Straight
Chuck Tingle
Chuck Tingle, publisher
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It started three years ago, when Earth first encountered a tear in the cosmos. For nearly twenty-four hours, a large segment of the population turned into homicidal maniacs, nearly unstoppable, only to completely forget everything they'd done afterward. It didn't take long to figure out the common factor: the monsters were straight cisgendered heterosexuals, and their targets were anyone who deviated even slightly from strict sex and gender norms. Parents and children and loved ones even turned on those closest to them, mindless as zombies and far more gruesome. Last year, as Earth's orbit passed through the tear again, a vaccine helped reduce the carnage. This year, most everyone predicts things will be even better; after all, now people know to expect "Saturation Day" and take precautions, and as scientists learn more about the phenomenon, surely it's only a matter of time until the threat is neutralized entirely. In the meantime, if people just hide away or lock themselves up, that should reduce the destruction and body count. This Saturation Day, rather than shell out the exorbitant fees for a walled-off compound like Palm Springs or lock themselves in basements or attics, four friends on the rainbow spectrum - bisexual Issac, homosexual Jason, trans Nora, and lesbian Hazel - decide to head out to the California desert and a remote rental cabin, far away from any presumed would-be zombielike killers... and also far, far away from help when their isolated retreat becomes a death trap.
REVIEW: It's hardly a secret in late 2025 that a rabid anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda has rampaged through decades of fragile gains in equality, education, and understanding, sparks of ignorance and fear and hatred deliberately fanned into political wildfires that threaten far, far more than the ostensible target populations. This novella crystallizes the rabid, mindless violence behind that agenda that lies just barely beneath the surface of everyday civility, how marginalized voices crying out for help and justice are too often dismissed, how the collateral damage of inherently hostile cultural and legal norms is brushed aside as acceptable sacrifices, and how allies cannot always be relied upon when knives are out and blood is drawn. Even when Saturation Day brings the horrors out of the shadows and forces the majority to confront the fear and violence that non-straight, non-majority populations endure every second of every waking day, the blood literally glistening on the hands of straight perpetrators, it's too often treated as a minor inconvenience, something to be brushed aside and downplayed or a thing that someone else will surely fix soon, so in the meantime it just has to be tolerated. Tingle also addresses the internal schisms that fracture what should be a united front against the horrors perpetuated against them, as some within the community question whether bisexuals or transgenders or others "count" or should be ostracized to their own ends of the rainbow to fend for themselves.
From the very beginning, the sense of impending doom and madness is quickly established; as Isaac is packing up to flee the city, he encounters an elderly neighbor, a normally nice and liberal-minded woman on her way to be locked up by her son; she's too old for the vaccine, she explains, though she surely means him no harm... until she offers him a fresh-baked cookie with a "surprise" inside. (Signs of mental instability in the affected show up several hours before Earth enters the rift itself.) This establishes the paranoia inherent in the tale, where nobody can be considered safe - not even those who got the shot (which doesn't work on everyone) or are ordinarily more accepting in daily life. Isaac and his friends think they've found a way to outsmart Saturation Day - avoid people, avoid problems - but underestimate just how many people can be in a seemingly uninhabited desert, and just how determined the affected are to find and eliminate target populations. The metaphor's as sharp and obvious as a bloody pitchfork to the neck, though even in the midst of the carnage Isaac tries to resist and deny his own rage at his helplessness and the ineffectiveness of those who insist they'll help the foursome escape. Tingle does an excellent job evoking the terror, tension, and jump-scares of a horror movie, along with some truly gory and gruesome moments. The ending stumbles a bit, but the points it makes shine clearly.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Camp Damascus (Chuck Tingle) - My Review
Friday, October 10, 2025
Thursday, October 9, 2025
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison)
The Goblin Emperor
The Chronicles of Osreth series, Book 1
Katherine Addison
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Maia Drahzar is woken one morning to learn that he has become the elven emperor. He never, in all his 18 years, expected to inherit the crown; for one thing, he's been the least favorite royal offspring of Varenechibel IV since he was born to his goblin mother out of a political marriage and showed too clearly the dark skin of her people, and for another he's spent most of his life in exile on a remote estate to keep him out of the way, without even a royal tutor to instruct him in the ways of court and leadership. But an airship accident claimed his father and all three of his pureblood elven sons, leaving Maia the next in line. From before he sets foot in the palace at Cetho, he has enemies hoping to end his reign before it begins. Even he isn't sure he can fill the role thrust upon him, utterly ignorant of the generations-long alliances and rivalries that fill the vast halls of his new home. But Maia has no choice but to try... and if he can't be the same cold-blooded emperor that his late father was, maybe he can learn a better way to rule.
REVIEW: I'd heard about this story now and again, but not until I was intrigued by the premise of a spinoff series did I decide to give it a try. Set in a world of elves and goblins and steeped in rich cultures and history that stretches far beyond the pages, The Goblin Emperor offers a slightly different angle on high fantasy, centered on one shy, reluctant young man thrust into a role he was (intentionally) not prepared to take and having to learn on the fly what takes most leaders their whole lives to master. This can be a strength, as the tighter focus and limited setting allow the reader to more fully experience Maia's trial-by-fire immersion into palace politics and scheming. It can also be a drawback, as Addison has to spend a fair bit of page time relating the histories and tangled relationships of various key ruling houses, the political stances of various provinces, the roles of innumerable committees and personages and other functionaries, and the deep history of the grounds themselves, among other things - almost all of which has its own long elven name and title and special connotation that the reader must become familiar with to make sense of the unfolding plot.
From the start, Maia is a young man with no true friends, let alone allies, deliberately cast aside by a father who never thought a halfblood boy from an unwanted marriage would ever be useful, let alone necessary for his legacy. His elevation to the throne is a shock to himself and his minder, an older man whose anger and resentment at being stuck in the middle of a marsh looking after the least favored princeling leads to a twisted, abusive dynamic. He never wanted to be the emperor, having little but bad memories of his one and only meeting with his father, and finds the obligations of office suffocating, but escape is not an option, especially not when the next in line is a boy who would be putty in the hands of any "regent" appointed to oversee the throne. Thus, the shy, thoughtful, and sensitive boy bearing scars from a lifetime of neglect and bullying must learn to swim quickly in the quicksand he's been cast into... which he does, but not without some stumbles and setbacks. Along the way, he must finally grapple with some traumas of his childhood and the people who caused them, and determine what sort of leader he means to be. Just being half-goblin among elves who often think of goblins as barbaric cannibals (for all that halfbloods are far from rare) is enough of a challenge, without adding in his utter lack of connections among the courtiers and officials who make the machinery of the empire work (or fail to work). Even the first letter from the lord chancellor in Cetho - the letter informing him of his elevation in status and summoning him "home" for the funeral - contains traps that Maia is too naïve to recognize until they're pointed out; navigating them becomes the first test of his nascent reign. It would, he learns quickly, be quite easy to become a vengeful tyrant given his life until now and the opposition he faces from the start, but he deliberately picks an imperial name that will remind him to seek more peaceful means rather than following in Varenechibel IV's heavy footsteps. His efforts to stay true to the parts of himself that he most cherishes while growing into his robes makes for interesting reading (or listening, as this was an audiobook version)... for the most part.
What weighs the tale down is the very intricacy that gives The Goblin Emperor its depth. Addison slings innumerable names, titles, locations, and concepts at the reader, and while for the most part one can (as in many epic fantasies) sit back and let them wash past as the generalities fall into place, it can get quite confusing when particulars become plot relevant. This may have been easier for me to sort out on a printed page, as names that sound so similar when spoken may have had a distinct enough look to help me sort them better in my head. As it was, I'd be lying if I could keep even half of everyone straight, meaning there were several times when I just felt lost and was letting words go by until I could regain my bearings.
The drawbacks were just barely enough to shave a half-star off the rating, in the end. I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and could appreciate the portrait of a young man learning how to rule and make his mark in defiance of those who would dismiss or destroy him. (And, as I originally tried this to see if I'd enjoy that spinoff series, I will say it successfully convinced me to give those a try; I'm hoping it will be like my experience reading Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and being blown away after having a mixed reaction to Shadow and Bone, though I definitely liked The Goblin Emperor more than the first Grishaverse novel.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
The Chronicles of Osreth series, Book 1
Katherine Addison
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Maia Drahzar is woken one morning to learn that he has become the elven emperor. He never, in all his 18 years, expected to inherit the crown; for one thing, he's been the least favorite royal offspring of Varenechibel IV since he was born to his goblin mother out of a political marriage and showed too clearly the dark skin of her people, and for another he's spent most of his life in exile on a remote estate to keep him out of the way, without even a royal tutor to instruct him in the ways of court and leadership. But an airship accident claimed his father and all three of his pureblood elven sons, leaving Maia the next in line. From before he sets foot in the palace at Cetho, he has enemies hoping to end his reign before it begins. Even he isn't sure he can fill the role thrust upon him, utterly ignorant of the generations-long alliances and rivalries that fill the vast halls of his new home. But Maia has no choice but to try... and if he can't be the same cold-blooded emperor that his late father was, maybe he can learn a better way to rule.
REVIEW: I'd heard about this story now and again, but not until I was intrigued by the premise of a spinoff series did I decide to give it a try. Set in a world of elves and goblins and steeped in rich cultures and history that stretches far beyond the pages, The Goblin Emperor offers a slightly different angle on high fantasy, centered on one shy, reluctant young man thrust into a role he was (intentionally) not prepared to take and having to learn on the fly what takes most leaders their whole lives to master. This can be a strength, as the tighter focus and limited setting allow the reader to more fully experience Maia's trial-by-fire immersion into palace politics and scheming. It can also be a drawback, as Addison has to spend a fair bit of page time relating the histories and tangled relationships of various key ruling houses, the political stances of various provinces, the roles of innumerable committees and personages and other functionaries, and the deep history of the grounds themselves, among other things - almost all of which has its own long elven name and title and special connotation that the reader must become familiar with to make sense of the unfolding plot.
From the start, Maia is a young man with no true friends, let alone allies, deliberately cast aside by a father who never thought a halfblood boy from an unwanted marriage would ever be useful, let alone necessary for his legacy. His elevation to the throne is a shock to himself and his minder, an older man whose anger and resentment at being stuck in the middle of a marsh looking after the least favored princeling leads to a twisted, abusive dynamic. He never wanted to be the emperor, having little but bad memories of his one and only meeting with his father, and finds the obligations of office suffocating, but escape is not an option, especially not when the next in line is a boy who would be putty in the hands of any "regent" appointed to oversee the throne. Thus, the shy, thoughtful, and sensitive boy bearing scars from a lifetime of neglect and bullying must learn to swim quickly in the quicksand he's been cast into... which he does, but not without some stumbles and setbacks. Along the way, he must finally grapple with some traumas of his childhood and the people who caused them, and determine what sort of leader he means to be. Just being half-goblin among elves who often think of goblins as barbaric cannibals (for all that halfbloods are far from rare) is enough of a challenge, without adding in his utter lack of connections among the courtiers and officials who make the machinery of the empire work (or fail to work). Even the first letter from the lord chancellor in Cetho - the letter informing him of his elevation in status and summoning him "home" for the funeral - contains traps that Maia is too naïve to recognize until they're pointed out; navigating them becomes the first test of his nascent reign. It would, he learns quickly, be quite easy to become a vengeful tyrant given his life until now and the opposition he faces from the start, but he deliberately picks an imperial name that will remind him to seek more peaceful means rather than following in Varenechibel IV's heavy footsteps. His efforts to stay true to the parts of himself that he most cherishes while growing into his robes makes for interesting reading (or listening, as this was an audiobook version)... for the most part.
What weighs the tale down is the very intricacy that gives The Goblin Emperor its depth. Addison slings innumerable names, titles, locations, and concepts at the reader, and while for the most part one can (as in many epic fantasies) sit back and let them wash past as the generalities fall into place, it can get quite confusing when particulars become plot relevant. This may have been easier for me to sort out on a printed page, as names that sound so similar when spoken may have had a distinct enough look to help me sort them better in my head. As it was, I'd be lying if I could keep even half of everyone straight, meaning there were several times when I just felt lost and was letting words go by until I could regain my bearings.
The drawbacks were just barely enough to shave a half-star off the rating, in the end. I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and could appreciate the portrait of a young man learning how to rule and make his mark in defiance of those who would dismiss or destroy him. (And, as I originally tried this to see if I'd enjoy that spinoff series, I will say it successfully convinced me to give those a try; I'm hoping it will be like my experience reading Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and being blown away after having a mixed reaction to Shadow and Bone, though I definitely liked The Goblin Emperor more than the first Grishaverse novel.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Voyage of the Damned (Frances White)
Voyage of the Damned
Frances White
Mira
Fiction, Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: For generations, the twelve provinces of Concordia have held a sometimes-fragile peace between them, united by the threat of the outcast Crabs to the south, the powerful Dragon emperor to the north, and the powerful, secret Blessings of each provincial leader. Passing down through bloodlines for generations, each dux's Blessing helps their realm to thrive and keeps potential rivals in check, but the magic comes at the cost of a shortened lifespan. Now, in honor of one thousand years of (relative) peace, the twelve Blessed have been gathered for a voyage to the sacred mountain where the Goddess first passed Her magic to mortals, to renew Concordia's ties and remind everyone of the might of the emperor.
Ganymedes Piscero, Blessed of the lowly Fish Province, would rather be anywhere else... because Ganymedes has no magic. That must have gone to one of the other byblows of his unfaithful father. But Fish Province is already looked down upon enough without having to admit that some unknown bastard child is likely running around with a Goddess's power, so it was agreed that Ganymedes would be presented as the true and Blessed heir. So long as he kept away from the others, who always bullied him anyway for his lowly province and his girth, it was a farce he could put up with. But twelve days trapped aboard a boat, surrounded by real Blessed and all their insufferable arrogance - he'd rather die.
Then the Dragon heiress is found hanging from the chandelier above the banquet table - the first murder on a voyage that will soon be awash in blood, mayhem, and danger. And the only one who can solve the murders and save Concordia may be the only "Blessed" with no Blessing - or allies - to call his own... assuming Ganymedes doesn't end up a victim, too.
REVIEW: I admit it - I was lured in again by a shiny cover, though in my defense the early pages seemed fun, a little snarky and intriguing. It also promised an interesting locked-room murder mystery, isolated on a boat with nearly a dozen magic wielders. But it wasn't long before the snark that lured me in became tiresomely obnoxious, the main character degenerated into a useless "investigator" who seemed uninterested in actually investigating anything, the suspects/victims turned out to have less depth, integrity, and believability than a Scooby Doo villain, and the whole thing just collapsed in on itself into tangled mess.
From the start, the world is on shaky ground with Ganymedes's narration, a voice that sounds too modern and Earthbound to belong in the fantasy world of Concordia; he even shoots "finger guns" at a young couple he's flirting with, in a world where it's never clear that guns actually exist, let alone the casual use of "finger guns" gestures as a mark of interest or approval. He also came across as a teenager, not a man in his twenties, enough that I wondered whether this book was originally intended for a Young Adult audience but had been aged up with the addition of copious cursing, possibly for marketing reasons. Still, I was willing to suspend disbelief for a while, as well as suspending my irritation with his selfish immaturity (partly ameliorated when he sidesteps his selfishness in order to help a bullied child), as it was early in the book and there were some nice, interesting tidbits that promised better things and smoother sailing ahead. But it didn't take long for me to realize that, no, it's rough waters all the way to the horizon. Ganymedes only gets more obnoxious and jerky, and also food-obsessed, because of course the self-loathing jerk in the tale is also overweight for comic relief purposes. He also wastes far too much time, in the book and for the reader, stubbornly refusing to do anything, even when he ostensibly decides to play detective and solve the mystery. What good is an investigator that refuses to investigate? His efforts too often amount to little more than scribbling on a useless "detective board" in his cabin (which even he doesn't take seriously, from the flippant and frivolous notes he pens - it's not like he's in danger himself or anything, to focus his attention - and if the narrator/main character isn't taking multiple murders seriously, why should I as a reader?), and avoiding actually asking useful questions or untangling motives. When he does interact with his fellow Blessed/potential suspects, his abrasive personality and refusal to take anything seriously completely undermines any investigative value before five words have left his mouth. As for his allies, he has the unpromising sidekicks of a sickly teenager and a precocious/pushy six year old girl who turns invisible when stressed (her recently-manifested Blessing, after the previous heir to her province passed) and eats far too much page count not contributing anything except being a cutesy distraction from the murder mystery (but, then Ganymedes was already deliberately not investigating the murders, so she could hardly be blamed for that). Again, her presence really made me wonder if this book had originally been intended for a younger audience, one where six-year-olds running around stuffing their face with candy and being in everyone's face while spouting cutesy non sequiturs wouldn't have clashed so blatantly with the whole grisly-murder vibe it intermittently tried to project.
