An Occasionally Happy Family
Cliff Burke
Clarion
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Theo Ripley used to have a happy family. He and his big sister Lauren used to be close. And he knew, above all, that his mom and dad loved them both very much. But then Mom grew sick and died. It's been a couple years now, and Theo is still mired in pain and grief, his sister doesn't talk to him like she used to, and his father... well, his father clearly tries, but just does not listen. This summer, Dad surprises the kids with a week at Big Bend National Park. Did he even ask Theo or Lauren if they wanted to spend July in a sweltering desert, part of it in a tent even? Of course not. But what Theo wants or needs never matters anyway, so off the Ripleys go - and, with them, goes the invisible baggage of a grief that Theo has never had a chance to fully process, which may finally burst out at the worst possible time... just when Dad's ulterior motive for the trip becomes apparent when he mentions that he's been speaking to an old friend from college.
REVIEW: As a general rule, far too often grown-ups just don't listen to kids, not really - especially kids who need to be heard the most. Oh, adults say they'll listen, and may be quiet when a child finally talks, but too often they've already decided what the child really means, or what the child really needs (even if they don't know it), and they dismiss anything they hear that contradicts those ideas. Thus, kids like Theo learn not to bother speaking up at all - and parents like his father convince themselves that a child not speaking up means there's nothing to worry about, nothing that can't be dismissed as irrelevant. So when Dad finally starts slowly moving on with his life after the tragic death of a spouse, he has already made up his mind that his children are ready, too - or that they'll get over any misgivings without an issue... a notion that gets blown across the desert in the events that unfold during the Ripley family vacation.
Early on, it's clear that there's still a massive hole in the middle of the Ripley family, one far bigger than the mother they all miss. Dad steadfastly refuses to talk to his children about it anymore, and Lauren seems to have pulled away from both him and her brother, retreating into researching every idea and planning every move - a trait that actually comes in handy, as Mr. Ripley seems utterly immune to planning ahead. He announces his trip to Big Bend National Park by touting it as "free" because a friend of his went back in the 1980's and didn't have to pay a dime to stay there... which is not at all true in the 2020's, and which he wouldn't have known at all until they showed up if Lauren hadn't done her homework. But Dad is determined to go, and determined that his kids will have a good time. Becoming "Nature Dad" has been part of his coping mechanism, one that his children saw as a simple eccentricity until they found out they were expected to actually camp with him in the desert. Theo, meanwhile, is more of an indoor boy than the outdoorsy type, a trait not entirely disconnected from poor experiences as a Cub Scout. He retreats into his hand-drawn graphic novels, though the only people he can share them with are a scant handful of friends - friends who are closer to lunchroom acquaintances, none of them close enough for him to confide in, or to see the pain beneath the panels. Through words and actions (or lack thereof), Theo has learned that his feelings don't really matter to anyone, that he can't discuss them even if they did. Still, he manages to cope, for all that he's still lonelier than he knows how to express (and when he does express his frustrations, naturally his father shrugs them off). This might have worked as they navigate various bumps and challenges and odd encounters, until Dad finally drops the bombshell about the real reason for the vacation: meeting his new girlfriend, one he hadn't even hinted about to them about until they're at Big Bend. Suddenly, the unprocessed feelings of both Lauren and Theo, and the many things the family has decided (without explicitly saying they've decided) not to discuss, are about to come crashing down - and this time, none of them can escape the fallout.
Neither Theo nor Lauren are entirely without fault in how they handle situations, but their father also causes a lot of trouble by pretending he can treat his kids as he did when they were much younger and less scarred by life and grief, sweeping them along wherever he chooses to go like babies strapped in a stroller - and if they kick up a fuss, well, just wait until they tire themselves out, because they can't possibly know their own minds. His own grief has blinded him, and his own healing process did not include checking in with the rest of his family to keep them on the same page, or at least somewhere in the same book; somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows this, but won't admit it, even to himself. Theo's frustrations build believably throughout the story, sometimes directed at his father or his sister or even utter strangers, until it all has nowhere to go but into his graphic novels, and finally out at the people around him. A few of the incidents seem a little random and without follow-through, but the whole comes together well enough for a decently cathartic conclusion where everyone has to learn to see each other, hear each other, and grow a little.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Walk Two Moons (Sharon Creech) - My Review
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart) - My Review
The Girl in the Well is Me (Karen Rivers) - My Review
Friday, November 21, 2025
The Shabti (Megaera C. Lorenz)
The Shabti
Megaera C. Lorenz
CamCat
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Dashiel Quicke made a killing on the spiritualist circuit, bilking gullible believers out of their money by faking seances and communications with the dead. Now, he has dedicated himself to exposing them as the frauds they are, baring their secrets and swindles to the public. It's a hard way to scrape by in 1934, far less lucrative than his old career, but at least he can try assuaging his conscience, and if he can keep one person from falling for the lies of the spiritualist movement sweeping America, surely that's worth the worn-out shoes and patched clothes. Then Dashiel is approached after a lecture by Hermann Goschalk, and everything changes.
Hermann is an Egyptologist at a local university, and has been experiencing some unusual problems with his collection of artifacts: objects moving when nobody's around, strange sounds in the dark, and more. He begs Dashiel for help in figuring out what's really going on, because the logical (if eccentric) professor is almost on the verge of believing in ghosts. Dashiel agrees to take a look, certain that it's either a case of overactive imagination or one of the many common, if convincing, tricks of his former colleagues. Instead, the former con man finds himself up against something he can't explain away with hidden wires or sleight of hand - just as an all-too-human specter from his old life catches up to him, threatening both Dashiel and the professor he has come to care for as more than a mere client.
REVIEW: I went into this book relatively blind, knowing nothing more than the blurb and the fact that the audiobook runtime filled an empty slot in my listening rotation for the week. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an intriguing, noir-tinged tale set in the Great Depression, exploring the elaborate deceptions of the spiritualists of the time, a smattering of ancient Egyptian archaeology, the closeted-in-public life of early 20th century queer Americans, and (hardly a spoiler) what happens when a real spirit enters the mix.
Dashiel is a man wounded in many ways, from a limp due to a bullet wound (not from war, but an old colleague turned enemy) to the indelible stain on his soul from the many lives he ruined and fortunes he squandered peddling false hope to desperate believers as a "spiritualist". His efforts to expose the mediums and gurus for the frauds they are through a series of talks across the country hardly makes a dent in the number of practitioners and believers, though it has made some very bitter enemies out of former associates. Hermann starts out as a simple object lesson, a "mark" he uses in his lecture to make a point about how spiritualists seem to know impossible things about clients. He is surprised, therefore, when the mild-mannered professor approaches him after the lecture and asks for help debunking the idea of haunted artifacts in his own collection. Even this early, Dashiel senses potential entanglements that he'd rather avoid, even though he eventually agrees to investigate... but his initial mundane "diagnosis" proves woefully inaccurate. Meanwhile, sparks fly between the former con artist and the rattled Egyptologist, a Jewish man who never outright speaks his orientation (neither does Dashiel) but never denies the growing attraction and feelings. Dashiel, for his part, tries to resist, convinced he's a bad luck penny who will curse anyone whose pocket he lingers in, yet unable to help himself from trying to fix Hermann's problem - even when it's clear that the problem is far beyond his area of purported expertise. When Dashiel's past catches up to him in the form of a former abusive lover, he's certain he's doomed Hermann, whose only crime is daring to care about him, but be damned if he'll see the man suffer for his sins, not without a fight... nor is Hermann, despite his outwardly innocent and harmless appearance, about to give up so easily, even when Dashiel doubts his own self-worth.
The tale moves fairly well, weaving in various characters and escalating both the haunting and the romance, as well as the growing sense of inevitable dread as the various threads of Dashiel's past and present come together, a forced reckoning with his own past and the motivations that first drove him into the spiritualism movement/con and out of it. The final leg of the story feels stretched, first when Dashiel is being toyed with by his ex and later when exploring the grand spectacle of early 20th century spirituality, a level of theater and sophistication that can cause many otherwise intelligent and rational people to fall under the sway of a charlatan; Dashiel himself does not truly condemn his former victims as simpletons, knowing from behind the scenes how ruthlessly a con can pursue a mark, how effectively they employ psychology and suggestion to exploit the same flaws in the human mind that have always and will always be vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. I found the wrap-up satisfying, and couldn't help wondering of Lorenz plans a sequel or series; it feels like there's sufficient meat on the bones established here for one more meal at least.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Diviners (Libba Bray) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Even Though I Knew the End (C. L. Polk) - My Review
Megaera C. Lorenz
CamCat
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Dashiel Quicke made a killing on the spiritualist circuit, bilking gullible believers out of their money by faking seances and communications with the dead. Now, he has dedicated himself to exposing them as the frauds they are, baring their secrets and swindles to the public. It's a hard way to scrape by in 1934, far less lucrative than his old career, but at least he can try assuaging his conscience, and if he can keep one person from falling for the lies of the spiritualist movement sweeping America, surely that's worth the worn-out shoes and patched clothes. Then Dashiel is approached after a lecture by Hermann Goschalk, and everything changes.
Hermann is an Egyptologist at a local university, and has been experiencing some unusual problems with his collection of artifacts: objects moving when nobody's around, strange sounds in the dark, and more. He begs Dashiel for help in figuring out what's really going on, because the logical (if eccentric) professor is almost on the verge of believing in ghosts. Dashiel agrees to take a look, certain that it's either a case of overactive imagination or one of the many common, if convincing, tricks of his former colleagues. Instead, the former con man finds himself up against something he can't explain away with hidden wires or sleight of hand - just as an all-too-human specter from his old life catches up to him, threatening both Dashiel and the professor he has come to care for as more than a mere client.
REVIEW: I went into this book relatively blind, knowing nothing more than the blurb and the fact that the audiobook runtime filled an empty slot in my listening rotation for the week. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an intriguing, noir-tinged tale set in the Great Depression, exploring the elaborate deceptions of the spiritualists of the time, a smattering of ancient Egyptian archaeology, the closeted-in-public life of early 20th century queer Americans, and (hardly a spoiler) what happens when a real spirit enters the mix.
Dashiel is a man wounded in many ways, from a limp due to a bullet wound (not from war, but an old colleague turned enemy) to the indelible stain on his soul from the many lives he ruined and fortunes he squandered peddling false hope to desperate believers as a "spiritualist". His efforts to expose the mediums and gurus for the frauds they are through a series of talks across the country hardly makes a dent in the number of practitioners and believers, though it has made some very bitter enemies out of former associates. Hermann starts out as a simple object lesson, a "mark" he uses in his lecture to make a point about how spiritualists seem to know impossible things about clients. He is surprised, therefore, when the mild-mannered professor approaches him after the lecture and asks for help debunking the idea of haunted artifacts in his own collection. Even this early, Dashiel senses potential entanglements that he'd rather avoid, even though he eventually agrees to investigate... but his initial mundane "diagnosis" proves woefully inaccurate. Meanwhile, sparks fly between the former con artist and the rattled Egyptologist, a Jewish man who never outright speaks his orientation (neither does Dashiel) but never denies the growing attraction and feelings. Dashiel, for his part, tries to resist, convinced he's a bad luck penny who will curse anyone whose pocket he lingers in, yet unable to help himself from trying to fix Hermann's problem - even when it's clear that the problem is far beyond his area of purported expertise. When Dashiel's past catches up to him in the form of a former abusive lover, he's certain he's doomed Hermann, whose only crime is daring to care about him, but be damned if he'll see the man suffer for his sins, not without a fight... nor is Hermann, despite his outwardly innocent and harmless appearance, about to give up so easily, even when Dashiel doubts his own self-worth.
The tale moves fairly well, weaving in various characters and escalating both the haunting and the romance, as well as the growing sense of inevitable dread as the various threads of Dashiel's past and present come together, a forced reckoning with his own past and the motivations that first drove him into the spiritualism movement/con and out of it. The final leg of the story feels stretched, first when Dashiel is being toyed with by his ex and later when exploring the grand spectacle of early 20th century spirituality, a level of theater and sophistication that can cause many otherwise intelligent and rational people to fall under the sway of a charlatan; Dashiel himself does not truly condemn his former victims as simpletons, knowing from behind the scenes how ruthlessly a con can pursue a mark, how effectively they employ psychology and suggestion to exploit the same flaws in the human mind that have always and will always be vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. I found the wrap-up satisfying, and couldn't help wondering of Lorenz plans a sequel or series; it feels like there's sufficient meat on the bones established here for one more meal at least.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Diviners (Libba Bray) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Even Though I Knew the End (C. L. Polk) - My Review
Thursday, November 20, 2025
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N. K. Jemisin)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Inheritance trilogy, Book 1
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Yeine Darr never expected to set foot in the wondrous capital city of Sky at the heart of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, despite her mother having been a daughter of the current Arameri monarch Dekarta. The price of marrying her father, a man of the jungle woodlands of distant Darr, was to forsake her royal heritage. Only now, after her mother was poisoned (no doubt by agents of Dekarta), a summons has come from Sky, one that Yeine dare not refuse. After all, the Arameri lineage traces their near-absolute power to an ancestor who, many centuries ago, bound the very gods themselves to servitude; to defy a summons would be to risk not only her own life but her nation and everyone she loves.
To the shock of everyone, especially herself, the ailing lord Dekarta declares her an heiress, putting her in contention for his soon-to-be-vacant crown alongside two cousins she's never met and plunging her into the monstrous world of Arameri courtiers with no idea whom she can trust or how to survive. Unexpectedly, the captive gods of Sky reach out to Yeine, offering an alliance and a chance to avenge her mother's murder. But does Yeine dare trust them?
REVIEW: I've enjoyed what I've read of Jemisin's works so far, and the premise of this fantasy trilogy sounded intriguing, promising a richly multicultural world where humans enslave the very entities that created them. Perhaps it was my own high expectations that undercut me, because, while I enjoyed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms well enough, I kept expecting something a little more out of it than it ultimately delivered.
While the premise is familiar enough from other fantasy tales, the setting Jemisin presents has some nice trappings and twists. The main gimmick, such as it is, is the enslaved deities and the human scriveners who have learned to harness the power of the divine written language to work near-miraculous magicks. Power tending to corrupt, the sprawling Arameri clan has by now been quite nearly corrupted absolutely; the city of Sky, literally stretching upward towards the heavens and casting the surrounding city into shadow, fairly seethes with hedonism, cruelty, and backstabbing as a way of life. Since none without Arameri blood are safe in Sky after nightfall (for reasons related to the captive deities), even the lowest of servants are relatives of the highest power brokers in the realm, so even family ties are not enough to spare a body from ill treatment. Simply getting on a rival noble's bad side is enough to condemn distant lands and hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians to enslavement or death in conflicts that mean little more than the shifting of game tokens on a board to the people of Sky. Everyone has an agenda, even the gods in their chains, though Yeine is no different in her way when she arrives; though she knew she couldn't resist a royal summons if she tried, she is determined to see whoever ordered the death of her mother pay in kind before she herself is killed (as seems inevitable) in the scramble for a throne she does not even want. But even she, an outsider to Sky, knows better than to blindly accept the word of a god at face value. She makes some missteps and mistakes as she struggles to sort friend from foe (or rather, casual foe from actively-trying-to-kill-her foe, as actual friends are not really a thing in the toxic atmosphere of Sky). She also tries to understand her late mother and why the woman ran away to live in the wilds of Darr, finding a truth far more complicated than she was prepared to face... not unlike the real reason she was brought all the way back to the capital after a lifetime in the hinterlands and obscurity, a reason that puts a hard deadline on her own agenda (and lifespan).
As Yeine struggles to stay afloat in the perpetual storm of Sky life, she also finds herself pulled into the lives and complex relationships of the gods, most particularly the dangerously mercurial (and alluring) Nahadoth, god of night and chaos, and Sieh, trickster deity with a childish aspect. Nahadoth is most often bound (literally, leashed) by Scimina, sadistic heiress and rival to replace Dekarta, but from the start Yeine finds herself drawn to him despite the dangers; even the gods cannot always control their powers among mortals. Sieh brings out a maternal, protective side in Yeine... part of a trend that started subtle but grew more prominent and irritating as the tale wound on. For all her determination to be her own master and pursue vengeance above all else, and despite being raised in a matrilinear nation where women command and fight while men are protectors of hearth and home, Yeine too often ends up being the motherly nurturer charged with soothing tears and healing broken people, particularly males, and things that said broken people destroyed. To really get into this would be to court spoilers, but it nearly dropped the story another half-star in the ratings by the end. There was also some confusion and "name soup" in the many servants, rivals, gods, relatives, and other terms I was meant to keep straight, not all of which ended up pulling enough weight by the end. The forbidden passion between Nahadoth and Yeine also had some dark undercurrents (likely intentional, but leaned into a little hard for my tastes). The ending was ultimately reasonably satisfying, but I can't say I'm that invested in the world to continue with the rest of the series, possibly in part because the people of Sky were too unpleasant for me to want to linger in their realm.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) - My Review
Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
The Inheritance trilogy, Book 1
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Yeine Darr never expected to set foot in the wondrous capital city of Sky at the heart of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, despite her mother having been a daughter of the current Arameri monarch Dekarta. The price of marrying her father, a man of the jungle woodlands of distant Darr, was to forsake her royal heritage. Only now, after her mother was poisoned (no doubt by agents of Dekarta), a summons has come from Sky, one that Yeine dare not refuse. After all, the Arameri lineage traces their near-absolute power to an ancestor who, many centuries ago, bound the very gods themselves to servitude; to defy a summons would be to risk not only her own life but her nation and everyone she loves.
