VEN.CO, sapphic Indigenous fantasy drenched in gynergy to keep you sane this Yule

VEN.CO
CHERIE DIMALINE
William Morrow (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: VenCo, a front corporation for a CoVen (get it?) is a really fun gynergetic fantasy of what it would take to overwhelm the patriarchy and restore women to power.

Do you need something else to get one for this hijacked-by-jesus (who has a sly off-kilter cameo) sacred solstice holiday?

How about this: Lucky, our PoV character, is at a low ebb when we meet her...she's been struggling along, caring for her dementia-ridden paternal grandmother, scraping the money to survive, and now...the capitalist axe comes down, they're losing their home. Relatable, if in a grim way, to most all of us in or after middle age. Plot twist: It's now that Lucky discovers she's a witch, and the coven that's forming needs her...but not in Toronto, in New Orleans. The coven is forming to bring the world that Lucky's been angry with for most of her life, patriarchal racist exploitive horror that it is, to an end. She's got to assist the assembled women...including transfem Freya, explicitly accepted as a woman...in locating and assembling the spoons that'll generate the power they need to accomplish the task.

There are lots of names that don't always have solid characters attached, there is a notable holeyness to the plot, there is a powerful aura of wish fulfillment here. There is also an even-handed treatment of adversarial relationships. There is a demonization of Patriarchy, it's true, but not (to my surprise) of men.

The reason I gave it four stars is that this story was just plain fun to read. I wish it had been a wee tiny tidge tighter of plot. I'm not going to hold it up as a best of my reading year book. But I loved feeling so at home with Lucky, her deeply stressful life, and her middlescent discovery of her powers and her purpose. I thoroughly agree, in 2024, with the need to smash the Patriarchy and all its boosters and adherents. I was deeply gruntled by the transfem Freya simply...being...unremarkably one of the coven.

If you're going to be among the unenlightened, even the benighted, this coming Yule, bring this on your Kindle. You'll have an escape into a much nicer version of the world at hand, and a little spirit boost as the impending events of 2025 loom ever larger.

WELLNESS, a truly moving, involving, deeply-felt trip inside Commitment with a capital "C"

WELLNESS
NATHAN HILL
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.

Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The struggles that all who form, and sustain, the heavy bonds of matrimony are everfreen plots because most of us have some experience of them. It doesn't matter how much you love each other, it matters how committed you each are to the friendship you share with your chosen partner. Love ebbs and flows, common interests wax and wane, people grow and change, and what makes couple-stories so endlessly interesting is how they are shown managing...or not...these deeply familiar challenges.

It is absolutely clear to me that Author Hill, in his second novel after the startlingly assured The Nix, has honed his craft to a sharp edge. He doesn't shy away from the difficult or the painful parts of commitment. The hateful, hurtful things people say when they are in a deeply enmeshed relationship are both unique and common. There is a certain kind of dynamic in US couples of different socioeconomic backgrounds that's central to this book. We are taught that ours is a classless society, but it is not. The wealth of one family is always a weapon in the couplehood of one its members; a more effective one when the other partner is not from equal wealth.

That bludgeon goes both ways, of course. After a child is born, dynamics change, often for the worse, as incompatible parenting goals are a major cause of divorce. In this story, the couple...a daughter of wealth and privilege, a psychologist, and a deeply wounded soul who feels shackled and devalued by her working class artist husband...are twenty years into a commitment neither can remember why they made.

It absolutely does NOT help that they're living in a surveillance-capitalist society that valorizes getting and spending, when neither has a set of core values instilled from solid bases in love to resist these relentless pressures. It is obvious Author Hill has little use for facile patching-up life hacks or quick-fix lifestyle gurus. He dedicates a lot of space to social media's machiavellian algorithm driven effects. (Coulda been less for all of me, but hey...) The thesis is, however, what good is hacking or fixing stuff too fragile and hollow to last? Your old marriage is not delivering the same thrills...move on, get something new and better.

Right?

Not necessarily. Not even desirably. Open your mind to the possibility that just maybe your life doesn't need to be fixed. Maybe instead your relationship to your life needs to be recalibrated, reassessed, revalued. This being a message I resonate with, I found the read compelling and involving.

