Best of 2019 as read by G

 The best (5 stars):

All murderbot, all the time! It looks like a lot, but they are so short it's really just one great novel-length muderbot book.

• The Nightingale: A Novel by Kristin Hannah
• Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries by Matha Wells
• All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Special mentions (4.5 stars):

• Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Borderline by Mishell Baker (3 stars)

I waited way too long to review this one. And I was staring at it in my list and could not recall a single thing about it. After reading some reviews it came back to me, but I think that is somewhat telling.

I actually recall liking the complex and messy characters in this book. Physical disability and mental illness is front and center: very unusual for an urban fantasy.

3 stars.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (3 stars)

This novel won a bunch of awards (hugo, nebula, locus) and I can see why. It's unusual to get sci-fi set against a Thai cultural backdrop. The Thai references and setting I liked a lot: farang, Bangkok, Ayutthaya, takraw.

It's a dystopia where the climate has been destroyed and there is a fierce multi-national battle underway for access to seed banks to provide new genetic material for food. The wind-up part comes from everything being powered by animals that store energy into springs, even up to "spring guns". This part was pretty ridiculous, there's a large belief suspension required.

While this setup sounds interesting, I struggled to like it. I usually like grim dystopia's, but something about this one was very unsatisfying. There was no lack of grim-ness, perhaps I just couldn't buy into the spring thing. There's an awful lot of the novel devoted to Emiko overheating.

3 stars.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac (4 stars)

This is a fascinating insight into one of Silicon Valley's unicorns. Uber was so successful it became a way for dozens of other startups to describe themselves: "Uber for ...".

Even though I read all of the NY Times articles as they unfolded at the time, this was a good read, and I learned some things. My two main takeaways were:

1. Toxic culture that starts at the top will infest every part of the organization.

2. Kalanick was really good at pitching VCs, raising money, and keeping complete control over the company despite enormous outside investment.

Of these, I knew there was going to be a lot in here about the toxic culture, and I was mostly surprised by how far and deep it seemed to run. The second was new to me. 

As more and more problems emerged with Uber I kept asking why the board hadn't kicked Kalanick out of the CEO role, and the answer is in this book. He had been through the fire with many VCs and previous companies, and by the time he founded Uber he knew all the tricks for how to lock out the investors from wresting control of the company, even if the CEO was driving it into the ground.

Here's my highlighted phrases.

Toxicity

More than most other tech companies, Uber prized the almighty Masters of Business Administration, a degree that signaled business acumen and, often, an alpha male mindset. Not every MBA grad was an asshole, by any means. It just seemed that many of the ones who were assholes tended to feel at home joining Uber.

At Uber, being cutthroat and competitive was considered an asset, not a liability.

Mohrer thought he was empowering his staff, and felt like his high expectations were a good management strategy. But around the office, according to two employees, he seemed like a shorter version of Biff Tannen, the high school bully antagonist from Back to the Future.

Some women at the Chelsea office felt alienated by management. To some staff, Mohrer appeared more comfortable with his “bros,” other alpha-male types who shared his frat-like mentality, and the office culture reflected as much.

Employee treatment

Have a free meal, you only have to work 12 hour days to get it:

Though employees were fed for free at work, Mohrer followed Travis’s lead and delayed dinner until 8:15 p.m.

Even during recruiting, prospective employees were treated poorly. The company had designed an algorithm that determined the lowest possible salary a candidate might accept before making an offer to them, a ruthlessly efficient technique that saved Uber millions of dollars in equity grants.

Do anything to win

The reality was much less noble. As Uber’s insurance costs grew exponentially, the “Safe Rides Fee” was devised to add $1 of pure margin to each trip, according to employees who worked on the addition.

After the money was collected it was never earmarked specifically for improving safety. “Driver safety education” consisted of little more than a short, online video course. In-app safety features weren’t a priority until years later. “We boosted our margins saying our rides were safer,” one former employee said. “It was obscene.”

Silicon Valley excess

Kalanick had paid Beyoncé $6 million in Uber restricted stock units for her performance.