To the shock of everyone, especially herself, the ailing lord Dekarta declares her an heiress, putting her in contention for his soon-to-be-vacant crown alongside two cousins she's never met and plunging her into the monstrous world of Arameri courtiers with no idea whom she can trust or how to survive. Unexpectedly, the captive gods of Sky reach out to Yeine, offering an alliance and a chance to avenge her mother's murder. But does Yeine dare trust them?
REVIEW: I've enjoyed what I've read of Jemisin's works so far, and the premise of this fantasy trilogy sounded intriguing, promising a richly multicultural world where humans enslave the very entities that created them. Perhaps it was my own high expectations that undercut me, because, while I enjoyed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms well enough, I kept expecting something a little more out of it than it ultimately delivered.
While the premise is familiar enough from other fantasy tales, the setting Jemisin presents has some nice trappings and twists. The main gimmick, such as it is, is the enslaved deities and the human scriveners who have learned to harness the power of the divine written language to work near-miraculous magicks. Power tending to corrupt, the sprawling Arameri clan has by now been quite nearly corrupted absolutely; the city of Sky, literally stretching upward towards the heavens and casting the surrounding city into shadow, fairly seethes with hedonism, cruelty, and backstabbing as a way of life. Since none without Arameri blood are safe in Sky after nightfall (for reasons related to the captive deities), even the lowest of servants are relatives of the highest power brokers in the realm, so even family ties are not enough to spare a body from ill treatment. Simply getting on a rival noble's bad side is enough to condemn distant lands and hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians to enslavement or death in conflicts that mean little more than the shifting of game tokens on a board to the people of Sky. Everyone has an agenda, even the gods in their chains, though Yeine is no different in her way when she arrives; though she knew she couldn't resist a royal summons if she tried, she is determined to see whoever ordered the death of her mother pay in kind before she herself is killed (as seems inevitable) in the scramble for a throne she does not even want. But even she, an outsider to Sky, knows better than to blindly accept the word of a god at face value. She makes some missteps and mistakes as she struggles to sort friend from foe (or rather, casual foe from actively-trying-to-kill-her foe, as actual friends are not really a thing in the toxic atmosphere of Sky). She also tries to understand her late mother and why the woman ran away to live in the wilds of Darr, finding a truth far more complicated than she was prepared to face... not unlike the real reason she was brought all the way back to the capital after a lifetime in the hinterlands and obscurity, a reason that puts a hard deadline on her own agenda (and lifespan).
As Yeine struggles to stay afloat in the perpetual storm of Sky life, she also finds herself pulled into the lives and complex relationships of the gods, most particularly the dangerously mercurial (and alluring) Nahadoth, god of night and chaos, and Sieh, trickster deity with a childish aspect. Nahadoth is most often bound (literally, leashed) by Scimina, sadistic heiress and rival to replace Dekarta, but from the start Yeine finds herself drawn to him despite the dangers; even the gods cannot always control their powers among mortals. Sieh brings out a maternal, protective side in Yeine... part of a trend that started subtle but grew more prominent and irritating as the tale wound on. For all her determination to be her own master and pursue vengeance above all else, and despite being raised in a matrilinear nation where women command and fight while men are protectors of hearth and home, Yeine too often ends up being the motherly nurturer charged with soothing tears and healing broken people, particularly males, and things that said broken people destroyed. To really get into this would be to court spoilers, but it nearly dropped the story another half-star in the ratings by the end. There was also some confusion and "name soup" in the many servants, rivals, gods, relatives, and other terms I was meant to keep straight, not all of which ended up pulling enough weight by the end. The forbidden passion between Nahadoth and Yeine also had some dark undercurrents (likely intentional, but leaned into a little hard for my tastes). The ending was ultimately reasonably satisfying, but I can't say I'm that invested in the world to continue with the rest of the series, possibly in part because the people of Sky were too unpleasant for me to want to linger in their realm.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) - My Review
Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
Saturday, November 15, 2025
The Lost Ryu (Emi Watanabe Cohen)
The Lost Ryū
Emi Watanabe Cohen
Levine Querido
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Kohei Fujiwara should not remember the big ryū - the large flying dragons of Japan, who disappeared after the end of World War II - but somehow he does: a clear vision of the creatures marching down the street while a great Western dragon circles overhead. It's a memory that stands out clearly, because it's about the only time he has seen the face of his grandfather Ojiisan without anger clouding his features. The man he knows now is old, bitter, and often drunk, flying into rages and barely speaking two words to the boy, though his daughter, Kohei's mother, keeps trying to insist everything is fine. Maybe it's because old Ojiisan has no little ryū of his own. Most everyone has a tiny dragon companion, like Kohei's own little pink Yuharu, but Ojiisan's ryū is long gone. When his grandfather falls ill and looks to be dying, Kohei is determined to find the lost ryū and bring it home, in the hopes it will heal the bitter old man's heart. Enlisting the aid of his new neighbors, the American-born girl Isolde and her Yiddish-speaking little western dragon Cheshire, Kohei and Yuharu embark on a secret quest... but what they find changes everything Kohei thought he knew about his parents, his grandparents, and his vivid, impossible memory of the last big ryū of Japan.
REVIEW: At first, this looks like a fairly straightforward alternate-historical fiction tale, one set in postwar Japan in a world where little talking dragons are common family companions. Once, the tiny ryū had larger cousins, ones big enough and powerful enough to fly; the household versions may speak and be very intelligent, but they can barely even hover, even in the midst of a rainstorm - water being the source of ryu magic. When the big ryū disappeared in the wake of the "atom dragon" attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems that the greater part of Kohei's grandfather's spirit left as well. Now, the old man barely talks except to complain and yell, and it only got worse after Kohei's father drowned while away from home during a typhoon. Kohei understands the value of family and family lore, and he feels keenly the holes in his heart where he should have stories of his parents and grandparents and ancestors beyond, the anger radiating off Ojiisan and the sometimes perfunctory attention from his stressed and grieving mother. He becomes convinced that finding one of the big ryū like the ones he remembers is the key to unlocking the family secrets and his grandfather's withheld affection, but nobody will tell him where they went after the war and why they never returned. Upon learning that the new renters in the family's building are from America, with a western dragon companion, Kohei's hopes rise; his one memory of an American dragon was the great western flier from his memory, and maybe even seeing a big American dragon will be close enough to a flying ryū for his grandfather... only for hope to come crashing down almost immediately. Young Isolde speaks some Japanese, but not much, and her dragon Cheshire is smaller even than little Yuharu, mostly speaking Yiddish (when the shy creature speaks at all). Worse, Isolde carries her own burdens. The two don't get off on the best foot, but they soon become friends through adversity, realizing that the other is their best and/or only hope of getting where they need to be in life. When Ojiisan's health takes a sudden turn, the quest becomes more urgent... and, as the children seek a new ryū for the old man (their next best hope if they can't figure out how to find the missing big ryū), the story takes an interesting turn.
Throughout the tale, language and the words used (or not used) are a theme, particularly the often subtle variants on Japanese phrases and written kanji (there is an afterword that goes into this in more detail). Kohei's mother's favorite phrase tries to tell him everything is fine, a dismissal of adversity, as if broken hearts and broken feelings can be swept away like the shattered glass left by Grandfather's tantrums... a lie Kohei comes to hate. One of the last things his late father told him before disappearing was to never give up and keep trying... though for what the boy doesn't understand at the time. A silver lighter that belongs to his father carries a kanji inscription whose exact meaning has several interpretations, and may not mean what he thinks it means as he struggles to fill in the missing pieces of the family puzzle on his own. And Cheshire's first language, Yiddish, ties into greater themes that become more central to the story, wartime traumas and losses experienced by the parents of a generation that may not have personally suffered the privations and faced the battles of a world war, but are living with the scars and consequences nonetheless, anxieties and lost stories that warp their own young lives. In seeking the big ryū, Kohei is inadvertently kicking over a stone and uncovering all manner of dark, scuttling shadows and truths about his family, his country, and the world at large, making clear much of what confused him. In this, he and Isolde are closer than he ever imagined. Ultimately, the parents who thought they could shelter children from the harsh truths of the past end up doing more harm than good with their silence.
The story sometimes wanders a bit, and there are some elements that emerge out of the blue or are set up to have greater importance than they ultimately do. I also thought there needed to be a little more follow-through and ramifications of an Earth with dragons and hints of magic skewing history just a touch to the side, though I'm likely overthinking the concept. Part of me wonders if Cohen intends a sequel to deal with some blatant loose threads, even if the main plot wraps up here. Overall, though, for an impulse read, I was pleasantly surprised by this unexpected tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Ember and the Ice Dragons (Heather Fawcett) - My Review
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Grace Lin) - My Review
Elevation (Stephen King)
Elevation
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, General Fiction/Suspense
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Castle Rock resident Scott Carey has been losing weight lately - a pound or more a day. Only he's not growing any thinner, and he hasn't lost any stamina or strength. Even stranger, his clothes or whatever he carries don't affect the scale. It's as if he's becoming immune to the force of gravity itself. Running the numbers, he realizes it's only a matter of months before "Zero Day", when he is effectively weightless, and after that... who knows?
He could go into a clinic, to be poked and prodded and experimented on as a medical marvel for the rest of his days, maybe even become a national sensation... or he could decide to embrace the time he has left and make amends with friends and neighbors, including the newcomer lesbian couple down the street.
This audiobook also includes the short story "Laurie": mired in depression after his wife's death, Florida widower Lloyd's worried sister gives him a puppy, hoping it will bring him out of his funk. She has no idea that, soon, little Laurie will save his life...
REVIEW: From the main character's name to the overall concept of a man undergoing a miraculous and strange transformation with metaphysical overtones, Elevation has clear nods to the classic Richard Matheson story The Shrinking Man (source of the cult classic film "The Incredible Shrinking Man"), only unlike Matheson's tale, King's main character chooses to avoid becoming a subject of national attention by seeking medical help. Instead, Scott decides to accept whatever is happening to him, as both he and the retired doctor friend he consults consider the likelihood of a cure to be found even if he were aggressively studied and pursued to be negligible. In choosing to embrace and accept the strange phenomenon (only the vaguest hints are given about what might be causing it, as the cause is less important than its effects), Scott's final weeks build bridges and friendships that will last long after "Zero Day", particularly in helping the town of Castle Rock accept his new neighbors and their vegetarian Mexican restaurant. Given that King is primarily known for horror and darkness, Elevation is a milder, even sweeter story, with more wonder than fear.
"Laurie", too, is a little off the usual Stephen King path, with no hints whatsoever of the unusual or supernatural. Lloyd, an older man stuck in a holding pattern of despondency after his wife's death, is almost physically dragged back to the land of the living by his older sister and her impulsive gift of the Border Collie/Mudi mix puppy Laurie. While initially resentful of the burden of caring for another creature, it isn't long before the healing - and protective - power of dogs works its magic to change his perspective. Not much about it lingers, but it does its job and paints decent portraits of its characters.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Swordquest: Realworld (Chad Bowers and Chris Sims) - My Review
Going Bovine (Libba Bray) - My Review
I Am Legend and Other Stories (Richard Matheson) - My Review
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, General Fiction/Suspense
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Castle Rock resident Scott Carey has been losing weight lately - a pound or more a day. Only he's not growing any thinner, and he hasn't lost any stamina or strength. Even stranger, his clothes or whatever he carries don't affect the scale. It's as if he's becoming immune to the force of gravity itself. Running the numbers, he realizes it's only a matter of months before "Zero Day", when he is effectively weightless, and after that... who knows?
He could go into a clinic, to be poked and prodded and experimented on as a medical marvel for the rest of his days, maybe even become a national sensation... or he could decide to embrace the time he has left and make amends with friends and neighbors, including the newcomer lesbian couple down the street.
This audiobook also includes the short story "Laurie": mired in depression after his wife's death, Florida widower Lloyd's worried sister gives him a puppy, hoping it will bring him out of his funk. She has no idea that, soon, little Laurie will save his life...
REVIEW: From the main character's name to the overall concept of a man undergoing a miraculous and strange transformation with metaphysical overtones, Elevation has clear nods to the classic Richard Matheson story The Shrinking Man (source of the cult classic film "The Incredible Shrinking Man"), only unlike Matheson's tale, King's main character chooses to avoid becoming a subject of national attention by seeking medical help. Instead, Scott decides to accept whatever is happening to him, as both he and the retired doctor friend he consults consider the likelihood of a cure to be found even if he were aggressively studied and pursued to be negligible. In choosing to embrace and accept the strange phenomenon (only the vaguest hints are given about what might be causing it, as the cause is less important than its effects), Scott's final weeks build bridges and friendships that will last long after "Zero Day", particularly in helping the town of Castle Rock accept his new neighbors and their vegetarian Mexican restaurant. Given that King is primarily known for horror and darkness, Elevation is a milder, even sweeter story, with more wonder than fear.
"Laurie", too, is a little off the usual Stephen King path, with no hints whatsoever of the unusual or supernatural. Lloyd, an older man stuck in a holding pattern of despondency after his wife's death, is almost physically dragged back to the land of the living by his older sister and her impulsive gift of the Border Collie/Mudi mix puppy Laurie. While initially resentful of the burden of caring for another creature, it isn't long before the healing - and protective - power of dogs works its magic to change his perspective. Not much about it lingers, but it does its job and paints decent portraits of its characters.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Swordquest: Realworld (Chad Bowers and Chris Sims) - My Review
Going Bovine (Libba Bray) - My Review
I Am Legend and Other Stories (Richard Matheson) - My Review
Friday, November 14, 2025
Fordlandia (Greg Grandin)
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Greg Grandin
Picador
Nonfiction, History
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few companies can claim to have transformed the world quite like Ford. Though not the first to come up with the assembly line process and other innovations, company founder Henry Ford melded them into an indelible symbol of the modern industrial age, building an empire that changed how people lived and worked. He didn't just sell cars and employ workers: he created a lifestyle, an idealized vision of America that, he was sure, would revolutionize the world and bring about a new golden age, amalgamating industry and agriculture and "pure" moral living. But not every venture was a success. In 1927, with factories hungry for latex and rubber, Henry Ford decided to risk a new, audacious scheme: a rubber tree plantation in the heart of the wild Amazon river basin, one that would not simply produce latex, but would export Ford's work ethics and prove the superiority of his American vision, to the point of conquering one of the last great wildernesses on Earth. He and his agents managed to secure the land, as well as concessions from a foreign government eager to bring some of Ford's legendary prosperity to an impoverished region. But troubles plagued "Fordlandia" from before the first American boot touched Brazilian soil. Rather than be Henry Ford's crowning achievement, it instead became a forgotten footnote and cautionary tale.
REVIEW: I only recently got around to Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian work Brave New World, which posited a nightmarish future where "Fordism" took root around the globe. It reminded me that I'd seen this book once or twice go through the library system where I work, so I figured it might give me some background information on what Huxley was responding to. Fordism was, indeed, a real phenomenon and philosophy associated with Henry Ford and his empire, one whose reach spread far beyond his factories and Model T's... one riddled with seeds of disaster. What Huxley explored in fiction, Fordlandia explores in history, as the decades-long venture demonstrated just how little of Henry Ford's envisioned utopia survived contact with reality, especially reality in the jungle.
