THE SECRETS OF ALABURG (Alaburg University #1) has maps and cool character art on its Ammy page!

THE SECRETS OF ALABURG (Alaburg University #1)
GREG WALTERS (tr. Patrick Moffatt)
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99, or free to read on Kindle Unlimited

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A hideous beast with glowing red eyes ambushes Bryn on his way home through the forest. After a narrow escape, the sixteen-year-old must flee with his foster father Gerald to the only place that promises Âlaburg University, where humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs come together to study the Colors of Magic.

Bryn soon discovers he can use all three magical colors, which renders him powerful and dangerous at the same time. Will he learn to channel his powers with the help of his unlikely new friends and secure peace for the land, or will he become the one who spells out doom for the enlightened nations of Razuclan?

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My Review: Aged-up wizarding school story but without the added transphobia that so appalls and offends me, though with forced heteronormativity...just let Bryn be a kid without a love interest!

That series wasn't the first iteration of the story, so no talk of "ripping off," please. In that case everyone owes the Mauschwitz people royalties for that revolting rodent's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" bit in 1940's Fantasia. Or the composer, Paul Dukas, of that bit owes at least a nod to Goethe for the poem from 1797; which is a nod to Classical sources that likely derive from ancient Egyptian sources. This idea, laddies and gentlewomen, does not belong to, nor was it originated by, the transphobic Scottish woman.

Thank all those useless gods.

Okay, well, that's one hobbyhorse ridden. Now why did I give the read three stars? Simple. I'm tired of this story. Let this field lie fallow a few generations. The translator from the original German, Patrick Moffatt, did an okay job. I don't know what he had to work with, but it's pretty much all "low, green armchair"s and "dust dancing in golden light beam"s level stuff. It works; it's not clunky; but I remember no specific line at all.

So a serviceable read? Yep. I resent not one minute of those five hours. I don't think I'd say yes to a DRC of #2 in the series...just not that excited. The folks who love the special-orphan-learns-magical-truth books will eat it up with a spoon. On current evidence, that's a whole huge heap of y'all. PLUS there's seven of 'em and the series is completed!

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a massive fan of this plot. Earthsea thrilled me as a ten-year-old; the transphobic woman's book had to be read due to FOMO; other than that I'm a resolute take it or leave it guy fatigued into resistance by ubiquity. YMMV, and most likely will, so give it a whirl. It's low risk for these prices, and free on KU means you're really not risking anything except time.

2024 NEBULA FINALISTS: A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL, a book you might misunderstand as bleak...it's hopeful

A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL
T. KINGFISHER
Tor Books
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

FINALIST for the 2024 Nebula Award! Winner announced at the 2025 Nebula Conference, 5 through 8 June 2025.

The Publisher Says: A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's "Goose Girl", rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.

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

My Review: Dark it is. A dark retelling of a fairy tale I myownself think is entirely too dark anyway. A deeply unhappy story that centers on the evil deeds and wicked heart of Evangeline (follow the link for the roots of this name) as a sorceress, "one who influences fate or fortune," in its original meaning; the sense is always pejorative. It certainly needs to be in this case, as Evangeline (I don't trust y'all to go look it up: the mother's name Evangeline is a diminutive of Latin "evangelium" ("gospel", itself from Greek Ευαγγέλιο "gospel", meaning "good news"...the christian gospels, in other words, those horrifying fonts of millennia of misogyny and detrimental social control, applied to an appalling, cruel, controlling mother) is following the Grimm plot closely in her actions.

I don't know what to think of the inspiration of the story. I'm positive Author Vernon (real name) did not know the results of the 2024 US election as a matter of fact before this book came out in that August. I am a bir chilled by its timeliness, a story of an evil old sorcerous person manipulating a good, innocent girl to her detriment. I wish I was writing this in a spirit of "how did she know we'd defeat the evil old sorcerous party" instead of "if only we'd defeated the evil old sorcerous party" but here we are.

It felt to me, all the way through the read, as though I was being Entertained, that the trademark Vernon wittiness was deployed not organic to the story. It isn't a story where wit, comedy, humor in general, sit naturally. I was abused by a mother much like Evangeline: cold, manipulative, withholding, but always hiding behind a good god-fearing front. For me the read was a return to the times of my life where my anxiety issues were installed. It's a testament to how very effective Author Vernon's skill at storytelling is that I finished and rated the read almost five stars! It's a deeply anxious story, a mother who is not a nurturer or a caregiver in the good sense but rather one who gives her child victim cares that will last a lifetime of therapy. (Why has no fantasy novelist given their MC a therapist?)

