Book Review: Avatars Inc.: A Sci-Fi Anthology Edited by Ann Vandermeer

by Megan Amato

The sci-fi genre is nearly as vast as space itself, so capturing a theme across a collection of stories can be difficult. Avatars Inc attempts to address this issue by creating a timeline of 49 years within twenty-four melancholic short stories that showcase a history through the eyes of an avatar—a robot that a person can mentally control in order to navigate the world without being physically present. 

Creating tension in a story with an avatar can be tricky, as the human body is, in theory, removed from immediate danger. Tension must be derived from more personal motives. “Add Oil” introduces us to an avatar’s mechanisms along with an issue that’s familiar—the rising tension between Hong Kong and mainland China—and reminds us that fighting for justice is not only the duty of the young. “La Mer Donne” appears sweet on the surface but depicts how desensitized we have become to human suffering. This theme continues with “Oannes, From the Flood,” which was hard to follow at times, but the message was clear: people matter more than artifacts. In “Bounty,” some people have become artifacts in a world where humans are dying out, and a governmental body pays poorer humans to collect others that meet the parameters of a “Noah’s Ark.” This was simultaneously the most uncomfortable and the most satisfying story, with effective worldbuilding and characters who showed agency, despite the short nature of the tale..

If we left earth now, nature would find a way to heal. Despite our need to intervene, nature thrives on its own and “A Bird Does Not Sing Because it Has an Answer” enforces how saviour complexes, in almost any scenario, aren’t as helpful as we think they are—even the birds understand this. So do the deep-sea creatures in “Behold the Deep Never Seen,” where the protagonist wasn’t strictly an avatar. I forgave this flaw because the story is full of imagination and could possibly be the beginning of a superhero or villain origin story. “Banding” proves that we should leave nature alone, and this story will linger in my nightmares for years to come. Unlike Bikini Bottom, you won’t find talking sponges or starfish in “Banding,” but millipedes that have evolved and surpassed what humans hybridized them for. Dr. Ian Malcolm said, “Life, uh, finds a way” in Jurassic Park, and “In the Lands of the Spill,” Vietnam has been nearly claimed by the sea in the south and an oil spill in the north that has created unfriendly sentient beings. 

Despite those who insist on denying it, humans are driving climate change, and some studies claim that the damage is now irreversible. “Robot and Girl with Flowers” illustrates older generations’ apathy regarding environmental degradation, as they leave it for younger generations to fix. However, corporations and capitalism are the biggest drivers of climate change. The protagonist in “Two Watersheds” is hired by a company to mitigate climate change results in the Rockies while escaping a present she feels forced into. “Waiting for Amelia” adds the theme of how colonization prioritizes the immediate amusement of the privileged over the long term needs of Indigenous and underprivileged people. “Overburden” questions how to deal with the aftereffects of toxic environmental damage done by mining, and humanizes those in the communities that have to deal with their cancerous environment—in this case literally.  All these stories highlight how capitalism and colonization bring destruction in the name of progress and leave it for others to clean up.

Avatar Inc did not leave me with a skip in my step—nor should it. It is a collection of bleak, melancholic stories, some more hopeful than others, that remind us to be mindful of our actions. 

Book Review: Savage Gerry by John Jantunen

by Matthew Del Papa

“A thrilling apocalyptic tale that rushes from the inside of a prison to a world that feels even more dangerous. The End couldn’t have come at a better time for Gerald Nichols.”

There is something strangely liberating in reading novels about hardship and suffering. The worse a character has it, the more we, as readers, enjoy their struggles. Some argue that the darker the circumstances the more satisfying the victory…and, given the chaos in the world right now, the timing couldn’t be better for John Jantunen’s powerfully grim Savage Gerry.

Published by ECW Press, this 336-page novel is a quintessentially Canadian tale of suffering and sacrifice. There is redemption too—for its title character, if not for the broken world which spawned him. As per the jacket blurb:

Dubbed “Savage Gerry” by the media, Gerald Nichols became a folk hero after he shot the men who’d killed his wife and then fled into the northern wilds with his thirteen-year-old son, Evers. Five years after his capture, he’s serving three consecutive life sentences when the power mysteriously goes out at the prison. The guards flee, leaving the inmates to die, but Gerald’s given a last-minute reprieve by a jailbreak. Released into a mad world populated by murderous bands of biker gangs preying on scattered settlements of survivors, his only hope of ever reuniting with his son is to do what he swore he never would: become “Savage Gerry” all over again.

