Book Review: Wrath by Shäron Moalem and Daniel Kraus

Imagine Pinky and the Brain, minus the comedy, plus lots and lots of gore

Rats are fast learners, can survive on almost any food, can adapt to almost every climate, can squeeze into almost any space, and reproduce amazingly fast. The number of rats in the world is around the same as the total human population.

Fear the day they organize.

In the novel Wrath, written as a collaboration between a PhD geneticist and a veteran horror author, a cutting-edge biotech company has—sigh—disrupted the fancy pet market. After launching a series of transgenic novelties such as pretty glowing fish, chattier parrots, and ponies that are more pleasant to ride (not to mention a few off-the-books critters for the US Army), its newest creation is sure to catapult it to financial superstardom: a breed of rats with human genes for intelligence. Rat voices are too high-pitched for the human ear, so these smart rats come with a tablet app for them to type their thoughts. It’s the perfect companion for anyone who ever wished their pet could talk back.

Somehow the genius techbro didn’t expect the smart rat to form an opinion on the ethics of animal experimentation.

It’s become difficult to write a compelling techbro without resorting to the same tics of personality that we all know and hate. Our fancy pet salesman Noah is interchangeable with every other techbro you’ve met: a proud workaholic with a short temper, a monumental ego and no tether to the real world. If he sets a launch date for a new product, it absolutely must be met, quality control be damned. In several flashbacks (which could have been placed at better locations in the novel to improve its pacing), we learn about his scary, violent childhood and the small town life he left behind to dedicate himself to making piles and piles of money. Now he has everything, but he feels chronically dissatisfied because he never learned to connect to other people, and he simply doesn’t register the humanity of anyone on a lower income bracket. He spent his youth grinding his way to the top of the food chain, and now sits  there alone.

His accomplice in the fancy pet business is Sienna, a genetic engineer who believes in the mission of improving animals with almost religious zeal. She has invented a practically flawless technique of gene editing that gives much more predictable results than CRISPR, so whereas Noah is the public face that gives carefully tested speeches to move the masses toward needing more transgenic pets, Sienna is the brains of the operation. Unfortunately, her backstory is rather uninspired: her obsession with curing her infertility strained her marriage to its breaking point, and now she makes creatures in the lab to replace the children she can’t have. It’s tiresome that in the 21st century, in a novel that isn’t about motherhood, the only prominent female character is defined entirely by her desire for motherhood. More attention could have been given to her world-saving ambitions, which are only mentioned in a mocking tone.

Another point of view we follow is that of Prez, an experienced rat catcher who ends up employed as chief of security at Noah’s lab and always has relevant rat-related trivia to contribute when the story needs to explain a concept to the reader.

And then we have a lucky random passerby: Dallas, a boy whose miscalibrated hearing aids allow him to hear the transgenic rats’ high-pitched pleas for help. After finding himself in the right place at the right time, he rescues the star specimen that Noah was planning to showcase at a huge event, with two main consequences: Noah’s company suffers a costly public humiliation, and the smart rat gets a quick tour of how badly we’ve been treating other species. When this rat makes contact with the millions of fellow rats that inhabit New York, humankind’s thus far uncontested supremacy will topple.

The novel is practically divided in two parts, before and after Dallas rescues this rat. In the first part, we follow Noah’s despotic rule over his tiny kingdom, peppered with too many flashbacks that flesh out characterization at the cost of an awkward narrative rhythm. In the second part, we’re introduced to the rat as another narrator, a voice whose quickly growing intelligence is skillfully conveyed via increasingly complex sentences. The eventual revenge of ratkind takes up a lengthy portion of the book, and it generously splatters the page with countless slit throats, torn ears, ripped fingers, gouged eyes, and furry wave after furry wave of unrelenting, methodical, sharp-toothed hatred.

The way the conflict resolves feels a bit too convenient, almost frictionless, but it doesn’t erase the effect on the reader’s mind of the horrible images of a New York overrun with gray blankets of rats filling the streets and mutilating any human body they find. Next time you meet a rat in the city, maybe try to not give it a reason to hold a grudge against you. Who knows what secret conversations they’re having in the sewers.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Reference: Moalem, Shäron and Kraus, Daniel. Wrath [Union Square & Co., 2022].

