The month's reviews are now archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Monday, October 31, 2022
Friday, October 28, 2022
The Girl in Red (Christina Henry)
The Girl in Red
Christina Henry
Berkley
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Her mother may have named her Cordelia, but everyone knows her as Red, and her whole life she's been a bit of a misfit in the family. When the first rumors of sickness reached the news, her mother, father, and brother dismissed it as a passing problem, but Red - always one to think ahead and consider worst-case scenarios, always reading scary stories and watching horror movies - took it deadly serious... so, when the Crisis hit full-force, she alone was anything like ready as civilization crumbled. Like the disease behind the pandemic itself, it may have started with an innocuous dry cough, but it ended in death for almost everyone, save those mysteriously immune.
Red's plan was for the family to set out on foot (because roads meant roadblocks and traffic jams) to head to Grandma's cabin in the woods. It's far enough from cities to be reasonably safe from infection and looters and the militias that rose in the power vacuum (not to mention the actual military, intent on rounding everyone up "for their own good" to be taken who knew where, to Red's suspicion), and is fairly self-sufficient to ride out the Crisis as long as possible. It won't be an easy hike, with Red's prosthetic leg and her mother's idea of a hike being walking across the college campus where she works to get a latte, but it seems like their best option. But one thing movies got right about plans in horror situations is that they never go right. Now it's just Red alone, struggling to survive long enough to reach Grandma's house, in a world full of a sickness that's taken a far deadlier turn than imagined and all-too-human wolves.
REVIEW: The Girl in Red, a dark story of apocalyptic survival, has obvious homages to the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood", but also draws on other horror stories and movies, particularly how a girl steeped in such tales tries to avoid becoming a cliche victim by doing the stupid thing - which looks so easy when one is sitting in the living room shouting at a character on a screen not to leave the essential item behind because they'll need it later, but much harder to do when it's reality writing the script. Red is a survivor and fighter from the start, but has to learn when to listen to her instincts and when she's spiraling into paranoia (not entirely unjustified, as things go from bad to worse to even worse than her own worst-case scenarios - which, given her love for horror movies, is very bad indeed). The story moves between her time as a solo traveler and what happened to her family, a tragedy that slowly unfolds in dark parallel to her current circumstances. If this is a fairy tale, it's definitely not the sanitized version many might be familiar with; I didn't label it "horror" for no reason (even though it doesn't seem to be categorized that way on Amazon). It starts moving quickly and keeps moving to the end, with Red discovering just how far she's willing to go to survive against the "wolves" of this new world. I had a few quibbles with a plot turn or two that ended up feeling like distractions or red herrings, and something about it feels like it should have a sequel or companion volume, but overall it's a solid, gutsy story that only rarely pulls its punches.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Alone (Megan E. Freeman) - My Review
Run (Patti Larsen) - My Review
The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey) - My Review
Christina Henry
Berkley
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Her mother may have named her Cordelia, but everyone knows her as Red, and her whole life she's been a bit of a misfit in the family. When the first rumors of sickness reached the news, her mother, father, and brother dismissed it as a passing problem, but Red - always one to think ahead and consider worst-case scenarios, always reading scary stories and watching horror movies - took it deadly serious... so, when the Crisis hit full-force, she alone was anything like ready as civilization crumbled. Like the disease behind the pandemic itself, it may have started with an innocuous dry cough, but it ended in death for almost everyone, save those mysteriously immune.
Red's plan was for the family to set out on foot (because roads meant roadblocks and traffic jams) to head to Grandma's cabin in the woods. It's far enough from cities to be reasonably safe from infection and looters and the militias that rose in the power vacuum (not to mention the actual military, intent on rounding everyone up "for their own good" to be taken who knew where, to Red's suspicion), and is fairly self-sufficient to ride out the Crisis as long as possible. It won't be an easy hike, with Red's prosthetic leg and her mother's idea of a hike being walking across the college campus where she works to get a latte, but it seems like their best option. But one thing movies got right about plans in horror situations is that they never go right. Now it's just Red alone, struggling to survive long enough to reach Grandma's house, in a world full of a sickness that's taken a far deadlier turn than imagined and all-too-human wolves.
REVIEW: The Girl in Red, a dark story of apocalyptic survival, has obvious homages to the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood", but also draws on other horror stories and movies, particularly how a girl steeped in such tales tries to avoid becoming a cliche victim by doing the stupid thing - which looks so easy when one is sitting in the living room shouting at a character on a screen not to leave the essential item behind because they'll need it later, but much harder to do when it's reality writing the script. Red is a survivor and fighter from the start, but has to learn when to listen to her instincts and when she's spiraling into paranoia (not entirely unjustified, as things go from bad to worse to even worse than her own worst-case scenarios - which, given her love for horror movies, is very bad indeed). The story moves between her time as a solo traveler and what happened to her family, a tragedy that slowly unfolds in dark parallel to her current circumstances. If this is a fairy tale, it's definitely not the sanitized version many might be familiar with; I didn't label it "horror" for no reason (even though it doesn't seem to be categorized that way on Amazon). It starts moving quickly and keeps moving to the end, with Red discovering just how far she's willing to go to survive against the "wolves" of this new world. I had a few quibbles with a plot turn or two that ended up feeling like distractions or red herrings, and something about it feels like it should have a sequel or companion volume, but overall it's a solid, gutsy story that only rarely pulls its punches.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Alone (Megan E. Freeman) - My Review
Run (Patti Larsen) - My Review
The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey) - My Review
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Between Two Fires (Christopher Buehlman)
Between Two Fires
Christopher Buehlman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: In a France devastated by the Black Death and by encroaching English armies, excommunicated knight turned brigand Thomas struggles just to survive one more day, though he finds it harder and harder to remember why he needs to go on living at all. He's already lost everything that ever mattered to him - his title, his lands, his wife, his honor - and the horrors he witnesses and is party to make him feel like he's living through the end of days. Then he finds the girl in the tree. She is filled with a strange light and stranger purpose, as if she has been touched by a higher power... but in a world where devils walk abroad at night and Lucifer's army again storms the walls of Heaven while God stands either helpless or indifferent, how is Thomas to know whether that higher power is good or evil? Nevertheless, he finds himself traveling with her, witnessing miracles and atrocities, on the way to either ultimate salvation or eternal damnation.
REVIEW: I've read two books by Buehlman previously and been very impressed by both, so when I heard this one mentioned favorably on a podcast I listen to, I decided to give this title a try. As in his other works, Buehlman does not pull his punches, and in fact leans into them with gusto: this is not a story for the squeamish, for all that the horrors ultimately serve the greater story and atmosphere. Both the bleakness of a plague-riddled medieval Europe and the twisted visions of medieval ideas of Hell and damnation (and the equally terrifying inhumanity and might of Heaven's angels) are on full display, a surreal landscape both physical and spiritual for the characters to navigate and in which they often (and inevitably) lose their way. Thomas, first wounded gravely in battle and then unjustly stripped of both his lands and his hope of Heaven, has wrapped himself fully in the darkness and misery that surrounds him, but deep down has a core of inner goodness that even he cannot deny forever. The girl, clearly an instrument of forces beyond him, could be either evil or good, but it almost doesn't matter, as she gives him a purpose that he's been lacking too long, becoming a daughter figure who brings out his vestigial better nature. She herself does not precisely understand her own role in the greater quest, her childish naivete slowly worn down but never completely lost. Along the way, they gain and lose companions, enduring numerous setbacks and encounters with enemies human and otherwise, all while the devils around them grow stronger and more emboldened as humans often seem all too eager to indulge their own dark sides. At times reality melts and twists into nightmarish surreality, where the lines between what is happening and what is imagined are blurred to the point of nonexistence. There is, naturally, a strong religious vein running through the story, but it manages not to be as preachy and judgmental as many such stories. For all the darkness and raw, visceral horror, I devoured this book at a rate I haven't managed in quite some time (audiobooks notwithstanding).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Armored Saint (Myke Cole) - My Review
Paradise Lost (John Milton) - My Review
The Merciful Crow (Margaret Owen) - My Review
Christopher Buehlman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: In a France devastated by the Black Death and by encroaching English armies, excommunicated knight turned brigand Thomas struggles just to survive one more day, though he finds it harder and harder to remember why he needs to go on living at all. He's already lost everything that ever mattered to him - his title, his lands, his wife, his honor - and the horrors he witnesses and is party to make him feel like he's living through the end of days. Then he finds the girl in the tree. She is filled with a strange light and stranger purpose, as if she has been touched by a higher power... but in a world where devils walk abroad at night and Lucifer's army again storms the walls of Heaven while God stands either helpless or indifferent, how is Thomas to know whether that higher power is good or evil? Nevertheless, he finds himself traveling with her, witnessing miracles and atrocities, on the way to either ultimate salvation or eternal damnation.
