The month has been unpleasantly eventful, but I still managed to get the main Brightdreamer Books site updated.
Enjoy!
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Holmes on the Range (Steve Hockensmith)
Holmes on the Range
The Holmes on the Range series, Book 1
Steve Hockensmith
Minotaur Books
Fiction, Humor/Mystery/Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's 1893, and the Amlingmeyer brothers - Otto and Gustav, better known as "Big Red" and "Old Red" for their fiery hair - are looking for off-season work in Montana cattle country. As cowpokes, they've been up and down the prairies plying their trade, but Old Red harbors secret aspirations. Ever since he heard the stories of the English detective Sherlock Holmes, he's got it into his head that he, too, could be a great detective, even if he never went to school or learned to read. Big Red, of course, has some doubts. Even if his big brother has the mind for deduction, where in the middle of nowhere is he going to prove it?
While washing the trail dust from their mouths at the Hornet's Nest saloon in Mile City, the Amlingmeyer brothers stumble into a job with a local ranch... one with a decidedly unfriendly foreman and some odd expectations. Instead of roping steers and riding the range, the handful of new hires are set to work cleaning up the dilapidated grounds, warned never to wander out of sight or mix with the other hired hands. Indeed, the crew are watched all day by decidedly unfriendly eyes. Big Red has distinct misgivings about the position, for all that beggars can't be choosers, but Old Red is positively ecstatic: he just knows there's something foul going on at the Cantlemere Ranch, and this is the closest to an actual case he's come across. When the dapper general manager, Perkins, is found trampled to death after a storm, everyone's willing to write it off as bad luck - except Old Red. With his large little brother in tow, he sets out to crack the case... not realizing just how much trouble he's about to ride into.
REVIEW: Sherlock pastiches can be tiresome and overplayed, particularly when it feels like the author just cut-and-pasted a caricature of the great detective and his dogged companion into another setting. Holmes on the Range, on the other hand, is more homage than pastiche. Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer may have devoted himself to studying Sherlock Holmes's methods via Doctor Watson's written accounts in Harper's Weekly magazines (in this iteration, Holmes and Watson are real people, not fictional creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), but he's very much his own personality, firmly rooted in his own history. Despite having no formal schooling, he's determined to prove that he's more than just a lowly brute laborer, and indeed shows himself to have a brilliant mind, if one that works in its own ways. Likewise, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer is no Watson. Though devoted to his last surviving family member, who taught him everything he knows about cowpunching, he's not beyond clapping back at his brother, and isn't set up to be the bumbling fool that Watson was sometimes reduced to in Holmes's adventures. The setting isn't a sanitized Old West, the kind seen in paintings or old TV shows, but one full of unruly cattle and unruly cowboys, stinking outhouses and stinking bodies pounded to mush in the Montana mud, classism and racism and other ways humans find to treat other humans worse than the pigs they slaughter for sausages. By aiming to capture the spirit of Doyle's iconic characters rather than the strict letter, Hockensmith succeeds where many others fail.
From the start, Old Red has suspicions about the ranch and its crew, but it's not until Perkins's body turns up that his detective skills kick into high gear. Though he keeps some things to himself, he lets his brother in on a fair bit of his reasoning, making Big Red more of a partner and less of a struggling tagalong. With logic, observation, and the instincts born of a hard life on the frontier, not to mention prodigal tracking skills, the would-be detective starts piecing together a picture that involves fishy hired hands, a suspiciously-timed visit by the English stakeholders, scandals stretching from America to the old country, and even a subplot involving an escaped madman known as "Hungry Bob", a notorious convicted cannibal who may or may not be implicated in crimes around the property. Big Red's narration has a humorous streak, but also serious weight, bringing the distinctive characters to life. Along the way, the Amlingmeyers learn the hard way that detective work isn't at all what they imagined it would be like from those Harper's Weekly stories, much more complicated and much more dangerous. The action and intrigue ratchet up nicely through the tale, with hardly any lulls along the way to a breakneck climax that sees many truths revealed, though at a cost neither brother could've anticipated. This is a series I wouldn't mind following for at least another book, with a nice balance of humor and mystery in a gritty Western setting.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) - My Review
Unwanted: Dead or Alive (Gene Shelton) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
The Holmes on the Range series, Book 1
Steve Hockensmith
Minotaur Books
Fiction, Humor/Mystery/Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's 1893, and the Amlingmeyer brothers - Otto and Gustav, better known as "Big Red" and "Old Red" for their fiery hair - are looking for off-season work in Montana cattle country. As cowpokes, they've been up and down the prairies plying their trade, but Old Red harbors secret aspirations. Ever since he heard the stories of the English detective Sherlock Holmes, he's got it into his head that he, too, could be a great detective, even if he never went to school or learned to read. Big Red, of course, has some doubts. Even if his big brother has the mind for deduction, where in the middle of nowhere is he going to prove it?
While washing the trail dust from their mouths at the Hornet's Nest saloon in Mile City, the Amlingmeyer brothers stumble into a job with a local ranch... one with a decidedly unfriendly foreman and some odd expectations. Instead of roping steers and riding the range, the handful of new hires are set to work cleaning up the dilapidated grounds, warned never to wander out of sight or mix with the other hired hands. Indeed, the crew are watched all day by decidedly unfriendly eyes. Big Red has distinct misgivings about the position, for all that beggars can't be choosers, but Old Red is positively ecstatic: he just knows there's something foul going on at the Cantlemere Ranch, and this is the closest to an actual case he's come across. When the dapper general manager, Perkins, is found trampled to death after a storm, everyone's willing to write it off as bad luck - except Old Red. With his large little brother in tow, he sets out to crack the case... not realizing just how much trouble he's about to ride into.
REVIEW: Sherlock pastiches can be tiresome and overplayed, particularly when it feels like the author just cut-and-pasted a caricature of the great detective and his dogged companion into another setting. Holmes on the Range, on the other hand, is more homage than pastiche. Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer may have devoted himself to studying Sherlock Holmes's methods via Doctor Watson's written accounts in Harper's Weekly magazines (in this iteration, Holmes and Watson are real people, not fictional creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), but he's very much his own personality, firmly rooted in his own history. Despite having no formal schooling, he's determined to prove that he's more than just a lowly brute laborer, and indeed shows himself to have a brilliant mind, if one that works in its own ways. Likewise, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer is no Watson. Though devoted to his last surviving family member, who taught him everything he knows about cowpunching, he's not beyond clapping back at his brother, and isn't set up to be the bumbling fool that Watson was sometimes reduced to in Holmes's adventures. The setting isn't a sanitized Old West, the kind seen in paintings or old TV shows, but one full of unruly cattle and unruly cowboys, stinking outhouses and stinking bodies pounded to mush in the Montana mud, classism and racism and other ways humans find to treat other humans worse than the pigs they slaughter for sausages. By aiming to capture the spirit of Doyle's iconic characters rather than the strict letter, Hockensmith succeeds where many others fail.
From the start, Old Red has suspicions about the ranch and its crew, but it's not until Perkins's body turns up that his detective skills kick into high gear. Though he keeps some things to himself, he lets his brother in on a fair bit of his reasoning, making Big Red more of a partner and less of a struggling tagalong. With logic, observation, and the instincts born of a hard life on the frontier, not to mention prodigal tracking skills, the would-be detective starts piecing together a picture that involves fishy hired hands, a suspiciously-timed visit by the English stakeholders, scandals stretching from America to the old country, and even a subplot involving an escaped madman known as "Hungry Bob", a notorious convicted cannibal who may or may not be implicated in crimes around the property. Big Red's narration has a humorous streak, but also serious weight, bringing the distinctive characters to life. Along the way, the Amlingmeyers learn the hard way that detective work isn't at all what they imagined it would be like from those Harper's Weekly stories, much more complicated and much more dangerous. The action and intrigue ratchet up nicely through the tale, with hardly any lulls along the way to a breakneck climax that sees many truths revealed, though at a cost neither brother could've anticipated. This is a series I wouldn't mind following for at least another book, with a nice balance of humor and mystery in a gritty Western setting.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) - My Review
Unwanted: Dead or Alive (Gene Shelton) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Rise (Mira Grant)
Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection
The Newsflesh series
Mira Grant
Orbit
Fiction, Collection/Horror/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The zombie apocalypse known as the Rising reshaped human civilization, after nearly destroying it. From the viral origins of the dreaded hybrid Kellis-Amberlee contagion to a new generation that has never known a world without bleach and blood tests and the risen dead as part of daily life, there are countless stories to be told. This collection includes the short stories and novellas in the Newsflesh world:
Countdown: Two scientists work to cure disease, one cancer and the other the common cold, entirely unaware of each other's work... or how their breakthroughs, which could have ended so much human suffering, will instead nearly end the known world.
