Candas Jane Dorsey

Canadian SFF monadnock Dorsey is operating in a new field so y'all sit up and hit the one-click. As one would expect from the author of Black Wine, sex and its coevals gender and sexuality get a workout here. Reading the third of what I devoutly hope will be an ongoing series first, I thought permaybehaps I'd be a bit lost, without the deeper background that makes series mysteries such good reads for me.

I forgot whose work I was reading.

Feeling lost and a little at sea is Author Dorsey's show more calling card. That said, I was never wondering where someone came from, or how anyone fits into the schema of the story being told. It probably helps that the way events unfold is as stochastic as real life is itself...it felt to me as though I was genuinely following our nameless detective around, learning things alongside them. In any truly immersive read I hope that I will be investing in the characters along with the main character, and that was indeed the case here. What might not work quite so well was the book's use of **COPIOUS** footnotes...over two hundred!...and huge numbers of acronyms. It took me some time to find a reading rhythm in this story, but I was so ready to trust the author, from past acquaintance in her SFF days, that I kept my hopes up. I felt rewarded. Again, as one would expect from Author Dorsey, there are little SFnal grace notes relatively unobtrusively scattered about.

As in all series reads, though, it's the characters that make the reader invest or decline to invest in the story at hand. Our nameless protagonist, sharp-eyed and -tongued, is a big draw for me. The other characters are literally kaleidoscopic, forming startling and unusual conjunctions with the narrator, each other, and the story unfolding. This is, to me, a net positive because as unusual as the juxtapositions can be, they're never gratuitous or exploitively deployed. I do sometimes feel as though some authors have, in their heads or on their editors' checklists, a set of identities that they feel the need to dot around to be "inclusive." This is absolutely never the way this read came across to me. In part that's because I've read the author's earlier work; in part it's down to the way the characters are included in the sleuth's life and thus this narrative.

I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the evident pro-environment, anti-capitalist thrust of the story. That won't work for some readers, because it's intrinsic to every element of the series' world-building. You know who you are, so you should seek elsewhere for your own ma'at needs to be met.

For me, it went down like a truly excellent, complex, single-malt whisky. I heartily recommend the read. show less

The Adventures of Isabel : An Epitome Apartments Mystery by Candas Jane Dorsey. Our protagonist (not named Isabel), a downsized pansexual social worker, lives in the Epitome (pronounced Epeetome, with a silent e at the end, by the residents) Apartments with her cat, Bunnywit (actually F***wit, but she is trying to change it because of her relatives' disapproval) and slogging through post-employment depression. Then she's asked by a friend, Hep (because she looks like a white-haired Katherine show more Hepburn) to investigate the death of Hep's granddaughter, Maddy, who was a prostitute and recovering drug addict. Our heroine, with help from Hep, their flamboyantly gay friend Denis, cops Roger and Lance, Jian (formerly homeless, later the protagonist's girlfriend), and cousin Thelma (very religious pillar of the church) pieces together Maddy's last days and who is responsible for her death. I really enjoyed this. The dialogue is snappy and snarky, the plot clips along, and the characters are great. For me, an added dimension was the city - nameless, like the protagonist, but by the appearance of the Double Greeting Wonton House, Noodle Noodle, and the Hardware Grill, at least mostly Edmonton. The author lives here, and is actually a friend of mine, so it's a double pleasure to be able to recommend this book. Go buy it, or get your library to buy it! show less

This work of feminist sci fi has a palindromic structure, weaving together the stories of several women in a complex way. Gradually we come to understand how the women's stories are related - and to see the common themes which join them, themes of freedom and dependence, love and maternal responsibility, the nature of home and the need to travel. Another major theme is what different languages are able to express - there are cruel languages in which it's impossible to say that you are free, show more and gentle languages which can't explain slavery.

It's a story which is sometimes hard to follow - after three chapters I turned back to the beginning and took notes, which is something I've never done before - but I felt that I needed to do that to get the most out of the book. I enjoyed the challenge of making the pieces fit together, as well as meeting the smart, intrepid women and their friends who feature in the book. The worldbuilding was good too - an interesting range of societies, sketched vividly without too much description.

It's not a perfect book. Some of the ideas were a bit clunky (there's a chapter actually titled "Women who transgress", for example), although not bad by the standards of the genre. A bigger problem for me was the utopianism - even though I know that it's ridiculous to criticise feminist SF for being utopian, that's what it's there for! But I guess I just don't believe in human nature being any better than what we see around us - and certainly not in a culture which doesn't even have words for nastiness. And I was more interested in the build-up than the resolution of the stories. But I enjoyed reading it, and would recommend it to someone interested in the genre. show less

I got this book as a birthday present from my sister.
As soon as I was done reading it (with that shuddering pleasure that only the absolute best books give you), I passed it back to her to read... and I still haven't got it back, because when she was done, she gave it to her boyfriend to read (someone who is not the biggest fantasy fan), and he won't read the very end, because "But once I finish it, it'll be over!"
I'm considering buying another copy, to re-read it and pass it on again to show more someone else.

It's amazing that 'Black Wine' is a first novel. The characters are complex enough to fully immerse yourself in their lives. The world is not some faux-medieval wish-fulfillment daydream, but a real, gritty and harsh land - that still somehow has the feel of one of your deepest dreams.
Recommended for fans of Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Atwood, and Sheri S. Tepper. (But having said that, I feel I should add that the "feminist" undercurrent of the book is neither distracting, nor does it leave you with that nasty "agenda" taste in your mouth.)

(oh, and they play Scrabble! Yay! (as Scrabble fanatics, both me & my sister got a big kick out of that!) show less