Well, that was a year that felt like a decade... At long last, though, 2025 has come to an end (on the calendar; the damage will last lifetimes). So, in addition to the usual monthly update of the main Brightdreamer Books site, it's time once again for my Reading Year in Review, where I look back over highlights and lowlights. (Note that I don't touch on every title I read; any omissions are more about lack of time and/or energy than a specific commentary.)
I went into January knowing that this would be a trying year at best (and it was not, at all, best); on a personal level, my father was in home hospice care for late-stage dementia and other health issues, while on a national level my country had opted to slam the self-destruct button rather than even attempt to progress past the worst parts of our own history. So perhaps it was little wonder that my first review of the year, Libba Bray's peculiar metaphysical young adult romp Going Bovine, disappointed me, though not as deeply as a classic that had a very deceptive description on Libby, Herman Melville's Billy Budd. I was more impressed by P. Djèlí Clark's first foray into middle-grade fantasy, the African-inspired tale Abeni's Song, though my top read - and one of my best of the year - turned out to be a surprise, the contemporary middle-grade fiction title The Remarkable Journey of
Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart... a book I found less than a week after my father passed away, which spoke so clearly to family and grief I couldn't not give it top marks.
February continued the year's trend of being cruddy (you can pretty much assume at this point that the best 2025 managed was "not quite as terrible as the month before"; I don't think I can point to one week, let alone month, where I could honestly say something was actually, quantifiably, without any mitigating asterisks and qualifications, "good"), but the reading improved somewhat. Henry. H. Neff's humorous take on family curses and demons in modern Appalachia, The Witchstone, started the month off on the right foot for reviews, while Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant series continued its impressive streak with Death Bringer. I ventured into a little history with All Blood Runs Red by Phil Keith with Tom Clavin, the remarkable tale of a young Black man who fled Jim Crow and America in the early 1900's to become a soldier, war pilot, boxer, spy, and more in France. Ray Nayler's The Tusks of Extinction explored a near future where resurrected mammoths are helped by the uploaded mind of a scientist who was murdered by poachers while trying to protect some of the world's last wild elephants, a thought-provoking tale. The short month ended with Ghostdrift, the fourth and final novel in Suzanne Palmer's highly enjoyable Finder series of sci-fi adventures. In between were a few more middling, sometimes mildly disappointing reads, but no outright clunkers.
The early reads of March were adrift in the three-star doldrums, from Holly Gramazio's deconstruction of love and marriage and the notion of a "perfect" life mate in The Husbands through the surreal dystopian future of Djuna's Counterweight, though it ended on a somewhat brighter note with Fundamentals, an exploration of some of the fundamental concepts of physics by Frank Wilczek. High points were Devin Elle Kurtz's delightful picture book The Bakery Dragon and Derek Landy's seventh Skulduggery Pleasant book, Kingdom of the Wicked, while I dabbled in yet another classic with Oscar Wilde's famed tale about a man whose portrait bears the mark of his depravity and sins in The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was enjoyable but couldn't help showing its age.
April opened with the surreality of Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, which had some fun and intriguing parts but ultimately skewed too random and vague for my tastes. I had better luck with Ta-Nehisi Coates's fascinating essays in Between the World and Me, chronicling his experiences as a Black man grappling with the omnipresent specter of American racism. David LaRochelle's silly picture book 100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli still has one of my favorite titles of all time, while Amber McBride's poetic young adult tale Me (Moth) felt like a strange and sometimes beautiful, if poignant, dream of grief and acceptance and love found too late. The rest of the month had a mixed-to-good assortment, from tales of peculiar experiences on the Navajo reservation in Stanley Milford, Jr.'s memoir The Paranormal Ranger to a tale of a shapeshifter finding unexpected love with two-legged prey in John Wiswell's Someone You Can Build a Nest In, concluding with Anne Rice's iconic tale Interview with the Vampire, a trendsetter that also aged a little poorly around the edges.
Derek Landy had two solid entries in May: the eighth chronological entry in his Skulduggery Pleasant series, Last Stand of Dead Men, and the short story collection (that also contained "spoilers" for later entries due to weird series chronology labeling by the publisher) Armageddon Outta Here. Overall, it was a good reading month, including a new Wayward Children novella from Seanan McGuire (Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear), the surprisingly touching tale of an imaginary friend finding his own way in the world (Michelle Cuevas's Confessions of an Imaginary Friend), and Chuck Tingle's brutal takedown of Hollywood's problem with algorithmically-controlled entertainment and non-hetero representation in Bury Your Gays. Another top read was Maya Angelou's recollections of her childhood in the Deep South during Jim Crow years, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Weaker reads included Sung-il Kim's Asian-flavored fantasy Blood of the Old Kings and E. E. Knight's epic dragon adventure Dragon Champion.
June had few standouts. While the Skulduggery Pleasant wrapped up its original run with the ninth book, The Dying of the Light, in spectacular fashion, other titles that I had high hopes for, such as Peter S. Beagle's I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, left me disappointed or nonplussed. I did enjoy Tochi Onyebuchi's novella Riot Baby, and Alex Bledsoe's melding of private investigation with a fantasy world, The Sword-Edged Blonde, had potential. The month ended with a DK Smithsonian book, Dinosaurs, that suffered mostly from iffy and inconsistent editing and a sometimes-frustrating mix of what was explored and what was glossed over or ignored, though as with most DK titles the pictures were (usually) intriguing enough to make up for weakness in the text.
I had hoped to start July off right with yet another Derek Landy book, but Resurrection not only couldn't quite strike a balance between the familiar Skulduggery Pleasant characters and the "next generation" brought in to keep the titles middle-grade/young adult, but suffered from an unfortunate bout of bad timing, as it featured a minor baddie with parallels to a monster currently (literally) demolishing the highest house in my country with impunity. I also had very high hopes for Scott Reintgen's spacefaring dragon romp The Last Dragon of Mars, but my suspension of disbelief was knocked out of orbit and burned up on re-entry. Jim C. Hines offered a fun middle-grade fantasy adventure as a girl tries to rescue her missing friends from a dangerous portal fantasy world in Tamora Carter, Goblin Queen. I ventured into nonfiction and politics with a few reads - Emmanuel Aoki's Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man and Democracy in Retrograde by Sami Sage and Emil Amick - because I'm very tired of feeling ignorant and helpless (and hopeless) about All The Things that are destroying... well, all the things, and the future along with them. To finish off the month, I ventured into thriller territory with Elizabeth Elo's North of Boston.
August was a lean month for reading, for various non-reading-related reasons. Far and away the best book was Daindreth's Assassin by Elisabeth Wheatley, though the rest were generally serviceable. Hannah Whitten's tale of a princess bound to be sacrificed in a cursed forest (that, of course, is not all that it appears) and the sister who will destroy the kingdom if need be to save her, For the Wolf, didn't quite live up to its promise, but was still fairly good. I was somewhat disappointed by a story of Puerto Rican storytellers and the teen girl unexpectedly inheriting a family gift (and burden), Ann Davila Cardinal's The Storyteller's Death. The Kate Elliott novella Servant Mage didn't quite deliver, either. I ventured into teen romance with the anthology Serendipity, edited by Marissa Meyer. Adrian Tchaikovsky wrapped up the month with an interesting subversion of tropes in his tale of a post-apocalyptic Earth threatened by total annihilation when the "gods" return from their space utopia to "fix" a planet they broke to begin with, The Hungry Gods.
