In my family growing up, my parents would take each child on their first out of the country trip when they were a teenager. I want to continue that tradition in my family, so July started with a trip to Japan with our 16 year old. He helped pick the destination and some of the activities. Our biggest hits were the Nintendo Museum, playing in an arcade in Ahkihabara, Teamlabs Borderless interactive art museum, our amazing AirBnB in Kyoto, and all the tasty treats from the conbinis and vending machines. The biggest flops were the once-in-a-decade heat wave, the basically empty Japanese Sword Museum, and that time when we accidentally boarded a reservation-only train and got yelled at by the ticket collector. Also, parents take note: traveling with one teenager is such a major upgrade from traveling with four small kids. Highly recommended if you can swing it.
The musical Toads at the Nintendo Museum
As for the rest of the month, I’ve been trying to get a bit of summer in my summer instead of just working all the time—hard when I have so many fun projects to work on! We’ve been taking advantage of very late church to go on long family hikes on Sundays. We’re going to try to do Mount Timpanogos in August! I also gave in to my college self and bought Civ VII. I haven’t put in too many hours yet, but as a more casual player, I’m really enjoying the changes that make the game less cumbersome and more fun
At the top of Kyhv Peak in Provo
On the academic side of things, I had lined up a research position for fall, then lost it to the whims of HR rules that prevent hiring former students at less than full time. Luckily, I’ve been able to pull together a teaching position for fall that I’m really excited about (and it comes with library access): I’ll be back at BYU teaching persuasive writing!
I continue in my quest to revive my podcasting schedule as well. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock and missed the internet’s new favorite show, we’ve got a podcast about the religious aspects of KPop Demon Hunters over at Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree.
The biggest news of the month, of course, was officially launching Further Light: Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition. This new little magazine already has more subscribers than this blog. I’m so happy that so many people have caught the vision of it. We’ve also received enough paid subscriptions to cover paying all of the authors for the first issue! Of course, there are still the printing costs that will be coming out of my own pocket, so if you’re able and inclined to support Latter-day Saint speculative fiction, please subscribe. I don’t plan to make any money out of this venture (a good bet since most magazines don’t), but I plan to use any profit to increase our pay rates for writers. I’ve also had several people reach out and volunteer to help us get off the ground—thank you for your generosity and keep it coming!
With all that happening, there are a few less book reviews than usual, but some real gems nonetheless.
The final conference in my post-graduation gauntlet of conferences was the Mormon History Association conference in Ogden. I presented my research on Orson Scott Card’s 1987 rewrite of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which I’ve had a ton of fun researching. A few things about the presentation are still tied up in permissions, but if I get that straightened out, I hope to publish it someday.
I was shocked how much literature-related content has grown at MHA since the Bushmans introduced the idea at the 2022 conference. Whereas I’m usually struggling to find literary panels, this year there were several panels relating to the upcoming volume on Mormon rhetoric, a paper about a Harlem renaissance poet who joined the church, and a panel each on Nephi Anderson and Bernard Devoto, just naming a few. We got together the AML crowd for a nice lunch one day, and I got to watch Burgindie’s two outstanding short films, The Angel and Java Jive—both highly recommended. My only disappointment was that Emma Tueller Stone’s paper on Orson Scott Card and Heavenly Mother was scheduled for the same time as my paper on Card. (Which reminds me that I need to send her an email to get a copy…)
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The panel listing attentively as Steve Peck rightly extolls Piranesi
Later in June, I also spoke on a panel for The Compass Gallery’s exhibit of religious fantasy art with two of my favorite people, Chanel Earl and Steven Peck. We had a great time bouncing ideas off each other about the significance of imagination for building and practicing faith. Wayfare is currently serializing Chanel’s book about fairy tales and the atonement. The introduction and piece on Snow White are available now: both are excellent examples of how fantasy and faith can collide in interesting ways.
Over on Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, we released a double-length short episode on two recent Catholic films, Conclave and The Two Popes. Carl and I had an excellent discussion about the similarities and differences between Catholic and LDS leadership and succession and how Hollywood doesn’t seem to really understand either. We’re hoping to release at least one episode a month during the summer, then return to a regular biweekly schedule in the fall.
