Book Review: A VOICE CALLING

TITLE: A Voice Calling

AUTHOR: Christopher Barzak

103 pages, Psychopomp, ISBN 9798891160019 (softcover, also in e-book)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Christopher Barzak’s new novella A Voice Calling is ostensibly a haunted house story, but it is also very much a haunted community story, an elegiacally written and unsparing look at the way secrets and violence can permeate and shape both places and people (individually and collectively).

In Barzak’s hands, Button House takes a rightful place alongside Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, Poe’s House of Usher, King’s Marsten House, and Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall as iconic haunted houses (each of those listed left an indelible mark on my imagination; your list may be different). Button House has a mood I can only describe as “habitable desolation,” thanks to its history. That history, revealed through flashbacks of varying lengths throughout the narrative, starts with an unsurety as to whether the house or the orchards that surround it came first. One way or the other, the property has roots that are more than one hundred years old, and most of that history is sordid and bloody. House and orchard together are fixed in my mind as someplace I wouldn’t want to be alone in at any time of day – and Barzak works this magic with very few detailed descriptions of the house and grounds. It is largely through mood and inference that a picture of the property forms in the reader’s mind, which I think is far more effective than overly detailed descriptions of the furniture in every room.

But as I said, it’s not just the house that is haunted. It is the nearby community as well. This community narrates the story with a collective “we.” These faceless, and mostly nameless, voices are at times judgmental, speculative, defensive, infuriated, occasionally even concerned – but they are never warm, never really welcoming or hospitable. And thus they are also blind both to how complicit they are in the events that occur (by turning a blind eye to the house and its inhabitants when attention might have swayed matters) and to how haunted they are by those events. The fear of a community is a palpable thing, self-perpetuating and uncontrollable. As the book progressed, I found myself increasingly picturing the narrators as one of the angry mobs from the early Universal monster films. Like those mobs, Barzak’s narrators never really gain any sense of individuality. Sure, we get a townsperson’s name here and there, for color. But we never get to know them.

We do get to know the focal character of the present day portions of the novel, the character the nameless narrators are most concerned about because she used to be one of their own: Rose Billings (the narrators never really accept her marriage to Button House’s last living resident, Jonas Addleson, and thus never refer to her by her married name, another manifestation of their fear and mistrust). Caught out near Button House during a bad storm, Rose, who has heard voices in her head all her life, feels called to the House. But did the House call to Rose because Jonas needed rescue, or because something else did? Barzak neatly conjoins this mystery with the bloody history of the house in prose that is compelling and engrossing, with not a superfluous word in the work. Even with chapter breaks, the story has so much momentum that it qualifies as my first “couldn’t put it down until I was done” read of 2024.

Throughout my reading, I kept feeling like the story was familiar, like I’d read it before. I chalked it up to Barzak being one of my favorite writers and just feeling at home in his style, because this is the first publication in any form of A Voice Calling. My feeling was correct, though. This novella grew out of a short story “What We Know About the Lost Families of –House,” which I’ve read at least once. The original story is great, but the novella format gives the story a bit more room to breath and to suck the reader into Button House’s history.

This book is also the first release from small press publisher Psychopomp (previously known for The Deadlands magazine). It is an excellent start to what I am confident will be a lengthy line of eerie books that explore our relationship with death in all its myriad facets, as well as what may or may not come after.

Book Review: MAMMOTHS AT THE GATES

TITLE: Mammoths at the Gates (Singing Hills Cycle #4)

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

128 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250851437 (hardcover, also e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

Mammoths at the Gates, the fourth novella in Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle, finally introduces readers to Cleric Chih’s home monastery. Chih’s return to Singing Hills is not as joyous as it should be. Chih’s mentor, Cleric Thien, has passed away. Most of the monastery inhabitants are away studying a recently uncovered flooded city. And Singing Hills is being threatened by the granddaughters of Cleric Thien, who want their grandfather’s remains to lie in state, because of his high status as clan head before becoming a Cleric and be buried alongside their recently deceased grandmother. Chih must find a way to help the acting head of the monastery, who also happens to be Chih’s childhood best friend Ru, deal with the granddaughters while honoring Thien’s memory and teachings under the traditions of Singing Hills.

Mammoths at the Gates is one of several books I’ve read recently that delve into the myriad ways in which we process grief and loss. Both Chih and Ru exhibit behaviors I found very familiar as they process their loss: the great outpouring of emotion only when alone or with the closest of friends, and the using of work, even if it’s just “busy work,” to blunt the raw emotions enough to get through the days/weeks that follow the loss. But while for Chih keeping busy is a choice, for Ru it is a requirement; as acting head of Singing Hills Ru must attend to the visitors at the gates as well as the day-to-day operations of the monastery. Vo also expertly addresses the swings that happen from recalling happy memories to recognizing the reality that the person is truly gone, including those moments when we “hear” the person, or “see” them out of the corner of our eye and think for a moment that maybe news of their passing was incorrect … or those moments when we simply forget the person is gone.

By contrast, there is Thien’s avian companion Many Virtues. In the Singing Hills Cycle, Cleric are accompanied by neixin, birds with infallible memory – they recall everything they see and hear, which makes them amazing repositories of world history, legend, and the details of an individual’s life. The bond between Cleric and neixin is indelible and deep. Through Many Virtues, Vo explores what happens when our sense of loss is so profound we cannot imagine continuing to live without the one we’ve lost, and how sometimes that leads to self-harm (off-screen, in this case).

