It's the end of the month, Halloween, and I updated the main Brightdreamer Books site with the month's reviews. (Whether that counts as a "trick" or a "treat" depends on one's point of view.)
Enjoy!
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Friday, October 27, 2023
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum)
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens - and Ourselves
Arik Kershenbaum
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Animals/Science
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For generations, humans have speculated on what life on other worlds might be like. Given the many strange surprises and wonders that have evolved on Earth, and in the most unlikely of places, what could an entirely alien ecosystem produce? So far, aside from speculation (and innumerable offerings of science fiction and Hollywood), nobody knows, but it is possible to make some educated guesses. After all, while the details may be unknowable (such as whether alien biomes would use DNA as a basic genetic material, or show right/left body symmetry as the majority of Earth animals do), some things - the basic physics of locomotion, a need to consume nutrients and reproduce, adaptability in the face of changes and the opening or closing of niches, the constant trade-offs of advantages and disadvantages, and more - are quite likely to be universal. Zoologist Kershenbaum draws on our own world's prehistory and other sources to offer educated guesses on what we might find if we ever manage to glimpse life on another world.
REVIEW: Drawing on what we understand of evolution and adaptation from the first living microbes to the current Anthropocene age, plus several other disciplines such as mathematics, linguistics, studies of animal intelligence and communication methods, probability and "game theory" behaviors, and more, author Kershenbaum offers compelling arguments that, while we of course can't conjecture specifics of alien life, we can make some very educated guesses about what such life might look like. The idea that there is other life in the universe (microbial at the very least) appears more and more likely, even if interstellar civilizations (so far) have yet to make an appearance on our telescopes. Even though we only have one known example of a living biosphere (our own), we can make some general educated guesses based on what we have learned - knowledge that is still expanding and being rewritten, particularly in areas such as animal intelligence. Much of life is about solving problems, even if that problem is as basic as acquiring energy for survival or moving toward a nutrient source (or away from a threat)... the sort of problems that any life form is going to encounter, be it on Earth or elsewhere.
From the start, he admits that some terms he uses - even the term "animal", when there's no way to even know if alien biospheres would have any distinctions like what we think of as animals, plants, or fungi - are terms of convenience for the thought experiments in the book. From there, he makes convincing arguments that several of the things we find in Earth evolution are more likely than not to have analogues elsewhere, such as methods of locomotion or sound as an ideal method of intra/interspecies communication or the development of certain social dynamics and strategies. Others, however, are likely to be unexpected or surprising, especially in areas where life on Earth has developed numerous strategies and no one has come out a clear winner (such as the various ways Earth life forms reproduce). Later chapters speculate on artificial life or tailored evolution, and whether or not immortality is a feasible goal even for a superintelligent species. At more than one point, he delves into the thorny issues of what constitutes intelligence, and what constitutes "human" or "person" - concepts that most of us think we know, but which are very difficult to definitively quantify, especially if we were ever to be faced with making such calls in the faces (or equivalents) of actual non-Earth entities. In numerous places, he acknowledges the speculations of sci-fi creators without belittling the genre or sneering at their creations (even when they're biologically unlikely or were created for allegorical purposes). Throughout are notes on other works for further reading on a wide variety of topics covered. The whole makes for a fascinating exploration of an interesting topic. In considering what might evolve on alien worlds, it explains much about how life evolves and behaves on our own world, and why.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Undeniable (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) - My Review
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Arik Kershenbaum
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Animals/Science
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For generations, humans have speculated on what life on other worlds might be like. Given the many strange surprises and wonders that have evolved on Earth, and in the most unlikely of places, what could an entirely alien ecosystem produce? So far, aside from speculation (and innumerable offerings of science fiction and Hollywood), nobody knows, but it is possible to make some educated guesses. After all, while the details may be unknowable (such as whether alien biomes would use DNA as a basic genetic material, or show right/left body symmetry as the majority of Earth animals do), some things - the basic physics of locomotion, a need to consume nutrients and reproduce, adaptability in the face of changes and the opening or closing of niches, the constant trade-offs of advantages and disadvantages, and more - are quite likely to be universal. Zoologist Kershenbaum draws on our own world's prehistory and other sources to offer educated guesses on what we might find if we ever manage to glimpse life on another world.
REVIEW: Drawing on what we understand of evolution and adaptation from the first living microbes to the current Anthropocene age, plus several other disciplines such as mathematics, linguistics, studies of animal intelligence and communication methods, probability and "game theory" behaviors, and more, author Kershenbaum offers compelling arguments that, while we of course can't conjecture specifics of alien life, we can make some very educated guesses about what such life might look like. The idea that there is other life in the universe (microbial at the very least) appears more and more likely, even if interstellar civilizations (so far) have yet to make an appearance on our telescopes. Even though we only have one known example of a living biosphere (our own), we can make some general educated guesses based on what we have learned - knowledge that is still expanding and being rewritten, particularly in areas such as animal intelligence. Much of life is about solving problems, even if that problem is as basic as acquiring energy for survival or moving toward a nutrient source (or away from a threat)... the sort of problems that any life form is going to encounter, be it on Earth or elsewhere.
From the start, he admits that some terms he uses - even the term "animal", when there's no way to even know if alien biospheres would have any distinctions like what we think of as animals, plants, or fungi - are terms of convenience for the thought experiments in the book. From there, he makes convincing arguments that several of the things we find in Earth evolution are more likely than not to have analogues elsewhere, such as methods of locomotion or sound as an ideal method of intra/interspecies communication or the development of certain social dynamics and strategies. Others, however, are likely to be unexpected or surprising, especially in areas where life on Earth has developed numerous strategies and no one has come out a clear winner (such as the various ways Earth life forms reproduce). Later chapters speculate on artificial life or tailored evolution, and whether or not immortality is a feasible goal even for a superintelligent species. At more than one point, he delves into the thorny issues of what constitutes intelligence, and what constitutes "human" or "person" - concepts that most of us think we know, but which are very difficult to definitively quantify, especially if we were ever to be faced with making such calls in the faces (or equivalents) of actual non-Earth entities. In numerous places, he acknowledges the speculations of sci-fi creators without belittling the genre or sneering at their creations (even when they're biologically unlikely or were created for allegorical purposes). Throughout are notes on other works for further reading on a wide variety of topics covered. The whole makes for a fascinating exploration of an interesting topic. In considering what might evolve on alien worlds, it explains much about how life evolves and behaves on our own world, and why.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Undeniable (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) - My Review
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Mechanical Failure (Joe Zieja)
Mechanical Failure
The Epic Failure trilogy, Book 1
Joe Zieja
Saga Press
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: After humans accidentally destroyed the Milky Way, their spread into another galaxy had an unexpected side effect: it has been two hundred years (and counting) since the various factions have engaged in war. Of course, that doesn't mean that they don't keep standing armies at the ready: after all, you can't be too prepared (or have too big of a project to throw government money at for dubious returns). But it does mean that, instead of drills and discipline and battle tactics, enlisted men and women are far more likely to spend their time gambling and boozing and turning starship hallways into giant slip-and-slides. It's been one big frat/sorority party for generations, long enough that most people have forgotten all about how to fight a war at all. But just because the peace has lasted this long doesn't mean that it will last forever...
When Sergeant Roger W. Rogers left the Meridan military, he figured he'd parlay his skills at smooth-talking strangers (and outright conning them) into a lucrative retirement. But his clever plan goes up in smoke, or rather up in weapons fire and spaceship parts, when the two criminal outfits he's running a scam on end up in a shooting match - and a Meridan ship turns up to pluck him from the debris. Nobody in top brass knows whether to condemn him for numerous criminal charges (including theft of a spaceship, smuggling, and littering) or commend him for taking out two of the most notorious crime syndicates in the system (albeit inadvertently). Fortunately, Rogers still has a few friends inside the system who owe him favors; a few pulled strings and fudged forms later, and he's back in uniform for a few years instead of condemned to hard labor in the salt mines. He's even going back to his old unit, the 331st, Merida's bulwark against the Thelicosan system. But the military he returns to is nothing at all like the one he left. Instead of a 24/7 spacegoing party, the ship is full of tense, serious men and women running drills, eating cruddy rations, and saluting superior officers every five steps - just like they were real, old-school soldiers instead of the pale imitation/parody the Meridian military used to be. There are even droids moving into jobs that used to only be trusted to humans. As if that weren't bad enough, he keeps hearing rumors that the Thelicosans are preparing an invasion.
Rogers would never have agreed to rejoin the military if he'd though there would be fighting involved. His first instinct, naturally, is to flee... but, even as he desperately seeks an escape, he discovers that rumors of an impending war are not just rumors after all. Indeed, the war may already have started while nobody was looking - and Merida may well be losing without firing a shot.
REVIEW: The military has long been a ripe target for humor, with its archaic rules and confusing bureaucracy and a hierarchy that seems to favor bloat and incompetence and secret handshakes over all else. Mechanical Failure skewers that culture (and several other topics) while transporting it into a deep space far future that's still, in many ways, as messed up as modern times, just in space.
