A CARNIVAL OF ATROCITIES, things going wrong? blame a woman!

A CARNIVAL OF ATROCITIES
NATALIA CARCÍA FREIRE (tr. Victor Meadowcroft)
World Editions
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The residents of a desolate town nestled in the Ecuadorian Andes are forced to reckon with the legend of Mildred, a girl wronged by the town years ago

Cocuán, a desolate town nestled between the hot jungle and the frigid Andes, is about to slip away from memory. This is where Mildred was born, and where everything she had—her animals, her home, her lands—was taken from her after her mother’s death. Years later, a series of strange events, disappearances, and outbursts of collective delirium will force its residents to reckon with the legend of old Mildred. Once again, they will feel the shadow of death that has hung over the town ever since she was wronged. The voices of nine characters—Mildred, Ezequiel, Agustina, Manzi, Carmen, Víctor, Baltasar, Hermosina, and Filatelio—tell us of the past and present of that doomed place and Mildred's fate.

Natalia García Freire’s vivid language blurs the lines between dreams and reality and transports the reader to the hypnotic Andean universe of Ecuador.

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My Review: Nine PoVs in under 160pp. Why is my rating even a speck over 3 stars?

Mildred.

How perfect that her memory is, not celebrated exactly, but very much incorporated into the life of the town she was Othered, abused, and abandoned by in life. She never once left the midrange of the townsfolk's memories. Funny about that, since all she ever got was a grudging corner in life. Now Cocuán, never a place that loomed large on the world's stage (or even Ecuador's), is slowly and steadily vanishing. It's an unnerving process to read about. The place is, under the pressure of shared guilt, Brigadooning itself as monsters (real? psychic?) claim all of Cocuán.

Told in the kind of prose that I'm reluctant to call "dreamlike" because that means all y'all will click away in search of meatier fare, it's akin to a folktale. A kind of Silver John the Balladeer reading experience. The nine (9) PoVs all expand, like in the Appalachian folktales I've referenced, the reach of Mildred's...presence? ghost? transitional object-iveness?...serves to illuminate the magic in magical realism. She (please attend to pronoun) is killing the place that killed her by causing (how?) the trauma they inflicted on her to make itself manifest in themselves. Revenge? Whose, and on whom?

It is as easy to see Mildred as Silver John the Balladeer's rejected suitor Evadare, pining unto death for what she is denied in life, as it is to see her as John the competent and potent restorer of ma'at to the town. It's a role that folktales love, the bringer of justice and balance who is not quite of this world, but was, and still cares about it.

As easily as that more esoteric take I can defend this story as a restoration of justice for a victim of cultural misogyny, whose maltreatment and displacement by the town was so deeply unjust that it haunts each perpetrator or passive unsavior unto death. The town's vanishing because their collective responsibility to a woman seeking only to exercise the rights they all demand to life and liberty signally failed. They project onto the space called Mildred all the consequences of their failings as women have always endured. Every bad thing is someone else's fault, never one's own. Othering and blaming Mildred for the forces shutting down their town gives Cocuán double psychic relief: exoneration for how they treated her, and an explanation for the advancing death rattles of Cocuán.

Plus it's got cool monstrous doins!

Real or fantasy, Mildred and Cocuán and their wildly entangled realities, as the author and the translator have thrown into relief with words of the most precisely calculated illumination, get all five stars from me.

HEARTWOOD: A Novel, A Read with Jenna Pick, takes us with three very strong women to resolutions they did not expect

HEARTWOOD: A Novel (A Read with Jenna Pick)
AMITY GAIGE
Simon & Schuster
$14.99 ebook, available 1 April 2025

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.

Heartwood is a “gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.

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My Review: What I liked about this read, which on its face is not one I would resonate positively with, is that we're not in doubt about Valerie's disappearance. We're reading her letters to her mom as the search for her unfolds. And yet it's a suspense novel...so how does Amity Gaige pull that off?

Deftly.

Honestly I'm still allergic to the Cult of Mother stuff...you'll have noticed an absence of any part of a fifth star...but the beautiful nature descriptions and the bleeding honesty of the toll that living in times celebrating dehumanizing "values" earned all four the story remaining stars. Leaving out the mother-daughter mealymouthing would've earned at least another half, just for Valerie's impressive if misused commitment to helping. Everyone, except herself...and how'd that little poison pill get in there. We do see that realization come to her. Her early-story-days burnout from nursing nursing nursing during COVID's worst passage means she's in need of time to process and consolidate her new emotional world...that won't include the husband she does't love anymore, but who is her logistical support on this trip....

