Starling House
Alix E. Harrow
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The small coal town of Eden, Kentucky is a bad-luck town if ever there was one. It's not just the poverty and poor living conditions from being so near the Gravely coal mines and power plants, but bad things seem to keep happening, accidents and deaths and explosions, often tied to the strange mists that rise in the night. Some think the town is cursed... and some look with suspicion on the secluded old Starling House, once the home of the late author Eleanor Starling, whose unsettling children's book The Underland still has a devoted following. It's been well over a century since Eleanor disappeared, but her reputation is still whispered in that way of small towns; if anyone cursed the good people of Eden, it must have been her and the strange string of successors who have inherited the place, culminating in the reclusive young man Arthur. None would believe the truth...
Opal and her teen brother Jasper have been stranded in Eden ever since a terrible accident sent their mother's car into the river over a decade ago. A high school dropout with a surly reputation, Opal struggles to earn enough money to at least save Jasper from this dead-end hole of a place. But she also is fascinated by Starling House, having been enthralled by The Underland since childhood. She even finds herself haunted by dreams of a sprawling mansion, a place that feels like the home she never had. But she never imagined she'd set foot in the place, until the night she has a fateful encounter with Arthur Starling himself. Beyond the threshold of Starling House is a place she recognizes too well from her dreams... and a dark secret worse than her deepest nightmares.
REVIEW: With the creepy Southern Gothic atmosphere and a gritty, hardscrabble heroine, Starling House looked like a great pick for October. Alix E. Harrow continues her streak of not disappointing me.
Opal is a young woman who should have given up years ago, fallen into drugs or alcohol or other traps - or simply given up on survival altogether. Her single mother didn't exactly provide a stable life before her untimely death, with neither child knowing who or where their fathers were, and Opal was in the car with the woman when they went off the bridge into the river. Things only got worse after that, as she dropped out of high school and learned to lie, cheat, steal, and grift to keep custody of her kid brother. Yet, while Opal isn't exactly the kindest or most mentally healthy person in Eden, adversity has made her dig in all the harder, made her all the hungrier and sharper, as she bends every fiber of her being and her pride toward getting her now-teen brother Jasper out and away to a better life - sacrificing herself and any potential for her own future or happiness in the process. Her quick temper and sarcastic tongue don't always help, but they're her defense mechanisms against a town that long ago branded her trouble, and against the parts of herself she deliberately buried because they were too broken and hurt to handle alone - and alone is the only way she knows how to handle anything. A small Southern town like Eden doesn't exactly go out of its way to help strangers, especially ones like Opal, though there are a few people who form a threadbare support net... people she doesn't learn to appreciate until it's nearly too late. Jasper, meanwhile, is becoming a teenager and pushing back against her mothering form of sisterhood; hard as she tries to shield him from the worst of small town hostility and the sacrifices she makes on his behalf, he's developing his own ideas of what his life will be, ideas that clash with her best intentions and efforts. This is yet another source of friction on the fraying ropes barely holding Opal together... and that's without the dreams and nightmares, some of which tie into the tale of The Underland and lead back, inevitably, to Eleanor Starling.
Arthur, meanwhile, has also sacrificed himself in his own way, as caretaker of Starling House and the legacy of Eleanor... and also the Warden working to protect a town that hardly deserves protection from a supernatural threat (not really a spoiler; this is a horror-fantasy, after all). He swore he'd be the last, that he'd die if need be to stop the cycle of new Wardens being "called" to Starling House to continue a fight that seemingly can never be won... until the redheaded young woman turns up and inadvertently offers blood to the wrought iron gates. Despite himself, he offers her a job as housekeeper to the sprawling estate, even knowing that he may not be able to save her from a fate like his own (especially not if she's already been called by the dreams), but he's denied himself so much, even companionship, for so long he can't help himself - plus he may need some assistance, as not only is the mist growing more malevolent and active, but enemies of an all too mortal variety - the wealthy, amoral Gravelys - are trying to steal Starling House (and its secrets) right out from under him.
As Opal and Arthur circle unspoken feelings for each other and their own agendas (both of which are facing increasing challenges as things get worse for them and for Eden), underlying secrets and the source of Eden's curse are slowly revealed, tied into festering wounds left generations ago by injustice, abuse, and trauma. The sins of the forefathers are compounded through the years, as the lack of consequences feeds into the entitlement and impunity of those who flout rules and common decency, while the habit of injustice becomes entrenched in a populace too willing to look the other way. All of this only makes the mist worse, building to a potentially catastrophic climax.
There are times when both Opal and Arthur let their emotions get in the way of intelligence and action; Opal in particular can break down and hole up in her own head and in the borrowed motel room that serves as a home. Her flexible morality (when it comes to people who aren't herself or Jasper; she will do anything, even sell herself out, if it means a chance at getting her brother out of Eden and away from their wretched existence) makes her a little tough to sympathize with as a main character, though Arthur can also be stubbornly obtuse and close-lipped. Still, they manage to grow, if unevenly, to confront the challenges placed before them. A few threads feel unresolved by the ending, though overall it's a satisfying and cathartic conclusion.
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The Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell) - My Review
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
Gallant (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Friday, October 24, 2025
Bryony and Roses (T. Kingfisher)
Bryony and Roses
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Tea Company
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It never would've happened but for the rutabagas. But Bryony's garden keeps her and her two sisters fed, and she needed more vegetables, so she and the clumsy family pony Fumblefoot set off... never expecting to get caught in a snowstorm on the way back through the woods. When she stumbles upon a manor house deep in the forest, it seemed a stroke of luck, and if there seemed to be something uncanny and a touch magical about the way its doors opened and food appeared (even food for a hungry pony) with no sign of humans about, well, women on the edge of freezing to death can't exactly pick and choose their salvation. It's only when she tries to leave and finds herself facing a hulking Beast that she realizes the trap she's fallen into. But is it he who keeps her imprisoned here, or is it some other, more insidious force... and, if so, is there any way to escape the curse that's entangled her?
REVIEW: As one might expect, this is yet another retelling of the familiar "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale, but this "Beauty" is no helpless damsel traded away by a greedy father, nor is breaking the curse as easy as learning to love a hulking "monster" with a human heart. Bryony is a gardener down to her marrow; when her late father squandered the family name and fortune and left his three daughters nothing but an out-of-the-way cottage in an out-of-the-way little town, she felt more relieved than devastated, finally able to indulge her passion without being forever chided about dirt under her nails. She's not a classical "beauty", either; her sister Iris got the family good looks, as well as a flair for playing the victim/helpless damsel in distress, while Bryony and her no-nonsense sister Holly are more plain-faced. When she first realizes she can never leave the House in the woods, she misses her garden at least as much as her own kin. This gives her a more practical bent than many classic fairy tale heroines, though she's also not notably brave or a warrior by any means; more than once she lets her fear get the better of her, though generally (and especially later on) that fear is quite justified by the circumstances. The Beast, meanwhile, is rarely anything but a gentleman from the start, as much a prisoner as she herself is. He has long ago become resigned to his fate, and regrets that she, too, is trapped with him, but her presence also offers a slim and painful hope of escape and freedom - if she can figure out how; every time he tries to tell her the origins and conditions of their imprisonment, the forces behind it seem to hear and act to silence them by increasingly malevolent means. Thus they have to find roundabout ways to communicate, when they can talk of it at all. Bryony sometimes seems slightly slow on the uptake about a few points, but manages to come through when it counts, and she and the Beast have a genuine connection and chemistry. It all makes for a reasonably satisfying tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Nettle and Bone (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Fire Rose (Mercedes Lackey) - My Review
For the Wolf (Hannah Whitten) - My Review
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Tea Company
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It never would've happened but for the rutabagas. But Bryony's garden keeps her and her two sisters fed, and she needed more vegetables, so she and the clumsy family pony Fumblefoot set off... never expecting to get caught in a snowstorm on the way back through the woods. When she stumbles upon a manor house deep in the forest, it seemed a stroke of luck, and if there seemed to be something uncanny and a touch magical about the way its doors opened and food appeared (even food for a hungry pony) with no sign of humans about, well, women on the edge of freezing to death can't exactly pick and choose their salvation. It's only when she tries to leave and finds herself facing a hulking Beast that she realizes the trap she's fallen into. But is it he who keeps her imprisoned here, or is it some other, more insidious force... and, if so, is there any way to escape the curse that's entangled her?
REVIEW: As one might expect, this is yet another retelling of the familiar "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale, but this "Beauty" is no helpless damsel traded away by a greedy father, nor is breaking the curse as easy as learning to love a hulking "monster" with a human heart. Bryony is a gardener down to her marrow; when her late father squandered the family name and fortune and left his three daughters nothing but an out-of-the-way cottage in an out-of-the-way little town, she felt more relieved than devastated, finally able to indulge her passion without being forever chided about dirt under her nails. She's not a classical "beauty", either; her sister Iris got the family good looks, as well as a flair for playing the victim/helpless damsel in distress, while Bryony and her no-nonsense sister Holly are more plain-faced. When she first realizes she can never leave the House in the woods, she misses her garden at least as much as her own kin. This gives her a more practical bent than many classic fairy tale heroines, though she's also not notably brave or a warrior by any means; more than once she lets her fear get the better of her, though generally (and especially later on) that fear is quite justified by the circumstances. The Beast, meanwhile, is rarely anything but a gentleman from the start, as much a prisoner as she herself is. He has long ago become resigned to his fate, and regrets that she, too, is trapped with him, but her presence also offers a slim and painful hope of escape and freedom - if she can figure out how; every time he tries to tell her the origins and conditions of their imprisonment, the forces behind it seem to hear and act to silence them by increasingly malevolent means. Thus they have to find roundabout ways to communicate, when they can talk of it at all. Bryony sometimes seems slightly slow on the uptake about a few points, but manages to come through when it counts, and she and the Beast have a genuine connection and chemistry. It all makes for a reasonably satisfying tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Nettle and Bone (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Fire Rose (Mercedes Lackey) - My Review
For the Wolf (Hannah Whitten) - My Review
Thursday, October 23, 2025
The Greatest Nobodies of History (Adrian Bliss)
The Greatest Nobodies of History: Minor Characters from Major Moments
Adrian Bliss
Penguin
Nonfiction, History/Humorous Nonfiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Leonardo da Vinci, Charles II, "Buffalo" Bill Cody... these and other names are familiar figures from history books. But truth is often difficult to come by, when so much is lost to time, and what survives can be (and often is) colored by the biases and misconceptions of those recording it, and when so much focus is given to great names that the experiences of ordinary folk is all but forgotten. In a series of "recovered" documents, explore little-seen perspectives on great men and great moments from witnesses standing just to the side of history, with testimonies from such impeccable observers as Henry VIII's "groom of the stool" (tender of the royal chamber pot), a vestal virgin on trial for failure to tend the sacred temple flame of ancient Rome and bringing various "disasters" down upon the empire, the emu field marshal who led her troops through Australia's first war against the birds, and more.
