Category Archives: Highly Recommended

What’s Up, Danger?

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Why Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Is the Most Important Superhero Movie Ever.

Superhero stories are important as a metaphor. To discover what our strengths and gifts are, to learn how to use them, and then to apply these skills to make the world a better place—this is the life’s work of every one of us.

This is also the reason why, for me, the most memorable moments in superhero films are the moments when the superhero inspires ordinary people to heroism. Think Superman II, when the people of Metropolis believe General Zod has killed Superman and they pick up pieces of debris and attack him themselves. Think Spider-Man (2002), when pedestrians start throwing things at the Green Goblin and one of them calls out, “You mess with Spider-Man, you mess with New York!” Think Wonder Woman, when she’s in the trenches and demanding that they do something to save a village. Everyone else tells her not to go over the top, that it’s too dangerous, that she’ll be killed. But she does it anyway. And they follow her!

Yes, Diana is a virtually indestructible demigod. But the soldiers behind her aren’t. They follow her anyway.

I could write multiple blog posts about all the things Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse does well, but what really makes it stand out is that it is the first superhero movie to center this idea of the superhero as an inspirational figure. Miles Morales is a 13-year old African-American Puerto Rican in Brooklyn. He is a bright and likeable kid, saddled with typical 13-year old problems: stress at school, a difficult relationship with his father, awkwardness around girls. He also has a Superman poster in his bedroom.

We learn exactly how Miles sees himself early in the film, when he paints a graffiti mural: a colorful rendition of the word “expectations” with a silhouette of himself in the middle. “I get exactly what you’re doing,” his uncle says. Outside, Miles is surrounded by expectations. Inside is shadow. A black box. Not even Miles knows what’s there.

A moment later, Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider. You know the drill. He develops superhuman abilities, but must learn to master them, a great metaphor for puberty, which the film makes explicit. And he makes a fateful promise. For Miles, a promise is a sacred duty. But he doesn’t know how to fulfill it. He studies Spider-Man comic books for tips, then meets other spider-heroes, learns from them, masters his powers, and earns the title “Spider-Man.” Delightfully, the film announces this by putting a Miles Morales Spider-Man comic book on screen.

Miles does not blindly imitate the ways of the other spider-heroes. When he comes into his own, we see the influences of the others, but his moves are his own, just as his Spider-Man outfit is his own. “Don’t do it like me; do it like you,” Peter Parker advises him. (The line was in the trailer, but was cut from the film. No matter. The point is clear.)

By the end of the film, we have come full circle, as Miles demonstrates his newfound mastery of his spider-skills to a street full of grateful New Yorkers. The boy who once looked up to superheroes is now himself an inspiration. Perhaps the message is that becoming the best you can be is important not only for your personal fulfillment, but as an encouragement to those around you. Or, as Miles puts it at the end of his story, “I never thought I’d be able to do any of this stuff. But I can. Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask. If you didn’t know that before, I hope you do now.”

That is the very best reason to make a superhero film. And the very best reason to go see one.

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

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Powers
by Ursula K. Le Guin,
2007.

Powers was awarded the 2008 Nebula for Best Novel by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, so once again, I am late to the party. Sadly, the author passed away in January of this year. But if you’ve ever wondered if she deserves her reputation, just read Powers and that should settle the matter once and for all.

Powers is billed as the third book in the Annals of the Western Shore, but don’t let that put you off. Apart from being set in the same invented world and with a light crossover of characters, the books are independent stories and can be read in any order.

Gavir is an eleven-year old slave boy at the beginning of the story. He is one of the Marsh People, which means he is darker skinned than the other people in his life, apart from his older sister, Sallo. Sallo and Gavir were taken when they were small children, too small to have any memory of their former lives. Now they are slaves in the household of a wealthy family in the city-state of Etra. Gavir is content with his life. He is not a farm slave, laboring in the fields, but a house slave, living in comfort with an enlightened master and his family. In this house, slaves are not beaten or tortured. Slave children play with and are educated alongside the children of the Family. Gavir himself is a promising little scholar, who is being groomed to take over the job of teacher to the household once the slave who currently holds that post grows too old to carry on.

