DEATH OF THE SOCCER GOD, fact-based fiction about race, love, and soccer

DEATH OF THE SOCCER GOD
DIMITRY ELIAS LÉGER
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A global soccer star’s epic ride to the 1950 World Cup places him in shooting distance of his dreams and his own death.

Gilbert Chevalier is a lover of life in a close and constant flirtation with death. His charms and big ambitions flood him with the sense that the world is, in fact, his. Despite his immense talents on the soccer field, his father makes him swear off the sport, a game he sees as unbecoming of a refined Haitian gentleman with a bright future ahead of him in the business sector. Gil promptly breaks this promise when he leaves the bourgeois comforts of Port-au-Prince high society and moves to the vibrant, jazz-soaked streets of Harlem to attend college. Scrimmaging in Central Park, he’s spotted by the US National Team’s coach and is recruited to play for the Americans in the 1950 World Cup in Minas Gerais, Brazil. What unravels next is the stuff of myth. Chance exchanges; secret messages smuggled across continents; lovers shuffled, scorned, and reclaimed; and a journey past the veil between our world and the afterlife. From the Caribbean, to the States, to South America and back, Gil’s journey is lush and lurid, and infused with a breathless, breakneck thrill synonymous with the world’s most popular game.

Death of the Soccer God by Dimitry Elias Legér is a roaring Pan American adventure about the unattainability of the dreams that govern our lives. Energized with the high-voltage fervor of a packed stadium, this is a story of fame and fate bursting with the vivid excitement and thrill of watching world-class athletes perform at their very best.

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My Review: I'll give Author Léger many points for really *getting* the novel as a form's best use: novelty. Starting a story with the titular event and working back from there, we-the-readers aren't left without something novel occurring for very long at all. The factual 1950 1–0 US men's soccer victory over England, whose goal was scored by a Haitian player on the US team (a FIFA investigation determined there was no wrongdoing as all non-citizens on the US team had declared they sought citizenship though only one ever got it), has been immortalized on film and in a non-fiction book before. Author Léger's novel is the first to treat it in fiction, that a ten-minute internet search turns up anyway. I'd be interested to know if any not-Anglophone attention has ever been paid to this unusual occurrence, so please advise if you have any knowledge of the same.

But fictional Gil's life was not begun in 1950, nor did it end there. Along the way from his homeland and the privileged upbringing he had there, handsome athlete Gil falls for a firebrand who bears his child despite being his boring half-brother's fiancée, marries the daughter of a Nazi war criminal hiding in Haiti, goes to Columbia in New York City where his life-altering selection for US soccer team occurs, bums around Europe trading on his looks and his educated wit for food and lodging; rescues Miles Davis from an enraged lover's murderous intentions; and for some reason ends up in front of one of Papa Doc the dictator's firing squads. He reflects, in extremis, on this awful ending so very soom to come for him: "Given the misery and injustice around us, we cannot be indifferent. Believe me, I tried. But evil won’t let you be blissfully ignorant. Or be blissful, period. Evil means hating another person’s peace. Trust me on that one."

Gil is a great, entertaining guide through the world of 1950. He's privileged, but broke; he's mixed race but accepted into segregated high society; he's a reprobate with the self-knowledge to outrun its worst consequences. Until his luck runs out. We aren't vouchsafed the reason that happens. I suspect the cuckolded half-brother had some hand in it, but that's all my own headcanon.

We're addressed directly by Gil throughout the story. It's the reason we get gems like these: "You hate my arrogance, right? I’m among the most arrogant people you ever created. All professional athletes and artists are. Don’t you see how stubborn we have to be to make our dreams and talents come true?" and "All relationships come with asterisks. Life is an asterisk, I would soon learn." Learn he does; not much time alloted to applying his knowledge: "Even today, this dreaded day, Gil remembers with freshly boiled rage all those decisions that weren’t his, but were necessary for the family."

It's a fast-paced two hundred fortyish pages. It's never slack or slow. It's got a lot to say and it says it clearly. Well, mostly clearly, because this twenty-first century guy's eyes look at Gil's unremarked and unremarkable for the time dismissive misogyny and thinks, "well aren't *you* a caddish laddish cheater?" unlike the other people around him. Self-awareness fails us all at some point.

Knowing Joe Gaetjens, the model for Gil in this novel, met his exact end, made this fiction feel very immediate. I was fully in Gil's corner, rooting for him to get what he wanted throughout the story. I glossed over or justified his caddish treatment of the women in his life. It's a weird thing to watch one's self do, while feeling surprised displeasure at the very behavior I'd condemn in another character or real person. That's how I know Author Léger's made a fine work of art. I sought ways to excuse bad behavior and explain away what I could not excuse.

I will note with wistfulness the fact that this is among the very last books that will appear under the MCD x FSG imprint. I have had a good amount of happy reading time with the books from MCD x FSG that I've read. It was a great run, so farewell great kings of biblioholics' hearts.

USING GIFT CARDS: Non-Fiction

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

QUEEN MOTHER: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore
ASHLEY D. FARMER
Pantheon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025

2025 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Biography!

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: From an award-winning historian of radical Black politics comes the definitive biography of Queen Mother Audley Moore—foremother of the Black Nationalism movement and trailblazer in the fight for reparations

In the world of radical Black politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore distinguished herself as a leading progenitor of Black Nationalism, the founder of the modern reparations movement, and a mentor to some of America's most influential Black activists from her homes in North Philadelphia and Harlem.

And yet, she is far less remembered than many of her peers and protégés—Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ahmad, to name just a few—and the ephemera of her life are either lost or plundered. In Queen Mother, celebrated writer and historian Ashley D. Farmer restores Moore's faded portrait, delivering the first ever definitive account of her life and enduring legacy.

Deeply researched and richly detailed, Queen Mother is more than just the biography of an American icon. It's a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism, told through the lens of the woman whose grit and determination sustained the movement.

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My Review: Listen to the author on the Smarty Pants podcast!

Black nationalism. Reparations for slavery's ongoing horrors. A long lifetime of refusing to sit down and shut up, refusing to be a good girl, declining to accept partial and insincere and less-than sops and stop-gaps. "Queen Mother" is a very good title for Audley Moore and a good character analysis of her.

It pains me I knew little about her until now, until someone pulled together threads her proteges had deliberately unpicked and appropriated. She was truly unforgivable to the PTB within and without the Civil Rights movement because she was that powerless victim, a woman; yet her every act and every word gave the lie to that characterization. No one anywhere ever comes across less like a victim than Audley Moore.

She got done wrong to all the damn time, but that did not make her a victim...an identity she rejected, along with mainstreaming, assimilation, and capitalism. It's no wonder she was ignored by historians of the movement until now. She is guaranteed to scare, offend, and even radicalize the very kind of white guy who will commit racist violence. Since those guys are already doing it, empowered by the kakistocracy presently in government in the US, along comes Author Farmer to be introduced to Queen Mother Audley Moore as a child; galvanized by her Presence, her affect on those around her, Author Farmer became her biographer in due course. Outrage at not finding any records cache or archive of her life, the biographer took her considerable powers of persuasion and of study to pull back together the deliberately unpicked threads of an incredible life.

If you care at all about why, how, and at what our country needs to look honestly at itself, use some of your holiday pilf to procure this excellent, easy-to-read, necessary to understand book. Rescuing a major force from calculated desuetude is the act of a true apostle of truth.

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ENSHITTIFICATION: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
CORY DOCTOROW
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

WINNER OF the 2026 Locus Award for NON-FICTION!

