Sunday Shorts: The Horla

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

TITLE: The Horla
AUTHOR: Guy de Maupassant
79 pages, Melville House Publishing, ISBN 9780976140740 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): This chilling tale of one man’s descent into madness was published shortly before the author was institutionalized for insanity, and so The Horla has inevitably been seen as informed by Guy de Maupassant’s mental illness. While such speculation is murky, it is clear that de Maupassant—hailed alongside Chekhov as father of the short story—was at the peak of his powers in this innovative precursor of first-person psychological fiction. Indeed, he worked for years on The Horla’s themes and form, first drafting it as “Letter from a Madman,” then telling it from a doctor’s point of view, before finally releasing the terrified protagonist to speak for himself in its devastating final version. In a brilliant new translation, all three versions appear here as a single volume for the first time.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla is another horror classic I should have read long ago, but if it was ever assigned in high school or college I have no memory of it. Considering it reads similar to my favorite Edgar Allen Poe stories (“The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”), I would hope I’d have remembered reading it before now. It’s a study of a man slowly descending into insanity while the reader watches, and as with Poe, the signs of the narrator’s madness are evident to the reader early on even though the main character remains somewhat unaware until it’s too late. However, this story differs from my favorite Poe stories in that de Maupassant’s narrator is not revenge- or guilt-driven; there may be an actual external cause, an actual supernatural entity possessing his home. The evidence for this presented in first person by journal entries could be authentic or could completely be in the main character’s mind. If the latter, the final events of the story are even more tragic.

What’s interesting about this Melville House re-issue is the inclusion of two earlier versions of the story. “Letter From A Madman” puts the narrator’s words in the form of a short letter to a doctor. The feel is less growing paranoia and more direct. In the alternate version of the story also titled “The Horla,” the protagonist tells his story to a board of doctors. The level of tension is somewhere between the well-known journal version and the letter version.

Each version has its positives (“Letter,” for instance, would make a great actor’s monologue, while the “board of doctors” version could easily be adapted and performed by an old-style radio troupe like Leonard Nimoy’s Alien Voices group) but the more well-known journal-entry version is the most compelling and involving of the three.

Series Saturday: Whyborne & Griffin

Series Saturday is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

Two book series that I absolutely love for their detailed genre-mashup world-building and strong character development came to an end in 2019. The first was E.Catherine Tobler’s 6-book Folley & Mallory series, which I discussed in last week’s Series Saturday post. The other is Jordan L. Hawk’s 11-book Whyborne & Griffin series.

The Whyborne & Griffin series mashes up Lovecraftian Mythos with urban fantasy and three different romance sub-genres: historical, paranormal, and m/m. The setting is late 1800s New England (the town of Widdershins, north of Boston); the title characters are a socially-awkward museum professor (Percival Endicott Whyborne, late of Miskatonic University) and a retired Pinkerton Detective who has moved to town to work as a private investigator (Griffin Flaherty, late of Chicago and before that the rural Midwest). Opposites immediately attract but their meet-cute is complicated in the first book, Widdershins, by murder, theft, and supernatural shenanigans that involve not only both men’s personal histories but the history of the town of Widdershins itself.

Whyborne and Griffin are endearing first-person narrators throughout the run of the series. It’s fun, if sometimes frustrating, to witness relationship, and other, misunderstandings from both characters’ POV. (This is something Hawk excels at and employs to good use in his Spirits and Hexworld series as well.) The reader often has a clearer idea of what’s really going on than either of the characters do, which I actually enjoy provided the characters eventually come to the same realizations the reader has. And they usually do, although often it’s slightly too late in terms of the dangers being faced. (I should note: I don’t always expect the story to go where I think it should go; that’s different from the characters realizing things the other characters and reader have already been made aware of. Hawk often surprises me with plot twists I didn’t see coming but which make perfect sense in retrospect.) Their relationship grows and deepens across the eleven books and several adjacent short stories and novellas in the series.

They also have a wonderful primary supporting cast that grows as the series progresses. From the very beginning, Whyborne’s Egyptologist coworker Doctor Christine Putnam is involved in the action. Strong-willed, fighting the attitudes towards professional women endemic to the time-period, Christine is as compelling a character as the leads and gets her own character arc that also eventually includes romance with an adventurer named Iskander. Whyborne’s family is often front-and-center in the action, and often at odds with our heroes (particularly his father Niles and older brother Stanhope). Griffin’s estranged adoptive and birth families come into the action eventually, as do Whyborne’s distant relatives on his mother’s side of the family tree. There’s also a fun set of tertiary characters who add color and a sense of life in Widdershins: Whyborne and Christine’s fellow staff at the Ladysmith Museum, the local undertaker and police force, and the Librarians at the Museum, who have a distinct devotion not only to the city of Widdershins but to Whyborne.

Hawk is faithful to the Mythos genre in general, capturing the tone of Lovecraft/Derleth/et al without being slavish to those authors’ penchant for florid descriptiveness. And as befits a series such as this, the Mythos elements are not only prevalent, they build on each other and become more important as the series approaches its apocalypse-level finale. Hawk also adds to the Mythos, spinning some new creatures and twists on old favorites into the mix to keep things fresh. (The author has also posted a list on his Patreon of the Lovecraft stories that influenced/inspired the various books in this series.)

