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!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Laws of Solomon (Martyr Maker #4) by Eriq La Salle
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Redemption isn't given. It's fought for.
After years of violence, Solomon leaves the brutal backdrop of New York and its underworld to find peace in California where he settles for the quiet life of a gardener defined by routine, restraint, and a fragile kind of peace that had alluded him. Having been a former child soldier, mercenary, and hit man, he is determined to put his past behind him. But as violence erupts on the grounds he tends, his hard-won tranquility shatters when he encounters a young boy named Gaby whose life is in danger.
Protecting the child pulls Solomon back into a world he swore he'd buried. As they set out on an unexpected journey, hunted by men who will stop at nothing to get what they want, Solomon must confront not only the threat closing in but the darkness he carries within.
Propulsive and deeply human, Laws of Solomon is a story of redemption, found family, and the cost of choosing compassion in a brutal world. In saving Gaby, Solomon may finally discover whether peace is something a man like him can earn—or something he must sacrifice everything to protect.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: The fatherly love Solomon lavishes on the child Gaby is very welcome to see in a literary landscape where men are solely violent and hateful, or redeemed by some woman or another. Solomon's world has only ever been violent so he's redeemed, but by the need to protect and guide a child not his.
Not to say he's non-violent...many readers will love that, but I didn't, and I can't get all the way to a fourth star despite how well-written the story is.
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $7.99 for an ebook. Tolerant of violence? Go ahead.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
She's a Killer by Kirsten McDougall
Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: Alice is struggling to find things to care about.
Branded 'smarter than most' at the age of seven, she now works in Enrolments at the local university and spends her time stalking the internet for shoes she can't afford.
Meanwhile, the climate is in crisis and wealthy immigrants are flocking to New Zealand for shelter, stealing land, driving up food prices and taking over.
When Alice meets teenage genius Erika, life suddenly gets a lot more interesting.
But Erika soon reveals a dangerous plan to set things 'right', forcing Alice out of indifference and into action of the most radical kind.
Just what is a slacker to do? Bold and brilliantly bizarre, She’s a Killer is the satirical dystopian cli-fi thriller you never knew you needed. Until now.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Buy it for the new (to me, anyway) coinage of "wealthugees." The rich are taking over beautiful New Zealand and screwing it both up and over, a too-smart-to-be-happy woman's caught up in a scheme to do something permanent about it, and hijinks ensue. Very slowly, but they do ensue.
I'm not over the moon because cli-fi and satire are odd bedfellows, the Māori in the story come across to me as more a white person's vision than real people, and I ran out of patience with Alice before I ran out of book.
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $14.99 for the openable ebook. In the proper mood....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Children of wolves: a novel by Lawrence Osborne
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Never fall for your prey....
A thrilling tale of manipulation and deceit about an American private investigator who travels to Turkey to track down the daughter of a wealthy family, unwittingly setting off a sinister plot.
Four children from wealthy families are sent to a strict prestigious boarding school for troubled teenagers. Haunted by the horrors they experience, they vow to disrupt the status quo by all means necessary.
Years later, Tyler is a private investigator with a failing career who has been hired by petrochemical billionaire James Arthur Knight Jr. to find his run-away daughter, Chana. At a seaside hotel in Turkey, he finds Chana lounging with her three wealthy friends and living with a fake name.
Enthralled by Chana’s shyness and elegance, Tyler decides to keep his discovery to himself, accepting Mr. Knight’s payments while feeding him elusive information and partying with Chana and her friends over wine and raki. One night, when Tyler lets slip his relationship with the American consul, Chana lights up with interest and asks if he can orchestrate a meeting.
With a backdrop of of glitzy ex-pat parties, diplomatic galas, and the gritty underworld of Istanbul, Chana conjures a plot involving the consul that sets into motion a dark chain of events.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Glitzy surfaces that sound nice, have interesting shapes, and doesn't do much with them beyond note their surfaces' shine and elaborately describe to color and texture. Tyler's failings are self-inflicted; Chana's rebellion is pique at how her rich dad, a scumbag to be sure, failed to give her *enough* so now she and her buds want to take it away.
It was nicely paced, had a fascinating geopolitical setting that's mostly squandered in travel-magazine puffery, and ultimately ends in sequel bait. It was not a huge success for me.
Summit Books/S & S (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) thinks $12.99 is fair for the book. Library's free....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them together: this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before
Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel
The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene.
A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.
Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets, Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web.
The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first. This twisty, queer, dark academia is a brand-new take on the questions that haunt Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: To read, or not to read: that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous youthful solipsism, or to take leave from Horatio's roiling inner-sea of troubles, and by opposing the demand to re-tread deepworn paths leading to that ever-stormy inner-sea, end them at bloody last; to die to this endlessly refought battle, finally to sleep through more youthful Sturm und Drang; and by a sleep, to say we end...at least my unwilling awareness of...the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that solipsistic young transmasc Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
I read the whole bleedin' thing and I want those hours back.
