SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL (Reaper #1) is a good read

SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL (Reaper #1)
RIN CHUPECO
S&S/Saga Press
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.

It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.

But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.

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

My Review: Weeelll...ya see...it's like this: I ain't the one to say nice things about vampire stuff, or about throuple romances. I do not believe the first exist, or could; the second seems like a really, really, really hard way to have a relationship one wishes to keep in place on the long term.

So what the hell made you ask for this DRC, old man?, I hear you wonder.

Rin Chupeco.

The Never-Tilting World and Wicked As You Wish as well as their debut The Bone Witch are all very well-written stories with queer characters and stakes that matter, characters I cared about, and world-building I invested in. I expected this book to have those strengths...mostly did...and be even better than their seven-years-ago debut. Not so much on this one.

The problem for me is that I can't put my finger on exactly how, why, or where. The prose is fine. The story doesn't have plot holes. I knew about the vampires before I asked for the DRC. There's not a good palpable reason for me not to be warbling my fool lungs out about this book. But.

There is always a chemistry between book and reader that is never, ever the same. Authors aren't the same people from book to book. Readers aren't either. And sometimes, in any kind of relationship, two chemistries change just enough, in just the wrong direction from each other, that one is not resonating in the right way for the other to get the gleeful rush of connection.

This is what happened in my experience of this perfectly good story.

GLORIOUS EXPLOITS, and glorious they are! Humor, pathos, sharp observation...all in this compact true tale

GLORIOUS EXPLOITS
FERDIA LENNON
Henry Holt and Co.
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Ferdia Lennon: "I was tired of ancient Greek or Roman characters sounding as if they’ve stepped out of a Merchant Ivory production"

Rating: 5* SIX (6)* of five

The Publisher Says: An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.

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

My Review: Graft Irish brogue onto ancient Syracusan and Athenian combatants, set the story in the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse with its famously weird resolution to the problem the Syracusans had with what to do with the POWs, and make a buddy comedy out of it.

Of COURSE I asked for this book!

The titanic tragedies unfolding in today’s world are nothing new. The sheer number of us alive on Earth compared to three thousand...heck, three hundred...years ago means there are higher head counts in the disasters, but not greater or even equal proportions of the population. The scale of Athens’s humiliation, and her losses, in the failed imperial project that included her attempt at conquering Syracuse, rivals the British losses in World War I. An entire generation gone. The scale of democracy’s failings, and this imperial expansionist war was directly down to a democratic vote in Athens, has always been epic. After all, no government is one tiny bit better than its people force it to be.

So Gelon and Lampo get the historically accurate job of dealing with the horribly immiserated prisoners chucked down into the quarry to die. The solution has not changed. We get to see it all from the viewpoints of the two men who more or less came up with the solution, though. Gelon is sort of a sad soul, a man who is aware of and burdened by awareness of, the pointlessness of existence. Does any of this really matter, on can hear Gelon wondering inside himself. He finds no joy in the deaths the Athenians are doomed to, especially since it means he...and the world, of course...won’t get to hear the latest Euripides hit The Trojan Women. Because of course Gelon is all about the tragedian Euripides.

Lampo...get it?...finds light gleaming in all darknesses, Lampo thinks the Athenians must be good for something...and entertaining the Syracusans with the latest and greatest plays from cultural hub Athens is just the ticket. The men overhear the Athenians lightening ther last hours with dialogue from the current Athenian version of the West End/Broadway season, and hey presto a solution to the awful moral conundrum of just letting human beings die in misery comes. Lampo is the instigator of the full cast revival of the play, and convinces the angry Syracusans...even the guy with the club who’s taking revenge for his lost sons by killing every Athenian he possibly can...to set aside their hatred and listen to this brand-new play from the cultural capital of the world.

Setting aside the utter weirdness of this story’s factual reality...we know it really happened...this could have been a retelling of the events that went heavy on Message, bearing down hard on whichever piece caught Author Ferdia’s fancy. Instead he lets the reader select the message they want from the many on offer. Start with an Irish voice telling, in English, a tale of a violently failed colonial enterprise. I trust I do not need to go too far on that one to bring it into focus for you. Move to the unemployed potters, those craftworkers whose job it is to take dirt and turn it into useful and often beautiful things for people to benefit from, who see the utility and the necessity for using these aggressors for some kind of benefit to those they harmed. A tale, then, of restitution, never a bad thing to bring into the modern world. But then look again: the actors are there, able and ready to do their jobs, but unnoticed until summoned into being as actors by capitalist producers, who in case this parallel to the modern world slid past you, make no effort whatever to compensate the creator of the play they are producing. And the actors making the play are, it should not go unremarked on, living below the poverty level and thus are ready to do anything to stay alive.

And, should all that be more than you want to deal with in your present mood, this short novel can simply and pleasurably entertain you with its surreal blend of fact, fiction, and Aristophanes-level multilayered comedy.

Laugh along. Think deeply. Enjoy the music. You pick, you are the one who makes this read...all Author Ferdia did was find the story for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

March 2024's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

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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The Science of Agatha Christie: The Truth Behind Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and More Iconic Characters from the Queen of Crime by Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Uncover the theories behind Dame Agatha Christie's most thrilling mysteries: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, The A.B.C. Murders, and so much more!

Gothic media moguls Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence, authors of The Science of Stephen King and co-hosts of the Horror Rewind podcast called “the best horror film podcast out there” by Film Daddy, present a guide to the Agatha Christie stories and supersleuths we all know and love. Through interviews, literary and film analysis, and bone-chilling discoveries, The Science of Agatha Christie uncovers the science behind the sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections that have become an integral part of the modern murder mystery, answering such questions as:

What is the science behind the poisons used to commit murders in Agatha Christie’s stories?

When did crime investigation become more common as seen in Murder on the Orient Express?

Has science made it possible to uncover the truth behind the investigative powers of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple?

How did Agatha Christie use isolated settings to best explore the psychology of her characters?

Join Kelly and Meg as they discover why sometimes the impossible must be possible!