Nominally an engineer, Rogers's true talent lies in sweet-talking favors and conning others so he can avoid doing anything like work - skills that worked quite well in the old Meridan military, but which don't work quite as well in the one he returns to after his disastrous and short-lived smuggling career. The thought of actually having to behave like a "real" soldier is enough to send him scrambling for the airlock, especially when the admiral assigns him to lead the Meridan military's first all-droid combat unit (a job that earns him the ire of the woman of his dreams, leader of the human unit that the droids are intended to replace). Rogers hates "shinies", who have infiltrated every space in the ship that used to be his home/party house; they even "eat" in the onboard bars. His prejudice earns him the side-eye from other characters, another way the military culture has changed since he left. Other changes have him scratching his head at first, such as how everyone seems to have been shuffled to jobs they're inherently unsuited for and don't even seem to know how to do (Rogers himself is assigned an assistant who used to be a zookeeper), and all the propaganda posters that have popped up in the hallways and even in the private quarters. It takes him a while (longer than the reader) to realize that the changes aren't just more inscrutable madness handed down from out-of-touch top brass, but something far less banal or benign. A failed escape attempt leads him to an ally, a defective prototype droid who provides him his first solid, undeniable hint that something is very much amiss in the Meridan military in general and the 331st in particular. (It also makes him re-evaluate his feelings toward the "shinies", part of his overall character growth from carefree/careless slacker to a somewhat less carefree man who is willing to pause his slacking when greater needs arise.) Meanwhile, Rogers's efforts to get out of a job he hates and doesn't know how to do through gross incompetence only end up getting him commended and promoted to ever-higher, ever-more-responsible/ridiculous postings - which also give him ever more access throughout the ship and its systems to see just how bad everything is and how close to ruin things already are. Along the way, he gathers a misfit team of contacts old and new (as well as picking up some new rivals and outright enemies), all of whom come into play in various ways, some of them unexpected, on the way to a wild climax and an ending that sets up the second book on something close to a cliffhanger.
Sometimes the silliness of the characters could get irritating, particularly when it interfered with the progression of the plot in obvious ways. There were a few times when the central joke of military incompetence threatened to wear thin: yes, I get it, these people couldn't find their own backsides with both hands and a star chart yet somehow they're in charge, can we move along... Overall, though, I found myself far more amused than exasperated, and actually chuckled out loud a few times at work listening to this - even at moments I didn't expect to be chuckling at. The plot itself is actually fairly decent (telegraphing and some obvious plot-extending stupidity moments notwithstanding) and pulls off some interesting twists and ideas along the way. I enjoyed it more than I expected to, enough that I'll likely be keeping an eye out for the next installment. For what could've been a one-note flop, Mechanical Failure turns out to be a rather enjoyable addition to the sci-fi comedy subgenre.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams) - My Review
Terminal Alliance (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Old Man's War (John Scalzi) - My Review
The Epic Failure trilogy, Book 1
Joe Zieja
Saga Press
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: After humans accidentally destroyed the Milky Way, their spread into another galaxy had an unexpected side effect: it has been two hundred years (and counting) since the various factions have engaged in war. Of course, that doesn't mean that they don't keep standing armies at the ready: after all, you can't be too prepared (or have too big of a project to throw government money at for dubious returns). But it does mean that, instead of drills and discipline and battle tactics, enlisted men and women are far more likely to spend their time gambling and boozing and turning starship hallways into giant slip-and-slides. It's been one big frat/sorority party for generations, long enough that most people have forgotten all about how to fight a war at all. But just because the peace has lasted this long doesn't mean that it will last forever...
When Sergeant Roger W. Rogers left the Meridan military, he figured he'd parlay his skills at smooth-talking strangers (and outright conning them) into a lucrative retirement. But his clever plan goes up in smoke, or rather up in weapons fire and spaceship parts, when the two criminal outfits he's running a scam on end up in a shooting match - and a Meridan ship turns up to pluck him from the debris. Nobody in top brass knows whether to condemn him for numerous criminal charges (including theft of a spaceship, smuggling, and littering) or commend him for taking out two of the most notorious crime syndicates in the system (albeit inadvertently). Fortunately, Rogers still has a few friends inside the system who owe him favors; a few pulled strings and fudged forms later, and he's back in uniform for a few years instead of condemned to hard labor in the salt mines. He's even going back to his old unit, the 331st, Merida's bulwark against the Thelicosan system. But the military he returns to is nothing at all like the one he left. Instead of a 24/7 spacegoing party, the ship is full of tense, serious men and women running drills, eating cruddy rations, and saluting superior officers every five steps - just like they were real, old-school soldiers instead of the pale imitation/parody the Meridian military used to be. There are even droids moving into jobs that used to only be trusted to humans. As if that weren't bad enough, he keeps hearing rumors that the Thelicosans are preparing an invasion.
Rogers would never have agreed to rejoin the military if he'd though there would be fighting involved. His first instinct, naturally, is to flee... but, even as he desperately seeks an escape, he discovers that rumors of an impending war are not just rumors after all. Indeed, the war may already have started while nobody was looking - and Merida may well be losing without firing a shot.
REVIEW: The military has long been a ripe target for humor, with its archaic rules and confusing bureaucracy and a hierarchy that seems to favor bloat and incompetence and secret handshakes over all else. Mechanical Failure skewers that culture (and several other topics) while transporting it into a deep space far future that's still, in many ways, as messed up as modern times, just in space.
Nominally an engineer, Rogers's true talent lies in sweet-talking favors and conning others so he can avoid doing anything like work - skills that worked quite well in the old Meridan military, but which don't work quite as well in the one he returns to after his disastrous and short-lived smuggling career. The thought of actually having to behave like a "real" soldier is enough to send him scrambling for the airlock, especially when the admiral assigns him to lead the Meridan military's first all-droid combat unit (a job that earns him the ire of the woman of his dreams, leader of the human unit that the droids are intended to replace). Rogers hates "shinies", who have infiltrated every space in the ship that used to be his home/party house; they even "eat" in the onboard bars. His prejudice earns him the side-eye from other characters, another way the military culture has changed since he left. Other changes have him scratching his head at first, such as how everyone seems to have been shuffled to jobs they're inherently unsuited for and don't even seem to know how to do (Rogers himself is assigned an assistant who used to be a zookeeper), and all the propaganda posters that have popped up in the hallways and even in the private quarters. It takes him a while (longer than the reader) to realize that the changes aren't just more inscrutable madness handed down from out-of-touch top brass, but something far less banal or benign. A failed escape attempt leads him to an ally, a defective prototype droid who provides him his first solid, undeniable hint that something is very much amiss in the Meridan military in general and the 331st in particular. (It also makes him re-evaluate his feelings toward the "shinies", part of his overall character growth from carefree/careless slacker to a somewhat less carefree man who is willing to pause his slacking when greater needs arise.) Meanwhile, Rogers's efforts to get out of a job he hates and doesn't know how to do through gross incompetence only end up getting him commended and promoted to ever-higher, ever-more-responsible/ridiculous postings - which also give him ever more access throughout the ship and its systems to see just how bad everything is and how close to ruin things already are. Along the way, he gathers a misfit team of contacts old and new (as well as picking up some new rivals and outright enemies), all of whom come into play in various ways, some of them unexpected, on the way to a wild climax and an ending that sets up the second book on something close to a cliffhanger.
Sometimes the silliness of the characters could get irritating, particularly when it interfered with the progression of the plot in obvious ways. There were a few times when the central joke of military incompetence threatened to wear thin: yes, I get it, these people couldn't find their own backsides with both hands and a star chart yet somehow they're in charge, can we move along... Overall, though, I found myself far more amused than exasperated, and actually chuckled out loud a few times at work listening to this - even at moments I didn't expect to be chuckling at. The plot itself is actually fairly decent (telegraphing and some obvious plot-extending stupidity moments notwithstanding) and pulls off some interesting twists and ideas along the way. I enjoyed it more than I expected to, enough that I'll likely be keeping an eye out for the next installment. For what could've been a one-note flop, Mechanical Failure turns out to be a rather enjoyable addition to the sci-fi comedy subgenre.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams) - My Review
Terminal Alliance (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Old Man's War (John Scalzi) - My Review
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Walk Two Moons (Sharon Creech)
Walk Two Moons
The Walk Two Moons series, Book 1
Sharon Creech
HarperTeen
Fiction, MG General Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since her beloved mother left in the wake of a personal tragedy, nothing has gone right in Salamanca's young life. Her father withdrew into his grief, then uprooted them from their Kentucky farm all the way to a suburb of Ohio... not far from a woman Sal doesn't want to ever know or be friends with. This new house doesn't even have a barn, or chickens, or a climbing tree, and there's no swimming hole in sight. But there are, at least, a few kids her age, and despite her own lingering resentment she makes new friends - one of whom might need a friend herself, more than she'll ever admit. When Sal's grandparents take her on a road trip to Idaho, in honor of her mother's coming birthday, the thirteen-year-old girl tells them the story of that girl, Phoebe Winterbottom, whose runaway imagination and seemingly perfect family both fail her at the worst possible time.
REVIEW: This classic is about grief, connections, enduring through crises, and learning to look outside oneself and understand that everyone has their own story, their own tragedy, their own life that we know nothing about... even those we love the most. In telling Phoebe's story of a perfect mother who disappears - just after a stranger turns up on their doorstep (which Phoebe's wild imagination immediately dubs the "lunatic" who must have abducted her missing mother, because there's no other reason the woman would leave the daughters and husband she loves so much, is there?) - Salamanca (better known as "Sal") finally processes her own grief and anger and sense of abandonment and misplaced guilt over her own mom's disappearance. The story cuts between the road trip with her grandparents (who insist on detouring past various scenic attractions, even as Sal feels an urgent need to reach her mother by the woman's birthday), the story of Phoebe, and the tragedy that led to Sal's mother walking out and never coming home. Tragedy and sadness enter into all the stories, each of which emphasize the importance of learning to step outside yourself and not pass judgment on another until you "walk two moons in their moccasins" (there are underlying threads involving Sal's part-Indian ancestry). Life is a complicated business, as is grief, and we all must learn our own ways to deal with both without paralyzing ourselves through fears or guilt or other ultimately unhelpful coping mechanisms. Sal even learns to see beauty in her loss and her complicated feelings about moving forward without a mother in her life.
