The origin stories of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series have a formula. They start with a child who doesn't fit. He or she is abanNadya's story
The origin stories of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series have a formula. They start with a child who doesn't fit. He or she is abandoned by those who should under ordinary circumstances take responsibility for providing them with a healthy childhood. In some cases the abandonment is more figurative than literal. In others -- and Nadya is one -- the abandonment is literal and explicit. This child comes across a door, always bearing the words "Be sure" that takes her to a new world where she fits better.
Unusually, we are often told the ends of the Wayward Children stories before the beginnings. We have met Nadya before, in Beneath the Sugar Sky, where we met her as one of the students of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, where she was introduced as a "Drowned Girl" who "was one of the school’s long-timers: five years so far, from the age of eleven to the age of sixteen." Thus we already know that Nadya's story will eventually bring her to Eleanor's.
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear tells the beginning of Nadya's story. Nadya begins as a Russian orphan, abandoned by her mother, who doesn't want a child. As we learned in Sugar Sky she eventually was adopted by an American couple. That after that she ended up with Eleanor and no desire to return to her adoptive home tells us how well that worked out. There follows the story of her sojourn in and eventual ejection from Belyyreka, the Drowned World.
I am not a big fan of horror fiction. I think, however, that is because, as a general rule, it is so poorHorror fiction writers: this is how you do it
I am not a big fan of horror fiction. I think, however, that is because, as a general rule, it is so poorly done. I'm being unfair -- when I say "it is poorly done", what I mean is that it doesn't horrify me. I am not horrified by creepy-crawlies -- in fact, I spent more than 30 years of my life studying worms, so I think worms and bugs are kind of cool, very beautiful little machines, in fact. Blood and guts and gore also don't bother me.
What I find really scary is psychological terror -- the fear of losing oneself. Nameless fears -- the "nameless" part is important. As a filmmaker once remarked, if you want to really be scary, never show the audience the monster. Leave it to their imaginations -- the monster they imagine is always scarier than anything you can put on the screen. As soon as you show the monster, as soon as you name the fear, it becomes a concrete problem to be solved, and that will never be as frightening as the invisible and nameless.
In Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud does that. In fact, he does it a little TOO well. It is truly scary. (And not because of the spiders -- there are spiders, but they play a surprisingly small role in the story.)
In fact, I'm going to be a little inconsistent here, because my main compliant about Crypt of the Moon Spider is that I never knew what was going on, even at the end. The world-building feels vague and perfunctory. Much of the action takes place on the moon, and there are forests and spiders there. It is 1923, and there are regular shuttle flights from Earth to the Moon. This is obviously not the Moon as we know it, and I never figured out how the world of Crypt of the Moon Spider relates to this one we inhabit.
Probably that ambiguity contributes to the mind-numbing horror that Ballingrud produces so well here. But still, I was left unsatisfied at the end.
The publisher's blurb for Sarah Rees Brennan's Long Live Evil makes it sound like a funny book about a real-world character who slips A brilliant mess
The publisher's blurb for Sarah Rees Brennan's Long Live Evil makes it sound like a funny book about a real-world character who slips into a book and finds herself the villain. And it IS that! There were many laugh-out-loud moments, such as this one
Books often described kisses as ‘searing’ which made Rae think of salmon, but characters seemed to enjoy the seared-salmon kisses.
or this
“You saw this horse born,” Marius reminded ... “I told you his bloodline could find their way anywhere. You named him.” “That was a joke,” ... Marius didn’t see what was humorous. He’d thought it was a nice name. ... “So this is my noble steed, Google Maps?”
Rae, our heroine/villainess, is a fantasy book lover, who knows all the plot tropes, not to mention the movies and songs. Plugged into a fantasy novel (à la Inkworld or Thursday Next -- both are referenced in the Acknowledgments) Rae reacts like the thoroughly modern young woman she is, with sense and never-ending incongruity. It never gets old, or at least it did not for me.
But there's another side to this that the blurb barely hints at. Rae, when we meet her, is dying of cancer. There's a lot of pain and anger in her -- there's a reason why, when she's plugged into her sister's favorite fantasy series, she is the villain. Brennan is herself a late-stage cancer survivor. When she writes,
A neighbour had taken Rae aside when news of her diagnosis spread, counselling her to take a blanket to her first appointment. Rae didn’t understand until she found herself on a reclined chair having chemo, every warm organ in her body turning to frozen grapes. She clutched her blanket as the last rope to a warmer world. When she got home, she plunged into a scalding hot bath, but once you knew such cold existed it was impossible to ever really be warm again.
it's obvious she knows what she's talking about.
So, there you have Long Live Evil. It's one laugh after another, and also a portrait of gut-wrenching pain and loneliness. A brilliant mess. It won't be for everyone. But I loved it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for an advance reader copy of Long Live Evil.
This review will be unfair to Suzanne Palmer's Ghostdrift, and that is my fault. I wasn't paying attention when I requested Picaresque with Hooloovoos
This review will be unfair to Suzanne Palmer's Ghostdrift, and that is my fault. I wasn't paying attention when I requested it and thus failed to notice that it is the fourth and last book of the Finder Chronicles, none of which I had previously read.