Jantunen, whose brief bio asserts he “has lived in almost every region of Canada,” writes of hardship and struggle with a sort of visceral, first-hand knowledge seldom seen in this country. Readers can feel that the novel was “greatly informed” by the author’s “experiences trying to come to terms with the opioid crisis” and its “disproportionally harsh toll on […] northern communities.”

Though the premise is deceptively simple (surviving the “End” times is nothing new), the character of Gerald Nichols is complex in the extreme. A misunderstood man—one who often works against his own best interests—Gerry travels through a broken landscape hoping to become whole. Driven by love and whipped by regret, he sets out to find his estranged son and protect the boy by any means necessary. Gerald Nichols may be a killer, a monster, and the kind of man even his fellow convicts try to avoid, but when the world’s burning, there is no one better prepared to stand against Armageddon’s coming madness than someone who’s already lost everything.

Set against the backdrop of post-apocalypse Ontario, this brutally honest novel shines a spotlight on the too-often shadowed underbelly of Canada. Universal truths are revealed in Savage Gerry. There is a parallel between Jantunen’s conflicted titular hero and our too-often divided nation. By focusing on the very real costs of survival—on both a personal and communal level—the novel reveals the price Canadians currently pay to maintain our so-called civilized society. 

No author currently writing in Canada pushes bigger ideas than John Jantunen. His is a unique perspective. Abrasive and often shocking, the author’s novels are firmly rooted in hardship and feature the sort of hardscrabble existence most us are happier to never think about. 

As real, painful, and shocking as a knife in the belly, Jantunen’s latest work glories in exposing prejudice and inequality. The author never once shies away from the ugly and utterly senseless violence common to society’s downtrodden, including the shocking damage done by addiction and poverty. He catalogues the cancerous consequences of fear, hate, and desperation with an almost sociopathic sickness . There are no shallow, politically correct sympathies in Savage Gerry’s pages. Rather than peddle polite platitudes or cheery “road to Damascus” conversions, Jantunen forces his readers to question their core beliefs and most base assumptions—all the while telling an enthralling end-of-the-world adventure yarn in the vein of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. 

Savage Gerry, the author’s fourth novel with ECW (after 2014’s Cipher, 2016’s A Desolate Splendor, and 2018’s No Quarter) is, on one level, a rip-roaring post-apocalyptic story told with passion and skill. But, for those willing to read a little deeper, there is another, much more disturbing layer to the book, with Jantunen eviscerating the illusions every one of us holds dear. By exposing the sacrifices necessary to prolong the peace—or the pretense of peace—the author weighs civilization’s collective good against Gerald Nichols’ happiness.

Savage Gerry asks three questions: How much can one man fight? What lines will he cross to protect everything that is important to him? And, can a person ever come back from such raw savagery? In doing so, Jantunen merrily exposes the dark and ugly underbelly of “Canada the Good,” imagining just how far modern society can fall when given the smallest push. 

Taking on the Sisyphean task of highlighting the hypocrisy of conventional CanLit—with its celebrated “nation-building” and congratulatory affirmations of history’s “upward trend”—Savage Gerry is a blistering middle finger to the establishment’s cherished self-delusions and safe mediocrity. 

Apocalyptic in all the right ways, John Jantunen’s novel is devastatingly honest—almost savage. Important “literature” shouldn’t be this fun.

Savage Gerry is available April 2021.

Book Review: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

by Kaylie Seed

*Content Warning: suicide, self-harm*

Matt Haig has created a world that sits between life and death, one that is unknown and experienced by few. 

As the story begins, Nora Seed is just going through the motions of life. Feeling like there is not a lot going for her and that she has let everyone down (including herself), Nora’s life is nothing but regret and sadness. When bad thing after bad thing begins happening to Nora, she decides there is no point to sticking around in this life, and she attempts suicide. And then Nora wakes up to find herself inside a library with the librarian from her high school—and she has no idea what she is about to get into. The reader will learn that Nora is in between life and death while in the library, and then follow her as she has the opportunity to try out different versions of her life that could have happened, had she made different choices.

The concept of The Midnight Library is fascinating, however the characters lack depth, and the reader may find it difficult to connect with Nora. Nora can leave one feeling annoyed by her whiny demeanour, and because of this she is not an easy character to like. All of the characters feel very one dimensional, making it hard to feel empathy towards any of them as the story progresses.

