truepenny | Alaya Johnson, Moonshine

Alaya Johnson's novel Moonshine is out this week. I was asked for a blurb and thus read Moonshine in ms last year, but I wrote up my impressions and saved them so that I could post them at a moment when people who read the review could actually then go buy the book.

If you're interested in Johnson's take on what she's wrought, she's featured on John Scalzi's Big Idea today (which also, happily, reminded me to make this post). And there's an excerpt of Moonshine up here.

The premise of this novel fills me with glee, and the execution does not disappoint. Zephyr Hollis is a social crusader in 1920s New York; she teaches night classes for immigrants and vampires (and immigrant vampires) along with picketing the corrupt mayor, volunteering for the local blood bank, and throwing herself into every other worthy cause that comes along. Zephyr has a problem with saying "No."

One of the joys of this novel is the world-building. I don't know enough about '20s New York to say whether Johnson really has done her homework, but she definitely gives that impression, with the details about Tammany Hall, the social life of the elite, the struggles of the working class, clothes, transportation, and a thousand and one other details, into which she has woven the non-human folk (vampires, fairies, and the rest--called Others in Johnson's New York, along with a host of varyingly offensive nicknames) with verve and a wicked sense of humor.

One of the other joys of this novel is that nothing is simple. Everyone has their own agenda; everyone has their own subject-position and it's never quite what Zephyr thinks it should be. I especially liked the way the novel was aware of, and ruthlessly exposed, Zephyr's particular blind spots. Class and race and gender are all fraught and difficult in Moonshine, and adding the Others into the mix just makes it more treacherous. Johnson plays some very delicate games with remapping the historical grotesqueries of racism and classism in the '20s onto the Others, which I enjoyed as much for her thoughtfulness as for her wit.

I had some minor quibbles (as Jeremy Clarkson says, "If I had to nitpick, and I do--"), mostly with a big reveal which I figured out at least a hundred pages before Zephyr did, and with some other aspects of the plotting, but it was nothing that got in the way of my enjoyment of the story and the world. The story is complete in itself but clearly sets up a sequel, which I will be looking forward to very much.