Oh, look!

An Expanse book! (And another book with a title that I confuse for another title, this one I read as "Strange Days" the entire time, until I wrote this review.)

OF COURSE I'm going to read it.

Okay, maybe not. I read this one because it was an Expanse book, knowing it might not have Holden in the plot. It didn't. I didn't find the main character particularly compelling, so this book took me a little longer to read than the Holden books do, even though it's a novella instead of a full novel.

The book is an on-the-ground, back story on one of the planets through the Ring. It left more questions than it exposed with the characters and dialogue, which might be the point of it, as a lead-in into the next book.

At this point, if not a hard-core, I'm-going-to-read-everything-Expanse fan, skip this one.

Her mother said that honey was better than molasses, but there weren’t any bees on Laconia. Cara had only ever seen pictures of them, and based on those, she didn’t like honey at all.
Location: 87

I giggled at this when I read it. Small children often don't like foods just because they are different from what they know. Except that adults do this, too, and spend a large amount of effort justifying why they don't like something, when, in reality, they don't know enough to know they don't like said something.

The focus of the family spotlight had moved past her. Momma bird was over. She couldn’t put her thumb on why that bothered her.
Location: 154

One of the hardest things about death is that life goes on.

She wondered if the windowless room was like being on a spaceship. Months or years without ever once going outside or hearing the rain tapping into puddles or being able to get away from Xan and her parents. Never being alone. Never feeling the sunlight on her face. Nothing changing. Nothing new. It sounded awful.
Location: 301

Oh, wow, yes, that would be awful, never having Alone Time.

She wondered if the dogs would want to be captured and studied. She thought not, and they’d already done more for her than the soldiers ever had.
Location: 468

Who is good and who is bad is often based on which perspective you see first. Not always, as some whos and many acts are simply evil. Excepting the obvious of those, who helped you, who talked with you first, who you interacted with last, these influence which side you end up on quite a bit.

“Because I hate feeling powerless,” he said. “I hate being reminded that the universe is so much bigger than I am. And that I can’t always protect people.”
Location: 542

The strangest thing was how normal they sounded. How much grief sounded like regular life.
Location: 581

Again, one of the hardest things about death is that life goes on.

Night on Earth was bright. That’s what they said. Their moon shone like a kind of second, crappy sun. Cities were big enough to drown out the stars with their extra glow.
Location: 616

Second, crappy sun. *snort*

Cara dropped to her knees and threw her arms around the dog, hugging the strange, too-solid flesh close to her. It was warm against her cheek, and rough. It smelled like cardamom and soil. It went still, like it wasn’t sure what do with her affection and joy, and it stayed still until she released it.
Location: 646

This scene reminded me of Bella, and of Chase. Both of those dogs were/are incredibly tolerant of my snuggling them.

There wasn’t a perfect answer, but she didn’t need a perfect one. Good enough was good enough. Making her way home was harder than leaving had been, which made some sense to her. Going away from a point, there were any number of paths, and all of them were right. Going back to the point, most paths were wrong.
Location: 700

Book 2 of the Secret Histories series.

Having read the first book in this series, and Green's Nightside series (and really liking the Nightside series), I was excited to start this book. The last book seemed to be the start of a long adventure, but still self-contained.

So, this book was a bit of the "I have just finished a grand adventure, I have power, what do I do with all this new power?" Well, you don't handle it well, you ignore those who supported you in your uphill battle, you do a lot of things wrong, and you become a jerk.

Based on how long-winded Green is in this book, and the reviews of subsequent books commenting about how the main character becomes cruel, I'm choosing not to continue reading this series. When I finished the first book, I was somewhat excited about this one. I'm not excited about this plot at all. I recommend the Nightside series over this one, by a long shot.

Maybe this is an okay book to read if you're a Green fan, but I'm not sure. I don't recommend it. Leave your memories of Eddie with the first book.

"When you work as a field agent, you learn pretty fast you can’t trust anyone."

