QUILTBAG ROUNDUP: LAST NIGHT IN NUUK; THE BOOK OF AWESOME QUEER HEROES: How the LGBTQ+ Community Changed the World for the Better; OUR EVENINGS

OUR EVENINGS
ALAN HOLLINGHURST
Random House (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence.

Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.

Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.

Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.

This is “one of our most gifted writers” (The Boston Globe) sweeping readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.

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

My Review: Vignettes from the privileged and fortunate life of a mixed-"race" (useless term, divisive and ill-defined, but lacking an appropriate alternative one here) queer man and his circle of friends of his youth as they move through the stages of life, change partners, grow, and grow old, in the UK of our recent past.

Details are as synopsized by the publisher above; my reading of it was undertaken because Author Hollinghurst has never failed to give me the very agreeable experience of following him through a logical and internally consistent plot led by the loveliest sentences creating relatable, heightened-into-beauty situations and images.

Job done again. I'm in the contented majority of readers who felt well-served by this outing (!) into Hollinghurst's familiar-but-better reality. I even had the thoroughly unpleasant duty of feeling the humanity of a political-right radical and Brexiteer.

Enjoyable, all of it, but not new or freshly imagined by the author of The Line of Beauty, hence that missing half-star.

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THE BOOK OF AWESOME QUEER HEROES: How the LGBTQ+ Community Changed the World for the Better
ERIC ROSSWOOD, KATHLEEN ARCHAMBEAU, KATE KENDELL, Esq.
Mango (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Discover how gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people have changed the world into the one we know and love in this riveting history book.

Historic Icons in the LGBTQ+ Community

Discover how gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people have changed the world into the one we know and love in this riveting history book.

Pride across the ages. The LGBTQ+ community has made countless positive impacts throughout history as scientists, world leaders, athletes, and entrepreneurs, and each one of them deserves to be celebrated in The Book of Awesome Queer Heroes. Going into the history and achievements of famous queer icons, this LGBTQ+ book is a love letter to those who have brought love, positivity, and advancement into our society. Let author and activist Eric Rosswood and Kathleen Archambeau guide your discovery of amazing facts about each historical figure and how their lives have shaped ours in more ways than one.

How they are still inspiring us today. The Book of Awesome Queer Heroes doesn’t just cover what so many LGBTQ+ people have accomplished; it also shares how we can achieve our dreams by learning from their persistence. Learn about activists such as Marsha P. Johnson, X González, Sylvia Rivera and many more in their fight for progressive change against discrimination.

Meet heroes and world-changers you may have heard of, with biographies about:

Star athletes such as Esera Tuaolo and Billie Jean King
Entertainers like Sir Elton John, Margaret Cho, Daniela Vega, and RuPaul
Government and military officials such as Eric Fanning and Leo Varadkar
Trailblazers in science and technology including, Alan Turing and Lynn Conway
Other historic icons like Oscar Wilde and Bayard Rustin

If you enjoy LGBTQ+ books and memoirs such as Hollywood Pride, The House of Hidden Meaning, or Karma, then you’ll love The Book of Awesome Queer Heroes.

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

My Review: I deliberately left publishing this review until after Yule because, I'm sad to say, there are families (of a sort) where a young adult could be in trouble if this book was given to them. I still think any queer kid over, say, thirteen would hugely benefit from receiving this book as a way of being reassured that they're not the first queer person, nor the only one who had a tough road to follow into adulthood.

Brief biographical sketches and images of the ancestors of their own people will encourage a young soul in need of the security and reassurance of belonging to a lineage.

At under $15, the modest price will more than repay your investment in a young queer kid's anchor into reality. I don't know how much longer these books will be available, so I'll recommend this one as a gift to give now while They still don't make it ever-harder to procure.

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LAST NIGHT IN NUUK
NIVIAQ KORNELIUSSEN
Black Cat/Grove Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty and fearless debut from a stunning new voice, Last Night in Nuuk is a work of daring invention about young life in Greenland. Through monologues, emails, and text exchanges, she brilliantly weaves together the coming of age of five distinct characters: a woman who’s “gone off sausage” (men); her brother, in a secret affair with a powerful married man; a lesbian couple confronting an important transition; and the troubled young woman who forces them all to face their fears. With vibrant imagery and daring prose, Korneliussen writes honestly about finding yourself and growing into the person you were meant to be. Praised for creating “its own genre” (Politiken, Denmark), Last Night in Nuuk is a brave entrance onto the literary scene and establishes her as a voice that cannot be ignored.

I RECEIVED A COPY AS A GIFT. THANK YOU.

My Review: I got one of these eight years ago from a friend now vanished into the internet's anonymity. I'd heard of it on Lambda Literary's reviews site.

There's always a novelty factor when someone from a place less frequented (to self-centered monoglot Anglophone readers) writes about their home place. It's new, it's fresh, it isn't a place you went on holiday in your teens. Extra exciting when the author's somewhere on the QUILTBAG spectrum and sets a queer story of five people in different gradations of outness in a place where that is not the first thing that comes to mind as a probability.

I had never once in my life considered the presence of QUILTBAG culture existing at all in Greenland.

A book of stories about different members of that community, deeply enmeshed in each others' lives, felt irresistible, and I was eager to dive in...then Life got in the way, my treebooks got relocated for me (much against my will), and it never happened until now. This is my last read of 2024. It's not a fat book so I thought it might be okay for me to hold.

Not a good choice. Much pain, three days to read under two hundred pages, an actual new gouty tophus formed from the exercise.

Yet I heartily enjoyed the novelty factor, I was on board with the use of this generation's epistolary style of texts and emails and social-media posts, since the characters are all young adults and this is their cultural landscape. Their landscape overlapped with mine of the same era in my life with its deeply predictable drunken sex and bewildering rage coming at them from unexpected places, aka bullying.

I don't think I'd've loved it more if I'd read it in '18. I didn't adore it now. I fell under its spell of novelty, enjoyed the reminder of how very powerful a force lust was in my past and how much fun it all was, and in the end was mildly glad I'd read it.

Won't pick it up again, will put it in the Little Free Library come spring, and might read the author's next book.

Equally might not.

Either outcome is fine.

THE SOCIALIST AWAKENING: What's Different Now About the Left, & THE POLITICS OF OUR TIME: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism

THE SOCIALIST AWAKENING: What's Different Now About the Left (Columbia Global Reports series)
JOHN B. JUDIS
Columbia University Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: John Judis is the author of one of the seminal books about the 2016 election, The Populist Explosion, which has sold 38,000 copies and was named One of six books to help understand Trump's win by The New York Times and The Economist called it "Well-written and well-researched, powerfully argued and perfectly timed." Judis is also the author of The Nationalist Revival, published in 2018, which was highly acclaimed and has sold over 9,000 copies. EJ Dionne in The American Prospect called it essential reading.

Both titles have been popular as course adoptions Judis is a veteran political reporter who examines national and global political trends through a nonpartisan lens. He specializes in speaking truth to liberals, wrote EJ Dionne in The Washington Post. Through his long career in progressive journalism, Judis has made a habit of seeing things that others were missing. With his new book examining the new socialism of the left, he once again provides a clarifying look at one of the biggest political trends of our time. Completes Judis's political trilogy explaining the Trump era.

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

My Review: I read this book, and I believed it was true. I do not now know if its analysis of Millennials is accurate, and thus what happened in November 2024 was an anomaly of some sort...read "the results were manipulated like they were in 2016"...or if Author Judis is just like the rest of us elitists on the left who just want to believe as much as Fox Mulder wanted to believe.

Maybe I'm an idiot (stop snickering) but I choose door number optimism.