A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Explaining the process of the “enshittification” of digital platforms over time and what to do about it.

Cory Doctorow's Enshittification takes a witty yet incisive look at the tech landscape, where platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Google start off great—before they inevitably turn terrible. In this contemporary moment of digital decline, Doctorow explores how tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, squeezing profit at the cost of user experience. With a mix of sharp humor and deep insight, he unveils the slow creep of "enshittification," turning the online world into a worse place, one algorithm at a time.

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My Review: Enshittification...it's not just for tech anymore. Popularized by Author Doctorow beginning in 2022, the word appeared online in the teens and identified exactly the capitalist endgame of charging you more and delivering less for it.

The model's simplicity is its strength. It is really down to real, enforced regulation to prevent this appalling greed from costing the users huge sums of money.

As the tech scum were willing to share their stolen good with the regulators, guess what didn't happen. Ever. The current spate of online regulation is hunky-dory by the tech scum because it makes them in an even more powerful position, requiring more and more and more data to be collected...that they can use to surveil you,to extract ever more profit from surveiling you. Ten years ago, I reviewed David Brin's THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY, his prescient 1999 warning about today's reality: NO PRIVACY only profit.

We weren't listening then, aren't listening to Author Doctorow's blaring klaxon now, and look where it's got us. Right about now is the time to read this book and heed its warning.

Please.

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READ THIS WHEN THINGS FALL APART: Letters to Activists in Crisis
KELLY HAYES (Editor)
AK Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 all editions, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending May 18, 2026

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the co-author of Let This Radicalize You, a collection of letters to inspire activists to continue the fight

Organizers are well seasoned in defeat. We study movement histories, strategize collectively, and gather strength in direct action, knowing that liberation does not arrive overnight, but that the fight is worth it. But what happens when political and personal crises overlap, and the despair becomes overwhelming? Where do we turn when the process of organizing no longer feels like a site of refuge, but isolating, or even tragic?

Read This When Things Fall Apart is a collection of letters written to organizers in crisis who are struggling with the conflicts, heartbreaks, and catastrophes that activists so often experience. From grief to exhaustion, fractured relationships, state violence and interpersonal violence, the struggle for justice can be tumultuous. Each letter invites the reader to the writer’s particular world in abortion defense, organizing within prison walls, recuperating from state repression after the 2020 uprisings, or as a new parent struggling to find their way in movement spaces, and offers an authentic account of moving through difficult times.

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

My Review: Burnout to burning the candle at both ends, every human one of is hits the wall of what we can do eventually. Oftentimes that spells the end of that person's activism. It's hard to invent solutions to problems in yourself and your personal sphere that you've never faced before, all while trying to fix things The World℠ would prefer you left alone...and also shut up about so "They" don't have to hear it.

So what better self-gift than a collection of letters to you, teetering on the edge of or mired deep in the falling-apart of the world, that show you it's happened before and been overcome? Even if no idea in this book resonates with you...that would surprise me a lot...or you've already done it before, just the reminder that you are not the first to face this and it's been overcome before is hugely valuable. Support, understanding, fellow feeling, commiseration, are all available in these pages. It can do you a world of good just to know others are, were, have been where you are now.

We can not afford to let challenges met and surmounted by those who went on this journey of resistance to illegitimate authority before us halt our gift of energy and effort in bettering the world be snuffed out. We have a long way to go...we'll only get to the better, kinder, fairer world we want to see if we use every tool in the world's chest to make ourselves as capable and as forearmed as we can.

I recommend this read for its tonic properties because they worked on me.

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PERFECT VICTIMS AND THE POLITICS OF APPEAL
MOHAMMED EL-KURD
Haymarket Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending June 9, 2026

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple dignity for the Palestinian.

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

My Review: Okay, I realize I'm unlikely to win this battle for your Yule gift card money. I'm gonna try because 2026 is not going to be an easy year for any of the warring parts of the world. In writing this book, Author El-Kurd did not use his polite appeaser voice. He does not pretend he is "reasonable" about the genocide being perpetrated on his people. He asks us to interrogate why this heinous act is not more in the foreground of our awareness. It is not the first time genocide has been perpetrated in this century. What allows that to continue?

How are good little capitalist consumers complicit in this media landscape that fails to condemn the crimes being committed? The mere mention of the crime of genocide is too divisive, is not acceptable discourse because...?

Those who dare to support Palestinians having full equal rights in their homeland are canceled, are required to prove they don't mean Israel should suffer consequences for committing this crime against humanity, and we accept it because...? Why is it The System℠ tells us what we may say about this ongoing crime against humanity and we obey?

It is time to interrogate our own (in)action regarding settler colonialism's record of injustices and crimes all over the world. Yes, that includes the US, Canada, Mexico, etc etc. This reckoning with the crimes committed by our ancestors, white people, will come no matter what. Get your mind ready by reading this book's very specific takedowns of the comfy little lies and ugly misdirections that have prevented a reckoning...but are failing at last, ever faster, ever more publicly to keep the cork in the bottle.

It's never a good idea to go into a discussion without any idea what you're discussing. Ignorance, in today's world, is a choice.

A very bad, stupid choice. Educate yourself before knowledge is thrust on you.

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ISRAEL ON THE BRINK: And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence
ILAN PAPPÉ
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A renowned Israeli-British historian argues Israel is fracturing, and considers the issues that must be centered for a peaceful future for Palestinians and Jews alike

In this timely book, historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the 2022 election of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, political fractures inherent in the Jewish state have expanded dangerously—and will potentially lead to Israel's collapse. With the goal of working towards a transition that is as peaceful as possible, Pappé sets out his thoughts about the risks and opportunities emerging from this historical moment.

Eight “mini-revolutions,” he argues, will be necessary for this more hopeful future to emerge, including:

Relocating the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the center of the future vision

Establishing a new definition for the Jewish collective in historical Palestine

Finalizing a plan for the future of the Jewish settlements built in the West Bank since 1967, and

Creating a new strategy for a united Palestinian national movement

Pappé concretely envisions a more just future—a democratic decolonized state for both Palestinians and Israelis—and how we might get there.

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My Review: Ilan Pappé's PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE (q.v.) contained temperature-taking interviews with many of the world's eminent progressives on the subject of public perception of Palestine. Now there comes via Beacon Press the proposal for a roadmap out of this quagmire.

Considering more West Bank Jewish settlements were approved this week I don't foresee the proposals herein being enacted or taken seriously by Israeli officials.

Considering the state of the world's opinion of Bibi and his gang of thugs, it feels more like we should be preparing for a collapse of the state.

It is a good idea for honest, morally sound people to get their heads around what eminent and practical thinkers propose as the future course of this extremely troubled part of the world. Much disgusting vitriolic hysteria will be spewed as things change, so have the antidote in your head already so as not to add to the chaos that's coming.

40: A Novel, more than I expected and as much as I'd hoped for from Heathcock

40: A Novel
ALAN HEATHCOCK
MCD x FSG
$27.00 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author Alan Heathcock comes an American myth of the future: a vision of civil war, spectacle, and disaster of biblical proportions.

In a future America ravaged by natural disaster, pandemic, and political unrest, a fundamentalist faction emerges. As the Novae Terrae gain power, enticing civilians with bread and circuses, a civil war breaks out between its members and the US government.

Mazzy Goodwin, a young soldier, only wants to find her little sister, Ava Lynn. One day, she wakes in a bomb crater to find wings emerged from her back. Has she died? Been gifted wings by God? Undergone a military experiment?