Gavir also has powers, hence the title, powers he barely understands himself. The first is that he has occasional visions, brief glimpses of the future. Gavir calls this “remembering,” in the sense of remembering things that have not yet taken place, though Gavir spends most of the story puzzling over what use this power might have, if any.

The invented world in which the story takes place and Gavir’s visions are the only real fantasy elements in this novel, which otherwise could be taken as an historical tale set in the ancient Mediterranean world. Oh, but wait! Gavir has one other power: a photographic memory, although the book never describes it in those words. It’s a phenomenon we are familiar with in our time, but surely would seem magical to those living in a less advanced culture, and indeed it does to Gavir and the people who know him.

The novel follows Gavir for the next six years of his life, until he’s seventeen. His world seems cozy and secure at first, with his future as a teacher in the household of a kindly master an inviting one. But, alas for Gavir, it is not to be. First, a terrible injustice turns Gavir’s world upside down and compels him to flee his master and Etra, and wander the Western Shore in constant danger. For the relationship between master and slave, as Gavir comes to understand, is based not only on power, but also on trust. A slave must be able to trust the master, and if the master betrays the slave, well, even a slave is capable of betrayal in return.

Gavir’s wanderings take him deep into a forest, where he discovers the legends he has heard are true: hidden deep in the wood is a community of escaped slaves, who live in freedom, as equals. Gavir is welcomed among them. He can recite from memory many of the long poems and tales of old for this band of largely illiterate and isolated ex-slaves, which soon makes him a valued and respected member of the community. But in time, there is another injustice, and Gavir must flee again. He makes his way to the marshes, where he reconnects with his clan and his family among the Marsh People. But the Marsh People are an isolated folk with a very different culture. Gavir finds they do not understand him and he cannot understand them. “The slave takers did not only take me from my people,” he muses. “They took my people from me.”

During his stay with the Marsh People, a vision tells him that his former owners do not believe he is dead, as he had hoped, but in fact a slave catcher is tracking him. Gavir now must leave his people, in the hope he can find a place for himself in this world, before the slave catcher has his vengeance. Perhaps Gavir might even at last find a use for his powers.

You expect elegantly crafted prose from Le Guin, and she does not disappoint here. Powers is largely a character study, as we watch Gavir grow from a naive, hopeful tween forced to become a man all too soon in reaction to the harsh world he lives in. And, led along by Le Guin’s sure hand, we grow right along with him. I had the misfortune of reading the climax of Gavir’s story late at night and found myself forced to keep reading into the small hours of the morning as my heart pounded in fear for Gavir as the slave catcher closes in, and ended the story the same way Gavir did—with tears in my eyes.

Powers is a young adult novel in every sense. It is literally the story of growing up. We can all, like Gavir, recall our sojourn from naive child to disillusioned young adult, wondering all the while what place, if any, this disappointing world holds for us, and so readers of any age can find in him some of our own formative experiences. Gavir’s world is a difficult world, but a textured one. There are no black knights, or white ones, just people making their way through tough circumstances, some more admirably than others. This is a long book, for Gavir has a long journey, but that merely means he has well earned his tears of joy on the final page. Journey by his side, and you will earn yours along with him.

Love’s Labors Lost

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They Both Die at the End
by Adam Silvera.
2017.


“Maybe it’s better to have gotten it right and been happy for one day instead of living a lifetime of wrongs.”

If a book keeps me up past my bedtime, gets me teary, and even after I finish it I still can’t sleep because I need several hours to process how I feel about what I just read, that’s an automatic “highly recommended.” Thanks, Adam. (I think.)