Through Thien’s granddaughters, Vo also looks at the way we sometimes mourn an idea rather than a real person. These granddaughters didn’t actually know their grandfather. But they were brought up on stories of his career and they say the palpable love their grandmother held for their grandfather even after he’d become a Cleric. But they still mourn the loss as though they knew him directly, mirroring the way in our world we mourn the passing of celebrities we’ve never actually met as though we knew them intimately.

Vo also comments on the cultural/societal ways in which we “say goodbye,” the rituals that are attached to acknowledging a person’s passing and the impact they had on our lives. I found Singing Hills’ ceremony, one of storytelling about the deceased with a touch of ritual rather than one focused more on the ritual than the person, to be sweet and ideal, providing some of the most poignant moments of the book.

Chih also must navigate the changes in their relationship with Run. As a traveling Cleric, Chih has been away from the monastery more than they have been present, while for reasons of health Ru has not been able to travel and has had to forge a life in the absence of their best friend. Watching Chih reconcile the past with the present was a bit uncomfortable at times but was important for both characters.

Even though this is the fourth book in the series, the Singing Hills novellas are all stand-alone. So even if you haven’t read the preceding three books you can pick up Mammoths at the Gates and quickly understand Cleric Chih and their world. For those that have read the earlier novellas, there are oblique references to those events that will tantalize without making new readers feel like they are missing vital information. (And the fifth Singing Hills Cycle entry, The Brides of High Hall, comes out on May 7, 2024!)

 I previously reviewed book three in the Singing Hills Cycle, Into the Riverlands, as well as Nghi Vo’s standalone novel The Chosen and the Beautiful.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Book Review: THE VINEYARD REMAINS

TITLE: The Vineyard Remains

AUTHOR: Addison McKnight

363 pages, Lake Union Publishing, ISBN 9781542038133 (paperback, also e-book)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

The Vineyard Remains is the sophomore effort from Addison McKnight, following their 2023 debut An Imperfect Plan. Much like the previous novel, The Vineyard Remains focuses on the lives of two women inextricably connected through childhood trauma that reverberates into their adult lives. McKnight is adept at weaving secrets and psychological drama with a very realistic look at the way women are judged both by society and each other, regardless of whether the things they are being judged for are within their control or not.

Cousins Angel and Kiki were pre-teen long distance best friends, seeing each other in person for only a few weeks each summer when Angel’s family visited family on Martha’s Vineyard, both her mother’s parents and her father’s brothers, one of whom was Kiki’s father. That all changed the year Angel’s mother killed her abusive husband (a night Angel has only hallucinatory memories of). Angel and her brother TJ are taken in by her mother’s parents, renamed Angela and Thomas, but Kiki’s father refuses to let her be friends with Angela anymore. Things are never the same between the girls, despite the similarities in their upbringings and the personalities of their fathers. As they age, the girls become rivals for the same boy – high school baseball phenom Bo Brooks – and unknowingly both become pregnant by him at the same time. This sets them on a lifetime course of bitter, and increasingly hostile, interactions.

There are several underpinning mysteries that propel the narrative: what happened the night Angela’s father was killed? where did Kiki’s missing mother go? and what occurred the night the babies were born? McKnight peppers clues about each throughout the decade-plus-spanning chapters, and thus throughout Angela and Kiki’s lives. It’s definitely a slow burn to the final reveals. Perhaps too slow. If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that the third quarter of it feels like the narrative is spinning its wheels in place – all the complications have been introduced, revelations should be imminent, and yet they don’t come for another 70 pages or so. It reminded me of when dramatic television series were 22-24 episodes long and 3-4 of those episodes were usually filler material because the season’s big mystery couldn’t be solved until the final episodes.

On the other hand, where McKnight really excels is at showing the difficulties of recovering from trauma and the circular thought patterns and recurring unhealthy habits that come from that trauma. And maybe that’s the point of those “wheel spinning in place” chapters I felt were so slow. Both Angela and Kiki are locked in patterns both emotional and physical that directly tie back to their different but shared childhood traumas. Every breakthrough, every attempt to change the pattern, is followed by backsliding as old habits and emotions rear up.

I try to avoid spoiling big reveals, so the most I’ll say about the final quarter of the book is that all the mysteries of the past are revealed, and all the roadblocks and complications of the characters’ adult lives are resolved (if not necessarily happily for everyone involved).

Also, it only occurs to me as I’m posting this that the title of this book can be read (interpreted) more than one way. Very cool playing with words, Addison McKnight!

I received an advance reading e-book of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Series Saturday: THE ATOMIC KNIGHTS

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

Cover art by Murphy Anderson

The Atomic Knights, published by DC Comics, (hardcover collected edition: 2010)

Writers: John Broome

Art: Murphy Anderson

Editor: Julius Schwartz

I could write a whole post (and perhaps someday I will) on how I have DC’s 100-Page Spectaculars of the 1970s (and to a lesser extent, their digest-sized reprints in the 80s) to thank for my love of most of the company’s non-super-hero content, and in particular DC’s science fiction, adventure team, and historical characters of the early Silver Age (not to mention my love of their Golden Age superheroes). On the science fiction side of things, those oversized issues were rife with reprints of the exploits of (among others) Tommy Tomorrow, Adam Strange, the Star Rovers, Space Cabby, and the Atomic Knights.