I’m taking a short break from presentations in July, but I’ll be back right at the beginning of August presenting at the Mythopoeic Society’s Online Midyear Seminar. My presentation is about Lev Grossman’s Arthurian retelling The Bright Sword, but there’s a whole track of Tolkien presentations as well. The conference is not very expensive and obviously online, so if you’re interested in these things, I’d love to see you (virtually) there!
This month continues my Hugo (and other fantasy awards) reading, so there’s a lot of new spec fic reviews below. Enjoy!
Speculative Fiction
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky – For some reason, this book puts me in mind of The Murderbot Diaries, which is strange because the tone is almost entirely different. Whereas Murderbot is sarcastic and ironic, UnCharles is sincere and straightforward. But what they share is being robots/constructs that want to deny their humanity, even though the reader can clearly see it’s there. I quickly fell in love with the narrative style of avoiding attributing emotion to the robot by describing what it would be feeling *if* anyone was stupid enough to build a robot with feelings, which they wouldn’t.
While the characters are charming, the plot of the book leaves something to be desired. It’s very episodic: we stop at one place after another, displaying how the robots have gone wrong in each place via the very mechanisms which were supposed to make them more efficient. Service Model reads like a strong commentary on contemporary constrained LLMs, which makes it worth the slight tedium. The ending is a bit sudden but resolves several things well. Worth a read if you need to laugh before you cry about AI.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher – I was hesitant about this one, given the cover and my general feelings about horror. Indeed, this book made me genuinely unsettled while also being absolutely compelling. As a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher, you know it’s going to end badly for the Ushers. This isn’t the kind of book where you expect plot surprises; it’s the kind where you can see the horrible ending coming from a million miles off and you still remain glued to it like a trainwreck. If you’re up for skin-crawling body horror, it’s worth a read.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – This will be my fourth review of Piranesi in only five years since it’s come out. So suffice to say, I think this book is here to stay as part of my life. I continue to discover new parts and pieces to it each time I read. This time, my focus was on what Clarke is saying about academia and the way it warps people, and how there might be other, better ways of deep knowing. (Should I write a paper on academia in speculative fiction? It seems to be trending…) Please, please, do yourself a favor and read this book. Preferably without knowing anything about where the book is going. You will be rewarded.
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler – The concept of this book was interesting, but that’s really all it is: a concept. The book poses many interesting questions but provides no answers. No one acts, just reflects on past action. I expected characters to come into conflict over the morality of bringing back mammoths, the morality of getting funding by controlled harvesting of ivory to bring back mammoths, the morality of putting someone’s brain into a mammoth in order to . . . bring back mammoths. But no, everyone just seems to feel really ambiguous about things and then just continue on with the same course of life. I really just can’t recommend this one.
The City in Glass by Nghi Vo – Another one that disappointed me, which I finished only because the audio book was so short and it keeps popping up on award finalist lists. This book fits into the apparently growing genre where an angel and a demon become uneasy friends, like Good Omens or When the Angels Left the Old Country. The problem was that this book is almost entirely vibes. For a book that’s advertised as building an epic fantasy city, everything remains very nebulous. It’s unclear what type of culture the city has–at various points I thought we were in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, maybe even Africa. There’s nothing consistent or real about the worldbuilding, which is only there to give the two main characters things to vibe over in their will-they-wont-they enemies-to-lovers plot. There are hints that there could be really cool magic or a world behind all this, but it’s left completely undeveloped. For me, this book was like one of those Japanese plastic food models in the window of a restaurant: perfectly suited from a distance, but lacking nourishment up close.
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett – This one is billed as a “fantasy Sherlock Holmes,” and the beginning chapter is almost too on the nose. Our detective is living for the thrill of the next mystery, plays a stringed instrument, and tries to get the Watson-character to buy them some drugs to cut through the boredom. Luckily, the book soon moves beyond this color-by-numbers rewrite and brings in some really interesting magical worldbuilding and details. I enjoyed the simultaneous unfolding of a strange world with the methodical unraveling of the mystery. The magic is sufficiently explained for the eventual way it is used in the payoff, but less clear than a Sanderson-style hard magic. I also really enjoyed how the Watson-character’s learning disability was incorporated into the plot, as well as the extra little twist about the detective at the end. This book works well as a standalone, but I will absolutely pick up the next in the series.