The rise and eventual fall of Henry Ford as an American icon mirrors that of many of today's magnates, including the contrast between the truth and popular public perception... and how, the longer their success lasted and the more power they accumulated, the more they drifted into their own worlds, increasingly paranoid and hostile to any who might rupture the bubble. Ford was not the most caring and altruistic man to begin with; one of his most trusted underlings was a violent bully (useful for busting unions and enforcing Ford's increasingly draconian restrictions on what employees could and could not do - even off the clock, in their own homes), he treated his son Edsel terribly, his antisemitism was notorious, and despite claiming to be a suffragist and hiring non-white workers at the same wage as whites, the schools he established in company towns had very clear notions about what women could learn and his factories somehow put Black workers in the most dangerous roles with the least options to advance. In Brazil, the company did not even try to hide the racism; they wrote off indigenous populations as "too lazy" to consider hiring, and more than one Fordlandia supervisor tried to blame labor problems on racial friction. Above all, Henry Ford seemed absolutely convinced that his industrial innovations and a strict enforcement of "traditional" American values and lifestyle (or, rather, a Puritanical interpretation of the rural Midwestern values and lifestyle he grew up with) would create a global utopia... if only he could convince the rest of the world that they were really better off admitting American superiority in all things, from business to culture.
There was, from the start, an inherent flaw in Ford's planned future: the lifestyle he held up as an ideal was the very one that his Model T drove to virtual extinction. That flaw, and others, only became more magnified when the company attempted to establish "Fordism" along with its rubber tree plantation in the remote heart of a foreign country, one where little effort was made to understand local custom, so convinced was the company of its own superior ways. Henry Ford also famously eschewed the very concept of "experts", which did not bode well for efforts to mass produce latex; there's a reason that rubber trees in the wild rarely clustered together (as would inevitably happen on a plantation), as the very jungle where they evolved was of course where there were innumerable insects, fungi, and other pathogens. Only in places like Asia and Africa, devoid of the native pests, could monocultures of the trees be expected to thrive... a lesson that the Ford Company would learn too late, and even then stubbornly refuse to take to heart.
Grandin traces the origins of the concept of Fordlandia from the rise of Henry Ford's global conglomerate and celebrity reputation (and the political situation that enabled that rise), through the plantation's rough history and the parallel hardships and evolution of the Ford Motor Company in America (which quickly transitioned to a bright vision of a future utopia, where workers were actually paid enough to buy the products they helped produce, to a mechanized and dehumanizing nightmare where the workforce was bullied and beaten into submission), and to Fordlandia's ultimate failure and Henry Ford's decline. The aftermath of both the plantation and the industrialization that Ford helped usher into the world - how Ford's original (if unrealistic) grand utopian vision of a future where industry and agriculture would bring harmony has instead become a grim reality of misery and exploitation of land and people at an unimaginable scale (and only getting worse by the minute) - puts the project and Henry Ford's legacy into perspective.
At times, the names and dates could be a little much to keep straight, but overall Grandin does a decent job exploring the subject. Since I originally read this book for context on Brave New World, I did indeed find a new understanding of what Huxley was commenting on with his book, showing the world what an ultimately monstrous and nightmarish future Fordism would bring about if allowed to thrive. The visions offered by today's billionaire industry titans, the spiritual descendants of Henry Ford and his ilk, are no less nightmarish and, I suspect, ultimately at least as toxic and detrimental in their long-term consequences (to be paid by the rest of humanity, of course, never them).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ruthless River (Holly FitzGerald) - My Review
The Sword and the Cross (Fergus Fleming) - My Review
The Lost City of the Monkey God (Douglas Preston) - My Review
Greg Grandin
Picador
Nonfiction, History
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few companies can claim to have transformed the world quite like Ford. Though not the first to come up with the assembly line process and other innovations, company founder Henry Ford melded them into an indelible symbol of the modern industrial age, building an empire that changed how people lived and worked. He didn't just sell cars and employ workers: he created a lifestyle, an idealized vision of America that, he was sure, would revolutionize the world and bring about a new golden age, amalgamating industry and agriculture and "pure" moral living. But not every venture was a success. In 1927, with factories hungry for latex and rubber, Henry Ford decided to risk a new, audacious scheme: a rubber tree plantation in the heart of the wild Amazon river basin, one that would not simply produce latex, but would export Ford's work ethics and prove the superiority of his American vision, to the point of conquering one of the last great wildernesses on Earth. He and his agents managed to secure the land, as well as concessions from a foreign government eager to bring some of Ford's legendary prosperity to an impoverished region. But troubles plagued "Fordlandia" from before the first American boot touched Brazilian soil. Rather than be Henry Ford's crowning achievement, it instead became a forgotten footnote and cautionary tale.
REVIEW: I only recently got around to Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian work Brave New World, which posited a nightmarish future where "Fordism" took root around the globe. It reminded me that I'd seen this book once or twice go through the library system where I work, so I figured it might give me some background information on what Huxley was responding to. Fordism was, indeed, a real phenomenon and philosophy associated with Henry Ford and his empire, one whose reach spread far beyond his factories and Model T's... one riddled with seeds of disaster. What Huxley explored in fiction, Fordlandia explores in history, as the decades-long venture demonstrated just how little of Henry Ford's envisioned utopia survived contact with reality, especially reality in the jungle.
The rise and eventual fall of Henry Ford as an American icon mirrors that of many of today's magnates, including the contrast between the truth and popular public perception... and how, the longer their success lasted and the more power they accumulated, the more they drifted into their own worlds, increasingly paranoid and hostile to any who might rupture the bubble. Ford was not the most caring and altruistic man to begin with; one of his most trusted underlings was a violent bully (useful for busting unions and enforcing Ford's increasingly draconian restrictions on what employees could and could not do - even off the clock, in their own homes), he treated his son Edsel terribly, his antisemitism was notorious, and despite claiming to be a suffragist and hiring non-white workers at the same wage as whites, the schools he established in company towns had very clear notions about what women could learn and his factories somehow put Black workers in the most dangerous roles with the least options to advance. In Brazil, the company did not even try to hide the racism; they wrote off indigenous populations as "too lazy" to consider hiring, and more than one Fordlandia supervisor tried to blame labor problems on racial friction. Above all, Henry Ford seemed absolutely convinced that his industrial innovations and a strict enforcement of "traditional" American values and lifestyle (or, rather, a Puritanical interpretation of the rural Midwestern values and lifestyle he grew up with) would create a global utopia... if only he could convince the rest of the world that they were really better off admitting American superiority in all things, from business to culture.
There was, from the start, an inherent flaw in Ford's planned future: the lifestyle he held up as an ideal was the very one that his Model T drove to virtual extinction. That flaw, and others, only became more magnified when the company attempted to establish "Fordism" along with its rubber tree plantation in the remote heart of a foreign country, one where little effort was made to understand local custom, so convinced was the company of its own superior ways. Henry Ford also famously eschewed the very concept of "experts", which did not bode well for efforts to mass produce latex; there's a reason that rubber trees in the wild rarely clustered together (as would inevitably happen on a plantation), as the very jungle where they evolved was of course where there were innumerable insects, fungi, and other pathogens. Only in places like Asia and Africa, devoid of the native pests, could monocultures of the trees be expected to thrive... a lesson that the Ford Company would learn too late, and even then stubbornly refuse to take to heart.
Grandin traces the origins of the concept of Fordlandia from the rise of Henry Ford's global conglomerate and celebrity reputation (and the political situation that enabled that rise), through the plantation's rough history and the parallel hardships and evolution of the Ford Motor Company in America (which quickly transitioned to a bright vision of a future utopia, where workers were actually paid enough to buy the products they helped produce, to a mechanized and dehumanizing nightmare where the workforce was bullied and beaten into submission), and to Fordlandia's ultimate failure and Henry Ford's decline. The aftermath of both the plantation and the industrialization that Ford helped usher into the world - how Ford's original (if unrealistic) grand utopian vision of a future where industry and agriculture would bring harmony has instead become a grim reality of misery and exploitation of land and people at an unimaginable scale (and only getting worse by the minute) - puts the project and Henry Ford's legacy into perspective.
At times, the names and dates could be a little much to keep straight, but overall Grandin does a decent job exploring the subject. Since I originally read this book for context on Brave New World, I did indeed find a new understanding of what Huxley was commenting on with his book, showing the world what an ultimately monstrous and nightmarish future Fordism would bring about if allowed to thrive. The visions offered by today's billionaire industry titans, the spiritual descendants of Henry Ford and his ilk, are no less nightmarish and, I suspect, ultimately at least as toxic and detrimental in their long-term consequences (to be paid by the rest of humanity, of course, never them).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ruthless River (Holly FitzGerald) - My Review
The Sword and the Cross (Fergus Fleming) - My Review
The Lost City of the Monkey God (Douglas Preston) - My Review
Friday, November 7, 2025
Gravebooks (J. A. White)
Gravebooks
The Nightbooks series, Book 2
J. A. White
Clarion Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: It has been some time since Alex, Yasmin, and the magical cat Lenore escaped from the clutches of Natacha, the wicked witch in apartment 4E. Back then, Alex loved writing scary stories in his "nightbooks" - a habit that led to his capture, as Natacha demanded new stories from him every night. But these days Alex can barely jot down a sentence, let alone a story. It's not just the trauma, though of course there's plenty of that. It's also not just that Yasmin no longer is around; he understands that he is a reminder of that terrible time in Natacha's clutches, which she endured far longer than he did, so of course they don't hang out anymore. It's that nobody seems to care about what he writes - not his teachers, not his peers, not even his own family. His stories just don't seem to matter to anyone but him... and now, they don't even seem to matter much to him. Besides, whenever he reads his favorite authors like Ray Bradbury or Stephen King, he realizes that there's no way a boy like him can ever hope to master words like they can, so why try? Maybe he'd be better off leaving his nightbooks and his dreams of writing behind.
But the dreams, it turns out, won't leave him behind that easily...
One night, he dreams that he stands in a graveyard - a vast landscape under a night sky, each marker a story idea he never pursued, never finished, left to languish and die in his nightbooks. And here, too, he finds Natacha - the witch he and Yasmin thought dead. This is no mere phantom of his sleeping brain, either. It's really her, or a ghost of her, and she can do him real harm. Once more, Natacha demands he write new stories, better than he's ever written before, one for each gravestone under the unreal moon. If he fails, she won't let him wake up. But he can't write, not anymore, not like he used to.
Soon, he realizes the threat he's facing in this nightmare is worse than anything he confronted in 4E, worse even than the witch Natacha alone... and, if his words fail him, it's not just Alex who will suffer. It's Yasmin, Lenore, and everyone he loves.
REVIEW: I read and greatly enjoyed the original Nightbooks, but never thought it needed a sequel. That said, the little of J. A. White I have read led me to trust him: if he had written a sequel, there must be sequel material worth writing. (And, yes, the audiobook also slotted into empty space in a work day again. I'm nothing if not predictable in my desire not to be bored at work.) Was my faith in White misplaced? No, it was not. Gravebooks is a worthy successor to Nightbooks, expanding on the themes of writing and storytelling while escalating the threat and the obstacles Alex and Yasmin face.
In the previous book, Alex was torn between his passion for dark stories and his worries that they revealed some darker rot inside him, that by writing bad things it meant he was in some way a bad person; maybe that was why a witch like Natacha wanted him. But one thing his time trapped with her proved was that his stories had power, and they were worth telling... or so he thought then. His enthusiasm and eagerness to show his stories to the world (after so long being ashamed of them) unfortunately ran head-first into two problems that have nothing of the supernatural about them: the rest of the world, and maturity. Outside of Yasmin and the witch herself, it seems that nobody is that interested in reading his tales or engaging with him about writing at all. Mom and Dad can't even be bothered to read anything, even though Alex notes that they make all the time in the world for his brother's sports events. He also is not the child he used to be; he's growing up, and as he's growing up, he's learning to see his writing with a more critical eye. In addition to making the classic rookie mistake (if an unavoidable one) of comparing his nightbooks to the published works of seasoned genre masters, he's realizing that coming up with an idea and even finishing a draft are far, far removed from crafting a story worth telling, one that speaks to friends and strangers alike, one that will put images and emotions and ideas in other people's heads that match the ones in his head when he wrote the tale. Like an artist who realizes that, in order to progress, they'll have to learn more about fundamentals like proportion and perspective and shading to properly pin down the images in their mind, Alex is just now realizing how daunting the task of developing writing skills truly is, and comes to doubt whether his ideas, which now seem weak and childish by comparison to the great works he reads, are worth all that effort, even if he were capable of it (which he's certain he isn't). Never mind that, logically, all but a very few rare prodigal creators have had to tackle those same learning curves to produce the finished, polished products one finds in a bookstore; emotionally, especially to a young and inexperienced writer previously fueled by the thrill inspiration alone, it all looks like too much, taking far too long, and their own stories suddenly seem too worthless to invest that much in. The patience, the willingness to persevere even when it seems one isn't going anywhere, the ability to stay focused on such a long-term and ephemeral goal when it can feel more like a chore or slog than fun, that takes time to develop, and for a kid especially that sort of patience is not always easy to come by, particularly when one lacks external support and guidance from family or peers or other sources. Alex is right at that age where many choose to give up on creating because it just seems like too much work to get where one wants to go anymore, feeling more frustration than excitement. He's about to call it quits altogether when the nightmares come and Natacha returns. Here, among the metaphor-made-literal of the graveyard of his abandoned stories, he undergoes a crash course under the worst possible circumstances, forcing him to learn how to buckle down, dial in, and find the story inside those unfinished ideas - ideas themselves being little but a spark, a starting point, plentiful and ultimately worthless as a grain of sand without an actual story to tell, the pearl around the sand... and, like the oyster discovers while forming the pearl, irritation is often an unavoidable part of the process. Under literal threat of life or death, Alex must figure out how to avoid hackneyed and obvious plots, how to find his own twist on familiar themes, how to keep readers interested without confusing them, and what makes for a satisfying reading experience. Most of all, he learns the invaluable lesson that, without perseverance and the self-discipline to push through the frustrating parts, writing is never finished, and a writer never learns.
There is, of course, much more to Gravebooks than a writing lesson packaged in a horror tale; there's the horror tale itself. Alex's situation has echoes of his time trapped in Natacha's enchanted apartment, but he is not the same kid he was then, and this is far from the same threat. Natacha herself is just one aspect of something far more insidious, something that fascinates even as it terrifies. It goes without saying that Yasmin finds herself pulled into danger as well, for all that she has tried to distance herself from Alex (and from the cat Lenore) for her own sanity; after her escape, she was plagued with PTSD, and tries to avoid any potential triggers now that she's slowly rebuilding her life outside apartment 4E's walls. Still, she and Alex share a bond that's not easily broken, and when he's in trouble, she wrestles with herself over whether she can survive reaching out to help. It's not much of a spoiler that the matter is taken out of her hands at some point, but there are several times where she must make a choice about how far she's willing to go, how much she's willing to risk. Alex, meanwhile, struggles over whether to accept her help; part of him is still hurt to have been set aside so cleanly, for all that logically he sympathizes and understands why she walked away, and that same part of him wonders whether she'll be willing or able to get past her own pain and fear to help save him from the nightmares and the dangers they represent, if she can be counted on. As Alex endures his nightly torments, she has her own quest, her own demons to face down, her own part to play.
Triumphs give way to setbacks, steps forward become steps back, numerous stories flow from Alex's reluctant pen, and it all builds up to a nicely satisfying conclusion, one that - again - has threads that could be taken up in future stories, but are just fine left how they are here. If J. A. White decides Alex and Yasmin (and Lenore) have another story to tell, I, for one, will eagerly listen... though I do admit to feeling a bit called on the carpet over letting my own creative urges gather too much dust in the graveyard of my mind (even a few decades of lived experience apparently isn't enough to shake all of those insecurities and self-doubts to let oneself pursue acts of creation, unfortunately, though adulthood has its own ways of squashing ambitions and enthusiasm...).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Circus of Stolen Dreams (Lorelei Savaryn) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
The Nightbooks series, Book 2
J. A. White
Clarion Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: It has been some time since Alex, Yasmin, and the magical cat Lenore escaped from the clutches of Natacha, the wicked witch in apartment 4E. Back then, Alex loved writing scary stories in his "nightbooks" - a habit that led to his capture, as Natacha demanded new stories from him every night. But these days Alex can barely jot down a sentence, let alone a story. It's not just the trauma, though of course there's plenty of that. It's also not just that Yasmin no longer is around; he understands that he is a reminder of that terrible time in Natacha's clutches, which she endured far longer than he did, so of course they don't hang out anymore. It's that nobody seems to care about what he writes - not his teachers, not his peers, not even his own family. His stories just don't seem to matter to anyone but him... and now, they don't even seem to matter much to him. Besides, whenever he reads his favorite authors like Ray Bradbury or Stephen King, he realizes that there's no way a boy like him can ever hope to master words like they can, so why try? Maybe he'd be better off leaving his nightbooks and his dreams of writing behind.
But the dreams, it turns out, won't leave him behind that easily...