Does learning to make the best of it mean settling? Mean getting less out of life? Or is it instead the way to find deeper, more important ways of being who you are inside this long-term commitment to yourself, and your partner, to be well and truly together?

Wellness is that endlessly relatable journey, set in a time where even asking that kind of question isn't encouraged by anything around us. Anyone in a couple, past or presnt, ongoing or ending, will find a lot of deeply interesting details to muse over. A lot of richly textured background to admire, even envy. A lot of deep and scary emotions to batten on from the safe remove of fiction.

I'd rate this the full five of five were it not for what felt to me like the author's rather-too-evident need to overshare. A funny thing to say in a review of a novel about intimacy, I know, but I'm left a bit overfamiliar wuth his opionons of the self-help/new-age/quick-fixery. A couple times, okay; after a while, what is this really about, Author Hill?

I'm highly recommending this read for all partners in a long-term relationship to load onto the /kindle this #Booksgiving. It is manna from heaven to feel seen in stressful times; family "Togetherness" is rough any time, but now...? Bring some independent comfort with you this Yule.

DAUGHTERS OF THE NILE, extraordinary sapphic family saga

DAUGHTERS OF THE NILE
ZAHARA BARRI
Unbound (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.15 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A bold multi-generational debut novel exploring themes of queerness, revolution and Islamic sisterhood.

Paris, 1940. The course of Fatiha Bin-Khalid’s life is changed forever when she befriends the Muslim feminist Doria Shafik. But after returning to Egypt and dedicating years to the fight for women’s rights, she struggles to reconcile her political ideals with the realities of motherhood.

Cairo, 1966. After being publicly shamed when her relationship with a bisexual boyfriend is revealed, Fatiha’s daughter is faced with an impossible decision. Should Yasminah accept a life she didn’t choose, or will she leave her home and country in pursuit of independence?

Bristol, 2011. British-born Nadia is battling with an identity crisis and a severe case of herpes. Feeling unfulfilled (and after a particularly disastrous one-night stand), she moves in with her old-fashioned Aunt Yasminah and realises that she must discover her purpose in the modern world before it’s too late.

Following the lives of three women from the Bin-Khalid family, Daughters of the Nile is an original and darkly funny novel that examines the enduring strength of female bonds. These women are no strangers to adversity, but they must learn from the past and relearn shame and shamelessness to radically change their futures.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A powerfully imagined story of how very lucky we are to be alive at this moment in world history, when even sixty lousy years ago...within my lifetime!...options for women, for gay men, and for overall independence from patriarchy were as unimaginable as escape from the divine right of kings were three hundred years ago. While this story of a family's women moving from tradition to liberation is a carefully thought-out demonstration of hurdles failed, hurdles overcome, and hurdles only now hoving into view, it has a structural weakness. Most multiple-timeline stories have this same weakness: As we move from timeframe to timeframe, focusing a different woman in each, we lose forward momentum. It takes reading time to recover the investment made within each timeframe. Yasminah is indeed a constant, though not always foregrounded, presence; this helps with, but doesn't overcome my issue.

It mattered to me because the locations should have felt different in really evocative ways...Paris, Cairo, Bristol might as well be on different planets!...but I had to refocus my emotional temperature to a new main character. I'm not trying to be unkind or dissuasive; I really enjoyed this journey through the world's astonishingly rapid growth, and equally disheartening failure to learn lessons from past failures.

It's a very inexpensive Kindlebook. I'd tell any of my women readers, especially the sapphic ones, to get this all loaded up for solidarity's sake. Your family "Togetherness" will be that much easier to bear if you read about an earlier generation's struggles. We all need to know we're not alone, and part of that is knowing we're not the first either.

It is a fine piece of writing, and of story-telling; it *just* fails at greatness for this old man reader.

THE WAGES OF SIN, deeply disappointing alt-hist

THE WAGES OF SIN
HARRY TURTLEDOVE
CAEZIK SF & Fantasy
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: A terrifying tale about HIV spreading in the early sixteenth century by an author, Publisher Weekly calls “The Master of Alternate History.”

What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. A patriarchal society reacts to this devastating disease in the only way it knows it sequesters women as much as possible, limiting contacts between the sexes except for married couples. While imperfect, such drastic actions do limit the spread of the disease.

