January was full throttle around here. My kids are finally getting back into the after-school activities that we hadn’t really been doing since the pandemic, so I feel like mom-Uber most evenings. And I’ve been working on my last PTA obligation of the year, the school read-a-thon. I’m keeping it pretty low-key, but it’s still going to be a lot of work. It’s all for the kids, right?
I nearly hit my word count goal this month, 7242/8000, despite starting a week late due to recovery from the holidays. A lot of those words went into a new personal essay that that the muses dumped into my head right before the BYU Studies contest deadline. I think it turned out really well and my beta readers had good things to say about it. It’s already been submitted to the contest, so wish me luck! I’ve also been working on a fairy tale codenamed “Cats with Footnotes,” though the footnote aspect has yet to appear, so it may just end up being “Cats.” The idea was to write a fairy tale with some elements from my childhood and then have semi-fictional footnotes explaining some of the background. I liked fiction with footnotes (such as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), and the idea of combining speculative fiction with creative nonfiction was intriguing, so we’ll see if it turns out. I’ve committed to my writing group to get a draft to them by next week.
In February I’m heading Life, the Universe, and Everything in Provo. I’m especially excited to hear “Could The Way of Kings have saved the Nephites?” by Nick Fredrick. Always happy for more literary engagement with Brandon Sanderson! I’m also going to focus on marketing the podcast and taking some classes about plotting, which is my weakness as a fiction writer. If you’re coming to LTUE this year, drop a comment below or send me an email and let’s do lunch!
Speculative Fiction
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson – An illustrious beginning to the Year of Sanderson! Tress was an immensely fun read. It’s nice to have something completely new from Sanderson, though there are a lot more Cosmere crossovers than I thought. I could absolutely feel that this story was inspired by The Princess Bride; the humorous, self-aware tone matches well with that classic. The running bit about bad fashion got a bit tedious to me by the end; it felt more Alkatraz than I’m used to in the Cosmere, but I suppose that makes sense since this is YA. Excited to eventually get my beautiful print edition so I can see the illustrations.
Strange Religion: Speculative Fiction of Spirituality, Belief, & Practice by Andy Dibble – An excellent collection of short stories exploring religion through speculative fiction. I was disappointed that there were no Mormon stories in this collection, but it does cover a variety of real-world religions including eastern ones that can sometimes be less represented. Editor Andy Dibble’s introductory essay makes a good case for SF in exploring religious ideas; I’ll most likely end up citing it in some of my own scholarship eventually. I particularly loved this quote: “On one level, it isn’t helpful to distinguish between wonder in scripture and in speculative fiction because scripture is speculative fiction when read by religious outsiders.”
I didn’t particularly like the inclusion of discussion questions at the end of each story, which sometimes seemed obvious and reductive and sometimes completely unrelated to the story, but it seems to be part of the format of the anthology series so I can forgive. However, I definitely think this book could be used as the basis for a future course on religion in speculative fiction (one that I absolutely dream about teaching).
My favorites from the collection include:
“Al-Muftiyah” by Jibril Stevenson – This story derives so organically from Islamic concerns and projects them forward two or three steps to create a believable sci-fi premise. Especially creepy to read in the age of AI art and ChatGPT. I may steal this central conceit to apply to an LDS story.
“Samsara” by JA Legg – Putting an SF spin on the Hindu concept of reincarnation, I love how the protagonist’s eventual course of action proceeds from her evolving understanding (and belief in) her faith.
“The Rebbetzin Speaks” by Daniel M Kimmel – This “Dear Abby”-type column for a sci-fi Jewish setting reminded me so much of things I’ve read in the Mormon Lit Blitz. Interesting evolution of the particularities of religious laws without devolving into generic progressive non-specificity.
“The Devil is a Shape in the Brain” by Joachin Glage – This story is a faux-academic report complete with footnotes and citations, so obviously I’m going to love it. The story follows the descendants of some sort of demonic being and how the spirit interacts with the physical. A fascinating concept from an LDS perspective of “no immaterial matter.”
“Deep Play” by Andy Dibble – A college student driven mad by a drug that shows him the possible truth of all religions. Interesting cold-logic take on the immediacy of the search for “which of all the churches is right.”
“Fate and Other Variables” by Alex Shvartsman – I’m a sucker for a mechanistic universe but this Kabbalistic story kicks it up a notch.