Likewise, Hawk is faithful to the primary tenet of the urban fantasy genre: Widdershins itself is as much of a character as Whyborne and Griffin and their supporting cast. From the very start of the first book, the city’s layout and history are important to the storyline as opposed to being just the place events occur. But the series avoids the inherent claustrophobia of the setting by occasionally veering outside the city. Trips to the mining town of Threshold in Appalachia, Alaska, Egypt, a rural Kansas farming town called Fallow, and coastal England build on the core mythology and present new and growing challenges for the characters that eventually follow them back home to Widdershins. Each of the remote locations is as well-developed as Widdershins.

I feel like I should also mention that most of the books and stories in the series have one or more explicit sex scenes. Readers who don’t like erotica may be caught surprised when they encounter such scenes. I also feel like I should mention that they are very easily skipped over if one doesn’t enjoy reading such material; in fact, as the series progressed I found myself only skimming the sex scenes. They do include little bits of character development (for instance, Whyborne becoming a little less “vanilla” as his confidence in their relationship grows) but nothing that can’t be gleaned from the rest of the scenes in the book.

The Whyborne and Griffin series includes:

·         Widdershins

·         “Eidolon” (short story)

·         Threshold

·         Stormhaven

·         “Carousel” (short story)

·         “Remnant” (short story crossover with KJ Charles’ Simon Feximal series)

·         Necropolis

·         Bloodline

·         Hoarfrost

·         Maelstrom

·         Fallow

·         Undertow (novella)

·         Draakenwood

·         Balefire

·         Deosil

(The link leads to the author’s website, which includes purchase options.)

Although the Whyborne & Griffin series has concluded, Hawk has announced a spin-off series centering on the Widdershins Librarians. I’m excited to see other aspects of the town and its history being explored.

Review of MORE THAN A VINTAGE DEATH

TITLE: More Than A Vintage Death

AUTHOR: Dennis R. Miller

282 pages, Lulu.com, ISBN 9780389021215 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover copy): I was a …    The unfinished message lay beside the dead man’s hand, sending Alec Knight on a quest through the world of rare vintage paperbacks. Soon, he and former FBI agent Ravi Khan are thrust into a deadly race to locate Nazi plunder buried in an upstate New York town. Before the battle is over, Alex must confront his own mortality, the 20-second Conundrum, and the mysterious all-powerful Dr. V.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: I really enjoyed Dennis R. Miller’s period Western novels One Woman’s Vengeance and One Bullet Beyond Justice, and still hope to see more of Nora Hawk and Pete Clawson. But for now, Miller has moved on to a present-day adventure featuring new characters Alec Knight and Ravi Khan that looks to be the first of a series in which the two battle neo-Nazi, and perhaps other terrorist, organizations. And I’m definitely all-in on this.

I’ve been known to haunt used bookstores looking to complete various paperback series or sets of a particular author’s works, but mostly I’m looking for copies I can read and reread – I’m not in it for the pristine first printings or re-sale value. Thus, I know just enough about vintage paperback collecting to be intrigued by Alec’s hobby and how it propels the plot of this novel. And the hobby is definitely central to the plot, not just something to make the main character more interesting. It reminded me of hit man Keller’s stamp collecting hobby in the novels by Lawrence Block. (Although Block’s books are more crime fiction while this is more of a thriller.) Whether the vintage paperback hobby will continue to be important in any subsequent novels, I have no idea. But it is integral not only to the plot of this book but in setting up the kind of person Alec Knight is.

Knight is our first-person narrator. He’s affable, likes his neighbors and friends, has an easy relationship with a girlfriend who lives in NYC. They make it work by alternating who visits who on the weekends. He’s knowledgeable about his hobby and curious about things outside his wheelhouse. He’s also conflicted, dealing with what he calls the 20-second Conundrum: the idea that any random 20 seconds can change the course of someone’s life. A non-spoilery example of this would be pausing in parking lot for a 20 second conversation with a co-worker causing you to end up at a red light instead of being in an intersection as an accident happens. There’s a character-related reason for Alec to have this small mental block that crops up repeatedly as things get more stressful.

Miller sets the book in the town of Big Flats, with forays into nearby Corning and mentions of Horseheads and Elmira. This is the area where I went to college in the 90s (and in the interest of full disclosure, where I first met the author, when his son appeared in a college production of The King and I with me). It’s changed a bit since I lived there, but I’ve been back just often enough that I recognized the places Miller mentions. The author’s familiarity with the area and its history enhances the book’s action and grounds it.

My only complaint with the book is that we don’t really get to know Ravi Khan as well as we perhaps should. I don’t mean to suggest we should know all of his secrets right off the bat – even the reveal that he’s former FBI and what his current job actually entails comes later in the book – but I think a few more scenes establishing his personality and his friendship with Alec would have enhanced the idea that he’s an equal part of this series and not just the main character’s chauffer and butt-kicking assistant. But that’s a minor quibble, and based on where this book left off I suspect we’ll get to know a lot more about Ravi in future books.