How big an issue is it to jump into a series in the middle, or even at the end? Usually people asked that question respond by discussing the plot. But of all the jump-in issues, the plot is the least important. More important are characters and, for speculative fiction, world-building. By the time you have finished three novels about Fergus Ferguson, the central character of the Finder Chronicles, you probably know him fairly well, and with any luck you like him and are happy to spend more time in his company. Furthermore, you know a great deal about the science-fictional galaxy he inhabits. Those were advantages I lacked.
I didn't feel that I lost a great deal by not having known Fergus. Fergus is pretty much a standard-issue picaro, so I know his type. On the other hand, though, not knowing the world was a problem. It isn't that it was difficult to follow -- instead, it was difficult to care. I haven't learned to care about the things that matter to Fergus and the people of Fergus's universe. This is one of those stories in which the universe is inhabited by hyperintelligent shades of the color blue (not literally -- those would be the Hooloovoos of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) some of whom patronize and essentially make pets of humans. Fergus has received the attention of at least one such species in previous books, and they show up here, too. They are not quite as annoying as Star Trek's Q, but they are still fairly obnoxious. The final third of the book is just deos ex machinis everywhere, the gods in question being not literal gods, but Hooloovoos. (OK, not literally them, either...)
So, bottom line: am I planning to get the previous three books and read them? No, I am not.
Thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an advance reader copy of Ghostdrift. Release date 28-May-2024.
Adrian Tchaikovsky likes to disguise philosophical treatises as novels. As Uncharles might say, "This is neither good nor bad. It The Robot's Progress
Adrian Tchaikovsky likes to disguise philosophical treatises as novels. As Uncharles might say, "This is neither good nor bad. It just is." That is to say, some readers enjoy novel-shaped philosophical treatises -- some not so much. If you've read a lot of Tchaikovsky, you know how you feel about this. For the record, I'd have to classify myself in the "not so much" group. If you love it, please adjust my rating accordingly.
There are really only two characters in Service Model: Uncharles and The Wonk. Uncharles is a high-end valet robot, a gentleman's personal gentlerobot -- a metal and plastic Jeeves. Except Jeeves never murdered Bertie, although he may at times have felt the urge. Service Model begins with Charles, the robot whom The Wonk will eventually rename Uncharles, discovering that his master is dead. Before long he figures out that his master is dead because he, Charles, murdered him. (This is not a spoiler, because the publisher's blurb reveals it.)
This leaves Charles with a problem. Not the one you're probably thinking, but another: his master's death leaves Charles without purpose. Charles would deny that he wants a purpose, or indeed that "wanting" is a thing he is capable of, or that he actually cares about anything. But his actions show that he is mistaken in this belief. He therefore sets out on a search for a human whose valet he can become.
Thus begins a journey in Five Parts, as Charles searches for a situation. (The parts are called KR15-T, K4FK-R, 4W-L, 80RH-5, and D4NT-A. I have no idea what those designations mean.) He soon meets a strange broken robot that calls itself The Wonk, who unintentionally renames him Uncharles, the name by which he is known for most of the book. It transpires that the world is in terrible shape: everything is broken or breaking. As Uncharles's journey progresses, we learn the nature of the apocalypse that has overtaken the world.
I claimed above that Uncharles and The Wonk are the only characters in Service Model. That is not literally true. There are many other characters, but they are not REAL characters. They are mere sock puppets for ethical and philosophical questions that Tchaikovsky wants Uncharles and The Wonk to cogitate upon. In fact, Service Model reminded me of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, and not in a good way. None of what happens appears plausible to me as events that could really happen. It's all an allegory meant to motivate the exposition of ethical and philosophical questions.
The publishers describe Service Model as "A humorous tale of robotic murder". It is indeed sometimes funny. However, I honestly found it more tedious than funny. As always, YMMV.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for an advance reader copy of Service Model.
Thersa Matsuura's The Book of Japanese Folklore is a reference work about strange and magical creatures from Japanese folklore. The long subtitle "An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth: The Stories of the Mischievous Kappa, Trickster Kitsune" is a better summary of the contents than the title. It is organized as a reference work. That is, it consists of an alphabetical list of articles about particular mythical creatures and characters.
The alphabetical organization makes sense for a work intended to sit on a shelf for use in looking things up. The best way to evaluate such a work is to use it over a long period of time, asking, when one wants information about Japanese folklore, "Is that information present? Is it easy to find? Is it accurate and comprehensive?" In these modern times, any such reference work is in competition with the Internet. Indeed, Matsuura herself has a blog and a podcast named "Uncanny Japan" about the subjects of this encyclopedia.
In any case, I didn't have time to evaluate The Book of Japanese Folklore by using it for a few years. Instead I simply read it from front to back. It is not meant to be consumed in this way. The alphabetical organization means that related subjects are scattered all over. And some important things are missing. For instance, Jimmu, the legendary first emperor of Japan, is frequently referenced. His ancestors Amaterasu and Otohime are mentioned in some of the stories. But there is no entry for any of those three. Emperor Jimmu's story is nowhere told. That seems an odd omission in a book entitled The Book of Japanese Folklore.