Everglades: A young woman reflects on childhood visits to Florida as she decides whether life in a zombie apocalypse is worth living.
San Diego 2014: A group of fantasy and science fiction fans gather for a weekend of cosplay and fun, only to find internet rumors of a zombie outbreak to be all too true when the undead crash the gates.
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea: A prominent internet journalist travels to Australia to experience their radically different take on the apocalypse and visit the infamous "rabbit-proof fence" that contains their viral-amplified wildlife.
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell: A Seattle elementary school thought it had effective protocols in place to prevent a zombie outbreak on the grounds, only to be proven disastrously wrong.
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus: An off-the-grid scientist and her team find an emaciated, insane stranger, harbinger of an all-too-human threat.
All the Pretty Little Horses: After becoming heroes during the Rising, a Berkeley professor and his grief-shattered wife struggle to fill a gaping, child-sized hole in their lives.
Coming to You Live: After taking on top government agencies and losing too many colleagues, former internet journalists Shaun and Georgia Mason had thought that fleeing to the Canadian wilderness meant they could be free of the traumas that had warped their lives, only for their fragile peace to be broken.
REVIEW: Grant's Newsflesh world, based on solid viral research and understanding of human nature, expands beyond the core cast with these additional tales. From the origins of the outbreak, a tragic combination of unintended consequences and the fallout of fearmongering "fake news" journalism that doesn't care what wildfires it sparks so long as it feeds the lucrative outrage machine, through the chaos and tragedy of the early days and on past the end of the third book in the core trilogy (I have yet to read the fourth entry), Rise fleshes out what already felt like a solid world and fills in more details on several characters. Here, we get the backstory of the elder Masons whose artificial, camera-dependent "love" of Rising orphans Sean and Georgia left the two adoptive siblings so psychologically damaged, as well as the origins of the drug-addicted killer "Foxy". We also see how the rest of the world responded to the Rising, and what might be on the horizon if people can let go of their addiction to fear (and the power that some groups gain through manipulating that fear). Hidden in the cracks are glimmers of hope that a better future is possible, though there's also plenty of death and darkness and violence, enough to break the strongest wills. Through all the tales, the world leaps to life in its many well-researched details and distinctive characters. As in the original stories, the biggest threat is often not the hybrid Kellis-Amberlee virus or the undead, but the all-too-living terror and calculated monstrosity of people, though some of the worst damage they do is not out of malice at all. Short introductions by the author explain inspirations and intents. My only real complaint, one that I can't exactly blame this collection for, was that it had been long enough since I read the Newsflesh books that it took me a while to remember the whos and whats and wheres of the core cast and referenced events. The rest ranks right up their with the main series, earning it top marks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) - My Review
I Am Legend and Other Stories (Richard Matheson) - My Review
The Newsflesh series
Mira Grant
Orbit
Fiction, Collection/Horror/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The zombie apocalypse known as the Rising reshaped human civilization, after nearly destroying it. From the viral origins of the dreaded hybrid Kellis-Amberlee contagion to a new generation that has never known a world without bleach and blood tests and the risen dead as part of daily life, there are countless stories to be told. This collection includes the short stories and novellas in the Newsflesh world:
Countdown: Two scientists work to cure disease, one cancer and the other the common cold, entirely unaware of each other's work... or how their breakthroughs, which could have ended so much human suffering, will instead nearly end the known world.
Everglades: A young woman reflects on childhood visits to Florida as she decides whether life in a zombie apocalypse is worth living.
San Diego 2014: A group of fantasy and science fiction fans gather for a weekend of cosplay and fun, only to find internet rumors of a zombie outbreak to be all too true when the undead crash the gates.
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea: A prominent internet journalist travels to Australia to experience their radically different take on the apocalypse and visit the infamous "rabbit-proof fence" that contains their viral-amplified wildlife.
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell: A Seattle elementary school thought it had effective protocols in place to prevent a zombie outbreak on the grounds, only to be proven disastrously wrong.
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus: An off-the-grid scientist and her team find an emaciated, insane stranger, harbinger of an all-too-human threat.
All the Pretty Little Horses: After becoming heroes during the Rising, a Berkeley professor and his grief-shattered wife struggle to fill a gaping, child-sized hole in their lives.
Coming to You Live: After taking on top government agencies and losing too many colleagues, former internet journalists Shaun and Georgia Mason had thought that fleeing to the Canadian wilderness meant they could be free of the traumas that had warped their lives, only for their fragile peace to be broken.
REVIEW: Grant's Newsflesh world, based on solid viral research and understanding of human nature, expands beyond the core cast with these additional tales. From the origins of the outbreak, a tragic combination of unintended consequences and the fallout of fearmongering "fake news" journalism that doesn't care what wildfires it sparks so long as it feeds the lucrative outrage machine, through the chaos and tragedy of the early days and on past the end of the third book in the core trilogy (I have yet to read the fourth entry), Rise fleshes out what already felt like a solid world and fills in more details on several characters. Here, we get the backstory of the elder Masons whose artificial, camera-dependent "love" of Rising orphans Sean and Georgia left the two adoptive siblings so psychologically damaged, as well as the origins of the drug-addicted killer "Foxy". We also see how the rest of the world responded to the Rising, and what might be on the horizon if people can let go of their addiction to fear (and the power that some groups gain through manipulating that fear). Hidden in the cracks are glimmers of hope that a better future is possible, though there's also plenty of death and darkness and violence, enough to break the strongest wills. Through all the tales, the world leaps to life in its many well-researched details and distinctive characters. As in the original stories, the biggest threat is often not the hybrid Kellis-Amberlee virus or the undead, but the all-too-living terror and calculated monstrosity of people, though some of the worst damage they do is not out of malice at all. Short introductions by the author explain inspirations and intents. My only real complaint, one that I can't exactly blame this collection for, was that it had been long enough since I read the Newsflesh books that it took me a while to remember the whos and whats and wheres of the core cast and referenced events. The rest ranks right up their with the main series, earning it top marks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) - My Review
I Am Legend and Other Stories (Richard Matheson) - My Review
Friday, September 15, 2023
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer)
Wolfwood
Marianna Baer
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Seventeen-year-old Indigo Serra has grown up idolizing her mother... or the woman her mother used to be. Once, Zoe Serra was the toast of the New York City art scene, a young rising star whose Wolfwood series of watercolors is still talked about and sought after by collectors. But she hasn't picked up a brush in years, sliding into a deep depression that leaves her unable to function most days. Indigo tries to pick up the slack, working two summer jobs and talking their former landlord into letting them sleep (illegally) in the basement in exchange for cleaning services, sacrificing her own hopes and dreams to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, but there's only so much a teenage girl can do... which is why, when a gallery reached out to Zoe about completing the Wolfwood series for a new exhibition, Indigo reached back.
She just wanted to give her mother a little nudge, something to get her back in the studio: surely, with the deadline of an exhibition and the interest of major buyers, that would be enough to shake off the crippling self-doubt. Then she thought maybe Zoe would get her confidence back if Indigo transferred the sketches to full-sized watercolor paper... Before Indigo knows it, she's painting the pictures her mother refuses to even look at - and finding out just why Zoe walked away from Wolfwood all those years ago. Whatever she paints, she finds herself living: a nightmare jungle of monstrous plants and silent clones and four terrorized girls, all controlled by an unseen master known only as the Wolf. By the time Indigo realizes the danger, it's too late to stop - even if finishing the Wolfwood series might mean finishing her own life.
REVIEW: Wolfwood is a different, dark fantasy that vividly illustrates the damage done by unresolved trauma and mental illness down through generations, as well as the pain and shame too often endured because of deep poverty.