One night, he dreams that he stands in a graveyard - a vast landscape under a night sky, each marker a story idea he never pursued, never finished, left to languish and die in his nightbooks. And here, too, he finds Natacha - the witch he and Yasmin thought dead. This is no mere phantom of his sleeping brain, either. It's really her, or a ghost of her, and she can do him real harm. Once more, Natacha demands he write new stories, better than he's ever written before, one for each gravestone under the unreal moon. If he fails, she won't let him wake up. But he can't write, not anymore, not like he used to.
Soon, he realizes the threat he's facing in this nightmare is worse than anything he confronted in 4E, worse even than the witch Natacha alone... and, if his words fail him, it's not just Alex who will suffer. It's Yasmin, Lenore, and everyone he loves.
REVIEW: I read and greatly enjoyed the original Nightbooks, but never thought it needed a sequel. That said, the little of J. A. White I have read led me to trust him: if he had written a sequel, there must be sequel material worth writing. (And, yes, the audiobook also slotted into empty space in a work day again. I'm nothing if not predictable in my desire not to be bored at work.) Was my faith in White misplaced? No, it was not. Gravebooks is a worthy successor to Nightbooks, expanding on the themes of writing and storytelling while escalating the threat and the obstacles Alex and Yasmin face.
In the previous book, Alex was torn between his passion for dark stories and his worries that they revealed some darker rot inside him, that by writing bad things it meant he was in some way a bad person; maybe that was why a witch like Natacha wanted him. But one thing his time trapped with her proved was that his stories had power, and they were worth telling... or so he thought then. His enthusiasm and eagerness to show his stories to the world (after so long being ashamed of them) unfortunately ran head-first into two problems that have nothing of the supernatural about them: the rest of the world, and maturity. Outside of Yasmin and the witch herself, it seems that nobody is that interested in reading his tales or engaging with him about writing at all. Mom and Dad can't even be bothered to read anything, even though Alex notes that they make all the time in the world for his brother's sports events. He also is not the child he used to be; he's growing up, and as he's growing up, he's learning to see his writing with a more critical eye. In addition to making the classic rookie mistake (if an unavoidable one) of comparing his nightbooks to the published works of seasoned genre masters, he's realizing that coming up with an idea and even finishing a draft are far, far removed from crafting a story worth telling, one that speaks to friends and strangers alike, one that will put images and emotions and ideas in other people's heads that match the ones in his head when he wrote the tale. Like an artist who realizes that, in order to progress, they'll have to learn more about fundamentals like proportion and perspective and shading to properly pin down the images in their mind, Alex is just now realizing how daunting the task of developing writing skills truly is, and comes to doubt whether his ideas, which now seem weak and childish by comparison to the great works he reads, are worth all that effort, even if he were capable of it (which he's certain he isn't). Never mind that, logically, all but a very few rare prodigal creators have had to tackle those same learning curves to produce the finished, polished products one finds in a bookstore; emotionally, especially to a young and inexperienced writer previously fueled by the thrill inspiration alone, it all looks like too much, taking far too long, and their own stories suddenly seem too worthless to invest that much in. The patience, the willingness to persevere even when it seems one isn't going anywhere, the ability to stay focused on such a long-term and ephemeral goal when it can feel more like a chore or slog than fun, that takes time to develop, and for a kid especially that sort of patience is not always easy to come by, particularly when one lacks external support and guidance from family or peers or other sources. Alex is right at that age where many choose to give up on creating because it just seems like too much work to get where one wants to go anymore, feeling more frustration than excitement. He's about to call it quits altogether when the nightmares come and Natacha returns. Here, among the metaphor-made-literal of the graveyard of his abandoned stories, he undergoes a crash course under the worst possible circumstances, forcing him to learn how to buckle down, dial in, and find the story inside those unfinished ideas - ideas themselves being little but a spark, a starting point, plentiful and ultimately worthless as a grain of sand without an actual story to tell, the pearl around the sand... and, like the oyster discovers while forming the pearl, irritation is often an unavoidable part of the process. Under literal threat of life or death, Alex must figure out how to avoid hackneyed and obvious plots, how to find his own twist on familiar themes, how to keep readers interested without confusing them, and what makes for a satisfying reading experience. Most of all, he learns the invaluable lesson that, without perseverance and the self-discipline to push through the frustrating parts, writing is never finished, and a writer never learns.
There is, of course, much more to Gravebooks than a writing lesson packaged in a horror tale; there's the horror tale itself. Alex's situation has echoes of his time trapped in Natacha's enchanted apartment, but he is not the same kid he was then, and this is far from the same threat. Natacha herself is just one aspect of something far more insidious, something that fascinates even as it terrifies. It goes without saying that Yasmin finds herself pulled into danger as well, for all that she has tried to distance herself from Alex (and from the cat Lenore) for her own sanity; after her escape, she was plagued with PTSD, and tries to avoid any potential triggers now that she's slowly rebuilding her life outside apartment 4E's walls. Still, she and Alex share a bond that's not easily broken, and when he's in trouble, she wrestles with herself over whether she can survive reaching out to help. It's not much of a spoiler that the matter is taken out of her hands at some point, but there are several times where she must make a choice about how far she's willing to go, how much she's willing to risk. Alex, meanwhile, struggles over whether to accept her help; part of him is still hurt to have been set aside so cleanly, for all that logically he sympathizes and understands why she walked away, and that same part of him wonders whether she'll be willing or able to get past her own pain and fear to help save him from the nightmares and the dangers they represent, if she can be counted on. As Alex endures his nightly torments, she has her own quest, her own demons to face down, her own part to play.
Triumphs give way to setbacks, steps forward become steps back, numerous stories flow from Alex's reluctant pen, and it all builds up to a nicely satisfying conclusion, one that - again - has threads that could be taken up in future stories, but are just fine left how they are here. If J. A. White decides Alex and Yasmin (and Lenore) have another story to tell, I, for one, will eagerly listen... though I do admit to feeling a bit called on the carpet over letting my own creative urges gather too much dust in the graveyard of my mind (even a few decades of lived experience apparently isn't enough to shake all of those insecurities and self-doubts to let oneself pursue acts of creation, unfortunately, though adulthood has its own ways of squashing ambitions and enthusiasm...).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Circus of Stolen Dreams (Lorelei Savaryn) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Blackstone Publishing
Fiction, Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the centuries since the Nine Years War ended the old, chaotic, wasteful ways, the world has thrived under a new World Order: inspired by the visionary Henry Ford, every aspect of human life, from conception to death, is carefully controlled and curated like parts on an assembly line. No longer must people strive or suffer or trouble themselves to think or worry; now, everyone knows their exact place and role, from the barely-human Epsilon menial workers to the Alpha scientists and controllers of civilization. Archaic concepts like "love" and "family" and "faith" have been relegated to the past, and the past relegated to oblivion, while any frustration or discomfort is easily dealt with via the omnipresent drug soma. Only in isolated islands and fenced off Savage Reservations do any humans follow the ancient ways, with their disorganized filth and outdated morals, rightly feared and derided by any enlightened mind. But even in paradise, there are those who are unhappy, even if they can't always identify how or why, let alone what to do about it. When the malcontent Bernard and his female companion Lenina visit a Reservation, they encounter John, a unique child of two worlds... an encounter that cannot lead anywhere but tragedy.
REVIEW: First published in 1932, Aldous Huxley's classic depiction of a society entirely subsumed by shallow consumerism and stripped of all pursuit of truth and meaning still resonates today, though some parts inevitably show their age. In Huxley's future, Henry Ford's assembly line, the way it reduced workers from skilled craftsmen to mere interchangeable cogs in a larger machine, was the first step on the road to a dystopian world government (which looks like a utopia from within), to the point where, when religion itself was erased along with other traces of the "irrelevant" past, "Fordism" filled the void... for the masses, at least. The controllers still have access to forbidden materials and ideas, the better to fine-tune the ongoing manipulation and infantilization of the masses; even the Alphas are subject to propaganda and subliminal messaging proscribing their thoughts and habits, while anyone at any level who shows signs of rejecting their programming is either shipped off to remote islands where they can't infect others with the sin of individualism or executed (though of course it's phrased more politely, for all that citizens are desensitized to death from an early age).
This is a world and story populated pretty much exclusively with emotionally stunted, immature people, the inevitable end results of a system so vast and monstrous that they don't even recognize how they've been psychologically and intellectually mutilated; as a result, the characters aren't exactly pleasant to spend time around, even as they all seem to recognize on some level that something isn't quite right with themselves or with society at large. Bernard, whose oddities many attribute to some unfortunately incident in his gestation (all done artificially; the concept of natural conception and birth, like some animal, is utterly repugnant, and the word "mother" is perhaps the greatest, foulest profanity one can utter), feels discontented and drawn to risks and isolation. Lenina flirts with the dangerous idea of only having one partner; in a society where people are expected to freely sleep around, forming any manner of exclusive emotional attachment is considered a perversion. Bernard's sometimes-friend Helmholtz, a slogan writer for propaganda and government programming, wrestles with strange yearnings that he literally has no words for, those ideas - like all art and poetry and anything that speaks to deeper, truer human experiences - having been excised from their lives and vocabularies. But the most tragically mutilated person of all is the young man John. His mother was a Beta who got lost on a vacation to the Savage Reservation while scandalously (and unknowingly) carrying the child of her Alpha partner; the boy is born among the "Savages", but - raised by a disliked mother who yearns constantly for the comforts of soma and the World Order and has no clue how to bring up a child, rejected by the locals for being an outsider (and because of the trouble his mother causes) - does not belong among them, for all that he's absorbed their habits and spirituality alongside the stories his mother told of the "heaven" beyond the Reservation. For selfish reasons (nobody in the World Order ever acts for anything but selfish reasons), Bernard arranges to return John and his mother to London... but even before departure, the writing is on the wall. John understands pain and longing and sorrow and all other manner of forbidden notions, learning to read via a tattered copy of Shakespeare found on the Reservation (Huxley quotes rather extensively from Shakespeare), his ideas of love twisted by a mother who, as a World Order citizen, has no concept of the term and didn't grasp what her son needed from her. It goes without saying that things do not go well when he gets to London and finally sees the truth with his own eyes.
This being more of a conceptual fable than anything else, it tends to wander and meander, bogging down in details of the false utopia of the World Order and, later, in the ways of the "Savages" on the Reservation; there are some iffy racial and cultural things going on here, and the less said about women's roles and character depictions in either culture, the better, though again the whole book is best considered in the light of allegory, not straight-up fiction. Here is where the tale shows its age the most, though it also is telling that, at the time it was written, the idea that those in power would seek not to simply rewrite and literally reshape humans to serve them but potentially eliminate most of them as unnecessary (automation and "artificial intelligence" doing all the tasks for anyone under Beta, or even under Alpha, by Huxley's World Order standards) did not occur, or was not considered a likely enough avenue to explore. Eventually, all the bogging down stops the story dead in its tracks as John confronts the Controller for Western Europe, allowing Huxley to basically talk directly to his audience about the problems the World Order thought it was solving (at least at first; if there ever were good intentions behind the rise of the Fordian concepts in the wake of the devastating Nine Years War, those were long ago subsumed by the bottomless pit of power-lust and sheer greed and the machinery eating its own tail as programmed and psychologically proscribed Alphas took over leadership roles and the perpetuation of the Order) and the rebuttals pointing out the unacceptably high cost for the stability such a system promises, the stripping away of all basic human drives and needs and all things that make life truly worth living in service to shallow wants and childish whims - wants and whims that aren't even one's own, but programmed into society at every level by higher powers. The final parts just draw out the inevitable ending; I don't deal in spoilers, but this is a classic cautionary tale, so don't expect sunshine and rainbows. In any event, this is another classic that I've meant to get to for some time. I'm glad I finally read it, but I don't expect to revisit it any time soon, especially not while I'm living in a futuristic dystopia myself.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Machine Stops (E. M. Forster) - My Review
Metropolis (Thea von Harbou) - My Review
The Giver (Lois Lowry) - My Review
Aldous Huxley
Blackstone Publishing
Fiction, Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the centuries since the Nine Years War ended the old, chaotic, wasteful ways, the world has thrived under a new World Order: inspired by the visionary Henry Ford, every aspect of human life, from conception to death, is carefully controlled and curated like parts on an assembly line. No longer must people strive or suffer or trouble themselves to think or worry; now, everyone knows their exact place and role, from the barely-human Epsilon menial workers to the Alpha scientists and controllers of civilization. Archaic concepts like "love" and "family" and "faith" have been relegated to the past, and the past relegated to oblivion, while any frustration or discomfort is easily dealt with via the omnipresent drug soma. Only in isolated islands and fenced off Savage Reservations do any humans follow the ancient ways, with their disorganized filth and outdated morals, rightly feared and derided by any enlightened mind. But even in paradise, there are those who are unhappy, even if they can't always identify how or why, let alone what to do about it. When the malcontent Bernard and his female companion Lenina visit a Reservation, they encounter John, a unique child of two worlds... an encounter that cannot lead anywhere but tragedy.
REVIEW: First published in 1932, Aldous Huxley's classic depiction of a society entirely subsumed by shallow consumerism and stripped of all pursuit of truth and meaning still resonates today, though some parts inevitably show their age. In Huxley's future, Henry Ford's assembly line, the way it reduced workers from skilled craftsmen to mere interchangeable cogs in a larger machine, was the first step on the road to a dystopian world government (which looks like a utopia from within), to the point where, when religion itself was erased along with other traces of the "irrelevant" past, "Fordism" filled the void... for the masses, at least. The controllers still have access to forbidden materials and ideas, the better to fine-tune the ongoing manipulation and infantilization of the masses; even the Alphas are subject to propaganda and subliminal messaging proscribing their thoughts and habits, while anyone at any level who shows signs of rejecting their programming is either shipped off to remote islands where they can't infect others with the sin of individualism or executed (though of course it's phrased more politely, for all that citizens are desensitized to death from an early age).
This is a world and story populated pretty much exclusively with emotionally stunted, immature people, the inevitable end results of a system so vast and monstrous that they don't even recognize how they've been psychologically and intellectually mutilated; as a result, the characters aren't exactly pleasant to spend time around, even as they all seem to recognize on some level that something isn't quite right with themselves or with society at large. Bernard, whose oddities many attribute to some unfortunately incident in his gestation (all done artificially; the concept of natural conception and birth, like some animal, is utterly repugnant, and the word "mother" is perhaps the greatest, foulest profanity one can utter), feels discontented and drawn to risks and isolation. Lenina flirts with the dangerous idea of only having one partner; in a society where people are expected to freely sleep around, forming any manner of exclusive emotional attachment is considered a perversion. Bernard's sometimes-friend Helmholtz, a slogan writer for propaganda and government programming, wrestles with strange yearnings that he literally has no words for, those ideas - like all art and poetry and anything that speaks to deeper, truer human experiences - having been excised from their lives and vocabularies. But the most tragically mutilated person of all is the young man John. His mother was a Beta who got lost on a vacation to the Savage Reservation while scandalously (and unknowingly) carrying the child of her Alpha partner; the boy is born among the "Savages", but - raised by a disliked mother who yearns constantly for the comforts of soma and the World Order and has no clue how to bring up a child, rejected by the locals for being an outsider (and because of the trouble his mother causes) - does not belong among them, for all that he's absorbed their habits and spirituality alongside the stories his mother told of the "heaven" beyond the Reservation. For selfish reasons (nobody in the World Order ever acts for anything but selfish reasons), Bernard arranges to return John and his mother to London... but even before departure, the writing is on the wall. John understands pain and longing and sorrow and all other manner of forbidden notions, learning to read via a tattered copy of Shakespeare found on the Reservation (Huxley quotes rather extensively from Shakespeare), his ideas of love twisted by a mother who, as a World Order citizen, has no concept of the term and didn't grasp what her son needed from her. It goes without saying that things do not go well when he gets to London and finally sees the truth with his own eyes.