On the other hand, the stories are fun. Many of them are accompanied by whimsical color pictures of the beasts in question, by Michelle Wang. I knew only a little Japanese folklore before reading this (mostly from the books of Clay and Yumi Boutwell), and I learned a lot.
I am left with mixed feelings. It was a fun read, and I'm glad I read it. On the other hand, the way it is organized makes it a less enjoyable read while not, in my opinion, making it noticeably more useful in a world that has computers and the Internet.
Le Fay is the second book in Sophie Keetch's Morgan Le Fay series. It is currently (4-Jun-2024) the final book, but afArthur and Morgan become enemies
Le Fay is the second book in Sophie Keetch's Morgan Le Fay series. It is currently (4-Jun-2024) the final book, but after reading it, I have no doubt that a third is on the way. I will certainly read it.
If you're familiar with Arthurian legend, you know that Morgan Le Fay has traditionally been an enemy of Arthur's, the most potent of all. And of course, any enemy of Arthur's is, almost by definition, evil. At the end of Morgan Is My Name Morgan and Arthur have such a good understanding that I wondered whether Keetch's Arthur and Morgan would become enemies. The publisher's blurb reports, "Rising from the ashes of desperation, she emerges hard, crystalline and unforgiving - now she is Morgan Le Fay. And hate is in her heart..." So that would be a "Yes".
The big difference, of course, is that Le Fay is told from Morgan's first-person point of view. She doesn't see herself as evil -- she sees herself as betrayed. That's one of the big stories of Le Fay. It's a good story. And Keetch does it without herself betraying Arthur -- Arthur remains a sympathetic character, if you squint...
The second big story, hinted at in the title, is Morgan's leveling up. The name "Morgan Le Fay" has always meant Morgan the Fairy or Morgan of the Fae -- meaning that she was, in the old Arthurian legends, something more than human. The Morgan of Morgan Is My Name was entirely human -- a remarkably learned, intelligent, and able human, but still human. Now she discovers "strange but wonderful powers of her own she is still exploring" and is named "Le Fay".
The third big story is a romance. I won't tell you who it is, but if you guess, you'll probably guess right. This, to my taste was the least satisfactory story. Morgan spends a lot of time with her lover in loving bliss; indeed, it felt as if the story came to a halt to enjoy Morgan's happiness. As an old aromantic grump I found these interludes too long. As always, YMMV.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reader copy of Le Fay.
I was born in 1955. By that time Harry Truman had been out of power for two years. Joseph Stalin died in 1953Harry and Joe made the world I grew up in
I was born in 1955. By that time Harry Truman had been out of power for two years. Joseph Stalin died in 1953. But for the first thirty years of my life, the international and political world I lived in was the one they made in Truman's first term as President of the USA, from 1945-1948. Indeed, as I look at the headlines on 16-Apr-2024, with Israel and Palestinians once more at war, and Putin's Russia trying to reconquer Ukraine, it is obvious that, even though we have to some extent moved on, we still live in the world that Harry and Joe made.
Harry and Joe met for the first time in Potsdam on 17-Jul-1945. Harry was impressed by Joe: “I can deal with Stalin. He is honest— but smart as hell.” Joe thought Harry was a lightweight, “Truman’s neither educated nor clever.” Stalin was not exactly wrong. In July, 1945, Harry *WAS* a lightweight. He had been ignored by Roosevelt and given no access to the political machinations that were central to his presidency. But Joe missed something important: Harry was a quick learner.
And something else: Harry was surrounded by smart people, and he was smart enough to use them. Harry appointed George (Marshall) as his Secretary of State, and stood aside and let him take the credit for sending American treasure and people to Japan and Europe (Germany included), resulting in an economically strong alliance of democracies that kept Joe's Soviet Union in a box until it finally collapsed, many years later.
We should pause for a second to appreciate how unusual this was. The historical rule is "To the victor go the spoils". It was entirely precedented and accepted that when you won a war, you walked off with everything that wasn't nailed down. This, indeed, was Joe's approach to that portion of Germany left in his hands -- to loot it. Harry and George brought about economic miracles in Japan and Germany (seriously, look up the German word Wirtschaftswunder). They didn't do this because they were generous -- they did it because they were smart. Far too many people -- even powerful world leaders -- believe that one person can benefit only if others lose. Harry and George made a bet that a powerful Japan and Europe would be good for the USA.
Harry also did other things that shaped the next several decades. He dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. But he was known as a straightforward, honest, and fair man. And he seems to have deserved that reputation. Harry recognized the new state of Israel within minutes of its declaration. Harry also championed civil rights in the USA -- a weaker version than we would now support, but it was the first big step towards a more fair USA. Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, who deserted Harry's Democratic Party over the civil rights issue, when asked why he would desert over Harry's actions when he had overlooked similar promises made by Roosevelt in 1944, answered that the difference was that “Truman really means it.”
Unlike previous histories of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies, this book focuses on the transition— the long shadow cast by the dead president, Truman’s struggle to emerge, and how decisions during the years of transition, 1944 through 1948, impacted the peoples who survived the sword.
