Reviews of favorite books

Fiction: Ithaca by Claire North

3/6/2026

Ithaca tells the story of Penelope from Greek myth who must fight off suitors and protect her country from civil war in the ten-year absence of her husband, Odysseus.
Penelope navigates a political tightwire by feigning indifference to the various suitors in order to maintain a tense and precarious balance of power among them. A kindly Egyptian threatens to upset the balance when he starts tutoring her son, Telemachus, in the arts of war. Penelope clearly explains that if she should show him favor, the other suitors would kill him.
Near the end, she advises the Egyptian to leave Ithaca if he would live—but he's been sent by his powerful older brother and can’t leave without disinheriting himself.

The story is told by a near-omniscient narrator with a wonderfully snarky tone. Two examples:
  Rosy-fingered dawn crawled its way across Ithaca’s back like an awkward lover fumbling at long skirts.
  From this termite hall [the palace] the kings of Ithaca send forth their commands across the western isles, all of which are far more pleasant than this wretched rock.

We soon learn the narrator is the goddess Hera, who has taken a particular interest in Queen Penelope.
She invites the reader deeper into the story:
  Follow me through the halls of the palace of Odysseus, follow to hear the stories that the men-poets of the greedy kings do not tell.
Here she describes Odysseus’s father, Laertes:
  [He was] an Argonaut, no less, a man who once sailed, under my banner, to fetch the golden fleece, before that little shit Jason betrayed me.

Throughout the story, Penelope is smart and resourceful.
When the island is attacked by pirates, the men are too busy competing among themselves to coordinate a proper militia. She organizes the women in the island’s defense.
This was one of my favorite aspects of the story: her recruitment of an Amazon to train the women, the participation of the goddess Artemis, and the women smartly playing to their strengths. The way they lay a cunning trap for the pirates—and reveal the suitor behind the attacks—is masterful.
I also loved how the men dismissed Penelope’s confession of how she actually pays for the nightly feasts for her suitors (through her own ingenuity and skillful trading). They believe Odysseus left her a horde of gold that she keeps hidden and nothing will dissuade them of this myth.

Several compelling subplots add depth to the narrative, the most intense being the flight of Penelope's cousin, Queen Clytemnestra, after murdering her husband and his concubine.
In her husband’s absence during the war, Clytemnestra ruled like a true queen—and is loath to surrender that power when her swaggering bully of a husband returns from Troy.

Her son, Orestes, is duty-bound to avenge his father’s death, even if killing his own mother will condemn him to the wrath of the Furies.
The most arresting character in this subplot is Clytemnestra’s daughter Elektra. She witnessed her older sister’s sacrifice at the start of the Trojan war, and has a strained relationship with her mother. Elektra is the only one who sees through the false trail Penelope lays trying to protect her cousin and forces a reckoning with her mother.
Throughout her flight, Clytemnestra remains a proud queen—who is nevertheless ruled by love for her son, Orestes.

Here she awkwardly greets him:
“Darling boy,” she says, holding out her arms to him. He does not move to meet her embrace, shows no reaction, his brows buried like a mine. She lowers her arms, steps toward him anyway. “You look . . . well.”
This psychic unraveling of an otherwise powerful woman parallels Penelope’s journey with her son.

Penelope’s son, Telemachus, is desperate to become a man. His struggles with his masculinity (and his rejection of Penelope’s mothering) form a critical emotional subplot. The more Telemachus draws away from her, the more Penelope clings. Cunning, resourceful, and composed in every other situation, she falls apart around her son. There’s a painful scene where she pounds on his door and he sits on the crate he’s used to bar entry, feeling the vibrations of her pounding fists and saying nothing.
Penelope’s angst over her son sets up the finale of the story, which was the one element that didn’t work for me. I re-read the ending several times and I researched the actual myth upon which this novel is based, but was left with the conclusion that the author was simply attempting to create a cliffhanger to compel readers to continue onto the sequel.
An unfortunate choice as the ending ruined the reading experience for me and honestly made no sense.

Setting aside the unfortunate and nonsensical ending, Ithaca is an otherwise compelling read about an admirable and wily queen set in a mythical ancient Greece.

Read other historical/mythological fiction with resourceful characters:
Babylonia, The Witch’s Heart, Spear, Song of the Huntress, Sistersong, The Queens of Innis Lear
Read more about Greek myth: Medusa, Sirens Empowered,
#MeTooMedusa, Justice, The Spring Maiden

Writing Craft: The Secrets of Character by Matt Bird

2/20/2026

The Secrets of Character is a solid overview of the writing elements that help make characters compelling: painful struggles, grit and resourcefulness, and believable, idiosyncratic details:
“Universal details we can identify with, and oddly specific details that seem so unusual that they must be real, because no one could make them up.”
The author also suggests front-loading situations to reveal character early in the story:
“Give your hero five different opportunities to show their character in the first ten pages, and readers will love it if they can already start to guess how heroes will react by the time they get to page ten.”

1. BELEIVEABLE CHARACTERS have friends. They have personality and a unique voice (created by choosing words specific to this character, culture, and world: for example, a laugh “like a pile of dishes breaking”).

Dialogue and internal monologue should also be unique and specific to each character and their individual point of view. Give them distinctive syntax (word order). Use short, terse sentences to make them sound “badass.” Example:
“I was arrested in Eno’s diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch.” (from Killing Floor by Lee Child)
The author also says, “We want our heroes to have free agency, to choose to be great, and earn their place in our hearts, without a prophecy telling us (or them) how special they are.”

2. MAKE READERS CARE: The events of the story (plot) force characters to confront and overcome their internal flaw(s). “[A] great flaw is often the ironic flip side of a great strength. … The challenge they’ll face in this story will ultimately transform them, but they should resist that change as much as possible.”
Very human to resist change!

Writers are often advised to make our characters suffer. The author suggests we wound them in a way that reveals their flaws and in a way that would only hurt this individual hero. A hero who sacrifices also elicits reader empathy. Jo in Little Women is a good example of a hero made to suffer and sacrifice in away specific to her character: “Her long, thick hair was her one beauty.” … of course, she will feel compelled to cut it off and sell it to help her father. Give your hero one gift, and then make them sacrifice it.”