The world sees a miracle. Mazzy is coaxed into seeing it as an opportunity: to become the angel-like figurehead of the revolution, in return for being reunited with her sister. Her journey leads her to New Los Angeles, where the Novae have set up the headquarters for their propaganda machine—right in the ruins of Hollywood. Aided by friends old and new, she must navigate a web of deceit while staying true to herself.

Told in sharp, haunting prose, as cinematic as it is precise, Alan Heathcock’s 40 is a dizzyingly fantastical novel about the dangers of blind faith, the temptation of spectacle, and the love of family. In a tale by turns mythic and tragic, one heroine must come to terms with the consequences of her decisions—and face the challenges of building a new world.

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

My Review: Regulars to this blog will recognize the name Alan Heathcock from my warbling my fool lungs out about his collection, Volt: Stories. One big reason for that is that Author Heathcock does not mess around when he makes his imagery work your brain:

"...I knew it'd come to this, you say. I knew I was right. The power of knowing the despair you ordered has finally come to pass makes you feel like a god. Let's be honest. It's what you want. You want this world to collapse. Want people to be every awful thing."

–and–

Grief was a demon of possession. When people talked of time healing wounds, they only meant that over time you become accustomed to that demon inside you, and what at first felt like an invasive presence, alien and nefarious, slowly became integrated into your being, the imp of sorrow crouched within you for the remainder of your days.

I don't know how much clearer the man can be than that. I can feel these words, see the world through their gravity lens, perceive the distorted light that comes from every other direction than the original one to form the ghost of the initial thought behind them.

Which is why I, devout atheist and committed anti-religion crusader, read a whole novel about a post-apocalyptic world run by and for evangelical evil-doers with hearts colder than emptiest space. Which is why I'm here telling you to go and get one of these books, these beautifully designed books (that jacket design!), or to pre-order the Kindle version so you'll open the device tomorrow morning and join Mazzy and Ava Lynn in the hellscape that Jo Sam the evangelist of doom designed and brought forth.

Betrayal is only the beginning of Mazzy's journey. It's certainly true that she's not a trusting, sunny-hearted soul for a single second of her life. Her sister Ava Lynn calls out the only tenderness she allows herself to externalize. The child, whose fate is not ever easy, confounds Mazzy in her extremely self-possessed certainty. Mazzy being incapable of a single sustained good mood for more than the absolute minimum of time, she envies Ava Lynn and vows to protect her. Which, this being a novel, means that Mazzy is unable to do so.

The amount of manipulative chicanery Mazzy experiences after she (unexpectedly and without external stimulus) becomes winged is, of course, the bulk of the novel's action. Her bewingèd state makes her very valuable to the evildoers around Jo Sam the evangelist, unsurprisingly, and so they use Ava Lynn to extort obedience out of Mazzy. The sheer outrage I experienced over this...! It's an effective tool, of course, the safety of one's child (dead mother) being hard coded into our protective circle by evolution. That it is never a violent threat, "we will hurt her," made me able to continue to read the story. They keep Mazzy from being with Ava Lynn to keep her working for their vile controlling cause.

The day dawns, of course, when Mazzy is no longer suitable for their use; a series of things occurs that, in several moments, made me think I was being played by Author Heathcock. It's a pleasure to report that he played fair...but the ending of the story is still a major surprise. Yes, I saw the twist coming, but I think that's to be expected. A truly successful twist, in this case, means the expected event occurs but something you-the-reader would've dismissed as improbable happens after. Job done, Author Heathcock.

I'll say that, after reading many, many chosen-one narratives and even more post-apocalyptic religion-used-for-evil tales over the past seven decades, I'm not sorry I read this one. I think it's well-made and well-written, I suspect it's something the author has allowed to simmer for a very long time before committing to words for others to read, and I'm pleased with the results he has achieved.

THE BLACK TREE ATOP THE HILL, folk-gothic horror novella & MENEWOOD, decade-in-the-making sequel to HILD

THE BLACK TREE ATOP THE HILL
KARLA YVETTE
CLASH Books
$16.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: What came first in this Gothic Western, the ghosts, or The Black Tree Atop the Hill? Set in an alternate American old-west that is hauntingly familiar yet strangely off-putting, Marisol is the first to see the tree on the hill, but that’s only to be expected. As the witch of Jack Boyd’s ranch, her job is to notice threats, even amid a most disastrous calving season. It is up to Marisol and the ranch’s ghost to work together to stop mysteriously spreading trees from taking over their ranch, California, and the entirety of the country. But real magic requires sacrifice, and Marisol is not certain she is prepared to accept the consequences of what she must do to stop the trees’ advance.

This is a story about believing in intuition against the rain, about the violence of nature and of those who inflict it. Gothic gardeners explore the question of nature’s home in a progressing world.

Oozing with conflicting resolutions and twisty insides, this is a stunning debut by Portland artist Karla Yvette.

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

My Review: I'm not sure how I got through the awful animal-horror bits. Must be because they weren't perpetrated upon the poor things after they were alive, but were part of a really awful curse that was put on this ranch—and the rest of California—in this altered Western. Folk horror-Gothic horror-tinges of cosmic horror...why the heck would I, materialist extraordinaire, like reading this?!

For one thing, it's short and succinct. Marisol's got a job to do, protecting people from the rampant ill-meant magic flowing everywhere. She doesn't dawdle around being scared or feeling put-upon, she focuses on her protection duties...thank goodness!

What worked best for me in this read was the pacing. A close second was the fact thar Author Yvette never put in any excessive "world-building" aka infodumping stuff...you're where you are, get used to it...and that works best when I'm being asked to suspend disbelief for the space of a novella. If this were a full-on novel, I'd miss the infodumping. The brevity of a novella, which is the exact right length for this story, is stodged up by too much detail of the rules the characters are all playing by. They know them, and I'm happy to follow their lead...for this long, anyway.

Marisol, as expected, carries the story forward. Her ideas about the curse, about the ghost of the rancher's dead wife, and her job, are the really interesting part of the read. The thing that always engages my forward-going gears in a read is a story of underdogs who face down the Powers That Be when it would be easier, and more sensible, to give in and give up. Not being too much of a giver-upper, I like that plot. The Lodge, in this story, functions as a church of sorts regulating magic and punishing its misuse...as, of course, defined by the Lodge. Marisol's magic isn't sanctioned by the Lodge yet she's the one who figures out what the heck is making things on Jack's ranch go so awfully wrong. That's always going to poke the people I don't like in their softest spot: Their hegemony.

All the way around a good tale well-told, an interestingly off-kilter from consensus normality setting, and a heroine whose power comes from her own resources. Definitely a winner for me!

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MENEWOOD
NICOLA GRIFFITH
MCD x FSG
$35.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the much anticipated sequel to Hild, Nicola Griffith's Menewood transports readers back to seventh-century Britain, a land of rival kings and religions poised for epochal change.

Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking's court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is eighteen, honed and tested, the formidable Lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood.

But Edwin needs his most trusted advisor. Old alliances are fraying. Younger rivals are snapping at his heels. War is brewing—bitter war, winter war. Not knowing who to trust he becomes volatile and unpredictable. Hild begins to understand the true extent of the chaos ahead, and now she must navigate the turbulence and fight to protect both the kingdom and her own people.

Hild will face the losses and devastation of total war, and then she must find a new strength, the implacable determination to forge a radically different path for herself and her people. In the valley, her last redoubt, her community slowly takes root. She trains herself and her unexpected allies in new ways of thinking as she prepares for one last wager: risking all on a single throw for a better future...