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

My Review: Chatty, entertaining mishmash of gossip and opinion from oodles of carefully documented sources. Vanishingly light on hard science, at least as I interpret that promise; it has anecdotes about the generalities from interviewees. Does not make it less amusing to read, sort of like going to a Christie book-club discussion with the most well-prepared session runner of all time.

Agathites will likely find it an entertaining read. Go into it as a browsing book, not a devour-in-a-day binge. That will keep the tone fresh and involving.

Skyhorse wants $10.99 for an ebook, which I find a very good value.

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Dark Æon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity by Joe Allen (Foreword by Steve Bannon)

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Humanity is consumed by relentless transformation

Like a thief in the night, artificial intelligence has inserted itself into our lives. It makes important decisions for us every day. Often, we barely notice. As Joe Allen writes in this groundbreaking book, “Transhumanism is the great merger of humankind with the Machine. At this stage in history, it consists of billions using smartphones. Going forward, we’ll be hardwiring our brains to artificial intelligence systems.”

The world-famous robot, Sophia, symbolizes a rising techno-religion. She takes her name from the goddess—or Æon— whose fall from grace is described in the Gnostic Gospels.

With an academic background in both science and theology, Allen confronts the paradox of what he calls “good people constructing a digital abomination.” Dark Æon is nothing less than a cri de coeur for humanity itself. He takes us on a roller coaster ride through history and the emergence of Scientism, and from government-mandated mRNA vaccines to the weird visions of cyborg billionaires like Elon Musk.

From Silicon Valley to China, these globalists’ visions of humanity’s future, exposed and described in Dark Æon, are dire and terrifying. But Joe Allen argues that humanity’s salvation is within our grasp. Only if we refuse to avert our eyes from the impending twilight before us.

It is relevant here to quote the unknown author’s bio from Skyhorse’s website here: Joe Allen has written for Chronicles, The Federalist, Human Events, The National Pulse, Parabola, Salvo, and Protocol: The Journal of the Entertainment Technology Industry. He holds a master’s degree from Boston University, where he studied cognitive science and human evolution as they pertain to religion. As an arena rigger, he’s toured the world for rock n’ roll, country, rap, classical, and cage-fighting productions. He now serves as the transhumanism editor for Bannon’s WarRoom.

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

My Review: Regular readers will expect rude comments about religious nuts and radical right-wing conspiracists here. The author is, indeed, a religious nut and a radical-right Koolaid imbiber. Follow any link in his bio that I have left for you.

That does not make him all wrong. There is much to deplore in Musk’s vision of transhuman consciousness. Start with, howinahell can a mere computer contain a human consciousness, let alone millions or billions of them, when the computer is still stuck by the laws of physics in the role of extremely fast calculator? We think a LOT faster than computers, a lot deeper, too. Will the day come when we can upload a human consciousness into an electronic matrix? Maybe. But while it is a good thing to think through the implications of that, and of actual AI not merely the impressively glib LLMs and neural networks we see today, doing so from this viewpoint is...well...stupid.

For people who claim to base their visions for Humanity on their god’s rule, they have very little faith in her ablity to do stuff for herself...they need to protect this omniscient and omnipotent being from us mere humans’ actions, because they will somehow harm her.

What this book gets wrong is its religion, not mostly wrong like its science. If your omnipotent god does not want transhumanism to occur, it won’t. Simple as that. As she set up rules of physics that present HUGE hurdles to the creation of genuine AI and/or transhuman being, I’d say she has it covered and y’all need to CTFD.

Skyhorse wants $17.99 for an ebook. I say get it out of the library.

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The Serpent (Time of Heroes #3) by David Drake

Rating: 3 generous stars of five

The Publisher Says: Jon of Dun Add has created a civilization where before there had only been isolated pockets of humanity in a shattered cosmos.

Young knight Pal is one of the most respected members of Lord Jon’s Hall of Champions. But Pal’s greatest talent lies not on the field of battle, though he’s no slouch there. He is also a Maker, one who can repair the tools the Ancients had left—sometimes. Moreover, he has learned to use his warrior dog’s ability to predict motion better than any human could, an ability that has saved his skin and won the day more than once.

Now, Pal will need all his talent—as a fighter, as a Maker, and as a Champion—to deal with the monsters the Waste throws at him—and to deal with his fellow humans. For there are those who would destroy Dun Add and Lord Jon’s vision of a humanity united in peace from within . . .

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

My Review: I screwed up. I got book three in a series I had never heard of before because I recognized the author’s name...what SFF reader wouldn’t...and, once I clocked my eff-up, I thought I’d just go back and get the others. That has never happened in three years, in spite of his December 2023 demise, because I just did not like this Arthurian retelling all that much. The writing is ordinary David Drakery. The typos were plentiful, and they irked me a lot.

It really just, as a story, goes nowhere much, which is actually quite a feat when retelling a millennium-old story; it has action that is not tied to anything like a plot; and, in under two hundred pages, there is more flashback to the first two books than there is present action. So it is not something I recommend to you.

Still, not everyone thinks like me, so a Kindle edition is only $6.99...but seriously, buy something from an unknown instead.

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Erskine Caldwell, Margaret Bourke-White, and the Popular Front: Photojournalism in Russia by Jay Caldwell

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Erskine Caldwell’s novels Tobacco Road (1932) and God’s Little Acre (1933) made the author a popular and critically acclaimed chronicler of the South but also a controversial one, due to his work’s political themes and depictions of sexuality. Margaret Bourke-White, fresh from her role as staff photographer for Fortune, became the first female photojournalist for LIFE in 1936, and her iconic images graced its covers and helped solidify the magazine as a preeminent visual periodical.

When Caldwell and Bourke-White married in 1939, they were both celebrities, popular and provocative in equal measures because of their leftist politics and their questioning of American cultural norms. They collaborated on the photodocumentary books You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), North of the Danube (1939), and Say, Is This the U.S.A. (1941). In the summer of 1941, the couple entered Russia on assignment and were there when the Germans invaded on June 22. As a result, Caldwell and Bourke-White were the first Americans to report on the Russian war front by broadcast radio and continued to transmit almost daily newspaper articles about the Russian reaction to the war. Their international celebrity and their clout within the Soviet literary establishment provided them remarkable access to people and places during their five-month stay. Their final collaboration, Russia at War (1942), is a culmination of their work during that time.