My generation, like the one before us and the one immediately after, fell for the capitalist lies about socialism = totalitarianism, thus flat refused to see the way socialism rescued capitalism from a full-on leftist rebellion during the Great Depression, and created the most powerful economy in the history of the planet, and reduced immiseration on a scale so epic that the Economic Royalists have spent forty-five years fighting back all the gains made so their power will once again be unchallenged and unshared.

I am deeply distressed that the plan is succeeding still, accelerating even, as they roll out the fascist facets of their controlling regime. All it took was repeating the old lies about Others that regularly succeed in scaring the crap out of the delicate little manbabies who can't tolerate anyone not looking/acting/thinking exactly like them.

So reading this book felt a little like masochism. It also felt a lot like a call to arms, a path marked towards reclaiming the future from the tech scum of the Nerd Reich before it becomes nigh-on impossible.

Don't shirk your part in the battle for the future. #ReadingIsResistance

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THE POLITICS OF OUR TIME: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism (Columbia Global Reports)
JOHN B. JUDIS
Columbia University Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$19.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The distinguished political analyst John Judis has brought out a book with Columbia Global Reports during each of the last three national political seasons: The Populist Explosion in 2016, The Nationalist Revival in 2018, and The Socialist Awakening in 2020. Together, these books chart the rise during the second decade of the twenty-first century of new and unexpected political movements in the United States and Europe that arose in the wake of the Great Recession, the conflict with al-Qaeda and ISIS, and encroaching climate change.

Judis has revised and updated these three books, and written a new introductory essay that seeks to explain the tumultuous last decade—most notably, Donald Trump's presidency and the response to a global pandemic and recession. This volume is an indispensable guide to understanding the deeply rooted disenchantment that gave rise to populist parties and politicians on the right and left—and to the global changes that have transformed the politics of our time.

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

My Review: Tendentious revisions and introductory essays, all with a cautiously hopeful tone.

Might shoulda waited until 2025 to assess the project in either its success or its failure.

Necessary reading...this omnibus edition is very useful indeed. I'm not at all sure Author Judis is related to Cassandra; I'm thinking more Pandora. But let's look at this editorial project for what it offers: Hope, faith in the malleability of the politically naïve in our direction not just theirs.

John B. Judis is able to point to the reasons for why we are where we are. That is an excellent starting point to get onto a new path.

THE POPULIST EXPLOSION: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, & THE NATIONALIST REVIVAL: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization

THE POPULIST EXPLOSION: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (Columbia Global Reports series)
JOHN B. JUDIS
Columbia University Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.16 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of THE POLITICS OF OUR TIME

What’s happening in global politics, and is there a thread that ties it all together?

There is, and it is called populism.

What is populism? And why have populist parties and candidates suddenly sprung up and even gained power in the United States and Western Europe? The emergence of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, France's Marine LePen, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and the Alternative for Germany are signs that an older consensus about politics and government is breaking down.

John B. Judis, one of America's most respected political analysts, tells us why we need to understand the populist movement that began in the United States in the 1890s and whose politics have recurred on both sides of the Atlantic ever since. The Populist Explosion is essential reading for anyone hoping to grasp a global political system that is only just beginning what will be a long-running and highly consequential readjustment.

Featured as one of "Six Books to Help Understand Trump's (2016) Win" by The New York Times

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

My Review: A very interesting read that boils the toxic goo of this moment in history's outrage and grievance into an easy-to-swallow dose. The author's a reputable source of wisdom for leftists for over fifty years. See his Wikipedia page. His take on the issue of seething rage and outrage at being derided, ignored, and exploited among huge swaths of the world's people is well worth your effort to read attentively; it is arguably the reason we are where we are on many fronts.

No one will ever convince me that 45 thought up the campaign that returned him to the White House. There are very, very rich and powerful and canny people who want him where he is. Those are the people who redesigned the way his campaign looked. The slide from populism into fascism, as Judis defines that term, has accelerated. The 2024 man is clearly modeled on Orban and Putin, Cult-of-Personality rulers who have created cadres of supporters who do the leader's bidding. This is something that has developed since this book was written. Judis defines fascism, then says unequivocally in this book that 45 is not one. That is simply not...or no longer is...true.

The truth is, though, understanding the way the people who voted for the redesigned 45 chose this path is something we all need to make the effort to do. The world is not going to end soon. *My* world will; most of my friends' and descendants and countrymen's worlds will too; so I'm quite clearly motivated to be focused on the topic. How we can make the world better for the largest number of people now alive is another strong motivator to get into this topic. I very strongly disapprove of the mental illness of hoarding and greed that constitutes our current economic system. I know this is a common opinion. The canny operators who redesigned the campaign that landed 45 back in power knew there needed to be a hook they could hang a future movement on.

Populism will not survive contact with the stated goals of this group's plan for power. Fascism will.

Learn how we got here, apply these rules to the world to come, and resist.

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THE NATIONALIST REVIVAL: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization (Columbia Global Reports series)
JOHN B. JUDIS
Columbia University Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$10.92 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Why Has Nationalism Come Roaring Back?

Trump in America, Brexit in the U.K., anti-EU parties in Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, and Hungary, and nativist or authoritarian leaders in Turkey, Russia, India, and China -- Why has nationalism suddenly returned with a vengeance? Is the world headed back to the fractious conflicts between nations that led to world wars and depression in the early 20th Century? Why are nationalists so angry about free trade and immigration? Why has globalization become a dirty word?

Based on travels in America, Europe, and Asia, veteran political analyst John B. Judis found that almost all people share nationalist sentiments that can be the basis of vibrant democracies as well as repressive dictatorships. Today's outbreak of toxic "us vs. them" nationalism is an extreme reaction to utopian cosmopolitanism, which advocates open borders, free trade, rampant outsourcing, and has branded nationalist sentiments as bigotry. Can a new international order be created that doesn't dismiss what is constructive about nationalism? As he did for populism in The Populist Explosion, a runaway success after the 2016 election, Judis looks at nationalism from its modern origins in the 1800s to today to find answers.

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

My Review: Much like The Populist Explosion, this 2018 book is a higher-level explainer to ground you in the essentials of nationalism's rise and development.

Post-WWII globalist institutions, created to combat the toxic fascist-infected nationalism running rampant today, have come a cropper in combating the nightmarish reality of resurgent and toxic nationalism—ironically because the institutions were using the weapons of the fascists, shame, Othering, and punishment, against them.

The force that is today's nationalist/fascist movement proves the weapons they themselves used ultimately hastened their own end.

The force of nationalism, like the force of populism, cannot be repressed forever, nor can it be reasoned out of people; it must be accounted for, if not exactly accommodated, in the politics of the twenty-first century. These are emotional responses to triggering events that make followers feel insecure. It cannot be stated enough that facts disproving emotive claims are ineffective in the face of passionately held feelings.

The points made in this book, that nationalists are not all wrong and the liberal elites are not listening to them could not be clearer in 2024. This US election was disastrously mishandled, manipulated by some very clear-sighted and goal-directed people, and need not have resulted in the the awful way that it did. Author Judis is very clear about how we fell into the trap we did; the job now is making the changes, personal, political, and societal, that need making to prevent the incoming administration from throwing US and by extension global society into far worse channels than we're already headed into.

An excellent companion read to The Populist Explosion and a worthy exploration of forces we as a society need to comprehend and harness to productive use.

BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS, infuriating true story of the consequences of untrammeled greed

BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs
ERIC WEINBERG & DONNA SHAW
Rutgers University Press
$26.95 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: By the mid-1980s, over half the hemophiliacs in the United States had become infected with HIV. Blood on Their Hands reveals the toxic combination of corporate greed, governmental complacency, and medical negligence that exacerbated this public health disaster.

