eAlthough I loved the concept of this novel I never felt the way in which the plot was executed completely engaged me as a reader so it lacked the compelling factor I look for. Still beautifully written and I can see it working for other readers.

Fascinating sci-fi esque novel from the author of the fantasic memoir A Chronology of Water. Exploring feminist themes in a unique and accessible way. Recommended

I wasn’t too sure of this book. I mean I liked the concept of it however it was too much.

The characters were ok but to me I just couldn’t get my head wrapped around the story. It took me some time to get into it and I just didn’t feel connected at all.

A strange book, which at first was difficult for me to carry on, so much so that a couple of times I thought of abandoning it. However, stubbornness was rewarded and I finally found the right key to interpreting Joan of Arc's life as a science fiction-apocalyptic story.

In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. The charismatic Jean De Men has led the survivors to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. But the survivors are not unchanged, evolution has been turned on its head: the survivors have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.

Jean de Men is not just charismatic though, he is crazy. He turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule – galvanised by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her.

This is a hypnotic book whose characters live on the edge of desperation and are all the stronger for it. It encompasses great themes, what it means to be human, whether humanity can recreate the planet it is so busy destroying, the fluidity of sex and gender and how love is tied by neither, and the role of art.

This has been a hotly anticipated book, and now I’ve read it I think it will be I a hotly anticipated film. It is wonderful, not just for the fantastic images and epic struggles within, but for the love between Christine and Trincula (who instantly became one of my favourite characters ever written) and the love between Joan and Leone.

Five Bites

Engrossing, brutal and beautifully written feminist sci-fi.

Not sure what to think of this. I loved the story, it was so different and unique but felt it was too rushed. This could have been a trilogy or an epic novel so some of the difficult concepts and visions were hard to get used to and picture. However the story was very timely so I’ve included my favourite quote below.

“All of human history has taught us how easily the clownish, the insane, the needy, the self-absorbed, even the at-first righteous can be grooved or embossed by the simplicity of power erosions.”

I mean to give myself two birthday presents before I’m forced to leave this existence and turn to dust and energy. The first is a recorded history. Oh, I know, there’s a good chance this won’t attract the epic attention I am shooting for. On the other hand, smaller spectacles have moved epochs. And anyway, I’ve got that gnawing human compulsion to tell what happened.

The second present is a more physical lesson. I am an expert at skin grafting, the new form of storytelling. I intend to leave the wealth of my knowledge and skill behind. And the last of my grafts I intend to be a masterwork.

2049. Christine Pizan lives on CIEL, a free-floating space station which siphons resources from the ravaged, dying Earth below. At 49, Christine is a year from the time when residents of CIEL die to make room for others; she’s determined she’s going out in spectacular fashion.

CIEL’s leader is Jean de Men. He’s risen from self-help guru to author to TV star to military leader. I have no idea who Yuknavitch was thinking of when she gave Pizan the line ‘We are what happens when the seemingly unthinkable celebrity rises to power.’

Jean de Men wrote CIEL’s most famous narrative graft, a romance. The irony of this being that CIEL’s inhabitants are mostly genderless and without genitalia. Humans have devolved.

It was a wish like the moth’s wish for flame. It was a wish to fuck the sun. To be burned alive inside a story where our bodies could still want and do what bodies want to do.

Grafting, creating skin stories, is the latest entertainment and a way of telling someone’s worth and social class. It’s how Christine earns a living. It’s also how she’s waged war against Jean de Men. In his stories, ‘all the women […] demanded to be raped’. In hers she re-creates the story of people’s bodies ‘as desiring abysses, creation and destruction’. Her work has inspired women to reclaim their bodies, their space, themselves.

A new philosophy took hold and pulsed: the idea that men and women – or the distinction between men and women – was radically and forever dead.

Christine’s partner-in-crime is her oldest friend and the love of her life, Trinculo. Trinculo is an engineer, inventor and illustrator, the person who designed and engineered CIEL. When we meet him, he’s wearing a belt garnered with vibrating appendages. The two main crimes on CIEL? Any acts that resemble the act or idea of sex and anything other than blind allegiance to Joan of Dirt’s official death story, the one where she was burnt at the stake. Clearly Trinculo’s taking charge of breaking the first law. The second? Christine’s last graft, her masterwork, the story she’s going to tell the reader, is the true story of Joan.

