Three Little Wishes (Paul Cornell)

Three Little Wishes
Paul Cornell, illustrations by Steven Yeowell
Legendary Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: The qualities that make Kelly a great lawyer are the same ones that make her personal life miserable. Nobody reads the fine print more closely, or writes a more airtight contract... or lives by such strict rules that she can't even get five minutes into a blind date before overthinking things to death. Worried that Kelly is building walls of rules so thick she'll suffocate in them and die alone and miserable, her best friend Annie pushes her to do one impulsive thing - just one, no matter how small (and no matter how drunk she has to be to do it).
Which is how, thanks to the power of alcohol and an online auction, Kelly came into possession of an abandoned self-storage unit full of random junk - including one old bottle containing a trapped fairy lord, none other than the legendary King Oberon himself.
Oberon makes the incredulous woman an offer any mortal should jump at: three wishes, to do whatever selfish, impulsive, ill-thought-out things they please (and which the fairy will have no end of fun twisting around for his own amusement, because nobody can find a hole to exploit in a wish like he can). But Kelly is nothing at all like the other humans he's encountered in his long life. Not only does she refuse to use her wishes for personal gain, but she treats them as she would any contract negotiation - to the point where her first wish, for world peace, actually brings an end to global war and violent crimes. But even the best-worded and best-intentioned wishes can go terribly awry... and even the most selfless and rigidly rule-bound person (or the oldest and most devious of fairy kings) might find themselves in the sort of trouble they never anticipated.

REVIEW: An impulse read to kill time (when I wasn't concentrating enough to read a paperback), Three Little Wishes has a fun premise, but seems a bit confused as to what to do with it, or the characters it introduces.
Kelly is the ultimate contract lawyer who uses rules to shield herself from life's scary ambiguities and pitfalls. A (not-so-) recent breakup with Michael, one of the few men to last more than one date with her, only made her that much more rigid... especially since she knows it was her overthinking and overanalyzing and refusal to bend one iota to accommodate another human being (or allow a sliver of spontaneity into their lives) that killed the relationship. When Annie, among the few implied friends she has, pushes Kelly to break loose and do something spontaneous, Kelly bumbles and fumbles and fails until sufficiently lubricated with liquor (and the ease of online auction sites). It reduces her a bit from a full character to the sort of shallow caricature I've seen in too many half-baked rom-coms that reduce women to flailing, helpless objects trapped by their own foolishness (until a guy helpfully saves them from themselves, of course). Oberon, too, is supposed to have a more nuanced backstory that eventually comes out, but I also found him a bit hard to connect with.
I get that it was a comedy, of course, but humor is inherently subjective, and the brand on display here just felt too clunky and forced, especially given how it tries to both cling to the low-hanging fruit tropes and also explore and elevate its core concept of a mortal woman figuring out how to actually get a wish out of a trickster fairy without having it twisted back on her in an ironic or literal way. Oberon's abilities (or lack thereof) feel random and plot-convenient, as does his uneven character growth from a being who resents foolish mortals and enjoys defrauding them with deliberately-warped wishes to one who actually comes to understand and even care about people. Annie too often feels like a third wheel, the Black best friend who exists simply to support and enable the white lead in her pursuit of a more fulfilled life, and later in the story Michael is reintroduced in a way that challenges Kelly's determination to not use any of Oberon's magic on her own wants. As she struggles with renewed feelings for her ex, she finds herself facing unexpected fallout from her first wish, which may have ended a lot of human suffering but also led to a lot of people (and nations) losing a lot of money and jobs - such as an assassin who tries to resort to indirect methods to taking out the woman who ended his career. (How everyone found out it was Kelly also had the feeling of a plot weakness, because of course women can't help gossiping online, tee-hee.)
Things eventually resolve and the expected lessons are learned by the expected characters, but I couldn't help feeling an itch of dissatisfaction with how it all played out. It's an okay enough story, but I kept feeling like it could've been more than just "okay" if it had moved beyond the expected, tired rom-com cliches it seemed determined to cling to, even when the story tried to rise beyond them.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Coda Vol. 1 (Simon Spurrier) - My Review