As mentioned previously, the other Blessed - and the world itself - become too surreally cartoonish and flat to take seriously. The magic-powered ship is so expansive and full of so much handwaved, plot-convenient things (cabins so big and transformed that they might as well not even be on a boat, for instance, and cutesy plush dragon servants who mostly exist to be cutesy and plush and provide a convenient way to explain a lack of serving staff, or even how food is prepared), while the people of each province can be readily identified by colored hair and particular traits that would not be out of place in a half-baked off-brand comic book. Eventually, the author gets around to introducing something like character depth and reasons behind Ganymedes's behavior (far too little too late to make me actually enjoy his company as narrator, but I did appreciate the effort), though the ultimate unmasking and explanation happen less because of his dogged determination to find the truth and more because he fails so utterly that the villain more or less monologues their plot just before the final bits. Another late game twist cut the legs out from under a subplot in a way I won't discuss (to avoid spoilers) but which completely undermined one of the few seemingly genuine bits of conflict and character growth of the ostensible protagonist. The last stretch has Ganymedes forced to actually do something, though by then I was long past caring whether Concordia or any of the characters still living in it survived.
I wanted to enjoy this one. It had potential, and it promised something a little fresh and a little different. Unfortunately, the bits I enjoyed (and there were a handful) were too few and far between.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green) - My Review
Frances White
Mira
Fiction, Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: For generations, the twelve provinces of Concordia have held a sometimes-fragile peace between them, united by the threat of the outcast Crabs to the south, the powerful Dragon emperor to the north, and the powerful, secret Blessings of each provincial leader. Passing down through bloodlines for generations, each dux's Blessing helps their realm to thrive and keeps potential rivals in check, but the magic comes at the cost of a shortened lifespan. Now, in honor of one thousand years of (relative) peace, the twelve Blessed have been gathered for a voyage to the sacred mountain where the Goddess first passed Her magic to mortals, to renew Concordia's ties and remind everyone of the might of the emperor.
Ganymedes Piscero, Blessed of the lowly Fish Province, would rather be anywhere else... because Ganymedes has no magic. That must have gone to one of the other byblows of his unfaithful father. But Fish Province is already looked down upon enough without having to admit that some unknown bastard child is likely running around with a Goddess's power, so it was agreed that Ganymedes would be presented as the true and Blessed heir. So long as he kept away from the others, who always bullied him anyway for his lowly province and his girth, it was a farce he could put up with. But twelve days trapped aboard a boat, surrounded by real Blessed and all their insufferable arrogance - he'd rather die.
Then the Dragon heiress is found hanging from the chandelier above the banquet table - the first murder on a voyage that will soon be awash in blood, mayhem, and danger. And the only one who can solve the murders and save Concordia may be the only "Blessed" with no Blessing - or allies - to call his own... assuming Ganymedes doesn't end up a victim, too.
REVIEW: I admit it - I was lured in again by a shiny cover, though in my defense the early pages seemed fun, a little snarky and intriguing. It also promised an interesting locked-room murder mystery, isolated on a boat with nearly a dozen magic wielders. But it wasn't long before the snark that lured me in became tiresomely obnoxious, the main character degenerated into a useless "investigator" who seemed uninterested in actually investigating anything, the suspects/victims turned out to have less depth, integrity, and believability than a Scooby Doo villain, and the whole thing just collapsed in on itself into tangled mess.
From the start, the world is on shaky ground with Ganymedes's narration, a voice that sounds too modern and Earthbound to belong in the fantasy world of Concordia; he even shoots "finger guns" at a young couple he's flirting with, in a world where it's never clear that guns actually exist, let alone the casual use of "finger guns" gestures as a mark of interest or approval. He also came across as a teenager, not a man in his twenties, enough that I wondered whether this book was originally intended for a Young Adult audience but had been aged up with the addition of copious cursing, possibly for marketing reasons. Still, I was willing to suspend disbelief for a while, as well as suspending my irritation with his selfish immaturity (partly ameliorated when he sidesteps his selfishness in order to help a bullied child), as it was early in the book and there were some nice, interesting tidbits that promised better things and smoother sailing ahead. But it didn't take long for me to realize that, no, it's rough waters all the way to the horizon. Ganymedes only gets more obnoxious and jerky, and also food-obsessed, because of course the self-loathing jerk in the tale is also overweight for comic relief purposes. He also wastes far too much time, in the book and for the reader, stubbornly refusing to do anything, even when he ostensibly decides to play detective and solve the mystery. What good is an investigator that refuses to investigate? His efforts too often amount to little more than scribbling on a useless "detective board" in his cabin (which even he doesn't take seriously, from the flippant and frivolous notes he pens - it's not like he's in danger himself or anything, to focus his attention - and if the narrator/main character isn't taking multiple murders seriously, why should I as a reader?), and avoiding actually asking useful questions or untangling motives. When he does interact with his fellow Blessed/potential suspects, his abrasive personality and refusal to take anything seriously completely undermines any investigative value before five words have left his mouth. As for his allies, he has the unpromising sidekicks of a sickly teenager and a precocious/pushy six year old girl who turns invisible when stressed (her recently-manifested Blessing, after the previous heir to her province passed) and eats far too much page count not contributing anything except being a cutesy distraction from the murder mystery (but, then Ganymedes was already deliberately not investigating the murders, so she could hardly be blamed for that). Again, her presence really made me wonder if this book had originally been intended for a younger audience, one where six-year-olds running around stuffing their face with candy and being in everyone's face while spouting cutesy non sequiturs wouldn't have clashed so blatantly with the whole grisly-murder vibe it intermittently tried to project.
As mentioned previously, the other Blessed - and the world itself - become too surreally cartoonish and flat to take seriously. The magic-powered ship is so expansive and full of so much handwaved, plot-convenient things (cabins so big and transformed that they might as well not even be on a boat, for instance, and cutesy plush dragon servants who mostly exist to be cutesy and plush and provide a convenient way to explain a lack of serving staff, or even how food is prepared), while the people of each province can be readily identified by colored hair and particular traits that would not be out of place in a half-baked off-brand comic book. Eventually, the author gets around to introducing something like character depth and reasons behind Ganymedes's behavior (far too little too late to make me actually enjoy his company as narrator, but I did appreciate the effort), though the ultimate unmasking and explanation happen less because of his dogged determination to find the truth and more because he fails so utterly that the villain more or less monologues their plot just before the final bits. Another late game twist cut the legs out from under a subplot in a way I won't discuss (to avoid spoilers) but which completely undermined one of the few seemingly genuine bits of conflict and character growth of the ostensible protagonist. The last stretch has Ganymedes forced to actually do something, though by then I was long past caring whether Concordia or any of the characters still living in it survived.
I wanted to enjoy this one. It had potential, and it promised something a little fresh and a little different. Unfortunately, the bits I enjoyed (and there were a handful) were too few and far between.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green) - My Review
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
September Site Update
Another month appears to have elapsed, and things keep going from bad to worse everywhere... In any event, September's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
A City On Mars (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith)
A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin
Nonfiction, Humor/Science
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Few things epitomize the Space Age dream like visions of cities on distant worlds, a future where humanity expands through the final frontier of the solar system. The challenges appear daunting, but so did the challenge of a manned moonflight, and we ticked that box decades ago. Surely, in this age of supercomputers and AI and swarms of satellites, with tech billionaires throwing money and resources at bringing down the cost of space travel, we'll see the first permanent human presence on another world in a matter of decades, at most... right?
Maybe not quite.
While it's true we've come a long way from the days of Sputnik, there are numerous problems to be solved - from thorny legal matters of who owns space and its resources to the practical matters of survival, let alone reproduction, in environs inherently hostile to life - before anyone rolls out the welcome mat on their Martian home. In this book, these obstacles are explored, with speculations on what a space-bound future might actually entail.
REVIEW: From The Jetsons to Star Trek, from space fantasy like Star Wars to grittier takes like 2001 and The Expanse, sci-fi and popular culture are steeped in visions of orbital habitats, space stations, and otherworldly colonies, a seemingly-inevitable next step for the wandering ape that emerged from Africa to spread to essentially every habitable corner of the Earth, adapting to wildly different conditions along the way. Successes like the 1960's moonshot and the International Space Station help keep the dream alive, further fueled by boasts from billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their races to build a better rocket, with exploitation of off-world resources and/or Martian colonies as the stated end goal. But the actual logistics of building and maintaining a human presence on another world, let alone a self-sustaining one, are immense. With humor and some interesting asides, the Weinersmiths break down the challenges confronting any would-be space colonizing civilization, a fair bit of which involves research that hasn't even been adequately done, such as how reproduction in a low-gravity environment would work and what the long-term effects of space radiation would be on an average population (our sample size, and sample specimens, of humans spending significant amount of time off-planet being statistically minuscule and based on trained specialists who had gone through rigorous pre-mission screening). Experiments to create entirely self-sustaining biomes are also not nearly robust enough to tell us what we'd need for a truly independent colony over the long term. Even finding a place to colonize is fraught with problems, from the limited prime real estate on the Moon (only a tiny fraction of locales are ideal) to the toxic "soil" of Mars to the technological challenges of that old staple of sci-fi, the spinning habitat that generates its own gravity. And that's not even getting into the psychological challenges, legal dilemmas, or potential security risks of sending people out into space who could potentially fling rocks down at our planet and re-enact the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact.
Does that mean that space colonization, even in orbital stations, is entirely impossible and will never happen? No, it does not, but the authors make some very valid points as they argue that we're going to have to do some very hard work, some very hard science, and some very deep thinking before we're ready to step offworld.
The whole makes for a fascinating, interesting, and occasionally amusing exploration of a fascinating concept. I'll still enjoy my sci-fi and space operas, of course, but I'm not so blinded by shiny fictional objects as to not understand that the reality, if it ever happens (exceptionally unlikely in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone reading this review), will be something far different, if equally as awe-inspiring and fascinating (again, in theory and concept, if unlikely to be fact anytime soon). I couldn't find any down sides or nitpicks, so I awarded this book top marks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Beyond: Our Future in Space (Chris Impey) - My Review
Vacation Guide to the Solar System (Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich) - My Review
Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin
Nonfiction, Humor/Science
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Few things epitomize the Space Age dream like visions of cities on distant worlds, a future where humanity expands through the final frontier of the solar system. The challenges appear daunting, but so did the challenge of a manned moonflight, and we ticked that box decades ago. Surely, in this age of supercomputers and AI and swarms of satellites, with tech billionaires throwing money and resources at bringing down the cost of space travel, we'll see the first permanent human presence on another world in a matter of decades, at most... right?
Maybe not quite.
While it's true we've come a long way from the days of Sputnik, there are numerous problems to be solved - from thorny legal matters of who owns space and its resources to the practical matters of survival, let alone reproduction, in environs inherently hostile to life - before anyone rolls out the welcome mat on their Martian home. In this book, these obstacles are explored, with speculations on what a space-bound future might actually entail.
REVIEW: From The Jetsons to Star Trek, from space fantasy like Star Wars to grittier takes like 2001 and The Expanse, sci-fi and popular culture are steeped in visions of orbital habitats, space stations, and otherworldly colonies, a seemingly-inevitable next step for the wandering ape that emerged from Africa to spread to essentially every habitable corner of the Earth, adapting to wildly different conditions along the way. Successes like the 1960's moonshot and the International Space Station help keep the dream alive, further fueled by boasts from billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their races to build a better rocket, with exploitation of off-world resources and/or Martian colonies as the stated end goal. But the actual logistics of building and maintaining a human presence on another world, let alone a self-sustaining one, are immense. With humor and some interesting asides, the Weinersmiths break down the challenges confronting any would-be space colonizing civilization, a fair bit of which involves research that hasn't even been adequately done, such as how reproduction in a low-gravity environment would work and what the long-term effects of space radiation would be on an average population (our sample size, and sample specimens, of humans spending significant amount of time off-planet being statistically minuscule and based on trained specialists who had gone through rigorous pre-mission screening). Experiments to create entirely self-sustaining biomes are also not nearly robust enough to tell us what we'd need for a truly independent colony over the long term. Even finding a place to colonize is fraught with problems, from the limited prime real estate on the Moon (only a tiny fraction of locales are ideal) to the toxic "soil" of Mars to the technological challenges of that old staple of sci-fi, the spinning habitat that generates its own gravity. And that's not even getting into the psychological challenges, legal dilemmas, or potential security risks of sending people out into space who could potentially fling rocks down at our planet and re-enact the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact.
Does that mean that space colonization, even in orbital stations, is entirely impossible and will never happen? No, it does not, but the authors make some very valid points as they argue that we're going to have to do some very hard work, some very hard science, and some very deep thinking before we're ready to step offworld.
The whole makes for a fascinating, interesting, and occasionally amusing exploration of a fascinating concept. I'll still enjoy my sci-fi and space operas, of course, but I'm not so blinded by shiny fictional objects as to not understand that the reality, if it ever happens (exceptionally unlikely in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone reading this review), will be something far different, if equally as awe-inspiring and fascinating (again, in theory and concept, if unlikely to be fact anytime soon). I couldn't find any down sides or nitpicks, so I awarded this book top marks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Beyond: Our Future in Space (Chris Impey) - My Review
Vacation Guide to the Solar System (Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich) - My Review
Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review
Friday, September 19, 2025
The Full Moon Coffee Shop (Mai Mochizuki)
The Full Moon Coffee Shop
The The Full Moon Coffee Shop series, Book 1
Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
Ballantine Books
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A schoolteacher turned screenwriter feels past her prime when her hot career turns to dust almost overnight, even as her latest relationship fizzles out. A movie director feels romantically stuck after breaking off an affair. A hairstylist enjoys her work but can't understand why it's been so draining lately. A tech entrepreneur keeps having things go wrong around him, threatening his business and his future. All four Kyoto residents need help... and all find themselves in a strange pop-up cafe under the light of the full moon, where the waitstaff are talking cats who may or may not be embodiments of the planets that influence fates. Here, they may find the insights they need to move forward, if they're willing to listen and learn.
REVIEW: Early on, this was a fun cozy fantasy novel with a nice central gimmick, if a strange one. The many lavish visual descriptions made me wonder if it was an adaptation of a manga or anime, while the flavors of each concoction offered by the friendly cats add another layer of immersion. None of the characters are facing epic life-or-death decisions, but are stuck and frustrated in the ways many can relate to: careers going nowhere (or actively going backwards), trouble finding romance, just generally something being very wrong but unable to pin down what, let alone what to do about it. Using the power of astrology and natal charts, the cats offer insights into each character's personalities and where/why they're experiencing troubles, as well as hints about how to move forward. What started as a nice little cozy idea soon slides into something between brow-beating and a sales pitch for astrology as a vital tool to better one's life, to the point where I half expected business cards for an astrologist to be stuck in print editions of the book. This also makes some elements feel repetitive. The wrap-up tale also feels a little long, overexplaining itself and how it ties all of the characters together. While there was some nice imagery and it had a few enjoyable moments, I tired of this brew long before I finished drinking.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Star Cats: A Feline Zodiac (Lesley Ann Ivory) - My Review
Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi) - My Review
The Dragon Slayer with a Heavy Heart (Marcia Powers) - My Review
The The Full Moon Coffee Shop series, Book 1
Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
Ballantine Books
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A schoolteacher turned screenwriter feels past her prime when her hot career turns to dust almost overnight, even as her latest relationship fizzles out. A movie director feels romantically stuck after breaking off an affair. A hairstylist enjoys her work but can't understand why it's been so draining lately. A tech entrepreneur keeps having things go wrong around him, threatening his business and his future. All four Kyoto residents need help... and all find themselves in a strange pop-up cafe under the light of the full moon, where the waitstaff are talking cats who may or may not be embodiments of the planets that influence fates. Here, they may find the insights they need to move forward, if they're willing to listen and learn.
REVIEW: Early on, this was a fun cozy fantasy novel with a nice central gimmick, if a strange one. The many lavish visual descriptions made me wonder if it was an adaptation of a manga or anime, while the flavors of each concoction offered by the friendly cats add another layer of immersion. None of the characters are facing epic life-or-death decisions, but are stuck and frustrated in the ways many can relate to: careers going nowhere (or actively going backwards), trouble finding romance, just generally something being very wrong but unable to pin down what, let alone what to do about it. Using the power of astrology and natal charts, the cats offer insights into each character's personalities and where/why they're experiencing troubles, as well as hints about how to move forward. What started as a nice little cozy idea soon slides into something between brow-beating and a sales pitch for astrology as a vital tool to better one's life, to the point where I half expected business cards for an astrologist to be stuck in print editions of the book. This also makes some elements feel repetitive. The wrap-up tale also feels a little long, overexplaining itself and how it ties all of the characters together. While there was some nice imagery and it had a few enjoyable moments, I tired of this brew long before I finished drinking.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Star Cats: A Feline Zodiac (Lesley Ann Ivory) - My Review
Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi) - My Review
The Dragon Slayer with a Heavy Heart (Marcia Powers) - My Review
Extinction (Douglas Preston)
Extinction
The Cash and Colcord series, Book 1
Douglas Preston
Forge Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: At Erebus Resort, a private valley in Colorado, wealthy visitors can see resurrected giants from a lost age. Thanks to a team of scientists, cutting-edge technology, and the investment of a billionaire backer, mammoths, glyptodonts, and more roam freely for the first time in thousands of years. Each creation has been carefully gene-edited to lack aggression, making them as safe as any domestic animal to be around.
