As promised in last month’s What to Read listicle, I have brought you reviews of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro and Alchemised by SenYinLu, but we also have a bonus book: Quicksilver by Callie Hart.
Buckle up for sci-fi and fantasy reads with dark themes, each more romantic and sexier than the last.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
In my last post, I mentioned that I had finished Klara and the Sun but needed more time to digest it before writing about it. That’s because I enjoyed the book a lot—until the end, where I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me.
But as some time has passed, I think I better understand the moral of the story.
Klara is an AF, or Artificial Friend, and the book opens in a store, where Klara waits to be purchased. It’s like grownup Toy Story, except the toy is manufactured to look alive.
When she is purchased by Josie’s mother, Josie and her friends talk about Klara and her peers like new iPhones with updated features. Kids want to throw her across the room to watch her land on her feet.
Klara has standards, though. Earlier, when a girl in the shop wanted to buy her, but she wouldn’t “turn on” for her, wouldn’t look at her with a neutral smile that suggests approval, as Manager had instructed her. Instead, she kept her gaze forward and unseeing, and this was enough for Manager to process Klara’s rejection.
When Josie’s friends try to get Klara to show off her skills, as a device rather than a being, she feigns malfunction rather than be subjected to their objectification.
Besides her self-worth, Klara has many other human attributes, like her powers of perception, particularly in what is left unsaid, what is implied. She can make inferences. She can assume. She has emotional intelligence—indeed, she has emotions.
Beyond even that, she experiences magical thinking, assigning cosmic meaning to ordinary events based on her assumptions. Klara recharges through solar exposure, and she recognizes that human life revolves around the sun too. Once, through the window in the shop, Klara saw Beggar Man and his dog lying on the ground, presumably dead. Neither moved as pedestrians passed—until the sun shone on them, and the two revitalized. Klara concluded then that the sun is a life-giving force—and she’s right, but not for the reason she thinks. And how human is that thought process? Haven’t we all, at some point, been right for the wrong reasons?
Because we see the world through Klara’s sharp but uninformed eyes, the plot unfolds as a mystery. Why is Josie so sick? Will she live? Why does her mother take her to get her portrait done in town? Why hasn’t Josie ever seen that portrait, even in-progress?
The interactions that Klara captures feel so human and real, and her devotion feels human and real too.
It’s the ending that subverts these expectations. Spoilers ahead. You can skip to the last part of the review here.
After a series of one-sided conversations with the sun as a discerning god, Klara bargains to save Josie’s life from her sickness. Josie is sick because of the genetic modifications her mother granted in Josie’s infancy. These modifications are what makes Josie “lifted,” accepted by society and allowing success to lie within reach, unlike her neighbor and childhood love, Rick. His mother did not lift her son in infancy, so he is healthy, with limbs that are not too long as some of his peers, but he is shunned by society all the same. At best, the smiles that come his way are out of pity.
Josie had a sister who got lifted too—Sal. Sal didn’t make it. She is dead, and every time Josie gets sick, her mother faces Sal’s death all over again. She doesn’t want Josie to die like Sal, but she prioritizes life after her second daughter’s seemingly impending death, rather than ensuring Josie gets the best help she can. Or perhaps, she has done everything she can, short of taking her daughter to the hospital, where she believes Josie will only be more miserable.
Klara believes that, if she can destroy the pollution-causing machine that she saw outside the window of her shop, she can improve Josie’s health. Of course, limiting pollution would have positive effects on health, for everyone within the pollution’s reach. But Klara’s reasoning is that if she destroys the machine, the sun will answer her prayer and shine his healing light on Josie.
Meanwhile, Josie’s mother is taking Josie to get her “portrait” done, as in, she is having an AF modeled after her daughter, and she wants Klara, with her human attributes, to play her daughter when she dies. She believes death is certain for her daughter, only allowing hope to slip into sight occasionally. Klara agrees to play Josie, only if her plan to save her doesn’t work.
With Josie’s father’s help, Klara spills some of her own vital fuel to destroy the targeted machine. After causing harm to her own human-like perception, overlapping the past and present, seeing people as pillars, hearing disembodied voices, Klara discovers that there is more than one pollution-causing machine. She has failed in her mission despite her best efforts.
After one last bargain with the sun, using Rick and Josie’s love for one another as proof of their value, Klara believes the sun will heal Josie. Josie has gotten especially sick, but Klara is so certain the sun will heal her that she gets everyone’s attention—Josie’s mother, Rick, the housekeeper—and pushes the blinds aside to shine the sun, noticeably brighter for all to witness, onto Josie’s sleeping form.
And she gets better!
She actually gets better.
Years pass. Josie makes it past the toughest part of her childhood, so she’s safe from the negative effects of getting lifted. She plans to go college now, and Rick has separate plans. They did not maintain their childhood closeness, though they will always, in some way, be part of each other’s lives.