My anxiety attacks aside, the story is true to its source material in its claustrophobia, its sense of physical as well as emotional deprivation of freedom. Cordelia's enforced motionlessness probably triggered more awful memories for me than anything else, and made me long for my Falada: The 1968 Bonneville belonging to my mother that I used to escape the misery of my "life" with her. I'm glad I don't have to re-read the book!

It sounds like I should be zero-stars-do-not-recommending it, doesn't it? So look at those almost-five stars and ask what the hell happened here.

Stories are the way people make sense of Life with the big "L" so they are good at their job when experiencing them is a powerful, bone-rattling experience. I think you can see this read rattled me! It shook my angry absorption in the horrendous return to 2016 into a new shape. It reminded me, by evoking feelings from the childhood I endured, that all things end. That even after they end, the consequences carry on...for good or ill, as we ourownselves choose to use them. That even in the midst of misery, someone we do not expect it of is aware of our problems and willing to help.

Rays of hope like this story represents are never more welcome than they are right now.

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD, supernatural novel set in wintry, beautiful Norway

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
CHELSEA IVERSEN
Sourcebooks Landmark
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Rage burns brighter than any spellfire...Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've been alone, but sweet-tempered Kaija is tired of living in shadows and longs for a life filled with community, even if it means stifling her magic. But Minna is a witch through and through, with wrath always simmering just below the surface.

Different as they may be, both will never forget the day they were driven from their village. The day their mother burned. When Kaija leaves to pursue a new life, Minna is left alone in the darkness of the forest.

Devastated and outraged at the betrayal, Minna casts a curse to punish those who took everything from her. What she doesn't realize is that this act will incite a deadly chain of events. Soon it will destroy everything, including the life Kaija has lovingly built. But once a witch's rage boils, regret means nothing—she can't take back what's already done.

Someone will have to burn.

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

My Review: The nicest surprise of Deathtober's reading. I hadn't read anything by Author Iversen before this, and was expecting a more horror-tinged read...what I got was a revenge story, featuring sisters whose lives were upended by small-minded christian hatemongers. There is definitely a supernatural element to the story. It isn't, however, the kind of all-in horror that ends up with your psyche splattered in gore.

A big part of the reason for that is this is a story that unspools slowly, and in a very interior way. It is almost a récit à deux, a double recit, though such a beast doesn't exist (that I know of). Minna is angry, bitter, and filled with the inexhaustable fuel of contempt for those not as smart as she is. Kaija, on the other hand, is genuinely kind if extremely Other by virtue of who she is and whom she knows best. She is the sister whose path is always set by her desire to see, and be, the best it's possible to, in herself and others. Her decision to return to their home village where their mother was burned alive as a witch causes Minna to react violently She casts a curse on the whole village. Her rage can never be extinguished, but can be thrust outward to burn others.

The reason the book appealed to me is probably the reason some found it frustrating. I liked the slower pace that the author chose, as it left more time for me to get to feel the sisters' differences of character. The third-person narration, told in short chapters alternating between the sisters, was spangled with lovely sentences that use Norwegian terms, that unfold into images of the birch woods and the village, in three mental dimensions. Shadows and light are lovely almost characters.

The Norse "pagan" craft is wonderfully used, with figures from the Norse mythos making their presences known without coming across as intrusions into Reality by pagan gods...they feel like characters whose names we happen to know. The worldbuilding is thus made that much more enjoyable for a twenty-first century atheist. The way that Kaija, the elder sister, yearns for life in the village as a christian wife and a mother did not sit well with me...selling herself short and out to be average, when she could be a Power? Not the kind of message I'd choose to send. But Minna's rageful reponse to her sister's absconding, while understandable, skates perilously close to Evil. The author was very wise to be sure we know that Minna's curse is not the cause of Kaija's different life challenges. That made what could've been unpleasant horror into not-entirely-pleasant, deeply thought through, supernatural fiction.

Set at the crossroads where Norway had to choose between its old, established supernatural beliefs and the newfangled ways of the christian church in a lasting, final way, this story of sisters whose choices define the stakes, and the costs, of each course is one I think is ideal for anyone on your Yule list who loves immersive reads. Investing the time to be in this world with Kaija and Minna is easiest to make happen now that the nights are long and the winds are cold. It was a pleasure to meet Author Iversen. I would commend Minna, and Kaija (though less so), to your long nights of deep reading.

