100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli
David LaRochelle, illustrations by Lian Cho
Dial Books
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor/Picture Book
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: 100 dragons live together in a high mountain cave, each and every one of them named Broccoli. When a storm sweeps half of them away, the dragons begin to find their own ways in the world... and maybe new names.
REVIEW: This picture book has one of the best titles ever, and I finally managed to read it during some down time at my job. With colorful images, and sparse words, the tale counts down (and sometimes up) the remaining dragons in the mountain cave as the horde breaks up and seeks their fortunes in a variety of places doing a variety of jobs, from becoming professional surfers in Hawaii to trying their luck as actors in Hollywood. A nice tale with plenty of fun dragon antics to enjoy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Dignity of Dragons (Jacqueline Ogburn) - My Review
The Dragons are Singing Tonight (Jack Prelutsky) - My Review
Dragons Love Tacos (Adam Rubin) - My Review
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Welcome to Night Vale (Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor)
Welcome to Night Vale
The Welcome to Night Vale series, Book 1
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Harper Perennial
Fiction, Humor/Literary Fiction/Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The desert town of Night Vale is a place much like any other, where monstrous librarians stalk the shelves of their bookish domain, where the waitress at the local all-night cafe offers customers invisible pie and fresh fruit growing from the branches that sprout from her wooden body, where every road out of town seems to loop right back to the city limits, and where the ghost of a faceless old woman can be found in every home... just your typical small American town. There are many stories in the streets of Night Vale, many happenings that might be deemed odd or even impossible.
Jackie Fierro runs Night Vale's only pawn shop, though she's only nineteen, and has been only nineteen for decades, possibly centuries. It's a shop as peculiar as the town itself, where people are as likely to bring in cursed plastic flamingos or single tears as watches or jewelry, and as likely to be paid in dreams or secrets as with money. Still, for all the strangeness that she works with daily, even she is disturbed when the man in the tan suit hands her a peculiar sheet of paper that she cannot let go of, no matter how hard she tries - a paper with the words "King City" printed upon it. Who is the man? Where is King City? And why is her ordered, ordinary life now skewing so far out of her control?
Single mother Diane Crayton has been working for many years at an office where nobody quite knows what they do, even the employees, but it pays well enough to support herself and her son Josh. Raising a boy who changes shape daily - everything from new faces to utterly inhuman forms and even inanimate objects - is a challenge, especially now that he's a teenager and starting to ask uncomfortable questions about his long-absent father Troy. The man disappeared shortly after Josh was born, and she hasn't seen him since... until, out of the blue, she spies him in the streets of Night Vale. Only there seems to be more than one Troy, a puzzle further complicated when she has an encounter with a man whose name and face she cannot remember but who presses upon her a piece of paper on which are written the words "King City".
Jackie and Diane have little in common, and don't even necessarily like each other, but as their paths keep crossing they realize that they're both facing a greater mystery, and a greater danger, than either can solve on their own.
REVIEW: I have never listened to the long-running podcast on which this book is based, so it's likely I'm missing some context or nuance coming at the story cold. As promised, Welcome to Night Vale delivers a surreal, often darkly comic aesthetic and a tale that bends reality and even causality into five-dimensional pretzels. At some point, though, the story and characters feel a bit lost in the constant firehose of strange happenings and tangential oddities.
