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Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

These Burning Stars

Review by Chris Pickens

In a distant star system known as the Kindom, a group of noble families rule with an unbreakable grip. But a single secret, in the right person’s hands, can change everything. A multilayered saga full of courtly intrigue and indelible characters, Bethany Jacobs’ These Burning Stars warps readers across the galaxy on a devilishly fun thrill ride.

Jun Ironway has just nabbed the biggest score of her thieving career: a data drive containing explosive evidence that one of the ruling families was involved in planetary genocide. It could bring in quite the payday. Or, it could get her killed. Hunting her are two of the Kindom’s finest clerics, members of a religious order that serve as law enforcement. Esek, heir to the Nightfoot family fortune, leads enigmatically and punishes ruthlessly while her counterpart, Chono, is impassive, devout and efficient. Haunting the steps of this trio’s deadly dance is a wanderer known only as Six, who seems to have a stake in the data drive as well. But who is Six and whose side are they on? And can Jun find a way to expose the truth before Esek and Chono catch her?

These Burning Stars is plotted like a chess match, confident and surprising as Jacobs moves each piece thoughtfully across her board. There’s a sense of delicate control as the pace and tension ebb and flow, and the characters approach and retreat from each other. Enriching flashbacks fill in relevant information, but only when the narrative calls for it. Jacobs has an applause-worthy restraint, holding her cards until they can be played for maximum effect.

All four main characters are extremely fun to follow, and this reviewer will be thinking about them long after filing this piece. Esek in particular stands out: a brilliant, haughty, rule-bending and gregarious sociopath who is as unpredictable as she is determined. Her scenes feel electric, like anything could happen, with Chono, her shadow and opposite, playing foil time and time again.

I’m happy to report that These Burning Stars opens a trilogy set in the Kindom. If Jacobs’ second entry is anything like the first, we’ll have so much more to discover across her universe in the years to come.

Bethany Jacobs’ These Burning Stars is a confident and surprising start to a sci-fi trilogy that boasts memorable characters and excellent plotting.
NonfictionGraphic Novels & Comics

Transitions

Review by Alice Cary

French university researcher Anne Marbot thought she was open-minded, until her 19-year-old child, who was assigned female at birth, announced, “I am a boy.” The news, seemingly out of the blue, hit Anne “like a tidal wave,” sweeping “away the comfort of my tidy little life that I was more or less satisfied with.” Before long, a seemingly insurmountable rift develops between the two. Élodie Durand beautifully recounts Anne’s acceptance of her transgender son, Alex, and their journey back to each other in the exceptional graphic novel Transitions: A Mother’s Journey. It’s a fine follow-up to Durand’s graphic memoir, Parenthesis, which described her own odyssey with tumor-related epilepsy.

“Why does my child’s choice seem so difficult for me to accept?” Anne wonders. As a biologist, she looks to science for answers, finding a multitude of examples showing that “our classical scientific conception of male and female isn’t relevant at all.” Whether documenting the biology of clownfish (all born male), or showing helpful scientific diagrams (a visual guide to the gender spectrum), Durand’s illustrations cut to the chase, conveying Anne and Alex’s angst as they navigate their changing relationship with both themselves and each other. Several effective pages are simply masses of dark scribbles, as Anne becomes overwhelmed by fear, anxiety and grief, while Alex lashes out in anger and self-preservation.

Durand also offers informative examples from biology, history and activism, which provide helpful pacing breaks amid the family’s emotional turmoil. Durand is particularly adept at using splashes of color to convey emotions—for example, Anne repeatedly appears as a splash of pink hair, lost amid a growing black cloud that threatens to consume her. One memorable full-page spread shows Anne behind bars, being strangled by a giant serpent of anxiety. Durand also follows Alex’s gradual acceptance by the rest of his family, including his two younger brothers. In a touching scene, Anne breaks the news to her parents, who are immediately supportive of their grandchild. After three years, Anne not only fully embraces Alex, but also becomes an activist for the trans community. What’s more, she changes the way she teaches science, noting, “When I read back my words, I have trouble relating to who I used to be.”

This powerful memoir brings to mind Iris Gottlieb’s excellent Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression. Transitions: A Mother’s Journey is a particularly helpful guide that speaks to a wide audience hoping to gain understanding about transgender transitions. The graphic format makes its heavy emotional content accessible, while Durand’s exquisitely paired text and illustrations bring home the power of this revelatory—and increasingly common—story.

Elodie Durand’s exceptional graphic novel recounts a mother’s acceptance of her transgender son and their journey back to each other.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Tremor

Review by Michael Magras

Most people eventually think about the concept of permanence—how one could live on after inevitable death. Some are drawn to photography for what has been, at least until recently, incontrovertible proof of what once existed. But attempts to secure a permanent place in history are often complicated by changes in technology, the prejudices of others, or, in the case of art, the purloining of treasured works. Conflicts like these animate Teju Cole’s dazzling novel of ideas Tremor, his first novel since 2011’s Open City.

