Sunday Shorts: Meikle vs. Lovecraft

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.

In 2019, Crystal Lake Publishing began a series called “Crystal Classics,” reissues of out-of-print classic horror novellas and novelettes. I bought all three initial releases … and then they sat, as so many things do, on Mount ToBeRead. I’m hoping to get to The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood by the end of this very seasonal (in NJ) October, but today I finally read Dagon Rising by William Meikle.

Those familiar with Meikle’s work know that he’s a current, rather than long-out-of-print, master of the macabre. So why is he in the “Crystal Classics” series? Because within the CC line, Crystal Lake intended to have the “Vs.” line – a series of books in which a classic horror short story is challenged by a modern writer (much in the way Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom challenges, or as some would say “is in conversation with,” Lovecraft’s “The Horror At Red Hook”). So what we have in Dagon Rising is actually two short stories: a reprint of Lovecraft’s “Dagon” followed by Meikle’s titular take on the story. I love this approach, and hope that despite the issues Covid-19 has caused the small press publishing world Crystal Lake will continue both the Crystal Classics and Vs. lines.

I think this was the first time I’ve read “Dagon” since high school (a statement that is true of a lot of the Lovecraft I’ve read; unlike Poe and Stoker and King, I don’t find myself drawn back to rereading Lovecraft very often despite how much I love the “cosmic horror” genre). And I have to admit: I don’t find “Dagon” particularly memorable. It’s a decent enough first-person “man on the cusp of insanity wonders if he saw what he saw – oh wait this is Lovecraft of course he did” tale. An American POW escapes from the German ship that captured him, and while adrift along the Equator wakes to find himself in a muddy nightmare land. Eventually he escapes, and finds himself some time later safe in a San Francisco hospital questioning his own sanity.  I can imagine reading this over a campfire to a group of fellow campers and relishing performing the slow deterioration of the narrator’s mind (the same reason I love reading Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” out loud). But “Dagon” isn’t particularly scary, although if performed well there is one sort of jump-scare moment. The “twist” at the end is obvious from the beginning, so there isn’t even really a sense of building tension. It just doesn’t stand out from the crowd in any way to me. I’m not sorry I read it, but I can’t find anything to overly compliment about it either. (To be fair, maybe it didn’t seem so trope-y when it was first published. Then again, it also didn’t leave an impression on me when I last read it in the early 1980s, so maybe I’m not being too harsh?)

“Dagon Rising,” on the other hand, is really, really good at both building tension and surprising the reader. Meikle doesn’t retell the original story but rather builds off of it, asking what the rescuers and doctors of the story’s nameless narrator would think in response to his ravings. Told in diary form over the course of a year by the doctor who heads up “John Doe’s” care, the story builds tension specifically by not revealing exactly what “John” may have said during his ravings, and by introducing a secondary mystery that the reader knows is connected long before the narrator does. There were at least two moments of such perfect “will the evil become apparent now or not” tension that I held my breath getting to the end of the paragraph. I will not reveal which moments or how they surprised me with their resolutions, but I’m sure anyone who has read the story will know which moments I’m talking about. The way the end of “Dagon Rising” ties the two stories together is also pitch-perfect.

I do have to say this: “Dagon Rising” may have had more of an effect on my because of when I read it. It’s October 2020, we’re roughly 9 months into a pandemic that spreads as much through human contact as is does through human lack-of-belief in it, and in which it’s not always obvious who is sick. This story encapsulates so much of the anxiety and fear associated with Covid-19, even though it was written well before this virus was on anyone’s radar.

(Also, can I just say that I love the “trade dress” cover design on the Crystal Classics books, as seen below?)

Review of RING SHOUT

TITLE: Ring Shout

AUTHOR: P. Djèlí Clark

192 pages, Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250767028 (hardcover, e-book, audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: P. Djèlí Clark has become an author I just trust will deliver great supernatural alternate-history narratives. The Black God’s Drums, The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” all blew me away with strong characters, intriguing magic systems, recognizable locations (New Orleans and Cairo) and high stakes. I’m very much looking forward to A Master of Djinn (forthcoming in 2021), which continues the adventures of characters from Haunting and “Dead Djinn.” In the meantime, we have Clark’s latest novella, Ring Shout.

In Ring Shout, Clark gives us a new magical alternate-history setting.  The year is 1915, the place is Macon, Georgia. The story starts with action: Marlyse Boudreux and her compatriots Chef (the Harlem Hellfighter) and Sadie (she of the foul mouth and the perfect aim) take down a trio of Ku Kluxes – demonic beings in human form who move among humans fomenting hatred and discord. Ring Shout is not a non-stop action ride. There are plenty of quiet, thoughtful scenes interspersed. But this opening sets the tone: very little is at is appears and the threat is everywhere albeit hidden to most eyes.