4 stars

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach (4 stars)

This is very unusual sci-fi. It's told in a series of short stories, each zooming out from a culture built entirely around making carpets out of human hair. The whole novel is a pursuit of the question: why? Where do they go? Who started this? Subsequent stories unveil the sheer scale of the production and it is astonishing.

The characters are almost non-existent, change every chapter, and a bunch of them die. It's one of the most plot-driven books I've ever read. Every character and previous chapter is just background to understand the implications of the next chapter. I think this structure of disconnection made the scope of the story easier to tell (no need to invent ways for the initial characters to cross the galaxy), but also harmed any possibility for character development.

The structure is actually quite clever to motivate the reader to search for answers: gradually giving us who, what, how, when but holding back "why" until the last page.

The vignettes are brutal, more than one ended with me exclaiming "daaaaaamn!". Usually when a book does that to me, it's a very good sign. It's very short, and I read it in about a day. I was completely consumed with finding out why these hair carpets were being made. On this fact alone it deserves 4 stars.

SPOILERS

But I'm not sure how to feel about the ending. Was it good? Kinda? I certainly didn't want it to be happy, or unexplained, and it delivers in those dimensions.

This story feels like a thought experiment for what would happen if a ruler has almost infinite power, but is also a narcissist and easily provoked into petty revenge. What would the petty revenge of an infinitely powerful being look like? This: destroying and reforming an entire galaxy of people and planets into a machine to demonstrate your own personal superiority over someone else.

I'm not sure what the "point" was. Perhaps it's a demonstration of what can happen with too much power and too little empathy?

4 stars.

Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb (4 stars)

This is an excellent piece of non-fiction that has me convinced that we need the help of beavers to rescue North American ecology. I came to this book after listening to a fascinating interview with Ben by Chris Morgan on KUOW's podcast The Wild.

the geological mass we call North America might, as Frances Backhouse put it, more accurately be termed Beaverland

Ben Goldfarb tells the story of beavers using a cast of interesting characters and anecdotes that makes it very easy reading. I think the only downside of the novel is that I was fairly convinced about how important beavers are early on, and things started to feel a little repetitive by the end.

I find myself looking at streams and rivers in a whole new light: have they been eroded down to bedrock, do they meander? What do the banks look like. And I'm now super curious about every piece of possible beaver infrastructure I come across.

Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year.

Here's to nature's hydrological engineers!

4 stars.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (4 stars)

Every Seattle resident should read this one. I'm giving it 4 stars because of all the great Seattle tidbits it dropped, if I lived somewhere else, it would be a 3.5.

I had no idea who Cliff was until my wife started talking about him one day shortly after we moved here and referring to him as "my weather guy". I've since read many an excited blog post by Cliff about various storm events. I agree with the sentiment.

We sat in silence. Then, at ten of four, we had to turn the radio back on because Fridays at ten of four is when we listen to our favorite person ever, Cliff Mass. If you don’t know who Cliff Mass is, well, he’s this thing me and Mom have, this awesome weather geek who loves weather so much you have no choice but to love him in return.

Yes. Two opposing grids have not been kind to intersection sanity in this city:

Take five-way intersections. The first time Bernadette commented on the abundance of five-way intersections in Seattle, it seemed perfectly relevant.

Favourite quote:

Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere, and even if they don’t get in your way, you can’t help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them.

Very entertaining. I actually quite enjoyed the descriptions of the husband geek-rockstar on the Microsoft connector and the over eager admin.

4 stars.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr (3 stars)

It's essentially a Sherlock Holmes novel narrated by the Watson-equivalent, in this case a journalist with a bizarre amount of free time and complete lack of any need to earn a living.

The interesting pieces are the historical setting, that also involves Theodore Roosevelt and J.P Morgan, as well as the early attempt at criminal profiling and psychology.

Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated,” not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists.

It's fairly standard Sherlock Holmes fare. God I wish they would eat at a different restaurant, I got so sick of hearing about Charlie Delmonico.

3 stars.

The Shadowglass by Rin Chupeco (3 stars)

Too far behind on reviews. I left myself two notes: "Luggage on azi is ridiculous" and this quote:

“But we have been conditioned to obey authority in subtle manners, Zoya. You would be surprised at how very few actually speak up in the face of injustice.”