A few short years after HIV first entered the world blood supply in the late 1970s and early 1980s, over half the hemophiliacs in the United States were infected with the virus. But this was far more than just an unforeseeable public health disaster. Negligent doctors, government regulators, and Big Pharma all had a hand in this devastating epidemic.

Blood on Their Hands is an inspiring, firsthand account of the legal battles fought on behalf of hemophiliacs who were unwittingly infected with tainted blood. As part of the team behind the key class action litigation filed by the infected, young New Jersey lawyer Eric Weinberg was faced with a daunting task: to prove the negligence of a powerful, well-connected global industry worth billions. Weinberg and journalist Donna Shaw tell the dramatic story of how idealistic attorneys and their heroic, mortally-ill clients fought to achieve justice and prevent further infections. A stunning exposé of one of the American medical system’s most shameful debacles, Blood on Their Hands is a rousing reminder that, through perseverance, the victims of corporate greed can sometimes achieve great victory.

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

My Review: I was there for the AIDS years. I lost the love of my life to AIDS. It was harrowing to see people who did not have the option to avoid infection (after we knew what transmitted the virus) by using condoms then contract and die horribly from the awful virus's depredations. Author Weinberg was a lawyer seeking compensation for families and what few survivors there were in the 1990s. If ever there was a class of truly innocent victims, this group is it.

The way the virus entered these unfortunate sufferers was inescapable. It is a requirement of life as a hemophiliac that, to survive long term, you received donated blood products from normal donors to enable your body to form normal blood. The path to infection of these victims ran right through the corporate boardrooms where for-profit blood banks chose to accept donations from people using drugs. I absolutely know of my own personal knowledge that gay men were unable to donate blood, which would've widened the pool of donors. It was inevitable that a blood-borne infection, one unscreened for and untested for in the blood products harvested, would eventually cause the infection all dreaded as a death sentence at that time.

In the name of profits, lives were gambled with; predictably, those lives were lost.

The "regulatory state" that the incoming (as of 2024) US administration rails against ignored the risks these greedy entities were taking with people who had no choice, no alternative, no voice in or power over the risks their continuing lives required them to take. Author Weinberg and his cohort of counselors acted to force the casino of lives to close, though it took a lot longer than it should have.

The stakes that were paid by the deaths by those without a say in the gambles they were forced to take are currently under threat of being made useless. We're being forced back into a time where we have no say in the rollback of regulations that save lives. Greed like that of the insurance industry currently making news is causing outrage. That's great.

BUT WE HAVE FOUGHT THESE FIGHTS, AND WON THEM, BEFORE. Those victories and protections are the ones in the sights of the profit-motivated incoming administration.

Do not sit idly by as the gains we've won, that have demonstrably saved lives, evaporate in the all-consuming heat of greed and lust for profits. Call your congressional office in the Capitol or the local constituent services office. I realize that takes effort, and the way to say what needs saying isn't in everyone's capabilities. Using 5calls.org will make the process as painless as it's possible to be. The needed numbers, even a script to follow if you're phone-phobic, are all there.

The stakes are too high to sit feeling helpless, or to think "I won't make a difference" or any other excuse. All voices count. Your representatives at every level are *required* to listen to you.

Make them earn their money. Just like you have to.

December 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 Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt by Chelsea Iversen

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A lush, enchanting story of a woman who must use the magic of the fantastical plants that adorn her crumbling estate in Victorian London to thwart the dark plots of the men around her...

Harriet Hunt is completely alone. Her father disappeared months ago, leaving her to wander the halls of Sunnyside house, dwelling on a past she'd rather keep buried. She doesn't often venture beyond her front gate, instead relishing the feel of dirt under her fingernails and of soft moss beneath her feet. Consequently, she's been deemed a little too peculiar for popular Victorian society. This solitary life suits her fine, though – because, in her garden, magic awaits.

Harriet's garden is special. It's a wild place full of twisting ivy, vibrant plums, and a quiet power that buzzes like bees. Caring for this place, and keeping it from running rampant through the streets of her London suburb, is Harriet's purpose.

When suspicion for her father's disappearance falls on her, she marries a seemingly charming man, the first to see past her peculiarities, in order to protect herself. It's soon clear, however, that her new husband might be worse than her father and that she's integral to a dark plot created by the men around her. To free herself and discover the truth, she must learn to channel the power of her strange, magical garden.

At once enchantingly mesmerizing and fiercely feminist, perfect for fans of The Magician's Daughter and The Once and Future Witches, the vibrant world-building and sinister undertones of The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt make for the perfect modern fairytale about women taking control of their lives—with a little help from the magic within them.

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

My Review: The men around her startle me. They noticed this floating wraith of a girl (term used advisedly) at all. She wanders lonely as a cloud around her unhappy home until, at the bitter end of this slogging tale, she has blinding revelatory things occur to her.

Women not in charge of their own lives aren't a lot of fun to read about, however period-appropriate this reality might be. When events finally goad her into action, she *still* drifts! Pretty sentences do not make up for a vacuous passive heroine (Victorian sense heavily implied) to this old man reader. YMMV, and you might see this book's feminism, so three stars.

Sourcebooks Landmark (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks $7.99 for a Kindle edition.

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Heir to Thorn and Flame (Court of Broken Bonds #1) by Ben Alderson

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Married to a ruthless prince…

For years, Max had to serve and obey the vicious magical nobles. Now he is one of them.

When the heir to the throne attacks him, Max accidentally responds with a lethal burst of magic. Max is certain he will be executed. But his power is too rare and precious for that…

Instead, the king forces him to become the boy he killed, taking on the identity and duties of the heir. That includes an arranged marriage—to the dangerously attractive Prince Camron.

Living a lie, Max knows he can trust no one. Not Camron. And definitely not Simion, a handsome, dragon-riding spy sent to test his loyalty.

As a deadly struggle for power begins and desire sparks, Max must protect his secret and his heart at all costs.

Heir to Thorn and Flame is a passionate and page-turning fantasy romance that will have you reading late into the night. Featuring slow-burn, dark secrets, arranged marriage and found family.

Previously published as The Lost Mage, this expanded version begins a series that builds in heart-pounding tension and steam.

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

My Review: Magic, political intrigue, and a deeply, if lopsidedly, drawn love triangle. I enjoyed it a lot more than I would have ordinarily because it's all men, all the time. I'm always down for a story about love blossoming among men. This time it's more than just private love, it's part of this secondary world's social and political fabric..a balm for someone who's spent over sixty years needing to find himself and those like him in the margins and shadows of heteronormative stories.

There are violent themes...family members murdered, rapes, exploitation and emotional abuse...that made the story darker than it needed to be. The pace of the story is slow, which isn't always a bad thing; it isn't offset by much introspection, though, or that was my experience. Acknowledging the need to use violent threats as a means of self-protection doesn't stand in for an involving inward gaze.

Second Sky (non-affiliate Amazon link) only asks $2.99 for a Kindle edition. Well worth the money; even more than that it's worth your time.

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I Will Greet the Sun Again by Khashayar J. Khabushani

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A searing, heartbreaking debut about the powerful bonds that make and break an Iranian-American family

Three young brothers leave Los Angeles in the dead of night for Iran, taken by their father from their mother to a country and an ancestral home they barely recognize. They return to the Valley months later, spit back into American life and changed in awful and inexorable ways. Under the annihilating light of the California sun, our protagonist, the youngest brother, tries to piece together a childhood shattered by his father's abuse, a queer adolescence marked by a shy, secret love affair with a boy he meets on the basketball court, and his suddenly-hostile status as a Muslim living under the shadow of 9/11.