I also love the way Miller plays with the idea that Alec Knight, Ravi Khan and the mysterious Dr. V (about whom I can say virtually nothing that isn’t a spoiler) exist in the same world with other familiar literary characters. Knight describes his friend Dick Jones as “my Mycroft” and mentions women having “the Ayesha allure and danger,” and compares a situation to “sitting on McGee’s boat on a calm ocean,” while another character later comments that “Ol’ Sherlock had a habit of getting excited and chasing into things.” These are statements that could be taken as references to actual people as opposed to fictional creations. Even when Knight mentions “Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald’s ‘knight in rusty armor’” or to the pile of Stone: MIA Hunter novels by Stephen Mertz, they’re phrased in a way that implies MacDonald and Mertz are simply chronicling or fictionalizing a real person’s adventures. The author may or may not have intended this, but for someone like me who loves the idea of fictional characters co-existing in the world outside our window, such references are a bonus.

If you love vintage paperbacks, “men’s adventure,” stories where characters unravel clues to find deeper conspiracies lurking, and engaging lead characters, More Than a Vintage Death is highly recommended.

Review of SIGNAL TO NOISE

TITLE: Signal to Noise
AUTHOR: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
272 pages, Solaris, ISBN 9781781082980 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said 'I love you' with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends - Sebastian and Daniela - and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. The three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love. In 2009, two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father's funeral. It's hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, reviving memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? Is there any magic left?

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Why did I wait so long to read this? It's been on my bookshelf for what feels like ages. It's beautifully written. Part love letter to the power music holds, part paean to lost childhood innocence, all imbued with the toll of actual magic (because all magic comes with a price).

The first time Meche uses magic, what happens could just be coincidence. Now, I’m normally a fan of books that leave it up to the reader to decide whether the supernatural aspect is real or imagination. In this case, with the story split between Meche’s present-day return to Mexico City and her teen years, I’m very glad that Moreno-Garcia doesn’t drag the reveal out: this magic is not only real, it’s generational (Meche’s grandmother Dolores, when pressed, talks about her own experiences as a teen – although perhaps doesn’t tell as much as she should), and it absolutely takes a toll not only on those using it (the changes in Meche’s personality over the course of the flashback scenes is stunningly laid out) but also on those who dwell on its periphery (teachers, classmates, potential love interests).

There are probably hundreds of clichés about how music is magic, how music saves lives, how novels are lyrical in tone when not actually poetry. Moreno-Garcia plays with all of them over the course of the book. There is so much music referenced in this novel, and while much of it was unfamiliar to me, I was able to understand the impact/importance of the songs through the way the characters talk about them. In this world, music saves lives but also ruins them.

Another aspect of the book I found interesting was the use of overlapping trios among the characters – and I know enough about triplets in music theory to sense that this was a conscious choice on the author’s part. There is of course the main trio of Meche, Sebastian, and Daniela, doing their magic together and then separately with varying results. Then there’s the trio of Meche’s adult family influences – her feuding mother and father and ever-patient grandmother. Some trios are less obvious: there’s the two love interests (Constantino for Meche, Isadora for Sebastian) whose storylines intercept at the party thrown by Meche’s cousin Jimena (who in the present is part of a trio of personalities that push Meche to certain epiphanies, along with Meche’s mother and the lingering presence of her late father). There are two abusive teacher figures in the novel who form something of a trio with Sebastian’s neglectful (and occasionally violent) older brother Romualdo. These trios overlap, members moving from one grouping to another as we jump between past and present. I think the idea could even apply to places: the homes of the three main characters; the trio of school, hidden getaway spot, and corner store; and in the present, the trio of Meche’s mother’s apartment, father’s apartment, and perhaps the arrivals/departures area of the airport. I’ll leave a more in-depth discussion of the musicality of this structure to people better versed in music and literary theory.

If you’re a fan of stories about teenagers discovering magic or of stories imbued with music, this is absolutely the book for you.

READING ROUND-UP: October, 2019

Better late than never! Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and writing.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in e-book format as “books.” I read or listened to 15 books in September: 10 in print, 3 in e-book format, and 2 in audio. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #113 (October 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Isabel Yap’s “Windrose in Scarlet,” Ray Nayler’s “The Death of Fire Station 10,” and Sam J. Miller’s “The Beasts We Want To Be.”

2.       Shadow of Doubt by Linda Poitevin. I love Poitevin’s “Grigori Legacy” urban fantasy series. She writes equally fun and compelling romantic thrillers. This one is about a local Canadian cop who falls in with an on-the-run US customs agent to solve who framed him and why.

3.       Simon Says (John Simon Thrillers #1) by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. Schmidt’s new near-future police procedural thriller is a fun ride full of car chases, gun fights, and solid character development. Read my longer review HERE.

4.       Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Volume 1, by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer and more. Tomb of Dracula is my favorite horror comic of all time, and possibly my favorite comic overall. Despite a rotating group of writers and artists, the early issues collected here set the stage for the great character developments that would come later. And for the first time, I think, the black-and-white Dracula Lives! Magazine stories are folded in close to publication order.