Erskine Caldwell, Margaret Bourke-White, and the Popular Front traces and analyzes the couple’s collaborations, the adventures that led to them, the evolving political stances that informed them, and the aftereffects and influences of their work on their careers and those of others. Both biographically revealing and analytically astute, author Jay Caldwell offers a profound, new perspective on two of America’s most renowned midcentury artists at the peaks of their careers.

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

My Review: In the 1990s I knew a man called Fred Bonnie, a writer and an academic who had a vision for the revival of his friend Erskine Caldwell’s many unjustly-neglected mid-century works. Sadly, Fred died in a one-car crash before any of these plans could be brought to fruition.

I approached this read, then, in sympathy with the politics and the art of both leads. I had hoped for an insight into the couple’s life together and their shared goals, with lots of photos. I got instead a thorough travelogue, a relatively few...forty-two to be exact...photos, and a pretty academically dry assessment of the enterprise of reporting from the front lines of WWII’s scariest front, that in Russia.

It is, of course, not the book’s fault I wanted something I did not get. I felt, not unreasonably I believe, that the marketing of the book...see synopsis above...led me to expect that book. I got a very worthwhile academic consideration of a stressful and productive time in the careers of two titans of early twentieth-century leftist culture.

The University OF Georgia Press offers a giftable hardcover for $41.95. I suggest requesting your library get one unless you are a giant fan of these lights of the era.

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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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Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang (tr. Ken Liu)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the Hugo Award–winning author of Folding Beijing comes a gripping science fiction thriller in which three unlikely allies attempt a desperate mission of first contact with a mysterious alien race before more militaristic minds can take matters into their own hands.

In a future where the world is roughly divided into two factions, the Pacific League of Nations and the Atlantic Division of Nations, tensions are high as each side waits for the other to make a move. But neither side is prepared for a powerful third party that has apparently been an influential presence on Earth for thousands of years—and just might be making a reappearance very soon.

With the realization that a highly intelligent alien race has been trying to send them messages, three rising scientists within the Pacific League of Nations form an uneasy alliance. Fueled by a curiosity to have their questions answered and a fear that other factions within their rival Atlantic Division of Nations would opt for a more aggressive and potentially disastrous military response, the three race to secure first contact with this extraterrestrial life they aren’t quite convinced is a threat.

Bolstered by recent evidence of alien visitations in the distant past, the three scientific minds must solve puzzles rooted within human antiquity, face off with their personal demons, and discover truths of the universe.

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

My Review: Interesting mash-up of Doctor Who and the holographic universe interpretation of quantum physics. I was less sold on this story than I was on Vagabonds a couple years ago. Part of that is down to the personalities of the main characters, as I am bored by straight people competing over sex. Another part was the politics of the Earth conflict...why the hell does an omniscient, all-but-omnipotent force...whether alien or divine...allow the injustice and horror of the world as it is?

There is no answer to that question that convinces me of the existence of such beings. So a big part of my reading energy goes into fighting off the sense that this story is founded on sand, and it is shifting rapidly under my readerly feet.

Not everyone will feel this way, so the folks who liked Contact, Arrival, or the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson will be gruntled by this read. Vagabonds readers will likely miss the more ornamented prose in that book, but the pleasures of characters developing, seeking, and solving problems will make up for it.

Saga Press wants $13.99 for an ebook, which feels like a good deal to me.

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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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Whaling Captains of Color: America's First Meritocracy by Skip Finley

PEARL RULED @ 27%

Rating: 3 generous stars of five

The Publisher Says: The history of whaling as an industry on this continent has been well-told in books, including some that have been bestsellers, but what hasn't been told is the story of whaling's leaders of color in an era when the only other option was slavery. Whaling was one of the first American industries to exhibit diversity. A man became a captain not because he was white or well connected, but because he knew how to kill a whale. Along the way, he could learn navigation and reading and writing. Whaling presented a tantalizing alternative to mainland life.

Working with archival records at whaling museums, in libraries, from private archives and interviews with people whose ancestors were whaling masters, Finley culls stories from the lives of over 50 black whaling captains to create a portrait of what life was like for these leaders of color on the high seas.

Each time a ship spotted a whale, a group often including the captain would jump into a small boat, row to the whale, and attack it, at times with the captain delivering the killing blow. The first, second, or third mate and boat steerer could eventually have opportunities to move into increasingly responsible roles. Finley explains how this skills-based system propelled captains of color to the helm.

The book concludes as facts and factions conspire to kill the industry, including wars, weather, bad management, poor judgment, disease, obsolescence, and a non-renewable natural resource. Ironically, the end of the Civil War allowed the African Americans who were captains to exit the difficult and dangerous occupation—and make room for the Cape Verdean who picked up the mantle, literally to the end of the industry.

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

My Review: A subject at once fascinating, important, and repellent. The whaling industry left us without whales that we now understand are vital members of an ocean ecology that works to stabilize the climate...while affording many men of color the opportunity to improve their lot in US life, support their families, and make a future of prosperity possible for their community as a whole. It is not their fault that this chain of consequences was not understood in their time. It still made reading about the industrial-scale killing of cetaceans for profit unpleasant to me.

The author has done a lot of research, has presented it in synthesis, and did so without a shred of verve, excitement, or pleasure. I had to stop reading because I was beginning to resent the didactic tone. If I am going to read a monograph, I want a grade. So, while the book succeeds on its own merits at doing the job it set out to do, it did not cross into general-interest readership territory as I had very much hoped it would.

A trade paper edition is $21.95, quite reasonable for an academic press book.

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Reservoir Year: A Walker’s Book of Days by Nina Shengold

PEARL RULED @ 34%

Rating: 3 generous stars of five

The Publisher Says: On the eve of her sixtieth birthday, Nina Shengold embarks on a challenge: to walk the path surrounding the Catskills' glorious Ashokan Reservoir every day for a year, at all times of day and in all kinds of weather, trying to find something new every time.

