World Without End by Ken Follett

read by John Lee

It’s two centuries after the building of Kingsbridge Cathedral, and while many things have stayed the same—for example, the balance of power between the hidebound clergy and the rapacious nobility is constantly being pushed at by both sides, pretty much always to the detriment of everyone else—change is on the way. The Hundred Years’ War has begun, and the Black Death is on the horizon. This won’t just mean the death of 60% of the population, but also the beginning of the end of the feudal system. New ideas about medicine and architecture are beginning to develop, among other things, and they’ll change the world, too.

In World Without End we see all of this through the eyes of four main characters: Caris, the daughter of a wool merchant; Merthin and Ralph, two very different sons of an impoverished knight; and Gwenda, the daughter of a ne’er-do-well landless laborer. As the book begins, they’re all children. Gwenda is being made to steal a nobleman’s purse at a crowded church service—which immediately leads to a plot twist I don’t want to spoil. In fact the entire book is essentially a big ball of easily-spoiled twisty-turny plotty-wotty stuff. In fact the plot thickens at such a pace that it’s as dense as a neutron star long before you get to the middle of the book's thousand or so pages (a.k.a. 45+  hours of audiobook).

Don’t let the size of the thing put you off, though. I’m long past the age when I was a size queen about books (ah, to be young and have time for a book-a-day habit—during the summer, at least), but I was engaged all the way through. Yes, Follett is putting characters with relatively modern mind-sets into a historical setting—but only relatively modern, and there’s a reason for it. He’s writing about a time when the world was changing pretty rapidly, after all. And he also includes plenty of characters with thoroughly contemporary points of view, including two of the four POV characters, only one of whom is a villain.

By having his main characters start off as children who don’t understand everything, Follett eases the reader into a world that isn’t fully understood. And throughout the book he explains all sorts of things we may not be familiar with, without ever making the reader feel talked down to; it just seems very natural that a given character wouldn’t understand a given situation or a technology fully, and you learn about it along with them. There are several times when some characters seem painfully and even unrealistically naive, but that's my only quibble with a really grand work of historical fiction.

For fans of the first book in this trilogy, Pillars of the Earth, this is a must-read. But you needn't have read the first book to enjoy this one thoroughly; it's written to stand alone. Strongly recommend.

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley

narrated by Charlotte Parry

Ah yes, Beauty and the Beast: the classic fairy tale about Stockholm Syndrome. I have to admit that I am enough of a fan of this story (and of modern retellings of fairy tales generally) to have sought out the live action version last year. And to have thoroughly enjoyed it—because, duh, Emma Watson, but also, Josh Gad as LeFou: what a performance! Totally stole the show.

But also, like any right-thinking person, I’m always a bit queasy about the premise, no matter how good the execution is. Basically this is the story of a young woman trapped in an enchanted castle by a man who has literally become a monster due to a (well-deserved) curse, and whose only hope of becoming human again is to have someone agree, of their own free will, to marry him.

But apparently in this universe the idea of “free will” isn’t negated by coercing someone to live with him by threatening grave harm to said person’s father, who innocently stumbled across an enchanted castle and plucked a single rose to bring her as a souvenir—so that’s exactly what the Beast does. It’s not technically kidnapping, but morally speaking, it might as well be.

Of course if we take all of this stuff literally, and not as a metaphor for bad things that happen in real life, we can decide to just focus, as this retelling does, on Beauty’s specific experience, her bravery and loyalty and ability to see the good in just about any person or situation. And on the magic and the tragedy of the castle and its various inhabitants.

If your only experience of this tale is the two Disney adaptations, you’ll notice some changes in this version. For one thing, “Beauty” is just a nickname—one that its bearer has come to dislike, over the years, even more than she originally disliked her given name, Honor. That’s because she’s not as beautiful as her two sisters.

The book spends quite a bit of time telling the story of the three sisters and their father and their various suitors, and how they became impoverished, and how they settled in their new life. A lot of time. About two-thirds of the book. Fortunately for Beauty, there is no Gaston in this retelling (which, alas, means no LeFou). Her troubles are a quieter sort—until her father falls afoul of the Beast, who threatens to kill him for taking one of his many flowers as a gift for Beauty. But Beauty offers herself in her father’s place, and somehow convinces her father to accept this, under a lot of protest.