While many parts of the story hold up well and are timeless, there are a few places where Walk Two Moons shows its age. Sal starts feeling the first sparks of romance toward another friend's cousin, Ben, but the relationship feels less sweet and more like Ben seriously oversteps his bounds on numerous occasions and pushes himself at a girl who gives no indication of interest (until she inevitably does; women in this story tend to be ultimately defined by their loves and families and not on their own terms). I was seriously wondering if Creech was setting up a potential assault, given how Ben keeps pursuing her and forcing physical contact and telling her she's wrong to flinch away from his touch. Don't all girls owe it to guys to smile at them and let them touch and fondle and kiss them? (The first time they meet, not five minutes later he grabs her and fumbles a kiss - I was seeing red flags all over his character, but I guess that's what passed for "love" when this was written...) There was also another bit involving an English teacher who oversteps bounds on student privacy, reading aloud to the class excerpts from private journals he'd asked them to keep... and does not even pick up immediate cues from his class about the embarrassment and chaos he's sowing (even changing names, the kids of course know just who wrote what), but blithely plows on until finally running into something that affects him on a personal level. And there's one plot element that felt just a little too coincidental.
The overall story stands up, even with those drawbacks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Clap When You Land (Elizabeth Acevedo) - My Review
The Tiger Rising (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery) - My Review
The Walk Two Moons series, Book 1
Sharon Creech
HarperTeen
Fiction, MG General Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since her beloved mother left in the wake of a personal tragedy, nothing has gone right in Salamanca's young life. Her father withdrew into his grief, then uprooted them from their Kentucky farm all the way to a suburb of Ohio... not far from a woman Sal doesn't want to ever know or be friends with. This new house doesn't even have a barn, or chickens, or a climbing tree, and there's no swimming hole in sight. But there are, at least, a few kids her age, and despite her own lingering resentment she makes new friends - one of whom might need a friend herself, more than she'll ever admit. When Sal's grandparents take her on a road trip to Idaho, in honor of her mother's coming birthday, the thirteen-year-old girl tells them the story of that girl, Phoebe Winterbottom, whose runaway imagination and seemingly perfect family both fail her at the worst possible time.
REVIEW: This classic is about grief, connections, enduring through crises, and learning to look outside oneself and understand that everyone has their own story, their own tragedy, their own life that we know nothing about... even those we love the most. In telling Phoebe's story of a perfect mother who disappears - just after a stranger turns up on their doorstep (which Phoebe's wild imagination immediately dubs the "lunatic" who must have abducted her missing mother, because there's no other reason the woman would leave the daughters and husband she loves so much, is there?) - Salamanca (better known as "Sal") finally processes her own grief and anger and sense of abandonment and misplaced guilt over her own mom's disappearance. The story cuts between the road trip with her grandparents (who insist on detouring past various scenic attractions, even as Sal feels an urgent need to reach her mother by the woman's birthday), the story of Phoebe, and the tragedy that led to Sal's mother walking out and never coming home. Tragedy and sadness enter into all the stories, each of which emphasize the importance of learning to step outside yourself and not pass judgment on another until you "walk two moons in their moccasins" (there are underlying threads involving Sal's part-Indian ancestry). Life is a complicated business, as is grief, and we all must learn our own ways to deal with both without paralyzing ourselves through fears or guilt or other ultimately unhelpful coping mechanisms. Sal even learns to see beauty in her loss and her complicated feelings about moving forward without a mother in her life.
While many parts of the story hold up well and are timeless, there are a few places where Walk Two Moons shows its age. Sal starts feeling the first sparks of romance toward another friend's cousin, Ben, but the relationship feels less sweet and more like Ben seriously oversteps his bounds on numerous occasions and pushes himself at a girl who gives no indication of interest (until she inevitably does; women in this story tend to be ultimately defined by their loves and families and not on their own terms). I was seriously wondering if Creech was setting up a potential assault, given how Ben keeps pursuing her and forcing physical contact and telling her she's wrong to flinch away from his touch. Don't all girls owe it to guys to smile at them and let them touch and fondle and kiss them? (The first time they meet, not five minutes later he grabs her and fumbles a kiss - I was seeing red flags all over his character, but I guess that's what passed for "love" when this was written...) There was also another bit involving an English teacher who oversteps bounds on student privacy, reading aloud to the class excerpts from private journals he'd asked them to keep... and does not even pick up immediate cues from his class about the embarrassment and chaos he's sowing (even changing names, the kids of course know just who wrote what), but blithely plows on until finally running into something that affects him on a personal level. And there's one plot element that felt just a little too coincidental.
The overall story stands up, even with those drawbacks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Clap When You Land (Elizabeth Acevedo) - My Review
The Tiger Rising (Kate DiCamillo) - My Review
Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery) - My Review
Saturday, October 21, 2023
To Shape a Dragon's Breath (Moniquill Blackgoose)
To Shape a Dragon's Breath
The Nampeshiweisit series, Book 1
Moniquill Blackgoose
Del Rey
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Generations ago, the pale Anglish came across the ocean to plunder and colonize the land of the Naquisit and beyond to the west. With them came the Great Dying that decimated the native dragons, leaving the invaders the undisputed masters and the tribes with little defense as more people were slaughtered or enslaved and more land was taken. Though technically the "nackies" are considered citizens now, public sentiment and treaty enforcement are notoriously malleable; it hasn't even been twenty years since the discovery of coal led to the near-extermination of a neighboring island. Fortunately, Anequs's own remote island home of Masquapaug has no such resources that the Anglish covet, and her people have mostly been left alone - but that changes the day that the sixteen-year-old girl sees a rare native Nampeshiwe dragon, and finds the egg it leaves behind. When that egg hatches, the young Kasaqua chooses Anequs to bond with, making her the first Nampeshiweisit - dragon companion - in living memory... but it has been too many years since her people have lived with dragons, and the old dances and lore have been lost. Without training, a dragon's "breath" is a truly dangerous thing, reducing anything it touches to component elements in potentially disastrous reactions. And if her people have forgotten how to do that, the Anglish are masters of their dragons.
Unfortunately, by reaching out to the local Ministry of Dragon Affairs, Anequs threatens to upset the fragile peace of insignificance that has kept Masquapaug relatively free from Anglish interference. The very thought of a savage nackie bonding with a dragon is close to blasphemy in the eyes of many Anglishmen; even among their own kind, there are strict protocols over who is even allowed to be near a dragon's egg, and if a beast bonds with the wrong person, it might be forcibly removed or even put to death, with the unfortunate human treated little better. If Anequs wants to be allowed to keep Kasaqua, she must travel to the Anglish city of Varmarden and attend Kuiper's Academy of Natural Philosophy and Skiltakraft, to learn the Anglish art and science of being a "dragoneer". She has one year to prove herself, not just as a fit keeper of a dragon, but as a civilized human among those who think her kind little better than animals. Plunged head-first into a foreign culture of contradictory and often cruel rules and customs, surrounded by students and staff who expect her to fail, and with her every move under the microscope of official and public scrutiny, Anequs refuses to give in to despair... but the stakes are far higher than she realizes, far higher than just one young woman and a dragon. For the success or failure of Anequs and Kasaqua may mean the difference between the survival and freedom of the Naquisit people, or their extermination.
REVIEW: Several elements of To Shape a Dragon's Breath are rather familiar: a bonded dragon, an underdog "fish out of water" heroine, a magic academy, even an alternate Earth. Where this book stands out is its highly imaginative setting. The world is distinguished not only by dragons and their "breath" magic (and implied human magic, if lost in the distant past), but by an alternate history where the Europeans who conquered the Americas were of Viking culture, not Christian... and this culture has come to a steampunk-level of technology, with trains and telegrams and automaton carriages and such, much of it apparently reliant on the abilities of dragons to break materials down to component elements and remake them (a discipline known as "skiltakraft"). Even as Anequs introduces the reader to her native culture, she also shows an outsider's perspective on the Anglish colonizers, a mixture of technological wonders and steep social stratification and oppression; not being Christian has not made the pale foreigners any less rigid in their senses of genetic and cultural superiority, propriety, and boxing everyone into their perceived proper places. Her brother abandoned the island to live among the Anglish, studying engineering (and creating tensions within the family, who do not understand his passion or his dreams of integrating Anglish technology with his native culture), and becomes an ally in helping Anequs navigate the strange new world she's in, one she previously only knew (or thought she knew) from "pennik" novel adventures.
