Book Review: Sin Eater

 
By Megan Campisi

• Pub Date: 2020

• Genre: Historical Fiction, Dystopian Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: Bookmatters, Milford, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: The term "Sin Eater" caught my eye 

• Bookmark used: Hell hath no rage greater than a woman scorned

********

    Let's get this out of the way: A sin eater is a woman, "unseen and unheard," who hears confessions of the dying and then literally consumes their sins by way of eating symbolic foods. By doing so, she cleanses their souls and takes on their damnations.

     It's not a career one seeks out, nor one that holds a high position in society. Rather, the woman is shunned, neither looked at nor spoken to, and must live apart, to be summoned only when sought out by the dying's kinfolk.

    It's occurred in cultures across time and space, but mostly in Great Britain around the 16th and 17th centuries. That's convenient for this novel, because it can add some kings and queens and palace intrigue, and set in a place that looks like an alternative Tudor England.

    It's an original, imaginative tale, centering around 14-year-old May Owens, an orphan and petty criminal who we first meet while she's in a crowded, dank prison cell, mostly for being poor. She's singled out for retribution by the judge (for reasons that become clear later on), and eventually sentenced to be the town's sin eater.

    An iron collar is locked around her neck; her tongue is burned with her mark, and she is sent off to work. She receives no instructions, and must find her own way and her own home.

    Poor and uneducated, May in nonetheless a resourceful, brave, and cunning character. She finds the older sin eater in town, and starts working and learning from her. But when they hear the dying confession of a royal courtier, and see an unaccounted for food at the eating, they find themselves in the thick of a palace scandal.

    The older sin eater refuses to eat a deer heart, not having heard the sin it represents, and is taken away to the dungeon. May doesn't know what it represents, but having seen the repercussions of refusing to eat it, does so.  But she recognizes that someone is plotting something; she seems to be a pawn in their game, and her life is in danger. So she decides she must, somehow, determine the what the hell is going on amongst the gentry.

    The royals sound much like a certain Tudor king and his court. The deceased King Harold II bears a strong resemblance to Henry VIII, what with his six wives, a new religion, and the lack of a male heir. Instead, his eldest daughter Maris, (Mary?), a Eucharistian, takes the throne and orders everyone to return to the old faith. But then Bethany, who, (like Elizabeth), is the daughter of the second wife, Alys Bollings, (Anne Boleyn, later executed for treason) became the Virgin Queen and returned the people to the new faith.

    As May explains it:

Maris ... was Eucharistian. She made everyfolk go back to the old faith and burned you if you didn't. She was known as Bloody Maris, even though it should as been Ashes Maris, since folk were burned not bloodied. ... (W)hen she died, her sister, Bethany, became queen. And what faith was she? Why, new faith. So she made everyfolk go back again to the new faith. Back and forth, back and forth. But it was no jest. Purgers came house to house to beat you if you didn't go along with the new faith. ... And the fighting's still not done. But now it for which suitor will win our queen, become king, and get his heir on her.

    The best parts of the book show the character of May, her growth, her kindness to the downtrodden, and her desire to tweak authorities. The palace intrigue, not so much.

    May is compared to Eve -- the woman who brings all evil into the world, according to the Christian Bible -- and the book itself has been compared to works such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Alice in Wonderland, and the play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. I'm not sure about the first two, and don't know enough about the third, but all contain bloody authoritarian leaders who force women to suffers the sins of others, so maybe there's something there.

Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

 By Suzzanne Collins

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Newport, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: Her books are a masterwork of characters and storytelling 

• Bookmark used: The Corner Bookstore, New York City

*********

    Perhaps it's not a coincidence that 47 children die in a tale that simmers the spark of a revolt that eventually ignited a revolution against a cruel and vindictive totalitarian regime.

    Collins outdoes herself in this timely tale that serves as another prequel to her Hunger Games trilogy, following up a previous prequel to weave detail and storyline into outstanding characters both new and updated. It cannot be easy to write a novel that everybody knows the ending to, but Collins, a master of the art, achieves her aim.

    She gives additional background and insight into characters such as Haymitch Abernathy, Lucy Gray Baird, Katniss Everdeen's ancestors, President Coriolanus Snow,  Effie Trinket, Plutarch Heavensbee, Beetee, Mags, and Wiress, among others.