At the enchanted castle at last, Beauty encounters the invisible servants of the original tale (not the talking animated objects of the Disney versions) and sets about making the best of her new circumstances. The best part is, of course, the library—this Beauty being just as bookish as Disney’s Belle—but I won’t spoil it for you, there being few enough surprises in this version. The rest of the story goes on more or less as one would expect, if somewhat condensed.

The end of the tale is extremely condensed—that, apparently, not being the part McKinley was most interested in. That was a bit disappointing. But overall, this is beautifully written, and, in spite of a certain vagueness about when it’s supposed to have taken place, it does a lovely job of bringing these characters and this story to life. Recommended for adult and teen fans of the genre or of fantasy in general.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by Lloyd James

Oh boy. This was my first re-read of this book in at least a couple of decades. And—spoiler alert!—it is flawed.

I should start by saying a bit about my history with Heinlein. My first Heinlein book was Friday; I read that when I was about 15 or so, and I was instantly hooked. The plot grabbed me by the collar and roared along like a freight train, and I loved every moment of it. I also loved the self-assured competence of the plucky-yet-vulnerable protagonist, and I was super intrigued with the future and with the alternative relationship models the author presented.

So I began reading every Heinlein book I could get my hands on. When I began to have a hard time finding new ones, I re-read the old ones. (To this day, there are a handful of his “juveniles” that I’ve never gotten my mitts on.) A few—Friday, The Number of the Beast, The Door into Summer, I Will Fear No Evil, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond the Sunset—I read over and over and over again. They were deeply satisfying worlds to crawl into; they were my happy place.

Much as I loved these stories and uncritical as I was at that age, even then I knew they weren’t perfect. I got that his ideas about gun-toting and personal liberty—I didn’t know the word “libertarian” yet—worked out so well in his universe only because he was in charge of everything in it, and could conveniently ignore all the real-world reasons why we don’t actually want that kind of society. And his ideas about sex—some were great, even enlightened, but many were clearly misguided and a few were flat-out harmful if taken as advice for how to conduct one’s life.

And o lord did that man love a soap box. Politics, economics, gender roles—if he had an opinion on a subject (and o lord did he have a lot of opinions), he didn’t hesitate to climb up and hold forth, at great length. Don’t even get me started about his long lessons on engineering and ballistics.

Still. When you’re reading an otherwise excellent book, by an author for whom you have great affection, it’s easy to quickly scan through the boring or squicky bits and get back to the good stuff. And there’s so much good stuff there. The “dean of science fiction writers,” as he was often called, could write a ripping yarn like nobody else. He was spilling over with story ideas—a universe full of them—multiple universes, actually—and he knew a thing or two about how to make them compelling.

Fast forward to 2018. I was nosing through the science fiction audiobooks on Hoopla, trying to decide what to read next, when The Moon is a Harsh Mistress popped up.

This was never one of my favorites. I had found the narrator’s pseudo-Russian patois a little annoying, as well as his pretense of having no political opinions. On the other hand, the book covers an interesting period in Luna’s history (in that particular timeline). As such, it gives important background for some of my favorite plot lines in other books. (Cameo by a very young Hazel Stone, anyone?) Also, I’ve always loved his stories featuring artificial intelligences.

So I decided to go ahead and download it. I listened to the first chapter or so on my own, and found the accent of the narrator even more annoying when read out loud than when printed on the page. It wasn’t so annoying that I couldn’t fall under the spell of the story, though. The next day I had a long car ride with my 14-year-old, and I asked if they would mind if we listened. They did not mind.

Almost immediately I had to stop the story to explain stuff to my kid. First, of course, was the basic setup—where the story takes place, and at what point in its history, and who Mike was (Mycroft Holmes, the first self-aware computer and the centralized administrator of way too many civic functions). Then mention was made of the main character’s line marriage, which my kid wondered about, so I paused the story to briefly explain the various sorts of marriage described in the book.

Then came a heaping pile of condescension toward Wyoming Knott, a female character who was putatively admirable, and I had to stop again.

Women’s place in Heinlein’s Luna… ugh, what a can of worms. I think he means to be generous and respectful toward women, in his way. But...

So, basically, Luna is a penal colony (much like Australia back in the day), and the male-to-female ratio is heavily skewed in favor of males. And there are no laws, as such; only the Authority’s rules. The way this plays out is that women’s sexual agency is considered sacred, and all decisions about marriage and divorce are theirs to make. Men universally band together to defend women's right to make these decisions, though it's so ingrained in the culture that it only needs to be defended against outsiders and "new chums."