I ventured back to a minor sci-fi classic, Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population, to start September, but it didn't quite live up to the hype for me. It was not the only classic of the month to let me down; I found Robert Sheckley's surreal Mindswap exceptionally dated. Jordanna Max Bordsky's imaginative spin on a prehistoric encounter between the Inuit and Norse explorers (and their respective deities) in The Wolf and the Whale proved much more intriguing. I breezed through Rob Renzetti's fun middle-grade Horrible Handbag trilogy and mostly enjoyed it, and snickered at Freida McFadden's satire of her own thriller genre in The
Widow's Husband's Secret Lie. The best book of the month, however, was Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's speculation on space colonization, A City on Mars.
October was another month that opened with a disappointment; after being suckered in by a shiny cover and intriguing early pages, Frances White's Voyage of the Damned just plain failed to deliver. I did my part to push back against the creeping, crushing grasp of book-banners and censors by checking a few frequently challenged titles off: The Complete Maus by Art Speigelman and Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, both in their ways unflinching explorations of how terrible humans can be to other humans, and what war does to bodies and minds. Maus was easily the best read of the month, and among the best of the year. I also enjoyed Chuck Tingle's take on classic horror tropes (and examination of gatekeeping and internal schisms in nonhetero communities), Straight. A classic children's tale, Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, unfortunately let me down, though I could see how it was a groundbreaker in its way, and it had some intriguing parts, even if I never felt they gelled cohesively. I also felt let down by S. J. Morden's hard sci-fi space thriller One Way, where convicts are recruited to build a Martian colony. Katherine Addison presented a different slant on epic fantasy with The Goblin Emperor, where a half-goblin unexpectedly inherits the throne of the elf king and must navigate courtly politics that he was intentionally never trained to cope with. Adrian Bliss offered humorously offbeat perspectives on historic times and figures with the tales of The Greatest Nobodies of History. I finished off the month with Alix E. Harrow's southern gothic-flavored story of a cursed Kentucky coal town, Starling House.
I started November with a long-anticipated prequel, Christopher Buehlman's The Daughters' War, and enjoyed it, though the tone was darker than The Blacktongue Thief. From there, I ventured through a range of stories and ratings, from the abysmal time loop of Edge of Tomorrow by Hiroshi Sakurazaka to the middle-grade tale of an eventful family vacation in the wake of grief in Cliff Burke's An Occasionally Happy Family, the surreality of Nghi Vo's The City in Glass, and the peculiar tale of a man's terminal antigravity affliction in Elevation by Stephen King. Aldous Huxley's cautionary tale of a dystopian "Fordian" future, Brave New World, prompted an exploration of Henry Ford's draconian, paternalistic vision of "ideal" Americana in Greg Grandin's Fordlandia, which chronicled Ford's efforts to export that vision to the Amazon basin. J. A. White offered a sequel to the middle-grade tale of a boy who loves writing horror stories, Nightbooks, in Gravebooks, which proved just as good. I stumbled across a few
surprises that I wound up enjoying, one in an alternate-history Chicago - Megaera C. Lorenz's tale of a former "spiritualist" con artist forced to confront a real haunting and his old colleagues in The Shabti - and another in an alternate postwar Japan in a world of dragon companions, Emi Watanabe Cohen's The Lost Ryū.
December... what to say about December. It was a year ago in December that my father went into the ER for what would turn out to be his last hospital visit, followed by the start of a month of home hospice (he came home the day after Xmas), and only a few months earlier this year other relatives experienced significant health crises, so I was already on a fraying mental rope. After about a year of the axe hanging over my head on the job front, the blade finally began its downward swing; the facility where I have worked for nearly twenty years is relocating out of range of my increasingly unreliable vehicle. It is because of this job and my familiarity with it that I manage to review so many books, as I can lose myself in an audiobook while my hands go through the familiar motions, so changing jobs will likely have a notable impact here (though at least I may have a job to change to, which is hardly a small thing in this economy, especially with my anemic resumé). Between that news and general holiday and year end frustrations, it was a lean review month. Jim Butcher offered a solid, if not exactly standout, tale of swashbuckling and steampunk and airships with a tinge of magic in The Aeronaut's Windlass, while Adam Rex delved into the peculiarities of dreams with the surreal A Little Like Waking. I ventured outside the fiction box with Surely You Can't Be Serious, about the making of the comedy classic film Airplane!, by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. Otherwise, there wasn't much particularly noteworthy in the month. Veronica Roth's tale of Eastern European monsters (and the "holy" knights who hunt them) hiding in plain sight in modern Chicago, When Among Crows, had some nice ideas but didn't quite click with me, while Margaret Rogerson's young adult fantasy romance An Enchantment of Ravens kept me interested through most of its length.
So... yeah, that was 2025. I anticipated a cruddy year going into it, and what I got was far worse, save some pretty good books along the way. (I'm not even getting into the local, national, and international horrors playing out...) Looking ahead, I'd be lying if I said I thought better things were awaiting in 2026, for the world or my nation, let alone myself. I'm not sure good things are even possible anymore; too much has been destroyed or poisoned, too little has been protected or gained. Hopefully I can at least find a few books to pass the time with between bad things and worse things.
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Saturday, December 20, 2025
A Little Like Waking (Adam Rex)
A Little Like Waking
Adam Rex
Roaring Brook Press
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Zelda's day started like any other. She woke in her bedroom in the little yellow house, she heads out through the front gate whose creaking sounds like a friendly frog, she went jogging into town past the frisbee-playing boys by the courthouse, she smiled at the clown in the laundromat, and suddenly realized she had a geology (or is it geometry?) quiz in five minutes... but today, she grabs a bike and tries to beat the bell to class, cutting in front of a car - and that's when she sees him: a teen boy, who tries to warn her of the danger she doesn't see until nearly too late.
A boy she has never seen before - and she knows every face in town like her own fingerprints.
The next morning, she wakes again in her bedroom, and goes out again on a jog... but she can't shake the memory of the stranger, or the sense that something isn't quite right about the world around her. It's all a little too perfect, like something out of a dream. But is she the dreamer, or is someone else - and what will happen when it's time to wake up for real?
REVIEW: It's very, very seldom that a book can pull of a "dream" ending without becoming an automatic wall-bouncer. It's a different matter entirely when the book admits it's a dream upfront - and when the question at its heart is who the dreamer is, and what the dream is trying to accomplish for them, what story their mind needs to tell itself, before they're allowed to wake. This makes the dream and its inhabitants matter, and allows the reader to invest in them and their fates. With frequently surreal imagery and imaginative turns of phrase, Adam Rex captures the peculiar nature and illogical logic of dreams, which can so often seem much, much bigger than the insides of a single human mind, populated by people and places that can feel as solid as anything in the waking world - complete with sounds, textures, scents, tastes, and even (despite the popular trope) pain.