    It takes place during the second Quarter Quell, the one we already know produced  District 12's only living victor. Indeed, Haymitch, 16 during the 50th Hunger Games, is the protagonist and narrator of the tale, and we hear and feel his every thought, fear, and emotion.

Haymitch's token from Lenore

    Make no mistake -- this is Haymitch's story, and it explains much about the character he eventually became, the broken man we were introduced to in the original Hunger Games. Our learning about him -- before, during, and after his time in the arena -- are the keys to knowing his motives and his future. 

    The only flaw I can find in the book is that Collins's  descriptions of the arena and the games tend to bog down the story. Still, the character interactions in the arena brought out the emotional feels and ripped out our hearts.                   

                          Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow 

                         From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for my lost Lenore 

                 For the rare and radiant maiden -- whom the angels name Lenore                                                          Nameless here for evermore.

    Collins ties it together with liberal use of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, a poem about longing, grief, and loss. Haymitch feels those acutely both inside the arena and afterwards, and the poem gives his young girlfriend her name.

    This may be the best book in the series. It helps us understand what happens in Panem. it shows how ignoring or erasing parts of your history can be devastating. It reaches out to us to understand her characters, their motives, and most of all, their suffering. 

    It's truly a tale of -- and for -- the ages.

Book Review: The God of Endings

 By Jacqueline Holland

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: Bookmatters, Milford, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: It is a debut novel, and stories of immortality intrigue me   

 ******

         We give immortality to our gods, because they are perfect. We grant immortality to our book characters, because they are not.

    Collette LeSange is far from perfect. And she assuredly does not like her immortality. She did not ask for it, and her years on earth -- full of pain and loss, despair, failed hope, and taunts from the gods -- have not been friendly. She isn't living, she thinks, just existing.

    And as modern society grows around her, she's finding it harder to hide -- and to eat. Because Collette is a vampire, she must feed on blood, which gets more difficult to find as her years mount up.

    Holland's debut novel tells us how Collette gained immortality, her life over the next 150 or so years, and the fears that engulf her and remain constant companions.

    It's an audacious tale, full of adventure and sadness. It's a life writ large, and as much as Colette tries, she find it impossible to ignore the larger world. All too often, we find that her attempts to exude compassion and kindness rarely end well. 

    Collette grew up the daughter of a gravestone carver in the America of the early 19th Century, before her grandfather chose immortality for her -- a sore spot with her. She soon made it to Europe, where she met and was kept by others of her kind. But angry gods and angry mortals decried what they saw as her wickedness, so she was forced to wander alone and live apart from the vremenie -- those who live short lives -- for most of her days.

    Now, in the early 1980s, she is living and working in America as the owner of and only teacher at an elite pre-school. She senses the gods -- Czerobog* and Belobog, the former the god of darkness, destruction, and woe; the latter the god of light, life, and good fortune (the pair also may be just two faces of one god) -- have something planned for her. 

    In successive chapters, Holland alternates between Collette's history and struggles through the years and her current saga, which includes her growing relationship with a young artistic student with a troubled family life.

    The book has a few problems: Parts of it are overwritten, both stylistically and in the telling. Over-description is rampant, and some of the storylines could have been parsed or omitted.

    But it's a wide-ranging epic, and the ageless protagonist allows Holland to tell a tale over centuries of human history through the eyes of a single women, who is caring and strong, if also confused and lonely. It's overall a good read, depressing at times, but with a texture of hope that threads its way through some of the worst actions of humanity.

___________________________________

    *He's also called the God of Endings, hence the title.

Book Review: The Fragile Threads of Power

  By V.E. Schwab

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Well, I've read the first three novels, so may as well keep going  

 ******

    Some great characters return in this book, the fourth in the Shades of Magic series, and the first in a new series, tentatively titled the Threads of Magic*. There's Lila Bard, the angry Antari**, a messy, unsubtle whirlwind; Alucard Emery, a wealthy lord, wannabe pirate, and consort to the king, and Kell Maresh, once cocky and now uneasy, an Antari who has lost his magic.

    They are joined by a series of new magicians: Tes, a young girl who can see the threads of magic and fix broken ones; Kosika, another young girl, who finds herself the queen of White London; and Queen Nadiya Loreni, wife of the new King Rhy Maresh, a magician and scientist.***

    The locations continue to excel: There's Red London, ruled by the Maresh family -- it's the powerful London with raucous neighborhoods full of taverns and marketplaces, but it's people worry it is losing its magic; dystopian Black London, closed up after destroying its magic centuries ago; and White London, trying to make a comeback after a devastating battle with the utmost evil. We also see the return of the Ferase Stras, which you must somehow find before boarding the ship of magical stuff and paying the proper price before getting what you may need.