Thus, compared to a full biography like David McCullough's Truman, Ascent to Power is relatively brief and focused. (I was taken aback by Roll's calling the entire four years of Truman's first term the "transition", but since he is straightforward about doing that, I have no real complaint.) It is not by any means a light read, and there was little here I didn't already know. I had not previously appreciated the extent to which these four years made the world I grew up in. That was an enlightenment.
K.J. Charles's Death in the Spires begins in 1905, when our hero Jeremy (Jem) Kite is called into his boss's office. His boss has jusCrimes of Passion
K.J. Charles's Death in the Spires begins in 1905, when our hero Jeremy (Jem) Kite is called into his boss's office. His boss has just received an anonymous letter accusing Jeremey of murder. Jem immediately knows what this is about, because it's something he's been living with for ten years. The REAL beginning of our story is in 1892, when Jem shows up at Oxford as a new student. He is quickly taken up into a group of seven friends, revolving about Toby Feynsham. So brilliant are these seven, both in sports and scholarship, that they become known among their contemporaries as the "seven wonders". Until 1895, when Toby was murdered. The other six know that the murderer had to be one of themselves. But the murder has not been solved.
Jem, prodded by the letter, is no longer able to let sleeping dogs lie, and begins to investigate. So it's a murder mystery with some of the usual elements common to most murder mysteries.
Two things about Death in the Spires stand out as different from genre murder mysteries. First, the usual mystery novel is passionless. The investigation is framed as an intellectual exercise, a game that the author plays with the reader. Indeed, Jem's boss alludes to this in his conversation with Jem. And, even more strangely, the murderers in genre mysteries are coldly rational actors, who plan their murders, and carefully think about the costs and benefits.
That is not the seven wonders at all. They are not coldly rational sociopaths. These are passionate, angry people (who, indeed, have much to be angry about). Death in the Spires is more emotionally powerful, and more believable as an account of murder, than most mystery novels.
The second thing that jumped out to me was, "This could not happen today." Charles has described Death in the Spires with these words
It's also whatever the opposite of a love letter to Oxford University might be. Possibly hate mail.
But the message is addressed to late 19th century Oxford, not the 21st century university that some of us know. At one point in the novel Jem and Hugo tell each other:
‘It hasn’t changed, has it?’ ‘Not much. Nothing here does.’
But it does. If your time horizon is ten years, the change is imperceptible. But the Oxford of Death in the Spires is not 2024 Oxford.
The Oxford in which Dorothy Hodgkin could not become a full-fledged Oxford Don because she was a woman is gone. That would not happen today. The England that convicted Alan Turing of "gross indecency" is gone. Gone too is the Oxford that would greet a brilliant new student with public mockery because he had, through his own merit, won a competitive scholarship.
Now, to be sure, the prejudices that motivated those injustices are still alive and flourishing in some quarters. But, at the very least, the legal environment has changed. And it has changed for the better!
Death in the Spires is not a typical genre mystery -- it is something better than that.
Thanks to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for an advance reader copy of Death in the Spires.
The First Law of Quantum Communication is that all explanations of Quantum Mechanics for general audiences are rThe First Law of Quantum Communication
The First Law of Quantum Communication is that all explanations of Quantum Mechanics for general audiences are really, really bad*. Sean Carroll's Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is very different from every previous pop quantum mechanics explanation I have ever read. The question before us is whether it is an exception to the First Law, or a uniquely creative new example.
Where I'm coming from: I am a retired neuroscientist and mathematician. I am familiar with and comfortable with quantum mechanics. I have also, to my sorrow, read dozens of pop physics explanations of quantum mechanics, because every pop physics book begins with the same tiresome six chapters intended to bring the presumed ignorant reader up to speed on relativity and quantum mechanics. And they are almost uniformly TERRIBLE. They are terrible for multiple reasons, but most of these come down to a determination on the part of the explainers to make quantum mechanics as confusing to a modern reader as it was to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg when they first began to work it out. Physicists explaining quantum mechanics seem to feel a duty to make it as confusing as possible. If they have to ignore a century of progress and get crucial points wrong to do so, well, yeah, they're up for that.
I said "almost uniformly", because Carroll is the honorable exception. Unfortunately, I'm afraid quantum mechanics is not suited for the approach of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The general idea was explained in the first Biggest Ideas book, Space, Time, and Motion
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is dedicated to the idea that it is possible to learn about modern physics for real, equations and all, even if you are more amateur than professional and have every intention of staying that way. It is meant for people who have no more mathematical experience than high school algebra, but are willing to look at an equation and think about what it means. If you’re willing to do that bit of thinking, a new world opens up.
How does he propose to do this?
Most popular books assume that you don’t want to make the effort to follow the equations. Textbooks, on the other hand, assume that you don’t want to just understand the equations, you want to solve them. And solving these equations, it turns out, is enormously more work and requires enormously more practice and learning than “merely” understanding them does.