“Not even those close to you?” said Molly, studying me solemnly with her huge dark eyes.

“Especially those. You always know where you are with an enemy; it’s only friends and loved ones who can betray you.”
Page: 6

The truth might set you free, but there’s nothing that says you have to be grateful.
Page: 6

“Never get attached to possessions,” Molly said briskly. “They’re just things, and you can always get more things.”
Page: 6

"Do you believe in karma, Molly?”

“My karma ran over my dogma.”
Page: 12

And you can’t ever be really close to anyone, when the life you share is a lie.
Page: 13

“If you start getting maudlin on me,” Molly said firmly, “I will slap you, and it will hurt. I told you; never look back. All you ever see are mistakes, failures, and missed opportunities. Concentrate on the here and now!"
Page: 14

“My world used to be so simple,” I said. “I knew who I was, and what I was, and what I was supposed to do with my life.”

“No,” said Molly, not raising her head from my shoulder. “You only thought you did. Welcome to the real world, Eddie. Hateful place, isn’t it?”
Page: 14

... a lot of them wanted to denounce other people as being against progress, or in favour of the wrong kind of progress, or just guilty of the sin of not agreeing with the speaker’s ideas.
Page: 27

Start as you mean to go on, or they’ll walk all over you.
Page: 33

“To keep me honest,” I said. “To tell me the things I need to know, whether I want to hear them or not. To rein me in when I go too far, try to make changes too quickly. Or to spur me on if I start dithering. You’ve always been the sensible one, Penny. A terrible thing to hear, I know, but facts are facts. If I can’t convince you something is right or necessary, maybe it isn’t. And . . . you know a hell of a lot more about running things and organising people than I do.”
Page: 40

So I chose people to advise me who I could trust to tell me the truth, whether I wanted to hear it or not; and who together might just be a match for me, if I looked like getting out of control.
Page: 47

No, he was Merlin Satanspawn, the Devil’s only begotten son. Born to be the Antichrist, but he refused the honour. He always had to go his own way.
Page: 56

This cracked me up, as Merlin Satanspawn is in the Nightside series, too.

There’s always someone we’d like to speak to in the past. Friends and relatives and loved ones, gone too soon, before we could say all the things we meant to say to them. The things we put off saying, because we always thought there’d be time . . . until suddenly there wasn’t.
Page: 58

“There are two main threats to humanity,” the Armourer said ponderously, slipping into his lecture mode. “Doesn’t matter whether they’re scientific or magical in origin, mythical or political or biblical; all of humanity’s enemies can be separated into two distinct kinds. Those who do us harm because they hope to gain something from it; these we call demons. And those who are too big to care about us, but who might do us harm just because we’re in the way; those we call gods, for want of a better word. The family is trained and equipped to deal with demons. The gods are best handled delicately, from a safe distance, and through as many intermediaries as possible.”
Page: 59

"You want them destroyed almost as much as I do, and the enemy of my enemy can be my ally, if not my friend.”
Page: 75

“You can’t trust anything he says. Hell always lies, except when a truth can hurt you more.”
Page: 76

“You are allowed to hold me when you’re feeling down, you know,” said Molly. “It’s allowed, when you’re in a relationship.”

“So we are definitely in one of those relationship things, are we?” I said.

“Yeah. It sneaked up on me when I wasn’t looking. You can squeeze my boobies, if you like.”

“Good to know.”
Page: 83

Laughing!

