RÍO MUERTO, 2025's first all-five read, though not for the fantasy-averse reader

RÍO MUERTO
RICARDO SILVA ROMERO (tr. Victor Meadowcroft)
World Editions
$14.99 ebook editions, available tomorrow

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: On the outskirts of Belén del Chamí, a town that has yet to appear on any map of Colombia, the mute Salomón Palacios is murdered a few steps away from his home. His widow, the courageous and foul-mouthed Hipólita Arenas, completely loses her sanity and confronts the paramilitaries and local politicians, challenging them to also kill her and her two fatherless sons. Yet as Hipólita faces her husband’s murderers on her desperate journey, she finds an unexpected calling to stay alive.

This poetic and hypnotizing novel, told from the perspective of Salomón’s ghost, denounces the brutal killings of innocent citizens and at the same time celebrates the invisible: imagination, memories, hope, and the connection to afterlife.

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

My Review: South America's cultural impact is never more delightfully represented, to me at least, than when I read magical-realist works whether in translation or not. A novel narrated by a ghost definitely counts as "magical" in my book (!), so I was prepared for something to get me, to find the chinks in my emotional armor.

Not prepared enough.

That there's a civil war, a narcoterror regime, and immense unrest in Colombia was known to me. How pervasive it was didn't seem to me to be a reason to be surprised until I read the author's explanation that these events are fictionalized, not merely fiction...that "based on a true story" line we see so often hit home hard, because this is a friend's life skinned in fiction but boned by facts.

It's really down to this:

I am telling what I was told to me: that Salomón Palacios was gunned down only a few paces from his home and died and became a nameless thing in the gloom—the closing in—before returning from the dead. That he took an eternity in coming back, for the soul recovers memory in its own time, at its own rhythm, but that he must be out there now, and always will be, because death is the true present and because some murder victims do not depart.

Time passes subjectively, per Einstein; I'm not entirely ready to say velocity's the one governing factor until someone can really explain time fully. Maybe Death really does equal time; after reading this book, I have to be open to the possibility. For one of the few times in my reading life I find myself agreeing with a Pentecostal character: the apocalypse really has begun.

What makes Salomón such a great narrator is his ongoing physiological voicelessness. In life, in death, he makes no auditory impact. His existence as a ghost is in a powerfully evocative way a continuation of his voiceless, ineffectual life. Small gestures of kindness, his eking of a living by doing odd jobs, his very death carry the same burden of being a little guy living a little life that couldn't possibly threaten anyone who gets killed in spite of his death changing nothing.

Well, it unhinges his wife. She goes on a campaign to force his killers to kill her, and their sons, too. The sons have other ideas. Her plan to confront the boss who ordered Salomón's death to force him to martyr her, and her boys, in order to...what, exactly? no one in their town doubts who caused the thugs who did it to pull the triggers...or is she simply and selfishly out to commit suicide to avoid feeling grief for her genuinely loved with all his flaws husband? Insisting the sons she birthed join her in this spectacular suicide-by-provocation motivates Salomón in ghostly form to attempt to communicate love felt, love given to be received, to the maddened Hipólita to cause her to reinvest in life, to use her rage to pick up her boys and get the hell out of there. It would give his death, and his life, meaning.

How can a man voiceless in embodied life, in other words, find a voice now he's bodiless?

Author Silva Romero wrote a story I did not want to inhabit, but I did inhabit as fully as I have most stories I've read, because few kinds of story command my involvement more than grief, love, and power dynamics in emulsion. He chose a story I couldn't not get myself into. He chose a storytelling voice I could not avoid investing my empathy, sympathy, and tearducts into. Salomón loved deeply and mutely showed his love in practical simple deeds; he loved so much he was motivated to reach around the barrier of death. Author Silva Romero, ably served by his translator Victor Meadowcroft, did a fine job evoking a violent time's hideous human cost, as well as human beings' overpowering need to force the world to make those costs make sense.

It's impossible to do that, I say confidently, as I read the story of how it is done. All five stars.

VANTAGE POINT, good times don't get better than watching rich people dally and fall

VANTAGE POINT
SARA SLIGAR
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Succession meets Megan Abbott in this seductive Gothic suspense novel about the dramatic downfall of one of America’s most affluent families.

The old-money Wieland family has it all—wealth, status, power. They’re also famously cursed. Clara and her brother Teddy grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later they’ve mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara’s best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when intimate videos of Clara are leaked online. The most frightening part is that she doesn't remember filming any of them. Are the videos real? Or are they deepfakes? Is someone trying to take down the Wielands once and for all?

Everyone thinks Clara is losing her grip on reality, but she knows the videos are only the beginning. Years ago the curse destroyed her parents. Now it’s coming for her. Brimming with palpable tension, Vantage Point reveals a twisted web of family secrets and political ambition that raises questions about the blurred lines between public and private personas and the nature of truth in the digital age.

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

My Review: Do I hope this is what happens to the richest .01% of families? Yes. Would I sit by and watch with huge schadenfreude while amplifying the most embarrassing, hurtful moments on social media despite the pain it might cause the family in question? Oh my goddesses YES! Extra speedy sharing if they issue statements deploring the hurtful invasion of privacy, and I'll find a way to automate the 24-hour-a-day posting process if they're tech scum!

This book and me? Destined to be besties.

Sounds like a five-star rave is incoming, doesn't it?

Nope. When the shock-twist ending is the same ending you've been telegraphing all along, you don't get five stars. It could be some meta thing, playing on my expectations for a twist in a thriller by not giving me one; I don't tend to read thrillers for that sort of playfulness (which is usually disappointing and annoying anyway). Why it bothered me was that the author was flagging the ending in what felt like every chapter, most unsubtly; then that's what happened; so why'd I read all this intermediate red-herring-ing?

Because this gothic, soapy, OTT strange-fest was fun. I liked reading it. It wasn't groundbreaking, or paradigm-shifting; no one promised me it would be. I was told I'd have a good time eagerly watching the twisted ending of a hypercapitalist family.

Check.

Would I have liked it more, if...fill in personal crotchet here? Sure, I can play that game all day and most of the night with almost anything. But this book delivers what it promises, and you'll have a good time getting there.

SUE BLACK'S PAGE: WRITTEN IN BONE: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind, & ALL THAT REMAINS: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes

ALL THAT REMAINS: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes
SUE BLACK
Arcade Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: For fans of Caitlin Doughty, Mary Roach, Kathy Reichs, and CSI shows, a renowned forensic scientist on death and mortality.

Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller readers, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.

Cutting through hype, romanticism, and cliché, she recounts her first dissection; her own first acquaintance with a loved one’s death; the mortal remains in her lab and at burial sites as well as scenes of violence, murder, and criminal dismemberment; and about investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident, or natural disaster, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. She uses key cases to reveal how forensic science has developed and what her work has taught her about human nature.

Acclaimed by bestselling crime writers and fellow scientists alike, All That Remains is neither sad nor macabre. While Professor Black tells of tragedy, she also infuses her stories with a wicked sense of humor and much common sense.