With a constant through-line of odd broadcasts from the town's only radio station and talk show, "Welcome to Night Vale", the tale wastes little time laying the weird foundations for what turns out to be a very weird journey. Night Vale exists in a sort of alternate reality, like the far fringes of the multiverse where infinite possibilities begin breaking down into bizarre improbabilities and dream (or nightmare) logic. Time itself doesn't function properly, to the point where each person seems to live their own lives entirely out of synch with their neighbors. Characters who live in a town like this cannot help but be a bit strange, but they're also unfortunately difficult to care about or relate to, even when dealing with relatable themes like family friction and a crisis of life direction. I didn't particularly like either Jackie or Diane, and the town itself was so disconnected from anything like continuity or reality that nothing that happened in, around, or to it seemed to matter anyway. This sense of detachment was not helped by how the nominal heroines often did unintelligent things at unintelligent times, even given the peculiar standards and circumstances of existence in Night Vale. That said, there were several lines that had me chuckling out loud, and some interesting ideas. It had some nice moments and memorable imagery, and I wanted to enjoy it. By the end, though, I found the resolution flat and unsatisfactory, like a very long walk down what was ultimately a short trail to nowhere and back, a story that seemed less interested in telling itself than about relating the strange, silly surreality of its setting.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Going Bovine (Libba Bray) - My Review
Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero) - My Review
John Dies at the End (David Wong) - My Review
The Welcome to Night Vale series, Book 1
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Harper Perennial
Fiction, Humor/Literary Fiction/Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The desert town of Night Vale is a place much like any other, where monstrous librarians stalk the shelves of their bookish domain, where the waitress at the local all-night cafe offers customers invisible pie and fresh fruit growing from the branches that sprout from her wooden body, where every road out of town seems to loop right back to the city limits, and where the ghost of a faceless old woman can be found in every home... just your typical small American town. There are many stories in the streets of Night Vale, many happenings that might be deemed odd or even impossible.
Jackie Fierro runs Night Vale's only pawn shop, though she's only nineteen, and has been only nineteen for decades, possibly centuries. It's a shop as peculiar as the town itself, where people are as likely to bring in cursed plastic flamingos or single tears as watches or jewelry, and as likely to be paid in dreams or secrets as with money. Still, for all the strangeness that she works with daily, even she is disturbed when the man in the tan suit hands her a peculiar sheet of paper that she cannot let go of, no matter how hard she tries - a paper with the words "King City" printed upon it. Who is the man? Where is King City? And why is her ordered, ordinary life now skewing so far out of her control?
Single mother Diane Crayton has been working for many years at an office where nobody quite knows what they do, even the employees, but it pays well enough to support herself and her son Josh. Raising a boy who changes shape daily - everything from new faces to utterly inhuman forms and even inanimate objects - is a challenge, especially now that he's a teenager and starting to ask uncomfortable questions about his long-absent father Troy. The man disappeared shortly after Josh was born, and she hasn't seen him since... until, out of the blue, she spies him in the streets of Night Vale. Only there seems to be more than one Troy, a puzzle further complicated when she has an encounter with a man whose name and face she cannot remember but who presses upon her a piece of paper on which are written the words "King City".
Jackie and Diane have little in common, and don't even necessarily like each other, but as their paths keep crossing they realize that they're both facing a greater mystery, and a greater danger, than either can solve on their own.
REVIEW: I have never listened to the long-running podcast on which this book is based, so it's likely I'm missing some context or nuance coming at the story cold. As promised, Welcome to Night Vale delivers a surreal, often darkly comic aesthetic and a tale that bends reality and even causality into five-dimensional pretzels. At some point, though, the story and characters feel a bit lost in the constant firehose of strange happenings and tangential oddities.
With a constant through-line of odd broadcasts from the town's only radio station and talk show, "Welcome to Night Vale", the tale wastes little time laying the weird foundations for what turns out to be a very weird journey. Night Vale exists in a sort of alternate reality, like the far fringes of the multiverse where infinite possibilities begin breaking down into bizarre improbabilities and dream (or nightmare) logic. Time itself doesn't function properly, to the point where each person seems to live their own lives entirely out of synch with their neighbors. Characters who live in a town like this cannot help but be a bit strange, but they're also unfortunately difficult to care about or relate to, even when dealing with relatable themes like family friction and a crisis of life direction. I didn't particularly like either Jackie or Diane, and the town itself was so disconnected from anything like continuity or reality that nothing that happened in, around, or to it seemed to matter anyway. This sense of detachment was not helped by how the nominal heroines often did unintelligent things at unintelligent times, even given the peculiar standards and circumstances of existence in Night Vale. That said, there were several lines that had me chuckling out loud, and some interesting ideas. It had some nice moments and memorable imagery, and I wanted to enjoy it. By the end, though, I found the resolution flat and unsatisfactory, like a very long walk down what was ultimately a short trail to nowhere and back, a story that seemed less interested in telling itself than about relating the strange, silly surreality of its setting.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Going Bovine (Libba Bray) - My Review
Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero) - My Review
John Dies at the End (David Wong) - My Review
Monday, March 31, 2025
March Site Update
Yet another month that felt like it overachieved by packing a year's worth of horrors into thirty-one days... Anyway, the month's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, March 28, 2025
Fundamentals (Frank Wilczek)
Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality
Frank Wilczek
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Science
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: What is the universe? How did it begin? How will it end? What is it made of, and how can we tell? Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek walks the reader through ten fundamental concepts that help explain the world around us, the discoveries that illuminated them, and what further questions remain.