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

My Review: Figuring yourself out is the main project of adolescence. Religion screws this up royally for many gay boys; all Muslim gay boys I've ever known, most others. This story's chronicle of family dissolution, personal awakening, and societal rage directed at children all unearned, isn't breaking new narrative ground. The Southern California/Iran axis of immigration's pretty new to most not from SoCal, so adds a savory new ingredient to most readers' reading.

Lovely sentences, cultural clashes among and outside the family, and a piquant salting of Farsi to lend extra music to this oft-told coming-of-age story all make this good value for a gay man's eyeblinks. Maybe less heartily recommended to straights; still worthy of the time and treasure to get it read.

Hogarth (non-affiliate Amazon link) says "$12.99 please" for the Kindlebook.

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Beholder by Ryan La Sala

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From Ryan La Sala, author of the tantalizingly twisted The Honeys and riotously imaginative Reverie, comes a chilling new contemporary fable about art, aesthetic obsession, and the gaze that peers back at us from behind our reflections.

Athanasios “Athan” Bakirtzis hasn’t had an easy life. Orphaned by a fire at a young age, he’s had to rely on his charm, his under-the-table job as an art handler, and the generosity of family friends to care for his ailing Yiayia, his grandmother.

But Athan also has a secret: a hereditary power that allows him to rewind the reflection in any mirror, peering into its recent past. Superstitious Yiayia calls the family ability a curse, and has long warned him never to use it. For Athan, who’s survived this long by keeping to the realm of the real, this is a perfectly agreeable arrangement.

Until the night of the party. After being invited to a penthouse soiree for New York’s art elite, Athan breaks his grandmother’s rule during a trip to the bathroom, turning back his reflection for just a moment. Then he hears a slam against the bathroom door, followed by a scream. Athan peers outside, only to be pushed back in by a boy his age. The boy gravely tells him not to open the door, then closes Athan in.

Before Athan can process what’s happening, more screams follow, and the party descends into chaos. When he finally emerges, he discovers a massacre where the victims appear to have arranged themselves into a disturbingly elegant sculpture—and Athan's mysterious savior is nowhere to be found.

Something evil is compelling people to destructive acts, a presence that’s been hiding behind Athan’s reflection his whole life, watching and biding its time. Soon, he’s swept up in a supernatural conspiracy that spans New York, of occult high societies and deadly eldritch designs. If beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, what can it do to us once it’s inside?

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

My Review: Fast-paced, fascinating tale of how mundane things, usually noticed in passing at best, can become deeply threatening when their shape and pretty shine is manipulated against the eye of the beholder. I think the fundamental need of the PoV, Athan, is one we ought to pay better attention to: Seeing underneath the surfaces of shiny, pretty things is a curse indeed, as his grandmother says; it's not because it's inherently dangerous, though. Because it means the adept is now dangerous to those who hide behind distractions and reflections.

Well-written, deftly plotted, and unputdownable. Why not more stars, especially since it's also low gore? "Eldritch" supernatural stuff automatically feels silly to me. Also I do not think I'd give this to anyone under seventeen and then only if I knew them well enough to know their level-headedness would keep nightmares at bay.

PUSH (an imprint of Scholastic; non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $11.99 for a Kindle copy. Reasonable to my eyes.

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The Longest Summer by Alexandrine Ogundimu

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Being queer in a small town? Bad. Your employer believing you stole ten thousand dollars? Worse.

Abboton, IN has kept hard-partying Victor Adewale in the closet for his entire life. So he makes a deal with his stern Nigerian father: Clean up his act, hold down a job, and the dad will pay for him to attend grad school in New York. Easy enough, until $10,000 goes missing from Victor’s Hot Topic-esque mall store under his watch, leaving him the prime suspect.

Meanwhile, Victor’s secret ex-boyfriend Kyle sets him up with fellow mallrat Amory. A bisexual love triangle forms when it becomes clear Victor and Kyle aren’t over each other. But as Victor grows increasingly certain that Kyle is responsible for the theft, their relationship gets way more complicated. Desperate, Victor turns to his dangerous friend Henshaw, who offers shady alternative methods of getting the money he needs. But Henshaw’s got secrets of his own that might destroy them all.

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

My Review: What a hoot! Kyle and Victor are such a fun snarktastic pair of boys who are seriously believeably In Love and scared to do anything like, you know, make a commitment or something. Their gal-pal Amory thinks she can wedge in the middle, and realizes how powerful the bonds she's between are. Kyle is manipulative and unkind; Victor's wishywashy and unmoored; everyone's in that middle ground where feelings are, in fact, everything. It makes the explosions that come all the more believable.

Victor's rigid, unyielding, controlling father and his mad, bad, dangerous to know chaotic craptastic "friend" Henshaw are the poles of the magnet that has him, Kyle, and Amory in its field. It was a completely believable story, true to the young people's life I think we all must go through, and drawn with great sensitivity.

Clash (an imprint of Scholastic; non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $5.99 for a Kindle copy—run, don't walk, to get one!

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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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Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture edited by Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Daniel Cross Turner (27%)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Depictions of the undead in the American South are not limited to our modern versions, such as the vampires in True Blood and the zombies in The Walking Dead. As Undead Souths reveals, physical emanations of southern undeadness are legion, but undeadness also appears in symbolic, psychological, and cultural forms, including the social death endured by enslaved people, the Cult of the Lost Cause that resurrected the fallen heroes of the Confederacy as secular saints, and mourning rites revived by Native Americans forcibly removed from the American Southeast.

To capture the manifold forms of southern haunting and horror, Undead Souths explores a variety of media and historical periods, establishes cultural crossings between the South and other regions within and outside of the U.S., and employs diverse theoretical and critical approaches. The result is an engaging and inclusive collection that chronicles the enduring connection between southern culture and the refusal of the dead to stay dead.

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

My Review: I'll say this for the editors: They cast a wide net. They did not give me a bum steer in their description. It's accurate.

That's my issue, it's accurate. It is great for a lit-crit text designed to enliven a course of lectures. It gave me a sense of seasickness from the discontinuity inherent in the format. So this isn't a complaining review, just a "don't mistake this book for a continuous narrative or you'll be disappointed" one.

LSU Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $19.95 for a Kindle copy.

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WALLACE STEGNER'S UNSETTLED COUNTRY: Ruin, Realism, and Possibility in the American West
Mark Fiege, Leisl Carr Childers, Michael J. Lansing, Editors @ (31%)

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Wallace Stegner is an iconic western writer. His works of nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angle of Repose and Big Rock Candy Mountain, as well as his nonfiction books and essays introduced the beauty and character of the American West to thousands of readers. Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country assesses his life, work, and legacy in light of contemporary issues and crises. Along with Stegner’s achievements, the contributors show how his failures offer equally crucial ways to assess the past, present, and future of the region.

Drawing from history, literature, philosophy, law, geography, and park management, the contributors consider Stegner’s racial liberalism and regional vision, his gendered view of the world, his understandings of conservation and the environment, his personal experience of economic collapse and poverty, his yearning for community, and his abiding attachment to the West. Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country is an even-handed reclamation of Stegner’s enduring relevance to anyone concerned about the American West’s uncertain future.

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

My Review: Why revisit the life and work of yet another old, dead white guy in all his sexist, regressive glory Because he has a lot to tell us, and teach us, about our world and its roots, I'm told in these essays.