At the academy, Anequs encounters the expected mix of friends and foes. Her proper roommate, Marta, is the only other female "dragoneer" student in the school - women of high birth are not precisely forbidden a dragon bond, but it's uncommon and generally seen more as a stepping stone to a good marriage than a legitimate pursuit and career in its own right - and has no real idea what to make of a "nackie" girl, for all that she tries, in her often fumbling way, to be friendly and "civilize" the darker-skinned stranger. Also at the school is Theod, a Naquisit-born young man stripped of his culture after being raised in an orphanage and bonded into service; his own dragon bonding was an unfortunate mistake, and he himself struggles to keep his aspirations low enough not to attract more attention than "his kind" is due in Anglish society; encountering the headstrong and outspoken Anequs, he is almost as flummoxed as Marta, unable to understand why she, too, doesn't embrace this chance to cast off her "savage" culture (which he only knows of through Anglish-penned "histories") and join "civilized" society, even if she'll always be seen as a "nackie" first and a woman second (and human distant third - and that's even before she realizes that her nonbinary nature makes her that much more of an outsider and potential pariah). Among the professors, reactions to her admission run the gauntlet from fascinated interest to outright hostility, and the whole of the city of Varmarden seems to be watching her with sometimes-fascinated, sometimes-horrified interest. Through it all, Anequs holds firm to her own convinctions and her culture, determined not to let Anglish ways change her irrevocably; she has come to the academy to learn what she must to keep Kasaqua and shape her breath, and earn the right to be her "dragoneer" (though she resents the term from the outset; the native word "Nampeshiweisit" implies a partnership with a dragon, while the Anglish word is more about discipline and dominance), and that is all. Of course, she cannot help being changed somewhat, her exposure to the larger world beyond her island helping her to understand far more about her life, her family, and her people and the Anglish.
The story moves fairly well, occasionally slowing down as some elements of the world and the Anglish and histories and such are elaborated upon. Personal and public sentiments toward Anequs and Kasaqua shift throughout, but she remains a deterimined heroine, generally not content to sit back and passively accept what comes to her. Where the story threatened to lose its extra half-star was at the ending, which felt a little forced (and also like it forgot some other plot threads and elements that wouldn't have felt as out-of-the-blue as a few developments that dropped in in the last fifty-odd pages), and with some elements of the worldbuilding. Yes, I know I said that the setting was one of this book's strongest suits, but some of the names and terms (especially the Anglish ones) become blurs, mentioned here and there in passing with too little to attach them to in my brain to be memorable, leaving me wondering if I'd encountered this or that word before when I came to them again. As part of the commitment to the alt-history, Blackgoose even uses alternate names for academy subjects ("al-jabr" instead of algebra) and elements in the rudimentary periodic table used in skiltakrafting, which put a definite foot over the "smeerp" line for me. ("Smeerps" are made-up terms for something that's basically something familiar, but made to sound "cooler"/more fantastic and exotic with fancy names that bog down a story by calling too much attention to themselves; an animal that acts like a rabbit and is basically a rabbit can just be called a "rabbit" instead of a "smeerp" even if it's not genetically and evolutionarily an Earthborn lagomorph, unless there's a darned good in-story reason they need to be set aside with a special term.) Much as I admired the depth of imagination and research, I was still trying to juggle new terms and concepts and dragon species and political structures and nationalities; expecting me to remember alternate terms for iron, carbon, lead, and such just felt like one plate too many to consistently keep in the air. (And if you're going that far - why stop there? Why not alternate names for all the food and beverages and furniture?) I also felt that Kasaqua and the other dragons sometimes receded too far into the background. In the end, the overall imagination and originality counterbalanced the relatively minor drawbacks to land at four and a half stars in the ratings.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wake of Vultures (Lila Bowen) - My Review
His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros) - My Review
The Nampeshiweisit series, Book 1
Moniquill Blackgoose
Del Rey
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Generations ago, the pale Anglish came across the ocean to plunder and colonize the land of the Naquisit and beyond to the west. With them came the Great Dying that decimated the native dragons, leaving the invaders the undisputed masters and the tribes with little defense as more people were slaughtered or enslaved and more land was taken. Though technically the "nackies" are considered citizens now, public sentiment and treaty enforcement are notoriously malleable; it hasn't even been twenty years since the discovery of coal led to the near-extermination of a neighboring island. Fortunately, Anequs's own remote island home of Masquapaug has no such resources that the Anglish covet, and her people have mostly been left alone - but that changes the day that the sixteen-year-old girl sees a rare native Nampeshiwe dragon, and finds the egg it leaves behind. When that egg hatches, the young Kasaqua chooses Anequs to bond with, making her the first Nampeshiweisit - dragon companion - in living memory... but it has been too many years since her people have lived with dragons, and the old dances and lore have been lost. Without training, a dragon's "breath" is a truly dangerous thing, reducing anything it touches to component elements in potentially disastrous reactions. And if her people have forgotten how to do that, the Anglish are masters of their dragons.
Unfortunately, by reaching out to the local Ministry of Dragon Affairs, Anequs threatens to upset the fragile peace of insignificance that has kept Masquapaug relatively free from Anglish interference. The very thought of a savage nackie bonding with a dragon is close to blasphemy in the eyes of many Anglishmen; even among their own kind, there are strict protocols over who is even allowed to be near a dragon's egg, and if a beast bonds with the wrong person, it might be forcibly removed or even put to death, with the unfortunate human treated little better. If Anequs wants to be allowed to keep Kasaqua, she must travel to the Anglish city of Varmarden and attend Kuiper's Academy of Natural Philosophy and Skiltakraft, to learn the Anglish art and science of being a "dragoneer". She has one year to prove herself, not just as a fit keeper of a dragon, but as a civilized human among those who think her kind little better than animals. Plunged head-first into a foreign culture of contradictory and often cruel rules and customs, surrounded by students and staff who expect her to fail, and with her every move under the microscope of official and public scrutiny, Anequs refuses to give in to despair... but the stakes are far higher than she realizes, far higher than just one young woman and a dragon. For the success or failure of Anequs and Kasaqua may mean the difference between the survival and freedom of the Naquisit people, or their extermination.
REVIEW: Several elements of To Shape a Dragon's Breath are rather familiar: a bonded dragon, an underdog "fish out of water" heroine, a magic academy, even an alternate Earth. Where this book stands out is its highly imaginative setting. The world is distinguished not only by dragons and their "breath" magic (and implied human magic, if lost in the distant past), but by an alternate history where the Europeans who conquered the Americas were of Viking culture, not Christian... and this culture has come to a steampunk-level of technology, with trains and telegrams and automaton carriages and such, much of it apparently reliant on the abilities of dragons to break materials down to component elements and remake them (a discipline known as "skiltakraft"). Even as Anequs introduces the reader to her native culture, she also shows an outsider's perspective on the Anglish colonizers, a mixture of technological wonders and steep social stratification and oppression; not being Christian has not made the pale foreigners any less rigid in their senses of genetic and cultural superiority, propriety, and boxing everyone into their perceived proper places. Her brother abandoned the island to live among the Anglish, studying engineering (and creating tensions within the family, who do not understand his passion or his dreams of integrating Anglish technology with his native culture), and becomes an ally in helping Anequs navigate the strange new world she's in, one she previously only knew (or thought she knew) from "pennik" novel adventures.
At the academy, Anequs encounters the expected mix of friends and foes. Her proper roommate, Marta, is the only other female "dragoneer" student in the school - women of high birth are not precisely forbidden a dragon bond, but it's uncommon and generally seen more as a stepping stone to a good marriage than a legitimate pursuit and career in its own right - and has no real idea what to make of a "nackie" girl, for all that she tries, in her often fumbling way, to be friendly and "civilize" the darker-skinned stranger. Also at the school is Theod, a Naquisit-born young man stripped of his culture after being raised in an orphanage and bonded into service; his own dragon bonding was an unfortunate mistake, and he himself struggles to keep his aspirations low enough not to attract more attention than "his kind" is due in Anglish society; encountering the headstrong and outspoken Anequs, he is almost as flummoxed as Marta, unable to understand why she, too, doesn't embrace this chance to cast off her "savage" culture (which he only knows of through Anglish-penned "histories") and join "civilized" society, even if she'll always be seen as a "nackie" first and a woman second (and human distant third - and that's even before she realizes that her nonbinary nature makes her that much more of an outsider and potential pariah). Among the professors, reactions to her admission run the gauntlet from fascinated interest to outright hostility, and the whole of the city of Varmarden seems to be watching her with sometimes-fascinated, sometimes-horrified interest. Through it all, Anequs holds firm to her own convinctions and her culture, determined not to let Anglish ways change her irrevocably; she has come to the academy to learn what she must to keep Kasaqua and shape her breath, and earn the right to be her "dragoneer" (though she resents the term from the outset; the native word "Nampeshiweisit" implies a partnership with a dragon, while the Anglish word is more about discipline and dominance), and that is all. Of course, she cannot help being changed somewhat, her exposure to the larger world beyond her island helping her to understand far more about her life, her family, and her people and the Anglish.