But have literally forgotten the entire plot. That usually means it was a solid 3.

3 stars.

The Heart Forger by Rin Chupeco (3.5 stars)

I left it too long to write this review and I didn't take many notes. Usually that means it's pretty good and I don't have complaints. I did get really sick of horses apparently being able to ride on dragons. Just picture that, it's ridiculous.

Also, WTF is the point of Tea learning sword skills, she'd be far better off using that time to practice magic. I feel like Chupeco is overdoing the set up for a "and that's why she needed sword skills" gotcha plot point in the future.

3.5 stars.

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco (3 stars)

The premise is appealing: the protagonist accidentally raises her brother from the dead. So begins this Memoirs of a Geisha meets Harry Potter. I think it could have worked: entwining magic and Geisha traditions into a Japanese style magic academy to protect the world from daeva. But it isn't really delivered.

The plot moves along at a glacial pace. Endless descriptions of dress patterns, hair pins, and Geisha politics. After Tea starts her training it takes many chapters and another magical accident before it actually moves away from Geisha protocol, tea ceremonies and parties and onto actual magic.

The delay seems insane as Mykaela is literally dying under the weight of being the only dark asha and Tea is the only possible replacement and burden-sharer. Guess we'd better make sure she goes to lots of parties instead of learning magic!

Having said all that, the world building is good, just way too slow and overly descriptive. The end of the novel quickens the pace and the future timeline has very cleverly hooked me into reading the whole series because man does it sound dark and interesting. Maybe this one was just slow to start?

3 stars

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (4 stars)

Almost certainly the greatest book cover of all time. I'll be honest that's really the only thing that drew me to this, horror is not really my genre.

I had a great time reading this. It's packed full of nostalgia, it's fairly over the top and in your face, but certainly not to the point of making me angry (I'm looking at you Ready Player One).

It's a classic teen horror story straight out of the 80s. Highly entertaining, occasionally funny, but not that much, and occasionally a bit more creepy than I would like reading it just before I go to sleep.

4 stars.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (3 stars)

After the strength of Uprooted, I was excited for this one, but it fell a little flat. I was really excited by the potential of this world when these mysterious Staryk moving roads showed up in the early novel, but was disappointed in the result.

Overall the novel is much more strongly rooted in fairy tale land (Rumpelstiltskin) than Uprooted. That leads to these fairly ridiculous plot constructions where someone agrees to a grand bargain and the other party tries to come up with a clever way around the letter of the agreement. The dialog sounds like this:

“Of course you can, mortal girl,” he said over his shoulder, as if I was the one being a fool. “A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true; the proving makes it so.”

And of course if you do manage to weasel your way out of the deal, the villain needs to be all honourable and stick to their side of the deal. Just like, well, real bad guys would never do.

I liked the idea of the Staryk being kinda like the white walkers from GoT except instead of just an evil domination foil, we actually get to discover their true motivation. That would have worked a lot better without the trope-laden fairytale framework.

There's quite an interesting treatment of Judaism, and struggle against widespread antisemitism.

The worst part of the whole novel though is really the huge number of first-person POVs. It gets crazy. It feels like every single character is getting their own POV, and it's really draining to read. Why should I care what this person thinks? They will disappear in a few pages anyway.

3 stars

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (4.5 stars)

Waited too long to write this review but I think? I really liked it. I think it's technically YA, but in the same way the last Harry Potter books are YA. i.e. it's pretty dark.

The world building is great. The great magic battle was really cool. It feel very fairy-taily, which is a different take on fantasy. There were a few points where I felt the characters' very powerful magical abilities created some logic holes: I remember thinking, they could just solve that problem using magic.

The only really negative piece was the weird and gross 17-yr-old to old-man "relationship" and sex scene. The Dragon spends all the early book being mean and acting like an angry grandpa to Agnieszka. He's constantly condescending and mentally abusive.