Nonfiction
Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities by Gregory M. Colon Semenza – Even though the references to keeping everything on paper make this book a bit dated, it’s still the most comprehensive guide I’ve found to seeking an academic career in the humanities. Much of what you find online about grad school is geared towards STEM or social science fields, which operate very differently than the humanities. The individual chapters can be read individually as needed, but they also operate together as a whole. I look forward to applying this approach in my future endeavors.
Abroad in Japan: Ten Years in the Land of the Rising Sun by Chris Broad – I didn’t realize how early in his career I had started follow Chris Broad’s YouTube channel. As a result, I already knew many of the stories of this book. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see how they fit together. However, you don’t really read this book for the content so much as Broad’s fantastic voice–and I mean that literally, since he narrates the audiobook in a slightly toned-down version of his YouTube persona. If you’re interested in the experience of living long-term as a foreigner in Japan, beyond the starry-eyed gushing of many travel books, this is the one you should pick up. Broad doesn’t shy away from the bad parts of life in Japan as well as the anime-fueled dream many of us have been sold. A really fun read before my own journey to Japan.
You know how sometimes past-you makes plans that sound fun, but present-you ends up resenting those plans? Yeah, that was May for me. May was the month of conferences, all of which I wanted to attend individually, but maybe not all within the same 30 days. Ah well, I’m sure future-me will look back and be happy we did it, even if it made May pretty insane.
On May 9-10, I attended Storymakers, a local conference mostly for fiction writers. I’ve never been able to justify paying for a ticket before as fiction is mostly a side hobby for me, but when my friend from Seattle told me that her book was a finalist for the Whitney Awards, I decided this was my year. The Storymakers atmosphere is every bit as fun and friendly as I had heard, and we had a great time. I met up with several of my favorite Mormon lit friends and generally stuffed my brain full of writing advice. I tried to focus mainly on panels about editing, publishing, and marketing, since I have a project I’m working on that involves these things. (Watch this space…)
Looking like goofballs while sitting at a table with Charlie Holmberg and Jeff Wheeler!
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The next weekend was the Faith and Knowledge Conference at the University of Utah. Lots of great advice given about finding employment in Mormon studies-related circles as well as the relationship between faith and scholarship. It was nice to be in a space where we could talk about our various perspectives on these things openly without worrying about judgement or providing context.
Faith and Knowledge Conference attendees!
I had a bye week to celebrate the end of school with my kids and then we promptly took off for a family vacation in Ephraim, UT, which was also the location of the AML-MSH joint conference the next weekend. Since AML has only done virtual conferences since the pandemic, it was amazing to see so many of these people whose writing I’ve read in person. Also exciting to have a whole two tracks with lots and lots of Mormon literature scholarship, instead of just a few crumbs. Michael Austin’s keynote was a call to action to further scholarship on lesser-known authors, which some of us are already scheming to answer.
Of course, I still had one more conference to go at this point, but I’ll leave the summary of MHA for my June reading post.
If reading about all these conferences has you ready to jump in on the action (and you live in Utah), you have a chance tomorrow night! I’ll be speaking on a panel about faith and imagine at the Compass gallery on Center Street in Provo on Wednesday, June 18th at 7 pm. More details here. Come say hi and maybe we’ll grab Rockwell Ice Cream’s new Brandon Sanderlanche flavor afterwards.
Now on to the book reviews! You’ll notice that I’m loading up on a lot of the Hugo nominees below. That’s a trend that will probably continue for a few months, though after reading so many brand-new books in a row, I do have an impulse to follow CS Lewis’s advice and grab a few old books as a palate cleanser.
I finally return from the land of the dead! The day after I graduated with my master’s, the stress reading on my Garmin watch suddenly improved by about 10 points, which goes to show that the background stress of graduate school is no joke. But I passed my thesis defense, and so it’s officially over. I’ll be taking a few years off to consider whether to apply to go on for a PhD, but I plan to continue my research and post more updates here in the meantime.