The story moves fairly well, occasionally slowing down as some elements of the world and the Anglish and histories and such are elaborated upon. Personal and public sentiments toward Anequs and Kasaqua shift throughout, but she remains a deterimined heroine, generally not content to sit back and passively accept what comes to her. Where the story threatened to lose its extra half-star was at the ending, which felt a little forced (and also like it forgot some other plot threads and elements that wouldn't have felt as out-of-the-blue as a few developments that dropped in in the last fifty-odd pages), and with some elements of the worldbuilding. Yes, I know I said that the setting was one of this book's strongest suits, but some of the names and terms (especially the Anglish ones) become blurs, mentioned here and there in passing with too little to attach them to in my brain to be memorable, leaving me wondering if I'd encountered this or that word before when I came to them again. As part of the commitment to the alt-history, Blackgoose even uses alternate names for academy subjects ("al-jabr" instead of algebra) and elements in the rudimentary periodic table used in skiltakrafting, which put a definite foot over the "smeerp" line for me. ("Smeerps" are made-up terms for something that's basically something familiar, but made to sound "cooler"/more fantastic and exotic with fancy names that bog down a story by calling too much attention to themselves; an animal that acts like a rabbit and is basically a rabbit can just be called a "rabbit" instead of a "smeerp" even if it's not genetically and evolutionarily an Earthborn lagomorph, unless there's a darned good in-story reason they need to be set aside with a special term.) Much as I admired the depth of imagination and research, I was still trying to juggle new terms and concepts and dragon species and political structures and nationalities; expecting me to remember alternate terms for iron, carbon, lead, and such just felt like one plate too many to consistently keep in the air. (And if you're going that far - why stop there? Why not alternate names for all the food and beverages and furniture?) I also felt that Kasaqua and the other dragons sometimes receded too far into the background. In the end, the overall imagination and originality counterbalanced the relatively minor drawbacks to land at four and a half stars in the ratings.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wake of Vultures (Lila Bowen) - My Review
His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros) - My Review
Friday, October 20, 2023
The Mist (Stephen King)
The Mist
Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The summer storm was the first sign of trouble in Bridgton, Maine, a vicious and hungry beast that destroyed trees and houses and brought down power lines all over town. At his lakeside home, David Drayton, his wife Steffy, and young son Billy rode out the worst of it in the basement. The next day, David notices a strange white mist across the water, lingering despite the sun and the breeze, but has more pressing concerns than a little odd weather, cleaning up storm debris and clearing the road.
He should have paid more attention to the mist.
When David, Billy, and a neighbor head into town to fetch groceries and supplies, the mist spreads, eventually reaching the supermarket parking lot... and those who venture into it do not return. Worse, with power and phone lines down, there's no way to call for help - and no way to know if there's anyone left to even call. Now David and his son are stranded in the store along with dozens of neighbors and strangers - as well as Mrs. Carmody, a local eccentric and religious zealot to whom the deadly mist is proof of the End Times at hand. The longer they're stuck, the more people fall under the sway of her words... and her conviction that the only way out is through blood sacrifice.
REVIEW: This classic horror novella packs plenty of terror, tangible and psychological, into its relatively short page count. From the first dark clouds of the impending summer storm to the last lines, a tangible weight of doom hangs over David and his small family, premonitions of deadly danger that nevertheless fall short of the actual horrors he and his son encounter. What, exactly, is the mist? Nobody knows exactly, and nobody can know. The beasts it births do not seem like anything of this world, lending some weight to the wilder theories bandied about concerning a nearby government base known as Project Arrowhead, but the sheer monstrous nature of them also makes Mrs. Carmody's insistence that Hell has opened up upon the Earth not entirely out of the realm of possibility. The cause, ultimately, hardly matters to those stuck trying to survive an inherently unsurvivable situation. The supermarket, which had seemed a salvation, soon becomes a trap, between Carmody's increasingly-fervent talk of damnation and sacrifice and a splinter sect of "Flat Earth" deniers who refuse to believe there's anything threatening in the fog despite all evidence on hand (all too relatable in modern times) and the general slow-creeping insanity of being stuck in a box with strangers and dwindling supplies and no plausible hope of outside rescue. David is no perfect hero; his commitment to his son's survival (and his own) leads him to some desperate acts (or non-acts, as when one desperate mother pleads for help getting home to her own children beyond the mist and finds no takers). As in other King tales, the characters become real people, even incidental ones, making their almost inevitable gruesome deaths hit all the harder. With the exception of Carmody (who has echoes in other King works, a figure seemingly energized and empowered by terrible circumstances who spreads confusion and lies to make bad situations even worse, as though in service to some darker purpose), there are few outright villains, just ordinary people pushed beyond the limits of psychological and physical endurance by an impossible situation. The tension and terrors keep rising throughout, leading to a fitting conclusion, if not a neat and tidy one.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Between Two Fires (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Rough Draft (Michael Robertson Jr) - My Review
Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The summer storm was the first sign of trouble in Bridgton, Maine, a vicious and hungry beast that destroyed trees and houses and brought down power lines all over town. At his lakeside home, David Drayton, his wife Steffy, and young son Billy rode out the worst of it in the basement. The next day, David notices a strange white mist across the water, lingering despite the sun and the breeze, but has more pressing concerns than a little odd weather, cleaning up storm debris and clearing the road.
He should have paid more attention to the mist.
When David, Billy, and a neighbor head into town to fetch groceries and supplies, the mist spreads, eventually reaching the supermarket parking lot... and those who venture into it do not return. Worse, with power and phone lines down, there's no way to call for help - and no way to know if there's anyone left to even call. Now David and his son are stranded in the store along with dozens of neighbors and strangers - as well as Mrs. Carmody, a local eccentric and religious zealot to whom the deadly mist is proof of the End Times at hand. The longer they're stuck, the more people fall under the sway of her words... and her conviction that the only way out is through blood sacrifice.
REVIEW: This classic horror novella packs plenty of terror, tangible and psychological, into its relatively short page count. From the first dark clouds of the impending summer storm to the last lines, a tangible weight of doom hangs over David and his small family, premonitions of deadly danger that nevertheless fall short of the actual horrors he and his son encounter. What, exactly, is the mist? Nobody knows exactly, and nobody can know. The beasts it births do not seem like anything of this world, lending some weight to the wilder theories bandied about concerning a nearby government base known as Project Arrowhead, but the sheer monstrous nature of them also makes Mrs. Carmody's insistence that Hell has opened up upon the Earth not entirely out of the realm of possibility. The cause, ultimately, hardly matters to those stuck trying to survive an inherently unsurvivable situation. The supermarket, which had seemed a salvation, soon becomes a trap, between Carmody's increasingly-fervent talk of damnation and sacrifice and a splinter sect of "Flat Earth" deniers who refuse to believe there's anything threatening in the fog despite all evidence on hand (all too relatable in modern times) and the general slow-creeping insanity of being stuck in a box with strangers and dwindling supplies and no plausible hope of outside rescue. David is no perfect hero; his commitment to his son's survival (and his own) leads him to some desperate acts (or non-acts, as when one desperate mother pleads for help getting home to her own children beyond the mist and finds no takers). As in other King tales, the characters become real people, even incidental ones, making their almost inevitable gruesome deaths hit all the harder. With the exception of Carmody (who has echoes in other King works, a figure seemingly energized and empowered by terrible circumstances who spreads confusion and lies to make bad situations even worse, as though in service to some darker purpose), there are few outright villains, just ordinary people pushed beyond the limits of psychological and physical endurance by an impossible situation. The tension and terrors keep rising throughout, leading to a fitting conclusion, if not a neat and tidy one.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Between Two Fires (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Rough Draft (Michael Robertson Jr) - My Review
Arm of the Sphinx (Josiah Bancroft)
Arm of the Sphinx
The Books of Babel series, Book 2
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: One year ago, mild-mannered small town schoolteacher Thomas Senlin arrived at the legendary Tower of Babel, bound for a honeymoon with his young wife Marya... only to lose her in the crowds before even setting foot in the tower itself. Bearing his trusty guide, The Everyman's Guide to the Tower of Babel, and his book-smarts, Thomas thought he'd be ready for anything the Tower threw at him - only to find out the hard way, like so many other visitors, just how easy it is to be broken by the place, and how hard it is to rise again. And yet, despite all the setbacks, despite the cruelties and corruption he both bore witness to and found himself forced to participate in, Thomas never gave up his goal of finding his abducted wife while holding onto some shred of his former ethics and dignity.
Now, the one-time schoolteacher is the ersatz captain of a stolen airship, the Stone Cloud, and a mismatched skeleton crew who have turned to piracy more for survival than out of any particular aptitude for the trade. Despite the odds against them - they are still being hunted by the lord of the third ringdom, and have been turned away from almost every port in the Tower - they've managed to endure, if not thrive, but unless something changes soon those odds are going to catch up with them. Worse, of late Thomas finds himself haunted by a ghostly vision of Marya, a figure far more malicious and cruel than his missing wife ever was in reality. An act of desperation leads him to the doorstep of Luc Marat, a dangerous revolutionary recruiting hods - Tower slaves - for his own inscrutable purposes, and eventually to the legendary figure known as the Sphinx. His first mate, Edith, knows firsthand just how cruel and manipulative the Sphinx can be: he is the one who replaced her missing arm with a mechanical marvel, but at a cost she wouldn't wish on anyone. He is also the man responsible for the Red Hand, the notorious assassin who nearly ended Thomas before their escape aboard the Stone Cloud. Any bargain made with the Sphinx is less an agreement and more glorified slavery. But neither Thomas nor the rest of their crew have much choice anymore if they mean to escape their growing list of enemies and survive the brewing troubles that threaten to shake the whole of the Tower to its foundations.
REVIEW: Arm of the Sphinx takes up the story of Thomas Senlin (or "Thomas Mud", a pseudonym that does little to hide his identity from his enemies) some months after the first book, expanding the scope to include more of his companions of circumstance. The story itself also widens from Thomas's search for his wife to encompass the greater mysteries of the Tower's origins and purpose, as well as the growing inter-ringdom tensions and power struggles that seem poised to spark into all-out war (and not for the first time).