    So we have a bevy of cunning characters, imaginative places for them to roam, and adventurous stories about royalty and magic and betrayal, urchins and bullies, love and life and death. All of the needed background is explained in the new series, but reading the previous three is well worth your time.

    This is good stuff. The overall story is compelling; the tales and anecdotes are gripping, and we are glad to be along for the ride. Even when the books top 600 pages, they are satisfying and surprisingly quick reads.

    The only flaws I find are the scenes of the battles of magic, which sometimes get a bit overdone and confusing. But rest assured, you can rip through them and stay in touch with the stories.

    -------------------------

* When I picked up the first book, I did not know it was part of a series.

** A most powerful magician in this world.

*** After all, what is science but magic with an explanation?

Book Review: Glory

  By Noviolet Bulawayo

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I like fables 

 ******

     I really, really wanted to like to book. Tholukuthi, I wanted to like this book. But it took my slogging through some 325 repetitive pages, with too many words, tholukuthi, and a writing style that carried around too many blending ideas and voices, before I found it.

    It's difficult to say it was worth it. But two parts of the book -- one in which Destiny finds her mother's past of being a victim of violence linked with her own similar history, and a second in the final 70 pages, which featured the hope of butterflies and some extraordinary writing -- made me rethink all the thoughts I had while reading it.

    It's a tale of Zimbabwe, an African country that suffered colonialism and white minority rule before a revolution threw out the white overlords but brought in a murderous, native dictatorship. The persecution and disappearances of the population continued, with the government of Black nationalist  Robert Mugabe becoming increasingly more vicious and corrupt over his 40-year dictatorship.

    This fable shows the country as literal animals -- Mugabe is the Old Horse, whose presence strikes fear and loyalty among the population of goats and chickens and cats and all manner of insects. His army of Defenders are brutal dogs that attack and kill without warning or remorse. The majority animals are poor but loyal to the ruler, wearing his image on their clothing and waving the proper flag of the Country Country.

    All of this mimics the history of the land in the south of Africa, which during colonialism was called Rhodesia -- named after the rich English lord who invaded and declared the area part of Britain. If that's not the most colonial thing ever, I'm not sure what is. After World War II, the rulers declared independence from Britain, and, looking to neighboring South Africa, set up an apartheid-like state.

    The book begins with Old Horse celebrating his 40 years of power, and moves on to the coup that tossed him out and took over his rule. But it is a verbose story, told through a multitude of conflicting and confusing voices. It's often unclear what the animals represent -- someone from the Seat of Power, the Resistance, the Dissidents, the Sisters of the Disappeared, or just random citizens.

    The writing includes repetitive words, phrases, entire sentences. Some chapters, tholukuthi, include long-winded descriptions that go on and on and on and on and on. And there is the use of tholukuthi, a word of African origin that means -- seemingly, whatever the author wants it to mean. It's an interjection, a hallelujah!, a "really, really," an "and so," a "you'll find that," and is used so many times it means all of them, and none of them.

    Bulawayo even uses a social media style to tell the tale. But even there, the streams of Twitter feeds are as disembodied, annoying, and incomprehensible as the real ones.

    When one overdoes a stylistic point, it loses its magic.

    That's what happens here. In the later quarter of the book, the tone changes, becomes more personal, and focuses on a single family of animals, including Destiny and her mother, Simiso. This is where I started enjoying the book, and eagerly read the pages. But the writing still overwhelms the ideas and actions. The repetition and overwriting stand out and get in the way of the story.

    When she writes about the genocide that occurred, it's hard to read -- because it's true. I stuck through the book until the end, and I'm glad I did. It struck a chord in me. It touched me. It taught me something.

    It also showed me what this book could have been.

Book Review: City of Orange

 By David Yoon

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl and Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: A blurb describes it as a cross between Station Eleven and The Road

***

    The Unreliable Narrator style, which is used in this book, annoys me.

    It makes me angry and frustrated. I feel deceived and manipulated. It makes the novel seem pointless, like the author didn't understand where they were taking the story, so changed direction. Ultimately, it's a waste of time for the reader.

    Like this book.