A MASTER OF DJINN, first full-length Dead-Djinn-verse novel

A MASTER OF DJINN
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK (Dead Djinn Universe #1)
Tor.com Publishing
$18.99 trade paper, available now

WINNER OF THE 57th ANNUAL NEBULA AWARD—BEST NOVEL!

WINNER OF THE 2022 LOCUS AWARD—BEST FIRST NOVEL! Watch the award ceremony here.

WINNER OF THE 2022 IGNYTE AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!

A BOOKRIOT BEST BOOK OF 2021!

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 2021 BEST BOOK FOR ADULTS RECOMMENDATION!

Enjoyable author interview at BookPage!

WINNER OF THE 57th ANNUAL NEBULA AWARD—BEST NOVEL! Winners announced 21 May 2022 at the Online Nebula Conference awards ceremony.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns to his popular alternate Cairo universe for his fantasy novel debut, A Master of Djinn And read Arley Sorg's interview with Author Clark!

Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.

So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.

Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city - or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems....

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

My Review: Let's just get that missing star dealt with: Ten w-bombs. Normally that's a whole star gone, but it's only a half here. It was "I feel a villain rant coming on" and "Sniffing a sharp nose, he made a bitter face" and Sobek, bless his scaly hide and hungry jaws, that made me think twice. Then the mechanical eunuchs, the Ministry's Brain, the wonderful inventive world that I am invited to share...despite being spat upon with disrespectful w-verbing...okay.

There are really terrific lines. There are Zack-Snyder-meets-Michael-Bay battle scenes. There is a majgicqk system that is more fun than three dozen djinn in a jar. The Ifrit Kings! What a gorgeous scene that will be in the film!

As I suspect y'all who haven't yet read the book are beginning to gather, this was a hit with me.

Fatma and Hadia, her new Modern Woman partner from Alexandria, are the ladies from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. Because, you see, the world has majgickq in it again since al-Hafiz, who pierced the interdimensional boundaries and allowed the Earth's myriad supernatural creatures, and the anti-physics the can wield, tore a hole in the Kaf (a mountain). I'd like, at this point, to recommend that anyone who hasn't read the novellas and short story I've reviewed here (the first two tales) and here (third tale) in that order. Two are free to read online, and the third is $3.99 on Kindle or other ereader.

The best thing about blogging is I now don't have to worry about spoilers anymore, if you're still here and not heeding my recommendation to seek out the rest of the world-building bits of the story in order, it's not my problem! A magazine site would insist that I consider the spoilerphobic soul's delicate eyestalks. I won't spoil what I consider the bits that make the trip worth taking.

And that is a lot. There are so many things I absolutely felt as though I'd *combust* if I didn't have someone to talk about them to! But it really isn't fair to say what happened on the palace roof until you've been there.

So here's the stuff I want to let everyone know.

Author Clark built this Cairo on a fascinating premise. He has already pulled magjiqck back to Earth. But he's also pulled a Cairene industrial revolution, a social ferment with workers' and women's rights being openly debated, a world with European colonialism on the run, and a lesbian couple leading us through the whole minefield of issues...and no one thinks much of it...into being. But Author Clark still manages to pack a gigantically important coming-out scene into the proceedings, one that explains little mysteries from the past and makes certain events in the future a lot less deus ex machina-y. This is some busy worldbuilding.

The colonialism-on-the-run part comes as a result of al-Hafiz chosing to restore magjiqck in Cairo itself. In doing so, he takes the former Ottoman colony of Egypt out of the British and the Turkish spheres. It is accomplished in 1872, which history buffs will recall as a difficult time in Egypt and Sudan...the Mahdi arose to lead resistance to both the Khedive and the British, whose combined efforts were destabilizing the local economy and religious issues were bubbling away. So here, we have instead fictional al-Hafiz guiding the world in a different direction but with many, many more times the power and success in re-ordering the system of the world compared to the factual resistance leader.

Also about that time, Napoleon III of France was defeated by the Prussians in a *nasty* war; the German Empire was whomped up in place of the Kingdom of Prussia; there was an organized independence movement called the Indian National Congress founded in 1885; and a little thing called the Berlin Conference was held to divide up Africa into "zones of influence." This alternate timeline, Author Clark has the latter conference take place but as a planning session to stop the African and Arabian djinn and other creatures from defeating the colonizers. (It does not work, as we see; nor in largely decolonized alternate India, either.) So a time of restless ferment is co-opted by the returned supernaturals to upset the world you and I live in!

