If I had a nickel for every book I’d read recently where I went into it not really knowing much more than the cover and title and suddenly horror novel, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Which probably should have clued me in.

It’s a fascinating story that starts out fairly tame. A southern woman settled into a life of housewife–a life of long days, unthanked by her family.

“Why do you pretend what we do is nothing?” she asked. “Every day, all the chaos and messiness of life happens and every day we clean it all up. Without us, they would just wallow in filth and disorder and nothing of any consequence would ever get done. Who taught you to sneer at that? I’ll tell you who. Someone who took their mother for granted.”

And to brighten her days…

Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club.

That is, until a strange man moves in next door. With a mysterious aversion to sunlight.

Uh huh.

At some point, the book really gets into that ‘runaway freight train’ feeling. There are some serious body horror scenes in this book and it gets increasingly dark. I mean, it started with biting an ear off, but it goes quite a bit further than that…

Yeah, definitely a horror novel.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The American South housewife theme isn’t something I read overly much and it it’s interesting counterpoint to the vampiric horror. They’re both great examples of ‘pretty and polite on the surface–and absolutely not underneath’.

Worth a read, I’d say.

Grandma always said to me that you never do things for people to get something in return. That is the white man’s way of living. You do it because they need you. You do it because if you don’t, no one else will.

Well that’s quite a book!

In a word, it’s an urban fantasy about a Diné (Navajo) forensic photographer that can see ghosts. But it’s so much more than that.

First, I love the main character: Rita Todacheene. Someone that can see ghosts and a cop (or cop adjacent) is something I’ve seen before, but it being a forensic photographer gave a particular poignancy to the whole thing. And the Diné angle was fascinating–I’ve seen a bit of it in other urban fantasy books, but they have a particular way of looking at death which really plays interestingly against someone that can see ghosts!

As a bit of setting, the attention to detail on the cameras and the craft of photography was a really interesting touch. Rita, growing up poor but from a whole line of photographers. You really get the feeling she knows and loves everything about it which really gives a certain feel to the story.

Content warning though: We do get a number of descriptions of what exactly she’s photographing. And some of those are grisly. At least we don’t get the pictures? (I don’t actually know for sure, I listened to this on audiobook…)

Structurally, the book alternates between the present day–Rita trying to solve crimes and stay mostly sane with ghosts hounding here–and the past: Rita’s time growing up with her grandmother on a reservation, first coming to terms with life, death, and all it means to her specifically. It’s a really nice contrast, pulling the two stories together.

Plotwise, it’s not the most complicated of mysteries. You mostly have enough clues to figure out where this is going, but oh the ride to get there. It’s still well worth it.

I learned early that no amount of prayer or smoke or love was ever going to change the fact that these lights wanted to talk to me. Even at three years old, I knew it was something that deeply terrified my grandma and our medicine man. It was something that I was going to have to hide from them. As I got older, I taught myself how to look beyond the ghosts and mute their voices.

I’m really going for that ’earliest published book’ for this coming Year in Reviews aren’t I?

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

Overall, it’s one of those stories you expect to know what happens even before you read it. Frankenstein¹ creates LIFE in a form stitched together from dead bodies. But it’s super ugly, so he drives his creation off. Said creation isn’t a huge fan of this and goes on a murderous rampage. The end.

And yet, that’s not entirely right?

It’s an oddly formatted story to a much more modern reader. It’s epistolary (told in letters and journals), which reminds me a lot of Dracula and nested. We have letters from a sea captain, the account of Victor Frankenstein, and then finally the monster himself .

It’s a neat style, but I think a bit more could have been done with it. And it’s never really a great sign when one of the main viewpoints (Frankenstein himself) is just hard to read. He’s not likeable and depressed a lot of the time.

Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.

Which again, I get it. But it doesn’t make for a thrilling read.

It’s billed as one of the earlier examples of science fiction, but it’s not really science fiction. It does deal with the idea of bringing life–but never really gets into it. It’s setting as much as anything, something to set the story in motion.

Alternatively, it’s also called early modern Horror, but … it’s not really horror in either the jump scare or thriller or cosmic senses of the word. There’s some sense of inevitability–the creation is coming!–but it never really amounts to much.