From the first ring of her alarm clock, Zelda's world is both too perfect and too strange to be truly real, but she never thinks to question it, or question how everything and everyone seems to center on her; the town's inhabitants all know her by name even if she doesn't know them, and the Frisbee bros remind her of the test she's about to miss... even though part of her knows she's graduated already. But it's only the arrival of the stranger, Langston, that shakes her complacency... that, and when she hears a strange, deep, disembodied voice that nobody else hears. The arrival of Patches the cat, who not only died when she was a young girl but now speaks with a decidedly philosophical and poetic bent, also helps tip the scales, as does the realization that she cannot seem to read long stretches of words; letters can be jumbled, and she might read small bits and pieces but they change as often as not when she blinks or looks away. When she alerts the rest of the town to the fact that they're all in a dream, chaos erupts; every one of them believes themselves to be the dreamer, as they all have lives and memories... and the rest cannot handle the idea that they and their memories aren't real, because they are so very real to themselves. Zelda is certain she's the one - doesn't everything in this place seem to center on her? - but Patches also makes convincing arguments, and neither can entirely rule out the shy boy Langston. But this dream has been going on an awfully long time, and grown impossibly complex; surely something must be very, very wrong with whoever is dreaming this world into being. Thus, Zelda determines to find a way to wake up, accompanied by Patches and Langston. Thus begins a trek to the edge of the dream... but any mind that has stayed this deep in slumber is not one that wants to face the waking world, and innumerable distractions and obstacles soon emerge. As the trio travel and navigate challenges, they continue to wonder which of them is the real person, or if any of them are; it's entirely possible that each of them is just a fragment of the dreamer, bits and pieces of their personality given independent form, either to work through something or simply through the random dance of neural electrical firings in a possibly-damaged brain.
Even given the inherent peculiarity of life in a (literal) dream world, the story managed to keep my interest and make me care about the characters (especially Patches) - even knowing that some (or even all) might not "survive" the ending. Given how hard they work for the sake of the dreamer, the lengths they go to in order to unravel each complication and persist in their quest to wake up, slowly piecing together what happened to create a dream this deep and determined to persist, it becomes a true quest requiring true sacrifice... and even if they aren't all "real" in a conventional sense, they're more than real enough to do their part, and some spark of them may well live on (skirting spoilers, the events of the dream and what the dreamer experiences and learns do indeed matter in the waking world, so it wasn't all wasted effort; some parts of the dream, therefore, do live on beyond the end of the dream itself, and in some way always will).
As a closing note, one point where Rex "failed" in capturing dream logic is where the dream characters don't recognize that they're not real when confronted. In my experience, you never ask someone in a dream if they're real if you don't want to know, because they will tell you the truth (and it will depress you far more than it will them, because danged if some of the best people I meet aren't in my own dreams).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Welcome to Night Vale (Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor) - My Review
The Girl In Between (Laekan Zea Kemp) - My Review
The Glass Town Game (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Adam Rex
Roaring Brook Press
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Zelda's day started like any other. She woke in her bedroom in the little yellow house, she heads out through the front gate whose creaking sounds like a friendly frog, she went jogging into town past the frisbee-playing boys by the courthouse, she smiled at the clown in the laundromat, and suddenly realized she had a geology (or is it geometry?) quiz in five minutes... but today, she grabs a bike and tries to beat the bell to class, cutting in front of a car - and that's when she sees him: a teen boy, who tries to warn her of the danger she doesn't see until nearly too late.
A boy she has never seen before - and she knows every face in town like her own fingerprints.
The next morning, she wakes again in her bedroom, and goes out again on a jog... but she can't shake the memory of the stranger, or the sense that something isn't quite right about the world around her. It's all a little too perfect, like something out of a dream. But is she the dreamer, or is someone else - and what will happen when it's time to wake up for real?
REVIEW: It's very, very seldom that a book can pull of a "dream" ending without becoming an automatic wall-bouncer. It's a different matter entirely when the book admits it's a dream upfront - and when the question at its heart is who the dreamer is, and what the dream is trying to accomplish for them, what story their mind needs to tell itself, before they're allowed to wake. This makes the dream and its inhabitants matter, and allows the reader to invest in them and their fates. With frequently surreal imagery and imaginative turns of phrase, Adam Rex captures the peculiar nature and illogical logic of dreams, which can so often seem much, much bigger than the insides of a single human mind, populated by people and places that can feel as solid as anything in the waking world - complete with sounds, textures, scents, tastes, and even (despite the popular trope) pain.
From the first ring of her alarm clock, Zelda's world is both too perfect and too strange to be truly real, but she never thinks to question it, or question how everything and everyone seems to center on her; the town's inhabitants all know her by name even if she doesn't know them, and the Frisbee bros remind her of the test she's about to miss... even though part of her knows she's graduated already. But it's only the arrival of the stranger, Langston, that shakes her complacency... that, and when she hears a strange, deep, disembodied voice that nobody else hears. The arrival of Patches the cat, who not only died when she was a young girl but now speaks with a decidedly philosophical and poetic bent, also helps tip the scales, as does the realization that she cannot seem to read long stretches of words; letters can be jumbled, and she might read small bits and pieces but they change as often as not when she blinks or looks away. When she alerts the rest of the town to the fact that they're all in a dream, chaos erupts; every one of them believes themselves to be the dreamer, as they all have lives and memories... and the rest cannot handle the idea that they and their memories aren't real, because they are so very real to themselves. Zelda is certain she's the one - doesn't everything in this place seem to center on her? - but Patches also makes convincing arguments, and neither can entirely rule out the shy boy Langston. But this dream has been going on an awfully long time, and grown impossibly complex; surely something must be very, very wrong with whoever is dreaming this world into being. Thus, Zelda determines to find a way to wake up, accompanied by Patches and Langston. Thus begins a trek to the edge of the dream... but any mind that has stayed this deep in slumber is not one that wants to face the waking world, and innumerable distractions and obstacles soon emerge. As the trio travel and navigate challenges, they continue to wonder which of them is the real person, or if any of them are; it's entirely possible that each of them is just a fragment of the dreamer, bits and pieces of their personality given independent form, either to work through something or simply through the random dance of neural electrical firings in a possibly-damaged brain.
Even given the inherent peculiarity of life in a (literal) dream world, the story managed to keep my interest and make me care about the characters (especially Patches) - even knowing that some (or even all) might not "survive" the ending. Given how hard they work for the sake of the dreamer, the lengths they go to in order to unravel each complication and persist in their quest to wake up, slowly piecing together what happened to create a dream this deep and determined to persist, it becomes a true quest requiring true sacrifice... and even if they aren't all "real" in a conventional sense, they're more than real enough to do their part, and some spark of them may well live on (skirting spoilers, the events of the dream and what the dreamer experiences and learns do indeed matter in the waking world, so it wasn't all wasted effort; some parts of the dream, therefore, do live on beyond the end of the dream itself, and in some way always will).
As a closing note, one point where Rex "failed" in capturing dream logic is where the dream characters don't recognize that they're not real when confronted. In my experience, you never ask someone in a dream if they're real if you don't want to know, because they will tell you the truth (and it will depress you far more than it will them, because danged if some of the best people I meet aren't in my own dreams).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Welcome to Night Vale (Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor) - My Review
The Girl In Between (Laekan Zea Kemp) - My Review
The Glass Town Game (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Friday, December 19, 2025
An Enchantment of Ravens (Margaret Rogerson)
An Enchantment of Ravens
Margaret Rogerson
Margaret K. Elderberry Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Romance
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The town of Whimsy exists in a perpetual summer, thanks to its proximity to the fairy courts and the influence of the Alder King. The immortal fair folk cannot get enough of crafted works - art, poetry, anything worked and shaped and made, even cooked food and brewed drinks - for all that they themselves cannot hold so much as a frying pan without risking death. In exchange for these works of mortal hands, they pay in kind with enchantments and blessings... though, as in anything related to the fae, one must be very careful what one asks, and how one asks it, lest a loophole be found. One must also be careful not to give offense, be impolite, or otherwise imply that life in Whimsy can feel less like a privilege and more like a trap... not even when the odd monster borne in the magical woods ventures into town and kills locals. Above all else, one must never delude oneself into believing that one is in love with a fairy; the Good Laws of the Alder King strictly forbid relations, with death for any offender.