They Both Die at the End is a young adult science fiction novel is set in a world just like ours, with one huge difference. In this world, there exists a service called Death-Cast. Every midnight, Death-Cast phones every person who is going to die on the coming day, to give them a heads-up. To give them one last chance to live to the fullest. To say goodbye. To have a fling. To do whatever they need to do on their Last Day.

Mateo Torrez is eighteen. He is bright and talented and kind. He is also agoraphobic and hardly ever leaves his apartment in New York City. He’s about to begin college (an online university, of course). On September 5, 2017 (the release date of the book!) Mateo gets the call. It’s a shock. How could a healthy young man who is too timid even to leave home possibly die so young?

Rufus Emeterio is seventeen and also a New Yorker. He gets the call in the middle of beating up his ex’s new boyfriend. Rufus is angry and hard edged. But cut him some slack. He lost his parents and his sister in a car accident just four months ago. Now he lives in a foster home and wonders what kind of future awaits him. None at all, it seems.

Mateo and Rufus don’t know each other. Neither of these young men has anyone to spend his Last Day with. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. It’s called Last Friend, and before dawn breaks, Rufus and Mateo are Last Friends. They spend a magical day in New York together, doing their damnedest to live to the utmost. They make their goodbyes. They try new things. They party. They fall in love. Rufus teaches Mateo to be brave. Mateo helps Rufus rediscover his gentle spirit.

Spoiler: They both die at the end.

They Both Die at the End is a tour de force. A novel in which Death is so near it is practically one of the characters will instantly trigger deep feelings, but this is a two-edged sword. Once you’ve got your readers by the feels, you’d better use the opportunity to show us something worth the pain of the journey, or else your book will feel like cheap manipulation. I am happy to say that Adam Silvera not only passed the test, he aced the extra-credit section.

Silvera’s “Death-Cast” is more than just a gimmick to get the plot moving. He devotes some of his novel to examining the impact Death-Cast has on society, on hospitals and emergency services, on celebrity culture, on the internet. Even “Deckers,” as they are called—I couldn’t suss out why—have to put up with creepy people on the internet. Silvera also devotes some chapters to introducing a cast of minor characters. Some are Deckers wrestling with their own fates, some are not, some are already known to Mateo or Rufus, others are not, but all of them cross paths with our two young protagonists on their fateful day.

For this story belongs to Mateo and Rufus. It isn’t easy spending your Last Day with another Decker. You can’t help wondering whether you have inadvertently sealed your own doom. Maybe the piano destined to land on his head is going to get you too, since you chose to tag along. Hilariously, tragically, the two young men avoid taking elevators. “Two Deckers riding an elevator on their Last Day is either a death wish or the start to a bad joke,” says Rufus.

Over the course of their remarkable day and this amazing book, Mateo and Rufus overcome their initial discomfort, get to know one another, say their goodbyes, have adventures, and narrowly escape several incidents that might have been The End for one or both of them right there. They also open up to one another and heal each other’s hurts until at last their budding friendship blossoms into an honest-to-God love. And Silvera strikes not a single false note along the way.

But as the day passes—noon, 5:00 PM, 7:00 PM—the time allotted to them grows short. The tension mounts as they know, and we know, that it must happen before midnight, yet they and we hope beyond any hope that somehow, some way, they will escape their shared fate. One of the most touching moments in a book chock full of touching moments is when the two young men each try to make the other promise not to die first, because neither wants to be the one left behind, even for a moment. It is a promise neither has the power to make of course, and logically they can’t both make it, but the heart has a logic of its own. At last, death comes for them, deaths that were perfectly predictable, in hindsight.

We would do well, every one of us, to follow the example of Mateo and Rufus. It is not given to most of us to know the day of our own deaths. But we all know that Death will come. We cannot escape it any more than Rufus or Mateo could. Most of us will never live a day as full as theirs, but we can at least strive to live as many of the days that remain to us as fully as we are able.

Because we all die at the end.

The Wearing of the Green

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Jade City
by Fonda Lee.
2017.