Until two visitors disappear while on a high-country honeymoon backpacking excursion through the park, leaving behind pools of blood large enough that nobody doubts their fate.
At the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Agent Frances Cash is eager to finally take the lead on a major case. Along with county sheriff James Colcord, she sets out to uncover what happened and if the culprit is animal or human. But it quickly becomes apparent that the Erebus staff knows more than they're letting on, that their cooperation has limits... and that the dead honeymooners are just the start of a far more dangerous spree.
REVIEW: With clear (and acknowledged) influence from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, Extinction explores the pitfalls of de-extincting lost species, particularly the slippery slope when arrogance crossbreeds with scientific breakthroughs and the brakes of ethics are cut by greed (to mix and mangle a metaphor).
Opening with the doomed honeymooners, the story then establishes its heroes, CBI Agent Cash and Sheriff Colcord. Each is initially a little skeptical of the other due to interdepartmental rivalries and the politics of the situation (in addition to some internal personnel friction, Erebus Resort is a political hot potato, a major revenue source for the state and backed by people too powerful to ignore but opposed by numerous very vocal groups, some of which have rather good points), but they share a dedication to the job and a determination to see it through, no matter whose toes get stepped on and how inconvenient the truth might ultimately be. The head of Erebus security, Maximilian, promises full cooperation and appears shocked by the murder, but it's clear early on that the company has more going on than they're revealing, and that their boss ultimately values the survival of the park and continuation of his de-extinction work over the safety of human beings. Meanwhile, the culprits grow bolder and more violent, their attacks more depraved, their ultimate plan expanding in scale, putting everyone in danger. In thriller fashion, events escalate through various action pieces and setbacks to an explosive finale that sets up the next installment (which has yet to be published).
What cost it in the ratings was a sense of needless plot and character sprawl, some people and elements never really justifying their page time by the end, their fates a little too predictable. I guessed early on what was behind the attacks, though some bits of the reveal still worked well. I also expected a little more to come of the mammoths and a few other resurrected creatures, which had brief sense-of-awe moments after a big deal was made of their presence but ultimately might as well have been just advanced animatronics or not even been there at all, which is not something I should be thinking after I was promised a park full of Ice Age creatures; it's a bit like thinking the dinosaurs might as well have not been in Jurassic Park.
Other than those nitpicks, it's a decent enough thriller with sci-fi trappings. I didn't mind the heroes, though I don't know if I need to read any more in the series.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) - My Review
The Tusks of Extinction (Ray Nayler) - My Review
Tyrannosaur Canyon (Douglas Preston) - My Review
The Cash and Colcord series, Book 1
Douglas Preston
Forge Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: At Erebus Resort, a private valley in Colorado, wealthy visitors can see resurrected giants from a lost age. Thanks to a team of scientists, cutting-edge technology, and the investment of a billionaire backer, mammoths, glyptodonts, and more roam freely for the first time in thousands of years. Each creation has been carefully gene-edited to lack aggression, making them as safe as any domestic animal to be around.
Until two visitors disappear while on a high-country honeymoon backpacking excursion through the park, leaving behind pools of blood large enough that nobody doubts their fate.
At the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Agent Frances Cash is eager to finally take the lead on a major case. Along with county sheriff James Colcord, she sets out to uncover what happened and if the culprit is animal or human. But it quickly becomes apparent that the Erebus staff knows more than they're letting on, that their cooperation has limits... and that the dead honeymooners are just the start of a far more dangerous spree.
REVIEW: With clear (and acknowledged) influence from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, Extinction explores the pitfalls of de-extincting lost species, particularly the slippery slope when arrogance crossbreeds with scientific breakthroughs and the brakes of ethics are cut by greed (to mix and mangle a metaphor).
Opening with the doomed honeymooners, the story then establishes its heroes, CBI Agent Cash and Sheriff Colcord. Each is initially a little skeptical of the other due to interdepartmental rivalries and the politics of the situation (in addition to some internal personnel friction, Erebus Resort is a political hot potato, a major revenue source for the state and backed by people too powerful to ignore but opposed by numerous very vocal groups, some of which have rather good points), but they share a dedication to the job and a determination to see it through, no matter whose toes get stepped on and how inconvenient the truth might ultimately be. The head of Erebus security, Maximilian, promises full cooperation and appears shocked by the murder, but it's clear early on that the company has more going on than they're revealing, and that their boss ultimately values the survival of the park and continuation of his de-extinction work over the safety of human beings. Meanwhile, the culprits grow bolder and more violent, their attacks more depraved, their ultimate plan expanding in scale, putting everyone in danger. In thriller fashion, events escalate through various action pieces and setbacks to an explosive finale that sets up the next installment (which has yet to be published).
What cost it in the ratings was a sense of needless plot and character sprawl, some people and elements never really justifying their page time by the end, their fates a little too predictable. I guessed early on what was behind the attacks, though some bits of the reveal still worked well. I also expected a little more to come of the mammoths and a few other resurrected creatures, which had brief sense-of-awe moments after a big deal was made of their presence but ultimately might as well have been just advanced animatronics or not even been there at all, which is not something I should be thinking after I was promised a park full of Ice Age creatures; it's a bit like thinking the dinosaurs might as well have not been in Jurassic Park.
Other than those nitpicks, it's a decent enough thriller with sci-fi trappings. I didn't mind the heroes, though I don't know if I need to read any more in the series.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) - My Review
The Tusks of Extinction (Ray Nayler) - My Review
Tyrannosaur Canyon (Douglas Preston) - My Review
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith (Rob Renzetti)
The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith #3
The Horrible Bag series, Book 3
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Zenith Maelstrom never wanted to go back to the world of GrahBag after escaping the first time; he only returned to rescue his sister, and inadvertently became tangled up in a rebellion against the remnants of the Wurm's forces and the Wurm's last vestiges, the ravenous cloak known as the Wraith. Still, that was a problem for the people of GrahBag, not two outsiders from Earth, both of whom are just children. Only Apogee betrayed him, literally throwing him out of the nightmare world and sealing the gates. Worse, his parents are convinced that something terrible happened to him when he witnessed his sister's "abduction"; they discovered his journal recounting his earlier trips to GrahBag and think it's a record of nightmares triggered by the trauma. Zenith is running out of ways to stall them, and is growing more desperate to find a way back to GrahBag, especially as days on Earth are months or years there... only the portals in the bag are still sealed up tight.
Unexpectedly, one day he finds his chance when a new portal opens in an alley - a salty mouth spewing monster-filled seawater (and foul language). Zenith has nothing on him but the clothes on his back, but he knows better than to wait for a better opportunity, so he leaps through... only to find that things have gone from bad to worse. The world of GrahBag is literally coming apart at the seams, and while Apogee's rebellion is still fighting, the Wraith's minions have seized control of the Collectary tree whose chalk-slate leaves literally write (or erase) reality... and it won't be long before there isn't even a world for them to fight over.
REVIEW: The third and (presumed) final installment of the Horrible Bag series pulls the story back on track after a somewhat weaker middle book, delivering an action-packed, intense finale to a series that, for a middle-grade title, pulls off some surprisingly dark moments as Zenith and Apogee finally confront the Wraith and the consequences of their own actions.
Unlike the previous book, Zenith remembers full well what happened to his (once older, now younger) sister and the world of GrahBag, in part because he took a page from Apogee's book and carefully writes recollections down every day, with a doodle of the bag itself; if he doesn't see the bag, after a while the memories slip away to be replaced with a more mundane version of events. He hates seeing his parents devastated by his sister's disappearance, just as he blames himself for not getting her and his best friend home safely, but there's nothing he can do except make himself remember and wait for a chance to get back - only to find himself in literal hot water, emerging in GrahBag's notorious Scalding Sea. Things only get worse from there, as he learns he and his sister are in no small part responsible for why the world is falling into chaos around them; the Scribe of the Collectary has found Apogee's old physics book and is haphazardly inserting whatever scientific concepts strike his fancy into GrahBag's reality. Zenith encounters the personification of the Grandfather Paradox of time travel (who is, understandably, rather paranoid) and Shrödinger's Cat (complete with the box in which it both is and is not alive), the latter of which becomes a surprisingly helpful companion. Zenith tries once more to rescue his sister - refusing to listen when she tells him she does not need rescuing - but his efforts backfire terribly, leading to some interesting plot developments that ultimately expose the roots of the Maelstrom siblings' ties to GrahBag and the origins of the Wurm itself. Things come together for a rather satisfying conclusion that doesn't erase all the damage done or losses incurred, one which leaves just enough of a crack in the door for future installments.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
The Circus of Stolen Dreams (Lorelei Savaryn) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
The Horrible Bag series, Book 3
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Zenith Maelstrom never wanted to go back to the world of GrahBag after escaping the first time; he only returned to rescue his sister, and inadvertently became tangled up in a rebellion against the remnants of the Wurm's forces and the Wurm's last vestiges, the ravenous cloak known as the Wraith. Still, that was a problem for the people of GrahBag, not two outsiders from Earth, both of whom are just children. Only Apogee betrayed him, literally throwing him out of the nightmare world and sealing the gates. Worse, his parents are convinced that something terrible happened to him when he witnessed his sister's "abduction"; they discovered his journal recounting his earlier trips to GrahBag and think it's a record of nightmares triggered by the trauma. Zenith is running out of ways to stall them, and is growing more desperate to find a way back to GrahBag, especially as days on Earth are months or years there... only the portals in the bag are still sealed up tight.
Unexpectedly, one day he finds his chance when a new portal opens in an alley - a salty mouth spewing monster-filled seawater (and foul language). Zenith has nothing on him but the clothes on his back, but he knows better than to wait for a better opportunity, so he leaps through... only to find that things have gone from bad to worse. The world of GrahBag is literally coming apart at the seams, and while Apogee's rebellion is still fighting, the Wraith's minions have seized control of the Collectary tree whose chalk-slate leaves literally write (or erase) reality... and it won't be long before there isn't even a world for them to fight over.
REVIEW: The third and (presumed) final installment of the Horrible Bag series pulls the story back on track after a somewhat weaker middle book, delivering an action-packed, intense finale to a series that, for a middle-grade title, pulls off some surprisingly dark moments as Zenith and Apogee finally confront the Wraith and the consequences of their own actions.
Unlike the previous book, Zenith remembers full well what happened to his (once older, now younger) sister and the world of GrahBag, in part because he took a page from Apogee's book and carefully writes recollections down every day, with a doodle of the bag itself; if he doesn't see the bag, after a while the memories slip away to be replaced with a more mundane version of events. He hates seeing his parents devastated by his sister's disappearance, just as he blames himself for not getting her and his best friend home safely, but there's nothing he can do except make himself remember and wait for a chance to get back - only to find himself in literal hot water, emerging in GrahBag's notorious Scalding Sea. Things only get worse from there, as he learns he and his sister are in no small part responsible for why the world is falling into chaos around them; the Scribe of the Collectary has found Apogee's old physics book and is haphazardly inserting whatever scientific concepts strike his fancy into GrahBag's reality. Zenith encounters the personification of the Grandfather Paradox of time travel (who is, understandably, rather paranoid) and Shrödinger's Cat (complete with the box in which it both is and is not alive), the latter of which becomes a surprisingly helpful companion. Zenith tries once more to rescue his sister - refusing to listen when she tells him she does not need rescuing - but his efforts backfire terribly, leading to some interesting plot developments that ultimately expose the roots of the Maelstrom siblings' ties to GrahBag and the origins of the Wurm itself. Things come together for a rather satisfying conclusion that doesn't erase all the damage done or losses incurred, one which leaves just enough of a crack in the door for future installments.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
The Circus of Stolen Dreams (Lorelei Savaryn) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie (Freida McFadden)
The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie: A Satirical Novella
Freida McFadden
Hollywood Upstairs Press
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: She had the perfect marriage - until it was over. It's been weeks since Grant died in a fiery crash, and Alice still can't get his face out of her mind... because she's still seeing him everywhere, quite literally. In the grocery store, following her in traffic, walking down the street - everywhere. Either his ghost is haunting her in a bad plot twist, or something sinister is going on. To figure out what, Alice will have to unravel the secrets, the lies, and the secret lies of their life together, all without revealing her own deceptions, or ending up dead herself.
REVIEW: I've never actually read anything by McFadden before (though, ironically, I saw several of her books go through the library shipping center as I listened to this audiobook), but satires can be fun and the length filled a dead spot in my day. From the title and first words of the prologue, it's pretty clear that McFadden is presenting a satire of her own genre (and even her own works, as Alice is reading a Freida McFadden novel when her best friend comes over with yet another condolence casserole), offering up a trawler's worth of red herrings via an unreliable narrator and false starts and plot twists that may not make a lick of sense but make for catchy chapter break hooks. As Alice struggles to deal with seeing Grant everywhere and second-guessing her own memories, McFadden puts genre tropes through their paces, clearly having a blast while doing it. At one point she even slips in a reference to Spaceballs, which helped boost the short tale over some uneven pacing to a solid Good rating. The plot is a bit flimsy and the characters paper-thin, but it wasn't written to be a gripping, taut thriller. It set out to be a satire, and it made me chuckle, which is all a satire has to do. Anyone looking for more than that needs to lighten up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite) - My Review
Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero) - My Review
Lord of the Fly Fest (Goldy Moldavsky) - My Review
Freida McFadden
Hollywood Upstairs Press
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: She had the perfect marriage - until it was over. It's been weeks since Grant died in a fiery crash, and Alice still can't get his face out of her mind... because she's still seeing him everywhere, quite literally. In the grocery store, following her in traffic, walking down the street - everywhere. Either his ghost is haunting her in a bad plot twist, or something sinister is going on. To figure out what, Alice will have to unravel the secrets, the lies, and the secret lies of their life together, all without revealing her own deceptions, or ending up dead herself.
REVIEW: I've never actually read anything by McFadden before (though, ironically, I saw several of her books go through the library shipping center as I listened to this audiobook), but satires can be fun and the length filled a dead spot in my day. From the title and first words of the prologue, it's pretty clear that McFadden is presenting a satire of her own genre (and even her own works, as Alice is reading a Freida McFadden novel when her best friend comes over with yet another condolence casserole), offering up a trawler's worth of red herrings via an unreliable narrator and false starts and plot twists that may not make a lick of sense but make for catchy chapter break hooks. As Alice struggles to deal with seeing Grant everywhere and second-guessing her own memories, McFadden puts genre tropes through their paces, clearly having a blast while doing it. At one point she even slips in a reference to Spaceballs, which helped boost the short tale over some uneven pacing to a solid Good rating. The plot is a bit flimsy and the characters paper-thin, but it wasn't written to be a gripping, taut thriller. It set out to be a satire, and it made me chuckle, which is all a satire has to do. Anyone looking for more than that needs to lighten up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite) - My Review
Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero) - My Review
Lord of the Fly Fest (Goldy Moldavsky) - My Review
Friday, September 12, 2025
The Twisted Tower of Endless Torment (Ron Renzetti)
The Twisted Tower of Endless Torment #2
The Horrible Bag series, Book 2
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Prepare for Battle! reads the note on Zenith Maelstrom's nightstand, but for the life of him he can't remember why he wrote it. Did it mean a game with his friend Kevin Churl? They've spent much of their summer together, except when Zenith has to watch his kid sister Apogee... but something in the back of his mind bothers him, like he's forgotten something very important. It's not until he finds Apogee in the basement trying to open an ugly old leather bag that he remembers about their terrible journey through the land of GrahBag - and how it's his fault that his sister is four years old instead of fourteen. He promised her when they left that he'd fix it, that they'd go back, but for some reason it's hard to hold onto that thought when he's in the real world and away from the horrible bag. Then Apogee forces his hand; she sneaks back through to the other world while he's asleep. With Kevin tagging along, he reluctantly goes back into the realm of monsters, only to find it's even worse than before. The Wurm lives on as a soul-sucking Wraith, and the very land seems to be dying. He and Apogee only barely escaped with their lives last time, and this time they may not be so lucky...
REVIEW: Taking up a short while after the previous volume ended, it also wastes little time getting going, though Zenith dithers a bit overlong once he realizes that he can't even trust his memories when he's out of sight of the horrible bag that's the portal to GrahBag. He also finds that he has two memories of the past, one in which Apogee is his protective kid sister and another where she's always been a little kid (the latter of which being the reality that their parents and the rest of the world accept)... which is he to believe? Which does he want? Part of him likes being the older sibling for once, while another doesn't feel at all prepared to protect a young kid as a big brother should (and as Apogee did when she was the big sister, as irritating as he sometimes found her). Worse, he realizes that, by abandoning GrahBag after their confrontation with the Wurm, he and his sister inadvertently made a bad place even worse; those who were loyal to the Wurm were outraged at the loss of their leader, while those who opposed it tried at last to revolt but lacked a leader, the instigator of the attack having fled their world after throwing it into utter chaos. What kind of person, let alone brother, is Zenith if he can't even face the consequences of his actions, however unintentional? As he reunites with old companions (and some old enemies), he finds new dangers and problems to solve; the titular Eternal Tower is a truly diabolical prison with mind-warping and devious traps. As before, there's a sense of very real danger for the kids, and Zenith has to take his lumps and learn lessons the hard way.
