Reviews and Comments

We needed this book so much. We’re fortunate to have authors like Leah Penniman to collect all these beautiful Black experts together for us. The presentation of the dialogue is enjoyable, and there were handy introductions before each speaker. It was inspiring to hear from my people about this, in our voices, on tackling the biggest challenge of our time. Tell it like it is, call out the purposeful, systematic blocks and even sabotages to resolving past and current environmental issues! Mother Nature says we trippin’, and it’s true.

The scope of this book was more than I ever expected. Amazing that it took us from the farm to the city to the ocean, and every crack and crevice in between. The fact that the ocean is more the lungs of the planet than the forests was the biggest eye-opener here for me. So much we gotta do for our water, so much more attention which has to be paid.

And hell yeah, of course we bringing it all back to the arts, because only artists can shift social consciousness in the ways necessary to galvanize the people. This sentiment was so beautifully communicated in the chapter with Alice Walker, and expressed poetically later on.

Thank you Penniman for this very timely, very necessary collection.

A cinematic, action-packed, deep-space horror that explores familiar sci-fi and AI tropes in a unique way, and with striking imagery.

The scene was set here quickly and intriguingly. While a little slow at the start, it picks up a little more than halfway through. The slow build of the psych horror elements balanced by the light-hearted camaraderie between crew-members, of both organic and artificial intelligence, gives off a Wolf-359 feel. There's some things going wrong, but it's manageable and things don't seem too hopeless... yet.

Then it picks up and it's suddenly giving Dead Space, only with hard-light holograms, AI avatars, and robots instead of your usual fleshy mutations. (There were also a few instances that made me think of StarCraft, like when it was described how construction vehicles could be 3D-printed in 15 minutes to help get a colony going. Ummmm, we require additional pylons!)

The writing style here was excessively detailed in its description, but that's not to say the descriptive elements weren't beautiful. It's what made this thing so cinematic and easy to visualize in the first place. There are many memorable images throughout, like early on when we get the first hint that there's something up with the AIs and we see the spooky blue light of an avatar as it walks through an otherwise dark and deserted spaceship.

Actually, there was a pretty good range representing the ways artificial intelligence might manifest: holograms, 3D printed robots, voices or text just part of a machine. There's even little devices that fit around the wrist like inconspicuous accessories. Add to these your usual existential/philosophical considerations of what it is to be human and feel emotions. How might an AI develop emotions or experience sensations like hunger? How might it deal with those feelings? (And it was this part that reminded me of The Orphans podcast.)

Finally, the memetic virus the characters are up against, spreading through consciousness, AI or not, reminds me of The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. Though not quite as meta, the plot has some heavy existentialism that gets close.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette for a free digital copy of the audiobook in exchange for my honest feedback!

Here we have a workplace satire where the employees don’t even have names, just reductive titles like Scissors Guy (who steals all the scissors) or Leftovers (who leaves leftovers in her desk) or Porn Guy (who shares porn gifs back and forth with another guy). There’s the Intern, the CEO, and of course, the Cleaner.

I don’t use the buzzword “unputdownable” lightly, if at all in my reviews. And it looks like the word “propulsive” is also enjoying some buzz right now. But I actually did struggle to put down The Cleaner. I didn’t want to stop reading — I needed to know what the Cleaner would do next, if she would get caught, what would go wrong.

This story was more about the people unseen, how they were judged by the trash they left behind more than what they could actually be seen doing and saying to people. The Cleaner feels she really knows these people and takes care of them without ever having seen them. Unlike L., the night-time security guard, her job is her entire life, and she desperately wants to be part of the vibrant community she imagines the daytime workers share.

The satirical archetyping of characters was well done because it makes it even easier to relate to one’s own workplace. Does your office have a Yarn Guy, or a Vinyl Guy? Do people metaphorically bring their kids to work by setting up their school science projects in a shared space? What’s the gossip about the intern, and how does competition play out? It’s all analyzed with the dry yet sharp and biting humor of realistic satire here. I could even imagine some scenes (particularly the ones where the Cleaner is in the CEO’s office) happening on a stage theater like on SNL. The Cleaner looks around his office at her handiwork then closes the door behind her with satisfaction as she exits stage right.

The thing is, as a night worker, the Cleaner is starved for meaningful connection, not just coworker camaraderie. Besides L. she also interacts with M., the delivery person, and the intern who allows her a little peak into the loud, chaotic world of the daytime crew. This emotionally dependent but ambitious young woman provides the Cleaner the opportunity to learn with her and place some subtle suggestions in her ear using what she’s found out about the company by snooping around.