    Is it the tale of a man beaten and dumped in a future world, perhaps on another planet? Is it a description of a wasteland after a cataclysmic event? We don't know, and neither does our hero, who can't even remember his own name. It unfolds slowly, as we see what he sees, with vivid descriptions of horror and loss in the world he believes himself to be in.

    Yet, hints abound that all is not as it appears. 

    I'm not going to say more about the plot, such as it is, so as not to reveal any spoilers. Suffice to say it goes in a lot of directions, several of which are predictable, some of which are cliches and tropes, and few of which are original. And yes, I get the extended metaphor, but it's weak.

    Still, it has strong points: A smart, well-drawn main character whom we get to know and can identify with. Sharp writing that drags you in. A setting that is both everywhere and nowhere.

    But deep flaws overcome those positives. A  sense of evil pervades that main character. (At one point in my notes, I write: Did something bad happen to him, or did he do something bad?) Secondary character are mere bit players. The story drags, and the detailed writing can be overdone. It's impossible to tell whether the setting is real or imagined.

Book Review: The Lives of Puppets

 By TJ Klune

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I liked two of his earlier books

**** 

  

    Unfortunately, Klune missed the mark with his latest offering.

   

    Not that he didn't give it his all. It contains a good heart, some unique characters, and a touch of lyrical writing. But there's not enough of that -- instead he writes too long, with too many words, and too many superfluous anecdotes -- for an overall story that's essentially pointless. Yes, it has a moral -- that we should all be kind, loving and forgiving, look beyond someone's past, and see into their hearts.

    And, boyo, does he hammer home this point, over and over and over. Both figuratively and literally.

    It's a rather simple story, sort of a robot rewrite of the tale of Pinocchio, set in an unknown future time. Geppetto is in there in as the android Giovanni Lawson, whose past is not as kind and thoughtful as he appears to be in the present. The Authority (yes, it is capitalized so you know it's evil) uses an emblem of a fox and a cat. There's even a Blue Fairy, who may be the good guys.

    Indeed, cultural references are in all the characters. There's Rambo, a Roomba with the personality of your annoying kid brother. There's Nurse Ratched, who isn't quite as nasty as the original. She can be pleasant, but must point out she is Engaging Empathy Protocol every freaking time. A paragraph or two later, when she returns to normal, she must note she is Disengaging Empathy Protocol, again in all caps. 

    To avoid a spoiler alert, I don't want to say too much about Hap -- nicknamed the Hysterically Angry Puppet -- who is an integral and multi-layered character that comes along later. 

    Oh yes. There's Victor. First identified as a son of Gio, he's the only non-android in the book. I'm guessing he's supposed to be the protagonist, but he's a weak and unlikeable one, lonely and melancholy, and often morose or depressed.

    So the book goes on. It include a few tropes (Vegas is the capital of this evil empire), and some sequences that must be read with a good eye-roll. If you like this sort of thing, you'll like the book. 

Book Review Lark Ascending

  By Silas House

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Taleless Dog Booksellers, Berea, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: House is one of the best of the current crop of Kentucky authors

*******

    As the world literally burns in the future, Lark, a young man of about 20, strives to survive after the fires and the fundamentalists take over his family's hideaway cabins in Maine.

    They take a boat across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland, which they hear is one of the few places left that is taking in refugees. 

    More a character study than a plot-driven narrative, Lark's story shows us how life's struggle conjures up misery and sadness, yet also provides joy and hope.

    The strength of House's work in this novel is not so much the story as the language. His writing is among the best that Kentucky offers -- and his partial setting in Ireland brings to mind some of that country's finest authors. 

    Just the words he uses to describe the simple things -- such as the time of day -- are a clear example of his talent. The blue hour, for instance, is just before the sun rises, when the light starts taking over from the darkness of night.

    And Helen, one of Lark's fellow Irish travelers, refers to the gloaming of the evening, When Lark asks why she uses that word instead of dusk or twilight, she replies, "the word gloaming is so much lovelier."

Book Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War

 

•  Authors: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

• Where I bought this book: after words, Chicago

• Why I bought this book: It has birds on the cover

***

  A short novel that nevertheless feels neverending.

    Perhaps that's an inherent problem when you set your story in everlasting time and every place. It goes on and on, and nothing really matters, because characters can go back and change everything.

     It's the quantum form of the Butterfly Effect.

        

    That said, I could find several reasons to like this book. It has an interesting concept: Two sentient beings who can travel through time and space as they represent different factions become pen-pals -- or whatever the quantum equivalent is.

