Category: Book Reviews

What I Read: Oct-Dec 2024

Once again, I’ve fallen behind in blogging, and I have no doubt it’s going to get worse as I work on my thesis over the next few months. But to catch up you up on the event most relevant to this blog, I attended Dragonsteel at the beginning of December with my two teenagers, who are also huge Sanderson fans. We didn’t cosplay ourselves but had to take photos with some of the amazing cosplayers we saw there. Also pictured is my son’s soul caster: immediately after putting it on, his first instinct was to do the Thanos snap, so I guess that puts “the Lesson” into an interesting perspective.

And of course, we have some of the cool merchandise pictured like the collectible card game that absolutely broke the convention. My boys have always loved the con games at Dragonsteel, but this one really went over the top. Through some hard work, we managed to collect all the story cards and even a good number of the more rare cards (even Heralds 7 and 9!). There was a really interesting panel on philosophy and religion in the series–I still definitely need to get in touch with the panelists about some of their ideas. As always, I enjoyed Brandon’s book launch speech, and the excerpt from the new non-Cosmere short story to be released. I’m finding it interesting that Sanderson keeps returning to write in the police/detective work genre (see also Snapshot, Legion), but I suppose it makes sense when you consider how many of his fantasy plots are also information-based. Definitely planning to come back next year, when hopefully things will be a little more chill since it won’t be a Stormlight year. (One can dream, right?)

Besides the convention, the end of the semester went well. I wrote an interesting paper on the uses of imagination for learning about God, as well as the dangers thereof, which I’ve already submitted to a conference. I finished my internship teaching persuasive writing and made a first pass at a teaching portfolio, which makes me feel like the end of grad school is in sight. There’s just one semester left, during which I’m writing my thesis, teaching two classes, and taking one class on women in Arthurian legend. I am savoring my graduate experience but also kind of ready for a short break. Orchestrating Christmas for a family while trying to write papers and grade was not very enjoyable.

As if that wasn’t enough to do, my conference schedule for this next semester is also packed. Here’s a summary of where you’ll find me this winter:

Feb 13-15: LTUE Symposium (Provo, UT) – I’ll be presenting my paper on LDS premortal theology in The Maze Runner and Matched, as well as a paper on The Mandalorian and religious clothing with my coauthor and podcast cohost Carl Cranney. I’ll also be on two panels discussing Dune and the work of Hayao Miyazaki.

Mar 19-22: ICFA (Orlando, FL) – I’m presenting the first half of my master’s thesis on the postsecular portrayal of religion in the Stormlight Archive.

April 4-5: Eaton Conference on Speculative Fiction (Riverside, CA) – I’ll be presenting the second half of my master’s thesis on secular and religious ways of knowing in the Stormlight Archive.

I’ve got a few more presentations lined up for spring at the MHA and MSH/AML conferences, but we’ll save those for another time.

As for my reading, I was forced to declare bankruptcy on actually writing full reviews for most of my reading for the past few months, so I’ve instead ordered them by my star rating on Goodreads, with a few sporadic notes below.

Speculative Fiction

5-star

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis – Still my favorite of the Narnia books.

4-star

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis – A necessary step to get my kids to Dawn Treader and Silver Chair. There are points in this book that are more pointedly allegorical than Lion, but also points that are more neo-medieval-classical than the other books as well. I didn’t remember nearly so much dancing!

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson – Re-listened to this in prep for Wind and Truth. It’s the only one in the series that I never went back to since first reading it. The technical details felt a bit more organic this time around, but I still find the Kaladin plotline to be a bit dull and stretched out (though the final scenes are excellent). I would rather have Sanderson drop a few of the characters and actually focus on the ones who are the nominally stars of the book. (This problem gets even more intense in Wind and Truth.) However, it wasn’t as much of a trainwreck as I remember, so that’s something.

The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke – Really liked this except that it was too short. I would read a whole novel about this.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini – Overall, a fun SF book with some interesting remixes of ideas that have been done before. One thing that made the book tough for me to get through was the way that it keeps changing the entire conception of the plot every couple of chapters. You think you are reading one type of SF, then it becomes another, and just as you get used to it, it changes again. I got rather annoyed and resisted caring about our third set of characters, thinking the author would soon dump them. But this third set of characters turns out to stay put for the rest of the book, so not caring about them made it hard for me to want to keep reading. Something about the structure of the novel is just a bit off for me. The ending “standalone with series potential” ending kind of annoyed me after all the other switches the book pulled on me, but once I was done with it, I realized it made sense. Still, I don’t know that I’ll follow up with future books.