REVIEW: I've seen some of Bliss's short online videos on a variety of subjects, and was curious how he'd come across in long-form writing. Drawing on what is known (or can be inferred) from history and adding a fair dollop of imagination and some humor, he presents ten unique, intriguing, satirical, and even sometimes touching stories, covering historical figures and events ranging from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century.
As in most short story collections (which this more or less is), the tales vary a little in quality and tone, though none of them are outright clunkers. From the epistolary story of a nameless wealthy Athenian writing a series of complaints about the uncouth and shocking behavior of the philosopher Diogenes whose outlandish ideas spread like wildfire to the "war journal" of an emu field marshal, from the story of a Cromwell-supporting English oak tree's fateful encounter with a fleeing King Charles II, even through the stories of a Renaissance ferret's art modeling career and the eager young understudy of Buffalo Bill's aging horse in the showbiz years, Bliss never fails to find unique angles to approach his topics. He also doesn't fail to create decent characters and arcs within each story, so they work as historical fiction (or fantasy, if you need to stretch to account for anthropomorphism in your characters) in their own right. Once in a while they feel a little long, and occasionally the English humor threatens to be a trifle thick, but they never fail to interest or amuse, and some have unexpectedly emotional moments.
Following each story, Bliss offers the facts (or at least the facts as can best be known; in 2025, we're seeing real-time evidence how even events happening right in front of us, with unprecedented means of preservation at the fingertips of innumerable observers, can be warped and twisted, particularly by those with ulterior motives to ensure a particular version of reality is seen as the one and only true account. Just imagine how much worse that distortion becomes when far fewer people had the means to record their observations, and those observations have been handed down through innumerable retellings and/or translations like a centuries-long game of Telephone... only the original player is long gone and can't tell us how laughably twisted the message has become when it reaches the end of the chain). Some of the stories stick fairly close to known events, and others are more inventive, but all invite the reader to pursue further reading if any subject strikes their fancy, demonstrating how history can be as exciting and seemingly improbable as any fiction.
On the whole, I found it enjoyable, and Bliss did a decent job narrating the audiobook (with an expanded cast in a few of the tales).
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Survive History (Cody Cassidy) - My Review
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (Terry Jones and Alan Ereira) - My Review
Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws (Adrienne Mayor) - My Review
Adrian Bliss
Penguin
Nonfiction, History/Humorous Nonfiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Leonardo da Vinci, Charles II, "Buffalo" Bill Cody... these and other names are familiar figures from history books. But truth is often difficult to come by, when so much is lost to time, and what survives can be (and often is) colored by the biases and misconceptions of those recording it, and when so much focus is given to great names that the experiences of ordinary folk is all but forgotten. In a series of "recovered" documents, explore little-seen perspectives on great men and great moments from witnesses standing just to the side of history, with testimonies from such impeccable observers as Henry VIII's "groom of the stool" (tender of the royal chamber pot), a vestal virgin on trial for failure to tend the sacred temple flame of ancient Rome and bringing various "disasters" down upon the empire, the emu field marshal who led her troops through Australia's first war against the birds, and more.
REVIEW: I've seen some of Bliss's short online videos on a variety of subjects, and was curious how he'd come across in long-form writing. Drawing on what is known (or can be inferred) from history and adding a fair dollop of imagination and some humor, he presents ten unique, intriguing, satirical, and even sometimes touching stories, covering historical figures and events ranging from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century.
As in most short story collections (which this more or less is), the tales vary a little in quality and tone, though none of them are outright clunkers. From the epistolary story of a nameless wealthy Athenian writing a series of complaints about the uncouth and shocking behavior of the philosopher Diogenes whose outlandish ideas spread like wildfire to the "war journal" of an emu field marshal, from the story of a Cromwell-supporting English oak tree's fateful encounter with a fleeing King Charles II, even through the stories of a Renaissance ferret's art modeling career and the eager young understudy of Buffalo Bill's aging horse in the showbiz years, Bliss never fails to find unique angles to approach his topics. He also doesn't fail to create decent characters and arcs within each story, so they work as historical fiction (or fantasy, if you need to stretch to account for anthropomorphism in your characters) in their own right. Once in a while they feel a little long, and occasionally the English humor threatens to be a trifle thick, but they never fail to interest or amuse, and some have unexpectedly emotional moments.
Following each story, Bliss offers the facts (or at least the facts as can best be known; in 2025, we're seeing real-time evidence how even events happening right in front of us, with unprecedented means of preservation at the fingertips of innumerable observers, can be warped and twisted, particularly by those with ulterior motives to ensure a particular version of reality is seen as the one and only true account. Just imagine how much worse that distortion becomes when far fewer people had the means to record their observations, and those observations have been handed down through innumerable retellings and/or translations like a centuries-long game of Telephone... only the original player is long gone and can't tell us how laughably twisted the message has become when it reaches the end of the chain). Some of the stories stick fairly close to known events, and others are more inventive, but all invite the reader to pursue further reading if any subject strikes their fancy, demonstrating how history can be as exciting and seemingly improbable as any fiction.
On the whole, I found it enjoyable, and Bliss did a decent job narrating the audiobook (with an expanded cast in a few of the tales).
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Survive History (Cody Cassidy) - My Review
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (Terry Jones and Alan Ereira) - My Review
Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws (Adrienne Mayor) - My Review
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brien)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Rats of NIMH series, Book 1
Robert C. O'Brien
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Like many animals around the Fitzgibbon Farm in the English countryside, the widowed mouse Mrs. Frisby makes her winter home in the fallow fields, moving her four children to her summer house by the brook before the human plows the thawed earth. But this year, her young son Timothy has taken ill, and won't be well enough when an early thaw necessitates an early relocation. If she stays where she is, the plow will surely destroy her family. In desperation, she turns to an unlikely ally: the rats who live beneath the rose hedge. Even for their kind, these rats have a peculiar, secretive reputation, but they may be Mrs. Frisby's only chance to save her children... and she, in turn, might help them when they need it most.
REVIEW: Like many children of the 1980's, I saw the Don Bluth animated movie based on this book (at a drive-in, if memory serves)... and I confess that, as a kid, I found it boring enough I think I nodded off during it. (But, then, I found many of Don Bluth's animated movies overlong and boring as a kid, even if the animation was often beautiful.) Maybe if I'd been familiar with this 1971 book I'd have understood what the film was trying to do - but, then, I'd probably have found the book a little dull and over-talkative as a child as well. As a grown-up, I can appreciate what it was doing and how relatively groundbreaking it was, introducing sci-fi concepts into a talking-animal setting, though I also admit to wishing O'Brien had stopped talking over and around everything, particularly when filling in backstory.
It begins like many a classic anthropomorphic critter tale begins, with a mouse who is both a scurrying little farm animal, fearful of predators and the farm cat Dragon (which is indeed something of a "dragon" in the tale, a beastly hunter from which few escape), and also a widow who has a "house" in a cinder block and sits down at a table with her children for meals. From early on, death is an unspoken specter in the animal world; she is happy when she finds an unattended stash of food gathered by some other animal, even as she is saddened by acknowledging that it likely met its fate in one of the winter hunts by the humans. When her smallest son Timothy takes ill, she makes a dangerous trek to a wise mouse who is skilled in herbal medicines, but is warned that the boy must not be moved for at least a month - and the ground is already thawing, meaning her home will likely not be safe for even a week. Thus, her desperate quest to find help... a quest that inevitably leads to the rats (not a spoiler if it's in the title) and the tale of NIMH (again, not a spoiler if it's in the title).
This becomes O'Brien's excuse to infodump all over the frantic-mother-trying-to-save-her-children-from-death-by-plow-blade plot with the backstory of how the farm's rat population came to their unusual abilities and intelligence, including but far from limited to tapping the Fitzgibbons' electricity and water, constructing motors and machinery, and mastering reading and writing. It's enough for an entirely different book altogether, yet it's shoehorned in here, overshadowing Mrs. Frisby's plight before the two ideas come to a somewhat lopsided coexistence as the connection to her late husband is revealed.
The widow mouse is less meek and passive than some females in these kinds of stories (and some in this very story, to be honest; her own two daughters are dismissively described as the pretty one and the silly one, while female rats are shown to be minimal participants in the colony's projects and the one named girl rat is a shallow infatuated stereotype), forced by circumstance to bravery and resourcefulness not common in wild rodents. The fact that death is always shadowing the characters lends some genuine peril to their situation; it's always an acknowledged possibility that not everyone will make it out alive. Along the way, O'Brien just can't resist bogging the story down in side-tracks through pointless details and cul-de-sacs that add little to the tale itself except word count. The wrap-up has some strong moments, but feels a little abrupt and unfinished; apparently the two sequels were written by O'Brien's daughter after his death, so the dangling loose threads were not even intentional bridges to more tales.