Beverly the Maine warden tasked with finding Valerie before her week's-worth of supplies runs out is, well, standard. She's a salty salt-of-the-earth supercompetent woman who throws herself into a job she's damned good at...to avoid dealing with her mother's steady decline into death. It's not like this is a groundbreaking idea. It is, however, very relatable; Beverly is rewarded and praised for the good work she does when other work must be neglected to do it. Work she does not want to do. "Women's work." Caring for her mother is...just too hard, given the older woman's dereliction of care for her, and effective devolution of care for Bev's sisters onto her too-young shoulders. Finding strangers who are a lot less competent than she is? Easy; and very much needed in the huge spaces that Maine has never "developed."

Lena is retired, lives a dull life of nothing much except chatting about birds to an unknown-in-meatspace mystery soul after her "useful" existence is done with her. She's sharp; she's savvy; she's got online skills that enable her to help Valerie and Beverly; so she does. I liked her best...I am her, I guess that won't surprise anyone that I think she's a good'un. She's estranged from her only child; she's difficult and spiky; and still can't resist doing something useful in despite of her physical disability. Yup. Thass me. The style of storytelling allows one to follow the developments, even Lena's, in the story's real time. It really worked on me.

How it all fits together is the fun of the read. I won't spoiler it because I am boot-quakingly afraid of the Spoiler Stasi. I'll say that misdirection я Amity. I had a firm opinion about where this was going and, when it got to the Big Reveal, I was correct. It gave me a lovely warm glow of satisfaction.

What makes this good Book Club Fiction™ is this mélange of traits, but most especially the dull mother-daughter conflicts. My own mother was awful; I do my goddamnedest to think around and past her gargoyle-statue-shaped lump in my head. But I've had decades of therapy and most of y'all ain't, so stories told about this feel better to you. I think Jenna Bush Hager picked a great iteration of the undistinguished, indistinguishable mass of Book Club Fiction™ to show y'all.

Buy one to say thank you to a talented author with her finger on The Pulse℠, and a celeb who's Book Club Fiction™ taste is solidly on the side of craft mastery instead of glam glitz and suchlike gubbins.

Not at all mad I read it.

March 2025's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews This review will appear in my blog's end-of-month roundup on 30 March 2025.

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Newly minted child psychologist Mina has little experience. In a field where the first people called are experts, she’s been unable to get her feet wet. Instead she aimlessly spends her days stuck in the stifling heat wave sweeping across Britain and anxiously contemplates her upcoming marriage to careful, precise researcher Oscar. The only reprieve from her small, close world is attending the local bereavement group to mourn her brother’s death from years ago.

Then she meets journalist Sam Hunter at the grief group one day, and he has a proposition for her: Thirteen-year-old Alice Webber claims a witch is haunting her. Living with her family in the remote village of Banathel, Alice finds her symptoms are getting increasingly disturbing. Taking this job will give Mina some experience and much-needed money; Sam will get the scoop of a lifetime; and Alice will get better—Mina is sure of it.

But instead of improving, Alice’s behavior becomes inexplicable and intense. The town of Banathel has a deep history of superstition and witchcraft. They believe there is evil in the world. They believe there are ways of…dealing with it. And they don’t expect outsiders to understand.

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My Review: Psychological horror/thriller novels really do scare me. This one, in a lot of ways, was scary; its only issue for full, effective scare factor in my eyes is the journalist/tyro child psychologist tie-up. I'm really oversensitive to that kind of cruel, manipulative relationship, having been abused by jesus freaks with the truly horrific tale of god and the devil making a bar-bet that Job wouldn't buckle under extreme psychological torture. It didn't help that the male journalist scraped her acquaintance in a group for grieving loss sufferers, a true predator move.

For those reasons I could never get all the way into the story, hence my seemingly ungenerous rating. It *is* effective in its creation of a spooky atmosphere, with icksome details and sensory evocations. Lots of body horror that feels very...bodily...so squeamish souls are duly cautioned. Effectively claustrophobic, emotionally sharp-edged horror read that has some serious flaws.

Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $14.99 for an ebook. I say it's a good library borrow.

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A Brazen Curiosity: A Regency Cozy by Lynn Messina (Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries Book 1)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Nothing ruins a lovely house party like bloody murder.

At the decrepit old age of six-and-twenty, Miss Beatrice Hyde-Clare has virtually no hope of landing a husband. An orphan living off her relatives' charity, her job is to sit with her needlework and to keep her thoughts to herself.

When Bea receives an invitation to an elegant country party, she intends to do just that. Not even the presence of the aggravatingly handsome Duke of Kesgrave could lead this young lady to scandal. True, she might wish to pour her bowl of turtle soup on his aristocratic head—however, she would never actually do it. But a lady can fantasize.

But, when she stumbles upon the dead body of another houseguest, all Bea's good intentions fly out the well-appointed window. Although the magistrate declares it a suicide, she knows better.

Time for some very unladylike behavior.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: OLD?! TWENTY-SIX WAS OLD?! I reject this notion whole and entire! I don't reject the series, however, as Beatrice is another anachronistic Regency heroine who does not "know her place" which will always get my attention, as someone who has never known his place either.

I don't rate it more highly because it has other anachronistic touches I found less amusing, eg "The difference between who she perceived herself to be and who she actually was was vast, and if she had any fight left in her, she would resent how easily she’d succumbed to everyone’s low expectations, including her own," very much a twenty-first century kind of a thought. Still well worth your time and treasure if you need a pleasant diversion.

Kindle edition's $2.99. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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A Scandalous Deception: A Regency Cozy by Lynn Messina (Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries Book 2)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: As much as Beatrice Hyde-Clare relished the challenge of figuring out who murdered a fellow guest during a house party in the Lake District, she certainly does not consider herself an amateur investigator.

So when a London dandy falls dead at her feet in the entryway of a London Daily Gazette, she feels no compulsion to investigate. It was a newspaper office, after all, and reporters are already on the case as are the authorities. She has her own problems to deal with anyway—such as extricating herself from a seemingly harmless little fib that has somehow grown into a ridiculously large fiction.

Truly, she has no interest at all.

Except the dagger that killed the poor earl seemed disconcertingly familiar… And so Bea is off to the British Museum because she cannot rest until she confirms her suspicion, while trying to allay her family’s concerns and comprehend the Duke of Kesgrave’s compulsion.

For the handsome lord has no reason to waste his time solving a mystery alongside a shy spinster. And yet he turns up everywhere she goes.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: I'm increasingly uncomfortable with Beatrice's facile, foolish, ill-considered lying as a source of plot momentum. It's as squicky a trait as it was to me in I Love Lucy when I was a kid. The lies are so silly, too.

That said I got solid laughs between brow-furrowings. Value delivered, even if in mitigated form.

Kindle edition's $3.49. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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A Pernicious Fabrication: A Regency Cozy by Lynn Messina (Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries Book 13)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, will not do the bidding of Hell and Fury Hawes. It does not matter how difficult it is to find new murder mysteries to investigate, especially ones where the victim was stabbed with a chisel. She absolutely refuses to lift a finger to help him figure out who killed one of his associates.

Nothing will persuade her, not even discovering the identity of the victim.

It is the duke’s cousin, son of the wretched Lord Myles, who also met an ugly death—bludgeoned with a candlestick—after going into business with the infamous crime lord, who rules over the worst rookery in London. Mortimer Matlock, a thwarted artist who stopped sculpting after his work was rejected repeatedly by the Royal Academy, was forging artifacts for Hawes’s illegal antiquities scheme.

Joining forces with the King of Saffron Hill, it seems, is frequently fatal.

That is an unfortunate development, then, for Bea, whose husband is determined to find out who slayed his relative. The duke shares her distrust of Hawes, whose avowals of just wanting justice for the fallen man ring hollow to him too. He believes there is more to the situation than meets the eye.

Well, obviously, yes, thinks Bea, who is unable to smother her misgivings.

Surely, they’re walking into a trap.

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My Review: Entertaining. The art-forgery and antiquities-smuggling aspects are what drew me in initially, and while these plot points drive the story they aren't the focus (if you see what I mean) as much as the web woven by and for the Duchess. It's book thirteen in a series, so good lawsy me have I missed a lot.