Indigo has every reason to hate her mother, and in some corner does harbor some anger toward their circumstances, but still loves Zoe deeply and fiercely, sacrificing her own life and future trying to help a woman who can't even admit the depth of her own troubles. For all the girl gives up, though, and hard as she tries, she can't fix someone else, especially when the mother she knows is only one facet of the woman Zoe Serra; flashbacks take the reader back to Zoe's own teenage years in the 1980's, where young love and teenage impulsivity lead her to a small Mexican town with a man she just met and a life that's too good, too naive, to possibly last. It's here that the iconic Wolfwood series of paintings has its roots, for all that Zoe wouldn't actually create them until years later... and it's here, or rather a twisted, nightmare version of the Mexican jungles, that Indigo finds herself transported when she tries to finish her mother's paintings. In the painted world, she takes on the persona of one of the four girls in the pictures who face horrific torments and torture, though it takes Indigo a little long to connect these "dreams" with her mother (especially as she's called "Zoe" by the other girls in the jungle world).
Meanwhile, in the real world, Indigo struggles to juggle this new obligation and deception, fending off increasingly pointed questions from the gallery owner and from an old friend, the owner's son, with whom she used to be close back when life was better and Zoe still worked as an artist. Her impoverished circumstances fill Indigo with dread and shame, not just from having no money or free time but from a nagging sense of guilt that it's all her fault somehow, that if she were a harder worker they'd have more money, or if she were a better daughter she could fix whatever's wrong with her mother just like she fixes their perpetually-malfunctioning refrigerator. There are people she could reach out to for support, places she could turn, but she's so used to hiding the family secrets and shames that it doesn't even cross her mind to try, even as she slips further underwater and the painted world exerts more and more power over her. She starts falling into similar mental patterns that led Zoe to where she is, the paralyzing fears and mental loops that have sapped the woman's will to live. Still, even when she sees from a friend's life how it's impossible to help someone who is not in a position to even try helping themselves, Indigo keeps trying, and failing, to be the perfect daughter and make everything better. The paintings, Indigo's mental health, and Zoe's condition grow darker and more twisted as they near the finale, even as the flashbacks point to the roots of Wolfwood's bleak narrative in Zoe's younger years, building to a reasonably powerful climax. Not everything is magically fixed by the ending, but there is a reasonably satisfactory resolution.
There are times when the twisted tortures of the Wolfwood grow repetitious, and where Indigo's repeated denials that anything unusual is happening when she paints get tiring. A few characters and incidents also felt extraneous by the end. On the whole, though, Wolfwood is an interesting, often dark exploration of art and trauma and family secrets and how the ones we love can sometimes be the ones who hurt us most, even when they don't intend it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Marianna Baer
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Seventeen-year-old Indigo Serra has grown up idolizing her mother... or the woman her mother used to be. Once, Zoe Serra was the toast of the New York City art scene, a young rising star whose Wolfwood series of watercolors is still talked about and sought after by collectors. But she hasn't picked up a brush in years, sliding into a deep depression that leaves her unable to function most days. Indigo tries to pick up the slack, working two summer jobs and talking their former landlord into letting them sleep (illegally) in the basement in exchange for cleaning services, sacrificing her own hopes and dreams to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, but there's only so much a teenage girl can do... which is why, when a gallery reached out to Zoe about completing the Wolfwood series for a new exhibition, Indigo reached back.
She just wanted to give her mother a little nudge, something to get her back in the studio: surely, with the deadline of an exhibition and the interest of major buyers, that would be enough to shake off the crippling self-doubt. Then she thought maybe Zoe would get her confidence back if Indigo transferred the sketches to full-sized watercolor paper... Before Indigo knows it, she's painting the pictures her mother refuses to even look at - and finding out just why Zoe walked away from Wolfwood all those years ago. Whatever she paints, she finds herself living: a nightmare jungle of monstrous plants and silent clones and four terrorized girls, all controlled by an unseen master known only as the Wolf. By the time Indigo realizes the danger, it's too late to stop - even if finishing the Wolfwood series might mean finishing her own life.
REVIEW: Wolfwood is a different, dark fantasy that vividly illustrates the damage done by unresolved trauma and mental illness down through generations, as well as the pain and shame too often endured because of deep poverty.
Indigo has every reason to hate her mother, and in some corner does harbor some anger toward their circumstances, but still loves Zoe deeply and fiercely, sacrificing her own life and future trying to help a woman who can't even admit the depth of her own troubles. For all the girl gives up, though, and hard as she tries, she can't fix someone else, especially when the mother she knows is only one facet of the woman Zoe Serra; flashbacks take the reader back to Zoe's own teenage years in the 1980's, where young love and teenage impulsivity lead her to a small Mexican town with a man she just met and a life that's too good, too naive, to possibly last. It's here that the iconic Wolfwood series of paintings has its roots, for all that Zoe wouldn't actually create them until years later... and it's here, or rather a twisted, nightmare version of the Mexican jungles, that Indigo finds herself transported when she tries to finish her mother's paintings. In the painted world, she takes on the persona of one of the four girls in the pictures who face horrific torments and torture, though it takes Indigo a little long to connect these "dreams" with her mother (especially as she's called "Zoe" by the other girls in the jungle world).
Meanwhile, in the real world, Indigo struggles to juggle this new obligation and deception, fending off increasingly pointed questions from the gallery owner and from an old friend, the owner's son, with whom she used to be close back when life was better and Zoe still worked as an artist. Her impoverished circumstances fill Indigo with dread and shame, not just from having no money or free time but from a nagging sense of guilt that it's all her fault somehow, that if she were a harder worker they'd have more money, or if she were a better daughter she could fix whatever's wrong with her mother just like she fixes their perpetually-malfunctioning refrigerator. There are people she could reach out to for support, places she could turn, but she's so used to hiding the family secrets and shames that it doesn't even cross her mind to try, even as she slips further underwater and the painted world exerts more and more power over her. She starts falling into similar mental patterns that led Zoe to where she is, the paralyzing fears and mental loops that have sapped the woman's will to live. Still, even when she sees from a friend's life how it's impossible to help someone who is not in a position to even try helping themselves, Indigo keeps trying, and failing, to be the perfect daughter and make everything better. The paintings, Indigo's mental health, and Zoe's condition grow darker and more twisted as they near the finale, even as the flashbacks point to the roots of Wolfwood's bleak narrative in Zoe's younger years, building to a reasonably powerful climax. Not everything is magically fixed by the ending, but there is a reasonably satisfactory resolution.
There are times when the twisted tortures of the Wolfwood grow repetitious, and where Indigo's repeated denials that anything unusual is happening when she paints get tiring. A few characters and incidents also felt extraneous by the end. On the whole, though, Wolfwood is an interesting, often dark exploration of art and trauma and family secrets and how the ones we love can sometimes be the ones who hurt us most, even when they don't intend it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Thursday, September 14, 2023
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck series, Book 1
Mark Manson
Harper
Nonfiction, Self-Help
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Accentuate the positive! Start each day with a smile! Everyone is extraordinary if they just let themselves be! Seek joy in all things at all times! Don't see the obstacles! Never give up! And if all else fails, buy this self-help retreat, or that product, or both! With all the motivational messages and admonitions against negative feelings or failures flying around these days, it's a wonder the world isn't chock full of literal superheroes by now, spontaneously combusting with enough extraordinary energy to outshine the sun... but it isn't, and despite the vast material comforts and opportunities available to many, we're possibly the most miserable, least satisfied generation ever. Maybe we're just not thinking enough happy thoughts, or reciting enough self-love affirmations in our mirror - or maybe, by avoiding all talk and experience of negative emotions and failures and sometimes-unpleasant self examinations, we're robbing ourselves of the vitally important experiences that lead to true growth and more fulfilled lives. Maybe we're just trying to give too many fucks about too many things that don't ultimately matter. Author and personal growth advisor Mark Manson offers advice without the shiny happy warm fuzzies.