There are several interesting ideas explored (if somewhat unevenly), concepts of intelligence and civilization and animal experimentation's potential ramifications. O'Brien also presents some nice imagery, and the story (when it's not weighted down by its own meandering loops) isn't bad. The parts don't always seem to mesh together, though; it's clear O'Brien was more interested in his rats, their origins and potential fate, than the somewhat cutesy and mildly mismatched tale of the country mouse widow and her children, who ultimately exist mostly to be awed by the rats and their amazing abilities and potential. It's still a classic in its way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
The Rats of NIMH series, Book 1
Robert C. O'Brien
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Like many animals around the Fitzgibbon Farm in the English countryside, the widowed mouse Mrs. Frisby makes her winter home in the fallow fields, moving her four children to her summer house by the brook before the human plows the thawed earth. But this year, her young son Timothy has taken ill, and won't be well enough when an early thaw necessitates an early relocation. If she stays where she is, the plow will surely destroy her family. In desperation, she turns to an unlikely ally: the rats who live beneath the rose hedge. Even for their kind, these rats have a peculiar, secretive reputation, but they may be Mrs. Frisby's only chance to save her children... and she, in turn, might help them when they need it most.
REVIEW: Like many children of the 1980's, I saw the Don Bluth animated movie based on this book (at a drive-in, if memory serves)... and I confess that, as a kid, I found it boring enough I think I nodded off during it. (But, then, I found many of Don Bluth's animated movies overlong and boring as a kid, even if the animation was often beautiful.) Maybe if I'd been familiar with this 1971 book I'd have understood what the film was trying to do - but, then, I'd probably have found the book a little dull and over-talkative as a child as well. As a grown-up, I can appreciate what it was doing and how relatively groundbreaking it was, introducing sci-fi concepts into a talking-animal setting, though I also admit to wishing O'Brien had stopped talking over and around everything, particularly when filling in backstory.
It begins like many a classic anthropomorphic critter tale begins, with a mouse who is both a scurrying little farm animal, fearful of predators and the farm cat Dragon (which is indeed something of a "dragon" in the tale, a beastly hunter from which few escape), and also a widow who has a "house" in a cinder block and sits down at a table with her children for meals. From early on, death is an unspoken specter in the animal world; she is happy when she finds an unattended stash of food gathered by some other animal, even as she is saddened by acknowledging that it likely met its fate in one of the winter hunts by the humans. When her smallest son Timothy takes ill, she makes a dangerous trek to a wise mouse who is skilled in herbal medicines, but is warned that the boy must not be moved for at least a month - and the ground is already thawing, meaning her home will likely not be safe for even a week. Thus, her desperate quest to find help... a quest that inevitably leads to the rats (not a spoiler if it's in the title) and the tale of NIMH (again, not a spoiler if it's in the title).
This becomes O'Brien's excuse to infodump all over the frantic-mother-trying-to-save-her-children-from-death-by-plow-blade plot with the backstory of how the farm's rat population came to their unusual abilities and intelligence, including but far from limited to tapping the Fitzgibbons' electricity and water, constructing motors and machinery, and mastering reading and writing. It's enough for an entirely different book altogether, yet it's shoehorned in here, overshadowing Mrs. Frisby's plight before the two ideas come to a somewhat lopsided coexistence as the connection to her late husband is revealed.
The widow mouse is less meek and passive than some females in these kinds of stories (and some in this very story, to be honest; her own two daughters are dismissively described as the pretty one and the silly one, while female rats are shown to be minimal participants in the colony's projects and the one named girl rat is a shallow infatuated stereotype), forced by circumstance to bravery and resourcefulness not common in wild rodents. The fact that death is always shadowing the characters lends some genuine peril to their situation; it's always an acknowledged possibility that not everyone will make it out alive. Along the way, O'Brien just can't resist bogging the story down in side-tracks through pointless details and cul-de-sacs that add little to the tale itself except word count. The wrap-up has some strong moments, but feels a little abrupt and unfinished; apparently the two sequels were written by O'Brien's daughter after his death, so the dangling loose threads were not even intentional bridges to more tales.
There are several interesting ideas explored (if somewhat unevenly), concepts of intelligence and civilization and animal experimentation's potential ramifications. O'Brien also presents some nice imagery, and the story (when it's not weighted down by its own meandering loops) isn't bad. The parts don't always seem to mesh together, though; it's clear O'Brien was more interested in his rats, their origins and potential fate, than the somewhat cutesy and mildly mismatched tale of the country mouse widow and her children, who ultimately exist mostly to be awed by the rats and their amazing abilities and potential. It's still a classic in its way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Friday, October 17, 2025
One Way (S. J. Morden)
One Way
The Frank Kittridge series, Book 1
S. J. Morden
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, architect Frank Kittridge was an ordinary man, a husband and a father and a respectable citizen... until he took the law into his own hands and shot the untouchable dealer who hooked his son on drugs. He may have had his vengeance, but it cost him his marriage and his freedom; he's not eligible for parole until well after his natural lifespan. But then he receives a very unusual offer from the tech giant XO. In exchange for helping build the first outpost on Mars, he'll be allowed to live out the remainder of his days on the red planet - still technically a prisoner, but freed from prison on Earth, and a part of truly groundbreaking science. He accepts, as do several other inmates at Panopticon private prisons throughout California. All of them have committed crimes worth extreme sentences, so Frank knows better than to consider any of them friends, but only together can they achieve their goals and survive on a new world. But will Mars truly bring any semblance of freedom, or have Frank and the others only signed their own death warrants?
REVIEW: On the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, there's an episode where the four ladies are attending a "murder mystery" dinner, and the "detective" is presenting the evidence. The hopelessly naïve Rose pipes up with a helpful suggestion: "Maybe that bloody dagger will lead us to the murder weapon." I found myself thinking of that line, of someone who cannot or will not see the damning clues right in front of them for what they are, for a significant portion of the back end of One Way. I should not have been thinking that about a character who, unlike Rose, was not only confronting a real problem in life-or-death circumstances, but was supposed to be focused, a little jaded, and of above-average intelligence.
The story opens with Frank in prison, receiving the unusual offer from XO via a lawyer, before heading to the private training facility deep in the desert where Frank and his companions of circumstance must learn their jobs and figure out how to cooperate despite all of them being criminals. Each chapter opens with internal memos and conversations between XO executives and legal departments, showing the all-too-familiar greed and cruelty and downright sociopathic logic driving the whole project, information deliberately withheld from the test subjects. Even without that knowledge, though, I found it a little hard to believe that Frank wouldn't at least suspect some hinky behavior and motivation behind his "employer", given how brazen modern tech billionaires are about such things today; in Frank's near future, I can't imagine how they'd become any more discreet, especially considering the utter lack of significant consequences for their openness thus far. Those decisions shape the mission and its goals into something other than what the inmates are told... and that's before people start dying on Mars.
From shortly after they're woken from the suspended animation that made the trip through space cost-effective (as they weren't consuming resources on the journey - not that XO doesn't have the tech, but they didn't want to waste a penny more than they had to on mere prisoners), death is a constant companion to their efforts to build a permanent habitat for future missions. It is an inherently hostile and deadly environment, so one or two deaths might be expected, but soon enough questions start arising even in Frank's mind - questions he goes out of his way to dismiss, as, despite his experience on the wrong end of the law and years spent in prison, he seems almost impossibly naive. Not only are more than one of his fellow "Martians" violent offenders, but XO itself is hardly a holy church. Metaphoric bloody daggers are bristling all over the red planet before Frank begins to seriously entertain notions of murder, and even then the culprit is eye-rollingly obvious from early on, for all that Frank draws out the "investigation" overlong (leading to more collateral damage/death) before the final confrontation.
That said, there are some strong points in this book. The author is an actual rocket scientist, and his vision of a Martian outpost is full of technical details that bring the concept to life, as well as descriptions of the stark, alien landscape that's both forbidding and oddly beautiful. His ideas of how a private tech company, driven by profit (and personal megalomania) beyond all other considerations, would approach space colonization is also exceptionally plausible. But at some point I just got too frustrated with Frank's obtuseness in the face of evidence even a barely-educated idiot like myself could see clearly. The ending is suitably intense, though the final parts again have Frank underestimating just who and what he's dealing with in ways that are bound to stab him in the back in the next volume (which I'm not sure I'm interested enough in to pursue).
While I appreciated the hard science behind Morden's story and it had several interesting and exciting parts, the characters and plot itself had me grinding my teeth too much by the end for a solid four stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Retrograde (Peter Cawdron) - My Review
Gunpowder Moon (David Perdreira) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
The Frank Kittridge series, Book 1
S. J. Morden
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, architect Frank Kittridge was an ordinary man, a husband and a father and a respectable citizen... until he took the law into his own hands and shot the untouchable dealer who hooked his son on drugs. He may have had his vengeance, but it cost him his marriage and his freedom; he's not eligible for parole until well after his natural lifespan. But then he receives a very unusual offer from the tech giant XO. In exchange for helping build the first outpost on Mars, he'll be allowed to live out the remainder of his days on the red planet - still technically a prisoner, but freed from prison on Earth, and a part of truly groundbreaking science. He accepts, as do several other inmates at Panopticon private prisons throughout California. All of them have committed crimes worth extreme sentences, so Frank knows better than to consider any of them friends, but only together can they achieve their goals and survive on a new world. But will Mars truly bring any semblance of freedom, or have Frank and the others only signed their own death warrants?