This being more of a conceptual fable than anything else, it tends to wander and meander, bogging down in details of the false utopia of the World Order and, later, in the ways of the "Savages" on the Reservation; there are some iffy racial and cultural things going on here, and the less said about women's roles and character depictions in either culture, the better, though again the whole book is best considered in the light of allegory, not straight-up fiction. Here is where the tale shows its age the most, though it also is telling that, at the time it was written, the idea that those in power would seek not to simply rewrite and literally reshape humans to serve them but potentially eliminate most of them as unnecessary (automation and "artificial intelligence" doing all the tasks for anyone under Beta, or even under Alpha, by Huxley's World Order standards) did not occur, or was not considered a likely enough avenue to explore. Eventually, all the bogging down stops the story dead in its tracks as John confronts the Controller for Western Europe, allowing Huxley to basically talk directly to his audience about the problems the World Order thought it was solving (at least at first; if there ever were good intentions behind the rise of the Fordian concepts in the wake of the devastating Nine Years War, those were long ago subsumed by the bottomless pit of power-lust and sheer greed and the machinery eating its own tail as programmed and psychologically proscribed Alphas took over leadership roles and the perpetuation of the Order) and the rebuttals pointing out the unacceptably high cost for the stability such a system promises, the stripping away of all basic human drives and needs and all things that make life truly worth living in service to shallow wants and childish whims - wants and whims that aren't even one's own, but programmed into society at every level by higher powers. The final parts just draw out the inevitable ending; I don't deal in spoilers, but this is a classic cautionary tale, so don't expect sunshine and rainbows. In any event, this is another classic that I've meant to get to for some time. I'm glad I finally read it, but I don't expect to revisit it any time soon, especially not while I'm living in a futuristic dystopia myself.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Machine Stops (E. M. Forster) - My Review
Metropolis (Thea von Harbou) - My Review
The Giver (Lois Lowry) - My Review
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Magic and the Shinigami Detective (Honor Raconteur)
Magic and the Shinigami Detective
The Case Files of Henri Davenforth series, Book 1
Honor Raconteur
Raconteur House, LLC
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Federal agent Jamie Edwards didn't plan on getting snatched from Earth on her way home from work, but evidently a witch in another world had other ideas. After untold months in captivity, enduring all manner of torment and magical alterations, she finally manages to kill Belladonna and escape... but this new world, with its peculiar amalgamation of Victorian-era sensibilities, steampunk-flavored technology, and plentiful magic - not to mention fantastic races like brownies, dwarfs, elves, and more alongside ordinary humans - will never truly be her home, even though there's no way to return from whence she came and survive, not after what the insane witch did to her. Like it or not, she'll have to build a life here. Fortunately, Jamie's job skills are surprisingly useful; where there are people, there's crime, and where there's crime, there are police officers and detectives.
Magical Examiner Henri Davenforth works in the bustling modern city of Kingston investigating the arcane aspects of crime scenes, mostly working alone (if his fellow department magical examiner Sanderson doesn't count, and Henri doesn't consider a man with all the sense of a flatworm as counting for much at all). But when a brazen attack on the station punches through the protection wards like a giant's fist punching through tissue paper, destroying the evidence locker and making off with a powerful artifact, the captain saddles him with a partner: the so-called "Shinigami Detective" herself, Jamie Edwards. Her reputation naturally precedes her; her single-handed murder of the exceptionally powerful and terrifying witch Belladonna was international news, and rumors coat her thicker than soot on factory walls. But the woman he expected is not at all what he finds. Somehow, being stuck with a detective doesn't seem so bad when it's Jamie. But the thieves are just getting started with their reign of terror, and the more they steal, the more likely that their ultimate target may be the very heart of Kingston itself.
REVIEW: This was another impulse download via Libby, promising an interesting mix of ideas with a little portal fantasy, a little steampunk, and a mystery at the crossroads of procedural crime and magic. It also presents a reasonably decent cast of characters who have some genuine chemistry and more or less solid banter between them. But the many parts and concepts don't always mesh cleanly, and more than once the story feels like it's spinning its wheels or jumping between ideas just to pad space.
From the beginning, Jamie is a determined survivor of untold abuses, physical and psychological and magical, at the hands of the insane witch. She has watched five other captives from other worlds perish under Belladonna's experiments, but also realizes that the witch is making her stronger - which turns out to be Belladonna's undoing, when Jamie turns the tables and breaks free. She wanders into the nearest town... and then the story skips ahead over a year, to where Henri is examining the break-in at the precinct and first meets her. The two couldn't be more different, in their ways; he's descended from money and loves food a little too much, while she's a no-nonsense investigator entirely cut off from her past, still determined to prove herself useful and come to grips with what was done to her (damage that lingers in plot-relevant ways; not only does she have certain enhancements, but distinct weaknesses that sometimes seem to exist simply so the author can avoid accusations of an overpowered heroine). She also continues to drop references to Earth pop culture in a way that Henri and others find both baffling and fascinating; she traipses close to Mary Sue territory, here, as sometimes she seems to exist as more an object of universal awe and desire, dazzling the natives with her sophisticated use of Harry Potter terminology and TV show references, than a fully realized character in her own right. But Henri isn't completely bowled over as an investigator or character, for all that he falls under the sway of her personality early on. The two make a decent team, and if he's in denial over how fast and how deep his feelings for her grow, well, he's not the first partner to fall for an outwardly mismatched colleague in fiction, nor will he be the last, and they make a reasonably compatible couple on personal and professional levels.
The investigation itself sometimes feels relegated to backdrop status, a feeling not helped by how revelations about magical properties sometimes feel contrived to either draw things out or push things ahead. (For that matter, the world itself felt oddly convenient, paralleling Earth in many ways but otherwise randomly diverging; Jamie can find most of the ingredients for curry and taco night, for instance, but Henri is baffled when she tries to describe a "cat"... despite, at one point, describing Jamie as moving like a cat - a glaring error, and not the only time I wondered if Raconteur was just making the worldbuilding up as she went along without regard for continuity or ramifications, but I digress.) The crime spree slowly escalates as the investigators race to unmask the culprits and deduce their ultimate goal. By the time they do, though, the ultimate answers feel weirdly anticlimactic and lacking the real twist or punch I'd hoped to find (and had come to expect from other, similar stories). But by then the case had served its purpose, allowing Raconteur to introduce her characters, her setup, and her world to the reader. And I will say that it kept me entertained. I just couldn't quite shake that sense of mismatched parts, and an underlying suspicion that I was reading fanfic that had had the serial numbers filed down, but which I would've recognized had I been familiar at all with the original franchise. (It could also be a sense that it was drawing on influences from manga convention, which I'm not familiar with enough to recognize; there was a strong sense of some formula at work beyond the broad strokes of portal fantasy, "buddy cop" procedural with hints of romantic potential, and genre mashup.) I don't expect I'll continue on in this series - particularly in audiobook form, as the gimmick of having male and female narrators voice relevant dialog and points of view sometimes grew oddly irritating - but I don't consider myself cheated. This is yet another case of a story being fine for what it was, but just not ultimately being my cup of cocoa.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jhereg (Stephen Brust) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
First Watch (Dale Lucas) - My Review
The Case Files of Henri Davenforth series, Book 1
Honor Raconteur
Raconteur House, LLC
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Federal agent Jamie Edwards didn't plan on getting snatched from Earth on her way home from work, but evidently a witch in another world had other ideas. After untold months in captivity, enduring all manner of torment and magical alterations, she finally manages to kill Belladonna and escape... but this new world, with its peculiar amalgamation of Victorian-era sensibilities, steampunk-flavored technology, and plentiful magic - not to mention fantastic races like brownies, dwarfs, elves, and more alongside ordinary humans - will never truly be her home, even though there's no way to return from whence she came and survive, not after what the insane witch did to her. Like it or not, she'll have to build a life here. Fortunately, Jamie's job skills are surprisingly useful; where there are people, there's crime, and where there's crime, there are police officers and detectives.
Magical Examiner Henri Davenforth works in the bustling modern city of Kingston investigating the arcane aspects of crime scenes, mostly working alone (if his fellow department magical examiner Sanderson doesn't count, and Henri doesn't consider a man with all the sense of a flatworm as counting for much at all). But when a brazen attack on the station punches through the protection wards like a giant's fist punching through tissue paper, destroying the evidence locker and making off with a powerful artifact, the captain saddles him with a partner: the so-called "Shinigami Detective" herself, Jamie Edwards. Her reputation naturally precedes her; her single-handed murder of the exceptionally powerful and terrifying witch Belladonna was international news, and rumors coat her thicker than soot on factory walls. But the woman he expected is not at all what he finds. Somehow, being stuck with a detective doesn't seem so bad when it's Jamie. But the thieves are just getting started with their reign of terror, and the more they steal, the more likely that their ultimate target may be the very heart of Kingston itself.
REVIEW: This was another impulse download via Libby, promising an interesting mix of ideas with a little portal fantasy, a little steampunk, and a mystery at the crossroads of procedural crime and magic. It also presents a reasonably decent cast of characters who have some genuine chemistry and more or less solid banter between them. But the many parts and concepts don't always mesh cleanly, and more than once the story feels like it's spinning its wheels or jumping between ideas just to pad space.
From the beginning, Jamie is a determined survivor of untold abuses, physical and psychological and magical, at the hands of the insane witch. She has watched five other captives from other worlds perish under Belladonna's experiments, but also realizes that the witch is making her stronger - which turns out to be Belladonna's undoing, when Jamie turns the tables and breaks free. She wanders into the nearest town... and then the story skips ahead over a year, to where Henri is examining the break-in at the precinct and first meets her. The two couldn't be more different, in their ways; he's descended from money and loves food a little too much, while she's a no-nonsense investigator entirely cut off from her past, still determined to prove herself useful and come to grips with what was done to her (damage that lingers in plot-relevant ways; not only does she have certain enhancements, but distinct weaknesses that sometimes seem to exist simply so the author can avoid accusations of an overpowered heroine). She also continues to drop references to Earth pop culture in a way that Henri and others find both baffling and fascinating; she traipses close to Mary Sue territory, here, as sometimes she seems to exist as more an object of universal awe and desire, dazzling the natives with her sophisticated use of Harry Potter terminology and TV show references, than a fully realized character in her own right. But Henri isn't completely bowled over as an investigator or character, for all that he falls under the sway of her personality early on. The two make a decent team, and if he's in denial over how fast and how deep his feelings for her grow, well, he's not the first partner to fall for an outwardly mismatched colleague in fiction, nor will he be the last, and they make a reasonably compatible couple on personal and professional levels.
The investigation itself sometimes feels relegated to backdrop status, a feeling not helped by how revelations about magical properties sometimes feel contrived to either draw things out or push things ahead. (For that matter, the world itself felt oddly convenient, paralleling Earth in many ways but otherwise randomly diverging; Jamie can find most of the ingredients for curry and taco night, for instance, but Henri is baffled when she tries to describe a "cat"... despite, at one point, describing Jamie as moving like a cat - a glaring error, and not the only time I wondered if Raconteur was just making the worldbuilding up as she went along without regard for continuity or ramifications, but I digress.) The crime spree slowly escalates as the investigators race to unmask the culprits and deduce their ultimate goal. By the time they do, though, the ultimate answers feel weirdly anticlimactic and lacking the real twist or punch I'd hoped to find (and had come to expect from other, similar stories). But by then the case had served its purpose, allowing Raconteur to introduce her characters, her setup, and her world to the reader. And I will say that it kept me entertained. I just couldn't quite shake that sense of mismatched parts, and an underlying suspicion that I was reading fanfic that had had the serial numbers filed down, but which I would've recognized had I been familiar at all with the original franchise. (It could also be a sense that it was drawing on influences from manga convention, which I'm not familiar with enough to recognize; there was a strong sense of some formula at work beyond the broad strokes of portal fantasy, "buddy cop" procedural with hints of romantic potential, and genre mashup.) I don't expect I'll continue on in this series - particularly in audiobook form, as the gimmick of having male and female narrators voice relevant dialog and points of view sometimes grew oddly irritating - but I don't consider myself cheated. This is yet another case of a story being fine for what it was, but just not ultimately being my cup of cocoa.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jhereg (Stephen Brust) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
First Watch (Dale Lucas) - My Review
Saturday, November 1, 2025
Edge of Tomorrow (Hiroshi Sakurazaka)
Edge of Tomorrow
Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Haikasoru
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Once, humans assumed they were the only intelligent life in the galaxy. Now, with the invasion of the Mimics, they know better. An alien terraforming technology that hijacked deep sea life forms, the hivelike entities have been slowly and inexorably spreading their toxic-to-humans waste, poisoning native Earth life to pave the way for the coming of their masters. Humans struggle to resist, but somehow the Mimics keep adapting and coming back stronger than ever. If somebody can't figure out how to break the cycle of defeats, the world is doomed.
Keiji Kiriya was a green recruit, a "jacket jockey" in the battle armor that at least gives soldiers a fighting chance against the incredibly resilient Mimics, when he went into his first battle - and died. Only he finds himself back in his bunk, 30 hours before the fatal blow, reliving a span of time he remembers almost perfectly.
Another death, another reset. And again... and again...
Has his mind cracked under pressure? Is it some sort of elaborate hallucination? Or has Keiji inadvertently stumbled into a secret known to only one other soldier - the nigh-unstoppable American fighter Rita, known informally as the Full Metal Bitch, who has more kills to her name than entire national armies?
This book was previously released under the title All You Need is Kill.
REVIEW: With a character, ostensibly a heroine and love interest, called the "Full Metal Bitch", one might have an inkling of why this popular Japanese sci-fi story - inspiration for a Tom Cruise film (whose title was used for this re-issue) - got its low rating from me. Try as it might to explore interesting concepts of possible time loops and alien invaders, it just cannot seem to help itself from falling back on the worst race, national, gender, and overall genre cliches, with flat, overreacting characters delivering clunky dialog and often wandering into tangents when time is of the essence (because even in a potentially endless time loop, sometimes you really do need to shut up and get on with what needs to be done or said before everything inevitably goes wrong again). Early on, I found the idea - a cross between the hell of potential extinction-level war and alien invaders with the "Groundhog Day" of a time loop only remembered by one man - intriguing, and was willing to ride along with a main character who wasn't exactly original or deep but was at least serviceable. Then I got to Rita, the crimson-armored, axe-wielding embodiment of all manner of cringeworthy stereotypes and overall sexual objectification, and it became abundantly clear that this book was written for a particular target audience that I was very, very much not. The story clunks along after that, wallowing in some disturbing fetishes, before ending up at a conclusion I guessed pretty much from the start (not a happy or satisfactory guess, but more a guess based on flat predictability). If I ever have to relive the loop of time where I downloaded this title to try, hopefully I'll remember enough to choose more carefully.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) - My Review
The Last Watch (J. S. Dewes) - My Review
Skyward (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Haikasoru
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Once, humans assumed they were the only intelligent life in the galaxy. Now, with the invasion of the Mimics, they know better. An alien terraforming technology that hijacked deep sea life forms, the hivelike entities have been slowly and inexorably spreading their toxic-to-humans waste, poisoning native Earth life to pave the way for the coming of their masters. Humans struggle to resist, but somehow the Mimics keep adapting and coming back stronger than ever. If somebody can't figure out how to break the cycle of defeats, the world is doomed.
Keiji Kiriya was a green recruit, a "jacket jockey" in the battle armor that at least gives soldiers a fighting chance against the incredibly resilient Mimics, when he went into his first battle - and died. Only he finds himself back in his bunk, 30 hours before the fatal blow, reliving a span of time he remembers almost perfectly.
Another death, another reset. And again... and again...
Has his mind cracked under pressure? Is it some sort of elaborate hallucination? Or has Keiji inadvertently stumbled into a secret known to only one other soldier - the nigh-unstoppable American fighter Rita, known informally as the Full Metal Bitch, who has more kills to her name than entire national armies?
This book was previously released under the title All You Need is Kill.
REVIEW: With a character, ostensibly a heroine and love interest, called the "Full Metal Bitch", one might have an inkling of why this popular Japanese sci-fi story - inspiration for a Tom Cruise film (whose title was used for this re-issue) - got its low rating from me. Try as it might to explore interesting concepts of possible time loops and alien invaders, it just cannot seem to help itself from falling back on the worst race, national, gender, and overall genre cliches, with flat, overreacting characters delivering clunky dialog and often wandering into tangents when time is of the essence (because even in a potentially endless time loop, sometimes you really do need to shut up and get on with what needs to be done or said before everything inevitably goes wrong again). Early on, I found the idea - a cross between the hell of potential extinction-level war and alien invaders with the "Groundhog Day" of a time loop only remembered by one man - intriguing, and was willing to ride along with a main character who wasn't exactly original or deep but was at least serviceable. Then I got to Rita, the crimson-armored, axe-wielding embodiment of all manner of cringeworthy stereotypes and overall sexual objectification, and it became abundantly clear that this book was written for a particular target audience that I was very, very much not. The story clunks along after that, wallowing in some disturbing fetishes, before ending up at a conclusion I guessed pretty much from the start (not a happy or satisfactory guess, but more a guess based on flat predictability). If I ever have to relive the loop of time where I downloaded this title to try, hopefully I'll remember enough to choose more carefully.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) - My Review
The Last Watch (J. S. Dewes) - My Review
Skyward (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
The City in Glass (Nghi Vo)
The City in Glass
Nghi Vo
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since fleeing catastrophe in a southern land, the demon Vitrine came to love the port city of Azril, becoming its invisible guardian and gardener. Under her influence, it rose to be a shining jewel in the land, home to wonders and scholars and music... until the angels came from the east, bearing fire and the righteous word of their master. They do not explain themselves, do not heed a mere demon pleading for mercy, and in the devastation that follows Vitrine can only watch helplessly - watch, and fling a sliver of her cursed self into one of their own. Corrupted, the angel can no longer return to the heavens, but neither does Vitrine desire his company as she mourns her city. As years, decades, and generations of mortals pass, the two are bound in an uneasy coexistence. Between them lie the ruins of Azril, the memories the demon holds in the book within the glass cabinet of her heart, and a future neither can anticipate.