REVIEW: I've read two books by Buehlman previously and been very impressed by both, so when I heard this one mentioned favorably on a podcast I listen to, I decided to give this title a try. As in his other works, Buehlman does not pull his punches, and in fact leans into them with gusto: this is not a story for the squeamish, for all that the horrors ultimately serve the greater story and atmosphere. Both the bleakness of a plague-riddled medieval Europe and the twisted visions of medieval ideas of Hell and damnation (and the equally terrifying inhumanity and might of Heaven's angels) are on full display, a surreal landscape both physical and spiritual for the characters to navigate and in which they often (and inevitably) lose their way. Thomas, first wounded gravely in battle and then unjustly stripped of both his lands and his hope of Heaven, has wrapped himself fully in the darkness and misery that surrounds him, but deep down has a core of inner goodness that even he cannot deny forever. The girl, clearly an instrument of forces beyond him, could be either evil or good, but it almost doesn't matter, as she gives him a purpose that he's been lacking too long, becoming a daughter figure who brings out his vestigial better nature. She herself does not precisely understand her own role in the greater quest, her childish naivete slowly worn down but never completely lost. Along the way, they gain and lose companions, enduring numerous setbacks and encounters with enemies human and otherwise, all while the devils around them grow stronger and more emboldened as humans often seem all too eager to indulge their own dark sides. At times reality melts and twists into nightmarish surreality, where the lines between what is happening and what is imagined are blurred to the point of nonexistence. There is, naturally, a strong religious vein running through the story, but it manages not to be as preachy and judgmental as many such stories. For all the darkness and raw, visceral horror, I devoured this book at a rate I haven't managed in quite some time (audiobooks notwithstanding).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Armored Saint (Myke Cole) - My Review
Paradise Lost (John Milton) - My Review
The Merciful Crow (Margaret Owen) - My Review
Friday, October 21, 2022
The Stranger in the Mirror (Liv Constantine)
The Stranger in the Mirror
Liv Constantine
Harper
Fiction, Thriller
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Two years ago, the woman who calls herself Addison Hope was found wandering by a New Jersey highway, bruised and scratched and with no memory before she found herself there. Taken in by kindly trucker Ed and his nurse wife Gigi, she has slowly built a new life in Philadelphia, but - aside from a talent for photography - she has no more clue who she was than ever. Now, she's engaged to Gabriel, son of a wealthy art family, and trying to move ahead... but she's afraid that, even as she looks toward a future, her past will return to destroy her. Judging by the scars on her body and the violent, terrifying flashbacks she sometimes glimpses, that past may be more horrific than she can handle.
Outside Boston, psychiatrist Julian has spent two years searching for his missing wife Cassandra. She was always a bit fragile after a traumatic upbringing, but he never expected her to just disappear, leaving behind both him and their young daughter Valentina - a daughter who asks every day when Mom is coming home and why she left. He's running out of answers to give her, but he can't give up the hope of finding his wife.
Meanwhile, Gabriel's mother can't help wondering about the strange girl Addison, a veritable ghost whose arrival disrupted a promising engagement for her well-meaning but sometimes too-softhearted son. She begins making some discreet inquiries, hoping to determine whether this woman is who, or what, she claims to be...
REVIEW: I figured I needed to vary the book diet a bit, and this thriller looked like a decent enough story (plus it was just long enough to fill a work day on audiobook). It started with some promise, albeit right from the gate it set "Addison" up as property to be claimed: she's at her engagement dinner with Gabriel, and simultaneously worries that she's stealing another woman's man (the former intended, Darcy, is also at the dinner) and that she has no idea if she's already someone else's wife. Meanwhile, Julian worries about his fragile lost wife who needs a man's protection (and a child's love) to justify her existence. Addison frets and worries and pokes at the holes in her memory (only to cringe back, often screaming, from what she glimpses in those holes), surrounded by a host of people who have bent their lives around her existence. The arrival of Julian seems to promise answers, but it's very quickly apparent to any reader with a remote sense of awareness (or has ever seen an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent) that there's more to the relationship than meets the eye. What comes next is a drawn-out string of torment and potential gaslighting that further reduces the nominal heroine into the role of helpless victim in need of outside rescue. When the truth is revealed, it is done with such repetition and hammering home of the twisted, psychotic nature of the culprit as to induce both numbness and eye-rolling: yes, I get it, I totally understand what happened, I do not need the past umpteen years related in painstakingly slow detail to understand, give me a little credit here for being able to connect the dots. Then it drags itself out past the climax with yet more flashbacks into a history that, frankly, no longer really mattered with the main issues resolved; it was just padding by that point, and relating trauma just for the sake of relating trauma. By the time I finished, I had gone beyond merely feeling blandly disappointed into actively irked at how my time was wasted; the whole story could've been maybe half as long if it hadn't dawdled and wallowed in Addison's helpless misery and crippling self-doubt, not to mention how it endlessly repeated itself for the sake of the one or two readers who may not have figured things out the first ten times they were explained. Being actively irked is an automatic ratings ding, hence the drop below three stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey) - My Review
Unflappable (Suzie Gilbert) - My Review
Comfort Me With Apples (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Liv Constantine
Harper
Fiction, Thriller
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Two years ago, the woman who calls herself Addison Hope was found wandering by a New Jersey highway, bruised and scratched and with no memory before she found herself there. Taken in by kindly trucker Ed and his nurse wife Gigi, she has slowly built a new life in Philadelphia, but - aside from a talent for photography - she has no more clue who she was than ever. Now, she's engaged to Gabriel, son of a wealthy art family, and trying to move ahead... but she's afraid that, even as she looks toward a future, her past will return to destroy her. Judging by the scars on her body and the violent, terrifying flashbacks she sometimes glimpses, that past may be more horrific than she can handle.
Outside Boston, psychiatrist Julian has spent two years searching for his missing wife Cassandra. She was always a bit fragile after a traumatic upbringing, but he never expected her to just disappear, leaving behind both him and their young daughter Valentina - a daughter who asks every day when Mom is coming home and why she left. He's running out of answers to give her, but he can't give up the hope of finding his wife.
Meanwhile, Gabriel's mother can't help wondering about the strange girl Addison, a veritable ghost whose arrival disrupted a promising engagement for her well-meaning but sometimes too-softhearted son. She begins making some discreet inquiries, hoping to determine whether this woman is who, or what, she claims to be...