REVIEW: There is an epidemic of positive thinking and self-esteem-over-self-growth messaging in the world today, not at all helped by social media and how it distorts perceptions: everyone else looks like they're either having the best time ever with the most positive hashtags or are the most picked-on and unlucky soul ever to emerge from the primordial ooze (and more hashtags), making everyone else feel awkward and inadequate and unable to compete on either end of the spectrum. Manson may not be the first to challenge this thinking, but he does it effectively, with more than a few curse words and verbal smacks across the face, along with some humor. All this positive thinking, he successfully argues, are distracting at best and harmful at worst. Failure and pain are essential to human growth and maturity, and things we need to learn how to cope with and learn from rather than avoid or cast blame about, but too many voices in society are urging us to reject this vital experience, even to feel shame or guilt for not always being happy or successful. Heck, many of us struggle to even tangibly define what success or happiness mean to us outside of parameters we've been trained to value by outside influences... or to redefine those terms when our previous ideas failed to come to fruition, or came to fruition and didn't bring us what we expected. Picking battles, picking where to invest our limited supply of fucks, is necessary. He even emphasizes the importance of coming to grips with our inevitable mortality as a part of personal growth, the one end-point none of us can predict or avoid.
As with many self-help books, he glosses over some pitfalls that can trap people (lack of money, for instance, or being stuck in repressive or abusive communities), but all in all he offers some solid food for thought.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Myth of Multitasking (Dave Crenshaw) - My Review
10% Happier (Dan Harris) - My Review
How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur) - My Review
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck series, Book 1
Mark Manson
Harper
Nonfiction, Self-Help
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Accentuate the positive! Start each day with a smile! Everyone is extraordinary if they just let themselves be! Seek joy in all things at all times! Don't see the obstacles! Never give up! And if all else fails, buy this self-help retreat, or that product, or both! With all the motivational messages and admonitions against negative feelings or failures flying around these days, it's a wonder the world isn't chock full of literal superheroes by now, spontaneously combusting with enough extraordinary energy to outshine the sun... but it isn't, and despite the vast material comforts and opportunities available to many, we're possibly the most miserable, least satisfied generation ever. Maybe we're just not thinking enough happy thoughts, or reciting enough self-love affirmations in our mirror - or maybe, by avoiding all talk and experience of negative emotions and failures and sometimes-unpleasant self examinations, we're robbing ourselves of the vitally important experiences that lead to true growth and more fulfilled lives. Maybe we're just trying to give too many fucks about too many things that don't ultimately matter. Author and personal growth advisor Mark Manson offers advice without the shiny happy warm fuzzies.
REVIEW: There is an epidemic of positive thinking and self-esteem-over-self-growth messaging in the world today, not at all helped by social media and how it distorts perceptions: everyone else looks like they're either having the best time ever with the most positive hashtags or are the most picked-on and unlucky soul ever to emerge from the primordial ooze (and more hashtags), making everyone else feel awkward and inadequate and unable to compete on either end of the spectrum. Manson may not be the first to challenge this thinking, but he does it effectively, with more than a few curse words and verbal smacks across the face, along with some humor. All this positive thinking, he successfully argues, are distracting at best and harmful at worst. Failure and pain are essential to human growth and maturity, and things we need to learn how to cope with and learn from rather than avoid or cast blame about, but too many voices in society are urging us to reject this vital experience, even to feel shame or guilt for not always being happy or successful. Heck, many of us struggle to even tangibly define what success or happiness mean to us outside of parameters we've been trained to value by outside influences... or to redefine those terms when our previous ideas failed to come to fruition, or came to fruition and didn't bring us what we expected. Picking battles, picking where to invest our limited supply of fucks, is necessary. He even emphasizes the importance of coming to grips with our inevitable mortality as a part of personal growth, the one end-point none of us can predict or avoid.
As with many self-help books, he glosses over some pitfalls that can trap people (lack of money, for instance, or being stuck in repressive or abusive communities), but all in all he offers some solid food for thought.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Myth of Multitasking (Dave Crenshaw) - My Review
10% Happier (Dan Harris) - My Review
How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur) - My Review
The Terminal List (Jack Carr)
The Terminal List
The Terminal List series, Book 1
Jack Carr
Atria
Fiction, Action/Thriller
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Lieutenant Commander James Reece has proudly served his country for close to two decades, a top Navy SEAL with an unparalleled reputation and track record. When new orders come down for an urgent mission in Afghanistan, though, something feels strange about the situation, but he is nothing if not a loyal soldier, and the intel seems solid... which is how he wound up leading his men into a deadly ambush. As one of the only survivors, Reece is shocked to discover that he's being made the scapegoat - and enraged when he learns why: multiple men in his unit, including himself, apparently have rare malignant brain tumors, too many to be mere natural coincidence. Clearly, someone up the chain is covering up something. Even then, there might have been a chance he could've swallowed his anger and followed orders, taking the fall - but then his wife and young daughter are killed in a "random" home invasion. Patriot he may be, but nobody hurts his family and lives to tell the tale. James Reece is now a man with literally nothing to lose. Even if he is staring down a death sentence, he can make what's left of his life count for something by bringing down the people who betrayed him, his troops, and his family.
REVIEW: On the one hand, this book is precisely what it claims to be: a testosterone-soaked tale of revenge, an ode to militant masculinity, draped in Old Glory and mounds of shell casings. If you're looking for a straightforward story of violence and vengeance and a red-blooded man sticking it to the corrupt politicians and fat cat private sector parasites, one that never drags its heels or dithers or concerns itself with wimpy ideas like "morality" or "legality" or "maybe pause a sec and think if turning into a one-man death machine is really the only possible solution to this problem", this story will not disappoint, especially if you love copious specs on weapons and tactical assaults. On that level, it certainly delivers in spades, drawing on Carr's extensive experience and research to add a nice ring of authenticity. On the other hand, there are the other levels...
James Reece is the quintessential Navy SEAL, a self-avowed patriot who chafes at stupid things like gun laws and environmentalism, who doesn't feel any particular qualms about killing even innocent civilians (I'm not sure he recognizes that such people exist, especially if they don't speak English; his idea of freedom is a Navy ship loaded to the gills with munitions and missiles sailing off to threaten or blast American dominance into other countries) and wistfully considers America's best and boldest days to be when we tortured and brutalized foreigners in the wake of 9/11... even as he scowls at enemies torturing and brutalizing Americans. He's a soldier's soldier, a man's man, a patriot's patriot, and when he no longer has anything to live for or anything to lose, he becomes the worst enemy imaginable, seeming to revel in being let off the leash to perform acts of cold-blooded murder and utter sadistic brutality; blood and bullets are the only law and justice he recognizes as remotely legitimate, and courts are as distasteful as any foreign word in his manly American mouth. A key part of the plot is an experimental drug meant to reduce the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on field soldiers... something apparently only lesser, weaker, flawed people experience, not proper men like Reece to whom killing is just another job a man does. It's just that sort of weak, lefty idea - that maybe constant warfare is bad for people, or maybe violence shouldn't be the only option on the table - that threatens everything good about America, and Carr doesn't exactly mince words driving home the theme that our country would be better off with more men like James Reece and less of... well, anything else.
In the end, I wound up splitting the difference. I can't exactly fault it for delivering the story it promised, after all, even if the execution often felt like being bashed over the head with a flag-wrapped rifle... and, yes, I have read far worse stories.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Forever War (John Haldeman) - My Review
Dogs of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Phoenix Rising (Cynthia Vespia) - My Review
The Terminal List series, Book 1
Jack Carr
Atria
Fiction, Action/Thriller
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Lieutenant Commander James Reece has proudly served his country for close to two decades, a top Navy SEAL with an unparalleled reputation and track record. When new orders come down for an urgent mission in Afghanistan, though, something feels strange about the situation, but he is nothing if not a loyal soldier, and the intel seems solid... which is how he wound up leading his men into a deadly ambush. As one of the only survivors, Reece is shocked to discover that he's being made the scapegoat - and enraged when he learns why: multiple men in his unit, including himself, apparently have rare malignant brain tumors, too many to be mere natural coincidence. Clearly, someone up the chain is covering up something. Even then, there might have been a chance he could've swallowed his anger and followed orders, taking the fall - but then his wife and young daughter are killed in a "random" home invasion. Patriot he may be, but nobody hurts his family and lives to tell the tale. James Reece is now a man with literally nothing to lose. Even if he is staring down a death sentence, he can make what's left of his life count for something by bringing down the people who betrayed him, his troops, and his family.