    And it's well written. Some of the writing is poetic, soaring with metaphors and philosophy. Literary concepts come hard and fast -- at times, the characters are literally writing onto the tea leaves, and drinking the tea means reading it while consuming the thoughts on those leaves.

    Yet, the authors get carried away, leaving the notion that if anything is possible, reality cannot exist.

    A striking, disturbing theme carries the novel: that war, competition among life forms, is the point of it all. Winning, and being on the winning side, is the reason for existence.

    That's how the novel begins, with the two authors competing to see which side thrives in the end. Either Red, who comes from Agency, a "post-singularity technotopia" (???) or Blue, from Garden, "a consciousness embedded in all organic matter." 

    Yet, as the pair continues their correspondence, they show signs they know they are merely pawns in the game. Blue expresses this thought:

Let me tell you a secret: I loathe Atlantis. Every last single Atlantis across all strands. It's a putrid thread. Everything you've likely been taught about Garden and my Shift should lead you to believe we treasure it as a bastion of good works, the original Platonic ideal for how a civilisation ought to be: How many bright-eyed adolescents have poured the fervour of their souls into lives imagined there? ... The work we do to maintain these notions is more subtle than you might think, given the publishing peccadilloes of a dozen twentieth centuries. 

    Indeed, cultural and literary figures abound across all times and dimensions. Historical figures pop in and out, but because of the omnipresence, the novel is ultimately ahistorical. 

    Red and Blue's letters go from hate and distrust to love and desire before doubling back. It's a frustrating novel. It wants to cover all the passions of a relationship. It wants time to double back and repeat, so anything and everything can happen in the worlds.   

Book Review: Ballad

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

   

    This is a prequel to the Hunger Games series, and a much needed backstory to one of the characters. I would not mind seeing more of these.

    It does help to have read the original series, and from what I can tell, this prequel hews closely to the future story.

    It looks into the life of future President Coriolanus Snow, and it also details how the Hunger Games grew from an unpopular killing and dying spree among unknown urchins to the much-loved extravaganza (well, at least by the Capital crowd) we see in the novels today. Hint: Snow had a lot to do with that.

    The Snow this book portrays is a sympathetic one. If you didn't know who and what he became, you might even be cheering for him at times. But then you realize who he is and what he will do, and you think, "Nah. Screw him."

    The novel's Snow is a somewhat privileged member of the elite living in Capital City. But the capital is not the glitzy, trendy place of the future. Instead, it's a city and populace still suffering from the wars, revolutions, and ecological disasters that forged Panem. You really get involved with the history of Panem, District 12, and the others, a decade or so after it formed.

    It does not reveal the beginnings of Panem, or why or how it started. Let's hope that will be revealed in the next tale in the pre-series. I could get into the backstories of other main characters, with a little bit of a creation tale.

    And, perhaps this time, a map.

Book Review: Full Throttle

Full Trottle, by Joe Hill

Let me start by saying the introduction to the book, in which Hill talks about having a famous father, is wonderful. Also, I liked two of the stories -- Late Returns, and You Are Released. The former is based on the idea of not wanting to die in the middle of reading a book, and involves a curious display of time travel. The latter is set on an airplane when a nuclear war breaks out. It's told from the variety of perspectives of the people on the plane, and it works well.

The rest, well -- let's just say they are the bad and the ugly of Sergio Leone's trilogy.

Usually, I enjoy Hill's writing, especially his  novels. A couple of tales in this short story collection might have been better had they been given more room to grow. And the title story, which he wrote with his father, Stephen King, has been published before.

Some of the others, though, are bad. Meandering, pointless, and, quite frankly, boring.

Take By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain, for instance. It's a tale about two children finding a dinosaur body along the waters of the lake between Vermont and New York, which takes on the legend of Champy, the lake's resident "monster." But the tale is dull, and it focuses more on the children and their siblings arguing with each other. The ending is confusing.

In the Tall Grass, which also credits King as a co-author, seems to be little more than a grotesque version of King's 1977 short story, Children of the Corn. Thumbprint had some interesting characters, but a weak story to bring them together. Mums, about a fanatical right-wing family and their son, is  more a rant against the alt-right movement to overthrow the government than anything else.