REVIEW: I figured I needed to vary the book diet a bit, and this thriller looked like a decent enough story (plus it was just long enough to fill a work day on audiobook). It started with some promise, albeit right from the gate it set "Addison" up as property to be claimed: she's at her engagement dinner with Gabriel, and simultaneously worries that she's stealing another woman's man (the former intended, Darcy, is also at the dinner) and that she has no idea if she's already someone else's wife. Meanwhile, Julian worries about his fragile lost wife who needs a man's protection (and a child's love) to justify her existence. Addison frets and worries and pokes at the holes in her memory (only to cringe back, often screaming, from what she glimpses in those holes), surrounded by a host of people who have bent their lives around her existence. The arrival of Julian seems to promise answers, but it's very quickly apparent to any reader with a remote sense of awareness (or has ever seen an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent) that there's more to the relationship than meets the eye. What comes next is a drawn-out string of torment and potential gaslighting that further reduces the nominal heroine into the role of helpless victim in need of outside rescue. When the truth is revealed, it is done with such repetition and hammering home of the twisted, psychotic nature of the culprit as to induce both numbness and eye-rolling: yes, I get it, I totally understand what happened, I do not need the past umpteen years related in painstakingly slow detail to understand, give me a little credit here for being able to connect the dots. Then it drags itself out past the climax with yet more flashbacks into a history that, frankly, no longer really mattered with the main issues resolved; it was just padding by that point, and relating trauma just for the sake of relating trauma. By the time I finished, I had gone beyond merely feeling blandly disappointed into actively irked at how my time was wasted; the whole story could've been maybe half as long if it hadn't dawdled and wallowed in Addison's helpless misery and crippling self-doubt, not to mention how it endlessly repeated itself for the sake of the one or two readers who may not have figured things out the first ten times they were explained. Being actively irked is an automatic ratings ding, hence the drop below three stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey) - My Review
Unflappable (Suzie Gilbert) - My Review
Comfort Me With Apples (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
The Wizards of Once (Cressida Cowell)
The Wizards of Once
The Wizards of Once series, Book 1
Cressida Cowell
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In ancient times, long before the British Isles knew they were even British, a vast, wild, and dark forest covered the land. Within this forest were all manner of magical beasts and beings, as well as a race of human Wizards... until the Warriors showed up from across the sea, bearing iron that was immune to their Magic. Battle lines were drawn as trees were felled and deaths mounted, and Wizards and Warriors both learned from the cradle to hate one another. But in fighting each other, they forgot another threat: the witches, a race of the worst sort of Bad Magic. It is said they were exterminated centuries ago... but many things are said that are not entirely true...
Xar may be the son of the King of the Wizards, but even at thirteen his magic has yet to grow in - as his bully older brother never lets him forget. Tired of the looks of disappointment from his father, the boy has concocted a desperate plan, one that involves finding and trapping a witch and then using stolen Warrior iron (a simple saucepan, in truth, but iron nonetheless) to steal its magic for himself. Of course, his older brother gets wind of the plot and utterly humiliates him for his foolishness - but Xar may not be wrong, and his trap ends up catching something very interesting, if very dangerous.
Wish is everything her mother, Queen of the Warriors, cannot stand. She has a limp and but one good eye, instead of a sturdy and whole warrior body. She's untidy and has a wandering, inquisitive mind, instead of being tidy and following the Rules of her people. And now she's slipped out into the forbidden woods after a pet she isn't even supposed to have: a spoon that somehow acquired magical life. Worse, she took with her an even more forbidden object: an enchanted iron sword she discovered on her way out of the keep. Magic is strictly forbidden by her mother, and her bodyguard is at his wit's end trying to keep her in line, but Wish keeps defying everyone... until something very strange and malevolent chases her straight into a trap.
Wish and Xan hate each other at first sight, as befitting their upbringing, but another, greater evil is afoot. It may take the combined might of Wizards and Warriors to stop a truly terrible fate from befalling the land of Once, and everyone in it.
REVIEW: Given the target age, this is a fun and adventurous romp through a fantastical Dark Ages, one populated with wizards and warriors and trickster fairies and gentle giants and great lynx-like "snow cats" big enough to ride and more wonders - as well as darkly dangerous witches, not to mention the all-too-human problems of prejudices, misunderstandings, and the secrets kept by those in power to keep themselves in power. As with Cowell's other series (the popular How to Train Your Dragon series, loose source material for one of my favorite animated trilogies of all time), it walks a line between exaggerated humor and dangerous stakes, with a little more to it than its outwardly silly trappings might suggest; I felt that line was stuck to better in this series, personally. Once in a while it pulled a punch slightly and waded a bit deep into tangents for the sake of silly tangents, but overall it moved decently and wasn't too predictable, and it kept me entertained for a while as an audiobook at work (even if the sound effects and voices seemed overdone - though, again, I'm a few decades over the target age, and I expect kids would find it enjoyable to have their listening interrupted with bangs and blasts to punctuate action bits). Being entertained is really all I asked of it, and it delivered.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying (Kelley Armstrong) - My Review
How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Have Sword, Will Travel (Garth Nix and Sean Williams) - My Review
The Wizards of Once series, Book 1
Cressida Cowell
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In ancient times, long before the British Isles knew they were even British, a vast, wild, and dark forest covered the land. Within this forest were all manner of magical beasts and beings, as well as a race of human Wizards... until the Warriors showed up from across the sea, bearing iron that was immune to their Magic. Battle lines were drawn as trees were felled and deaths mounted, and Wizards and Warriors both learned from the cradle to hate one another. But in fighting each other, they forgot another threat: the witches, a race of the worst sort of Bad Magic. It is said they were exterminated centuries ago... but many things are said that are not entirely true...
Xar may be the son of the King of the Wizards, but even at thirteen his magic has yet to grow in - as his bully older brother never lets him forget. Tired of the looks of disappointment from his father, the boy has concocted a desperate plan, one that involves finding and trapping a witch and then using stolen Warrior iron (a simple saucepan, in truth, but iron nonetheless) to steal its magic for himself. Of course, his older brother gets wind of the plot and utterly humiliates him for his foolishness - but Xar may not be wrong, and his trap ends up catching something very interesting, if very dangerous.
Wish is everything her mother, Queen of the Warriors, cannot stand. She has a limp and but one good eye, instead of a sturdy and whole warrior body. She's untidy and has a wandering, inquisitive mind, instead of being tidy and following the Rules of her people. And now she's slipped out into the forbidden woods after a pet she isn't even supposed to have: a spoon that somehow acquired magical life. Worse, she took with her an even more forbidden object: an enchanted iron sword she discovered on her way out of the keep. Magic is strictly forbidden by her mother, and her bodyguard is at his wit's end trying to keep her in line, but Wish keeps defying everyone... until something very strange and malevolent chases her straight into a trap.
Wish and Xan hate each other at first sight, as befitting their upbringing, but another, greater evil is afoot. It may take the combined might of Wizards and Warriors to stop a truly terrible fate from befalling the land of Once, and everyone in it.
REVIEW: Given the target age, this is a fun and adventurous romp through a fantastical Dark Ages, one populated with wizards and warriors and trickster fairies and gentle giants and great lynx-like "snow cats" big enough to ride and more wonders - as well as darkly dangerous witches, not to mention the all-too-human problems of prejudices, misunderstandings, and the secrets kept by those in power to keep themselves in power. As with Cowell's other series (the popular How to Train Your Dragon series, loose source material for one of my favorite animated trilogies of all time), it walks a line between exaggerated humor and dangerous stakes, with a little more to it than its outwardly silly trappings might suggest; I felt that line was stuck to better in this series, personally. Once in a while it pulled a punch slightly and waded a bit deep into tangents for the sake of silly tangents, but overall it moved decently and wasn't too predictable, and it kept me entertained for a while as an audiobook at work (even if the sound effects and voices seemed overdone - though, again, I'm a few decades over the target age, and I expect kids would find it enjoyable to have their listening interrupted with bangs and blasts to punctuate action bits). Being entertained is really all I asked of it, and it delivered.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying (Kelley Armstrong) - My Review
How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Have Sword, Will Travel (Garth Nix and Sean Williams) - My Review
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
Children of Time
The Children of Time series, Book 1
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: One one blue world in an insignificant star system, millions of years of evolution and chance produced a prodigal, if destructive, species from nondescript ancestors. Now, Homo sapiens reaches out to the stars to repeat the process, only on their own terms. On terraformed planets seeded with Earth wildlife, an artificial nanovirus will, in theory at least, compress the ageless trial-and-error that created self-aware and technologically advanced humans into a few thousand years, uplifting a lucky population of primates to join humanity in exploring the vast and, thus far, empty void of space. Doctor Avrana Kern stands poised above one such world, about to trigger the process... but she has ignored the threat that has, for so long, held her kind back. She has ignored the discontent and desperation back home, the ideological schisms, and the increasingly violent calls to curb humanity's reach and ambition. Right on the very brink of her ultimate success, saboteurs destroy everything... everything except Kern, escaping into an orbital satellite with a hibernation chamber, and the nanovirus itself. But what can it possibly hope to do, on a planet without even the most basal primate to act upon? In the nature of life since the dawn of time, it will have to adapt - and it will do so in a way nobody could have possibly expected, when it discovers the vast, untapped potential waiting within invertebrate minds, particularly the species Portia labiata, known on Earth as jumping spiders.
