cahn

Saturn Run (Sanford, Ctein) - 3/5 - I forget why I read this one, though I think there was some RL reason. It reminded me a little of Project Hail Mary, if most of the science in PHM (except, I guess, the orbital mechanics and some of the engineering, which they say they worked out carefully and I'm too lazy to check) was replaced by Political Thriller Hijinks, and if all the touching and sweet parts of PHM were replaced by manly machismo. The idea is that aliens have been found at Saturn, and China and the US promptly get into a tense space race to get there. The aliens themselves are treated as almost an afterthought to Tense Country Relationships. I honestly greatly preferred PHM's idealistic "all countries would work together with no problem!" to this book's "The USA must win at all costs and that's a happy ending!"

Verity (Hoover) - 3-/5 - I read this because of rachelmanija's review saying This Is Bonkers, and I guess I'm a sucker for bonkers?

It is, indeed, bonkers. It starts out with a man falling into NYC traffic and his head getting crushed "like a grape" in front of our POV character, the writer Lowen. No one apparently thinks this is odd, except for Lowen, who is at least upset that her shirt has blood all over it because she has a job interview. A good-looking guy, Jeremy, trades shirts with her so she can get to the interview. (He is A-OK with the guy getting crushed like a grape because... his daughter drowned?? Because that's so similar??)

I had previously read all the spoilers in rachelmanija's post (which I don't regret at all, although someone else who wanted to revel in the BONKERS might) and had I not, I would have assumed that Lowen and Jeremy were about to team up to investigate the dead guy's murder. (I even had a suspect, her slimy literary agent and ex-lover.)

Spoiler: the book is not about that at all! In point of fact what happens is that when she goes to her job interview, it is in fact with Jeremy! Who is married to the best-selling author Verity, who is in a coma (which is a secret because ?? I don't know why??) and Jeremy wants Lowen to ghostwrite more of her work. She moves into their mansion (Verity was a very bestselling author) and spooky/tense things start happening, including Lowen finding Verity's journal, which is, uh, in large part erotica featuring Verity and Jeremy, but also starts getting more sinister.

A couple of my notes from this book that I passed on to rachelmanija while reading (if you do read this, I highly recommend lining up someone whom you can splutter to when bonkers things happen):

His eyes match the tie he just shoved in his pocket. Chartreuse.
His eyes... Are chartreuse?? Wtf??

stubble on his jaw. It was the perfect length to scratch my thighs.
The... What?

This was a deeply weird book! It was compelling, I give it props for that; I finished it very quickly. But also bonkers!

The Cartographers (Shepherd) - 2/5 - of all of these I regret reading this one the most, because I feel stupider now than I did before I read it. (I only finished it because my sister wanted to talk about it, and it turns out she wanted to know whether I would agree with her that it was Not All That. I did.) Plus which at least Verity and Saturn Run were compelling, but this one was so boring that I would just sort of skip over pages just to try to finish it, and it still took me forever. And also all the characters are somehow both cardboard and unlikeable.

Also, this book makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE.

What would you do?? (Spoilers, but you weren't going to read this, were you?)

The plot idea here is that the main character, Nell, a thirtysomething washed-up cartographer, finds out that her parents and her parents' friends (all cartography grad students) found out (when she was age 3 or so) that there are these maps that have a town drawn on them that does not exist "in real life" -- but then if you have the map with you, that town actually does exist!

Now listen. If you found out that there's this whole extra town that exists just because it was printed on a map, what would be your reaction?
A) Whoa! Does this work for all maps??
B) If it doesn't work for all maps, what are the conditions on the new town or room or whatever showing up?? Is this just for printed maps? Is it just for maps produced by a certain company?? If the latter, what's so special about that company??
C) Is this violating physical principles in creating something out of nothing, and how does that even work?? Is there magic involved? Are printing presses magic????
D) Hey, does this mean that if you had a map of the solar system and you put a big city on Mars, that then that city would exist?? <-- actual response by 7-year-old when his parent was ranting about this plot twist

If you answered any of these things, congratulations, you have more logical or at the very least more interesting thought processes than the characters in the book, whose response is to go hang out in the new town that was created by the map for a few months while they make a very detailed map of that town. Because something something show the world something? Even though I have no idea what making a detailed map of the town adds?? Even though I can tell you the world would care less about a map of the town than they would about the fact of existence of the town??

And no, we never find out what conditions are for new towns showing up, and we never find out if it's magic or what, and we never find out whether any random person could draw a new town on a map and magically have it show up! (It seems like this is true, in the sense that it happens several times with secret rooms, etc.)

Really nothing the characters do make any sense. One of the members of the grad student group, Wally, goes rogue and obsessed, and there's a fire which engulfs a lot of these maps, in which Nell's mom dies. Except she doesn't actually die. She stays behind in the town and lets everyone else (except Nell's dad, but INCLUDING NELL) think she is dead, because she thinks... Wally will come to his senses if he thinks she is dead? Only this doesn't actually work, so it's not clear why she stays there for, like, 30 years?? And then when it seems like 20-something Nell might find the Map of Doom, Nell's dad basically browbeats her into losing her job and blackballs her in the cartography industry because...???? something something this would protect her?? instead of actually telling her what was going on?? NO SENSE.

Dark Matter (Crouch) 3-/5 - One where my sister wanted me to read it to tell her whether the quantum mechanics stuff in it was correct. (I told her the answer before I read a single word of it. The answer is, unless it is a physics professor writing it, the quantum mechanics stuff is never correct, and sometimes not even then. To be fair, this one at least name-checked the Many-Worlds hypothesis (the book is an extended riff on alternate universes) and even had the word "decoherence" in it, which is much better than I'm used to!) Although I don't recommend it, it was certainly much more compelling than Cartographers, and some of the alternate-universe hijinks were sort of interesting although it never got particularly deep. (Also content warning for AU's with extremely deadly pandemic, AU where everyone died of starvation, etc.) And the writer likes to write in that thriller style which means there are lots of --
Single phrases.
One phrase per line.
Or even less than that.
Word.
Because this builds tension.
Or something.
Also, there's a question of "which AU self is the 'right' one?" and the book's answer is "the right one is the one who is narrating the book," which is hardly at all satisfying.