cosmic_llin

I liked this book when it was a fantasy noir starring a biracial knife-throwing assassin with magic hands in 1940s New York who's trying to get out of the business but keeps getting pulled back in. But that book wraps up about a third of the way through the actual book. Then it turns into a completely different book where the assassin moves upstate with her boyfriend and the story becomes about slimy small town politics and the characters' profound guilt for their actions in the city, and I became increasingly confused about what the book was trying to do and decreasingly satisfied with my reading experience.

Part of the problem is that Dev (the boyfriend) kind of rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't feel invested in the romance between him and Phyllis (the assassin), so shifting the focus more to their relationship was not going to work well for me. I actually liked both characters less and less as the book went on, and by the end I was feeling pretty fed up with both of them. A late promotion to the group of main characters is Tamara, Dev's ex, who comes to have a close bond with Phyllis as well. There is some interesting complexity to the dynamic of this trio, but I ended up frustrated with the way it was handled.

relationship endgame spoilers

It seemed to me that this was going in a poly triad direction, and then backed off of it. And I mean... it's not not poly. Phyllis, Dev, and Tamara have a one-night threesome, and Tamara also has a boyfriend who's deployed overseas, and in general it is not a book that assumes people only love one person at a time. I did appreciate that. What specifically threw me was this passage in Tamara's POV:

Sure, she and Phyllis had kissed that night with Dev and even now, in certain light, she didn't mind the notion of touching Pea [Phyllis] until she came. But the love she felt wasn't really that kind—it was a blood love, a bone love, and it ricocheted off of her other loves at unexpected angles.

Maybe I'm misreading the author's intention in pushing away the idea that Tamara's love for Phyllis is "that kind", or maybe I'm misunderstanding what "that kind" is supposed to be. But to me it read like the poly dynamic was being held at arm's length, which was not the direction I'd hoped it would go. I guess the Tamara/Phyllis relationship is ambiguous and not clearly defined as (queer)platonic or romantic, which sometimes I like, but the way it was presented here didn't land for me.

I also didn't understand what we were supposed to take away from the reveal of how the magic in the book works.

worldbuilding and plot spoilers

Only certain rare people have magic, and only people of color. It's eventually shown that the magic is a gift from their ancestors, who intended for their descendants to use it to fight white oppression. But if the ancestors are displeased with how the magic is used, the magic can turn against its holder or disappear completely. This explains why Phyllis loses control of her hands—the ancestors wanted her to assassinate the sadistic mob boss Vic (who is white), but by that point Phyllis wanted to stop killing so she didn't do it. She spends the rest of the book trying to make amends for the murders she's committed, yet her hands continue to torment her for not killing Vic, and she eventually sickens and dies. Dev, who also has magic, does kill Vic, and is tortured by guilt for the rest of the book, and he also dies. Tamara has magic too, and also becomes consumed with guilt because even though she never hurt anyone directly, she worked for Vic and looked the other way; she tries to sacrifice herself to save Phyllis but doesn't succeed.

To me it ended up reading like the characters were being punished for not living up to binding magical agreements that they never consented to or even knew about, which override their own agency and moral convictions. What are the ancestors trying to accomplish here? How does any of this help in the fight against racism? We're told that magic is getting rarer, but it's not really explained why. I know it's not because people of color in the 1940s don't need the help, and I can't imagine the author is saying it's because they're not worthy of it, but... what, then? Phyllis and Dev's daughter is supposed to have extraordinary powers, but I don't think that's explained either and I didn't have a clear sense of what she's expected to do. The whole cosmology of the book didn't make sense to me.

It sucks because I find Johnson's prose excellent, and the first third worked so well for me. I really didn't want to have to say I don't like this book! But alas, here we are.

When I was a kid I had two artillery games: Tank Wars and QBasic Gorillas.

Both games share the same basic concept. You and your opponent sit on opposite ends of a battlefield and take turns lobbing projectiles at one another in parabolic arcs, adjusting the angle and power of each shot to try to land a hit.

Tank Wars, created by Kenneth Morse, allows you to customize a myriad of game options, from windspeed to the color of the sky. You can play hotseat multiplayer, or if you have a keyboard and a mouse (fancy!) you and a friend can huddle around the computer together and split the controls. If your friends are unavailable there are CPU opponents of various levels of skill, from "Mr. Stupid" to "Wind Master". As you rack up points you can buy bombs with different blast radii, and when you win the terrain blows up in a satisfying crater and rains back down on the field in an elaborate shower of pixels.

QBasic Gorillas came with MS-DOS 5.0 and was created by Microsoft as a demonstration of the capabilities of the QBasic programming language. You and your opponent are gorillas who throw exploding bananas, and when you win, you do the Monkey.

Tank Wars is, I suppose, the "better" of the two games, in the sense of having more sophisticated graphics and gameplay. But does it have dancing gorillas? Does it have exploding bananas? Does it have a cartoon sun that makes a face like 😮 if you manage to hit it? I ask you. I did play both games a lot, but I know which one was more appealing to my sensibilities as a child of 8-9 years of age.

subtitle that didn't fit in the subject line: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

I'm going to say this prominently because I think it has caused some confusion among reviewers: This is a book by two nonbinary authors and the title is Life Isn't Binary, and it is NOT (primarily) about nonbinary gender identity! If you want a book that is primarily about nonbinary gender identity, this book may not give you what you're looking for!

Instead, it is about problems with binary thinking in all areas of life. There is a tendency for people to view many things in terms of two categories in opposition. Male/female and cis/trans, yes, but also Black/white, straight/gay, privileged/marginalized, body/mind, emotion/logic, friend/lover, us/them. The book examines and deconstructs these binaries and more, and encourages thinking about who currently benefits from their resultant flattening of nuance, and what we could gain from framing concepts in a less polarized way.

The book is short but extremely densely packed with ideas. I read it as a two-person book club with dragonque, and every chapter elicited fruitful discussion about its points and how they related to our own lives and experiences. I have known dragonque for a long time and I feel like I got to know them much better through talking about this book!

I do think at times it can feel too dense and too short for the vast scope of its thesis. The authors can state in one sentence an absolutely massive idea that could itself be an entire book, and that's the only thing they say about it because they're already on to the next point. (The authors have in fact collaborated on several other books which sound like they may elaborate on some of the things where I was like, "so, that's all you're going to say about that one? okay!")

But I found the book very worthwhile and thought-provoking, and after returning it to the library I bought my own copy because I expect I will be re-reading it, referring to it, or wanting to lend it to people.