Armed with lively curiosity, infectious enthusiasm, and renewed stubbornness, she hits the path every day with all five senses wide open, searching for details that glint. As Shengold explores the secrets of this spectacular place, she rediscovers the glories of solitude and an expanded community, both human and animal. Step by step, her reservoir walks rekindle connections with family, strangers, and friends, with a landscape she grows to revere, and with a new sense of self. Like the writings of John Burroughs, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez, Shengold's reflections on her personal journey will resonate with outdoor enthusiasts and armchair hikers alike.

Quietly transformative, Reservoir Year encourages readers to find their own ways to unplug and slow down, reconnecting with nature, reviving old passions and sparking some new ones along the path.

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

My Review: I am the author’s age, I am always interested in nature-centered books, and I LOVE the Catskills.

I should’ve loved this book. I did not. It took me a year to get to the 34% mark in my DRC, and then I forgot I even had the book. The writing is perfectly fine, nothing awful, nothing glorious. I love the idea of this kind of book. The quiet, gentle quality of this iteration ended up feeling soporific to me.

If Annie Dillard is too tendentious, and Barry Lopez is too strident, for your present mood, this book is a godsend for you. Treading the same paths they do in Hush Puppies instead of sneakers or boots, the stories will offer you solid value.

The ebook is steep at $24.95, but the library ought to have it.

IN EXCESS OF DARK, new horror novella that does it all right

IN EXCESS OF DARK
RED LAGOE
DarkLit Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: What if every terrible thing imagined came true? Every fleeting, nightmarish thought a reality?

For grief-stricken Karina, her newfound ability to turn her worst daydreams into palpable truths has sent her into a downward spiral of depression and guilt. Coupled with the appearance of an enigmatic shadow figure and visions of her dead family, she grapples to maintain her sanity while desperately attempting to harness her abilities and reunite with her loved ones.

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

My Review: Red Lagoe was introduced to me by Well Read Beard a couple years back. As I bought her books with my very own United States dollars, they went unreviewed...though not unenjoyed. This is not the first book-bullet the Beard has clipped me with, this author and her wild, fearless pursuit of story-logic's final destination (note horror-movie play on words, please), no matter how deeply grim it may be are now part of my regular rotation. I was very pleased to get this as a DRC.

I am not a chirpy soul. I genuinely believe the worst will happen because that is what the evil xian gawd, who clearly does rule the universe, wants for her victims. So as I read along in this book, I kept thinking, is Karina really just me? I tested my hypothesis by handing the Kindle to my Young Gentleman Caller on a flying visit he paid without telling him why I wanted him to read the book. Two hours later he handed it back and commented, "when did you meet this Red person, and Red had better be a she." So yeah...I related to Karina's nightmarish sense of deja vu as the horrors she is experiencing tie right in to her worst, darkest imaginings.

The worst things that can happen to a parent will spiral any one of us into deepest, most depressed misery. Not all of us see dark shapes that can mimic our lost ones. As a reader, I wavered between being sure this was a bad case of delusional grieving, and Karina's toxic mother's low-key emotional manipulations...and a little, uneasy sense that maybe, juuust maaaybe....

And by the ending, I was *still* not sure. To be clear, the ending has a full and satisfying reason for the events of the book...but I was still in that uncertain space until the very end of the read. That is quite a feat for an author to manage, as I started reading before young Author Lagoe was even born...I have seen every trick and ridden every trope before, and she still made me change my mind about what was happening multiple times.

I recommend this short, intense read to anyone whose life has included loss at an extremely deep level and who is willing and ready to process the darker side of it, as well as to those who think religious and supernatural "horror" are really quite silly. This book plays with those notions in a very unsettling, yet more grounded in reality, way that is very believable.

Karina and her disintegration are genuinely unnerving and upsetting, but for all the darkness on parade here, this is in the end a strong woman's discovery of her truest, most powerful self.

At 99¢, this is a great value. Look into it, and Red Lagoe, and I think you will come away glad to buy her work when you need a little challenging reading.

THE MARS HOUSE, latest Natasha Pulley exploration of the costs of Othering

THE MARS HOUSE
NATASHA PULLEY
Bloomsbury USA
$32.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, a queer sci-fi novel about an Earth refugee and a Mars politician who fake marry to save their reputations—and their planet.

In the wake of environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London’s Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. In Tharsis, January’s life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger—a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars’s lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalized to, Mars. January’s job choices, housing, and even transportation options are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to be surgically naturalized, a process that can be anything from disabling to deadly.

When Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January’s life is thrown into chaos, but Gale’s political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five-year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January’s financial future without naturalization and ensure Gale’s political future. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. And worse, soon, January finds himself entangled in political and personal events well beyond his imagining. Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay—and January may be the only person standing in the way.

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

My Review: Comme d'habitude, Author Pulley has taken multiple strands of today's hellscape and woven them into a clever, involving story. January is a ballet dancer...lean, lithe, and muscular even by Earth standards...and a refugee from the sinking of his home, London, due to climate change. No worries, it isn't a big deal in the story, just the way he gets to colonial Mars.

Where he, because he grew up on a high-gravity planet, is an "Earthstronger" and a terrible threat to the naturalized Martians. This condemns him to a life of menial labor where his freakish strength is an actual advantage not a threat.

Does this anti-immigrant rhetoric sound familiar? Start from actual differences, create threats, and stigmatize the Other with the largely imaginary threats and violent rhetoric?

The story is about all that and more. January is the only one who is referred to by the masculine pronoun. All the Martians are "they." No more information is given than that...and Gale, the senator whose careless seeking for a soundbite in their campaign to forcibly "naturalize" the Earthstrongers...a procedure with a horrific death rate, and ugly medical side-effects for those it does not kill...as the external suits that cause the Earthstrongers not to be able to exert themselves to capacity are defeatable. Gale's effort to get a political advantage blows up badly and causes them, as well as January, terrible problems.

Their solution is to offer January a five-year fake marriage contract that will give them good political optics, and him a way out of the endless drudgery and second-class citizenship of being in a suit or, far worse, beinf forcibly "naturalized." So, as always in Author Pulley's work, there is a slow...slooow...burn into True Love. That the relationship is so suitable is weird. January had to travel to another planet to find True Love...and the balance of power, also as always in Author Pulley's work, is even but in a completely unexpected way.