Written by John Broome, with art by Murphy Anderson, and under the editorship of Julie Schwartz, the Knights debuted in Strange Adventures #117 (June 1960) and ran intermittently in the title under #160 (January 1964), a mere 15 adventures in three-and-a-half years. But what adventures they were – and what an effect they had on pre-teen and early-teen me when they were reprinted a decade or so later. I no longer own most of the various issues those reprints appeared in, nor do I know if every single Atomic Knights story was reprinted at the time. But in 2010, DC published a hardcover collection of all 15 original stories. I recently re-read it, hence this post.

For those who may not be familiar with the Atomic Knights, here’s the set-up: it is 1986 and World War III, the Great Atomic War, is over after a scant 20 days. Amnesiac soldier Gardner Grayle finds his way to a ruined city whose citizens are desperate for food and medicine, both of which are being hoarded by a warlord calling himself the Black Baron. Grayle teams up with some of the locals (Douglas Herald, a teacher; Marene, Douglas’s sister; redheaded twin brothers Hollis and Wayne Hobard; and a scientist named Bryndon) to take down the Baron wearing ancient armor that is impervious to the Baron’s radioactive weapons. Hence, the group name. The Baron is, unsurprisingly, defeated and run off in the first episode, whereafter the Knights alternate between protecting their small city of Durvale from a variety of menaces and traveling out to explore what’s left of the United States of America.

As was typical of comics of the period, the characterizations are rather flat, with each team member designed to fill a particular role. Gardner is the square-jawed, death-defying, motivational-speech-giving, “do what’s right no matter how dangerous” leader. Douglas is the practical-minded, thoughtful second-in-command and provider of much exposition. Marene is the requisite damsel-in-distress love interest. Wayne and Hollis are the loyal, do-as-told, muscle of the group. Bryndon is the scientist, the gadget man, and the not-so-subtle reminder that science without conscience is usually not a good thing. There are moments where some of these molds are broken (Wayne and Hollis get to build gliders for the team to use, something that usually would be Bryndon’s role; Marene finally gets to go undercover and save the day in the series’ final installment, “Here Come the Wild Ones,” although Broome still can’t resist having the story end with her thinking that as happy as she is that her mission was a success, she’d be happier if she and Gardner could finally get married and start a family.) but for the most part, each character plays his/her assigned role.

The stories started out very episodic, rarely mentioning what had come before other than the team’s origin. In the early adventures, the team visits other small enclaves of surviving humans as well as the remains of New York City and Los Angeles (in later stories, they also get to New Orleans, Detroit, and Washington DC), each time facing radiation-created monsters or greedy humans who need to be defeated. With the introduction of a revived Atlantean civilization as a threat, the stories develop stronger internal continuity, and it becomes clearer that the stories are progressing in something close to real time. While the stories were published between 1960 and 1964, the characters progress from 1986 to 1992, with some amazing advances in recovery from an atomic war (or “the hydrogen war,” as it’s called in some stories). The Atlantean threat is a 3-parter which also introduces the giant dalmatians (the first giant irradiated creatures that do not pose a threat) that will serve as the Knights’ steeds for the rest of the run.

Actual aliens visit the radiation-devastated Earth in “Menace of the Metal-Looters,” one of the series’ weaker entries, but they are the only extra-terrestrial threat the Knights face – the exception that proves the series’ rule: we humans are our own worst enemies, whether through misused technology, hubris and greed, or both. Okay, that’s not 100% true. “When The Earth Blacked Out” reveals that World War III / the Nuclear War / The Hydrogen War started not because of any one nation, but because of an energy pulse sent out by an underground civilization of mole people! (It was the 1960s, and lost underground civilizations were all the rage in SF and comics.) Douglas’ declaration that “we humans still cannot escape responsibility” (because we created the bombs in the first place) feels a little tacked on, almost insincere. I get what Broome was going for, but I think it would have been better for the series overall if the actual start of the war had just been left unexplored.

Throughout the run, Murphy Anderson’s art is consistently excellent. His characters have distinct facial features and body language, his action sequences are dynamic, and even the silliest monsters (I say again: mole people!) are threatening. There’s a reason he’s one of the most highly regarded and revered artists of the late Golden and Silver Age.

The 2010 hardcover collection does not include the Atomic Knights’ later appearances in DC Comics’ Kamandi and Hercules Unbound, wherein it was revealed that all three series shared the same future world, nor their appearance in DC Comics Presents. The Kamandi and Hercules Unbound appearances are included in a black-and-white paperback collection called Showcase Presents the Great Disaster Starring the Atomic Knights (whew!), which I recently ordered a copy of. I look forward to revisiting those stories. I do own a copy of the DC Comics Presents issue where Superman “teams up” with the Atomic Knights. I’ve always been conflicted about it. On the one hand, it relegates the original Strange Adventures stories to being the dreams of a soldier (Gardner Grayle) in suspended animation, in an unnecessary attempt to explain why the series’ 1986 and the real world 1986 look different – which I think does a disservice to Broome and Anderson. On the other hand, it did pave the way for a “modern times” Gardner Grayle to join The Outsiders (one of my then-favorite titles and teams) as The Atomic Knight, which I really liked.

Overall, my reread of the hardcover collection cemented why the sometimes-silly post-apocalyptic Atomic Knights series was, and remains, one of my favorite non-superhero DC runs.