A gifted artist since she could hold a brush, seventeen-year-old Isobel is renowned through the town of Whimsy and the fairy courts for her portraits. When her reputation spreads as far as the reclusive Rook, the Autumn Prince who has not been seen in the mortal realm for centuries, some see it as a testament to her skill and the greatest of fortune; after all, the more powerful the fair folk, the greater the gifts they might bestow. But ever since her parents were killed by a magical beast, Isobel has known better than to consider dealings with fairies as fortunate in any way, or to be tempted by their more extravagant promises; for payment, she keeps to strictly practical, useful enchantments, such as blessings on the household chickens or protections for her family. With the many immortals she has painted, the countless hours she's observed them, she knows better than anyone just how inhuman and empty they truly are within.
Rook is nothing at all like any fair folk she has painted before - but it's not until she paints his picture that she realizes why. Her brush captures the sorrow she sees deep in his amethyst eyes - and one thing no faerie ever shows, or would even admit to experiencing, is a mortal emotion. Rook is enraged, and demands she fix the "flaw" - snatching her away from Whimsy and bringing her into the heart of the fairy realm to do so. But a greater threat lurks here, in the endless woods and cruel courts, one that turns Isobel and Rook into unlikely allies... and, before either realizes it, the two become something more to each other, something that violates the Good Law itself.
REVIEW: There is no shortage of "romantasy" on the shelves these days, just as there's no shortage of fairies. This title, however, manages to avoid the more obvious traps many of those books fall into, presenting a reasonably competent heroine and fairies who retain the sharp edges and inscrutable, dangerous nature that makes relations with the fair folk - even casual meetings, let alone love affairs - so deadly.
In many books with the fae, there's an inherent power imbalance; aside from the usual weakness to iron, the fair folk are ageless, physically and mentally superior, innately magical, and unburdened with anything like what a human would recognize as morality (even if they are sometimes encumbered by their own peculiar customs and rituals), against which humans stand little chance. Here, however, mortals hold a couple advantages that puts them closer to a level playing field (if still often outmatched and easily duped by fae illusions and cunning). The biggest of these is humanity's ability to craft items, to change and shape natural things, something that is so antithetical to faerie nature that they could die if they even attempted to write a single letter or hold a sewing needle. Fairies can (and do) covet crafted items, but can never make them themselves, a "magic" they can never possess - and they burn with envy, even as they lust after mortal craftings. The other advantage, which can also be a disadvantage, is of course the range of human emotions. Fae have something like emotions, but not in a way humans readily recognize most of the time; more often than not they're simply mimicking or emulating rather than experiencing such things as joy or sorrow (though they do seem to have quite genuine streaks of envy and anger). The fairies see mortal emotions as weaknesses, and one thing their society will not tolerate is weakness in any form. This is what makes Isobel's "mistake" in Rook's portrait such a source of scandal and rage; by showing the sorrow that she saw in him, she was potentially showing the faerie world that the Autumn King is weak. Thus, his fury and his demand that she make it right... but there are games afoot in the courts that even Rook misjudges, putting them both at risk.
Neither Rook nor Isobel are perfect, and both make mistakes and missteps that cost them, but they also learn along the way. The dangers the two face are real, tangible, and occasionally terrifying; the fairies are only barely human beneath their glamours, more akin to predatory ghouls or conniving demons who delight in tormenting mortals even as they obsessively emulate humans - in part to mock, or simply to study their favored prey, but also out of an unspoken yearning toward something they can never truly understand. Only a few, such as Rook, even come close. The relationship between the two has sparks early on, but takes some time to spark a flame, yet even in the midst of attraction Isobel is never a helpless victim of her own hormones or emotions. She can (and does) step back and recognize what an unwise idea it is, even if the heart ultimately cannot be restrained. Rook, too, never forces the issue, and is as surprised as she is to find his own heart betraying him.
The story hits a few lulls and can be a touch repetitious in its description of fae cruelties, drawing out some torments and scenes, but only really stumbles with a climax that draws itself out a little too long for its own good. There are also some elements that were set up to be more meaningful or plot relevant than they ultimately were, such as Isobel's little "sisters", March and May; they used to be a pair of goats until fairy magic intervened, and they retain several goatlike traits (a streak for mischief and a tendency toward destructive behavior and even head-butting), but ultimately don't contribute anything meaningful to the plot. I get the feeling there's supposed to be a sequel at least, which may explain why parts of the ending feel unfinished. But it does more right than it does wrong, so I ended up forgiving it some weaknesses and gave it the solid fourth star in the ratings it came close to losing.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Darkest Part of the Forest (Holly Black) - My Review
Thornhedge (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Surely You Can't Be Serious (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker)
Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!
David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker
St. Martin's Press
Nonfiction, Autobiography/Media Reference
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few movies can claim to have changed the entertainment landscape like the 1980 classic Airplane!. From the opening shot of the jet plane tail slicing through the clouds to the menacing chords of the Jaws theme to the final roll of credits riddled with humorous inserts, it redefined what comedy could do and changed the lives of most everyone involved, not to mention numerous fans in the decades since its premiere. But long before Ted Striker developed his drinking problem or Captain Oveur asked a young boy about gladiator movies, the Zucker brothers and their best friend Jim Abrahams were just three Midwestern boys who loved to laugh and make others laugh. This is the story of the long, unlikely journey that took them from Wisconsin to Los Angeles, from improvised stage shows to the silver screen, and from obscurity to international stardom.
REVIEW: Airplane! was a staple of my childhood (as was the criminally short-lived and ahead-of-its-time TV series Police Squad!; I never found the Naked Gun trilogy quite as consistently funny as the series, myself, even before the whole O. J. Simpson thing soured me on rewatches); it's one of those movies where one can watch it a dozen time and catch something new each and every time through. For all the silliness, though, it would've fallen flat on its face if it hadn't been so meticulously and artfully constructed, from the script to the cinematography to the casting choices to the score. This book delves into how the trio learned to work together, hone their sense of humor and writing skills via live theater, and not only survived the culture shock of 1970's Los Angeles but managed to eventually live every creator's dream of landing a studio contract and filming a genre-defining hit. It was not a straightforward road, nor was it one without doubts or setbacks or mistakes.