Overall, I think it’s worth having read mostly in a completionist sense. And really, I’m glad I listened to this one on audiobook–they have a way of just keeping you going when you might otherwise get stuck and put the book down.

Onward!

Whenever I come across a “I’ve read all of The Dresden Files, now what?” discussion, one of the series that always seems to come up is Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London. They’re not entirely the same, but I get why people cross recommend them.

Basically, we have a London cop who stumbles upon a mysterious killing, questions a ghost, gets recruited by the ‘magical’ side of the London police, ends up meeting and befriending several rivers (see, the title! Also, it ends up making more sense in the story), and saves the day.

“Are they really gods?"

“I never worry about theological questions,” said Nightingale. “They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen’s peace - that makes them a police matter.”

More or less.

I think my favorite part of the series (so far) is the humor, most especially the sheer Britishness of it (not being British, I have no idea how accurate it all is, but it’s good enough for me!).

He was from Yorkshire, or somewhere like that, and like many Northerners with issues, he’d moved to London as a cheap alternative to psychotherapy.

Oh, and also picking fun at it’s own genre of course.

“You put a spell on the dog,” I said as we left the house.
“Just a small one,” said Nightingale.
“So magic is real,” I said. “Which makes you a…what?”
“A wizard.”
“Like Harry Potter?”
Nightingale sighed. “No,” he said. “Not like Harry Potter.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not a fictional character,” said Nightingale.”

Second up, the introductions of magic. Any world where the characters try to treat magic as a science and figure out how in the world it really works is a great one in my book.

There’s an awful lot of hinted at worldbuilding there. I hope and expect to see a lot more of that in future books. We’ll just have to see which way all that goes.

Also also, having recently decided that learning Latin was just a great idea as our main character (although for (un)fortunately different reasons I suppose):

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

😄

Spoilers, I guess. 😄

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this book. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!

I’ve got a theory… it could be bunnies.

“We never joke about bunnies, Bunny.”

Man, that is quite a book.

It’s part college experience–and not just any college experience, but one at a super small liberal arts school, focusing on writing and poetry and all that… to a degree that I (engineering school) couldn’t even tell you for sure if it’s satire or just how that works.

It’s part a story about loneliness and fitting in–which ties in well with the college experience. About seeing the ‘popular girls’, first from the outside, and then all too intimately.

And of course (not that I knew this going into it; figured it out pretty quick though), it’s part horror story. It’s a slow burning thrilling, but there’s more than a bit of the surreal and body horror bits of the genre.

All together, it’s an intense sort of read, sort of like a car crash, but in a good way. (Yeah. I know.)

It takes a while to get going, slowly getting more and more… off. And then everything skids hard to one side. You just can’t look away. You have to see what happens next.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience.

I think.

Certainly not a book for everyone, but there are more than a few that I expect would get a (bunny?) kick out of it.

read more...

Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces.

Any time you ask about modern ‘weird fiction’ / weird ecologies / weird cities. China Miéville and Perdido Street Station almost always come up. Turns out… that’s for a good reason. Why in the world did I take so long to read this book?

Overall, this book really shines when it comes to weird¹ worldbuilding. Half-bird, half-human creature? Not that weird. Half-bug creatures? Where the women have a scarab beetle instead of ahead and the males are non-sapient grubs? Weird. Frog people? Re-animates and constructs? Plant people? All living together in a grimy steam-powered, airship and tech and magic driven mess of a metropolis?

Weird¹.

And wonderful.

Overall, this was exactly the sort of book that I love and I’m glad to see there are other books in the same world, if not with the same characters. I want more!

Conversely, if you’re not into weird fiction, more than a touch of body horror, or a book where everyone necessarily get a happy ending (or even survive the story)… maybe skip this one. It’s dark. And that’s sort of the point.

Side note: I listened to this on audiobook and I loved the narration. Perhaps my favorite thing? Whenever the narrator said Issac’s full name. Grimnebulin! 😄

Art is something you choose to make… it’s a bringing together of… of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.

read more...

Well that’s a surprisingly fun book!

In a nutshell:

The year is A.D. 793; Jack and his sister have been kidnapped by Vikings and taken to the court of Ivar the Boneless and his terrifying half-troll wife; but things get even worse when Jack finds himself on a dangerous quest to find the magical Mimir’s Well in a far-off land, with his sister’s life forfeit if he fails.