The ‘Wasting’ (HIV) has caused devasting destruction throughout the known world and severely limited the development of technology as well, creating a mid-nineteenth century England and London almost unrecognizable to us. This is the world Viola is born into. Extremely intelligent and growing up in a house full of medical books which she reads, she dreams of travelling to far-off places, something she can only do via books since her actions and movements are severely restricted by both law and custom.

Meticulously researched and exquisitely detailed in a way only a master like Harry Turtledove can do, this book is a tour-de-force from one of the best historical and alternate history writers ever to write in the genre.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Big ideas chopped to bits, tossed around some, then left to collapse where they collided. Are we in the 1509 Congolese-disease plot? The 1850s jerkoff's plot? (That is more literal than figurative here.) What made me read the book was Turtledove. Why I finished it was Turtledove. I disliked its underdeveloped alt-hist; I deeply disliked the crude and demeaning language, though both period and setting appropriate; I never felt as though, unlike a certain character, the story ever got near a climax as Viola and Peter, the straight people whose story I expected (not unreasonably) this to be, spend the entire story apart. Then, after a betrayal, a confession, and a shocking comeuppance(!), all conducted by letters between them, there's a wedding and...

...off you and I go. Contracts all fulfilled, we have a story thay does the absolute bare-bones minimum.This can't be all, thought I, but indeed it was. Please note there is absolutely not more than one tiny whiff of gayness, of sodomy as an act, of the merest hint of the existence of queers at all. In three hundred pages about AIDS.

Now it's the poor straight women get all the fallout of the AIDS epidemic because, I guess, there weren't gay people in 1509 Congo (great, let's put the source of the STD plague in Africa...at least it's a change from South America's factual syphilis plague...then switch to straight people in whiter-than-white England! Ignoring Africa thereafter! It's the twenty-fucking-first ventury, colonialism is on the cross so let's drop it, k?)

So I think I'm being pretty magnanimous with two stars.

EXORDIA, rich, immersive story to block out the world's noise

EXORDIA
SETH DICKINSON
Tor Books
$29.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time. it’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now. It wouldn’t be narratively complete.”

Anna Sinjari―refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker―has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. While humanity reels from disaster, she must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A species (!) of hard sci fi from a writer previously celebrated in the fantasy field for The Traitor Baru Cormorant, here blending queer representation with cosmic horror via military sci-fi in the paranoid Cold-War mode, heavily Cthulhu-ized.

That sounds like something I'd hate. Why didn't I?

Seth Dickinson. He has a deft touch with humor to lighten the darkness, irony to show the urgency of perspective, and unflinching realism to get the reader's investment in the stakes. Which are, I know this will surprise you, existential for Humanity.

On the nose, in our present political and environmental climate? I thought so going in. I think so now. However, there's a reason I recommend this story for your immersion and entertainment anyway. It is about the ways and means used to accomplish political goals while using people's fears and anxieties to motivate them into actions that are genuinely necessary. It takes us into the labyrinth of tech-dominated institutions of force apllication, and shows us the internal conflicts that impact everything done or not done in these institutions. The stakes are often secondary to the purposes of the instituion's inmates.

Yet...in the end, after much troubling back-and-forth...the people are clearly all working for something they see as Right and Good. No matter what outcome eventuates, someone's plans will fail, and someone else's will sorta-kinda work. Will anyone be fully happy? No. The way the book's structured, the changing PoVs are the way to keep this story from devolving into Us-v-Them predictability. Whose ideas and goals you empathize with really isn't the point. It's recognizing the goals and ideas matter TO THEM, and using that knowledge to get what *you* want.

A hard leap to make, as witness the fact that so few ever make it. Author Seth shows the reader the idea of it with startling clarity and not a little dark humor. The results...you'll discover the specifics...are exactly and precisely what the actions of all the characters add up to. There is no deus ex machina here. There is, in the second half, a lot of science to go with your fiction, mostly physics.