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

My Review: Professor Dame Sue Black has spent a long lifetime giving those deprived of life and their families the closure she has learned how to give them, their families, and the Body Politic. This book is a report of how she has done this important task that offers communities and survivors a (sometimes partial) restoration of ma'at. She presented a TV show in the teens called History Cold Case. I've watched those shows with great interest, several times, and honestly never understood why there were only two seasons of it. There can be no end of distant-enough ancient cases to investigate. I suppose the ratings weren't up to more...yet our cultural moment is full to bursting with forensics-based fiction. Why this isn't still running, then, is deeply mysterious to me.

The facts that Author Black works with in her job are often only described in jargon; looking them up, that seems like a means she uses to buffer her readers from the full weight of the horrifying things humans do to each other.

Starting off easy, we're led through her early life at a spanking pace. Her decision to become a firensic scientist was oddly inevitable, though she was not and is not a gloomy goth type. I get the strong impression she'd be a right hoot to sit down with down the pub. Surprisingly she's been a lead investigator at the sites of multiple human-rights violations, like Kosovo. One would imagine this would rob a person of the will, even ability, to find perspective in her job's inescapable conclusions.

Not so. This is a rugged, centered, practical and skilled person. Spending three hundred-plus pages with her was interesting, informative, and...oddly...a lot of fun. Given the deeply unhappy subject matter, a fifth star wasn't likely to materialize, but all four that were available shine bright on this very well-made book.

I recommend it to y'all legions of CSI, NCIS etc. etc. shows, the many thousands of us who read Jimmy Perez and Jackson Brodie mystery procedurals, and to anyone who just likes to know weird stuff.

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WRITTEN IN BONE: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
SUE BLACK
Arcade Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 ebook edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association ALCS Gold Dagger for Nonfiction— A tour through the human skeleton and the secrets our bones reveal, from the author of All That Remains

In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence, all leavened with her wicked sense of humor.

In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls "the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it." Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology—how the bone is formed in a person's development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold—and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author's career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.

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

My Review: A step back from the storytelling done in her first book, this book goes through the human skeleton to consider the way a life...and a death...affects the bone in question. I'm very involved as she discusses the ways we unthinkingly abuse our very skeletons, and the way that story is memorialized in the bones we leave behind.

Often enough the things that happen to us after we're born leave the most horrific traces. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF REPORTS OF CHILD HARM CAUSES YOU DISTRESS.

I was revolted in this book, more than the first, by the reports of the reasons people's skeletons show enduring damage. The harm we do, or tolerate being done to others, disgusts me. Author Sue Black has seen, understood, and reported on so much more than I will ever see or learn about...and yet she has maintained perspective, has developed immensely valuable skills, has made a positive difference in the social fabric of many communities and families. I am deeply impressed by her. I am awed at how much good a person whose career has led her down very, very dark paths following horrifyingly evil actors has and can do.

It is not for everyone, but if you can endure the child-harm descriptions, this is a weirdly hopeful story. Author Sue Black is facing horrors to restore the rents people have torn in ma'at.

Fred Rogers taught me, "look for the helpers," whenever there's a tragedy. Sue Black is who he meant. At this moment in time, I appreciate knowing there are still helpers out in the world.

ABALONE AND THE SNAKE GODDESS, Chinese-inflected fantasy novel with promise

ABALONE AND THE SNAKE GODDESS
CHRISTINE LI
Inanna Media (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 ebook edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Once a promising magician, Abalone has lost everything: her love, her voice, and her soul. For thirteen years, she hides behind the high walls of Jiankang, the imperial capital of ancient China, consumed by grief and silence. But one fateful new moon night, she crafts a forbidden love spell and calls upon the fiery magic of the dark Snake Goddess.

This powerful goddess, however, has plans of her own. Guided by ancient forces, Abalone must leave her sanctuary and journey into the wild swamps and treacherous mountains beyond the city. There, among the last rebellious heirs of shamanic tribes, she begins her true path: to reclaim her soul and fulfill her destiny.

When a young girl is stolen by ruthless hands, Abalone must decide whether to risk everything—again—and confront the shadows of a forgotten past.

Abalone and the Snake Goddess is a poetic and haunting tale of love, magic, and the dark, transformative journey of the soul. Perfect for readers of mythical fantasy, Chinese folklore, and stories of resilient heroines.

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

My Review: It's the Year of the Snake, and Satan only knows it's a very China-heavy news cycle with the AI-development wars going on. I'm always down for a history- and mythology-inflected story. Make all these things come together and voilà! The perfect time to review this book has arrived.

The first half of the story is about Abalone, our PoV, and her severely circumscribed world. The worldbuilding here is...patchy...it's not particularly cohesive as we come to know the people who hate Abalone, how the husband she loves loves her not, and how the resolution of that truly devastating problem comes to Abalone's attention. There are exactly no "why"s in this story.

That's when the conflicts kick off, the goddess who has the power to help her reveals the cost of asking for divine intervention, and what the stakes for the world are going to be no matter what she does.

Frankly this feels as though I'm reading part two of far longer story and I really need part one to get me to invest emotional energy into this character's worldview. The cultural stuff is very interesting, the ideas around divinity are fun to think through as events transpire, the atmospherics of the setting worked very well for me. If there's a part one, I'll gladly read it.

I think Abalone, as presented here, is not enough of a character to make me warble my fool lungs out about the read. It's okay, and has moments of genuine excitement; but it lacks that most helpful of things, a solidly investable main character, needed for me to shove it at you demanding you read it now.

Pity...it almost got all four stars.

FIRE EXIT, Native American author Morgan Talty's debut novel

FIRE EXIT
MORGAN TALTY
Tin House Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.75 ebook edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.

Now, it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth, and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic, quick-tempered, and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping ever deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, in a hunting accident—a death he and Louise are at odds over as to where to lay blame—Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she’s ever known?

From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.

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

My Review: Twice in the course of this read I stopped to think carefully about the truth, encapsulated in the truism "every tool is a weapon," that the greatest evils come from the least expected places. Honesty, or simple vanity, or (as reality is next to never binary) somewhere on the spectrum defined by those endpoints, in claiming a daughter Charles has always known he fathered though he was never allowed to parent her thanks to the blood quantum laws (weapons of oppression formed into tools of exclusion by the Penobscots themselves) would ruin her life as it is. Does she still have that life? Why hasn't Charles, her immediate neighbor all her life, seen her at all in weeks? Has she moved away, run away or vanished under more sinister circumstances? He has no standing to ask any of these questions, an off-reservation neighbor in the eyes of the law. "To think that the reservation is what makes an Indian an Indian is to massacre all over again the Natives who do not populate it," thinks Charles.

Elizabeth's mother chose to have his child, who was conceived while Charles was able to live on the reservation thanks to his mother's marriage to a Penobscot man, Charles's alcoholic best reservation-dwelling buddy Bobby, by pretending she was his child...a Penobscot father. Charles's avknowledged paternity would have denied Elizabeth a place on reservation, thus her ancestral identity and such benefits as are available to Native Americans who pass the blood quantum tests. Adding injury to this insult, Charles's dearly loved Penobscot stepfather dies...hunting accident? darker tragedy?...so he must leave the reservation for good. A tool, a gift of identity and grudging economic benefit for Elizabeth, becomes a weapon to deprive Charles of a life he wanted. Charles identifies the weaponization of the tool of identity, of belonging: "It was {dead stepfather} Fredrick’s love that made me feel Native. He loved me so much that I was, and still am, convinced that I was from him, part of him, part of what he was part of. That was how I felt about Elizabeth—in truth, she was a descendant only from her mother’s side, and if that were to come out and she were taken off the census, would she feel any less Native? I didn’t think so."