When she's first having romantic thoughts during their shared rose spell, he doesn't miss an opportunity to be an asshole:

"Well?" he demanded, hoarse and irritated, and it was him. "We can't do this for long, whatever you are doing. I can't have my attention divided.

When she decides to actually just go to his bedchamber, his reaction is:

"Listen, you impossible creature," he said, "I'm a century and more older than-

After the climatic ending, he doesn't even bother sending her a note, or expressing any form of concern for her mental or physical wellbeing:

Sarkan hadn't come back. I didn't know if he'd ever come back. I heard fourth- or fifth-hand that he was still in the capital, setting things right, but he hadn't written.

This isn't a relationship that starts out antagonistic and gradually grows more loving and respectful. It's abusive and shallow the whole time, with a sex scene in the middle. It feels very Stockholm-syndrome. It would have made for far better reading for Sarkan to make some advances and Agnieszka turn him down like the powerful witch she is, further strengthening her character.

4.5 stars.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (3.5 stars)

An interesting post-apocalyptic read, sitting at the intersection of that genre and literary fiction. Survivalists who like to geek out on the details will probably be fairly disappointed: flying planes is a central part of the novel, despite the shelf life of avgas being about a year, which the author attempts to patch over in a few places.

The writing style is "stream of consciousness" with plenty of missing punctuation, which was somewhat annoying at first. There's some very sudden transitions from survivalist adventure type novel, to literary and reflective. These felt fairly jarring but were not implausible for the style of storytelling.

This was our ritual while we waited for our lives to truly begin and I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don’t know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly.

Eventually surviving isn't enough, and leads to a almost-suicidal mission to seek out new people. This leads to a love story, and finishes with an action novel, which are all in stark contrast to the lonely reflective passages.

Favourite quote:

Watch anyone enter their arena of real mastery and you see it, the growing bigger than themselves.

3.5 stars

The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts (3.5 stars)

Left it too long to review this one. I think the premise was good, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief on various occasions. There seemed far too many situations where they should have been caught, and the plausibility of the forest and music communication for very complex concepts was stretched too thin.

Still, it was a fairly enjoyable read.

“In a way, prey are lucky. Running for your life instead of running for your dinner.” A weak smile. “Better motivation, right?”

3.5 stars.

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll (3 stars)

Great intro for non-techies into the world of computer security and espionage. A lot of the fundamental concepts remain the same, although the technology and the associated risks have changed dramatically from the early 1990s.

Reading this felt too much like work, so I didn't enjoy it much, it also moves pretty slowly. But I would recommend it to others looking for a basic understanding of computer security with some historical and nostalgic interest for nerds.

The computer has become a common denominator that knows no intellectual, political, or bureaucratic bounds; the Sherwin Williams of necessity that covers the world, spanning all points of view.

Diversity, then, works against viruses. If all the systems on the Arpanet ran Berkeley Unix, the virus would have disabled all fifty thousand of them. Instead, it infected only a couple thousand. Biological viruses are just as specialized: we can’t catch the flu from dogs. 

3 stars

Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia by David Hunt (3.5 stars)

Really refreshing to read a version of Australian history different to the whitewashed version taught in schools. In Hunt's history, no-one is safe from sarcasm, irony, and a darker view on white settlement of Australia.

Some favourite quotes:

No other nation can rival Australia for sheer maritime girtitude.

Each sailor was given a pint of 94 per cent proof rum a day, except for the ship’s boys, who had to make do with half a pint.

So Nepean offered the job to Arthur Phillip, a doggedly unexceptional performer most noted in Royal Navy circles for having two first names. Phillip was the man you would want in your corner if you’d run out of paperclips or your workmates had left unwashed cutlery in the office sink – a man who could boldly requisition new stationery or prepare a dishwasher roster without fear or favour.

Richards insisted that the weevils in the cheap flour he proposed to feed the convicts were a protein supplement and that the government should pay extra for them. The convicts found an unlikely champion in Phillip, who threatened not to leave port unless they were given better rations and luxuries such as clothes.

