Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see why this one had a long waitlist at the library: it’s a little mind bender worthy of Christopher Nolan, particularly Inception, but antimatterized. The idea of antimemes, in universe, began with the noble purpose of experimentally eradicating Nazi thought, but like many other fictional AI’s or similar experiments, it quickly proved to be far more difficult to control, and now there is no Antimemetics Division except that which this book follows, along a wild and unpredictable path. It’s ultra relevant now, and way too much so, in a world perfectly content to hide in bubbles of lies for comfort, or just to think it’s right. And it’s as good an explanation as any for the mindlessness that surrounds us too closely.

View all my reviews

Review: Divine Ruin

Divine Ruin by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book that got me to notice the Sister Holiday series to begin with, being on the New Book shelf at Beaverton Library, and with that I’m now caught up on her New Orleans nunnery mysteries. Though each book has had personal stakes for Sister Holiday, threatening her place of unlikely peace and much-deserved redemption, this one feels extra devilishly personal as a sneaky drug dealer targets the schoolchildren she cares for with fentanyl. And it’s not just the children either: Sister Holiday might just lose someone with whom her connection has always been complicated. Though not as tightly paced as its immediate predecessor, this book keeps all the unique style of the series intact, and while I won’t be living in Beaverton anymore when the fourth book drops, I’ll still be ready to pick it up from the library all the same.

View all my reviews

Review: Blessed Water

Blessed Water by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second Sister Holiday mystery benefits from a tighter pace and its Easter weekend setting - covering all three days from Good Friday to Easter itself - all in a package of less than 300 pages. And it ain’t no bunny hop of fun, not when we’ve got one priest dead, one missing (and being made to reenact stations of the cross out of order for maximum humiliation), and a mother of a rainstorm befalling New Orleans outside of hurricane season. Though the first book was good in its own right, this sequel is an improvement in almost every metric.

View all my reviews

Review: House of Margins

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an unforgettable masterpiece. A gripping gothic tale of colonization and cultural appropriation, set against the backdrop of an African writing fellowship that’s run by white people still hoping to capitalize on Black trauma, in a Huis that’s haunted beyond belief with the spirits slain in centuries of genocide, and presented in the style of a true crime podcast hosted by the one white Afrikaner selected for this fellowship, while also exploring the traumas within the indigenous communities of the nations of Southern Africa…this is a novel anyone who reads it won’t soon forget, and for good goddamn reason.

View all my reviews

Review: Scorched Grace

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in this series introduces a singular new protagonist to the world of the mystery genre: Sister Holiday, a rough and tumble New Orleans nun with a dark and troubled past, and still prone to various vices and sins - hell, she’s smoking right there on the beautiful cover art, an early indication of this book’s massively blasphemous style. It’s a mystery, to be sure, but it’s much less about the arson plot and more about the tension between each and every character, especially as Sister Holiday has to reckon with her past. I’ll be reading the next two books very soon, that’s for sure.

View all my reviews

Review: Doing Time

Doing Time by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I picked up this book thinking it would be a great time-travel adventure kind of story, and somehow...I don't know, it just fell flat for me, for some reason. The concept is a strong one - eerily predicting the TVA from Loki several years before that show first streamed on Disney+, and I'm surprised the notoriously litigious producers of El Ministerio del Tiempo didn't try to accuse Jodi Taylor of ripping them off the way they did with Timeless (which is how I first heard about them, and it's a shame the writer loves to sue the pants off everyone because that show was damn good stuff.) I think for me, what really brings this book down is the cast of characters, who feel like they belong more in a sitcom than anything else, but the humor just doesn't really land for me. Shame, that. I guess I won't be continuing with this series after all.

View all my reviews

Review: Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina

Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina by Chris Frantz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Talking Heads may be known for their chunky, complex music, but drummer Chris Frantz’s rock memoir is refreshingly unpretentious and straightforward. Primarily focused on the band’s early days - lots of dreadful NYC lofts to live in, grueling tours with the Ramones, Frantz meeting the love of his life in bassist Tina Weymouth - and eventually working up to Tom Tom Club as well, there’s definitely one recurring theme that anyone familiar with Talking Heads can tell you right off the bat. It’s that David Byrne is a dreadful role model for autistic people, not in terms of talent - his is undeniable - but in terms of personality, as Frantz recalls numerous occasions where Byrne went behind everyone else’s backs to ensure he would be the only credited writer on the band’s biggest hits. It’s too bad Byrne’s an asshole, because without Frantz and Weymouth’s rhythm section, that’s where the band’s legacy wouldn’t exist.

View all my reviews