REVIEW: I've been enjoying Vo's Singing Hills novellas (which have a tangential relationship to this story), so I figured I'd try some other works by the author. (That, and the audiobook fit into a gap in listening time to make work tolerable; yes, sometimes I select for time - so sue me, my job can be rather mind-numbing.) I'm sometimes a little leery of books with demons and angels, as they can traipse close to religious fiction and I'm not a huge fan of real-world religions. This tale, however, subverts several expectations. Vitrine is the one who loves the world and sees the humanity of the city, embracing its darkness and its light, coaxing it toward greatness as a bonsai gardener shapes their trees. Then the angels arrive with divine orders to level the city and destroy everyone in it. Why? They do not explain; it is not their duty or inclination to explain, to consider, let alone to care, but simply to act, destroying good along with bad if that is what they're charged to do. The rest is as much an examination of trauma and grief as it is about the growing bond between the mourning demon and the now-earthbound angel... an angel who does not understand why a demon grew so attached to the city, who has never had to spend time in the mortal world, who may never have even had an original thought that was not dictated by his divine master before encountering Vitrine; he does not even have a name, nor does the demon ever give him one. The demon tries to rebuild the city, the angel often more an obstacle than an asset, but still struggles to process her centuries-deep grief and impotent rage over the needless devastation. There are some very clear metaphors to be found in the ruins of Azril and the efforts of the immortals to process the terrible thing that happened and the seemingly-impossible task of moving forward in a world that insists on turning after everything worth living for has been destroyed. It nearly earned an extra half-star, as it has some beautiful and poignant moments, but at some point it starts meandering, and the conclusion is so exceptionally surreal that I couldn't quite work out how I felt about it as an endcap.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Paradise Lost (John Milton) - My Review
The Illustrated Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) - My Review
The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo) - My Review
Nghi Vo
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since fleeing catastrophe in a southern land, the demon Vitrine came to love the port city of Azril, becoming its invisible guardian and gardener. Under her influence, it rose to be a shining jewel in the land, home to wonders and scholars and music... until the angels came from the east, bearing fire and the righteous word of their master. They do not explain themselves, do not heed a mere demon pleading for mercy, and in the devastation that follows Vitrine can only watch helplessly - watch, and fling a sliver of her cursed self into one of their own. Corrupted, the angel can no longer return to the heavens, but neither does Vitrine desire his company as she mourns her city. As years, decades, and generations of mortals pass, the two are bound in an uneasy coexistence. Between them lie the ruins of Azril, the memories the demon holds in the book within the glass cabinet of her heart, and a future neither can anticipate.
REVIEW: I've been enjoying Vo's Singing Hills novellas (which have a tangential relationship to this story), so I figured I'd try some other works by the author. (That, and the audiobook fit into a gap in listening time to make work tolerable; yes, sometimes I select for time - so sue me, my job can be rather mind-numbing.) I'm sometimes a little leery of books with demons and angels, as they can traipse close to religious fiction and I'm not a huge fan of real-world religions. This tale, however, subverts several expectations. Vitrine is the one who loves the world and sees the humanity of the city, embracing its darkness and its light, coaxing it toward greatness as a bonsai gardener shapes their trees. Then the angels arrive with divine orders to level the city and destroy everyone in it. Why? They do not explain; it is not their duty or inclination to explain, to consider, let alone to care, but simply to act, destroying good along with bad if that is what they're charged to do. The rest is as much an examination of trauma and grief as it is about the growing bond between the mourning demon and the now-earthbound angel... an angel who does not understand why a demon grew so attached to the city, who has never had to spend time in the mortal world, who may never have even had an original thought that was not dictated by his divine master before encountering Vitrine; he does not even have a name, nor does the demon ever give him one. The demon tries to rebuild the city, the angel often more an obstacle than an asset, but still struggles to process her centuries-deep grief and impotent rage over the needless devastation. There are some very clear metaphors to be found in the ruins of Azril and the efforts of the immortals to process the terrible thing that happened and the seemingly-impossible task of moving forward in a world that insists on turning after everything worth living for has been destroyed. It nearly earned an extra half-star, as it has some beautiful and poignant moments, but at some point it starts meandering, and the conclusion is so exceptionally surreal that I couldn't quite work out how I felt about it as an endcap.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Paradise Lost (John Milton) - My Review
The Illustrated Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) - My Review
The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo) - My Review
The Daughters' War (Christopher Buehlman)
The Daughters' War
The Blacktongue Thief series, Book 2
Christopher Buehlman
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the goblins came to the human lands, two devastating wars have been fought, leaving large swathes under the control of the poison-wielding, man-eating enemy who farm and butcher humans like livestock - wars that took most able-bodied men and boys, and saw horses fall to a goblin-concocted plague. Now, the third war is fought with what remains... and with women and girls in armor. Among these is Galta, daughter of an affluent duke, who is part of a unit that will be field-testing an experimental new weapon: corvids, great flightless war birds created by powerful magic. Without a cavalry, creatures like corvids may be humanity's only hope to avoid enslavement and butchery - but nobody will know for sure until the Raven Knights are tested in battle... and even before they see a single goblin, politics and tensions may cripple the ranks in the long, bloody conflict that will become known as the Daughters' War.
REVIEW: The Blacktongue Thief had a certain dark humor about it, taking place in the aftermath of the Daughters' War and with Galta, a jaded veteran who worships a goddess of death, as a significant character. She clearly had a deep history behind her, full of loss and scars. This book is her story, a prequel about her first campaign as a Raven Knight and how she went from being a somewhat hopeful noble-born woman hoping to prove herself and turn back the enemy into the far more cynical outcast readers met in The Blacktongue Thief. Unlike the first volume, there is little humor or even hope to be found here, in a tale dominated by tensions and betrayals, where victories are few and happiness fleeting between devastating losses and gore-soaked battles.
Galta is a young woman raised in the shadow of the goblin wars; her father was crippled fighting the "biters", and she has watched the family's lone surviving horse age even as she herself grew up. She proved capable as a swordswoman and eagerly joined the ranks of the experimental Raven Knights, willing to do anything in her power to defend her homeland, having no idea how fateful that decision would be. Her three brothers are all also part of this campaign in varying capacities, from a wizard's assistant to a decorated general to the drunk and corrupt heir in a unit of irregulars. though bonds between them can be complicated and tense. The war has Galta working side by side with common-born young women, a blurring of traditional class stratification that creates some problems within mankind's armies in ways that figure heavily into later developments; while the goblins are a devastatingly devious and inhuman enemy, one whose very nature precludes any manner of lasting peace or coexistence, humans being stubbornly and blindly human accounts for far more losses than anyone, especially anyone in the upper echelons, will ever admit. As Galta experiences a harsh coming of age in combat, she also has the first stirrings of passions, first with a common-born fellow Raven Knight and later with the one who will prove so pivotal to events in The Blacktongue Thief, even as she unexpectedly finds enlightenment in the doctrines of the goddess of death - a far cry from the sun god favored by her family and many noble houses, but one whose worship makes much more sense to those facing the gruesome realities of war firsthand. By the end, Galta is a far cry from the woman she was at the start of the grueling campaign, having lost almost everything she once held dear and even several things she didn't think to appreciate until they were torn away.
The story takes a while to get moving, introducing its characters and concepts and world; the land itself may be the same as the one in Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief, but nobleborn Galta's life experience is worlds away from Kinch the thief, and this Galta is far from being the woman he encountered. (It's also been a while since I read that book; the author does a good job not assuming the reader remembered every detail, filling in relevant aspects as encountered.) The reader also gets to see more of the war corvids, intriguing creatures with surprising, if always inhuman, intelligence; this is essentially their origin story, their first test in combat, mankind's first hint of hope against the goblins since the devastating loss of horses. (It goes without saying that results are... complicated, to say the least.) Buehlman explores some interesting themes and ideas in Galta's journey, enhanced by additional notes now and again, such as journal entries from one of her brothers who serves the great and eccentric magician who created the corvids and other "mixlings", and sometimes letters from her father, who loves his children but doesn't really see them or understand them in that way of parents everywhere, blinkered by nostalgia, rank, and tradition. A few characters wind up feeling conspicuously flat, particularly Galta's boorish eldest brother, but most people become tantalizingly rounded and deep.
While there were times the story meandered and felt like it was reveling in its own despair and violence, overall it's a worthy companion to The Blacktongue Thief, a dark examination of the devastating ramifications of war.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Bloody Rose (Nicholas Eames) - My Review
Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
The Blacktongue Thief series, Book 2
Christopher Buehlman
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the goblins came to the human lands, two devastating wars have been fought, leaving large swathes under the control of the poison-wielding, man-eating enemy who farm and butcher humans like livestock - wars that took most able-bodied men and boys, and saw horses fall to a goblin-concocted plague. Now, the third war is fought with what remains... and with women and girls in armor. Among these is Galta, daughter of an affluent duke, who is part of a unit that will be field-testing an experimental new weapon: corvids, great flightless war birds created by powerful magic. Without a cavalry, creatures like corvids may be humanity's only hope to avoid enslavement and butchery - but nobody will know for sure until the Raven Knights are tested in battle... and even before they see a single goblin, politics and tensions may cripple the ranks in the long, bloody conflict that will become known as the Daughters' War.
REVIEW: The Blacktongue Thief had a certain dark humor about it, taking place in the aftermath of the Daughters' War and with Galta, a jaded veteran who worships a goddess of death, as a significant character. She clearly had a deep history behind her, full of loss and scars. This book is her story, a prequel about her first campaign as a Raven Knight and how she went from being a somewhat hopeful noble-born woman hoping to prove herself and turn back the enemy into the far more cynical outcast readers met in The Blacktongue Thief. Unlike the first volume, there is little humor or even hope to be found here, in a tale dominated by tensions and betrayals, where victories are few and happiness fleeting between devastating losses and gore-soaked battles.
Galta is a young woman raised in the shadow of the goblin wars; her father was crippled fighting the "biters", and she has watched the family's lone surviving horse age even as she herself grew up. She proved capable as a swordswoman and eagerly joined the ranks of the experimental Raven Knights, willing to do anything in her power to defend her homeland, having no idea how fateful that decision would be. Her three brothers are all also part of this campaign in varying capacities, from a wizard's assistant to a decorated general to the drunk and corrupt heir in a unit of irregulars. though bonds between them can be complicated and tense. The war has Galta working side by side with common-born young women, a blurring of traditional class stratification that creates some problems within mankind's armies in ways that figure heavily into later developments; while the goblins are a devastatingly devious and inhuman enemy, one whose very nature precludes any manner of lasting peace or coexistence, humans being stubbornly and blindly human accounts for far more losses than anyone, especially anyone in the upper echelons, will ever admit. As Galta experiences a harsh coming of age in combat, she also has the first stirrings of passions, first with a common-born fellow Raven Knight and later with the one who will prove so pivotal to events in The Blacktongue Thief, even as she unexpectedly finds enlightenment in the doctrines of the goddess of death - a far cry from the sun god favored by her family and many noble houses, but one whose worship makes much more sense to those facing the gruesome realities of war firsthand. By the end, Galta is a far cry from the woman she was at the start of the grueling campaign, having lost almost everything she once held dear and even several things she didn't think to appreciate until they were torn away.
The story takes a while to get moving, introducing its characters and concepts and world; the land itself may be the same as the one in Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief, but nobleborn Galta's life experience is worlds away from Kinch the thief, and this Galta is far from being the woman he encountered. (It's also been a while since I read that book; the author does a good job not assuming the reader remembered every detail, filling in relevant aspects as encountered.) The reader also gets to see more of the war corvids, intriguing creatures with surprising, if always inhuman, intelligence; this is essentially their origin story, their first test in combat, mankind's first hint of hope against the goblins since the devastating loss of horses. (It goes without saying that results are... complicated, to say the least.) Buehlman explores some interesting themes and ideas in Galta's journey, enhanced by additional notes now and again, such as journal entries from one of her brothers who serves the great and eccentric magician who created the corvids and other "mixlings", and sometimes letters from her father, who loves his children but doesn't really see them or understand them in that way of parents everywhere, blinkered by nostalgia, rank, and tradition. A few characters wind up feeling conspicuously flat, particularly Galta's boorish eldest brother, but most people become tantalizingly rounded and deep.
While there were times the story meandered and felt like it was reveling in its own despair and violence, overall it's a worthy companion to The Blacktongue Thief, a dark examination of the devastating ramifications of war.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Bloody Rose (Nicholas Eames) - My Review
Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Friday, October 31, 2025
October Site Update
This year just is not quitting with the cruddy stuff, but at least it let me update the main Brightdreamer Books website between crises (or rather during an ongoing one involving a malfunctioning furnace; hey, at least we have running water, which is better than we had for 11 days at the start of the month).
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Starling House (Alix E. Harrow)
Starling House
Alix E. Harrow
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The small coal town of Eden, Kentucky is a bad-luck town if ever there was one. It's not just the poverty and poor living conditions from being so near the Gravely coal mines and power plants, but bad things seem to keep happening, accidents and deaths and explosions, often tied to the strange mists that rise in the night. Some think the town is cursed... and some look with suspicion on the secluded old Starling House, once the home of the late author Eleanor Starling, whose unsettling children's book The Underland still has a devoted following. It's been well over a century since Eleanor disappeared, but her reputation is still whispered in that way of small towns; if anyone cursed the good people of Eden, it must have been her and the strange string of successors who have inherited the place, culminating in the reclusive young man Arthur. None would believe the truth...
Opal and her teen brother Jasper have been stranded in Eden ever since a terrible accident sent their mother's car into the river over a decade ago. A high school dropout with a surly reputation, Opal struggles to earn enough money to at least save Jasper from this dead-end hole of a place. But she also is fascinated by Starling House, having been enthralled by The Underland since childhood. She even finds herself haunted by dreams of a sprawling mansion, a place that feels like the home she never had. But she never imagined she'd set foot in the place, until the night she has a fateful encounter with Arthur Starling himself. Beyond the threshold of Starling House is a place she recognizes too well from her dreams... and a dark secret worse than her deepest nightmares.
REVIEW: With the creepy Southern Gothic atmosphere and a gritty, hardscrabble heroine, Starling House looked like a great pick for October. Alix E. Harrow continues her streak of not disappointing me.
Opal is a young woman who should have given up years ago, fallen into drugs or alcohol or other traps - or simply given up on survival altogether. Her single mother didn't exactly provide a stable life before her untimely death, with neither child knowing who or where their fathers were, and Opal was in the car with the woman when they went off the bridge into the river. Things only got worse after that, as she dropped out of high school and learned to lie, cheat, steal, and grift to keep custody of her kid brother. Yet, while Opal isn't exactly the kindest or most mentally healthy person in Eden, adversity has made her dig in all the harder, made her all the hungrier and sharper, as she bends every fiber of her being and her pride toward getting her now-teen brother Jasper out and away to a better life - sacrificing herself and any potential for her own future or happiness in the process. Her quick temper and sarcastic tongue don't always help, but they're her defense mechanisms against a town that long ago branded her trouble, and against the parts of herself she deliberately buried because they were too broken and hurt to handle alone - and alone is the only way she knows how to handle anything. A small Southern town like Eden doesn't exactly go out of its way to help strangers, especially ones like Opal, though there are a few people who form a threadbare support net... people she doesn't learn to appreciate until it's nearly too late. Jasper, meanwhile, is becoming a teenager and pushing back against her mothering form of sisterhood; hard as she tries to shield him from the worst of small town hostility and the sacrifices she makes on his behalf, he's developing his own ideas of what his life will be, ideas that clash with her best intentions and efforts. This is yet another source of friction on the fraying ropes barely holding Opal together... and that's without the dreams and nightmares, some of which tie into the tale of The Underland and lead back, inevitably, to Eleanor Starling.
Arthur, meanwhile, has also sacrificed himself in his own way, as caretaker of Starling House and the legacy of Eleanor... and also the Warden working to protect a town that hardly deserves protection from a supernatural threat (not really a spoiler; this is a horror-fantasy, after all). He swore he'd be the last, that he'd die if need be to stop the cycle of new Wardens being "called" to Starling House to continue a fight that seemingly can never be won... until the redheaded young woman turns up and inadvertently offers blood to the wrought iron gates. Despite himself, he offers her a job as housekeeper to the sprawling estate, even knowing that he may not be able to save her from a fate like his own (especially not if she's already been called by the dreams), but he's denied himself so much, even companionship, for so long he can't help himself - plus he may need some assistance, as not only is the mist growing more malevolent and active, but enemies of an all too mortal variety - the wealthy, amoral Gravelys - are trying to steal Starling House (and its secrets) right out from under him.