The story barely lost a half star for a sense of it being rushed, for Kevin's involvement feeling extraneous (he's sidelined pretty quickly and hardly mentioned afterwards), and for ending on an actual cliffhanger this time. I also get a bit irked by plot points that feel drawn out because people won't spit out what they know or what they need despite ample opportunity (regardless of target age). Still, I'm invested enough to finish off the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Tamora Carter, Goblin Queen (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Story Thieves (James Riley) - My Review
100 Cupboards (N. D. Wilson) - My Review
The Horrible Bag series, Book 2
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Prepare for Battle! reads the note on Zenith Maelstrom's nightstand, but for the life of him he can't remember why he wrote it. Did it mean a game with his friend Kevin Churl? They've spent much of their summer together, except when Zenith has to watch his kid sister Apogee... but something in the back of his mind bothers him, like he's forgotten something very important. It's not until he finds Apogee in the basement trying to open an ugly old leather bag that he remembers about their terrible journey through the land of GrahBag - and how it's his fault that his sister is four years old instead of fourteen. He promised her when they left that he'd fix it, that they'd go back, but for some reason it's hard to hold onto that thought when he's in the real world and away from the horrible bag. Then Apogee forces his hand; she sneaks back through to the other world while he's asleep. With Kevin tagging along, he reluctantly goes back into the realm of monsters, only to find it's even worse than before. The Wurm lives on as a soul-sucking Wraith, and the very land seems to be dying. He and Apogee only barely escaped with their lives last time, and this time they may not be so lucky...
REVIEW: Taking up a short while after the previous volume ended, it also wastes little time getting going, though Zenith dithers a bit overlong once he realizes that he can't even trust his memories when he's out of sight of the horrible bag that's the portal to GrahBag. He also finds that he has two memories of the past, one in which Apogee is his protective kid sister and another where she's always been a little kid (the latter of which being the reality that their parents and the rest of the world accept)... which is he to believe? Which does he want? Part of him likes being the older sibling for once, while another doesn't feel at all prepared to protect a young kid as a big brother should (and as Apogee did when she was the big sister, as irritating as he sometimes found her). Worse, he realizes that, by abandoning GrahBag after their confrontation with the Wurm, he and his sister inadvertently made a bad place even worse; those who were loyal to the Wurm were outraged at the loss of their leader, while those who opposed it tried at last to revolt but lacked a leader, the instigator of the attack having fled their world after throwing it into utter chaos. What kind of person, let alone brother, is Zenith if he can't even face the consequences of his actions, however unintentional? As he reunites with old companions (and some old enemies), he finds new dangers and problems to solve; the titular Eternal Tower is a truly diabolical prison with mind-warping and devious traps. As before, there's a sense of very real danger for the kids, and Zenith has to take his lumps and learn lessons the hard way.
The story barely lost a half star for a sense of it being rushed, for Kevin's involvement feeling extraneous (he's sidelined pretty quickly and hardly mentioned afterwards), and for ending on an actual cliffhanger this time. I also get a bit irked by plot points that feel drawn out because people won't spit out what they know or what they need despite ample opportunity (regardless of target age). Still, I'm invested enough to finish off the trilogy.
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Tamora Carter, Goblin Queen (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Story Thieves (James Riley) - My Review
100 Cupboards (N. D. Wilson) - My Review
Thursday, September 11, 2025
The Teller of Small Fortunes (Julie Leong)
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Julie Leong
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The Shinn woman Tao travels far and wide across the land of Eshtera in her mule-drawn wagon, using her gifts of seeing to tell fortunes to farmers and villagers... but small fortunes only. Seeing big events carries too great a burden, and draws too big a price - something she has only tried once, and something she vows never to do again. This is part of why she travels; the royal Guild of Mages would love to get their hands on a seer, and they wouldn't care about the cost. The other part is that she never feels like she truly belongs in this land, her Shinn features marking her as a foreigner among the pale Eshterans for all that she barely remembers her native language. It is a lonely life, forever on the road and on the run, but at least she is free.
A chance encounter on the road lands her in the company of a pair of roving ex-mercenaries, one a "reformed" thief and the other desperately searching for the young daughter who disappeared while he was away on campaign. Tao doesn't want traveling companions, and if she did, she likely wouldn't have picked these two, but fate seems to have other ideas. Like it or not, Tao's solo journeys will have to wait, as she becomes more entangled in the lives of these strangers, and others encountered with them, than she ever intended... so entangled that her past, and the guild, may finally catch up to her.
REVIEW: This one was advertised as a "cozy fantasy", riding a current wave of the subgenre's popularity. It is, indeed, cozy, with fairly low stakes, a focus on characters and found family, and no real baddies or scary stuff. At some point, though, the blunted edges and rosy golden glow become a little tiresome, and fail to hide some weaknesses underneath the story.
Things start well and cozy enough, as Tao rides into a village and resolves her first crisis - missing goats - with minimal fuss, while establishing the world and how the people view "exotic" foreigners like herself, an Asian-analog race from across the sea, with whom relations have been fraught lately. Tao herself has an ambivalent relationship with her own heritage. On the one hand, she loves her memories of childhood and the father she lost too soon, while on the other she sees it as one more barrier between herself and the people around her, her features a permanent brand marking her as different and other, no matter how well she speaks the local tongue. Tao may lean into the trappings of her Shinn blood to promote her small fortune-telling business, but can't help regretting and resenting how it creates a barrier... though, of course, she tells herself she doesn't need or even want companionship anyway. It's only when given no other choice that she reluctantly accepts Mash and Silt, a solid soldier/little thief pair cut from the (over)familiar genre cloth as Leiber's classic duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as fellow travelers. They, too, don't intend to become close to the fortune-teller, but nevertheless they wind up warming up to each other as friends, each finding in the group something they were missing in their lives before. Tao strives to keep herself separate even as she works to help the others, but can't hold herself aloof forever, and is surprised to realize that she has wants and needs in her life as well - and that, much as she tries to embrace the lonely traveler life, she could really use a friend.
There is, from the outset (and throughout), a soft, warm glow of "cozy" about the whole story and the characters. Some lip service is given to rough pasts and inequalities and other grounding elements, but overall the world feels vague and hazy and bubble-wrapped, to the point where one can predict that, even when things look slightly bad, nothing will ever be particularly unpleasant or even vaguely discomfiting for very long. Some elements are too predictable early on, and others feel like pointless, page-eating tangents that never really deliver. The whole eventually started feeling like someone constantly hugging and coddling the reader, force-feeding them warm tea, always reassuring them that things will be all right even when it may look momentarily like it's not... and there are a few "surprises" where, honestly, nobody in the cast should've been that stupid for that long, even in a world this fuzzy-slipper cozy. By the end, it just felt too puffy and insubstantial and forcibly "feel all good all the time" to be really satisfying to me, though that probably says more about me than the story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Bookshops and Bonedust (Travis Baldree) - My Review
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Julie Leong
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The Shinn woman Tao travels far and wide across the land of Eshtera in her mule-drawn wagon, using her gifts of seeing to tell fortunes to farmers and villagers... but small fortunes only. Seeing big events carries too great a burden, and draws too big a price - something she has only tried once, and something she vows never to do again. This is part of why she travels; the royal Guild of Mages would love to get their hands on a seer, and they wouldn't care about the cost. The other part is that she never feels like she truly belongs in this land, her Shinn features marking her as a foreigner among the pale Eshterans for all that she barely remembers her native language. It is a lonely life, forever on the road and on the run, but at least she is free.
A chance encounter on the road lands her in the company of a pair of roving ex-mercenaries, one a "reformed" thief and the other desperately searching for the young daughter who disappeared while he was away on campaign. Tao doesn't want traveling companions, and if she did, she likely wouldn't have picked these two, but fate seems to have other ideas. Like it or not, Tao's solo journeys will have to wait, as she becomes more entangled in the lives of these strangers, and others encountered with them, than she ever intended... so entangled that her past, and the guild, may finally catch up to her.
REVIEW: This one was advertised as a "cozy fantasy", riding a current wave of the subgenre's popularity. It is, indeed, cozy, with fairly low stakes, a focus on characters and found family, and no real baddies or scary stuff. At some point, though, the blunted edges and rosy golden glow become a little tiresome, and fail to hide some weaknesses underneath the story.
Things start well and cozy enough, as Tao rides into a village and resolves her first crisis - missing goats - with minimal fuss, while establishing the world and how the people view "exotic" foreigners like herself, an Asian-analog race from across the sea, with whom relations have been fraught lately. Tao herself has an ambivalent relationship with her own heritage. On the one hand, she loves her memories of childhood and the father she lost too soon, while on the other she sees it as one more barrier between herself and the people around her, her features a permanent brand marking her as different and other, no matter how well she speaks the local tongue. Tao may lean into the trappings of her Shinn blood to promote her small fortune-telling business, but can't help regretting and resenting how it creates a barrier... though, of course, she tells herself she doesn't need or even want companionship anyway. It's only when given no other choice that she reluctantly accepts Mash and Silt, a solid soldier/little thief pair cut from the (over)familiar genre cloth as Leiber's classic duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as fellow travelers. They, too, don't intend to become close to the fortune-teller, but nevertheless they wind up warming up to each other as friends, each finding in the group something they were missing in their lives before. Tao strives to keep herself separate even as she works to help the others, but can't hold herself aloof forever, and is surprised to realize that she has wants and needs in her life as well - and that, much as she tries to embrace the lonely traveler life, she could really use a friend.
There is, from the outset (and throughout), a soft, warm glow of "cozy" about the whole story and the characters. Some lip service is given to rough pasts and inequalities and other grounding elements, but overall the world feels vague and hazy and bubble-wrapped, to the point where one can predict that, even when things look slightly bad, nothing will ever be particularly unpleasant or even vaguely discomfiting for very long. Some elements are too predictable early on, and others feel like pointless, page-eating tangents that never really deliver. The whole eventually started feeling like someone constantly hugging and coddling the reader, force-feeding them warm tea, always reassuring them that things will be all right even when it may look momentarily like it's not... and there are a few "surprises" where, honestly, nobody in the cast should've been that stupid for that long, even in a world this fuzzy-slipper cozy. By the end, it just felt too puffy and insubstantial and forcibly "feel all good all the time" to be really satisfying to me, though that probably says more about me than the story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Bookshops and Bonedust (Travis Baldree) - My Review
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things (Rob Renzetti)
The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things #1
The Horrible Bag series, Book 1
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The ugly old black leather bag on the doorstep moaned; Zenith is sure of it. He doesn't know where it came from or who it was for or why it was left in front of the house, but he knows that it moaned when he first saw it. When he tries to pick it up, it pricks his finger - and seems to wake up, disgorging a monstrous thing of slime and hair and too many legs around a darkly beating heart. This is the last thing a boy who's already been grounded for mischief-making needs... and when the "shlurp" grabs his older sister and babysitter, Apogee, and pulls her back into the bag, Zenith has to get her back. Thus he finds himself leaping into the land of GrahBag, a world of surreal horrors, where every monster is worse than the last and even "friends" may turn out to be foes.
REVIEW: I needed a palate cleanser after the previous disappointing audiobook, and this looked like a quick way to fill out the rest of a work shift, having a great title that promised spooky shenanigans. Happily, it delivers in full.
Kicking off from the first sentence of the first page, the boy Zenith finds himself with a monstrous bag to deal with... and, soon, a monster from within the monstrous bag. Almost as bad is Apogee, the sister he used to be close to until an incident a few years back that transformed her from his comrade-in-mischief to a preteen prison guard/third parent who would rather lecture him about responsibility than play. As creeped out as Zenith is by the bag and the "shlurp" monster, he's initially more worried about how letting a horrible bag into the house will affect his grounding sentence, even as he wishes he could still confide in his sister. Before long, the matter is taken out of her hands when Apogee is abducted. Zenith wastes little time jumping into the bag afterward... and if he found the outside creepy, with its mismatched assortment of hides and leathers, the inside is even worse... and that's before he makes the transition to GrahBag proper, a place that makes nightmares seem downright quaint. Zenith tries to outwit and outthink the place, but the land of the sickly green skies and red sun always seems to have another twisted trick up its sleeve, and even when he thinks he's getting ahead, he may be digging himself into more trouble. He picks up a companion of sorts in the form of a little gargoyle, but he can't expect others to fight his battles or solve his problems. Nor is Apogee entirely helpless or stupid. The pacing's pretty quick (as one would expect from a middle grade title) and there are a few fun moments (and a few bits of crude humor - again, as one comes to expect from middle grade), but it also has genuinely creepy encounters and moments where Zenith must confront his own mistakes and fallibility. The ending sets up the conflict for the second book nicely, doing a good enough job baiting the hook that I've already downloaded the next two titles in the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Game of Sunken Places (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Shadows (Jacqueline West) - My Review
The Horrible Bag series, Book 1
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The ugly old black leather bag on the doorstep moaned; Zenith is sure of it. He doesn't know where it came from or who it was for or why it was left in front of the house, but he knows that it moaned when he first saw it. When he tries to pick it up, it pricks his finger - and seems to wake up, disgorging a monstrous thing of slime and hair and too many legs around a darkly beating heart. This is the last thing a boy who's already been grounded for mischief-making needs... and when the "shlurp" grabs his older sister and babysitter, Apogee, and pulls her back into the bag, Zenith has to get her back. Thus he finds himself leaping into the land of GrahBag, a world of surreal horrors, where every monster is worse than the last and even "friends" may turn out to be foes.
REVIEW: I needed a palate cleanser after the previous disappointing audiobook, and this looked like a quick way to fill out the rest of a work shift, having a great title that promised spooky shenanigans. Happily, it delivers in full.
Kicking off from the first sentence of the first page, the boy Zenith finds himself with a monstrous bag to deal with... and, soon, a monster from within the monstrous bag. Almost as bad is Apogee, the sister he used to be close to until an incident a few years back that transformed her from his comrade-in-mischief to a preteen prison guard/third parent who would rather lecture him about responsibility than play. As creeped out as Zenith is by the bag and the "shlurp" monster, he's initially more worried about how letting a horrible bag into the house will affect his grounding sentence, even as he wishes he could still confide in his sister. Before long, the matter is taken out of her hands when Apogee is abducted. Zenith wastes little time jumping into the bag afterward... and if he found the outside creepy, with its mismatched assortment of hides and leathers, the inside is even worse... and that's before he makes the transition to GrahBag proper, a place that makes nightmares seem downright quaint. Zenith tries to outwit and outthink the place, but the land of the sickly green skies and red sun always seems to have another twisted trick up its sleeve, and even when he thinks he's getting ahead, he may be digging himself into more trouble. He picks up a companion of sorts in the form of a little gargoyle, but he can't expect others to fight his battles or solve his problems. Nor is Apogee entirely helpless or stupid. The pacing's pretty quick (as one would expect from a middle grade title) and there are a few fun moments (and a few bits of crude humor - again, as one comes to expect from middle grade), but it also has genuinely creepy encounters and moments where Zenith must confront his own mistakes and fallibility. The ending sets up the conflict for the second book nicely, doing a good enough job baiting the hook that I've already downloaded the next two titles in the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Game of Sunken Places (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Shadows (Jacqueline West) - My Review
Mindswap (Robert Sheckley)
Mindswap
Robert Sheckley
Dell
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: College student Marvin grows bored with his life in a quaint town in upstate New York, a place so backwards in the intergalactic age that the people still travel by jet plane. He wants to see the wider worlds, but the only affordable way for someone of his limited means is a mindswap: transferring his consciousness instantaneously into another body on another planet, while the inhabitant of that body enters his own. What better way to experience another planet than in a body adapted to live there? Despite the warnings of his conservative family and friends, Marvin answers an ad from a Martian who wants an Earth vacation... but his plans go awry almost from the moment he arrives on the red planet. Ze Craggash was a crook who simultaneously sold his body to multiple travelers and has absconded with Marvin's Earth body in the confusion. Ordered to vacate his new host - a death sentence if he can't find another body to swap into - he turns to a down-on-his-luck Martian detective. Thus begins a series of increasingly desperate swaps, each taking him further and further from his home across the vastness of space.
REVIEW: As one might expect from a story originally published in 1966, Mindswap shows its age, even as it plays with some fun ideas and presents some moments of timeless satire and absurdity in the vein of Gulliver's Travels.
