Blog | Eric Hendel

(Cover Artist: Cynthia Sheppard ) Martha Wells's 2023 novel Witch King is a book which I wish I had a more positive opinion of, though not because this was a story which I lacked enthusiasm for. I enjoyed the characters, and the world which Wells has imagined for this novel is unique and well-realized. Moreover the book's core storyline, while slow to establish itself, has many elements of intrigue and nuance. Yet unfortunately in spite of these many points in the novel's favor, I'm not convinced that the narrative that Wells is attempting to tell with this story functions in the way that it should. Particularly given Wells's broader success in the science fiction genre (her wryly profound Murderbot Diaries series ), it was hard for me to not read Witch King , and begin seeing within this story every element of Wells's writing which normally functions so well, but which here never quite manages to bring itself to fruition.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

(Cover Designer: Tyler Comrie ) Yoko Ogawa's 1994 novel The Memory Police is unusual in part for how subtle the book's premise is. First translated into English in 2019 by Stephen Snyder, The Memory Police is ostensibly the story of a woman living under the rule of a totalitarian police state. There is a focus in this novel not only on the dehumanizing consequences of living in a dictatorship, but also on the quiet acts of rebellion that can be far more significant than they may outwardly seem. However, what makes Ogawa's approach to this material most unique is that, despite certainly being a book about characters who struggle to survive under the rule of an Orwellian government, it's never entirely clear to the reader how the oppressive force in this novel operates. For that matter, even in spite of the very real dangers that Ogawa's characters face over the course of this text, it's never clear to the reader whether or not this oppressive force which drive...

Arrival by Ted Chiang

The most striking quality of the stories appearing in Ted Chiang's anthology Arrival (which was originally published in 2002 under the title Stories of Your Life and Others ) is the author's ability to use fiction as a rhetorical device. By saying this I don't mean that Chiang's work is comprised only of messages which he seeks to impart upon his audience, or even that his stories explicitly take the form of moral/ethical parables aimed at demonstrating some kind of lesson to his readers. Rather, it's more that throughout this collection, Chiang produces fiction which often strives to explore the tension that exists between two or more subtly contradictory ideas, examining various perspectives on his subjects through the medium of narrative. Via stories as diverse as a very contemporary-minded retelling of a biblical parable, an alien first-contact story that touches on themes of predestination and free will, and a fictional documentary about the ethics of limiti...

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This blog does not use generative AI. All of the articles and reviews posted here were written by me, and I have done my best to block web crawlers used in training commercial Large Language Models from accessing this material.