#the chrysalids

[quasi-normalcy]

If I had a nickel for every post-apocalyptic dystopian novel I'd read that was set in Labrador, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[goodiecornbread]

Best Books I Read in 2022

In no particular order

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. Okay, I know I said "no particular order" but I think this was my #1 for the year. Starting with a misunderstood, nerdy bookworm, who ends up being the only one who can save the word, how can it get better? Maybe the fantasy, the interdimensional travel, the demigods... I'll absolutely reread this one again.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Magical realism, historical fiction, and a hint of the devil. What's not to love?

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun. Hey, the first in the list that isn't a drama. In fact, this rom-com has it all: neurodiversity, secret relationships, 'let's fuck away our problems', and lots of queer representation!

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Oops, back to the serious books. I'm a sucker for dystopian novels, and knew I'd love this. If you can, listen to the audiobook read by Noah Reid; his narration is chef's kiss.

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske. More historical fantasy with magical realism! Plus throw in some turn-of-the-century queer folks, and you're all set! At least I am, because apparently magical queer books are my jam.

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas. Okay, this fantasy doesn't have a bunch of queer representation, but it's got lots of smut! The latest in the Court of Thorns and Roses series, this one follows a different MC who is kind of a super bitch, and I kind of love it.

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. Oh good, back to the weird gay books. This post-apocalyptic horror stars a trans teen who revolts against the radical evangelical terrorists who unleashed a plague upon the world. This is a book that sinks it's teeth into you. And claws.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. More historical fantasy with interdimensional travel and magic! Not as gay, but just as interesting, and the second book has a strong female main character.

All That's Left in the World by Erik J. Brown. Another book about post-apocalyptic queer youths! This one is much less horror than the previously mentioned, but more heartwarming. Two teen boys trying to find their way in a post-pandemic work (not COVID, but a similar illness with a more drastic outcome).

Book Lovers by Emily Henry. Sorry to end this list with a heterosexual rom-com, but we do what we have to. A book about two people who love books, working on a book? With a bookstore?! Yes please!

Honorable Mention: Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman. This year I re-read the graphic novels, as well as some of the novels and novellas of the Osemanverse, and the Hearstopper Yearbook. Loved the show? You'll love the books even better. I don't know how Alice does it, but she created some of the best characters to ever live on the page.

[cxmembert]

LOOK AT WHAT JUST ARRIVED !!

[ulysses-blues]

Sometimes I think back on the time I wrote an 3 pg essay on how much I though David Strom was an idiot.

Fuck you, David

[diamondnokouzai]

“The alternative is the sword over your heads.”

“A sword inside us would be worse.”

[thebooklook]

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

After reading this book in my high school English class, and absolutely loving it, I rediscovered it this year. It was incredibly interesting to read a book that I only dimly remembered but knew I had enjoyed. Reading it now, I picked up on some deeper themes that I had missed, and enjoyed the ending less. At first glance this is post-apocalyptic science fiction based around the theme of religious intolerance, but I think it ultimately is about the evils of believing ourselves superior to other people. Events in the book are shrugged off by the main characters and forgotten, because they happened to someone "lower" than them and I feel like the moral of the book could be interpreted as that being okay. The casual destruction at the end of the novel is presented as a necessary evil to reach a better, more advanced world. That theme doesn't sit well with me, but I appreciate when a book makes me feel uncomfortable. Although I didn't enjoy it as simply as I did before, this was a great read and I'm happy to have rediscovered this story. My English teacher had some good taste.

[clevermird]

Review: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Number 13 in my quest to read the “great classics” of Western Literary Canon, The Chrysalids is the second science fiction entry on the list (the first being Brave New World, which was just before I started doing these reviews)

Like Brave New World, The Chrysalids takes place in a distant future. Many years ago, the technologically advanced Old People were wiped out in what is now referred to as The Tribulation. Since then, mutation has run rampant in the small pockets of humanity that remain and crops, livestock, and humans must all be certified by government inspection as being correctly formed before they can be allowed to exist. Young David Strorm has never really questioned this reality until one day he meets a girl who is perfectly ordinary, except for her six toes. The events this sets in motion lead David to question the beliefs he’s always taken for granted and to realize that he might not be quite in the True Image either. . .

This book was an interesting one.  Reading it gave me a very “young adult dystopian novel” vibe, which I suppose proves that there’s nothing new under the sun, as this book was aimed at adults and published in the 1950s. The prose was easy and enjoyable to read and the structure of the beginning of the novel, a series of scenes throughout David’s childhood that slowly expand both the characters and the worldbuilding, are masterfully done. Several of them also had genuinely devastating emotional climaxes. The first half of the book overall is extremely solid.