5.       The Girl on the Porch by Richard Chizmar.  A really compelling horror novel about a family dealing with the possibility that a missing girl rang their doorbell in the middle of the night and then disappeared again. High tension throughout.

6.       The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. Melville House’s re-issue of the horror classic includes two earlier versions of the story written by the author. An excellent study in how an idea develops in different iterations.

7.       Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Volume 2, by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer and more. Continuing the reprints of both the color Tomb of Dracula comic and the black-and-white Dracula Lives! Magazine.

8.       Deosil (Whyborne & Griffin #11) by Jordan L. Hawk. Another series I’m sad to see end with this installment. Hawk’s blending of Lovecraftian horror with gay paranormal historical romance has been pitch-perfect throughout the run, and this final volume wraps up all the major and supporting plots satisfactorily.

9.       Rosemary and Rue (Tenth Anniversary Edition) by Seanan McGuire. My first re-read of the very first October Daye installment proved to me just how much of the series McGuire had planned from the beginning. Almost every chapter has some wink or nod towards things that will be revealed later on. There’s also a new novella at the back of this hardcover re-release, in which we finally get to see how Toby became a Knight in the service of Sylvester Torquill and how she found the Queen’s new Knowe, both events having occurred before the events of this first novel.

10.   Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand. A perfect novella for the Halloween season: the story of a band and the haunted house they spend a summer in, told in a “Behind the Music” talking heads documentary style. I can’t believe this one hasn’t been adapted to movie form given the obvious overlap of music and the supernatural. I just realized there’s a multi-reader audiobook version that I’ll be listening to as soon as possible.

11.   Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Volume 3, by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, Tom Palmer and more. Continuing the reprints of both the color Tomb of Dracula comic and the black-and-white Dracula Lives! Magazine.

12.   Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5) by Seanan McGuire. McGuire returns to the Portal world of the Moors in a story that builds on elements from the first and second books in the series. The Moors is my favorite of the Portal worlds the author has created for this series, and I was not disappointed to return there. I read an ARC. The book is due out in early January 2020. My Full Review HERE.

13.   Absolution (Serena Darkwood Adventures #1) by Charles F.  Millhouse. This is a really enjoyable new “dirty SF” book – meaning we get immersed in the criminal underbelly of this new interstellar world Millhouse has created. The main characters are engaging, the alien races intriguing, and the audiobook a fun listen. Looking forward to more of Serena’s adventures.

14.   Songs of Giants by Mark Wheatley. Editor Mark Wheatley gathers a variety of poems written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft for various pulp magazines and adds his own original and stunning artwork that brings the poems to life.

15.   A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. My annual re-read of the battle between Openers and Closers for the fate of the world, narrated by a demon in dog form who becomes best friend with a cat. Featuring a lot of recognizable horror and mystery characters. Just a fun read, and I always pick up on a new or somehow forgotten detail.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each 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.       “The Beasts We Want to Be” by Sam J. Miller, from Lightspeed Magazine #113 (October 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Nesting Habits of Enceladen Beetles” by Eli Brown

3.       “Revival” by WC Dunlap

4.       “The Death of Fire Station 10” by Ray Nayler

5.       “The Valley of the Wounded Deer” by E. Lily Yu

6.       “<<Legendaire.>>” by Kai Ashante Wilson

7.       “Windrose in Scarlet” by Isabel Yap

8.       “The Words of Our Enemies, The Wards of Our Hearts” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

9.       “Take The Shot” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

10.   “Strangers in Court” by Seanan McGuire, included in the hardcover 10th Anniversary edition of Rosemary and Rue.

11.   “On Full Moon Nights” by Idza Luhumyo, from The Dark #53, October 2019, edited by Silva Moreno-Garcia

12.   “Every Exquisite Thing” by Lynda E. Rucker

13.   “Authentic Zombies of the Caribbean” by Ana Maria Shua, translated by Andrea G. Labinger

14.   “The Demon L” by Carly Holmes

15.   “The Maw” by Nathan Ballingrud, from Nightmare #85, October 2019, edited by John Joseph Adams

16.   “Some Kind of Blood-Soaked Future” by Carlie St. George

So that’s 16 short stories in October, keeping me way ahead for the year so far. (October 30th was the 303rd day of 2019.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 3 of 14 read.

365 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  16 read; YTD: 364 of 365 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 3 read; YTD: 26 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 15 read; YTD: 118 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 5 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 of 10 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 0 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I may not do something like this every month but October’s mini-goal was Horror, Horror, Horror!. I did pretty well: 7 of the titles I read I would count as part of the horror genre (possibly 8, as the Whyborne and Griffin series, while technically paranormal historical romance, has Lovecraftian horror elements to it).

November’s mini-goal of course is: Crime/Mystery/Noir because it is Noirvember!