Fans of Cole’s work know he is a photographer as well as a writer. His moving, introspective 2017 book of images, Blind Spot, features photos from his worldwide travels. Cole draws from those experiences in Tremor, in which Tunde, the protagonist who, like Cole, is a Harvard professor raised in Nigeria, perpetually examines the tensions of life as a Black man in a white-dominated country where he is never seen as belonging anywhere.

Tremor is split into eight exploratory chapters in which Cole addresses injustices both personal and global. During a talk Tunde gives at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which forms the fifth chapter of the book, he describes the circumstances under which many of their paintings and plaques came into their possession, from the Nazis’ cultural genocide to Britain’s 18-day massacre in Benin in 1897 that led to the expropriation of 4,000 artworks. He ends with “a plea to take restitution seriously, a plea to reimagine the future of the museum.”

In a brilliant extended sequence in the sixth chapter, Cole includes the first-person perspectives of numerous people Tunde interviews during a trip to Nigeria to depict the complexities and struggles of life in that country. Other sections address colonialism and the reluctance of many in the United States to “change their essential faith in American superiority.” Hanging over these discussions is the specter of impending death. A Harvard colleague is diagnosed with colon cancer, and Tunde fears, even in his 40s, signs of his own inevitable decline.

A lesser writer would have turned this into a depressing jeremiad, but Cole makes it a thrilling and important work. During Tunde’s Nigeria visit, one interviewee says, “We have to know how to forget the past in order to make progress into the future.” As Tunde does in his talk, Tremor issues a plea to reimagine the future for the betterment of humanity.

In this dazzling novel of ideas, Teju Cole addresses injustices both personal and global, and issues a plea to reimagine the future for the betterment of humanity.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Ways to Build Dreams

Review by Alice Cary

Renée Watson’s Ryan Hart series demonstrates timeless, universal appeal while examining the worries of all sizes that loom large in its protagonist’s life. It proves Watson—recipient of both a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Award—to be a more-than-worthy successor to Beverly Cleary, creator of the beloved character Ramona Quimby.

Ryan is a spirited Black girl in Portland, Oregon, trying to find her place in the world. Her parents and grandmother have always told her and her older brother, “You were put on this earth to do something.” In her fourth adventure, Ways to Build Dreams, a fifth-grade assignment on identifying dreams leads Ryan to worry, “Everyone has a big dream except me.”

Watson makes it easy for fans and newcomers alike to plunge into the story of Ryan and her family. Although the novel’s 20 short chapters move briskly along from January to the end of the school year, Watson expertly weaves many plot strands together and balances action with quiet, touching moments of reflection.

“I’m constantly trying to show young people in my books, ‘Hey, I see you and I know what you are capable of.’” Read our interview with Renée Watson. 

At school, Ryan completes a group history project about Beatrice Morrow Cannady, editor of Oregon’s largest Black newspaper, and frets about whether her own goals of being a chef and a good big sister to her baby sister, Rose, are too simple. As Ryan also spends time with her best friends, KiKi—who may go to a different middle school next year—and Amanda, the girls all realize they are growing up. In a spring outing to a tulip farm, they grapple with whether they are too old to get their faces painted. Change is in the air throughout these pages, and Grandma tells Ryan she is “just thinking of all you’re becoming and what lies ahead for you.”

The cast of supportive adults—Ryan’s parents, Grandma and Ryan’s excellent teacher—provide reassurance about dreams big and small. Similarly, Ryan, Rose and their older brother Ray’s sibling relationship is ultimately one of love and encouragement, even if it also includes friendly rivalry and teasing. Elementary school readers will not only be entertained but also readily identify with the sometimes overwhelming sense of change that Ryan faces.

Renée Watson makes it easy for fans and newcomers alike to plunge into the story of Ryan and her family, expertly weaving many plot strands together and balancing action with quiet, touching moments of reflection.
RomanceContemporary Romance

What Happens on Vacation

Review by Elizabeth Mazer

What’s the best part of vacation? Is it sugar-white beaches and lots of tropical-themed drinks? Maybe the real allure is just the chance to get away from your everyday life: no alarm clocks, no deadlines, no crowded cubicles or the smell of fish cooking in the office microwave. But if that’s the case, then what would you do if you got all of the expected perks of vacation—but the worst, most annoying part of your job came with you?

That’s the situation Margaret finds herself in when she wins the coveted office quiz prize—an all-expense-paid trip to Zanzibar—but is forced to share it with the officemate she detests, Jagger. He’s everything she can’t stand: a clickbait writer at the same South African newspaper where she writes hard-hitting journalism; a popular playboy while Margaret’s love life is dead in the water; and worst of all, someone who coasts through life even as Margaret struggles with the one-two punch of her divorce and the death of her father. Jagger’s lighthearted attitude seems like a taunt, and tension between them has risen so high that Margaret added an actual, physical partition to their shared workspace to avoid having to see his smug face. But there’s no hiding from him at the beachfront Zanzibar resort, no matter how hard she tries . . . and it becomes harder and harder to ignore the way irritation is giving way to attraction—and maybe something more.