I'm not sure I'll go get three through twelve. Don't start here, but if like me you're a fan of Regency-set stuff, pick up book one. I enjoyed it more than this one; most likely because I missed so much in the middle.

The Kindle edition's $6.99. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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Cabinet of Curiosities: A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre by Aaron Mahnke

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The new book based on the long-running hit podcast by Aaron Mahnke, which has translated into over 120-million downloads to date, and a monthly average of over 2 million listeners.

The podcast, Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. Now, in Cabinet of Curiosities the book, learn the fascinating story of the invention of the croissant in a country that was not France, and relive the adventures of a dog that stowed away and went to war, only to help capture a German spy. Along the way, readers will pass through the American state of Franklin, watch Abraham Lincoln’s son be rescued by his assassin’s brother, and learn how too many crash landings inspired one pilot to leave the airline industry and trek for the stars.

For the first time ever, Aaron has gathered scores of his favorites in print, and curated them into a beautiful, topical collection for devoted followers and new fans alike.

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My Review: Fun trivia book. I don't listen to Mahnke's podcast but this definitely makes me understand why people do, with his engaging, personable affect, and the combination of infotainment and attractive design.

Sourced anecdotes largely point you to Wikipedia, some are not *quite* as presented here (lookin' at you Saqqara-bird story) but honestly...you'd buy this as a giftie for the nibling who's a Jeopardy!-watcher and they'd enjoy debunking the stuff as much as anything.

St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) requests $14.99 for an ebook.

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The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (tr. Sarah Moses)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

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My Review: Seemingly alone among readers, I did not like Tender Is the Flesh because its conceit was simply too absurd for me. I was unable take it seriously enough to get into the real story. Not at all the issue with this top-flight idea. "The Enlightened" are so very of the moment, and so perfectly limned as the abuser tech bros and Aynholes they're...parodying? illuminating in 3D, certainly. By gender-flipping the baddies, Author Bazterrica bypasses facile dismissive male critics' inevitable sexist dismissals of the story's, um, Gothic excesses. She's also thereby making a powerful point about women and their missing solidarity. The (female) abusers rise to the top, thereby to use their power in pointlessly sadistic rituals of pain and humiliation.

Hence my lower-than-expected rating. I do not wish to examine women in any remotely sexual light. It's metaphorical here, granted; I still do not enjoy it; so not-quite-four is my rating of a solid five-star story. YMMV, of course, and I very much hope it will.

Scribner (non-affiliate Amazon link) will say "$13.99 please" at checkout.

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Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A joyfully unhinged story of money, marriage, sex, and revenge unspools when a billionaire crashes his hot air balloon into the middle of a post-pandemic first date.

Joannie hasn’t been on a date in seven years when Johnny invites Joannie and her daughter to dinner. His house is beautiful, his son is sweet, and their first kiss is, well, it’s not the best, but Joannie could convince herself it was nice enough. But when Joannie’s childhood crush, a summer camp fling turned famous billionaire, crash lands his hot air balloon in Johnny’s swimming pool, Joannie dives in.

Soon she finds herself alighting on a lost weekend with Johnny the bad kisser, Jonathan the billionaire, and Julia his smart, stunning wife. Does Joannie want Jonathan? Does Julia want her husband? Or Joannie? Or Joannie’s beautiful little girl? Does Johnny want Julia? Does Jonathan want Joannie, or Julia, or maybe, his much younger personal assistant, Vivian, who is tasked to fix it all? A tale of lust and money and lust for money, Hot Air is as astonishing as it is blisteringly funny, a delirious, delicious story for our billionaire era.

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My Review: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice for modern times. A bit prim and a lot heteronormative for my taste.

I'm not mad about it, also not mad I read it. Some decent one-liners in here.

Knopf (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $13.99 for the ebook. *shrug*

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O Sinners!: A Novel by Nicole Cuffy

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A journalist investigates a seductive and mysterious cult and its leader, an enigmatic Vietnam War veteran, in this not-to-be-missed novel.

