Image: The cover of the book is a black background with spirals and lines scribbled all over in thin white ink. In the center, in red, green, and blue rounded letters outlined in white is, "atoms never touch." Across the top in small green letters in a box is "emergent strategy series." Across the bottom in blue letters in a white box is micha cárdenas. Below that in red letters in a box is "foreword by adrienne maree brown."
This is a review I have admittedly dreaded writing. I already feel anxious writing a negative review for any book that isn't obscenely oppressive because writing is difficult and I generally think exploring one's creativity regardless of skill is a worthwhile endeavor. I admire micha cárdenas' organizing work on behalf of migrants and have enjoyed the nonfiction writing of hers that I have read. In fact, her essay in another emergent strategy series book - Pleasure Activism - was one of the few that made an otherwise mediocre book a worthwhile read. Given that she has such a wide array of talents, I was looking forward to reading her foray into fiction with Atoms Never Touch. Unfortunately, she is mortal like all of us and there is a limit to her abilities.
To be frank, this book reads like a first draft of a first fiction attempt written by someone who thinks fiction is different from nonfiction in terms of skill needed to write it successfully. An analogy to cárdenas' academic work would be if I decided to write an academic essay in the field she has a PhD in, did no research and no editing and then submitted it to be published in a journal alongside hers. Perhaps blame also lies at the feet of adrienne maree brown who writes a gushing foreword showing that she has read and should have edited or given feedback to her friend before sending this to press. Even if the story was good and the plot and subject matter made sense and were well researched, the writing style is unskilled and very obvious edits would have made it easier to read. In the first paragraph I could already tell what I was in for. It's the kind of writing with repetitive and unnecessary descriptions, "she took her bag to the sink, she put it on the counter by the sink, she washed her hands in the sink then picked up her bag from the counter by the sink," (this is not a direct quote but a fake example since I am reading from an ARC.) It's also one of the biggest examples of writing by someone who has not heard the phrase "show don't tell."
I do not think that this book could have been saved by better writing or editing however. The story itself does not make sense and the book does not know what it wants to be. A large chunk of it is essentially, "so I time traveled to another dimension again, anyway, here's 15 pages on why I like going to the gym and 20 more about this girl I met. Oh yeah time travel is like a huge part of my life but let's not even talk about or describe it, it's completely destroyed everything I know and love but it barely deserves mention and hasn't affected me emotionally really at all, here's 25 more pages about my date." If the science fiction part, which tries and fails to have some basis in fact, was attended to at all, this would be a different book. I was already put off by the title because it in itself represents misinformation. I was willing to forgive this until the titular line inside the book itself where two womens "atoms touched" causing a cascade of events which again made no sense. People who write successful science fiction books- especially those that include things rooted in reality like physics- do research on the topics they include rather than just putting what they think they might mean onto a page.
This book maybe could have been a lesbian love story with all of the half cocked scifi stuff left out of it. Also, the randomly added part where a new trans girl enters the chat (to avoid spoilers you will understand what I mean when you get to it,) felt tokenizing and kind of gross. This might have been able to be fashioned into a near future cyberpunk lesbian love story given the "auglens" technology involved, but the politics within the story necessary for a decent dystopia are also incredibly transparent and carbon copies of a Trump presidency. It's nearly word for word retelling something from real life with no metaphor or allegory in sight. The love story itself is not good, but it at least offers something that we don't see very often in a lot of romance writing. We know from books like This is How You Lose the Time War that a skilled author can indeed write an excellent time travel queer romance novel that draws in fans of all genres. ANT unfortunately fails in all of the ways TiHYLtTW succeeds.
Do I believe the author should never have tried her hand at fiction? No. Creative endeavors are always a good idea. If you want to publish though, take some classes, do a lot of practice writing, get people to read it who will offer actual constructive criticism, scrap the bad drafts, and start over. Choose a topic- time travel OR dystopia OR near future critique of technology, etc- and spend a ton of time doing research to build a believable narrative. If you can pull it off, maybe you can pull off more. The only way this book would have succeeded is if those who read it were honest with the author and told her they love her passion and to start again by including a ton of feedback they had for her. Decent fiction writing, like all of the nonfiction writing that the author has successfully done, takes talent, time, practice, and help. I hope that the next time she gives it a shot, she has a better foundation to draw from, puts more time into researching the story and outlining a structure, and has better folks in her corner with the willingness and ability to help her make it better. Until then, I will stick with where the author's talent and training lie- in her nonfiction work.
This was also posted to my goodreads.
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