Thousands of years later, the ark ship Gilgamesh has set out from a dying Earth with a remnant population of humans, one of a handful of hail-Mary passes into the unknown following old star charts salvaged from what came to be known as the Old Empire. Records of those days are sketchy, the ancients elevated to near-divine (or -diabolical) status in common culture, but provide the only hope for a future of the species. At last, they arrive at a green world - a world guarded by a satellite governed by a half-mad artificial intelligence. Nobody has heard from the other ark ships since departing Earth, and this planet - despite the angry satellite ghost of Kern and the bizarre monsters that appear to infest it - might be the only possible home for the displaced former masters of Earth. One thing humans have always been good at is species extermination and selfish survival... but they've never encountered an intelligence like the one waiting for them on Kern's World.
REVIEW: This is not the first tale to speculate on "uplifted" animals, but among the few (that I've encountered, at least) to extend that speculation to spiders, whose minds are surprisingly sophisticated and utterly alien to even mammalian thinking, let alone humans. Not being a huge fan of spiders myself (though jumping spiders never creeped me out like the web-spinners and wolf spiders), I was a bit iffy on this, but Tchaikovsky's spiders won me over, balancing a fine line between inhuman perspectives - their civilization, their strengths and weaknesses and cultural blind spots, come from somewhere between solid research and speculation - and necessary anthropomorphization for the sake of the human readers. By exploiting their natural abilities and those of the nanovirus that created them, they arrive at civilization by entirely different avenues than those taken by the species responsible for uplifting them, if not without their own setbacks and problems. The human cast, meanwhile, skips through their centuries thanks to suspended animation, with the primary point-of-view character, "classicist" Holsten Mason (an expert in "classic" Old Empire languages and history), being mostly a passive observer, often annoyingly so. He watches, through generations, as humans persistently echo the same strengths and weaknesses that led to both the rise of the Old Empire and its collapse (and Earth's eventual doom), tilting toward the latter as the stakes become more desperate. The common human fear of and revulsion for spiders kicks things up to a higher degree, even as the spiders struggle to grasp what little they see and learn of humans and their incomprehensible ways. It is inevitable that the two civilizations, one on the rise and one in decline, will clash, both desperate for the one thing they can both agree is top priority: their own survival. It wanders now and again, particularly on the Gilgamesh (I really got annoyed by Mason's lack of anything resembling a vertebral column; the spiders had ten times more backbone even without internal skeletons), and something about the end felt a little rushed, but overall I enjoyed the journey; I never expected to find myself rooting for spiders...
You Might Also Enjoy:
City (Clifford D. Simak) - My Review
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
The Children of Time series, Book 1
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: One one blue world in an insignificant star system, millions of years of evolution and chance produced a prodigal, if destructive, species from nondescript ancestors. Now, Homo sapiens reaches out to the stars to repeat the process, only on their own terms. On terraformed planets seeded with Earth wildlife, an artificial nanovirus will, in theory at least, compress the ageless trial-and-error that created self-aware and technologically advanced humans into a few thousand years, uplifting a lucky population of primates to join humanity in exploring the vast and, thus far, empty void of space. Doctor Avrana Kern stands poised above one such world, about to trigger the process... but she has ignored the threat that has, for so long, held her kind back. She has ignored the discontent and desperation back home, the ideological schisms, and the increasingly violent calls to curb humanity's reach and ambition. Right on the very brink of her ultimate success, saboteurs destroy everything... everything except Kern, escaping into an orbital satellite with a hibernation chamber, and the nanovirus itself. But what can it possibly hope to do, on a planet without even the most basal primate to act upon? In the nature of life since the dawn of time, it will have to adapt - and it will do so in a way nobody could have possibly expected, when it discovers the vast, untapped potential waiting within invertebrate minds, particularly the species Portia labiata, known on Earth as jumping spiders.
Thousands of years later, the ark ship Gilgamesh has set out from a dying Earth with a remnant population of humans, one of a handful of hail-Mary passes into the unknown following old star charts salvaged from what came to be known as the Old Empire. Records of those days are sketchy, the ancients elevated to near-divine (or -diabolical) status in common culture, but provide the only hope for a future of the species. At last, they arrive at a green world - a world guarded by a satellite governed by a half-mad artificial intelligence. Nobody has heard from the other ark ships since departing Earth, and this planet - despite the angry satellite ghost of Kern and the bizarre monsters that appear to infest it - might be the only possible home for the displaced former masters of Earth. One thing humans have always been good at is species extermination and selfish survival... but they've never encountered an intelligence like the one waiting for them on Kern's World.
REVIEW: This is not the first tale to speculate on "uplifted" animals, but among the few (that I've encountered, at least) to extend that speculation to spiders, whose minds are surprisingly sophisticated and utterly alien to even mammalian thinking, let alone humans. Not being a huge fan of spiders myself (though jumping spiders never creeped me out like the web-spinners and wolf spiders), I was a bit iffy on this, but Tchaikovsky's spiders won me over, balancing a fine line between inhuman perspectives - their civilization, their strengths and weaknesses and cultural blind spots, come from somewhere between solid research and speculation - and necessary anthropomorphization for the sake of the human readers. By exploiting their natural abilities and those of the nanovirus that created them, they arrive at civilization by entirely different avenues than those taken by the species responsible for uplifting them, if not without their own setbacks and problems. The human cast, meanwhile, skips through their centuries thanks to suspended animation, with the primary point-of-view character, "classicist" Holsten Mason (an expert in "classic" Old Empire languages and history), being mostly a passive observer, often annoyingly so. He watches, through generations, as humans persistently echo the same strengths and weaknesses that led to both the rise of the Old Empire and its collapse (and Earth's eventual doom), tilting toward the latter as the stakes become more desperate. The common human fear of and revulsion for spiders kicks things up to a higher degree, even as the spiders struggle to grasp what little they see and learn of humans and their incomprehensible ways. It is inevitable that the two civilizations, one on the rise and one in decline, will clash, both desperate for the one thing they can both agree is top priority: their own survival. It wanders now and again, particularly on the Gilgamesh (I really got annoyed by Mason's lack of anything resembling a vertebral column; the spiders had ten times more backbone even without internal skeletons), and something about the end felt a little rushed, but overall I enjoyed the journey; I never expected to find myself rooting for spiders...
You Might Also Enjoy:
City (Clifford D. Simak) - My Review
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Where The Mountain Meets the Moon (Grace Lin)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The village shadowed by Fruitless Mountain is a poor and desperate place to be. Like the mountain itself, little grows, and what does grow takes backbreaking work for meager returns. Minli tires of hearing her mother's sad sighs at their poor fortune, finding some solace in her father's folk tales. At last, guided by advice from a goldfish, the girl sets out to find the Old Man in the Moon: in Ba's tales, he is the one who ties the red threads of fate and reads from the book of fortune, so surely, if anyone can change her family's sad state and bleak future, it is him. Her travels will take her far from her tiny shack and village, winding through tales old and new as she seeks to write a new story for her life.