REVIEW: Oh, what a difference a mere few years makes... Published in 2021, Fundamentals at times seems impossibly optimistic as it extols a wonderful potential future for humanity and the sciences, how civilization has only grown more accepting of science and empathy, how AI will soon usher in a golden age for the planet. It was almost painful to listen to in early 2025, in a country whose leaders have openly railed against the "sin of empathy" as a destroyer of Western civilization, that has deported scientists and hacked research off at the knees and cowed universities into submission, that has become almost giddy in its rush to reject the very concept of science and the accumulated intelligence and knowledge of centuries as it elevates the basest and most debunked superstitions to national policy and law, how the AI Wilczek hoped would save the world has become a major destructive force in the hands of greed that is being used to undermine the notion of reality itself... but I digress. Setting aside the stark contrast of the dismal present compared to the author's hoped-for future (which seems rooted in a sadly unrealistic notion of our species, or at least those of our species who have grasped the most power to shape our destinies), this is an interesting, if occasionally overwhelming, exploration of the nature of reality itself, from the smallest subatomic particles and forces to the greater universe at large, from clues about cosmic origins and hints about its future. Along the way, he explains the processes that led to the various discoveries and theories, how everyone can benefit from adopting a more scientific attitude toward life and the unknown, and how science is in no way incompatible with philosophy or even (non-fundamentalist) theology. Though - once again - I was unable to find the promised downloadable supplemental PDF file with this Libby audiobook, I found it intriguing. I just had a very hard time even pretending to share a glimmer of the author's wonder and optimism through the metaphoric stormclouds on the national horizon...
You Might Also Enjoy:
It's Not Rocket Science (Ben Miller) - My Review
Everything All at Once (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson) - My Review
Frank Wilczek
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Science
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: What is the universe? How did it begin? How will it end? What is it made of, and how can we tell? Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek walks the reader through ten fundamental concepts that help explain the world around us, the discoveries that illuminated them, and what further questions remain.
REVIEW: Oh, what a difference a mere few years makes... Published in 2021, Fundamentals at times seems impossibly optimistic as it extols a wonderful potential future for humanity and the sciences, how civilization has only grown more accepting of science and empathy, how AI will soon usher in a golden age for the planet. It was almost painful to listen to in early 2025, in a country whose leaders have openly railed against the "sin of empathy" as a destroyer of Western civilization, that has deported scientists and hacked research off at the knees and cowed universities into submission, that has become almost giddy in its rush to reject the very concept of science and the accumulated intelligence and knowledge of centuries as it elevates the basest and most debunked superstitions to national policy and law, how the AI Wilczek hoped would save the world has become a major destructive force in the hands of greed that is being used to undermine the notion of reality itself... but I digress. Setting aside the stark contrast of the dismal present compared to the author's hoped-for future (which seems rooted in a sadly unrealistic notion of our species, or at least those of our species who have grasped the most power to shape our destinies), this is an interesting, if occasionally overwhelming, exploration of the nature of reality itself, from the smallest subatomic particles and forces to the greater universe at large, from clues about cosmic origins and hints about its future. Along the way, he explains the processes that led to the various discoveries and theories, how everyone can benefit from adopting a more scientific attitude toward life and the unknown, and how science is in no way incompatible with philosophy or even (non-fundamentalist) theology. Though - once again - I was unable to find the promised downloadable supplemental PDF file with this Libby audiobook, I found it intriguing. I just had a very hard time even pretending to share a glimmer of the author's wonder and optimism through the metaphoric stormclouds on the national horizon...