Another way to test our characters is to “show that they lack something essential that others around them have. We’ve all felt disadvantaged and our hearts go out to people feeling the same, especially if their suffering is a little bit bigger than the version of it we’ve experienced.”

Nonfiction: Slither by Stephen S. Hall

2/13/2026

Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World is a comprehensive exploration of snakes—for their own sakes and as cultural bellwethers of human attitudes.
The author describes the “push-pull” he experiences of “a relationship [toward snakes] built of equal parts fascination, fear, admiration, and perhaps a secret sentimentality of a particularly wise and despised form of Otherness.”
He provides ample evidence that we’re biologically wired to react to the quick movement of snakes, “yet culturally wired to channel that reaction in a particular emotional direction.” Hence why snakes have been revered as sacred in some cultures and despised as evil in others.

As “cold-blooded” animals, snakes use the environment to control their body temperature. One scientist commented, “I really want to know what it’s like to crawl out from under the rock on a cold morning and feel your body warm up and feel your organ systems start to switch on and your brain start to work. That must be an amazing sensation.”

Asklepios is a Greek god of healing, closely associated with snakes. In healing centers dedicated to him, known as Asklepions, “free-ranging non-venomous snakes may have been allowed to slither unrestrained throughout the gymnasium-like dormitory while the patients slept. In the morning, patients would recount their dreams to the attendant physician-priests, who interpreted the dreams and translated them into a strategy for healing.” The snake was viewed as an “incarnation of the god.”
Archeologists have uncovered more than 903 of these snake-centric healing sanctuaries. The author notes, “The cult of Asklepios—with its reputation of healing and its essential association with snakes—permeated all levels of Greco-Roman culture for nearly a millennium.”

Snake venom kills tens of thousands of people each year. These toxins “wreak four main types of havoc: breaking down cells and tissues (known as cytotoxins), breaking down muscle to thwart movement and get a jump start on digestion (myotoxins), disrupting the ability of blood to behave properly, either clotting too much or too little (hemotoxins), or short-circuiting the function of nerve impulses that affect motor control and breathing (neurotoxins).”
Scientists have been able to repurpose these toxins into drugs used to dissolve blood clots or block hemorrhaging. Ace inhibitors such as Lisinopril are derived from the venom of a South American pit viper.

Snakes “curing” cancer. Snakes like pythons, who may only eat one giant meal a year, transform from a prolonged fasting cycle into an intense digestive machine in a matter of hours. They do this by activating approximately two thousand genes that enlarge and accelerate the metabolism of multiple organs: the heart enlarges to pump more blood, the liver and kidneys similarly move into high gear, and they grow more intestines.

After the meal is digested, all of these organs turn off and shrink back down to their fasting size. “These changes—dramatic growth and shrinkage, rapid cell proliferation and targeted cell death—were driven at the cellular level by well-known molecular processes that build and eliminate cells.”
“It’s almost like the snakes create a short-lived form of cancer to meet the extraordinary demands of digesting a huge meal, then ‘cure’ the cancer by cutting it out once digestion is complete.”

Snakes smell in 3-D through their tongues. The molecules collected by each tine of the tongue are interpreted by two organs on the roof of their mouths. Per the author, “the two separate tines of a snake’s tongue gather molecular ‘data’ with such precision that the difference between left and right tine provides a chemosensory gradient that [creates] a three-dimensional perception of space.”

Snakes with pit organs can detect infrared radiation. “They can discern variations in temperatures to a level of precision as small as 0.003 degree Celsius—three one-thousandths of a degree.” By studying how a snake’s sense of vision, heat, and smell interact in the brain, scientists believe snakes combine all of these inputs to create a single “somatosensory map” of their environment in a type of sensory synesthesia.

Snake Sex. Some snakes can reproduce by parthenogenesis (without male sperm) and there are “a confounding percentage of intersex individuals—snakes that possess the anatomical features of both males and females.”
Snake mating has an Otherworldly beauty, and can incorporate elaborate rituals between the two parties. Or can be communal: garter snakes in central Manitoba “congregate in massive copulatory orgies known as mating balls.”

Female snake reproduction was ignored for decades. Patty Brennan (whose research into duck genitalia was highlighted in The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog) also studied female snake reproduction. Her collaborator, Megan Folwell, was the first scientist to discover and document a female snake clitoris. They demonstrated “that female serpents have evolved incredibly cunning mechanisms to exercise reproductive choice—even after copulation. They can constrict vaginal muscles to squeeze out [male penises]. They can close the gate to their oviducts, preventing insemination of their eggs. They can create a more acidic genital microenvironment that effectively kills unwanted sperm.”
Brennan says females are often “portrayed as passive, as somehow victims; they’re waiting for the males to fight it out so that they can then mate with the male. That is an inaccurate portrayal of females, and complexity in females. . . . Because they’re not passive vessels. They are active evolutionary agents.”
Research has demonstrated that females in some species can store sperm for a year or more, choosing when to self-fertilize. There is also a species "native to India and Southeast Asia in which all the individuals are females and all the offspring are clones of the mother," similar to Lesbian Lizards.

Snake Dance. Snakes “started out with legs in the deep evolutionary past” then dropped their limbs “roughly 85 million years ago.” Yet snakes can “negotiate a dizzying array of surfaces and obstacles—dirt, sand, water, mud, muck, rock ledges, poles, crevices, burrows, trees, forests, deserts, oceans, swamps. They crawl. They swim. They climb. They fly [glide]. They do all those things without limbs.”

Sidewinders in particular, have a unique way of moving: their forward movement “is actually at a sharp angle to the axis of the body.” Scientists studying them discovered that the key to their locomotion “was not the side-winding, but the up-and-down wave. . . . the snakes were masters at fractionally adjusting the amount of their bodies that touched the surface of the sand depending on the slope. More of a slope, more body contact with the sand; less slope, less body contacting the surface. The sidewinders made these miniscule, neuromuscular calculations on the fly, adjusting the amount of their body’s surface area that comes in contact with the sand in milliseconds. [It’s] a fully three-dimensional behavior.”

You can watch a sidewinder in action (beware: it catches a lizard at the 2:23 mark).

