Book Review: Red Star Hustle / Apprehension

 

Images: the covers of both books in the double press are shown. Both are cyberpunk street scenes with bright neon colors. On the left is Red Star Hustle showing a night street from above with a person running downward with neon green graffiti art on the building walls. Across the top in bright red is red star hustle. Below that in yellow is nebula award winning author Sam J Miller. To the right is the second book cover showing a person standing in the center of the road viewed head on. There are buildings on both sides towering past the top of the image and a spiral galaxy can be seen in the distant sky. Across the top in yellow is Mary Robinette Kowal, hugo and nebula award winning author. Below that in large letters is Apprehension.

I was pumped to see Saga Press put out a double book like this. It has been a while since I have seen one of these fun texts where you flip it over in the middle and start anew. The draw of the book for me was a favorite author - Sam J. Miller - putting out the novel Red Star Hustle. I was not only excited to read more from him, but also to see him take on a cyberpunk space opera style that I had not previously seen from him. The bonus was getting to be introduced to a second author who I was not familiar with previously- Mary Robinette Kowal. Her entry Apprehension was attractive as a sort of crime thriller space opera of a shorter, novella length.

I have never reviewed a double before, but it seems best to just review each book. I was worried that might be a large disparity in quality between the two making them difficult to rate. Both books ended up being about 4 stars for me. Imperfect but highly enjoyable.

Red Star Hustle follows two main characters points of view: a young sex worker in space who is framed for the murder of one of his clients and an agent tasked with tracking him down. I saw that other reviews found it too sexual, but I did not. I am not into long drawn out graphic sex scenes and I did not find those in this book to be so. They captured the romance between the protagonist and his love interest- heir to a massive empire whose details I will leave out so as not to spoil things. There was a fairly decent variety of characters of varied demographics with complex flaws and strengths. Addiction is a factor tying many of the most prominent characters together at different phases- long term sobriety, acceptance and attempting to start, and one who has not fully grasped his own addiction. 

I assume the author or someone close to him is in 12 step programs because there was a lot of that in addiction discussions. As a person who owes much of my own escape from the horrors of addiction to the community found in 12 step programs, I get it. That said, I wish there was a little more variety. 12 step programs don't really work much for more than community and are highly flawed- including the demeaning of treatments that are now shown to be very effective such as suboxone and treating any mistake as something that forces you to start all over with your "clean time." Unlearning this stuff took me a bit of education and humility. I don't think 12 steps programs are bad, there are great mutual aid elements, especially within groups who splintered off and removed some of the garbage, just that they should not be considered the gold standard. I will end this tangent by saying that this represents a variety of addictions well but is limited in the solution.

Miller is excellent at world building and I really felt immersed in the spaces he created in this book from inside ships to elaborate societal structures and inequities. The complex portrayal of sex work was also welcome. I enjoyed the entire story and felt it had a satisfying ending. I do think the book needed to be longer in order to properly explore the twists and turns the story took. There are at least three different times where Aran has an epiphany seemingly out of nowhere about an elaborate plan and shift in storyline. The first one I forgave despite not knowing how he came to the conclusion. The others though were too much. I enjoyed the book enough that I gladly would have read another 100 pages if they helped integrate the twists a bit more. I am not talking about excessive exposition, but anything to show how Aran came to the conclusions he did. 

I am happy to have another Sam J Miller book on my shelf and look forward to anything he puts out next. I would love more cyberpunk stories. We essentially live in the stupidest cyberpunk timeline here in the USA at the moment and I crave something a bit more queer, flashy, and somehow uncharacteristically optimistic.

Kowal's Apprehension felt like a good piece of fiction to pick up next. It allowed me to keep my head in outer space for a little while longer. This book also had a great mix of characters. I loved that the protagonist was a badass older woman with a southern USA accent and a variety of trade histories including neurosurgery. Characters like these can sometimes be written to a fault- either a grandma character whose whole identity is that, or a older person who is exactly like everyone else. I appreciated the inclusion of things like arthritis, disability, complex trauma, fragility, etc along with wisdom, strength, perseverance, family, and so on. She's a grandma driven to protect her family as well as someone digging into a mystery.

It is difficult to speak too much more about the novella without tons of spoilers. I will say that I enjoyed the thrill ride that Kowal took me on and felt immersed in the story. I do feel the book also suffered a little from a sudden shift in the ending. The book almost feels rushed and like a different book altogether when then end is wrapped up. It would have been cool if more time was spent wrapping things up.

Overall, I was happy to experience another story from a favored author and to be introduced to a new one. I look forward to read more from both Miller and Kowal in the future.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Little Red Barns

Image: the cover of the book is a black background with cream colored writing interspersed between sequential identical icons of small red barns and a cream colored factory. The top says "little red barns." Then, divided by icons is "hiding the truth from farm to fable." Across the bottom is "Will Potter, author of green is the new red."