Heir of the Line by Eric James Stone – This one was a bit of a disappointment to me. It’s my first time reading a novel that was published originally on Kindle Vella, and the episodic nature of the story shows. The beginning of the novel is character heavy, making us fall in love with the three protagonists, with a typical coming-of-age narrative. Unfortunately, the concerns of the beginning of the novel fall by the wayside with little satisfying conclusion as we suddenly transfer from coming-of-age to the arranged romance genre and finally to a chosen one narrative. By the time was get to the last third of the story, there’s a sudden rush to fill in the absence of worldbuilding which would have been hinted at in the beginning of the story had it been written traditionally.
As a scholar of Mormonism in speculative fiction, I was also disappointed with the naive perspective on the nature of prophecy in the last half of the book. The characters literally stand around and run down a checklist of things that they need to fulfill the prophecies of the chosen one (the original forms of which we don’t get to see). There are a few twists on the fulfillment over the course of the ending, where one thing turns out to mean another, but those twists were ultimately hollow for me as they were typically one character replacing another with little impact on the overall expected structure. There is one very spoilery exception to this which was fascinating, and the way the characters navigated around it was mind-bending, but not foreshadowed well enough to work for me. Overall, I guess my problem was that this didn’t feel like a society that had been engaging with prophecy and studying it for years, but like a group of D&D characters picking up a shopping list. I wonder if my perspective on this one would have been different reading it serialized on Vella.
Star Mother by Charlie N. Holmberg – While this is still at its heart a fantasy romance (a genre that Holmberg excels in), the book went above and beyond the typical genre tropes to focus more on the nature of divinity and the protagonist’s own motivations. I see lots in the worldbuilding that points to the author’s LDS background.
The description of the protagonist’s heavenly pregnancy takes seriously the idea of heavenly procreation that’s deeply implied in LDS theology about Heavenly Mother, both in a positive and negative light. (And yes, there is a sort of heavenly polygyny going on, but not the way you might expect.) Although Ceris has given up a lot to become a mother, she doesn’t resent her choice because she sees the beauty in giving life to another person. The way the protagonist finds meaning in motherhood feels deeply Mormon to me.
After the plot twist (which is in the back cover copy, but I won’t spoil here) leaves the protagonist at a loss for meaning, she goes about recovering it in a very LDS way: family history, including a moment with a physical object representing her family tree that I would love to have a version of for my home. Star Mother takes the tropes of the mortals-interacting-with-gods fantasy and makes them its own by adding uniquely LDS doctrines, including the fact that the world building is set up for the gods to be bound to respect mortal agency. Though the ending was a bit confusing and abrupt, still, I think that this book is an excellent representation of how a secondary world fantasy can be thoroughly Mormon.
Dark One: Forgotten by Brandon Sanderson & Dan Wells – I didn’t remember much about the graphic novel this audiobook is a prequel to. I read it as a PDF because the pandemic had delayed the printing and the whole experience was kind of bad and confusing. However, I really enjoyed this audio-play and don’t think any knowledge of the Dark One graphic novel is necessary to enjoy it.
At the beginning of the story, I was irked a bit by some verisimilitude problems of the faux-podcast format. As a podcaster myself, I found it hard to believe that our protagonists had a full day of recording interviews and managed to edit and release it in such a way that it could be going viral by early the next morning. I’d estimate a minimum 3 hours of editing per hour of audio, and it takes a while for people to actually listen to it and share it, so this seemed unrealistic in the extreme.
My persnicketiness fell by the wayside once I got wrapped up in the story. The way the characters manipulate and overcome the main magical obstacle (left vague for spoiler reasons) was exactly the kind of cleverness I want from a quick fantasy read. The final wrap up of the plot line is horrifying for just the right amount of time before reaching the release. Overall, I really appreciated Dan Well’s horror and dialogue touches on this interesting Sanderson worldbuilding. I hope the Dark One multi-genre franchise Brandon pitched us years ago eventually materializes, especially if it contains more like Forgotten.
The Christmas Pig by J.K. Rowling – I’m late to the train on this one, but this fable of a boy and his lost toy on Christmas Eve really is a return to form for JK Rowling. The style of world building is familiar to any fan of the Harry Potter series (such as myself): apt names, just-so creations, and not too much worry about implications or believability. It leans more heavily to the allegorical than Harry Potter, but the characters still feel real and enjoyable. I read this aloud to my 9yo and 6yo. It was just the right amount of tension and terror to not frighten off the 6yo, with still enough action and stakes to keep the 9yo interested. The Christmas aspect of the book is fairly slight, most present at the beginning and the end, so you could really read this any time of year.