Look forward, never back. And never get too attached to anything or anyone, because the enemy will use that against you.
Page: 85

“Not everything that happens here is part of some conspiracy; it just seems that way."
Page: 99

The cemetery was dominated by Victorian styles, with oversized tombs and mausoleums, and fancy graves. That whole period was fascinated with death and all its trappings, and the graveyard was positively littered with statues of weeping angels, mourning cherubs, and enough morbid carvings and engravings to make even an undertaker shout Jesus! Get a life, dammit!
Page: 129

“Never look back, boy,” the Armourer said gruffly. “Concentrate on what you’re going to do next. Doesn’t matter if you lose a battle, as long as you win the war."
Page: 168

“There’s more to being a leader than being right,” said Penny. “You have to inspire, to motivate . . . and to know when to play politics with the right people.”
Page: 194

"The principles of waging war are really quite simple: divide and conquer, identify and strike at weak spots, and most of all, get everyone else so confused they don’t dare do anything for fear of doing the wrong thing.”
Page: 224

Failing that . . . you kill me, while I’m still me. Before I become something we’d both hate.”

“I couldn’t do that,” I said.

“You have to, Eddie. Just in case I’m not strong enough to do it myself.”
Page: 280

This is a fascinating theme to me. Kay had a similar concept in the Fionavar Trilogy: a death by the hand of a loved one is better than a death by the hand of an enemy.

We talked some more, but didn’t really say anything. Just the normal, reassuring things you say when you’re afraid in the dark.
Page: 280

"You can never trust politicians to do the right thing, Edwin, because at heart all they really care about is staying in power. They live in the present; it’s up to us to take the long view.”
Page: 288

“He knows that,” I said. “But hope springs eternal in the deluded heart."
Page: 299

It does.

“Everyone has to grow up eventually. All it took for me was an other-dimensional parasite infecting my body and eating my soul.”
Page: 306

“I’m scared, Eddie. Scared of becoming less and less me, and becoming something that won’t even care what it’s lost. I won’t even care that I don’t love you anymore."
Page: 307

“We all have things in our life that we would wish undone,” William said carefully. He clearly wanted very much to swallow, but didn’t dare. “But sins can never be undone. Only pardoned.”
Page: 320

Ever since he retired from field work, Uncle Jack had not so much lost his people skills as thrown them away.
Page: 323

The Sarjeant-at-Arms made his guns disappear again, and folded his arms tightly with a definite Look at me I’m not sulking even though I have cause expression on his face.
Page: 357

The weapon didn’t actually look like much, but then, the really nasty ones often don’t.
Page: 359

“It’s really very simple,” said Jay.

“No it isn’t,” I said. “No explanation that begins that way ever is.”
Page: 363

“This . . . is how I die. Jacob finally remembered. I don’t mind, really. It’s . . . a good death. Spitting in the face of the enemy, saving the innocent; for the family. A Drood’s death.”
Page: 363

"Some things . . . just are. Because they’re needed.”
Page: 365

“This is the place where quests fail,” Subway Sue said quietly. “Where love is always unrequited, promises are broken, and only bad dreams come true.”
Page: 369

“Always a good idea to have a little surprise in reserve. For when you absolutely have to kill every living thing that annoys you.”
Page: 373

"A trained soldier with a blade is a match for any number of unarmed rabble.”
Page: 373

There were so many things I wished I’d done, or said. So many things I meant to do . . . but I suppose that’s always true, no matter when you die.
Page: 373

“It’s just another place,” he said. “The details change, but that’s all. You can cope. You can adapt. Because you’re human, and that’s what humans do. We roll with the punch, and we come back fighting. If you can’t cope with what you’re seeing, let your mind translate it into something you can cope with. You’re stronger than you think, Eddie, Molly. No matter how weird things get here, remember; it’s just another place.”
Page: 390

It might be a very small thing to be human, in this largest of worlds, but even the smallest insect can pack a deadly sting.
Page: 390

“Manifest Destiny is an idea, a philosophy. It’ll always be around, in some form or another. There’ll always be small, bitter people ready to follow some charismatic leader who promises them peace and happiness through justified violence and the killing of scapegoats.”
Page: 400

What good would it do? Sometimes love is in the things we don’t tell each other.
Page: 403

A copy of this book was sitting on the nightstand of Melissa's guest bedroom. I knew vaguely about this book, knew it was a classic, and had never read it. So, I picked it up and read it, what with my mission to read the books I should have read decades ago or some such.

