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In the first few pages a twelve-year-old girl leaves her home to marry, by arrangement, a forty-something widower. Seriously? Do I really need to keep reading this?? (I did. Grudgingly. Would you believe that, just a few pages after that, my reluctance transformed into eagerness?)

This. Was. Beautiful. Okay, a bit over the top, but goddamn what a heart Verghese has! Compassion, insight, humor; an eye for the unbearable lightnesses and despairs of life. I was reminded over and over of a soap opera. One where the characters are kind, gentle, smart, talented, noble. I’ve never actually watched a soap, so all I have is the cartoon cultural idea of what they’re like: drama, plot twists, suffering, redemption, characters larger than life; this had them all but entirely infused with tenderness.

Plus, culturally educational. Verghese writes with (what reads like) good rhythm for local customs and language. He packs in a good amount of background, all of which I found enjoyable and fascinating.

The last hundred or so pages ramped up the drama a notch, which forces me to drop my rating from six stars to five.

Abandoned, p.57. Then again, p.162, and again p.200, and so on. Lost track of the number of times I abandoned it. Caught up on New Yorkers. Gazed at New Mexico skies. And each time, went back to reading, because so many people I respect & trust speak so highly of this book.

The gimmick was clever, and well done: each chapter is a completely different voice, tone, perspective, style; like it was a writing exercise. Okay, Egan is a talented writer. I’m impressed. If you appreciate fine writing, this is your thing.

It’s just not my thing. It might’ve been, if the story worked for me, but it didn’t. Far too much That’s-Not-How-It-Works, and too few relatable characters. I realize that wanting to care about characters is a defect in both my personality and intelligence; it is not a flaw I am able to fix. I also realize that my T-N-H-I-W quirk is inconsistent and even hypocritical, since I happily read about hyperintelligent spiders and TV-devouring Murderbots and magical unicorns. Why did I dwell on it so much in this book? Three aspects, I think.

First, that’s not how memory works. Seriously, this is kindergarten neuroscience. Memory is not a recorder, you can’t simply hoover up forgotten memories. The book gets this so fundamentally wrong, and it’s such an important part of the plot, that I could not suspend disbelief. (Also, human behavior and relationships are quantifiable—an important subplot—but not without involving astronomical, ridiculously-impossible numbers of variables.)

Second, okay, let’s pretend it were possible to upload memories to the cloud: who would do so? Who among us has no secrets? No truly private memories, fantasies, desires, misdeeds, embarrassments, or even quiet personal/ prides? Egan draws parallels to privacy loss in the social media age, trading your surf habits for free music, but that’s not even close to comparable.

Finally... fine, let’s go with it all. You can retrieve and net-share all your memories, and you do. Egan doesn't even follow through with the really interesting ramifications of such a development. Like, all the asymmetries! What do megacorporations and governments do with all that? How will it be used to further oppress disadvantaged peoples? How will banks authenticate now that the entire world knows your password, favorite pet’s name, and Dream Vacation? Everyone you meet, for the rest of your life, you now need to wonder: what do they know about me? And, beautiful people: even if they themselves haven’t uploaded their memories, some of their circle will have. Are there no stalkers in this world? What are the unexpected consequences? What are the right questions to ponder? That's what makes good SF.

On the positive side, though, we could learn what happened to our favorite Van Halen concert t-shirt. So it really is a difficult trade-off.

Bah. Enough. You get my point. But back to the characters: the vast majority were shallow, self-absorbed, banal. The penultimate chapter, that was good: depth, complexity. A few other snippets of light throughout the book: again, Egan is clearly very smart and compassionate, so I assume that she deliberately chose to write about vapid people. Which, again, is not my thing.

I kept finding so many little problems with the book, yet I kept reading and liking it. Perhaps my expectations (based on his interview on the Ezra Klein podcast) were too high. But the human characters were hard to relate to, the relationships between them flat and mechanical. It’s like he spent more time developing the spiders than the humans. Twenty-year-old me would’ve been a-okay with that, today’s me felt a little disappointed but is still planning to read the next book.

The science was ... inadequate. He tried really hard, though! A+ for effort, B- for accuracy. B- overall, that is: Some aspects -- mind uploading; technology adaptation/innovation/maintenance on a millennial starship -- were D-worthy at best, and there were countless “sigh... it Does Not Work That Way” moments, but the vast majority of the science is plausible and intriguing. I tamed my eyeroll response and feel that, taken all together, this was worth it. Tchaikovsky’s heart is absolutely in the right place: he explores Big Questions worth exploring, and has developed a really promising, clever, sciencefiction-y universe.

Half of the book was impenetrable; half was a masterpiece. Half of me wanted to start it over the moment I finished, the other half wanted to move on. (We compromised: I flipped back and reread maybe a tenth.) This was a library copy; I’ve ordered my own so I can mark it up.

Thom gets it. She gets power structures and distractions and ambiguity. Responsibility, consent, nuance, storytelling. Asking the right questions. Aspects of life I know well, so her thoughtful perspective lends absolute credibility to her writings on what I don’t know as well or at all: it’s one thing to be peripherally aware of violence against trans women, a whole different thing to read Thom’s first-person experiences. Same with coming out, or mentoring/being mentored. How Thom navigates the world is quite different from anything I’ve ever experienced, and I can’t say that I understood her every message... but to be a better ally I will keep trying.

TRUST! Wells is a remarkable human being. I love how her work depicts the exquisite complexity of human relationships. Witch King is Wells at her finest (yet). A completely new direction for her, no trace whatsoever of Murderbot or its universe, no snark either, but still recognizably Wells.