Since my last reading update, I have attended three conferences: LTUE 43, ICFA 46, and the Eaton Conference on Speculative Fiction. All really interesting events with the chance to soak up a lot of speculative fiction thinking. One thing ICFA’s fantasy track did this year that I loved is send out a reading list of all the texts that people were presenting on. Of course, there was no way to read them all, but I got to 4-5 of them, which made many of the papers more relevant to me. More conferences should do this!
For the next month, I’m in another marathon sprint of conferences before taking the summer off to relax a bit, travel to Japan, and honestly, just declutter my house from everything that has accumulated over two years of grad school. Here’s the schedule of places you’ll find me:
May 16-17: Faith and Knowledge Conference (SLC, UT) – I’m really excited by the chance to meet with so many other interesting early career scholars and grad students. The conference is closed to the public, so I can’t share who else is there, but I’ll be presenting on “The Risks and Rewards of Imagining the Divine.”
May 28-30: AML/MSH Joint Conference (Ephraim, UT) – I’m on a round table discussing the “great Mormon epic,” and why Mormons seem draw to the epic form. (Obviously, this has implications for why Mormons keep writing epic fantasy as well.) I’m also the MC for the AML Awards.
June 5-7: MHA Conference (Ogden, UT) – I’ll be presenting my research on Orson Scott Card’s rewrite of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. It’s a shame that so much of Card’s explicitly LDS work gets neglected. As I argued in another post, Card is unique as an LDS SF writer because he speaks both to the general public and to an insider audience. I think he’s had a greater influence on LDS thought than people realize, not the least of which is through the Hill Cumorah pageant’s framing of the “Mormon story.”
June 18, 7 pm: Wayfare Fantasy and Religion Lecture for The Compass Gallery (Provo, UT) – I’m really excited to see the Compass Gallery doing an exhibit of fantasy artists in June and explicitly tying in faith. I’ll be on a panel with Steven Peck and Chanel Earl (possibly others) about how fantasy can build faith. It should be an engrossing discussion, and it’s open to the public!
Geez, seeing it all laid out like that, no wonder I’m tired! Anyway, I have four months of book reviews for you now, some longer than others. Hopefully I can get back to a more regular pace of updates now that grad school is over (right??).
Speculative Fiction
Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit by Mercedes Lackey – As I’m taking a class on women in Arthurian legend that focuses more on the medieval and early texts, I’m trying to supplement with my own reading of some of the more recent takes on the legend that fall within the speculative fiction umbrella. This retelling of the story of Gweneviere certainly hits that mark. Gwenhwyfar recasts Gweneviere as a woman choosing between her own innate magical talents and her desire to become a horsewoman warrior. Lackey’s reimagining of the story apparently derives from a scrap of ancient poetry that mentions not one but three women named Gwenhwyfar associated with the Arthur legend. So the book gets rather confusing in that the main character’s sister is also named Gwenhwyfar (she ends up becoming the protege of Morgaine and the wife of Mordred) as is Arthur’s first wife (the protagonist become Arthur’s second wife after this first one runs away).
For me personally, the pacing of this book was uneven. I nearly gave up in the first 25% because of the constant focus on Gwenhwyfar’s horse obsession. I’ve never been a horse girl, but if you are one, you might enjoy this book. The Arthurian connections are barely present in the first half of the book, then begin to grow slowly then exponentially as we near the finish line. That made the book feel rushed at the end, trying to get through Gwenhwyfar’s affair with Lancelot and the betrayal of Mordred. I don’t think it will be one of my favorite Arthur retellings, but it’s worth a look for those interested in a more feminine take on the legend that isn’t the now-tainted Mists of Avalon.
Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin – A very different take for Earthsea. This one finally pulled me in where the others in the series have been meh or middling for me. I guess I’m just a sucker for fantasy books about middle-aged women and where the answer is not violence. LeGuin is doing really cool stuff here, and I see a re-read in my future to figure out exactly what and how.
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Picked this one up as the author will be the guest of honor at ICFA 2025 and I hadn’t yet read any of her works. This one came in first on the library holds. The book reminds me strongly of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass in that it’s primarily a regency romance with some very decorative and frivolous magic thrown in for entertaining the upper classes.
