I’m almost caught up! And I’m reading a SUPER long book so I’ll stay caught up. Mothership readers remember than HBO was at one point considering a show called Confederate (helmed by the white-savior-narrative peddlers of Game of Thrones, ugh) that would tell the story of an alternate history of the U.S., a what if the South had won. Underground Airlines has a different alternate history to propose – what if the war had never really been fought, but a truly terrible compromise reached instead? In this history, […]
When Speculative Fiction Speculates All Too Well
Like many of the books I read, I first heard about Underground Airlines on NPR—in a book review by Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air. It came out about the same time as Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Because I read Whitehead’s novel first, that world was rattling through my head as I entered the alternative history that Ben Winter has created—where the civil war never happened and where slavery still exists in the United States, even if it’s only confined to four southern states. It’s […]
An excellent book with a few concerns.
I’ll be honest: it really concerned me that this book was written by a white guy. I have hesitations about whether this is entirely his story to tell, and I’d like to hear a POC’s perspective on it. I think it was written and handled well, but I’m saying that will the full awareness that it’s not fully mine to judge. Frankly, this is a story that includes the n-word a lot and presents the first person perspective of a Black man in a world […]
Two books for the price of no thanks
These two detective stories have made me realize I need to do a better job of picking mystery novels. I’ve been completely spoiled by Tana French who manages to make even the most basic characters interesting. One could even argue that her mystery plots aren’t all that complex or interesting and yet, I’m always enthralled. These two books squandered super interesting premises on garbage characters. Brilliance is a bookish take on the X-Men premise of humans being born with super abilities. These abilities are a […]