Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma

read by Stephanie Racine

I’m not sure how to categorize this book. It's not a psychological thriller, though we do spend a lot of time on the edge of our seats wondering, claustrophobically, what's really going on. It's not contemporary realistic fiction, because people travel to and live on another planet. It’s not exactly science fiction, either—though a lot of it takes place on that other planet, in a near-future that’s scarily like ours.

That planet, Nyx, is a lot of things—on a surface level it’s what the narrator describes it as, a barren planet sufficiently Earth-like as to make colonization and eventual terraforming a possibility. Scratch just a little below that surface, though, and Nyx is a sort of anti-Earth, a symbolic and literal refuge for social media refuseniks who romanticise grandiose and permanent acts of rebellion, or for those who just can’t cope with life under the modern social panopticon. Its presence in the book, at the beginning at least, is clearly more about our current social ills than about actual and literal heavenly bodies.

So: in addition to being straight-up entertaining and a quick, fun read, this book is definitely literary, working on several levels and raising more questions than it answers. In fact, if I were teaching a freshman lit class in college, I'd want to assign this book, for those very reasons.

And so we come to the fourth paragraph on this review and I’m not sure I’ve even begun to tell you what you want or need to know. I may, in fact, have already scared you off from reading this novel. But in case you're still considering reading it (and I do recommend that you do), you’ll want some basic information. So:

It’s set in the near future, as I’ve said. A near future that’s maybe halfway between Life As We Know It here and now, and that Black Mirror episode where people constantly rate each other and their ratings affect what jobs they can have, what housing they can live in, and so on. What’s really different about this near future is that a wormhole has opened up on Earth. A one-way wormhole that leads to the planet Nyx, which humans are colonizing.

Nyx is beautiful and pink and Instagram-perfect, populated by like-minded folks who have no interest in being connected to the World Wide Web—which is a good thing, seeing as how the wormhole is one-way only. Once they go to Nyx, they can’t send home so much as an email. (And yet, strangely, social media posts complete with luscious images are sent to Earth on a daily basis, and they arrive just fine.)

Our protagonist, who does social media for a living, isn’t exactly a wiz at critical thinking. What she is is exhausted with her life and with having to pretend that it’s better and prettier than it is. She’s also suicidal—not that she wants anyone to know. After spending her entire (young) adult life putting a good and socially acceptable face on everything, she’s ready to pitch it all and head to where things are real, even if there’s no return from there. Especially since there’s no return from there.

And naturally, once she’s there and it’s too late, things aren’t quite what they seemed from Earth. A slow, intensely creepy unraveling of the minds and lives of the Nyxians ensues. And that's where I need to stop in order to avoid spoilers.

Read this book. Just don’t expect to know quite what to make of it, even after you’re done with it.

Note: Sharlene Teo summarizes this book brilliantly as "both ultra contemporary and timeless in its examination of mental health and existential and social purpose, it's the most hilarious and razor-sharp depiction of office politics I've ever read. The protagonist, Iris, hates earht so much she volunteers to participate in a reality show set on another planet."

See the entire article here.

An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King

read by James Chen, Tim Chiou, and Elaine Kao

Set in a near-future China where the problem of “excess males” caused by a combination of the one-child policy and parents’ preference for boy children is being solved by making “advanced families” (two or three husbands sharing one wife) the norm, this book tells the story of a two-husband family considering “going the max” by marrying a third man, and that of the man being considered.

The little family has secrets that would be safer without adding another person to the mix. One of May-Ling's husbands has autism, and the other is "willfully sterile," meaning gay. Both of these conditions are, if not technically illegal, certainly punishable, and must be kept hidden if their child is to thrive and everybody is to survive in relative freedom. But those selfsame secrets make the marriage untenable, in the long run, for two of its members. That's why they're even considering adding a third husband to the mix.

Meanwhile Wei-Guo, our eponymous "excess male," has, in his 40s, just managed to save up enough money for a dowry. He soon falls in love with May-Ling, to the consternation of his fathers, who are appropriately cautious about the match. They've heard rumors about May-Ling's husbands, and being a third husband isn't exactly a high-status position.

And then, of course, disaster strikes and everybody has to decide how committed they really are to their desires and to each other, and what kind of consequences they're willing to accept for their actions. Wei-Guo's talent for loyalty won't be enough to save anyone without a lot of help from an unexpected quarter.

This book is super absorbing, and as a bonus, raises all sorts of interesting points about gender roles, neurodiversity, the nature of love, and the meaning of family. Highly recommend.