Faruq Zaidi, a young journalist reeling from the recent death of his father, a devout Muslim, takes the opportunity to embed in a cult called The Nameless. Based in the California redwoods and shepherded by an enigmatic Vietnam War-veteran named Odo, The Nameless adhere to the 18 Utterances, including teachings such as “THERE IS NO GOD BUT THE NAMELESS,” “ALL SUFFERING IS DISTORTION,” and “SEE ONLY BEAUTY.” Faruq, skeptical but committed to unraveling the mystery of The Nameless, extends his stay over months, as he gets deeper into the cult's inner workings, compassionate teachings, and closer to Odo. Faruq himself begins to unravel, forced to come-to-terms with the memories he has been running from while trying to resist Odo's spell.

Told in three seamlessly interwoven threads between Faruq’s present-day investigation, Odo’s time before the formation of the movement as a Black infantryman during the Vietnam War, alongside three other Black soldiers, and a documentary script that recounts The Nameless’ clash with a Texan fundamentalist church, O SINNERS! examines both longing and belonging. Ultimately the novel What is it that we seek from cults and, inevitably, from each other?

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My Review: I am exactly the right audience for this story: I think cults are reprehensible, predatory horrors; I'm part of the generation defined by the Vietnam War and its aftermath; I'm a strong advocate of novels that tell stories complicated by memories a character needs to repress in order to make sense of their daily life.

After about the fifth time-switch I felt ping-ponged; after the repetitions of the 18 Utterances, I was not able to control my eyerolling. I just liked the story, yet didn't like the storytelling as much.

One World (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks $13.99 for the ebook. I myownself would ask the library to get one.

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The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Emma Donoghue, the “soul-stirring” (Oprah Daily) nationally bestselling author of Room, returns with a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station.

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

From an author whose “writing is superb alchemy” (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century.

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My Review: Of all the (too-many) characters in this story, I liked the train the best.

Quite a change from Room and its claustrophobic one-space, a crowded cast of characters and actions that merely move them around the train to talk at each other some more left me...unsatisfied. I'd've liked Author Donoghue to cut a few, and home in on the ones left. Beautiful sentences, and a fascinating historical background, rescue the story from mediocrity. Make it a movie already!

Summit Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges a reasonable $12.99 for an ebook.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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The Antidote by Karen Russell (64%)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

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

My Review: I cried "Uncle" at 64% because I just don't care anymore.

I hadn't meant to sound so angry. Nothing about their calm faces in my uncle's kitchen made any sense.

I read that, thought, "I couldn't agree more," and put the book down. I had steadily lost interest, which was a sadness since I really wanted this read to thrill and delight me. It *sounds* great!

Knopf thinks $14.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link) is right and proper. I say use the library.

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The Ego System: The Awakening by René Zografos (51%)

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Can we afford to stand by as our planet collapses?

In the past 50 years, humanity has wiped out 70% of the world’s wild animals. Our oceans are being emptied, wildlife habitats destroyed, and ecosystems pushed to the brink, all to satisfy an insatiable hunger for meat and animal products.

In The Ego: The Awakening, award-winning journalist René Zografos reveals the devastating consequences of the meat industry on the environment, animal welfare, and our health. With eye-opening insights into factory farming, wildlife crimes, and political inaction, this book challenges us to rethink our choices and their impact on the planet.

Discover how factory farming fuels climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.Animal suffering is hidden by an industry designed to obscure the truth.Plant-based living can lead to a sustainable future and improved personal health.This is more than a wake-up call. It’s a call to action, offering practical steps to create a better world. Zografos blends compelling facts, personal reflections, and a sense of urgency to empower readers to make meaningful changes.

Proceeds from this book support animal welfare, ensuring that every purchase makes a difference. It’s not too late to save our planet. The time to act is now. Will you be part of the solution?

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My Review: More citations, less verbiage.

However much I agree with you, rigorous adherence to standards is even more urgent than ever when you're arguing against the Orthodoxy.

Kindle Unlimited for free (non-affiliate Amazon link), if you must.

THE NIGHT GUEST, deeply unnerving psychological domestic horror novella centers misogyny

THE NIGHT GUEST
HILDUR KNÚTADÓTTIR (tr. Mary Robinette Kowal)
Tor Nightfire (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Hildur Knutsdottir's The Night Guest is an eerie and ensnaring story set in contemporary Reykjavík that’s sure to keep you awake at night.

Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?

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My Review: I'm always down for a psychological horror read. This one has a strong message about misogyny at its core. I think that is what powered me past my disappointing reading experience.