What makes me happy when I know there is a new book coming from Author Pulley is that I know what I will get...musings on interpersonal dynamics, commentary on injustices that clearly cause her outrage and pain, the somewhat unrealistic Love Conquers All resolutions...but have not clue the first how she will take me where I already know we're going.

*happy sigh*

So, I hear you wonder, since you got exactly what you wanted, and enjoyed the trip to get it, where's that fifth star? The one thing I was a lot less than thrilled with was the bizarre and offputting de-extinction of wooly mammoths as part of the Martian terraforming because it felt uncharacteristically gee-whiz neato-keeno it's my book and I'll do it because I can legerdemain. It did not make any sense to me, though clearly there is a narrative srand to explain it. I just did not buy it. I was also not entirely convinced by the time it was set in...the kinds of changes on Earth seemed to be unusually late, for what I expect to happen based on current trends and on Mars way too soon. So, not quite able to ignore and go on with my suspension of disbelief.

These were not terrible sins...this is a novel, not a counterfactual scientific paper...and they are in service of telling a cracking good story. Very much a good place to start reading Natasha Pulley's work if you haven't already; and a great treat for your season of reading if you have.

THE BLUE BUTTERFLY OF COCHIN, sweet story with gorgeous Siona Benjamin artwork

THE BLUE BUTTERFLY OF COCHIN
ARIANA MIZRAHI (illus. Siona Benjamin)
Kalaniot Books
$19.99 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Blue Butterfly of Cochin is the story of the ancient Jewish Indian community’s mass immigration to Israel in the 1950s. We follow Leah as she struggles to come to terms with leaving her beloved India and moving to the newly-formed country of Israel. Accompanied by a magical butterfly and through dream-like illustrations, both Leah and the reader, are transported from the lush Indian coastline to the awesome beauty of the Israeli desert.

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

My Review: Decades ago, I saw a documentary at the American Museum of Natural History about the Cochin Jewish community, of whose existence I had been utterly unaware until then. It was a typical documentary of its era, the 1990s, with the expected non-commercial production values; what came bursting through the auditorium screen was the gorgeous, lush architecture, evocative of great wealth; now, however, empty and becoming shabby with neglect. The community that had been so rooted in the tropical coastal state of Cochin for over a millennium and a half had just...vanished.

The beauty they left behind was haunting. The documentary set out to make a visual record of it before entropy carted its magnificence away entirely. This made a deep and lasting impression on me. (Clearly.) I saw this book on Edelweiss+, and of course had to have it for that reason first. Then I noticed the illustrator’s name: Siona Benjamin!

I had discovered how much I loved her Indian-miniature style images in the early Aughties, when I ran across her New York gallery’s website. Although these illustrations are not in that same style, they are just as beautiful, just as intricate, just as emotionally impactful.

These images all evoke in me the same energy that Marc Chagall’s 1960s paintings evoke:

The Circus Horse, 1969; via Wikimedia Commons
I don’t know about you, but I feel there is a creative DNA connection between these artists’ œuvres. Much joy, then, for me on the visual level; the story, with which I was familiar from that long-ago introduction, was here made personal through telling it from a displaced child’s viewpoint. That worked as a means to particularize the community’s collective decision’s personal cost.

The global rise in antisemitism is something I deplore. I think, quite apart from the State of Israel’s appalling actions in Gaza in 2023-2024, the threat of antisemitism is in its turn appalling; we have, in the last century, seen where that has led. Better by far in my view to oppose ethnic hatred wherever we find it. How better to start than with teaching children that Humanity is one race, made up of all kinds of people, and they all have very interesting stories to read, tell, and learn about.

Starting here, with this beautiful book, would be a great introduction.

THE SIEGE OF BURNING GRASS, complex consideration of the moralities around war

THE SIEGE OF BURNING GRASS
PREMEE MOHAMED
Solaris Books
$8.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 4* of five

Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

The Publisher Says: A stunning meditation on war, nationalism, violence and courage by a rising star of the genre.

The Empires of Varkal and Med’ariz have always been at war.

Alefret, the founder of Varkal’s pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a ‘visionary’ scientist. But now they’re offering him a chance of freedom.

Ordered to infiltrate one of Med’ariz’s flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy’s population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers.

He should refuse to serve the warmongers, but what if he could end this pointless war once and for all? Is that worth compromising his own morals and the principles of his fellow resistance members?

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

My Review: As you would expect from Premee Mohamed, this is a carefully constructed secondary world, with a deeply tendentious story playing out inside its rules. Moral greyness and relativistic morality are always welcome sights in the secondary-world fantasy genre. Meditating on what makes a villain villainous, what makes it possible to fight and kill in service of peace (as George Carlin famously observed, "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity"), all the while still feeling Very Certain of one's own cause's Rightness. No one in one of Author Mohamed's worlds is Right. That being the reality of life on the Earth I like seeing it shown this way in very appealing fiction.

Bioengineering plays a very significant role in this fantasy world. (Including a use of wasps that absolutely *never* would've occurred to me!) I think it is best to leave the whats and hows of that fact alone, as there are surprises in store that hang on those hooks. If I am transparent about it, I would have been five-star warbling my fool head off had some of those fascinating facets found even greater, and sooner, uses in the story.

While I comprehend the metaphorical use of a flying city, I am deeply skeptical of any use of them because they use unrealistic tech to solve...nothing. There is no actual, practical benefit to a flying city that is not outweighed by real, unaddressed increases in the complexity of urban living. I guess the metaphorical "coolth" and visual appeal is just too much to resist, and the people with the flying city in this story definitely seem like the sort of culture that would develop one. Still...just no. Resist the pointed contrast of tech "coolth" to natural development and augmentation!

The absolute joy of the read is the very carefully natural debate between the competing moral certainties of pacifism and Security Über Alles from the alleged same side of the war. This is, to me, the best use of fiction: Don't give one side the monopoly on the good stuff or the bad stuff. Humankind doesn't, hasn't, and won't ever work like that. As you are telling this story, albeit set on a different world, to Humankind, follow our rules when it most counts. This being one of Author Mohamed's storytelling's strong points, I always enjoy her stories.