Charles now wants his daughter found, and to tell her at last who her family truly includes. Armistead Maupin, a true treasure of a writer, activist, and thinker, titled his memoir of coming out after coming of age as a true Southern right-wing boy Logical Family. The journey, the destination, the idea of clipping "bio" from "family," all form part of Charles's heterosexual journey. He is more proof that the reality of love forming family not family necessarily forming love, is more than ever a bulwark against increasingly harsh reality. "I wanted to say it all: wanted to give her all the history that is hers. This past. This family. I wanted her to know, wanted her to understand what it meant that she was being stretched beyond the walls of her parents' house," her family of origin was not all there was to her...or his...world. As the story unfolds Charles grapples with claiming the bio- and logical family as his mother descends into dementia thus dying to him before her body finally dies. All of these are issues I've faced; I was totally engrossed, enmeshed in this multipart logical family struggling to be formed.

Charles spends the entire book obsessing over Elizabeth and his denied paternity, over the ethics of telling her this potentially tribal-membership ending reality...and it suddenly hit me almost three-quarters if the way through: Elizabeth is in her middle twenties! I'd simply never done the math. It changed everything to know this.

Telling an adult who can decide for herself what to do with the life-changing factual information is a duty. It's not optional. Her life is built on a lie, and that is unconscionable to continue to hide from a twentysomething. She's got the life experience to decide for herself if she wants to continue to lie to the authorities. How to handle the fallout, if she tells the truth. She's not a kid...and I also realized that Charles'a obsessive worry about why she's vanished is completely misplaced, even a little creepy.

Charles switched from being "poor old Charles" to being "pick your balls up, put 'em back on, and take action for once" Charles. At almost the same narrative moment, a major plot point resolves. I was left wondering what to think about this altered idea of and opinion about the character I'd invested in so deeply.

That is a very, very good reminder to check the facile, shallow interpretations at Author Talty's doorstep...his short fiction should've taught me that! There is no surface without structure around here. I can't quite finish that fifth star because I found some of Charles's passive acceptance and supine acquiescence unpleasant, if relatable throughout, but the awareness misdirection was truly *chef's kiss*

If you haven't read Night of the Living Rez, his story collection, by all means do. Starting here, or starting as I did with the stories, your decision to make Morgan Talty part of your reading universe is one you aren't likely to regret.

(Where the HELL is my 2022 review of the stories?! Panic stations until I find it!)

January 2025'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 Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.

Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA MY FRIEND MARK. THANK YOU.

My Review: Quirky neighbors living in a supremely hardscrable era, gettin' by and gettin' along with the help and kindness they so generously give without expecting a return. Thus, of course, assuring they get one.

In other words, Norman Lear's wet dream. Author McBride can write his socks off. The lovely prose masks the sitcom-from-1972 plot. I expect to receive brickbats for breaking orthodoxy, but there it is.

Riverhead Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) only asks $12.99 for your lefty-liberal uplift.

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North to Paradise: A memoir by Ousman Umar (tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The inspiring true story of one man’s treacherous boyhood journey from a rural village in Ghana to the streets of Barcelona—and the path that led him home.

Ousman Umar is a shaman’s son born in a small village in Ghana. Though his mother died giving birth, he spent a contented childhood working the fields, setting traps in the jungle, and living off the land. Still, as strange and wondrous flying machines crisscrossed the skies overhead, Ousman dreamed of a different life. And so, when he was only twelve years old, he left his village and began what would be a five-year journey to Europe.

Every step of the way, as he traveled across the Sahara desert, through the daunting metropolises of Accra, Tripoli, Benghazi, and Casablanca, and over the Mediterranean Sea aboard a packed migrant dinghy, Ousman was handed off like merchandise by a loose network of smugglers and in the constant, foreboding company of “sinkers”: other migrants who found themselves penniless and alone on their way north, unable to continue onward or return home.

But on a path rife with violence, exploitation, and racism, Ousman also encountered friendship, generosity, and hope. North to Paradise is a visceral true story about the stark realities of life along the most dangerous migrant route across Africa; it is also a portrait of extraordinary resilience in the face of unimaginable challenges, the beauty of kindness in strangers, and the power of giving back.

I RECEIVED A COPY FROM THE AMAZON FIRST READS PROGRAM. THANK YOU.

My Review: The original Spanish-language title is Viaje al país de los blancos which literally translate to "trip to the country of white people."

It is both more accurate and better reflective of the experience that the author endured. In racist white countries like ours, or like Spain, we tend not to think much about the grit and determination it takes to leave your home, your family, your culture, in order to get more stuff...like food, medical care, consumer goods...in the teeth of gale-force headwinds of hate. I'm bitterly ashamed of all y'all who voted in 2024 for an increase in this reprehensible, cruel, and ultimately futile behavior, across the globe.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Amazon link) only wants $2.49 for a Kindle edition. Definitely well worth such small change for a short, good read.

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Cold nights of childhood by Tezer Özlü (tr. Maureen Freely)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The Bell Jar meets Good Morning, Midnight, by one of Turkey’s most beloved writers.

The narrator of Tezer Özlü’s novel is between lovers. She is in and out of psychiatric wards, where she is forced to undergo electroshock treatments. She is between Berlin and Paris. She returns to Istanbul, in search of freedom, happiness, and new love.

Set across the rambling orchards of a childhood in the Turkish provinces and the smoke-filled cafes of European capitals, Cold Nights of Childhood offers a sensual, unflinching portrayal of a woman’s sexual encounters and psychological struggle, staging a clash between unbridled feminine desire and repressive, patriarchal society.

Originally published in 1980, six years before her death at 43, Cold Nights of Childhood cemented Tezer Özlü’s status as one of Turkey’s most beloved writers. A classic that deserves to stand alongside The Bell Jar and Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Cold Nights of Childhood is a powerfully vivid, disorienting, and bittersweet novel about the determined embrace of life in all its complexity and confusion, translated into English here for the first time by Maureen Freely, with an introduction by Aysegül Savas.

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

My Review: I am always, always delighted that I'm not a woman. I'm even more delighted now that I've read this book. If you've read the publisher's comps with as little pleasure as I have, be warned: They are spot-on.

Seriously, straight women, if you dislike men this much, be a lesbian. There is no reason to endure what seems, from y'all's discourse, to be a neverending stream of controlling abusive relationships.

Transit Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $9.99 for an ebook edition. At least it's got interesting settings.

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Hidden in Snow (The Åre Murders) by Viveca Sten (tr. Marlaine Delargy)

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The splendor of the Swedish mountains becomes the backdrop for a bone-chilling crime. On the day Stockholm police officer Hanna Ahlander’s personal and professional lives crash, she takes refuge at her sister’s lodge in the Swedish ski resort paradise of Åre. But it’s a brief comfort. The entire village is shaken by the sudden vanishing of a local teenage girl. Hanna can’t help but investigate, and while searching for the missing person, she lands a job with the local police department. There she joins forces with Detective Inspector Daniel Lindskog, who has been tasked with finding the girl. Their only lead: a scarf in the snow.