Invasive Snakes. Snakes are incredibly diverse and successful survivalists. Pythons (released by irresponsible pet owners) have established themselves in southern Florida, but may be poised to spread into colder climes.
“At a time when 40 percent of Americans do not accept the notion of evolution, the pythons that survived the [2010] Big Freeze in Florida appear to believe in it 100 percent. The [message] from the snakes is that evolution is real, it’s apparently happening at blindingly fast speed and it argues that the 2010 cold snap may have created a subset of pythons better able to survive cold temperatures—and thus better adapted to spread beyond the northern boundaries of its current range.”

The author closes with these sobering thoughts:
  “[Our] century-long embrace and promotion of the fossil-fuel economy enabled, knowingly or not, population spread, commercial and residential development, habitat destruction, climate change [and turned] all of us into invasive species.”
  “[In Nature,] every ecological niche is unique, dynamic, complex. Nature celebrates diversity; all those name-brand franchises lining [the roads] reminded me that commerce and ‘civilization’ demand conformity, predictability, consistency. Development is a form of predation [where natural habitats] surrender to the number one predator on the planet, [humans].”
  “Although many people believe animals relocate when their habitats are destroyed, most organisms have nowhere to go. Part of the imperial indifference of the human animal is our illusionary belief that there is always plenty of habitat left.”
  Respect for snakes and “for nature itself [requires] acceptance of all the things we can’t control.”
  Whether or not you’re a snake lover, Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World is definitely worth reading.

Read other fascinating nonfiction books on nature and science: Sounds Wild and Broken,
If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, The Forest Unseen, The Underworld, The Light Eaters,
An Immense World, The Hidden Life of Trees, The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog

Fiction: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

2/9/2026

Some Desperate Glory is an intense space opera featuring a totalitarian Spartan-like culture that exists to avenge the destruction of Earth by an alien superpower. The main character, Valkyr, is a would-be warrior who devotes herself whole-heartedly to the cause.
The characters make this story: Valkyr is laser-focused, driving herself and everyone around her to unrealistic perfection. Her talented, athletic brother Magnus—whom she idolizes—turns out to be more emotionally sensitive and “unheroic” than she imagined. Snarky, self-centered Avi, the tech wiz, provides a nice contrast to Valkyr’s focus on duty and honor, as does the alien Yiso, who is terrified by Valkyr’s anger and aggression.

We spend the first eight chapters on Valkyr’s homeland, the space fortress Gaea, an asteroid converted into a habitable world through human ingenuity. The survivors on Gaea escaped the destruction of Earth in four dreadnought spaceships, which have been largely repurposed to make the asteroid habitable.

Valkyr trains incessantly in a holographic environment that creates scenarios nearly impossible to survive. She is ultra competitive and the undisputed leader of her age cohort of girls, pushing them as hard as she pushes herself (and is universally despised for it).
Part of her competitive drive is to try to match her peerless brother Magnus, and to live down her older sister Ursa’s defection (she fled Gaea and hasn’t been heard of since).
Valkyr's dreams are destroyed when she's sidelined from the warrior class to breed the next generation of warriors. Then she discovers her brother Magnus has been sent away on a suicide mission and she decides to go after him.

The second four chapters take place on the planet Chrysothemis, which has been colonized by hundreds of thousands of human survivors. Here we watch Valkyr warm to a precocious child, who turns out to be her older sister Ursa’s son.
Valkyrie learns an alternate version of the history she’s always been told (in which her beloved Uncle Jole is not a war hero but a criminal traitor) and shares an unsettling conversation with her brother, Magnus, who confesses that he’s gay and in love with Avi. Valkyr, who's essentially asexual, doesn't understand why it's such a big deal to him.

The planet Chrisothemis is beautiful and we experience it with Valkyr:
The wind blew, disturbing the shadowy fronds of the native vegetation . . . Rain stop-started with pattering sounds, which had different qualities, depending on whether the droplets hit the trees, or the soil, or the rock overhang [Valkyr] was sheltering under, or the surface of the stream that ran nearby. Whenever the rain stopped, bugs appeared, seeming to sprout out of the moist air. There were several different kinds, but all of them glowed with some inner luminescence, creating little trails of light when they flew into the shadow under the overhang; and they made whining and wiring sounds as they flew, almost but not quite like the distant whines and whirrs [Valkyr] was used to, the hum of a working space fortress.

The next seven chapters involve Valkyr, her brother Magnus, and the tech wiz Avi. They’ve infiltrated a node on Chrysothemis of the alien sentient technology called Wisdom, which was used to destroy Earth. Magnus is trying to protect Valkyr and is mortally wounded in the process. Avi wants to turn the technology against the aliens, which Valkyr wholeheartedly supports until the implications of genocide sink in. The ending of this section is horrific—until Valkyr bargains with the sentient Wisdom directly.

The next five chapters take place in an alternate timeline where the Earth was never destroyed. Instead, humans have turned the entire galaxy into a totalitarian state where aliens are little more than chattel slaves. Valkyr is graduating from the university, about to embark on a stellar career and in love with another woman. Her brother Magnus is part of a rebel underground that includes the alien Yiso; they're trying to destroy Wisdom to keep its secrets safe from Jole, who is the supreme dictator in this timeline (and Avi is his fascist sidekick).
The final chapters of the book takes place back on the space fortress Gaea in the original timeline, with Uncle Jole preparing a dreadnought to conquer the nearest human settlement: Chrysothemis. Valkyr is promoted to command, her dream job, as Jole’s personal assistant. The stakes rise higher and higher, with Yiso, Magnus, Avi, and Valkyr all putting their lives in jeopardy in this final timeline.

I don’t usually enjoy time-travel stories, but in this novel, the what-if-I-could-do-it-all-over-again trope worked well. The idea of reliving the past, only better, was explored theatrically in Peggy Sue Got Married and altering timelines was theme in Back to the Future.
This novel explores the theme with nuance and depth: What if “fixing” the past made things different, but not in the way you expected? What if things worked out the way you always wanted, but it wasn't satisfying?

The author also uses the alternate timelines to deftly explore characterization: Valkyr suppressing all emotions, Valkyr with confused emotions, Valkyr in love, Valkyr filled with compassion and kindness. Or, Magnus in conflict with his sexuality and society’s expectations, Magnus distraught; timid Magnus; brave, self-sacrificing Magnus.