I typed that sentence with a sinking heart. I know some significant fraction of my readers just went *click* into the off position. It is, of course, entirely y'all's privilege...but please hear me out. Your prior knowledge of physics would enrich the uses of it. Your entire ignorance of it will not in any way diminish the force of its uses in the story. You read about magic without understanding how it works, this is essentially the same thing. The scientists are casting spells on ushabtis, not writing code to make drones work in concert...it's all a matter of looking at the technology talk in the proper storytelling spirit.

Appeal made. You decide. What you'll miss, if you ignore my recommendation of this read, is a cracking good story about how people, real people with needs and wants and ideals, get together to accomplish goals in the real world. That story will, I wager, appeal to readers of technothrillers, geopolitical spy stories, and SF gulpers as we head into the season where a big, immersive read will keep you from needing to pay attention to Aunt Lurlene's stories about her neighbors you've never met and couldn't care less about, or your nephew's reprehensible politics.

ROB GREENE'S PAGE: The First Planets series, perfect shut-out-the-world alt-hist space opera

MERUCRY RISING (First Planets #1)
RWW GREENE
Angry Robot Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Alternative history with aliens, an immortal misanthrope and SF tropes aplenty

Even in a technologically-advanced, Kennedy-Didn’t-Die alternate-history, Brooklyn Lamontagne is going nowhere fast. The year is 1975, thirty years after Robert Oppenheimer invented the Oppenheimer Nuclear Engine, twenty-five years after the first human walked on the moon, and eighteen years after Jet Carson and the Eagle Seven sacrificed their lives to stop the alien invaders.

Brooklyn just wants to keep his mother’s rent paid, earn a little scratch of his own, steer clear of the cops, and maybe get laid sometime in the near future. Simple pleasures, right? But a killer with a baseball bat and a mysterious box of 8-track tapes is about to make his life real complicated…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: 8-track tapes! How I hated them...annoying clunky things vastly overcomplicated and bad at their job. Cassettes were a boon and a blessing.

Still and all, I'd put up with the sodding things if it meant Moonbases and Mars colonies when I was sixteen.

Thanks, Rob...this world scratches my itch. This is a timeline I'd've loved living in, so this chance to visit it was really welcome.

This was a re-read in advance of reading book two, below. Here is my 2022 full review.

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EARTH RETROGRADE (First Planets #2)
RWW GREENE
Angry Robot Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Becoming the planet's most (in)famous human has not changed Brooklyn Lamontagne one bit, but the time has come for him to choose where his allegiances really lie.

The United Nations is working to get everyone off Earth by the deadline—set by the planet’s true owners, the aliens known as the First. It’s a task made somewhat easier by a mysterious virus that rendered at least fifty percent of humanity unable to have children. Meanwhile, the USA and the USSR have set their sights on Mars, claiming half a planet each.

Brooklyn Lamontagne doesn’t remember saving the world eight years ago, but he’s been paying for it ever since. The conquered Earth governments don’t trust him, the Average Joe can’t make up their mind, but they all agree that Brooklyn should stay in space. Now, he’s just about covering his bills with junk-food runs to Venus and transporting horny honeymooners to Tycho aboard his aging spaceship, the Victory.

When a pal asks for a ride to Mars, Brooklyn lands in a solar system’s worth of espionage, backroom alliances, ancient treasures and secret plots while encountering a navigation system that just wants to be loved…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: "The mice will see you now" said Slartibartfast to Dentarthurdent.

The First and their prior claim to the Earth Humanity thinks it owns, and definitely dominates, left me uneasily aware that the religious nuts' worldview of a creator god who is the real owner of the place and the people is a very, very short step from most SF...at least the kind with superpowered aliens. I'm not a believer in either things (aliens or gods), so I was a bit more distanced from this book's essential worldview than the first one.

As soon as we get into alien territory I lose steam. I like the idea here more than it sounds like I do; alert readers will notice a 4.5* rating, which is no one's idea of a dissatisfied reader's opinion. I'm mostly responding to Brooklyn's kindness and unwillingness to leave anyone who needs help unhelped. I'm also deeply satisfied by the story's ending.

But I'll admit, I wanted to know more about the First than I learned; the book needed to be longer, or there needed to be another one. Read together, in quick sequence, the story moves quickly to its satisfying conclusion...which is why I re-read the first one. It's a long afternoon and evening taken at one stretch, but it worked well for me. Think of it aas one read and submerge into Brooklyn's forty-two degrees antisolar worldview.

