Reviews and Comments

EDIT: I just learned that the author is a TERF, as such I can't recommend this book or suggest supporting her work. I'll leave my original, uninformed review below.

A feminist speculative short story ironically featuring two men as the protagonists. The plot examines the lives, thoughts, actions, and interactions of these two old friends as they spend a day together navigating a heteromatriarchal world that is just as oppressive as our current heteropatriarchal one.

The role reversal at the center of the story does a magnificent job of bringing forth both the banal and extreme forms of repression and alienation that manifest under heteropatriarchy. But as during the course of the story, these events are experienced by men, the oppressively mundane suddenly becomes the outrageously absurd. As a cis male, I found this story engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring of reflection. I agree with those who say the ending could have been stronger, but overall, I would recommend this quick, impactful read.

My main response to having completed this book was, “Good riddance, I’m done with this series.” I suppose I could have stopped at any time, but I’m stubborn, so I insisted on reading all seven books. (Though this was the fifth one written, I read the two subsequently published prequels first.)

Of all seven books, this was my least favorite. It felt like Asimov was just phoning it in to complete his contractual obligation. For one, the previous books had various plotlines that inevitably intersected in clever ways – even if Asimov never mastered the skill of showing not telling. Yet this book only had one plotline from which we never veered, and it frankly got boring. What added to the boredom was that the plot was essentially all about an individual seeking to verify a decision he had already made in a previous book. Four-hundred pages about double-checking your answer is not the most inspiring of tales.

One upside of the book was a deep dive into a planet called Gaia that seemed to be inspired by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the noosphere, for which I have a soft spot in my heart. The possibility of extrapolating lessons from that form of consciousness did give value to the text. On the other hand, there were the usual drawbacks – Asimov’s sexism, predominantly. In addition, this novel heavily featured intersex characters who were treated with opprobrium, disgust, and misgendering, adding another disturbing layer to Asimov’s embrace of heteropatriarchy.

Overall, I would not recommend this book, nor would I recommend this series except for those interested in it as a historical artifact.

Not having a strong background in Claude Lévi-Strauss or Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this book was extremely challenging and at many points just didn't make sense to me. I ended up more skimming it than reading every word as it was all largely over my head.

From what I was able to ascertain that I did appreciate was the inversion of anthropology and anthropological practice via what Viveiros de Castro refers to as perspectivism and multinaturalism. These are rooted in the perspective of Indigenous peoples he conducted field work with in so-called Brazil who view all animals and spirits as humans as well. Meaning there are "human humans" and "non-human humans," but who is human varies depending on perspective. For example, a jaguar sees itself as human, but us humans as non-humans, whereas we may see ourselves as humans and the jaguar as non-human. However, all animal and spirit beings are wrapped up in humanity, which raises the point, "What everything is human, the human becomes a wholly other thing."

This perspectivism and multinaturalism leads Viveiros de Castro to reflect on how Indigenous peoples perform their own form of anthropology, including on the anthropologists doing anthropology on them. Because the Indigenous and Occidental frames are so different from one another, the forms of anthropology end up missing each other and misunderstanding each other. Along with the introduction of a third concept, that of "cannibal alterity," Viveiros de Castro ultimately is arguing for a new ontology of anthropology that, through rigorous engagements with Lévi-Strauss and Deleuze and Guattari, forces the Occidental anthropologist to reassess the ground on which they walk, think, write, and inhabit.

At least, that's what I got out of it, though I could be entirely wrong. This isn't a text to pick up unless one is well-versed in the aforementioned authors and passionate about the field of anthropology.

2.5 stars.

It's 2095, and technology has of course advanced rapidly, with the population reliant on designer pills and AI assistants as they primarily toil away at gig work. Posthumanism is in full effect, with some embracing transhumanism. In such a tech dependent society, a threat emerges that forces the populace to confront and fear its dependence on machines. Our hero springs into action to stop this "Machinehood" but first must determine if it is a smart AI, a group of neo-Buddhists, or a technophobic caliphate.

If you can push politics, some forced character construction and plot points, and some all-too-convenient and none-too-believable story twists aside and read this book for its entertainment value alone, then it might be worth picking up. But clearly the author meant for this to be a novel that inspires reflection on our relationship with technology. Unfortunately, the book falls short there.