The book begins with a fairly extensive list of potential triggers including sexual assault (offscreen), genocide, and suicide. I found all of the potential content warnings were handled well in the narration: nothing was gratuitous or melodramatic. The ways abusive perpetrators groom acquiescence in their victims was especially impactful, and I appreciated how this even affected a normally aggressive and confident character with profound effects on the plot.
Some Desperate Glory is an exciting space adventure with unusual depth. Themes of community, found family, and the power of forgiveness play out against a background of revenge and domination.
Highly recommended.

Read other space operas/sci-fi: Ancillary Justice; Behind the Throne; Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet;
A Closed and Common Orbit; Light from Uncommon Stars

Fiction: Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen

2/6/2026

An arrogant yet insecure spy mostly saves the day in the enjoyable science fiction romp Waypoint Kangaroo.
  We meet Kangaroo during a mission-gone-wrong in Kazakhstan. He’s stopped by border patrol, one of whom he deduces is a Hungarian secret agent. In his words: If this guy’s not a field agent for a national intelligence outfit—a spy like me—I’ll eat my shoe. And shoes taste terrible. Trust me, I know. Long story.
  A high-speed chase ensues, and Kangaroo draws from his “pocket,” an interdimensional portal only he can access, to retrieve a super-secret weapon. He justifies using the ultra-expensive emergency equipment to himself, knowing his superiors will be displeased.

We learn several things about Kangaroo in this opening: He’s smart, resourceful, has a wry sense of humor, sensory enhancing augmentations, and an interdimensional “pocket. ”
Also, he's a loose cannon in terms of following protocol.

Predictably, his superiors are unhappy when he returns despite Kangaroo wearing a suit (he usually wears jeans and a T-shirt). We learn the unit is being audited by the Director, and because he’s such a chronic screw-up, a fuming Kangaroo is sent on a mandatory vacation on a luxury spaceliner.
This futuristic world with its space elevators and gravity-generating spaceships is revealed as we journey with Kangaroo. On the ship, Kangaroo meets the Chief Engineer, an attractive woman inappropriately insecure about her social skills—who takes an immediate liking to Kangaroo.

It isn’t long before two dead bodies are found in a stateroom, and the head of security, aware of Kangaroo’s secret identity, asks him to assist in the investigation. Kangaroo uses his enhanced vision to find clues the others missed, but also learns they’ve all been exposed to radiation and need treatment.

Needing more help, Kangaroo spacewalks and attaches a communication dish on the outside of the ship, having pulled the equipment out of his “pocket.” He uses the satellite dish to send a message to his unit asking for help with the radiation treatment. Once inside, he’s accused of colluding with a suspected terrorist.
Meanwhile, his boss and co-workers back home are showing signs of stress from the ongoing audit, and Kangaroo risks implicating them in unauthorized communication if he continues to use the satellite dish.

Kangaroo fumbles his way through his budding romance with the Chief Engineer, but things on the ship go from bad to worse when Engineering is taken over by a terrorist. Desperate to save his beloved and the ship, Kangaroo tries a variety of rescues, but whoever is behind this attack has anticipated his every move.
I enjoyed Kangaroo's humor and found his moments of intense self-doubt endearing. Although his playing fast and loose with the rules gets him in trouble, and potentially endangers others, it’s his creative spirit that helps him solve complicated problems and survive. We get a smattering of his backstory, enough to understand why his boss’s approval is so important to him. Despite all his bravura, Kangaroo is essentially a kind-hearted soul longing for approval.
Waypoint Kangaroo has a similar sardonic tone as the Murderbot Diaries, but in a glitzier setting and with a protagonist who, unlike Murderbot, consciously yearns for social connection. And although it's well-written, this debut novel doesn't match the authority and ease of the writing in Murderbot. But it's still a fun romp.

Read more about Murderbot: All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy

Nonfiction: Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden

1/22/2026

Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People explores the incredible variety of our world in genetics, gender identity, and sexuality. The author, a professor of biology and geophysics, makes the fascinating science easily understandable.
Symbiotic partnerships between organisms is one of many captivating aspects of the natural world explored in the book.
For example, the chloroplasts in plants (where sunlight is converted into energy) “were once bacteria that lived on their own. The places within a cell where our food is broken down and converted into energy (the mitochondria) were also once bacteria existing independently.”

Because of this, every cell in our bodies is essentially “a partnership” between elements of different origins. “If every one of our cells is a symbiosis among formerly free-living bacteria, then we are but clusters of bacteria ourselves. We’re not only descended from bacteria—we still are bacteria.”

The author makes a strong argument against a mechanistic approach to genetics, giving numerous examples of how complex and decentralized genetic expression is in real life.

Dolly the sheep

She says the myth of genetic predetermination “stems from a desire to own and control development. If a master gene produces some trait, then anyone who owns the patent for that gene controls the trait. But if traits emerge from a committee, then what’s to own? ... One can patent a gene, but not a relationship between genes.”
I was surprised to learn that Dolly, the first successfully cloned sheep, aged prematurely. The author asserts that this is because the basic premise of cloning is misguided:
“The nucleus doesn’t unilaterally ‘control’ the cell. The nucleus negotiates with the cytoplasm, and if the cytoplasm doesn’t go along, the project aborts.”

The author’s exploration of gender identity was especially impactful. She writes:
“Apart from gamete size [big egg versus little sperm] and associated plumbing, nearly every male trait is naturally possessed by some females, and nearly every female trait is naturally possessed by some males. Claims of a gender binary in humans based on small statistical differences against a background of great overlap amount to social myths.”

Some surprising facts:

“The most common form among plants and in perhaps half of the animal kingdom is for an individual to be both male and female at the same, or at different times, during its life.”
“In lots of species, especially in fish, the female is bigger than the male.” [The largest animal on our planet is the female blue whale, measuring 90-100 feet long and weighing 190-200 tons.]
“In many species the female deposits the eggs in the pouch of the male, who incubates them until birth. In many species, males, not females, tend the nest.” [Male seahorses “give birth” to the young from their belly pouches. Male emperor penguins tend the eggs and the dad ostrich-like rhea tends the nest and chicks while the female competes for other mates.]
“In all alligators and crocodiles, some turtles and lizards, and the occasional fish, sex is determined [not by chromosomes but] by the temperature at which the egg is raised.”
“In spotted hyenas, females have a penis-like structure identical to that of males, and in the fruit bat of Malaysia and Borneo, the males have milk-producing mammary glands.”