In a reworked version of the story of Joan of Arc, told by Christine de Pizan, Yuknavitch considers the damage we’re doing to Earth and to humanity. How we’ve made ourselves more important than the universe because we can’t cope with the idea that we’re a small, insignificant part of it. She looks at our need to take and hold onto power and the myriad ways in which women are belittled in order for this to happen.

The voice and tone of the novel is fierce from beginning to end. It is also very funny in parts. Trinculo, in particular, pertains to play the part of the joker, quoting insults from a favourite childhood app which generated medieval insults.

The Book of Joan is furious, eloquent and inventive. The best feminist dystopia since The Power and an early contender for one of my books of the year.

Continuing my adventures in rediscovering my love Sci-Fi/Fantasy, I was drawn to The Book of Joan when I heard it described as feminist dystopian reimagining of Joan of Arc. That sounds right up my street and Lidia Yuknavitch delivers on every level.

It’s angry. It’s feminist. It’s queer. It’s disdainful of those who destroyed earth. It will get under your skin and mess with your head, all in the best possible way.

Today I’m reviewing the astounding The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch. This book was like a punch in the gut, raw, visceral, and direct.

It’s a retelling of the Joan of Arc story, except not really. This is Joan of the future, on a twisted and utterly insane Earth; her story is told by a woman who is burning the tale into her own skin on a human colony living in orbit around their ravaged former planet. It is utterly disturbing and graphic as the horrors being inflicted on women and on the environment, on woman and wild - oppressed and controlled for so much of the history of mankind - scale out of control before fighting back.
Yuknavitch has not created an easy book to read, either in its disconcerting content or in its slightly outlandish narrative style, but it’s utterly compelling. This is the the startling edge of the dystopian genre, designed to unsettle the reader - but with characters by turns so strange, so brave, and still so full of love and lust that it retains its humanity. I also loved the nod to Christine de Pizan, one of the first known writers of “feminist” literature, by naming the narrator after her. Overall, it’s a triumph of an imagination that forces us to confront the flaws in our society head on.
N.B. I recieved this book via netgalley from the publisher in return for my honest review; as ever my views are unaffected and my own.
#minibookreview18

Lidia Yuknavitch's beguiling prose is clear from the outset of this novel, She utilises descriptions that are at once beautifully crafted and sparing.
As for the concept: a dystopian futuristic reimagining of the Joan of Arc story (with a nod to Christine de Pizan and Jean de Meun) in the context of the mass geological disaster on earth and the death of the human race. A perhaps timely, if not original, examination of feminism, gender fluidity, ecology and politics.

I so wanted to love this book. However, as mellifluous the writing, the execution of the plot failed to grip me. I was carried through Yuknavitch's alternation in storytelling from various viewpoints (both in the first and third person) but key elements of the story fell through the gaps. The development of one character, Nyx, feels bluntly inserted and her backstory is rushed. Such a shame compared to the selected care taken to depict Joan, Christine, Jean, Leone and the fantastic Trinculo. The pseudo science behind Joan's true powers, particularly in what is termed ''kinema', requires a lot more explanation.

There were also fundamental elements of Yuknavitch's worldbuilding that didn't make sense- inhabitants of the space station CIEL are the last bastion of the known human race, yet they are killed at age 50 (a la Logan's Run), even though there are no new humans born to replace them. The earth is supposedly barren and CIEL should be resource poor, but Jean de Men expends great energy in fighting Joan and her armies, killing children rather than capturing them, again further eradicating the human race.

Yuknavitch's plot construction and devices echo that seen time and again in television and film. This starts with scene setting and flashbacks, leading to 'meanwhile on earth''s, surprise character appearances, lovers in peril to be rescued, meaningful messages to be delivered at dying moments, and finally to a showdown and salvation, Her language sparked my visual imaginings, but these cliches left me ultimately deflated and disappointed.

One word review: Rushed

Rambling review: I am completely torn. I really, really wanted to love this novel. Here is just some of the press which preceded it’s publication:

New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
15 Best Books of 2017, Esquire
33 New Books to Read in 2017, The Huffington Post

Sounds pretty promising, right? And it’s a gorgeous cover (for once, the UK cover is better than the US one, by a significant margin). I thought it would be 2018’s The Power. (OK, that’s a terrible statement, we should not limit feminist women’s science fiction to just one breakthrough book a year. But you know what I mean).

