Here at WWAC, we’ve been delving into some meaty explorations of how societies work recently, from Kathryn and Paige’s nonfiction recommendations of Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan and Extremely Online – The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, And Power on the Internet; to Masha’s appreciation of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, and my own anthropologically-inflected speculative fiction interests with Long Live Evil and Those Beyond the Wall. Dive in for an adventurous, cultural summer!
Emily: After writing a lot of YA, including the Lynburn Legacy trilogy and her celebrated self-aware portal fantasy In Other Lands, Long Live Evil is Sarah Rees Brennan’s first book officially for grownups! It comes out from Orbit on August 27, and I can confidently say that if you loved In Other Lands and wanted a similar treatment for contemporary doorstop fantasy, Long Live Evil will be very satisfying for you. I’ve also just learned that the audiobook is voiced by Moira Quirk, my absolute favorite reader, so now I’m looking forward to a listen, too.
In Long Live Evil, we meet Rae, a young woman dying of cancer. She’s in the hospital, drifting in and out of awareness as her sister reads aloud from their favorite novel series, Time of Iron. One day, a mysterious woman arrives in her hospital room with an offer: go through a portal into the world of Time of Iron and try to get a magic flower that can save her life in her own world.
Rae takes the bargain and finds herself suddenly in the world of the first book of the series (not her favorite), in the royal court, in the smokin’ hot bod of the villainess about to be put to death. She talks her way out of the death penalty, and the story starts changing around her. Maybe the king isn’t as dreamy as she thought he was on the page. Maybe the ingenue isn’t as vapid. Maybe no one is what they seem.
As Rae starts to form alliances with other potential villains, the events of the story world are reshaped around those new relationships. Long Live Evil is full of the thoughtful and clever commentary on genre expectations I love in In Other Lands, here mixed with Sarah Rees Brennan’s lived experience of cancer.
While the plot is certainly bloodier, Long Live Evil also has some of the relationship dynamic fans love from In Other Lands, and there are a lot of funny lines and lovable characters. Overall, it tells a really engaging story that supports the argument that everyone is worth having their story told.
Kathryn: Many people associate summer with a break from school, but I’d like to recommend Chris McMorran’s Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan, an academic monograph that’s surprisingly entertaining and enjoyable to read. McMorran is an anthropologist at the National University of Singapore who spent more than a year working at an onsen hotel in the idyllic town of Kurokawa on Japan’s southern island of Kyūshū. His account of how such resorts operate is informed by his own experience, as well as a decade of talking to people with fascinating life stories.
McMorran is discrete and never exploitative, but he uses a fair amount of behind-the-scenes drama to illustrate the conflicting views at play in the construction and maintenance of Kurokawa’s fantasy of “traditional Japan.” Despite stubbornly persistent expectations of gender roles, one aspect of these onsen hotels that seems almost utopian is their willingness to employ women who might otherwise be in danger of falling through the cracks of society, such as divorcées and single mothers with small children. Even though McMorran tackles serious social issues, his approach is always accessible, and his writing is so crisp and clear that this study often feels akin to reading a novel.
Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan has the potential to be a fun summer read for fans of anime and manga looking for a bit of armchair tourism alongside a deeper understanding of contemporary Japanese society. I’d also recommend the gorgeous travel guide Onsen of Japan: Japan’s Best Hot Springs and Bath Houses to complete the experience, perhaps along with a viewing of the beautiful slice-of-life anime movie Okko’s Inn.
Masha: I’ve been reading a lot of books recently, but my favorite right now is Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. It’s funny, heartfelt, and sharply written. It even has gay people in it! Martyr! follows Iranian-American poet and recovering addict Cyrus Shams and the people around him as Cyrus explores the concept of martyrdom through his poetry and imagined conversations with his family members and fictional/historical figures. I promise it’s both more fun and more sad than that makes it sound.
Emily: Those Beyond the Wall, the sequel to Micaiah Johnson’s celebrated debut, The Space Between Worlds came out in March! It takes place in the same desert dystopia and features many of the same characters, but it is much more brutal. In her Author’s Note before Those Beyond the Wall, Johnson talks about how enraged she is and how rage is not bitterness. Bitterness, she says, is too close to resignation, only a couple steps from complacency. Rage, on the other hand, will fuel us to keep working for something better. And that’s what Those Beyond the Wall is about. Our main character, Scales, is full of love for her fellow runners, her brother, and her community in general. Wiley City is protected by high walls and heavily armed enforcers, but Scales lives in Ashtown, the violent but fairly open and functional enclave outside Wiley City’s artificial atmosphere.
In Those Beyond the Wall, a threat from another corner of the multiverse explored in The Space Between Worlds throws Scales’s whole region into disarray, and the brutalized dead bodies start stacking up. Scales is no stranger to pain and danger, and I felt like the whole book alternates between her intense love and the pain she endures and inflicts because of it. It’s very good, and the end is satisfying and feels earned, but it! is not! cheerful!
Paige: I’ve been really working to get back into a regular reading habit lately while also wanting to really just dig into books that get me thinking/contemplating. So, my tried and true choice is to turn to non-fiction! I recently finished Extremely Online – The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, And Power on the Internet by Taylor Lorenz, and I really enjoyed it from start to finish.
It’s a recent book, having been published in October 2023, and it was one I’d had on my TBR for a long time before it came out (shoutout to my local library for ordering it!). Lorenz is now a tech columnist at The Washington Post (as of 2024), known for her coverage of online culture. In Extremely Online, she has traced some of the biggest changes the Internet has gone through from 2000 until now, with a particular focus pointed at online creators and social platforms. The book covers a pretty broad range of areas, including the start of blogging, the rise of YouTube, and the 2010s online creator boom. And while I don’t think a lot of the information in the book is necessarily new (especially for anyone who’s grown up online like I did), I still found it to be an interesting, well-researched history that compiles a lot of the rise of social media and creator/influencer culture into one book.