I regret that I’m late to this party; by the time I get around to writing a review of this book, it’s already snagged a Nebula nomination for Best Novel and a Locus Award nomination for Best Fantasy Novel, so it’s well past the time I can claim to have “discovered” it. I was sold on Fonda Lee’s writing by Exo, so when Jade City came out, I read it right away, but I had to think about it for a while before I felt ready to write about it. This is a book that invites thought.

Jade City brings to mind classic Bruce Lee martial arts films, but with jade magic substituted for conventional martial arts. It’s set in an imagined world drawn from our East Asia. The island of Kekon won its independence a generation earlier with the help of Green Bones, Kekonese warriors who have mastered the art of magical combat using power drawn from the jade they wear. Today, the same clans that secured Kekon’s freedom act as underworld crime families. They battle for control of the districts of Janloon, the capital (and titular “Jade City”), policing the streets, expanding their own interests, claiming stakes in local businesses, and helping friends of the clan while fighting off attempts by other clans to expand their own influence in the same way. Kekon might be Taiwan. Or Japan. Or the Philippines. Janloon might be Tokyo. Or Hong Kong. Or Singapore. The technology of this world seems to be 1970-ish. There are cars and air conditioning and television, but no sign of computers or mobile phones. Maybe that’s why my mind keeps going to Bruce Lee films.

I have to say that I’m probably not the ideal person to comment on this book. I was never able to get into martial arts films. (Even though my family is part Asian, and it’s not like no one’s ever tried!) So I approached Jade City with some doubts about whether someone like me could enjoy this book. I’m happy to report that those doubts were groundless. Fonda Lee has built a living, breathing world populated with a cast of varied characters struggling to maintain their positions as the ultimate conflict—between Janloon’s two most powerful clans—threatens to tear their world apart. There are young people learning to become adults, adults learning how to lead, and elders struggling to let go. Here you will find warriors wielding jade magic to defend their way of life, lovers finding, or rediscovering, their passions, and secrets everywhere, waiting to be unraveled. There is Lan, the leader of the clan, an able administrator, but perhaps not the right person to lead his clan into war. There is his brother Hilo, skilled in jade combat but hot-headed and too easily provoked. And their sister Shae, who walked away from the clan but now finds herself returning in her family’s time of need.

I particularly liked Lee’s use of linked points of view to introduce the large cast of characters she’s created. We meet a teenage criminal in the first chapter, he meets the character who becomes the POV character in the second chapter, who meets another POV character, and so on. It’s an effective way to ease the reader into this world without overwhelming. Jade City tells a sprawling story with many engaging characters, each trying to make her or his way through a world suddenly off balance and changing in unpredictable and dangerous ways. That’s a circumstance we call all identify with.

Jade City isn’t like anything you’ve read before, and even if you’re like me, and martial arts films aren’t your thing, its characters and world will keep you reading and will stay with you a long time after you’ve finished.

Narrator, Unreliable

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character, driven hc.indd

Character, Driven
by David Lubar
Tor. 2016.

 

DISCLAIMER: I am going to say some mildly spoilery things about this book farther down in the review. If that bothers you, you should bail before you get there. Don’t worry; I’ll warn you.

I was not previously acquainted with the work of David Lubar. Now I’m going to have to correct that oversight. Character, Driven is a masterful coming-of-age story that, incidentally, is also something of a catalog of literary devices, as the title implies.

We are introduced to Cliff, the first-person narrator of the story. Cliff (as in “on the edge”) is a clever, witty, charming young man who comes to life on the first page, and makes you feel sorry to say goodbye on the last. I speak from personal experience when I say that creating an adolescent character who is charming and authentic at the same time is no small feat, but Lubar makes it look easy.