From the start, Marvin lets his enthusiasm and desperation to do something bold and adventurous before he gets too old and settled (and too much like the people around him in his backwards town) blind him to the potential drawbacks of mindswaps. To the rest of the world and the galaxies, mindswapping is as casual a means of travel as taking a plane or riding the subway; the odds of something going on are supposed to be infinitesimally small. So, of course, everything that can go wrong eventually does. Losing his human body and place on Earth is the least of his troubles before long, as he finds himself faced with numerous ridiculous situations that have potentially dire consequences for his survival. At some point, the absurdity starts overtaking the (admittedly thin) plotline, especially when his mind starts to crack from numerous swaps and he begins seeing his increasingly alien environs as caricatured, surreal locales from Earth... displaying at the same time some rather cringeworthy class, gender, and racial stereotypes that can't really be swept under the lumpy "author of his time" rug. (The audiobook narrator did not help with this, leaning hard into overdone accents to emphasize just what culture and ethnic group Sheckley was caricaturing.) It also starts to feel like Sheckley gave up all pretense of story and even satire to show off just how utterly bizarre he could get, to the point of completely derailing the final leg of Marvin's adventure and making this reader wonder what the point of it all was, as it ended up feeling like a waste of time.
While I could appreciate Sheckley's deadpan delivery of a strange far future and stranger situations, I just plain didn't enjoy it or care by the end, by which point even the laughs had dried up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Nonexistent Knight (Italo Calvino) - My Review
Midnight at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker) - My Review
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) - My Review
Robert Sheckley
Dell
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: College student Marvin grows bored with his life in a quaint town in upstate New York, a place so backwards in the intergalactic age that the people still travel by jet plane. He wants to see the wider worlds, but the only affordable way for someone of his limited means is a mindswap: transferring his consciousness instantaneously into another body on another planet, while the inhabitant of that body enters his own. What better way to experience another planet than in a body adapted to live there? Despite the warnings of his conservative family and friends, Marvin answers an ad from a Martian who wants an Earth vacation... but his plans go awry almost from the moment he arrives on the red planet. Ze Craggash was a crook who simultaneously sold his body to multiple travelers and has absconded with Marvin's Earth body in the confusion. Ordered to vacate his new host - a death sentence if he can't find another body to swap into - he turns to a down-on-his-luck Martian detective. Thus begins a series of increasingly desperate swaps, each taking him further and further from his home across the vastness of space.
REVIEW: As one might expect from a story originally published in 1966, Mindswap shows its age, even as it plays with some fun ideas and presents some moments of timeless satire and absurdity in the vein of Gulliver's Travels.
From the start, Marvin lets his enthusiasm and desperation to do something bold and adventurous before he gets too old and settled (and too much like the people around him in his backwards town) blind him to the potential drawbacks of mindswaps. To the rest of the world and the galaxies, mindswapping is as casual a means of travel as taking a plane or riding the subway; the odds of something going on are supposed to be infinitesimally small. So, of course, everything that can go wrong eventually does. Losing his human body and place on Earth is the least of his troubles before long, as he finds himself faced with numerous ridiculous situations that have potentially dire consequences for his survival. At some point, the absurdity starts overtaking the (admittedly thin) plotline, especially when his mind starts to crack from numerous swaps and he begins seeing his increasingly alien environs as caricatured, surreal locales from Earth... displaying at the same time some rather cringeworthy class, gender, and racial stereotypes that can't really be swept under the lumpy "author of his time" rug. (The audiobook narrator did not help with this, leaning hard into overdone accents to emphasize just what culture and ethnic group Sheckley was caricaturing.) It also starts to feel like Sheckley gave up all pretense of story and even satire to show off just how utterly bizarre he could get, to the point of completely derailing the final leg of Marvin's adventure and making this reader wonder what the point of it all was, as it ended up feeling like a waste of time.
While I could appreciate Sheckley's deadpan delivery of a strange far future and stranger situations, I just plain didn't enjoy it or care by the end, by which point even the laughs had dried up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Nonexistent Knight (Italo Calvino) - My Review
Midnight at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker) - My Review
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) - My Review
Friday, September 5, 2025
The Wolf in the Whale (Jordanna Max Bordsky)
The Wolf in the Whale
Jordanna Max Bordsky
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the oldest times, the Inuit have lived in the land of the caribou and the white bear, telling stories of the ancestors and the spirits of the world around them. Omat, child of a fallen hunter, was born with the late man's spirit and the blessing of the great Wolf, a clear sign that she will become the next angakkuq, the shaman, of their small band, invoking the powers and guidance of the spirit world to keep the people safe. But even in their isolated settlement on the very eastern edge of the land, there are some who doubt her destiny; her soul is male, but her body female, and there are taboos about the roles of men and women that could threaten retribution from the spirit world if violated. She must prove herself always, even to her own milk-brother Kiasik, if she is to fulfill her destiny... but when she is ripped from her family and drug to the very edge of the vast open waters, Omat encounters a threat beyond anything she has imagined: a strange, pale-skinned people with gleaming blades and hair like fire, who bring their own warlike pantheon of gods to her shores. She will do anything to save her people... but the Inuit spirits and the Norse gods have already marked her as the herald of the end of days.
REVIEW: The Wolf in the Whale is inspired by the explorations of the Viking Leif Erickson and his warlike daughter, Freydis, who briefly established a settlement in what they called Vinland before abandoning the "New World" for over five centuries... a settlement whose time frame coincided with the eastward expansion of the Inuit. There is evidence that indiginous resistance was involved in Vinland's abandonment, though of course concrete details are almost impossible to ascertain over a thousand years after the events in question. From these historic threads and copious research into Norse and Inuit cultures, Bordsky deftly weaves in elements of religion and magic and very human culture clashes, turning the encounter into something worthy of a saga.
From the moment of her birth, Omat's grandfather Ataata recognizes the signs of a future shaman and heir to his position as leader and liaison with the spirits - a position that brings very real powers, but also carries great burdens, for the spirits of the Inuit can be fickle and tricky and even cruel. What Ataata doesn't realize is that Taqqiq, the Moon man, has foreseen Omat's destiny and already harbors great anger toward her from her first breaths. Meanwhile, Omat grows up raised as a boy and a man-to-be; it is only several chapter in that she and the reader realize that, though her soul is that of her father, her body is female. (She narrates her tale in the first person, concealing this as she sees herself as a boy.) This is not unheard of in their people, according to Ataata - after all, it is known that the souls of the dead return to be reborn in the living, so of course sometimes "boy" and "girl" souls end up in a different body - but it is rare enough that the others in her small, struggling settlement are uncomfortable at times with the arrangement, worried about breaking one of the strict taboos that could bring ill luck and doom upon them all when they are already much dwindled from when they first arrived in this new territory. Still, Omat is confident she can win her kin over, even successfully completing her vision quest to receive her spirit guides and shaman powers... until strangers arrive to destroy everything she has worked towards, and the spirits themselves betray her. Even that devastation pales in comparison to what she finds when she is essentially traded away to the cruel strangers, the coming of the Norsemen and the slaughter that changes everything. Even then, things might have been different if the men in the blue cloaks and great boats hadn't taken her milk-brother Kiasik captive when they sailed off, driving Omat to undertake a dangerous, even epic journey far from the lands and spirits she knows to find him again. Along the way, she encounters an outcast Norseman, Brandr, who challenges everything she thinks she knows about the strangers... and herself. Meanwhile, the spirits and gods play their own games, as usual thinking nothing of the mortals they use as game tokens and tools (even the Inuit spirits don't exactly coddle their humans, particularly the powerful entities behind the Moon and the Sun and the sea), while myths and stories form a framework for sharing knowledge.
There are times when the story threatened to slip in the ratings, some moments where I was prepared for the story to go one way and disappoint me, only for it to ultimately go another and pleasantly surprise me. That said, I'd definitely include a trigger warning for sexual assault, and one for canine fates. But Omat remains a strong, compelling hero/heroine throughout (she sees herself as both man and woman throughout, straddling the line between genders as a shaman straddles the line between the waking world and the spirit realm), far from flawless but rarely giving up for long and willing to learn from mistakes. Bordsky does a superb job bringing the world of the Inuit to life, as well as the Norse culture she so unexpectedly and violently encounters, making the people more than simple caricatures. It makes for a solid story of mythic proportions with ideas and images that linger well in the memory.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Eagle Drums (Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson) - My Review
The Leopard's Daughter (Lee Killough) - My Review
The Tiger and the Wolf (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Jordanna Max Bordsky
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the oldest times, the Inuit have lived in the land of the caribou and the white bear, telling stories of the ancestors and the spirits of the world around them. Omat, child of a fallen hunter, was born with the late man's spirit and the blessing of the great Wolf, a clear sign that she will become the next angakkuq, the shaman, of their small band, invoking the powers and guidance of the spirit world to keep the people safe. But even in their isolated settlement on the very eastern edge of the land, there are some who doubt her destiny; her soul is male, but her body female, and there are taboos about the roles of men and women that could threaten retribution from the spirit world if violated. She must prove herself always, even to her own milk-brother Kiasik, if she is to fulfill her destiny... but when she is ripped from her family and drug to the very edge of the vast open waters, Omat encounters a threat beyond anything she has imagined: a strange, pale-skinned people with gleaming blades and hair like fire, who bring their own warlike pantheon of gods to her shores. She will do anything to save her people... but the Inuit spirits and the Norse gods have already marked her as the herald of the end of days.
REVIEW: The Wolf in the Whale is inspired by the explorations of the Viking Leif Erickson and his warlike daughter, Freydis, who briefly established a settlement in what they called Vinland before abandoning the "New World" for over five centuries... a settlement whose time frame coincided with the eastward expansion of the Inuit. There is evidence that indiginous resistance was involved in Vinland's abandonment, though of course concrete details are almost impossible to ascertain over a thousand years after the events in question. From these historic threads and copious research into Norse and Inuit cultures, Bordsky deftly weaves in elements of religion and magic and very human culture clashes, turning the encounter into something worthy of a saga.
From the moment of her birth, Omat's grandfather Ataata recognizes the signs of a future shaman and heir to his position as leader and liaison with the spirits - a position that brings very real powers, but also carries great burdens, for the spirits of the Inuit can be fickle and tricky and even cruel. What Ataata doesn't realize is that Taqqiq, the Moon man, has foreseen Omat's destiny and already harbors great anger toward her from her first breaths. Meanwhile, Omat grows up raised as a boy and a man-to-be; it is only several chapter in that she and the reader realize that, though her soul is that of her father, her body is female. (She narrates her tale in the first person, concealing this as she sees herself as a boy.) This is not unheard of in their people, according to Ataata - after all, it is known that the souls of the dead return to be reborn in the living, so of course sometimes "boy" and "girl" souls end up in a different body - but it is rare enough that the others in her small, struggling settlement are uncomfortable at times with the arrangement, worried about breaking one of the strict taboos that could bring ill luck and doom upon them all when they are already much dwindled from when they first arrived in this new territory. Still, Omat is confident she can win her kin over, even successfully completing her vision quest to receive her spirit guides and shaman powers... until strangers arrive to destroy everything she has worked towards, and the spirits themselves betray her. Even that devastation pales in comparison to what she finds when she is essentially traded away to the cruel strangers, the coming of the Norsemen and the slaughter that changes everything. Even then, things might have been different if the men in the blue cloaks and great boats hadn't taken her milk-brother Kiasik captive when they sailed off, driving Omat to undertake a dangerous, even epic journey far from the lands and spirits she knows to find him again. Along the way, she encounters an outcast Norseman, Brandr, who challenges everything she thinks she knows about the strangers... and herself. Meanwhile, the spirits and gods play their own games, as usual thinking nothing of the mortals they use as game tokens and tools (even the Inuit spirits don't exactly coddle their humans, particularly the powerful entities behind the Moon and the Sun and the sea), while myths and stories form a framework for sharing knowledge.
There are times when the story threatened to slip in the ratings, some moments where I was prepared for the story to go one way and disappoint me, only for it to ultimately go another and pleasantly surprise me. That said, I'd definitely include a trigger warning for sexual assault, and one for canine fates. But Omat remains a strong, compelling hero/heroine throughout (she sees herself as both man and woman throughout, straddling the line between genders as a shaman straddles the line between the waking world and the spirit realm), far from flawless but rarely giving up for long and willing to learn from mistakes. Bordsky does a superb job bringing the world of the Inuit to life, as well as the Norse culture she so unexpectedly and violently encounters, making the people more than simple caricatures. It makes for a solid story of mythic proportions with ideas and images that linger well in the memory.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Eagle Drums (Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson) - My Review
The Leopard's Daughter (Lee Killough) - My Review
The Tiger and the Wolf (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Remnant Population (Elizabeth Moon)
Remnant Population
Elizabeth Moon
Random House
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since childhood, Ophelia has been told what to do with her life, forced to give up any dreams of creativity or education to be a housewife, mother and, for forty years, a colonist. But when the charter company, having struggled for decades with declining populations and no profits, loses their contract, the people are given just thirty days to pack up and leave... only Ophelia refuses to go. Even her own son considers her worthless (save as cook and cleaner), and the company actually wants to charge a fee for transporting a woman well past breeding (read: useful) age to another world. The septuagenarian is beyond tired of being told how worthless she is. All she wants is peace and quiet to tend her garden, and that can't happen until everyone else has left.
Alone in the abandoned village, Ophelia feels joy for the first time since she was a little girl. She can go where she wants, wear what she wants, do what she wants, whenever she wants. If she feels any loneliness, it's more than outweighed by the freedom of being the only human - the only self-aware being - on the entire planet.
Or so she thinks... until she overhears a transmission from a new colony ship that ends in disaster when a previously unknown species attacks their fledgling settlement - a species advanced enough to coordinate a battle plan and even use war machines and explosives.
But that ship landed over a thousand kilometers away. Surely, if any of the natives were nearby, someone in Ophelia's village would've spotted some sign of them long ago... wouldn't they?
REVIEW: This title is something of a classic, or at least a notable title, in sci-fi circles, featuring an older woman, widowed and a grandmother, as the unlikely point of contact with intelligent alien life. It offers a somewhat different lens on human and alien interactions, though at times it meandered and drifted and ultimately fell back on some tired ideas, enough to narrowly cost it a half-star.
From the start, it's clear that Ophelia, and the culture she's part of, is a throwback to mid-century gender attitudes: women are discouraged from becoming anything but homemakers, men regularly belittle and abuse even their own mothers, and the status quo is stringently and violently enforced when anyone dares to question it. Ophelia knows something is not right with this arrangement, that she has been deprived of something vital and essential, but has tolerated it for lack of options for most of her long life, until the cancellation of the colony charter offers an unexpected opportunity for escape - if not an unlimited one. Earth-based lifeforms need Earth-originated food sources grown or fed with Earth microbes, meaning that any plant or animal native to the colony world cannot be digested (a restriction that goes both ways). Still, there's plenty of gardens and seeds and livestock to support one old woman for however long she has left to live, and the company didn't bother removing the buildings or machinery that powered the village and the orbital weather satellite. Ophelia finds the empty place to be a paradise, freed at last to rediscover joy and whimsy. She doesn't hate her fellow humans (though she had no love for her late, abusive second husband, and her lone surviving son turned into a petty tyrant of the household in his cruel father's image), but she never felt like herself when she was around them, and revels in the chance to discover who she truly is at the twilight of her life. The story drags a little here as the old woman plots her escape and establishes new routines in the empty village. (There are also hints, now and again, that some other force is at work behind her unusually strong bond to the planet over her own kind, but it's never explicitly followed up on.)
A year or so into her isolation, she overhears, via the satellite feed, the disastrous second colony attempt and learns that the planet holds more dangerous surprises. Ophelia tries to tell herself that nothing has changed, that she'll likely pass away of old age before the native culture discovers her settlement... but even then, part of her knows she's lying to herself, that it's only a matter of time before she is found. The People are a reasonably interesting culture, not nearly so simple-minded or "primitive" as Ophelia initially believes, though once again things bog down a bit as she finds herself trying to communicate with utterly inhuman visitors. At first she sees them as almost childlike, partly because the only way she knows how to begin teaching them is the way every parent teaches their own children, through gesture and repetition, though soon she must concede that the People are far more intelligent than that, possibly even more precocious than humans with how quickly they grasp new ideas. Even as she makes progress, her peace has been broken, and it's inevitable that the greater spacefaring government and military will arrive at some point, which could be disastrous for all concerned.
Though there was plenty Remnant Population did right, in the end I found the excessive meandering and drifting had worn on my interest. I also felt that it undermined its own oft-repeated ideas of women breaking free of oppressive patriarchal (and ageist) cultures that expect them to be nothing more than submissive mothers and grandmothers when it ultimately wound up making Ophelia's maternal instincts the most vital part of her personality.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Strange Dogs (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Amid the Crowd of Stars (Stephen Leigh) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Elizabeth Moon
Random House
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since childhood, Ophelia has been told what to do with her life, forced to give up any dreams of creativity or education to be a housewife, mother and, for forty years, a colonist. But when the charter company, having struggled for decades with declining populations and no profits, loses their contract, the people are given just thirty days to pack up and leave... only Ophelia refuses to go. Even her own son considers her worthless (save as cook and cleaner), and the company actually wants to charge a fee for transporting a woman well past breeding (read: useful) age to another world. The septuagenarian is beyond tired of being told how worthless she is. All she wants is peace and quiet to tend her garden, and that can't happen until everyone else has left.