When the Dutch got adventurous, they’d name their discoveries after bits of the Netherlands and, when they were really on fire, insert the word Nieuw (New) first. The Netherlands is small, which meant Dutch explorers gave the same names to lots of different places. They had christened their Brazilian territories New Holland in the 1630s but Tasman, stuck for ideas, happily recycled the name a decade later. Tasman went on to discover New Zealand, which was named after the Dutch province of Zeeland, or the bit of New Guinea the Dutch had previously named New Zealand, or perhaps Zeelandia, which is what the Dutch called their settlement in Taiwan.

3.5 stars

The Nightingale: A Novel by Kristin Hannah (5 stars)

An incredibly powerful story of a family living through the Nazi occupation of France. It follows two sisters, one joins the resistance and the other fights to keep her family alive through the many hardships of Nazi occupation, including starvation rations and no heat in winter.

This book made my cry. A lot. I had trouble reading the final chapters because I was bawling my eyes out.

Unlike much historical fiction it doesn't fall into the trap of beating you over the head with boring details just because the author spent time researching them. I'm certainly no history buff, so I'm not qualified to judge accuracy, but it felt plausible. It struck what I thought was a good balance of accuracy and poetic license to allow the author to create an emotional connection to the characters.

There's a number of memorable lines, some of my favourites are:

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.

“I’m not fragile,” she said. The smile he gave her was barely one at all. “We are all fragile, Isabelle. It’s the thing we learn in war.” 

However, the writing is fairly simple and approachable on the whole. Hannah says she wanted to tell the forgotten story of women's resistance and struggle through WWII, and she did so, spectacularly:

“Men tell stories,” I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. “Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over. 

I was angry at Vianne for handing over the names of the Jews and others in her town with no protest. Of course I have the benefit of hindsight, I know the horror of the traincars and the camps are what's coming, and she didn't. And she was in a very vulnerable position. But I felt she should of at least made Beck threaten her explicitly before giving up her best friend and her family, she just assumed the threat was there and implied.

Minor quibble: Nightingale could not have been a worse code name. It's literally her last name. I mean come on.

I wished there was more detail on how the safe houses were established and worked, and how they had to innovate to cross the border. The first crossing we experience with Isabelle is very precarious, I can't imagine they could continue like that for long. Since this part was based on a true story I would think the details could be found with enough research.

Overall a very powerful and harrowing book.

5 stars.

Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (5 stars)

Final $10 "novella" in the series.

Amazing, like the rest, and a good ending that still leaves it open for more extortion. I only have one real criticism of this series, and it's the hacking. It's too easy. Murderbot never gets caught, never fails, and it's just a little too perfect. Perfectly hacking yourself out of every different camera feed, owning every security system, weapons detection system, and doing it all with no margin for error: any failure of those perfect hacking skills would pretty much always have led to instant discovery and capture.

Although, I kinda believe this one:

(Humans never think to tell their bots things like, say, don’t respond to random individuals wandering the outside of the station. Bots are instructed to report and repel theft attempts, but no one ever tells them not to answer polite requests from other bots.)

If you can suspend disbelief on the hacking there's still lots to love. In the final scene of the book Dr. Mensah has an incredible conversation with Murderbot. We see how Murderbot appears to act like a teenager (albeit with superpowers), and relates to Dr. Mensah's daughter immediately. Mensah is Mum, the coolest, most in-touch, understanding, challenge-yourself mum.

(“I don’t want to be human.”)
Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human."
(“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”)

“We have more options now that you’ve changed your appearance, and have been successful at…” She was hesitating over the phrase pretending to be human. I remembered at least three conversations about that. “Let’s say, not being noticed."

5 stars.

Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (5 stars)

The spectacular story continues, at 6.25c per page. Ouch. Murderbot gets caught up in more messy human business, accidentally becomes a freelance security consultant, and explores a super creepy abandoned space station with a very "Aliens" vibe. Tons of action, sarcasm, and excitement.

Thank you, next!

5 stars.

Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries by Matha Wells (5 stars)

The amazingness continues, although I'm now wise to the scheme. Carve an amazing novel up into 160 page chunks and sell them all for the price of a full novel. I paid it because the books are great, but I'll grumble along with everyone else on amazon. They aren't novellas, they are just sections from an awesome novel that cost $10 each.