Where Kowal’s book felt very Pride and Prejudice, I’d put this one somewhere between a Jane Austen and something more like Wuthering Heights. There’s a strong love triangle here, along with the trope of first love being all consuming. Both of these are tropes that I usually roll my eyes at, but for this book, they absolutely worked. The novel had the kind of over-the-top emotional magnetism that you’d get out of your favorite guilty-pleasure reality TV, but with a lot more sophistication in language and imagery. Indeed, I was certainly pulled through the novel in less than a week. I also enjoyed the female lead’s “not your typical romantic protagonist” hobby of collecting bugs, but I’m always a sucker for academic women in my fiction.
If I had to pick one adjective to describe this book, it might be “gothic,” which seems to fit with the rest of her work. Mexican Gothic had been on the edges of my TBR for a long time, with me hesitating on whether I would enjoy it when I’m not a bit fan of gothic fiction, but after reading and enjoying this, I will likely be picking it up.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Really excellent twisting of the original story. A dark Gothic fantasy with everything bubbling under the surface of the naive narrator. I liked the strange twist on the Eve mythology throughout. Highly recommend.
That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis – I have put off reading the final book in the Space trilogy for many years because I had heard about how super weird it was. But I figured if there was ever a time to read it, it was while taking a class on Arthurian legend. Now, the Arthurian aspect was actually a lot smaller than I expected, as was the planetary aspect. Honestly, the main thing you need to do to prepare to read this book is to read The Abolition of Man, which contains a lot of the same ideas but in nonfictional form. I can also see a lot of the influence of Charles William’s The Place of the Lion in this book, from the character of the female academic avoiding marital duties to the idea of the gods coming down. Honestly, it’s a very prophetic book to read in the age of AI, but not as engaging as a work of fiction as Out of the Silent Planet or Perelandra. Also, no one told me there was a Busby in this book, so that was a fun Easter egg.
Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler – What an absolutely wild book. The feeling of utter horror and inevitability for most of the book is extremely well executed. I don’t know how she managed to pull off the ending without making it feel cheap, but it’s extremely impressive. I may continue with the rest of the series when I can handle the trauma.
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman – I was skeptical when the NYTimes review called this the first major Arthurian retelling for the 21st century, but I think Grossman pulls it off. I didn’t enjoy the film version of his Magicians series, so I never picked up his other books, but I really enjoyed this one. You can tell he’s playing with quite a bit of Arthuriana, from medieval legends through Victorian classics all the way through modernish versions like The Winter King and Mists of Avalon. The storytelling is unpredictable and goes in cycles that tend to end in dead-ends, but it works with the theme of the book. Highly recommended.
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White – I did not anticipate just how faithful the Disney adaptation was to the original. Granted, Madam Mim was made a lot less scary and misogynist, but that’s a positive change. Lots of dialogue in the film was lifted straight from the book. Sometime I’ll continue on to read the read of the larger work, but this gave me a good sense for what T.H. White was about.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle – Absolutely thrilled to finally have read this book. Again, amazed at the faithfulness of the film version, right down to the butterfly’s dialogue. I enjoyed the longer version of Mummy Fortuna’s zoo in this one, particularly that Arachne is thrown in. The mixing of mythologies here reminds me strongly of what Lewis did in Narnia, not being too worried about making things cohesive. It’s also clear that this universe is somehow connected to ours in unclear ways. Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you this is a fantasy classic and worth reading.
The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle – Two very strange novellas, both of which feel utterly different from the Last Unicorn, yet there’s something about the narration that ties them together even if the world-building is almost entirely different.
The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo – I really enjoyed the Asian ghost story vibes of this book, but the twist seemed like a complete non-sequitur to me. But that could be my bad, as I might have zoned out on the audiobook and missed something. Anyway, worth it for a short listen, but I was left wanting more.
The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko – This book is a combination of a Beauty and the Beast-type folktale and a handbook on how to lead a Marxist uprising. You probably know if you’re in the target audience for that. The magic was the highlight of this book and what kept me reading when I got tired of descriptions of how everyone rich is evil. It’s a cleaning-based magic system based on how we are influenced by others expectations. The romance isn’t too bad either. I just got bored of the didactic, simplistic message.