The Suicide Motor Club (Christopher Buehlman)

The Suicide Motor Club
Christopher Buehlman
Berkley
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It was an ordinary night on the road in late 1960's America, and the Lamb family was driving home under the light of a golden-orange rising moon... until a horror beyond imagining shattered their happiness and left only young wife and mother Judith alive. In the moments before the crash that would end her husband's life, she got a good look at the people in the other car - the man with the cat-bright eyes and long fangs who pulled her young son from his seat through the open window, a memory seared into her brain even when nobody else believes her. But even as she is told, again and again, how only a miracle could have spared her, she knows that she has looked into the eyes of pure evil.
Years later, dedicating herself to the service of God as a nun, she is contacted by a stranger who actually believes her - a man who offers her a chance to hunt down and end the monsters who took her son and her happiness, a pack of vampires known as the Suicide Motor Club who use roadside "accidents" as cover for their kills. But is this secretive group, the Bereaved, truly a path to peace and salvation... and, if so, what is she to make of the unusual vampire who offers to help her in her quest?

REVIEW: Tangentially connected to Buehlman's The Lesser Dead through shared vampire lore and references to one character in particular, The Suicide Motor Club largely stands on its own, a story of inhuman predators and flawed people and the now-faded heyday of American muscle cars on the open roads.
Judith Lamb starts out, if not entirely happy with her lot - her marriage is best described as "complicated" - then reasonably content, enough that the loss of her pre-crash life cuts deep into her soul in a wound that will never truly heal. She turns eventually to faith, leaning into a belief she has carried since childhood as she struggles to make sense of not only her survival but of the horrific things she saw snatch her boy literally from her grasp, and even if she ultimately must walk her own path and find her own way to redemption outside the convent, she carries the strength of her belief into the coming battle. It is not a simplistic thing, her faith in her God, a faith tested not only by what she sees among the Bereaved and in her prophetic visions but also by her interactions with Clayton, a vampire who defies most everything she thought she knew about the undead. Clayton himself is a complicated figure, a vampire who struggles to retain some restraint even as he is surrounded by those who gleefully embrace their monstrous natures and the liberty it gives them to be the worst abominations they can be. (As with Buehlman's other titles, punches are not pulled and quarter is not given; these are bloodthirsty, depraved vampires to whom humans are not just prey of necessity but the most deliciously fragile toys to torment and smash and discard at leisure.) The story moves between Judith's struggles and the depredation of the Suicide Motor Club as they crisscross the country, racking up a small mountain's worth of collateral damage, before the inevitable confrontation... one that doesn't play out as anyone expects, in a climax that threatens to overplay its tension before finally coming to an ending that leaves some ambiguous threads dangling. I preferred this book's wrapup to the one in The Lesser Dead, even with that ambiguity and sense that there is more to tell.
The whole makes for a nicely twisted story of monsters and humans, belief and disbelief, and the often twisted, ever-shifting lines between good and evil, even within the same individual.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan le Fanu) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review

Fortunately, the Milk (Neil Gaiman)

Fortunately, the Milk
Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: A lack of milk threatens to ruin breakfast (not to mention tea), so a father dutifully sets off to the nearby store to fetch some. When the trip takes far longer than the children figure it ought to, he explains just what happened along the way - if they believe him, that is...

REVIEW: This is a simple, fun tale of a grocery run gone humorously wrong (at least, according to one man). From alien abduction to time travel and pirates to a memorable encounter with a curious inventor (who happens to be a Stegosaurus) and more, the hapless father just can't seem to make his way home to his children and their dry bowls of breakfast cereal. Fortunately, he manages to keep hold of the precious bottle of milk throughout his incredible adventures. The various elements tie together by the end of the dubious story, and if the whole thing is rather frothy and silly, well, it is ultimately just a tall tale about a milk run.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Chloe and the Lion (Mac Barnett) - My Review
Cold Cereal (Adam Rex) - My Review
Time Travel Dinosaur (Matt Youngmark) - My Review

September Site Update

The month has been unpleasantly eventful, but I still managed to get the main Brightdreamer Books site updated.

Enjoy!