If you enjoyed this post, check out some of my previous DC comics-related Series Saturday posts:

Silverblade, First Issue Special, Nathaniel Dusk, Young Heroes in Love

Book Review: DEATH COMES TOO LATE

TITLE: Death Comes Too Late

AUTHOR: Charles Ardai

397 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781803366265 (paperback, e-book)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Hard Case Crime imprint, the publishers have released Death Comes Too Late, a collection of 20 mostly noir short stories from across the career of imprint founder Charles Ardai. The author admits the choice of title is a bit cheeky for a collection of stories in which death seems to arrive in a timely manner, if not early and unexpectedly. Regardless, it is a phenomenal collection by an author who I think is truly underrated. I say this as someone who is mostly familiar with Ardai as founder/editor/publisher and who had previously read only one of the stories contained herein.

That story, “Mother of Pearl,” blew me away when I first read it in From Sea to Stormy Sea (edited by the great Lawrence Block), and it blew me away again here. It is one of the few non-noir stories in the collection, if noir must include a crime or double-cross of some kind. There is a mystery at its core – who is this nameless, seemingly genderless, narrator telling us this tale of a young woman’s search for the truth of her father’s death and the mother who put her up for adoption? As I said back in 2020, the story is “a rumination on success, failure, identity, and the search for where we come from,” and upon multiple rereads I continue to find some moment or bit of phrasing or twist in the story that didn’t stand out to me on previous reads. As with most of the stories in Death Comes Too Late, “Mother of Pearl” has layers upon layers, twists to the twists, that keep you wondering where Ardai is leading you right up to the last paragraph.

I think it is safe to say that the whole collection is a rumination on success, failure, identity, and the search for where we come from (sometimes to embrace it, sometimes to understand it, sometimes to leave it behind). And equally safe to say that most of the time, those ruminations take some long, complicated routes to get to that moment of embracing, understanding, or leave-taking.

The book starts strong with “The Home Front,” in which a private investigator hired by the United States government to suss out black marketeers during World War Two is responsible for the accidental death of a young man he’s just arrested – which is just the start of a journey that turns brutal and bloody by the end while our protagonist tries to decide who he is after the tragedy. This is followed by “Game Over,” which starts with a boy’s simple wish to treat his less-well-off best friend to a free afternoon of video games at the local pizza place but whose plan to do so results in wounded pride, misunderstanding, harsh accusations, and yes tragedy. Two quite different time frames with characters of very different ages, both dealing with expectations of who they are based on something someone else has done (or not done). “The Fall of Man” is another heartbreaking story with a teen at the center, a startlingly honest look at suicide and its aftermath.

Charles Ardai is an expert at making sure his stories don’t end where they start – those long, complicated routes mentioned earlier – even when obeying genre dictates. “The Case” starts out as a standard “missing luggage” story but neatly twists through two characters’ points-of-view into something that would be at home on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. “Goin’ West” starts with a classic “Hollywood casting couch” scene (only in New York) that doesn’t quite go where you’d expect but with a conclusion that feels inevitable. “The Shadow Line” opens with our narrator waking up in a room in Mexico with a sex worker, intent on hunting down a man he’s been sent to locate – but not for the reasons that seem apparent. “Jonas and the Frail” is a “bodyguard loses his teenage charge, chaos ensues” tale with a killer reveal and ending; “Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright” is a revenge tale writ large; “My Husband’s Wife” is a riff on “disaffected corporate wife has affair” type stories. But they all take surprising turns, and each protagonist faces challenges that reveal something about where they came from or who they really are.

Ardai is also not above twisting his genres. “The Deadly Embrace,” one of my favorites in the collection, is a neat bit of super-hero noir that takes the real-world fierce competition between comics publishers in the 1950s (think the famous DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit over the original Captain Marvel) and combines it with a twist on the Hollywood Studio System in a world where super-heroes are real but under contract to the comics companies, which some of them find stifling. “Don’t Be Cruel” plays with conspiracy theories (particularly around Elvis’s supposed survival) in a noir light. “The Day After Tomorrow” is another tale that is not really noir at all, but more horror.

The collection ends with another decidedly non-noir tale, the mystery “The Investigation of Things.” If any story in the book can be called “Sherlockian,” it is this one. Two brothers in 11th century China, both detectives with decidedly different investigatory styles, are called to solve the murder of a Buddhist monk and stumble upon the invention of something we are all too familiar with as a weapon of murder in our modern era. There are twists upon twists, with one brother looking at minute and seemingly unimportant minute details while the other systematically interviews reluctant peers of the deceased (said brother even utters a variation on Detective Columbo’s famous “oh, just one more question” line, which brought a smile to this reader’s face).

If you love short stories in the mystery/crime genre that are more than just a recitation of the facts of the case or the reveal of the mystery, stories that explore the breadth of human interactions and passions, then Charles Ardai is your man, and Death Comes Too Late is your next must-read short story collection.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Those interested can find my review of From Sea to Stormy Sea, where Charles Ardai’s story “Mother of Pearl” first appeared, HERE.

Series Saturday: CHEFS OF THE FIVE GODS

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

cover designs by Philip Pascuzzo

Chefs of the Five Gods duology

Written by Beth Cato

published by 47 North (2023 – 2024)

Titles:

·       A Thousand Recipes for Revenge (2023)

·       A Feast for Starving Stone (2024)

“Chefs of the Five Gods,” Beth Cato’s recent fantasy duology, features intriguing world-building, complicated characters, and strong commentary on how something being a cultural norm or tradition doesn’t necessarily mean it’s morally correct.