Stegner is nowhere near as troublesome to modern sensibilities as many of his contemporaries. He was blissfully unaware of the importance of nonwhite people in the discourses about our country, yet perfectly willing to discourse about them and their issues. His unawareness of the privilege of old-white-maleness was tempered by his genuine concern for the abuses and issues of people not like him; but he was a man of his time, and both misogynistic and paternalistic in his attitudes. Liberalism is not enough, and that idea never so much as crossed his mental radar. He is shown here in all his flawed grandeur, a talented writer and a man more open to learning and to changing his mind as facts and evidence demanded. His position as a monadnock of Western-US writing, and thinking about Western-US issues, is not diminished by assesssing his failings, flaws, and mistakes. That does not, however, mean the essays about him don't take A Tone that swings from laudatory to embarrassed. It wore my patience too thin.

Bison Books asks $14.99 for a Kindlebook. You'd need to be a much bigger fan than I am to shall that out.

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GIFT CARD SPENDING: My Edelweiss+ Reads

Enviable haul, no?

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met.
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Mala Vida: A Novel by Marc Fernandez (tr. Molly Grogan)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Almodovar meets Orwell in this acclaimed, fast-paced contemporary noir novel exposing the most shameful secrets of the Franco era—a finalist for the Grand Prix des Lectrices d’Elle

Present-day Spain, a time of economic crisis and resurgent populist nationalism. The radical right has just won the election after twelve years of Socialist rule. In the midst of this political upheaval, a series of murders is committed, taking place from Madrid to Barcelona to Valencia. The victims include a politician a real-estate lawyer, doctor, a banker, and a nun. There is no obvious connection between them.

As the country prepares for a return to a certain moral order, radio crime reporter Diego Martin is trying to keep his head above water in anticipation of the expected media purge. When he decides to look into the first murder, he doesn't have the faintest clue that his investigation will lead far beyond his local beat and put his life at risk. For what he uncovers exposes the roots of a national scandal: the theft of babies from the victims of the Franco regime, crimes—never prosecuted—that were orchestrated by now well-connected citizens who will do anything to avoid exposure.

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

My Review: Seriously noir vision for how a radical-right takeover would look, and work, in a traumatized country. Transfem Ana is a private detective assisting resistance figures Diego, a talk-radio host, and lawyer Isabel, as they undermine the moral foundations of a horrific bunch of authoritarian hypocrites by exposing a vile, evil child-trafficking scheme.

Always look at what the sides accuse each other of; it's what they're doing. I'm sure nothing like that would ever happen here.

For legal reasons, that's all I'll say.
Arcade (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $16.99 for any edition.

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His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the smash hit historical thriller that the New York Times Book Review calls “thought provoking fiction,” a brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae. There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path? And will he hang for his crime?

Presented as a collection of documents discovered by the author, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers of Culdie, Ross-shire. They offer conflicting impressions of the accused; one interviewee recalls Macrae as a gentle and quiet child, while another details him as evil and wicked. Chief among the papers is Roderick Macrae’s own memoirs where he outlines the series of events leading up to the murder in eloquent and affectless prose. There follow medical reports, psychological evaluations, a courtroom transcript from the trial, and other documents that throw both Macrae’s motive and his sanity into question.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s multilayered narrative—centered around an unreliable narrator—will keep the reader guessing to the very end. His Bloody Project is a deeply imagined crime novel that is both thrilling and luridly entertaining from an exceptional new voice.

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

My Review: Far more Real than mere reality is, this eight-year-old inquiry into the consequences of brutal oppression on the oppressed resonated with me then, and even moreso now. Fascinating structure of documentary evidence presented in a context you will need to parse for yourself. It gave the book an added element of investment and involvement.

I can't get to four stars because, in the end, I'm pretty familiar with this story of unreliable narrators who need careful watching, thoughtful parsing, and a lot of skepticism. Well-done iteration of a story I've read before.

Skyhorse Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link) offers a $12.99-on-Kindle version.

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The Preserve (The Wendell Lett Novels #2) by Steve Anderson

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A WWII vet finds himself trapped inside a sinister military experiment in this historical thriller based on true events and sequel to Under False Flags.

Hawaii, 1948. In World War II, Wendell Lett was considered a hero before he became a deserter. Now he's looking for a cure for his severe combat trauma, and The Preserve seems to be his salvation. Run by military intelligence, the secretive training camp promises relief from the terrors in his mind. Together with tough-minded Hawaiian Kanani Alana, who's also looking for a new start at The Preserve, Lett begins to feel hopeful.

But soon Lett discovers the chilling, true purpose of his treatment. The Preserve intends to rebuild him into a cold-blooded assassin-whether he's willing to cooperate or not. His only hope is Alana's dangerous escape plan. But even if it succeeds, he'll still have to survive a merciless manhunt through the harsh wilderness of the Big Island.

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

My Review: Quite a lot of Goodreads reviews sang five-star epithalamiums at this book. I was not enamored in that high a degree. I was entertained, and enjoyed this sequel to a book I wrote a one-word note about: "Okay." With the best will in the world, I can't do diddly with that.

This story intrigued me because I'm deeply interested in PTSD. I thought there'd be more about it than there was, but it really wouldn't exist as a story without it, so it's actually hugely present...just not explicitly all the time. I'm not sure modern psychology agrees that it's possible to do what's done here, but honestly just didn't care. Hawaii is a great setting for this dark little entertainment.

Open Road Media (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $9.99 for a Kindlebook.

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Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Set in the neighbourhood of “Little Jamaica,” Frying Plantain follows a girl from elementary school to high school graduation as she navigates the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation immigrants experiencing first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity in a predominantly white society.

Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle—of her North American identity and her desire to be a “true” Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother’s rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too “faas” or too “quiet” or too “bold” or too “soft.” In these twelve interconnected stories, we see Kara on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig’s head in her great-aunt’s freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother’s house, trying to cope with ongoing battles of unyielding authority.

A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker.

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

My Review: Braided stories that really wanted to be a novel. The issue with that is, to make a novel in its ordinary form, one would've been required to snip most of these strands and put in a LOT of "development" for the survivors. I put that in sarky quotes because I think that's usually an excuse to pad stories with stuff not hugely relevant and often enough not that well thought out. Author Reid-Benta chose moments and details that count; used them sparingly; and gave us a mosaic of Caribbean-Canadian life that works well. As long as you know going in that you're not getting an ordinary novel.

It's a fine and complicatedly narrative character study, and ideal for the gift-card holder who needs something to absorb their attention while offering logical stopping points, that isn't as incompletely immersive as a story collection.

Astoria (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks a not-cheap but not-unreasonable $14.95 on Kindle.

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Darkness for Light (Caleb Zelic #3) by Emma Viskic

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Caleb Zelic can't hear you. But he can see everything.

After a lifetime of bad decisions PI Caleb Zelic is finally making good ones. He's in therapy, his business is recovering and his relationship with his estranged wife Kat is on the mend.

But soon Caleb is drawn into the tangled life of his troubled ex partner Frankie, which leads to a confrontation with the cops. And when Frankie's niece is kidnapped, she and Caleb must work together to save the child's life. But can Caleb trust her after her past betrayals?

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

My Review: Interesting amateur-sleuth noir, with a Deaf person PI, who possesses a set of tremendously, consciously hyperdeveloped obsevational skills. He's got the usual woman problems, the accustomed bad luck that lands him in awkward situations, and the starchy sense of honor that prevents him from doing what the rest of us do: ignore the problem and walk away.

Entertaining, nicely calibrated change rung on the the themes we all love in our noirs. As third in series, I was not ever "at sea" or uncertain of my footing, so starting here's fine. Anyone know Nyle DiMarco? This is a TV series idea he'd be great for.

Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants a very reasonable $9.99 for the Kindlebook. I liked it more than that.

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Those Who Perish (Caleb Zelic #4) by Emma Viskic

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The thrilling finale of the groundbreaking Caleb Zelic series, from the award-winning author of Resurrection Bay

Caleb Zelic can't hear you. But he can see everything.

Caleb's addict brother, Anton, has been missing for months, still angry about Caleb's part in his downfall.

After almost giving up hope of finding him, Caleb receives an anonymous message alerting him to Ant's whereabouts and warning him that Ant is in danger. A man has been shot and Ant might be next.

Caleb reluctantly leaves his pregnant wife's side and tracks his brother to an isolated island where Ant has been seeking treatment. There, he finds a secretive community under threat from a sniper, and a cult-like doctor with a troubling background.

Caleb must hunt for the sniper to save Ant, but any misstep may ruin their faltering reconciliation, and end in death. When body parts begin to wash up on shore, it looks like the sniper is growing more desperate...

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

My Review: Family is at the heart of this final outing in the Cal Zelic series. It's been a road for Cal, finding his emotional and professional footing. His life, as all our lives, can only be lived forward and understood backward. He's got the hardest bits ahead now, facing fatherhood and repairing siblinghood.

Add some professional puzzle-solving stress, and this is one pacey little read in all the best ways. I like Cal, and I like the Aussie setting, and I really want someone to get this in development for Deaf actor Nyle DiMarco more now than I did after the third one. Cal's deafness is a very well-integrated part of his method of working. I'd love this to come on my streaming service. Soon, please, I need fresh stories, and this one's in a completed series.

Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants a still-reasonable $9.99 for this one, too.

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Red Dog by Willem Anker (tr. Michiel Heyns)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A blistering, brutal novel of the South African frontier from a major new literary voice

In the eighteenth century, a giant strides the border of the Cape Colony frontier. Coenraad de Buys is a legend, a polygamist, a swindler and a big talker; a rebel who fights with Xhosa chieftains against the Boers and British; the fierce patriarch of a sprawling mixed-race family with a veritable tribe of followers; a savage enemy and a loyal ally. Like the wild dogs who are always at his heels, he roams the shifting landscape of southern Africa, hungry and spoiling for a fight.

Red Dog is a brilliant, fiercely powerful novel - a wild, epic tale of Africa in a time before boundaries between cultures and peoples were fixed, based on the life of a real historical figure.

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

My Review: There are no places left where big, loud, crude, larger-than-life men can go to be themselves. De Buys would be, in almost any place in the twenty-first century, in prison for at least a half-century for fraud; a few years for rape; a few months for just being too much for the people around him. This was, in fact, the way things were headed in eighteenth-century Europe so he went to Africa.

A white man with multiple African wives, with no manners and a mean streak a mile wide, and no fear for scare was exactly what the colonists needed...though they made sure to let all and sundry including de Buys know that they held him in contempt. Marrying African women and getting sons on them?! Horrors! (Ignoring of course their own bastards born of rape; *they* were never called family like de Buys' get were.) History we just do not tell ourselves is nonetheless history. Willem Anker did a fine job rescuing one man shoved into the memory hole.

Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) says "$13.99 please" for a Kindle book. Even if I can't overlook my own twenty-first century distaste for him, de Buys was important and deserves to be remembered.

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The Salt Fields: A Novella by Stacy D. Flood

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Salt Fields chronicles this day's journey of four African-American passengers—Minister, a soldier named Carvall, and the young couple Lanah and Divinion, each searching for a new life, but none sure of what that means—as they travel through a myriad of locations, histories, and events that shape who they are, what they dream, what they are escaping, who they will eventually become, and what experiences they will have to endure in order to do so.

On the day that Minister Peters boards a train from South Carolina heading north, he has nothing left but ghosts: the ghost of his murdered wife, the ghost of his drowned daughter, the ghosts of his father and his grandmother and the people who disappeared from his town without trace or explanation. In the cramped car, Minister finds himself in close quarters with three passengers also joining the exodus from the South—people seeking a new life, whose motives, declared or otherwise, will change Minister's life with devastating consequences.

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

My Review: Beautiful, meditative tale of the absolute Hell on Earth of the Jim Crow South, told from the PoV of some escapees as they leave 1947 South Carolina. The events that cause each one to leave, in 128 pages, are sketched in; maybe that's for the best, but it left this old white man thinking it might shoulda been a short story, or a novel.

I'm all for novellas, make no mistake; the form's got a sweet spot that just sings when it's hit. In this case, I felt Minister Peters, as the most opaque character, would work in a récit about him alone. Here, I want to know a lot more about his losses as they affected him when they happened, and why it took him so long to leave South Carolina.

Lanah and Divinion are characters I got too little of; particularly their origin as a couple; so I was not terribly interested in their story. The perfect balance came from the very ordinary Carvall. I got exactly the right story fragment from him. I'm glad I read it because the sentences are so lovely. I think anyone interested in the Great Migration, or the Black culture of Jim Crow times, would love the read.

Lanternfish Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $13.25 for a Kindle edition. Used paperbacks will be cheaper.

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Resist Everything Except Temptation: The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde by Kristian Williams (ed.)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A book that penetrates the surface of the Oscar Wilde mythos to uncover the radical politics that propelled his art.

Oscar Wilde is remembered as a wit and a dandy, as a gay martyr, and as a brilliant writer, but his philosophical depth and political radicalism are often forgotten. Resist Everything Except Temptation locates Wilde in the tradition of left-wing anarchism, and argues that only when we take his politics seriously can we begin to understand the man, his life, and his work. Drawing from literary, historical, and biographical evidence, including archival research, the book outlines the philosophical influences and political implications of Wilde's ideas on art, sex, morality, violence, and above all, individualism. Williams raises questions about the relationships between culture and politics, between utopian aspirations and practical programs, and between individualism, group identity, and class struggle. The resulting volume represents, not merely a historical curiosity, but a contribution to current debates within political theory and a salvo in the broader culture wars.

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

My Review: Re-reading my elder sibling in queerness Oscar Wilde's wildly witty aperçus as leftist coded messages? Sign me up! I'll trot down this happy trail as fast as you like. What happens is a bit different than I was imagining it might be. Wilde was a protean character by his own design. Political movements like anarchism are (ironically) a lot more prescriptive in their roles than Wilde could ever have forced himself to be. He wrote: "A man belongs to his age even when he struggles against it." The fact is I'd never bothered to consider his struggles against his own racism, antisemitism, and even sexism, in any serious light. It makes perfect sense that an Irish man of his generation and privileged class would partake of them all even as he grew into ever more Socialist modes of thought.

Why I stop just short of four stars is I'd've liked more attention to be paid to journalism (eg, “The Soul of Man under Socialism”) than the commentary on The Importance of Being Earnest and De Profundis, which are well-studied and familiar...no matter that the commentary was trenchant, it adds nothing new to Wilde's thought-development...it can't.

AK Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks $15.20 for the Kindle edition; used trade paperbacks are a lot less, and at any price very well worth your gift-card money.

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The Party Upstairs by Lee Conell

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: An electrifying debut novel that unfolds in the course of a single day inside one genteel New York City apartment building, as tensions between the building's super and his grown-up daughter spark a crisis that will, by day's end, have changed everything.

Ruby has a strange relationship to privilege, having grown up the super's daughter in the basement of an Upper West Side co-op that is full-on gentrified, and getting more so with each passing year. She wasn't economically privileged herself, but her close childhood friendship with the daughter of wealthy tenants named Caroline, and the mere fact of living in a lovely neighborhood, close to her beloved Natural History Museum and just across the park from the Met, brought with them certain real advantages, even expectations. Naturally Ruby followed her dreams and took out large student loans to attend a prestigious small liberal arts college and explore her interest in art.