Book Review of SIMON SAYS

TITLE: Simon Says (John Simon Thrillers, Book 1)

AUTHOR: Bryan Thomas Schmidt

470 pages, Boralis Books, ISBN 9781622257515 (ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Master Detective John Simon is a tough, streetwise fifteen-year veteran of the Kansas City Police Department with a healthy disdain for the encroachment of modern technology into his workplace. When his partner is kidnapped after a routine stakeout by thugs with seeming ties to wealthy art dealer Benjamin Ashman, he’s determined to find the truth, but the only witness is a humanoid android named Lucas George. Reluctantly, he takes Lucas along as he begins to investigate and soon finds himself depending more and more on the very technology he so distrusts. Meanwhile, Simon’s precocious teenage daughter begins to teach Lucas how to sound more like a cop using dialogue from famous cop movies. If only he’d use them in the appropriate context. As the two men dig in deeper, they find themselves and every witness they touch faced with danger from assassins as they begin to uncover a conspiracy that may stretch from the heights of the KCPD itself to South America and beyond. Can they identify the guilty before it’s too late without getting themselves killed in the process?

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS:

If it hasn’t become clear through the reviews I’ve run recently, I am a huge fan of books and stories that blend genres. Give me spaceships powered by magic or supernatural entities appearing in well-researching historical settings and you’ve got my attention. Likewise pretty much any genre (sf, fantasy, horror) mixed with a solid mystery/crime element. Simon Says is one of those: a fast-paced crime thriller set in the near future. There’s just enough technological advancement in the world-building to place the book in our future, but not so much that the world is unrecognizable as “ours.”

Crime/thriller enthusiasts will enjoy the high-speed car chases and gun battles throughout the book. They’re made all the more intense because the author knows his setting, Kansas City, inside and out, and did lots of ride-alongs and research with local law enforcement to keep these scenes as grounded in reality as possible.

But what really makes the book work is the character interactions and character growth. Lead cop John Simon may not quite be a Luddite (he uses cars and cellphones without a problem), but he is skeptical about new tech and the applications thereof and he’s very set in his ways. He doesn’t welcome change, whether that change is in the form of a new partner or some new tech designed to make life easier.  And especially not when those are combined, in the case of material-witness-turned-partner Lucas George (yes, the name is an intentional nod). In Simon and Lucas’ interactions, we get the beginning of a great buddy-copy team: experienced versus innocent, grumpy versus enthusiastic. Their relationship starts out adversarial (cop vs. witness) before turning professional and then into a friendship. It’s a fun progression to watch develop.

The book is also packed with a diverse cast of fellow officers and informants along with Simon's family and Lucas's creator who I look forward to seeing in subsequent books. The fellow officers and their support staff have distinct personalities, so they don’t feel blandly interchangeable, and I do hope they’ll get sub-plots of their own as the series continues. The informants are fun character types who I’m sure will pop up again as future stories warrant. I also know it can be hard for series based in professional settings (police precincts, hospitals, etc.) to smoothly incorporate the characters’ personal lives. Schmidt manages it here largely because Simon’s daughter becomes enmeshed in her father’s growing friendship with Lucas as well becoming a potential target of the criminals Simon is searching for. Hopefully, he can find a way to continue to include Simon’s daughter and estranged wife, as well as Lucas’ creator and her assistant, without constantly putting them in the line of danger and without their scenes feeling out of place or unneeded.

The book is high on humor and near-future pop culture references, including one of my favorite scenes involving one of my favorite STYX songs (you can read that scene HERE on my blog for free). But there are some dark moments as well, including a couple of brutally realistic scenes of grief over the death of a loved one. The bad guys are bad guys, for sure, and not everyone we meet makes it out of the book alive on either the good guys or bad guys sides of the equation.

For those who are concerned about starting a series that may not conclude, I offer these two bits of information: First, this is very much a done-in-one mystery. While there are hints at a continuing threat behind the scenes, the crimes that instigate the story are solved by the end of the book. Second, the author has already completed the second book and is hard at work on the third and expects to release them in short order in 2020. So go pick up Simon Says now and get in at the start of this fun new series.

Review of DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP

TITLE: Desdemona and the Deep
AUTHOR: C.S.E. Cooney
221 pages, Tor.com Publishing, ISBN 9781250229830 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy. A goblin market narrative that’s also a steep drop into an uncanny, richly painted underworld, C.S.E. Cooney combines 1920s luxury with deeply felt questions of identity and justice that strike at the heart of who we are, human or otherwise.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In Desdemona and the Deep, C.S.E. Cooney drops the reader into a multi-layered new fantasy world that I hope to see a lot more of. While it tells a complete and compelling story, the novella only scratches the surfaces of each of this world’s layers, with hints of how each has affected the others over their existence.

Cooney gives us “the World,” “the World Beneath,” and “the World Beneath the World Beneath.” The World, known to its human inhabitants as “Athe,” looks and feels very much like our own Earth just before the Great Depression with aspects of where we are in modern times (especially in terms of environmental and human health damage due to uncontrolled industry). The rich get richer off of the toil of the working poor while the natural world is collapsing around them. The “World Beneath” is the Valwode, home of the Gentry (what we might call the Fae), who are concerned about the upheaval of the Valwode’s natural order after the abdication of Queen Nyx. The “World Beneath the World Beneath” is Bana, the home of the kobold-kin (goblins) lead by king Kalos Kantzaros; Bana is a world at odds for different reasons with the worlds “above” it. Humans, Gentry and Kobold can move from realm to realm if they can find the way. But it’s never easy, and always comes with a price. The humans of Athe mostly consider the other two realms to be mythical, but the denizens of the other two realms are all too aware of how actions on Athe affect their own Valwode and Bana.