Fiction
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin – I don’t think I’ve reread this one since I first read it in fifth grade. I remembered it as being one of my favorite books that year, though it had strong competition from Tuck Everlasting. Returning to The Westing Game for a quick January book club read, I found it still charming but a little less clever. As a more experienced reader, you can tell that the author didn’t really know where she was going from the beginning but opened a lot of possibilities and then scrambled to close them all. For me, this meant that the beginning is much more fun than the ending, but it’s still a fun mystery read for kids.
Lancelot; Or, the Knight of the Cart – A fascinating side of Lancelot that I had never seen before my Arthurian class.
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell – Excellent retelling of Arthurian legend. Though I dislike the low/no magic aspect as a fantasy reader, Cornwell makes it work very well. The frame narrative of a side character looking back and explaining the story provides interesting color. Worth reading if you enjoy Arthuriana and haven’t already read it.
Le Lai de Lanval by Marie de France – A fun short story about Sir Lanval who becomes the lover of the fairy queen but can’t tell anyone. Pretty fun and worth a read.
The Knight of the Parrot: Early Adventures of Young King Arthur, translated by Thomas E. Vesce – A very weird medieval text about a young King Arthur. Guaranteed that you have never heard these episodes before, including the fish knight and the giant nursed by a mother unicorn, all narrated by King Arthur’s parrot sidekick.
Nonfiction
Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn’t Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom by Stanley Fish – I expected to like this one more than I did, and I think the issue was a matter of expectations. I had seen some of the Goodreads reviews rant about the “unnecessary religion stuff” brought into the book. Of course, being myself someone who is always bringing in “unnecessary religion stuff” into my conversations, I thought that would be a plus for me.
In reading the book, I found the real issue was not the religion per se but the fact that this book is secretly a literary analysis of Paradise Lost masquerading as a book about argument. That’s not a bad thing in itself; I just read Paradise Lost last summer and would be very interested to look at argument in the book. It’s just the false advertising that really throws you off. Rhetoric is all about predicting and managing the expectations of your audience, so the fact that this was bungled so badly in a book about rhetoric seems problematic.
Other than the expectations issue, the book flows freely through ideas rather than being practical. It’s a fun listen, but not particularly applicable to the context of teaching persuasive writing, which was where I was trying to go with it.
The Game Changers: How Playing Games Changed the World and Can Change You Too by Tim Clare – A really fun book if you’re a board game nerd like me. This book includes not only the obvious board game stories (eg Monopoly was invented by a woman and later ripped off by a man) but goes one layer deeper (eg Monopoly was possibly based on a Native American board game), so there was lots of new and interesting information. I especially enjoyed learning about the Japanese game of Karuta, where players race to be the first to slap a card containing the second half of a poem which is being read by a judge. I absolutely need there to be an English language version of said game; plus I hear there’s an anime series based on the game that I’m adding to my watchlist. My only complaint about the book is that the ending is a bit abrupt: a research thread for the book leads the author to receiving a diagnosis of autism. While the story is interesting, it seems a strange note to end the book on without bringing it back around to board games. Other than that slight stumble, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys board games and wants to defend their closet full of very expensive paper and cardboard as a legitimate and important part of humanity.
Divine Law: Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants by Justin Collings – A good summary of the theme of divine law throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. I’m still thinking about a few of the ideas from this book after finishing it. The biggest one of these is how the D&C sets up divine law as a component of God’s mercy and love rather than an opposite to it.
Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King – Brunelleschi himself is fascinating! I really enjoyed learning more about renaissance architecture (and remembering some of what I learned back in my high school humanities course). There are some great stories here that were mind-blowing not only in their content but in how they survived as stories to this day–like an epic practical joke that Brunelleschi played on a rival.
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard – A reread for book club. This book has only grown on me since I first read it back in 2016, and ironically the state of the nation has continued to make President Garfield’s story even more resonant. Millard’s writing absolutely holds up. She’s compulsively readable. Even if you aren’t usually into thick historical books, you should pick up this one.
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.