REVIEW: On the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, there's an episode where the four ladies are attending a "murder mystery" dinner, and the "detective" is presenting the evidence. The hopelessly naïve Rose pipes up with a helpful suggestion: "Maybe that bloody dagger will lead us to the murder weapon." I found myself thinking of that line, of someone who cannot or will not see the damning clues right in front of them for what they are, for a significant portion of the back end of One Way. I should not have been thinking that about a character who, unlike Rose, was not only confronting a real problem in life-or-death circumstances, but was supposed to be focused, a little jaded, and of above-average intelligence.
The story opens with Frank in prison, receiving the unusual offer from XO via a lawyer, before heading to the private training facility deep in the desert where Frank and his companions of circumstance must learn their jobs and figure out how to cooperate despite all of them being criminals. Each chapter opens with internal memos and conversations between XO executives and legal departments, showing the all-too-familiar greed and cruelty and downright sociopathic logic driving the whole project, information deliberately withheld from the test subjects. Even without that knowledge, though, I found it a little hard to believe that Frank wouldn't at least suspect some hinky behavior and motivation behind his "employer", given how brazen modern tech billionaires are about such things today; in Frank's near future, I can't imagine how they'd become any more discreet, especially considering the utter lack of significant consequences for their openness thus far. Those decisions shape the mission and its goals into something other than what the inmates are told... and that's before people start dying on Mars.
From shortly after they're woken from the suspended animation that made the trip through space cost-effective (as they weren't consuming resources on the journey - not that XO doesn't have the tech, but they didn't want to waste a penny more than they had to on mere prisoners), death is a constant companion to their efforts to build a permanent habitat for future missions. It is an inherently hostile and deadly environment, so one or two deaths might be expected, but soon enough questions start arising even in Frank's mind - questions he goes out of his way to dismiss, as, despite his experience on the wrong end of the law and years spent in prison, he seems almost impossibly naive. Not only are more than one of his fellow "Martians" violent offenders, but XO itself is hardly a holy church. Metaphoric bloody daggers are bristling all over the red planet before Frank begins to seriously entertain notions of murder, and even then the culprit is eye-rollingly obvious from early on, for all that Frank draws out the "investigation" overlong (leading to more collateral damage/death) before the final confrontation.
That said, there are some strong points in this book. The author is an actual rocket scientist, and his vision of a Martian outpost is full of technical details that bring the concept to life, as well as descriptions of the stark, alien landscape that's both forbidding and oddly beautiful. His ideas of how a private tech company, driven by profit (and personal megalomania) beyond all other considerations, would approach space colonization is also exceptionally plausible. But at some point I just got too frustrated with Frank's obtuseness in the face of evidence even a barely-educated idiot like myself could see clearly. The ending is suitably intense, though the final parts again have Frank underestimating just who and what he's dealing with in ways that are bound to stab him in the back in the next volume (which I'm not sure I'm interested enough in to pursue).
While I appreciated the hard science behind Morden's story and it had several interesting and exciting parts, the characters and plot itself had me grinding my teeth too much by the end for a solid four stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Retrograde (Peter Cawdron) - My Review
Gunpowder Moon (David Perdreira) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Fallen Angels (Walter Dean Myers)
Fallen Angels
Walter Dean Myers
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Action/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Perry was never supposed to be in Vietnam at all, let alone on the front lines. He had a bad knee from a basketball injury, and was told that he'd be given a desk job for his year of military service, the Harlem boy's only option when his college prospects fell through. But a paperwork mix-up led to him being sent overseas - for a desk job, he's assured, just until his medical profile catches up to him and he's returned stateside. Yet somehow he finds himself in a "hooch" - barracks - with the rest of the soldiers, issued a weapon, and sent on patrols. Rumors keep insisting that the war's nearly over anyway, so Perry shouldn't see much, if any, action. If that's true, someone forgot to tell the Vietcong...
REVIEW: Another frequently challenged and banned book, Fallen Angels dives straight into the nightmare experience that was Vietnam. For all the talk and propaganda about patriotism and honor and justified force, for those with boots on the ground and blood on their hands, war is hell.
Perry just wanted to go to college and become a writer or even a philosopher, but when college plans fell through, the army seemed like a not-bad option for an income and life experience. He's told, more than once, that his profile will keep him out of harm's way, and learns the hard way that recruiters and superiors sometimes lie, just as countries lie to their own citizens, the first of many harsh lessons. Indeed, Perry ends up learning more about life, death, honor, cowardice, himself, and the world in his tour than he ever imagined, starting the moment he arrives in Vietnam; a fellow green recruit is killed right in front of him before they even reach the barracks, an early warning that death is all around, at all times, and can come for anybody at any time. From this inauspicious start, Perry's experience only gets grimmer. Even his own superiors can be at least as much of a threat as the enemy - and the enemy is often nebulous and seemingly ubiquitous. Efforts to win the favor of a local village by a goodwill visit one day transition almost seamlessly into a firefight in the same village's streets shortly afterwards, a whiplash that borders on the surreal but which is just another day in the madness of the war.
More than once, Perry must ask himself what he's doing here and why he's fighting; the answers he comes up with never seem adequate to justify the horrors he sees and the death he deals to total strangers. His bonds with his bunkmates keep him sane, if just barely at times, bonds that don't spare the rough, dark humor and crudity of soldiers in high-stress situations. None of them are perfect men, and none are any more guaranteed survival than Perry himself is, especially as numbers dwindle and his unit finds itself on a suspicious number of dangerous assignments, particularly the non-white members of the unit; racism is alive and well in the ranks. Some grumble about protesters back home, especially as the flow of new recruits to fill empty bunks slows to a trickle, but the longer the war drags on (despite peace being perpetually just a few weeks away) and the higher the body count (a body count that American news somehow never mentions when it talks about the war at all), the more Perry and the others start to wonder whether they have a point. The end result is a brutal, visceral look at the true face of war, an ugly thing even when necessary and worse when the reasoning is (generously described as) ambiguous.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Forever War (Joe Haldeman) - My Review
Monster (Walter Dean Myers) - My Review
Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Sunday, October 12, 2025
The Complete Maus (Art Spiegelman)
The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
The Maus series, Volumes 1 and 2
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon
Nonfiction, Graphic Novel/History/Memoir
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Art Spiegelman always had a troubled relationship with his father, Vlatek. He knew that the man, like Art's mother Anja, had experienced terrible things during Hitler's reign in Europe, but still Vlatek could be so very, very difficult to be around. It wasn't until much later that a grown Art, now a successful cartoonist and writer, decided to try recording his father's experiences in graphic novel form. Thus, in a series of interviews and encounters spanning several years, the story unfolds, the story of how a successful young Jewish man in Poland saw the world he knew destroyed and witnessed horrors no human should ever have to experience again.
This edition includes Volume I: My Father Bleeds History and Volume II: And Here My Troubles Began.
REVIEW: I've heard of this book for many years, a Pulitzer Prize-winning record of one of history's greatest modern atrocities through the eyes of one survivor, but it never quite ventured onto my reading radar. In recent times, as efforts to censor and outright ban books gain more traction (and disturbing signs of history repeating itself play out in broad daylight, to the unheeded warnings of many and the cheers of those too ignorant to know how this story always goes and those gleefully aware and spurring it on), I decided it was high time to give it a try; anything they're trying that hard to silence must be necessary reading. I finally manged to secure a used copy... and I only wish I'd gotten to it sooner.
The tale opens with a brief glimpse of a young Art - portrayed as a mouse, all characters in the book being anthropomorphic animals - out roller skating with friends only to fall behind when his skates break. He goes home to his father, but if he was expecting sympathy, he gets none. "Friends? Your friends?" Vlatek tells his son cynically. "If you could lock them together in a room with no food for a week... then you could see what it is, friends!" This moment sets the stage for the unfolding tale, which takes up again when Art is a grown man, his relationship with Vlatek best described as "complicated"... as are Vlatek's relationships with many people, particularly Mala, the woman he married after Anja's death by suicide. The two snipe at each other ceaselessly, driving one another to their wit's end (with Art too often caught in the middle). Even many years later, Vlatek still mourns Art's mother, herself also a survivor of the camps, a pain that often expresses itself in anger and helpless frustration, not helped by failing health. Art's efforts to record Vlatek's memories are as much about trying to bridge the gap with his father and reconnect with memories of his mother (whose own memoirs Vlatek burned in his grief, a tragedy Art struggles to forgive) as documenting a vital part of world history as experienced by one man. In this way, Art develops both himself and his father as full characters, in the present and the past, not just hollow placeholders to parrot facts and figures about the Holocaust experience. This lends the story more weight than anything I recall reading in history class, driving home that these were people, real people, warts and all, who thought and dreamed and loved and feared, not statistics and not some dismissable "other" from long ago and far away. In the present, Art and Vlatek meet several times, visits often ending in frustration and arguments, while Vlatek's past - starting from just before the young man met his future wife and Art's mother Anja (daughter of a wealthy and influential man who learned too late that money was no shield against evil) and wending through the buildup to Hitler's invasion of Poland and the relentless stripping down of rights and basic humanity on the way to the camps themselves. The illustrations sometimes bleed into surreality, the only way to effectively render the terrible events unfolding. Through it all, Vlatek persisted then as he persists in modern times, through a mix of resourcefulness, luck, and sheer stubbornness, traits Art comes to understand (even if he still can't help but find the old man difficult to the point of exasperation).
Spiegelman's simple, expressive renderings and heavy lines are surprisingly eloquent and effective, and the story as it unfolds in both past and present comes together splendidly, as much a tribute to one man's endurance as a testimony of an ugly time that should never be repeated (and yet, unfortunately, has been and is and most likely will be; I'd call these times and events "inhuman" if they weren't so often the flame to which humanity seems to keep fluttering like a moth, time again and again). This is a book that only becomes more important and even necessary as witnesses to World War II fade in the rear view mirror just as fresh new horrors appear through the mists ahead, a dire warning sign as well as a tiny glimmer of grim hope that maybe, eventually, these new evils too might fall and light return to a darkened world.
