The Skill of Our Hands

November 21, 2016
Brust and White follow 2013’s The Incrementalists with this timely novel that examines immigration and police brutality through the device of a detective story. The story opens in April 2014 with Arizona activist Phil being shot and killed. Luckily for him, Phil is an Incrementalist, connected to other Incrementalists through a memory garden that allows them to pass along their personalities after the deaths of their bodies. They are also able to use the garden to gather information about people and “meddle” with them to positively influence events. Phil’s attempt to overturn Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration law, SB 1070, has gone disastrously awry, and now it is up to his friends to find a new person to host Phil’s consciousness and to solve his murder, even if that means visiting his past life in the bloody Kansas of 1856. The unclear source of the Incrementalists’ abilities makes this hard to categorize as fantasy or SF, but its examination of human responsibility in the face of inhumane policies strongly recalls some of Kim Stanley Robinson’s best work. Agent: Kay McCauley, Pimlico.

November 15, 2016
A group of secretive immortals are thrown into turmoil by the murder of one of their own in Brust and White's sequel to The Incrementalists (2013).The Incrementalists possess mortal bodies but immortal minds--as long as they can find willing host bodies to keep inhabiting. Able to share their memories, they seek to make the world a better place, albeit in "incremental" fashion. In the first novel, one of their own committed suicide; this time, it's the murder of the oldest Incrementalist, Phil, that disrupts immortality-as-normal. Phil's fiancee, Ren, must investigate his killing with the help of a large cast: the handsome if bullheaded Oskar; meddling, haughty Irina; avuncular Jimmy; pragmatic doctor Kate, and others. Solving a murder should be easy when you can view the victim's memories--and easier still when he can be resurrected. But the Incrementalists can't agree on who Phil's new host should be...and solving his murder is complicated by conflicting agendas and old wounds dating back to before the Civil War. The investigation provides the loose thread of a plot on which the characters string flashbacks--and guilty ruminations on just how far is too far to go for their better world. With the book set against a timely backdrop of an Arizona torn apart by anti-immigration laws and sentiment, the Incrementalists seem set to clash with corrupt local police and nativist militias. Instead, salvation comes, not in cinematic violence but in moments of confessional soul-searching. Brust and White's bickering immortals are terribly human, granting vulnerability to the photogenically diverse cast. The imaginative worldbuilding and magic system overshadow the plot, and the reader may need a flowchart to track the cast, but Brust and White offer a frequently poignant take on the question of whether power conveys authority.

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January 1, 2017
Immortals walk among us. Well, kind of. Their personalities are immortal, but the bodies are not, as we discover in the opening sentences of the second book in Brust and White's Incrementalists series. Phil is quite dead; his fiancee, Ren, is understandably distraught; and the rest of the Incrementalists are scrambling to learn why he was killed. As a group, the Incrementalists meddle, working to make the world a better place through small pushes here and there, and they must determine what Phil was meddling in as part of their effort to bring him back. In addition to seeking answers, they are searching for a suitable Second, somebody who's inclined to help others yet willing to sacrifice his or her personality if the currently deceased one turns out to be dominant. Phil, being one of the oldest personalities in the group, is likely to remain dominant. Brust and White cross modern politics with history, showing the echoes of events through Phil's life, with hints of the mystical tying it all together nicely.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)