So the approach of The Biggest Ideas is to show you the equations, but not to explain how to solve them. I thought this worked well in Space, Time, and Motion. But in quantum mechanics solving the equations is really a critical part of understanding what they mean. Carroll himself writes
The quantumness of quantum mechanics, including quantum field theory, comes from solving the equations, not from the fundamental nature of the ingredients we use to construct the model.
Elsewhere, when describing how quantum field theory explains particles, he writes
And then the miracle occurs. Each mode of a quantum field behaves like a simple harmonic oscillator, including the quantized energy levels we previously uncovered. Those energy levels are interpreted as the number of particles we would observe: a mode in its first excited state represents one particle, its second excited state represents two particles, and so on.
It is indeed almost miraculous. I remember seeing this in my first quantum field theory class, and it was SO, SO COOL! Unfortunately, if your understanding of the solution is "And then the miracle occurs", well, you don't really experience the miracle. Carroll tries to explain it in more depth than that, but I didn't feel that his explanations really worked, except for those who already understand them.
I enjoyed this. I learned quite a bit -- it contains a particularly lucid explanation of renormalization.
When we first meet Ada Lamarr she is alone on her ship Glory with less than an hour of oxygen left. Ada makes her living by salInscrutably transparent
When we first meet Ada Lamarr she is alone on her ship Glory with less than an hour of oxygen left. Ada makes her living by salvaging abandoned spaceships. She is ostensibly here to salvage valuable metal from a ship that crashed on a nearby planet. But as a result of an explosion, Glory now has a three-meter hole in her hull, and almost all systems are down. That includes life support, but not communications. Ada knows that there is another ship in the vicinity and has sent out a distress call.
Ada is straight as a corkscrew and trustworthy as a seven-dollar bill. I have no hesitation in mentioning Ada's dodginess, because it is (1) Extremely obvious from page 1, and (2) Intentionally obvious. That is, in my judgment Beth Revis fully intends to make it obvious that Ada is up to something.
In fact, this is the thing I don't get about Full Speed to a Crash Landing. It is transparently obvious what Ada is about, and you will work out in some detail how she intends to do it. You don't need to be particularly clever to do so -- Ada tells you. She's the first-person narrator of this story -- you're in her head and you know what she's thinking for most of the book. (I say "most" because a few chapters are ostensibly documents written by and to government agent Rian White.) Ada doesn't exactly blurt out her detailed plans, but honestly, not much is left to the imagination.
The upshot was that nothing surprised me. Well, I take that back -- one thing did surprise me. I was surprised that Revis wrote a book whose plot twists were so transparently revealed in advance by the narrator. I suspect that she intended something sophisticated, and that it flew right over my head.
Benjamin Liar's (a pseudonym, of course) debut novel The Failures is a big book, the first novel in the planned Wanderlands TriloFools on the mountain
Benjamin Liar's (a pseudonym, of course) debut novel The Failures is a big book, the first novel in the planned Wanderlands Trilogy. It has been a long time in the making. In the author's note "A Round of Applause, A Round of Shots", he tells us
I started writing— not this book, exactly, but exploring the place that I would eventually name The Wanderlands— over thirty years ago.
The Wanderlands are a dark and broken world without a sky. Most of the story concerns the actions of five people or groups of people:
The Lost Boys The Convox/Cabal The Monsters The Deadsmith The Killers
Most chapters have two titles. The first is one of the five above, telling you who the chapter will be about. Then there is a second title that refers to the events about to be recounted. In addition to these chapters, there are five chapters named "An Aside: ..." -- these are (very welcome) brief infodumps about the history of the Wanderlands.
(view spoiler)[The chapters are not in temporal order. Events separated by many years often occur in adjacent chapters. The order in which I have listed them is roughly their temporal order, as well as I could work it out. (hide spoiler)]
The title is nowhere explained. You will, however, quickly guess where it comes from. These people are losers. They're losers in different ways. Some are kids who never grew up, some will remind you of Bruce Springsteen's song "Glory Days", and some -- these are the most pathetic -- believe themselves to be gods and puppeteers, directing the fates of all the lesser beings who surround them. The events take place on top of, around, and under a huge mountain. Aside from the mountain we see only a little of the Wanderlands.
The Failures is a world-building story. By the time you reach the end, you will have some grasp of what the Wanderlands are, how a part of them works, and what is likely to come. There is more than a hint that one day some of the Failures may be Glorious. I will certainly read the whole trilogy.
Thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an advance reader copy of The Failures.
**spoiler alert** The Sting meets Fiddler on the Roof
Ruthi Johnson, our first-person narrator, arrives at the wealthy resort New Monte (which seems to**spoiler alert** The Sting meets Fiddler on the Roof
Ruthi Johnson, our first-person narrator, arrives at the wealthy resort New Monte (which seems to be a satellite orbiting the quondam planet Pluto, not that that ever matters) bent on revenge. Esteban Mendez-Yuki, the scion of the obscenely wealthy Mendez-Yuki family and corporation, knocked up Ruthi's kid sister Jules then abandoned her. Ruthi is here for revenge. Since she and Jules are con artists, conning Esteban is the best way she knows of getting vengeance. Also, the money couldn't hurt. Jules is not here with her -- she's back at a nice resort colony making Esteban's baby.