You Might Also Enjoy:
All Blood Runs Red (Phil Keith with Tom Clavin) - My Review
They Called Us Enemy (George Takei et al.) - My Review
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - My Review
The Maus series, Volumes 1 and 2
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon
Nonfiction, Graphic Novel/History/Memoir
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Art Spiegelman always had a troubled relationship with his father, Vlatek. He knew that the man, like Art's mother Anja, had experienced terrible things during Hitler's reign in Europe, but still Vlatek could be so very, very difficult to be around. It wasn't until much later that a grown Art, now a successful cartoonist and writer, decided to try recording his father's experiences in graphic novel form. Thus, in a series of interviews and encounters spanning several years, the story unfolds, the story of how a successful young Jewish man in Poland saw the world he knew destroyed and witnessed horrors no human should ever have to experience again.
This edition includes Volume I: My Father Bleeds History and Volume II: And Here My Troubles Began.
REVIEW: I've heard of this book for many years, a Pulitzer Prize-winning record of one of history's greatest modern atrocities through the eyes of one survivor, but it never quite ventured onto my reading radar. In recent times, as efforts to censor and outright ban books gain more traction (and disturbing signs of history repeating itself play out in broad daylight, to the unheeded warnings of many and the cheers of those too ignorant to know how this story always goes and those gleefully aware and spurring it on), I decided it was high time to give it a try; anything they're trying that hard to silence must be necessary reading. I finally manged to secure a used copy... and I only wish I'd gotten to it sooner.
The tale opens with a brief glimpse of a young Art - portrayed as a mouse, all characters in the book being anthropomorphic animals - out roller skating with friends only to fall behind when his skates break. He goes home to his father, but if he was expecting sympathy, he gets none. "Friends? Your friends?" Vlatek tells his son cynically. "If you could lock them together in a room with no food for a week... then you could see what it is, friends!" This moment sets the stage for the unfolding tale, which takes up again when Art is a grown man, his relationship with Vlatek best described as "complicated"... as are Vlatek's relationships with many people, particularly Mala, the woman he married after Anja's death by suicide. The two snipe at each other ceaselessly, driving one another to their wit's end (with Art too often caught in the middle). Even many years later, Vlatek still mourns Art's mother, herself also a survivor of the camps, a pain that often expresses itself in anger and helpless frustration, not helped by failing health. Art's efforts to record Vlatek's memories are as much about trying to bridge the gap with his father and reconnect with memories of his mother (whose own memoirs Vlatek burned in his grief, a tragedy Art struggles to forgive) as documenting a vital part of world history as experienced by one man. In this way, Art develops both himself and his father as full characters, in the present and the past, not just hollow placeholders to parrot facts and figures about the Holocaust experience. This lends the story more weight than anything I recall reading in history class, driving home that these were people, real people, warts and all, who thought and dreamed and loved and feared, not statistics and not some dismissable "other" from long ago and far away. In the present, Art and Vlatek meet several times, visits often ending in frustration and arguments, while Vlatek's past - starting from just before the young man met his future wife and Art's mother Anja (daughter of a wealthy and influential man who learned too late that money was no shield against evil) and wending through the buildup to Hitler's invasion of Poland and the relentless stripping down of rights and basic humanity on the way to the camps themselves. The illustrations sometimes bleed into surreality, the only way to effectively render the terrible events unfolding. Through it all, Vlatek persisted then as he persists in modern times, through a mix of resourcefulness, luck, and sheer stubbornness, traits Art comes to understand (even if he still can't help but find the old man difficult to the point of exasperation).
Spiegelman's simple, expressive renderings and heavy lines are surprisingly eloquent and effective, and the story as it unfolds in both past and present comes together splendidly, as much a tribute to one man's endurance as a testimony of an ugly time that should never be repeated (and yet, unfortunately, has been and is and most likely will be; I'd call these times and events "inhuman" if they weren't so often the flame to which humanity seems to keep fluttering like a moth, time again and again). This is a book that only becomes more important and even necessary as witnesses to World War II fade in the rear view mirror just as fresh new horrors appear through the mists ahead, a dire warning sign as well as a tiny glimmer of grim hope that maybe, eventually, these new evils too might fall and light return to a darkened world.
You Might Also Enjoy:
All Blood Runs Red (Phil Keith with Tom Clavin) - My Review
They Called Us Enemy (George Takei et al.) - My Review
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - My Review
Friday, October 10, 2025
A Week in the Woods (Andrew Clements)
A Week in the Woods
Andrew Clements
Atheneum Books
Fiction, CH Adventure
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For over a decade, the highlight of the fifth grade year at Hardy Elementary has been A Week in the Woods, five days and nights camping out in a national forest and learning about the natural world. Mr. Maxwell, the science teacher, is the organizer and greatest proponent of the outing, being an avid woodsman and environmentalist. He loves sharing his passion for the wilderness with young minds, always eager to learn... but one thing he cannot stand is slackers, or spoiled, entitled, wealthy kids whose families make their money off destroying the planet. So it was inevitable that he'd take a dislike to the new kid in his class, Mark Chelmsley (the Fourth). The boy's parents spent more renovating a local historic farm house and acreage than the entire town sees in a year, and the kid himself is every bit as disengaged and even snotty as one would expect from a wealthy boy "slumming" with commoners. A kid like that might even ruin A Week in the Woods - and Mr. Maxwell is determined not to let that happen.
Mark is tired of bouncing around the world from house to house, his parents gone on business trips more often than not. He loves his caretakers, and isn't neglected by any means, but he misses Mom and Dad and doesn't really feel attached to anyone or anywhere... until he arrives in the Chelmsleys' latest home in New Hampshire. The wooded hills seem to call to him, and he develops a love of the land beyond anything he's experienced before. The only real drawback is his school - a public school, for the first time in his life - and the science teacher Mr. Maxwell. The man seems to dislike him from the start, the two developing a rivalry that only barely stays civil. But when Mr. Maxwell lets his grudge go too far, Mark finally snaps. He sets out to prove himself to the teacher and everyone... never expecting things to go so wrong.
REVIEW: Many children's books reduce adults to caricatures, mere obstacles that must be either avoided or overcome by the young protagonists. Clements never cheapens his stories like that. Here, both Mr. Maxwell and young Mark are well rounded, with clear roots and motivations for their behavior and their rivalry. The science teacher comes from a love of both teaching and the environment, and has seen what entitled people do to the planet... and what an unmotivated, slacker student can do to a classroom. Mark, meanwhile, has been told time and again that his brief foray in public school is a chance to relax; it won't really count, after all, for a boy already assured entry into an elite private boarding school, and besides his own schools covered most of the curriculum at least a year or two before so it's all old news. His disengagement masks a loneliness even the boy doesn't quite acknowledge, but which comes across to Mr. Maxwell as something else entirely. When young Mark discovers his own love of the woods, this could be a means to connect with the standoffish teacher, especially when he realizes himself how his attitude is contributing to his social isolation and he tries to change, but by then the faculty has made up its mind, especially Mr. Maxwell, who only digs in harder as the boy tries to establish a truce. It all culminates in the promised school camping trip, where Mr. Maxwell leaps to a conclusion and harsh judgement and pushes Mark too far. Given that the title and blurb center this camping trip as a main plot point, it feels like Clements drags his feet in getting there, wandering through backstory and Mark's earlier excursions into the woods on his family's property as he builds confidence and skills (helped by one of his caretakers, who has experience camping from his childhood in Russia). That said, the story does a decent job letting both Mark and Mr. Maxwell earn their lessons (it's not just the child who has something to learn, here). Despite the slower, wandering start, its portrayal of a boy's sense of wonder as he discovers a new world outdoors, how easily miscommunication between teachers and students can start, and the lasting ramifications of classroom grudges rings true.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Janitor's Boy (Andrew Clements) - My Review
My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George) - My Review
Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Andrew Clements
Atheneum Books
Fiction, CH Adventure
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For over a decade, the highlight of the fifth grade year at Hardy Elementary has been A Week in the Woods, five days and nights camping out in a national forest and learning about the natural world. Mr. Maxwell, the science teacher, is the organizer and greatest proponent of the outing, being an avid woodsman and environmentalist. He loves sharing his passion for the wilderness with young minds, always eager to learn... but one thing he cannot stand is slackers, or spoiled, entitled, wealthy kids whose families make their money off destroying the planet. So it was inevitable that he'd take a dislike to the new kid in his class, Mark Chelmsley (the Fourth). The boy's parents spent more renovating a local historic farm house and acreage than the entire town sees in a year, and the kid himself is every bit as disengaged and even snotty as one would expect from a wealthy boy "slumming" with commoners. A kid like that might even ruin A Week in the Woods - and Mr. Maxwell is determined not to let that happen.
Mark is tired of bouncing around the world from house to house, his parents gone on business trips more often than not. He loves his caretakers, and isn't neglected by any means, but he misses Mom and Dad and doesn't really feel attached to anyone or anywhere... until he arrives in the Chelmsleys' latest home in New Hampshire. The wooded hills seem to call to him, and he develops a love of the land beyond anything he's experienced before. The only real drawback is his school - a public school, for the first time in his life - and the science teacher Mr. Maxwell. The man seems to dislike him from the start, the two developing a rivalry that only barely stays civil. But when Mr. Maxwell lets his grudge go too far, Mark finally snaps. He sets out to prove himself to the teacher and everyone... never expecting things to go so wrong.