In the last decade, Hild has become a beloved classic of epic storytelling. Menewood picks up where that journey left off, and exceeds it in every way.


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My Review: Pearl-clutchers get your grips ready: I'm going to say some nice things about a christian abbess.

Of course, her christian belief is...muted? inflected? yes, inflected...by the ancient practices of seventh-century Northumbria (a name she wouldn't have known of or used, but firmly established in our modern idea of the time and place). Her christian belief is, by most modern standards, heretical. The Roman priests in this story don't come off that well. They're not alone. King Edwin, whose godmouth Hild is still, is singularly blind to the way his rulership's grip drives the agendas of many angry, ill-willed forces around him.

They are using deeply predictable pathways to bring his rule down, yet he needs Hild's counsel to identify the threats. It's ever thus: Power is as always its own worst enemy. Look at the extensive historical record. All dictators eventually fall, even if it's sometimes quite a lengthy process. What Griffith does brilliantly is in the construction of the story of Hild's rise and the fall of an older world. Her inventions and fictionalizations of this history make sense of some things that our few contemporary(ish) sources apply generous slatherings of handwavium to. It's not, in the end, a story with huge depths of character but rather one with immense scope and sweep of events, and actions taken, purposes found, lives changed and morphed. That being a good kind of historical epic strategy, I'm on board.

Good thing, too, as there are seven hundred-ish pages of Hild's story.

Expect action, don't expect explication. The last book's, um, meatyness and squalor as I think it's fair to characterize it, is still a major register of the narrative voice. You're going to want to bookmark the maps, the notes, and the glossary. There is also, in the ebook, a hyperlink to the author's website where there is a wealth of information about who was who and who never really was and what the hell all those freaky-deaky names mean. In fact this historical novel has more source citations than many history books claiming factuality I've read here recently. It works very much to Author Griffith's favor that she spends a goodly amount of time in her endnotes explaining why she made some choices regarding names and naming conventions, as well as giving a Cliffs Notes course in the unreliability of our best sources on the grounds of non-neutrality.

For this cranky old man reader, Hild is only coming more and more to matter as she moves from fey young girlhood to her surprisingly potent womanhood. I love the fact that this woman, this member of a group outrageously repressed and abused for the majority of the millennium-plus since Hild's death, is the only person powerful enough to change the course of the world (go look up the Synod of Whitby). That isn't in this book, but it'd better be in a future one. This character is far, far too amazing to drop now!

A hardcover of this length is pricey and hard for older and disabled people to manage as an object as well as a significant purchase. All I can say is that the read is worth accepting these obstacles to get in your head.

MAD EDEN: A Novel, long may Morgan Thomas create characters to enrich our imaginations

MAD EDEN: A Novel
MORGAN THOMAS
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From a pathbreaking writer, a thrilling, form-bending novel about a trans healthcare worker whose carefully built life is suddenly imperiled.

Ro and Liam live in a ramshackle cabin in a secluded stretch of Florida. Neither their home nor their sometimes-tumultuous relationship is what the world would call perfect, but to Ro—newly diagnosed with autism and working as a patient navigator for people seeking gender-affirming care—their life, despite the deeply inhospitable political climate, is a kind of paradise.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what shatters their peace. There’s Quentin, the unpredictable teenager for whom Liam and Ro are quasi-parents, who visits on his way to college, where he plans to finally start T. There’s the appearance of “Mad Eden,” an online fantasy serial about heroic dragon riders that increasingly becomes Ro’s obsession. And then there’s a seemingly innocuous patient video call that results in consequences both unexpected and grave. This triad of circumstances sends Liam's and Ro’s world spinning toward disaster—unless Ro can become the real-life hero their situation demands without betraying who they are and who they love.

With colossal heart and preternatural skill, Morgan Thomas crafts a deliciously destabilizing debut novel that challenges us to confront and reinvent questions of language, sex, prejudice, identity, and the shifting scales of morality. Playing with the possible relationship between autism and time to forge an ingenious new kind of storytelling, Mad Eden imagines, with exhilarating courage, how we might yet joyfully live in a precarious world.

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My Review: "Intersectionality" is a buzzword, it's true; the idea behind a person having intersecting identities has always seemed self-evident to me, so I'm been a bit eye-rolly in my response to its polysyllabifactive neologization.

Whatever, old man, what's your point?

The intersectionality of Ro's adult-diagnosed autism and Ro's trans identity would never have been used in a mainstream, high-budget novel in my youth. It would have lurked in the bottom-of-the-midlist pity-porn area of publishing throughout the entirety of the twentieth century. (Leave aside autism's hideous, abusive history for now, it's not relevant in this context. Let's just be delighted that it is not the case anymore.)

And Author Thomas would have been deprived of their métier. To all our great loss. (Singular "they" is neither error nor solecism.) To make this exploration of human...grunginess, messiness, animal-function reality...there had to be a generation of writers pushing pushing pushing against the polite prudery of nice people who act like they've never smelled, let alone touched, an asshole. If you've changed a diaper, cleaned yourself after a shit, cleaned up after your pet, yes you have. Many a nose is wrinkling now. Maybe this read is not for you, because it's very forthright in its body-ness. I think all y'all ought to unpucker and stop with the fakeness of pretending you're shocked, shocked! to find there's animal reality to beings living their life.

I suspect it will cause some people to re-evaluate their transphobia, however minld it may be, to realize that it's rooted in a concept of body-ness that belongs to a bygone era. Much like "eww-ick" homophobia, the reality of the twenty-first century is we can fix/clean/care for many, many things that killed people in older times. Keep up! Plug in! Grow some empathy for others' needs and wants, if you expect to go unchallenged in your perception of yourself as a good person.

Ro, the autistic trans guide through the deliberately desgined to be complex medical system that enriches many corporations and immiserates and impoverishes millions who live in the US, uses their autism to guide those in need through a labyrinth. Think, in this case, of the original Labyrinth and its intended function: a prison to hold a monstrous being created out of mismatched partners' uncontrollable, animal (!) passion. Is this making sense now? Ro is less Theseus, more Ariadne. A humane person, one caring for the welfare of others, helping them finr ways through the unforgiving maze, not always a "monster"-slaying self-righteous prick.

I don't offer a perfect five stars because I was less convinced by the "Mad Eden" text that Ro becomes obsessed with being all that worthy of their obsession. I was also more interested in leaning more about Ro, their partner Liam, and the couple's found-family child Quentin in relationship than I was in "Mad Eden." So, purely on personal-enjoyment grounds, I've got to go with a solid four-and-a-half stars for this rich, enriching, selfness-nourishing tale of one person's choice to use their lifee to help others find their own true selves.

WHERE THE AXE IS BURIED, Ray Nayler gets his Nostradamus on

WHERE THE AXE IS BURIED
RAY NAYLER
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

FINALIST for the 2026 Locus Award for SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.

In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.

As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.

Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buriedcombines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

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My Review: Political allegory is risky for authors to indulge themselves by creating. "The irony that haunts our entire history is that we humans have been the ones standing in the way of our own happiness the whole time" is a pithy truism. It's not much to hang a novel on.