While the story fell short, the themes in The Midnight Library are well-thought out and interesting. Haig focuses on Nora learning from her regrets as she tries out different versions of her life. This allows her to let go of those expectations she had for herself and find peace in who she is. Haig also focuses heavily on mental health and suicide, two topics that still have stigma attached to them. 

It is a notable aspect of this book that it attempts to normalize conversation surrounding mental health and suicide and allow for conversation between readers. While these topics can be difficult for some to read and reflect upon, if you’re in the right mindset, this is a lovely book to use as a tool to reflect upon your own life. All in all, the story itself fell short and the characters were unsatisfying, but the concept was interesting. The Midnight Library feels like a tale that wasn’t quite fully formed yet has the potential to be something amazing. 

Readers who enjoyed The Time Traveller's Wife would enjoy this read!

Book Review: Now Then and Every When by Rysa Walker

By Dahl Botterill

Tyson hails from the year 2304, where he has been raised from birth (and shaped even before that) to be a time-traveling historian. Madi lives in the year 2136 and has accidentally managed to stumble into time travel before it's been invented. Their stories become intertwined when something happens to break history as they know it—something that may fall at their time-traveling feet. 

Rysa Walker's Now, Then, and Everywhen is a big, sprawling time travel adventure that hints at more questions than it answers. The bulk of the story jumps between Tyson and Madi, each surrounded by their own cast of supporting characters and influences, and each traveling in time independently of one another. For Tyson, time travel is his everyday reality; he and his co-historians at CHRONOS explore history in the flesh, trying to capture those nuances that don't generally survive the telling. For Madi, it's a dangerous game; she's literally fallen into time travel and is exploring it without a safety net of any sort (either for herself or for the course of history).

The book is a prequel to Walker's CHRONOS series, and while it certainly isn't necessary to have read her previous books, I'm sure one would benefit from being familiar with the world she has created. The book is peppered with references and moments that feel like they carry unseen weight, and this can leave the new reader feeling like they're not getting the whole story. Now, Then, and Everywhen stands on its own, but the most intriguing of these references generate interest and questions that the book itself never answers. Whether this is because they've been addressed in previous books or because they may someday be addressed in future novels is unclear. Time travel makes for a tricky focal point and there's certainly some risk inherent in putting it under a literary microscope—risk that Walker has embraced, more to her audience's benefit than not.

Now, Then, and Everywhen is an often entertaining and occasionally compelling read, but it suffers a little from its size and scope. There is a tremendous amount of set-up involving a daunting number of characters, and many of the most intriguing questions aren't effectively answered by the book’s conclusion. The result is a novel that feels like a paradox of its own; it runs a little long and yet ends too soon.

Walker's new book won't be for everybody, but it has lots to offer to the right sort of reader.

Book Review: Dune by Frank Herbert

by Dahl Botterill

I was traveling with my family when I was first introduced to Frank Herbert's Dune. I had already read all of the books I'd brought with me and there were a couple weeks of touring left to occur, so we stopped at a used bookstore alongside a highway, somewhere long past remembering at this point.

I suspect most people learn of Dune when they are told that Dune is a must-read, that it's among the greatest science fiction novels ever written, that they can't truly claim to be a fan of science fiction while leaving that stone unturned. A close friend or fellow fan, perhaps a favourite critic, sharing their love of this incredible tome. Myself? I was browsing this long low building in the general vicinity of nothing, independently scanning shelves filled with books while my family did the same, when my mother stepped up behind me and drew Dune from the shelf in front of me. "You might like this," she said, handing it to me, and that was that.

It wasn't the gushing praise I've heard from others when talking about Dune, but it nonetheless joined the other novels in my growing pile of reading material. It was that fat Berkley paperback edition that came out alongside the David Lynch film, the front cover consisting of two oddly coloured moons hanging over a desert while the back cover is filled with tiny hard-to-decipher stills from the film. In many ways it's a pretty terrible edition; it says little about the novel beyond its bestseller status, spending most of its energy trying to sell you the movie. That said, even at thirteen I knew a few things about my mother; one of these was that she didn't have it in her to recommend a bad book.

When I finally took the book in hand a few days later, I devoured it. Dune is a tremendous book, not just in terms of quality but also scale.

Dune is gloriously huge. It's obviously not a short book, but it's also a work of epic scope, an exercise in world-building that puts many others to shame. It was probably among the first books I read that really gave me the impression that the story was occurring in a fully realized universe. The desert planet of Arrakis is more than just a handful of locations and characters, and is itself shaped by - and reflects - an entire universe of intertwined power structures, political machinations, and religious influences. This is a world with rich and oft-misunderstood history that shapes its present; the background information is never just filler in Dune.