REVIEW: Many children's books reduce adults to caricatures, mere obstacles that must be either avoided or overcome by the young protagonists. Clements never cheapens his stories like that. Here, both Mr. Maxwell and young Mark are well rounded, with clear roots and motivations for their behavior and their rivalry. The science teacher comes from a love of both teaching and the environment, and has seen what entitled people do to the planet... and what an unmotivated, slacker student can do to a classroom. Mark, meanwhile, has been told time and again that his brief foray in public school is a chance to relax; it won't really count, after all, for a boy already assured entry into an elite private boarding school, and besides his own schools covered most of the curriculum at least a year or two before so it's all old news. His disengagement masks a loneliness even the boy doesn't quite acknowledge, but which comes across to Mr. Maxwell as something else entirely. When young Mark discovers his own love of the woods, this could be a means to connect with the standoffish teacher, especially when he realizes himself how his attitude is contributing to his social isolation and he tries to change, but by then the faculty has made up its mind, especially Mr. Maxwell, who only digs in harder as the boy tries to establish a truce. It all culminates in the promised school camping trip, where Mr. Maxwell leaps to a conclusion and harsh judgement and pushes Mark too far. Given that the title and blurb center this camping trip as a main plot point, it feels like Clements drags his feet in getting there, wandering through backstory and Mark's earlier excursions into the woods on his family's property as he builds confidence and skills (helped by one of his caretakers, who has experience camping from his childhood in Russia). That said, the story does a decent job letting both Mark and Mr. Maxwell earn their lessons (it's not just the child who has something to learn, here). Despite the slower, wandering start, its portrayal of a boy's sense of wonder as he discovers a new world outdoors, how easily miscommunication between teachers and students can start, and the lasting ramifications of classroom grudges rings true.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Janitor's Boy (Andrew Clements) - My Review
My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George) - My Review
Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Straight (Chuck Tingle)
Straight
Chuck Tingle
Chuck Tingle, publisher
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It started three years ago, when Earth first encountered a tear in the cosmos. For nearly twenty-four hours, a large segment of the population turned into homicidal maniacs, nearly unstoppable, only to completely forget everything they'd done afterward. It didn't take long to figure out the common factor: the monsters were straight cisgendered heterosexuals, and their targets were anyone who deviated even slightly from strict sex and gender norms. Parents and children and loved ones even turned on those closest to them, mindless as zombies and far more gruesome. Last year, as Earth's orbit passed through the tear again, a vaccine helped reduce the carnage. This year, most everyone predicts things will be even better; after all, now people know to expect "Saturation Day" and take precautions, and as scientists learn more about the phenomenon, surely it's only a matter of time until the threat is neutralized entirely. In the meantime, if people just hide away or lock themselves up, that should reduce the destruction and body count.
This Saturation Day, rather than shell out the exorbitant fees for a walled-off compound like Palm Springs or lock themselves in basements or attics, four friends on the rainbow spectrum - bisexual Issac, homosexual Jason, trans Nora, and lesbian Hazel - decide to head out to the California desert and a remote rental cabin, far away from any presumed would-be zombielike killers... and also far, far away from help when their isolated retreat becomes a death trap.
REVIEW: It's hardly a secret in late 2025 that a rabid anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda has rampaged through decades of fragile gains in equality, education, and understanding, sparks of ignorance and fear and hatred deliberately fanned into political wildfires that threaten far, far more than the ostensible target populations. This novella crystallizes the mindless violence behind that agenda that lies just barely beneath the surface of everyday civility, how marginalized voices crying out for help and justice are too often dismissed, how the collateral damage of inherently hostile cultural and legal norms is brushed aside as acceptable sacrifices, and how allies cannot always be relied upon when knives are out and blood is drawn. Even when Saturation Day brings the horrors out of the shadows and forces the majority to confront the fear and violence that non-straight, non-majority populations endure every second of every waking day, the blood literally glistening on the hands of straight perpetrators, it's too often treated as a minor inconvenience, something to be brushed aside and downplayed or a thing that someone else will surely fix soon, so in the meantime it just has to be tolerated. Tingle also addresses the internal schisms that fracture what should be a united front against the horrors perpetuated against them, as some within the community question whether bisexuals or transgenders or others "count" or should be ostracized to their own ends of the rainbow to fend for themselves.
From the very beginning, the sense of impending doom and madness is quickly established; as Isaac is packing up to flee the city, he encounters an elderly neighbor, a normally nice and liberal-minded woman on her way to be locked up by her son; she's too old for the vaccine, she explains, though she surely means him no harm... until she offers him a fresh-baked cookie with a "surprise" inside. (Signs of mental instability in the affected show up several hours before Earth enters the rift itself.) This establishes the paranoia inherent in the tale, where nobody can be considered safe - not even those who got the shot (which doesn't work on everyone) or are ordinarily more accepting in daily life. Isaac and his friends think they've found a way to outsmart Saturation Day - avoid people, avoid problems - but underestimate just how many people can be in a seemingly uninhabited desert, and just how determined the affected are to find and eliminate target populations. The metaphor's as sharp and obvious as a bloody pitchfork to the neck, though even in the midst of the carnage Isaac tries to resist and deny his own rage at his helplessness and the ineffectiveness of those who insist they'll help the foursome escape. Tingle does an excellent job evoking the terror, tension, and jump-scares of a horror movie, along with some truly gory and gruesome moments. The ending stumbles a bit, but the points it makes shine clearly.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Camp Damascus (Chuck Tingle) - My Review
Chuck Tingle
Chuck Tingle, publisher
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It started three years ago, when Earth first encountered a tear in the cosmos. For nearly twenty-four hours, a large segment of the population turned into homicidal maniacs, nearly unstoppable, only to completely forget everything they'd done afterward. It didn't take long to figure out the common factor: the monsters were straight cisgendered heterosexuals, and their targets were anyone who deviated even slightly from strict sex and gender norms. Parents and children and loved ones even turned on those closest to them, mindless as zombies and far more gruesome. Last year, as Earth's orbit passed through the tear again, a vaccine helped reduce the carnage. This year, most everyone predicts things will be even better; after all, now people know to expect "Saturation Day" and take precautions, and as scientists learn more about the phenomenon, surely it's only a matter of time until the threat is neutralized entirely. In the meantime, if people just hide away or lock themselves up, that should reduce the destruction and body count.
This Saturation Day, rather than shell out the exorbitant fees for a walled-off compound like Palm Springs or lock themselves in basements or attics, four friends on the rainbow spectrum - bisexual Issac, homosexual Jason, trans Nora, and lesbian Hazel - decide to head out to the California desert and a remote rental cabin, far away from any presumed would-be zombielike killers... and also far, far away from help when their isolated retreat becomes a death trap.
REVIEW: It's hardly a secret in late 2025 that a rabid anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda has rampaged through decades of fragile gains in equality, education, and understanding, sparks of ignorance and fear and hatred deliberately fanned into political wildfires that threaten far, far more than the ostensible target populations. This novella crystallizes the mindless violence behind that agenda that lies just barely beneath the surface of everyday civility, how marginalized voices crying out for help and justice are too often dismissed, how the collateral damage of inherently hostile cultural and legal norms is brushed aside as acceptable sacrifices, and how allies cannot always be relied upon when knives are out and blood is drawn. Even when Saturation Day brings the horrors out of the shadows and forces the majority to confront the fear and violence that non-straight, non-majority populations endure every second of every waking day, the blood literally glistening on the hands of straight perpetrators, it's too often treated as a minor inconvenience, something to be brushed aside and downplayed or a thing that someone else will surely fix soon, so in the meantime it just has to be tolerated. Tingle also addresses the internal schisms that fracture what should be a united front against the horrors perpetuated against them, as some within the community question whether bisexuals or transgenders or others "count" or should be ostracized to their own ends of the rainbow to fend for themselves.
From the very beginning, the sense of impending doom and madness is quickly established; as Isaac is packing up to flee the city, he encounters an elderly neighbor, a normally nice and liberal-minded woman on her way to be locked up by her son; she's too old for the vaccine, she explains, though she surely means him no harm... until she offers him a fresh-baked cookie with a "surprise" inside. (Signs of mental instability in the affected show up several hours before Earth enters the rift itself.) This establishes the paranoia inherent in the tale, where nobody can be considered safe - not even those who got the shot (which doesn't work on everyone) or are ordinarily more accepting in daily life. Isaac and his friends think they've found a way to outsmart Saturation Day - avoid people, avoid problems - but underestimate just how many people can be in a seemingly uninhabited desert, and just how determined the affected are to find and eliminate target populations. The metaphor's as sharp and obvious as a bloody pitchfork to the neck, though even in the midst of the carnage Isaac tries to resist and deny his own rage at his helplessness and the ineffectiveness of those who insist they'll help the foursome escape. Tingle does an excellent job evoking the terror, tension, and jump-scares of a horror movie, along with some truly gory and gruesome moments. The ending stumbles a bit, but the points it makes shine clearly.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Camp Damascus (Chuck Tingle) - My Review
Thursday, October 9, 2025
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison)
The Goblin Emperor
The Chronicles of Osreth series, Book 1
Katherine Addison
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Maia Drahzar is woken one morning to learn that he has become the elven emperor. He never, in all his 18 years, expected to inherit the crown; for one thing, he's been the least favorite royal offspring of Varenechibel IV since he was born to his goblin mother out of a political marriage and showed too clearly the dark skin of her people, and for another he's spent most of his life in exile on a remote estate to keep him out of the way, without even a royal tutor to instruct him in the ways of court and leadership. But an airship accident claimed his father and all three of his pureblood elven sons, leaving Maia the next in line. From before he sets foot in the palace at Cetho, he has enemies hoping to end his reign before it begins. Even he isn't sure he can fill the role thrust upon him, utterly ignorant of the generations-long alliances and rivalries that fill the vast halls of his new home. But Maia has no choice but to try... and if he can't be the same cold-blooded emperor that his late father was, maybe he can learn a better way to rule.