 This is more of the same brilliant AI, now off on an adventure of its own choosing.

I didn’t care what humans were doing to each other as long as I didn’t have to a) stop it or b) clean up after

I'm fairly confused about how it can use TV shows to bribe other bots. Why can't ART just download its own media from the same place as Murderbot? That aside, I loved the scenes of two AIs sitting around critiquing soap operas as unrealistic, while devoting bazillions of compute cycles to watching every single episode:

The depiction is unrealistic.

and getting emotional

When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on.

and then using the made up action as advice for real life

I asked ART, How did you know to do that? though I already knew the answer. It knew I knew, but it said, Episode 179 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

 5 stars.

 

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (5 stars)

I started reading this as I was going to sleep, then was up until 2am finishing it, as I couldn't put it down. It won all the awards in 2018 (Hugo, Nebula, Alex, Locus), with good reason. It's fantastic.

A SecUnit (powerful security robot artificial intelligence) has hacked it's govenor module and is now able to ignore commands from its human masters. It could go around killing everyone, but mostly it just wants to binge-watch TV and gets really annoyed when humans create work for it, or try to engage it in conversation.

I COULD HAVE BECOME a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

At least Mensah and Arada had overruled the ones who wanted to talk to me about it. Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I’d rather climb back into Hostile One’s mouth.

It calls itself MurderBot, and is wonderfully sarcastic, lazy, pessimistic and depressed.

...you may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.

And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.

Granted, I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.

The story rips along full of action and sarcasm. The plot has twists, and while things end happily, it wasn't a clean path to get there, and the emancipation doesn't play out as I expected it to, which is great.

There's not a single thing I didn't love about it. It's really short (160 pages). I'm already well into the next one.

5 stars.

Endurance: Shackleton's incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (5 stars)

Incredible is right. Astonishing is also accurate. This is the best adventure story I've ever read, and possibly the best ever written: if there's a better one, tell me what it is and I'll read it immediately.

How this group of men survived through multiple Antarctic winters with the most primitive of equipment and barely any food boggles the mind. I kept expecting people to die, but they didn't. How is it possible that a group of 28 men survived for almost two years in Antarctica in 1914 after their ship was crushed by the ice?

Not only did they survive, they rescued themselves. There were no radios, no GPS, no emergency beacons, literally no way to get help unless you were within visual range of rescue. They had woolen clothes, felt boots, reindeer-hair sleeping bags to keep them warm. Some small life boats to travel in. A sextant, compass and maps for navigation and not even a plastic bag to keep those things dry.

At any one of thousands of moments Shackleton's crew could have been crushed by ice, drowned, succumbed to hypothermia, been eaten by a leopard seal, starved to death, died due to dehydration or any other manner of things, but they didn't. One guy even has a heart attack and survives. If it was fiction I'd dismiss it as ridiculous.

Lansing's account is well written and gripping. He moves through tedious sections of waiting with style - you get a feeling for the bone crushing boredom of being trapped by weather and ice conditions, but the story itself doesn't get boring.

Probably the most impressive thing about the whole journey is that no-one gave up. I honestly don't understand how that was possible. Shackleton was obviously an impressive leader to be able to maintain a functioning team through all of the trials of the journey, but even so it just seems....impossible. I'm very certain that in similar circumstances I would have ended my own misery rather than continue.

Many of them, it seemed, finally grasped for the first time just how desperate things really were. More correctly, they became aware of their own inadequacy, of how utterly powerless they were. Until the march from Ocean Camp they had nurtured in the backs of their minds the attitude Shackleton strove so unceasingly to imbue them with, a basic faith in themselves—that they could, if need be, pit their strength and their determination against any obstacle—and somehow overcome it.

Certainly the intense cold was a factor in this condition, and the two physicians believed it was aggravated by the fact that they were continually wet so that they absorbed water through their skin. Whatever the reason, it required a man to leave the slight comfort of the sheltering canvas and make his way to the lee side of the boat several times during the night. Most of the men also had diarrhea from their diet of uncooked pemmican, and they would suddenly have to rush for the side and, holding fast to a shroud, sit on the frozen gunwale. Invariably, the icy sea wet them from beneath. 