The story wanders somewhat in the telling; written in something like screenplay format, the book is a dialog, like an interview where the trio are sitting down to tell their story to the audience of the reader. Along the way are extras and interjections from colleagues, cast members, executives, and several people whose lives were influenced by Airplane!. (The audiobook features several guest narrators for these different "parts".) As a result, the story sometimes feels a little scattershot, moving back and forth and wandering on tangents before getting back to the main "plot" of the making of the movie. This lack of focus almost cost it a half-star, but overall it's an interesting examination of the movie that never should've existed, and a lost era when Hollywood still embraced unique, new voices and was willing to take risks. The Zuckers and Abrahams are right that Airplane! couldn't have happened today. (Though I personally always take such assertions with a little grain of salt; no envelope-pushing classic could be "made today", in part because different times have different envelopes and in part because they themselves already pushed that envelope, so any attempt to make the same thing again isn't close enough to the edge anymore to push anything. That doesn't mean today's metaphoric envelopes don't still have edges to be pushed, or that nobody is capable of pushing them, though in today's climate of endless franchises and remakes, it's far less likely a major studio would back such an experiment. But I digress...) The whole is an intriguing glimpse of cinematic lore for anyone who enjoys the film or the history of cinema and comedy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
This Book is Not Yet Rated (Peter Bognanni) - My Review
Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film (Mel Brooks with Rebecca Keegan) - My Review
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir (Brent Spiner) - My Review
David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker
St. Martin's Press
Nonfiction, Autobiography/Media Reference
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few movies can claim to have changed the entertainment landscape like the 1980 classic Airplane!. From the opening shot of the jet plane tail slicing through the clouds to the menacing chords of the Jaws theme to the final roll of credits riddled with humorous inserts, it redefined what comedy could do and changed the lives of most everyone involved, not to mention numerous fans in the decades since its premiere. But long before Ted Striker developed his drinking problem or Captain Oveur asked a young boy about gladiator movies, the Zucker brothers and their best friend Jim Abrahams were just three Midwestern boys who loved to laugh and make others laugh. This is the story of the long, unlikely journey that took them from Wisconsin to Los Angeles, from improvised stage shows to the silver screen, and from obscurity to international stardom.
REVIEW: Airplane! was a staple of my childhood (as was the criminally short-lived and ahead-of-its-time TV series Police Squad!; I never found the Naked Gun trilogy quite as consistently funny as the series, myself, even before the whole O. J. Simpson thing soured me on rewatches); it's one of those movies where one can watch it a dozen time and catch something new each and every time through. For all the silliness, though, it would've fallen flat on its face if it hadn't been so meticulously and artfully constructed, from the script to the cinematography to the casting choices to the score. This book delves into how the trio learned to work together, hone their sense of humor and writing skills via live theater, and not only survived the culture shock of 1970's Los Angeles but managed to eventually live every creator's dream of landing a studio contract and filming a genre-defining hit. It was not a straightforward road, nor was it one without doubts or setbacks or mistakes.
The story wanders somewhat in the telling; written in something like screenplay format, the book is a dialog, like an interview where the trio are sitting down to tell their story to the audience of the reader. Along the way are extras and interjections from colleagues, cast members, executives, and several people whose lives were influenced by Airplane!. (The audiobook features several guest narrators for these different "parts".) As a result, the story sometimes feels a little scattershot, moving back and forth and wandering on tangents before getting back to the main "plot" of the making of the movie. This lack of focus almost cost it a half-star, but overall it's an interesting examination of the movie that never should've existed, and a lost era when Hollywood still embraced unique, new voices and was willing to take risks. The Zuckers and Abrahams are right that Airplane! couldn't have happened today. (Though I personally always take such assertions with a little grain of salt; no envelope-pushing classic could be "made today", in part because different times have different envelopes and in part because they themselves already pushed that envelope, so any attempt to make the same thing again isn't close enough to the edge anymore to push anything. That doesn't mean today's metaphoric envelopes don't still have edges to be pushed, or that nobody is capable of pushing them, though in today's climate of endless franchises and remakes, it's far less likely a major studio would back such an experiment. But I digress...) The whole is an intriguing glimpse of cinematic lore for anyone who enjoys the film or the history of cinema and comedy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
This Book is Not Yet Rated (Peter Bognanni) - My Review
Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film (Mel Brooks with Rebecca Keegan) - My Review
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir (Brent Spiner) - My Review
Friday, December 5, 2025
The Aeronaut's Windlass (Jim Butcher)
The Aeronaut's Windlass
The Cinder Spires series, Book 1
Jim Butcher
Penguin
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Captain Francis Grimm used to be a rising star in the airship forces of Spire Albion, one of the massive, ancient structures towering over the deadly, mist-shrouded outside world to pierce the skies. But when a mission went terribly wrong, Grimm was left holding the bag, drummed out of service... officially, that is. As a privateer aboard the vessel AMS Predator, Grimm and his loyal crew still serve the spire in their own way. After a chase left the Predator damaged, Grimm finds himself out of commission, on the hook for repairs he can ill afford.
Then, in a bold surprise attack, ships from Spire Aurora descend on Albion, the opening salvo of an audacious plan.
Along with green Guard recruits Gwendolyn Lancaster, headstrong daughter of a wealthy family whose crystal-growing vats literally keep the spire powered and the airships aloft, and Bridget Tagwynn, whose lack of social graces and manners nearly bring disaster on her before she's officially in uniform, the feline-eyed warrior-born Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, and the cat prince Rowl of the House of the Silent Paws, Grimm and the crew of the Predator are recruited by Albion's secretive Spirearch Addison for a secret mission. Aurora's attack not only left an unknown number of enemies hiding in the labyrinth of ventilation shafts and other hidden places of the spire, but has to have been coordinated and planned by a traitor - hence, Addison turning to those outside the existing military ranks or too fresh to have been compromised. With them also travel two peculiar Etherealists, Master Ferus and apprentice Folly, whose ability to perceive and manipulate the ethereal currents of the world may be instrumental to untangling the real reason for Aurora's attack. But what the mismatched crew discovers is something far bigger and more dangerous than mere war... at least, mere war among earthly humans. This may be the beginning of the end of the spires themselves, and all the life that depends on them.
REVIEW: The Aeronaut's Windlass promises a steampunk-flavored swashbuckling yarn in a fantastic world of crystal-powered airships, vast towers, a colorful culture with such oddities as "warrior-born" people born with recessive catlike genes granting them superior strength and agility (but which are seen as slightly less than fully human), and sapient, mildly evolved cats with their own culture and politics and language, set on a world that 's either in a far enough (or alternate enough) future as to be near-unrecognizable - populated with monsters that have a dash of Lovecraftian inexplicability and malice - or is an actual alien planet. Like many a swashbuckler before it, it incorporates liberal dashes of nautical warfare into its airship battles, and it populates itself with a cast that is not entirely unexpected or excessively complex: the brilliant captain wrongly maligned by politics yet loyal to the flag, the hotheaded young noblewoman eager to prove herself beyond the shelter of family privilege, the less sophisticated newcomer who partially exists for the world and its rules to be explained to (as a proxy for the reader), and so forth. This is, indeed, pretty much what Butcher delivers.