Cliff has the usual sort of teenager problems. He’s a high school senior who doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. There’s a new girl in the school that Cliff is interested in, but he’s afraid to ask her out. He is not popular (odd, considering how likable he is, but we’ll get back to that), although he has the usual circle of offbeat friends. He’s working two part-time jobs and having trouble staying awake in class. And he is brutally honest with the reader, sharing his deepest, most shameful thoughts and bravely recounting his life’s greatest embarrassments.

His honesty aside, Cliff has a playful streak, and he lets it run loose with you, the reader. He indulges in word play that ranges from sophisticated to eye-rolling. He gives the characters in his story Dickensian names that reflect their natures. (A teacher with a drinking problem is Mr. Tippler. A super-competitive classmate is Abby Striver. A classmate who has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is Jimby Fasborne.) And he plays with every literary device you can think of, often in the context of denying he’s doing it:

I was almost at the door at the rear of the gym when something smacked the back of my head. I could try to craft a clever literary device to convey disorientation total my but that thing of sort is half too clever by. So, it with on get let’s.

Speaking of literary devices, let’s not overlook the Unreliable Narrator. I suppose that’s slightly spoilery, but before you condemn me, consider that Cliff opens the book by describing himself being beaten within an inch of his life by a stepfather in an alcoholic rage, then picks himself up, dusts himself off (metaphorically speaking), and asks you, the reader, “Do I have your attention? Good. That’s crucial. Grab the reader with the first sentence.” It turns out he doesn’t even have a stepfather; he lives with both his biological parents. His dad is an accountant.

If the self-conscious literary devices and the made-up names and the fanciful opening scene aren’t enough to drive home the point that Cliff isn’t quite as honest as he seems, he concludes the opening chapter by proclaiming that his story better have a good plot, because he is not strong enough of a character to drive the novel himself. Apart from the meta-fictional novelty of watching a character draw his own conclusions about how strong a character he is, in truth Cliff couldn’t be more wrong. This is absolutely a character-driven story, as, um, Lubar told you in the title. So that Cliff is not a 100% trustworthy narrator is obvious early on.

I suspect any teenage boy who likes to read will see a lot of himself in Cliff, and I would recommend the book highly to any and all of them. As well as to any teenage girl who might be wondering what makes boys tick. I also recommend it to older people, like me, who enjoy a good young adult story. This novel made me feel like a teenager again, and at my age, that’s quite a feat. A greater one, even, than creating a likable and authentic teenager.

Also, though I can hardly imagine a worse thing an old person like me might say to a young person to induce them to read a book than, “It will be good for you. You’ll learn something,” it is nevertheless true. The self-conscious style makes Character, Driven a good choice for young people (even not-so-young people) with an interest in writing, or interested in examining the craft of writing.

Okay, it’s time for you spoiler-averse people to bail now. I have one more thing to say. A mild spoiler follows.

I read this book twice in the first week. Why twice? Because there is a revelation on page 277 (out of 290) that made me blurt out “Oh, my God!” to the empty room I was sitting in when I read it. Because, though Cliff has been brutally frank with the reader up to that moment, he has one secret he shares with no one, not even you. As Character, Driven progresses, the reader will begin to pick up that there is an inexplicable sadness in Cliff’s core that comes through in spite of his attempts to laugh it off. Sure, he’s got the usual teenager problems, but when he spends a chapter toying with the idea of suicide, we know something is way wrong.

Cliff eventually comes clean. Not only is there something important in his life that he has been keeping from the reader, he’s even gone so far as to make tweaks to the story, in order to distract you from the one thing Cliff can’t face up to. When he finally finds the courage to tell you (and everyone else), his life changes dramatically.

And so does the book. Most of what’s already happened is now revealed in a new light. And now you have to read it all over again, in that new light. The only other work I can think of to compare this to is The Sixth Sense, the 1999 film by M. Night Shyamalan. Not because Character, Driven has any supernatural elements (it doesn’t), but because, like the film, once you know the reveal at the end, it becomes an entirely different story. And that is David Lubar’s greatest feat of all.