The world itself is politically and geographically based on Western Europe in the pre-Colonial period. At the start of book one, A Thousand Recipes for Revenge, Solenn, a princess of Braiz (essentially coastal northern France as its own country) has been promised in marriage to a prince of Verdania (the larger, more landlocked portion of France). Thanks to recent events (including the virtual destruction of Braiz’s once powerful navy), Verdania is a more politically and militarily powerful nation than Braiz. Braiz needs the ally, given its geographic position between Verdania and the equally powerful and antagonistic island nation of Albion, a constant threat. Accompanied to Verdania’s capitol city by only a small handful of musketeers led by her father’s closest friend and her mentor, Erwan Corre, Solenn must navigate the politics of a foreign nation and the burgeoning of a power she didn’t know she had: she’s a Chef.

In this world, ingredients called epicurea, derived from certain animals and plants, hold magic. Foods cooked with epicurea do everything from enhancing stamina and erasing wrinkles to making voices louder and more sonorous … and being used as sometimes-undetectable poisons. People who can empathically sense epicurea are called Chefs, and in Verdania and Albion they are conscripted into service of the government. Especially empathetic Chefs can even sense the aromas and flavors of ordinary ingredients and can perfectly pair epicurean and non-epicurean ingredients to create unforgettable meals. Ada Garland is a rogue Chef, on the run from service to Verdania’s ruthless king and separated from the love of her life, a Braizian musketeer named Erwan Corre. When Ada is attacked by employees of a man she sent to prison many years earlier, she is put on a path that will inevitably lead her to the daughter she sent away with Erwan for safety’s sake: Solenn.

The combination of a volatile political situation and a magic that only certain people can wield is a potent one. Throw in two strong female leads and a diverse supporting cast, all with their own secrets, and you have a fast-moving, often surprising pair of books that I highly recommend.

Solenn has no idea that Erwan and Ada are her parents, so learning she’s a Chef (as she senses poison in a meal being served to her soon-to-be husband) is a shock that leads to the reveal of her parentage. These early scenes with Solenn establish who she is so clearly: strong-willed, intelligent, but still afraid of being alone once she’s married in a court of enemies. She is not happy about being a political tool, but she loves her country too much to shirk what she perceives as her duty. Learning that she is in fact not the child of the parents who raised her, learning that she is in fact “gifted” with a talent she’s only seen others possess, learning that there’s a plot to kill her betrothed … all of this turns her world upside down, but doesn’t deter her from doing what she knows is the right thing.

Solenn’s scenes alternate with Ada’s which almost from the start are more action-packed (arrests, chases, and attacks) but are equally informative about who Ada is: strong-willed, intelligent, well-trained in sword and gun and hand-to-hand combat, afraid of the toll being on the run has taken on her beloved grandmother, also a rogue Chef. She loves the ability she possesses, hates having to create less-than-perfect meals to serve customers at the Inn where she works so that no one will suspect she’s a rogue Chef. She is devoted to her grandmother, to the friends she served with, to the memory of her marriage to Erwan Corre, annulled by edict of Verdania’s king (which forced her to send her infant daughter away). Both women would do anything, risk anything, for the people they love – and throughout the duology they do just that.

Mother and Daughter’s paths slowly converge over the course of the first book, as the true magical origins of epicurea add another layer of intrigue and several of the Five Gods become personally involved in the events. A Thousand Recipes for Revenge wraps up its major plot points before the book’s denouement, but not everyone emerges completely unscathed … and everything escalates in book two, A Feast for Starving Stone. Albionish machinations in book one lead to outright war in book two as Solenn finds herself in a new role, creating an alliance between Braiz and the previously unknown magical world to save Braiz from being overwhelmed by larger and more powerful enemies attacking from both sides.

A large portion of A Thousand Recipes for Revenge is devoted to the political intrigues surrounding Solenn and the revelations of why Ada went rogue (and how that reason is coming back to threaten her), making the book a delightful slow boil of alternating viewpoints, keeping the reader wondering how and when Ada’s and Solenn’s stories will converge. The reveal of the mother-daughter connection comes early, which enabled me to enjoy picking out how similar, and how different, the two women are without too much time spent on wondering why they are so similar. (I should admit here that I received a print ARC of the book and because I’m such a Beth Cato fan, I dove right in without reading the back cover copy, where the relationship is revealed in the first paragraph.) As noted above, they are both strong women who love their families and would do anything to protect the people they love – even if that means facing fatal danger. But where Solenn also loved her country, Ada is jaded and embittered against hers (for good reason), and this difference in political fealty affects the decisions each makes, which in turn propels the narrative. I hope you can tell how much I love, and feel for, both characters.

I also really enjoyed the supporting cast. Not just Erwan Corre, who is a wonderfully relaxed yet dangerous man, but also the sweet but mysterious Aveyron Silvacane and his father Brillat; Ada’s beloved Grand-Mere, suffering from dementia; Ada’s friend and former fellow soldier Emone and her wife Claudette; and others I loath to identify in fear of spoiling some major plot twists/reveals.