3-star

The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks

Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson – I am working on a longer review, plus writing my thesis on the series thus far, but here are a few initial thoughts:

The book doesn’t justify its length. At a panel with the editors at Dragonsteel Nexus 2025, they said they were proud of how they used typography tricks to avoid having to cut anything to fit the maximum page restrictions. I think this was a mistake; the book should have received more developmental editing. Perhaps this is a hazard of all authors that get too famous to delay publication in order to get the book right. I hope in the future, Dragonsteel avoids assigning launch dates before the book is finished (probably impossible).

The book is also marred by the heavy influence of current therapy culture. Mental health has always been a focus of the series, but it’s been done in a universal timeless way until Rhythm of War. Even the Rhythm of War version looks subtle compared to the therapy-worldview statements in this book, and not just in the Kaladin, Therapist to the Gods, plotline. I worry that this book will read as extremely dated in a decade.

On the positive side, this is Sanderson’s most fascinating book from a theological perspective. More elaborations to come, but at minimum, we have a real Paradise-Lost-ish explication of the Mormon Satan and an interesting argument for the need for an atonement. Also lots of interesting implications about the importance of belief in character’s lives, especially those who aren’t traditional believers. And Jasnah’s development in this book makes me extremely interested in where Sanderson intends to go with the character from here.

I am about to embark on a re-read to prepare for all the writing I need to do about this book, so I’ll report back with more considered opinions eventually

Fiction

5-star

Silence by Shūsaku Endō – Read this book again for the graduate class on divine silence. I’m pretty sure this is my fourth time reading it, some assigned and some by choice. This time around, I saw a lot of more of Endo’s intentionality in setting up Rodrigues’s conflict with God’s seeming silence in the face of suffering. I also read the ending as a lot more hopeful than I did as a college freshman. This time, I assumed that Rodrigues maintained his faith even though he was forced to remain silent about it, a reflection of God’s own silence towards the Japanese martyrs. I saw more hints in the strange economic log of the last chapter that Rodrigues kept secretly practicing his faith, especially with regards to Kiichijiro. Perhaps this is just contamination from watching the (amazing) film, but it just seemed so obviously intended to be read this way, which would surprise my college freshman self who read it as absolutely atheist in its ending.

Nonfiction

5-star

The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ – Finishing this week with the kids for our family scripture study. On to church history next year!

4-star

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis – Still very readable even after all these years. Whereas in the past I’ve really focused on the educational implications, with the recent rise of AI language bots, the last chapter reads as very prophetic and important.

Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair by Christian Wiman

Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil

Cup My Days Like Water by Abigail Carroll

All Manner of Things: Meditations on Suffering, Death, and Eternal Life by Jeffrey A. Vogel

Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days: Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand: 1846–1893 – The release of volume 4 finally inspired to make my way through all the volumes of Saints. This one does an excellent job of exploring the early days of Deseret and Utah, and doesn’t shy away from the tricky stories of polygamy.

3-star

Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis by Sarah Bachelard

The World of Silence by Max Picard

Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross – Read bits and pieces of this in three different translations, none of which were easier than others.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach – Fun read for Halloween season. I liked this better than my previous Mary Roach readings, though she’s still not my favorite writer. Some chapters were more interesting than others, but some were more nauseating than I could handle. Still, I have brought up some of the interesting facts I learned here in conversation, so I suppose the book worked well enough.

Cahokia and Deseret: One Projection of an Alternate Mormon Nation

As Michael Collings noted in his classic article on depictions of Latter-day Saints in speculative fiction, one of the science fiction common uses of the Church is as a governmental structure in post-apocalyptic fiction. Once the world has been destroyed, governments fall and alternate structures take its place. When the western United States is mentioned, that usually means a casual mention of the Church maintaining order. (Orson Scott Card did a take of this trope from an LDS perspective in Folk of the Fringe.)