OK, this is obviously a disaster waiting to happen. It's hard to read Ruthi's schemes of revenge and imagine any way this can have a happy ending. While Esteban is kind of feckless and oblivious, he has a half-sister Sol who is both protective of him and frighteningly smart and competent. She is also, as it happens, very attractive to Ruthi. So, Ruthi begins to enact her plan to reel Esteban in and stuff happens to Sol and to Ruthi.
At about a third of the way through the book, I began to discern a possibility for pulling off a happy ending. That was, for me, the main interest of the story -- watching Rebecca Fraimow engineer a plausible path. I'm not telling you there IS a happy ending. I'm not telling you there is NOT. But we need that possibility to make the story work -- the is-there-a-path-out-of-this-disaster suspense drove the story -- and it's very well done. There was even a twist near the end that I totally failed to see coming, although it made perfect sense.
When I was in High School, I saw the movie The Sting. In The Sting two small time con artists play a revenge con. It is impossible to watch the film and not come out of the theatre smiling, or even dancing a little with joy. (Well, it may not be literally impossible, but it certainly was not something I could do.) That's what Lady Eve's Last Con felt like. Now, I want to emphasize that aside from the points I've just mentioned, there is no similarity between the plots of The Sting and Lady Eve's Last Con. In particular, I'm not telling you whether or not Ruthi's con succeeds.
One thing that took me entirely by surprise (and the reason I'm marking this review a spoiler) was the Yiddishkeit. Ruthi and Jules grew up culturally Jewish. I seriously doubt that Ruthi keeps shabbat or eats kosher -- but I am quite confident that she would be comfortable doing both if she wanted to. And, although it is not huge, Ruthi's Yiddishkeit even has an essential plot function. There's also an explicit reference to Fiddler on the Roof.
Heist/con stories can be tremendous fun, and this one is. It left me smiling.
I received an advance reader copy of Lady Eve's Last Con from NetGalley and Rebellion. This review expresses my honest opinions.
JE Payne's ABB has everything you want in a fantasy adventure: humble but badass buddy soldiers, sorcerers, pretty girlAn everything fantasy adventure
JE Payne's ABB has everything you want in a fantasy adventure: humble but badass buddy soldiers, sorcerers, pretty girls, badass girls, pretty badass girl sorcerers, elder gods, a little romance... (It also has, in its title, a word that is absolutely forbidden in an Amazon review, for which reason I abbreviate it ABB.)
It was not unentertaining, and I read with pleasure most of the time. However, I was glad to reach the end, and I was left with a feeling of disappointment that I have trouble explaining. After all, I am a Fantasy and Science Fiction fan, and we have here all the kind of stuff here that is found in other books I love.
And that, I think, is the problem. ABB never surprises. I don't mean that it's predictable. If I roll a die and get a six, that is not surprising, even though it was unpredictable.
It is not easy to surprise. To surprise, you have to create an expectation, then break it. And not with a random something else: ideally it should be a bigger and better or more evil or impressively weirder something. ABB has the stuff in it that a fantasy adventure should have. But I never found myself saying, "Whoa! I wasn't expecting that!"
I thank NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for an advance reader copy of ABB. This review expresses my honest opinion.
Meet our first-person narrator Freya. She's a beautiful Norse woman who knows how to swing a sword. Her hair c**spoiler alert** True lust conquers all
Meet our first-person narrator Freya. She's a beautiful Norse woman who knows how to swing a sword. Her hair color is not at first mentioned, but we presume she's the blond pictured on the cover.
Meet Bjorn. He's a big, extraordinarily handsome black-haired warrior. Much of his conversation consists of boasts of his sexual prowess, and women he's favored talk to other women about how great he is in bed.
Freya and Bjorn meet cute (Freya literally throws a fish in his face), and of course they are immediately possessed by a desire to jump each other's bones. You know Freya feels this way because she's the narrator and you're in her head. You know the feeling is mutual because you're not an idiot -- besides, he eventually tells her. Before the end of the book they act on this desire, and we are presented with a detailed description of moist bits rubbing against other moist bits, along with the sizes of some of them. Both Freya and Bjorn belong to the "bigger is better" school of thought.
They do eventually use the "L"-word to describe their feelings for each other, two of them, in fact. "Love" is an "L"-word, and so is "lust". The first of these they use mostly when in the throes of the aforementioned bones-jumping, so to be honest, it was, for me, the "Lu" word that carried more conviction.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, then go for it. It was not mine, though. I am not a fan of romance novels, and this is not one, so you might think that would be fine. But I discovered that a novel that tries for romance and misses was even less to my taste.
What saved the book from a one or two- star rating was the swords and sorcery. We eventually get a revelation of gods and plots and stratagems that is rather good.
I thank NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reader copy of A Fate Inked in Blood. This review expresses my honest opinions.
Veris lives near an enchanted forest, the Elmever. Children who get lost in the forest never come out. PeThe fluid boundary between mystery and puzzle
Veris lives near an enchanted forest, the Elmever. Children who get lost in the forest never come out. People of the villages have learned to mourn those who go lost in the wood as if they were dead, for those who enter the forest to search for their lost children also never come out. With one exception: Veris herself once went into the forest to search for a child and returned with the child. That was years ago.
