The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America by Jim Sciutto

The Shadow War

4/5. Concise survey of the various challenges posed by Russia and China to U.S. unipolar power in cyberspace, outer space, the sea, etc. This would be a very good place to start if the topic is unfamiliar; if it is familiar, as it is to me, this book doesn't supply much new, but does bring everything together in a useful fashion. It's also a bit less enamored of Obama than a lot of similar texts are. This is actually a compliment – there is plenty to criticize in Obama's foreign policy choices, but a lot of commentators are reluctant to do so.

Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold

Knife Children

2/5. Novella in her sharing knife universe. A lakewalker dude (guy who fights monsters with knives containing the souls of dead people) connects with the daughter he's never known because she was accidentally conceived in a tryst across a cultural divide.

Hoo boy. I've never been interested in this universe – its central culture clash has always seemed simplistic and boring to me. This iteration is pleasant enough on the surface, with some messy family dynamics in all directions. But. But.

At the heart of this book is a rape that goes largely unacknowledged on both watsonian and doylist levels. Within the text people are disapproving, but in a boys-will-be-boys way that is really more about cultural purity than anything. And structurally – we're supposed to think it was okay to use magic to compel this girl to sleep with him because he could tell she wanted him. Wow. Where to start. First: just because she wanted to doesn't mean she actually was going to. These are different things. Second: if somehow her wanting to makes this okay, then why did he do it? Like, if it's totally cool because she was going to fuck him anyway, why did he need to coerce her? Third – eh, never mind. I don't even.

Why is this universe of stories prone to such problematic content? Why why why.