An entire chapter surveys gender diversity in the more-than-human world. We learn of two male genders among bullfrogs (one sings, the other is silent), singing fish with a male gender that attracts mates by humming and one that mates by stealth, and salmon with “jack” and “hooknose” males.

Bluegill sunfish actually have three male genders of different sizes and different mating behaviors, as do tree lizards in the American Southwest who come in different colors as well as divergent mating styles. The side-blotched lizard in the same region has three male and two female genders, all with different coloration and behavior patterns.

White-throated sparrows in Canada have two male genders and two female genders (with variations in the colors of their stripes). They display different behaviors and pair in different combinations. This is “genetic polymorphism, in which the body differences are not limited to colored stripes. The brain architecture of the morphs differs. … the differences among the genders extend deep into the body.”

And there are animals with “transgender” members: male-colored females and female-colored males among more traditionally feathered birds in forty-two species of hummingbirds. Five percent of hooded warblers in the mid-Atlantic US are females with male coloration though one male warbler was observed living as a female, “including nest building, incubating and brooding young [stereotypical female behaviors], and not singing or engaging in territorial defense [stereotypical male behaviors].”

Numerous examples of human cultures recognize more than two genders, including Native American two-spirit people whose role in the tribe was neither male nor female; the third-gender mahu of Polynesia; and India’s third-gender hijras.

The book also describes nonbinary gender roles in the ancient world including eunuchs. Ancient Romans defined them as “males who lacked functioning genitals.” Some eunuchs had male genitals that “didn’t continue developing at puberty.” Others chose castration, such as the divine priestesses of Cybele who had their genitals severed in “an ecstatic frenzy.”
Hard to imagine divine castration today, but we’re all products of our cultures, and other societies—whether in the past or present—have widely varying worldviews and belief systems. The idea of “sex-reassignment surgery” through castration may sound abhorrent to modern Americans, but trying to squeeze all humans into narrow male-female boxes would seem equally perverse to cultures that recognize more diversity.

“Same-sex sexuality was part of life in antiquity, although not as a category of personal identity. Whether one did or did not participate in same-sex sexuality no more defined who a person was, and who they thought themselves to be, than does, say, an appetite for French fries instead of potato chips.”
In ancient Greece, men “could, even should have sex with one another … [but used] different positions than they did with women. By restricting the permissible positions, gay sex in ancient Greece was kept masculine.”

Oystercatchers

Lest we assume only human engage in homosexual behavior, the book provides many examples of same-sex engagement among animals: “lesbian” whiptail lizards, same-sex mating among the New Zealand pukeko (about 10% of sightings), male and dual-female threesomes among the Eurasian oystercatcher (about 3% of nestmates), geese (15% of monogamous pairs are male-male), and male-male swan pairs observed rising adopted fledglings with more success than female-male pairs.

Homosexual behavior has also been observed in over one hundred species of mammals. For example, bighorn sheep live in “gay” bachelor groups, copulating with each other outside of mating season. “Same-sex mating is common among female red deer, male giraffes, female kobs, male blackbucks, male and female mountain goats, male American bison, and male African and Asiatic elephants.”
The list goes on and includes female red squirrels who sometimes engage in “joint parenting. The female squirrels take turns mounting each other, and raise a single litter of young. Although only one [fertilized] member of the pair is the mother, both nurse the young.” Dolphins also engage in well-documented homosexual mating and form male same-sex pair bonds or threesomes.

Primates are the closest relatives to modern humans in evolutionary terms.
Japanese macaques engage in female-female courtship behavior and copulation, forming short-term relationships within the female hierarchy.
Up to “14% of all matings" among lemurs in Madagascar are same-sex coupling between males.

Humans share roughly 99% of our genes with Bonobos, a chimpanzee-like species in central Africa. Among bonobos, sex reinforces social bonds: “Daily life consists of numerous brief episodes [of sex] scattered throughout the day. Every female participates in GG [genital-genital] rubbing once every two hours or so. A sexual encounter lasts about ten to fifteen seconds.”

The following situations lead to Bonobo sex:
Sex before meals (“males invite females, females invite males, and females invite females”); “reconciliation after a dispute” (generally female-female); when a new female joins the group (to reinforce female-female bonds); to form female-female coalitions against harassing males; in exchange for gifts (usually males give treats in exchange for sex); and for procreation.

Evolution’s Rainbow expands our understanding of gender and sexual diversity through engaging science, thoughtful insights, and a rich treasure of examples. Highly recommended.

For more on gender diversity read: Genderqueer Gods, Lesbian Lizards

Poetry: Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

1/20/2026

Lord of the Butterflies is an impactful collection of poems both personal and political. Andrea Gibson excels at using ordinary language in extraordinary ways, making her poems both accessible and powerful.
In “Ode to the Public Panic Attack,” the poet describes self-destructing on stage (Gibson was known for her live performances). She finds humor amidst the vulnerability and pain. In the poem a friend says:
. . . That was as awkward
as watching a goat give birth in the mall.
She sometimes plays with rhyme as in these lines from “Boomerang Valentine”:
. . . the truth of me, that beauty of a beast,
chewing through the leash . . .

Some favorite lines:
. . . made love like a hungry ghost digging its way out of a grave. –from “Tincture”

. . . I might have learned how to load my rocky smile into a slingshot whenever a dude suggested smiling was something I should do.  You’re right, man. Here ya go—pew! —from “What Do You Think About This Weather?”

. . . Some people fall out of love.
I jump
to feel the safety
  of the parachute. —from “Bad at Love”

. . . What’s your sign? My sign has historically been STOP
but since meeting you I’ve changed it
to MERGE.     —from “Give Her”

. . . I think the hardest people in the world
to forgive are the people we once were,
the people we are trying desperately not to stir
   into the recipe of who we are now.
. . . Truth knows everybody’s dark side
is daytime somewhere.   —from “Daytime, Somewhere”

She has several pithy, short “definition” poems that pack a punch:

“Diagnosis”
I suffer
from unrequited self love.
I love myself, but I don’t
love myself
back.