Yet hang it does. The near-future techno-dystopia is all too real, all too probable, and dankly depressingly akin to the tech...bros...in charge of the most important functions of infrastructure's clear intentions. Why is "hacking" a crime? Because it interferes with the Aynholes' desires to install ransomware in all societal functions to exert supreme control over all humans. "The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me," is Ayn Rand's own deeply evil, greedy, and selfish distillation of the deeply evil, selfish, and destructive soi-disant "philosophy" entrenched in the tech industry, that reaches apotheosis in this story.

There are no good, humane systems in this novel, albeit they are uniformly very human-centered. Control of Humanity has always been at the center of all social and governmental systems throughout time. The eternal tension between the ideal of individual liberty and the safety of others has never, in my opinion can never, be anything more than temporarily balanced. It's the moment of imbalance, the time when the system built is not in equilibrium that makes this a novel not a short story. Looking into a dark and a deep void is courting vertigo. It's vertigo, a sense of the ground deciding it's not going to support one's weight any longer that defined this story to me.

Author Nayler blew past the discomfiting (to me) notion of AI government leaders into nightmare territory with the Federation president whose personality is digitized and downloaded time and time again into fresh bodies. An immortal being, like the Meths in Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, will not in any meaningful way be human. I don't even think the present-day model for this character is human. Well, genetically so but not humane or honorable in human terms. Be that as it may...this is a cautionary tale about ignoring mile-long freight trains barreling towards you. You will get flattened.

“What a world, Nikolai,” the president had said. “no old age, no sickness, and no death. Finally, we can have both our wisdom and our health.”

The president said we—but it was only he who could have those things. It was only he who could escape old age, sickness, and death.”

Like the immense benefits promised to thee and me in the rollout of "AI" there's a very, very low likelihood of anyone under billionaire status deriving more than the tiniest benefits, and as few of those as they can manage, from "AI". Assuming it's ever better than it is at this moment, where the divide is already stark, it will immiserate billions and make greedy oligarchs a scoche richer.

The essence of the story is:

“That was how it was. One day you had your own country. Next day you were a refugee. You were in a line, waiting to be someone again. To be legal again. Not to be nothing.

You could spend your whole life waiting.”

...and you will.

It's a bitter pill of a tale written by Author Naylor from a far greater pool of knowledge than mine on every story axis. It is not me, an old, bitter, angry socialist, shouting at the clouds the tech...bros...float atop. It is one of their own saying, "pay attention now before you pay a very steep price for lazy inattention."

It behooves us without his knowledge, or his storytelling nous, to listen up while we can.

THE HENRY HOKE PAGE: OPEN THROAT, how did Author Hoke think of a puma being queer?! & STICKER, queer boyhood through the lens of stickers

OPEN THROAT
HENRY HOKE
MCD x FSG
$25.00 hardcover, available now

PICADOR OFFERS THE TRADE PAPERBACK ON 4 JUNE 2024. It retails for $17.00.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In elegiac prose woven with humor, imagination, sensuality, and tragedy, Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world told by a lovable mountain lion.

A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days protecting the welfare of a nearby homeless encampment, observing obnoxious hikers complain about their trauma, and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their gender identity, memories of a vicious father, and the indignities of sentience. “I have so much language in my brain,” our lion says, “and nowhere to put it.”

When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call “ellay.” As the lion confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles and the toll of climate grief, while scrambling to avoid earthquakes, floods, and the noise of their own conflicted psyche. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?

In elegiac prose woven with humor, imagination, sensuality, and tragedy, Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world told by a lovable mountain lion. Both feral and vulnerable, profound and playful, Open Throat is a star-making novel that brings mythmaking to real life.

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My Review: From the off, I wasn't sure about this...how did Author Hoke think of a puma being queer?! What kind of twee nonsense is a whole novel told from the point of view, nay, in the voice of, an animal going to be?!

Oh me of little faith.

What dazzles and delights me about this read is the meditations on being and becoming a sentient individual in the shadow of trauma and persecution, being and becoming an existential threat to creatures you're not able quite to emulate but whose world you inhabit. It's never about you, the fear and the anger; it's about what They bring with them into the tiny corner of space They condescend to allow you to roam in so long as you don't transgress Their amorphous, undefined boundaries.

Oh wait...that's pretty much a perfect summation of being queer in the cishet world.

Right there came my happiest moment in this read. I felt so exactly in tune with this puma. I felt so completely free to be in his head, and to enjoy his meditations on what the hell it is humans think they're doing. It's not quite what our lion thinks it is, of course, but he's a savvy old survivor with very keen senses...so he's often Right even when he's factually incorrect.

Of course, I'm tiresomely wedded to certain perceptual filters, and kept jumping a little in my seat when the cat would describe, eg, cars as being metal objects...what's a cat know about metal, my ill-tempered filing elf who lives in my brain rent-free and refuses to come up with words and/or data when I want them but freely kibitzes on minor points of fantasy in excellent reads, wanted to know. The cat who knows about metal should also know what a lighter is, and call it by name. Irritating damned elf needs to get a grip on what its actual job desciption requires.

So no five full stars. If fantasy is to work, it needs to make internal sense and be consistent in its fantastical dimensions...see Chouette for a similarly batshit crazy idea that works on this specific level better than Open Throat does.

But don't think for a second I am warning you off this short, concentrated, pithy read. I am not. I am waving my arms at you to get you to join me over here in the scrubby, hot, dry edgeland with this wonderful old cat as his world, never safe, takes on another configuration of threat.

He and I? We're hangin' as we await some kind of ending. Whatever we once thought we were doing, it's no longer what They want us to. And there's a pont in life where the reality of the exercise reveals itself in blinding bright light and inarguable simplicity. It's very much a before-and-after moment in one's life.

“I’m old because I’m not dead.”


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STICKER
HENRY HOKE
Bloomsbury USA
$14.95 trade paper

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Stickers adorn our first memories, dot our notebooks and our walls, are stuck annoyingly on fruit, and accompany us into adulthood to announce our beliefs from car bumpers. They hold surprising power in their ability to define and provoke, and hold a strange steadfast presence in our age of fading physical media. Henry Hoke employs a constellation of stickers to explore queer boyhood, parental disability, and ancestral violence.

A memoir in 20 stickers, Sticker is set against the backdrop of the encroaching neo-fascist presence in Hoke's hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, which results in the fatal terrorist attack of August 12th and its national aftermath.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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My Review: Twenty little meditative essays inspired by a ubiquitous part of 1980s and 1990s childhoods: Stickers. (GAWD how I hated the damned things. "Easy release" my lily-white one! I was still finding them on the undersides of chairs and backs of paintings in 2010.)

Author Hoke shines in these quick hits of memory, bringing the reader back into his world as it was and thinking about his various challenges...disabled mother in a wheelchair, absent father, being queer in Charlottesville, Virginia...and the roots his white self has in the South, with all the freight that implies.

He reckons with comparatively large parts of his ancestral racism; he states that, with all its contradictions, he intends this read to make his identity "...a little more tangible." Without being acquainted with the gentleman, I feel that I have a picture of him as a person that would never be obtainable through any more rigorous, structured look at what makes a person into the unique self they are. No, it's not autobiography, or even memoir, it's that rare thing : The reflective essay, the thoughtful, loosely organized look into the back corners of the closets and the darker recesses of the attic for the bright, shiny things once delighted in and now gathering patina and dust in unused parts of one's mind

I enjoyed myself as I wandered around with Author Hoke as he showed me his once-prized gewgaws and knick-knacks. Join us for a good old wander.

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.

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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.

THE WAYFINDER, one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025!

THE WAYFINDER
ADAM JOHNSON
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Wall Street Journal's The 10 Best Books of 2025
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2025!


