THE JAGUAR MASK, a beautiful tale of working with people not like you to accomplish things that need doing

THE JAGUAR MASK
MICHAEL J. DeLUCA
Stelliform Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$21.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Felipe K’icab doesn’t know who he is. He only knows he was born different than his human family, and he can’t relax unless he’s blasting reggaeton in his cab weaving through the streets of Guatemala City. The jaguar mask and his other human faces keep him safe–until El Bufo, a corrupt ex-cop, commandeers his cab and drags Felipe into a murder conspiracy investigation, trying to expose the foreign-backed regime’s ecocidal and genocidal past.

Cristina Ramos knows who her mother’s killers are. After witnessing the murder in a vision, she struggles to keep her grieving family from falling apart. When El Bufo’s relentless vendetta throws Felipe into her life amid increasing civil unrest, Felipe and Cristina must overcome generations of institutionalized silence, uncover the secrets of their powers, and forge a path to justice, or else be swept away by another wave of violence.

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

My Review: A werejaguar and a corrupt ex-cop drive a revenge/vengeance plot that cuts the nonsense out of criminally culpable ecocide. Different agendas make them extremely effective in cooperation. Cristina adds a psychic flair to a deeply unlikely scoobygroup, all with very different...even conflicting...agendas for their actions.

But those actions are all in immediate harmony, so they go well. Proof that people with different agendas are well-advised to focus on an immediate goal that suits each. Let the longer-term issues go; make common cause with anyone who can help you get urgent business done; keep your ears open for what those you're working with do not know they are telling you because all information is useful.

Ki'cab, our werejaguar, is the most immediately appealing and relatable character for me. He feels unsafe in his home, so goes to the big city and flourishes in his own patchwork piecemeal way. His human mask is the one that fits least well, perfectly understandably given how awful Humanity is, how poorly the weres fare at their hands. I'm with ya all the way, soul sibling. He has many masks, though, and wears them to accomplish different tasks for which he needs to be a slightly different guy. It's fascinating! I love that Ki'cab lives with a woman who loves and commits to life with Aníbal, her transmasc boyfriend. I love that he cares more for the needs and dignity of his friends than for abstractions like Morality and Legality. Felipe Ki'cab, you're the human in this book that I want to grow up to be.

El Bufo and Cristina are decent enough characters, each is presented as a human being with motivations and reasons for their lives and actions; it's no fault of writing or characterization that I'm less interested in either of them. Cristina's got the grief of knowing the truth, seeing it clearly in front of her eyes, and not being able to alter its happening (Cassandra deserves a better rep in our culture); El Bufo ("The Toad") is presented such that empathizing with him is hard.

Hard for monoglot readers will be contextually-clued-in words from Spanish; I hear this, but it's so incomprehensible to me y'all find it troublesome to read "foreign" words when this amazing tool the internet will tell you what anything you don't know means in English. I'm more empathetic with those unfamiliar with Guatemala, as my own acquaintance is nodding at best, relying on a friend who lived there ages ago. I find learning about places dimly familiar or utterly unfamiliar fun; if you don't treat them like Mordor or Arrakis, places impossible and unreal, and just get on with reading.

I'll say that the beginning say 15% will challenge you. It is not entirely in medias res, but gets really close to it. If that's just intolerable to you as a reader, this might not be the read for you. I can't offer an all-5 rating because of that, but can say I think you'd do well to give the sample a read. Maybe the prose will woo you in....

DAY BOY, dark fantasy & WEIRD FISHES, subaquatic cli fi

WEIRD FISHES
RAE MARIZ
Stelliform Press
$15.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: AN UNDERWATER TALE OF FRIENDSHIP AGAINST MONSTROUS ODDS

When Ceph, a squid-like scientist, discovers proof of the ocean’s slowing currents, she makes the dangerous ascent from her deep-sea civilization to the uncharted surface above. Out of her depths and helpless in her symbiotic mech suit, Ceph relies on Iliokai, a seal-folk storyteller, who sings the state of the sea and has seen evidence of clogged currents as she surfs the time gyres throughout the lonely blue. Navigating the perils of their damaged ocean environment, and seemingly insurmountable cultural differences, Ceph and Iliokai realize that the activities of terrestrial beings are slowing the spiralling currents of time. On a journey that connects future and past, the surface and the deep, the unlikely friends struggle to solve a problem so big it needs a leviathan solution.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU. ***CW: rape***

My Review: I know a lot of folks are, um, squeamish about couples that aren't one-man/one-woman. Y'all gonna bust somethin' when it comes to intimate interspecies relations....

