Cover of The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Ministry for the Future starts with bang, and then plods for the remainder of its considerable length. This is a strange book, even for KSR. It has a non-fiction feel but not to its benefit. It is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson at times with its giddy exploration of technology. In fact, it might be better to describe this as a collection of ideas for re-engineering society and geoengineering rather than a novel. This is a brainstorm-your-way-out-of-climate-catostrophe session brought to life. It’s the meaty fare late-night change-the-world conversations are made of, but while interesting, this particular meal is unsatisfying.

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Cover of The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

While better than the first, “The Last Graduate” is still a little shaky. The waves of exposition have been replaced by swells of action, but the story still suffers from the struggles of a first-person narrative: we are smothered by an internal monologue. This leaves other characters feeling a little thin. When your main character is prickly and stand-offish, it’s hard to spend much quality time with anyone else.

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Parable of the Talents

I think it is fair to say that I don’t enjoy these books, but please don’t jump to conclusions; I’m a human, I’m allowed to have complex feelings about things. Writing this in early 2022, I cannot help but make the comparison to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (among other headlines). The news is bad. It is unpleasant to consume, but one must consume it or live in willful ignorance. It is comfortable to bury one’s head in the sand, but the world is dangerous, people are dangerous. Ignorance may be comfort but it is no defense.

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This is a take on the YA wizard-school genre, and it is brutal. In this world, as young wizardly people (my terminology) enter adolescence, their powers awaken, and they become attractive to horrible monsters that want to eat them, yadda-yadda. The wizard-folk who survived to become robust adults decided the best solution to this problem is to lock all the children in a magical school suspended in a magical void while they go through this transition. The school has, naturally, become infested with horrible monsters who devour a significant proportion of the students before they graduate. This is the setup, and it already begs many questions, only some of which are answered. My favorite being, “Why, exactly?”

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