REVIEW: On the one hand, this book is precisely what it claims to be: a testosterone-soaked tale of revenge, an ode to militant masculinity, draped in Old Glory and mounds of shell casings. If you're looking for a straightforward story of violence and vengeance and a red-blooded man sticking it to the corrupt politicians and fat cat private sector parasites, one that never drags its heels or dithers or concerns itself with wimpy ideas like "morality" or "legality" or "maybe pause a sec and think if turning into a one-man death machine is really the only possible solution to this problem", this story will not disappoint, especially if you love copious specs on weapons and tactical assaults. On that level, it certainly delivers in spades, drawing on Carr's extensive experience and research to add a nice ring of authenticity. On the other hand, there are the other levels...
James Reece is the quintessential Navy SEAL, a self-avowed patriot who chafes at stupid things like gun laws and environmentalism, who doesn't feel any particular qualms about killing even innocent civilians (I'm not sure he recognizes that such people exist, especially if they don't speak English; his idea of freedom is a Navy ship loaded to the gills with munitions and missiles sailing off to threaten or blast American dominance into other countries) and wistfully considers America's best and boldest days to be when we tortured and brutalized foreigners in the wake of 9/11... even as he scowls at enemies torturing and brutalizing Americans. He's a soldier's soldier, a man's man, a patriot's patriot, and when he no longer has anything to live for or anything to lose, he becomes the worst enemy imaginable, seeming to revel in being let off the leash to perform acts of cold-blooded murder and utter sadistic brutality; blood and bullets are the only law and justice he recognizes as remotely legitimate, and courts are as distasteful as any foreign word in his manly American mouth. A key part of the plot is an experimental drug meant to reduce the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on field soldiers... something apparently only lesser, weaker, flawed people experience, not proper men like Reece to whom killing is just another job a man does. It's just that sort of weak, lefty idea - that maybe constant warfare is bad for people, or maybe violence shouldn't be the only option on the table - that threatens everything good about America, and Carr doesn't exactly mince words driving home the theme that our country would be better off with more men like James Reece and less of... well, anything else.
In the end, I wound up splitting the difference. I can't exactly fault it for delivering the story it promised, after all, even if the execution often felt like being bashed over the head with a flag-wrapped rifle... and, yes, I have read far worse stories.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Forever War (John Haldeman) - My Review
Dogs of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Phoenix Rising (Cynthia Vespia) - My Review
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
The Storyteller's Handbook (Elise Hurst)
The Storyteller's Handbook: 52 Illustrations to Inspire Your Own Tales and Adventures
Elise Hurst
Compendium
Nonfiction, CH? Creativity
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Artist Elise Hurst offers numerous detailed images of whimsical surreality to spark the imagination. With a foreword by Neil Gaiman.
REVIEW: A bit of a sparse description, I know, but there is no other way to really describe this "handbook". After Gaiman's remarks, which form an introduction of sorts in the form of a fairy tale, the book is mostly just what the subtitle indicates: a series of often-peculiar pen and ink illustrations full of animals, people, buildings, wildlands, skyscapes, seascapes, and more. Most contain hidden details and little flourishes and hints of secretive shapes and meaning that reward repeated perusal or merely lingering over the pages. Almost any part of any picture, from a small detail to the overall milieu to the general emotion to what possible symbolism could be at play (if one doesn't take the images literally), could spark ideas in readers of all ages, for everything from stories to poems to songs to even original artwork. It gets top marks for sheer imagination and delivering precisely what it promises.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Animalia (Graeme Base) - My Review
Journey (Aaron Becker) - My Review
What Do You Do With an Idea? (Kobi Yamada) - My Review
Elise Hurst
Compendium
Nonfiction, CH? Creativity
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Artist Elise Hurst offers numerous detailed images of whimsical surreality to spark the imagination. With a foreword by Neil Gaiman.
REVIEW: A bit of a sparse description, I know, but there is no other way to really describe this "handbook". After Gaiman's remarks, which form an introduction of sorts in the form of a fairy tale, the book is mostly just what the subtitle indicates: a series of often-peculiar pen and ink illustrations full of animals, people, buildings, wildlands, skyscapes, seascapes, and more. Most contain hidden details and little flourishes and hints of secretive shapes and meaning that reward repeated perusal or merely lingering over the pages. Almost any part of any picture, from a small detail to the overall milieu to the general emotion to what possible symbolism could be at play (if one doesn't take the images literally), could spark ideas in readers of all ages, for everything from stories to poems to songs to even original artwork. It gets top marks for sheer imagination and delivering precisely what it promises.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Animalia (Graeme Base) - My Review
Journey (Aaron Becker) - My Review
What Do You Do With an Idea? (Kobi Yamada) - My Review
Friday, September 8, 2023
Empire of Exiles (Erin M. Evans)
Empire of Exiles
The Books of the Usurper series, Book 1
Erin M. Evans
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since the changelings, shapeshifters without souls that could mimic anyone, sowing chaos and destruction, chased the people of the world to the land of Semilla, the many races and nations have struggled to live together, but the steadying hand of the imperial family managed to keep the peace - until the War of the Brothers, when a royal Duke went renegade and nearly succeeded in overthrowing the rightful heir and seizing the crown in a terrible civil war of destructive magic and deepest treachery. It has been twenty-three years since those dark days, and the peace still feels fragile, particularly for those who lived through it. Still, time must move on, and wounds must be healed. After all, those who did not repent their participation in the coup have been imprisoned or executed, and nobody wants to destabilize Semilla again - not when there's literally nowhere else in the world left to go that isn't overrun with changelings.
When apprentice scribe Quill comes to the Archives in the capital city, he thinks he's just on another tedious errand as part of his tedious training for a law career, fetching some old artifacts at the behest of one of his master's well-to-do clients. The Archives, at least, are fascinating, repositories of treasures from every nation that fled behind the salt wall that protects Semilla, much of it still uncatalogued. The archivists themselves are at least as interesting: specialists with magical affinities for select elements or items, but whose powers wax and wane on unpredictable cycles that carry great risks if they spin out of control, up to and including death. When he witnesses a terrible tragedy that evening - a fellow scribe and his one-time best friend apparently murdering someone in cold blood before uttering a cryptic phrase and slitting his own throat - he can think of nowhere else to run for help but the Archives... and finds himself entangled in a dangerous plot with roots in the failed coup and beyond, a plot that wakes old memories in those who have done their best to forget those dark days... and hints that the threat posed by the usurper brother may be far from over.
REVIEW: I'd heard decent things about this one, and it was available on Libby, so I figured I might as well give it a try. If I'm being honest, I nearly gave up on it early on; even for high fantasy, the story is a name stew, people and races and places and more, and I found the characters tough to care about, not helped by some of the choices of the audiobook narrator that turned them into exaggerated caricatures in my mind's eye. But I was low on alternate options, and I figured it would pick up eventually, given the aforementioned decent things I recalled hearing.
It does, eventually pick up... somewhat. Unfortunately, the story throughout is burdened with excessive flashbacks and repetition - telling me something or having a character think a particular thing, then telling me again (almost word for word) later, often in the same scene... then, just in case I wasn't paying attention before, often telling me the same information or have the same character think the same things yet again - that kept bogging down my interest. The narration also leans far too hard into setting the mood with vocal variations, low urgent murmurs or brash over-the-top accents or singsong trills or sharp snarking or marble-mouthed mumbles or (my personal least favorite) breathless and gulping tremulous quavers for one particularly spineless person who spends far, far too much time fretting and hemming and hawing and cowering and otherwise consuming page time avoiding agency and action. It was the vocal equivalent of an encyclopedia of "said-bookisms" jackhammered into my ears, the delivery distracting from the dialog and story. The plot and cast of characters both get too convoluted for their own good, with a subplot involving the magical "affinities" of the archive workers that starts to feel less like an interesting quirk of the world and more like an author being a bit too on-the-nose and in the reader's face about addressing Important Issues about mental health spirals and cycles with magic as a thin lampshade. (Not to downgrade the importance of representation and addressing those things, mind you, but when it feels less like an organic element of plot or character and more like one of those after-school specials or "very special episodes" of a TV show, it gets a bit irritating, like using someone's important issue for a ratings bump.) This, too, often drifts into time-eating repetition of minimal plot or character progress. Eventually, things trundle and bump along toward revelations and unmasking of culprits - all mired by yet more flashbacks and hesitations and repetition, most of which the reader already knows and the rest adding little to justify its word count - and the expected dangling threads and threats to set up the longer series arc.