I struggled with it. I struggled with a lot of it…

Firstly, the pace of the novel. It is quick, I felt like I had skipped a few pages by accident and was often flicking back and forth. I think it is intentionally snappy (“All right, let’s speed this tale along”) but I wish she had taken more time to paint the finer details of this dystopian world so I was more invested.

Secondly, Christine as a narrator. She isn’t the voice of a 49 year old. She mentions that she was last on earth when she was 14, is she meant to be an eternally petulant, inexperienced teenager? This could very well be, because Trinculo is equally underdeveloped and they clearly lack significant life experience, but if that is the case then she could have drawn this out in a more clever way. Also, her affair with Trinculo felt quite inauthentic and hollow, like an infatuated teenager? I didn’t quite understand how their timeline fit with her husband and the way (and infrequency) she spoke of her husband made me question her emotional breadth.

Thirdly, and I’m so sorry, but I just didn’t agree with some of the concepts? From practical ones, such as the space ship, to more fundamental ones about how their society worked. They anecdotally reference how quick the destruction of Earth was, but their floating “space condom” would have taken years, if not decades, to build? Christine also speaks about how bland the society it, with no need for god nor crime because they are all abundantly wealthy. I completely disagree, I think witnessing the destruction of earth and lording over a world would actually enhance a religious extremism movement. I also think crime would be rife, given they are living in an utterly boring chasm and just because someone had wealth in the old world doesn’t mean they are law abiding…

Overall, I just didn’t feel an emotional connection to the characters, the world or the plot. I completely lost interest when she, so casually, donated a rib. There wasn’t enough time spent building the picture a therefore explaining some of the author’s choices and overall it just felt rushed.

I did much prefer Joan’s book as the characters were more fleshed out, perhaps because they had featured in Christine’s books. There were also a number of very quotable soundbites which I enjoyed.

There is SUCH potential here, and maybe it would make a better blockbuster film?

P.S. I did keep rubbing my arms as I read, expecting to feel grafts…

Ever since my father introduced me to Star Wars as a child I have been in awe of the stories that Science-Fiction can tell, when done right. Similarly to Fantasy, it allows authors to discuss worldly problems in a foreign setting, highlighting their hypocrisy or methods. Once you mix Science-Fiction with Dystopia you have an incredibly powerful tool with which to reassess our world. It is with that in mind I started reading The Book of Joan and yet I still wasn't prepared for what was to come. Thanks to Canongate and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Where to start? Often I finish reading a book and I know exactly what I want to say about this, whether it's positive or negative. Sometimes a review already forms in my head while I'm reading. But there are some books where, after the last page, I just stare ahead, attempting to sort out my thoughts. The Book of Joan is one of those latter ones. So I'm going to try and answer some basic questions first. Yes, it is a Science-Fiction book. Yes, it is a Dystopian book. No, it isn't a straightforward book. Yes, there is a high chance you'll be puzzled by it at times. Yes, it will be a worthwhile experience reading it. Yes, this is a book about love. Confused yet? Good, now join me as I try and make sense of my thoughts.


The Book of Joan is set in the not too distant future where the Sun has given up and the world has been ravaged by geostorms and atomic warfare. Hovering above Earth is CIEL, a space platform in which Jean de Men has brought together some of the richest and most talented people to live under his rule. Radiation has significantly impacted the human bodies to the point where they're sexless and hardly recognisable. On Earth, struggling survivors fight a desolate climate and attacks from above. All of this is important and yet it is also very much background noise. At the heart of the novel are the stories of Joan, a child-warrior who fought Jean de Men for Earth's sake, and Christine de Pizan, floating in CIEL and inscribing stories upon her own and others' skin in the hope of retaining some humanity. With their stories Yuknavitch tries to explore what it is that makes us human, which drives define us above all, and where we have gone wrong.