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A monumental classic of science fiction gets renewed for 21st-century readers

Is this novel a retelling, a remake, a reimagining, a reboot, a requel? I'd call it a reclaiming.

The original book that inspired it, The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells, bears several hallmarks typical of Victorian adventure fiction: a properly educated Englishman ventures into the scary jungle and is quickly forced to dodge the infighting of the locals before he makes an eager return to modern civilization. In a new version of the story, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, author Silvia Moreno-Garcia takes that premise and turns it on its head: no, when the white man sets foot in the tropic, the dangerous thing about that interaction is not the tropic; no, the locals are not aggressive by nature, but they won't take kindly to attempts at enslavement; and no, home sweet home is not only to be found in the drawing rooms of Europe.

The first chapter deliberately declares this shift in the place of enunciation, when one of Moreau's hybrids asks, "what does an Englishman know about managing anything here? There are no jungles in England."

It's now the locals who get to tell the story. Instead of using an outsider perspective that follows the white man as he enters the jungle and then runs for his life, this novel is told from the jungle, without the othering that so often occurs in adventure fiction written from Europe. Contra Wells, nature is not described with the tools of narrative estrangement, as an anomalous place, full of forbidden mysteries; here nature is simply home. The anomalous, menacing thing to fear is not the tropical heat of the wilderness, but the extremes of coldness that the civilized mind is capable of.

This decentering of the white gaze is a sorely needed change to the classic story. The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of the foundational works of science fiction, but it's also appallingly racist. In some passages, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau reads like an effort to correct what was wrong with the original by adding background information that Wells didn't include, but which stands out as essential when one compares both books. Where Island merely portrays the character of Montgomery as a bitter alcoholic, Daughter does the work of exploring why he's a bitter alcoholic and how his life story influences his atttitude and his actions. Where Island presents us a Doctor Moreau comfortably settled in the remote jungle where he has built a fully furnished laboratory by himself, Daughter questions how much he could have achieved without live-in servants and a rich sponsor. Where Island believes that the purpose of creating the animal/human hybrids can be pure scientific advancement, Daughter understands the potential for oppression and explicitly states that the hybrids are intended to serve as cheap subhuman workers. Where Island uses the hybrids as token monsters for the hero to flee from, Daughter demands empathy for the hybrids and makes them the protagonists of a moral tragedy.

Lastly, the most important alteration is the titular daughter. The original book is a boys' club; the only noteworthy female character is a panther hybrid who is only there to be feared and then killed. The film adaptations of the novel have expanded this character into a love interest for the hero. Moreno-Garcia rejects that cliché and populates the novel with women and girls who are central to the plot. The young lady Carlota Moreau is a spectacularly constructed character, pulsating with a fearless love of life and an innate sweetness that accentuates the horror of the events around her. By casting Doctor Moreau as the physician of his own daughter, the author turns him into a representation of male control over female bodies; by including the topic of her upcoming marriageability, the author also brings into the story the convolutedness of 19th-century Latin American classism.

Reclaiming the Western canon by giving it a feminist and/or anticolonial twist has become an established practice for roughly half a century. Christa Wolf and Pat Barker gave a voice to the women of the Iliad, as did Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller for the Odyssey; Jean Rhys added an entire Caribbean backstory to Jane Eyre; David Henry Hwang brought queer poetic justice to Madame Butterfly; Valerie Martin put Doctor Jekyll under a working-class lens; Bharati Mukherjee made The Scarlet Letter unapologetically her own; Alice Randall cheerfully eviscerated Gone with the Wind; Juan Gabriel Vásquez corrected Nostromo's erasure of Colombia; Kamel Daoud humanized the victim of the remorseless murderer Mersault; and Nancy Springer gave Sherlock Holmes a sister.

Even Doctor Moreau has received this treatment in recent years: both Megan Shepherd and Theodora Goss have written novels that invent a daughter for him.