Clark had gone off in the Caird, leaving Greenstreet in the Docker with nothing to protect his hands as he rowed. Now his hands began to freeze. Frostbite blisters developed in his palms, and the water in them also froze. The blisters became like hard pebbles inserted into his flesh. 

Once every ninety seconds or less the Caird’s sail would go slack as one of these gigantic waves loomed astern, possibly 50 feet above her, and threatening, surely, to bury her under a hundred-million tons of water. But then, by some phenomenon of buoyancy, she was lifted higher and higher up the face of the onrushing swell until she found herself, rather unexpectedly, caught in the turmoil of foam at the summit and hurtling forward. Over and over again, a thousand times each day, this drama was re-enacted. Before long, to the men on board the Caird, it lost all elements of awesomeness and they found it routine and commonplace instead, as a group of people may become inured to the perils of living in the shadow of an active volcano. 

They all hated Orde-Lees, with good reason, who, it seemed to me, was the only one acting out of self preservation. Amazingly this rag-tag team, that was thrown together with barely an interview in some cases, all pulled their weight equally through a series of disasters:

Most of all they cursed Orde-Lees, who had got hold of the only set of oilskins and refused to give them up. He maneuvered himself into the most comfortable position in the boat by shoving Marston out, and he would not move. He either ignored or was oblivious to the oaths flung at him.

My only regret of the novel is that we don't hear of the reaction when they returned home, or where the crew we came to know ended up after they got back. The scene of acknowledgement by the whalers was very moving, but left me wanting to know more about what the world thought. Perhaps it all got lost in the midst of WWI.

5 stars.

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown (3.5 stars)

I approached this with some trepidation and reluctance. Brown did such a good job on the red rising trilogy, adding another book seemed like a mistake. I wasn't particularly motivated to regain all the state of the characters from the various houses that I had forgotten from the trilogy. But I dove in anyway.

Some minor spoilers ahead.

Some of the things I liked from the trilogy are present. It's a messy war: things don't go to plan, Reaper loses support, makes mistakes, and creates big rifts in the fragile peace he has managed to construct through revolution.

The central theme in this book is the tension between Darrow's family life and what he feels is his responsibility to the new world order he has created through his bloody uprising. This was good depth for Darrow's character, but I didn't find it particularly compelling as he obviously chose the war over his family many years ago and has barely looked back. This twinge of regret as he finds his star falling, and is ostracized from his own government is understandable but not all that deep, since he doesn't change direction in the slightest, but instead continues on the same path with more self awareness.

I feel the trauma of what I’m doing not just to him, but both our families. It feels like the world is doing this to us. But is it the world, or is it me? The way I am built? A breaker, not a builder after all.

Prior to embarking on what seems like a suicide mission, he only decides to say goodbye to his son after Sevro insists on saying goodbye to his. Eventually he realises he has effectively abandoned his family.

I have made my choice and it kills me to know I chose not to be a father. Not to be a husband. I failed at both when I chose the Rising over my family. And now it teeters on the razor’s edge. Orion might already be lost. Our fleet, cobbled together, the product of ten years, might already be debris.

There are a lot of different points of view to follow, and Lysander seemed like a complete waste of time. Lyria brought an important perspective of a 'liberated' Mars colony, but once she is off Mars she is isolated, in a position of little power, and effectively becomes a prop for the heist. Ephraim's perspective is for the heist, which is entertaining. Darrow's is of course required.

I'm fairly sick of Darrow surviving this long. He's been in front-line tooth-and-nail combat too many times to count at this point, there's just no way he could have survived all those battles. Darrow and Sevro should have died in this book, then we would have had a real story. What happens to the rising once they are gone?

Having said all that, it's still an entertaining read, and I could mostly ignore trying to piece back together all the multitude of character relationships from the earlier novels, but I probably missed a lot of significant points.

I wish Brown had left the Red Rising universe alone and embarked on a fresh new series in a different world.

3.5 stars.