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks – I’ve had my eye on the Culture series for a while, as it had been recommended from a few different directions. I finally decided to dive in with this book, even though it’s technically second in the series. A Google search assured me that the books in the series can mostly stand alone and that this was the best regarded.
As an avid board gamer myself, I was absolutely tickled by the idea of a person who spends his life playing games and is then called to save the civilized world by playing a board game. The author managed to convey the feeling of playing a board game without ever having to spend time explaining the rules of any of the various games being played, which was quite a narrative trick. I worried that it would get boring or confusing, but the action was compelling all the way through to the final battle.
I did enjoy the glimpse I got of the post-scarcity society of the Culture, though I felt like maybe I was missing out on some explanations that were in the first book. I was a little less enamored of the Empire as described in the book. I mean, obviously you aren’t supposed to like it, but it felt even less likeable than the Capital in the Hunger Games series, more like a takedown pastiche of imperialism and patriarchy (or in this case, apex-archy) rather than a real society. At least in the Capital we have interesting tech innovations, cool fashions, and a few sympathetic characters. The portrayal of the Empire ranges from tasteless to grotesquely violent, with not one positive aspect that I can think of in sight. Maybe that’s realistic since the society is a late-Roman-type empire on the verge of collapse, but I felt like there ought to have been at least a few positive things about the society (beside the game, of course, which our main character finds absolutely beautiful) to make it a more realistic society.
I will definitely be picking up more of the Culture series to see if I like the rest. I don’t know if I’m sold yet as so much of my love of this book depended on the board game theme, which I’m not sure will carry over to the other books.
Nonfiction
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski – As a start to my 2023 project to expand my knowledge of the Inklings, this book laid an excellent foundation. I participated in the BYU CS Lewis Society during my college years and as a result had read many of his works in various categories. I consider Lewis to be my literary role model, since he managed to write in all the genres I aspire to myself (speculative fiction, religion, literary criticism), and as such, I figured I owed it to myself to put myself on a firmer footing as to his life, his associations, and literary theories before going back to graduate school myself.
Many of the reviews of this book on Goodreads complain that this book is mostly about Lewis and Tolkien with some Barfield and Williams on the side. I can’t say that’s inaccurate, but I personally attribute it to more information being available and generally known about more major figures than those who have faded into relative obscurity. Nonetheless, to someone who knew only the story of Addison’s Walk and other scraps from Surprised by Joy, this book thoroughly lays out the biography, personality, and literary works of these four primary Inklings. While those more familiar with the group may have been annoyed by the summaries of their works, I found it very helpful and modified a few of my selections for the rest of my year of study based on the descriptions of the books and their critical receptions.
The hazard of reading what is, essentially, a biography of a group is that you get a longing to start such a group of your own. Can you imagine the luxury of a group of friends who were able to get together twice a week to read from and comment freely on each other’s current projects, whatever their genre? I could really use such a group and can’t imagine how in the world I would find the time.
All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience by Neal A. Maxwell – My first Maxwell book. To be honest, I picked it up because it was free on the Deseret Book Bookshelf+ app. This book was a mixed bag for me. I loved the introduction, then the first few chapters were a bit slow, same with the last few chapters.
In the middle was the chapter “Growth through Counsel, Correction, and Commendation,” which struck me like a bolt of lightning. Elder Maxwell talks about the importance of giving actual counsel to each other at a local level–families and wards, not just general authorities. He acknowledges that it can be easy to cause or take offense when advice is given but lays out an effective case for the necessity of this kind of spiritual advice giving. Then he proceeds to list several ways to make counsel more likely to be received effectively.
I have been feeling this problem in the church lately, that we’ll all willing to step up and make church programs run, but we’re all terrified to do the actual spiritual work that is required to make church transformational. I worry that one of the reasons church meetings can feel “boring” is because we’re so afraid of offending or judging that we don’t deal with the tough problems that we are facing and glide over the surface doing nothing.
Anyway, for my money, the book was worth reading just for this chapter, but YMMV. I’m looking for recommendations for my next Maxwell book. What’s your favorite?