What Collings didn’t note was that the same idea carries over into many books in the alternate history genre. Alternate history is an interesting part of the speculative fiction universe in that these books don’t necessarily contain the same reality-breaking tropes typical of science fiction or fantasy: no aliens, robots, or magic. (Though some do: shoutout to Lee Allred’s Clockwork Deseret universe.) Instead, they speculate by changing a key moment in history and projecting possible societal changes forward. This creates a world that feels speculative, even though it may be entirely realistic (or to be more precise, mimetic). Alternate history novels often focus on a different ending to some key moment in history like the Civil War (eg Bring the Jubilee) or WWII (eg The Man in the High Castle). if America is part of the setting, there’s often a throwaway reference to some kind of state or territory called Deseret out in the west.

This brings us to Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford, which won this year’s Sidewise Award for Alternate History. My friend Paul Williams who studies alternate history novels brought this one to my attention. He pointed out that the author is a religious guy (he’s also written a book of Christian apologetics, titled ironically Unapologetic) and that this novel had a small but significant portrayal of an alternate Deseret.

Since the audiobook was currently available through my library, I picked it up and blasted through it fairly quickly. The general premise of the book is that the initial colonizers of the Americas brought over a less virulent strain of smallpox, immunizing many of the indigenous people. The result is a lot more native peoples live through the early colonization era. They form an alliance with the Jesuits, who help them find an acceptable way to syncretize Catholicism with indigenous religions. They travel north and rehabilitate the abandoned native metropolis of Cahokia into a territory largely governed and inhabited by indigenous people (referred to by the unified name of Takata) that eventually join the union as a free state during the Civil War.

From an LDS perspective, we could see this conjecture as similar to the project of the Book of Mormon, which casts the native peoples of America as ancient Christians. There’s a long history of people looking for evidence of Book of Mormon geography to syncretize various drawings and legends with the narrative. Spufford has caught some flack for his syncretism as drawing away from authentic indigenous speculative fiction. Granted that I have no skin in the game, but Spufford’s supposition seems like a reasonable one from a historical perspective. It would hardly be the first time in history that Christianity blended in local religious practices to make itself more successful. I’m thinking about all those Catholic Saints who seem to have been syncretized with local pagan deities, like Brigit/Brigid in Ireland.

Let’s set that aside. Since my wheelhouse is portrayals of Mormons, let’s look at what amounts to a fairly fleshed-out (yet still background) description of the alternate history of the Latter-day Saints. Deseret, Brigham Young, and other Mormon items crop up in the book less than a dozen times, but the pieces still paint an interesting picture:

  • Apparently, there’s still a restoration of some kind. Joseph Smith doesn’t get a mention, but Brigham Young apparently leads the saints to the west, so Joseph’s presence is implied. However, the reaction to the restoration is modulated by the increased Catholic presence in America. It seems to be more of a “we’ll deal with those heretics later,” rather than “these religious ideas are dangerous now.” It’s the kind of long-term, centuries-rather-than-decades thinking that I’ve come to associate with a Catholic approach.
  • Polygamy makes it all the way to the 1920s. The story’s present-day newspapers contain headlines about polygamy as a sticking point for the negotiations for Deseret to enter the union.
  • There’s a Mormon temple that looks like a “pink wedding cake” in the heart of the midwestern city where the story is set. I’m guessing this is based on the Community of Christ temple in Independence, but it’s not really clear. Yet somehow the main body of Latter-day Saints still ended up in the west. I guess with the presence of Cahokia, Nauvoo wouldn’t have been as much of a frontier as it was in our timeline. But why go to Nauvoo? The book is silent on this; it only indicates that the Takata thought their safety was benefitted by separating the white people into warring groups, and thus they aided the Mormons on their journey westward. Presumably, Cahokia’s presence as an independent country also helped them establish Deseret as an independent state. Cahokia decides to join the union in the civil war because they are starting to being outnumbered, while it appears Deseret is still considering, right up to the story’s present.
  • Brigham Young seems to be much more friendly to natives. There’s a prominent scene in the “palace” of the now-symbolic monarch of Cahokia, which showcases a painting of a native council negotiating with business tycoons over the location of cross-continental railroad lines, and Brigham Young gets a seat at the table. This leads me to . . .
  • Questionable understanding of LDS sartorial choices. In this painting, Brigham Young is pictured in a prophetic robe embroidered with lightning. (Yes, we have robes, but not those kind, and they presumably wouldn’t have been worn to a political negotiation.) But this could be forgiven as the painting is explicitly historiography; the book draws attention to how the painting inaccurately dolls up each of the native representatives in maximum costume, when the real negotiation was much rougher. But prophetic robes as a Mormon ethnic costume? I suppose it’s better than pioneer garb.

