Book Thoughts: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
Read this because my sister borrowed it from the library and recommended it to me (just like with Some Desperate Glory). I've decided that Demon Copperhead is truly not a book for me so I've just gone rogue and read this other fiction book instead of finishing my book club book (first time so far).
Hm. Doesn't hit as well as Some Desperate Glory. My sister liked this book way more than I did (rating it a full 5/5); I think if I were pressed to rate it, it would be a 3.75. (Some Desperate Glory is a 4.25 to me).
This is because personally, I need books to really make me think deeply about something that's related to our society — in addition to being good in craft measures — before I even consider a 4.5+ score. I did not do a lot of thinking while reading The Incandescent.
Which isn't to say that it was bad. The beginning third of the book was riveting and very easy to sink into narrative-style wise. However, the middle third dragged a ton as someone who hated Mark right from the start, and then the last third was pretty good but nowhere near the first part.
Highlights (not spoiler free because I never am):
This book is written by someone who teaches, and you can tell. All the details about the curriculum and teaching teenagers, etc., were done very well and I enjoyed these parts a lot.
This book has the most interesting conception of demons I've seen, personally (again, I don't read a lot of fiction). I feel like a lot of the time demons, when presented as beings completely removed from the morals of humans, don't have much of a logical backing for why they are the way they are. Presenting the idea of a "self" as something that demons create and inhabit was very, very interesting. This was the first book with magic I've read where they actually integrated the tech well in, as in, they explain why there isn't much tech around magicians besides #timeyaesthetic. Kids do have cell phones and Nintendo Switches, they just have to be barricaded because complex systems that are likely to be referred to as having a self get easily hijacked by demons. Very funny.
Also the idea that a self is ultimately something you choose. I loved the whole discussion on the ethics of using demons and whether demons are people, etc.The Phoenix's whole section when it possessed Walden in the last third of the book was great, loved it. Reminded me of the part in Some Desperate Glory with Kyr's alternate universe and all the weird feelings about having another self in you.
I liked Nikki and Aneeta.
The romance between two women who are bad at talking about their feelings was fun to read, but I honestly would've liked to see how they actually work out relationship problems and whatnot.
The last part where the description stops using "Walden" and starts using "Saffy" just naturally in the dialogue as she talks with someone who really makes her feel like a person who isn't just Career Teacher.
Parts that I can understand but did not hit for me:
Mark. The whole thing with Mark and how obviously foolish Walden was being grated my gears the whole time. I know that was the point, and by making him extremely annoying and not that subtle, it gives reason for why Walden cracks when she realizes that he's played her (because she thinks she's supposed to be above that, the hubris). However, this does not change the fact that reading the whole section had me rolling my eyes even if it was in character and Walden's mistakes are understandable. Dude, I just hate egotistical men. My sister is watching Heated Rivalry and I'm there on the side going, "Can we throw this weird Russian — exoticizing? don't know if that's the term — boy off a building?"
The ending with Walden immediately thinking about what her next steps are without an arm and thinking about going back to teaching (though finally in a different place) didn't really hit for me, even though I don't think it should necessarily have been done different. Rather, it would probably be worse if it had been done different, because people who become disabled still have a life and skills after acquiring a disability and all. And a whole big part of this book was about continuing to move on and not denying what you just like to do even after you have major fuck-ups. So this is all in line with the characterization and the themes.
However, as someone who struggles immensely with shame, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was kind of "wrong," even as I sat there acknowledging everything I just said in the previous paragraph. If I were Walden and I had endangered 400+ kids as a teacher due to my own hubris that led me to miss really obvious clues about an awful man, I would probably think about real, concrete ways of actually ending my life. The fact that Walden doesn't really struggle with this is fine and all, because they tried to already cover their bases here with Nikki and Walden is not Nikki and has an inflated ego rather than a self-shaming one, but as a result it basically bypasses me emotionally.
It's funny because books shouldn't really be about how much do you relate to a character and whatnot if they're thought of exploratory texts and all, but I just don't like it. Sitting with this discomfort is probably a teaching moment for me or whatever — especially when all I want to say is, "Okay, but you were so stupid," "How could you even like a smarmy white man for a second, and even give him parts of yourself at all; how could you let him taint you like that," in a way that is very victim-blamey and counterproductive — but even if it's a maybe good thing for me to go through this exercise, it unfortunately doesn't change the fact that it makes it not-enjoyable for me. Which means personally I would rate this book lower than it maybe "deserves," or whatever, except I'm not actually adding my rating to Storygraph because it's under 4 so maybe it doesn't matter what I think or rate it.There's a very deliberate avoidance of talking about what the Phoenix did to Mark exactly other than that it's inhumane, terrible, exploits his very living body in the most malicious way, but I am likewise lukewarm about this even though I get why it did this. Punishing Mark isn't the point when the book is against punitive measures in general (even if I would rather see him dissected). To some people, like my sister, simply not saying what happens to someone also makes it scarier. The opposite is true for me. If you don't even tell me whether his limbs are fucked up or his skin has been peeled or something along those lines, all I imagine is just his stasis body being 3D rotated rather peacefully. I am not willing to do the imagination work for the grotesque, and thus the omission of the grotesque renders it not scary at all. This is just, again, different things work for different people, and I am not really the audience for this book, it seems.
Iffy parts:
Walden is the only physically disabled person by the end of the story that matters, and her physical disability is literally the hubris of her own actions (getting her arm chopped off for thinking she could safely contain a demon there). Bad.
In fact, during the ethics talk portion of the book, Walden even specifically mentions that having low intelligence doesn't make a human less human, yet it's evident that Walden as a character and the book in general values people with education. No intellectually disabled characters anywhere to be seen. I would say that the fact that they were even alluded to as deserving of personhood is better than most, but the bar is literally five levels beneath top soil for this one, so it doesn't make me feel good to say that at all.
What are the Marshalls? There was a weird sort-of "Keep police out of school" parallel with them in the beginning, but they are actually a force that is for fighting demons and not for sending kids to jail. Supposedly. So they're needed. But they're also incompetent and Laura is just better than all of them #mygoodapple
May be indexing too hard as I have only read two of Tesh's works, but both of them featured blonde butch female fighters that were seen as beautiful (though in Kyr's case, at least that was specifically because of racism rather than her actually being stereotypically beautiful). Once is fine but twice and I start suspecting that the author has a type, and when that type is "blond" all I can say is that we desperately need fewer blonde characters in the world because they are vastly overrepresented. And this is something that my sister would never agree with me on; she would rather accuse me (half-jokingly, half-serious) of hating blond people. Sigh. Anyway, could just be a coincidence.
Anyway, it's an all right book. I would much rather see a book written about Nikki, but sometimes writers don't really want to try to write outside of what they know identity-wise. And it's, like, fine to write about what you know, but it also just makes me think that I wouldn't be very inclined to pick up another Emily Tesh book because I should probably be off reading more works from writers of color so I don't go, "Why is this so white," while reading a book that never promised me otherwise.