REVIEW: This award-winning book weaves Chinese folk tales into a charming new story that feels like a beloved classic. Though Ma dismisses the old stories as worthless and impractical frivolities, filling her daughter's head with foolish ideas, the tales of Ba give Minli solace and comfort, not to mention a certainty that impossible things are possible if only one tries; ultimately, the true worth of a story is proven many times over, to both Minli and her parents. From magical goldfish to dragons to lion statues and more, Minli finds Ba's stories coming to life around her, and all of them ultimately connect to create a rich backstory for her adventure. Along the way, she learns the true meaning of family and fortune, as do her parents. It's a quick read with a timeless feel and solid ending that earns it an extra half-mark, quite enjoyable even for a grown-up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Plain Kate (Erin Bow) - My Review
Dragon Rider (Cornelia Funke) - My Review
My Father's Dragon (Ruth Stiles Gannett) - My Review
Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The village shadowed by Fruitless Mountain is a poor and desperate place to be. Like the mountain itself, little grows, and what does grow takes backbreaking work for meager returns. Minli tires of hearing her mother's sad sighs at their poor fortune, finding some solace in her father's folk tales. At last, guided by advice from a goldfish, the girl sets out to find the Old Man in the Moon: in Ba's tales, he is the one who ties the red threads of fate and reads from the book of fortune, so surely, if anyone can change her family's sad state and bleak future, it is him. Her travels will take her far from her tiny shack and village, winding through tales old and new as she seeks to write a new story for her life.
REVIEW: This award-winning book weaves Chinese folk tales into a charming new story that feels like a beloved classic. Though Ma dismisses the old stories as worthless and impractical frivolities, filling her daughter's head with foolish ideas, the tales of Ba give Minli solace and comfort, not to mention a certainty that impossible things are possible if only one tries; ultimately, the true worth of a story is proven many times over, to both Minli and her parents. From magical goldfish to dragons to lion statues and more, Minli finds Ba's stories coming to life around her, and all of them ultimately connect to create a rich backstory for her adventure. Along the way, she learns the true meaning of family and fortune, as do her parents. It's a quick read with a timeless feel and solid ending that earns it an extra half-mark, quite enjoyable even for a grown-up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Plain Kate (Erin Bow) - My Review
Dragon Rider (Cornelia Funke) - My Review
My Father's Dragon (Ruth Stiles Gannett) - My Review
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
The Sandman Volume 2 (Neil Gaiman)
The Sandman Volume 2: The Doll's House, 30th Anniversary Edition
The Sandman series, Issues 9 - 16
Neil Gaiman, illustrations by Mike Dringenberg and Malcom Jones III
Vertigo
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Dream of the Endless, sometimes known as Morpheus, has escaped his long decades of captivity at the hands of mortals and begun rebuilding his realm, but four dreams and nightmares have eluded capture. Meanwhile, the young woman Rose Walker meets the grandmother she never knew she had and seeks her kid brother, lost in the foster system after her parents divorced and her father died. When a dream vortex - a powerful, disruptive force that weakens the barriers between the Dreaming and waking Earth - develops, their quests may cross paths... as will the paths of the missing denizens of Morpheus's realm, with potentially dire consequences.
REVIEW: I read, and was less impressed than I'd hoped to be by, the first Sandman volume some time ago. Not only do I find sprawling megaverses like DC's offputting and unwieldy, but there was something about Dream's stories, one in particular, that struck a very sour and repelling note with me. So I guess I can credit Netflix with luring me back; I watched and (mostly) enjoyed the recent streaming adaptation, which tweaked the elements I found most unappealing and updated the story enough to intrigue me into coming back to the graphic novels for one more try. (The fact that the graphic novels are free via hoopla and my local library was also an influence, I'll admit.)
This, unfortunately, is one of those somewhat uncommon instances where the adaptation exceeds the source material.
In the show's version of the Doll's House arc, which I saw before reading this and thus I cannot seem to avoid the comparison, Rose Walker is a decently developed character with some manner of agency over her actions; she may not understand what she is and the risk she poses at first, but she's active in her search for her brother and able to stand up to even Dream, fully capable of defending herself. The denizens of the Florida home where she stays during her search are also decently realized for side characters, as are their dream lives and hidden selves (which Rose inadvertently visits as her vortex abilities grow). Meanwhile, the King of Dreams is undergoing his own unwilling realization that even the Endless grow and change, and the abandonment of some of his fugitive creations is due at least in part to his own inability to see that... in the streaming show, that is.
The graphic novel version of the story, unfortunately, is not that. Here, Rose is powerless over everything, a victim start to finish, who must be rescued by male figures and never has anything approaching agency. She can't even defend herself when she's physically attacked. The whole of her arc boils down to her not being able to control what power she has, so a man has to take it all away - even the memory of it (not the first time the series has invoked this idea). Her brother is also rather a victim, for all that there's a certain retro charm in the dream world he finds himself in nightly, with deliberate nods to the classic comic strip Little Nemo. There's also another woman who exists only to be a prop to a clueless man, another powerless female whose connection to anything felt rather vague; she seems to exist just to be helpless and chained to someone else's whims and desires. Meanwhile, the nightmarish Corinthian also feels rather thin compared to the development he got in the adaptation, where he took on a stronger, more malevolent role, actively working to undermine Dream and promote his own dire work inspiring serial killers in their calling. Here, he's just another bad man in a convention of bad men, easily dealt with once the King of Dreams gets around to it. Indeed, "Dream finally turns up and stops the bad thing" is pretty much how a lot of problems get resolved here. Underneath the story are some intriguing concepts and mythic roots and speculations on who controls whom, mortals or Endless (or others), in the many-layered dollhouse of reality, and hints of future conflicts for Dream, particularly regarding his bitter sibling Desire.
The more successful stories, or at least the ones that worked better for me, are the side vignettes, one about Dream's first (and possibly last) mortal love and the tragedy that ensued and another about a man granted immortality by Dream's sister Death after he is overheard vowing that he will never die. The longer story arcs feel drawn out, and too often - as noted - reduce people to helpless pawns in games so great even the Endless move by rules and restrictions they cannot adequately explain. For all that parts of The Sandman remain interesting and like something I should enjoy, and I can still respect the mythic roots Gaiman weaves in (and the artwork), once more I find that the appeal of this iconic graphic novel series is lost on me.
I'm really not sure if I want to bother pushing onward to see if it hooks me, but I'm leaning towards not; the women-as-victims things, particularly the women-must-be-stripped-of-any-power-or-ability-to-help-themselves thing, really started irritating me. (As did how absolutely, glaringly white the whole graphic novel was, even background characters, with only rare exceptions. I suppose, thirty-odd years ago, it was just a thing, but you really start seeing it, especially after the adaptation added a more human color palette to the cast.) I'll probably just wait to see if Netflix (or somebody) gives the show a second season, instead; it's not an obsession-level favorite, but it is interesting enough to watch - and they absolutely nailed the look.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Afar (Leila del Duca) - My Review
The Sandman Volume 1 (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Low Road West (Phillip Kennedy Johnson) - My Review
The Sandman series, Issues 9 - 16
Neil Gaiman, illustrations by Mike Dringenberg and Malcom Jones III
Vertigo
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Dream of the Endless, sometimes known as Morpheus, has escaped his long decades of captivity at the hands of mortals and begun rebuilding his realm, but four dreams and nightmares have eluded capture. Meanwhile, the young woman Rose Walker meets the grandmother she never knew she had and seeks her kid brother, lost in the foster system after her parents divorced and her father died. When a dream vortex - a powerful, disruptive force that weakens the barriers between the Dreaming and waking Earth - develops, their quests may cross paths... as will the paths of the missing denizens of Morpheus's realm, with potentially dire consequences.
REVIEW: I read, and was less impressed than I'd hoped to be by, the first Sandman volume some time ago. Not only do I find sprawling megaverses like DC's offputting and unwieldy, but there was something about Dream's stories, one in particular, that struck a very sour and repelling note with me. So I guess I can credit Netflix with luring me back; I watched and (mostly) enjoyed the recent streaming adaptation, which tweaked the elements I found most unappealing and updated the story enough to intrigue me into coming back to the graphic novels for one more try. (The fact that the graphic novels are free via hoopla and my local library was also an influence, I'll admit.)
This, unfortunately, is one of those somewhat uncommon instances where the adaptation exceeds the source material.