DAW (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
thinks $15.99 works as a price for the ebook...I disagree.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Three Hitmen and a Baby (Assassins Anonymous #3) by Rob Hart
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: Welcome back to Assassins Anonymous, where family is everything and danger lurks around every corner.
Assassins Anonymous isn't just a weekly recovery meeting for reformed killers—it's also a family.
When Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing, she wants rush off to LA to find him. But she can’t bring her baby girl, Lucia. Enter the other members of Assassins Anonymous—Mark, Astrid, and Booker, who offer to watch the toddler while she's gone. After all, they're three of the deadliest, most highly skilled people on the planet; what could go wrong?
Turns out, a lot. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor—she wants him to kill Astrid, his protege and friend. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend . . . and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do.
Meanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realize too late, that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Also, they don't know Valencia’s last name, let alone Lucia's. They can hardly blame the staff for calling the NYPD.
Suddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police, dodging bad guys and do-gooders while trying to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras—all without killing anyone. That is, until Zmeya captures Sara and Bennett, and Mark is ready to throw his sobriety out the window.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I lost steam, lost the thread, lost my sense of humor...SOMEthing happened to reduce my enjoyment of the silliness of this series to a new low. Maybe it's the baby's fever...?
Whatever it was I chuckled a couple times early on then sat stonefaced in front of my Kindle flipping pages with no trace of a smile, no moment of rib-tickling daffy fun I could see on my mental TV screen.
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requires $14.99 to completely transfer you a reading license that they can revoke at any time, for any reason. At least the library isn't capricious. (see? humorless)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir (tr. Mary Robinette Kowal)
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs—or even bodies—in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest.
Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.
Trying to do the right thing, Unnur reunites the lost pet with its owner—a young woman named Ásta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until Ásta is able to care for it again herself.
Soon, Ásta becomes a fixture in Unnur's life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing Ásta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn.
Nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Dark, horrifying story of how vicious the world is to women, how victimization of women is met by apathy, and how few women step up to help each other in hours of need. Nothing else in this story made me afraid and angry...I was pretty eye-rolly about the "horror" in this story.
At a hair over 150pp, this is a novella which is exactly long enough to spend with dreary, depressing Unnur and ridiculously unintrospective Ásta...about three and a half hours and I was gnawing on my Kindle's case to escape the dreary sadness I was feeling with some microplastic consumption.
Tor Nightfire (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $12.99 for an ebook, but the library's free.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To Rob a Bank Is an Honor by Lucio Urtubia (tr. Paul Sharkey)
Rating: 3.9* of five
The Publisher Says: For the first time in English, the life story of the revolutionary outlaw who brought Citibank to its knees.
In 1981, Lucio Urtubia received a suitcase full of cash from Citibank executives, handed over the plates he’d used to forge 20 million dollars in traveler’s checks, and walked away a free man. This is the true story of the most famous Robin Hood of the twentieth century, a lifelong anarchist who robbed from the rich to give to liberation struggles the world round.
Born to a poor family in the Basque Country, Urtubia was conscripted into Franco’s army at seventeen, where he began smuggling rations from military stores. In 1954, he fled to exile in Paris, where he learned to work as a mason, laying bricks by day and collaborating with Catalonian anarchists by night. Soon, he was planning bank heists to fund the Spanish struggle, stealing weapons, and masterminding the escape of resistance fighters. Following the uprisings of May 1968, Urtubia opened a printshop, producing political pamphlets while amassing a crew of operatives to counterfeit passports, ID cards, and workers’ paychecks.
By the late 70s, Urtubia hit on the plan that would make him infamous: changing the serial numbers on traveler’s checks and depositing them simultaneously. Citibank’s early global banking system offered the prime target, and checks spread to revolutionary movements in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. “He who robs a thief is a thousand times forgiven,” Urtubia argued. Over decades, Urtubia funneled material support to groups including the Red Brigades in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the Black Panthers in the US, and the ETA Basque separatists.
Told with Urtubia's characteristic warmth and humor, To Rob a Bank Is an Honor collects the adventures and political convictions of this larger-than-life figure of an incendiary era.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Gets into inspiration porn pretty quickly, is 75pp too long, and deals with rebellion in a world that simply does not exist in today's societal panopticon.
OTOH he's got good stories to tell, makes an excellent example of "who robs a thief is a thousand times forgiven," and very clearly does not succumb to the right-wing-encouraged "moral purity" bullshit afflicting leftists for centuries.
AK Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $21.99 for an ebook...I'd make the obvious joke but....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When the Tamarind Tree Blooms by Elaine Russell
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Geneviève Dubois, half-Lao, half-French, turns eighteen and leaves the French orphanage where she has been trapped for fourteen unhappy years. She is determined to uncover the story of her parents and locate her missing twin brother.