I don't know that Dune is for everybody, but for anybody even remotely interested in reading it I'd unreservedly suggest they do so. It is something to be experienced. 

Book Review: Obliteration by James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth

By Kaylie Seed

The third book in the Awakened series, Obliteration was published on June 23, 2020. Author James S. Murray and Canadian author Darren Wearmouth co-write this series and is it ever a wild ride! Murray and Wearmouth have created a science-fiction thriller that is bound to keep readers on the edge of their seat and reading past their bedtimes to find out what is going to happen next. With an omniscient viewpoint, readers have the chance to learn about various character’s thoughts and feelings including the novel’s civilians as well as characters who are trying to save the world! The world is being attacked by terrifying creatures that live under the Earth’s surface and their sole mission is to obliterate the human race. Tom Cafferty is not planning on letting that happen. Along with his most trusted allies, Tom also has to put his trust into his nemesis Albert Van Ness who claims that he can stop the monsters from completely taking out the human race.

Murray and Wearmouth have written unique characters that all have voices that can be distinguished from one another as the story plays out. The characters in Obliteration are entertaining and keep the reader engaged throughout the story which helps build on the overall plot of the novel. Obliteration is for pure enjoyment and is meant to entertain and boy does it not disappoint. Murray and Wearmouth have written this novel in a way that plays out like an action movie before the reader’s eyes. The two authors balance action with downtime perfectly so that the entire book isn’t action packed and gives the reader some breathing room so that they are ready for the next action-packed scene.

Obliteration is the perfect book for readers looking for entertainment and escape while not having to worry about heavy themes. While it is a story that is filled with monsters and death, it is an incredibly engaging read that is bound to keep the attention of readers from the first page until the very end. There are currently three books in the Awakened Series but the end of Obliteration leaves the reader thinking that there may be another book joining this action-packed series of novels. One thing is for certain, Murray and Wearmouth make an awesome writing duo and it will be interesting to see what they come up with next.

*Thank you to Wunderkind PR for the gifted eARC

Book Review: The Down Days: A Novel by Ilze Hugo

By Kaylie Seed

Entering into the world at the perfect time, Ilze Hugo’s debut novel The Down Days follows corpse collector (and self-proclaimed “truthologist”) Faith as she tries to help an orphaned girl locate her baby brother. Hugo has created a cast of quirky characters who are all trying to survive in this new post-truth world. After a mysterious illness that residents are calling “the Laughter” sweeps the world, Sick City is a place where laughing is prohibited, masks are essential, hair is underground currency, and lip porn is all the rage. The Down Days is heavily character driven, extremely fast-paced and switches between different narrators as the story progresses, sometimes leaving the reader confused as to what is happening but Hugo always reigns it back in and then continues the plot forward. This apocalyptic novel questions life, love, and loss in what is now a post-truth society.

Along with Faith, the reader learns a great deal about Sans, an illicit goods trader. As the story progresses Sans sanity denigrates leaving him to wonder what is true and what just might be a hallucination. The reader also follows some secondary characters as they recount parts of the plot. This is not always common as there is usually one or two main characters who tell the story, but Hugo takes in multiple perspectives (even for just one chapter) to help the reader understand what is going on as the story progresses.

The Down Days focuses on themes that we all deal with on a daily basis: life, love, and loss. What is so different about The Down Days is that these themes are surrounded by a new type of world, one that is in constant decay, fear, and the unpredictable. Hugo addresses these themes by using various characters to question and try to answer them through conversations with other characters and the actions that they take throughout the novel. Hugo also includes themes like trade, culture, and death that are explored through this mysterious illness. Hugo is South African and she weaves in this culture and language into her story. It’s absolutely wonderful to get to escape to a different part of the world while not leaving your house. Hugo even includes a glossary at the back of The Down Days so that readers can educate themselves on the language used throughout the novel. Hugo’s story is one wild trip that is fast paced and full of questions surrounding humanity. With COVID-19 still a huge issue around the world (and one that is bound to create waves in our history book), Hugo’s story parallels perfectly with how the world is today.

Readers who enjoy Stephen King’s The Stand and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven will enjoy this quirky take on a worldwide pandemic.

Special thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the gifted e-copy of The Down Days.