What Moreno-Garcia contributes to this tradition is the specificities of her Mexican heritage. The timeline she has chosen for her plot coincides with a real historical conflict between native populations and white settlers, a context she helpfully provides in an appendix. By narrating the experiments of Doctor Moreau in parallel with an uprising of indigenous communities against the encroachment perpetrated by Hispanic landowners (a conflict where the English became involved seeking commercial advantage), she places onto the story the weight of the entire historical baggage of the colonial system of racial hierarchy, which assigned legal rights based on ancestry, considered the natives as less than human, and aspired to "improve" indigenous blood by hybridizing it with European blood.

The other identifiable Mexican ingredient in this novel is the romance plot. Yes, this is a story of medical horror and wars of conquest and patriarchal abuse and modern slavery, but it's also a tragic romance story. Carlota falls in love, gets entangled in a love triangle, and suffers inevitable heartbreak with the impetuosity and the fierceness of the best Mexican telenovelas. This is another way Moreno-Garcia has transformed the original story into something wholly new and wholly hers.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau does more than update a classic. It takes the themes and tropes of canonical English literature, from the period that perfected the novel form, and brings them down to earth in a setting outside the control of English characters and English norms. Instead of the superior attitude of those who proclaimed of anything that didn't fit their categories, "Here be dragons," we jump right into the places where the systems of domination clash against the human spirit. At last, we listen to the dragons.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau [Del Rey, 2022].

Microreview [film]: Jupiter Ascending, written and directed by the Wachowskis

It Sucks Less than Speed Racer!

Jupiter Ascending. Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski. Warner Bros.: 2015.

On the other hand, Speed Racer really sucked hard. I'll just apologize in advance to its seven fans worldwide, but it must be said: instead of being a movie that had to be made (due to social relevance or whatever) it was a movie that cried out not to be made. And the blame is squarely with the Wachowskis, since as co-directors they're responsible for signing off on the visual look and feel of the film, and the cartoonish colors, etc., while interesting as a technical experiment, were pretty yucky on the eyes. Plus, Speed Racer? Really? Cause that's what the world wants to watch these days, a bunch of meatheads with magnificent hair dashing to and fro in cars? Speed Racer was super-lame when it first came out (that's right, I said it!), and it hasn't improved with age.

Circling back to Jupiter Ascending: I know everybody kind of hates it, apparently, and it's not like it's hard to find things to hate. The normally energetic Mila Kunis's leaden, all-too-damsel-y performance; the fact that Channing Tatum's character Caine (real clever, Wachowskis—I see what you did there with the part-wolf thing, but why not just call him Loopy?) has to swoop in despite tremendous danger and rescue her from Certain Death at least five hundred times; and plenty more. It's easy to hate, if you want to focus on the crappy parts. But why do that, when there's some interesting stuff there too? Unless we're going in a utilitarian direction, and you get more hedons from blasting a movie than from enjoying it, I suppose...

For my part, I actually thought Jupiter Ascending was quite fun to watch (that's right, haters—I said that too!). This is despite it having a weak plot, singularly unconvincing romance betwixt (I get bonus points for using betwixt!) Kunis and Tatum, way too long running length, and a cartoonishly sinister, ridiculously histrionic performance by the Main Bad Guy (I can't remember the name of either the character or the actor, and who cares, really? It's the guy who played Marius in the most recent movie version of Les Miserables, unless said guy donated his lips in the first-ever successful lip transplant!). With its many flaws, what on earth did I like about it, you might ask?

Well, for starters, kudos to the Wachowskis for coming up with something new, especially considering we're now living in a world of 90% sequels (I'm looking at you, every action movie this year!). It's hard to launch an entirely new mythology, and sooo seductive just to sink back into the sweet stupor of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or whatever. They created something new, and even though it's a bit crappy, it's an intriguing idea, involving some creepy genetic harvesting reminiscent (unsurprisingly!) of the "...turn human beings into one of these" idea from the Matrix. Plus, Channing Tatum and Sean Bean deliver some good stuff, and Mila Kunis in the first quarter or so, that make it entertaining to watch.