“Resentment”
Loading the past into a cannon
to murder this year.

“Awestruck”
To quit
building bomb shelters
to keep the universe
from blowing your mind.

She makes skillful use of line and stanza breaks for optimal emotional impact. Here’s a passage from “Until We Act” about war in Syria:
. . . My mother never had to teach me
that to breathe is to die, so I imagine

her hand covering my mouth
in the dark of our basement,
tasting her palm salted
with terror.

Another example of skillful line breaks from “Living Proof”:
. . . I imagine people
on their backs in lilac fields snorting the lines
the planes leave in the sky, waking
with honeymoons in their bloodstreams.

I also enjoyed the line breaks in “Baby Teeth in a Landfill”:
. . . When are the shooting stars gonna aim
for that orange guy’s head?

. . . Once I got proposed to
just hours after leaving the psych ward.
Where did the romance go?

. . . There is a world in which all the bad things
that happened didn’t really happen
and this
is not that world.

She’s at her most powerful when she lays bare the vulnerability of being human as in these excerpts:

“Dear Tinder,”
. . . I hear almost every argument
is a race for the victim spot.

. . . Only I know how broke I got
buying into the theory
that my life is something that happens
to me, that we are more holy
the more hurt we are.

“Hurt the Fly”
. . . A few years ago, a friend asked if you’d ever had a childhood. You said, No—but that wasn't right. What you haven’t had is an adulthood.
. . . Your therapist says . . . you blame yourself so you can believe the world is a safe place, or would be if you had done things differently.

“America Reloading”
. . . Of the twenty children murdered at Sandy Hook,
not one of them needed an ambulance.
That’s how dead they were.
That’s how well the Second Amendment works.

. . . After Columbine, parents were notified
about their children in tiny conference rooms.
One family said, We could hear the family before us
screaming, and we knew we were next.

Lyrical, searingly intense, snort-out-loud funny, and painfully poignant--Lord of the Butterflies creates an immersive experience. Highly recommended.

Read another fabulous poetry book by Andrea Gibson: You Better be Lightning
Read more great poetry: Not a Princess

Fiction: The Spider’s War by Daniel Abraham

1/6/2026

  The Spider’s War is the fifth and final book in Daniel Abraham’s exceptional The Dagger and the Coin series.
The story is told primarily from the perspective of four main characters:
  Marcus Wester, a world-weary soldier who roused the last dragon Inys from hibernation and is now on a quest to destroy all spider priests with the dragon's help; Cithrin, the prodigy banker, who wages a financial war against the spider priests and against War itself; Clara, a noblewoman intent on saving her country by destroying Lord Regent Pallaiko and the spider priests he champions, no matter the personal cost; and Lord Regent Geder Palliako, increasingly at odds with himself and with the spider priests who keep him in power.

Marcus is the only one who can cajole the dragon Inys into cooperation, but he goes on a quest with Clara and Master Kit (an apostate and former spider priest) to bring Geder Palliako’s army home from the field. It’s a gruesome march, and the author makes the cold and starvation palpable.
Throughout the novel, Marcus's experience and leadership skills prove key to his mission to thwart the spider priests. Marcus remains an endearing character, treating everyone with courtesy and respect, including when he provides expert guidance to the Lord Marshall of the army (Clara’s son Jory) without undermining his authority.

With Marcus gone, Cithrin tries to reason with the dragon, but with limited success as Inys becomes increasingly despondent and volatile.
Meanwhile, her propaganda campaign against the spider priests proves unsuccessful. Her scheme to print paper money has given her resources to hire mercenaries, but that too has limited effect on Geder Palliako and his spider priests. She decides to make a desperate gamble to promote her agenda and end war once and for all. Cithrin is strong and resourceful throughout the story. She has developed an intuitive sense of when and how to act to influence others, and grasps the inherent vulnerability of love.

Clara has a son who lives as an exiled pirate, a son serving as Lord Marshall of Geder Pallaiko’s army (Jory), and a son who has become a spider priest. As a mother, she wants the best for her boys, but knows that if she succeeds in her quest to destroy Geder Palliako, not all of her sons will survive.
And if she manages to restore her family’s fortunes and resume her place as a noblewoman, she’ll have to give up her common-born lover, the huntsman Vincen Coe, her only source of happiness in the world.
Clara walks a tightrope throughout the story, but never wavers from her resolve to rid her country of Geder Palliako and his priests.

Lonely, scholarly Geder Palliako is a complex and fascinating character: desperate to prove himself a good leader and please the spider priests, protective of Prince Aster, vindictive and violent when he believes himself made a fool.
Early in the story, we see him caught in a conflict between different factions of the spider priests. As confusion spreads among the priests, Geder’s doubt also grows, but is always assuaged by the head spider priest and Geder’s need to be “right.”

He makes atrocious decisions that have painful and deadly consequences for others, particularly the disenfranchised. And though he feels guilt and remorse, he justifies his cruel actions and is quick to blame others for his misdeeds.

Like all of the books in the series, the author addresses compelling themes, including the nature of faith, the importance of being true to ourselves, the powers of persuasion, and “good” versus “bad.”
For example, Marcus and Master Kit discuss why there are no plays or stories about good people being kind to each other:

Master Kit maintains that people are by nature “thoughtful and kind and gentle and resolve their hurts and confusions with consideration and love. [But these actions] seem like nothing. Thoughtfulness and kindness and love, I contend, are so much the way we expect the world to be that they become invisible as air. We only see war and violence and hatred as something happening, I suggest, because they stand out as aberrations. In my experience, even in the midst of war, many lives are untouched by battle. And even in a life of conflict, violence is outweighed by its absence.”

Marcus says: “Seems more likely to me that violence and strife catch the attention because ignoring them leads you down a short road. I’ve walked a lot of battlefields that had boys who’d have lived another few decades watering them. I’ve made my gold working at war and death, and I haven’t often gone hungry.”
“But war’s not the same as death, is it?”
“The one involves the other, Kit.”
“I disagree. War, I think, only involves a particular manner of death. Everyone always dies. It’s the price of being born.”