But really, they are all alienated and lonely in their way, and find ways to make little meaningful connections in their night where they can, whether it’s with a plant in the break room, a fish in the CEO’s office, or the ghosts of the daytime employees.

However, even the daytime employees are more alienated than the Cleaner would ever have guessed. They’re not looking up at each other over the course of their workday just because she tilts the angle of their desk to move a person into their line of sight. More likely than not, they are absorbed into their own world, totally oblivious to their coworker next to them, no matter how loud they’re speaking. Things just happen to them and they don’t even question who might have done it. They may not even know there is a night cleaner.

This book is a funny but no less poignant reminder that for most people, work is not their life or their family, no matter how a company might suggest that with its many stickers, posters, relationship building activities, fliers, or memos. The story traces the arc of a bottom-most employee who genuinely cares about the company doing well, and having that drive pulled out of her when it becomes clear how much management doesn’t know how to appreciate the actions of such employees. And a change in management usually doesn’t change that.

Right from the beginning this had me imagining past secret underground lab environments media has taken me to: Black Mesa from Half-Life, Hawkins Lab in Stranger Things. And my video game writing intuition turned out to be correct since this story has multiple endings at the final boss fight. Make sure to get them all for the achievement. (There’s no achievement, satisfaction is its own reward here).

While told from multiple POVs (which sometimes changes from paragraph to paragraph) the story mainly revolves around Abby, her fate, and her decisions. She’s the only female scientist at an underground laboratory and is trying to invent something to prove her merit, but she has the odds stacked against her with a faulty computer and the prejudices of Tony, the most authoritative scientist of the bunch with the most patents to his name. Then, when she does create something, the computer corrupts it, and chaos ensues. . .

This was an interesting and quick read. The multiple endings provide the opportunity to see what would happen to Abby based on which choices her male coworkers make. Because it was her creation, and certain choices will shift full blame to her and leave her with the fallout. Comparing the endings is part of the fun.

Only a couple complaints with the book, which are connected in a way. The pacing in the beginning was slow and dragged on with dialogue. The characters themselves were a bit flat — they had a background story but that was their one thing, their defining characteristic. Would have been more interesting if they had a bit more depth to them.

All that said, it was, most importantly to me, a fun read, even with cardboard-like characters, which is ultimately what boosted this from 3 stars to 4 stars for me. It helps that it’s subtitled as a “creature feature,” calling back to the horror B-movies of old. You know what you’re getting into with something like that, so you don’t go into it expecting a masterpiece of the craft, but you can still probably expect a good time.

This book is a Western-style study of evil, of multi-generational trauma and redemption, and of whether or not we can change our fate due to who our parents or grandparents were — and it’s a fun ride with a memorable cast of characters to boot. Not to mention the action-packed chase scenes and firefights between the fugitive main characters and the vicious Texas Rangers. This book was such a joy to read, and I loved sinking back into its atmosphere, its people.

The pacing and flow was perfectly done. The story editing here was top notch. Then there’s the sharp, insightful prose and dialogue with just the right amount of narrative self-awareness and social commentary. The subversion of the hero’s journey was cleverly executed, and made me laugh out loud at times. The dialogue especially felt very authentic, and I could clearly hear each character’s voice in my head.

The Sonoros family has blood ties to the first brother-killer, Cain of the Christian mythos. Many of them have led typically morally corrupt lives, and “have always had a talent for profit through wickedness” (p. 227). This story is one of why Remedio, an invisible shadow character who vaguely represents the grim reaper and occasionally makes himself known, follows Antonio Sonoros, living in the 1890s, and his grandson, Jamie Sonoros in 1964. It’s about what conclusion he comes to about humanity and fate after not damning Antonio straight to Hell as soon as he was born, as he was supposed to.

For it is Antonio who is destined to become the infamous Bullet Swallower. Remedio shadows him as he leads a life both of crime and of compassion, helps people, and kills them, and as he goes on a revenge quest after a group of Texas Rangers kill his brother.

Antonio acts “as though he were aware of the precariousness of his own existence, that he wished to perform some balancing of accounts within himself, committing murder and then saving a family from starvation on the same day, net equal” (75). He instinctively feels the need to balance the harm he does with care. He can be tender to people who need it — even if doing so gets him in trouble. But the point is that he does try to consciously balance his own perceived moral debts, and make up for crimes he’s committed.

Which is what most people with a shred of humanity left do, even the “evil” Texas Rangers. This book really shows you that inside everyone is a tender heart. Every character here gets a chance to finally reveal it.

Finally, the book portrays pretty well some situational answers to questions of fate, redemption arcs, healing from the transfer of trauma across the generations, and existential judgement in the face of this wild, wild world.