Anyway, I highly recommend Cahokia Jazz all on its own, even if you aren’t interested in the Mormon references. It’s got a compelling detective plot and some interesting things to say about a multi-ethnic Christianity, and there may or may not be some magic going on in the end. Definitely worth your time.

What I Read: March 2024

ICFA was definitely my happy place

I’ll keep this summary short since it’s April and all the grad school papers are due in a couple of weeks. During March, I presented at both the BYU English Symposium and the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. You can read my notes about ICFA over here.

Since I was already in Florida, I also took the chance to slip away by myself to Epcot without kids. I ate way too many snacks at the Flower and Garden Festival and spent my time in line listening to books for class on headphones, but a break is a break!

Obligatory picture with the giant golf ball at Epcot

Results for the various creative writing contests that BYU runs have also been trickling out. My essay “Growing Up L’Engle,” which reflects on the various times I have read A Wrinkle in Time, was the second place winner of the Elsie C. Carroll Informal Essay contest. And my story about a robot nanny, “Insufficient Memory,” won the specialty short story category in the Vera Hinkley Mayhew Student Creative Arts Contest. I’m hoping that I’ll find a place to publish both of these someday.

Over on the podcast, I highly encourage you to check out our exploration of Pride and Prejudice adaptations featuring the wonderful Katherine Cowley, author of The Secret Life of Mary Bennet mystery series. We’re hard at work on some fun episodes that should come out with greater frequency once winter semester ends.

And now, onto the book reviews!

Continue reading “What I Read: March 2024”

What I Read: Sept 2023

Graduate school has begun in earnest, and man, I’m sliding back into school like a fish into water. It’s so refreshing to be around people who are deep thinkers, great writers, and prolific readers all day long. Grad school is a blast! (Remind me of that in December when the paper deadlines hit.)

bundle of books on a library
Photo by Guilherme Rossi on Pexels.com

This weekend (Oct 13 & 14) I’ll be at the Latter-day Saints and Media Studies Symposium presenting my analysis of the portrayal of LDS characters in The Expanse and Stranger Things. Tickets are $30 for two days of interesting research about the interaction between the media and the church and its members. If you’re in the Las Vegas area, I’d love to say hello!

A short essay/fiction/something I wrote made the finalist list for the 12th Mormon Lit Blitz! The Lit Blitz will be starting on October 23rd with my piece being released on November 2nd. I’m also involved behind the scenes this time as I’ll be putting together a podcast version of the Lit Blitz to make it even easier to follow along and vote.

Over at Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, we finished our Barbenheimer miniseries by talking about Barbie. I know there’s been a lot of LDS coverage of the film, but I think our discussion added a perspective that wasn’t as prevalent. I also really enjoyed our discussion of season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. If you’re not already watching it, I highly recommend using your free trial of Paramount+ to do so (maybe over the holidays?).

Onward to book reviews!

Continue reading “What I Read: Sept 2023”

What I Read: July 2023

Family snapshot outside the Kirtland temple

July has been a good break month. My kids have gone to several fun camps, we’ve celebrated some holidays and family gatherings, and I’ve taken time to rest and recharge (and read lots of nonfiction, apparently, as you’ll see from my reviews below). Near the end of July, we took off on the big trip of the summer which I like to call the Church History Mega Road Trip. We drove from Utah to New York and back, over 5000 miles in total. It was my first time visiting Palmyra and Kirtland, and my kids’ first time at any of the sights. We’re back now and were thrown straight into back-to-school prep, so I’m glad I got in some restful days early.

As for writing, I did finish one short piece of creative nonfiction that I sent in to Exponent II for their fall issue. I also sent in a couple of class proposals to some local writing conferences. In general, I’ve been less productive than I wish I had been, but I’m trying to accept that I have the opposite cycle from many writers: where most people have less work in the summer, as a mom I actually have more work in the summer than during the school year. It’s always difficult to be happy in the season that you’re in, but I’m trying.

Continue reading “What I Read: July 2023”