As subzero temperatures drop even further, a treacherous blizzard sweeps toward Åre. Hanna and Daniel’s investigation is getting more desperate by the hour. Lost or abducted, either way time is running out for the missing girl. Each new clue closes in on something far more sinister than either Hanna or Daniel imagined.

In this devious novel by the bestselling author of the Sandhamn Murders series, discover what it will take to solve a case when the truth can be so easily hidden in the coming storm.

I RECEIVED A COPY FROM THE AMAZON FIRST READS PROGRAM. THANK YOU.

My Review: When what you need is a well-executed (!) murder to solve, Viveca Sten as translated by Marlaine Delargy will deliver what you're looking for. It won't break new aesthetic or technical ground. If that's where you want to go, know that going in. Characters and, imporyantly, settings are sufficiently drawn to make me care that they survived...or didn't...and since ma'at must be served, we know where we're headin' before we start.

I'm already reading the second one, that I bought for myself.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants a piddlin' $2.49. Value for entertainment ratio 3:1.

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My Friends by Hisham Matar

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return, a luminous novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile

The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author at the peak of his powers.

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

My Review: Beautiful writing, like: "The question is, my boy, and it has always has been the most important question, how to escape the demands of unreasonable men" and "It’s hard work hiding things, you have to watch yourself, how you walk even, how you eat and sleep and I am terrible at it, you know it." All the sentences I liked were much on this model. The gestalt, unfortunately, never rose above my appreciation for the author's writing talent.

The story left me...unmoved. You look at stories in the light shone by the world at the time they're read, and I read this during the Israeli genocide of the Gazans. My symapthy for this privileged whiner was severely attenuated.

Random House (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $12.99 for an ebook edition.

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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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Mister Sandman by Barbara Gowdy (50%; p241)

Rating: 3.5* of five (for this re-read)

The Publisher Says: Barbara Gowdy's outrageous, hilarious, disturbing, and compassionate novel is about the Canary family, their immoderate passions and eccentricities, and their secret lives and histories. The deepest secret of all is harbored in the silence of the youngest daughter, Joan, who doesn't grow, who doesn't speak, but who can play the piano like Mozart though she's never had a lesson.

Joan is a mystery, and in the novel's stunning climax her family comes to understand that each of them is a mystery, as marvelous as Joan, as irreducible as the mystery of life itself.

In its compassionate investigation of moral truths and its bold embrace of the fractured nature of every one of its characters, Mister Sandman attains the heightened quality of a modern-day parable.

I GOT THIS BOOK DECADES AGO, AND HAVE NO MEMORY OF HOW.

My Review: I read it in 1996 or so, loved it, and felt a re-read would be a fun thing. Queer representation has come a long way in thirty years.

I'm not as excited and delighted as I was in my 30s, and got more and more uneasy with the characters' poor communication skills, so I pulled the ripcord at 50%. It's pretty well-written so I'm not warning you off. I'm just not that guy anymore.

It's out of print; there's an AI-generated audio version, should you wish to participate in the theft of authorial work.

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A Valley to Harness: A Novel for the World's Revolution by Jason A. Bartles (37%)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The climate crisis is here, and no refuge is safe. In the late 2050s, Henry seeks safety in Sediment Valley, an Appalachian retreat promising peace, prosperity, and a place to bake his delicious sweets. But the corporate powers of SustainAble have other plans for Sediment Valley and the geologic power it hides.

Henry soon meets Colson, a reserved butler for the founder of Sediment Valley, and Brisa, a tech genius with an outgoing spirit. Unbeknownst to Henry, both Colson and Brisa have concealed their motivations for leaving the violence of the outside world.

When they discover the true, terrifying plans for the valley and its inhabitants, Henry, Colson, and Brisa must learn to trust one another to save themselves, their loved ones—and the world.

Three isolated heroes face impossible odds. Can they work together to liberate the valley? Or is it already too late to act?

A Valley to Harness welcomes readers, new and returning, to the speculative future of The World’s Revolution.

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

My Review: Ambitious, tendentious, and ultimately can't avoid the risk of didacticism.

I agree with the author's story's thrust (do not trust tech bros and other Aynholes) but am tired of being thrust into with his rhetorical spear. I found nothing to leaven the dough I'm being asked to chew, just more cogent points. This is a novel; tell me a story that I can enjoy at some higher emotional, not solely fear-driven, level.

Two Doctors Media Collaborative, LLC (non-affiliate Amazon link) thinks $3.99 is a fair price for a Kindlebook.

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To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation by Frank G. Anderson MD (43%)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Trauma blocks love. Love heals trauma.

Frank was just six years old when he learned there was something wrong with him. Seriously wrong. But no one told him what it was. Instead, between attending weekly therapy sessions, navigating the passion and violence of his home life, and reading between the lines of dark family secrets, he was left to figure out for himself what the world expected him to be.

Despite an unstable childhood, his remarkable intelligence, caring nature, and desperation for love and acceptance carried him from the top of his high school class to the elite residency program at Harvard University, where he ultimately became one of the world's leading experts in the treatment of trauma. Along the way, his encounters with those suffering from abuse, addiction, and mental illness inspired a sense of purpose...and an earth-shattering awakening of his authentic self.

Ignited by this newfound identity, Frank embarked on a profound—sometimes painful—and redemptive journey that brought the love and acceptance he always longed for.

***

In To Be Loved, renowned trauma expert Dr. Frank G. Anderson shares the complicated experience of growing up gay in an Italian-American home that was at once fiercely loving and culturally close-knit while at the same time unaccepting, abusive, and rife with secret shame. With compassion, humor, and disarming honesty, Frank invites the reader into his formative experiences: coming out amid the LGBTQ+ carnival atmosphere of 1990s Provincetown, finding love and forming a family within the staid Boston suburbs, and coming home to confront his family's legacy of abuse. By forging paths for forgiveness, he found that his truth and tenacious spirit were stronger than his trauma.

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

My Review: My rating reflects what I found to be an off-putting digressive style, one I felt was better suited to fiction than self-help via memoir. My Pearl-Ruling the book reflects how well the author, not much younger than I am, was at evoking the awful experience of being Othered by those you rely on for your existence, for your idea of Self.

Too much for me amid the Satanic Evil takeover of so much of the world by fascist scum.

Bridge City Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) does not want you to buy a Kindlebook, at $22-ish. A hardcover is the same price.

IRON HOPE: Lessons Learned from Conquering the Impossible, focus on the lessons not the why of them and it's inspiring

IRON HOPE: Lessons Learned from Conquering the Impossible
JAMES LAWRENCE
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$15.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The ultimate guide to mental toughness by James 'Iron Cowboy' Lawrence – the greatest endurance athlete in human history.

Lawrence’s accomplishments are nearly impossible to comprehend. In 2015, he set a Guinness World Record record by completing 50 full-distance triathlons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days. Yes, THE Ironman, 'the single most difficult day in sports'—a 2.4-mile swim, 112 miles on a bike, then a 26.2-mile run, all completed in under 17 hours. It is a race so intense that less than .01% of the population have completed one.

Afterwards, Lawrence subjected his body to exhaustive physical testing, to every genetic test known to science. The stunning discovery is that physically, James Lawrence is unspecial in every way. The secret to his bulletproof body is his bulletproof mentality.