I started out reading this since it’s a great (and rare) fit for the 2024 Book Bingo ‘Bard’ square, since both Jack and his mentor are explicitly called ‘Bards’ (even if, interestingly music is a relatively small part of their training), but it ends up being so much more.

It’s got Vikings–including digging into what makes them who they are and how they think differently from the people Jack grew up with.

Just say no to pillaging.

It’s got monsters–the Vikings for one, along with Trolls (sometimes more human that anyone), dragons, ravens, and giant spiders.

“Norns keep the tree Yggdrassil alive. Without them, nothing would exist… They show up when you’re born and decide what kind of life you’re going to have."
“I guess they were in a rotten mood when I came along,” Jack said. He loaded up the water bag and supplies.
“Me too,” Thorgil said gravely.

Look around you…Feel the wind, smell the air. Listen to the birds and watch the sky. Tell me what’s happening in the wide world.

It’s got magic. Bardic magic. Shapeshifting. Talking to animals. Calling up / banishing storms. Norse mythology. Norns. Yggdrasil.

“It’s my fault," said Rune. “He’s untrained and likely to overdo things.”
“Like turning the queen bald. That was a good trick, though.” Olaf smiled.”

I’ve absolutely no idea if it’s particularly historically accurate (barring the above of course :)), but it’s a fun read and I greatly enjoyed it. Now I really want to know what happens next!

Side note: Great fun for an audiobook, lightly accented. Just enough to get into the feel of the book all the more!

Second side note: I totally caught the Jack and Jill reference from when we first learned her birth name. But man. Them just outright using that as an in universe poem was fun.

That one has been on my list for years now. It’s just got such a fun title!

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

Now, having read it… I think that I enjoyed it?

read more...

We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

This year book bingo has a ‘Underground’ category–and I’ve been meaning to actually go back and read more Verne. Seemed like a great chance to check out Journey to the Center of the Earth!

In a nutshell, it’s a quintessential Jules Verne adventure. A student and professor find an old manuscript purporting to describe a path to the very center of the Earth… and off they go to Snæfellsjökull (Icelandic is such a lovely language) and down into the Earth.

From that, it’s one adventure after another. Down caves, running out of food and water, nearly dying–and all manner of completely scientifically improbable findings along the way.

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

I think the biggest difficulty in this book is probably entirely tied up with the fact that it’s 160 years old. It’s just written in a very different style. People just … don’t talk like that. But it does make it feel amusingly old-timey, which I actually like. (I wonder how much of that is the translation?)

Worth a read. Going to have to read a few more of these!

Yeah, this definitely fits this year’s ‘Judge A Book By Its Cover’ on the [[2024 Book Bingo]]. I mean… look at it! I love the title and have a soft spot for the illustrated manuscript style.

And then on top of that, it’s actually quite a delightful book as well. Win win!

I mention this because that’s how the world changes. It’s either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don’t notice.

In a nutshell, it’s the story of an alternate history Earth. Take a roughly medieval european tech level empire and an army corps of engineers (they build bridges) out on their own. Add a force somehow conquering everything, leaving said engineers really the only remaining hope. And then stick them in a city, the only hope to hold off against a siege.

But what really shines (for me–and your milage really may vary on this one) is the tone. The main character is competant (perhaps too much so at times) and wonderfully snarky.

I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it.

Things that have always been done? About to be undone–in the name of defending the city.

My belief is, either you understand things or you understand people. Nobody can do both. Frankly, I’m happier with things. I understand stuff like tensile strength, shearing force, ductility, work hardening, stress, fatigue. I know the same sort of things happen with people, but the rules are subtly different. And nobody’s ever paid for my time to get to know about people.

Yeah… he knows people better than he claims.

The people turn out to be—well, people; a collective noun for all those individual men and women, none of them perfect, some of them downright vicious, most of them monumentally stupid. As stupid as the emperor, the great hereditary lords, the priestly hierarchs, the General Staff and the Lords of the Admiralty, the merchant princes and the organised crime barons.

Anyways. You’ll know right away if you like this book or not. I loved it. Give it a try.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. I can’t remember offhand where that quote comes from; it was something to do with some bunch of wild-eyed idealists overthrowing the tyrant so they could become tyrants themselves. No good will have come of it, you can be sure. The people; God help us.