All is not paradisical. We're treated to much glancing contact with German goblins (predictably revoltingly racist), among other different national supernaturals, as they exert some difficult to ignore pressure on Humankind's affairs. This happens at the Egyptian King's peace summit, the reason this particular story is happening. There is mounting pressure for war in Europe, and Egypt (a neutral country interested in peace so its magical industries can make and sell goods) wants to see if it can be averted. The other organizer of the summit is a crackpot Englishman, third son of a Duke, who lives in Cairo because he's besotted by magjiqck and also wants the world to remain at peace so we can all Learn To Be Better. *snort* It is his murder that begins the destabilization of Cairo that Fatma and the Ministry must fight.

As the summit approaches, al-Hafiz...gone from this plane since 1872...suddenly returns! And is inexplicably trying to bollix things up so the peace summit turns into a war congress. All of this in Cairo and under the noses of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. Since al-Hafiz is...gone, dead, translated...they call his recrudescence "the Impostor" and set about doing the usual police-y things to stop him from spreading unrest while world leaders are in Cairo.

I really must take just a moment to cough into my hanky about the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm II is at this conference in person and seemingly without his factual badly damaged arm. President Poincaré of France is there, too. No mention of Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, and the Turkish Sultan is effectively hiding behind the Kaiser's coattails...we have no American President Taft? But anyway...the house is full and al-Hafiz treats us to a truly exciting scene as he appears among the leaders! The beauty of that scene is the realism of a determined saboteur merely needing to bring up impolitic realities to threaten world peace.

It's stuff like this that makes me croon in delight. I appreciate the grace notes...a city full of leaders with a revolutionary stalking the streets and rousing up the impoverished! But we don't stop there, we get a battle scene before and a fight scene during. Yes, Author Clark knows how to make the adrenaline users buy right on in to his story.

And since we're packing in action, let's not forget that the Ministry has a lot to do to make the leaders safe and clean up this unsettled political landscape! We have Zagros back, the Ministry's Marîd librarian; we have the Angels in their bureaucratic collective glory back; we have Fatma learning how to trust her new partner Hadia; we re-meet Aasim and Hamed and Onsi. There is a gigantic battle about every thirty or so pages. Lots of property damage. Many problems with identifying the imposter al-Hafiz, learning the hows and whys of the magic that makes him appear invincible.

It's all very clever, but it's not all the same story.

And that's why this is a four-star, not a four-and-a-half star, review. Author Clark has written, until now, novellas, novelettes, and short stories in this universe. I think the story he wants to tell here, and I haven't even made much of the ripening and deepening of Fatma's love affair with Siti-Abla (no explanation is ever given for the woman's having two different names, though there is a really obvious one that goes unused), needed a novel's length to make it work. My issue is that his heroic efforts couldn't keep all the balls in the air at the same time.

It's still a fun and often funny read (see my first sentence for examples). But when Fatma the investigator actually has interviewees telling her where to go next...when Hadia the new partner is simultaneously dumped when things get violent then forgotten for a chapter or two when interviewing is taking place...when the djinn, the Ifrits, the Janns, and the ghuls, the nasnas, are reduced to quick, broad strokes because honestly there isn't time to do more...there needed to be a more unforgiving editorial stance taken. Do more to build Zagros and the other major djinn Siwa, or reduce them to one-hit and gone props. The ghuls are supernumeraries, so I'm not clear why the kind of ghul al-Hafiz summoned was different from the rest; was that necessary? It doesn't seem so to me.

But I'm disinclined to keep star-breaking because, when I realized the perpetrator's silhouette was very quietly limned against a shadow just in slightly darker colors, I was very pleased at the effect's subtlety. The identity of al-Hafiz's faker was satisfying because it wasn't trumpeted but was made clear to the attentive. The developments between Fatma and Siti need to continue, of course, but the main areas of conflict are starkly present as of now. Hadia is someone I think Author Clark wanted to be more in touch with, so to speak, but the over-stuffed yet under-baked plot wasn't allowing that. Future books will, I trust, give him room to make her more than a hijab with martial arts skills (though that is pretty awesome as a start).