Suffice it to say, HAD I read this book in high school or college, my life would have been a lot different. I would have moved to New York, instead of staying in Los Angeles, after college. I am uncertain what jobs I might have had, but aerospace and computers would not have been in my future, I wouldn't think.

But, I didn't read this until this summer, and here we are, a have-read book about New York City somewhat around the turn of the last century (hoo boy, are we really nearly a fifth of the way through this century already?), when one's imaginings about how things were is better than how they actually were, and I'm minimizing how stressful living in New York City might have been.

I can see why this book is a classic. I enjoyed reading it.

The airshaft was a horrible invention. Even with the windows tightly sealed, it served as a sounding box and you could hear everybody's business.
Page 83

Oh, to be a Chinaman, wished Francie, and have such a pretty toy to count on; oh, to eat all the lichee nuts she wanted and to know the mystery of the iron that was ever hot and yet never stood on a stove. Oh, to paint those symbols with a slight brush and a quick turn of the wrist and to make a clear black mark as fragile as a piece of a butterfly wing! That was the mystery of the Orient in Brooklyn.
Page 87

SCHOOL days were eagerly anticipated by Francie. She wanted all of the things that she thought came with school.
Page 91

What's free about it, they reasoned when the law forces you to educate your children and then endangers their lives to get them into school? Weeping mothers brought bawling children to the health center for inoculation. They carried on as though bringing their innocents to the slaughter. The children screamed hysterically at the first sight of the needle and their mothers, waiting in the anteroom, threw their shawls over their heads and keened loudly as if wailing for the dead.
Page 91

"Papa's at Headquarters waiting for a job. He won't be home all day. You're big enough to go alone. Besides, it won't hurt."
Page 91

Sending a six year old kid off to the doctors alone. Different world.

The doctor was a Harvard man, interning at the neighborhood hospital. Once a week, he was obligated to put in a few hours at one of the free clinics. He was going into a smart practice in Boston when his internship was over. Adopting the phraseology of the neighborhood, he referred to his Brooklyn internship as going through Purgatory when he wrote to his socially prominent fiancée in Boston.
Page 92

A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the boot-strap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel up climb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.
Page 93

This explanation satisfied Francie because she had never been able to tell her left hand from her right. She ate, and drew pictures with her left hand. Katie was always correcting her and transferring the chalk or the needle from her left hand to her right.
Page 93

He taught them good music without letting them know it was good. He set his own words to the great classics and gave them simple names like "Lullaby" and "Serenade" and "Street Song" and "Song for a Sunshine Day." Their baby voices shrilled out in Handel's "Largo" and they knew it merely by the title of "Hymn." Little boys whistled part of Dvorak's New World Symphony as they played marbles. When asked the name of the song, they'd rely "Oh, 'Going Home.' " They played potsy, humming "The Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust which they called "Glory."
Page 104

OH, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words!

For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word and the picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between the individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read!
Page 106

Indeed, Francie was the only one in her classroom whose parents were American-born. At the beginning of the term, Teacher called the roll and asked each child her lineage. The answers were typical.

"I'm Polish-American. My father was born in Warsaw."
"Irish-American. Me fayther and mither were born in County Cork."
When Nolan was called, Francie answered proudly: "I'm an American."
"I know you're American," said the easily exasperated teacher. "But what's your nationality?" "American!" insisted Francie even more proudly.
"Will you tell me what your parents are or do I have to send you to the principal?"
"My parents are American. They were born in Brooklyn."

