Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

    Without the natural resources of Earth or the military might of Mars, the people who live on the asteroids belt have always been treated like second class citizens. It is not particularly surprising then that when the ring opens up thousands of new worlds and one of them appears to be earth like - that is with air, water and other things humans need - a group of Belters decide to make it their new home. The Belter group names the new planet Ilus and sets up a settlement. Unfortunately for them, like colonial powers of the past the global powers that be don't especially care whether someone else got their first. They see land they want and assume they have to right to take it. The earth based UN government decides to assert its "rights" by issuing a contract to Royal Charter Energy (RCE) that gives the corporation the "rights" to New Terra (otherwise known as Ilus) and all its resources. The fact that people are already living on Ilus/New Terra matters not at all to RCE or the UN. But it matters to Ilus’ new settlers and to show it matters, the settlers set off an explosion as an RCE ship tries to land on the new planet, thereby beginning the first war in the new frontier. The UN's Chrisjen Avasarala and the OPA's Fred Johnson send James Holden and the crew of Rocinante to keep the peace until the global powers can come up with a more permanent solution.

Cibola Burn started off a bit slow. The first half of the book is basically argument and fight after argument and fight between various the settlers and RCE, with Holden in the middle trying and failing to make peace or at least stop the killing going on. 

As Holden fails to bring any measure of peace the planet starts mobilizing its own defenses against its human intruders. This is where things began to get interesting. There are death slugs, water organisms that make people go blind, and something that makes space ships stop working and fall out of the sky. But even natural disasters (to the extent anything on alien planet is natural, I suppose it has its own version of what's natural) aren't enough to stop people from bickering and so the fights and arguments continue on the ground and in space where each faction has a ship floating on stand by (along with the Rocinante). The series started with a mystery in space – what happened to Julie Mao and what the protomolecule was. Now everyone knows about the protomolecule and story is how people are reacting to it.

New point-of-view characters are introduced in Cibola Burn. There is someone from each of the relevant factions. Basia is a settler whose son was one of the kids who were kidnapped in the previous books. Holden and crew were able to rescue some of the children but they didn’t make it in time to save Basia’s son. Havelock who first made an appearance in Leviathan Wakes as Miller’s partner shows up here as one of the less sociopathic members of RCE’s security team. Elvi is one of the RCE scientists. Her sections were funny but mostly I enjoyed Holden and the investigator/ Miller. I really hope there is more of the investigator/Miller in books to come (despite Holden’s attempt to prevent that).

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

The soap opera that began in Crazy Rich Asians continues in China Rich Girlfriend. This wasn't quite as good as the first book. Mind you, there is still plenty of excessive spending, sumptuous food, and planet sized egos. The tension in the first book was all about Asian-American Rachel meeting her rich boyfriend's family for the first time in Singapore, how she would react to their billionaire lifestyles, and how they would react to her. This second book in the series introduces Rachel's long lost father and his family. They are just as crazy rich (and plain crazy) as Nick's family but given that Rachel is meeting them for the first time and is therefore not as close to them as Nick was to his family the stakes felt much lower. Rachel and Nick who are ostensibly the main characters, are more observers than participants in the craziness, which further has the effect of putting distance between the reader and the story. I did like this. I just hope the final book in the trilogy packs a bit more punch.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The story begins in New York with young professors and couple, Rachel Chu and Nick Young. Nick, who is originally from Singapore, invites his girlfriend home for the summer to meet his family and attend his best friend's wedding. Rachel says yes. She has the usual "meeting boyfriend's family for the first time jitters" but figures everything will be fine. Unfortunately, she has no idea what she has said yes to. It turns out Nick's family is crazy rich and old, old as in the kind of family that can trace its roots back to whatever the Asian equivalent of the Mayflower is. Accordingly, they are snobby and obsessed with associating with the right kind of people. American-Asian Rachel from a no-name family with only a middle-class sized bank account just doesn't quite measure up.

Nick is clueless for a large part of the book. Like only a rich person could, Nick never thinks about money - having it or not having it. He doesn't worry about impressing people or fitting in. His life has always been one of relative ease and so the possibility that Rachel would be shocked to discover how crazy rich (and crazy snobby) his family is simply never occurs to him.

There is a parallel story about Nick's cousin Astrid who a few years earlier married a middle class man. Astrid's husband Michael is smart, hardworking, and successful but he's not from a wealthy family with old roots and therefore never completely feels accepted by the family. Like Nick, Astrid doesn't notice her husband's discomfort. (This isn't to say I liked Michael. He has issues to work out but his feelings were understandable once he got around to explaining them to his wife.)