So, while not a masterpiece, this story of pacifism and its moral greyness, warmongering and its honest, if misguided, aims, and what men will do to WIN, is one fine read, indeed.

AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT, multi-award-winning novella and damning takedown of a hypercapitalist hellscape

AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT
PREMEE MOHAMED
Neon Hemlock Press
$12.99 all formats, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of the 2022 Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

In a far future city, where you can fall to a government cull for a single mistake, And What Can We Offer You Tonight tells the story of Jewel, established courtesan in a luxurious House. Jewel’s world is shaken when her friend is murdered by a client, but somehow comes back to life. To get revenge, they will both have to confront the limits of loyalty, guilt, and justice.

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

My Review: Self-esteem, self-love, class solidarity, friendship, Love...big, big themes to tackle in under a hundred pages. Yet as one expects from Premee Mohamed, tackled they are, and indeed pinned to the mat of argument.

There are those who say they have no patience for future-set stories, yet who will gobble the stories that center amateur sleuths who are not arrested and abused by police and courts who do not approve of this behavior...inconsistent much? Each is unbelievable in its own way, and this story’s amateur sleuths have some *very* powerful motives for their far higher stakes poking around. I know others whose taste in storytelling excludes tales that begin in medias res. That being a taste that can not be argued with, I warn those folk that this is not one for them.

The authorial voice here, Jewel’s stream of consciouness and self-aware of its floridity, would wear on my nerve if it lasted more than the eightyish pages that it does. In this size of a dose, it counterpoints the horrifying, bleak dystopia that these young people are...existing is a better fit than living...within. The brothel where they work is a reputaable one, yet a client murders one of them and no one in power cares, or pursues justice.

Sound familiar, y’all?

Unlike boring old twenty-first century reality, though, the murdered party returns for revenge, not as a zombie or vampire but simply undead. Go with it. As the co-sex-worker Winfield sets about getting the revenge that I myownself feel is richly deserved, the story meditates on the larger, darker themes of living in a hypercapitalist hellscape. The ending is, as expected, satisfying. The truths Author Mohamed tells us in the course of this bleak vision of a future where money = justice, where might = rights, where even the meagerest of existences is contingent on selling one’s own body for the gratification of others, are readily applicable to the world around us.

That horrifying truth is how this very short, sharp shock to the reader’s system won the very high-powered awards that it did. Very highly recommended.

THE NEW TRUE CRIME: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence, just what it says on the tin

THE NEW TRUE CRIME: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence
DIANA RICKARD
NYU Press
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: How serialized crime shows became an American obsession

TV shows and podcasts like Making a Murderer, Serial, and Atlanta Monster have taken the cultural zeitgeist by storm, and contributed to the release of wrongly imprisoned people―such as Adnan Syed. The popularity of these long-form true crime docuseries has sparked greater attention to issues of inequality, power, social class, and structural racism. More and more, the American public is asking, Who is and is not deserving of punishment, and who is and is not protected by the law? In The New True Crime, Diana Rickard argues that these new true crime series deserve our attention for what they reveal about our societal understanding of crime and punishment, and for the new light they shine on the inequalities of the criminal justice system. Questioning the finality of verdicts, framing facts as in the eye of the beholder―these new series unmoor our faith in what is knowable, even as, Rickard critically notes, they often blur the lines between “fact” and “fiction.”

With a focus on some of the most popular true crime podcasts and streaming series of the last decade, Rickard provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which this new media―which allows for binge-listening or watching―makes crime into a public spectacle and conveys ideological messages about punishment to its audience. Entertainment values have always been entwined with crime news reporting. Newsworthy stories, Rickard reminds us, need to involve sex, violence, or a famous person, and contain events that can be framed in terms of individualism and conservative ideologies about crime. Even as these old tropes of innocent victims and deviant bad guys still dominate these docuseries, Rickard also unpacks how the new true crime has been influenced by the innocence movement, a diverse group of organizers and activists, be they journalists, lawyers, formerly incarcerated people, or family members, who now have a place in mainstream consciousness as DNA evidence exonerates the wrongly convicted.

The New True Crime questions the knowability of truth and probes our anxieties about the “real” nature of true crime media. For fans of true crime shows and anyone concerned about justice in America, this book will prove to be essential reading.

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

My Review: I chose to read this in spite of my serious problems with making victimhood the center of yet another cultural conversation. The howls of outrage when another Black man is convicted, on the flimsiest of evidence, of raping a white woman, center her whiteness and the racism of the laughingly labeled criminal-justice system.

Many parts of the conversations we should be having are entirely missing, eg, Black women raped by white men get no podcasts, murders of Black men and male adolescents get fewer than the statistically appropriate number of hours devoted to them, and let us not even bring up trans folk and/or sex workers of any skin color or gender...why go on, it is all part of the entertainment industry and its long, deep relationship with Othering.

This is not, however, the story...or even more than a glancing part of the story...that Author Rickard tells in this book. It was not intended to be, so this is not a failing of execution but of design.

There is no point yelling at someone for not doing what *you* want done.

The book, as written, makes a strong case for the net positives of a field of entertainment that focuses cultural attention on the failings of a system designed to operate out of the majority’s sight. The techniques of the entertainment industry...heightened language, elisions of tediously bulky chains of evidence into more narrative-friendly sound bites...mirror the long-standing prosecutorial tricks of evidentiary manipulation that these podcasts and shows highlight, only from the other side.

Since the system we have is an adversarial one, with rules that...while on the surface even-handed...frequently get bent or ignored when convenient for those representing institutional authority, we will always need independent actors with the access and the desire to turn over the rocks plopped on top of the holes in evidence in service of the narrative needed to get a conviction. Everyone is guilty if the right/wrong storyteller gets hold of the narrative. (Side note: NEVER TALK TO COPS WITHOUT A LAWYER. NO ONE IS INNOCENT IF THEY SAY YOU ARE NOT.)

So this new use of the entertainment media does indeed do Society a solid service by shining harsh and unflattering light on the actors for the State. It highlights the miscarriages of fairness and honest dealing that are so very common in US society. These are net positives for all concerned. Right?