How does a person develop the mental fortitude necessary to overcome incredible exhaustion, immeasurable suffering, and unfathomable pain in order to achieve impossible goals? With Iron Hope, that’s exactly what James 'Iron Cowboy' Lawrence shows readers how to do. Lawrence explains how readers can forge an iron will by making and keeping small promises to themselves again and again, amassing experience and building momentum until giving up becomes impossible. Combine a big dream with small improvements repeated with great consistency and make your goals and dreams a reality.

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

My Review: I read this because I am unable to fathom WHY anyone would do this insane thing to their body.

I still don't know.

What I *do* know is that doing this insane thing to his body afforded Author Lawrence great clarity about how he accomplished this absurd, OTT feat of effortful activity. He reports to readers the means by which he accomplished a feat of endurance and self-discipline that a vanishingly small number of us fellow humans ever even attempt, let alone accomplish.

There is huge value in absorbing this attitude: "do it to prove you can." Do hard things because they are hard, and along the way build the habits of mind that will make you unstoppable in areas that actually matter.

*oops* I didn't mean to type that out loud.

There it is, though. What earthly use is doing this to one's body? This smacks of the religious ascetics who do appalling things to themselves because god. In what way is this necessary, or beneficial to the world? As an example to emulate? I'd drag anyone I know to the shrink if they announced they'd got this idea for abusing their body in this way.

However much I decry the wasteful, expensive thing this lunacy promotes...that training costs, the supplements and dietary demands cost like crazy, donate the time and money to bettering the world you selfish thing!...I acknowledge the author's using the platform it gives him to have accomplished this as a means to offer practical, actionable advice on how to acquire the *habits* that got him there. He's offering good information, clearly and understandably formatted, explaining how and why this or that effort pays off in self-discipline; this is the thing I focused on, not the reason *he* was doing it but rather *how* he did what he did.

I devoutly hope the readers the book will get because the author did what he did will put his path to attaining an enviable strength of mind to more useful ends. It's the egotism, the selfish "MY victory" straight-male vanity of the exercise (!) that won't let me get to a full four stars despite the more positive uses the information can be put to.

THE FORBIDDEN BOOK, Sacha Lamb's sophmore Jewish fantasy novel

THE FORBIDDEN BOOK
SACHA LAMB
Levine Querido (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$10.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Dybbuks.
Illegal printing.
A genderqueer lesbian with a knife.
Set against a backdrop of literary censorship and growing Jewish political consciousness, Sydney Taylor and Stonewall award-winning Sacha Lamb's sophomore novel is a soaring exploration of identity, survival, and ultimately, hope.

On the night before her wedding, 17-year-old Sorel leaps from a window and runs away from her life. To keep from being discovered, she takes on the male identity of Isser Jacobs—but it soon becomes clear that there is a real Isser Jacobs, and people want him dead. Her mistaken identity takes Sorel into the dark underworld of her small city in the Pale of Settlement, where smugglers, forgers, and wicked angels fight for control of the Jewish community. In order to make it out, Sorel must discover who Isser Jacobs really is—and who she wants to be.

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

My Review: Sorel, a lesbian about to be forcibly married to a man, decides that, on balance, she'd rather not, jumps out her window and desperately hunts down a new way to live her life.

Supernatural and political hijinks ensue.

Well? What's the hold-up? Have you one-clicked yet? Just go get the blessèd thing already! You need a chuckle or two, and a high-stakes plot to keep you flippin' the pages. Absent the very interesting and unfamiliar-to-me cast of Jewish folkloric creatures of majgickq, this might have been three-and-a-half stars; the dybbuk alone crests over the four line and we're not even into the head of a woman who so absolutely rejects her cultural and societal repressions across multiple axes; repression SO INIMICAL TO HER that she does the extreme thing of becoming something and someone she chooses for herself. That this happens to land her in deep waters she'd never so much as heard of before made me root for her even harder.

Lesbian or not, give this book to every tween girl you know. More particularly the ones being raised in repessive god-ridden hate cults. Sorel, whose one flaw as a character that I found a bit itchy is that she springs out that window as herself and remains unchanged by the end of the story, is an archetype I wish more young women saw themselves in. (This is also why my stars stop at four.) She is not deeply shaded, but brightly, loudly limned. This kind of person is exciting to meet, often difficult to know well; still more often than that, troublesome.

We badly need that kind of woman in 2025.

Grow a few more, gift this amusing, edifying look into the magical corners of Jewishness widely.

BOOKED FOR MURDER, debut bookseller/sleuth cozy mystery set in Georgia

BOOKED FOR MURDER
P.J. NELSON
Minotaur Books
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this atmospheric southern cozy debut, Madeline Brimley returns to the bookstore she inherited, discovering that small towns hold deadly secrets.

Madeline Brimley left small town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she's left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstore, and restart her life, Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges. The gazebo in the back yard is set ablaze and a late night caller threatens to burn the whole store down if she doesn't leave immediately.

But Madeline Brimley, not one to be intimidated, ignores the threats and soldiers on. Until there's another fire and a murder in the store itself. Now with a cloud of suspicion falling over her, it's up to Madeline to untangle the skein of secrets and find the killer before she herself is the next victim.

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

My Review: Very cozy indeed. Slow of pace, low on suspense, modest stakes as a result...I never got the sense Madeline believed she was in real danger, always a risk in a mystery...but what I got was the balm of feeling at home.

A bookstore, a small town where you're a known quantity, a problem to solve that demands attention you'd otherwise devote to unhealthy rumination on unfixable crap from the past, all marry the needs of the moment and the desire to see ma'at served. It happens so seldom in the real world. I read on, certain I knew who was behind the deeds most dastardly (I was right, if it matters), coddiwompling along in no particular hurry to get to the end. This, by itself, this ability to go somehere I *knew* Rightness and Justice would prevail, was so soothing to my outraged sensibilities that I was happy to ignore my crotchets. A too-convenient aversion to cell phones was my biggest gripe about Madeline.

The pace is likely to put many off, though as a class cozy-mystery readers do not seem to me all that interested in how fast we're traveling. Unless the trip is, for some personal reason, unpleasant to them, the cozylover tends towards the vibe-reader end of things. This story is all about the vibes. Even Gloria, the new priest in town, failed to rub me the wrong way. Quite a feat for a religious professional.

So I got over the "three-stars-just-fine" hump. I couldn't go all the way to four because in a different context there's no way I'd get past three.

We are where we are, so three and a half grateful to be wiled away into a gentler place stars it is.

THE MAGIC OF NORMAL: Love, Hope and Beyond, strong woman tells her powerful life's story

THE MAGIC OF NORMAL: Love, Hope and Beyond
DR. MAKY ZANGANEH
Forbes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In The Magic of Normal: Love, Hope and Beyond, Dr. Maky Zanganeh, an indomitable businesswoman and biotech CEO opens her heart to share an extraordinary journey marked by resilience, hope, and transformation. Known for her relentless ambition and groundbreaking achievements in the biotech industry, Maky’s life took an unexpected turn when she was diagnosed with cancer amidst the global turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her bustling life, filled with high-stakes projects and constant travel, was abruptly paused. The enforced stillness brought by her cancer treatments and the worldwide lockdown offered Maky a unique opportunity for introspection. Instead of succumbing to despair, she embraced this period as a catalyst for personal and professional growth. Her journey through treatment, combined with the stories of those she met along the way, forms the heart of this compelling narrative.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center, Maky encountered a wide range of individuals, each battling their own challenges with cancer. From the young couple facing a terminal diagnosis to the mother juggling the care of her two ill children, these stories of courage and love deeply resonated with her. These experiences not only provided solace during her own treatment but also reinforced her commitment to advancing medical research and innovation.