The novel swims with themes and philosophies. The Book of Joan is a cry for environmentalism, full of the pain of a dying and decaying world, an ode to the beauty of nature that is slowly being destroyed. Although quite obvious, it never felt too on the nose for me. Similarly, The Book of Joan is an exploration of love, sex and bodies. At times the book may be too crude in this exploration for some readers, as Yuknavitch unblinkingly analyses human impulses and bodies. But there is a beauty in how unrelenting she is, the way in which she shows Christine using her own body to tell stories, to feel, to express herself, by inscribing them upon her own skin. It may not be for everyone, it's not necessarily for me, but it is fascinating and definitely made me think about my own body and how I express myself with it, through it. It made me think about how we judge others by how they carry themselves, how they claim an identity through their bodies

The names of the two women at the heart of The Book of Joan give an indication of what inspired Yuknavitch to write this book. First there is Joan, clearly inspired by the story of Joan of Arc, the warrior-maiden inspired by God to defend her people and her country before she was declared a witch and burned. Then there is Christine de Pizan, an influential author in the 14th and 15th centuries. Although she initially wrote ballads, she engaged herself in literary debates and rose as a prominent voice on women's place in society. She also deeply criticised author Jean de Meun, author of La Roman de la Rose, another name you may recognise, for how he portrayed women. These two historical women, in their own way and in their own times, fought for the rights of women and their determination and strength is reflected in The Book of Joan. Whether it is through fighting or writing, it is important to have your voice heard. It was a fascinating take on these women, unlike any other "adaptation" I have ever read. And I think it did both a lot of justice.

Yuknavitch's writing in The Book of Joan is at times lyrical, at other times brutal. She switches between moments of intense beauty and heartbreak to horrible descriptions of warfare and horror. You can't have one without the other, she almost seems to say. From destruction comes creation, life from death. It is hard balance to strike but Yuknavitch strikes it beautifully. For me the novel took on something of an allegorical feel as I was reading it. On the one hand the plot is there and is what the book turns on, on the other hand it is about much more than that. The characters could be stand-ins for philosophies or ideologies, the action an expression of our own history and potential future. THe Book of Joan will not be for everyone. One has to partially put one's expectations to the side and let the book do its thing. The bewildering, alien existence of those in CIEL, the struggle and hardship of those on Earth, it all comes together into a story that tries to convey the importance of love, of companionship, of understanding, of caring and of the power of standing up for what you believe in.

The Book of Joan will not be for everyone. It is both bleak and horrifying, as well as beautiful and heartening. It is a book you will question, struggle with, but (hopefully) emerge from with a different outlook on things, a new appreciation for our Earth and our selves. I'd recommend this to readers interested in Speculative Fiction and Dystopian Fiction.

Firstly the cover of this book is so beautiful, I’d be happy just to look at it. Having read it, I did find the writing a little indulgent although the dystopian extremist future is a fascinating debate to be had and I believe The Book of Joan would spark such conversations. For me however it felt a little nonsensical, but lovers of science fiction may enjoy.

The basic premise of this book is that the human race is pretty much doomed. Earth is a blasted wasteland after an environmental catastrophe ends a long and bitter global war. The rich and powerful now live in a space facility known as CIEL and fritter away their time inscribing their own bodies with something like a cross between tattoos and self-harm. The survivors of humanity have become, somehow, pale, hairless and without any sexual characteristics - sexual acts themselves have become punishable offences but the body adornments they favour are usually erotic tales. The most powerful figure on CIEL is Jean de Men - who seems to be leading a bloodthirsty cult - and his nemesis is Joan, a young girl, originally from France when such a place existed, who seems to hear voices and has strange powers over the Earth itself. Much is made of the parallels with the historical figure of Joan of Arc and her fate seems to be much the same as this Joan is burnt to death. Or possibly not, according to her faithful followers both on Earth and CIEL.

This wasn't an easy read. It is very literary in tone, with very strong language used throughout, and is definitely speculative rather than sci-fi. The reasons for mankind's transformation isn't explained, nor are Joan's powers, but the story and language are gripping. Worth persisting with.

A tricky rating to give, for I did like some parts of this novel, but others just didn’t sit with me.

It made for intense read, for sure: for the catastrophe it depicts, the parallels it draws with our current world, the violence inflicted to characters (and especially women), the crude representation of a degenerated mankind, the desperate way the main characters live their lives. Christine and Trinculo, lovers in bodies that cannot experience physical pleasure anymore, united through skin grafts and art instead, as well as through their common support of Joan of Dirt, burnt for heresy. Leone, sexless and hardened warrior who never gives up. Nyx and their willingness to bring about destruction to help creation in turn.