I like this world; I like this book; I like what I see as the possibilities and energy in Author Clark's writing. As first novels go, this one is superior in conception and execution to most, and in genre terms displays the bravado and chutzpah that augur well for more and better to come.

THE HAUNTING OF TRAM CAR 015, a delightful if short hit of an alternate steampunk Cairo...with Djinn!

THE HAUNTING OF TRAM CAR 015
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK (Dead Djinn Universe #0.7)
Tor.com Publishing
$3.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Haunting of Tram Car 015 returns to the alternate Cairo of Clark’s short fiction, where humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS TITLE FROM TOR.COM FOR REVIEW.

My Review: When I asked for more after reading A Dead Djinn in Cairo, I sorta-kinda vaguely hoped that there would, one day, maybe be more. Then this book came out. It doesn't feature Fatma as the main Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities agent on the case, but Hamed and Onsi grew on me fast. And, of course, the inclusion of Siti was welcome as it assured me this was well and truly part of a Cairo I absolutely believe is real and wish to emigrate to now, please.

Ahem.

And now there's a lovely new title, A Master of Djinn, coming on 11 May 2021! In fact, we'll get Fatma and Siti back at the center of the doings, so all will be extra-special right with my reading world.

This story, of a spirit entity (NOT like a Djinn, as Zagros the Ministry's librarian Djinn bristles at Hamed) called an "al" (plural "alk") that's arrived from Armenia to ply its evil, baby-stealing ways; it involves graft (a Transportation ministry bureaucrat doing what he didn't oughta), confusion (Hamed seeking help from a sheika and a sexy transgender Djinn to perform a Zal exorcism-y thing), and a lot of humility instead of humiliation. Hamed and Onsi do a deeply shocking thing to slip past the al's nervous vigilance, something their patriarchal upbringings wouldn't find agreeable, but to them it's far superior a choice than failing to protect Cairo's mothers.

There are scenes of action with the men pursuing the al, there are scenes of fun, deep brain-work where the author gets to infodump you about this delicious anti-colonial alternate history without feeling like it's him forcing you to eat your spinach, and there's a beautifully queer undertone to the proceedings that agrees with me. If you know it won't agree with you, skip on.

Now, it's clear that I love this world. Anyone who has read my deep and caustic growls about majgickq in my alt-hist will even now be sharpening their quill to jab out a "GOTCHA!!" message. This series has majgicqk in it, yes; the magjicqk is integral to the action, yes; and no, I am not fleeing at top speed. So before the ringing cries of "hypocrite!" begin their rise from ill-mannered and poorly bred peoples' keyboards, listen up: I'm not interested in medieval-Europe-with-monsters, WWII-with-werewolves/aliens, or their like. Tired of those stories. Cultures not European? You interest me strangely, Tale-spinner, come and say on.

I wouldn't say you should read this book first, but definitely before the new one comes out. And definitely read it. I know it's a quick hit, and it's hard to invest in something this concentrated when you wonder if you can come home again. Now you know you can, indulge! (But be alert for the one, and only one, w-bomb.)

GOD STALK, a 35-year-old first fantasy novel that spawned a series still going today

GOD STALK
P.C. HODGELL (Chronicles of the Kencyrath #1)
Baen Books
$6.99 eReader platforms, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the first book of the Kencyrath, Jame, a young woman missing her memories, struggles out of the haunted wastes into Tai-tastigon, the old, corrupt, rich and god-infested city between the mountains and the lost lands of the Kencyrath.

Jame's struggle to regain her strength, her memories, and the resources to travel to join her people, the Kencyrath, drag her into several relationships, earning affection, respect, bitter hatred and, as always, haunting memories of friends and enemies dead in her wake.

My Review: I read this 35-year-old fantasy novel because a good LibraryThing friend of mine ran a group read of it. She contended that the book was underfamous and underappreciated. I don't know about you, but I'd say any first-in-series book that's followed by eight others (to date) set in the same universe, and which has an 816 page fandom wiki, isn't exactly a concealed target.

Still.

Reading older books in the speculative fiction genre is an education in revised expectations and their invisibility until challenged. Modern fantasy nonillionologies, each volume a minimum of a jillion pages densely packed with made-up language vocabulary and/or Randomly capitalized normal Words that indicate they're being used as something More Than their mundane meaning, are now the minimum standard. This book predates that trend. As a result, its brevity can feel...unfinished...to a 21st century sensibility. There were many, many moments that the author moved through hastily or simply glided past entirely that would, in modern times, be entire novels.