Alone in the abandoned village, Ophelia feels joy for the first time since she was a little girl. She can go where she wants, wear what she wants, do what she wants, whenever she wants. If she feels any loneliness, it's more than outweighed by the freedom of being the only human - the only self-aware being - on the entire planet.
Or so she thinks... until she overhears a transmission from a new colony ship that ends in disaster when a previously unknown species attacks their fledgling settlement - a species advanced enough to coordinate a battle plan and even use war machines and explosives.
But that ship landed over a thousand kilometers away. Surely, if any of the natives were nearby, someone in Ophelia's village would've spotted some sign of them long ago... wouldn't they?
REVIEW: This title is something of a classic, or at least a notable title, in sci-fi circles, featuring an older woman, widowed and a grandmother, as the unlikely point of contact with intelligent alien life. It offers a somewhat different lens on human and alien interactions, though at times it meandered and drifted and ultimately fell back on some tired ideas, enough to narrowly cost it a half-star.
From the start, it's clear that Ophelia, and the culture she's part of, is a throwback to mid-century gender attitudes: women are discouraged from becoming anything but homemakers, men regularly belittle and abuse even their own mothers, and the status quo is stringently and violently enforced when anyone dares to question it. Ophelia knows something is not right with this arrangement, that she has been deprived of something vital and essential, but has tolerated it for lack of options for most of her long life, until the cancellation of the colony charter offers an unexpected opportunity for escape - if not an unlimited one. Earth-based lifeforms need Earth-originated food sources grown or fed with Earth microbes, meaning that any plant or animal native to the colony world cannot be digested (a restriction that goes both ways). Still, there's plenty of gardens and seeds and livestock to support one old woman for however long she has left to live, and the company didn't bother removing the buildings or machinery that powered the village and the orbital weather satellite. Ophelia finds the empty place to be a paradise, freed at last to rediscover joy and whimsy. She doesn't hate her fellow humans (though she had no love for her late, abusive second husband, and her lone surviving son turned into a petty tyrant of the household in his cruel father's image), but she never felt like herself when she was around them, and revels in the chance to discover who she truly is at the twilight of her life. The story drags a little here as the old woman plots her escape and establishes new routines in the empty village. (There are also hints, now and again, that some other force is at work behind her unusually strong bond to the planet over her own kind, but it's never explicitly followed up on.)
A year or so into her isolation, she overhears, via the satellite feed, the disastrous second colony attempt and learns that the planet holds more dangerous surprises. Ophelia tries to tell herself that nothing has changed, that she'll likely pass away of old age before the native culture discovers her settlement... but even then, part of her knows she's lying to herself, that it's only a matter of time before she is found. The People are a reasonably interesting culture, not nearly so simple-minded or "primitive" as Ophelia initially believes, though once again things bog down a bit as she finds herself trying to communicate with utterly inhuman visitors. At first she sees them as almost childlike, partly because the only way she knows how to begin teaching them is the way every parent teaches their own children, through gesture and repetition, though soon she must concede that the People are far more intelligent than that, possibly even more precocious than humans with how quickly they grasp new ideas. Even as she makes progress, her peace has been broken, and it's inevitable that the greater spacefaring government and military will arrive at some point, which could be disastrous for all concerned.
Though there was plenty Remnant Population did right, in the end I found the excessive meandering and drifting had worn on my interest. I also felt that it undermined its own oft-repeated ideas of women breaking free of oppressive patriarchal (and ageist) cultures that expect them to be nothing more than submissive mothers and grandmothers when it ultimately wound up making Ophelia's maternal instincts the most vital part of her personality.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Strange Dogs (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Amid the Crowd of Stars (Stephen Leigh) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Saturday, August 30, 2025
August Site Update
Goodbye and good riddance, August... Another gruelling month ends, and more reviews archived on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, August 29, 2025
The Hungry Gods (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The Hungry Gods
(Terrible Worlds: Innovations)
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Solaris
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the toxic ruins of civilization's collapse, there is little room for compassion or the weak... which is why Amri is so desperate to find fuel to bring back to the Rabbit tribe. Without close kin, she knows she is one bad harvest away from being sacrificed for the survival of the others. She pushes further than she knows she should, into the city ruins and into the territory of the bloodthirsty Seagulls - but instead of death at the hands of their champion Beaker, four great smoking fires roar out of the skies.
It is the end of the world as Amri knew it, and the beginning of one she and the other clans might not survive.
Those fireballs carry "Gods" from the long-lost golden age of humanity, returned from centuries in their distant space utopia. They intend to "fix" Earth... but each of the four have their own ideas how to go about doing that, mutually exclusive goals that only share a complete disregard for whatever life still clings to the worn-out planet. As Amri falls into the company of one of these new warring Gods, an artificially enhanced man known as Guy Vestin, she will need all her wits about her to navigate the changes ahead - but what chance does the littlest, weakest Rabbit stand when faced with the might of the world-changing Gods themselves?
REVIEW: The Hungry Gods takes the old-school trope of the technologically superior spaceman arriving on a primitive (and/or postapocalyptic) world and single-handedly saving it from itself by (re)starting civilization and becoming a veritable god among the worshipful, superstitious "savages" (a trope with clear roots in cringeworthy racism and colonialism), and knocks it firmly on its ear by the end. Told from the perspective of Amri, one of the first witnesses of the "Gods" descending - and one of the first survivors of their wrath, when one of the Gods lands right in the Rabbit village and wipes out her kin with the bioengineered plants and fungi that are meant to turn Earth into his vision of a new Eden - it clearly establishes the notion that, even if humans no longer can sustain civilization in the ruins left by their ancestors, they are not entirely stupid or mindless or hobbled by superstition. Amri knows full well that the ruins of the city were created by people, and also knows that the outcast "God" Guy is just a man, if a man with technology long lost to this reduced, exhausted Earth. Still, even if he is "just" a man, he is a force that is remaking her world, and she quickly realizes that the only way she is going to survive is by sticking by him and learning as much as she can about him and his one-time colleagues who are now his rivals. The other three "Gods" each have monstrous ideas about how to best re-imagine the ruins of Earth, and Guy - whose own vision and tech was sabotaged on the way - sets himself up in opposition to them... but what is his ultimate goal, and is it any less devastating to the people remaining on Earth? Do he and the others even see Amri and her kind as human, or just more obstacles or tools or biomass to be fed into their machinations? Like today's billionaires, Guy insists he is the only one who can lead the people out of "savagery" into a bright new age, but Amri can see how little he truly thinks of humans other than himself.
There are a few times where the story hits its themes a little hard on the head, but overall it moves well and makes its points clearly, with a truly satisfying conclusion. One thing that becomes abundantly clear throughout is that the greatest threat to the world's future is the people who insist that they, and they alone, can lead us there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Emergency Skin (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre) - My Review
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
(Terrible Worlds: Innovations)
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Solaris
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the toxic ruins of civilization's collapse, there is little room for compassion or the weak... which is why Amri is so desperate to find fuel to bring back to the Rabbit tribe. Without close kin, she knows she is one bad harvest away from being sacrificed for the survival of the others. She pushes further than she knows she should, into the city ruins and into the territory of the bloodthirsty Seagulls - but instead of death at the hands of their champion Beaker, four great smoking fires roar out of the skies.
It is the end of the world as Amri knew it, and the beginning of one she and the other clans might not survive.
Those fireballs carry "Gods" from the long-lost golden age of humanity, returned from centuries in their distant space utopia. They intend to "fix" Earth... but each of the four have their own ideas how to go about doing that, mutually exclusive goals that only share a complete disregard for whatever life still clings to the worn-out planet. As Amri falls into the company of one of these new warring Gods, an artificially enhanced man known as Guy Vestin, she will need all her wits about her to navigate the changes ahead - but what chance does the littlest, weakest Rabbit stand when faced with the might of the world-changing Gods themselves?
REVIEW: The Hungry Gods takes the old-school trope of the technologically superior spaceman arriving on a primitive (and/or postapocalyptic) world and single-handedly saving it from itself by (re)starting civilization and becoming a veritable god among the worshipful, superstitious "savages" (a trope with clear roots in cringeworthy racism and colonialism), and knocks it firmly on its ear by the end. Told from the perspective of Amri, one of the first witnesses of the "Gods" descending - and one of the first survivors of their wrath, when one of the Gods lands right in the Rabbit village and wipes out her kin with the bioengineered plants and fungi that are meant to turn Earth into his vision of a new Eden - it clearly establishes the notion that, even if humans no longer can sustain civilization in the ruins left by their ancestors, they are not entirely stupid or mindless or hobbled by superstition. Amri knows full well that the ruins of the city were created by people, and also knows that the outcast "God" Guy is just a man, if a man with technology long lost to this reduced, exhausted Earth. Still, even if he is "just" a man, he is a force that is remaking her world, and she quickly realizes that the only way she is going to survive is by sticking by him and learning as much as she can about him and his one-time colleagues who are now his rivals. The other three "Gods" each have monstrous ideas about how to best re-imagine the ruins of Earth, and Guy - whose own vision and tech was sabotaged on the way - sets himself up in opposition to them... but what is his ultimate goal, and is it any less devastating to the people remaining on Earth? Do he and the others even see Amri and her kind as human, or just more obstacles or tools or biomass to be fed into their machinations? Like today's billionaires, Guy insists he is the only one who can lead the people out of "savagery" into a bright new age, but Amri can see how little he truly thinks of humans other than himself.
There are a few times where the story hits its themes a little hard on the head, but overall it moves well and makes its points clearly, with a truly satisfying conclusion. One thing that becomes abundantly clear throughout is that the greatest threat to the world's future is the people who insist that they, and they alone, can lead us there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Emergency Skin (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre) - My Review
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Serendipity (Marissa Meyer, editor)
Serendipity: Ten Romantic Tropes, Transformed
Marissa Meyer, editor
Feiwel and Friends
Fiction, YA Anthology/Romance
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The matchmaker who doesn't expect to find their own match... the fake relationship that reveals real feelings... the vacation mix-up leaving two people sharing a room... the grand romantic gesture... In this anthology, several notable authors explore these and other tropes of young adult romance tales.
REVIEW: For all that I don't generally read many romances (especially romances that aren't crossovers with some other genre, such as sci-fi or fantasy), I'm familiar enough with the tropes and with rom-coms (also not generally my go-to entertainment, but ubiquitous enough I've absorbed the gist through cultural osmosis) to see what these stories were trying to do and where they were working to subvert them, even though some of the subversions didn't feel as subversive as I'd expected given the title and its promise of tropes "transformed". As one might expect, I enjoyed some tales more than others, though none were outright clunkers. The stories present a spectrum of personalities and attractions, with some cultural variations as well. All things considered, it made a nice break to change up my reading selections. As with all anthologies, I rated on a cumulative score.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Fix Up (Tawna Fenske) - My Review
The Love Con (Serissia Glass) - My Review
When Lightning Strikes (Brenda Novak) - My Review
Marissa Meyer, editor
Feiwel and Friends
Fiction, YA Anthology/Romance
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The matchmaker who doesn't expect to find their own match... the fake relationship that reveals real feelings... the vacation mix-up leaving two people sharing a room... the grand romantic gesture... In this anthology, several notable authors explore these and other tropes of young adult romance tales.
REVIEW: For all that I don't generally read many romances (especially romances that aren't crossovers with some other genre, such as sci-fi or fantasy), I'm familiar enough with the tropes and with rom-coms (also not generally my go-to entertainment, but ubiquitous enough I've absorbed the gist through cultural osmosis) to see what these stories were trying to do and where they were working to subvert them, even though some of the subversions didn't feel as subversive as I'd expected given the title and its promise of tropes "transformed". As one might expect, I enjoyed some tales more than others, though none were outright clunkers. The stories present a spectrum of personalities and attractions, with some cultural variations as well. All things considered, it made a nice break to change up my reading selections. As with all anthologies, I rated on a cumulative score.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Fix Up (Tawna Fenske) - My Review
The Love Con (Serissia Glass) - My Review
When Lightning Strikes (Brenda Novak) - My Review
Daindreth's Assassin (Elisabeth Wheatley)
Daindreth's Assassin
The Daindreth's Assassin series, Book 1
Elisabeth Wheatley
Book Goblin Books
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Amira was born with the gifts of her sorceress mother and the birthright of her royal father... until King Hyle bent the knee to an invading emperor and the sorceresses rebelled, fleeing at last beyond a deadly forest. Those of magical blood left behind were bound by cursed oaths into slavery, granted power only so long as they obey their master, and despite her noble birth young Amira was no different. Now, instead of being the princess in waiting, she is a bastard child of an annulled union and her father's private assassin. Her latest target, though, surprises even her, for the king has sent her against Archduke Daindreth, son of the empress and the intended groom of Amira's half-sister Fonra. It seems like just another curse-compelled murder - until Amira arrives at Daindreth's tent to find a half-demonic monster in man form, which she barely escapes.
Nobody is more surprised than Amira to learn that the monster was, in fact, Daindreth himself, victim of a terrible curse... a curse that, somehow, Amira's magic temporarily counteracted in their brief, desperate struggle. Then the archduke springs the greatest surprise: a last-minute substitution of betrothal, taking not Fonra as originally planned but Amira.
Compelled by her curse of obedience, the assassin is pulled into the vipers' nest of the imperial palace, brimming with impenetrable politics and scheming courtiers and vicious rumors swirling about long before she sets foot in the royal palace. Worse, Amira begins developing feelings toward her one-time target, even as she uncovers the terrible truth of Daindreth's curse - and the doom awaiting him and the whole of the empire if that curse isn't broken soon.
REVIEW: I've watched and enjoyed the author's videos on Instagram and YouTube for a while, and finally got around to trying one of her audiobooks via Libby and my local library; I figured if anything was going to break my recent middling-rated streak, it would be Wheatley's works. Did it? As one might surmise by the near-top-notch rating, yes, yes it did.
The tale kicks off fairly fast, as Amira is about to set out on her latest hated mission, establishing the world and characters and the generalities of magic and curses. She is not a flawless assassin or person, and - like everyone, even her enemies - has more to her than is initially apparent, adding some depth and room for growth. Even bound by her curse of obedience, she struggles against her bonds, finding ways to twist and subvert commands as best she can, even if she can't keep the blood from her hands; to directly defy an order is to risk death by magical strangulation. Killing Daindreth would at least free her innocent half-sister from a future as a powerless political pawn (at least for a while), so Amira isn't entirely opposed to her latest task... until she confronts the evil entity and becomes tangled up in things far more deadly and dangerous than she understands. But Daindreth the man, when not consumed by a flare-up of his curse, is not at all the odious beast she was expecting, for all that she's too experienced (and jaded) to take him at face value. It's the first of many surprises she encounters as her unexpected and unwanted betrothal whisks her away from her father's keep, off to the distant palace of the empress and a future that might be much shorter than anticipated if Daindreth's many enemies have their way.
Amira may struggle, but always does her best to confront each new challenge, never dithering or freezing (unlike some main characters I've encountered lately... not namin' names, here...). Along the way, romantic feelings start to develop - unwelcome, given Amira's situation and less-than-idealistic notion of humanity in general, one more complication and potential liability in a situation that already threatens to overwhelm her. The tale moves fairly well, and avoids the low-hanging fruit and obvious for the most part. The main drawback is that it ends at a pause in the larger arc, leaving much still in the air; I'm not sure if my library even has the next installment on Libby, let alone when I can get to it, given the hold lists and other life complications. Dang it...
As a closing note, the author narrated the audiobook herself. She did an excellent job (again, unlike some narrators I've encountered... again, not namin' names...).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Graceling (Kristen Cashore) - My Review
Raybearer (Jordan Ifueko) - My Review
The Element of Fire (Martha Wells) - My Review
The Daindreth's Assassin series, Book 1
Elisabeth Wheatley
Book Goblin Books
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Amira was born with the gifts of her sorceress mother and the birthright of her royal father... until King Hyle bent the knee to an invading emperor and the sorceresses rebelled, fleeing at last beyond a deadly forest. Those of magical blood left behind were bound by cursed oaths into slavery, granted power only so long as they obey their master, and despite her noble birth young Amira was no different. Now, instead of being the princess in waiting, she is a bastard child of an annulled union and her father's private assassin. Her latest target, though, surprises even her, for the king has sent her against Archduke Daindreth, son of the empress and the intended groom of Amira's half-sister Fonra. It seems like just another curse-compelled murder - until Amira arrives at Daindreth's tent to find a half-demonic monster in man form, which she barely escapes.
Nobody is more surprised than Amira to learn that the monster was, in fact, Daindreth himself, victim of a terrible curse... a curse that, somehow, Amira's magic temporarily counteracted in their brief, desperate struggle. Then the archduke springs the greatest surprise: a last-minute substitution of betrothal, taking not Fonra as originally planned but Amira.