This time she tackles trust: the burdens of being trustworthy, the difficulty of figuring out the trustworthiness of others. The costs of betrayal. The comfort of gaining a genuinely trusted circle, of working together toward higher goals. For a responsibility geek like me, this was almost pornographic (in the good sense; the Cindy Gallop sense). Add in strong, independent, self-aware, well-written characters; plenty of reflection and brooding; a generous helping of gendernonconformity; and tragic losses; ... and you’ve got me swooning.

Great story. Great world-building. Powerful, believable dialogue. Such beautiful relationships. My one quibble was that the bad guys were a little too unbelievable: grand-scale torture, genocide, enslavement, cruelty. Then I remembered the rpblcn party platform and all of a sudden the story isn’t so far-fetched.

Complex, rich, convoluted, exquisite. Inconsistent. Often irritating. Am I talking about the book or about humanity? Maybe both: Rushdie has an impressive talent for showing us our reflections. And wow, can he write. Some books you can relax into, this one I felt slightly on edge the entire time. Not in a bad way; I just had to pay attention, and after finishing I can confirm that the energy cost was worth it. This is a memorable book that rewards careful reading.

The first surprise was the narrative gimmick: purportedly a distillation of a “long-lost history,” like a Cliff’s Notes version of Gilgamesh, but told first person in an oddly subjective voice: warm and personal. Biased pretty heavily in favor of the main character. It’s an intriguing device, new to me, and effective: it lent the book an overall tone of closeness, of caring, that I find hard to describe.

Irritations: wishy-washy sex positivity, which I know partly reflected regime and epoch changes but it felt wedged in. Overly handwavy treatment of war and violence. Blatant lookism, sheesh, does he really need to remind us every other page of how “beautiful” or “handsome” the favorite characters are? (Very) infrequent deep dives into boring religious crap, which I skipped and assume were not important. And, grumble, “goats slathered in chilies.” In the Fourteenth century. O Editors, Where Art Thou? (Okay, that last one is just a pet peeve. The others did, to me, genuinely detract from the story. A little.)

Anyhow... not a spoiler, but DAE raise an eyebrow when they first read how many years Pampa would live? Did you do some quick mental arithmetic, subtract it from the book’s year of publication, then double-check it? Maybe wonder if all that cruelty, the empire born from seeds, the colonizing and war-in-the-name-of-peace, the tremendous extremes of good and evil and prosperity and neglect, the theocratic tendencies, might be Rushdie’s allegory for a different decaying empire? Yeah, me either. Just coincidence.

Mixed feelings: I loved most of its parts, just not the entirety. Probably because I’m old and cismale, also in large part because I read it too soon after [b:World of Wonders|48615751|World of Wonders In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments|Aimee Nezhukumatathil|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1577258440l/48615751.SY75.jpg|73952157] and it’s impossible not to contrast them: the describe-a-creature-then-find-parallels-with-my-life thing was less effective this time; it was also a lot harsher in this book, chip on shoulder. I felt deeply sorry for the author, for their pain; also somewhat angry at their parents and parental figures for not teaching boundaries or enthusiastic consent. I feel angry thinking of how many more children out there will suffer because parents shy from difficult conversations.

Imbler writes elegantly. Their marine biology segments are informative and fascinating. Their memoirs profoundly vulnerable, distressing at times but in necessary ways: Imbler’s experiences will be more relatable to young people, but we olds can learn from them. If I had a high-school age person in my life, I would pass my book to them. For my friends, though: if you’ve read World of Wonders, skip this one, or perhaps wait a year or two. If you’ve read neither, but want to read one: both are excellent, pick WoW for a broader view of racism and a wider selection of living beings, pick HFtLR for intense and painful perspectives on toxic masculinity, rape culture, blackout-drinking, queer self-discovery (and a narrow focus on marine biology). You will be better for reading either one.

Favorite excerpt: When the sand striker snatches a fish and begins to feast, it is not thinking of what the fish is feeling. It has no complex brain and no sense of morality, which means its intentions are never cruel. A worm cannot shirk a duty it does not know. But we can.

What a slog. Pretentious, long-winded, annoying. I found myself wondering how this could be the same author as [b:Victory City|61111246|Victory City|Salman Rushdie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1670259879l/61111246.SY75.jpg|96232966]. (Likely answer: forty difficult years).

Maybe it would help if I knew more about India’s history and culture. Or if I liked florid ornate excessive circumlocutious language. Or if I were more tolerant of moronic religions and stupid vain shallow self-absorbed people. But that’s not me, and I am clearly not the target audience.

In a delicious coincidence, halfway through my reading I stumbled into a conversation with a remarkable young person who was drawing parallels between this book and [b:The God of Small Things|9777|The God of Small Things|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590282886l/9777.SY75.jpg|810135] and who urged me to just not bother with this one, and rush to pick up that one. Unfortunately, it turns out I already tried and DNF’ed it... with similar gripes about flowery prose. Sigh.

Unrated, because who am I to argue with a Booker Prize.

A little heavyhanded... until the last chapter, when it went a LOT heavyhanded, we’re talking over-the-top soapbox. But I loved it anyway: it was sweet, thoughtful, and the ranting was 100% on target (bullies, religiofanatics, rpblcns).

One aspect that resonated deeply with me, and I wonder how this comes off for U.S. natives, is the plight of competent people from third-world countries. Stay, or emigrate? Live surrounded by incompetence and corruption, but possibly able to effect positive change in a land one knows? Or move to the first world, small fish in big pond, making no difference to the world? Ogunyemi does a superb job of evoking the draws of each: there are comforts of living in one’s childhood culture, and drawbacks to living in an increasingly nazified U.S. Even when the decision is clear, it isn’t always easy; not for anyone. And it’s clear where Ogunyemi’s sympathies and hopes lie, ... but you’ll need to read the book to feel the depth and richness of all the beautiful lives she depicts.