Maky’s professional achievements are as remarkable as her personal journey. She played a pivotal role in bringing revolutionary cancer treatments to the market, including the development of Imbruvica, a groundbreaking oral therapy for blood cancer. Her work has had a transformative impact on patient care, offering new hope and improved outcomes for countless individuals worldwide. These professional milestones underscore the book’s central theme: the profound intersection of science, innovation, and human resilience.

The Magic of Normal: Love, Hope and Beyond is much more than just a memoir; it is a beacon of inspiration for anyone facing life's interruptions. Maky’s story is a powerful reminder that even in the face of immense adversity, it is possible to find strength, purpose, and hope. Her dedication to medical research and her unyielding spirit offer a roadmap for overcoming challenges and rediscovering the beauty in everyday life.

This book is dedicated to those whose lives have been upended by illness or global crises, and to those who dream of returning to the simple, yet profound, magic of normal. Maky’s message is clear: you are not alone. With courage, community, and the relentless pursuit of innovation, we can all navigate the darkest nights and emerge into the daylight of hope and recovery.

The Magic of Normal: Love, Hope and Beyond is a testament to the transformative power of a trailblazing and entrepreneurial spirit. Maky invites readers to join her on this journey, sharing lessons learned and the enduring belief that with perseverance, we can all find our way back to the magic of normal.

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

My Review: Super-high achieving privileged lady gets smacked in the teeth by a scary medical crisis amid the recent global pandemic.

Damn...even her crisis is an overachiever.

This has the bones of an excellent, dramatically exciting story. What we get is a competent retelling of the events of a very interesting, laudably goal-driven life. There are no action items as one might reasonably expect from the title and publisher. Forbes Books is not the place I turn to for blood-stirring action stories.

Writing a memoir can often succumb to this "...then this happened, and I did that, but the other thing was still weighing me down..." rhythm that leaches the important events of their impact. We do not, in fact, need to know everything but need you to think deeply and with vulnerability about why things happened, how it made you feel, and what the results of that were. Otherwise it's a Wikipedia article with fewer citations.

I am morally certain that Dr. Maky would be a hit on a coffee date. I suspect she's a solidly skilled listener. As the one listening, I wish she had used some of that success-building listening, thinking about how others need you to deliver your message, writing this book.

It's A LOT harder than it looks to make reality interesting on a page. The events are worthy of a four, the telling of a two, so three and a half gets the nod.

THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom, opening a conversation Society needs to have

THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom
NANCY REDDY
St. Martin's Press
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom.

When Nancy Reddy had her first child she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong?

For answers Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from mid-century researchers, yet their bad ideas about so-called “good” motherhood have seeped pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one illustration of a father interacting with his child. Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.

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

My Review: Misogyny begins at home. You drink it in with your mother's milk. She is, after all, "just your mother." That phrase resounds in my brain as one of the most invidious, viprously poisonous idiocies that passes unquestioned from many a mouth.

The myth of Motherhood is exalted...pedestalized...and thus an extremely effective weapon in misogyny's arsenal of control. A woman, a human female, is reduced to her biological capacity for reproduction. It is an important function but not, as the Cult of the Mother makes it, a predestination and (not incidentally) a life sentence.

The author's struggles with the reality of being a mother versus the snake-oil sold to her by The Cult of Mother led her into paths of research done during my, and my generation's, childhoods. It was done by men. It was deeply embedded in capitalist norms then being solidified, codified, and imposed to create a Cult of Mother to support a culture of mothers without agency since that belonged to husbands and experts. Never mind that the sample sizes were uneven and the methodology unreliable, uncintrolled often enough; never mind that a lot of the research designs adopted were unethical. Hear the Word of Your Lord And Master, woman: feel this or be forever lacking, wanting in human feeling, LESS THAN.

It's a vicious self-springing trap for someone in a deep emotional, existential, physical crisis often enough exacerbated by sudden and/or acute depression. Author Reddy takes us through the orthodoxies of our youth, hers too, and parallels them with her own struggles.

What this book sets out to offer the reader is a footing to view the mountain of garbage "science" and the reeking cesspits of "how YOU should feel" liberally sprayed with "...but it's NATURAL" as though Nature isn't the one and only source of all the ills and plagues of Humanity's time on Earth. Yes, it is. We too are part of Nature, not apart from, above it.

Our actions are natural, they can not be otherwise because we live within the laws of nature.

I offer four stars to the read, not docked too far for its lack of rigor...her models for that failing are the great and good of the subject's past...or for its tooth-gritting tendency to repeat itself...see previous parenthetical...but in recognition of its undeniable attack from within the fortress by a victim of The Cult of Mother, therewith to offer aid and comfort to others who experience what she has.

That deserves all five stars. I can't honestly warble my fool lungs out about the execution. It's above average and it makes its case clearly if anecdotally. It is a read that spoke my truth to me, so I resonate to its vibes.

Women: Do NOT settle for becoming what your biology hands you. Decide for yourself who and what you want to be.

Signed, A Pissed-off Man.

HARBINGERS: What January 6 and Charlottesville Reveal About Rising Threats to American Democracy

HARBINGERS: What January 6 and Charlottesville Reveal About Rising Threats to American Democracy
TIMOTHY J. HEAPHY
Steerforth Press (non-affiliate Amazonn link)
$9.99 ebook editions, avalable now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A crucial, clear-eyed assessment of what connects the 2 most influential moments of political violence in recent American history, and where we go from here
An unparalleled firsthand account from the foremost expert on American political violence, crucial for readers of Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor, and How Democracies Die

This dramatic, revealing book offers an insider account of the planning and aftermath of the racist riot in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, and the insurrection at the US. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

As the lead investigator into both tragic days, Tim Heaphy has an absolutely unique perspective. Readers will travel alongside Heaphy as he organized his team and structured the massive investigations they were about to take, as he interacts with politicians and members of law enforcement, interviews planners, perpetrators, and bystanders, gathers and sorts evidence, and compels and records testimony in order to create a record for today’s voters as well as future generations.

In his page-turning book, he shares what he saw and came to understand about what those events say about state of American democracy. He examines how and why they took place with the hope that understanding the contexts of these events will be a crucial and helpful step toward avoiding similar episodes of political violence in the years ahead.

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

My Review: The manifold failings of the astonishingly huge, well-funded, and deeply entrenched domestic surveillance industry are laid out in this book.

I was taken aback on how much there was about the surveillance state I was correct to be paranoid about, and how little it did to prevent these acts of political violence from going ahead, or even getting off the ground. This is something that gives me the gravest kind of worry for the US as a still-slightly-functional civil society.

I will not tell you this is the most deft or entertaining read of 2025. It's dry, it's pedantic, it's explanatory not exciting. This being what it needed to be to convey its burden of information...and I use the term advisedly...I won't downrate it for being its proper self. A louder, more emotionally charged voice becomes part of the clangor of 2025's soundscape. I know more now than I did before I read this book about the ways and means used by the rebel forces within the US to bring about their desired repressive, totalitarian replacement government.