Crimes have victims or they are not crimes. Victims, living or dead, have no say in who, or how, or why, their trauma is presented, whether during or after the crime, its investigation, or its rehashing. Very few people are Alice Sebold or E. Jean Carroll, those eloquent enough, well-favored enough, or just willing enough to see processes like those needed to re-investigate their horrific personal and, all too often, intimate violations bandied about in public again and again. I dont know if you are aware of this,but there are truly shitty people out there on the internet who absolutely **love** making their ugliest opinons public. These already-traumatized people are all too often targeted by those rotten-souled jerks.

This book is not intended to solve these issues. That it does not is not a reason not to read it. This new use of entertainment to correct flawed narratives instead of spread copaganda is, in my own view, a net positive for society. It comes with problems and abuse vectors that are, sadly, not new. The possibility is that the new true crime could shine a bright enough light on those cyberissues that they will get onto the radar of the ones who can solve them, too.

Ain’t holdin’ my breath, mind you, but the possibility exists, and that is a good thing. Author Rickard makes the outlines of the emerging true-crime media landscape clear and comprehensible to non-expert readers. Her prose is up to the reportorial task at hand; her eye for the narrative strand is at the least as good as the podcasters and showrunners she reports on.

A read I recommend to any media junkies, all leftists, and the passively consuming podaholics who might read this review.

ONCE UPON A VILLA: Adventures on the French Riviera, a vicarious stroll among the one-percenters

ONCE UPON A VILLA: Adventures on the French Riviera
ANDREW KAPLAN
Smuggler’s Lane Press
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this wise, warm-hearted, witty, and LOL hilariously funny true account, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Kaplan tells what it’s like when he, his wife, and two-year-old son decided to chuck it all and live the fantasy in a villa by the sea in that extraordinary corner of the world—part international café society, part billionaires’ playground, part provincial France—that is the French Riviera.

Whether it’s matching wits with French bureaucracy, searching for the perfect bouillabaisse, encounters with con men, eccentric ex-pats, and Monaco’s royal family, partying with the international set on Onassis’ yacht, playing chess with a philosophical police chief, or adventures and friendships with the rich and famous and the presumably standoffish French, Once Upon a Villa will transport you to a fascinating and shrewdly-observed world that you will savor like your first-morning bite of pain au chocolate.

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

My Review: No idea if it’s just me or what, but I still crave comfort reads.

The world’s gotten way meaner here lately. It takes more and more effort not to simply check out and leave the awfulness to its own devices, perpetuating itself being its best-ever trick. Thus I approached this read with all the fervor I would’ve lavished on the Best-Costume Oscar had I known about the bit John Cena committed to this ceremony. The man’s fifty-five, y’all, give it up for growing old gracefully...and hotly.

Ahem. Focus, Mudge, focus!

So, back to Author Kaplan, and the idea of relocating to the Riviera. Short of money, the author clearly is not...and there’s my sticking point, the reason for my missing stars. The part of the read that was charming, the French and their cultural schizophrenia of warm, generous, welcoming people and cold, maddening bureaucracy, was outweighed in my pleasure-reading by a very arriviste kind of name-dropping and hobnobbing with the Society Set that has long made the South of France its own. So much of the book is about who the author and his shopaholic wife went around and about with that I lost my warm happy glow.

That was not fatal...the story is a lot of fun to read...it just hits me, the leftist redistributionist, in the wrong way. I do not care about Princess Caroline of Monaco. I do care about the neighbors who were kind.

I am not everyone, and I am quite sure many of y’all will not feel my collywobbles about the snobbery on view. I urge y’all to go to it, go get it, and enjoy its very real writerly pleasures. I felt uneasy about my own trip, but that is no reason you should. This tour of the land of naked privilege should entertain and distract (most) anyone.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, trauma victim’s voyage of discovery

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND
JENNINE CAPÓ CRUCET
Simon & Schuster
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Scarface meets Moby-Dick in this groundbreaking, darkly comic novel about a young man’s attempt to capitalize on his mother’s murky legacy—a story steeped in Miami’s marvelous and sinister magic.

Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull’s legal team and living in his aunt’s garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.

When Izzy’s efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are—permeating everything from Miami’s sinking streets to Izzy’s memories to the very heart of the novel itself. What begins as Izzy’s story turns into a super-saturated fever dream as sprawling and surreal as the Magic City, one as sharp as an iguana’s claws, and as menacing as a killer whale’s teeth. As the truth surrounding Izzy’s boyhood escape from Cuba surfaces, the novel reckons with the forces of nature, with the limits and absence of love, and with the dangers of pursuing a tragic inheritance. Wildly narrated and expertly rendered, Say Hello to My Little Friend is Jennine Capó Crucet’s most daring, heart-breaking, and fearless book yet.

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

My Review: Izzy is as average a guy as you will ever find. He has a crazy-ass inner life which suggests to him that making a living as a Pitbull impersonator:

...so we have a visual lock on Izzy from the off. Though, speaking of "off," the novel opens with Izzy getting his life rearranged by a lawyerly letter telling him to cease-and-desist with the Pitbull-y stuff. Now he has to figure out a way to make a living, and a life. Where is his family, you ask. Nowhere. He’s got none.

That central reality, that lack of mooring chains, allows Izzy to follow his inner voice’s promptings to do the absolute most batshit-crazy nonsense...remember he *was* a Pitbull impersonator until forced not to be...like, oh, let’s say, model the entire rest of his life on the character in the film Scarface.

Follow the links, notice the patterns...this is not random pop-cultural detritus the author has randomly picked up.

Then comes the plot twist Lolita the Orca. How in the name of all that is holy did an ORCA show up in a novel about a Cuban-American man’s identity crisis?!

You really need to follow those links. Do some surface-scratching into the culture not already familiar to you. The word "reggaeton" will enter your vocabulary painlessly this way, and you will need it and the ideas it fronts for to wedge into your brain. The world is changing, and unless you intend to try to stop it by joining the banners and deniers on the radical right, you had best expend some brainergy getting convesrant with Izzy and his world.