As Josie has gotten older, Klara has lost her usefulness. Her days are spent in a dark room, essentially a closet.
When Josie goes off to college, Klara is sent to a dump. Manager finds her and wonders if she had a good life with her family, and Klara says yes.
THE END.
Devastating!
But I realize now the meaning of the story. Klara’s insights and magical thinking are not what made her human. She was never human. Her life was always lived for someone else. Her only intention was to aid her owner. She has no independence. In essence, at the end of the book, Klara is free. She has no owner, but for Klara, that means she has no purpose.
She is free but has no free will.
Alchemised by SenLinYu
This Harry Potter fan fiction has no business being this good and this emotionally impactful. I cried on my way home from work on a Friday while I was listening to it because Not Hermione and Not Draco were so tender with each other. I walked into the apartment, like, “Hey, babe,” as casually as I could, and my boyfriend was like, “Oh, my god, are you OK? Do you need some water?” which is his solution for everything. (And that’s fair because I am often dehydrated.)
So, first, here are my hypotheses about who is whom in the book (having not read Manacled, the original, undifferentiated fan fiction novel):
- Helena Marino, the main character = Hermione Granger
- Kaine Ferron = Draco Malfoy
- Ilya Holdfast = Professor McGonagall, though she is Harry Potter’s aunt
- Principate Apollo = Professor Dumbledore, though he is also Harry Potter’s father
- New Principate Luc/Lucien Holdfast = Harry Potter, whose character is changed by this plot; he has a whole family and is born into privilege.
- Soren and Lyla = Ron and Ginny as twins, like Fred and George minus the impishness.
- Atreus Ferron = Lucius Malfoy
- Morrough = Lord Voldemort
- The Undying = Death Eaters
- High Necromancer = Dark Lord
- Order of the Eternal Flame = Order of the Phoenix
There’s so much to like about this book:
Unlike in the Harry Potter franchise, Hermione, or Helena, most notably is a whole, well-rounded person, instead of a lazy plot device posing as feminism. Helena doesn’t see her worth beyond what she can offer the people she loves with her gifts, which could explain Hermione’s lack of personality in the HP series, despite her many, many talents. In Alchemised, we get her background, her history, and her feelings. Rather than being a “mudblood” in Alchemised, Helena is a southerner; her “othering” comes from her not knowing the culture of the north or its religious influence.
I appreciated the inclusion of religion in this book. When authors introduce ghosts, at minimum, in a fantasy series, they are introducing the known existence of an afterlife, so the lack of religious commentary in most contemporary fantasy works often confuses me and even feels willfully obtuse. Religious folklore and the understanding of science in the late 1700s, when the book takes place, make the magic system more realistic and easier to understand. There is a logic in Alchemised that is missing in the Harry Potter series. SenLinYu’s alchemy relies on the transference of existing energy, so you will not find humans transforming into cats here. There’s no magicking something out of thin air. Everything has a source, which naturally increases the stakes in the story.
The romance of the book is extremely dark. At first, I thought the author was leaning into consensual-non-consent themes, which would have been a fine avenue to explore, but Helena’s feelings about her first encounters with Kaine Ferron were so upsetting to read. There was nothing sexy about them. I found this foundation of the romance interesting, especially when paired with the rough, consensual sex she and Ferron have later in the book. He wraps his hands around her neck and repeats, “You’re mine,” over and over, and there’s this idea that he loves her because she gave herself to him, as negotiated at the height of the war.
That said, there is a tenderness in the book that very few romance novels successfully pull off. The main characters understand one another and see past each other’s flaws (which can be common, in theory, with enemies-to-lovers and forced-proximity tropes, but not like this), and they have a shared loneliness, so palpable that it could be considered a third main character.
This part of the book finally made me cry, despite my having the urge to early on in the book: Kaine exercises enough patience to let Helena come for the first time, and he says, “It’s OK for you to feel good. You deserve this.” Wow, that is so nice. I might record that and use it as a daily affirmation.
Another part that made me cry, also during that particular sex scene, was when Helena says, “I think I’ve finally memorized your face.” Because this scene took place in a flashback, her lost memories finally resurfacing, I knew she would forget him. She forgot his face, the one that she loved enough to memorize. Gut-wrenchingly sad.
Despite how much I enjoyed the journey, this over-1,000-page book is exhaustingly long. However, I also cannot determine which scenes to cut. The drawn-out enemies-to-lovers romance made sense to me in context. Ferron killed Principate Apollo, Helena’s best friend’s (and Sol’s chosen one’s) father, and for a long time, she didn’t understand that he was forced to commit that murder. He’s an asshole to her because he’s trying to push her away; he doesn’t want to experience the pain of caring for someone in his position, so close to Morrough, who is senselessly cruel. Being with Ferron fully means betraying everything Helena believes in. Meanwhile, everything she believes in is more flawed and politically manipulative than she ever realized.