There is a wonderful lyricality and playfulness to the character names: the alliterativeness of Kalos Kantzaros; the on-the-nose name Mannering for the rich family whose child Desdemona is at the center of the actions; the sensual appropriateness of Gentry names like Nyx the Nighcrawler and Sussura the Nighthag; the regality of a name like Albus Idris and the sheer fun tongue-twister that is The Umber Farkelwhit. Cooney has, across all of her work, a knack for character and place names that conjure immediate and strong images or connections. (The Umber Farkelwhit not only puts me in mind of a Shakespearean court Fool, ala Lear, but also of the character Belaga from the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 for example.)

One of the things rich-child-turned-activist Desdemona discovers in her travels through the realms is that the richest class is almost always the most clueless and often the most careless. Whether it is the intentional cluelessness of the rich on Athe regarding the human and environmental costs of the industries making them rich, the by-their-very-nature cluelessness of the Gentry regarding how their own attempts to overthrow their previous ruler have doomed them, or the not-quite cluelessness of Kalos Kantzaros regarding the possible misuse of the bargain he struck long ago with members of the Mannering family of Athe, Desdemona sees over and over again the impact of not being aware of the world around you or of your own role in it. The rich of Athe could do more for the poor; the Gentry could do more to recognize their own faults; Kantzaros could temper his search for his missing daughter to find a way out of the contract. But they are all so caught up in their own sense of entitlement that it takes an outsider to set them on redemptive paths. In two cases, that outsider is Desdemona, although it's a different character who sets Desdemona on her own path of redemption.

Early on, Kalos Kantzaros asks Desdemona whose child she is, her father’s or her mother’s, and Desdemona spends the entire book trying to answer that question. We are witness to Desdemona’s incremental transition from spoiled rich child to defender of the weak, and also to the self-discovery journeys of several other characters, notably Desdemona’s closest friend Chaz, Desdemona’s mother Tracy, and the rulers of the other worlds: Albus Idris and Kalos Kantzaros. Each have their own blind spots regarding their better natures or the effect they have on the world around them. All discover that being a part of community is more significant than they previously recognized.

Desdemona’s story may or may not be concluded, but there is so much to explore in these worlds. I’m looking forward to many more visits to Athe, the Valwode, and Bana.

Sunday Shorts: Faux Ho Ho

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.



TITLE: Faux Ho Ho
AUTHOR: ‘Nathan Burgoine
152 pages, Bold Strokes Books, ISBN 9781635557596 (ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Silas Waite doesn’t want his big-C Conservative Alberta family to know he’s barely making rent. They’d see it as yet another sign that he’s not living up to the Waite family potential and muscle in on his life. When Silas unexpectedly needs a new roommate, he ends up with the gregarious (and gorgeous) personal trainer Constantino “Dino” Papadimitriou. Silas’s parents try to brow-beat him into visiting for Thanksgiving, where they’ll put him on display as an example of how they’re so “tolerant,” for Silas’s brother’s political campaign, but Dino pretends to be his boyfriend to get him out of it, citing a prior commitment. The ruse works—until they receive an invitation to Silas’s sister’s last-minute wedding. Silas loves his sister, Dino wouldn’t mind a chalet Christmas, and together, they could turn a family obligation into something fun. But after nine months of being roommates, then friends, and now “boyfriends,” Silas finds being with Dino way too easy, and being the son that his parents barely tolerate too hard. Something has to give, but luckily, it’s the season for giving—and maybe what Silas has to give is worth the biggest risk of all.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: As with most things written by ‘Nathan Burgoine, I was sucked into Faux Ho Ho from the start. The story has real romantic and dramatic stakes, and main characters you want to see overcome them. And all told in a tidy 150-ish pages, so there’s not a wasted word or superfluous scene.

I found Silas and Dino both endearing, the kinds of guys I’d love to hang around with – although like Silas I would be initially intimidated by Dino’s size and athletic ability – and I would certainly love to read more about both of them. Their interplay, as friends and more, is just downright adorable. (And I admit, I might have developed just a little bit of a fictional crush on Silas.) Despite the character descriptions, this is not just another “insecure nerd / cocky jock” romance with stock types; each man has his own insecurities and distinct personality traits and, perhaps more importantly, commonalities that play against the nerd/jock stereotypes.

The development of their relationship, from awkward roommate interview to friends to more, felt natural and real. I’m a fan of books that alternate past and present chapter-by-chapter, and here the alternating chapters heighten the tension of Silas and Dino’s pretense while providing deep insight into the relationship’s background. I think the book would have suffered with a more linear presentation of events; the “twin openings” (for lack of a better term) give us a sense of the dramatic stakes (the drama of Silas rushing to find Dino and make amends for something we’re not yet aware of) and the comedy we can expect (half-naked Dino “meeting” Silas’ parents for the first time via Skype and setting the whole story into motion) in a way a linear progression wouldn’t have been able to.