As Opal and Arthur circle unspoken feelings for each other and their own agendas (both of which are facing increasing challenges as things get worse for them and for Eden), underlying secrets and the source of Eden's curse are slowly revealed, tied into festering wounds left generations ago by injustice, abuse, and trauma. The sins of the forefathers are compounded through the years, as the lack of consequences feeds into the entitlement and impunity of those who flout rules and common decency, while the habit of injustice becomes entrenched in a populace too willing to look the other way. All of this only makes the mist worse, building to a potentially catastrophic climax.
There are times when both Opal and Arthur let their emotions get in the way of intelligence and action; Opal in particular can break down and hole up in her own head and in the borrowed motel room that serves as a home. Her flexible morality (when it comes to people who aren't herself or Jasper; she will do anything, even sell herself out, if it means a chance at getting her brother out of Eden and away from their wretched existence) makes her a little tough to sympathize with as a main character, though Arthur can also be stubbornly obtuse and close-lipped. Still, they manage to grow, if unevenly, to confront the challenges placed before them. A few threads feel unresolved by the ending, though overall it's a satisfying and cathartic conclusion.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell) - My Review
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
Gallant (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Alix E. Harrow
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The small coal town of Eden, Kentucky is a bad-luck town if ever there was one. It's not just the poverty and poor living conditions from being so near the Gravely coal mines and power plants, but bad things seem to keep happening, accidents and deaths and explosions, often tied to the strange mists that rise in the night. Some think the town is cursed... and some look with suspicion on the secluded old Starling House, once the home of the late author Eleanor Starling, whose unsettling children's book The Underland still has a devoted following. It's been well over a century since Eleanor disappeared, but her reputation is still whispered in that way of small towns; if anyone cursed the good people of Eden, it must have been her and the strange string of successors who have inherited the place, culminating in the reclusive young man Arthur. None would believe the truth...
Opal and her teen brother Jasper have been stranded in Eden ever since a terrible accident sent their mother's car into the river over a decade ago. A high school dropout with a surly reputation, Opal struggles to earn enough money to at least save Jasper from this dead-end hole of a place. But she also is fascinated by Starling House, having been enthralled by The Underland since childhood. She even finds herself haunted by dreams of a sprawling mansion, a place that feels like the home she never had. But she never imagined she'd set foot in the place, until the night she has a fateful encounter with Arthur Starling himself. Beyond the threshold of Starling House is a place she recognizes too well from her dreams... and a dark secret worse than her deepest nightmares.
REVIEW: With the creepy Southern Gothic atmosphere and a gritty, hardscrabble heroine, Starling House looked like a great pick for October. Alix E. Harrow continues her streak of not disappointing me.
Opal is a young woman who should have given up years ago, fallen into drugs or alcohol or other traps - or simply given up on survival altogether. Her single mother didn't exactly provide a stable life before her untimely death, with neither child knowing who or where their fathers were, and Opal was in the car with the woman when they went off the bridge into the river. Things only got worse after that, as she dropped out of high school and learned to lie, cheat, steal, and grift to keep custody of her kid brother. Yet, while Opal isn't exactly the kindest or most mentally healthy person in Eden, adversity has made her dig in all the harder, made her all the hungrier and sharper, as she bends every fiber of her being and her pride toward getting her now-teen brother Jasper out and away to a better life - sacrificing herself and any potential for her own future or happiness in the process. Her quick temper and sarcastic tongue don't always help, but they're her defense mechanisms against a town that long ago branded her trouble, and against the parts of herself she deliberately buried because they were too broken and hurt to handle alone - and alone is the only way she knows how to handle anything. A small Southern town like Eden doesn't exactly go out of its way to help strangers, especially ones like Opal, though there are a few people who form a threadbare support net... people she doesn't learn to appreciate until it's nearly too late. Jasper, meanwhile, is becoming a teenager and pushing back against her mothering form of sisterhood; hard as she tries to shield him from the worst of small town hostility and the sacrifices she makes on his behalf, he's developing his own ideas of what his life will be, ideas that clash with her best intentions and efforts. This is yet another source of friction on the fraying ropes barely holding Opal together... and that's without the dreams and nightmares, some of which tie into the tale of The Underland and lead back, inevitably, to Eleanor Starling.
Arthur, meanwhile, has also sacrificed himself in his own way, as caretaker of Starling House and the legacy of Eleanor... and also the Warden working to protect a town that hardly deserves protection from a supernatural threat (not really a spoiler; this is a horror-fantasy, after all). He swore he'd be the last, that he'd die if need be to stop the cycle of new Wardens being "called" to Starling House to continue a fight that seemingly can never be won... until the redheaded young woman turns up and inadvertently offers blood to the wrought iron gates. Despite himself, he offers her a job as housekeeper to the sprawling estate, even knowing that he may not be able to save her from a fate like his own (especially not if she's already been called by the dreams), but he's denied himself so much, even companionship, for so long he can't help himself - plus he may need some assistance, as not only is the mist growing more malevolent and active, but enemies of an all too mortal variety - the wealthy, amoral Gravelys - are trying to steal Starling House (and its secrets) right out from under him.
As Opal and Arthur circle unspoken feelings for each other and their own agendas (both of which are facing increasing challenges as things get worse for them and for Eden), underlying secrets and the source of Eden's curse are slowly revealed, tied into festering wounds left generations ago by injustice, abuse, and trauma. The sins of the forefathers are compounded through the years, as the lack of consequences feeds into the entitlement and impunity of those who flout rules and common decency, while the habit of injustice becomes entrenched in a populace too willing to look the other way. All of this only makes the mist worse, building to a potentially catastrophic climax.
There are times when both Opal and Arthur let their emotions get in the way of intelligence and action; Opal in particular can break down and hole up in her own head and in the borrowed motel room that serves as a home. Her flexible morality (when it comes to people who aren't herself or Jasper; she will do anything, even sell herself out, if it means a chance at getting her brother out of Eden and away from their wretched existence) makes her a little tough to sympathize with as a main character, though Arthur can also be stubbornly obtuse and close-lipped. Still, they manage to grow, if unevenly, to confront the challenges placed before them. A few threads feel unresolved by the ending, though overall it's a satisfying and cathartic conclusion.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell) - My Review
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
Gallant (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Friday, October 24, 2025
Bryony and Roses (T. Kingfisher)
Bryony and Roses
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Tea Company
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It never would've happened but for the rutabagas. But Bryony's garden keeps her and her two sisters fed, and she needed more vegetables, so she and the clumsy family pony Fumblefoot set off... never expecting to get caught in a snowstorm on the way back through the woods. When she stumbles upon a manor house deep in the forest, it seemed a stroke of luck, and if there seemed to be something uncanny and a touch magical about the way its doors opened and food appeared (even food for a hungry pony) with no sign of humans about, well, women on the edge of freezing to death can't exactly pick and choose their salvation. It's only when she tries to leave and finds herself facing a hulking Beast that she realizes the trap she's fallen into. But is it he who keeps her imprisoned here, or is it some other, more insidious force... and, if so, is there any way to escape the curse that's entangled her?
REVIEW: As one might expect, this is yet another retelling of the familiar "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale, but this "Beauty" is no helpless damsel traded away by a greedy father, nor is breaking the curse as easy as learning to love a hulking "monster" with a human heart. Bryony is a gardener down to her marrow; when her late father squandered the family name and fortune and left his three daughters nothing but an out-of-the-way cottage in an out-of-the-way little town, she felt more relieved than devastated, finally able to indulge her passion without being forever chided about dirt under her nails. She's not a classical "beauty", either; her sister Iris got the family good looks, as well as a flair for playing the victim/helpless damsel in distress, while Bryony and her no-nonsense sister Holly are more plain-faced. When she first realizes she can never leave the House in the woods, she misses her garden at least as much as her own kin. This gives her a more practical bent than many classic fairy tale heroines, though she's also not notably brave or a warrior by any means; more than once she lets her fear get the better of her, though generally (and especially later on) that fear is quite justified by the circumstances. The Beast, meanwhile, is rarely anything but a gentleman from the start, as much a prisoner as she herself is. He has long ago become resigned to his fate, and regrets that she, too, is trapped with him, but her presence also offers a slim and painful hope of escape and freedom - if she can figure out how; every time he tries to tell her the origins and conditions of their imprisonment, the forces behind it seem to hear and act to silence them by increasingly malevolent means. Thus they have to find roundabout ways to communicate, when they can talk of it at all. Bryony sometimes seems slightly slow on the uptake about a few points, but manages to come through when it counts, and she and the Beast have a genuine connection and chemistry. It all makes for a reasonably satisfying tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Nettle and Bone (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Fire Rose (Mercedes Lackey) - My Review
For the Wolf (Hannah Whitten) - My Review
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Tea Company
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It never would've happened but for the rutabagas. But Bryony's garden keeps her and her two sisters fed, and she needed more vegetables, so she and the clumsy family pony Fumblefoot set off... never expecting to get caught in a snowstorm on the way back through the woods. When she stumbles upon a manor house deep in the forest, it seemed a stroke of luck, and if there seemed to be something uncanny and a touch magical about the way its doors opened and food appeared (even food for a hungry pony) with no sign of humans about, well, women on the edge of freezing to death can't exactly pick and choose their salvation. It's only when she tries to leave and finds herself facing a hulking Beast that she realizes the trap she's fallen into. But is it he who keeps her imprisoned here, or is it some other, more insidious force... and, if so, is there any way to escape the curse that's entangled her?
REVIEW: As one might expect, this is yet another retelling of the familiar "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale, but this "Beauty" is no helpless damsel traded away by a greedy father, nor is breaking the curse as easy as learning to love a hulking "monster" with a human heart. Bryony is a gardener down to her marrow; when her late father squandered the family name and fortune and left his three daughters nothing but an out-of-the-way cottage in an out-of-the-way little town, she felt more relieved than devastated, finally able to indulge her passion without being forever chided about dirt under her nails. She's not a classical "beauty", either; her sister Iris got the family good looks, as well as a flair for playing the victim/helpless damsel in distress, while Bryony and her no-nonsense sister Holly are more plain-faced. When she first realizes she can never leave the House in the woods, she misses her garden at least as much as her own kin. This gives her a more practical bent than many classic fairy tale heroines, though she's also not notably brave or a warrior by any means; more than once she lets her fear get the better of her, though generally (and especially later on) that fear is quite justified by the circumstances. The Beast, meanwhile, is rarely anything but a gentleman from the start, as much a prisoner as she herself is. He has long ago become resigned to his fate, and regrets that she, too, is trapped with him, but her presence also offers a slim and painful hope of escape and freedom - if she can figure out how; every time he tries to tell her the origins and conditions of their imprisonment, the forces behind it seem to hear and act to silence them by increasingly malevolent means. Thus they have to find roundabout ways to communicate, when they can talk of it at all. Bryony sometimes seems slightly slow on the uptake about a few points, but manages to come through when it counts, and she and the Beast have a genuine connection and chemistry. It all makes for a reasonably satisfying tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Nettle and Bone (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Fire Rose (Mercedes Lackey) - My Review
For the Wolf (Hannah Whitten) - My Review
Thursday, October 23, 2025
The Greatest Nobodies of History (Adrian Bliss)
The Greatest Nobodies of History: Minor Characters from Major Moments
Adrian Bliss
Penguin
Nonfiction, History/Humorous Nonfiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Leonardo da Vinci, Charles II, "Buffalo" Bill Cody... these and other names are familiar figures from history books. But truth is often difficult to come by, when so much is lost to time, and what survives can be (and often is) colored by the biases and misconceptions of those recording it, and when so much focus is given to great names that the experiences of ordinary folk is all but forgotten. In a series of "recovered" documents, explore little-seen perspectives on great men and great moments from witnesses standing just to the side of history, with testimonies from such impeccable observers as Henry VIII's "groom of the stool" (tender of the royal chamber pot), a vestal virgin on trial for failure to tend the sacred temple flame of ancient Rome and bringing various "disasters" down upon the empire, the emu field marshal who led her troops through Australia's first war against the birds, and more.
REVIEW: I've seen some of Bliss's short online videos on a variety of subjects, and was curious how he'd come across in long-form writing. Drawing on what is known (or can be inferred) from history and adding a fair dollop of imagination and some humor, he presents ten unique, intriguing, satirical, and even sometimes touching stories, covering historical figures and events ranging from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century.
As in most short story collections (which this more or less is), the tales vary a little in quality and tone, though none of them are outright clunkers. From the epistolary story of a nameless wealthy Athenian writing a series of complaints about the uncouth and shocking behavior of the philosopher Diogenes whose outlandish ideas spread like wildfire to the "war journal" of an emu field marshal, from the story of a Cromwell-supporting English oak tree's fateful encounter with a fleeing King Charles II, even through the stories of a Renaissance ferret's art modeling career and the eager young understudy of Buffalo Bill's aging horse in the showbiz years, Bliss never fails to find unique angles to approach his topics. He also doesn't fail to create decent characters and arcs within each story, so they work as historical fiction (or fantasy, if you need to stretch to account for anthropomorphism in your characters) in their own right. Once in a while they feel a little long, and occasionally the English humor threatens to be a trifle thick, but they never fail to interest or amuse, and some have unexpectedly emotional moments.
Following each story, Bliss offers the facts (or at least the facts as can best be known; in 2025, we're seeing real-time evidence how even events happening right in front of us, with unprecedented means of preservation at the fingertips of innumerable observers, can be warped and twisted, particularly by those with ulterior motives to ensure a particular version of reality is seen as the one and only true account. Just imagine how much worse that distortion becomes when far fewer people had the means to record their observations, and those observations have been handed down through innumerable retellings and/or translations like a centuries-long game of Telephone... only the original player is long gone and can't tell us how laughably twisted the message has become when it reaches the end of the chain). Some of the stories stick fairly close to known events, and others are more inventive, but all invite the reader to pursue further reading if any subject strikes their fancy, demonstrating how history can be as exciting and seemingly improbable as any fiction.
On the whole, I found it enjoyable, and Bliss did a decent job narrating the audiobook (with an expanded cast in a few of the tales).
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Survive History (Cody Cassidy) - My Review
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (Terry Jones and Alan Ereira) - My Review
Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws (Adrienne Mayor) - My Review
Adrian Bliss
Penguin
Nonfiction, History/Humorous Nonfiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Leonardo da Vinci, Charles II, "Buffalo" Bill Cody... these and other names are familiar figures from history books. But truth is often difficult to come by, when so much is lost to time, and what survives can be (and often is) colored by the biases and misconceptions of those recording it, and when so much focus is given to great names that the experiences of ordinary folk is all but forgotten. In a series of "recovered" documents, explore little-seen perspectives on great men and great moments from witnesses standing just to the side of history, with testimonies from such impeccable observers as Henry VIII's "groom of the stool" (tender of the royal chamber pot), a vestal virgin on trial for failure to tend the sacred temple flame of ancient Rome and bringing various "disasters" down upon the empire, the emu field marshal who led her troops through Australia's first war against the birds, and more.
REVIEW: I've seen some of Bliss's short online videos on a variety of subjects, and was curious how he'd come across in long-form writing. Drawing on what is known (or can be inferred) from history and adding a fair dollop of imagination and some humor, he presents ten unique, intriguing, satirical, and even sometimes touching stories, covering historical figures and events ranging from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century.
As in most short story collections (which this more or less is), the tales vary a little in quality and tone, though none of them are outright clunkers. From the epistolary story of a nameless wealthy Athenian writing a series of complaints about the uncouth and shocking behavior of the philosopher Diogenes whose outlandish ideas spread like wildfire to the "war journal" of an emu field marshal, from the story of a Cromwell-supporting English oak tree's fateful encounter with a fleeing King Charles II, even through the stories of a Renaissance ferret's art modeling career and the eager young understudy of Buffalo Bill's aging horse in the showbiz years, Bliss never fails to find unique angles to approach his topics. He also doesn't fail to create decent characters and arcs within each story, so they work as historical fiction (or fantasy, if you need to stretch to account for anthropomorphism in your characters) in their own right. Once in a while they feel a little long, and occasionally the English humor threatens to be a trifle thick, but they never fail to interest or amuse, and some have unexpectedly emotional moments.