I've complained about book bloat and editing fails so often and so publicly that I expect someone will quite soon point this out with a smug "gotcha!" of some sort. To those legions of carping natterers, I say "oh shut up" and remind them that 1) consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and 2) there's such a thing as a happy medium.

I'm not a huge consumer of fantasy novels at the best of times because magic makes me itch. It seems so nonsensical, so counter to the realities of physical laws under which we live; it flies in the face of experiential existence; but it satisfies a deep need in many people, just not me. Also, almost always, the protagonist is An Exceptional Adolescent (usually female), and that's very much not my favorite kind of person. Adolescence stank, and so do adolescents. Just not where I want to be, or to stay for any length of time.

This novel's magical system got in under my radar because it feels to me, like the magic in Kai Ashante Wilson's marvelous Africa-set fantasy stories, as though any second we're going to be told that it's a form of technology we don't recognize as such. I can hang with that. Most of what the main character does isn't terribly magical, and the city of Tai-Tastigon itself is the source of the overall magic. We're teased with the notion of the city's magic being the reason there are so many gods in it; in fact, there's a truly delicious idea that temples to the gods are actually ways for the mundane people to *trap* the gods, to limit their scope for activity, instead of mere places of worship.

Jame, our main character, even targets one of these gods in an experiment to test the limits of its power. She causes the god to lose its worshipers in the process, and the results prove to Jame that there is something very hinky about the way the gods function. This subplot is played for comedy, but I was happy to note that the very real consequences for this god and its priest were later sources of shame and remorse for Jame. She goes out of her way to fix the damage she's done, and in the process discovers an amazing library of knowledge that this god's temple has hidden for ages. It is one of the wonderful things about the tapestry of Tai-Tastigon created by Author Hodgell.

The city and its quirks, its societal and legal peculiarities, are incredibly enough left to one side as soon as they're revealed! Inconceivable, and that word does mean what I think it means, in today's publishing world. I was intrigued by the Cloudies, a subset of society that's decided to take to the rooftops and not touch the ground: whence came they, what do they do for a living, how come they're not subject to groundling law, and so on and so forth. Never answered. Never addressed. The Thieves' Guild that Jame enters without the smallest tiniest bit of effort on her part is an entire multi-volume storytelling universe! The history that Jame barely skates over with her sort of accidental Thieves' Guild master, one Penari the ancient master thief, is another multi-volume series of novels. I am all for rich texture in a story, and I got it here, but there are way too many delicious side trails that lead nowhere in this book.

At the end of the book came my personal biggest disappointment as Jame left Tai-Tastigon for parts unknown. This was inevitable, given the fact that she enters the city from parts only slightly less unknown and for reasons utterly unclear and unclarified. This is a fantasy novel, and the first in a series. Of course there will be a quest, and of course it will lead away from any one location. That doesn't make me any happier about it. The textures of Tai-Tastigon's tapestry are involving and exciting, and I'd like to stay here please.

Which is how I know Author Hodgell created a wonderful thing in this book, and why it's no real surprise that her fantasy universe has spawned an 816-page wiki. She understands her readers' need to feel immersed and invested in more than a simple, surface-gleaming world. She delivers those goods. My various dissatisfactions with the execution of this tale aside, I admire her ability and her vision. I won't continue reading the series because I'm less interested in Jame than I am in Tai-Tastigon, but I will likely pick up any future book that returns to this setting.

CALIFORNIA BONES: Unsettling, exciting beginning to a series

CALIFORNIA BONES Daniel Blackland #1
GREG VAN EEKHOUT
Tor Books
$14.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When Daniel Blackland was six, he ingested his first bone fragment, a bit of kraken spine plucked out of the sand during a visit with his demanding, brilliant, and powerful magician father, Sebastian.

When Daniel was twelve, he watched Sebastian die at the hands of the Hierarch of Southern California, devoured for the heightened magic layered deep within his bones.

Now, years later, Daniel is a petty thief with a forged identity. Hiding amid the crowds in Los Angeles—the capital of the Kingdom of Southern California—Daniel is trying to go straight. But his crime-boss uncle has a heist he wants Daniel to perform: break into the Hierarch's storehouse of magical artifacts and retrieve Sebastian's sword, an object of untold power.