But my gosh! The worldbuilding in this novella would support a billion-page nonillionology for each of these cultures. And still the read manages to be truly satisfying. That is a major achievement. The consequences of human action starts the plot on its course; the circle of life gets closed in the end, but in a way I warned you about above.

I am delighted to say that every step leading up to the ending's unpleasantness contains no such activity. I can't say you're likely to be prepared for it with foreshadowing or desensitization. I can say it's stark and shocking when it happens, unambiguous in its cost, and fully part of the narrative arc.

And my goddesses did I hate it.

There's nothing like consequences to offer a lesson about what the author wants to say. I'm glad Author Mariz said it. But I still hated it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DAY BOY
TRENT JAMIESON
Erewhon Books
$25.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A lyrical, tender story about role models and growing into manhood that reimagines the elements of the vampire myth in a wholly original way . . . while never breathing a word about vampires.

They worship the Sun: the only god as cruel as they are.

The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will.

Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master, Dain. It’s grueling, often dangerous work, but Mark neither knows nor wants any other life. And, if a Day Boy proves himself worthy, the nightmarish, all-seeing Council of Teeth may choose to offer him a rare gift: the opportunity to forsake his humanity for monstrous power and near-immortality, like the Masters transformed before him.

But in the crackling heat of the Red City, widespread discontent among his fellow humans threatens to fracture Mark's allegiances. As manhood draws near, so too does the end of Mark's tenure as a Day Boy, and he cannot stay suspended between the worlds of man and Master for much longer.

With brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a fang-sharp and surprisingly tender coming-of-age story about a headstrong boy—and the monster who taught him to be a man.

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

My Review: Erewhon does very, very interesting SF stories, like this wonderfully realized take on vampirism. The story of Mark, the Master/vampire's Day Boy coming of age in a system that is grotesquely unfair, is handled with care and with respect for his genuine struggle to come to terms with his privilege. As this is a struggle many, if not most of us with levels of privilege similar to Mark's have yet to engage with/in, the story isn't a Young Adult one. In my opinion, anyway.

I'd like to call y'all's attention to the descriptive prose. It is very well-handled. It doesn't overwhelm the momentum of the story, and it doesn't veer into for-its-own-sake lyricality. I'd excerpt some or you but the fact is it's best appreciated in its context...anything I call out won't have the impact I'm describing to you. Author Jamieson is one heckuva prose stylist and that alone's a reason for fans of the vampire genre, the post-apocalyptic genre, and social-comment fiction to read it.

AFTER THE DRAGONS, nice and subtle multilayered title

AFTER THE DRAGONS
CYNTHIA ZHANG
Stelliform Press
$7.99 ebook platforms, available TODAY!

Shortlisted for the inaugural Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dragons were fire and terror to the Western world, but in the East they brought life-giving rain…

Now, no longer hailed as gods and struggling in the overheated pollution of Beijing, only the Eastern dragons survive. As drought plagues the aquatic creatures, a mysterious disease—shaolong, or “burnt lung”—afflicts the city’s human inhabitants.

Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis. Elijah Ahmed, a biracial American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong. Interest in Beijing’s dragons leads Kai and Eli into an unlikely partnership. With the resources of Kai’s dragon rescue and Eli’s immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons? Eli and Kai must confront old ghosts and hard truths if there is any hope for themselves or the dragons they love.

After the Dragons is a tender story, for readers interested in the effects of climate change on environments and people, but who don’t want a grim, hopeless read. Beautiful and challenging, focused on hope and care, this novel navigates the nuances of changing culture in a changing world.

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

My Review: The entire world is burning up...including the people in it.

We are in an alt-Beijing in a future based on today. Climate change has gone into overdrive, and Beijing's famously poor air quality has never been worse...or warmer. There is a new lung disease, fatality rate as close to one hundred percent as to be indistinguishable, called "shaolong" or burning lung.