Iðunn's world is a very familiar, quotidian one of tedious work, unfulfilling relationships, and family pressures that might or might not be external. Like so many, maybe every, female of my acquaintance, she's a poor sleeper. This has multiple negative effects on a person's life. Iðunn tries to make changes in her sleeping deficits with a fancy new kind of wearable multiple-axes tracking device.

The promised data on her sleeping patterns tells a story that does not make sleep come any easier. If anything the data scares her more; and the device itself seems to be making her life, not only her sleep deficit, much worse.

Iðunn's sense of crushing responsibility for every single thing in her life is not unfamiliar to me. It's just not something I think is always an external pressure as Iðunn thinks it is. No matter; her responses to the world are the story, so putting aside my sense of her emotional immaturity, I travel down the unhappy trail with her. Why is she, for want of another term, sleepwalking? Why does her body acquire wounds during her unconsciousness? If it isn't sleep, what is this state and why is it part of her nightly experience that is unavailable to her daylight mind?

I was ready to quit the read when animal harm entered the chat. I was perfectly happy to follow the deteriorating sense of control over her body and mind; it seems to me to be an excellent metaphor for being a woman in a misogyny-drenched world. I'm very much not down with harming creatures that can not adequately defend themselves, when it's done for cruelty's sake most especially. In this case it did nit feel to me to be more than an intensifying trope; it did not come from something within Iðunn that was just bursting out of her in a horrible way...see The Wasp Factory for an example of what I mean by that.

I decided to trust the eminent Mary Robinette Kowal, a personal favorite creative talent, whose translation of the text felt very smooth and organic and unlike I was reading a story at an extra remove. That often happens to me, even in excellent translations. This story isn't ever going to be a five-star read to me, thought I, but it's way better than average.

Then...the ending.

Three and a half stars. No more, no less.

YOUR LOVE IS NOT GOOD, exploring queer desire's darker corners

YOUR LOVE IS NOT GOOD
JOHANNA HEDVA
And Other Stories (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.95 trade paper, available 15 April 2025

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Finalist for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize
An artist of color becomes obsessed with a white model in a novel with the glamour of Clarice Lispector and the viscerality of Han Kang.

At an otherwise forgettable party in Los Angeles, a queer Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly controls the room: gorgeous and distant and utterly white, the center of everyone’s attention. Haunted into adulthood by her Korean father’s abandonment of his family, as well as the specter of her beguiling, abusive white mother, the painter finds herself caught in a perfect trap. She wants Hanne, or wants to be her, or to sully her, or destroy her, or consume her, or some confusion of all the above. Since she’s an artist, she will use art to get closer to Hanne, beginning a series of paintings with her new muse as model. As for Hanne, what does she want? Her whiteness seems sometimes as cruel as a new sheet of paper.

When the paintings of Hanne become a hit, resulting in the artist’s first sold-out show, she resolves to bring her new muse with her to Berlin, to continue their work, and her seduction. But, just when the painter is on the verge of her long sought-after breakthrough, a petition started by a Black performance artist begins making the rounds in the art community, calling for the boycott of major museums and art galleries for their imperialist and racist practices.

Torn between her desire to support the petition, to be a success, and to possess Hanne, the painter and her reality become more unstable and disorienting, unwilling to cut loose any one of her warring ambitions, yet unable to accommodate them all. Is it any wonder so many artists self-destruct so spectacularly? Is it perhaps just a bit exciting to think she could too?

Your Love Is Not Good stuffs queer explosive into the cracks between identity and aspiration, between desire and art, and revels in the raining debris.

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My Review: The way I know queer folk are, for want of a more accurate and inclusive term, assimilated into the Borg Collective straight peoples' overcultural awareness as real, fully human people is the virulence of the Gawd Squad's attacks on our rights, and our young people (by which I mean everyone born from 1984 on) feel it's okay to write about messed-up, creepy, mean, or even evil queer people. In other words, people. Just plain ol' humans. No need to fancy it up with initialisms that help us find each other but become tiger traps of ghettoization over time.

Here's a novel about a mixed-"race" (a term I hate with all my passion mobilizable...we are all humans none of us are neanderthals or antecessors!!) lesbian at the ragged edge of youth shading into middle age finding out how easy it is to fall into obsessive love when your hypercapitalist life starts to spontaneously deconstruct under the weight of expectation. Becoming fixated on someone like you see yourself being, only moreso, someone refined, and just...better...is justifiable to others and yourownself when the object is from the group at the pinnacle of society's desire hierarchy.