Stepping into the deeply divided world of 1931 French colonial Laos, she finds neither French colonists nor native Lao readily accept her mixed heritage. Even falling in love is fraught with the cultural restrictions of two dissonant societies. Where does she fit in?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Interesting setting, interesting mixed-race woman's PoV in colonial patriarchal cultures (plural), and somehow it never comes together. From the outset I was not clear as to why I was so involved in the story as I read it; when I'd put it down, I'd forget about it. It's a two-year-plus odyssey, my finishing the story.
Yet finish it I did, and without much flipping back to refresh my memory; unusual experience, honestly I just don't get it at all.
Belles Histoires (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $4.99 for an ebook. If the premise interests you, it's not a bad read.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Warning to the Crocodiles (41%) by António Lobo Antunes (tr. Karen Sotelino)
Rating: 3* of five because there was no reason it should've been this obfuscatory
The Publisher Says: Set in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, Antonio Lobo Antunes's Warning to the Crocodiles is a fragmented narrative of the violent tensions resulting from major political changes in Portugal.
Told through the memories of four women who spend their days fashioning homemade explosives and participating in the kidnap and torture of communists, the novel details the clandestine activities of an extreme right-wing Salazarist faction resisting the country s new embrace of democracy."
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I don't know what's going on here, I'm told there are four narrators and okay that's nice but who are they and why are they helping the men doing these horrible things to decent, upstanding communists anyway? Like, they're men who're bruised by losing but you're going to be better off so what the what is the cheapness of the family treasures causing such gold-plated anxiety about?
It's never been harder to say "No thanks" to a read because I liked the strange, not-ordinary descriptions (that church shadow *shudder*), the way the prose wrapped around itself; but when you don't like these women and you can't tell who's who and there's not one shred of help...ya gotta bail eventually.
Dalkey Archive Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) has a yen for getting $9.95 per ebook.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Swallows (46%) by Natsuo Kirino (tr. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda)
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: The highly anticipated new novel. When a young single woman in Tokyo decides she’s ready to sell anything—even her womb—to escape the precarity of her life, an agency pairs her with a wealthy couple desperate to have a child. The match seems made in heaven. She even looks a little like the wife. But is anything ever that simple?
Nothing has ever gone right for Riki. She left her boring hometown in Hokkaido, where she worked at a nursing home, for a better life in Tokyo. But as a temp in the big city she has no job security, and barely scrapes by. She eats the same old discount boiled egg for lunch every day, sometimes for dinner, too. Many of her peers have to take on a side hustle just to make ends meet. So when her friend discovers an agency offering a hefty sum for egg donation, both leap at the chance for an interview.
Meanwhile, former ballet star Motoi Kusaoke and his wife, Yuko, have been trying to conceive for years. After trying what feels like every available option, it seems futile—until Motoi dives deep into his research and learns that, while surrogacy is technically illegal in Japan, there is a company that’s found a loophole.
Before long, everyone has an opinion on the from Yuko’s sex-obsessed, asexual best friend, to Motoi’s controlling prima ballerina mother, and even the affable sex-worker-slash-therapist that Riki has been to a couple of times, after she accepted a down-payment to be a surrogate.
Acutely funny and addictively page-turning, Swallows pulls at the seams of society, reassessing our understanding of motherhood, self-worth, bodily autonomy, and class. What does it mean to be “in control”? And can money really buy happiness?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: My discomfort reached the breaking point at the end of chapter two, when the ironic distance between Ririko and those around her crystallized into the overarching phoniness of the entire story's relationships being so in-my-face I couldn't unsee it. It could simply be a mood-based dislike of that, it could be there's humor in how it was being done that I simply didn't cotton on to, or it could just be a sea-change in me, away from interest in stories about fa¸ades, is real.
Whatever the source, I'm not continuing reads that lose me, no matter where they do so.
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $12.99 for the ebook. Read a sample first.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fallow (61%) by Sarah Anderson
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world’s first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind.
Natalie knows one truth: There is no such thing as a good job.
As the clock ticks away at the workplace harassment call center, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled.
Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot in-house surrogate. The Company pitches it as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity, motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated.
For years, her every need is stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock healthcare. Between deliveries, she takes time off—no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free.
But just as she’s about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything and drags her deep into another social experiment. There she meets new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, and what she can expect from the world.
Woundingly funny and deeply moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, hilarious, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: K.M. Szpara's Docile made my skin crawl, with its pharmacologically induced submissiveness as an enforcement of sexual servitude to repay debt. This is, somehow, worse. I was all the way into part three of three when a twist occurred that caused me to mark a character's speech given to Natalie...very amusing name to give her, Author Sarah...and decisevely type "Uncle" and nope out. I can't say why because I hope you will be deeply intrigued by this not-unrealistic end-stage-capitalist cautionary tale of why we need tumbrils, guillotines, and Mme Defarge to recrudesce, and to give it a fair shake.
My breaking point is entirely, idiosyncratically personal so irrelevant to the quality of the book.
FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $14.99 for your ebook passport to capitalist dystopia. Only if it gets me *out*....
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.