The title sounds a little larger in scope than I was going for, but I may explore that too.

I was recently reading a book, called The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley. I enjoyed it well enough, and may go on to read the other two in the series. If you haven’t read it, and you don’t want spoilers, you may want to stop reading (though to be fair, the book is largely used as a jumping off point for other musings).

The main character, as you will find out within the first few pages, is named Myfanwy Thomas, and she works for a supernatural intelligence agency in London. And she wakes up, not knowing who she is or anything about herself, surrounded in a park by dead bodies, all of which are wearing latex gloves. She finds a letter in her pocket from herself, saying that she knew this would happen in advance, and gives her instructions to find more missives, and we are off to the races.

I found this to be an interesting take on how to get the reader introduced to a complex world, though by the end it could get excessive (particularly since every time we read a missive to herself, at least in the Kindle version, it leads to pages of letters in italics, which was tough on my eyes). But what I found truly compelling, was the way that the main character’s personality is rewritten.

Having awoken in her “new” self, she has none of the shyness or timidity from her past. She has no memory of the life that made her who she was; she just has the skills and abilities from before, and the ability to progress on the path she was on.

I found this idea so intriguing. So much of who we are, and how we respond to things, is in response to the maps of our lives, and what we experience. That can be trauma responses, or positive responses…but either way, these lenses color how we react. Who could we be, if we could shed the skins of our past, and see things new? Wake up with the skills we’ve learned and the ability to use them, but essentially….get out of our own way?

The book, whether intentionally or not, makes the argument that we could be superhuman badasses. I like that idea. When I was a child, I was extremely shy. I’ve fought it my whole life, and also had a hard time trusting people. There are various pet reasons I’ve come up with for the reasons that I am that way, but the fact is, it’s never totally gone away. I’ve learned to adapt and overcome, but inside I’m still largely that child, and sort of have to convince myself to behave in other ways. If I had no memory of a lifetime of hesitancies around people, or having had my heart hurt by those that I allowed to keep it in trust, would I still feel shy inside? Or would that go away?

Over the years I’ve seen various papers that have shown me that much of the behavior I would assume is learned, is actually genetic. What a fascinating concept, to have bits of personality just be born into us via our genetic lotteries. But how much of that ends up being cemented into place later on by experiences and trauma responses?

Over the last few years, I’ve had the unpleasant experience that I feel many experience around this time, and that’s the death of friendships from our younger lives. Social media has given us the illusion that we can just find the people from our past online, pick up where we left off, and just continue to be friends, happily ever after. But as I’ve moved out of my thirties, unsurprisingly I’m finding that life is more complex than that. But as the branches of our trees of life diverge, and we become further settled into who we are as people, something odd happens. Sometimes it’s just that you realize you haven’t had communication in a while, and when you reach back out it feels…odd. Sometimes it’s that someone unceremoniously cuts you off. And sometimes as we see our paths take extremely different turns, we find ourselves not able to allow the same time to someone that doesn’t seem to have similar aspirations.

These transitions hurt. We can see sometimes where our trust and affection were unaligned with the person we directed them to, where we were taken for granted. And then we pick up and move on. But looking back through that experience, we can also allow ourselves to see in what ways we have changed, and I like to think in many ways it’s for the better. For myself, I think that I have gotten much better at realizing that not every person is worthy of taking my time. I no longer have that feeling of endless time stretching in front of me; I am cognizant of my own mortality, and fairly comfortable with it. And with that feeling, comes the recognition that I should not just waste the time I do have. I have also had enough experience with people I blindly trusted, to learn the hard way that I shouldn’t have, that I realize that even though I’d like to extend open arms to all who would seem to extend open arms to me…I cannot. That flame hurts, little one.