That was refreshing to see in Alchemised too: Unlike the Harry Potter series, the Good Guys are not just cartoonishly good. There’s nuance. This is war, after all. Even Helena wants to use necromancy, which is seen as blasphemous under the northerner’s religion, to protect their remaining living soldiers during battle. Sometimes doing good for the sake of doing good doesn’t make sense in context. Sometimes, if you want to protect yourself, you have to reevaluate your principles.
I appreciated this book’s humanity. I appreciated how deeply it made me feel. I just did not appreciate its eight endings. It felt like SenLinYu was trying to establish a sequel romance, featuring the children of the remaining members of the Eternal Flame, but I would have read that sequel without all the epilogues. She already had me; no need to keep selling me.
Quicksilver by Callie Hart
I didn’t plan to read a whole additional book this month, especially since I had signed up for an advance reader copy of another book, featured in the “Coming Up: Horror and Strange Literature” section.
But I noticed everyone on Instagram reading Brimstone by Callie Hart, and after how much I loved the last book all the girlies were reading (hello, Alchemised!), I knew I needed to see what all the fuss was about.
Brimstone is Quicksilver’s sequel in the Fae & Alchemy series. A young woman I have befriended at the kava bar I frequent said that Quicksilver was her favorite book for its quicksilver pace.
She neglected to mention how friggin’ HORNY this book was, holy shit.
I tried listening to the audiobook at work, at my cubicle, surrounded by coworkers, and I had to sheepishly pause it and drink some ice water. (Side story: A member of the HR team, who no longer works at my organization, once came up to me at my cubicle, and I said, “Hang on, let me pause my book.” And he said, “Why? Are you listening to smut?” Which was bold! And horrifying! But also, apparently, sometimes I accidentally do listen to smut at work. Go figure.)
Anyway, the book is similar to A Court of Thorns and Roses, in that a young adult woman is quasi-kidnapped by a hot fae male thousands of years older than her, and they have chemistry despite her deep desire to be reunited with her family, which the hot male ignores. Saeris is five whole years older than ACOTAR’s Feyre, so her frontal lobe is nearly fully cooked, and she’s had some time to explore her sexuality.
Quicksilver jumps straight into the sexual chemistry between Saeris and Kingfisher, but lets the enemies-to-lovers romance slow-burn its way into the reader’s heart. The chemistry is so especially steamy because the main characters know their way around dirty talk. They say unimaginable things to each other, and those words are the titillating equivalent of watching Jennifer Lopez rub lube over her nearly naked body in the music video for “Booty,” featuring Iggy Azalea.
Listen, I know that’s a deep cut, but if you watch that video, you’ll see what I mean. Mesmerizing. You don’t even have to be queer to get tingled.
I’ve gone on for several paragraphs about the sex, but the characters and story are both developed enough to plow—I mean, drive the story forward.
After her mother’s death, which she witnessed at just eight years old, Saeris feels a parentified sense of responsibility for her only slightly younger brother. Their poor region rations just a few ounces of unfiltered water per person, per day (which is basically how I live my life on the daily, according to my boyfriend, so I felt submerged in the story from the jump). After Saeris is nearly murdered by a queen’s guard, she uses her secret alchemy to open a portal to the world of the fae by interacting with quicksilver, a mysterious, sentient liquid metal that is the key to saving the fae people from their vampiric enemies.
I’ve never seen “fae versus vampires” in fantasy before—the stories I read usually feature one creature or the other—so I rather enjoyed the story.
Coming Up: Horror and Strange Literature
On top of my Reedsy Discovery ARCs, I now also have access to NetGalley pre-releases, so you’ll get a host of recommendations from me on the latest horror and strange fiction reads.
You can look forward to my reviews on:
- Manitou by Glen Gabel, out now as of March 15, ARC provided by NetGalley. I started this, and so far, it’s like if Cocaine Bear were not funny or fun. Maybe it’ll turn around, but I am absolutely dragging my feet through it.
- The Residency by C D Major, out August 6, ARC provided by NetGalley
- Unladylike: A Mythopoetic Reclamation of Love by Regina Louse, out August 18, ARC provided by Reedsy Discovery
- The Exorcism of Faeires by J. L. Vampa, out September 8, ARC provided by NetGalley
I also picked up a few other books to read for leisure:
- Would you believe Libby also had both the audiobook and ebook for Brimstone available? If the library doesn’t take the book before I’m finished with it, you can read my thoughts on Quicksilver’s sequel next month.
- Sunrise on the Reaping was also available through Libby, so I snagged that, but I may have to check it out one-more-again before the movie comes out in theaters.
Want to read more of my long-form thoughts on books? Check out my Media Crit page.
Want to ask me to review your book? Page me.
Want to hire me to edit your memoir or novel? I’ll carve out time for you.
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