In the show's version of the Doll's House arc, which I saw before reading this and thus I cannot seem to avoid the comparison, Rose Walker is a decently developed character with some manner of agency over her actions; she may not understand what she is and the risk she poses at first, but she's active in her search for her brother and able to stand up to even Dream, fully capable of defending herself. The denizens of the Florida home where she stays during her search are also decently realized for side characters, as are their dream lives and hidden selves (which Rose inadvertently visits as her vortex abilities grow). Meanwhile, the King of Dreams is undergoing his own unwilling realization that even the Endless grow and change, and the abandonment of some of his fugitive creations is due at least in part to his own inability to see that... in the streaming show, that is.
The graphic novel version of the story, unfortunately, is not that. Here, Rose is powerless over everything, a victim start to finish, who must be rescued by male figures and never has anything approaching agency. She can't even defend herself when she's physically attacked. The whole of her arc boils down to her not being able to control what power she has, so a man has to take it all away - even the memory of it (not the first time the series has invoked this idea). Her brother is also rather a victim, for all that there's a certain retro charm in the dream world he finds himself in nightly, with deliberate nods to the classic comic strip Little Nemo. There's also another woman who exists only to be a prop to a clueless man, another powerless female whose connection to anything felt rather vague; she seems to exist just to be helpless and chained to someone else's whims and desires. Meanwhile, the nightmarish Corinthian also feels rather thin compared to the development he got in the adaptation, where he took on a stronger, more malevolent role, actively working to undermine Dream and promote his own dire work inspiring serial killers in their calling. Here, he's just another bad man in a convention of bad men, easily dealt with once the King of Dreams gets around to it. Indeed, "Dream finally turns up and stops the bad thing" is pretty much how a lot of problems get resolved here. Underneath the story are some intriguing concepts and mythic roots and speculations on who controls whom, mortals or Endless (or others), in the many-layered dollhouse of reality, and hints of future conflicts for Dream, particularly regarding his bitter sibling Desire.
The more successful stories, or at least the ones that worked better for me, are the side vignettes, one about Dream's first (and possibly last) mortal love and the tragedy that ensued and another about a man granted immortality by Dream's sister Death after he is overheard vowing that he will never die. The longer story arcs feel drawn out, and too often - as noted - reduce people to helpless pawns in games so great even the Endless move by rules and restrictions they cannot adequately explain. For all that parts of The Sandman remain interesting and like something I should enjoy, and I can still respect the mythic roots Gaiman weaves in (and the artwork), once more I find that the appeal of this iconic graphic novel series is lost on me.
I'm really not sure if I want to bother pushing onward to see if it hooks me, but I'm leaning towards not; the women-as-victims things, particularly the women-must-be-stripped-of-any-power-or-ability-to-help-themselves thing, really started irritating me. (As did how absolutely, glaringly white the whole graphic novel was, even background characters, with only rare exceptions. I suppose, thirty-odd years ago, it was just a thing, but you really start seeing it, especially after the adaptation added a more human color palette to the cast.) I'll probably just wait to see if Netflix (or somebody) gives the show a second season, instead; it's not an obsession-level favorite, but it is interesting enough to watch - and they absolutely nailed the look.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Afar (Leila del Duca) - My Review
The Sandman Volume 1 (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Low Road West (Phillip Kennedy Johnson) - My Review
Those Across the River (Christopher Buehlman)
Those Across the River
Christopher Buehlman
Ace
Fiction, Historical Fiction/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Scarred by the Great War and academically ruined when he had an affair with his then-married current fiancee Eudora, Frank Nichols was in desperate need of a fresh start, somewhere - anywhere - to rebuild a life with the woman he loves. The letter from the aunt he never knew, leaving him control of the long-abandoned Savoyard Plantation in Georgia, was a lifeline, for all that the late woman's final letter warned him to simply sell the property without ever going there himself. Instead, Frank and Eudora pack up their Model A and head to the small town of Whitbrow, not far from the property. Like many small towns, it's an insular community with some peculiar local legends and customs, such as driving two pigs into the woods across the river every full moon, but it seems harmless enough. Frank even sets his mind to settling in and writing a book about the Savoyard, whose master - his ancestor - was notorious for cruelty even among his cruel peers and where the slaves rose up in a bloody and gruesome revolt to end his reign of terror after the Confederacy's fall. But from the start Frank gets warnings and signs to leave the ghosts of the past alone, and to avoid the ill-omened woods across the river where the old ruins stand... and where something dark and malevolent may still lurk today, something ever hungry for fresh blood...
REVIEW: I was very impressed with Buehlman's fantasy novel The Blacktongue Thief and am eagerly awaiting the sequel, but in the meantime I figured it was worth my while to explore his other works. While lacking the dark humor of The Blacktongue Thief, Those Across the River is still an excellent, bleak, and occasionally twisted tale of monsters and secrets and scars, physical and psychological, that reach out of the past to consume the present and the future.
Frank starts with more than ample scars on his body and mind, suffering from post-traumatic stress after his time in the trenches of World War I. His would-be wife Eudora, once the wife of his mentor and fellow professor in his old university job, is among the few who can handle his moods and frequent nightly screaming fits; it is clear from the start that she and Frank are truly in love, not merely in lust, for all that their affair (and her divorce) destroyed both of their reputations. Coming to Whitbrow is the change of scenery they both need; she can get a job teaching at the small school, while Frank works on landing another professorship and tries to write the story of his notorious ancestor, a figure who both repels and oddly fascinates him. In town, they find an assortment of small town characters, as well as a secret that has lingered since the days of the Savoyard Plantation's heyday, a secret tied to the odd pig festival that lean times finally end... only for the townsfolk to be reminded of why the sacrifice has been needed all these years. Frank and Eudora both get pulled far deeper into the mystery than either intended, doomed almost from the start by a certain air of fate unfolding. Even when they get a chance to leave, they realize it's too late to avoid what's coming, for them and the whole of Whitbrow. The tale unfolds under a dark cloud that only grows darker with every chapter, managing to draw out the suspense without making me feel like I was being strung along, in part because it delivers on its ominous warnings and foreshadowing in full (and then some).
The squeamish are advised to steer clear; blood, death, and mutilations abound, especially as things pick up toward a climax that tests Frank and Eudora's bond to the breaking point. All through the tale are themes of the deep scars left by the brutality of slavery and how easily people can become the very monsters they fear and despise, generation after generation. By the end, it has taken the reader on a truly harrowing journey through one man's personal, inescapable Hell. Very well written and compelling, though not for the faint of heart.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Pines (Blake Crouch) - My Review
Full Throttle: Stories (Joe Hill) - My Review
Christopher Buehlman
Ace
Fiction, Historical Fiction/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Scarred by the Great War and academically ruined when he had an affair with his then-married current fiancee Eudora, Frank Nichols was in desperate need of a fresh start, somewhere - anywhere - to rebuild a life with the woman he loves. The letter from the aunt he never knew, leaving him control of the long-abandoned Savoyard Plantation in Georgia, was a lifeline, for all that the late woman's final letter warned him to simply sell the property without ever going there himself. Instead, Frank and Eudora pack up their Model A and head to the small town of Whitbrow, not far from the property. Like many small towns, it's an insular community with some peculiar local legends and customs, such as driving two pigs into the woods across the river every full moon, but it seems harmless enough. Frank even sets his mind to settling in and writing a book about the Savoyard, whose master - his ancestor - was notorious for cruelty even among his cruel peers and where the slaves rose up in a bloody and gruesome revolt to end his reign of terror after the Confederacy's fall. But from the start Frank gets warnings and signs to leave the ghosts of the past alone, and to avoid the ill-omened woods across the river where the old ruins stand... and where something dark and malevolent may still lurk today, something ever hungry for fresh blood...
REVIEW: I was very impressed with Buehlman's fantasy novel The Blacktongue Thief and am eagerly awaiting the sequel, but in the meantime I figured it was worth my while to explore his other works. While lacking the dark humor of The Blacktongue Thief, Those Across the River is still an excellent, bleak, and occasionally twisted tale of monsters and secrets and scars, physical and psychological, that reach out of the past to consume the present and the future.
