CAI EMMONS' PAGE: THE BELLS; two Bronwyn Artair cli-fics

THE BELLS
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: As The Bells opens, thirty-three-year-old Niall O'Malley has failed a five-year mission to live as a monk and is attempting to redefine himself as a high school teacher in New Jersey. The transition has been bumpy. He loves teaching history to inner city teens, but he hits a roadblock when a belligerent student, Colton, possibly a white-supremacist, behaves in ways that threaten Niall.

As troubles mount at school, Niall's girlfriend Lluvia pressures him into make a deeper commitment to their relationship. She wants them to move in together with Lluvia's pre-teen daughter and elderly mother. Haunted by his failure as a Cistercian monk and his troubles with one man in particular, the abusive Brother Thomas, Niall abandons Lluvia and heads back to his old monastery in Massachusetts for a final showdown with Thomas, now dying of ALS. Redemption for Niall is elusive as he strives to mend his faith.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Odd as it sounds, unsympathetic people deserve sympathy and understanding, no matter how hard it is to offer. Niall, one of life's least-lovable characters, is a passive abuse sponge. In this story, we hear him absorbing the pressures that the predators around him...his female companion, one of his students in the high-school history class he teaches...sense his vulnerability and mount their cruelty campaigns against him to...what? prove they can? get a desired result from him?...it's this that resulted in my rating being under four full stars.

I completely get why this is a story worth telling. I know others will not be able to invest in Niall because he feels so passive, yet clearly feels rage about his many instances of abuse. As a horror story for the spooky season, this (to me) makes it a perfect read: Finally acting against Lluvia's pressures and demands, going back to the escape-turned-hellscape of his early adult life in the monastery, it seems as though Niall might at last lift the fog of rage that hides his horizons.

Resolving a lifetime of trauma is very very hard. Closer to seventy than fifty, I'm still mid-process. Niall's not even fiftyish, so I'm right there with him, understanding his issues and his weirdly ineffectual...has life taught him nothing?...attempts to gain a handle on the reality of a lifetime spent being acted on, not acting. It is a big ask to spend 250pp with someone floundering in wreckage he does not see clearly, has no map to understand, and no sense of agency (though plenty of urgency propelling him hither thither and yon) in coping with. It is truly psychological horror.

I'm sorry to say I wasn't satisfied by the resolution *on a story level* not based on the result that occurred. If I'd simply wanted a different resolution I'd be giving the writing alone 4+ stars. What I'm referring to is the resolution to the story does not use the beats to build to something, to make the read a journey. It is very probable that this is intentional, as Author Emmons was capable of writing effective outrage fueling logical story resolution.

It feels very poignant that Author Emmons gave the abuser her own fatal affliction as a trigger to cause Niall to act at last. ALS is a terrible, terrifying condition. It is nightmare fodder to understand what is happening to you and still to know what is happening can not be altered.

I'm not interested in most "horror" because it relies on tropes I find deeply silly and utterly incredible. The psychological horror of this story might, had the author lived longer, have resolved itself in a more effective manner commensurate with the investment of time and attention required of the reader. As it is I got genuine frissons of horror from this resolutely reality-anchored story of psychological abuse and its consequences.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SINKING ISLANDS
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sinking Islands continues the story of Bronwyn Artair, a scientist who possesses the power to influence the natural forces of the Earth. After several successful interventions, including one in Siberia, she has gone into hiding, worried about unintended consequences of her actions, as well as about the ethics of operating solo. But circumstances call her to action again, and an idea takes shape: What if she could impart her skill to other people?

Gathering a few kindred souls from climate-troubled places around the world—Felipe from São Paulo, where drought conditions are creating strains on day-to-day life; Analu and his daughter Penina from a sinking island in the South Pacific; and Patty from the tornado-ridden plains of Kansas—she takes them to the wilds of Northern New Hampshire where she tries to teach them her skill. The novel, realistic but for the single fantastical element, explores how we might become more attuned to the Earth and act more collaboratively to solve the enormity of our climate problem.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Now that Bronwyn's "out of the closet," so to speak, as someone with a unique and effective ability to change the world's weather as climate change bites us ever harder, she's got qualms.

The men who want to use her powers do not.Retreating from the pressures of the desperate world witb a scoobygroup of others she will teach how to use her newly discovered powers, Bronwyn learns, tests, grows.

Should she simply use her abilities to effect local changes without ever knowing in advance what the global consequences are? Should the same behavior, in other words, that was used to get us into this mess be used to try getting us out? Unlike lesser writers' heroes, Bronwyn considers this ethical and practical conundrum seriously. She does it collaboratively, not solipsistically. She does it with all due haste because the world is changing fast and the consequences are dire (I'd argue condign, as well, but I'm sorta Savonarola-y on the subject.) “Death turns everything inside out. After death, nothing’s the same, for the living or the dead.”

Then, when she's determined what the course of action should be based on all the evidence she can accumulate and all the counsel she can trust, the world feels her scoobygroup's efforts. As climate catastrophes mount, as Bronwyn and her support staff take more and more drastic action, things do change.

Change, then, is possible. Change is necessary. Change can...must...come from inside you as you effect it wherever you are, as you model its reality to anyone who looks or even watches you effect it, and those few who study your efforts to reproduce them for themselves.

This 2021 title deserves our attention, with its prequel for multiple reasons. One is the men and women who surround, support, and assist Bronwyn to bring her vision and her power to reality. Another is the sheer idiocy of male-dominated power structures in their dismissal or outright rejection of ideas from women. A further idea that needs wider currency is the need for women to simply up and do stuff because it all needs doing. Waiting for validation attention or perish forbid permission is no longer an option. The world is very badly in need of all hands running to the pumps to do their own best.

Author Emmons left Bronwyn and company here. I think that's a good thing. I felt the message was delivered, the ideas explored in the depth that informed and encouraged but stopped before overwhelm set in. The books are a good set, a good length of time with these admirable people, and that counts for a lot in a world with too much and not enough always tipping, tipping, tipping....

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WEATHER WOMAN
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces.

When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia.

A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: What the heck are women supposed to do when they discover they have actual, utilizable power? Hide it, or course, because some man somewhere will feel threatened by it because he doesn't have it, or have a way to control it, or simply doesn't like that a woman can do something without needing to check it until a man approves of it.

Meet Bronwyn. She's an ordinary woman in an ordinary relationship with an ordinary man. It ends because he ends it. It ends, in other words, because someone not her has determined her worth is not sufficient to deserve his august attention.

So far this is realist fiction with the twist that the woman has Something Extra. But how she discovers that, what it is, and how extremely valuable it is...that's Cai Emmons' secret story sauce. In giving ordinary-everywoman Bronwyn the Something Extra, Author Emmons is sneaking into a realist-fiction piece the verity that all women have power through the metaphor of A Power. She does this as the world...hers of 2018, ours of 2025...faces unprecednted challenges to our future as a species. This passage in time is very reminiscent of the Black Death in its existential crisis. And here's unregarded Bronwyn discovering she could very well have the means to alter a seemingly inevitable death spiral.

Exploring that is, I think, the reason most reviews and ratings that ridicule and belittle the story are by men. Author Emmons dares to say, "what if a woman has the solution to our crisis? Not because a man worked on it, or because she earned it by studying under men, but in and of herself she possesses the answer, the solution, our collective way out?"

Watch the rats empty from the sinking ship to devour the rope tying us to reality.

That's why I'm offering a full four stars to this cli-fic story of how stupid it is to think you know everything thus shutting down possibly lifesaving ideas from outside your purview.