From the opening pages, the story offers adventure and action and danger, managing to trickle in the strangeness and the peculiarities of its setting - a world where unseen "ethereal" currents act on airships like wind, "gauntlets" discharging rays of bright heat in lieu of firearms and "guns" that work on steam rather than traditional gunpowder, and where the ground beyond the towers is shrouded in perpetual mist and populated with dangerous beasts - between thrilling bursts of action and the odd touch of humor and humanity. If the people and situations are somewhat familiar from other, similar swashbucklers and action stories, well, there's a reason such things become tropes: they tend to work more often than not. For the most part, the story's interesting enough and the characters have sufficient chemistry that it's easy to gloss over the sense of familiarity (and a few instances of plot convenient developments and nick-of-time reversals of fortune). Grimm and company must navigate intraspire politics and friction, as well as interspecies tensions in dealing with the cat clans who only rarely interact with humans, as they attempt to grapple with foes who are equally cunning and dedicated to their own masters and plans. For a sizeable volume, it moves at a decent clip for the most part, only bogging down when Butcher gets a little too involved and intricate in blow-by-blows of action sequences and fights, particularly the climactic one at the end. It's more a stagger than outright stumble, though, even if it makes the conclusion itself less definitively conclusive than it might have been, and thus a little weak.
Overall, even if it's a little familiar underneath the interesting worldbuilding, I enjoyed it. I even liked the parts with the cats more than I anticipated, with Rowr and his kin coming across as distinct and intelligent characters in their own right, less stilted and stereotyped than some people portray felines. I'd be game to continue the series at some point, when I'm next in the mood for a steampunk-flavored swashbuckler with a side of clever cats.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
Arabella of Mars (David D. Levine) - My Review
Leviathan (Scott Westerfield) - My Review
The Cinder Spires series, Book 1
Jim Butcher
Penguin
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Captain Francis Grimm used to be a rising star in the airship forces of Spire Albion, one of the massive, ancient structures towering over the deadly, mist-shrouded outside world to pierce the skies. But when a mission went terribly wrong, Grimm was left holding the bag, drummed out of service... officially, that is. As a privateer aboard the vessel AMS Predator, Grimm and his loyal crew still serve the spire in their own way. After a chase left the Predator damaged, Grimm finds himself out of commission, on the hook for repairs he can ill afford.
Then, in a bold surprise attack, ships from Spire Aurora descend on Albion, the opening salvo of an audacious plan.
Along with green Guard recruits Gwendolyn Lancaster, headstrong daughter of a wealthy family whose crystal-growing vats literally keep the spire powered and the airships aloft, and Bridget Tagwynn, whose lack of social graces and manners nearly bring disaster on her before she's officially in uniform, the feline-eyed warrior-born Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, and the cat prince Rowl of the House of the Silent Paws, Grimm and the crew of the Predator are recruited by Albion's secretive Spirearch Addison for a secret mission. Aurora's attack not only left an unknown number of enemies hiding in the labyrinth of ventilation shafts and other hidden places of the spire, but has to have been coordinated and planned by a traitor - hence, Addison turning to those outside the existing military ranks or too fresh to have been compromised. With them also travel two peculiar Etherealists, Master Ferus and apprentice Folly, whose ability to perceive and manipulate the ethereal currents of the world may be instrumental to untangling the real reason for Aurora's attack. But what the mismatched crew discovers is something far bigger and more dangerous than mere war... at least, mere war among earthly humans. This may be the beginning of the end of the spires themselves, and all the life that depends on them.
REVIEW: The Aeronaut's Windlass promises a steampunk-flavored swashbuckling yarn in a fantastic world of crystal-powered airships, vast towers, a colorful culture with such oddities as "warrior-born" people born with recessive catlike genes granting them superior strength and agility (but which are seen as slightly less than fully human), and sapient, mildly evolved cats with their own culture and politics and language, set on a world that 's either in a far enough (or alternate enough) future as to be near-unrecognizable - populated with monsters that have a dash of Lovecraftian inexplicability and malice - or is an actual alien planet. Like many a swashbuckler before it, it incorporates liberal dashes of nautical warfare into its airship battles, and it populates itself with a cast that is not entirely unexpected or excessively complex: the brilliant captain wrongly maligned by politics yet loyal to the flag, the hotheaded young noblewoman eager to prove herself beyond the shelter of family privilege, the less sophisticated newcomer who partially exists for the world and its rules to be explained to (as a proxy for the reader), and so forth. This is, indeed, pretty much what Butcher delivers.
From the opening pages, the story offers adventure and action and danger, managing to trickle in the strangeness and the peculiarities of its setting - a world where unseen "ethereal" currents act on airships like wind, "gauntlets" discharging rays of bright heat in lieu of firearms and "guns" that work on steam rather than traditional gunpowder, and where the ground beyond the towers is shrouded in perpetual mist and populated with dangerous beasts - between thrilling bursts of action and the odd touch of humor and humanity. If the people and situations are somewhat familiar from other, similar swashbucklers and action stories, well, there's a reason such things become tropes: they tend to work more often than not. For the most part, the story's interesting enough and the characters have sufficient chemistry that it's easy to gloss over the sense of familiarity (and a few instances of plot convenient developments and nick-of-time reversals of fortune). Grimm and company must navigate intraspire politics and friction, as well as interspecies tensions in dealing with the cat clans who only rarely interact with humans, as they attempt to grapple with foes who are equally cunning and dedicated to their own masters and plans. For a sizeable volume, it moves at a decent clip for the most part, only bogging down when Butcher gets a little too involved and intricate in blow-by-blows of action sequences and fights, particularly the climactic one at the end. It's more a stagger than outright stumble, though, even if it makes the conclusion itself less definitively conclusive than it might have been, and thus a little weak.
Overall, even if it's a little familiar underneath the interesting worldbuilding, I enjoyed it. I even liked the parts with the cats more than I anticipated, with Rowr and his kin coming across as distinct and intelligent characters in their own right, less stilted and stereotyped than some people portray felines. I'd be game to continue the series at some point, when I'm next in the mood for a steampunk-flavored swashbuckler with a side of clever cats.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
Arabella of Mars (David D. Levine) - My Review
Leviathan (Scott Westerfield) - My Review
Thursday, December 4, 2025
When Among Crows (Veronica Roth)
When Among Crows
The Curse Bearer series, Book 1
Veronica Roth
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dymitr traveled from the old country to Chicago on a quest, seeking perhaps the most powerful witch the world has ever seen, Baba Jaga. He is descended from a long line of monster hunters, self-styled knights of the Holy Order who are determined to slay the monsters who hide in plain sight among ordinary mortals. If he were to succeed against the witch where many a knight has failed, he would become a legend... but he has another reason for his hunt, one he has hidden even from his own kin. In the uneasy company of Ala, an inhuman burdened by a deadly curse, he must find the witch before time runs out and his own people hunt him down.
REVIEW: Set in a modern Chicago with a hidden underworld of monsters, with roots deep in Eastern European folklore, there's a fair bit to enjoy in When Among Crows... but there's also enough holding it back to keep it from that solid fourth star in the ratings.
From the outset, there's an intriguing mythic feel to Dymitr and his journey, as he confronts a guardian leszy to obtain a rare, magical fern flower from a hidden grotto, with hints about the secret nature of his quest. The trail then leads to a small movie theater specializing in horror shows run by zmory, magical beings who feed on fear, and specifically to the curse-burdened Ala. So far, I was enjoying the story, as it moved at a fair clip and did a decent job crafting its hidden world, how the unseen creatures have adapted to modern America and learned to extract what they need from humans, and establishing its rules; magic, here, is based on debt and sacrifice, and there's been enough human misery and exploitation in a modern city like Chicago for a thriving underworld of mystical beings from around the world, though most of the ones Dymitr encounters are conveniently ones from his own Eastern European homeland. The Holy Order itself relies on pain and sacrifice for the magics they use to destroy the "evil" beings, creating a generations-long chain equating suffering and abuse with purity and even familial love (not to mention a generations-long chain of xenophobia and extreme intolerance ensconced in impenetrable trappings of "tradition"). These are not happy people, either knights or "monsters", and it's not always a pleasant place to be as a reader, but it is intriguing.