One may or may not appreciate, also, the literary references. Jean de Men is most obviously a reference to Jean de Meung, and his perverted goals a direct echo of de Meung’s writings about women being deceitful and full of vice. In the same vein, Christine is Christine de Pisan, whose own writings attacked de Meung’s. Trinculo, both in name and behaviour, is the Shakespearian fool, whose apparently nonsensical language and insults are used to carry unconvenient truths. This goes further, since Christine is a feminist voice who lost her physical femininity, while Jean defiles bodies too close to his for comfort. As far as I’m concerned, those worked for me.

The writing itself, too, has beautiful moments, and weaves metaphors and descriptions in a way that gives the story a surreal aspect. Something larger than life, something that the characters try to reach for and clutch to, just like they clutch to their past sexualised humanity because they don’t really know what to do with their new bodies, much too fast devolved.

The science fiction side, though, didn’t work so well, and even though I was willing to suspend my disbelief, I couldn’t get over the evolutionary processes throughout the story. Joan’s power? Alright, why not. But human bodies degenerating to sexless, hairless, mutating in such a rapid way affecting everybody, not even on two or three generations but within one’s own lifetime? That’s just completely illogical. I see the intent, I understand it to an extent ( as it pitches this broken mankind with its broken bodies against the one being who brought destruction yet at the same time is the only one who can still bring about true creation), but it still won’t work for me from a scientific standpoint, which is something I still expect to see in a sci-fi/post-apocalyptic setting.

The writing deals with first person points of view that aren’t necessarily the same person’s from one chapter to the other, and it made the story confusing at times, until a hint or other made it clearer whose voice I was reading. At times, it made the narrative disjointed and the characters ‘remote’, which made it more difficult to really care for them.

Nevertheless, it was a compelling read that goes for the guts, violent despite—or because of?—its poetry.

A bizarre yet powerful post apocalyptic tale that takes as it's inspiration the story of Joan of Arc, this book is disturbing , in a very good way. Set in 2049,climate change and war have ravaged the earth, and the few select survivors that remain live in a floating space station above what remains of the radiation scarred earth. Led by a quasi religious megalomaniac, Jean de Men , the scarred survivors are devolving, losing their ability to reproduce and changing in appearance, no longer having hair, or functioning genitals. Aboard this station ,CIEL, Christine is reaching the end of her allotted lifespan of 50 years, and seeks to turn her body into a living memorial to the one person who tried to stand up to Jean, a young girl named Joan . Branded a heretic, she was supposedly burned at the stake, but rumors are now appearing that she may still be alive on Earth, and that she may be the one person who can save humanity. The Book of Joan of the title is burned onto Christine's skin.
Grim, fatalistic and memorable, this book is definitely memorable, not just for the story being told , but also for the starkly beautiful writing, every word has a purpose and a place.

So so sci-fi with a mixed environmental message. Never really gathers any pace.

I really wanted to love this. The storyline is right up my street: fantasy, dystopian, science fiction. It ticks all my favourite genre boxes. I liked it, but I didn't love it. As the story went on, I found that the time jumps just seemed to confuse me. How could the biological changes happen so quickly? Surely they would have had to have happened at least in utero, if not over generations? But it all seemed pretty 'immediate'. This is fiction, I know, and an author should be allowed to manipulate a timeline however they want to. I just felt a little lost! I loved the characters Joan and Christine: particularly Joan's 'superpowers' and connection to the Earth. The prose was beautiful to read in places and really descriptive. Also the poem at the end makes me curious to see if Yuknavitch will write more poetry, or indeed, whether she already has. I'd read it!
In conclusion, I would recommend this to my book-reading friends (and I have!).

Although this book personally wasn’t for me, it is quite beautifully written and there were passages that really stood out. The author clearly has great skill and a remarkable imagination. Part of why I struggled was because I couldn’t ‘see’ what she was describing - it is so alien and out there that I think her quite subtle descriptions ended up being a bit of a barrier to me. I also struggled to relate to or care about the characters at all. The concept is fascinating and I can see from other reviews that many other people have found this book to be excellent. It just wasn’t for me.