The object is then defined by the terrible, reductive term "muse," one definition of which that I think is relevant here is: A muse represents more than a mere subject or source of inspiration; it embodies the very essence of creative energy and inspiration itself. The muse possesses a unique allure that captivates the artist’s senses, provoking emotions, ideas, and a deep connection that fuels their artistic expression. It is not limited to a passive role but actively participates in the artistic process. They stimulate the artist’s vision, evoking a profound response and encouraging the exploration of new artistic territories. And Hanne, the white woman in her current, sold-out (!) painting series, is not her first "muse" nor her first racialized lust object.

In many ways, our unnamed narrator...called "Johanna" as a proxy for the author, but still explicitly stated not to be the author, so not named...painting Hanne (note how similar the beauteous muse's name is to the author's) for a highly prestigious gallery show is falling into the ugly territory that dogged Nabokov when he wrote the bitter, angry, utterly misunderstood Lolita. Inspired by the conventional white-woman prettiness of Hanne, so distinct from the narrator's own constructed "mixed" identity, she's creating beautiful artworks that are (she tells herself) critical of and interrogating the primacy of whiteness in the construction of a concept of beauty.

The art collectors and institutions who will see the show, however, will most likely buy them because she's painting a pretty picture of a pretty woman whose skin is white.

The deep-seated inner conflict between her Korean father's immigrant economic striving and Asianness and her white artist-mother's centrality to everything she's desired to become as well as escape is brought to crisis point when a Black friend issues a manifesto, calling on artists of color to boycott the white-centered art/beauty industry. If she ignores the call, she's made implacable enemies out of longtime friends, but most likely saved her school-debt-ridden, broke-ass economic life. Getting down to the nitty-gritty of this particular story, however, for all the complex and fascinating issues it raises and grapples with, is a simple sentence fragment: "...it takes hours to paint a portrait, and this is who I wanted to spend hours looking at."

There it is. Has the narrator burned out her exoticizing fascination with the women of color who served as muses before Hanne, or is this loudly, argumentatively toxic assumption of control that is the relegation of a person to the role of "a muse" a form of revenge on whiteness like the paintings are? Or, and this seems likely to be true to me, is the artist painting Hanne finally giving in to hypercapitalism's siren song of money, approval, and fame?

Are any of these untrue, or mutually exclusive? Not in my eyes. They're all likely to form part of the mosaic (another word related to the original Muses) of the core truth of this dark, brave narrative. Queer desire is as murky and incomprehensible as all desire is; made up of dark and angry stuff, bright and uplifting stuff, all rolled into the minds of the lovers...though all too seldom examined, or shared, or even acknowledged. Hanne feels the muse's rage and outrage at being Othered; the narrator the desperation of feeling intensely an unshared emotion.

It ends, as great and passionate loves must, in tears and bitterness.

This is exactly why I loved it as much as I did. The prose earns four and a half stars for economy of imagery, just enough not too much. The messy, angry queer desire slipped that extra half-point on for the full five.

PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE, aptly titled interviews with eminent thinkers

PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE
KATHERINE NATANEL & ILAN PAPPÉ
Haymarket Books
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A collection of interviews with some of the world’s leading progressive thinkers on the movement for Palestinian liberation and its connections to struggles for justice across the globe.

As more and more people align themselves with the Palestinian people, Palestine in a World on Fire provides the global perspective and analysis needed to inform how we forge ahead on this path of newfound solidarity. Editors Ilan Pappé and Katherine Natanel have gathered a collection of interviews that are intimate, challenging, and rigorous—many of them conducted before October 7th but still startlingly prescient. The interviewees connect the struggle for Palestinian liberation to various liberatory movements around the world, simultaneously interrogating and recontextualizing their own positions given the ongoing aggression in Palestine. This incredible group includes Angela Y. Davis, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Nadine El-Enany, Gabor Mate, Mustafa Barghouti, Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Gilroy, Elias Khoury, Gayatri Spivak, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.

Palestine in a World on Fire highlights the centrality of Palestine in struggles shared across the capitalism, imperialism, misogyny, neo-colonialism, racism, and more. Each conversation tackles urgent events and unfolding dynamics, and the scholar-activists interviewed here provide invaluable perspectives and insights, illuminating the richness and relevance of recent scholarship on Palestine.

