There are moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and it’s not often they turn out to be the same moment.

It’s island life–a small town, far out on the water that lives and dies by the one big event a year. Just in this case, that one event is a race involving murderous meat eating horses that come from the sea and would like eating the racers just as much as carrying them. It’s a magical combination of worldbuilding, with the quiet island life and violence of the sea horses complementing one another nicely.

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Ashby eyed the readouts on his control screen. “I swear, our engines have never been running this smooth.”

Sissix spoke without looking up from her navigation controls. “That’s what happens when you take two easily-bored techs on a long haul.”

“Hmm. Maybe we should do this more often.”

That made Sissix’s head turn. She gave him a look that could melt the hull. “Let’s not.”

That’s a great book. It’s a slice of life story, set on small starship travelling the galaxy chock full of some of the most fascinating and delightful characters I’ve read in a scifi novel in a long time. There’s not particularly a huge over-arching plot. Instead, our intrepid band of oddballs is off on a long mission (it’s a Long Way after all) to the edge (center?) of ‘known’ space. Really, we’re just on a trip with them, through all the ups and downs, the drama and relationships. It’s exactly the sort of story I didn’t even know I was looking for. Well worth a read.

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Since before I could remember, Mamá had taught me the legends of the criaturas. They were creatures unlike humans, children of the Desert goddess, who the Great Namer created from dust and words. Mama taught me the difference between animal criaturas, who were made to fill the desert, and dark criaturas, who were made to attack the descendants of the Sun god—us. But her advice for dealing with both types was the same.

That’s a delightful book. It’s a quick read (middle grade) with lovely worldbuilding (albeit a bit of whiplash reading it back to back with Black Sun. It’s got a touch of southwest US / Mexican mythology with Coyote myths, El Sombrerón//La Chupacabra/La Llorona and others, brujas, and touch of Pokemon/creature collection with whole loads of hearts and the power of one little girl trying to save her sister and instead–perhaps–accidentally changing the world along the way. It’s a great read and something that I’m definitely going to put onto the list to read to my children.

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More lore around the Constantine line, hints of destiny thwarted before birth, a magic stick, and a mage hunting shark man.

Good times. Good times.

Also: Tell me there’s a series about Johanna Constantine. That’s quite the story of hers at the end of the volume.

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“Your father thought he could forbid me to wear this,” she said calmly enough, but the boy could hear the thread of pain in her voice, the places where deprivation and sorrow had left their cracks. “But your father doesn’t understand that this is the way of my ancestors, and their ancestors before them. He cannot stop a Carrion Crow woman from dressing to honor the crow god, particularly on a day as sacred as today.”

That’s a magical book. It’s got dark and beautiful worldbuilding, some absolutely bizarre and still somehow eminently relatable characters, and quite the cliffhanger of an ending (spoilers I suppose). Well worth reading.

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On one level, it’s about fatherhood. Apollo grew up without a dad and vows he’s going to do better by his own son. And right from the beginning–a surprise delivery no one around was quite ready for–he does everything he can. As a father, with my youngest about the age of Apollo’s… when things go sideways. But we’ll come back to that.

On another level, it’s about motherhood. Emma had all sorts of issues of her own, but she and Apollo seem absolutely delightful together. So when the first signs of postpartum depression start, it’s terrifying and entirely too relatable to many parents out there. New babies are hard, not going to lie, and everyone deals with that completely differently.

On a third, it’s about fairy tales and other stories. The stories we read to our children and the stories we tell ourselves.

And on a last level, it’s about magic. There are hints right from the beginning that there’s something strange in this world. From Apollo’s dreams of his absent father, to the magic inheriant in old books and libraries, to finding a postcard from Aleister Crowley… there’s little in the way of obviously supernatural for most of the book… but that doesn’t last.

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Constantine gets his Mojo back.

Joyride is a pretty crazy story which may yet come back to haunt us. All His Engines is even better, getting some Aztec flair in line. A good volume.

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Well that’s an interesting saga. Heaven, Hell, and… a Third Place. Mythology certainly goes some interesting places in Hellblazer. I enjoyed it.

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Physics of the Impossible is a really great book. It goes into a wide variety of primarily science fictional topics in decreasingly order of likelihood and gets into how each works (so far as they do work with what we know now) and what it would take to make them possible. There’s just enough scientific background that I understood most of it and could stretch for the rest, with pointers for what to search for to learn more, which is always a good way to go.

Worth a read! One interesting point is how many of these seeded ideas for more stories in the future! Onward!

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All about that little issue of Constantine and one very very long day.

There’s a lot of crazy things going on better my here. Quiet a story… where can it possibly go next?

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