 The Devil on the Staircase pages

I liked that Hill took liberties with style and structure in two stories. One, The Devil on the Staircase, was written in a typography that resembles flights of stairs. A second, Twittering From the Circus of the Dead, is what the story implies -- a young girl's tweets from a mysterious circus in a small, isolated town. In both cases, the experimental typography and format worked better than the story.

Book Review: Brave New World

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

I first read this book some 50 years ago, in the seventh grade, when I was about 12 years old. I kind liked it, and thought of the world it created as a nice place full of happy people. And when they weren't happy, authorities spread Soma into the air, making them happy.

More recently, I expressed the opinion, based on that reading in the long, long ago, that I did not understand why the novel was listed with other dystopias, such as 1984. Twitter raged at my stupidity.

So I gave it a re-read. I still have my copy (paperback, published in 1969, costing $3.50) so I didn't have to buy it again. That second reading showed how wrong I was.

Yes, Huxley's world is still a place full of happy people. Well, seemingly happy. Indeed, they are bred to be happy, then slotted into society where they will be happy.

But here's what I know now. They are happy on the surface, because they have everything they could possibly need or want. They are conditioned to think in certain ways. Their standing in society is based on on how they were bred. No mothers and fathers exist in this world, just a sperm and an egg put in a test tube, manipulated for certain conditions, and then turned into a baby. A baby who will grow into an adult who will fit perfectly into whatever role was predetermined -- whether that be a moronic, low-level Epsilon worker; a smart Alpha leader, or anything in between. And society will give proper respect to all those people, knowing that they are conditioned to accept their roles, which all carry value. No more discrimination and no more bigotry. Just acceptance.

All sexual fantasies are fulfilled -- and because love, or life partners, or family, are unknown, then guilt, deception, or rejection are not issues. For entertainment, sports and games and "feelies" -- a kind of interactive porn -- are constantly available.

And if none of those does the trick, there is Soma. Just a half-gram, and off you go to your own happy place, with no consequences -- no hangover, no sadness, no feelings of regret -- upon return.

But here's the thing: With all this happiness, based on constant entertainment and diversion, the loss is of self and identity. There is no need for contemplation, for self-reflection, or quiet time. There's no reading, or writing, or art, or creativity.

It's not that this world burns books; it just takes away the need for them. It's not that it bans theater, it just makes the arts unnecessary. It doesn't prohibit drawings or sculptures, or music, or history, it just replaces them with constant, public entertainment.

And as such, there is no individuality or privacy, only group-think and public behavior. There is no downtime, just consumption and control. But unlike Orwell's 1984, that control is not achieved through pain and fear, but with pleasure and distraction. Control is established through fulfilling people's childish and adolescent desires -- keeping them childish and adolescent.

Without unmet needs, without goals to strive for, without conflict, without the ugliness of life, there is no beauty, no art, no humanity.

It may be a happy place, but it's still a dystopia. 

Book Review: The Testaments

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood

If you were riveted by The Handmaid's Tale, its sequel also will enthrall you.

I'm not sure I like the word sequel, which carries the inference of being somewhat lesser than the original. So consider this not a sequel, but a continuance of the first novel. Think of it as Part 2, the later years.

Because that's a better description of it.

I read The Handmaid's Tale back in the long, long ago, and saw the original movie. I have not watched the TV series for a number of reasons. But I remember the first book, which had a huge impact on me.

The Testaments provides a backstory as to how and why Gilead came into existence. It's setting is years into the Gilead regime, which solidified its control of the country once known as the United States. Opposition to the regime, both from Canada -- its neighbor to the north and the author of these novels -- and among the states that split off from the regime after various civil wars, has intensified.

This is today's story.

It is told in a multitude of voices, from a top aunt in the organization to members of the resistance, both inside and outside the country. Some of the voices are those of children, who only know Gilead after the revolution, as they are taught little about the previous life.

Those voices alternate in the book. Together, they tell a complete tale, but the individual accounts are compelling in their own right. What happens is you get into one person's story; the chapter ends, and you move into another's story. You immediately want to find out more about the story you were reading, but wind up so engrossed in the new one you get upset when that chapter ends, and a third story moves in, or a previous one returns.

So you find yourself staying up late into the evening to learn the next verse of each story, which together tell a complete tale.

Atwood is a wonderful story-teller and a top-notch writer. It's no wonder this book was short-listed for the Booker Prize. We'll know who wins the prize later this month.

My bet is on Atwood. Besides, anyone who quotes a William Blake poem is OK with me.