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My Review: Ask yourself why the US media does't have any, or not many, pro-Palestinian voices featured as speakers about the ongoing genocide Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinians. An answer comes when you're ready to look at the roots of bias in a hypercapitalist world undergoing a multi-front fascist takeover across multiple countries. Populist values, such as they are, burn brightly when people are afraid and abused. Tech scum are in charge of huge pots of wealth and using it to forward the abusive, hypercapitalist agenda...the luckiest thing that has happened yet is the dopes from DOGE coming after the data and the money of the jerkoffs who voted the scumbags who can't even run a group chat properly.

Waking up to the threat to yourselves, at last, means we all have a small chance of making some of them see the pattern of abuse being used. It certainly also includes the murder and the eradication of people and cultures "They" do not like.

Palestinians are on the sharp edge of the sword. "They" do not plan to stop swinging it. If you and yours are not in its path, you will be.

Essentially this collection of softball interviews of Progressive figures across multiple scholarly disciplines is evidence that the reason libraries, universities, and "lower" schools are all under attack. The way to stop an idea is not to ban it, but to render it incomprehensible and unrelatable. Physics is doing that very handily and entirely to itself by getting really, really deeply up its own ass. Economics and social sciences are having it done to them by "Them" demanding their supply of new thinkers and believers be cut off from resources to learn about the disciplines. Stupid people are easier to lie to than educated ones.

It is a book that's been overtaken by events in some ways. It's a shame that many who could best benefit from its focus are likely not to read it as "the news" is hard enough to contend with, still less launch on a deep dive into how the Palestinian genocide is part of a larger playbook.

The terrible truth is it is working as it always has. Critics of the machinery of totalitarianism, like Alexei Navalny and Primo Levi, suffer awful fates if they're high enough profile to be threatening. The rest if us, the insignificant ones, are left alone to chatter amongst ourselves, as we can't do "Them" much inconvenience still less harm.

So take this as my considered advice: Learn more about what atrocities are going on right now; think about what will keep happening; get angry and resist. However small it is, act against "Them."

BLOOD ON HER TONGUE, modestly successful Carmilla revamp

BLOOD ON HER TONGUE
JOHANNA van VEEN
Poisoned Pen Press
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: "I'm in your blood, and you are in mine…"

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.

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My Review: Messy take on Carmilla, only with twin sisters.

It's at its strongest in conveying the overpowering terror of losing one's mind, of feeling the moorings of consensus reality slipping out of one's grasp. The very introduction to the story's reality is a letter...hi, Bram!...that unquestionably gives us a taste of how that unmooring will play out in the rest of the tale. Lucy worries mightily about Sarah as she learns more about the damage done to Sarah's sense of reality. When she comes to look over the damage to repair what she can, the situation somehow gets worse for her.

Evidence aplenty greets her that Sarah is in the midst of supernatural crisis, vampiric deaths, and quite a lot of relationship toxicity. Sarah's world is full of people dying in creative ways. But the main issue I think most will have is how far Author van Veen (My Darling Dreadful Thing) is willing to push the body horror. No ordinary, sane person, ie Lucy/the reader, is going to see this kind of violence and not skedaddle. At top speed. Lucy is there for her twin so of course she will stay longer than you or I might, but there's an eye-gouging scene that...no matter if one witnesses the event or the aftermath...would cause a celeritous evacuation of self and digestive tract.

I wasn't convinced by the characters. To me, they felt insubstantial, tags placed on dialogue, because they reacted yet never interacted. Lucy, for example, has no reason to get entwined with Michael that I could see; it was a plot contrivance. It's not like this is shocking in the context of a horror novel, but I hoped for more, given my first experience with the author. That, more than any other factor, stalled my rating at four stars. I was really ready to go higher.

If you come to this read expecting body horror and a page-turning, propulsive gorefest, you will like the book. If you're wanting an updated Carmilla with its sapphic overtones and its more interpersonal horror slant, it won't be the most satisfying of reads.

On a personal resonance,the story's twins have the same names as my sapphist grandmas, Sara and Lucy...the very first QUILTBAG people I knew in this life.

So on balance a read aimed at others, not at me.