Monthly Archives: December 2016

Welcome to the Madhouse

Book Review of Welcome to the Madhouse, by S.E. Sasaki

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I won a copy of S.E. Sasaki‘s Welcome to the Madhouse through Goodreads. The ebook was also free at the author’s website and Amazon at the time of posting.

Description from Goodreads:
Doctor Grace Lord, a lieutenant in the Conglomerate Medical Corps, has come to the medical space station, the Nelson Mandela, as the new surgical fellow under the renowned Doctor Hiro Al-Fadi. Though she earned her commission as a combat surgeon in the field, she is unprepared for the scope and pace of what awaits her in the Conglomerate’s Premier Medical Space Station. The countless cryopods that come into the Nelson Mandela are filled with the casualties of the Conglomerate’s animal-adapted military forces. Traumatically injured and disfigured in campaigns spread across the galaxy, it is up to the staff of the Nelson Mandela to patch up the wounded combat soldiers for redeployment. For Grace, it is a trial by fire, as she familiarizes herself not only with the routines and protocols of life on the Nelson Mandela, but also with the eclectic community of professionals with whom she works – not the least of which is an android that has taken an almost human interest in her. When disaster strikes the space station, the Nelson Mandela must race against time to stave off annihilation, and it becomes clear that, regardless of the outcome, nothing will never be the same again.

Review:
Going into this book, I didn’t expect it to be a comedy. The humor was a pleasant surprise. At times it reached a little too far and came across as trying too hard to be funny, but it usually managed to walk the line and I enjoyed it.

I liked all the characters too, Bud especially. The back and forwards banter between the surgeons was amusing and was nicely balanced with the obvious affection the characters had for one another. Grace was a little too perfect in all ways, but I managed to look over her lack of faults.

However, I thought the whole plot-line with the closest thing to a villain the book has was unnecessary, distasteful, distracting, and predictable. It was painfully obvious who they were from the first moment they were introduced. Their character lacked depth, was evil just because they were evil and their plot arc didn’t tie well into the primary plot-line. In fact, it had nothing to do with it and was an unappreciated distraction that was wrapped up too quickly and easily to fee satisfying in any way.

Further, I felt the introduction of inferred rape and mental abuse (described as easy, at that) was unnecessary and detracted from my enjoyment of the book. I am so sick of victimized women as plot-points that I almost just gave up on the book after reading the prologue. I was pleased the subject didn’t come up again. I understand that this particular plot-point probably just set up the sequel, but I REALLY wish this book had done without it. In fact, it reads like it did and the author went back and added it just for book two.

The writing/editing was unusually good for an indie. I did think some of the dialogue was on the stiff side, even when allowing for android-speak and there was an excess of exclamation marks. But I was mostly pleased.

All in all, however, I enjoyed the book. I laughed and was interested enough to read until the end. I’d happily read book two to see how Bud progresses.

What I’m drinking: Bentley’s Oolong tea.

The Mortifications

Book Review of The Mortifications, by Derek Palacio

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I received a copy of The Mortifications, by Derek Palacio from Blogging for Books.

Description from Goodreads:
In 1980, a rural Cuban family is torn apart during the Mariel Boatlift. Uxbal Encarnación—father, husband, political insurgent—refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideals and lush tomato farms of his sun-soaked homeland. His wife Soledad takes young Isabel and Ulises hostage and flees with them to America, leaving behind Uxbal for the promise of a better life. But instead of settling with fellow Cuban immigrants in Miami’s familiar heat, Soledad pushes further north into the stark, wintry landscape of Hartford, Connecticut. There, in the long shadow of their estranged patriarch, now just a distant memory, the exiled mother and her children begin a process of growth and transformation.

Each struggles and flourishes in their own way: Isabel, spiritually hungry and desperate for higher purpose, finds herself tethered to death and the dying in uncanny ways. Ulises is bookish and awkwardly tall, like his father, whose memory haunts and shapes the boy’s thoughts and desires. Presiding over them both is Soledad. Once consumed by her love for her husband, she begins a tempestuous new relationship with a Dutch tobacco farmer. But just as the Encarnacións begin to cultivate their strange new way of life, Cuba calls them back. Uxbal is alive, and waiting.

Review:
This is what I would classify in my own taxonomy as a Book Club Book. It’s one of those books that takes itself very seriously, is beautifully written and every single person in it is miserable from start to finish. The specifics of their misery might change in the course of the book, counting as growth for a character, but everyone’s still miserable. That is The Mortifications  for you.

Despite how it might sound, I did like the book. More so now that I’ve finished than as I crawled through it. (It’s quite slow, inhabiting the characters mental space more than anything else.) But I can’t say reading it was as enjoyable for me as having digested the story as something to contemplate. I liked Ulises and Williams and I liked their relationship to the women in the novel. But the women are the objects of the book, while Ulises and, to a lesser extent Williams and Uxbal, are the subjects, in my opinion. And I could never quite wrap my head around the decisions and personalities of Soledad and Isabel.