Compelled by her curse of obedience, the assassin is pulled into the vipers' nest of the imperial palace, brimming with impenetrable politics and scheming courtiers and vicious rumors swirling about long before she sets foot in the royal palace. Worse, Amira begins developing feelings toward her one-time target, even as she uncovers the terrible truth of Daindreth's curse - and the doom awaiting him and the whole of the empire if that curse isn't broken soon.
REVIEW: I've watched and enjoyed the author's videos on Instagram and YouTube for a while, and finally got around to trying one of her audiobooks via Libby and my local library; I figured if anything was going to break my recent middling-rated streak, it would be Wheatley's works. Did it? As one might surmise by the near-top-notch rating, yes, yes it did.
The tale kicks off fairly fast, as Amira is about to set out on her latest hated mission, establishing the world and characters and the generalities of magic and curses. She is not a flawless assassin or person, and - like everyone, even her enemies - has more to her than is initially apparent, adding some depth and room for growth. Even bound by her curse of obedience, she struggles against her bonds, finding ways to twist and subvert commands as best she can, even if she can't keep the blood from her hands; to directly defy an order is to risk death by magical strangulation. Killing Daindreth would at least free her innocent half-sister from a future as a powerless political pawn (at least for a while), so Amira isn't entirely opposed to her latest task... until she confronts the evil entity and becomes tangled up in things far more deadly and dangerous than she understands. But Daindreth the man, when not consumed by a flare-up of his curse, is not at all the odious beast she was expecting, for all that she's too experienced (and jaded) to take him at face value. It's the first of many surprises she encounters as her unexpected and unwanted betrothal whisks her away from her father's keep, off to the distant palace of the empress and a future that might be much shorter than anticipated if Daindreth's many enemies have their way.
Amira may struggle, but always does her best to confront each new challenge, never dithering or freezing (unlike some main characters I've encountered lately... not namin' names, here...). Along the way, romantic feelings start to develop - unwelcome, given Amira's situation and less-than-idealistic notion of humanity in general, one more complication and potential liability in a situation that already threatens to overwhelm her. The tale moves fairly well, and avoids the low-hanging fruit and obvious for the most part. The main drawback is that it ends at a pause in the larger arc, leaving much still in the air; I'm not sure if my library even has the next installment on Libby, let alone when I can get to it, given the hold lists and other life complications. Dang it...
As a closing note, the author narrated the audiobook herself. She did an excellent job (again, unlike some narrators I've encountered... again, not namin' names...).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Graceling (Kristen Cashore) - My Review
Raybearer (Jordan Ifueko) - My Review
The Element of Fire (Martha Wells) - My Review
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Servant Mage (Kate Elliott)
Servant Mage
Kate Elliott
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When the old kings reigned, mages of the five elements - fire, air, water, earth, and aether - were highly trained and celebrated members of society. But ever since the Great Liberation that overthrew the decadent and corrupt royal houses, magic is tightly controlled, with practitioners only allowed to learn a small fragment of their potential skills (that which serves the new government best), taught to fear the corrupting "demon" spirit inside them that grants them their powers. For all the August Protector's talk of creating a more equal and just society based on Virtues instead of bloodlines, many in this new, reformed world find themselves no better off than before... some, such as the mages, significantly worse.
Fellian has no love for the August Protector and the Liberationists, not since her mother and one of her fathers were publicly executed for "seditionist" activities. She was only spared because an oracle detected the fire magic within her. Now, she works off her indenture scrubbing latrines at a city inn by day and crafting magical Lamps by night. On the side, she still secretly teaches letters to those who wish to learn, a direct defiance of Liberationist decrees that restrict education to the most virtuous patriots. She's counting the moments until she earns her freedom to return the distant hills of her home. Then an inn guest makes her an offer she doesn't dare refuse, drawing her into the company of Monarchist rebels who seek to topple the August Protector and restore noble rule. Is this her chance at a future she hardly dared dream of, or is she walking deeper into danger?
REVIEW: There are authors I have an ambivalent relationship with as a reader, ones whose works I feel I should like, that I want to like, but for some reason I tend to feel let down by their stories more often than not, in some way I can't always articulate (which probably explains why I'm not exactly the world's best book reviewer, if I can't isolate and express my thoughts better). Kate Elliott is not at the top of that list by any means, but novellas like this remind me why she's on it, as for all the potential in the story premise and world going into it, I left it feeling subtly unsatisfied.
Things open on reasonably decent footing, as Fellian's situation and world are established in quick strokes that manage to avoid dull, intrusive infodumping... at least, at first. As the story progresses, though, there are more and more moments where she pauses to observe and think worldbuilding information for the benefit of the reader; her go-to reaction in stress tends to be lead boots. (I lost track of how often her feet or legs were described as "leaden", mostly so Fellian could stand uselessly and look around and describe things - even in the middle of high-stakes action - so the reader peering at the tale through her eyes got a full tour.) Things do at least happen, as Fellian is whisked from the inn halfway across the nation in the company of mages recruited to the Monarchist cause. She's all for undermining the August Protector and freeing herself from bondage, though at times Fellian parrots party-line ideas a little too readily for someone raised in the hinterlands by parents who were not loyal to the uprising, and having been partially educated in magic by someone outside the Liberationists and their strict, stifling, shame-infused system. The closer she and her companions get to their end goal, the more danger she's in - and the more she comes to question the ultimate motives and goal of their leader. Ultimately, she must decide where she means to stand in a politically fractured world, and what future she wants to work toward, though by then my interest was somewhat dimmed by distancing infodumps and tangled histories and relationships, and a general failure to really bond with Fellian enough to care where she ended up. I also found myself subtly irked that the cover misled me into thinking dragons would be more involved in the tale. (Aside from a somewhat-symbolic minor character/encounter, dragons are notably absent. Do not promise me dragons that you do not intend to deliver, authors and/or cover artists...) And the tail end drags out a little long, in a way that makes me wonder - along with all the worldbuilding crammed into a novella's page count - if Servant Mage was originally intended to be a full length novel or even a series but never quite fledged.
As I say too often, I've read worse. There are some interesting ideas, and when Fellian's not mired in leaden boots things happen. I just never felt drawn in like I'd hoped to be.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Kindling (Traci Chee) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
The Jewel and Her Lapidary (Fran Wilde) - My Review
Kate Elliott
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When the old kings reigned, mages of the five elements - fire, air, water, earth, and aether - were highly trained and celebrated members of society. But ever since the Great Liberation that overthrew the decadent and corrupt royal houses, magic is tightly controlled, with practitioners only allowed to learn a small fragment of their potential skills (that which serves the new government best), taught to fear the corrupting "demon" spirit inside them that grants them their powers. For all the August Protector's talk of creating a more equal and just society based on Virtues instead of bloodlines, many in this new, reformed world find themselves no better off than before... some, such as the mages, significantly worse.
Fellian has no love for the August Protector and the Liberationists, not since her mother and one of her fathers were publicly executed for "seditionist" activities. She was only spared because an oracle detected the fire magic within her. Now, she works off her indenture scrubbing latrines at a city inn by day and crafting magical Lamps by night. On the side, she still secretly teaches letters to those who wish to learn, a direct defiance of Liberationist decrees that restrict education to the most virtuous patriots. She's counting the moments until she earns her freedom to return the distant hills of her home. Then an inn guest makes her an offer she doesn't dare refuse, drawing her into the company of Monarchist rebels who seek to topple the August Protector and restore noble rule. Is this her chance at a future she hardly dared dream of, or is she walking deeper into danger?
REVIEW: There are authors I have an ambivalent relationship with as a reader, ones whose works I feel I should like, that I want to like, but for some reason I tend to feel let down by their stories more often than not, in some way I can't always articulate (which probably explains why I'm not exactly the world's best book reviewer, if I can't isolate and express my thoughts better). Kate Elliott is not at the top of that list by any means, but novellas like this remind me why she's on it, as for all the potential in the story premise and world going into it, I left it feeling subtly unsatisfied.
Things open on reasonably decent footing, as Fellian's situation and world are established in quick strokes that manage to avoid dull, intrusive infodumping... at least, at first. As the story progresses, though, there are more and more moments where she pauses to observe and think worldbuilding information for the benefit of the reader; her go-to reaction in stress tends to be lead boots. (I lost track of how often her feet or legs were described as "leaden", mostly so Fellian could stand uselessly and look around and describe things - even in the middle of high-stakes action - so the reader peering at the tale through her eyes got a full tour.) Things do at least happen, as Fellian is whisked from the inn halfway across the nation in the company of mages recruited to the Monarchist cause. She's all for undermining the August Protector and freeing herself from bondage, though at times Fellian parrots party-line ideas a little too readily for someone raised in the hinterlands by parents who were not loyal to the uprising, and having been partially educated in magic by someone outside the Liberationists and their strict, stifling, shame-infused system. The closer she and her companions get to their end goal, the more danger she's in - and the more she comes to question the ultimate motives and goal of their leader. Ultimately, she must decide where she means to stand in a politically fractured world, and what future she wants to work toward, though by then my interest was somewhat dimmed by distancing infodumps and tangled histories and relationships, and a general failure to really bond with Fellian enough to care where she ended up. I also found myself subtly irked that the cover misled me into thinking dragons would be more involved in the tale. (Aside from a somewhat-symbolic minor character/encounter, dragons are notably absent. Do not promise me dragons that you do not intend to deliver, authors and/or cover artists...) And the tail end drags out a little long, in a way that makes me wonder - along with all the worldbuilding crammed into a novella's page count - if Servant Mage was originally intended to be a full length novel or even a series but never quite fledged.
As I say too often, I've read worse. There are some interesting ideas, and when Fellian's not mired in leaden boots things happen. I just never felt drawn in like I'd hoped to be.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Kindling (Traci Chee) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
The Jewel and Her Lapidary (Fran Wilde) - My Review
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Lockjaw (Matteo L. Cerilli)
Lockjaw
Matteo L. Cerilli
Tundra Books
Fiction, YA Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Bridlington is a quintessential small American town, the sort of place where goodly folks mind their own business and stay out of trouble... and where, too often, the cries of the outcasts are ignored in the name of keeping the peace. When young Chuck Warren, a bullied eleven-year-old boy, died in the old mill one night, Paz Espino saw what happened, but the grown-ups don't believe that she saw a monster in the shadows below the hole in the floor. She's branded a problem child, a troublemaker, and only her three best friends stick by her as the rest of the town turns their backs. But Paz is like a bulldog with jaws locked on a bone; she's determined to find and kill the beast, and if nobody else will help her, then she'll do it herself or die trying.
The young stranger blows into town with a cruddy old car, a mutt named Bird, an envelope of money, and no name. He's looking for a fresh start far away from home, and Bridlington seems as good a place as any. But from the moment he pulls up at the gas station, he gets a sense of hidden secrets and lurking danger, a sense that grows stronger after a strange encounter with a group of kids outside the convenience store. Taking the name Asher, he starts trying to build a new life, making friends with the right sort of people, but Bridlington is a town haunted by dark secrets - and the bill for looking the other way is about to come due...
REVIEW: In the vein of Stephen King's It where children are left to deal with the problems intentionally ignored (and sometimes openly exacerbated) by adults and generations past, Lockjaw exposes the "monster" underlying the veneer of civility, in towns small and large. Though at times effectively creepy and even surreal, sometimes it gets too clever for its own good with confusing timeline shifts and some exceptionally heavy-handed messages about silence in the face of injustices by the end.
Starting with young Chuck's doomed efforts to connect with a new group of outcast friends after being bullied on the playground, the tale goes to "Asher" and his seemingly carefree arrival in Bridlington with nothing but a dog for company. This is clearly a young man with secrets in his past, and it's just as clear that this small town has secrets of its own, even as he tries to ignore the pricklings of premonition that hang over his first introduction to the group of outcast kids. Other characters who become entangled in things include Paz's older sister, who has done everything in her power to distance herself from her peculiar sibling, and Beetle, a trans teen who is counting the seconds until he can escape to college and leave the whispers and cruelties of small town life in the dust. Creepy overtones and tension drift through the tale in a thickening miasma that sometimes obscures the plot itself, not helped by how the story jumps back and forth in time at random (it's possible this is an issue with the audiobook, that there is some hint in the printed version, because otherwise it comes across as an author trying to wow the reader with a two-by-four surprise that felt more like jerking me around for half the book), and eventually the promised supernatural/gory elements come to the forefront as the metaphoric chickens of Bridlington come home to roost. Asher, set up to be the main character, became my least favorite of the bunch, far too cagey with his past and shallow in his motives (the reason is later revealed, but by then my general dislike of his apparent shallow pursuit of popularity - even in the face of glaring red flags -had set in, plus even after the reveal he remained overreactive to an almost cartoonish degree when confronted with conflict, to the point of literally jumping around and denting his car door and needing to be socked in the face by another character to calm down). The latter parts feel drawn out to grind in the main lesson about the toxicity of brushing off bullying and abuse and intolerance as "not my business" and masking it as small-down politeness, and how the interest on those injustices compounds exponentially. The heavy hand of the Message smashes the reader in the face repeatedly by the end, to an almost numbing effect. This alone dropped it down to nearly three stars; the final half-star loss concerns the unnecessary cruelty of the fate of Bird the dog.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Pines (Blake Crouch) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck) - My Review
Matteo L. Cerilli
Tundra Books
Fiction, YA Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Bridlington is a quintessential small American town, the sort of place where goodly folks mind their own business and stay out of trouble... and where, too often, the cries of the outcasts are ignored in the name of keeping the peace. When young Chuck Warren, a bullied eleven-year-old boy, died in the old mill one night, Paz Espino saw what happened, but the grown-ups don't believe that she saw a monster in the shadows below the hole in the floor. She's branded a problem child, a troublemaker, and only her three best friends stick by her as the rest of the town turns their backs. But Paz is like a bulldog with jaws locked on a bone; she's determined to find and kill the beast, and if nobody else will help her, then she'll do it herself or die trying.
The young stranger blows into town with a cruddy old car, a mutt named Bird, an envelope of money, and no name. He's looking for a fresh start far away from home, and Bridlington seems as good a place as any. But from the moment he pulls up at the gas station, he gets a sense of hidden secrets and lurking danger, a sense that grows stronger after a strange encounter with a group of kids outside the convenience store. Taking the name Asher, he starts trying to build a new life, making friends with the right sort of people, but Bridlington is a town haunted by dark secrets - and the bill for looking the other way is about to come due...
REVIEW: In the vein of Stephen King's It where children are left to deal with the problems intentionally ignored (and sometimes openly exacerbated) by adults and generations past, Lockjaw exposes the "monster" underlying the veneer of civility, in towns small and large. Though at times effectively creepy and even surreal, sometimes it gets too clever for its own good with confusing timeline shifts and some exceptionally heavy-handed messages about silence in the face of injustices by the end.
Starting with young Chuck's doomed efforts to connect with a new group of outcast friends after being bullied on the playground, the tale goes to "Asher" and his seemingly carefree arrival in Bridlington with nothing but a dog for company. This is clearly a young man with secrets in his past, and it's just as clear that this small town has secrets of its own, even as he tries to ignore the pricklings of premonition that hang over his first introduction to the group of outcast kids. Other characters who become entangled in things include Paz's older sister, who has done everything in her power to distance herself from her peculiar sibling, and Beetle, a trans teen who is counting the seconds until he can escape to college and leave the whispers and cruelties of small town life in the dust. Creepy overtones and tension drift through the tale in a thickening miasma that sometimes obscures the plot itself, not helped by how the story jumps back and forth in time at random (it's possible this is an issue with the audiobook, that there is some hint in the printed version, because otherwise it comes across as an author trying to wow the reader with a two-by-four surprise that felt more like jerking me around for half the book), and eventually the promised supernatural/gory elements come to the forefront as the metaphoric chickens of Bridlington come home to roost. Asher, set up to be the main character, became my least favorite of the bunch, far too cagey with his past and shallow in his motives (the reason is later revealed, but by then my general dislike of his apparent shallow pursuit of popularity - even in the face of glaring red flags -had set in, plus even after the reveal he remained overreactive to an almost cartoonish degree when confronted with conflict, to the point of literally jumping around and denting his car door and needing to be socked in the face by another character to calm down). The latter parts feel drawn out to grind in the main lesson about the toxicity of brushing off bullying and abuse and intolerance as "not my business" and masking it as small-down politeness, and how the interest on those injustices compounds exponentially. The heavy hand of the Message smashes the reader in the face repeatedly by the end, to an almost numbing effect. This alone dropped it down to nearly three stars; the final half-star loss concerns the unnecessary cruelty of the fate of Bird the dog.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Pines (Blake Crouch) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck) - My Review
Sunday, August 17, 2025
For the Wolf (Hannah Whitten)
For the Wolf
The Wilderwood series, Book 1
Hannah Whitten
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, the magic of the Wilderwood was available to all who willingly laid a sacrifice beneath its branches... until the Five Kings struck a bargain to imprison the dark gods and monsters beneath their roots, diverting all power to that monumental and eternal task. But the forest would still bargain, if at a higher price. And when the Five Kings rode into the woods again, they became imprisoned in the Shadowlands too. Only the seemingly-immortal man known as the Wolf remains in the Wilderwood now, protecting the people from the shapeshifting monsters that slip free from the Shadowlands. For his service, he demands the second royal daughter of every ruler of Valleyda be sent to the Wilderwood, never to be seen again.