However, Wyndham fumbles in the second half. Without spoiling too much, once the narrative abandons the episodic structure to focus on a longer event, the pacing struggles, the character development slows, and most of the things I liked about earlier sections are lost. Perhaps some of this is inevitable in trying to complete the narrative set up in the first half, but what isn’t inevitable is the borderline deus ex machina ending, nor the ignoring or direct undermining of most of the questions about tolerance and what it means to be human. In the end, it felt like the author couldn’t figure out how to end the story, so he just threw in a simple resolution so he could stop writing without bothering to integrate it with the themes or characters.

As a more positive side note, something that stood out was the handling of the religious bigotry and oppression themes. I find these hard to do well in SF, typically being very one-note and unsubtle. They were equally unsubtle here, but something about it worked for me. I think it was the lack of one-note-ness, the way different characters were shown to have different attitudes towards things, different levels of intensity, and even different reasons for their beliefs, rather than being a solid wall of hatred of mutants. It made them read as humans, rather than plot devices so our main characters could suffer more.

Overall, a simple post-apocalyptic dystopia initially carried on strong writing and characters that falls apart in the third act. Worth a read if the premise interests you, but not a strong recommendation from me.

Warnings: As alluded to above, themes of prejudice and hatred of The Other permeate the book. Often this has religious overtones, but evolutionary/eugenics-based arguments come into it as well. Readers who are sensitive to these themes will want to skip this one. There is one pretty intense scene of brutal child abuse and, while not graphically described, suicide, torture, and an implied sexual assault are plot points as well. Rating: 3.25/5

[pbwritesthething]

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham || Book Review

Mar. 29, 2023

How do you cope with being different? Is being different such a bad thing when it’s not hurting anyone else? These aren’t easy questions to answer, especially if your difference is something that can get you shunned…or worse.

Those are exactly the kind of questions David Strorm, and a few others like him, asked themselves when they realized they had strange abilities their society condemned. Their secret is a matter of life or death and they only have 2 options. They could either stay in their puritanical communities, or flee to the unpredictable wilderness of the Badlands. 

It’s 4.5/5 stars for me. I loved The Chrysalids. I haven’t yelled at a book for years, and I only yell at books that can elicit intense physical sensations in the emotional turmoil and adrenaline it could inflict on you. Moreover, its messages and “us vs. them” conflict is an eerily accurate reflection of today’s policymakers and authority figures using marginalized groups as a scapegoat for their society’s socio-political instability.

Every inciting incident is a misstep down a flight of stairs, every victory is a sigh of relief, and every chapter is a vivid film that can inspire any writer looking to use a “Show, Don’t Tell” approach to their own stories. Its sense of urgency propels the plot forward like falling dominoes; you must turn the page to know what happens next. It adds to the effect when almost every final line in Wyndham’s paragraphs is written like a cliffhanger.

Wyndham also doesn’t rely on looks to distinguish his characters but uses dialogue to give them an easily identifiable tone and voice. It’s like when your friends are talking to each other; you don’t have to look up to know who’s talking. You just hear it’s them. With clear voices, their rapport is easy to flesh out into interactions that feel natural. Wyndham sometimes gets carried away when he adds long monologues to explain his key points. I don’t mind them, but I can see how this might be tedious and distracting to some readers.

This book contains dark themes like bigotry, xenophobia, racism, sexism, abuse (particularly violence against women and children), torture, suicide, and incest (first cousin relations). Thankfully, Wyndham doesn’t write the torture or abuse scenes in great detail. But, he does write enough to inform the imagination, making your skin crawl and face scrunch into a wince. I wouldn’t recommend this book if these are deal breakers to you.

But if you’re a fan of dystopian sci-fi or are social justice advocates, this thought-provoking one-sitter is worth reading and definitely earns itself a spot on my “Read It Again” shelf.

[prettylittlelyres]

Review - “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham

10th February 2023

Hello, friends! I've just finished reading “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham, which I started on 22nd January this year. I read the last few pages before I went to sleep on 8th February, and I'm just getting around to writing my review now, on the 10th.

This is the third book I’ve read in 2023, but I'm writing this review before I write the review for the second, because I have an awful lot to say about that one! This review will be fairly short, I hope, but I promise it's a good one!

Pages: 202

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian.

