“Hollow City” is the second book in the “Peculiar Children” series, picking up immediately where the first book left off without much catch-up exposition. As I continued reading the series, my feelings got darker and more desperate, in line with the experience of the characters. There is very little hope or joy in Jacob Portman’s journey. He is a young man who answers the call, and then just plugs away at all the minutiae of being a hero. It’s not that it’s a chore to […]
Mary Jane-ing the Pacific Theatre, one atoll at a time
There are good war novels, and there are bad war novels. And occasionally, a well-intentioned reader like myself gets saddled with an excruciating mess like Never Too Old to Cry. This is a fictionalized memoir of D. G. McWilliams, a veteran of the 1st Marine Division, which fought in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. McWilliams’ endeavor was to try to document the war from a very intimate perspective, primarily through the eyes of a small cadre of Marine recruits. Paramount among them […]
When I say “Nazis,” you say “No thank you!”
It’s 1962. The Allies lost World War II. Slavery is legal. The United States has been divided by its conquerors, with the Japanese ruling the West, and the Germans in the East, with a small No Man’s Land in the Rocky Mountains. The Nazis have exterminated Africans, drained the Mediterranean to make space for farmland, and developed and used the hydrogen bomb. Not content to only take over the world, they’ve started colonizing space. Meanwhile, there’s a book. It’s not banned, but it’s […]
A Shameful Reminder
Before the war, they had names. Identities. They had neighbors, friends, teachers, classmates. But as soon as Japan rained bombs down on Pearl Harbor, everything about these people was stripped away. Only their ethnicity remained. Japanese. Traitor. Other. Nameless, they were crowded onto trains, clutching their suitcases, trying to convince themselves they’d be home again soon. They were on their best behavior in the camps, trying to convince the guards they were “good Americans.” And they waited. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine follows […]