Following each story, Bliss offers the facts (or at least the facts as can best be known; in 2025, we're seeing real-time evidence how even events happening right in front of us, with unprecedented means of preservation at the fingertips of innumerable observers, can be warped and twisted, particularly by those with ulterior motives to ensure a particular version of reality is seen as the one and only true account. Just imagine how much worse that distortion becomes when far fewer people had the means to record their observations, and those observations have been handed down through innumerable retellings and/or translations like a centuries-long game of Telephone... only the original player is long gone and can't tell us how laughably twisted the message has become when it reaches the end of the chain). Some of the stories stick fairly close to known events, and others are more inventive, but all invite the reader to pursue further reading if any subject strikes their fancy, demonstrating how history can be as exciting and seemingly improbable as any fiction.
On the whole, I found it enjoyable, and Bliss did a decent job narrating the audiobook (with an expanded cast in a few of the tales).
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Survive History (Cody Cassidy) - My Review
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (Terry Jones and Alan Ereira) - My Review
Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws (Adrienne Mayor) - My Review
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brien)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Rats of NIMH series, Book 1
Robert C. O'Brien
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Like many animals around the Fitzgibbon Farm in the English countryside, the widowed mouse Mrs. Frisby makes her winter home in the fallow fields, moving her four children to her summer house by the brook before the human plows the thawed earth. But this year, her young son Timothy has taken ill, and won't be well enough when an early thaw necessitates an early relocation. If she stays where she is, the plow will surely destroy her family. In desperation, she turns to an unlikely ally: the rats who live beneath the rose hedge. Even for their kind, these rats have a peculiar, secretive reputation, but they may be Mrs. Frisby's only chance to save her children... and she, in turn, might help them when they need it most.
REVIEW: Like many children of the 1980's, I saw the Don Bluth animated movie based on this book (at a drive-in, if memory serves)... and I confess that, as a kid, I found it boring enough I think I nodded off during it. (But, then, I found many of Don Bluth's animated movies overlong and boring as a kid, even if the animation was often beautiful.) Maybe if I'd been familiar with this 1971 book I'd have understood what the film was trying to do - but, then, I'd probably have found the book a little dull and over-talkative as a child as well. As a grown-up, I can appreciate what it was doing and how relatively groundbreaking it was, introducing sci-fi concepts into a talking-animal setting, though I also admit to wishing O'Brien had stopped talking over and around everything, particularly when filling in backstory.
It begins like many a classic anthropomorphic critter tale begins, with a mouse who is both a scurrying little farm animal, fearful of predators and the farm cat Dragon (which is indeed something of a "dragon" in the tale, a beastly hunter from which few escape), and also a widow who has a "house" in a cinder block and sits down at a table with her children for meals. From early on, death is an unspoken specter in the animal world; she is happy when she finds an unattended stash of food gathered by some other animal, even as she is saddened by acknowledging that it likely met its fate in one of the winter hunts by the humans. When her smallest son Timothy takes ill, she makes a dangerous trek to a wise mouse who is skilled in herbal medicines, but is warned that the boy must not be moved for at least a month - and the ground is already thawing, meaning her home will likely not be safe for even a week. Thus, her desperate quest to find help... a quest that inevitably leads to the rats (not a spoiler if it's in the title) and the tale of NIMH (again, not a spoiler if it's in the title).
This becomes O'Brien's excuse to infodump all over the frantic-mother-trying-to-save-her-children-from-death-by-plow-blade plot with the backstory of how the farm's rat population came to their unusual abilities and intelligence, including but far from limited to tapping the Fitzgibbons' electricity and water, constructing motors and machinery, and mastering reading and writing. It's enough for an entirely different book altogether, yet it's shoehorned in here, overshadowing Mrs. Frisby's plight before the two ideas come to a somewhat lopsided coexistence as the connection to her late husband is revealed.
The widow mouse is less meek and passive than some females in these kinds of stories (and some in this very story, to be honest; her own two daughters are dismissively described as the pretty one and the silly one, while female rats are shown to be minimal participants in the colony's projects and the one named girl rat is a shallow infatuated stereotype), forced by circumstance to bravery and resourcefulness not common in wild rodents. The fact that death is always shadowing the characters lends some genuine peril to their situation; it's always an acknowledged possibility that not everyone will make it out alive. Along the way, O'Brien just can't resist bogging the story down in side-tracks through pointless details and cul-de-sacs that add little to the tale itself except word count. The wrap-up has some strong moments, but feels a little abrupt and unfinished; apparently the two sequels were written by O'Brien's daughter after his death, so the dangling loose threads were not even intentional bridges to more tales.
There are several interesting ideas explored (if somewhat unevenly), concepts of intelligence and civilization and animal experimentation's potential ramifications. O'Brien also presents some nice imagery, and the story (when it's not weighted down by its own meandering loops) isn't bad. The parts don't always seem to mesh together, though; it's clear O'Brien was more interested in his rats, their origins and potential fate, than the somewhat cutesy and mildly mismatched tale of the country mouse widow and her children, who ultimately exist mostly to be awed by the rats and their amazing abilities and potential. It's still a classic in its way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
The Rats of NIMH series, Book 1
Robert C. O'Brien
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Like many animals around the Fitzgibbon Farm in the English countryside, the widowed mouse Mrs. Frisby makes her winter home in the fallow fields, moving her four children to her summer house by the brook before the human plows the thawed earth. But this year, her young son Timothy has taken ill, and won't be well enough when an early thaw necessitates an early relocation. If she stays where she is, the plow will surely destroy her family. In desperation, she turns to an unlikely ally: the rats who live beneath the rose hedge. Even for their kind, these rats have a peculiar, secretive reputation, but they may be Mrs. Frisby's only chance to save her children... and she, in turn, might help them when they need it most.
REVIEW: Like many children of the 1980's, I saw the Don Bluth animated movie based on this book (at a drive-in, if memory serves)... and I confess that, as a kid, I found it boring enough I think I nodded off during it. (But, then, I found many of Don Bluth's animated movies overlong and boring as a kid, even if the animation was often beautiful.) Maybe if I'd been familiar with this 1971 book I'd have understood what the film was trying to do - but, then, I'd probably have found the book a little dull and over-talkative as a child as well. As a grown-up, I can appreciate what it was doing and how relatively groundbreaking it was, introducing sci-fi concepts into a talking-animal setting, though I also admit to wishing O'Brien had stopped talking over and around everything, particularly when filling in backstory.
It begins like many a classic anthropomorphic critter tale begins, with a mouse who is both a scurrying little farm animal, fearful of predators and the farm cat Dragon (which is indeed something of a "dragon" in the tale, a beastly hunter from which few escape), and also a widow who has a "house" in a cinder block and sits down at a table with her children for meals. From early on, death is an unspoken specter in the animal world; she is happy when she finds an unattended stash of food gathered by some other animal, even as she is saddened by acknowledging that it likely met its fate in one of the winter hunts by the humans. When her smallest son Timothy takes ill, she makes a dangerous trek to a wise mouse who is skilled in herbal medicines, but is warned that the boy must not be moved for at least a month - and the ground is already thawing, meaning her home will likely not be safe for even a week. Thus, her desperate quest to find help... a quest that inevitably leads to the rats (not a spoiler if it's in the title) and the tale of NIMH (again, not a spoiler if it's in the title).
This becomes O'Brien's excuse to infodump all over the frantic-mother-trying-to-save-her-children-from-death-by-plow-blade plot with the backstory of how the farm's rat population came to their unusual abilities and intelligence, including but far from limited to tapping the Fitzgibbons' electricity and water, constructing motors and machinery, and mastering reading and writing. It's enough for an entirely different book altogether, yet it's shoehorned in here, overshadowing Mrs. Frisby's plight before the two ideas come to a somewhat lopsided coexistence as the connection to her late husband is revealed.
The widow mouse is less meek and passive than some females in these kinds of stories (and some in this very story, to be honest; her own two daughters are dismissively described as the pretty one and the silly one, while female rats are shown to be minimal participants in the colony's projects and the one named girl rat is a shallow infatuated stereotype), forced by circumstance to bravery and resourcefulness not common in wild rodents. The fact that death is always shadowing the characters lends some genuine peril to their situation; it's always an acknowledged possibility that not everyone will make it out alive. Along the way, O'Brien just can't resist bogging the story down in side-tracks through pointless details and cul-de-sacs that add little to the tale itself except word count. The wrap-up has some strong moments, but feels a little abrupt and unfinished; apparently the two sequels were written by O'Brien's daughter after his death, so the dangling loose threads were not even intentional bridges to more tales.
There are several interesting ideas explored (if somewhat unevenly), concepts of intelligence and civilization and animal experimentation's potential ramifications. O'Brien also presents some nice imagery, and the story (when it's not weighted down by its own meandering loops) isn't bad. The parts don't always seem to mesh together, though; it's clear O'Brien was more interested in his rats, their origins and potential fate, than the somewhat cutesy and mildly mismatched tale of the country mouse widow and her children, who ultimately exist mostly to be awed by the rats and their amazing abilities and potential. It's still a classic in its way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Friday, October 17, 2025
One Way (S. J. Morden)
One Way
The Frank Kittridge series, Book 1
S. J. Morden
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, architect Frank Kittridge was an ordinary man, a husband and a father and a respectable citizen... until he took the law into his own hands and shot the untouchable dealer who hooked his son on drugs. He may have had his vengeance, but it cost him his marriage and his freedom; he's not eligible for parole until well after his natural lifespan. But then he receives a very unusual offer from the tech giant XO. In exchange for helping build the first outpost on Mars, he'll be allowed to live out the remainder of his days on the red planet - still technically a prisoner, but freed from prison on Earth, and a part of truly groundbreaking science. He accepts, as do several other inmates at Panopticon private prisons throughout California. All of them have committed crimes worth extreme sentences, so Frank knows better than to consider any of them friends, but only together can they achieve their goals and survive on a new world. But will Mars truly bring any semblance of freedom, or have Frank and the others only signed their own death warrants?
REVIEW: On the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, there's an episode where the four ladies are attending a "murder mystery" dinner, and the "detective" is presenting the evidence. The hopelessly naïve Rose pipes up with a helpful suggestion: "Maybe that bloody dagger will lead us to the murder weapon." I found myself thinking of that line, of someone who cannot or will not see the damning clues right in front of them for what they are, for a significant portion of the back end of One Way. I should not have been thinking that about a character who, unlike Rose, was not only confronting a real problem in life-or-death circumstances, but was supposed to be focused, a little jaded, and of above-average intelligence.
The story opens with Frank in prison, receiving the unusual offer from XO via a lawyer, before heading to the private training facility deep in the desert where Frank and his companions of circumstance must learn their jobs and figure out how to cooperate despite all of them being criminals. Each chapter opens with internal memos and conversations between XO executives and legal departments, showing the all-too-familiar greed and cruelty and downright sociopathic logic driving the whole project, information deliberately withheld from the test subjects. Even without that knowledge, though, I found it a little hard to believe that Frank wouldn't at least suspect some hinky behavior and motivation behind his "employer", given how brazen modern tech billionaires are about such things today; in Frank's near future, I can't imagine how they'd become any more discreet, especially considering the utter lack of significant consequences for their openness thus far. Those decisions shape the mission and its goals into something other than what the inmates are told... and that's before people start dying on Mars.
From shortly after they're woken from the suspended animation that made the trip through space cost-effective (as they weren't consuming resources on the journey - not that XO doesn't have the tech, but they didn't want to waste a penny more than they had to on mere prisoners), death is a constant companion to their efforts to build a permanent habitat for future missions. It is an inherently hostile and deadly environment, so one or two deaths might be expected, but soon enough questions start arising even in Frank's mind - questions he goes out of his way to dismiss, as, despite his experience on the wrong end of the law and years spent in prison, he seems almost impossibly naive. Not only are more than one of his fellow "Martians" violent offenders, but XO itself is hardly a holy church. Metaphoric bloody daggers are bristling all over the red planet before Frank begins to seriously entertain notions of murder, and even then the culprit is eye-rollingly obvious from early on, for all that Frank draws out the "investigation" overlong (leading to more collateral damage/death) before the final confrontation.
That said, there are some strong points in this book. The author is an actual rocket scientist, and his vision of a Martian outpost is full of technical details that bring the concept to life, as well as descriptions of the stark, alien landscape that's both forbidding and oddly beautiful. His ideas of how a private tech company, driven by profit (and personal megalomania) beyond all other considerations, would approach space colonization is also exceptionally plausible. But at some point I just got too frustrated with Frank's obtuseness in the face of evidence even a barely-educated idiot like myself could see clearly. The ending is suitably intense, though the final parts again have Frank underestimating just who and what he's dealing with in ways that are bound to stab him in the back in the next volume (which I'm not sure I'm interested enough in to pursue).
While I appreciated the hard science behind Morden's story and it had several interesting and exciting parts, the characters and plot itself had me grinding my teeth too much by the end for a solid four stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Retrograde (Peter Cawdron) - My Review
Gunpowder Moon (David Perdreira) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
The Frank Kittridge series, Book 1
S. J. Morden
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, architect Frank Kittridge was an ordinary man, a husband and a father and a respectable citizen... until he took the law into his own hands and shot the untouchable dealer who hooked his son on drugs. He may have had his vengeance, but it cost him his marriage and his freedom; he's not eligible for parole until well after his natural lifespan. But then he receives a very unusual offer from the tech giant XO. In exchange for helping build the first outpost on Mars, he'll be allowed to live out the remainder of his days on the red planet - still technically a prisoner, but freed from prison on Earth, and a part of truly groundbreaking science. He accepts, as do several other inmates at Panopticon private prisons throughout California. All of them have committed crimes worth extreme sentences, so Frank knows better than to consider any of them friends, but only together can they achieve their goals and survive on a new world. But will Mars truly bring any semblance of freedom, or have Frank and the others only signed their own death warrants?
REVIEW: On the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, there's an episode where the four ladies are attending a "murder mystery" dinner, and the "detective" is presenting the evidence. The hopelessly naïve Rose pipes up with a helpful suggestion: "Maybe that bloody dagger will lead us to the murder weapon." I found myself thinking of that line, of someone who cannot or will not see the damning clues right in front of them for what they are, for a significant portion of the back end of One Way. I should not have been thinking that about a character who, unlike Rose, was not only confronting a real problem in life-or-death circumstances, but was supposed to be focused, a little jaded, and of above-average intelligence.
The story opens with Frank in prison, receiving the unusual offer from XO via a lawyer, before heading to the private training facility deep in the desert where Frank and his companions of circumstance must learn their jobs and figure out how to cooperate despite all of them being criminals. Each chapter opens with internal memos and conversations between XO executives and legal departments, showing the all-too-familiar greed and cruelty and downright sociopathic logic driving the whole project, information deliberately withheld from the test subjects. Even without that knowledge, though, I found it a little hard to believe that Frank wouldn't at least suspect some hinky behavior and motivation behind his "employer", given how brazen modern tech billionaires are about such things today; in Frank's near future, I can't imagine how they'd become any more discreet, especially considering the utter lack of significant consequences for their openness thus far. Those decisions shape the mission and its goals into something other than what the inmates are told... and that's before people start dying on Mars.
From shortly after they're woken from the suspended animation that made the trip through space cost-effective (as they weren't consuming resources on the journey - not that XO doesn't have the tech, but they didn't want to waste a penny more than they had to on mere prisoners), death is a constant companion to their efforts to build a permanent habitat for future missions. It is an inherently hostile and deadly environment, so one or two deaths might be expected, but soon enough questions start arising even in Frank's mind - questions he goes out of his way to dismiss, as, despite his experience on the wrong end of the law and years spent in prison, he seems almost impossibly naive. Not only are more than one of his fellow "Martians" violent offenders, but XO itself is hardly a holy church. Metaphoric bloody daggers are bristling all over the red planet before Frank begins to seriously entertain notions of murder, and even then the culprit is eye-rollingly obvious from early on, for all that Frank draws out the "investigation" overlong (leading to more collateral damage/death) before the final confrontation.
That said, there are some strong points in this book. The author is an actual rocket scientist, and his vision of a Martian outpost is full of technical details that bring the concept to life, as well as descriptions of the stark, alien landscape that's both forbidding and oddly beautiful. His ideas of how a private tech company, driven by profit (and personal megalomania) beyond all other considerations, would approach space colonization is also exceptionally plausible. But at some point I just got too frustrated with Frank's obtuseness in the face of evidence even a barely-educated idiot like myself could see clearly. The ending is suitably intense, though the final parts again have Frank underestimating just who and what he's dealing with in ways that are bound to stab him in the back in the next volume (which I'm not sure I'm interested enough in to pursue).
While I appreciated the hard science behind Morden's story and it had several interesting and exciting parts, the characters and plot itself had me grinding my teeth too much by the end for a solid four stars.
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