Several centuries after nuclear war has devastated the earth, David Strorm and his parents live on the island of Labrador. Society is slowly rebuilding itself according to the laws of the Christian Bible: “And God created man in His own image. And God decreed that man should have one body, one head, two arms and two legs: that each arm should be joined in two places and end in one hand: that each hand should have four fingers and one thumb: that each finger should bear a flat fingernail." When the authorities discover that David's friend Sophie has six-toed feet, she and her family are labelled “Blasphemies” and banished to contaminated land to fend for themselves. As he grows up, David sees deformed crops and livestock destroyed, and families torn apart by the births of babies with visible differences. The message is clear: conform or perish. So, when David and his cousins realise they are different in their own way, they must hatch a plan to escape.

The moral of this story can be summed up quite easily in a single quote from the book itself: “change is evolution, and we are part of it.” Sometimes difference is the first sign of wider change for the better; far from shunning different ideas, we should embrace them as chances to improve what we currently have. Normality and tradition should not be upheld just because they are normal and traditional; what is outdated and restrictive should be reconsidered. There is a time for everything to come to an end, or move aside for the new. This book has a very strong anti-persecution message, but I don't know how well it upholds that message towards the end. Without spoiling anything, it feels like a different group is simply being persecuted instead.

This book really spoke to me as a Queer person. I think it's a universal experience within the queer community to realise slowly that you and all your friends are on the same wavelength, and to come to a gradual understanding that that is because you're all Queer. This is rather like what happens with David and his cousins. Slowly, they come to understand that they all differ from other people in the same way. A society that demonises difference without considering whether the difference deserves to be demonised (does it hurt anyone? is it harmful? or are people simply different?), is all too familiar for anyone who has grown up in the closet.

This book reminded me of “The Outrage” by Willi Hussey, which I read last year, and of “Q” by Christina Dalcher, which I read in 2021. All three books deal with the persecution of people who are labelled “inferior” by the majority. "The Outrage” is far more explicitly Queer, dealing with Queer characters oppressed by laws based on Section 28 legislation, where “Q” explores the dangers of eugenics similarly to “The Chrysalids”. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed reading “The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood - another post-apocalyptic novel which sees contaminated land used to threaten those who don't conform - or “Unwind” by Neal Shusternan, another story about a daring flight from a dangerous society.

I first read “The Chrysalids” in 2009, when I was still at primary school. I liked it then, but a lot of it went over my head as a child. I decided to reread it in 2023 because I realised that I probably hadn't understood it fully the first time, and that I couldn't remember much of the plot. I read “Chocky” and “The Kraken Wakes” by the same author last year after high recommendation (which I will now pass on to you) from my family, and loved them, so I thought I ought to reread “The Chrysalids” as well. I enjoyed it, and appreciated it, far more this time! I hope to reread “The Day of the Triffids” and “The Midwich Cuckoos” in 2023 as well. It's been a long time since I read those, too, and I think I'm getting back into John Wyndham's books!

[azazel-dreams]

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[ravens-cove]

[mr-craig]

“They have become history without being aware of it. They are determined still that there is a final form to defend: soon they will attain the stability they strive for, in the only form it is granted — a place among the fossils.” ~ John Wyndham, from The Chrysalids (1955)

I originally released Chrysalids as a single in 2020. The album version is a new take, recorded from scratch. As John Wyndham wrote in the book that inspired the song: “The essential quality of living is change.”

(I should add that it’s very hard to find decent photos of John Wyndham. I’m not super happy with this collage, but I did the best I could with the pictures available. Oh well, onwards and upwards!)

Stay tuned for exciting news next week.

[atasteforsuicidal]

One of my all-time favourite books is available on Audible for free, so I decided to listen to it, which was great.

I've always, however, been just the tiniest bit dissatisfied with the ending, because Michael and Rachel deserved better, and I wanted solid answers on Mark, Sally, and Katherine.

So, I thought I'd just. Take a peak, to see.

I wasn't really expecting much, and yet I'm still disappointed.

😫

[persimmonlions]

me, someone who checked lotr out of my elementary school library when i was 10: um

[bookcoverbycemo]

“Küçük bir çocukken bazen düşlerimde bir şehir görürdüm. Bu tuhaftı çünkü o zamanlar şehir denen şeyin ne olduğunu bile bilmiyordum.” (Alıntı)

“When I was a child, I sometimes dreamed of a city. It was strange because back then I didn't even know what a city was.” (Quote)

[musicktoplayinthedark]

My albums selection for the next week:

Autechre ‎– Oversteps

Orphx - The Way Through All Things

Chrysalide – Lost In A Lost World

Dive – First Album

Skinny Puppy – Weapon

John Foxx ‎– Metamatic

Front Line Assembly – Caustic Grip

Velvet Acid Christ – Church Of Acid

JK Flesh – No Exits

Hüma Utku – The Psychologist