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meredithakatz 's review for:
The Genesis of Misery
by Neon Yang
What do you get when you take the story of Joan of Arc, put it in the blender with a huge helping of Neon Genesis Evangelion, a dash of Code Geass and Gideon the Ninth, and just a pinch of feudal lord/handmaiden? Well -- you get the Genesis of Misery, an unapologetically queer, unrecognizably religious space opera about a young nonbinary person (or 'nixen', the term they use in-text) who goes from con artist to zealot as they try to destroy their enemies, the Heretics, and defy the government to do so.
(Misery uses she pronouns in personal contexts and they pronouns in professional/report-style settings; a review is a report so I'm using 'they' here in general, but she for my personal feelings about her. That feels right.)
I thought this book was just extremely, extremely cool. The setting is extremely rich (an aeons-past-earth settler story! Voidmadness! Religious? angels? of the Forge? who left mecha for their blessed people! A decadent, decaying space-empire!). It's Joan of Arc's life story remixed, as I said, with a lot of deliberate Evangelion, and you can see the nods to it in plenty of places, ("all is right, all is right, all is right", making a hole through a base so the angel can descend into the depth, the non-religious religiousness of the whole thing) but it's nothing like a fanfic either; its world is unique.
I can understand why some people might not entirely jive with it, although I very much did. Like Gideon the Ninth, The Genesis of Misery plays with rapid whiplash between high and low language, going from religious speeches to a vulgar comment, or interrupting the strange, foreign fantasy of this place with quotes from our own modern era. This works for me given the themes and the characters. Likewise, Misery is not a nice person. She's selfish, self-centered, blames other people for her flaws, and refuses to ever doubt herself, even when murder is involved. But she's believable and she's engaging and fascinating.
This story is queer as hell, and I love how the pronouns are presented -- we are being TOLD the story straight up by a being in a culture where introducing yourself with your pronouns is standardized; why wouldn't it be listed in the text as specifically offered information? Everyone is pan, many characters are nonbinary.
The one flaw I personally had with it is that it felt unresolved at the end (in a way Joan of Arc's story isn't), and I would have been fine with it except that the frame narrative is very much... I want to know what decision he's making about Misery, and why he needs this information about them from their point of view, and we're not given that. So it doesn't feel quite complete to me, just, so close to being there but not quite. Perhaps this is the first part of a duology or trilogy (as in the Joan of Arc biography obviously there is.... a bit more to go) but if so, neither NetGalley nor Goodreads has said as much, which means my reading has to be informed as if this is a standalone.
I enjoyed this VERY much. Thank you to NetGalley and to Tor.com for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
(Misery uses she pronouns in personal contexts and they pronouns in professional/report-style settings; a review is a report so I'm using 'they' here in general, but she for my personal feelings about her. That feels right.)
I thought this book was just extremely, extremely cool. The setting is extremely rich (an aeons-past-earth settler story! Voidmadness! Religious? angels? of the Forge? who left mecha for their blessed people! A decadent, decaying space-empire!). It's Joan of Arc's life story remixed, as I said, with a lot of deliberate Evangelion, and you can see the nods to it in plenty of places, ("all is right, all is right, all is right", making a hole through a base so the angel can descend into the depth, the non-religious religiousness of the whole thing) but it's nothing like a fanfic either; its world is unique.
I can understand why some people might not entirely jive with it, although I very much did. Like Gideon the Ninth, The Genesis of Misery plays with rapid whiplash between high and low language, going from religious speeches to a vulgar comment, or interrupting the strange, foreign fantasy of this place with quotes from our own modern era. This works for me given the themes and the characters. Likewise, Misery is not a nice person. She's selfish, self-centered, blames other people for her flaws, and refuses to ever doubt herself, even when murder is involved. But she's believable and she's engaging and fascinating.
This story is queer as hell, and I love how the pronouns are presented -- we are being TOLD the story straight up by a being in a culture where introducing yourself with your pronouns is standardized; why wouldn't it be listed in the text as specifically offered information? Everyone is pan, many characters are nonbinary.
The one flaw I personally had with it is that it felt unresolved at the end (in a way Joan of Arc's story isn't), and I would have been fine with it except that the frame narrative is very much... I want to know what decision he's making about Misery, and why he needs this information about them from their point of view, and we're not given that. So it doesn't feel quite complete to me, just, so close to being there but not quite. Perhaps this is the first part of a duology or trilogy (as in the Joan of Arc biography obviously there is.... a bit more to go) but if so, neither NetGalley nor Goodreads has said as much, which means my reading has to be informed as if this is a standalone.
I enjoyed this VERY much. Thank you to NetGalley and to Tor.com for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.