As Ala and Dymitr pick up another inhuman companion, the anger-eating strzygon Nico, I started feeling an itch of discontent. The events of this tale unfold over the course of a couple nights. Dymitr is an outsider to the Chicago monster community, even before they figure out his true origins. Yet it takes only a couple hours max for both Nico and Ala to bond with him to the point of being willing to defend him against their own kind... and the same for Dymitr, when his kid sister insists on following her big brother on his hunt. (She really was a pointless character, existing to pop up like a fun house ghost whenever the story needed a little jump.) There are even sparks between Nico and Dymitr. I just did not buy the speed at which this happened, given the histories and the hurts and the many secrets that linger between them all, for all that the trio aren't a bad character mix ... especially when, while the personal relationship evolution is turbo-charged, the tale itself bogs down in painful backstories and stretches of dialog and dithering when the metaphoric clock is ticking.
The ending seems to forget a key threat, drawing out a confrontation and final twist and leaving the story in an odd place that didn't seem to really fit with what had come before and what must surely come after. I know this is the first of a duology, but it did not feel like a conclusion so much as a shrug. While it was reasonably well written and I enjoyed several aspects of the story, the whole just wasn't my cup of cocoa and didn't quite work for me.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Book Eaters (Sunyi Dean) - My Review
Discount Armageddon (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Strange Practice (Vivian Shaw) - My Review
The Curse Bearer series, Book 1
Veronica Roth
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dymitr traveled from the old country to Chicago on a quest, seeking perhaps the most powerful witch the world has ever seen, Baba Jaga. He is descended from a long line of monster hunters, self-styled knights of the Holy Order who are determined to slay the monsters who hide in plain sight among ordinary mortals. If he were to succeed against the witch where many a knight has failed, he would become a legend... but he has another reason for his hunt, one he has hidden even from his own kin. In the uneasy company of Ala, an inhuman burdened by a deadly curse, he must find the witch before time runs out and his own people hunt him down.
REVIEW: Set in a modern Chicago with a hidden underworld of monsters, with roots deep in Eastern European folklore, there's a fair bit to enjoy in When Among Crows... but there's also enough holding it back to keep it from that solid fourth star in the ratings.
From the outset, there's an intriguing mythic feel to Dymitr and his journey, as he confronts a guardian leszy to obtain a rare, magical fern flower from a hidden grotto, with hints about the secret nature of his quest. The trail then leads to a small movie theater specializing in horror shows run by zmory, magical beings who feed on fear, and specifically to the curse-burdened Ala. So far, I was enjoying the story, as it moved at a fair clip and did a decent job crafting its hidden world, how the unseen creatures have adapted to modern America and learned to extract what they need from humans, and establishing its rules; magic, here, is based on debt and sacrifice, and there's been enough human misery and exploitation in a modern city like Chicago for a thriving underworld of mystical beings from around the world, though most of the ones Dymitr encounters are conveniently ones from his own Eastern European homeland. The Holy Order itself relies on pain and sacrifice for the magics they use to destroy the "evil" beings, creating a generations-long chain equating suffering and abuse with purity and even familial love (not to mention a generations-long chain of xenophobia and extreme intolerance ensconced in impenetrable trappings of "tradition"). These are not happy people, either knights or "monsters", and it's not always a pleasant place to be as a reader, but it is intriguing.
As Ala and Dymitr pick up another inhuman companion, the anger-eating strzygon Nico, I started feeling an itch of discontent. The events of this tale unfold over the course of a couple nights. Dymitr is an outsider to the Chicago monster community, even before they figure out his true origins. Yet it takes only a couple hours max for both Nico and Ala to bond with him to the point of being willing to defend him against their own kind... and the same for Dymitr, when his kid sister insists on following her big brother on his hunt. (She really was a pointless character, existing to pop up like a fun house ghost whenever the story needed a little jump.) There are even sparks between Nico and Dymitr. I just did not buy the speed at which this happened, given the histories and the hurts and the many secrets that linger between them all, for all that the trio aren't a bad character mix ... especially when, while the personal relationship evolution is turbo-charged, the tale itself bogs down in painful backstories and stretches of dialog and dithering when the metaphoric clock is ticking.
The ending seems to forget a key threat, drawing out a confrontation and final twist and leaving the story in an odd place that didn't seem to really fit with what had come before and what must surely come after. I know this is the first of a duology, but it did not feel like a conclusion so much as a shrug. While it was reasonably well written and I enjoyed several aspects of the story, the whole just wasn't my cup of cocoa and didn't quite work for me.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Book Eaters (Sunyi Dean) - My Review
Discount Armageddon (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Strange Practice (Vivian Shaw) - My Review
Monday, December 1, 2025
November Site Update
A prolific month for reading, if another questionable one outside of reading... The main Brightdreamer Books site has been updated with the month's reviews. (Yes, I'm aware it's a day late. See also: questionable month outside of reading...)
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Pet (Awaeke Emezi)
Pet
Awaeke Emezi
Make Me a World
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, the world was full of monsters: not goblins or demons or storybook beasts, but the kind who walk on two legs. They could be anywhere, and look like anything, and they spread their greed and hate and evil far and wide, until the people finally had enough. It took decades, and many things were done which are no longer spoken of, but at last the revolution succeeded. They dismantled the prisons and abolished the firearms that turned public places into potential massacre zones. They turned to proactive intervention rather than reactive punishment, embracing difference and diversity over bigotry and hatred. And the angels, the heroes of that era, still watch over the better world they created in the town of Lucille, one in which the public can at last breathe a sigh of relief, because the monsters are all gone.
At least, that's what the children are taught in school, and what their parents tell them.
Jam did not mean to bleed on her mother's latest unfinished painting. She just wanted to look at it, to ponder the strange, beastly figure of smoke and feathers and horns that had emerged on the canvas. When she accidentally cuts herself, a few drops of her blood somehow wake the creature, or rather open a portal to some strange other place through which it can step into her world. It tells her she can call it Pet, and declares that it is a hunter of monsters, summoned to this world because it is needed.
Surely it must be mistaken; Mom and Dad and all her teachers tell her that the monsters are gone and never coming back to Lucille. But it is quite insistent, and Jam begins to wonder. Would she even know what a monster looked like if she saw one? And could it be possible that one has been hiding in plain sight right in front of her and she just didn't know how to see?
REVIEW: Any book that opens with a prologue explaining its themes to the reader before they can have a chance to read and discover them for themselves is waving a red flag warning that the coming story is not going to tell me a tale but sell me a message. But I'd already given up on another audiobook for my workday and had a very specific window of time to fill, and this looked intriguing. Thus, I waded in.