The Tyrant who rules over the country where Veris lives has two children. Last night they snuck out of the castle and went into the forest, looking for adventure, probably. The Tyrant has Veris brought to him and tells her
“You are to go into the woods again, and recover my children.”*
He will kill her family and raze her village if she fails. He is a cruel man who has done such things for far less reason in the past.
Veris walks into the forest. This description intrigued me:
Really, the problem was that people believed that there was some kind of . . . door, or gate, or at any rate some visible thing that let you enter the Elmever, and it was thought that this lured children in some way, tempted them with sparkle or song to step through it.
The truth was much more dangerous, Veris knew. For the world of those others was not at all through a doorway that alerted you to its presence, but was instead adjacent to the real one in a way that could not be perceived by human senses, and that was precisely why people went missing into it. At some point, you took a step, and you were simply there, and you would not see the difference between it and the true woods, and you would never take another step that led you back home.*
There are two kinds of questions that are hard to answer -- more, really, but we start with these two: mysteries and puzzles. It has been pointed out (by Malcolm Gladwell, among others) that these are different things. A puzzle has a right answer. A mystery does not -- it is an unknowable thing. But if you know anything of the history of ideas, you know that sometimes puzzles become mysteries and mysteries puzzles. Sometimes you have to find a different way of knowing. (The history of mathematics is full of examples.)
Here is the story as I saw it: to bring the children out, Veris must make puzzles of some of the mysteries of the Elmever. Although I doubt it is what Premee Mohamed had in mind, her description "At some point, you took a step, and you were simply there, and you would not see the difference between it and the true woods" felt to me like the imperceptible slip from puzzles -- things unknown -- to mysteries -- things unknowable. And to return Veris must do the opposite -- move from mystery to puzzle.
The actual story of what happens to Veris in the Elmever is far more concrete than that abstract question makes it sound. In fact, Veris meets things and fights things and talks to things and makes bargains. It becomes clear as the story progresses that we will not understand what Veris is doing unless we also know the story of her past foray into the forest, why she went, who she was pursuing, how she succeeded and how she failed. We do eventually learn these things.
I was left with a puzzle, and this is definitely a puzzle rather than a mystery: why is the book called Butcher of the Forest? Nothing that Veris encounters in the forest is referred to as a butcher, nor does anything obviously merit that description. I am left puzzled as to where the title of the book comes from. I am pretty sure Mohamed knows why she called it that, but I am clueless.
I really enjoyed this. It was not like anything I had read before. It is just the right kind of weird. Different readers will see different things in it.
I thank NetGalley and Tordotcom for an advance reader copy of Butcher of the Forest. This review expresses my honest opinions. Release date 27-Feb-2024.
*Quotes are from an advance reader copy of Butcher of the Forest and may change before publication. If necessary, this review will be corrected on the release date.
I loved Deke Moulton's debut novel Don't Want to Be Your Monster. It was a strikingly original vampire story for middle grade readers with the Best Vampires Ever! I am therefore sorry to report that their second novel, Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf, a middle grade novel about Jewish werewolves, did not hit the spot for me in quite the same way.
I was surprised to learn that Jewish werewolves are a thing. In their Author's Note, Moulton reveals that this surprised them, too
I didn’t even know we had our own werewolf mythology. Or that Jewish werewolf myth is built upon lines from Torah, and that rabbis, thousands of years ago, built a midrash around it (Midrash is a biblical exploration, like rabbinical fanfiction).*
So that was fun -- in fact, I learned about a bunch of things I had not previously been familiar with before. That was the best part.
The problem was that, as a novel, it didn't really work for me. Our hero Benji somehow never really came into focus. Benji suffers from anxiety attacks, and, judging from the end matter, Moulton meant that to be an important facet of Benji's character, but I was barely aware of it as a distinctive trait -- that is, as something different from the anxiety everyone often feels.
Also, I found the story disappointing. It is, in unfairly sketchy outline: "Jewish community is pressured/attacked by bigots, then our hero makes everything all right with a Big Speech to one of the bigots." I couldn't make myself believe the "Big Speech solves everything" part.
Finally, for the Princess Bride question, "Is this a kissing book?"
Yes, yes it is.
I thank NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reader copy of Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf. This review expresses my honest opinions. Release date 2-Jul-2024.
*The quote is from an advance reader copy and may change before publication. If necessary, this review will be corrected on the release date.
What Feasts at Night is the second of T. Kingfisher's Sworn Soldier books. It is thus the return of Alex Easton, who is the sworn soldier after whom the series is named. It is also Alex's return to kan homeland Gallacia. (Remember that Gallacian has special pronouns, ka/kan, for soldiers.) Although Alex returns to kan homeland in What Feasts at Night, Gallacia is not kan home. If home is where the heart is, then Alex's home is Paris.