Red has known her fate since childhood. While her older sister Neve will someday inherit the silver crown, she is no more than a sacrificial lamb for the Wolf, and nothing her sister or her handful of friends can do will change that fate - especially not once she showed the Mark of all Second Daughters, a sign of the eternal pact between the people and the forest that keeps the gods imprisoned. Some day, the Temple priestesses declare, the Wolf will relent and let the Five Kings free, but why should Red be any different than the other Daughters who have gone before? She cannot even bring herself to be angry anymore about her fate, though Neve has more than enough anger for them both: anger at their cold and distant mother, anger at the Temple and the old gods, anger at the Wilderwood, and anger at the Wolf and his demand for sacrifices.
What Red finds in the Wilderwood beneath the boughs of the white sentinel trees is not at all what she imagined. The Wolf is no evil beast, but a man who, like her, has been bound by bargains and magicks over which he has no control. Worse, the Wilderwood has sickened, sentinel trees disappearing into gaps through which monsters emerge, and he's running out of strength to hold the prison gates closed. As much as Red yearns to escape and return to her sister, she cannot ignore the dangers that would befall everyone and everything she ever loved should the Wolf and the Wilderwood fall. But there are those who would stop at nothing to release the five lost Kings of old - and there are those too blinded by anger and love to realize what they're about to destroy...
REVIEW: I had high hopes going into this one, for all that there are obviously some familiar tropes at play. For the most part, I enjoyed it, though it never quite rose to the level of my highest expectations.
From the beginning, the dynamics of the characters and the world are well established. Neve keeps trying to convince Red that she can escape her obligations, that she can run away, and even has some friends and allies on board with the plan, but Red remains dedicated... not out of a sense of duty to her kingdom or her royal mother (both of which have always treated her as a disposable object, keeping her at arm's length) or out of piety to the Temple (neither she nor Neve really believe the priestesses who promise that, someday, the sacrifice of the Second Daughter will free the Five Kings), but because of a darker secret, one that she fears will destroy the few people she truly does love if she were to remain in Valleyda. Even then, given the chance to fight and live or lie down and die in the Wilderwood, she chooses life - and learns that almost everything she has been taught about the place, and about the Wolf, is dead wrong. As she comes to terms with her new circumstances and the new dangers around her, Neve remains desperate to rescue her sister... and here things started to shake a bit for me. The princess allies herself with a fanatical priestess seeking to subvert the traditional Temple teachings in favor of a more pro-active approach to ending the Wolf's reign and freeing the Kings, a woman who is so clearly evil that even blind sisterly devotion can't possibly be enough to mask the insanity.
With no way to communicate, the sisters end up working at cross purposes, with the fate of the Wilderwood and the greater realm hanging in the balance. Despite some occasional meandering and muddy bits, plus a little too much brooding and angst (particularly on the part of the Wolf himself, teetering on the trope/cliché line a little too often), a reasonably satisfying ending is partially marred by cliffhanger elements without being a straight-up cliffhanger, setting up the second volume in the duology... one I'm not sure I'll pursue, if I'm being honest, because it showed every sign of repeating some of the stuff that started to wear on me in this book, particularly the tormented, brooding, angst-ridden soul being redeemed by the power of love. (I will say, in its favor, that For the Wolf had a rather pointed subtext about consent and listening to women; this would've been a novella had people - even those who were closest to her and loved her best - actually listened to Red and respected her choices rather than barging ahead, convinced they knew better than she did what she really needed...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scriber (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Silver in the Wood (Emily Tesh) - My Review
The Wilderwood series, Book 1
Hannah Whitten
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, the magic of the Wilderwood was available to all who willingly laid a sacrifice beneath its branches... until the Five Kings struck a bargain to imprison the dark gods and monsters beneath their roots, diverting all power to that monumental and eternal task. But the forest would still bargain, if at a higher price. And when the Five Kings rode into the woods again, they became imprisoned in the Shadowlands too. Only the seemingly-immortal man known as the Wolf remains in the Wilderwood now, protecting the people from the shapeshifting monsters that slip free from the Shadowlands. For his service, he demands the second royal daughter of every ruler of Valleyda be sent to the Wilderwood, never to be seen again.
Red has known her fate since childhood. While her older sister Neve will someday inherit the silver crown, she is no more than a sacrificial lamb for the Wolf, and nothing her sister or her handful of friends can do will change that fate - especially not once she showed the Mark of all Second Daughters, a sign of the eternal pact between the people and the forest that keeps the gods imprisoned. Some day, the Temple priestesses declare, the Wolf will relent and let the Five Kings free, but why should Red be any different than the other Daughters who have gone before? She cannot even bring herself to be angry anymore about her fate, though Neve has more than enough anger for them both: anger at their cold and distant mother, anger at the Temple and the old gods, anger at the Wilderwood, and anger at the Wolf and his demand for sacrifices.
What Red finds in the Wilderwood beneath the boughs of the white sentinel trees is not at all what she imagined. The Wolf is no evil beast, but a man who, like her, has been bound by bargains and magicks over which he has no control. Worse, the Wilderwood has sickened, sentinel trees disappearing into gaps through which monsters emerge, and he's running out of strength to hold the prison gates closed. As much as Red yearns to escape and return to her sister, she cannot ignore the dangers that would befall everyone and everything she ever loved should the Wolf and the Wilderwood fall. But there are those who would stop at nothing to release the five lost Kings of old - and there are those too blinded by anger and love to realize what they're about to destroy...
REVIEW: I had high hopes going into this one, for all that there are obviously some familiar tropes at play. For the most part, I enjoyed it, though it never quite rose to the level of my highest expectations.
From the beginning, the dynamics of the characters and the world are well established. Neve keeps trying to convince Red that she can escape her obligations, that she can run away, and even has some friends and allies on board with the plan, but Red remains dedicated... not out of a sense of duty to her kingdom or her royal mother (both of which have always treated her as a disposable object, keeping her at arm's length) or out of piety to the Temple (neither she nor Neve really believe the priestesses who promise that, someday, the sacrifice of the Second Daughter will free the Five Kings), but because of a darker secret, one that she fears will destroy the few people she truly does love if she were to remain in Valleyda. Even then, given the chance to fight and live or lie down and die in the Wilderwood, she chooses life - and learns that almost everything she has been taught about the place, and about the Wolf, is dead wrong. As she comes to terms with her new circumstances and the new dangers around her, Neve remains desperate to rescue her sister... and here things started to shake a bit for me. The princess allies herself with a fanatical priestess seeking to subvert the traditional Temple teachings in favor of a more pro-active approach to ending the Wolf's reign and freeing the Kings, a woman who is so clearly evil that even blind sisterly devotion can't possibly be enough to mask the insanity.
With no way to communicate, the sisters end up working at cross purposes, with the fate of the Wilderwood and the greater realm hanging in the balance. Despite some occasional meandering and muddy bits, plus a little too much brooding and angst (particularly on the part of the Wolf himself, teetering on the trope/cliché line a little too often), a reasonably satisfying ending is partially marred by cliffhanger elements without being a straight-up cliffhanger, setting up the second volume in the duology... one I'm not sure I'll pursue, if I'm being honest, because it showed every sign of repeating some of the stuff that started to wear on me in this book, particularly the tormented, brooding, angst-ridden soul being redeemed by the power of love. (I will say, in its favor, that For the Wolf had a rather pointed subtext about consent and listening to women; this would've been a novella had people - even those who were closest to her and loved her best - actually listened to Red and respected her choices rather than barging ahead, convinced they knew better than she did what she really needed...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scriber (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Silver in the Wood (Emily Tesh) - My Review
Friday, August 8, 2025
The Storyteller's Death (Ann Davila Cardinal)
The Storyteller's Death
Ann Dávila Cardinal
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Fantasy/General Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Isla was eight years old and a thousand miles away when her beloved father died. She'd been sent to stay with her mother's relatives, the sprawling Sanchez family, in Puerto Rico as she had been every summer, and her mother didn't tell her about the death until she returned to New Jersey. Since then, her life has crumbled around her, as her mother escapes into alcohol and she struggles to stay afloat. Her only safe haven is her summers in Puerto Rico, in the home of her stern great-aunt and under the judgemental eye of her iron-fisted grandmother. Here, she loves listening to the vivid tales woven by her elders, stories of colorful ancestors and relatives and their seemingly larger-than-life exploits, adventures, and incidents, where truth and fiction often blend.
It wasn't until her grandmother passed away many years later that Isla began seeing those stories come to life around her, vivid recreations that play out daily.
Is it some sort of hallucination or daydream? Is her mind finally cracking under the many stresses of her life? Or has Isla inherited a gift - or a curse - that has passed down the Sanchez line for generations... and, with it, shouldered the burden of stories that the dead demand be shared with the living?
REVIEW: After a middling reading selection in July, I wanted to start August out on a better note, so I thought I'd switch up genres a bit; while The Storyteller's Death may technically have fantastic elements, it's more in the "magic realism" sense that shades into general or even literary fiction more than straight-up fantasy. (Also, this was part of a "great library read" via Libby.) By the end, though, I found the middling streak unfortunately continued.
The story, which is ostensibly told by an older Isla about her formative years and experiences, opens with an eight-year-old girl encountering the face of impending death; a relative across the street from her tia's house where she stays in summers offers hospice care to elderly, dying family members, and she ventures into the "forbidden" room... not that this is her first encounter with infirmity, what with her father hospitalized in New Jersey. There's promise in this opening, if no real hint of how any of it ties in to the concept that was promised in the blurb (the whole "stories coming to life around her" thing). But from there the story drags its feet and meanders through Isla's miserable childhood, her dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic single mother and how it costs her opportunities for normalcy and friends, and how it's only in Puerto Rico that she has anything like the love and support and freedom she craves. Slowly, she comes to realize that there's a lot more to the island, the Sanchez clan (more of a dynasty), and class and race divides than her half-white outsider viewpoint initially sees, a point first driven home when she befriends the son of a laborer and is firmly berated by her great-aunt for fraternizing with "those" people. More foot-dragging and meandering ensues, with some foreshadowing and a sprawling cast of relatives and friends and not-friends, and eventually Isla encounters her first experience living through a story after her grandmother passes away. The Sanchez family is not big on sharing secrets, let alone discussing potential mental illnesses or supernatural events, so Isla struggles to figure out what is going on and to whom she can reach out - not at all helped by the weight the Sanchez name carries, which makes reaching out to others problematic, even if it seems they might be the only ones with the answers she needs. Eventually, she figures out what's going on and what she can do about it, but the visions only grow more vivid with each new encounter, to the point where they can actually inflict harm, even if she can't physically alter events. Belatedly, she encounters the one story that proves most pivotal to her family and her current situation, a particularly stubborn tale that becomes a mystery she needs to unravel... a mystery where she and everyone else conveniently forget something previously established (that stories, or rather the memories encapsulated in the stories, can be colored or outright fabricated by the deceased storytellers, and thus can't be trusted to reveal unvarnished truths). At some point, someone mentions how the threads Isla unearths in her research begin to sound as tangled and implausible as a telenovela - which, unfortunately, predicts the ultimate truth she uncovers (I don't deal in spoilers, but let's just say I found it stretched credulity to the point of being almost cartoonish). Along the way, Isla does a fair bit of growing up, learning to find her voice and her place and what it means to be a Puerto Rican, a Sanchez, and - most importantly - herself.
There are several good parts in the story. It paints a vivid, textured picture of what the island was like in the 1980's, and the disillusionment that comes with discovering the complexities and darkness hiding in the family tree, as well as realizing, to quote how Douglas Adams put it in The Salmon of Doubt, "how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left". The living stories were intriguing, but - and admittedly this comes from the fantasy reader in me, who can't help poking at general fiction or crossovers looking for deeper magic - I'd hoped more would come from them, and more explored about the whole concept, particularly how they could be solid enough for Isla to be physically harmed by them even though she alone experiences them; that point ultimately felt like an excuse to lend urgency to solving the mystery, because the story that gets "stuck" involves a firearm with a potentially-lethal-to-her bullet. I found the whole thing felt just a little too long for the story it told, some of the revelations and resolutions a little too forced.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Clap When You Land (Elizabeth Acevedo) - My Review
Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
Ann Dávila Cardinal
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Fantasy/General Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Isla was eight years old and a thousand miles away when her beloved father died. She'd been sent to stay with her mother's relatives, the sprawling Sanchez family, in Puerto Rico as she had been every summer, and her mother didn't tell her about the death until she returned to New Jersey. Since then, her life has crumbled around her, as her mother escapes into alcohol and she struggles to stay afloat. Her only safe haven is her summers in Puerto Rico, in the home of her stern great-aunt and under the judgemental eye of her iron-fisted grandmother. Here, she loves listening to the vivid tales woven by her elders, stories of colorful ancestors and relatives and their seemingly larger-than-life exploits, adventures, and incidents, where truth and fiction often blend.
It wasn't until her grandmother passed away many years later that Isla began seeing those stories come to life around her, vivid recreations that play out daily.
Is it some sort of hallucination or daydream? Is her mind finally cracking under the many stresses of her life? Or has Isla inherited a gift - or a curse - that has passed down the Sanchez line for generations... and, with it, shouldered the burden of stories that the dead demand be shared with the living?
REVIEW: After a middling reading selection in July, I wanted to start August out on a better note, so I thought I'd switch up genres a bit; while The Storyteller's Death may technically have fantastic elements, it's more in the "magic realism" sense that shades into general or even literary fiction more than straight-up fantasy. (Also, this was part of a "great library read" via Libby.) By the end, though, I found the middling streak unfortunately continued.
The story, which is ostensibly told by an older Isla about her formative years and experiences, opens with an eight-year-old girl encountering the face of impending death; a relative across the street from her tia's house where she stays in summers offers hospice care to elderly, dying family members, and she ventures into the "forbidden" room... not that this is her first encounter with infirmity, what with her father hospitalized in New Jersey. There's promise in this opening, if no real hint of how any of it ties in to the concept that was promised in the blurb (the whole "stories coming to life around her" thing). But from there the story drags its feet and meanders through Isla's miserable childhood, her dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic single mother and how it costs her opportunities for normalcy and friends, and how it's only in Puerto Rico that she has anything like the love and support and freedom she craves. Slowly, she comes to realize that there's a lot more to the island, the Sanchez clan (more of a dynasty), and class and race divides than her half-white outsider viewpoint initially sees, a point first driven home when she befriends the son of a laborer and is firmly berated by her great-aunt for fraternizing with "those" people. More foot-dragging and meandering ensues, with some foreshadowing and a sprawling cast of relatives and friends and not-friends, and eventually Isla encounters her first experience living through a story after her grandmother passes away. The Sanchez family is not big on sharing secrets, let alone discussing potential mental illnesses or supernatural events, so Isla struggles to figure out what is going on and to whom she can reach out - not at all helped by the weight the Sanchez name carries, which makes reaching out to others problematic, even if it seems they might be the only ones with the answers she needs. Eventually, she figures out what's going on and what she can do about it, but the visions only grow more vivid with each new encounter, to the point where they can actually inflict harm, even if she can't physically alter events. Belatedly, she encounters the one story that proves most pivotal to her family and her current situation, a particularly stubborn tale that becomes a mystery she needs to unravel... a mystery where she and everyone else conveniently forget something previously established (that stories, or rather the memories encapsulated in the stories, can be colored or outright fabricated by the deceased storytellers, and thus can't be trusted to reveal unvarnished truths). At some point, someone mentions how the threads Isla unearths in her research begin to sound as tangled and implausible as a telenovela - which, unfortunately, predicts the ultimate truth she uncovers (I don't deal in spoilers, but let's just say I found it stretched credulity to the point of being almost cartoonish). Along the way, Isla does a fair bit of growing up, learning to find her voice and her place and what it means to be a Puerto Rican, a Sanchez, and - most importantly - herself.
There are several good parts in the story. It paints a vivid, textured picture of what the island was like in the 1980's, and the disillusionment that comes with discovering the complexities and darkness hiding in the family tree, as well as realizing, to quote how Douglas Adams put it in The Salmon of Doubt, "how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left". The living stories were intriguing, but - and admittedly this comes from the fantasy reader in me, who can't help poking at general fiction or crossovers looking for deeper magic - I'd hoped more would come from them, and more explored about the whole concept, particularly how they could be solid enough for Isla to be physically harmed by them even though she alone experiences them; that point ultimately felt like an excuse to lend urgency to solving the mystery, because the story that gets "stuck" involves a firearm with a potentially-lethal-to-her bullet. I found the whole thing felt just a little too long for the story it told, some of the revelations and resolutions a little too forced.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Clap When You Land (Elizabeth Acevedo) - My Review
Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
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