But now, out of school for a while, she is no closer to her dream job, or anything resembling it, and she's been forced by circumstances to do the last thing she wanted to do: move back in with her parents, back in the basement apartment of the building. And Caroline is throwing one of her parties tonight, in her father's glorious penthouse apartment, a party Ruby looks forward to and dreads in equal measure.

With exquisite narrative control, The Party Upstairs distills down worlds of wisdom about families, great expectations, and the hidden violence of class into the gripping, darkly witty story of a single fateful day inside a single Manhattan co-op. Told from the alternating perspectives of the super, Martin, and his daughter, Ruby, as they are obliged, one way or another, to interact with the various species of inhabitant of the little ecosystem of their building, the novel builds from the spark of an early morning argument between Martin and Ruby to the ultimate conflagration that results by day's end. By the time the ashes have cooled, the façade that masks the building's power structures of dominance and submission will have burned away, and no party will be left unscathed.

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

My Review: Nicely observed, well-told Sabrina story. Martin, the super, resonated with me in his fed-up hadditness; as did Lily, the elderly principled holdout rent-controlled tenant. Caroline, the rich girl, was bland to the point of being invisible; Ruby, resentful arriviste manquée, I disliked more and more as the pages turned.

I couldn't get to a fourth star because the conflicts were given more weight than I felt they merited based on how they're presented. I'm well aware that, in real life, the point of ignition for a cataclysmic blaze isn't always consequential, but when we're retreading paths at least seventy years old, I want more than the minimum in all aspects of the storytelling. This was the author's first novel, so I'm not mad, I'm mildly disappointed.

Penguin Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) only wants $5.99 for a Kindle edition, which is excellent value for money.

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GIFT CARD SPENDING: My NetGalley reads

Lovely sight, innit.

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met.
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In Search of the Unknown by Robert W. Chambers

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Chambers' early novel explores the mysteries of the unknown. "Very genuine, though not without the typical mannered extravagance of the eighteen-nineties, is the strain of horror in the early work of Robert W. Chambers . . . One cannot help regretting that he did not further develop a vein in which he could so easily have become a recognised master."—H.P. Lovecraft. (Includes a brief introduction by Lovecraft.)

Robert William Chambers was an American artist and writer. His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow, a collection of weird short stories, connected by the theme of the fictitious drama The King in Yellow, which drives those who read it insane.

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My Review: Like The King in Yellow, this is a collection of weird short stories, this time connected by the character of a scientist who, in the fashion of the times, goes on hunts to retrieve sample organisms previously only rumored to (still) exist.

Very much in the mode of its day, the breathless excitement of taking ownership via description and study of wild things resonates very differently now. It is notable that Chambers, whose later career was writing mostly romantic fiction, grafts a romance onto the last story that has an unfulfilled unreturned love in it.

Wildside Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) offers a trade paper edition for $15.95, or you can opt for a free Kindle edition.

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The Tracer of Lost Persons by Robert W. Chambers

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: from Wikipedia: Chambers's novel The Tracer of Lost Persons was adapted into a long-running (1937–54) radio crime drama, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, by soap opera producers Frank and Anne Hummert.

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My Review: I can see how this loosely structured novel inspired the long-running soap opera it did. I really dislike the author's unquestioned-imperialism era worldview, which I see everywhere in his stories. It's clear, however, that he understands narrative structure intimately.

The "occult detective" genre was a way to add supernatural frisson to the emerging blockbuster of amateur sleuth stories in the middle nineteenth century. I've read and enjoyed John Thunstone and Jules de Grandin stories, so I'm not immune to the charms here. But this is a pleasure best sipped in a liqueur glass of story size, where a novel is a quart jar of high-fructose corn syrup.

Enjoy in moderation, and it can be fun. Odin’s Library Classics (non-affiliate Amazon link) offers a trade paperback for $5.25. Or there's always Project Gutenberg.

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Blood Heir (Blood Heir Trilogy #1) by Amélie Wen Zhao

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In the Cyrilian Empire, Affinites are reviled. Their varied gifts to control the world around them are deemed unnatural—even dangerous. And Anastacya Mikhailov, the crown princess, is one of the most terrifying Affinites.

Ana's ability to control blood has long been kept secret, but when her father, the emperor, is murdered, she is the only suspect. Now, to save her own life, Ana must find her father's killer. But the Cyrilia beyond the palace walls is one where corruption rules and a greater conspiracy is at work--one that threatens the very balance of Ana's world.

There is only one person corrupt enough to help Ana get to the conspiracy's core: Ramson Quicktongue. Ramson is a cunning crime lord with sinister plans--though he might have met his match in Ana. Because in this story, the princess might be the most dangerous player of all.

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My Review: Five years ago, there was quite a brouhaha about an early version of the book that got tagged for some problematic themes surrounding human trafficking. Author Zhao, Chinese descended ESL writer that she is, took that criticism to heart and pulled her self-published book to address the issues; somehow an idiot white man stuck his oar in to say this was the PC mob forcing her into a corner. Hijinks ensued for months.

The book, a well-crafted YA secondary-world fantasy about the ways that people use us-v-them instincts to control, manipulate, and devalue others via Othering, is just fine. She didn't learn English until late. It shows. It's a self-translation, made by someone creative but not entirely familiar with English or its worldwide cultures, of a story informed by the author's abiding desire to show the personal cost of Othering.

Ironic, that. I think it deserves the reading world's support. Delacorte Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $9.99 for a Kindlebook.

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The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander WINNER OF THE NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

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My Review: Sci-fi doing what it does so very well: Speculate. Can we really say for sure that there was never a connection among the females of many species in acknowledgment of their sad exploitation by males? We can't prove it. We also can't DISprove it because no one has bothered to try, so we don't have a framework for the effort.

I'm not as delighted as so many others were. I suspect it's because I'd've done better at falling in love with it if we'd had more room to develop the connections among the timelines. The modern-day timeline felt poorly attached to the 1920s, to me at least.

Tor.com Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link) only asks $1.99 and that is, no matter my quibbling, an excellent value for money.

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Mother Knows Best by Kira Peikoff

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A mother’s worst nightmare, a chance at redemption, and a deadly secret that haunts a family across the generations.

There’s only room for one mother in this family.

Claire Abrams’s dreams became a nightmare when she passed on a genetic mutation that killed her little boy. Now she wants a second chance to be a mother, and finds it in Robert Nash, a maverick fertility doctor who works under the radar with Jillian Hendricks, a cunning young scientist bent on making her mark—and seducing her boss.

Claire, Robert, and Jillian work together to create the world’s first baby with three genetic parents—an unprecedented feat that could eliminate inherited disease. But when word of their illegal experiment leaks to the wrong person, Robert escapes into hiding with the now-pregnant Claire, leaving Jillian to serve out a prison sentence that destroys her future.

Ten years later, a spunky girl named Abigail begins to understand that all is not right with the reclusive man and woman she knows as her parents. But the family’s problems are only beginning. Jillian, hardened by a decade of jealousy and loss, has returned—and nothing will stop her from reuniting with the man and daughter who should have been hers. Past, present—and future converge in a mesmerizing psychological thriller from acclaimed bestselling author Kira Peikoff.

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My Review: Heteronormative cult-of-mother story I expected to rail against and rag on for its regressive construction of "family" and its reprehensible Fatal Attraction-inflected gender relations. The latter was indeed a really big downside resulting in three stars being as high as I could go.