Project 2025 should have scared y'all a lot more than it did. I'm guessing most of you won't read this important informative book. Whatever your reasons are, they're not excuses. Very bad things are coming. Resisting them will be a lot of work and involve significant effort.

The option is passive acceptance.

Choose wisely.

DARKMOTHERLAND, an IMAX movie played on a 1080i screen

DARKMOTHERLAND
SAMRAT UPADHYAY
Soho Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: An epic tale of love and political violence set in earthquake-ravaged Darkmotherland, a dystopian reimagining of Nepal, from the Whiting Award–winning author of Arresting God in Kathmandu

In Darkmotherland, Nepali writer Samrat Upadhyay has created a novel of infinite embrace—filled with lovers and widows, dictators and dissidents, paupers, fundamentalists, and a genderqueer power player with her eyes on the throne.

At its heart are two intertwining narratives: one of Kranti, a revolutionary’s daughter, who marries into a plutocratic dynasty and becomes ensnared in the family’s politics. And then there is the tale of Darkmotherland’s new dictator and his mistress, Rozy, who undergoes radical body changes and grows into a figure of immense power.

Darkmotherland is a romp through the vast space of a globalized universe where personal ambitions are inextricably tied to political fortunes, where individual identities are shaped by family pressures and social reins, and where the East connects to and collides with the West in brilliant and unsettling ways.

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

My Review: There is a lot to be said for ambition in storytelling. This book, for the first third, was destined for enshrinement in my hall of fame; the second third for my favorites list; and by the end for my "you should read it if you love, or need, a full-immersion wide-angle view of what chaos really does." You should know going in that women have significant challenges regarding consensual sex here. The centering of a transfem character's experiences made for sharp commentary on gender roles in a repressive, fascistic regime, yet also made my hackles rise. I have trans folk in my life whose potential feelings about this book's explicitness I constantly found obtruding in my reading.

It's not to say this is a pure negative. I'm all for people writing uncomfortable takes on the world as we find it today. The fact that Rozy is a person with agency, albeit in a very twisted system, felt both natural and unhappy. Her choices were severely limited, and yet also used to prove the point that pressure can cause a person to become more powerful the same way water under pressure can become a weapon.

The fictionalized country in the story was a background for me, a setting; the events played out on its stage. I was unable to get deeper than that, despite the story's evident desire for me to do so, by the sheer size if the cast we're following. It is always a risk to expand a cast beyond a handful of people. The great trick of numbing people to the reality of suffering is to follow Stalin's epigrammatic maxim: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." Like teaching history, telling a story in novel form only becomes less involving when you dilute your message (especially when it's essentially the same message repeated) beyond a certain point. I'm not clear if that was an intentional choice of metacommentary on the author's and publisher's part.

This story of the chaos and upheaval that attend a violent ending suffers from this dilution. It also tries its best to invest you in its very deeply felt observations on how cruelty ultimately undermines itself as it metastasizes. As ever, the issue of what is celebration and/or normalization arises as repetition of violent language and behaviors continues to assault one's readerly experience. This fine balance between intention and reception is always deeply personal. It crossed my internal line shortly after midpoint; I was too deeply interested in the results the author intended to bring to quit, as I ordinarily would have done. That's why I got as close as I did to a full four stars.

I'm not doing a good job, I fear, of expressing how deeply enfolding a tale is told here. I'm very much a fan of stories that require me to think and deeply consider the places and times and inhabitants of the storyscape before me. I think a read that makes demands on my deeper cognitive resources is a fun read. This story does that. I'm very interested in tales of messy endings that are inevitable and inherent in the setup of the world being built. This story could be the poster child for that. I was, then, very much on the side of the author and his project of elucidation.

But because of certain choices he made, it began to feel like it was just that: a project.

I wanted to end the read as much, or more in love with it as I started our being. I'm bummed that I couldn't.

STRANGE PICTURES, aptly titled off-kilter murder-mystery narrative translated from Japanese

STRANGE PICTURES
UKETSU (tr. Jim Rion)
HarperVia (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The spine-tingling bestseller that has taken Japan by storm—an eerie fresh take on horror for fans of Hidden Pictures and Junji Ito, in which a series of seemingly innocent pictures draws you into a disturbing web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches.

An exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . .

A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.

A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.

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My Review: Visual horror...sequential art, film, artworks...isn't very effective on me. My idea of horror is Wrongness, and that's deeply individual in its iconography, therefore effective representation. I'm more afraid of people than Supernatural Forces because the Supernatural, by definition, can't be identified until we know all the laws of nature, and know that we know all of them. Until then, everything that happens, including things that break the known laws of physics, are simply unexplainable but still not supernatural.

Reality stinks, mono- or a-theistic religious nuts. Miracles and superheroic gods are improbable but not impossible because nature is not even a billionth of a percent explained yet. Stay agnostic, it's the only defensible stance.

This effort at image-enhanced horror is very interesting, though I'm pretty convinced it's one of that most Japanese of stories, the eerie murder mystery. I've reviewed plenty of those. This is another one. It's...fine, perfectly readable (as a mystery), and in spots enjoyable. It's a complex puzzle, not at all easy or simple to solve. It defeated me. I was sure one particular thing was true, and it explicitly wasn't. That made the read much more interesting to me than it would've been if I'd been correct.

Like so many mysteries from Japan, the characters are more gesturally indicated than developed. Mystery-genre readers in the US are less tolerant of this than they could be; we tend to look for people to invest emotional energy in, not just puzzles that rake place in a brooding ill-defined space. I think the ideal reader for this story, among my Anglophone audience, is likely to be someone who really enjoys Julio Cortázar or Umberto Eco.

I was not particularly enraptured by the read until after I finished it. This was more akin to a storyboard pitch to investors about an idea for a horror story connecting some...suspicious deaths that were or could've been Influenced From Beyond than itself a horror story. Thinking about the read, which I finished last night after taking a week to read (in my habitual scattershot way interspersed with other books), I realized I was very, very successfully manipulated from the off. A child psychologist explaining how a little murderer's artwork provided clues to the reality that child operated within initially felt a bit In Cold Bloody to me. Should I believe the narrative? Should I be interested in *how* or why? Or permaybehaps what....

That's top-quality misdirection for that to work on a reader with sixty years' experience.

Will you love it? I doubt it; I didn't. Will you enjoy reading it? See my comps, if you love them you might get a charge out of this off-kilter, well-crafted read.

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD, good iteration of my delight the "Now what?" post-apocalyptic tale

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD
EIREN CAFFALL
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most—love and work, community and knowledge—will survive.

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My Review: I really liked Station Eleven a lot. I'm a sucker for this story: After the Fall, now what? Maybe proof of this enduring fascination is my championing of Earth Abides (now a TV show) and Day of the Triffids. The genre presents a long tail of goodwill, then, as well as wide scope for action set in the present. This story is split between the present crisis...being flooded out of their home on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History...and how things came to be so terrible that this is where their home needs to be.

A really good story idea, one that has a lot of genuine and affecting emotional resonance; then uses up its narrative momentum by structuring the past as flashbacks. Once or twice, okay; more than that it becomes a real drag. Start the story in the past. Trust the reader to invest in the characters, and rip our lungs out by showing us in real time what's happening. It felt to me the author was cushioning the blow by using this method of storytelling.

So no fifth star from me.