Frank starts with more than ample scars on his body and mind, suffering from post-traumatic stress after his time in the trenches of World War I. His would-be wife Eudora, once the wife of his mentor and fellow professor in his old university job, is among the few who can handle his moods and frequent nightly screaming fits; it is clear from the start that she and Frank are truly in love, not merely in lust, for all that their affair (and her divorce) destroyed both of their reputations. Coming to Whitbrow is the change of scenery they both need; she can get a job teaching at the small school, while Frank works on landing another professorship and tries to write the story of his notorious ancestor, a figure who both repels and oddly fascinates him. In town, they find an assortment of small town characters, as well as a secret that has lingered since the days of the Savoyard Plantation's heyday, a secret tied to the odd pig festival that lean times finally end... only for the townsfolk to be reminded of why the sacrifice has been needed all these years. Frank and Eudora both get pulled far deeper into the mystery than either intended, doomed almost from the start by a certain air of fate unfolding. Even when they get a chance to leave, they realize it's too late to avoid what's coming, for them and the whole of Whitbrow. The tale unfolds under a dark cloud that only grows darker with every chapter, managing to draw out the suspense without making me feel like I was being strung along, in part because it delivers on its ominous warnings and foreshadowing in full (and then some).
The squeamish are advised to steer clear; blood, death, and mutilations abound, especially as things pick up toward a climax that tests Frank and Eudora's bond to the breaking point. All through the tale are themes of the deep scars left by the brutality of slavery and how easily people can become the very monsters they fear and despise, generation after generation. By the end, it has taken the reader on a truly harrowing journey through one man's personal, inescapable Hell. Very well written and compelling, though not for the faint of heart.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Pines (Blake Crouch) - My Review
Full Throttle: Stories (Joe Hill) - My Review
Friday, October 7, 2022
A Spindle Splintered (Alix E. Harrow)
A Spindle Splintered
The Fractured Fables series, Book 1
Alix E. Harrow
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the day she was born, Zinnia Gray has been living on borrowed time thanks to chemical pollution's impact on her mother's pregnancy. Despite all the doctors and lawyers and drugs and treatments, her twenty-first birthday is more than likely to be her last, the protein buildup in her organs approaching terminal levels. Her best friend Charm had decided that Zinnia will go out with the best birthday party ever. In an old abandoned tower (once a prison watchtower), she throws a Sleeping Beauty-themed bash, complete with an authentic spinning wheel; Zinnia always related to the princess who lived her whole life under an unavoidable curse, and even got a degree studying fairy tales to understand its roots. It was on a lark that, at midnight, she deliberately pricked herself on the spindle... and found herself whisked away, to another tower and another wheel, where another princess is about to make her own fateful mistake.
Princess Primrose has lived with a fairy curse since her christening, and was about to fulfill it when Zinnia turned up and stopped her. Now, she can marry the prince and have a happily-ever-after... but the prince looks more arrogant and conniving than handsome, and Primrose doesn't seem happy at all - and not just because she still feels the curse pulling her toward the tower and the spindle and one hundred years of enchanted slumber. Zinnia, however, has had enough of fatalism. Surely, in this world of wishes and magic and fairies, she can find a way to avoid her own death sentence, and help Primrose avoid hers. But Zinnia, of all people, should know that it's never that simple to thwart fate - and many versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale are not about princesses getting happily-ever-after endings, but princesses finding tragedy and death.
REVIEW: Talk about a turnaround from yesterday's book, Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars. From a story where women are weak and almost inhuman entities whose only desire is to belong to a man, it's a long way forward and up to A Spindle Splintered, which is all about women taking back their power and autonomy.
Zinnia's entire life has been lived under the cloud of her impending death, and though she's told herself time and again that she is ready, that she has done all she possibly could and has accepted her fate - has even lived her life by a set of rules she came up with for dying people, to prevent her getting too invested in her very brief stay on Earth - the moment she has even the vaguest, wildest chance at more time or a cure, she hardly wastes a moment before chasing it. At first, she sees the princess Primrose as a fragile victim, a fairy tale figure in a fairy tale world that defies everything she knows about logic and reality and yet persists in existing (in a strange sort of quantum reality where Zinnia still gets cell service, and can briefly text her panicking friend Charm back in Ohio), but as the tale goes on it becomes clear that there's more to her than is initially apparent, and they have more in common than Zinnia first realized. Determined to lift the curse, they set out to find the wicked fairy responsible, but what they learn turns everything they thought they knew on its ear. Throughout the story, under Zinnia's snarky modern voice and the increasingly dark overtones of the fairy tale world she's plunged into, is a theme of feminism, how women are stripped of choices and that very stripping is romanticized and glamourized until even the women come to embrace it (most of them, at least)... and how those who resist are vilified and punished. The harder Zinnia and Primrose try to forge their own happy endings, the more the worlds push back, but Zinnia's not about to give up, not when she literally has nothing to lose.
From the start, the voice pulled me in, and the tale kept moving until almost the very end, which seemed a little drawn out. The whole makes for an enjoyable and thought-provoking examination of a classic story whose roots are far darker than many want to realize.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse (K. Eason) - My Review
Spindle's End (Robin McKinley) - My Review
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C. Wrede) - My Review
The Fractured Fables series, Book 1
Alix E. Harrow
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the day she was born, Zinnia Gray has been living on borrowed time thanks to chemical pollution's impact on her mother's pregnancy. Despite all the doctors and lawyers and drugs and treatments, her twenty-first birthday is more than likely to be her last, the protein buildup in her organs approaching terminal levels. Her best friend Charm had decided that Zinnia will go out with the best birthday party ever. In an old abandoned tower (once a prison watchtower), she throws a Sleeping Beauty-themed bash, complete with an authentic spinning wheel; Zinnia always related to the princess who lived her whole life under an unavoidable curse, and even got a degree studying fairy tales to understand its roots. It was on a lark that, at midnight, she deliberately pricked herself on the spindle... and found herself whisked away, to another tower and another wheel, where another princess is about to make her own fateful mistake.
Princess Primrose has lived with a fairy curse since her christening, and was about to fulfill it when Zinnia turned up and stopped her. Now, she can marry the prince and have a happily-ever-after... but the prince looks more arrogant and conniving than handsome, and Primrose doesn't seem happy at all - and not just because she still feels the curse pulling her toward the tower and the spindle and one hundred years of enchanted slumber. Zinnia, however, has had enough of fatalism. Surely, in this world of wishes and magic and fairies, she can find a way to avoid her own death sentence, and help Primrose avoid hers. But Zinnia, of all people, should know that it's never that simple to thwart fate - and many versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale are not about princesses getting happily-ever-after endings, but princesses finding tragedy and death.
REVIEW: Talk about a turnaround from yesterday's book, Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars. From a story where women are weak and almost inhuman entities whose only desire is to belong to a man, it's a long way forward and up to A Spindle Splintered, which is all about women taking back their power and autonomy.
Zinnia's entire life has been lived under the cloud of her impending death, and though she's told herself time and again that she is ready, that she has done all she possibly could and has accepted her fate - has even lived her life by a set of rules she came up with for dying people, to prevent her getting too invested in her very brief stay on Earth - the moment she has even the vaguest, wildest chance at more time or a cure, she hardly wastes a moment before chasing it. At first, she sees the princess Primrose as a fragile victim, a fairy tale figure in a fairy tale world that defies everything she knows about logic and reality and yet persists in existing (in a strange sort of quantum reality where Zinnia still gets cell service, and can briefly text her panicking friend Charm back in Ohio), but as the tale goes on it becomes clear that there's more to her than is initially apparent, and they have more in common than Zinnia first realized. Determined to lift the curse, they set out to find the wicked fairy responsible, but what they learn turns everything they thought they knew on its ear. Throughout the story, under Zinnia's snarky modern voice and the increasingly dark overtones of the fairy tale world she's plunged into, is a theme of feminism, how women are stripped of choices and that very stripping is romanticized and glamourized until even the women come to embrace it (most of them, at least)... and how those who resist are vilified and punished. The harder Zinnia and Primrose try to forge their own happy endings, the more the worlds push back, but Zinnia's not about to give up, not when she literally has nothing to lose.