You Might Also Enjoy:
It's Not Rocket Science (Ben Miller) - My Review
Everything All at Once (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson) - My Review
Thursday, March 27, 2025
The Langoliers (Stephen King)
The Langoliers
The Four Past Midnight series, Book 1
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Pilot Brian Engle never meant to be on the redeye from Los Angeles to Boston, especially not so soon after completing another cross-country flight. But this time he's a passenger, rushing back to Boston after his ex-wife's untimely death. Thus, he finds himself on another American Pride jet shortly after departing the cockpit, so exhausted he falls asleep shortly after takeoff... to wake up in a nightmare. The plane is empty save a handful of other passengers, flying on autopilot over an America with no cities, no towns - no life. As the survivors try to figure out what to do and where to go and if they can ever get back to where they came from, they all become aware that a danger is approaching, a danger that takes form in one passenger's childhood tales of all-devouring monsters called the Langoliers.
REVIEW: This novella explores some familiar King themes: an isolated group stranded by an inexplicable Event, a largely-unseen and essentially unstoppable threat, the threat of madness within the group even as the enemy threatens without, and underlying hints of supernatural or psychic phenomena. I thought King explored these ideas a bit better in other stories, but this one does its job and hits its marks, creating ever-rising tension with creepy and memorable imagery, even if the characters sometimes feel a little flat and stereotyped. More than once, I wanted to shake the people to remind them to stop dithering and babbling and taking forever to explain things when the danger is marching relentlessly closer to them, but this isn't the first story where I've felt that urge.
It might have earned a Good rating, save it felt a little weak in spots and the audiobook narration of the edition I checked out from Libby was irritating. The narrator's pitch and volume kept rising and falling, surging and fading, all woven around musical accompaniment that threatened to overwhelm the quieter and lower parts. I kept having to crank up the volume, only to drop it half a minute later when he raised his voice again and nearly blew out my eardrums. It made for a frustrating listening experience that affected my overall enjoyment.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Mist (Stephen King) - My Review
The Hollow Places (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Secret Hour (Scott Westerfield) - My Review
The Four Past Midnight series, Book 1
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Pilot Brian Engle never meant to be on the redeye from Los Angeles to Boston, especially not so soon after completing another cross-country flight. But this time he's a passenger, rushing back to Boston after his ex-wife's untimely death. Thus, he finds himself on another American Pride jet shortly after departing the cockpit, so exhausted he falls asleep shortly after takeoff... to wake up in a nightmare. The plane is empty save a handful of other passengers, flying on autopilot over an America with no cities, no towns - no life. As the survivors try to figure out what to do and where to go and if they can ever get back to where they came from, they all become aware that a danger is approaching, a danger that takes form in one passenger's childhood tales of all-devouring monsters called the Langoliers.
REVIEW: This novella explores some familiar King themes: an isolated group stranded by an inexplicable Event, a largely-unseen and essentially unstoppable threat, the threat of madness within the group even as the enemy threatens without, and underlying hints of supernatural or psychic phenomena. I thought King explored these ideas a bit better in other stories, but this one does its job and hits its marks, creating ever-rising tension with creepy and memorable imagery, even if the characters sometimes feel a little flat and stereotyped. More than once, I wanted to shake the people to remind them to stop dithering and babbling and taking forever to explain things when the danger is marching relentlessly closer to them, but this isn't the first story where I've felt that urge.
It might have earned a Good rating, save it felt a little weak in spots and the audiobook narration of the edition I checked out from Libby was irritating. The narrator's pitch and volume kept rising and falling, surging and fading, all woven around musical accompaniment that threatened to overwhelm the quieter and lower parts. I kept having to crank up the volume, only to drop it half a minute later when he raised his voice again and nearly blew out my eardrums. It made for a frustrating listening experience that affected my overall enjoyment.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Mist (Stephen King) - My Review
The Hollow Places (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Secret Hour (Scott Westerfield) - My Review
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