1990s period of Koja's work—those terse, teeming sentences; the intense and grimy atmosphere—so I was destined to enjoy it and expect I'll like it more on reread when I know how to set my expectations. But I still wish that the weirdness of The Cipher transferred fully into the stronger interpersonal dynamics of Skin—I'd love for this to take a step further into truly bizarre.
Title: Survivor (Patternmaster Book 3)
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Published: 1978
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 317,875
Text Number: 1101
Read Because: fan of the author
Review: On an alien planet, a woman uses her past experiences adapting to new societies to help human settlers survive native conflicts. I didn't read this for a long time, despite having read all of Butler's other work, out of respect for her wish to bury the book; Gerry Canavan's remarkable biography of Butler changed my mind—particularly discussions of her self-critical nature and the degree to which it stymied her work. In that context, it's no surprise that Survivor is fine. It's better, honestly, than her weakest novels (compare the clumsy, near-grimdark, borderline-boring Clay's Ark in the same series) and the writing is on par for Butler (read: more serviceable than phenomenal). The only thing that really sets it apart from the rest of her work is that it takes place on an alien planet. Butler called it her "Star Trek novel" and, no, the premise isn't groundbreaking, and yes, the science is fuzzy. (Some context, perhaps, for the intricate, plot-central means of interspecies reproduction in the Lilith's Brood series?) But this doesn't weaken the sociological elements of the worldbuilding and it's prime Butler thematically: a layered exploration of what it means to adapt to/be adopted into another culture, obsessed, as Butler always is, with the fuzzy borders between agency and complicity.
My positive response to this is in part that it's perfectly adequate Butler, and in part that "adequate Butler" is phenomenal, and in part because this is—finally, for real this time!—the last of her novels for me to read, so I'm celebrating (and mourning) her work entire.
Title: The Seep
Author: Chana Porter
Published: Soho Press, 2020
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 318,085
Text Number: 1102
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: All seems well after a gentle, microscopic invasion of aliens brings world peace and strange new biologies—until Trina's wife expresses the desire to be baby again. The soft apocalypse is a fascinating concept, but identity/experience through biology or through alien symbiosis are Trina's wife's journey; Trina, meanwhile, is concerned with the narcotic interdependence of the alien symbiosis and:
"We're supposed to have free will. That includes being unhappy. That includes making the wrong decisions and getting hurt, or even doing something terrible. We're on this planet to grow and change, and sometimes that can only happen through struggle."
True—but not revelatory, and not finely rendered. The tone vacillates between these transparent emotional/thematic statements and a sardonic (bordering on farcical) humor, a combination which feels very millennial; it reads easily and is blessedly constrained to novella length, but lacks meaningful nuance or incisive exaggeration. The comparison is a borderline spoiler (for the other book), but this reminds me of Newman's Planetfall conceptually and I wish it shared that book's tone: a sense of wonder, a more evocative and intimate alien strangeness, would bring welcome balance even if this retained its humor, and would make for a more complex study of the ambiguous morality of an apocalypse by way of utopia.