All the children turned around to look at a little girl whose parents had not come from the old country. And when Teacher said, "Brooklyn? Hm. I guess that makes you American, all right," Francie was proud and happy. How wonderful was Brooklyn, she thought, when just being born there automatically made you an American!
Page 108

The parents were too American, too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the immigrants and the second generation Americans.
Page 111

It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
Page 112

When the great day came, she was reluctant to set them off. It was better to have them than to use them
Page 113

Francie, in company with other little girls, roamed the streets carrying a bit of white chalk. She went about drawing a large quick cross on the back of each coated figure that came by. The children performed the ritual without meaning. The symbol was remembered but the reason forgotten. It may have been something that had survived from the middle ages when houses and probably individuals were so marked to indicate where plague had struck.
Page 113

You had tickets but you thought you could be smart and get something you weren't entitled to. When people gamble, they think only of winning. They never think of losing. Remember this: Someone has to lose and it's just as apt to be you as the other fellow. If you learn this lesson by giving up a strip of tickets, you're paying cheap for the education."
Page 116

"I'll tell you why," broke in mama. "They want to keep tabs on who's voting and how. They know when each man's due at the polls and God help him if he doesn't show up to vote for Mattie."

"Women don't know anything about politics," said Johnny lighting up Mattie's cigar.
Page 119

"What's free about it if you have to pay?" asked Francie.
"It's free in this way: If you have the money you're allowed to ride in them no matter who you are. In the old countries, certain people aren't free to ride in them, even if they have the money."

"Wouldn't it be more of a free country," persisted Francie, "if we could ride in them free?"

"No."
"Why?"
"Because that would be Socialism," concluded Johnny triumphantly, "arid we don't want that over here."

"Why?"


"Because we got Democracy and that's the best thing there is," clinched Johnny.
Page 122

As Teacher talked, a great trouble left Francie. Lately, she had been Oven to exaggerating things. She did not report happenings truthfully, but gave them color, excitement and dramatic twists. Katie was annoyed at this tendency and kept warning Francie to tell the plain truth and to stop romancing. But Francie just couldn't tell the plain undecorated truth. She had to put something to it.

Although Katie had this same flair for coloring an incident and Johnny himself lived in a half-dream world, yet they tried to squelch these things in their child. Maybe they had a good reason. Maybe they knew their own gift of imagination colored too rosily the poverty and brutality of their lives and made them able to endure it. Perhaps Katie thought that if they did not have this faculty, they would be clearer-minded; see things as they really were, and seeing them loathe them and somehow find a way to make them better.

Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. "You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you're making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up."

It was the best advice Francie ever got. Truth and fancy were so mixed up in her mind-as they are in the mind of every lonely child-that she didn't know which was which. But Teacher made these two things clear to her. From that time on, she wrote little stories about things she saw and felt and did. In time, she got so that she was able to speak the truth with but a slight and instinctive coloring of the facts.

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction.
If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar
Page 126

"Intolerance," she wrote, pressing down hard on the pencil, "is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and to each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror and heart and soul breaking of the world."

She read the words over aloud. They sounded like words that came in a can; the freshness was cooked out of them. She closed the book and put it away.
Page 145

Each time Joanna passed, her cheeks got pinker, her head went higher and her skirt flipped behind her more defiantly. She seemed to grow prettier and prouder as she walked. She stopped oftener than needed to adjust the baby's coverlet. She maddened the women by touching the baby's cheek and smiling tenderly at it. How dare she! How dare she, they thought, act as though she had a right to all that?
Page 146

Remember Joanna. Remember Joanna. Francie could never forget her. From that time on, remembering the stoning women, she hated women. She feared them for their devious ways, she mistrusted their instincts. She began to hate them for this disloyalty and their cruelty to each other. Of all the stone-throwers, not one had dared to speak a word for the girl for fear that she would be tarred with Joanna's brush. The passing man had been the only one who spoke with kindness in his voice.

Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman ... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have.

Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them.
Page 150

June 22. Mama turned my mattress today and found my diary and read it. Everywhere I had the word drunk, she made me cross it out and write sick. It's lucky I didn't have anything against mama written down. If ever I have children I will not read their diaries as I believe that even a child is entitled to some privacy. If mama finds this again and reads it, I hope she will take the hint.
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