While Thousand Recipes focuses very much on behind-the-scenes political machinations and spycraft before moving into a deadly battle, A Feast for Starving Stone’s opening chapter makes it clear that war is no longer imminent, it is here – and Braiz is caught in a pincer between Albion and Verdania. Solenn and Ada again find themselves on separate quests to protect the people they love, again at great personal peril, and again caught up in the games several of the Five Gods seem to be playing with humanity and with each other. Starving Stone is a much faster paced, blatantly action filled than Thousand Recipes, which puts the books in interesting counterpoint to each other, just as Solenn and Ada counterpoint but complement each other. There is much more bloodshed in Starving Stone but there is also emotional healing and bonding. The book has a lot to say about how we heal from trauma, and how we sometimes come to forgiveness and understanding for those who have harmed us. (Solenn in particular has a painfully beautiful arc regarding this.)

Throughout both books, it is clear that all of these countries regard epicurea as a tool, drawn from animals who are not as important as the humans in control of the world. Many of these animals are hunted to near extinction or bred in horrible circumstances, the plants overharvested. While I am not a vegetarian or vegan, I recognize the parallels between the epicurea of Cato’s world and the hunting, cruel breeding/raising, and overharvesting that happens in our own. As mentioned earlier, Cato makes a persuasive case that just because something is an ingrained cultural institution doesn’t mean it is the morally correct or empathetic thing to do. But we’ve all seen in our own world how hard it is to get people to change from “the way it’s always been” to “a way that is more caring,” and the characters in this duology struggle with what will be a massive cultural shift.

“Chefs of the Five Gods” is currently billed as a duology, and the second book ends on a satisfying note with all the major plotlines tied up, but I really hope Cato will return to this world. It feels like there’s still plenty to explore both in where the characters will go (I totally ship Solenn and Aveyron, by the way. If I wrote fanfiction…) and in the shifts in politics and culture that the reveal of the truth about epicurea should bring about. Still, for now the story is done and I cannot recommend highly enough that fantasy fans seek out A Thousand Recipes for Revenge and A Feast for Starving Stone.

I’ve also featured Beth Cato’s Blood of Earth trilogy on Series Saturday. You can find that post HERE. And I’ve reviewed several of her short stories. Those reviews can be found HERE.

Sunday Shorts: Two by Dane Kuttler

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. I’ve considered promising to review a short story every day, but that’s a lot of pressure. And while no one will fault me if I miss days, I’ll feel guilty, which will lead to not posting at all. So better to stick to a weekly post highlighting a couple/three stories, as I’ve done in the past.

TWO BY DANE KUTTLER

Dane Kuttler is a wonderful poet (https://www.danepoetry.com/about.html), who has also had two science fiction short stories published in the past year in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Sheree Renee Thomas. The two stories are quite different in tone and topic but are equally engaging.

“The Interspatial Accessibility Compact’s Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter, 2024)

On a multi-species space station where sound carries very well and certain species have a harder time communicating, a florist helps an Earthman express his affection for a coworker is from a sound-sensitive species. This far-future, outer-space story is so sweet, so endearing, so romantic and so recognizable in the awkwardness on the part of all three of the main characters. It’s not easy expressing your affection for someone who essentially speaks a different language, with completely distinct cultural landmarks and social cues. It’s also not easy being the one trying to help two people who clearly care for each other but who aren’t navigating how to communicate with each other. I’ve been in both positions and felt all of the awkwardness. But also felt all of the happily-ever-after (or at least, the happy for now). In other hands, the drama of the situation might have been drawn out into a longer piece with more roadblocks for the protagonists, but Kuttler keeps the story to a tight, fast-moving but still emotionally investing seven pages.

“Off the Map” (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan-Feb 2023)

Ava is in danger of losing her children to the system after a second “neglect” infraction that any rational person would consider unwarranted. Then she receives an offer to relocate to a new town in Florida under the auspices of Better Days, an organization that will give her full-time work, a home, a school that works with students’ learning disabilities and alternative learning styles, and access to therapy and guidance counselors. But is it all too good to be true, especially in a post-climate change, high scarcity of resources world? This story is an incisive and biting look at corporate involvement in social issues, and how the most vulnerable are mistreated and used to further other ends. I’ve read this one multiple times since it was published a year ago, and each time I reread it the injustice and abuse the characters experience (both the abuse they know of, and the stuff they are unaware of) hits hard.

READING ROUND-UP: February 2024

Here’s what I read, listened to, and watched in February 2024!

BOOKS

I read 9 books in February: 5 in print, 2 in e-book format, and 2 in audio format. They were:

1.       Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned by Alan Alda. (AUDIOBOOK, 2024 TBR CHALLENGE, NON-FICTION CHALLENGE)

2.       The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey Through the Art and Craft of Humor by Keegan Michael Key and Elle Key (PRINT, NON-FICTION CHALLENGE)

3.       Aftermarket Afterlife (InCryptid #13) by Seanan McGuire (E-BOOK, ARC (publishes March 2024)) Read my review HERE

4.       Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #1 by CRC Payne, Starbite, Maria Li, Lan Ma and Suzie Blake. (PRINT, GRAPHIC NOVEL)

5.       A Feast for Starving Stone (Chefs of the Five Gods #2) by Beth Cato. (PRINT)

6.       Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda. (AUDIOBOOK, NON-FICTION CHALLENGE)

7.       Santa Claus and His Works by George P. Brewster and Thomas Nast (PRINT)

8.       New Super-Man Vol 1: Made in China by Gene Luen Yang, Victor Bognanovic, Richards Friends, David Sharpe and others. (PRINT, GRAPHIC NOVEL)

9.       Korak at the Earth’s Core (Dead Moon Super-Arc #1) by Win Scott Eckert. (E-BOOK, ARC (publishes March 2024, PREORDER HERE) Read My Review HERE

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this leap year. Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “Companion Animals in Maho Shojo Kira Kira Sunlight” by Stewart C. Baker, in Lightspeed Magazine #165, edited by John Joseph Adams

2.       “Scarlett” by Everdeen Mason.