The author also does a great job of juxtaposing the characters’ very different familial experiences: Dino’s family has clearly always been completely accepting and loving, while Silas’s (with the exception of his sister) has grudgingly accepted their gay son/sibling provided he doesn’t embarrass them and provided he remains politically useful as a ‘good gay’. It’s nice to see more than one part of the spectrum of familial acceptance represented, and also great that through Silas’s sister and her fiancée, Burgoine explores the idea that not every family member reacts/feels the same way about a family member’s sexuality. (Reading Burgoine’s previous Christmas romance novella Handmade Holidays along with Faux Ho Ho really expands this exploration, as the family of the main character of HH completely abandoned him upon coming out.) Like Handmade Holidays, Faux Ho Ho also explores the idea of “found family,” the people who are like siblings and parents to us without any genetic or legal connection.

Unlike Handmade Holidays, in Faux Ho Ho Christmas itself is not much more than a plot point, a reason for delayed travel to keep our main characters out of touch with the wider world for a stretch of hours. (I actually to find this to be true of many Christmas romances (gay, straight, or Hallmark variety) that don’t hinge on actual Christmas Magic as opposed to the ”magical” feel of the season, but that’s a digression worthy of its own blog post). In fact, Halloween gets a bit more “pride of place” in terms of the holiday’s effect on the growing relationship between Silas and Dino, as does Thanksgiving. The family visit / wedding that triggers most of the drama could take place at any time of year. This is not a negative, as it makes the story all the more universal in tone, but readers going in expecting scenes of caroling and gift exchanges might be slightly disappointed.

This story is also a part of the wider world of Burgoine’s fiction, interconnecting not only with Handmade Holidays (with references to characters and specifically to the “Misfits Christmas” tradition at the center of that book) but also with other denizens and locations of Burgoine’s gay Village as seen in his short story collection Of Echoes Born.

For slow-build awkward romance, tweaking family expectations, and adorable characters, check out Faux Ho Ho.

Series Saturday: Folley & Mallory

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

E. Catherine Tobler’s six-book Folley & Mallory is one of those series that is hard to categorize, an interesting blend of genres. There are alternate history (a recognizable but still different late 1800’s setting) and steampunk aspects (airships that are more than traditional dirigibles, tech that allows a character to have fully-working metal prosthetic arms), shapeshifters (main character Virgil Mallory is revealed as a werewolf early on), Egyptian mythology (the gods Anubis and Horus play significant roles), spy intrigue (Mallory works for an international spy outfight called MISTRAL that has internal intrigues and subdivisions); time travel (to an ancient Egypt that is both like and unlike what we know), historical and sociological commentary (about why Egypt fell to the Romans and about the unsavory nature of archaeological digs in Egypt in the 1800s), and romance (between the title duo of Eleanor Folley and Virgil Mallory, and between a pair of supporting characters). That’s a quick summary of the genres that co-mingle in these books. I may be missing one or two. There’s a lot going on here.

And because this is E. Catherine Tobler, it all melds wonderfully. The steampunk aspects of the narrative enable the time travel as much as the Egyptian mythological aspects; the mythology informs Folley’s family history; the time travel and shapeshifting are sensible roadblocks to the culmination of the romance; the subterfuge of MISTRAL and its sister organization affect the mythological and time-travel adventures. Nothing feels out of place or shoe-horned in.

The arc of the series is instigated by archaeologist Eleanor Folley’s search to discover what really happened to her missing mother. Eleanor’s father claims she’s dead, but Eleanor knows something weird happened when their Egyptian dig was attacked by unknown assailants just as her mother discovered a legendary artifact, “the hand of the Lady.” Now an adult, Eleanor pushes against her father’s constraint to give up the search for her mother. At the same time, MISTRAL agent Virgil Mallory is assigned to protect the Folleys from possible attack by rogue/enemy agents who want to know what Eleanor and her father know about the artifact and the associated “rings of Anubis.” Of course, complications arise that put them in great danger while allowing them to overcome initial distrust. And Eleanor’s search, combined with Virgil’s personal history, will have potentially history-altering consequences as Anubis’ plan becomes more obvious and closer to fruition.

The romance between Eleanor and Virgil is not the primary point of the series. But it is a vital sub-plot as they grow from that initial distrust and miscommunication through to a mutual if unrequited attraction and then to an actual relationship. Their connection helps them to survive some pretty drastic situations that each might not have survived alone. The progression of their relationship feels natural and is not at all smooth. They also discover they have more in common than they thought and that their lives have overlapped even before they ever met.

Eleanor’s life, her family’s history and connection to ancient Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut, and the god Anubis are at the center of everything that happens; to say too much about the family tree, especially her mother’s side, would be to spoil a great deal of what happens in the second half of the series. Suffice to say, we’re very invested in how and what Eleanor’s matrilineal line has done to enable the events depicted. Virgil and the other MISTRAL agents are essentially along for the ride for a good portion of the series. But throughout, we get a lot of background on Virgil: how he became a werewolf and how it affects his daily life, his previous romantic history, certain of his previous cases as an agent that turn out to be connected to his assignment to protect Eleanor. Eventually we also get a bit of detail on fellow agents and distant lovers Cleo and Auberon. Anubis also becomes more fully fleshed out and less of a plot device as the series goes on.