Most of the book reads like a soap opera about rich people and their problems, and I was totally down for that. I loved books and shows like Gossip Girl and Downton Abbey and this reminded me of those. Then the story took a turn. Rachel's learns a shocking secret about her family, which kind of fits in with the soap opera theme but also came out of nowhere and at the end leaving little time to really develop that story thread. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book overall. There's nothing earth shattering or deep here, but it's fun. I will definitely read the next book and watch the upcoming movie.

Read-a-Thon 2018

It's time for another read-a-thon! Perfect timing too. I am behind on my various reading challenges. The read-a-thon is a chance to catch up. Of course, I started late but who can blame me? It's starts at 5 a.m. I love reading but getting up at dawn to do it, that's crazy talk. But now I am up and the coffee is ready. Time to start reading!

KEEP 

CALM

AND

READ

The Trespasser by Tana French

  Detective Antoinette Conway is on the murder squad, just like she always dreamed, but at times it is closer to a nightmare. The only woman on the squad, Conway is constantly subjected to harassment. But she keeps going, solving cases with her partner Stephen Moran, the newest addition to the squad and the only person who seems happy she's there.

Conway and Moran are assigned a new case. At first it appears to be pretty cut and dry - a lover's spat going horribly wrong and ending with a young woman getting her head bashed in. They bring in the boyfriend for questioning because of course, the boyfriend, but something doesn't seem right. Something is missing. Conway and Moran insist on following up on loose ends, which seems like a reasonable and thorough way to conduct a case and yet another detective - a veteran detective at that - keeps pushing them to close the case and just arrest the boyfriend. Something is definitely up.

Tana French has written six books now for her Dublin Murder Squad series and I've read every one. What I have loved about her books, especially the last two and this one is that I feel like I'm getting a comment on something true about life or society in addition to the mystery. With Broken Harbor it was the housing crisis; with The Secret Place it was girls' friendships and how the world tries to tell girls who they should be. With The Trespasser it's sexism and harassment and the way that kind of treatment can twist a person up. Conway has good reason to distrusts her fellow detectives. People try to screw with her in ways that are not only disgusting but that potentially damage her cases, which is scary because she is a murder detective after all. Screwing up her cases means violent criminals could go free. It twists her up. Conway doesn't know who to trusts so she trusts no one, which in turn makes it that much more impossible to make friends with anyone on her squad.

It took me a little while to get into this one. The first half focused on an obvious suspect but I knew it couldn't be that easy. I kept waiting for the real story to start. Once it did, I was all in. One of the interesting things about the Dublin Murder Squad series is that each books is told from the point of view of a different detective. The last book was Moran's point of view and of course here it was Conway's. I wouldn't mind getting more books that center on these two detectives. They're a good team.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir of his childhood in South Africa. He was born during apartheid when miscegenation laws were still on the books in South Africa, making his conception - his mother is Black and his father is White - literally a crime. Given that Noah was born during apartheid, I expected stories of violence and sadness. I wasn't expecting to laugh as much as I did. There is some violence and sadness but I laughed more than anything else. Noah tends to see the positive side of life and the absurdity of it. At least that is how he comes across in this book.

In addition to providing plenty of laughs, Noah uses his childhood to comment on issues relating to race, gender, poverty, and family. Even though he was talking about his childhood in South Africa, he could have been talking about ghettos in America. I heartily recommend this.

Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile

 

A year or so ago I heard that a new show was coming to Oprah’s channel OWN called Queen Sugar. It stared Rutina Wesley, who I have admired since True Blood. There’s a lot I like about the show so I thought I’d check out the source material: Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile. As it turned out, the book and TV show share a title, character names, a couple plot points, and that’s about it. 

***Warning: I really wanted to discuss this book and you can't really discuss a book without spoiling it a little, so beware there are some slight spoilers ahead. ***

Natalie Baszile's Queen Sugar begins with a woman named Charlotte “Charley” Bordelon and her daughter Micah driving from California to Louisiana. Charlie’s father Ernest has inexplicably left her an 800-acre sugarcane farm. Why Charlie’s father left her the farm is unclear. On the television show the father leaves his farm to his three children. There it makes some sense in that although his children have chosen different career paths, they at least grew up in Louisiana and have some familiarity with farming life. In contrast, the Charley in the book grew up in Los Angeles, is an art teacher, and knows absolutely nothing about farming. Further, Ernest ties the farm up in a trust so Charley can’t sell it. If she doesn’t farm the land successfully, then Charley will lose the farm. Frankly it seemed like a screwed up inheritance to leave a daughter who by all description was a very good and caring daughter, but I guess Baszile had to get Charley to Louisiana somehow.