For this dangerous mission, Daniel will need a team he can rely on, so he brings in his closest friends from his years in the criminal world. There's Moth, who can take a bullet and heal in mere minutes. Jo Alverado, illusionist. The multitalented Cassandra, Daniel's ex. And, new to them all, the enigmatic, knowledgeable Emma, with her British accent and her own grudge against the powers-that-be. The stakes are high, and the stage is set for a showdown that might just break the magic that protects a long-corrupt regime.

Extravagant and yet moving, Greg van Eekhout's California Bones is an epic adventure set in a city of canals and secrets and casual brutality--different from the world we know, yet familiar and true.

My Review: Want to know something amazing? My assisted-living facility's library, which I created from my own library, cannot keep this book on the shelves.

So what, I hear you think really loudly. So this: I'm in a place where I'm young at 55...most of these eager readers are over 70.

This gives me the happy. It proves to me that, if you tell a good story well, people it with easy-to-relate-to characters, and pull no punches, any and all ages will grab and snatch and fight to get their shot to read it.

I'm no fan of teen heroes, get highly irked by teen angst, and never want to hear the phrase "coming-of-age" again; I am usually bored into a coma by magic; altogether this book should have made me sleepily grouchy. Instead, I was flipping pages and holding my breath, and so are all the library users I've spoken to.

For me at least, one of the main appeals is the future L.A. van Eekhout posits, a place turned into a quasi-Amsterdam by the devouring sea. I love that idea mostly because I don't like California despite being born there. But also and more positively, I got the image fixed in my head immediately, enjoyably, and permanently. Now I see photos of the real L.A. and feel confused...where's the sea?

Greg van Eekhout changed my image of a place I've been to a zillion times. He's that much of a wizard with his words. I can't wait to be able to afford the next two books! C'mon February, Daddy needs new books!

DEATHLESS, Catherynne Valente's Leningrad Diptych #1 7 October 2013

DEATHLESS
CATHERYNNE VALENTE (Leningrad Diptych #1)
Tor Books
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

2 JUNE 2021 KINDLE EDITION ON SALE FOR $2.99

The Publisher Says: Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.

Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.

My Review: Remember how I said I didn't like books with majgickq and elves and stuff, and how very resistant I'd be so such stories?

Ha.

Magical to a fault, mystical and full of eyerollingly silly things like big black cars with chicken's feet instead of tires, and factories where soldiers are hand-loomed by the Tsar of Life's cast-off mistresses under the supervision of Baba Yaga.

And what can I say? Like every hard and fast rule, this rule went flooey in no time at all, thanks to some ecstatic carolings and appreciative lowings from some very talented reviewers. You terrible people know who you are. I don't love you for causing me to eat my words so publicly.

Russia is a strange, strange place to me. During some really vicious pogroms they tossed in the 19th century, a Polish Jewish ancestress of mine...great-grandmother...walked away from her shtetl, her family, and her identity, got to Bavaria and married an old Catholic man with no living children but who had a shop, and started again. He died, she sold up, she moved on to the USA via Paris, two kids and an American lover in tow. So thanks Russians for being murderously anti-Semitic or I wouldn't be alive today! But the culture that gave rise to the anti-Semitic stuff has always filled me with disgust and not a little horror at the christian hate and apostolic misery doled out on all the people. The myths of the peasantry seem so unforgiving and tricksy and just plain vicious. Then I contemplate the way the country was run (being polite, not well, not ever)...it makes sense...but it still always made me feel icky to read about it.

Then comes this melding of myth and materialsm, supernatural and Supreme Soviet...and I fell head first into love with the package.

Valente's use of language is exemplary. She never stints or holds back. Descriptions are abundant yet they are never obfuscatory; the idea is to create a 3-D experience in the reader's mind and by GUM (old Cold War humor, sorry) she does just exactly that. She never reaches beyond her grasp or talks down to her audience. If only a Russian word will do, there it is, and the nuances are not Spelled Out For You and neither must you resort to Google and Good Luck to find out what the hell this woman's on about.

This (revoltingly) young writer has the temerity and the confidence and the chops to pull off this melding of modernity and medievalism without breaking a (visible) sweat. That's one sweet achievement. This is a book that's as Russian as hot tea with sour cherry preserves and as American as serving it in a Starbucks cup.

And it's beautiful. And it's moving. And it's graceful and lovely and possessed of the most marvelous ability to switch from tango to waltz to jitterbug. Dance with her. This opportunity doesn't come every day.