a critique of a book i liked a lot

i adore ruthanna emrys’ writing.

i first fell into it through her Innsmouth Legacy series (two novels and a novella so far), which reshapes h.p. lovecraft’s world in ways that i hope he would, after his definitive late-life turn towards antifascism, would have appreciated – and that i certainly do, for the changes she plays on the first and second red scares, on the many faces of u.s. fascism (and the pervasive xenophobia and eugenics that feed it) past and present, on the pleasures and dangers of closed communities and port cities. and her “the word of flesh and soul” made me fall even harder for the lovely and chilling things it does with the entanglement of words and bodies, sex and scholarship, archives and autonomy.

i’ve just finished emrys’ latest novel, “a half-built garden”, which is a first-contact story, a trans/queer/poly story, a climate-apocalypse story, a jewish diasporist futurist story, and even, in its subtle way, a monsterfucker story – and, according to its acknowledgements, has been (accurately) accused of being a “diaperpunk” story. it’s sweet, and tense, and very satisfyingly balanced between familiar and new. i enjoyed the hell out of reading it, and slowed down to draw out the pleasure.

i’m writing about it here because part of its power, to me, is as a very specific kind of cautionary tale – but in a way that i don’t think the novel itself sees. whether emrys does or not isn’t particularly important to me; i know very well from my own work that what i understand about and intend with a piece and what the piece understands and does have only a tenuous relationship.

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