The former schoolteacher is ill-suited to the life of piracy that has been thrust upon him, but he is not at all the same man he was at the start of his adventures, and what he lacks in ruthlessness he makes up for in cleverness. Though he still pursues his missing wife, last known to have been abducted by a wifemonger and presented to a nobleman in the affluent ringdom of Pelphia, the chase has, even to him, taken on a certain ephemeral quality, not helped by his persistent hallucinated version of Marya (which hints at another, telegraphed complication for the captain). It seems less and less likely he'll ever return to the life he had before coming to the Tower, or that Marya will be by his side if he ever does manage to escape the place; his new friends and responsibilities are more real, pressing concerns, and it becomes harder and harder for Thomas to remember the man he was when he committed to this quixotic quest. His crew, likewise, are all loyal to him for their own reasons, all of them changed in some way by being in his company, but even they realize that they can't go on like this, rarely more than half a step away from disaster. And yet, as before, every glimmer of hope they find turns out not to be a guiding star but a will o' the wisp at best, leading them astray, or an outright pit of hellfire at worst, ready to devour them. A revolutionary freeing the hods from their bondage sounds like a possible ally... until Thomas meets the man and catches a glimpse of what's going on at his hidden camp. After that failure, the Sphinx seems like their next, possibly last, hope, but this encounter, too, ends up costing all of them far more than they anticipate.
There are times here, as in the previous volume, where characters can feel a bit too naive given what they've already been through - even those who have been in the Tower much longer than Thomas - or behave in plot-convenient ways. Thomas also remains stubbornly blockheaded on occasion to further the story. Overall, though, the story moves fairly well and presents more wondrous, surreal mind's eye candy, delving deeper into the secrets of the Tower and some of the clues Thomas picked up in the first volume (such as the meaning of the painting that he went to such lengths to "acquire" in the third ringdom, and why everyone is so determined to get it back, even over his dead body). The other characters also generally grow and change in interesting ways, and Thomas himself starts to realize that, even if he reunites with Marya, their futures may not lie together anymore. After all, if the year has changed Thomas Senlin from straight-laced schoolteacher to veteran airship pirate, Marya can hardly be unchanged herself. I'm looking forward to slotting the third installment of the series into my reading queue (or listening queue, as this was another library-borrowed audiobook via Libby).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
The Keys to the Kingdom: Mister Monday (Garth Nix) - My Review
The Books of Babel series, Book 2
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: One year ago, mild-mannered small town schoolteacher Thomas Senlin arrived at the legendary Tower of Babel, bound for a honeymoon with his young wife Marya... only to lose her in the crowds before even setting foot in the tower itself. Bearing his trusty guide, The Everyman's Guide to the Tower of Babel, and his book-smarts, Thomas thought he'd be ready for anything the Tower threw at him - only to find out the hard way, like so many other visitors, just how easy it is to be broken by the place, and how hard it is to rise again. And yet, despite all the setbacks, despite the cruelties and corruption he both bore witness to and found himself forced to participate in, Thomas never gave up his goal of finding his abducted wife while holding onto some shred of his former ethics and dignity.
Now, the one-time schoolteacher is the ersatz captain of a stolen airship, the Stone Cloud, and a mismatched skeleton crew who have turned to piracy more for survival than out of any particular aptitude for the trade. Despite the odds against them - they are still being hunted by the lord of the third ringdom, and have been turned away from almost every port in the Tower - they've managed to endure, if not thrive, but unless something changes soon those odds are going to catch up with them. Worse, of late Thomas finds himself haunted by a ghostly vision of Marya, a figure far more malicious and cruel than his missing wife ever was in reality. An act of desperation leads him to the doorstep of Luc Marat, a dangerous revolutionary recruiting hods - Tower slaves - for his own inscrutable purposes, and eventually to the legendary figure known as the Sphinx. His first mate, Edith, knows firsthand just how cruel and manipulative the Sphinx can be: he is the one who replaced her missing arm with a mechanical marvel, but at a cost she wouldn't wish on anyone. He is also the man responsible for the Red Hand, the notorious assassin who nearly ended Thomas before their escape aboard the Stone Cloud. Any bargain made with the Sphinx is less an agreement and more glorified slavery. But neither Thomas nor the rest of their crew have much choice anymore if they mean to escape their growing list of enemies and survive the brewing troubles that threaten to shake the whole of the Tower to its foundations.
REVIEW: Arm of the Sphinx takes up the story of Thomas Senlin (or "Thomas Mud", a pseudonym that does little to hide his identity from his enemies) some months after the first book, expanding the scope to include more of his companions of circumstance. The story itself also widens from Thomas's search for his wife to encompass the greater mysteries of the Tower's origins and purpose, as well as the growing inter-ringdom tensions and power struggles that seem poised to spark into all-out war (and not for the first time).
The former schoolteacher is ill-suited to the life of piracy that has been thrust upon him, but he is not at all the same man he was at the start of his adventures, and what he lacks in ruthlessness he makes up for in cleverness. Though he still pursues his missing wife, last known to have been abducted by a wifemonger and presented to a nobleman in the affluent ringdom of Pelphia, the chase has, even to him, taken on a certain ephemeral quality, not helped by his persistent hallucinated version of Marya (which hints at another, telegraphed complication for the captain). It seems less and less likely he'll ever return to the life he had before coming to the Tower, or that Marya will be by his side if he ever does manage to escape the place; his new friends and responsibilities are more real, pressing concerns, and it becomes harder and harder for Thomas to remember the man he was when he committed to this quixotic quest. His crew, likewise, are all loyal to him for their own reasons, all of them changed in some way by being in his company, but even they realize that they can't go on like this, rarely more than half a step away from disaster. And yet, as before, every glimmer of hope they find turns out not to be a guiding star but a will o' the wisp at best, leading them astray, or an outright pit of hellfire at worst, ready to devour them. A revolutionary freeing the hods from their bondage sounds like a possible ally... until Thomas meets the man and catches a glimpse of what's going on at his hidden camp. After that failure, the Sphinx seems like their next, possibly last, hope, but this encounter, too, ends up costing all of them far more than they anticipate.
There are times here, as in the previous volume, where characters can feel a bit too naive given what they've already been through - even those who have been in the Tower much longer than Thomas - or behave in plot-convenient ways. Thomas also remains stubbornly blockheaded on occasion to further the story. Overall, though, the story moves fairly well and presents more wondrous, surreal mind's eye candy, delving deeper into the secrets of the Tower and some of the clues Thomas picked up in the first volume (such as the meaning of the painting that he went to such lengths to "acquire" in the third ringdom, and why everyone is so determined to get it back, even over his dead body). The other characters also generally grow and change in interesting ways, and Thomas himself starts to realize that, even if he reunites with Marya, their futures may not lie together anymore. After all, if the year has changed Thomas Senlin from straight-laced schoolteacher to veteran airship pirate, Marya can hardly be unchanged herself. I'm looking forward to slotting the third installment of the series into my reading queue (or listening queue, as this was another library-borrowed audiobook via Libby).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
The Keys to the Kingdom: Mister Monday (Garth Nix) - My Review
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
The Third Man Factor (John Geiger)
The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible
John Geiger
Hachette Books
Nonfiction, Psychology/Sociology/Survival
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A scuba diver in a deep cave loses track of her guideline... only to sense a presence that helps keep her calm until she can escape. An injured mountain climber, lost in bad weather, is tempted to give up, until someone who could not possibly be there urges them onward toward rescue. A sailor attempting a solo circumnavigation senses and even sees and hears a stranger aboard their ship, helping them through rough weather. An explorer lost in hostile jungle terrain follows a phantom figure to safety. A man in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks feels a presence just behind him, guiding him to safety before the towers collapse.
It sounds like the stuff of fiction, but these and other encounters like them are recorded thousands of times and more: people in high-stress, emergency situations and survival circumstances who sense or even see a phantom person, an entity that sometimes just watches and sometimes actively seems to offer advice or assistance. The figure can be a simple sensation of an unseen presence, a figure lacking features, an associate or loved one, or even a complete stranger. Even famed explorers like Shackleton experienced this, though many hide encounters for years or decades to avoid ridicule. The "Third Man Factor" is a real phenomenon, for all that nobody seems quite sure what the cause or trigger is. Author John Geiger relates several stories of Third Man encounters, along with studies and theories on their nature, from spiritual guides to evolutionary survival tactics to neural misfirings.
REVIEW: I've heard a few mentions of Third Man-like experiences in other survival stories, but this book is the first I've read dedicated solely to the phenomenon, which often falls into a gray area between spiritual or religious beliefs and neurochemistry. Actually studying it in action is difficult to impossible, given that it generally takes extreme situations to trigger, though some progress has been made on simulating similar experiences in lab settings. There's also some indication that it is related to the sense of a presence during sleep paralysis episodes and "imaginary friends" generated in childhood, and also possibly the misplaced sense of self that can also be seen in out-of-body experiences and "phantom limb" feelings in amputees; indeed, more than one person reporting their encounters seems to realize at some point that the "other" is an extension of themselves. Unlike delusional episodes or hallucinations, the people experiencing the Third Man often know that the "other" cannot possibly be there in truth, but the presence can still sometimes mean the difference between life and death in a very literal sense. "Third Men" (sometimes manifesting as female, or of undetermined gender) may well be an extreme survival tactic concocted by our social ape brains, for all that they sometimes seem like inert entities or even, rarely, vaguely malevolent (as in the "sleep paralysis demons" some report); just the sense of not being alone can help one rally in the face of impossible odds. The stories Geiger relates can occasionally bleed together (how many mountaineering disasters can a reader be expected to keep straight?), and sometimes the Third Man entity/experience involved seems more tangential than instrumental to helping the victims pull themselves together and get out of trouble, but overall it's a decently interesting look at an unusual psychological phenomenon.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Girl With No Name (Marina Chapman et al.) - My Review
Nation (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Lost in Shangri-La (Mitchell Zuckoff) - My Review
John Geiger
Hachette Books
Nonfiction, Psychology/Sociology/Survival
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A scuba diver in a deep cave loses track of her guideline... only to sense a presence that helps keep her calm until she can escape. An injured mountain climber, lost in bad weather, is tempted to give up, until someone who could not possibly be there urges them onward toward rescue. A sailor attempting a solo circumnavigation senses and even sees and hears a stranger aboard their ship, helping them through rough weather. An explorer lost in hostile jungle terrain follows a phantom figure to safety. A man in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks feels a presence just behind him, guiding him to safety before the towers collapse.