There is so much going on in Queen Sugar, too much really. It hints at a range of issues, introduces several plot points, and then never follows through. One of those issues is race in the south. Charley is an African-American woman trying to farm sugarcane in the south – something that has traditionally been the province of men, especially White men. In the beginning of the novel there is very much a sense of Charley making waves in rural Louisiana merely by being an African-American woman. There are a couple White male characters early in the story who are completely disrespectful and dismissive of Charley. It is suggested that they are out to destroy her in part because they want her land and in part because they don't think she belongs in their farming world. Then those characters disappear and we don't get anything more on that plot point. There are other hints at race issues. For instance, Charley’s daughter Micah wants to enter a baking contest but her great-grandmother remarks that it is only the rich White women that ever win. Micah doesn’t win but then it isn’t clear that she should have.

In large print on the back cover of my copy of Queen Sugar it says the novel is an “intimate story of mother-daughter reinvention, endurance, and hop amid the complexities of the contemporary South.” I have no idea who wrote that description but I don’t think they read the same book I did. For starters there isn’t much of a mother-daughter story. There are several mothers and daughters: Charley and Micah, Lorna and Charley, and Miss Honey and Violet – but none of those take center stage.

The relationship between Charley and Micah is particularly frustrating. In an early chapter of the book Charley and Micah are driving to their new farm. Eleven-year-old Micah is not happy with the move, which is understandable. Charley is playing with her wedding ring, something she does when she’s anxious. Micah asked to see it so Charley gives the ring to her daughter who throws it out the window of their moving car. Micah suffers no consequences for actions. Charley and Micah don’t even really talk about it. Throughout the book Micah repeatedly engages in rude and destructive behavior. Her behavior is partly excused as preteen hormones, which I didn’t buy as an adequate reason, but even if that was the sole reason for her behavior, her behavior needed to be addressed. I was waiting for a confrontation or conversation between Micah and Charley in which both vented about their frustrations. That confrontation never happened.

Queen Sugar is mostly Charley’s story but her half-brother Ralph Angel figures heavily into the story as well, arguably to the book’s detriment. I’m not sure what Baszile was trying to say with this character or what she wanted readers to feel about him. He has a sad backstory. Ernest (Ralph Angel and Charley’s father) got his high school girlfriend (that is Ralph Angel’s mother) pregnant and then pretty much abandoned Ralph Angel and his mother. There is a strong suggestion that Ralph Angel’s mother suffered from a mental illness but no specifics are provided (why I don’t know). At some point in his teens Ralph Angel moved to California to live with his father, who by then had married and had a second child. Ernest was a much better father the second time around, doting on baby Charley. Ralph Angel couldn’t help but be jealous. He began acting out and was eventually kicked out of his father’s house and sent to live with his grandmother in Louisiana. So super sad, right? Fast forward two decades later, and Ralph Angel is still that jealous, angry kid.

The situation in California was not entirely Ralph Angel’s fault. His father and stepmother could have done better but then so could have Ralph Angel. That ends up being the story of Ralph Angel’s life. The world could have done better by him, but Ralph Angel could have also done better. Instead he spends most of his time getting high, blowing jobs, blowing relationships, and being angry at and jealous of his half-sister. He feels like she has everything while he has nothing. Never mind that just like Ralph Angel, Charley tragically lost her spouse and is now a single parent looking for a new start. On the television show I also find the Ralph Angel character frustrating at times (but not nearly as frustrating as the character in the book). On the show the character is younger so I can excuse some of his behavior as youthful stupidity. In the book however, Ralph Angel is a man in forties with a kid. He was just too old to be acting the way he did.

I kept waiting for Ralph Angel’s moment of redemption. In the beginning he seemed like a good father making bad decisions but trying to do better. For a short while it looks like he might do better then it all goes down hill. Again, some of what goes wrong isn’t his fault, but a lot of it is Ralph Angel acting like an entitled prick who never takes responsibility for any of his actions. He is constantly focused on what he thinks is owed to him. And in the end, Charley ends up feeling bad because she hasn’t done more to help him. That actually made me angry because she could not have done more. Even if she had somehow found been able to find a way, there is only so much one can do for a person who is unwilling to change. Sometimes life just isn’t fair and all you can do is forget about other people's business and mind your own. Ralph Angel was always too focused on Charley and everyone else.

I want to end on something I did like about this book – the description of sugarcane farming. Moby Dick is one of my favorite books. (Stay with me, there’s a point coming.) Part of what I love about Heman Melville’s classic is the thing most people hate about it – the long interludes about the whaling industry. I’m never going to read a nonfiction book about whaling, but teach me about whaling while telling me an adventure story and I’m in. I like learning about stuff when I read, even better when it is mixed in with my fiction. It’s like two books for the price and time of one. So it is no surprise that I enjoyed the parts of Queen Sugar that delved into the complexities of sugarcane farming. As Charley learned about planting and harvesting sugarcane, I learned.

Queen Sugar is Natalie Baszile’s first book and I think it showed. It was a good, though not great, first book. I would read another one by her. She obviously has lots of ideas and I think with more practice her stories will get better.