REVIEW: I'd heard about this story now and again, but not until I was intrigued by the premise of a spinoff series did I decide to give it a try. Set in a world of elves and goblins and steeped in rich cultures and history that stretches far beyond the pages, The Goblin Emperor offers a slightly different angle on high fantasy, centered on one shy, reluctant young man thrust into a role he was (intentionally) not prepared to take and having to learn on the fly what takes most leaders their whole lives to master. This can be a strength, as the tighter focus and limited setting allow the reader to more fully experience Maia's trial-by-fire immersion into palace politics and scheming. It can also be a drawback, as Addison has to spend a fair bit of page time relating the histories and tangled relationships of various key ruling houses, the political stances of various provinces, the roles of innumerable committees and personages and other functionaries, and the deep history of the grounds themselves, among other things - almost all of which has its own long elven name and title and special connotation that the reader must become familiar with to make sense of the unfolding plot.
From the start, Maia is a young man with no true friends, let alone allies, deliberately cast aside by a father who never thought a halfblood boy from an unwanted marriage would ever be useful, let alone necessary for his legacy. His elevation to the throne is a shock to himself and his minder, an older man whose anger and resentment at being stuck in the middle of a marsh looking after the least favored princeling leads to a twisted, abusive dynamic. He never wanted to be the emperor, having little but bad memories of his one and only meeting with his father, and finds the obligations of office suffocating, but escape is not an option, especially not when the next in line is a boy who would be putty in the hands of any "regent" appointed to oversee the throne. Thus, the shy, thoughtful, and sensitive boy bearing scars from a lifetime of neglect and bullying must learn to swim quickly in the quicksand he's been cast into... which he does, but not without some stumbles and setbacks. Along the way, he must finally grapple with some traumas of his childhood and the people who caused them, and determine what sort of leader he means to be. Just being half-goblin among elves who often think of goblins as barbaric cannibals (for all that halfbloods are far from rare) is enough of a challenge, without adding in his utter lack of connections among the courtiers and officials who make the machinery of the empire work (or fail to work). Even the first letter from the lord chancellor in Cetho - the letter informing him of his elevation in status and summoning him "home" for the funeral - contains traps that Maia is too naïve to recognize until they're pointed out; navigating them becomes the first test of his nascent reign. It would, he learns quickly, be quite easy to become a vengeful tyrant given his life until now and the opposition he faces from the start, but he deliberately picks an imperial name that will remind him to seek more peaceful means rather than following in Varenechibel IV's heavy footsteps. His efforts to stay true to the parts of himself that he most cherishes while growing into his robes makes for interesting reading (or listening, as this was an audiobook version)... for the most part.
What weighs the tale down is the very intricacy that gives The Goblin Emperor its depth. Addison slings innumerable names, titles, locations, and concepts at the reader, and while for the most part one can (as in many epic fantasies) sit back and let them wash past as the generalities fall into place, it can get quite confusing when particulars become plot relevant. This may have been easier for me to sort out on a printed page, as names that sound so similar when spoken may have had a distinct enough look to help me sort them better in my head. As it was, I'd be lying if I could keep even half of everyone straight, meaning there were several times when I just felt lost and was letting words go by until I could regain my bearings.
The drawbacks were just barely enough to shave a half-star off the rating, in the end. I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and could appreciate the portrait of a young man learning how to rule and make his mark in defiance of those who would dismiss or destroy him. (And, as I originally tried this to see if I'd enjoy that spinoff series, I will say it successfully convinced me to give those a try; I'm hoping it will be like my experience reading Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and being blown away after having a mixed reaction to Shadow and Bone, though I definitely liked The Goblin Emperor more than the first Grishaverse novel.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
The Chronicles of Osreth series, Book 1
Katherine Addison
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Maia Drahzar is woken one morning to learn that he has become the elven emperor. He never, in all his 18 years, expected to inherit the crown; for one thing, he's been the least favorite royal offspring of Varenechibel IV since he was born to his goblin mother out of a political marriage and showed too clearly the dark skin of her people, and for another he's spent most of his life in exile on a remote estate to keep him out of the way, without even a royal tutor to instruct him in the ways of court and leadership. But an airship accident claimed his father and all three of his pureblood elven sons, leaving Maia the next in line. From before he sets foot in the palace at Cetho, he has enemies hoping to end his reign before it begins. Even he isn't sure he can fill the role thrust upon him, utterly ignorant of the generations-long alliances and rivalries that fill the vast halls of his new home. But Maia has no choice but to try... and if he can't be the same cold-blooded emperor that his late father was, maybe he can learn a better way to rule.
REVIEW: I'd heard about this story now and again, but not until I was intrigued by the premise of a spinoff series did I decide to give it a try. Set in a world of elves and goblins and steeped in rich cultures and history that stretches far beyond the pages, The Goblin Emperor offers a slightly different angle on high fantasy, centered on one shy, reluctant young man thrust into a role he was (intentionally) not prepared to take and having to learn on the fly what takes most leaders their whole lives to master. This can be a strength, as the tighter focus and limited setting allow the reader to more fully experience Maia's trial-by-fire immersion into palace politics and scheming. It can also be a drawback, as Addison has to spend a fair bit of page time relating the histories and tangled relationships of various key ruling houses, the political stances of various provinces, the roles of innumerable committees and personages and other functionaries, and the deep history of the grounds themselves, among other things - almost all of which has its own long elven name and title and special connotation that the reader must become familiar with to make sense of the unfolding plot.
From the start, Maia is a young man with no true friends, let alone allies, deliberately cast aside by a father who never thought a halfblood boy from an unwanted marriage would ever be useful, let alone necessary for his legacy. His elevation to the throne is a shock to himself and his minder, an older man whose anger and resentment at being stuck in the middle of a marsh looking after the least favored princeling leads to a twisted, abusive dynamic. He never wanted to be the emperor, having little but bad memories of his one and only meeting with his father, and finds the obligations of office suffocating, but escape is not an option, especially not when the next in line is a boy who would be putty in the hands of any "regent" appointed to oversee the throne. Thus, the shy, thoughtful, and sensitive boy bearing scars from a lifetime of neglect and bullying must learn to swim quickly in the quicksand he's been cast into... which he does, but not without some stumbles and setbacks. Along the way, he must finally grapple with some traumas of his childhood and the people who caused them, and determine what sort of leader he means to be. Just being half-goblin among elves who often think of goblins as barbaric cannibals (for all that halfbloods are far from rare) is enough of a challenge, without adding in his utter lack of connections among the courtiers and officials who make the machinery of the empire work (or fail to work). Even the first letter from the lord chancellor in Cetho - the letter informing him of his elevation in status and summoning him "home" for the funeral - contains traps that Maia is too naïve to recognize until they're pointed out; navigating them becomes the first test of his nascent reign. It would, he learns quickly, be quite easy to become a vengeful tyrant given his life until now and the opposition he faces from the start, but he deliberately picks an imperial name that will remind him to seek more peaceful means rather than following in Varenechibel IV's heavy footsteps. His efforts to stay true to the parts of himself that he most cherishes while growing into his robes makes for interesting reading (or listening, as this was an audiobook version)... for the most part.
What weighs the tale down is the very intricacy that gives The Goblin Emperor its depth. Addison slings innumerable names, titles, locations, and concepts at the reader, and while for the most part one can (as in many epic fantasies) sit back and let them wash past as the generalities fall into place, it can get quite confusing when particulars become plot relevant. This may have been easier for me to sort out on a printed page, as names that sound so similar when spoken may have had a distinct enough look to help me sort them better in my head. As it was, I'd be lying if I could keep even half of everyone straight, meaning there were several times when I just felt lost and was letting words go by until I could regain my bearings.
The drawbacks were just barely enough to shave a half-star off the rating, in the end. I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and could appreciate the portrait of a young man learning how to rule and make his mark in defiance of those who would dismiss or destroy him. (And, as I originally tried this to see if I'd enjoy that spinoff series, I will say it successfully convinced me to give those a try; I'm hoping it will be like my experience reading Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and being blown away after having a mixed reaction to Shadow and Bone, though I definitely liked The Goblin Emperor more than the first Grishaverse novel.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Voyage of the Damned (Frances White)
Voyage of the Damned
Frances White
Mira
Fiction, Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: For generations, the twelve provinces of Concordia have held a sometimes-fragile peace between them, united by the threat of the outcast Crabs to the south, the benevolent Dragon emperor to the north, and the powerful, secret Blessings of each provincial leader. Passing down through bloodlines for generations, each dux's Blessing helps their realm to thrive and keeps potential rivals in check, but the magic comes at the cost of a shortened lifespan. Now, in honor of one thousand years of (relative) peace, the twelve Blessed have been gathered for a voyage to the sacred mountain where the Goddess first passed Her magic to mortals, to renew Concordia's ties and remind everyone of the might of the emperor.
Ganymedes Piscero, Blessed of the lowly Fish Province, would rather be anywhere else... because Ganymedes has no magic. That must have gone to one of the other byblows of his unfaithful father. But Fish Province is already looked down upon enough without having to admit that some unknown bastard child is likely running around with a Goddess's power, so it was agreed that Ganymedes would be presented as the true and Blessed heir. So long as he kept away from the others, who always bullied him anyway for his lowly province and his girth, it was a farce he could put up with. But twelve days trapped aboard a boat, surrounded by real Blessed and all their insufferable arrogance - he'd rather die.
Then the Dragon heiress is found hanging from the chandelier above the banquet table - the first murder on a voyage that will soon be awash in blood, mayhem, and danger. And the only one who can solve the murders and save Concordia may be the only "Blessed" with no Blessing - or allies - to call his own... assuming Ganymedes doesn't end up a victim, too.