Another strength of this book, and the series in general, is the sense of a world beyond the storyline: the reign of the dragons a millennia ago; mentions of Far Syramys, a fantastical world beyond the sea; the ways characters and countries outside the main setting play into character’s calculations.
The fate of the dragon Inys is a good example: he yearns to re-establish his rightful dominance of the world, but we have no idea if he has the skills to craft anything given his admission that all prior creating was done by his mother and older siblings.

The book comes to a stunning climax when all of the characters, including Master Kit and his acting troupe, gather in the capital city to move against the spider priests. Marcus organizes the logistics and the role of Inys; Cithrin uses her intuitive powers of persuasion; Clara moves among the nobility, carefully cultivating allies; and Geder is given an opportunity for heroic redemption.
At the last minute, the head spider priest threatens to thwart the entire plan, and the courage of our heroes is put to the ultimate test . . .

In the aftermath, Cithrin and another banker excitedly consider what the future will hold for “paper” currency, Clara confronts Vincen Coe about their uncertain future, and Marcus and his long-time sidekick Yardem tie up “loose ends.”
Without giving away specifics, I will say the ending of The Spider’s War was very satisfactory, providing an excellent conclusion to the series.

Read other books in The Dagger and the Coin series:
The Dragon’s Path,  The King’s Blood,  The Tyrant’s Law,  The Widow’s House
Read other books by Daniel Abraham: Age of Ash,  Blade of Dream (both set in Kithamar)
Read other gritty lived-in fantasies: Memories of Ice,  Fire Logic,  City of Stairs,  City of Blades,  City of Miracles

Fiction: The Widow’s House by Daniel Abraham

1/3/2026

The Widow’s House is the fourth installment in Danial Abraham’s The Dagger and The Coin Series.
  Inys the Dragon, introduced at the end of the previous book, The Tyrant’s Law, plays a critical role in this tale, proving to be a powerful but uncertain ally to our heroes.
The tale is told from the perspective of four main characters:  Clara the widowed noblewoman, who charts her own course in the world;  Cithrin the rogue banker, desperate to protect her loved ones and herself from the spreading war;  Marcus the world-weary soldier who wants to protect Cithrin; and Geder Pallaiko the scholarly Lord Regent and puppet of the spider priests who are determined to cleanse the world through war.

One of the delights in this book is seeing how much Clara has grown since the series began, when she was constrained by her role as wife and mother among the nobility. In this book she throws herself whole-heartedly in the fight against Lord Regent Geder: He was a violent and unpredictable man, and she feared and opposed him as she would a wildfire or a plague.

Later, Clara and Vincen learn that a mysterious key player in the fight against Lord Regent Geder is being targeted for assassination. Vincen is planning to warn him until he is injured in a surprise attack. Clara is ready to give up on the warning.
“We came so that we could try, but there are constraints. There are limits.”
“And have we reached them?” Vincen asked.

If she hadn’t been so terribly tired, she would not have sobbed. Truly, staying up all night waiting for a young lover to die before one’s eyes was better done at twenty. It took too much energy.
“You cannot go,” she said. “And there is no one else that I trust.”
“[You] Take the warning,” Vincen said.
“Me?” Clara said, and laughed.
“Who else?” Vincen asked.
“What makes you think I could manage that?”
“You’re a predator, my lady,” Vincen said, and closed his eyes with a sigh. “You can manage anything.”

Cithrin fled the war in the previous book just ahead of Lord Regent Geder, who hoped to make her his lover. When she arrives in Port Oliva, her bank supervisor Pyk dresses her down for the way she used the bank’s money to smuggle out Timzinae refugees:
“Well,” [Pyk] said. “You’ve got balls. Not the sense God gave a housefly, but balls.”
  Cithrin tries to defend herself, but Pyk isn’t buying it:
   Her expression was worse than angry. It was patient. . . . “You made the classic error. You saw something you wanted, and you bought it. For you it was Timzinae lives. For someone else it could have been fancy jewelry. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same mistake.”
  “It isn’t,” Cithrin said.
  “It is,” Pyk said, and her tone allowed no room for discussion. “Our job is to get power. Gather it up. Protect it. Not piss it away so that we can claim the moral high ground. . . . You rubbed the Lord Regent’s nose in shit and signed it with the company chop [and] You brought it here. You brought it to me. The latest of [your] messes to mop after.”
  [Cithrin asks] “What will your recommendation be?”
  “That we wrap you in chains and festive paper and ship you to [Lord Regent Geder] with a letter of apology,” Pyk said.

Cithrin’s position becomes even more precarious when Geder’s army marches on Port Olivia. Throughout the novel she’s trying to figure out a way to use what she knows—manipulating the coin of the realm—to defeat Geder’s military might and save Port Olivia (and herself).

Marcus goes through the most intense emotional arc in this book. The novel opens with him commiserating with the dragon’s loneliness based on his own loss of his wife and daughter:
  “Can you imagine what it would be like? Waking up to find everything you loved turned to bone and ash, everything that made the world beautiful gone?”
  “I take it that you can?” [said Kit]
  “Every day the sun rises,” Marcus said. “It takes some getting used to.”

It’s when Marcus arrives in the port city Carse that he’s forced to come to terms with the ghosts of his past, in a way that is painful, potentially deadly, and ultimately healing.
A moment of self-reflection:
The sun had set now, and the mountains seemed crafted from distance and mist and the deepening gray-blue of night. The snowfield glowed. The [others'] voices rose and fell behind him, giddy and pleased and happy because they were a people who traded in that. He traded in violence, and had his whole life. He didn’t see that changing now.

The witty banter between Marcus and the dragon Inys (who considers all humans slaves) is delightful:
  “A fair part of the world I live in is in the process of grinding itself into blood and bone, and these [spider] priests look to be at the heart of it. No offense meant, but if this really is your fault, the least you can do is explain yourself.”
  “I do not answer to slaves.”
  “Make an exception. Just this once.”

And later he berates the dragon for wallowing in self-pity:
“What I can’t have is everyone making the plan to move forward counting on you if you’re too weak. So, all respect, are you going to sit there feeling sad for yourself, or are you going to stand up and do the job?”
“No one speaks to a dragon so,” Inys said, his voice deep and resonant as a gong.
“Almost no one. What’s it going to be? Do what needs doing? Or mope like a child who didn’t get his candy he wanted? . . . May have gone a bit far there.