So in the case of refining my experience into distilled wisdom for myself down the road, the trauma that has resuscitated my hesitancy in some regards with people, has also served to strengthen the bonds with those I am closest with. I no longer give time and attention freely, but I am more generous with those that are worth it. That annealing of love for a more select few is a process of heat and pressure, but ultimately has resulted in relationships that are both stronger and more beautiful.

These situations have also made me truly appreciate how life is not black and white. For me, it is just full of seasons. Some relationships are good for a certain season of life, and it is good to embrace them before it turns, and then appreciate the time we were given. It’s equally important to realize that not all relationships are permanent, and that we can’t force them.

So if I could wake up tomorrow, and have no memory of my past, what would change? Well I assume I would be even more assertive. Perhaps I would not feel shy. But would I lose the wisdom that things like the trauma of changing friendships have left on me? Or would that wisdom be deep enough that it would sink in on genetic level? I don't know. Obviously it’s all just an abstract exercise of thought, but it’s been interesting to toy with it. Would I take the chance to shed the bruises of my history, to only take up the mantle of the knowledge and skills that I’ve earned? Would I still be me? I think no.

Although I might like to try for a day or two and see what I could accomplish.

Oh dear. I truly wanted to enjoy this book. I give it three stars, because I found the quality of the writing itself to be really good. Nicely formed sentences, good cadence, intelligent.

But I took away 2 for the plot.

I didn't know what I was getting into with this book. I saw it in the "New Science Fiction" section, read the synopsis, and thought I'd try to support a female science fiction author. When I picked up the book and read a couple pages, I thought the prose was well crafted (I'm getting increasingly picky about that).

SPOILERS AHEAD btw

So when we started off the book by having women thrust out of working by a misogynistic government, I thought that was interesting. When 5 women astronauts who had been cherry-picked to head a mission to the first "Goldilocks" planet, but then were ousted so that men with less training could take over, decided to steal the rocket and do the mission anyway, I thought that was a fun ride.

But as I continued through the book, I found things increasingly improbable. When it was continually implied that random people could "hack the encryption" on various systems, as a software developer, I rolled my eyes. It's the software equivalent of the classic "Enhance!" trope in movies. But all that was okay.

But in chapter 9, at the end, when the lead character discovers she got pregnant the night before launch...by her step brother....that's when I thought in my head, "Oh lord here we go." And yes, it got sillier after that. First of all, I was supposed to have sympathy for what was basically an incestuous relationship. Note: I do NOT have sympathy for that.

Then you get into the parts of a virus being engineered to kill everyone on earth, so the smuggled embryos the female Elon Musk character had managed to smuggle on board can start a "new civilization". So the inevitable mutiny happens, the women who (for pretty undefined reasons, given the risk and vilification they would receive) decided to steal the spaceship, jettison the "cryo" backup crew, and keep pushing forward....decide to TURN BACK, with the space baby and its mysteriously convenient baby spacesuit and space c-section.....well, I'll be honest here.

I felt as though what was clearly meant to be a flag-waving feminist novel, shot itself in the foot. With the silly pregnancy, and all the crazy interpersonal ridiculous drama that overshot any of the interesting science, this was my conclusion: This book made the argument that if the men would have just been allowed to do the mission, they would have gotten it done, instead of having crazy emotional catfights, turning back, abandoning ship and killing 1/3 of the population, and a totally improbable pregnancy. I REALLY doubt that's the point the author wanted to make. But here we are.

I wanted this to be a book about female engineers being equally footed and discovering true life on a another planet. What I was left with was an improbably "Real Housewives of Cape Canaveral: The Crazy Billionaire Science Edition". It was truly a let down. I'd try to read other things by the author, since hopefully they wouldn't go to the plot improbabilities that this one did. But as a STEM female, I felt this made the exact opposite points, and delivered the exact opposite ideas, of the uplifting book I hoped this to be.

One more note: This is an extremely dark and depressing book for the pandemic. The world in it is dying of a pandemic and global warming and misogyny, so if you are looking for any sort of escapism, this is NOT. IT.