Book Review: Children of Time

Children of Time

Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky in 2015

Synopsis: Children of Time tells two stories on a collision course, each spanning thousands of years and beginning long after Earth civilization destroyed itself. One follows the last of humanity, who have deciphered enough of their predecessors’ technology to launch an aging starship and now drift in and out of cryostasis as they search for a new home. The other follows a derailed terraforming experiment on a distant planet and generation after generation of the sentient life and civilization that has developed there.

Review: Befitting the title, the way Tchaikovsky plays with time in this book is masterful. The main human character we follow is woken for a couple days at a time between centuries-long sleeps, and the author beautifully captures his growing emotional ache and vertigo as he loses external markers of time, and his strained relationship with a confidant who is kept awake longer and steadily grows older than him. Planet-side, where everyone is living normal-length lives, each part of the book picks up with a new generation. While individual characters thus only survive for a few chapters, the next part gives three new characters the same names, treating them as continuations of the same archetypes—the main characters are each generation’s leader, its sharpest scientist, and its most talented second-class citizen. These unique time-jumps were fun to follow, and switching between the two stories at pivotal moments meant I was constantly kept in suspense.

Everything about life on the new planet Tchaikovsky invented is fascinating. The individual character and societal developments also feel authentic, meaning this novel might rope you in even if you’ve been burned too many times by hard sci-fi historical exposition. The human group too is given time to change. By the time these two civilizations began their inevitable conflict, far later in the book than I’d expected, I didn’t know who would win, nor who I wanted to.

Strengths:

• Dr. Avrana Kern. Both sets of characters are at the mercy of an entity whose dialogue is haunting.

• The commander isn’t a flat character hellbent on the triumph of industry or power for its own sake!

Weaknesses:

• After a certain point, I couldn’t understand or fully picture the ant computers. Admittedly, I have a similar upper limit on comprehending our computers.

• I’m sick of the epilogue trope where a child descended from and named after the main characters marvels at how the new society has worked itself out.

Rating: 18/20 orbits of the Messenger

Ideal Setting: Read this somewhere with minimal chance of encountering a spider.

Series Review: The Kyoshi Novels (Chronicles of the Avatar)

“The Rise of Kyoshi” and “The Shadow of Kyoshi”
Written by F.C. Yee in 2019

Synopsis: This “The Last Airbender” prequel duology* follows Aang’s past life, the Earth avatar Kyoshi, who learns of her identity much later than intended and finds herself in a reckless quest for survival and revenge.

Review: ATLA co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino has a foreword talking about his apprehensions with any spinoff and his personal requirements for an Avatar story. He signed off on Yee’s novels, and it quickly becomes clear why. The series drops readers back into a beloved world, complete with familiar bits like the hybrid animal species and innovative benders with unique signature moves, as well as brilliant scripting of minor characters to develop the main cast’s skills and worldviews as they work up to fighting the true antagonists. Yee’s writing also respectfully handles nostalgia, deprioritizing explicit references to the original series in favor of worldbuilding opportunities. In one memorable dialogue, we learn that Zuko’s obsession with honor in the show is a symptom of his culture as a whole. Kyoshi’s companion Rangi nearly says something that would give away Kyoshi’s identity in a dangerous situation, only to be cut off by someone fed up with hearing Fire nationals talk about their honor.

On the whole, Yee leans into worldbuilding in the places ATLA couldn’t. Plot points surrounding rival Fire Nation clans, a shrewd Earth minister, and ‘Fifth Nation’ pirates all flesh out the politics and culture of this world. This reflects the slightly older target audience of the series, and I was gripped by the dark turns and major twists in both books. Kyoshi’s coming into her own is radically different from Aang and Korra’s stories, and her legend is undoubtedly a worthwhile addition to the Avatar saga.

Strengths:

• We only meet one Airbender in each book, but they and their bison are wonderful.

• My long-standing question of “Can’t you use any element to make yourself fly?” has a satisfying answer.

• There are a dozen more entertaining moments and ideas I could list here.

Weaknesses: 

• Kyoshi’s closest companions don’t experience any development, and there is little to grasp at for any fans wanting more friend group antics.

Rating: 18/20 times Kyoshi is asked if she plays Pai Sho

Ideal Setting: Read this when it’s been too long since you tried moving the elements with your mind.

*The series is technically three books with a planned fourth, but the third begins an entirely new (well, older) story with Yangchen, and I was happy to stop here.

Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Written by James W. Loewen in 1995; 3rd edition released in 2018

Synopsis: History and sociology professor James Loewen critically examined twelve of the most popular American history textbooks. He found their content to be oversimplified and nationalistic to the point of being inaccurate (and boring!), failing to present history as an ongoing debate relevant for students today. Half of Lies gives a full, nuanced treatment to major periods in American history, while the rest of the book shows how implicit and explicit cultural agendas have distorted history textbooks and why educational reform has proven so difficult.

Review: I concur with other reviewers that every American citizen age 18 and above should read this book.

Loewen follows my Goldberg Gold Standard of Arguments: He gives a fair treatment of multiple perspectives, then doesn’t just explain why he believes others are wrong but also how they’ve come to hold those positions. Lies is not just revisionist history with a leftist agenda. It’s a plea by a concerned teacher who’s watched a generation of students make it to college stuffed with memorized facts about the War of 1812 and no understanding of Vietnam, students who aren’t even properly taught about America’s strengths despite being aggressively shielded from its hypocrisies.

There are some obvious culprits. Loewen has acted on his values, writing a more accurate Mississippi textbook rather than just calling out others’ flaws, and he places the example of his book being shut down by the state’s school boards within a nationwide pattern of officials and parents explicitly fighting to keep history bright and white. But Loewen doesn’t point fingers so much as splay his hands at systemic issues.  In incisive, documentary-like chapters, he gives sobering statistics on overworked teachers who themselves didn’t study history in college, blatant plagiarism and fact-checking failures by publishers trying to turn a profit, historians who lend their name to the covers of textbooks they neither wrote nor reviewed, and self-censorship from all parties out of an outdated fear of appearing Marxist. The resulting history education is a bland folk tale that leaves many students, myself included, baffled when we learn anything real about other cultures and our own.

The actual history Loewen presents is fascinating, backed in nearly every sentence by primary and secondary sources. I would’ve loved in high school to hear the full story of Squanto, the helpful Indian from the Thanksgiving story. Most textbooks just say he learned English from fishermen; Loewen charts his course being sold into slavery in Spain, escaping to England, convincing colonists to bring him home, and then prudently casting his lot with the Pilgrims after finding that his entire village had been wiped out by smallpox in his absence. If that makes anyone defensive about a beloved American tradition, it’s also worth noting Thanksgiving as we celebrate it today was spearheaded by Lincoln to boost patriotism during the Civil War, relatively recently for a holiday about our founding. 

Lies makes clear that the history of our history is deeply important and relevant to navigating today’s challenges. Here is a history textbook that fills in the gaps we didn’t know we had and that teaches readers to think critically about how we interpret imperfect historical evidence, as my high school textbook should have.

Strength/Weakness: If your interest is just in learning accurate history and less in discussing education and historiography, you can skip Chapters 1, 12, and 13 and still get a full book. 

Rating: 20/20 interventions in Latin America

Ideal Setting: Read this.