One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan island who becomes her people's queen.

Talking corpses, poetic parrots, and a fan that wafts the breath of life—this is the world young Kōrero finds herself thrust into when a mysterious visitor lands on her island, a place so remote its inhabitants have forgotten the word for stranger. Her people are desperate and on the brink of starvation, and the wayward stranger offers them an impossible choice: they can remain in the only home they’ve ever known and await the uncertainty to come, or Kōrero can join him and venture into unfamiliar waters, guided by only the night sky and his assurance of a bountiful future in the Kingdom of Tonga. What Kōrero and her people don’t know is that the promised refuge is no utopia—instead, Tonga is an empire at war and on the verge of collapse, a place where brains are regularly liberated from skulls and souls get trapped in coconuts with some frequency.

The perils of Tonga are compounded by a royal feud: loyalties are shifting, graves are being opened, and everyone lives in fear of a jellyfish tattoo. Here, survival can rest on a perfectly performed dance or the acceptance of a cup of kava. Together, the stranger and Kōrero embark upon an epic voyage—one that will deliver them either to salvation or to the depths of the Pacific.

Evoking the grandeur of Wolf Hall and the splendor of Shōgun, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Adam Johnson conjures oral history, restores the natural world, and locates what’s best in humanity. Toweringly ambitious and breathtakingly immersive, The Wayfinder is an instant, timeless classic.

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My Review: Because I read stochastically, I find very long books challenging to complete. It's harder to keep momentum, and information sometimes escapes me; in this book's case, over 700 pages, it worked against the read feeling whole and complete. When it was named one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025, I realized I was going to have to read the whole book again, this time straight through.

It was worth it. After a slow start acquiring needed information about the dramatis personae (helpfully enumerated in the front of the book,just before the urgently needed map), I was launched into two full reading-days of immersion into Tongan royal politics, Polynesian diaspora politics, LOTS of sexual violence against women (that's the missing star explained), poor resource management decisions and their consequences, and the odd-but-inescapable feeling that this novel was happening in front of me, wasn't fiction but myth reenactment, was an Akashic record playing for me.

I definitely understand why it's on The Washington Post's list. Going through the book in a solid focused way definitely is the way to experience it. The pacing is not fast or page-turny. It's relentless, like the small, innumerable waves lapping against the hull, against the shore, each one easy to ride but all of them adding up to major losses of land, of wooden protective hull, major changes in place and time without much seeming to happen until whipped into fierce destruction by a storm.

Because the read is like sailing on deep waters there's not a linear relationship to time. Quite a lot of people find long reads intimidating. More still find time-jumps distracting. Please believe me: If you can last ~65pp, you can make a very intense and interesting journey with Author Johnson. If that initial part, about the sample you get to read free, is not working for you, maybe this isn't the read for right now. I will note that, if you can read fantasy novels or SF novels, you can cope with the Tongan names and language (you'll get help along the way).

I have snorted derisively at spoilerphobes since y'all emerged from the shadows to bully the rest of us with your demand we worry about your emotional state. It's weird, then, that I look back over this read and think "I do not have the skills to convey the substance of this story even without worrying about spoilers." It is dense, it is immersive, it is seawater and fierce lashing squalls and the utter solitude of the vast deep ocean...but to tell you the story...? Read the synopsis. It's about a third of the story you're being told.

I feel like I'm copping out. Maybe I am. I can say with certainty that I tried hard to figure out how to synopsize with justice the complexities of the story, and failed. What did not fail was the engulfing pull of the story as it moved me from place to place, from person I cared about to villain I didn't (unless we're counting hatred as "caring"), as I watched helpless as people...peoples...made their deaths inevitable. I mourned and cried over a few, the few who are many, and then felt the outrage of being denied what suddenly mattered to me that I have.

It was an excellent read. But, accurate and/or period-appropriate or not, the sexual violence against women...never prurient or played for titillation...just did not ever let me forget its pervasive threat. I can't forget and I don't diminish it.

No matter. I still think you'll get a lot of excellent story-pleasure from this outstanding read.

THE REVERSE CENTAUR'S GUIDE TO LIFE AFTER AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late, latest Doctorow klaxon

THE REVERSE CENTAUR'S GUIDE TO LIFE AFTER AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late
CORY DOCTOROW
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Whether you want to criticize, kill, or use AI, you have to get through the hype and uncover the real story.

Start with labor: in automation theory, a centaur is a person who chooses to use technology to help them do the things that matter to them. A reverse centaur is a person who has been conscripted to serve as a helper for a machine, at an inhuman, machine pace: a driver made to deliver all day long, nonstop; a warehouse worker made to work without food or bathroom breaks; a programmer made to crank out impossible amounts of code. As Doctorow says: it's not enough to ask what the technology does—we have to understand who it's doing it for and who it's doing it to.

The intended audience for AI hype isn't the people who are forced to use AI. The AI show is a performance staged for bosses and investors. Investment bankers claim AI will to be worth more than $16 trillion: a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of "value," every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI.

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. When the AI bubble bursts, what will we salvage? Is there something in the wreckage that everyday people will find useful? In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI—as he so successfully did in Enshittification—Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life "after" AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.

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My Review: The argument I myownself have against "AI" (which isn't and won't be intelligent the way humans are) is financial. There is an AI bubble running right now that's gifted us the utterly brummagem world's first trillionaire. Look a little more deeply into SpaceX's IPO, you'll see how much of it's built on AI (which was partially trained on stolen US Government data via the little dickweeds from DOGE).

It really looks a lot like a gigantic pump-and-dump scheme when one reads Author Cory's work as digested and documented in this scathing book. He's been in the trenches reporting on tech matters for what feels like forever. Enshittification, anyone? It must make the guy a crazy person to present his deeply researched, well sourced and informed conclusions to general apathy. It lights fires under some of us, my dude, so please don't stop!

Especially relevant to my eagerness to share this book with all y'all is the centering of "AI"'s intended impact on labor. It's Author Cory's clear statement that the bubble's partly fueled by tech scum's intense desire to destroy any power of workers over their work, the conditions and rewards thereof, and the very nature of employment as reconstituted post-Great Depression. Wealth inequality is something "AI" is designed to entrench.

I hope a skilled human copyeditor went over this book after my DRC was created. There are some amusing errors of fact that, honestly, trouble me a bit, eg referring to trustbusting under FDR instead of his distant cousin TR. Some other errors niggled at me, but...well...consider the subject matter, maybe these sorts of issues are proof positive of the validity of Author Cory's thesis...?

I'm very serious when I say this: reading this book can give you tools to manage your personal interactions with the "AI" being rammed down our unwilling throats to further enrich the riches scum ever to rise to the controlling positions they're now it. It can do this by alerting the complacent or avoidant reader to what is actually at risk in this economic bubble's inflation.

An easy prose style delivers a hard-to-fathom message. It's one of my favorite reads of 2026. Please get one and read it. Libraries are very likely to have copies in stock now. Of course, if you can, making the purchase for your own shelves or devices is the best way to support Author Cory in his quest to wake us all up to the threats...and the opportunities knowing they're there present...to our essential human nature.

November 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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I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley by Thom Vernon

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this dark comedy taking place over twenty-four hours, a blizzard pummels Toronto as a beloved high school teacher coerces his teenage student to assist in his violent suicide forcing the student, his best friend, the friend’s bulimic mom, and a down-low cop to outrun each other, the storm, and the ghosts haunting them.

I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley is a breathtaking and hilarious novel about the lengths people will take to erase themselves in order to matter.