3.       “The Pearl Captain” by Christopher Rowe

4.       “But From Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive” by Phoebe Barton

5.       “A Sojourn in the Fifth City” by P H Lee

6.       “Further Examination and Capture of Candle Skulls Associated with the Baba Yaga” by Mari Ness

7.       “What Becomes of Curious Minds” by Wen-yi Lee

8.       “An Elegy for the Former Things” by KT Bryski

9.       “Not A Drop to Drink” by Seanan McGuire, on the Author’s Patreon

10.   “Valentine's Dave” by ‘Nathan Burgoine, Candy Hearts Charity Anthology, edited by Lee Blair

11.   “Bee My Valentine” by Beck Grey

12.   “Dreaming of you in Freefall” by Seanan McGuire, novella included with the novel Aftermarket Afterlife (InCryptid #13)

13.   “The Cut Cares Not for the Flesh” by George Sandison, from Nightmare Magazine #157, edited by Wendy N. Wagner

14.   “Dusk” by Angela Slatter, from The Dark #105, edited by Sean Wallace

15.   “The Interspatial Accessibility Compact's Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Engagement” by Dane Kuttler, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Winter 2024, edited by Sheree Renee Thomas

16.   “Off The Map” by Dane Kuttler, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan-Feb 2023, edited by Sheree Renee Thomas (REREAD)

17.   “Dawn of the Deathslayer” by Christopher Paul Carey, novella included with the novel Korak at the Earth’s Core

18.   “The Fallen: A Tale of Pellucidar” by Mercedes Lackey, from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. website

19.   “Jason Gridley of Earth: Across the Moons of Mars” by Geary Gravel, novella included with the novel Red Axe of Pellucidar

So that’s 19 short stories in February. Far less than “1 per day” for the month, and way off pace for the year so far. (February 29th  was the 60th  day of 2024.)

MOVIES

I somehow managed to watch zero movies in February, thanks largely to work travel taking me to cities where I had friends to hang out with and to a bit of a head-cold. However, I did manage to watch some television:

TELEVISION

·       Doctor Who Season 4, Episode 7 (1 episode, REWATCH)

·       Love, Death & Robots Season 1, episodes 1 – 18 (18 episodes)

That’s 19 episodes of television, again not quite the “1 per day” I was shooting for.

LIVE THEATER

No live theater in February, either.

Summary of Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 1 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  19 read; YTD: 45 of 366 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 9 read; YTD: 19 of 120 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 2 read; YTD: 6 of 52 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 3 read; YTD: 3 of 12 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0 read/watched; YTD: 1 read/watched.

Movie Challenge: This month: 0 watched; YTD: 4 of 52 watched.

TV Shows Challenge: This month: 19 episodes watched; YTD: 40 of 366 watched

Live Theater Challenge: This month: 0 show attended; YTD: 1 of 12 attended.

Book Review: AFTERMARKET AFTERLIFE

TITLE: Aftermarket Afterlife (InCryptid #13)

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

368 pages, DAW Books, ISBN 9780756418618 (print, also available in e-book, audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS:  One of the many things I love about Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series is the consistent change in first person narrators. Within the context of a multigenerational family saga that just happens to also be a wonderfully original urban fantasy series, McGuire works to find the most appropriate narrator for each stage of the story. Throw-caution-to-the-wind sibling Verity Price started the series off, followed by her calm-and-cool brother Alex. When the narratorial duties shifted to youngest sibling Antimony for three books, we started to get a sense of the burdens of being a Price. Two books narrated by cousin Sarah moved the series from straight-up urban fantasy to multidimensional adventure, which set the stage for two books narrated by family matriarch Alice during her hunt for long-missing patriarch Thomas. Now, it’s family babysitter (and resident ghost) Mary Dunlavy’s turn. Mary is one of my favorite characters in the series so when she was announced as the next narrator, I was extremely excited. I was not disappointed in the story Mary had to tell, and she is the perfect narrator for this part of the family’s story.

As a ghost, Mary has guided each generation of the Price-Healy clan to adulthood successfully (if not always harm-free) starting with Alice, while at the same time juggling her responsibilities as negotiator and advocate for humans making deals with the otherworldly Crossroads. While each narrator of the series so far has mentioned the difficult position Mary was in balancing these two roles, and while the family understands how Mary’s existence has changed since the Crossroads were destroyed, we as readers have never really been fully privy to Mary’s own thoughts on the matter before now. There are a number of heartbreaking scenes where Mary comes to terms with her own trauma (including, I believe, our first real detailed look at Mary’s death and subsequent first encounter with the Crossroads), as well as scenes in which we are reminded just how much Mary loves her adopted family and how much the knowledge that she will “outlive” (for lack of a better term) her charges pains her. At the same time, Mary is exploring her new freedom from the Crossroads and learning what new limits she may have. Given that her current crop of infant and toddler charges are scattered across the country (Verity’s family is in New York City, Alex’s is in Ohio, while most of the rest of the adults in the family are in the Portland Oregon area), Mary definitely needs to know what these new limits may be, and how far she can stretch the concept of “family.” She does get answers to these questions, although they may not necessarily be the answers she wants.