I am a long time follower of Will Potter. His old site Green is the New Red was a bit of a companion to me in my organizing days before my health knocked me down too much. Not only did I often feel isolated from other leftists who were frequently unwilling to face exploitation of other animals and environmental destruction as important issues, it was just a scary time all around existing through the height of the green scare. Maybe that is not a correct way to frame it, as the damage has been done, the laws like the AETA and Ag-Gag still exist, and people are still being charged with "terrorism" for things like rescuing abused animals or property destruction with no harm to the living. Back then, animal and earth activists were labeled the #1 domestic t-word threat in the USA and the feds came down on these movements like a never-ending avalanche. There are still people languishing in prison from outlandish sentences, ones who were returned to high security prison for blogging, and others who were freed due to entrapment and the state withholding evidence (but not before their lives were torn apart.) The surveillance at the time was so suffocating that even the most banal and unthreatening actions such as blogging about animal suffering or having a completely legal sidewalk protest would still attract feds. I suppose since then I have seen the feds acknowledge that nazis killing people might be a tad more important than people rescuing chickens or filming animal torture, but it is still bad.

It was exciting to see Potter put out his newest book Little Red Barns as it is an important catalogue of past and present that is very relevant to the current dystopian state of things, especially in the USA. Animal agribusiness industries have brilliant front groups and advertising that has allowed them to frequently skirt the response to blatant violence towards other animals, decimation of neighborhoods they use up and destroy, and being top causes of climate change. The myth of humane slaughter and "family" farms is a big part of that as well as the utilization of wealth to influence political action. To salvage my mental health, I chose to limit my consumption of media that speaks of harm to animals in detail many years ago. I make few exceptions. Reading this book in its entirety is one of those. Do not misunderstand me- this is not simply a book of horrific descriptions of abuse. But, there are some descriptions woven throughout the text as it is impossible to convey the reality without mention of it. Potter describes his own awakenings to this info and encourages the reader not to look away.

There is a frank discussion about media saturation with violence. When should we witness harm? What purpose does it serve? When is it responsible to look away? When does it motivate us to act and when does it desensitize us? I often see this discussion about harm to humans, but this is one of the rare times I have seen it addressed regarding harm to other animals as well. Potter is not the first, but brings it to another audience.

Given my aforementioned history, I expected to know a lot of the content in this book already. I lived through many of the things he discusses. I thought I would pick up some new info here and there while enjoying Potter's work as always. This book was a much bigger experience than that for me. There were facts like learning that the AETA was actually written in part by animal exploitation industry ceos that should not have surprised me but did. I always knew these powers were huge but did not realize they were actually writing the laws as well. I also didn't realize just how absolutely horrific and disgusting the treatment of people living in neighborhoods where these farms exist is. I knew about the shit sprayed into the air at times, the poor air and water quality, and other forms of hell. I did not realize you literally have to use your windshield wipers to see past the feces while driving and that you can never open your windows. Potter visiting these places, interviewing people, and cataloguing the experience was something I had never read before.

Potter also breaks down all of the arguments in favor of exploitation of farmed animals (and all of the resulting effects upon wild animals, environments, humans, etc) and combats them frankly. His arguments are not devoid of passion, but he relies heavily on concrete evidence and explanation of what is going on behind all of the closed doors and red tape. He shows well the connections to fascism and other forms of oppression. Near the end of the book, he discusses how seeing the big picture in regards to how all of these oppressions are interconnected was illuminating to him. The only thing I think he could have improved upon here is inclusion of the feminist organizers, writers, sanctuary workers, etc who have been discussing these ideas for some time. It would have wrapped the whole thing up nicely.

I found Potters writing style in this book to be interesting as well due to how intimate it was. He went out of his way to acknowledge his own biases and combat them in his reporting. He often writes in a more detached journalistic style, but this book is full of bits of memoir. It meant a lot to read things like this in part because of how much I related to Potter. Being aware of what occurs on these farms and slaughterhouses, what they do to the people who live in neighborhoods that rain literal shit, what they do to the soil and climate, and so on is taxing. On top of that, spending so many years doing what often feels like screaming into the void trying to change things is very defeating. It becomes more taxing when otherwise liberation minded people ignore it. Watching the same leftists who would break a window to save a dog from a hot car turn completely reactionary in regards to the suggestion that farmed animals should not suffer in the same way is beyond depressing. But, I digress. This is all a recipe for mental health crises and I was very grateful to see Potter speak frankly about it. 

Despite the level of struggle expressed, Potter still manages to end the book on a more positive note. It reminds me a bit of the book Hope without Hope. Even though we are often up against unstoppable forces, we need to keep going. There is no movement in history that was one and done. Things will always be shifting and we will always need to evolve with that. 

I definitely recommend this book to pretty much anyone. It's especially important for folks without knowledge of animal agribusiness industry, government repression, and so on- even if they don't consider these things as personally relevant. These effects spread across the planet and to other movements. It is very important for folks who believe that "humane" exploitation both exists and is easy to choose over factory farming. It is important for folks concerned with climate change. It is also a good book for folks who may already agree or think that they know the info therein. There is a lot here that I did not know. The connection and validation of personal struggles in and around these movements is also a big benefit to reading this. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.