Oh...and dragons are real, and are very common in Beijing. Little dragons, not like the hulking fire drakes that medieval Europeans hunted to extinction. Small, delicate, beautiful...but not particularly valued. In fact they're used much as cocks are, for dragon fights. (While this isn't gone into in detail, it leads me to remind thoose sensitive to animal harm that this factor exists.)

Eli comes to Beijing from the USA. He is a mixed-race Black and Chinese diasporan child with a working grasp of Mandarin and a strong desire to make his mark in biomedicine. Kai is a dying victim of shaolong who meets handsome, healthy Eli when he comes into Kai's...well..."job" implies he gets paid which he does not...position at a dragon sales shop-cum-dragon fight ring. Their attraction is mutual but stuttering at its start: Eli can't help noticing Kai's illness and thus sets up the pity dynamic...unintentionally, of course, but inevitably...which makes Kai resist his reciprocal feelings for Eli.

Their dance of approach and stillness and retreat and stillness was beautifully handled, while never leading to a Conclusion. They are involved...in a coupling-type thing...and it's making them both happy...today. The way we're left at the end of the story, that is all we can expect to hear about these young men. I would like to say aloud that I would love to read more stories set in this world because its depth-of-field in this novella is amazing and has not come remotely close to exhausting the possibilities it contains. What does it mean to fall in love with someone who is dying? What kind of world can you, the healthy one, believe in once you've realized he will die before you? Not things I'd know about at all....

I did not expect to think the AIDS parallels were particularly well-done or even necessary. I was wrong. The story is very much enriched by the author's quiet acknowledgment that these men face a short future and a rough road to the end. Nothing is made of that, as in there are no set pieces built around it, but it pervades their oddly tender yet standoffish dynamic.

Anyone who can make the Bird's Nest from the 2008 Beijing Olympics into a ratty-tatty old hulk where wild dragons swarm is someone who needs to delve far more deeply into this world they have made. The details that bring it to life...the drought causing the poor to pay so much for water while there are still fountains in the wealthy part of town, for example...made my greedy little story bandit within coo and gurgle.

This is the second novella I've read from Stelliform Press (after The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, reviewed here), and they have both been excellent cli-fic books with stellar (!) production and design values. It is clear that this press has a very well-defined mission and is using the best kind of writing...tense, intense, high-stakes storytelling...to get your attention. You will enjoy the trip even while you're unhappy with the implied destination.

More, please. Soon, please.

THE IMPOSSIBLE RESURRECTION OF GRIEF, Dr. Cade's dystopian vision expanded without expounding

THE IMPOSSIBLE RESURRECTION OF GRIEF
OCTAVIA CADE Read Arley Sorg's interview with her here!
SPECIAL SALE AT: Stelliform Press
$14.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

2022 WINNER, SIR JULIUS VOGEL AWARD—BEST NOVELLA!

The Publisher Says: IN A DYING WORLD, GRIEF HAS A LIFE OF ITS OWN...

With the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of species comes the Grief: an unstoppable melancholia that ends in suicide. When Ruby’s friend, mourning the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, succumbs to the Grief, the letters she leaves behind reveal the hidden world of the resurrected dead. The Tasmanian tiger, brought back from extinction in an isolated facility, is only the first... but rebirth is not always biological, and it comes with a price.

As a scientist, Ruby resists the Grief by focusing her research on resilient jellyfish, but she can’t avoid choosing which side she’s on. How can she fight against the dead and the forces behind them when doing so risks her home, her life, and the entire biosphere?

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

My Review: Here's how we start this tale:

The Sea Witch lived in an abandoned salt water pool. I knew her when she was called Marjorie and had the office next to mine at the University, but when the Grief came on her she stopped coming into work and set herself up at the derelict public pool with a stack of useless journal articles and a lifetime supply of plastic.

That's a high-octane start to what turns into a careening rush between ugly and awful, ending its trip at unthinkable.

And you will not be blamed for wondering why I now say: Get this book right now. Sit down, open it, and then let Author Cade do her wicked, caustic thing for/to you.

The jellyfish migrated through the lake during the day, and snorkelers could swim with them, with thousands of jellies, with millions of them, and see in their lovely, delicate forms the histories of another life. They pulsed around me like little golden hearts, shimmering in the surface layer of waters, and it was as close as I've ever come to religious communion.