It sounds like the stuff of fiction, but these and other encounters like them are recorded thousands of times and more: people in high-stress, emergency situations and survival circumstances who sense or even see a phantom person, an entity that sometimes just watches and sometimes actively seems to offer advice or assistance. The figure can be a simple sensation of an unseen presence, a figure lacking features, an associate or loved one, or even a complete stranger. Even famed explorers like Shackleton experienced this, though many hide encounters for years or decades to avoid ridicule. The "Third Man Factor" is a real phenomenon, for all that nobody seems quite sure what the cause or trigger is. Author John Geiger relates several stories of Third Man encounters, along with studies and theories on their nature, from spiritual guides to evolutionary survival tactics to neural misfirings.
REVIEW: I've heard a few mentions of Third Man-like experiences in other survival stories, but this book is the first I've read dedicated solely to the phenomenon, which often falls into a gray area between spiritual or religious beliefs and neurochemistry. Actually studying it in action is difficult to impossible, given that it generally takes extreme situations to trigger, though some progress has been made on simulating similar experiences in lab settings. There's also some indication that it is related to the sense of a presence during sleep paralysis episodes and "imaginary friends" generated in childhood, and also possibly the misplaced sense of self that can also be seen in out-of-body experiences and "phantom limb" feelings in amputees; indeed, more than one person reporting their encounters seems to realize at some point that the "other" is an extension of themselves. Unlike delusional episodes or hallucinations, the people experiencing the Third Man often know that the "other" cannot possibly be there in truth, but the presence can still sometimes mean the difference between life and death in a very literal sense. "Third Men" (sometimes manifesting as female, or of undetermined gender) may well be an extreme survival tactic concocted by our social ape brains, for all that they sometimes seem like inert entities or even, rarely, vaguely malevolent (as in the "sleep paralysis demons" some report); just the sense of not being alone can help one rally in the face of impossible odds. The stories Geiger relates can occasionally bleed together (how many mountaineering disasters can a reader be expected to keep straight?), and sometimes the Third Man entity/experience involved seems more tangential than instrumental to helping the victims pull themselves together and get out of trouble, but overall it's a decently interesting look at an unusual psychological phenomenon.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Girl With No Name (Marina Chapman et al.) - My Review
Nation (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Lost in Shangri-La (Mitchell Zuckoff) - My Review
Saturday, October 14, 2023
Three Little Wishes (Paul Cornell)
Three Little Wishes
Paul Cornell, illustrations by Steven Yeowell
Legendary Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The qualities that make Kelly a great lawyer are the same ones that make her personal life miserable. Nobody reads the fine print more closely, or writes a more airtight contract... or lives by such strict rules that she can't even get five minutes into a blind date before overthinking things to death. Worried that Kelly is building walls of rules so thick she'll suffocate in them and die alone and miserable, her best friend Annie pushes her to do one impulsive thing - just one, no matter how small (and no matter how drunk she has to be to do it).
Which is how, thanks to the power of alcohol and an online auction, Kelly came into possession of an abandoned self-storage unit full of random junk - including one old bottle containing a trapped fairy lord, none other than the legendary King Oberon himself.
Oberon makes the incredulous woman an offer any mortal should jump at: three wishes, to do whatever selfish, impulsive, ill-thought-out things they please (and which the fairy will have no end of fun twisting around for his own amusement, because nobody can find a hole to exploit in a wish like he can). But Kelly is nothing at all like the other humans he's encountered in his long life. Not only does she refuse to use her wishes for personal gain, but she treats them as she would any contract negotiation - to the point where her first wish, for world peace, actually brings an end to global war and violent crimes. But even the best-worded and best-intentioned wishes can go terribly awry... and even the most selfless and rigidly rule-bound person (or the oldest and most devious of fairy kings) might find themselves in the sort of trouble they never anticipated.
REVIEW: An impulse read to kill time (when I wasn't concentrating enough to read a paperback), Three Little Wishes has a fun premise, but seems a bit confused as to what to do with it, or the characters it introduces.
Kelly is the ultimate contract lawyer who uses rules to shield herself from life's scary ambiguities and pitfalls. A (not-so-) recent breakup with Michael, one of the few men to last more than one date with her, only made her that much more rigid... especially since she knows it was her overthinking and overanalyzing and refusal to bend one iota to accommodate another human being (or allow a sliver of spontaneity into their lives) that killed the relationship. When Annie, among the few implied friends she has, pushes Kelly to break loose and do something spontaneous, Kelly bumbles and fumbles and fails until sufficiently lubricated with liquor (and the ease of online auction sites). It reduces her a bit from a full character to the sort of shallow caricature I've seen in too many half-baked rom-coms that reduce women to flailing, helpless objects trapped by their own foolishness (until a guy helpfully saves them from themselves, of course). Oberon, too, is supposed to have a more nuanced backstory that eventually comes out, but I also found him a bit hard to connect with.
I get that it was a comedy, of course, but humor is inherently subjective, and the brand on display here just felt too clunky and forced, especially given how it tries to both cling to the low-hanging fruit tropes and also explore and elevate its core concept of a mortal woman figuring out how to actually get a wish out of a trickster fairy without having it twisted back on her in an ironic or literal way. Oberon's abilities (or lack thereof) feel random and plot-convenient, as does his uneven character growth from a being who resents foolish mortals and enjoys defrauding them with deliberately-warped wishes to one who actually comes to understand and even care about people. Annie too often feels like a third wheel, the Black best friend who exists simply to support and enable the white lead in her pursuit of a more fulfilled life, and later in the story Michael is reintroduced in a way that challenges Kelly's determination to not use any of Oberon's magic on her own wants. As she struggles with renewed feelings for her ex, she finds herself facing unexpected fallout from her first wish, which may have ended a lot of human suffering but also led to a lot of people (and nations) losing a lot of money and jobs - such as an assassin who tries to resort to indirect methods to taking out the woman who ended his career. (How everyone found out it was Kelly also had the feeling of a plot weakness, because of course women can't help gossiping online, tee-hee.)
Things eventually resolve and the expected lessons are learned by the expected characters, but I couldn't help feeling an itch of dissatisfaction with how it all played out. It's an okay enough story, but I kept feeling like it could've been more than just "okay" if it had moved beyond the expected, tired rom-com cliches it seemed determined to cling to, even when the story tried to rise beyond them.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Coda Vol. 1 (Simon Spurrier) - My Review
Paul Cornell, illustrations by Steven Yeowell
Legendary Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The qualities that make Kelly a great lawyer are the same ones that make her personal life miserable. Nobody reads the fine print more closely, or writes a more airtight contract... or lives by such strict rules that she can't even get five minutes into a blind date before overthinking things to death. Worried that Kelly is building walls of rules so thick she'll suffocate in them and die alone and miserable, her best friend Annie pushes her to do one impulsive thing - just one, no matter how small (and no matter how drunk she has to be to do it).
Which is how, thanks to the power of alcohol and an online auction, Kelly came into possession of an abandoned self-storage unit full of random junk - including one old bottle containing a trapped fairy lord, none other than the legendary King Oberon himself.
Oberon makes the incredulous woman an offer any mortal should jump at: three wishes, to do whatever selfish, impulsive, ill-thought-out things they please (and which the fairy will have no end of fun twisting around for his own amusement, because nobody can find a hole to exploit in a wish like he can). But Kelly is nothing at all like the other humans he's encountered in his long life. Not only does she refuse to use her wishes for personal gain, but she treats them as she would any contract negotiation - to the point where her first wish, for world peace, actually brings an end to global war and violent crimes. But even the best-worded and best-intentioned wishes can go terribly awry... and even the most selfless and rigidly rule-bound person (or the oldest and most devious of fairy kings) might find themselves in the sort of trouble they never anticipated.
REVIEW: An impulse read to kill time (when I wasn't concentrating enough to read a paperback), Three Little Wishes has a fun premise, but seems a bit confused as to what to do with it, or the characters it introduces.
Kelly is the ultimate contract lawyer who uses rules to shield herself from life's scary ambiguities and pitfalls. A (not-so-) recent breakup with Michael, one of the few men to last more than one date with her, only made her that much more rigid... especially since she knows it was her overthinking and overanalyzing and refusal to bend one iota to accommodate another human being (or allow a sliver of spontaneity into their lives) that killed the relationship. When Annie, among the few implied friends she has, pushes Kelly to break loose and do something spontaneous, Kelly bumbles and fumbles and fails until sufficiently lubricated with liquor (and the ease of online auction sites). It reduces her a bit from a full character to the sort of shallow caricature I've seen in too many half-baked rom-coms that reduce women to flailing, helpless objects trapped by their own foolishness (until a guy helpfully saves them from themselves, of course). Oberon, too, is supposed to have a more nuanced backstory that eventually comes out, but I also found him a bit hard to connect with.