This is in part because the author refuses to go all-in in her socio-political analysis. So we have horrific neoliberal capitalism that is sometimes bad, but not too bad. Venture capitalists as mournable victims but also cheats. A nauseatingly patriotic protagonist who has issues with the government. A strident defense of private property and law and order even when those things don't work out. There's so much waffling, I need some syrup. To top it all off, there's that elephant in the book called Orientalism (with a dab of Islamophobia), in that throughout, we constantly hear that "dark" North Africa and its ever-expanding caliphate might be humanity's existential threat. That's a tiresome trope.

I wish I could have liked this book more, but not with all those flaws. And one pet peeve: the caliphate is called al-Muwahhidun. The book always refers to it as "the al-Muwahhidun." But "al" in Arabic means "the." So literally hundreds of times we read about "the the Muwahhidun." The lack of knowledge to catch that error in many ways encapsulates the quality of this book on the whole.

I approached this book with some skepticism. In general, I'm skeptical of celebrities, even celebrities like Janelle Monáe. And more skeptical of celebrities who try to write books. My skepticism increased when I saw the five stories comprising this volume were co-authored by Monáe, with a different author contributing to each piece. At the same time, I really enjoyed the Dirty Computer Emotion Picture, but was unsure how well Monáe and her co-writers would pull off creating narrative worlds based off an album concept. Quite well is the answer.

I genuinely enjoyed each of these five stories. My skepticism has proven unwarranted. There is beauty, creativity, music, rebellion, love, vision, and authenticity running through these texts. There are the subalterns, the persecuted creating new worlds in the shell of the old, fighting back against a world in which they are not welcome and are targeted for erasure. There is queer, trans, and Black joy, resilience, and refusal. There are the dirty computers showing us the way through this storm of oppression, hatred, fascism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, transphobia, and misogynoir, showing us the potential end of this world and what possible new worlds might emerge or are already waiting for us.

A son gets kidnapped by a dragon and a mother and her superpowered crew go off to get him back. To do so, they traipse through various realms, spending most of their time in a place called the "Beyond" that reminded me a lot of the "Upside Down." Most of the text is dedicated to the project of worldbuilding, and there is plenty of that to go around. Frankly, it was a confusingly built world, with many different locations, specifics, and rules that made it difficult to keep track of or feel a part of or invested in.

I can't say that I really enjoyed this book and am grateful it was short. Everything from the action to the characters; the dialogue to the plot, felt clunky and forced, like jigsaw pieces that just wouldn't fit together properly. Little felt genuine, engaging, or even entertaining. While the author had creative ideas, I felt they didn't congeal into a workable whole. This is not a text I would recommend.

Many reviews and blurbs of “Critique of Black Reason” by Achille Mbembe note it as “challenging” or “demanding.” While not an easy read, a large part of the difficulty of the text emerges from its lack of structure and overall argumentative coherence, leaving one to feel as if one is reading a collection of disparate thoughts brought together in book form.

Mbembe sets out to write a genealogy of Blackness, or to pick apart Black Reason – that phenomenon of fantasy and ignorant apprehension surrounding the epistemology of the Black subject, Blackness, and Africa. However, the path often gets lost and at times it became unclear if I was reading a poor version of Paul Gilroy, a literary review of African novelists, or a history of French colonization. Clarity in the text also suffers from Mbembe’s reluctance or inability to ontologically situate Blackness, preferring to make insinuations or allow others to comment on being/nonbeing, subject/object, life/death, etc., without staking out his own claim. This makes his epistemological task all the more difficult, as it rests on unsure footing. Lastly, of course a book will be difficult when there are statements in the text that simply do not make sense or hold any water without the providing of further explication or supporting evidence, which is not offered.

There are other issues with the text, such as the focus on the nineteenth century as the key moment for racial construction, the gendering throughout of the Black Man (Hortense Spillers would like a word), and deploying as critique that which he is critiquing – namely speaking in a universalizing manner about Africa en toto or the ostensible experiences of all colonized peoples.

While I have been harsh in this review, the book is certainly not without merit and has poignant moments of analysis, in particular around colonization. It also ends in a spirit of hope and gestures towards the future, which I don’t share, but some people like that sort of thing.