Indeed, the book begins with Alex riding through Gallacia and complaining, which is something of a Gallacian core competence, Gallacia being a nation uniquely suited to the pursuit of complaint as a full-time occupation. Alex and kan batman Angus are on their way to a hunting lodge that Alex owns, having inherited it some years ago. Alex's principle complaint is that ka doesn't want to be here. ka would rather be in Paris, and ka claims that Angus blackmailed kan into this visit. Angus of course stoutly denies this, then proceeds to reapply the blackmail. As we learned in What Moves the Dead, Angus admires Eugenia Potter. Mrs Potter (Beatrix Potter's aunt) is a formidable Englishwoman and avid mycologist. Angus leaned on Alex to invite her to visit kan lodge in Gallacia in order to experience Gallacian misery, molds, and mushrooms firsthand. Potter saved Alex and Angus from a horrible fate at the Usher mansion in Ruravia, so Angus argues that they owe her gratitude.
This plan runs into some hitches, and a plot ensues. You will not be surprised to learn that the plot involves sinister things wot feast at night.
For my money the plot serves mainly as a vehicle to illuminate Alex's character. Alex is a retired soldier. Ka fought in a war with Bulgaria. Although Gallacia is fictional, "Alex’s war is a very real one, the Serbian– Bulgarian War of 1885." as Kingfisher informs us in her Acknowledgments. She adds, "I can’t possibly do it justice in a paragraph, but it’s worth reading about if you ever want an object lesson in how not to invade Bulgaria. (Please do not invade Bulgaria under any circumstances.)" I'll keep that in mind next time I get the urge to invade Bulgaria.
The ambiguity of the preposition in the phrase "fought with Bulgaria" is intentional. As a result of these experiences Alex suffers from Soldier's Heart, an old and more evocative name for what we now call PTSD. The events of What Feasts at Night give Alex cause to display extraordinary courage and generosity, in kan characteristically understated way. To my mind, kan debt to Mrs Potter is paid forward with interest.
If the author were anyone other than Kingfisher, I would describe What Feasts at Night as an unusual combination of sensitivity and humor. But it is not unusual for her -- this is what Kingfisher does!
I thank NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for an advance reader copy of What Feasts at Night. This review expresses my honest opinions.
Pinquickle's Folly: The Buccaneers is the first novel in a new fantasy series by R.A. Salvatore. Therefore it has two jobs: introduce new interesting characters and their world and tell a story about them, and also solve the Act One problem for the series as a whole. I confess that before Pinquickle's Folly I had never read anything by Salvatore. But it was immediately apparent that this was not his first rodeo. Thus, for me, Pinquickle's Folly was an unusual combination of two pleasures: that of recognizing that I had put myself in safe, experienced hands, and that of a new (to me) voice. Pinquickle's Folly takes place in the world of Salvatore's DemonWars Saga -- a useful thing to know if you want to find maps.
The principal characters of Pinquickle's Folly, pictured on the cover, are the Xoconai sailor Quauh (pronounced Coo-wow or Coo-ah) and the powrie sailor Benny McBenoyt. The Xoconai, who consider themselves to be the Master Race or words to that effect, have recently conquered most of this world. They despise others and refer to lesser peoples as "sidhe" -- goblins. Xoconai control of the seas is not complete -- pirates and privateers prey on Xoconai shipping. As an officer in the Xoconai navy, Quauh is responsible for protecting shipping from the sidhe. The Xoconai are more-or-less ordinary humans, although their faces are brightly colored like those of Mandrills. Powrie are not human -- Benny is one of those whom the Xoconai would call a sidhe pirate.
You can already see from the cover that Quauh and Benny become colleagues. How that happens, and how they fight their enemies is the story of Pinquickle's Folly. It's a rousing sea adventure story. It is somewhat conventional, in that the usual elements of ship-handling and sail are there. However, the battles are fought with weapons very different from those you might be familiar with from Horatio Hornblower or Patrick O'Brian -- indeed, weapons technology is an important part of the story.
I thank NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reader copy of Pinquickle's Folly: The Buccaneers. This review expresses my honest opinions.
The publisher has done an unusually good job of summarizing Linda Crotta Brennan's The Selkie's Daughter, so I won't bother. Read the publisher's blurb, if you haven't done so already!
What you will perhaps not realize from the blurb is how well this book evokes Nova Scotia and the Celtic legends on which it is based. Each chapter begins with a verse of song about Neve, Finn MacCool, and the selkies. These verses are so well chosen -- when I read them, I hear them as song
I am human upon dry land. I swim as selkie on the sea. And when I’m far and far frae land, My home it is in Sule Skerrie.
Sule Skerry is a real place. However, you could not get there from Nova Scotia in a few hours in a small boat, as The Selkie's Daughter implies -- it's on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Nova Scotia of The Selkie's Daughter is vivid. It's a hard land -- this past Nova Scotia. I assume that children in Nova Scotia now have cell phones and modern schools and, like all Canadians, are covered by Health Insurance. Even the selkies!
It's a beautiful story of past time and old stories that you won't find in Grimm's Fairy Tales or even, as far as I know, a Walt Disney film.
I thank NetGalley and Holiday House for an advance reader copy of The Selkie's Daughter. This review expresses my honest opinion.
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