Some of the late revelations and twists were indeed intriguing, though by then I'd given up on connecting to the characters, some of whom I wanted to smack or shake or otherwise shove to get them out of their own heads and doing something already. I also saw potential in the magic systems and cultures, and wish I hadn't been too distracted by the irritating narration and characters so I could've enjoyed them more. I found myself thinking I might've been more absorbed if I'd consumed it in written form, all of which helped pull the rating back up to three and a half stars. While I have read (and listened to) worse, this is another series that can go on without me.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Starfire: A Red Peace (Spencer Ellsworth) - My Review
Mistborn: The Final Empire (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
The Bone Shard Daughter (Andrea Stewart) - My Review
The Books of the Usurper series, Book 1
Erin M. Evans
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since the changelings, shapeshifters without souls that could mimic anyone, sowing chaos and destruction, chased the people of the world to the land of Semilla, the many races and nations have struggled to live together, but the steadying hand of the imperial family managed to keep the peace - until the War of the Brothers, when a royal Duke went renegade and nearly succeeded in overthrowing the rightful heir and seizing the crown in a terrible civil war of destructive magic and deepest treachery. It has been twenty-three years since those dark days, and the peace still feels fragile, particularly for those who lived through it. Still, time must move on, and wounds must be healed. After all, those who did not repent their participation in the coup have been imprisoned or executed, and nobody wants to destabilize Semilla again - not when there's literally nowhere else in the world left to go that isn't overrun with changelings.
When apprentice scribe Quill comes to the Archives in the capital city, he thinks he's just on another tedious errand as part of his tedious training for a law career, fetching some old artifacts at the behest of one of his master's well-to-do clients. The Archives, at least, are fascinating, repositories of treasures from every nation that fled behind the salt wall that protects Semilla, much of it still uncatalogued. The archivists themselves are at least as interesting: specialists with magical affinities for select elements or items, but whose powers wax and wane on unpredictable cycles that carry great risks if they spin out of control, up to and including death. When he witnesses a terrible tragedy that evening - a fellow scribe and his one-time best friend apparently murdering someone in cold blood before uttering a cryptic phrase and slitting his own throat - he can think of nowhere else to run for help but the Archives... and finds himself entangled in a dangerous plot with roots in the failed coup and beyond, a plot that wakes old memories in those who have done their best to forget those dark days... and hints that the threat posed by the usurper brother may be far from over.
REVIEW: I'd heard decent things about this one, and it was available on Libby, so I figured I might as well give it a try. If I'm being honest, I nearly gave up on it early on; even for high fantasy, the story is a name stew, people and races and places and more, and I found the characters tough to care about, not helped by some of the choices of the audiobook narrator that turned them into exaggerated caricatures in my mind's eye. But I was low on alternate options, and I figured it would pick up eventually, given the aforementioned decent things I recalled hearing.
It does, eventually pick up... somewhat. Unfortunately, the story throughout is burdened with excessive flashbacks and repetition - telling me something or having a character think a particular thing, then telling me again (almost word for word) later, often in the same scene... then, just in case I wasn't paying attention before, often telling me the same information or have the same character think the same things yet again - that kept bogging down my interest. The narration also leans far too hard into setting the mood with vocal variations, low urgent murmurs or brash over-the-top accents or singsong trills or sharp snarking or marble-mouthed mumbles or (my personal least favorite) breathless and gulping tremulous quavers for one particularly spineless person who spends far, far too much time fretting and hemming and hawing and cowering and otherwise consuming page time avoiding agency and action. It was the vocal equivalent of an encyclopedia of "said-bookisms" jackhammered into my ears, the delivery distracting from the dialog and story. The plot and cast of characters both get too convoluted for their own good, with a subplot involving the magical "affinities" of the archive workers that starts to feel less like an interesting quirk of the world and more like an author being a bit too on-the-nose and in the reader's face about addressing Important Issues about mental health spirals and cycles with magic as a thin lampshade. (Not to downgrade the importance of representation and addressing those things, mind you, but when it feels less like an organic element of plot or character and more like one of those after-school specials or "very special episodes" of a TV show, it gets a bit irritating, like using someone's important issue for a ratings bump.) This, too, often drifts into time-eating repetition of minimal plot or character progress. Eventually, things trundle and bump along toward revelations and unmasking of culprits - all mired by yet more flashbacks and hesitations and repetition, most of which the reader already knows and the rest adding little to justify its word count - and the expected dangling threads and threats to set up the longer series arc.
Some of the late revelations and twists were indeed intriguing, though by then I'd given up on connecting to the characters, some of whom I wanted to smack or shake or otherwise shove to get them out of their own heads and doing something already. I also saw potential in the magic systems and cultures, and wish I hadn't been too distracted by the irritating narration and characters so I could've enjoyed them more. I found myself thinking I might've been more absorbed if I'd consumed it in written form, all of which helped pull the rating back up to three and a half stars. While I have read (and listened to) worse, this is another series that can go on without me.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Starfire: A Red Peace (Spencer Ellsworth) - My Review
Mistborn: The Final Empire (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
The Bone Shard Daughter (Andrea Stewart) - My Review
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman)
The Lesser Dead
Christopher Buehlman
Berkley
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: 1978 New York City is a happening place, with night clubs and disco and a lively underground - not to mention the vampires. Since being turned as a spoiled brat of a 14-year-old some decades earlier, vampire Joey Peacock has had a fine time, prowling bars and dance floors and keeping up on modern sitcoms (even though his closest vampire friend, bookish philosopher Cvetko, insists television will rot his brain). So long as he takes care not to "peel" (kill) too many mortals or endanger his peers or their leader, the fiery Irishwoman Margaret, afterlife is good. Since nothing short of immolation, decapitation, or a stake through the heart will kill him permanently, Joey figures he has essentially forever to party... until the night on the subway when he sees an unsettling pair of little children - children who appear to be stalking and hypnotizing mortals, just like vampires. But what kind of monster turns young children - and are these newcomers friends of the local vampire community or the deadliest of foes?
REVIEW: As in his other books (the ones I've read, at least), Buehlman does not pull punches or spare lives (or bloodshed) in spinning a solid horror tale, this one set firmly in the late-70's Big Apple - perfect hunting grounds for the undead, especially the undead who have a taste for disco and rock music and cheesy television. Buehlman's vampires are not the "nice" ones popularized in modern romance crossovers, drawing instead on their original, darker, predatory roots; though they are capable of friendship and love in limited ways, they're far more interested in personal short-term pleasures and slaking their hunger, where dominating human wills and drinking blood is at least as erotically satisfying as sex. For all that he's unapologetic about his life, Joey is just as happy hypnotizing victims into "donations" of blood without resorting to draining them dry; indeed, it's considered bad form to kill too many victims, if more because of the potential headache of police involvement/investigation than about anything like moral constraints about murder in general. He's not an old enough vampire to have the weight of ages and downsides to his new condition truly hit home, like those vampires who succumb to "night fever" and eventually commit suicide by sunshine, but he's old enough to recognize the children as something potentially destabilizing to what passes for the vampire neighborhood... something hinting at an enemy more evil than his own brand of vampire, even though such distinctions - even a "good" vampire can at best be described as "not quite as monstrous as theoretically possible" - can seem like splitting an already-fine hair. The true threat becomes all too apparent as the story unfolds, leaving Joey on the run and running out of places to hide and people to turn to. Things take increasingly dark turns, some of which comes across as grinding in the gore, before an ending that feels a bit less revelatory and a bit more like an author getting a touch too clever for his own good; one too many whiplashes kept it from rising above four stars (and came close to knocking it down to three and a half). On the other hand, Buehlman again succeeds in capturing a time and a place and complex characters, which helped buoy the book against an ending that felt like it was trying too hard for the Shock And Awe factor.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Those Across the River (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
The Book Eaters (Sunyi Dean) - My Review
Certain Dark Things (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - My Review
Christopher Buehlman
Berkley
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: 1978 New York City is a happening place, with night clubs and disco and a lively underground - not to mention the vampires. Since being turned as a spoiled brat of a 14-year-old some decades earlier, vampire Joey Peacock has had a fine time, prowling bars and dance floors and keeping up on modern sitcoms (even though his closest vampire friend, bookish philosopher Cvetko, insists television will rot his brain). So long as he takes care not to "peel" (kill) too many mortals or endanger his peers or their leader, the fiery Irishwoman Margaret, afterlife is good. Since nothing short of immolation, decapitation, or a stake through the heart will kill him permanently, Joey figures he has essentially forever to party... until the night on the subway when he sees an unsettling pair of little children - children who appear to be stalking and hypnotizing mortals, just like vampires. But what kind of monster turns young children - and are these newcomers friends of the local vampire community or the deadliest of foes?