The dragon closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, the house-wide ribs expanding , pausing, and falling again. The air filled with a smell like brimstone and hot iron.
“You shame me. Tell me what it is you need, [Marcus]. I am in despair, but not yet in defeat.”
“Yes, well. You and me both,” Marcus said.

Lord Regent Geder Pallaiko is devastated by Cithrin’s abandonment and betrayal. The Timzinae she rescued are the very race he believes [inaccurately] are plotting to kill him. He wavers between complete despair, rage, and hope for a fantasy reunion with a contrite Cithrin.

Here he pulls himself together:
He could already picture himself being strong and stoic. If he practiced it enough, it might even start to be true.
The reader watches in horror and admiration as Geder uses his scholarly skills to uncover and reconstruct ancient anti-dragon weapons to bring against Inys, unknown to the other characters.

One of the things that makes Geder sympathetic despite the atrocities of his endless war against the Timzinae, and now Cithrin, is his internal struggle with his role:
  For now, and for years to come, Geder was the Severed Throne. The power should have been freeing. Instead, it weighed him down.
  Later he whispers a secret:
  “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

One of the themes throughout the series is manipulating perception. The spider priests can change people’s beliefs and Cithrin learns how to manipulate the meaning of “money.”
  Here Clara’s sweet lover Vincen gives his take on competing narratives:
    “Things change so quickly," [Clara] said, “and so completely.”
  “They don’t, m’lady,” Vincen said, taking her hand. He kissed the knuckle of her thumb. “Only the stories we tell about them do.”

The Widow’s House ends on a potentially hopeful note with a minor character (Karol) and Timzinae rebels harassing Geder’s army. The closing lines of the book set up the next, concluding story:
“We’ll have back for every last thing you broke. Every child you took. Every slaveman’s lash. All of it,” Karol said between clenched teeth. “And we’ll show your [Lord Regent] Geder Palliako what war looks like when he isn’t winning.”

Read other books in The Dagger and the Coin series:
The Dragon’s Path, The King’s Blood, The Tyrant’s Law, The Spider’s War
Read other books by Daniel Abraham: Age of Ash, Blade of Dream (both set in Kithamar)
Read other gritty lived-in fantasies: Memories of Ice, Fire Logic, City of Stairs, City of Blades, City of Miracles

Writing Craft: If You Want to Write by Barbara Ueland

12/26/2025

If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence, and Spirit offers whole-hearted encouragement to writers of any skill level or none. The core message of the book is that everyone can access their creative spirit, and the more we embrace our creativity, the more readily it flows.
The author says our words are most powerful when we speak our truth, use our own unique voice—rather than trying to speak as we think we should or to sound “better” than our true voice. Instead she notes, “ if you speak or write from yourself you cannot help being original.”
The book has a positive, encouraging tone throughout, similar to the wonderful You’ve Got a Book in You.

For example:
  “I want to show you that millions of human beings, with education and without it, think and feel things that are worth saying and then can write them just as beautifully, like great men and women and true poets. I want you all to know that. This is so that you will not be discouraged, annihilated by rejection slips, and [not] too much awed and inhibited by successful writers, but will work along in your own way [and pace].”
  “If you are going to write, you must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently and with self-trust. If you once become aware of it, and have faith in it, you will be all right.”
  “Know that you have talent, are original, and have something important to say.”

Our creative superpower is telling the truth as we understand it, in our own words. She says the more accurately we portray our perceptions, the better our writing will be: “your impulsive, free way of saying it will be better, closer, truer than the planned contrived way.”
However, she warns against trying too hard to sound sincere, “for that too is a kind of falseness. When you are honest there is no trying about it. You are just quietly honest and that is all there is to it.”
“The truth, like life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. [In uninspired] fiction, movies, etc., everything is smoothed out to seem plausible—villains more bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word of it.”

The author believes creativity lives in the present moment. Our creativity “comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness. [This creative flow] should feel like . . . a child stringing beads in kindergarten—happy, absorbed, and quietly putting one bead on after another.”
This playfulness reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s emphasis on play as a means of freeing the creative subconscious in Zen in the Art of Writing.

She warns against perfectionism, saying “there are wonderfully gifted people who write a little piece, and then write it over and over again to make it perfect, absolutely, flawlessly perfect, a gem. [They’re driven by] the fear that the little literary pearl will not be perfect and unassailable. But this is all a loss of time and a pity. For in them is a fountain of exuberant life and poetry and literature and imagination, but it cannot get out because they are so anxiously busy polishing the gem. And this is the point: if they kept writing new things freely and generously and with careless truth, then they would know how to fix up the pearl and make it good, in two seconds, without any work at all.”
Instead she urges us to: “Work freely and rollickingly as though [you were] talking to a friend who loves you.”

When revising work, she advocates digging for the truth of the story: “When you have written a story and it has come back to you a few times and you sit there trying to write it over again and make it more impressive, do not try to think of better words, more gripping words. Try to see the people [more accurately]. It is not yet deeply enough imagined. See them—just what they did and how they looked and felt. Then write it. If you can at last see it clearly, writing is easy.”
She also addresses pacing in revision: “The secret of being interesting is to move along as fast as the mind of the reader (or listener) can take it in. Both must march along in the same tempo. That is why it is good to read your writing aloud to yourself. As soon as your voice drags, cross that part out.”

Rather than focusing on writing to pleasing critics or editors, she advocates focusing on art as a generous act of sharing our creativity with others. She uses the artist Vincent Van Gogh as an example:
“the creative impulse of Van Gogh, a great genius, was simply loving what he saw and then wanting to share it with others, not for the purpose of showing off, but out of generosity—”

If You Want to Write is full of wonderful examples of truthful, immediate writing, and is told in a casual, engaging style. First published in 1938, the book is dated by occasional use of the (non)universal male pronoun and using the term "man" to refer to all humans, but I found these few instances easy to overlook. Above all it’s a delightful book to help anyone embrace their creative spirit.
In the author’s words: “Be Bold. Be Free. Be Truthful.”

Read other encouraging writing books: You’ve Got a Book in You, Zen in the Art of Writing,
Fearless Writing, The Courage to Write, Art & Fear, Writing Down the Bones

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