Naomi Kritzer

Winnipeg seems to be a black hole in terms of getting Naomi Kritzer books. The Winnipeg Public Library has two older UA novels currently but the copy of her book of short stories, Cat Pictures Please, that I took out in 2018 seems to have been deleted. Neither of the two independent bookstores that I patronize has any of her books although they would order them. Fortunately for me, friends in Minneapolis went to the signing of this book and got me a copy. (They are really good friends because they found out that the cost to mail it to me was almost as much as the cost of the book.) It was wonderful to read the first book of what promises to be a very interesting series.

Rebecca (who prefers to be called Beck) lives on a seastead with her father. The seastead is an manmade archipelago in the Pacific Ocean composed of constructed platforms and old ships. Like an archipelago, there are individual islands most of which are joined by bridges but a few can only be reached by boat. The seastead was started by libertarian separtists who didn't want to be subject to government interference in their lives so, of course, there are few laws. Beck and her father moved to the seastead from California after her mother's death. Beck receives tutoring along with the handful of other teenagers on her island but she still had time to get a part-time job. She works for a store that specializes in finding hard to acquire objects and it turns out Beck is good at finding things. When she finds the sparkly high-heeled sandals that some customer wants they are the property of a debt slave i.e. a person who moved to the seastead for work but had to borrow money to get on the islands and has to work that debt off. This debt slave, Debbie, came with her sister Lynn but her sister has been missing for 3 weeks. Debbie wants Beck to find Lynn in return for the sandals. Beck may be young but she's smart and she knows her way around the seastead. Her father is also quite influential but Beck has to tread carefully in terms of letting him know what she is doing. While Beck does succeed in finding Lynn she also finds more than she expected. It turns out that her mother is very much alive and has been trying to communicate with Beck by sending letters to the American consulate. When Beck takes Lynn there to get her legal assistance she is handed a letter from her mother. Quite a shock for Beck which leads her to wonder what else her father might have hidden. His work involves genetic manipulation of diseases so there's quite a scope for secrets. Can you imagine the potential for chaos if a new disease is unleashed on the seastead? The plot whizzes along, taking the reader with it.

Kritzer has done a great job of world-building. I could easily picture all the places that Beck took us. I just hope it's not too long until the next book in the series is out.… (altro)

Pros:
- gay
- butch
- the fastest I've read a fantasy novel in over a decade
- interesting worldbuilding
- gaaaaaaaay

Cons:
- despite the window dressing, it's all Christians all the way down
- still a sort of formulaic fantasy novel

What is up with that cover!! Eliana spends the first section of the book in shapeless gray robes and short hair, and most of the rest dressed like a dirty short-haired peasant Joan of Arc. There's multiple plot points where she's uncomfortable in or outright refuses to wear dresses.

So, despite some (creative, I grant) differences in festivals, goddess-worship, sexual morals, details of the stories, and etc, this is a lightly disguised version of early christians vs the catholic church in more-or-less Italy, plus some enviornmentalism. I don't know a lot about early christian history so I'm sure there are many things I'm missing, but I know enough Aramaic/Hebrew (it's probably Aramaic, I just don't know enough to confirm it's *not* Hebrew) to know that she's not working that hard to come up with her own stuff.

I have some very mixed feelings about christians using Aramaic/Hebrew for their religious purposes. On the one hand, sure, Jesus spoke Aramaic. On the other hand, your scripture is written in Greek! The christian religious use of Aramaic/Hebrew is always suspicious to me, strategically giving christianity a fake patina of age by tacking it onto jewish history/scripture/thought as the only natural continuation. When you're writing a story about your "Old Religion" being violently suppressed by institutional (Mary-worshipping, lol) catholicism, too.... eesh. Where'd you stash the Jews, polytheistic greco-roman pagans, etc. in this story?

On the upside, Eliana is not a capital-B believer and has a lot of questions and doubts about Redentore sexual and other morals. On the downside, I am never going to be a fan of a fantasy monotheism when you can "prove" a given religion is the correct one, as Lucia's story seems to do. I'm not sure if the story is just gonna let that stand or complicate how much of her conviction is confirmation bias.

Either way, I ordered the second one from an online used bookstore and I'm looking forward to reading it.… (altro)

My opinion on Turning the storm is sort of similar to that of Fires of the faithful. It has a great heroine, it passes the Bechdel test, and it has a nice story. I did find myself drifting away on occasion. I'm not sure if I can describe what it was, but I was a bit impatient with it at times. I think it would have benefited from a bit more depth regarding the characters. It pains me a little to say it, since I did like the characters. But with the novelty of the story wearing off a bit, I guess I started noticing a certain simplicity in the description of the characters and a bit in the story itself as well. That doesn't mean it wasn't pleasant to read, it was. And if I'm correct this is only the second book of this author, so I have high hopes for her. She had good ideas: I like the male/female equality, I like the way the main characters, Eliana, slowly figures out she likes women and the understated way in which this is described, and I like how she mixes the ideological with the practical when it comes to religion. This is the only fantasy book I can remember that shows a christian-like religion in a positive light, which is already interesting by itself. Of course, the differences she has incorporated (the most important one God being female) are interesting to see as well. What I really like is that a few of the main characters only vaguely believe in either religion, despite the fact that one of their friends is a fervent believer, and that both religions are corrupted at some point by people lusting for power. Even though the fighting parties are mostly divided by religion, it shows people of either religion fighting on both sides, it shows that there are good people and bad people on both sides, and in the end, it shows that neither side is impervious to corruption.

All in all, I would give this book 3.5 stars, because I think the execution could be improved, but given the subject matters, and the original ideas the author incorporates in her book, I'm rounding it of to four.… (altro)