REVIEW: As in his other books (the ones I've read, at least), Buehlman does not pull punches or spare lives (or bloodshed) in spinning a solid horror tale, this one set firmly in the late-70's Big Apple - perfect hunting grounds for the undead, especially the undead who have a taste for disco and rock music and cheesy television. Buehlman's vampires are not the "nice" ones popularized in modern romance crossovers, drawing instead on their original, darker, predatory roots; though they are capable of friendship and love in limited ways, they're far more interested in personal short-term pleasures and slaking their hunger, where dominating human wills and drinking blood is at least as erotically satisfying as sex. For all that he's unapologetic about his life, Joey is just as happy hypnotizing victims into "donations" of blood without resorting to draining them dry; indeed, it's considered bad form to kill too many victims, if more because of the potential headache of police involvement/investigation than about anything like moral constraints about murder in general. He's not an old enough vampire to have the weight of ages and downsides to his new condition truly hit home, like those vampires who succumb to "night fever" and eventually commit suicide by sunshine, but he's old enough to recognize the children as something potentially destabilizing to what passes for the vampire neighborhood... something hinting at an enemy more evil than his own brand of vampire, even though such distinctions - even a "good" vampire can at best be described as "not quite as monstrous as theoretically possible" - can seem like splitting an already-fine hair. The true threat becomes all too apparent as the story unfolds, leaving Joey on the run and running out of places to hide and people to turn to. Things take increasingly dark turns, some of which comes across as grinding in the gore, before an ending that feels a bit less revelatory and a bit more like an author getting a touch too clever for his own good; one too many whiplashes kept it from rising above four stars (and came close to knocking it down to three and a half). On the other hand, Buehlman again succeeds in capturing a time and a place and complex characters, which helped buoy the book against an ending that felt like it was trying too hard for the Shock And Awe factor.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Those Across the River (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
The Book Eaters (Sunyi Dean) - My Review
Certain Dark Things (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - My Review
Saturday, September 2, 2023
The Giver (Lois Lowry)
The Giver
The Giver quartet, Book 1
Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Jonas lives in a perfect community, with a perfect family unit of a mother, a father, and a younger sister, who offer support and help him process his daily emotions every evening. He attends school, follows the rules, is polite and courteous, and accepts his punishments for mistakes as a good citizen should. This December, he and his yearmates will enter their twelfth year and receive their job assignments, what they will do for the rest of their working days until it's time to enter the house of the olds and eventually be released to somewhere even better, somewhere none have ever returned from. But at the assembly, something extraordinary happens: instead of a regular job, the Elders Council has selected Jonas to become the new Receiver of Memories. It is the greatest of honors... and, he soon learns, the greatest of burdens. Because there is much more to this perfect community than Jonas ever imagined, and what he learns will change everything he thought he knew - and destroy every shred of happiness he thought he had ever felt.
REVIEW: This is a classic young adult dystopian tale, written before the glut of tales that made the genre a bit played-out for a while. Aiming for atmosphere and message over plausibility and using Jonas's blindered point of view to present the world, Lowry creates a seeming utopia in its community of well-behaved people, each knowing their place and constantly reminded of rules (and corrected for errors or transgressions, first with lashes from a rod and then to more serious corrections), but who have been stripped of vital elements of their humanity over the generations in the process. Jonas doesn't even notice the lack, and takes for granted the necessity of sharing dreams with his family (who are not his birth parents; birthing mothers are actually considered among the lowest of the community, and babies are raised in a central nursery for their first year before being assigned to couples) and whatever emotions he happened to feel every evening. When he confesses to strange new feelings, he's relieved that there's a simple daily pill to make them go away. Even the words the people speak are nitpicked and micromanaged and ultimately rendered close to meaningless with obsessive precision, stripped of all nuance and depth. Jonas doesn't even mind how his every move is monitored, his every word listened to, because that's just how the Community helps keep everyone safe and productive and (what he thinks of as) happy. Neither does he question the concept of "release", or why nobody who is "released" is ever seen in the Community again.
It is only when Jonas begins training to become the Receiver of Memories that he realizes that the way things are is not the way they have always been. From the moment the first collective memories of the lost past flow into him, Jonas begins to wake to the world as it truly is around him, seeing it truly for the first time; even the ability to perceive color has been stripped from the citizens, a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor for how their lives have been deprived of meaning and beauty in the process of creating a "safe" and conflict-free existence, where no unpleasant sensation or idea is allowed to linger longer than it takes to pop a pill. Naturally, his new knowledge begins separating him from his friends - or the kids he thought were his friends - and family - or the people he considers his family. As he learns what happened to the last apprentice to the Giver, he despairs, even as he becomes more determined to do something to change things, leading to a drastic action that may save or doom everyone in general and Jonas in particular.
As mentioned, there are some distinct plausibility issues with the worldbuilding, especially toward the end. Just how memories are stripped and gathered (and later shared) by the Receiver of Memory is vague, as is how people have been literally blinded to color (without making them completely colorblind; Jonas's ability to perceive color proves there are still both rods and cones in human eyes, or at least some human eyes). Likewise, some elements of the ending really don't make a ton of sense if you think too hard about them. I also raised an eyebrow a bit at the notion that, in this world, light-eyed people might have some inherent advantage over the dark-eyed majority; anomalously, Jonas and the Giver (and the previous apprentice) have blue eyes, as does a struggling infant who becomes a plot point. They all seem to share special gifts that allow for potential enlightenment, while the rest are just mindless sheep incapable of being roused from their complacent stupor, things that may not even be truly human anymore.
Despite those flaws, the book still has a decent emotional weight to it, conveying Jonas's growing confusion and horror over just what the community has allowed itself to become, what it has willingly sacrificed, in pursuit of an ultimately hollow paradise, driven home by a darkly ambiguous ending.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Marrow Thieves (Cherie Dimaline) - My Review
Among the Hidden (Margaret Peterson Haddix) - My Review
A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engle) - My Review
The Giver quartet, Book 1
Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Jonas lives in a perfect community, with a perfect family unit of a mother, a father, and a younger sister, who offer support and help him process his daily emotions every evening. He attends school, follows the rules, is polite and courteous, and accepts his punishments for mistakes as a good citizen should. This December, he and his yearmates will enter their twelfth year and receive their job assignments, what they will do for the rest of their working days until it's time to enter the house of the olds and eventually be released to somewhere even better, somewhere none have ever returned from. But at the assembly, something extraordinary happens: instead of a regular job, the Elders Council has selected Jonas to become the new Receiver of Memories. It is the greatest of honors... and, he soon learns, the greatest of burdens. Because there is much more to this perfect community than Jonas ever imagined, and what he learns will change everything he thought he knew - and destroy every shred of happiness he thought he had ever felt.
REVIEW: This is a classic young adult dystopian tale, written before the glut of tales that made the genre a bit played-out for a while. Aiming for atmosphere and message over plausibility and using Jonas's blindered point of view to present the world, Lowry creates a seeming utopia in its community of well-behaved people, each knowing their place and constantly reminded of rules (and corrected for errors or transgressions, first with lashes from a rod and then to more serious corrections), but who have been stripped of vital elements of their humanity over the generations in the process. Jonas doesn't even notice the lack, and takes for granted the necessity of sharing dreams with his family (who are not his birth parents; birthing mothers are actually considered among the lowest of the community, and babies are raised in a central nursery for their first year before being assigned to couples) and whatever emotions he happened to feel every evening. When he confesses to strange new feelings, he's relieved that there's a simple daily pill to make them go away. Even the words the people speak are nitpicked and micromanaged and ultimately rendered close to meaningless with obsessive precision, stripped of all nuance and depth. Jonas doesn't even mind how his every move is monitored, his every word listened to, because that's just how the Community helps keep everyone safe and productive and (what he thinks of as) happy. Neither does he question the concept of "release", or why nobody who is "released" is ever seen in the Community again.