Good as far as it goes (though why they should have to be underrepresented in the population in order for this to be the case is a fair question). However, the way men show “respect” to women is to howl, snap, and wolf whistle instead of, say, shaking hands. Whether this “respect” is paid to women past a certain age, or who present as butch, or are otherwise sexually unappealing or unavailable to a given man, isn’t mentioned—but it seems clear from context that women’s status is firmly based on their sexual availability and desirability in a situation of scarcity. And it’s unambiguously clear that women who choose to sell their sexual favors are considered to have the right to do so—but are also looked down upon as flighty, at best.

Wyoming Knott—Wyoh—is presented as intelligent, a beauty, and a political leader. She is simultaneously presented as a charming little fluff-head whose misapprehensions about politics are to be gently but firmly corrected. Oh, and whenever she does anything unusually admirable, she’s praised for being almost like a man. It’s not just that she’s imperfect; it’s that her imperfections are cute little specifically-female qualities that add up to there being no need to take her seriously. (That Mannie and the Prof take her as seriously as they do is clearly meant to be taken as admirable gallantry on their part.) Women are supposedly treated extra well in Luna because they are scarce—but they are treated like a scarce commodity, not fully human.

So I told my kid, awkwardly, that Heinlein had a lot of strange ideas about women, and that he was, in lots of ways, ahead of his time, but in other ways he was very much a man of his time. And, my kid being 14 years old, I left it at that. They are, after all, able to ask their own questions if they have any. We listened. We didn't get as far as any of his numerous instances of casual racism thinly disguised as admiration, so we didn't have to have that conversation. Not that that isn't a good and important conversation to have with your kids, and not that I haven't had it before and won't have it again—but just then I wanted to hear a story, not give a series of lessons.

And it’s an engaging story. It is. It's about a lonely computer, a revolution, and an engineer pulled into it for friendship’s sake. One character, Professor Bernardo de la Paz, is clearly a stand-in for the author, and he’s a charming old coot in his way. This book is definitely worthwhile—it won a Hugo award in its day—though I probably wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Heinlein.

Verdict: read it, but with a very large grain of salt.

Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free by Wednesday Martin

Read by the author

I’ll state right at the outset that this book is not for everyone. If you’re not interested in frank, open, sex-positive discussions of female sexuality—or if you’re so triggered by the thought of women who cheat on their partners that reading an account of them that doesn’t condemn them will make you fly into a rage—or if you aren’t interested in the distinction between consensual and non-consensual nonmonogamy, you probably shouldn’t read this book.

Or maybe you should.

Wednesday Martin is standing on the shoulders of the authors of Sex at Dawn, What Do Women Want?, and What Love Is and What It Could Be. From that vantage point, she can see quite a lot that our society and past sex researchers (almost exclusively male) not only couldn’t see, but actively pooh-poohed. Because she doesn’t assume, as they did, that women are more naturally monogamous than men, but is open to other possibilities, she’s able to look at existing research without discounting evidence that doesn’t fit into that box.

And what does she see? That taken as a whole, women, not men, are the ones who have a harder time maintaining monogamy. That it’s at least just as natural for women as for men to cheat on their spouses or have multiple sexual partners. That it was the rise of agrarian societies, not biology, that put a premium on controlling women’s sexuality. That in societies where women are free to have more than one sexual partner at a time without social sanction, they often do.

These ideas aren’t entirely new, of course. What Ms. Martin brings to them is the backing of scientific research. She then goes on to conduct interviews and research of her own, all of which are fascinating. She talks to women in long-term monogamous relationships, women who have cheated on their spouses, and women who practice consensual nonmonogamy. She visits a women-only sex club aimed at women who identify as basically straight, to see what women’s sexuality might be like absent the male gaze. And she draws some interesting conclusions.

This is a very wide-ranging book; topics include social anthropology/ethnography (of both familiar and less-familiar cultures, past and present), primatology, and evolutionary psychology. The numerous interviews she conducts put a human face on the scientific studies she cites. The book does occasionally seem to wander a bit aimlessly, but never for long; another fault in her writing is the focus on female vs. male as if they were immutable categories. However, overall it's a well-researched and informative book, written in a conversational tone that keeps it highly readable. Strongly recommended for anybody who is interested in female sexuality.