REVIEW: I admit it - I was lured in again by a shiny cover, though in my defense the early pages seemed fun, a little snarky and intriguing. It also promised an interesting locked-room murder mystery, isolated on a boat with nearly a dozen magic wielders. But it wasn't long before the snark that lured me in became tiresomely obnoxious, the main character degenerated into a useless "investigator" who seemed uninterested in actually investigating anything, the suspects/victims turned out to have less depth, integrity, and believability than a Scooby Doo villain, and the whole thing just collapsed in on itself into a tangled mess.
From the start, the world is on shaky ground with Ganymedes's narration, a voice that sounds too modern and Earthbound to belong in the fantasy world of Concordia; he even shoots "finger guns" at a young couple he's flirting with, in a world where it's never clear that guns actually exist, let alone the casual use of "finger guns" gestures as a mark of interest or approval. He also came across as a teenager, not a man in his twenties, enough that I wondered whether this book was originally intended for a Young Adult audience but had been aged up with the addition of copious cursing, possibly for marketing reasons. Still, I was willing to suspend disbelief for a while, as well as suspending my irritation with his selfish immaturity (partly ameliorated when he sidesteps his selfishness in order to help a bullied child), as it was early in the book and there were some nice, interesting tidbits that promised better things and smoother sailing ahead. But it didn't take long for me to realize that, no, it's rough waters all the way to the horizon. Ganymedes only gets more obnoxious and jerky, and also food-obsessed, because of course the self-loathing jerk in the tale is also overweight for comic relief purposes. He also wastes far too much time, in the book and for the reader, stubbornly refusing to do anything, even when he ostensibly decides to play detective and solve the mystery. What good is an investigator that refuses to investigate? His efforts too often amount to little more than scribbling on a useless "detective board" in his cabin (which even he doesn't take seriously, from the flippant and frivolous notes he pens - it's not like he's in danger himself or anything, to focus his attention - and if the narrator/main character isn't taking multiple murders seriously, why should I as a reader?), and avoiding actually asking useful questions or untangling motives. When he does interact with his fellow Blessed/potential suspects, his abrasive personality and refusal to take anything seriously completely undermines any investigative value before five words have left his mouth. As for his allies, he has the unpromising sidekicks of a sickly teenager and a precocious/pushy six-year-old girl who turns invisible when stressed (her recently-manifested Blessing, after the previous heir to her province passed) and eats far too much page count not contributing anything except being a cutesy distraction from the murder mystery (but, then Ganymedes was already deliberately not investigating the murders, so she could hardly be blamed for that). Again, her presence really made me wonder if this book had originally been intended for a younger audience, one where six-year-olds running around stuffing their face with candy and being in everyone's face while spouting cutesy non sequiturs wouldn't have clashed so blatantly with the whole grisly-murder vibe it intermittently tried to project.
As mentioned previously, the other Blessed - and the world itself - become too surreally cartoonish and flat to take seriously. The magic-powered ship is so expansive and full of so much handwaved, plot-convenient things (cabins so big and transformed that they might as well not even be on a boat, for instance, and cutesy plush dragon servants who mostly exist to be cutesy and plush and provide a convenient way to explain a lack of serving staff, or even how food is prepared), while the people of each province can be readily identified by colored hair and particular traits that would not be out of place in a half-baked off-brand comic book. Eventually, the author gets around to introducing something like character depth and reasons behind Ganymedes's behavior (far too little too late to make me actually enjoy his company as narrator, but I did appreciate the effort), though the ultimate unmasking and explanation happen less because of Ganymedes's dogged determination to find the truth and more because he fails so utterly that the villain more or less monologues their plot just before the final bits. Another late game twist cut the legs out from under a subplot in a way I won't discuss (to avoid spoilers) but which completely undermined one of the few seemingly genuine bits of conflict and character growth of the ostensible protagonist. The last stretch has Ganymedes forced to actually do something, though by then I was long past caring whether Concordia or any of the characters still living in it survived.
I wanted to enjoy this one. It had potential, and it promised something a little fresh and a little different. Unfortunately, the bits I enjoyed (and there were a handful) were too few and far between.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green) - My Review
Frances White
Mira
Fiction, Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: For generations, the twelve provinces of Concordia have held a sometimes-fragile peace between them, united by the threat of the outcast Crabs to the south, the benevolent Dragon emperor to the north, and the powerful, secret Blessings of each provincial leader. Passing down through bloodlines for generations, each dux's Blessing helps their realm to thrive and keeps potential rivals in check, but the magic comes at the cost of a shortened lifespan. Now, in honor of one thousand years of (relative) peace, the twelve Blessed have been gathered for a voyage to the sacred mountain where the Goddess first passed Her magic to mortals, to renew Concordia's ties and remind everyone of the might of the emperor.
Ganymedes Piscero, Blessed of the lowly Fish Province, would rather be anywhere else... because Ganymedes has no magic. That must have gone to one of the other byblows of his unfaithful father. But Fish Province is already looked down upon enough without having to admit that some unknown bastard child is likely running around with a Goddess's power, so it was agreed that Ganymedes would be presented as the true and Blessed heir. So long as he kept away from the others, who always bullied him anyway for his lowly province and his girth, it was a farce he could put up with. But twelve days trapped aboard a boat, surrounded by real Blessed and all their insufferable arrogance - he'd rather die.
Then the Dragon heiress is found hanging from the chandelier above the banquet table - the first murder on a voyage that will soon be awash in blood, mayhem, and danger. And the only one who can solve the murders and save Concordia may be the only "Blessed" with no Blessing - or allies - to call his own... assuming Ganymedes doesn't end up a victim, too.
REVIEW: I admit it - I was lured in again by a shiny cover, though in my defense the early pages seemed fun, a little snarky and intriguing. It also promised an interesting locked-room murder mystery, isolated on a boat with nearly a dozen magic wielders. But it wasn't long before the snark that lured me in became tiresomely obnoxious, the main character degenerated into a useless "investigator" who seemed uninterested in actually investigating anything, the suspects/victims turned out to have less depth, integrity, and believability than a Scooby Doo villain, and the whole thing just collapsed in on itself into a tangled mess.
From the start, the world is on shaky ground with Ganymedes's narration, a voice that sounds too modern and Earthbound to belong in the fantasy world of Concordia; he even shoots "finger guns" at a young couple he's flirting with, in a world where it's never clear that guns actually exist, let alone the casual use of "finger guns" gestures as a mark of interest or approval. He also came across as a teenager, not a man in his twenties, enough that I wondered whether this book was originally intended for a Young Adult audience but had been aged up with the addition of copious cursing, possibly for marketing reasons. Still, I was willing to suspend disbelief for a while, as well as suspending my irritation with his selfish immaturity (partly ameliorated when he sidesteps his selfishness in order to help a bullied child), as it was early in the book and there were some nice, interesting tidbits that promised better things and smoother sailing ahead. But it didn't take long for me to realize that, no, it's rough waters all the way to the horizon. Ganymedes only gets more obnoxious and jerky, and also food-obsessed, because of course the self-loathing jerk in the tale is also overweight for comic relief purposes. He also wastes far too much time, in the book and for the reader, stubbornly refusing to do anything, even when he ostensibly decides to play detective and solve the mystery. What good is an investigator that refuses to investigate? His efforts too often amount to little more than scribbling on a useless "detective board" in his cabin (which even he doesn't take seriously, from the flippant and frivolous notes he pens - it's not like he's in danger himself or anything, to focus his attention - and if the narrator/main character isn't taking multiple murders seriously, why should I as a reader?), and avoiding actually asking useful questions or untangling motives. When he does interact with his fellow Blessed/potential suspects, his abrasive personality and refusal to take anything seriously completely undermines any investigative value before five words have left his mouth. As for his allies, he has the unpromising sidekicks of a sickly teenager and a precocious/pushy six-year-old girl who turns invisible when stressed (her recently-manifested Blessing, after the previous heir to her province passed) and eats far too much page count not contributing anything except being a cutesy distraction from the murder mystery (but, then Ganymedes was already deliberately not investigating the murders, so she could hardly be blamed for that). Again, her presence really made me wonder if this book had originally been intended for a younger audience, one where six-year-olds running around stuffing their face with candy and being in everyone's face while spouting cutesy non sequiturs wouldn't have clashed so blatantly with the whole grisly-murder vibe it intermittently tried to project.
As mentioned previously, the other Blessed - and the world itself - become too surreally cartoonish and flat to take seriously. The magic-powered ship is so expansive and full of so much handwaved, plot-convenient things (cabins so big and transformed that they might as well not even be on a boat, for instance, and cutesy plush dragon servants who mostly exist to be cutesy and plush and provide a convenient way to explain a lack of serving staff, or even how food is prepared), while the people of each province can be readily identified by colored hair and particular traits that would not be out of place in a half-baked off-brand comic book. Eventually, the author gets around to introducing something like character depth and reasons behind Ganymedes's behavior (far too little too late to make me actually enjoy his company as narrator, but I did appreciate the effort), though the ultimate unmasking and explanation happen less because of Ganymedes's dogged determination to find the truth and more because he fails so utterly that the villain more or less monologues their plot just before the final bits. Another late game twist cut the legs out from under a subplot in a way I won't discuss (to avoid spoilers) but which completely undermined one of the few seemingly genuine bits of conflict and character growth of the ostensible protagonist. The last stretch has Ganymedes forced to actually do something, though by then I was long past caring whether Concordia or any of the characters still living in it survived.
I wanted to enjoy this one. It had potential, and it promised something a little fresh and a little different. Unfortunately, the bits I enjoyed (and there were a handful) were too few and far between.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green) - My Review
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