From the start, the voice pulled me in, and the tale kept moving until almost the very end, which seemed a little drawn out. The whole makes for an enjoyable and thought-provoking examination of a classic story whose roots are far darker than many want to realize.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse (K. Eason) - My Review
Spindle's End (Robin McKinley) - My Review
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C. Wrede) - My Review
Thursday, October 6, 2022
The Jewel of Seven Stars (Bram Stoker)
The Jewel of Seven Stars
Bram Stoker
Blackstone Audio
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Young barrister Malcolm Ross only met the lady Margaret Trelawny briefly; though he was enchanted by her beauty, he never thought she'd take him up on his offer to help if ever she needed assistance. The summons in the dead of night, therefore, startles him. Margaret's father, Dr. Abel Trelawny, a noted Egyptologist whose home has more artifacts than anywhere outside the British Museum, has been attacked, and now lies as if in a coma. Stranger still, they discover no sign of an attacker entering or leaving the premises, and there's a note in Abel's desk addressed to her that seems to indicate he expected just this very thing to happen. With an inspector, a doctor, and one of Dr. Trelawny's associates, one Eugene Corbet, Malcolm finds himself drawn into a tale of hidden tombs, lost histories, a blood-red jewel like no other on Earth, and a curse - or possibly prophecy - that has already claimed numerous lives.
REVIEW: This Gothic tale hits all the notes one might expect of a classic horror centered around ancient Egypt (and the Europeans who felt no qualms about tomb raiding in the name of science and cultural superiority, even as the notion of repercussions for said tomb raiding left them uneasy). As was the style of the day, Malcolm is more observer than active participant or driver of the plot, drawn in by his love for Margaret - who, also typical of the era, is presented as being almost of an alien species as a female, something inherently unknowable and weaker and more emotional than a real person (read: man). There's an unsubtle vibe here about what all women evidently truly value above even power and autonomy, not to mention England being the pinnacle of all possible civilizations to which all others should aspire... but Stoker was a writer of his time, with an audience of his time. That aside, he paints some decently vivid settings and occasionally creepy goings-on, though (also typical for the time) nothing that could be said in a single sentence is presented in anything less than a paragraph or more. At some point, the story becomes less about unraveling the secrets and the threat of the curse and more about sitting around twiddling thumbs until something happens. The ending feels like a pulled punch and a total waste of all the painstaking setup (I understand it's a revised version, the 1912 ending, though even the original 1903 ending sounds a little like a long stroll into a short tomb), costing it the half-star the descriptions (and consideration for its age) nearly earned it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Halloween Tree (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
The Amulet of Doom (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Dracula (Bram Stoker) - My Review
Bram Stoker
Blackstone Audio
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Young barrister Malcolm Ross only met the lady Margaret Trelawny briefly; though he was enchanted by her beauty, he never thought she'd take him up on his offer to help if ever she needed assistance. The summons in the dead of night, therefore, startles him. Margaret's father, Dr. Abel Trelawny, a noted Egyptologist whose home has more artifacts than anywhere outside the British Museum, has been attacked, and now lies as if in a coma. Stranger still, they discover no sign of an attacker entering or leaving the premises, and there's a note in Abel's desk addressed to her that seems to indicate he expected just this very thing to happen. With an inspector, a doctor, and one of Dr. Trelawny's associates, one Eugene Corbet, Malcolm finds himself drawn into a tale of hidden tombs, lost histories, a blood-red jewel like no other on Earth, and a curse - or possibly prophecy - that has already claimed numerous lives.
REVIEW: This Gothic tale hits all the notes one might expect of a classic horror centered around ancient Egypt (and the Europeans who felt no qualms about tomb raiding in the name of science and cultural superiority, even as the notion of repercussions for said tomb raiding left them uneasy). As was the style of the day, Malcolm is more observer than active participant or driver of the plot, drawn in by his love for Margaret - who, also typical of the era, is presented as being almost of an alien species as a female, something inherently unknowable and weaker and more emotional than a real person (read: man). There's an unsubtle vibe here about what all women evidently truly value above even power and autonomy, not to mention England being the pinnacle of all possible civilizations to which all others should aspire... but Stoker was a writer of his time, with an audience of his time. That aside, he paints some decently vivid settings and occasionally creepy goings-on, though (also typical for the time) nothing that could be said in a single sentence is presented in anything less than a paragraph or more. At some point, the story becomes less about unraveling the secrets and the threat of the curse and more about sitting around twiddling thumbs until something happens. The ending feels like a pulled punch and a total waste of all the painstaking setup (I understand it's a revised version, the 1912 ending, though even the original 1903 ending sounds a little like a long stroll into a short tomb), costing it the half-star the descriptions (and consideration for its age) nearly earned it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Halloween Tree (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
The Amulet of Doom (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Dracula (Bram Stoker) - My Review
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Fragile Things (Neil Gaiman)
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Neil Gaiman
HarperAudio
Fiction, Collection/Fantasy/Horror/Poetry/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The months of the year meet to trade stories over a campfire... a mysterious circus proves to be more than it appears... a club of gourmands seeks the ultimate rare delicacy... a man witnesses proof that his reality is not as it seems... These and more tales and poems are related in this collection of stories from modern master Neil Gaiman.
REVIEW: I've mentioned in previous reviews that I find Gaiman a bit hit-and-miss; I can appreciate what he does, but his stories aren't always my cup of cocoa. This is also not the first time I've seen a couple of these; his mashup of Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft, "A Study in Emerald", I've previously read in another anthology, and the poetic short story "Instructions" has been spun off into a picture book (which I haven't specifically read, but have seen go through the sort at the library shipping center where I work). From those two examples alone, one can infer that there's a broad range of tones and potential target audiences in this collection. As usual for Gaiman, the ideas are always imaginative, and even when the tales weren't quite to my taste they were well executed. In an introduction, he explains the inspirations behind most of them, though part of me wished he'd related them closer to the stories in question; in an audiobook, one can't exactly flip back and forth to an opening section as one reaches a story. The American Gods novella, "Monarch of the Glen", lost some context for me since I haven't read that novel, but stood alone well enough to be understood. Overall, it's a decent collection of tales, even if some of the endings are deliberately ambiguous.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Odds Are Good (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Fifty-One Tales (Lord Dunsany) - My Review
The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Neil Gaiman
HarperAudio
Fiction, Collection/Fantasy/Horror/Poetry/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The months of the year meet to trade stories over a campfire... a mysterious circus proves to be more than it appears... a club of gourmands seeks the ultimate rare delicacy... a man witnesses proof that his reality is not as it seems... These and more tales and poems are related in this collection of stories from modern master Neil Gaiman.
REVIEW: I've mentioned in previous reviews that I find Gaiman a bit hit-and-miss; I can appreciate what he does, but his stories aren't always my cup of cocoa. This is also not the first time I've seen a couple of these; his mashup of Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft, "A Study in Emerald", I've previously read in another anthology, and the poetic short story "Instructions" has been spun off into a picture book (which I haven't specifically read, but have seen go through the sort at the library shipping center where I work). From those two examples alone, one can infer that there's a broad range of tones and potential target audiences in this collection. As usual for Gaiman, the ideas are always imaginative, and even when the tales weren't quite to my taste they were well executed. In an introduction, he explains the inspirations behind most of them, though part of me wished he'd related them closer to the stories in question; in an audiobook, one can't exactly flip back and forth to an opening section as one reaches a story. The American Gods novella, "Monarch of the Glen", lost some context for me since I haven't read that novel, but stood alone well enough to be understood. Overall, it's a decent collection of tales, even if some of the endings are deliberately ambiguous.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Odds Are Good (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Fifty-One Tales (Lord Dunsany) - My Review
The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
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