There is a Jellyfish Lake in Palau, first crossing my own personal radar in 1982, where there is an immense concentration of two sorts of stingless jellies isolated from the ocean for about twelve thousand years and therefore have lost the need for such strong self-defense and hunting measures. The two species are able to coexist, and are so very gorgeous they can stop your heart:

The left are golden jellies, the right has one moon jelly in the middle. These are the creatures that take our narrator's heart from her. She is, from the moment she sees them, in thrall to the living heartbeats that are jellies, in all their many-shaped and -colored and -toxined glory. I can see why they would; in fact, these gorgeous animals are found literally everywhere there is an ocean, are brilliantly adapted to staying alive in every kind or sort of circumstance, and have changed themselves as little as possible over the millennia always just enough to stay in the hunt, just ahead of predators and just behind prey. In Author Cade's world, they are the only ocean creatures thriving as a result.

Also on this Palau dive is a woman, Marjorie, who becomes the narrator's very best friend. Marjorie's obsession is the Great Barrier Reef. The ladies, scientists both, bond over their love of and understanding for the ocean's many and wildly variable ecosystems, all under threat from Anthropogenic Climate Change (maybe you've heard about it?)—but few ecosystems are under greater threat than the Great Barrier Reef. Marjorie succumbs to a new thing, the Grief, a declining mental health state that invariably ends in suicide, that is becoming more and more prevalent among humans who, for idiosyncratic reasons, suddenly can no longer bear to exist in the changing world.

Our narrator, called Ruby as we discover about midway through the story, is apparently immune to the Grief. So is her Māori husband, George...not a scientist, an artist of science subjects, so it's really not science that saves or damns. But Marjorie retreats to behaviors so weird, so utterly foreign to her former self, and yet still sea-themed...she renames herself "the Sea Witch" from "The Little Mermaid" by H.C. Andersen, which is also what she named the expensive boat she bought herself before the Grief and burned to the water-line after it...that it's clear what the decline's end will be while remaining unclear what the hell she's going to do next. The next thing the Sea Witch does...well....

That is a thing of spoilers. The things Marjorie, I mean the Sea Witch, does or causes or abets, are...disturbing. I will leave it to you to read the under-100 page novella, instead of doing what I would love to do and relating the scary, freaky, incredible things that Ruby rips from pillar to post to attempt to make sense of, to attempt to explain to herself (and very possibly the authorities, though which ones and what she could convince them to do in a Grief-stricken world is unclear even to her) what Grief is doing to some apparent survivors.

Why I want you to get this book is really very simple: I need people to talk about it with! There are so many fascinating characters...Tasmanian Granny the Thylacine Jesus for one, addled by Grief but quite the scientist withal, and maybe the Sea Witch's relative...? Ruby goes to visit her at...well, because she gets a Message to, although George her husband isn't keen on it:

"Hurt's easy enough to live with," he said. "If there's an end to it. Break your arm and it hurts, but it heals soon enough and the hurt goes away. Even a small pain, if it never leaves...It wears you down," he said. "In the end it isn't the hurt that gets you, it's the exhaustion."

He's right; physical or psychic, it's the unending aches that cost one the most to survive. As for how that explains the Grief, and those who succumb, we don't know if it's causal or correlative, but Indigenous peoples all over are succumbing to the Grief in greater numbers than the population as a whole. Great grief is always a form of insanity, a melding of psychosis and depression, but Granny is extra no matter what yardstick we're using. The Sea Witch, if she's related, came by it honestly. Gawd...this climate-changed world of Author Cade's is one scary place! Resurrection is never a harbinger of sunshine lollipops and rainbows, anywhere, anytime.

"Some people said...{t}he coming of people like me, and what we'd done to Tasmania, the rest of Australia, and what we'd don in New Zealand...the same devouring, the same indifference to the pre-existence of other life. The same conversation, over and over, with different settings and different subjects." (Ruby speaking)
–and–
"I guess we all got better and better at killing. What a shock it must be, to find how efficiency in slaughter always takes the upward trajectory." (George speaking)

At the end of the read, Author Cade delivers a devastating truth to us, one that went straight into my commonplace book. Ruby is having the one conversation she most hoped she wouldn't have to have, and least expected to be remotely possible. In her newly cleared eyesight, she sees this: Self-knowledge was the clearest thing in the world. It was also the unkindest.

Unholy, misbegotten things always survive, don't they? Isn't that Evolution's sick little secret?