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

My Review: This book is a dopamine desert. I powered through to the end for some stupid, stubborn reason, and I wish to heaven above I'd Pearl-Ruled it.

Lots of aimless talk, all-narrative no-drive style. If there was any humor, or any actual—not reported—queerness in here I do not recall it.

Guernica Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) sells trade paper editions for $24.95.

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Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this searing novel, a courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka.

Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K's invitation to work as a medic at the field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.

Set during the early years of Sri Lanka's three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman's moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.

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

My Review: This is why I rated it how I did:

Other empires had reached for Sri Lanka: the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the British had ceased and relinquished it in succession, leaving in their wake people divided by colonial powers and central angles and bullheaded pride. Long before I was gone, Sri Lanka, then Ceylon stumbled once more into a lazy self indulgent independence: the majority, smarting at sights, perceived and actual, discovered ways for the country to promote their Buddha, their language and their histories—comeuppance for us for Tamils, who were a minority and who had flourished in English. Learn Sinhalese or leave your job Tamil civil servants were told—my father among them. I still haven’t forgotten the look on his face when he told us.

Very nice non-fiction prose. But this is a novel. I never found the fiction rhythm but I enjoyed the story, so....

Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) only asks $1.99 for an ebook right now, so do not hesitate to indulge yourself.

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Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From an unforgettable new voice in Caribbean literature, a sweeping story of two families colliding in 1940s Trinidad--and a chilling mystery that shows how interconnected their lives truly are

Trinidad in the 1940s, nearing the end of American occupation and British colonialism. On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognizable to those who reside in the farm's shadow. Down below is the Barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops--Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, all three born of the barracks. Theirs are hard lives of backbreaking work, grinding poverty, devotion to faith, and a battle against nature and a social structure designed to keep them where they are.

But when Dalton goes missing and Marlee's safety is compromised, farmhand Hans is lured by the promise of a handsome stipend to move to the farm as a watchman. As the mystery of Dalton's disappearance unfolds, the lives of the wealthy couple and those who live in the barracks below become insidiously entwined, their community changed forever and in shocking ways.

A searing and singular novel of religion, class, family, and historical violence, and rooted in Trinidad's wild pastoral landscape and inspired by oral storytelling traditions, Hungry Ghosts is deeply resonant of its time and place while evoking the roots and ripple effects of generational trauma and linked histories; the lingering resentments, sacrifices, and longings that alter destinies; and the consequences of powerlessness. Lyrically told and rendered with harrowing beauty, Hungry Ghosts is a stunning piece of storytelling and an affecting mystery, from a blazingly talented writer.

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

My Review: "Even without a mouth, the woman can scream, she said. Even without a stomach, one can go hungry. And even in death, one can lust for life."

Gothic, ghostly, set in a specific place and time evoked with charm and grace. I found I could not stomach the cruelty of each and every character, whether it was expressed in passive or active ways. It says a lot about honor, fairness, and their opposites.

Ecco (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks for 14.99 United States dollars. I'd get it from the library.

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Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: No Country for Old Men meets Killing Eve in this gritty, feminist Western thriller from the award-winning author of These Women.

Florence "Florida" Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women's prison―or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating.

Dios knows the truth about Florida's crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn't a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world's refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida's eyes and unleash her true self.

When an unexpected reprieve gives both women their freedom, Dios's fixation on Florida turns into a dangerous obsession, and a deadly cat-and-mouse chase ensues from Arizona to the desolate streets of Los Angeles.

With blistering, incisive prose, the award-winning author Ivy Pochoda delivers a razor-sharp Western. Gripping and immersive, Sing Her Down is a spellbinding thriller setting two indelible women on a path to certain destruction and an epic, stunning showdown.

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

My Review: I should've liked this more than I did. I understand the effect Author Pochoda was reaching for with her visceral, visual similes and her keenly observed scene-setting visuals, something like Dorothy B. Hughes or Craig Rice would go looking for.

It wore on me because I don't feel she found terribly good ones. And there are a lot of them.

MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks you for $11.99 for an ebook. Read a sample, if you vibe with the prose the story will reward you.

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The B-Side of Daniel Garneau by David Kingston Yeh

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: "Equal parts raunchy and sweet ... A fun, funny look at gay life in Toronto." - Kirkus Reviews

"A timeless, well-crafted story about love, family and friendship." -IndieReader

"Laugh out loud ... Reminiscent of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City." -Reedsy

The B-Side of Daniel Garneau concludes a rollicking three-book series set in Toronto featuring the misadventures of boyfriends Daniel and David, their eccentric family and friends. As Daniel prepares to graduate from med school and propose marriage, David sets out to donate his sperm so his brother can have a baby. But as his celebrity ex Marcus launches his boldest exhibit yet, an unexpected crisis forces Daniel to re-evaluate his priorities in life.

The B-Side of Daniel Garneau is the inspirational follow-up to A Boy at the Edge of the World (2018) and Tales from the Bottom of My Sole (2020). At turns both comic and tragic, it is a celebration of queer identities and non-traditional families, as Daniel struggles to discover himself and his path in the world. At its heart, it is a philosophical reflection on family bonds, and living with courage and love.

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

My Review: As much as I liked the second book in the series, review linked above, I was deflated reading this one. It got repetitive, not of the series but within itself, as the focus never really got going on the group dynamic like it did in Tales from the Bottom of My Sole. I think most cishet people won't enjoy the read.

I did; but not as much as before.

Guernica Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $21.95 for a paperback. If you've read the others, maybe yes.

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Judas by Amos Oz (tr. Nicholas de Lange)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: At once an exquisite love story and a coming-of-age novel, an allegory for the state of Israel and for the biblical tale from which it draws its title, Judas is one of Amos Oz’s most powerful novels.

Jerusalem, 1959. Shmuel Ash, a biblical scholar, is adrift in his young life when he finds work as a caregiver for a brilliant but cantankerous old man named Gershom Wald. There is, however, a third, mysterious presence in his new home. Atalia Abravanel, the daughter of a deceased Zionist leader, a beautiful woman in her forties, entrances young Shmuel even as she keeps him at a distance. Piece by piece, the old Jerusalem stone house, haunted by tragic history and now home to the three misfits and their intricate relationship, reveals its secrets.

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

My Review: Historically terrible winter weather hit Jerusalem in 1959 into 1960; Shmuel is lucky to find a live-in caretaking position for Gershon, allowing him warmth and protection from the awful outside. He's entranced by mysterious (as in why's she there, what's she do there? mysterious) older Atalia. Lots of talking; not much doing; plenty of meditation on Jewish ideas about Jesus, and about Judas...was he the first and only christian?...and so on.

No real interest in the topic from me but I sure felt the beauty of the words."Here is a story from the winter days of the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960.It is a story of error and desire, of unrequited love, and of a religious question that remains unresolved." If that, with the certainty the whole book is like that, appeals, it's one for you.

Mariner Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) only needs $6.99 for you to secure legal access to an ebook.

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The Yelp: A Heartbreak in Reviews by Chase Compton

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Entertaining and touching—a vibrant memoir for anyone who’s had a broken heart.

When Chase Compton met the love of his life at a dirty dive bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he had no idea how far from comfort the relationship would take him. Their story played out at every chic restaurant, café, and bar in downtown New York City. Ravenous hunger, it seemed, was their mutual attraction to one another—until suddenly the appetite was spoiled, and Chase was left to pick up the pieces of a romance gone wrong.