The former, though...much more nuanced than I expected, down to the way Author Peikoff draws the tangled love, hate, guilt, joy cat's cradle among Jillian, Claire, and daughter Abby. The man was really, in the end, pointless. What induced Claire and Jillian to agree to this idiotic division of responsibilities?! How did he talk them into any of it? He's too much of a cipher as written for me to buy it.

The result is a waffling three stars, though I'd definitely still recommend it. Crooked Lane Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $14.99 for a Kindle edition. Used hardcovers are bound to be cheaper.

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A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall by Andy Abramowitz

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: After their lives fly off the rails, getting back on track takes everything they have left.

Davis Winger has it all. A respected engineer who designs roller coasters in theme parks across the country, he is deeply in love with his wife and has a beautiful young daughter and a happy home. Until an accident strikes on one of his rides. Nothing fatal—except to his career. And to his marriage, when a betrayal from his past inadvertently comes to light. In one cosmically bad day, Davis loses it all.

His sister, Molly, is at a crossroads herself. She’s coasting through a dire relationship with an incompatible man-child. And she’s a journalist whose deeply personal columns about mothers and daughters are forcing her to confront the truth about her own mother, who abandoned Molly and Davis years ago and disappeared.

For these two siblings, it’s just a matter of bracing themselves for one turbulent summer in this redemptive and painfully funny family drama about making the best of the sharp turns in life—those we choose to take and those beyond our control.

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My Review: Man screws (literally) his really decent marriage and life into a wad of misery, spends the book whinging about it, manages his adult sister's life (better than his own), all without any apparent self-reflection.

Throwback to pre-#MeToo times. I gave it three stars because there's some witty dialogue. I suspect the best reader for it will need to be in need of something Hallmark-like.

Lake Union Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks $4.99 for a Kindle edition.

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The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Based on the true World War II story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris, this is an unforgettable story of romance, friendship, family, and the power of literature to bring us together, perfect for fans of The Lilac Girls and The Paris Wife.

Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet has it her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has—books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.

Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings, and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them.

A powerful novel that explores the consequences of our choices and the relationships that make us who we are—family, friends, and favorite authors—The Paris Library shows that extraordinary heroism can sometimes be found in the quietest of places.

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My Review: The 1939 story, split from its successor, would get four stars and at least a little more love from me. I really, really, really did not like the Montana 1983 part. At all.

My principal issue was with the motivating incident. I did not believe for a second that the response of moving to the ass-end of nowhere much was the kind of response someone as emotionally intelligent, as reourceful and resilient, as Odile would come up with. As a result, I disinvested in the entire proceedings. That's fatal to a good read.

However, I think the Romance of It All will carry lots of readers right over that hurdle, so I still say it's worth a gift card. Atria Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) needs $13.99 for a Kindlebook. Used hardcovers will be cheaper, as usual.

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The Pelican: A Comedy by Martin Michael Driessen (tr. Jonathan Reeder)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From award-winning Dutch author Martin Michael Driessen comes a fearlessly funny tragedy about an improbable friendship, unstable dreams, missed opportunities, and epic coincidence.

In a quiet coastal town in Yugoslavia, two men seeking more than the Communist regime can offer find their lives deceitfully entwined.

Andrej is a postman in complete denial of his existence. He yearns for respect and fame but commits petty crimes for reasons he doesn’t fully comprehend. Josip is an increasingly irrelevant cable car operator and unfaithfully married. Life was so much simpler when neither one knew the other’s secrets. Now that they do—discovered quite by accident—each man has resorted to blackmailing the other. As their anonymous misdeeds escalate, a farce of mutual dependency begins. So does the unlikeliest of friendships when Andrej and Josip finally meet face-to-face.

In a tale set against the impending wars, Martin Michael Driessen ingeniously explores the foibles of two painfully ordinary men boldly staking their claims on life.

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My Review: This *is* a comedy, albeit a really dark one, despite the synopsis and the actual content matching perfectly. The strangeness of two old friends unknowingly blackmailing each other for unsuspected peccadillos that neither knows the other is the one committing...we're well into absurdist territory. Set just before the Yugoslav civil wars that ended the artificially created country as an entity amid atrocities and abomination, it might be just a bit on-the-nose.

I enjoyed the story as a story. When I could ignore the geopolitical resonances of a book written in the teens about events already by then a quarter century gone, I was okay. It really *is* funny. It's only the overlay of my post-2020 knowledge base that made me squirm. The way Andrej and Josip could simply...not know...each other was deeply sad. It's kind of the point, of course, how well do we know each other? Yet the ending point of the story was very very dark indeed.

Don't think too much about the title. It does eventually make sense.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Amazon link) says "$4.99 please" for a purchase, or "free" if you pay them for Kindle Unlimited.

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Tokyo Green by C.D. Wight

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In 2048, AI specialist Tomo is about to lose his job in Silicon Valley, as U.S. unemployment soars past thirty percent. He’s a terrible team player, and his ass-kissing skills are sub-par. While Tomo’s got talents for making computers act more human, the job makes him feel more like a machine.

When his hometown in Japan is destroyed by a tsunami, Tomo has the reason he needs to take a break. But in Tokyo, Tomo overhears something impossible: a care-giving bot is pressuring his grandmother to sell her condo and move into an old folks’ home. Elderly neighbors complain their bots sing the same tune.

Tomo breaches the veil of customer service at the care-giving company, revealing a yakuza scheme that amounts to genocide. Tomo now has an opportunity to put his talents to better use—with help from an upbeat slacker and a rogue AI.

TOKYO GREEN is a stand-alone SF novel that explores not only the dangers of technology, but also the ability of technology to thrust humanity deeper into nature, making the future a worthwhile destination for all.

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My Review: AI anxiety, elder abuse, and a really dry witty voice made this under-the-radar DRC a real pleasure for me to read. The US is in the early stages of an AI takeover of healthcare, so this feels more than usually relevant. I'm sure that the author, writing in 2018, thought thirty years was a solid gap between bringing the book out and it becoming prescient...it worked okay as more or less the gap between 1948 and 1984.

More like months than years this time. I was required to keep reading by the sense of "oh wow, I can really see that happening" married to his narrative voice. I *did* need to overlook spelling and grammar infelicities of a very minor sort. Under 300 pages (if only just), it read more like 150. It filled the pages and left me satisfied...you too, I hope, as the Kindle edition is the best bargain here at $2.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link).

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An Act of Faith (Songs of the Lost Islands #1) by C.A. Oliver

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An Act of Faith is the first of twelve books which comprise the 'Songs of the Lost Islands' series. It introduces the reader to a vast archipelago, home to several ancient Elvin civilizations, whose survival is at stake as they confront the unavoidable rise of men, and their thirst for conquest and wealth.

For centuries, the sailors of the clan Filweni have sought to cross the Austral Ocean in search of the Lost Islands, a lost archipelago beyond the antipodes, the legendary ultimate refuge of the elves.

No ship from the Elvin kingdom of Essawylor has ever returned.

Until Feïwal dyn and his Irawenti crew set sails onboard the Alwïryan, towards the infinite South.

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My Review: A perfectly fine "High Fantasy" series starter. I'm not always that interested in the genre. This proved to be involving enough to make my investment of eyeblinks worth it, in spite of being almost four hundred pages long with not a lot of action occurring.

I don't care about Elves per se. I got involved in the crew of Alwïryan's personalities. It was surprising to me, I wasn't trying to find reasons to keep going...yet I did. A fantasy-fancying reader might love it a lot more than I did.

The Kindle costs $6.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link).