Four stars were assured when this happened:

“Hell, it was happening, I saw it happening. But I couldn’t picture it, you know? I couldn’t picture how we’d lose the seasons, how it would be tropical heat in November, but still have blizzards that melted into heat waves. I couldn’t picture the way the storms come and then come back. Not the polar cold fronts in the south. Not the new hurricanes, the hot winters, the king tides, the typhoons going east then west then east again. It should have been easy to see. It was in the data.”

This is exactly and precisely how I've been feeling about others' apparent inability to retain the thread between the past climate events and their all-but-certain genesis. My problem is that I *can* picture it and am cursed with seeing it before my appalled eyes...it's like, in the space of thirty-nine years, I've moved from New York to Maryland. Without moving an inch.

I won't live long enough (I hope) to see this novel's world in the flesh. I expect that, if I'm cursed to do so, it will look a lot like this. It was Author Caffall's gift to me to make me a lot gladder that I'm really old and fairly infirm.

The reason I hope you'll read it, though, is that its sisters Nonie and Bix are the kind of kids we should all strive to raise. They are resilient, they are resourceful, they are respectful of the limited resources they can command and mindful of their good fortune, they are angry enough to work for more and humble enough to know what "enough" means.

They made the issues I had with the structure into cavils. Had I not had them to invest my emotional energy into, I would've enjoyed the story a lot less. As it is, I do recommend it, and hope you'll take this as your nudge to see what a wounded planet will do to heal itself.

THE LADY OF THE MINE, bitter take-down of imperialism's Silent Majority

THE LADY OF THE MINE
SERGEI LEBEDEV (tr. Antonina W. Bouis)
New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$17.95 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths.

The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed Russian author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht in World War Two.

Then corpses rain from the sky when a jet liner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past.

Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history’s evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today’s Russia.

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My Review: When someone sets out to write about how truly vilely humans treat, and think about, each other, they get...pushback. Unsurprisingly a man from Moscow known to support anti-Russian causes gets review-bombed for this bitterly anti-imperialist examination and take-down of the memory hole people put their dark collusions into on Goodreads. 82% of all the reviews are one-star Cyrillic alphabet ones. I don't speak or read Russian so I can't comment on what those reviewers say. The few among the one-starrers who wrote in English don't seem to me like real people based on their profiles, which fits.

I wish nothing but the best for Ukraine. This book is set there because it's the place most in the news; because it's clear the Russian Army is there to forcibly reintegrate Ukraine into whatever Little Vladdy Pu-Pu plans to call the new Soviet Union. The entire thrust in the guts of this book is aimed at imperialism and conquest, using the silently collusive's various ways of justifying their collusion against them, in service of the downtrodden. Simply not doing something active in support of evil is not enough to remain a decent human being. The mine in this story has no bottom, has no end, it never closes or runs out of its resource: Victims who were not saved by those who could have.

If you, cishet white person reading this, are feeling a wee bit uncomfortable about now, you should pay attention to that feeling. It's as fresh as the headlines: we're reading everywhere about disasters, and doing the "easy" to do; about how our nature as humans is to go along to get along, to survive, to be small targets. That will only gain force in the coming years as duck-and-cover feels safe, feels good.

There is no safe.

Stand up whatever way you can. Not doing so will not keep you safe. Ask those people in this novel's crashed airplane...they weren't safe.

I assume I don't need to explain the metaphors used by Levedev, they're not very subtle. I hope I don't need to say "not getting this book and reading it isn't anything but denial of your humane duty." Listen to the people who know what they're talking about, like exiled writers; plan your resistance with their examples. Help them keep the message going, keep the help spreading.

Or sit and wait for it to happen to you. It will.

Not quite five stars for me, because as mentioned above the metaphors aren't terribly subtle. The story deserves your time and treasure.

TOWARD ETERNITY, meditative title for a contemplative debut novel

TOWARD ETERNITY
ANTON HUR
HarperVia (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer: The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells that not only cure those afflicted but leave them virtually immortal. At the same time, literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning "Beloved," in honor of his husband. When Dr. Beeko, who holds the patent to the nano-therapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness into an android body, giving it freedom and life.

As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.

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My Review: This book renewed my faith in my judgment of poetry as a stalking horse for the worst kind of exclusionary snobbery. It requires a linguistic adept, a genuinely intellectually superior mind, to fathom its Sacred Complexities well enough to use it to create AGI, which (of course) then becomes a worthy love-object.

"Whether a life ends happily or sadly, what does it matter but the weight of the emotions one felt, the weight of the clarity of all the meaningful moments one possessed while living on this Earth, whether they have been good or bad? Is it not the weight, in the end, that really makes us human after all?" muses Panit the AGI. This beautiful phrase does convince me to give the writing four stars. This is prose I wish to high heaven other SFF writers would at least aspire to. Author Hur has been to the linguistic wellspring and used a solid-silver vessel to drink from it.

The idea of sentience being the connecting thread as we travel through a deep future of change and revision, of editing and shaping the narrative of consciousness, is where the other half-star comes from. The narrative device of one notebook passing among many hands, taking on many meanings, offers the reader a handle to grapple with balancing the solid-silver vessel Hur used while not losing control of the easily-spilled contents.

It's not going to be easy for many to move past the genders of the consciousnesses that take this notebook through time. That's a shame. I'll say that poetry, in this case, can draw in those questing minds. I'm pretty sure that has a downside. If what you want is to "{feel} these words against my skin as if they were physical objects, or as if they were light passing through the prism of my body and shattering into the spectrum. Had I ever truly understood any word before, ever? How could I have claimed to have made a study of poetry or that this study had made me human when I had never understood what it meant to feel words?", then you're in the proper aisle. If those sentiments, expressed in same-sex contexts, are going to make you uneasy, you're late for the exit.

Asserting that poetry is the proper lens for emotional writing is, honestly, disproved by this novel. It is a story with a plot, with development of multiple characters, and has an ending that flows from the events described herein. That is a novel in my eyes, and it does something poetry does not: It connects the reader...me...to Author Hur's worldview as chosen and molded into this story.

Change. Time. Immaterial movement. All are central to making a work a novel, not a poem. But because (I'm confident in this assertion) Author Hur's pharmacopoeia is the shape and weight of words before the end that is the sentence, what occurs is a valorization of the idea of poetry, which functions on that small, precise unit for its impact.

I liken this to a poem being a mosaic, a story being a fresco, and a novel an oil painting. Mosaics fall apart easily, the pieces are still pretty but don't do much to make an impression unless painstakingly restored by experts; frescos, done in sharply defined spaces and usually quickly can last for centuries and, even if volcanoes engulf them are still recognizably art; oil paintings are gigantic efforts to use malleable medium to create a simulacrum of reality, whose materials are slippery and prone to blending as well as subject to vagaries of fashion for their perceived beauty. Makes sense, too, as these are roughly the same order of appearance (assuming one counts folktales and fables and myths as stories not novels or poems).

Author Hur's debut novel is a beautiful work. It's a deep questioning of Humanity, humaneness. It's a story that moves the reader through the ideas, we don't often take time to articulate, of love and connection. Poetry isn't my choice of a defining trait of being human.

Words are...beautiful, sharp, shiny, eternally morphic words. Take this as your encouragement to go get Author Hur's first novel.