Holmes on the Range (Steve Hockensmith)

Holmes on the Range
The Holmes on the Range series, Book 1
Steve Hockensmith
Minotaur Books
Fiction, Humor/Mystery/Western
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It's 1893, and the Amlingmeyer brothers - Otto and Gustav, better known as "Big Red" and "Old Red" for their fiery hair - are looking for off-season work in Montana cattle country. As cowpokes, they've been up and down the prairies plying their trade, but Old Red harbors secret aspirations. Ever since he heard the stories of the English detective Sherlock Holmes, he's got it into his head that he, too, could be a great detective, even if he never went to school or learned to read. Big Red, of course, has some doubts. Even if his big brother has the mind for deduction, where in the middle of nowhere is he going to prove it?
While washing the trail dust from their mouths at the Hornet's Nest saloon in Mile City, the Amlingmeyer brothers stumble into a job with a local ranch... one with a decidedly unfriendly foreman and some odd expectations. Instead of roping steers and riding the range, the handful of new hires are set to work cleaning up the dilapidated grounds, warned never to wander out of sight or mix with the other hired hands. Indeed, the crew are watched all day by decidedly unfriendly eyes. Big Red has distinct misgivings about the position, for all that beggars can't be choosers, but Old Red is positively ecstatic: he just knows there's something foul going on at the Cantlemere Ranch, and this is the closest to an actual case he's come across. When the dapper general manager, Perkins, is found trampled to death after a storm, everyone's willing to write it off as bad luck - except Old Red. With his large little brother in tow, he sets out to crack the case... not realizing just how much trouble he's about to ride into.

REVIEW: Sherlock pastiches can be tiresome and overplayed, particularly when it feels like the author just cut-and-pasted a caricature of the great detective and his dogged companion into another setting. Holmes on the Range, on the other hand, is more homage than pastiche. Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer may have devoted himself to studying Sherlock Holmes's methods via Doctor Watson's written accounts in Harper's Weekly magazines (in this iteration, Holmes and Watson are real people, not fictional creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), but he's very much his own personality, firmly rooted in his own history. Despite having no formal schooling, he's determined to prove that he's more than just a lowly brute laborer, and indeed shows himself to have a brilliant mind, if one that works in its own ways. Likewise, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer is no Watson. Though devoted to his last surviving family member, who taught him everything he knows about cowpunching, he's not beyond clapping back at his brother, and isn't set up to be the bumbling fool that Watson was sometimes reduced to in Holmes's adventures. The setting isn't a sanitized Old West, the kind seen in paintings or old TV shows, but one full of unruly cattle and unruly cowboys, stinking outhouses and stinking bodies pounded to mush in the Montana mud, classism and racism and other ways humans find to treat other humans worse than the pigs they slaughter for sausages. By aiming to capture the spirit of Doyle's iconic characters rather than the strict letter, Hockensmith succeeds where many others fail.
From the start, Old Red has suspicions about the ranch and its crew, but it's not until Perkins's body turns up that his detective skills kick into high gear. Though he keeps some things to himself, he lets his brother in on a fair bit of his reasoning, making Big Red more of a partner and less of a struggling tagalong. With logic, observation, and the instincts born of a hard life on the frontier, not to mention prodigal tracking skills, the would-be detective starts piecing together a picture that involves fishy hired hands, a suspiciously-timed visit by the English stakeholders, scandals stretching from America to the old country, and even a subplot involving an escaped madman known as "Hungry Bob", a notorious convicted cannibal who may or may not be implicated in crimes around the property. Big Red's narration has a humorous streak, but also serious weight, bringing the distinctive characters to life. Along the way, the Amlingmeyers learn the hard way that detective work isn't at all what they imagined it would be like from those Harper's Weekly stories, much more complicated and much more dangerous. The action and intrigue ratchet up nicely through the tale, with hardly any lulls along the way to a breakneck climax that sees many truths revealed, though at a cost neither brother could've anticipated. This is a series I wouldn't mind following for at least another book, with a nice balance of humor and mystery in a gritty Western setting.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) - My Review
Unwanted: Dead or Alive (Gene Shelton) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review