Of course, the book is not just about Mary and her new existence, as important as that may be to readers like me who absolutely love the character. The war between the Prices (protectors of North America’s Cryptid population) and The Covenant of St. George (looking to purge said population out of existence) is heating up. The Covenant is on the offensive, seeking to vanquish the Prices and their allies once and for all. Which makes Mary the perfect narrator for this volume, as she is one of the few family members who can move cross-country almost instantaneously – which she is called upon to do more than once or twice, pushing up against those potential new limits.

Fair warning: this is a book about war, and Seanan McGuire is an author who understands that no one (individual or family or organization) who experiences war emerges from it unscathed. There is tragedy in this book (no, I won’t spoil exactly what that tragedy is) but I feel that long-time readers should be warned that terrible things happen. I cried. Multiple times. (New readers really should not be starting the series with this book – it’s number 13 for crying out loud and this isn’t the type of series where the characters reset to the status quo at the end of each adventure. Go read the books in order!)

As usual, there is a bonus novella included. I can’t say much about it without spoiling events of the main novel. Suffice to say, it continues the novel’s ruminations on trauma and grief and the way we process and begin healing from both, and it is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

I received an electronic advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Book Review: KORAK AT THE EARTH'S CORE

TITLE: Korak at the Earth’s Core (Dead Moon Super-Arc #1)

AUTHOR: Win Scott Eckert

306 pages, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., ISBN 9781945462634 (hardcover, softcover, collector’s hardcover)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: Win Scott Eckert returns to the world of Pellucidar with his latest novel in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe (ERBU) series, Korak at the Earth’s Core. This new installment is every bit as action-packed, immersive, and character oriented as Eckert’s Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar, and while it picks up some subplot threads from that novel it is the start of a new storyline. It also begins to address a number of questions the Master, Edgar Rice Burroughs, left unanswered in the original Tarzan and Pellucidar novels, including the mystery of life on Pellucidar’s stationary pendant moon as well as what Philip Jose Farmer called “the Great Korak Time Discrepancy.”

The action takes place about twenty years after Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar. Tarzan’s granddaughter, Suzanne, has been living in Pellucidar since the events of that book, has taken a mate and had a child – and has gone missing in the Land of Awful Shadow underneath the pendant moon. Korak and Meriem, Suzanne’s parents, immediately (but separately) head to the Hollow Earth to search for her. Eckert wonderfully juggles chapters from both characters’ perspectives as their searches take them across the breadth of Pellucidar. They encounter a variety of familiar and new deadly Pellucidarian wildlife and equally dangerous new civilizations, and Eckert details the battles with his usual distinct action style. Quite a few pulse-pounding moments for both characters, as well as for the crew of the airship O-220.

But what I really appreciated about the book is Eckert’s focus on the two main characters, and how they are both similar to and different from their predecessors.

Korak may be the son of Tarzan and have his father’s survival skills and enhanced strength and love of wildlife – but he is NOT his father in terms of temperament and life experience. Eckert draws on Korak’s childhood abandonment issues and his adult experiences as a soldier in World Wars One and Two to create a complex exploration of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that so many of those who experienced childhood neglect and/or wartime service have suffered from. Korak’s PTSD, which has been under control for years, comes roaring back while he is in Pellucidar, and Eckert hints at complexities that I’m sure will be explored deeper in this book’s sequels.

Likewise, in some hands Korak’s wife Meriem could simply be portrayed as “Jane Porter redux.” But she is so much more than that. Both are strong-willed women who are the equals of the men they love, capable of taking charge of situations and surviving harsh environments. Neither woman is so in love with their men that they are blind to or forgiving of their spouses’ foibles; for instance, when they learn of Suzanne’s disappearance, Korak and Meriem are at separate places on the surface world and Korak charges off to Pellucidar without his wife. Meriem eventually forgives, but does not forget, his rash hotheadedness. Meriem’s survival skills are different from Jane’s, thanks to their different upbringings, and come well into play in Meriem’s chapters.

Ultimately, Korak and Meriem and the characters traveling with them (and oh, I could probably write an essay on those supporting characters and how they enhance the narrative; I will simply say it’s a joy to see Suzanne’s mate Lordan again, and to see ERB’s Betty Calwell playing an ongoing major supporting role across the new ERBU books) come together for the novel’s dramatic denouement. The final scenes of the book tie the subplots of the novel together but still leave some questions to be answered – which makes sense as this is the start of a new trilogy, the “Dead Moon Super-Arc.” I am excited to see where Eckert takes Korak, Meriem, Lordan, Akut, Betty, and the rest in the second installment.

The book also comes with a bonus novella written by ERB Inc. Vice President of Publishing Christopher Paul Carey, “Dawn of the Deathslayer.” This novella stars Janson Gridley, another second (or is it third?) generation character introduced in the previous ERBU series (the “Swords of Eternity Super-Arc”) who I’ve been hoping to see more of. Janson explores another previously unexplored part of Pellucidar and meets a new character, Darva the Shadow, and her tribe. The novella does a wonderful job bringing in this new character and giving us insight into where Janson Gridley has been since his experiences in the novel Victory Harben: Fires of Halos. I’m looking forward to seeing both characters turn up in future ERBU novels. Maybe they’ll even get a book of their own at some point.

I received an advance reading pdf of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Korak at the Earth’s Core publishes in late March and can be pre-ordered on the publisher’s website.