Do it painlessly by reading this novel. Moby-Dick was nowhere near this much fun to read, and Izzy beats Ishmael all hollow as a cicerone through all things whale-y. The resonances with the culture of the past make the culture of this century accessible for us midcentury moderns. The read is fun, it’s fast, it’s trenchant...it’s saying a lot more than the words mean.

Isn’t that more or less a novel’s brief? This one does make you work. It requires some effort to get the pop-cultural zeitgeist. It does not pretend to be all about you and center your experience. That novel exists in droves, elsewhere. THIS novel takes you inside the head of a man so traumatized by his past that he can not afford to go deep into anything. This novel parses the cost of cheap thrills and entertainment. The plot, the spine, is the voyage of discovery that we take with Izzy. Like any voyage of discovery, it is not a straight line from start to finish, so douse that expectation right away. Go on the trip as Author Crucet planned it and it will reward you with knowledge and information about the world of a trauma survivor. That can only be a net gain to your own world, because you are statistically likely to know a trauma survivor.

You might not know it yet, but you could easily pick up on signs you would not have seen before if you get your hooks into this story and its meanings.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FLOWERS: The Stories that Make Our Gardens, pretty pretty pictures celebrating springtime in the Global North

A SHORT HISTORY OF FLOWERS: The Stories that Make Our Gardens
ADVOLLY RICHMOND (illus. Sarah Jane Humphrey)
Frances Lincoln Ltd
$24.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Garden and social historian Advolly Richmond (of Gardener’s World) unravels the surprising histories of 60 flowers that shape our gardens.

Have you ever wondered where your favourite garden flowers came from? Where their names derived? Or why some cultivars go in and out of favor? Every flower in your herbaceous border has a story, and in this book Advolly Richmond takes you on a tour of the most intriguing, surprising and enriching ones.

Tales of exploration, everlasting love and bravery bring these beautiful flowers to life. Advolly has dug down to uncover the royalty, scholars, pioneers and a smuggler or two that have all played a part in discovering and cultivating some of our favourite species. From the lavish and exotic bougainvillea, found by an 18th century female botanist in disguise to the humble but majestic snowdrop casting a spell and causing a frenzy. These plants have played pivotal roles in our societies, from boom to bust economies, promises of riches, and making fashion statements. These unassuming blooms hold treasure troves of stories.

With specially commissioned artworks from award-winning botanical illustrator Sarah Jane Humphrey, which sumptuously bring each flower to life – this is a beautiful compendium for every garden lover.

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

My Review: I needed something uncomplicatedly pretty. I expect y’all do, too.

There. Springtime sorted.

Of course, this being Reality, there are no uncomplicated pleasures. The stories of how your favorite flowers got to your garden is tied up with colonialism, capitalism, and the endless intertwining of greed and ownership between them.

Advolly Richmond does a far more deft job of making the connections than I have. She had a lot more room than I did:

This table of contents is like a really good garden’s plan, expansive and filled with beautiful sights. Richmond’s expertise is writing about the domesticated plants we adorn our built environment with, aka gardening. She has practiced the craft long enough to have honed her execution of it into art.

The fact that I myownself find the flower-gardening madness that so many of y’all suffer from inexplicable, and the money y’all lavish on it borderline obscene, does not mean I do not see and appreciate the beauty of the plants themselves.

I still think that the water, fertilizer, and hours of labor *should* be spent on growing vegetables.

THE SIX: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters, bringing Us-v-Them all the way home

THE SIX: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters
LAURA THOMPSON
Picador
$20.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The contrasting lives of the Mitford sisters—stylish, scandalous and tragic by turns—hold up a mirror to upper-class life before and after the Second World War.

The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire.

They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege, they became prominent as ‘bright young things’ in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark—and very public—differences in their outlooks came to symbolise the political polarities of a dangerous decade.

The intertwined stories of their lives—recounted in masterly fashion by Laura Thompson—hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after World War II.

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

My Review: I have read The American Way of Death. I have read Love in a Cold Climate. That these books were written by sisters never fails to astonish me. If you have not yet, read them to see just how little two sisters can share...the folks in Nancy’s novels own the corporations that rip off the bereaved in Jessica’s book.

The gossipy goodness of a big family that has oodles of money and wildly talented members is a cultural icon these days, thanks to Succession and its imitators...but honestly, what kind of world would we live in if we couldn’t look at the source material with a more compassionate eye? The Mitford sisters were not villainesses. They disagreed on a lot of things...but won’t any six people when examined as closely as their fame enabled the Mitfords to be? Nancy, the eldest, was not overtly political, yet spent her life among the people she grew up among, the wealthiest in the world. That did not prevent her from shopping Diana and her repugnant fascist husband Oswald Mosley to the Intelligence services during WWII. She might have been rich and upper class, but she had limits that could not be transgressed, including treasonous actions against the UK that the fascists led by her brother-in-law were planning. That did not extend to Decca, Jessica’s family nickname, and her leftist principles...despite Jessica being so committed to those principles that she allowed her own child to die rather than accept help from her family.

So, clearly, this is a juicy, gossipy read. Does that make it a worthwhile one? We are, as of this writing, in a time of wealth inequality as stark as the one in the Mitford sisters’ lives. The natural consequence of battle-lines being drawn is depersonalizing the Other Side, attributing inhuman levels of focus to Them, all against what Our Side...clearly the side of God and the Angels, self-evidently Right in all ways and destined to prevail over Them...thus excusing ourselves in advance from the annoying burden of empathy with people we disagree with.

What Author Thompson does in this book is give us the gory details of rich people’s lives, while bringing our attention to the immutable nature of Family in forming its members...would Nancy, the eldest, ever have been able to turn into the radical that late-in-order rebel Jessica, or middle-child Diana, did? Likely not. Her world, Thompson shows, is that much different from theirs. Like any big family, the Mitfords were a very mixed bag of people formed by the pressure cooker of differing expectations and opportunities into very, very different people. What looks from the outside like a bloc of wealth and privilege is, from a closer view, a forest of unique trees.

This is a useful reminder now, when we look at the Othering that is so prevalent in modern society. They are not Them, they are all part of Us. We are, in fact, always an Us, just like the Mitfords were.