The writing is beautiful, though entirely told, rather than shown—to such an extent that there are no quotation marks in the book. Nothing is said directly, the reader is just told that someone said something. It took a little while to get used to the style. But I did eventually and it was very cleverly done.

If you have a book club or happen to like book club books, this is worth picking up.

Book Review of Back Where He Started, by Jay Quinn

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I downloaded a free copy of Back Where He Started from Amazon when it was free. (It was still free at the time of posting.) This was timely as it’s by Jay Quinn and Q was the last letter I had left in my yearly alphabet reading challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
Chris Thayer finds himself packing up the last pieces of a quietly extraordinary life. After twenty-three years of marriage to Zack Ronan—and after raising the widower’s three kids—Chris finds himself facing an uncertain second act. Seeking refuge in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Chris has to come to terms with his own empty nest and challenge himself to move forward with a new relationship. This is a subtle depiction of the meaning of family and motherhood, and of the search for your true soul.

Review:
I generally really enjoyed this. I liked Chris and most of the other characters. I liked the story and the writing. I liked that the characters were older and had a real relationship with their adult children. I liked that the role of mother was shown to be valuable and validating and that a man is shown to be just as capable of care and tender feelings as anyone else.

However, I had some serious complaints that tainted the read for me. First and foremost, I was really disturbed by how many ways this gender binary, fit, gay, male character (who was shown to be an exclusive bottom and physically smaller than every other male) was painted as a woman. Not in the indirect way some readers complain about, when a male character expresses too much emotion and is deemed too feminine, but in explicit ways. The fact that he calls himself a wife, only once saying househusband when speaking to someone he fears will be judgmental. His children call him mom. He calls himself a grandmom when one gets pregnant. (Never once does anyone refer to him as dad or equivalent.) Someone says his pussy will dry up. His ‘breasts’ are fondled in the sex scenes. His boyfriend calls him bitch. He’s compared to the Madonna. He and his ‘high-fag’ friend (his words) speaks of him as ‘girlfriend’ and ‘woman’ and he’s religious, which is generally a female characteristic in literature. If he had claimed any gender flex, I wouldn’t have blinked. But he didn’t, which meant the innumerable ways he’s described as female only made the book feel as if it had been written as M/F and poorly converted to M/M, which I don’t actually think is the case.

I understand that struggling with his identity as a homemaker is part of the plot of the book. In fact, there are some borderline offensive passages that could be read to denigrate wives as unable to be simultaneously married and individual, self-sufficient human beings, but the point is him deciding if he has to be unattached to be whole. But I was still uncomfortable with a lot of it because it felt so overblown and because it compromised the theme that a man just as motherly as a woman. Because according to this narrative, a man can be motherly, but only if he’s also womanly. Plus, it suggests that even among gay men there can only be heteronormative-like partnerships in which one plays the woman.

The writing is mostly very good, though a bit repetitive. But over half the names could be taken out of the dialogue and it would read much more smoothly. They are included far more often than feels natural. Further, the transitions between events are abrupt and jarring. Often there is no indication that time, location or characters are changing from one paragraph to the next, leaving the reader to flounder until they manage to relocate themselves. Lastly, Zach’s attitude goes from hostile and aggressive to contrite off page and it neither feels natural nor satisfying. He was horrible and then was forgiven instantly. The same could be said for the woman who was party to breaking up Chris’ relationship. She is never forced to face the fact that she participated in an affair with an essentially married man with children and with him destroyed another person’s life. She is just treated kindly. I needed to see the people who did wrong face the consequences of their actions and I didn’t feel this was provided.

I also didn’t like the form of Chris and Steve’s relationship. Yes, I understood that all the ‘bitch, make me dinner,’ was half joking and a symptom of Steve’s gruff affection. But I didn’t enjoy reading it. Neither did I feel comfortable with the inference that to marry someone Chris would have to take the subordinate role of wife (or that the wife has to be the subordinate role) and belong to Steve. The author does not seem to have a very broad or forgiving understanding of the role of wife and it was painful to read, regardless of the homemaker’s gender.

In fact, I kind of felt the author didn’t do well with female characters in general. There are only three female characters, none playing a big role. One is a predatory ‘business woman’ who steals another person’s husband. The second is the classic saintly mother trope and the last, and most important one is described as and shown to be neurotic. Not a single one exists outside of her husband, which is notable considering the afore mentioned views towards wives as whole people.

I also thought the book could have ended at 70%, the last 30% only adding unnecessary drama and becoming increasingly saccharine with each passing page. These are content complaints though. I enjoyed the experience and the book in general.