The early parts have a lot of promise. It takes place in an unspecified place and time, either near future or alternate timeline, where the promise of progressive revolution has borne fruit. All the "monsters" who have warped society for too long, from the child predators to the overpowered monsters who have seized the reins of power at the highest echelons to strangle justice and turn a profit off poisoning the land and murdering countless people, have been cast down, the militarization of police and packing of prisons has ended, and even religious extremism has been nipped, with religion itself only vaguely discussed in school (though the public libraries are well stocked and well staffed and will offer anything to anyone who wishes to learn). Jam is transgender, her parents are different races, and her best friend/potential boyfriend Redemption's extended family includes a parental throuple. This is a future that's as close to an accepting, peaceful utopia as possible, though of course it's not perfect... and, as the book shows, it threatens to become a victim of its own success. Though Jam's and Redemption's parents, and of course the elder "angels" who fought for this society, remember the time before and the many guises of the monsters they overthrew, children no longer understand just how easy it is for terrible people to hide in plain sight. They don't know the warning signs, and when anyone does dare suggest that perhaps there are still dangers in the world, their elders refuse to acknowledge that monsters could ever return; after all, they sacrificed so much and did "hard things" to end the terrors, and they refuse to admit that this is not a battle that can be decisively won and forgotten about. When Jam accidentally wakes the being "Pet" (which may or may not be an angel), she, too, does not want to believe - especially when it tells her that the monster it is here to hunt is in Redemption's home. Her own parents deny the possibility so vehemently that Jam convinces herself that Pet is mistaken, or even lying. Yet Pet insists, while she grows conflicted, then denies any chance of trouble, only Pet insists....
You may sense a bit of repetition in the previous bits. While the early parts of the tale have a certain literary, surreal element - the peculiar being emerging from the painting with its slightly archaic and poetic speech, the way her parents react to its arrival, even the way neurodivergent and selectively mute Jam interacts with the world as much through energy and vibration as verbal or signed communication - it starts getting a little heavy-handed with its themes, and soon sinks into a holding pattern that keeps things stuck for far too long, where Pet insists that it needs to hunt and Jam needs to help it figure out where the monster is, while Jam refuses to take the threat seriously and doesn't really believe monsters are real anymore, only for Pet to once again repeat itself with some variant of "the hunt is the hunt" and "see the unseen" or some other entirely useless phrase or sentiment that fails to convince Jam to step up to a plate that needs to be stepped up to if the story's going to move forward, yet which she dithers about for far, far too long... and even when she does, the tale bogs down more with too much filler and not enough progress. At some point, it stopped being intriguing and started being tiresomely preachy and repetitious, before (slowly) building up to a (slow) confrontation and (slow) resolution, underlain with a religious subtext that felt a little out of place. By the end, my skull was fairly ringing from the sledgehammer blows driving its message home, plus few things irk me more than a sermon mislabeled as a story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Skellig (David Almond) - My Review
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer) - My Review
I Was a Teenage Fairy (Francesca Lia Block) - My Review
Awaeke Emezi
Make Me a World
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, the world was full of monsters: not goblins or demons or storybook beasts, but the kind who walk on two legs. They could be anywhere, and look like anything, and they spread their greed and hate and evil far and wide, until the people finally had enough. It took decades, and many things were done which are no longer spoken of, but at last the revolution succeeded. They dismantled the prisons and abolished the firearms that turned public places into potential massacre zones. They turned to proactive intervention rather than reactive punishment, embracing difference and diversity over bigotry and hatred. And the angels, the heroes of that era, still watch over the better world they created in the town of Lucille, one in which the public can at last breathe a sigh of relief, because the monsters are all gone.
At least, that's what the children are taught in school, and what their parents tell them.
Jam did not mean to bleed on her mother's latest unfinished painting. She just wanted to look at it, to ponder the strange, beastly figure of smoke and feathers and horns that had emerged on the canvas. When she accidentally cuts herself, a few drops of her blood somehow wake the creature, or rather open a portal to some strange other place through which it can step into her world. It tells her she can call it Pet, and declares that it is a hunter of monsters, summoned to this world because it is needed.
Surely it must be mistaken; Mom and Dad and all her teachers tell her that the monsters are gone and never coming back to Lucille. But it is quite insistent, and Jam begins to wonder. Would she even know what a monster looked like if she saw one? And could it be possible that one has been hiding in plain sight right in front of her and she just didn't know how to see?
REVIEW: Any book that opens with a prologue explaining its themes to the reader before they can have a chance to read and discover them for themselves is waving a red flag warning that the coming story is not going to tell me a tale but sell me a message. But I'd already given up on another audiobook for my workday and had a very specific window of time to fill, and this looked intriguing. Thus, I waded in.
The early parts have a lot of promise. It takes place in an unspecified place and time, either near future or alternate timeline, where the promise of progressive revolution has borne fruit. All the "monsters" who have warped society for too long, from the child predators to the overpowered monsters who have seized the reins of power at the highest echelons to strangle justice and turn a profit off poisoning the land and murdering countless people, have been cast down, the militarization of police and packing of prisons has ended, and even religious extremism has been nipped, with religion itself only vaguely discussed in school (though the public libraries are well stocked and well staffed and will offer anything to anyone who wishes to learn). Jam is transgender, her parents are different races, and her best friend/potential boyfriend Redemption's extended family includes a parental throuple. This is a future that's as close to an accepting, peaceful utopia as possible, though of course it's not perfect... and, as the book shows, it threatens to become a victim of its own success. Though Jam's and Redemption's parents, and of course the elder "angels" who fought for this society, remember the time before and the many guises of the monsters they overthrew, children no longer understand just how easy it is for terrible people to hide in plain sight. They don't know the warning signs, and when anyone does dare suggest that perhaps there are still dangers in the world, their elders refuse to acknowledge that monsters could ever return; after all, they sacrificed so much and did "hard things" to end the terrors, and they refuse to admit that this is not a battle that can be decisively won and forgotten about. When Jam accidentally wakes the being "Pet" (which may or may not be an angel), she, too, does not want to believe - especially when it tells her that the monster it is here to hunt is in Redemption's home. Her own parents deny the possibility so vehemently that Jam convinces herself that Pet is mistaken, or even lying. Yet Pet insists, while she grows conflicted, then denies any chance of trouble, only Pet insists....
You may sense a bit of repetition in the previous bits. While the early parts of the tale have a certain literary, surreal element - the peculiar being emerging from the painting with its slightly archaic and poetic speech, the way her parents react to its arrival, even the way neurodivergent and selectively mute Jam interacts with the world as much through energy and vibration as verbal or signed communication - it starts getting a little heavy-handed with its themes, and soon sinks into a holding pattern that keeps things stuck for far too long, where Pet insists that it needs to hunt and Jam needs to help it figure out where the monster is, while Jam refuses to take the threat seriously and doesn't really believe monsters are real anymore, only for Pet to once again repeat itself with some variant of "the hunt is the hunt" and "see the unseen" or some other entirely useless phrase or sentiment that fails to convince Jam to step up to a plate that needs to be stepped up to if the story's going to move forward, yet which she dithers about for far, far too long... and even when she does, the tale bogs down more with too much filler and not enough progress. At some point, it stopped being intriguing and started being tiresomely preachy and repetitious, before (slowly) building up to a (slow) confrontation and (slow) resolution, underlain with a religious subtext that felt a little out of place. By the end, my skull was fairly ringing from the sledgehammer blows driving its message home, plus few things irk me more than a sermon mislabeled as a story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Skellig (David Almond) - My Review
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer) - My Review
I Was a Teenage Fairy (Francesca Lia Block) - My Review
Friday, November 21, 2025
An Occasionally Happy Family (Cliff Burke)
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
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
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
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