It is only when Jonas begins training to become the Receiver of Memories that he realizes that the way things are is not the way they have always been. From the moment the first collective memories of the lost past flow into him, Jonas begins to wake to the world as it truly is around him, seeing it truly for the first time; even the ability to perceive color has been stripped from the citizens, a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor for how their lives have been deprived of meaning and beauty in the process of creating a "safe" and conflict-free existence, where no unpleasant sensation or idea is allowed to linger longer than it takes to pop a pill. Naturally, his new knowledge begins separating him from his friends - or the kids he thought were his friends - and family - or the people he considers his family. As he learns what happened to the last apprentice to the Giver, he despairs, even as he becomes more determined to do something to change things, leading to a drastic action that may save or doom everyone in general and Jonas in particular.
As mentioned, there are some distinct plausibility issues with the worldbuilding, especially toward the end. Just how memories are stripped and gathered (and later shared) by the Receiver of Memory is vague, as is how people have been literally blinded to color (without making them completely colorblind; Jonas's ability to perceive color proves there are still both rods and cones in human eyes, or at least some human eyes). Likewise, some elements of the ending really don't make a ton of sense if you think too hard about them. I also raised an eyebrow a bit at the notion that, in this world, light-eyed people might have some inherent advantage over the dark-eyed majority; anomalously, Jonas and the Giver (and the previous apprentice) have blue eyes, as does a struggling infant who becomes a plot point. They all seem to share special gifts that allow for potential enlightenment, while the rest are just mindless sheep incapable of being roused from their complacent stupor, things that may not even be truly human anymore.
Despite those flaws, the book still has a decent emotional weight to it, conveying Jonas's growing confusion and horror over just what the community has allowed itself to become, what it has willingly sacrificed, in pursuit of an ultimately hollow paradise, driven home by a darkly ambiguous ending.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Marrow Thieves (Cherie Dimaline) - My Review
Among the Hidden (Margaret Peterson Haddix) - My Review
A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engle) - My Review
The Third Man (Graham Greene)
The Third Man
Graham Greene
Penguin Books
Fiction, Mystery
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Before war came calling, Vienna was a beautiful and cultured city, but now it's a shadow of its former self, shattered by bombings and controlled by a mishmash of nations with increasingly fractious relations. It's the sort of place where crime is almost a way of life... and an all-too-common cause of death.
Rollo Martins, writer of pulp Westerns under a pen name, comes to Vienna hoping to meet his old school friend Harry Lime - and barely learns of the man's death in time to make it to the funeral. When a local cop tells him that Lime was suspected of racketeering, Martins refuses believe it. He knew Harry like he knew few people; sure, the man was forever coming up with clever schemes, but criminal activity - especially on the level the authorities are implying - was surely a step too far. But as Martins starts looking for evidence to clear his late friend's name, he becomes convinced that the car crash that ended Lime's life was no accident. And if the police are too busy suspecting the man of dark deeds to investigate, then it's up to Rollo Martins to find the truth... and that's the sort of thing that can get an outsider killed in a city like Vienna.
REVIEW: A classic noir mystery (and film; apparently, Greene wrote the book with the intent of adapting it into the screenplay, which he did, even though the book itself wasn't released until 1950 and the movie came out in 1949), The Third Man starts with a simple enough setup and develops into a story of intrigue permeated by gray morality and characters with inherently flawed souls.
Rollo Martins starts out convinced of one simple truth, that he knows his friend better than even the local authorities and they've got the wrong idea about everything. The lead detective is wrong, but not, unfortunately, in the way Martins hopes. Martins himself is not quite the man he might have hoped to be, driven home by a case of mistaken identity that plays into the story later on, but he just can't bring himself to believe that the stories of Lime's shady dealings are true. Even when it becomes clear that not only was he murdered but that he was, indeed, mixed up in something unsavory, Martins keeps telling himself that there must be someone else behind it all, someone pulling his friend's strings and making him a victim instead of a perpetrator. Thus he begins to dig what may well be his own grave, encountering numerous friends and acquaintances of the late Lime, few of whom have anything like clean hands. Even Lime's girlfriend, Anna Schmidt, an actress living in town under false papers, isn't an innocent heart; she knew full well what the man was capable of, but still loved him. After all, who in a city as broken and traumatized as Vienna can possibly be a pure soul? Despite everything he learns, Martins just can't stop digging, trying to find an angel under mountains of corruption and sin, but there are no angels in Vienna, just flawed humans and human monsters, with a blurred line between the two.
The plot ratchets up nicely with each new revelation and each fresh blow to Martins's rosy memory of the Lime he knew, adding more bodies to the count and more threats to the amateur detective. Outside of a noir plot, the revelation at the end might feel a bit contrived, as might the climax, but it works in the setting and with the characters and mood. Naturally, there's some aging, and there's a bit at the very end that doesn't quite ring true, but overall it holds up decently. (And I really should get around to seeing the movie one of these days...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) - My Review
0.44 (H. A. DeRosso) - My Review
Graham Greene
Penguin Books
Fiction, Mystery
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Before war came calling, Vienna was a beautiful and cultured city, but now it's a shadow of its former self, shattered by bombings and controlled by a mishmash of nations with increasingly fractious relations. It's the sort of place where crime is almost a way of life... and an all-too-common cause of death.
Rollo Martins, writer of pulp Westerns under a pen name, comes to Vienna hoping to meet his old school friend Harry Lime - and barely learns of the man's death in time to make it to the funeral. When a local cop tells him that Lime was suspected of racketeering, Martins refuses believe it. He knew Harry like he knew few people; sure, the man was forever coming up with clever schemes, but criminal activity - especially on the level the authorities are implying - was surely a step too far. But as Martins starts looking for evidence to clear his late friend's name, he becomes convinced that the car crash that ended Lime's life was no accident. And if the police are too busy suspecting the man of dark deeds to investigate, then it's up to Rollo Martins to find the truth... and that's the sort of thing that can get an outsider killed in a city like Vienna.
REVIEW: A classic noir mystery (and film; apparently, Greene wrote the book with the intent of adapting it into the screenplay, which he did, even though the book itself wasn't released until 1950 and the movie came out in 1949), The Third Man starts with a simple enough setup and develops into a story of intrigue permeated by gray morality and characters with inherently flawed souls.
Rollo Martins starts out convinced of one simple truth, that he knows his friend better than even the local authorities and they've got the wrong idea about everything. The lead detective is wrong, but not, unfortunately, in the way Martins hopes. Martins himself is not quite the man he might have hoped to be, driven home by a case of mistaken identity that plays into the story later on, but he just can't bring himself to believe that the stories of Lime's shady dealings are true. Even when it becomes clear that not only was he murdered but that he was, indeed, mixed up in something unsavory, Martins keeps telling himself that there must be someone else behind it all, someone pulling his friend's strings and making him a victim instead of a perpetrator. Thus he begins to dig what may well be his own grave, encountering numerous friends and acquaintances of the late Lime, few of whom have anything like clean hands. Even Lime's girlfriend, Anna Schmidt, an actress living in town under false papers, isn't an innocent heart; she knew full well what the man was capable of, but still loved him. After all, who in a city as broken and traumatized as Vienna can possibly be a pure soul? Despite everything he learns, Martins just can't stop digging, trying to find an angel under mountains of corruption and sin, but there are no angels in Vienna, just flawed humans and human monsters, with a blurred line between the two.
The plot ratchets up nicely with each new revelation and each fresh blow to Martins's rosy memory of the Lime he knew, adding more bodies to the count and more threats to the amateur detective. Outside of a noir plot, the revelation at the end might feel a bit contrived, as might the climax, but it works in the setting and with the characters and mood. Naturally, there's some aging, and there's a bit at the very end that doesn't quite ring true, but overall it holds up decently. (And I really should get around to seeing the movie one of these days...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) - My Review
0.44 (H. A. DeRosso) - My Review
Friday, September 1, 2023
(Delayed) August Site Update
Delayed by this week being full of distractions, obstacles, and various time-sucking inconveniences, August's thirteen reviews have finally been archived on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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