I get that it was a comedy, of course, but humor is inherently subjective, and the brand on display here just felt too clunky and forced, especially given how it tries to both cling to the low-hanging fruit tropes and also explore and elevate its core concept of a mortal woman figuring out how to actually get a wish out of a trickster fairy without having it twisted back on her in an ironic or literal way. Oberon's abilities (or lack thereof) feel random and plot-convenient, as does his uneven character growth from a being who resents foolish mortals and enjoys defrauding them with deliberately-warped wishes to one who actually comes to understand and even care about people. Annie too often feels like a third wheel, the Black best friend who exists simply to support and enable the white lead in her pursuit of a more fulfilled life, and later in the story Michael is reintroduced in a way that challenges Kelly's determination to not use any of Oberon's magic on her own wants. As she struggles with renewed feelings for her ex, she finds herself facing unexpected fallout from her first wish, which may have ended a lot of human suffering but also led to a lot of people (and nations) losing a lot of money and jobs - such as an assassin who tries to resort to indirect methods to taking out the woman who ended his career. (How everyone found out it was Kelly also had the feeling of a plot weakness, because of course women can't help gossiping online, tee-hee.)
Things eventually resolve and the expected lessons are learned by the expected characters, but I couldn't help feeling an itch of dissatisfaction with how it all played out. It's an okay enough story, but I kept feeling like it could've been more than just "okay" if it had moved beyond the expected, tired rom-com cliches it seemed determined to cling to, even when the story tried to rise beyond them.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Coda Vol. 1 (Simon Spurrier) - My Review
Thursday, October 12, 2023
The Suicide Motor Club (Christopher Buehlman)
The Suicide Motor Club
Christopher Buehlman
Berkley
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It was an ordinary night on the road in late 1960's America, and the Lamb family was driving home under the light of a golden-orange rising moon... until a horror beyond imagining shattered their happiness and left only young wife and mother Judith alive. In the moments before the crash that would end her husband's life, she got a good look at the people in the other car - the man with the cat-bright eyes and long fangs who pulled her young son from his seat through the open window, a memory seared into her brain even when nobody else believes her. But even as she is told, again and again, how only a miracle could have spared her, she knows that she has looked into the eyes of pure evil.
Years later, dedicating herself to the service of God as a nun, she is contacted by a stranger who actually believes her - a man who offers her a chance to hunt down and end the monsters who took her son and her happiness, a pack of vampires known as the Suicide Motor Club who use roadside "accidents" as cover for their kills. But is this secretive group, the Bereaved, truly a path to peace and salvation... and, if so, what is she to make of the unusual vampire who offers to help her in her quest?
REVIEW: Tangentially connected to Buehlman's The Lesser Dead through shared vampire lore and references to one character in particular, The Suicide Motor Club largely stands on its own, a story of inhuman predators and flawed people and the now-faded heyday of American muscle cars on the open roads.
Judith Lamb starts out, if not entirely happy with her lot - her marriage is best described as "complicated" - then reasonably content, enough that the loss of her pre-crash life cuts deep into her soul in a wound that will never truly heal. She turns eventually to faith, leaning into a belief she has carried since childhood as she struggles to make sense of not only her survival but of the horrific things she saw snatch her boy literally from her grasp, and even if she ultimately must walk her own path and find her own way to redemption outside the convent, she carries the strength of her belief into the coming battle. It is not a simplistic thing, her faith in her God, a faith tested not only by what she sees among the Bereaved and in her prophetic visions but also by her interactions with Clayton, a vampire who defies most everything she thought she knew about the undead. Clayton himself is a complicated figure, a vampire who struggles to retain some restraint even as he is surrounded by those who gleefully embrace their monstrous natures and the liberty it gives them to be the worst abominations they can be. (As with Buehlman's other titles, punches are not pulled and quarter is not given; these are bloodthirsty, depraved vampires to whom humans are not just prey of necessity but the most deliciously fragile toys to torment and smash and discard at leisure.) The story moves between Judith's struggles and the depredation of the Suicide Motor Club as they crisscross the country, racking up a small mountain's worth of collateral damage, before the inevitable confrontation... one that doesn't play out as anyone expects, in a climax that threatens to overplay its tension before finally coming to an ending that leaves some ambiguous threads dangling. I preferred this book's wrapup to the one in The Lesser Dead, even with that ambiguity and sense that there is more to tell.
The whole makes for a nicely twisted story of monsters and humans, belief and disbelief, and the often twisted, ever-shifting lines between good and evil, even within the same individual.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan le Fanu) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Christopher Buehlman
Berkley
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It was an ordinary night on the road in late 1960's America, and the Lamb family was driving home under the light of a golden-orange rising moon... until a horror beyond imagining shattered their happiness and left only young wife and mother Judith alive. In the moments before the crash that would end her husband's life, she got a good look at the people in the other car - the man with the cat-bright eyes and long fangs who pulled her young son from his seat through the open window, a memory seared into her brain even when nobody else believes her. But even as she is told, again and again, how only a miracle could have spared her, she knows that she has looked into the eyes of pure evil.
Years later, dedicating herself to the service of God as a nun, she is contacted by a stranger who actually believes her - a man who offers her a chance to hunt down and end the monsters who took her son and her happiness, a pack of vampires known as the Suicide Motor Club who use roadside "accidents" as cover for their kills. But is this secretive group, the Bereaved, truly a path to peace and salvation... and, if so, what is she to make of the unusual vampire who offers to help her in her quest?
REVIEW: Tangentially connected to Buehlman's The Lesser Dead through shared vampire lore and references to one character in particular, The Suicide Motor Club largely stands on its own, a story of inhuman predators and flawed people and the now-faded heyday of American muscle cars on the open roads.
Judith Lamb starts out, if not entirely happy with her lot - her marriage is best described as "complicated" - then reasonably content, enough that the loss of her pre-crash life cuts deep into her soul in a wound that will never truly heal. She turns eventually to faith, leaning into a belief she has carried since childhood as she struggles to make sense of not only her survival but of the horrific things she saw snatch her boy literally from her grasp, and even if she ultimately must walk her own path and find her own way to redemption outside the convent, she carries the strength of her belief into the coming battle. It is not a simplistic thing, her faith in her God, a faith tested not only by what she sees among the Bereaved and in her prophetic visions but also by her interactions with Clayton, a vampire who defies most everything she thought she knew about the undead. Clayton himself is a complicated figure, a vampire who struggles to retain some restraint even as he is surrounded by those who gleefully embrace their monstrous natures and the liberty it gives them to be the worst abominations they can be. (As with Buehlman's other titles, punches are not pulled and quarter is not given; these are bloodthirsty, depraved vampires to whom humans are not just prey of necessity but the most deliciously fragile toys to torment and smash and discard at leisure.) The story moves between Judith's struggles and the depredation of the Suicide Motor Club as they crisscross the country, racking up a small mountain's worth of collateral damage, before the inevitable confrontation... one that doesn't play out as anyone expects, in a climax that threatens to overplay its tension before finally coming to an ending that leaves some ambiguous threads dangling. I preferred this book's wrapup to the one in The Lesser Dead, even with that ambiguity and sense that there is more to tell.
The whole makes for a nicely twisted story of monsters and humans, belief and disbelief, and the often twisted, ever-shifting lines between good and evil, even within the same individual.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan le Fanu) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Fortunately, the Milk (Neil Gaiman)
Fortunately, the Milk
Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A lack of milk threatens to ruin breakfast (not to mention tea), so a father dutifully sets off to the nearby store to fetch some. When the trip takes far longer than the children figure it ought to, he explains just what happened along the way - if they believe him, that is...
REVIEW: This is a simple, fun tale of a grocery run gone humorously wrong (at least, according to one man). From alien abduction to time travel and pirates to a memorable encounter with a curious inventor (who happens to be a Stegosaurus) and more, the hapless father just can't seem to make his way home to his children and their dry bowls of breakfast cereal. Fortunately, he manages to keep hold of the precious bottle of milk throughout his incredible adventures. The various elements tie together by the end of the dubious story, and if the whole thing is rather frothy and silly, well, it is ultimately just a tall tale about a milk run.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Chloe and the Lion (Mac Barnett) - My Review
Cold Cereal (Adam Rex) - My Review
Time Travel Dinosaur (Matt Youngmark) - My Review
Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A lack of milk threatens to ruin breakfast (not to mention tea), so a father dutifully sets off to the nearby store to fetch some. When the trip takes far longer than the children figure it ought to, he explains just what happened along the way - if they believe him, that is...
REVIEW: This is a simple, fun tale of a grocery run gone humorously wrong (at least, according to one man). From alien abduction to time travel and pirates to a memorable encounter with a curious inventor (who happens to be a Stegosaurus) and more, the hapless father just can't seem to make his way home to his children and their dry bowls of breakfast cereal. Fortunately, he manages to keep hold of the precious bottle of milk throughout his incredible adventures. The various elements tie together by the end of the dubious story, and if the whole thing is rather frothy and silly, well, it is ultimately just a tall tale about a milk run.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Chloe and the Lion (Mac Barnett) - My Review
Cold Cereal (Adam Rex) - My Review
Time Travel Dinosaur (Matt Youngmark) - My Review
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