If you like an opposites-attract story, then you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more clear-cut example than Jo Watson’s What Happens on Vacation. The enemies-to-lovers vibe delivers: Margaret doesn’t have a single kind thought toward Jagger until quite far into the book, with Watson leaning in to humor and sharp repartee during their interactions. It’s a bit too sharp in spots—Margaret’s assumptions can be rather judgmental and harsh, especially since Jagger never retaliates. But Watson portrays Margaret’s struggles so honestly, especially her grief over the loss of her father, that it’s easy to understand why Margaret feels the need to build walls around herself. And Jagger is genuinely charming as he works to bring those walls down. Vacation’s really about letting yourself let go—of stress, cares, worries and doubts. And that’s exactly what happens on vacation for Margaret as she opens the door to love.

Fans of opposites-attract and enemies-to-lovers romances will be well-satisfied by Jo Watson’s What Happens on Vacation.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

What the River Knows

Review by Mariel Fechik

All Inez Olivera wants is to be with her parents in Egypt, where they work as archaeologists with her Tio Ricardo. From her home in Argentina, Inez longs to understand what separates her family for half of every year, and waits hopefully for her parents to send an invitation to join their latest expedition.

Instead, a courier arrives with the news that her parents went missing in the desert and are now presumed dead. Having just turned 18 and inherited both her family’s fortune and Tio Ricardo as a guardian, Inez immediately books passage to Egypt to find out what happened to her parents. She carries with her the last item she received from her father: a gold ring bearing  ancient magic.

Inez is frustrated when Tio Ricardo’s assistant, Whit Hayes, meets her at the dock with orders from Ricardo to send her back to Argentina immediately. Refusing to leave without answers, Inez decides to begin her own investigation. Tio Ricardo is hiding something, and the answers can only be found along one path: down the glittering Nile, into the desert.

Author Isabel Ibañez’s fourth young adult novel, What the River Knows, is a lush and layered fantasy adventure that plays with the magic of ancient Egypt while delivering a multilayered commentary on colonialism. Inez hails from a country that historically suffered under Spanish rule; additionally, she is angered by the impacts of British imperialism in Egypt. Ibañez offers a nuanced look at the complex dichotomies of archaeology and the handling of antiquities: academic conservation and curation versus theft and appropriation of cultural legacy.

Ibañez balances all of this with fun: Fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope will relish Inez and Whit’s growing flirtation, and readers who spent their childhoods poring over kids’ encyclopedias about ancient Egypt will find themselves captivated.

Though the novel’s lengthy exposition is generously sprinkled with compelling depictions of magic and late 19th-century Cairo, readers may find themselves losing steam early on. That said, once Inez and crew begin their journey down the Nile, the plot is captivating and full of intrigue, making great use of a clear influence: Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

What the River Knows is dense and may take some time to build investment, but for fans of atmospheric historical mysteries tinged with magic, Ibañez’s story will be well worth the time.

A lush and layered fantasy adventure, What the River Knows plays with the magic of ancient Egypt and ponders the complex dichotomies of archaeology and the handling of antiquities.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

World Within a Song

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

Jeff Tweedy’s 2020 book, How to Write One Song, offered a practical guide to songwriting—a map of creative processes, daily habits and attitudes that have long sustained the Wilco frontman. It’s only fitting that Tweedy, one of contemporary rock’s most prominent figures, now turns his attention to what happens when he encounters the work of other songwriters and performers. In World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music, Tweedy shares an eclectic and admittedly idiosyncratic catalog of 50 popular tunes that reflect “how songs absorb and enhance our own experiences and store our memories.”

Although icons like Bob Dylan (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”), Mavis Staples (“I’ll Take You There”) and the Beatles (take your pick) are on the list, Tweedy grants an equally prominent place to a song by a “weird little band” called Souled American, and to one by the late Diane Izzo that doesn’t exist in recorded form. In that sense, World Within a Song isn’t a playlist of greatest hits, or even ones Tweedy considers mandatory listening. As a mildly misfit kid growing up in 1970s Belleville, Illinois, Tweedy knew at an early age he was destined for a music career. He discovered artists like Patti Smith, The Clash and The Replacements, whose songs helped him understand that, while he might have been lonely, he wasn’t ever alone.

Interspersed with Tweedy’s musical picks are bits of memoir he calls “rememories,” mini essays he considers “dreamlike passages recounting specific events in my life.” Some touch on aspects of his musical career, among them a hostile encounter with Timothy B. Schmit, the longtime Eagles vocalist. Most interesting are the deeply personal ones, like his reflections on his close relationship with his late mother. 

Tweedy is a smart, witty and empathetic writer. His unabashed joy in introducing readers to the music that delights him is infectious and will unleash a flood of associations and memories for anyone who shares that passion. More than anything, he wants people to realize that music is as much about how we relate to it as it is about the music itself, and “how much we all can bring to a song as listeners.” World Within a Song will expand your musical horizons and radically increase your enjoyment the next time you tune in.

In World Within a Song, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy introduces readers to the music he loves with unabashed joy.

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