Make this two-part story your escape-from-togetherness read this Yuletide if you batten on alternate history and/or space operas without pew-pew battles. Think Flash Gordon with sex clubs, or the Star Wars cantina with booze reviewer's notes sound like fun? Welcome, Soul Sibling, to your dream's fulfillment.

SANDY ROBSON'S PAGE: The Grand-Mafia Series for #Booksgiving reading pleasure

RUBY BEFORE THE RAIN
SANDY ROBSON
Sandy Robson Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, KU avaiable

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Scandalous origin story of the last true sex symbol.

Hot on the heels of Bone Park and Snow Bird, Sandy dives deep into one of the fan favorites. The Grand Mafia's siren...RUBY!

From naughty to notorious...homeless to home wrecker, harlot to household name. Ruby Hewton (one half of the infamous Buffalo Girls from the Grand-Mafia Series) has a history even more risque than her retirement. The path to fortune and fame is a very crooked one.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Raunchy, saucy origin story for some terribly fun old-people sleuths' senior sex kitten.

I like this series because I need some fun that requires very little beyond crude decoding skills that, heaven knows, I possess. You do, too, or you wouldn't be here. You should know that Ruby's struggles are bona fide struggles with unkind unpleasant consequences for her...and the gory details are not stinted by Author Robson.

You are warned. It's not all funny-funny chucklefest. I think you'd do well to read this one first, the move on to the two books I've reviewed below. All three are on KU so make great escape-the-family-togetherness reads.

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Snow Birds (Grand Mafia Series #2) by Sandy W. Robson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Get ready to immerse yourself in the gripping, golden-years finale of the Grand-Mafia Series! If the quirky escapades in Bone Park left you hungry for more, buckle up for a wild ride with this compelling conclusion.

Bernie, Ruby, Freda, and Opal are four indomitable spirits, each uniquely shaped by the tempestuous world of Cicada Hollow. They've accidentally started a burgeoning criminal empire, their story unfolding like a modern-day "Thelma and Louise" saga.

But as their empire expands, so do the risks. These ladies might have expected bingo nights and quiet book clubs in their later chapters, but fate had other, far more thrilling plans.

This book isn't just a story—it's a captivating journey through the ups and downs of friendship in the face of remarkably unconventional challenges.

Join us for a story that combines heart, suspense, and just a touch of criminal activity. It's a reminder that adventure doesn't retire – and neither do the fabulous ladies of Cicada Hollow. Grab your copy and prepare for a series finale proving retired life doesn't have to be boring (but make sure you have a good alibi)!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Still decently entertaining, with the expected pleasures of a cozy mystery that subverts our cultural expectations of old women existing solely as powerless, sweet Little Old Ladies. I will, I confess, miss the Grand-Mafia now that their adventures have come to an end.

The right combination of fun and silly with a light salting of pointed social commentary in the background. Great for the first sunny afternoon on the front porch.

A Kindle edition is $5.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link), and it is available via Kindle Unlimited as well.

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Bone Park: The Golden Girls Meets The Godfather by Sandy Robson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1991, the quiet Florida retirement community of Cicada Hollow was the perfect place for seniors to relax and enjoy their golden years. It also was the place where four retired women joined together out of necessity, to become the biggest crime syndicate in American history.

Love, sex, dreams, revenge and regrets have no age limit. Friendship and loyalty get stronger with time and these four bad-ass broads are about to draw a line in the Florida sand that no one will ever cross.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Decently entertaining, and while I *abominate* the use of long, promotional subtitles that read like advertising copy written by an overeager intern, I can't fault this one for accuracy.

Approached with the expectation of having some good-spirited chuckles with your revenge fantasy fulfillment, this is a very successful read. The hole in ones heart left by The Golden Girls and the yawning gap of Jessica Fletcher's, (of Murder, She Wrote fame) endless supply of keen observation and devotion to justice are herein plugged. My very favorite thing about the read was the series title: Grand-Mafia Series! Apt, appropriate, and very much on brief. Book 1 will not, and should not, be book only, I predict.

A Kindle edition is $5.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link), and it is available via Kindle Unlimited as well.