Most of the volumes in the series run around 250-300 pages. These are concisely written books that don’t ramble on about the background world-building. While it would be nice to know more about the history of the MISTRAL agency and the other shadowy groups encountered, none of that is necessary to the plot or progress of this story. (Maybe Tobler will give us adventures of other MISTRAL agents in the future, and that would be wonderful.) The Folley & Mallory series, in order, is:
• The Rings of Anubis
• The Glass Falcon
• The Honey Mummy
• The Clockwork Tomb
• The Quartered Heart
• The Ebon Jackal

(The link leads to the author’s website, which has purchase options listed.)

This is a complete story in six volumes. While there are hints at future adventures Folley, Mallory, and their friends could have, The Ebon Jackal capably and satisfactorily wraps up the main plot and all of the important sub-plots. So those of you who insist on waiting until a series is concluded before you invest in it? You have no excuse here: go get these books, in print or ebook, and get started!

Review of COME TUMBLING DOWN

TITLE: Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
208 pages, Tor.com Books, ISBN 9780765399311 (Hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): The fifth installment in Seanan McGuire’s award-winning Wayward Children series, Come Tumbling Down picks up the threads left dangling by Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones. When Jack left Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister – whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice – back to their home on the Moors. But death in their adopted world isn’t always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack herself is carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome. Eleanor West’s “No Quests” rule is about to be broken. Again.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Note: I received a print uncorrected proof Advance Review Copy from the publisher.
The latest entry in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series returns us to my favorite of the Portal worlds we’ve seen so far: the Moors. In Down Among the Sticks and Bones, we witnessed the twins Jack and Jill’s arrival in the Moors and their subsequent adoption, for lack of a better term, by The Master (a vampire) and Doctor Bleak (a mad scientist). The Moors is a very Gothic / 1920s Universal Monsters / 1960s Hammer Horror type of world; everything feels black-and-white and saturated with color at the same time. Supernatural creatures exist side-by-side with lightning-based mad science. The Master has the regal bearing of Lugosi combined with the physical menace of Lee, Doctor Bleak could easily be Peter Cushing. It’s not that The Master and the Doctor are one-dimensional pastiches so much that McGuire describes them in ways that bring your favorite or most frightening (often the same thing, don’t you think?) versions of vampires and mad scientists to mind. In Come Tumbling Down, McGuire expands what we know of the Moors, introducing a Lovecraftian Mythos aspect to the world via the Drowned Gods and the cult/villagers that worship them. And we get to meet another “wayward child,” Gideon, who is the current high priest of the Drowned Gods. McGuire has mad science, gothic horror, and cosmic horror overlap throughout the book, contrasting the different types of horror and the effect they have on the reader.

I don’t want to say too much about the characters of Jack and Jill lest I spoil aspects of Down Among the Sticks and Bones for people who haven’t read it. I can say that this book showcases McGuire’s ability to craft nuanced portrayals of neuro-atypical characters that help those of us who don’t have those traits to understand them, and perhaps relate to them, a little bit better. Jack’s germophobia and body dysmorphia and each twins’ need to not be who they were before they arrived in the Moors are so well-drawn. This extends to the other characters as well: Christopher’s social awkwardness/anxiety and discomfort with bodily fluids, Cora’s connection to water, Sumi being somewhere on the Autism spectrum, Kade being transgender – all are written in the non-judgmental way McGuire is known for. This is a truly diverse cast not just in physicality and in ethnicity but in neuroicity (is that a word?) as well.

The Wayward Children series is set up so that “present day” books, usually built around a quest or a character attempting to return to the world they’ve lost, alternate with “past times” books that show how characters got to their portal world and what they experienced before returning to our world. This book builds off of events in the first and second books. I don’t think one necessarily needs to have read the third (Beneath the Sugar Sky, a present-day quest into the land of Confection) or fourth (In An Absent Dream, a times-past chronicle about a supporting character who doesn’t appear in Come Tumbling Down at all), although reading Beneath the Sugar Sky will help understand where the characters of Kade, Christopher, Sumi and Cora are coming from as they enter this latest adventure. As a rule, I tend to enjoy novels that alternate chapters between the present and the past to build tension. I absolutely love that McGuire is structuring this novella series this way. It means that the books can be read in almost any order, mixed and matched upon re-reads. And I suspect that the reader will notice different things in each book depending on the order of the reread.

I suspect this will be our final foray into the Moors because Jack and Jill’s combined story now has a beginning (Down Among the Sticks and Bones), a middle (Every Heart a Doorway) and an end (Come Tumbling Down). But I really hope I’m wrong. I want to know more about Gideon and how he became the High Priest of the Drowned Gods. I want to know what The Master will do next. And I really want to know more about the werewolves in the hills and whether this world also has living mummies and other classic monster types.

And regardless of whether this is the last trip to the Moors, it is not the last book in the series. There are so many characters and worlds to explore: Christopher’s Mariposa, Cora’s The Deeps, Kade’s goblin world. I look forward to all of those trips, as well as future “present day” quests for the characters and more insight into what is happening with Eleanor West herself.

Come Tumbling Down releases in hardcover in January, 2020. The first four books in the series are available now.