Secondly—and perhaps more tellingly—I watched it on a plane, and I'm always in a super-suggestive, overly emotional state on planes (I cry at just about every movie anyway, but on planes it gets so ridiculous I have to grab huge handfuls of kleenex just so I can soak up the heart-soaring emotions of cinematic gems like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, etc. etc. Day!). Though come to think of it, I didn't actually cry at Jupiter Ascending, mostly because every time emotions threatened to spiral out of control, the Wachowskis killed the mood with another visually impressive but dull/repetitive Rescue the Damsel action sequence. Snore. What can I saw? Regularly spaced action sequences are an emotional boner killer.

The only question remaining to you, dear reader, is this: is Jupiter Ascending "worth" watching? The answer is a qualified "Not quite, unless you're on a plane, in which case, totally." And you can take that to the bank!

The Math:

Objective assessment: 5/10

Bonuses: +1 for creating something new, +1 for Sean Bean (and even Channing Tatum! Who knew?) being awesome

Penalties: -1 for the Plane Effect, -1 for choking the life out of Mila Kunis's performance, -1 for periodically jabbing the viewer with improbable rescue sequences every fifteen minutes or so

Nerd coefficient: 4/10 "Not very good"*

*Note that if on a plane, the score will rise to 5/10, "Equal Parts Good and Bad!"

[Think I'm being mean to the poor widdle Wachowskis? Not at all; a 4/10 is a perfectly respectable score, as you can see here.]

Zhaoyun has been crying at movies on planes since forever, and writing about it and other stuff here at Nerds of a Feather since 2013.

Microreview [book]: Power Rises by R.M. Willis

A wonderful new voice...

Power Rises is the first installment in the Ways of Power series by R.M. Willis, and it tells the story of Rancoth, a light magi who has the rare power of summoning demons from other realms. But Rancoth has some demons of his own, plagued with guilt over the death of his mother and feelings of abandonment towards his father. Raised under the care of the Archmage Grecrum, with all the creature comforts he could desire, Rancoth yearns to see the world and experience life for himself, so he sets out with Dorbin, his Dwalish mentor and companion, on diplomatic missions for Grecrum.

The story takes place on Earth, far into the future. It is essentially fantasy within science fiction, as this world full of different races, some with marvelous magical powers, was created through genetic engineering. I really appreciate that the author allows us to infer this on our own. There is a prologue and epilogue to border this supposition, along with the publisher description, which I should add seems to be a summary of the entire series not just this first book. Regardless, there is no unnecessary explanation of how the world was created and no stating of the obvious, which makes me happy.

In fact, this whole book made me happy. I really, really enjoyed reading it.The prose is crisp and refreshing and not at all pretentious. And while this first book in the series feels mostly like world building and set up, it is surprisingly engrossing. Willis’ imagery is beautiful and immersive, and Rancoth’s mini quests are lighthearted and entertaining. The world Willis has created here is captivating but not over complicated, which makes it a purely delightful read. I had a hard time putting it down.

I have one major complaint though, and that is the objectification of women. From rulers of state to tavern maids to childhood mentors, they are all sexual objects to our narrator. For example, every female has their appearance critiqued (usually the bum) and in one scene Rancoth is rushing to save a character because she is exotic first and dying second. Now, I’m operating under the assumption that this is intentional, since Rancoth is a strapping, twenty something young man with the one thing on his mind 99% of the time. But it got old fast, and by the end I actually started to cringe when a female character was introduced. Hopefully in the next book this won’t be so prominent.

That aside, I really enjoyed Power Rises, and I highly recommend it. It is a humble, imaginative, and immersive tale by an emerging new talent, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.

You can check out a sample (look inside) here.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for stunning imagery, +1 for engaging prose

Penalties: -1 for reducing all women to sexual objects

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 “well worth your time and attention”

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POSTED BY: Tia   Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2014

Reference: Willis, R.M. Power Rises [Burning Willow Press, 2015]