Left high, dry, and starving for affection (and cheeseburgers), Chase turned to an unlikely audience in a moment of desperation: Yelp.com. Detailed in the Yelp reviews is the story of how to survive a broken heart. Every meal and cocktail shared is a reminder of times spent with the ever elusive “Him.” In recounting the bites devoured and the drunken fits of passion that propelled the relationship, the author chronicles his whirlwind relationship with the man of his dreams, revisiting the key places where the couple ate, drank, and fell in and out of love in the West Village and beyond.

The Yelp is a memoir of personal transformation and self-realization, or more simply—a memoir of food and love, played out on a map of modern Manhattan’s culinary scene. The book includes the original twenty-eight Yelp reviews, with interwoven narrative chapters that provide context, insight, and delight to Chase’s story.

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

My Review: A novel way for a man to get attention for his (largely) self-inflicted heartbreak. The form is indeed clever...using your Yelp reviews to mourn the platonic ideal dining companion you've, hmm, well...a case can be made for finishing this sentence with lost, mislaid, driven away...anyway, who ain't with you no more.

Honestly, I say too bad in sympathetic tones because he sounds like a guy Chase (if better equipped) could've made a good run at the future with. So sorry, bud.

Skyhorse (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $12.99 for an ebook. Gay heartbreak sufferers on your Yule giving list ought to get one.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books.

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The Sculthorpe Murder (Detective Lavender Mysteries #3) {31%} by Karen Charlton

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Northamptonshire, 1810: As a new canal network snakes across the landscape, a vicious mob stakes its claim to the county. Every local constable is out on the hunt for the ruthless Panther Gang. When an elderly man is robbed and murdered in sleepy Middleton, the beleaguered magistrates send for help from London’s Bow Street Police Office.

Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods soon discover there’s more to William Sculthorpe’s demise than meets the eye. Mystery surrounds the old man and his family, and the stench of revenge hangs heavy in the air. Are the Panther Gang really responsible or is something more sinister afoot? As Lavender delves further into long-hidden secrets, Woods has demons of his own to contend with: ghosts from his past that stalk him through the investigation.

Uncovering decades of simmering hatred and deceit, Lavender and Woods must use all their wit and cunning to solve this evil crime.

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

My Review: I tapped out at "'But did he drink brandy every night?' Woods remembered the poisonous concoction of brandy and ink cap mushrooms Sculthorpe had taken on the night he died." in chapter 13, because it was the last clumsy, awkward straw on my readerly back.

It's not awful, not incompetent, not any terrible thing; it's just not any very good thing either.

Thomas & Mercer (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $15.95 to give you a paperback. YMMV as to style/mood/tolerance level.

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A Line Too Far (Australia Under Attack) {19%} by Barry Colman

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: Chinese commandos in a lightning raid have seized the vast, under-populated, resource-rich lands of Northern Australia. Thousands of Australian soldiers are held hostage. International realpolitik has left Australia abandoned by its supposed allies and its brittle social fabric is rapidly unwinding as the people panic.

A Chinese ultimatum demands the annexation of the country’s top half in ten days, or face a full scale invasion.

As other politicians clamour to sue for peace, Prime Minister, Gary Stone, in a desperate race against time and impossible military and political odds must commit to a risky and controversial plan to try and free the country.

A Note From the Publisher

At the heart of this novel is a serious security issue for Australia. In 1911, Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin said, "Either we must accomplish the peopling of the Northern Territory or submit to its transfer to some other nation." In 1942, as the threat of Japanese invasion of Australia loomed, Edward Ward, the Minister for Labour and National Services accused the previous government of a secret plan — the "Brisbane Line" — that would have seen Northern Australia abandoned in the event of a Japanese invasion. In A Line Too Far, author B.C. Colman draws an all-too-real scenario for the present day, showing that the basis of these fears is just as relevant today as it was generations ago.

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

My Review: Look at the publisher's note above, and at the name of the publishing company. In 2016, when I downloaded this, I ignored the blaring klaxons and strobing red lights, requested it, and then 45 was elected shortly after that; my stomach for Brad Thor-like writing and jingoistic stories fell into a pit and still hasn't re-emerged.

YMMV.

Liberty Publishing Company (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) still offers it.

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To Capture What We Cannot Keep: A Novel {16%} by Beatrice Colin

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Set against the construction of the Eiffel Tower, this novel charts the relationship between a young Scottish widow and a French engineer who, despite constraints of class and wealth, fall in love.

In February 1887, Caitriona Wallace and Émile Nouguier meet in a hot air balloon, floating high above Paris, France—a moment of pure possibility. But back on firm ground, their vastly different social strata become clear. Cait is a widow who because of her precarious financial situation is forced to chaperone two wealthy Scottish charges. Émile is expected to take on the bourgeois stability of his family's business and choose a suitable wife. As the Eiffel Tower rises, a marvel of steel and air and light, the subject of extreme controversy and a symbol of the future, Cait and Émile must decide what their love is worth.

Seamlessly weaving historical detail and vivid invention, Beatrice Colin evokes the revolutionary time in which Cait and Émile live—one of corsets and secret trysts, duels and Bohemian independence, strict tradition and Impressionist experimentation. To Capture What We Cannot Keep, stylish, provocative, and shimmering, raises probing questions about a woman's place in that world, the overarching reach of class distinctions, and the sacrifices love requires of us all.

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

My Review: Downloaded in 2016, the note I made for myself after abandoning the read that December (consider what December 2016 was like) was: "Émile...Concours Hippiques...guinguettes...zut alors!"

That made no sense, so I went back and re-read from the top. I got to chapter 6, ran into those words and thought, "I'm about sick of this," and quit again. It's better than competent writing, but I just do not care at all if straight people get together, cross class boundaries, find glory in the sack or end up holding it, in 2025. Straight ladies with historical tastes, Francophilia, and plucky-widow tolerances higher than mine are advised to seek it out.

Flatiron Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) says "$11.99 please" at checkout. Read the sample, if it sounds good in your mental ear, go for it.

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The Angriest Angel {21%} by Christopher Halt

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: They’ve lived among us for decades without incident. Until now.

The Caelans are a nonviolent and technically advanced people who long ago conquered anger and interstellar travel. Virtually indistinguishable from us, they hide in plain sight. They live in our neighborhoods and work in our offices.

But something unexpected happens at their base of operations in the Midwestern United States. Anger begins to infect some of them—like a disease. When the mysterious outbreak takes their leader, Regulus Lafaye, he becomes hostile and violent. He even abuses his mind power, psy, in order to control others.

The Caelans’ peaceful nature makes it impossible for them to stand up to Lafaye’s aggression, until Avery—one of the uninfected—stumbles upon an unlikely hope: Chase Madison, a plucky criminal recently incarcerated for selling his ADHD meds. Avery discovers that Chase’s ADHD makes him immune to the Caelans’ psy, and therefore key to the cure.

It also makes him a target.

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

My Review: Sound the tocsin. I am dead to this...work:

"We have since psyed this indigena, but it's impossible to convince him to not see something that was right before his eyes, especially something out of the ordinary. Our only choice was to taint his credibility, which has succeeded thus far. My plan is to let him say whatever he wants to whoever will listen while tarnishing his personal backstory so he won't be believable. Do you understand?"

I think it's awful, content *and* execution; the content because it's done all the time and makes me very angry, the execution because I do not have a robust enough infodumpbrella to keep it off my hair.

Createspace Independent Publishing Platform (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) (!) asks for $15.95 per paperback you purchase.

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