That threat is about as Lovecraftian as one can get: unknowable beings from another dimension send minions to infiltrate and influence a human cult to bring about their own ascension on the Earthly plane. That the cult in question is the historical Ku Klux Klan is no accident but rather a pitch-perfect rendering of H.P. Lovecraft’s often blatant racism into this fictional world. Clark also takes Lovecraft’s penchant of making black characters nameless stereotypes and applies it to the people in this story that Lovecraft would have identified with. I don’t think we learn the name of a single human Klan member in the entire story, and most of them are described with as little detail as possible. The human Klan members are nameless, featureless tools of the cult leader, Butcher Clyde. We get a lot of detail about him as the main protagonist, but he’s as inhuman as the feral Ku Kluxes he controls on behalf of his masters. Clark also makes it clear that while this threat is supernatural, the supernatural is not responsible for the historical atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan. There are multiple mentions that Butcher Clyde and the Ku Kluxes are simply feeding off an irrational hate for non-whites that the human Klan members already harbor. It’s that hate that allows the Ku Kluxes entry into the human world, and that hate that allows their presence to go unnoticed by the people they are using.

It's apropos that the threat is generically Lovecraftian while the powers that fight against the threat are specifically culled from across the African Diaspora. The magic Maryse and her partners access is drawn from music, from storytelling, from the shared history of slavery and pain. The “ring shout” tradition that gives the book its title in front-and-center in the narrative, more than just a historical allusion. In fact, the chapters are bookended by descriptions of various “shouts” translated from the Gullah dialect into modern English by one of the few characters in the book who is white (which mirrors the way slave and sharecropper folk music was gathered by white musicologists in our world), explicating how the songs are also stories.

Marlyse possesses a magic sword gifted to her by three otherworldly “Aunties” (who, I must admit, reminded me of Mrs. Whatsit, Who and Which from A Wrinkle in Time, but who I’m sure have a much more culturally African basis of which I’m ashamed I’m unaware). But she also carries power of her own, in the memories of her brother and the Brer Rabbit storybook he gave her. Clark takes something white people are aware of via stereotype (in this case, the Walt Disney film Song of the South) and gives the power of those stories back to the people who first told them. The oral storytelling tradition among slaves also introduces the book’s possible secondary threat, the Night Doctors, who here are not just white slaveowners dressed up to scare their slaves into accepting their lot. (This is another part of the slave experience I’m embarrassed to admit I was unaware of before reading Ring Shout.)

The power of storytelling works both ways, and it’s an important story point that the Klan’s power is drawn largely from the way D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (and the books it was adapted from) galvanized disaffected white people into the Klan movement. Clark never downplays the power of words and pictures to motivate people both positively and negatively. In our current climate this is more obvious than ever. It’s not new to the internet age just more quickly spread.

While magic powers the proceedings, it is the characters that pulled me in and kept me invested. Marlyse’s first-person narration is melodic, by turns soothing and energizing, as befits the narrator of a book whose action so hinges on the power of storytelling. Chef and Sadie are equally as important to the story and equally as well-developed because of their proximity to Marlyse. Each brings something different to the narrative in terms of personality, especially in how they handle past trauma and current danger. Elderly Nana Jean, scientist Molly and even the three otherworldly “Aunties” are distinct personalities who bring different ways of viewing the world to the table, and I hope to see more of all of them if Clark ever gives us a sequel to Ring Shout. I also hope we’ll see more of the men in the group as this world develops. There were hints of personality for Michael George, Lester, and Uncle Will, but a novella only has so much space and these characters were not as important to this particular story.

Reading Ring Shout is one of those experiences that operates on multiple levels: it’s an adventure, a horror, an educational, and social commentary all wrapped together, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I received an e-ARC of this book for review through NetGalley.

review of HALLOWEEN SEASON

TITLE: Halloween Season

AUTHOR: Lucy A. Snyder

168 pages, Raw Dog Screaming Press, ISBN 9781947879218 (paperback, e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Halloween is the most wonderful part of the year for many of us. For dedicated fans, the season begins when the leaves start turning autumn colors and doesn't finish until Hallowtide ends in November. With it comes a whole lot of fun: scary movies and stories, haunted houses, seasonal sweets, spooky decorations, costume parties, and of course trick or treat. But Halloween is also a deeply spiritual time for some; it's an opportunity to remember and honor loved ones who have passed on. Master storyteller Lucy A. Snyder has filled her cauldron with everything that Halloween means to her and distilled it into a spell-binding volume of stories. Within these pages you'll find thrills and chills, hilarity and horrors, the sweet and the naughty. One of the best things about Halloween is you don't have to be yourself. So go ahead and try on a new mask or two ... you may discover hidden talents as a witch, a pirate, a space voyager, a zombie fighter, or even an elf. This is the perfect collection to celebrate the season of the dead or to summon those heady autumn vibes whenever you like. You may even find a couple of tales that evoke a certain winter holiday that keeps trying to crowd in on the fun. In the worlds within this book, every day is Halloween!

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: To a lot of people, Winter is the ‘deadest’ time of the year by natural standards (at least in the eyes of most people). But Autumn, and especially October and Halloween, seem to be when our minds fixate on loss, death and, consciously or not, to the possibility of the supernatural encroaching on our lives. While a new Lucy A. Snyder short story collection is welcome any time of year, her latest, Halloween Season, is perfectly timed to remind us how well she understands the overlapping emotions of the season at hand. A number of the stories included here center on loss (emotional, physical or both) or the intrusion (subtle or obvious) of the supernatural into the mundane world and how easy it is for most people to ignore signs that should be blatant. But Halloween also comes with a certain humorous aspect – the “trick or treat” aspect of the holiday – and this collection, like the season itself, has a fair amount of comedy (some broad, some nuanced) interwoven.

The set-up of “Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies” is pure comedy: insecure author at a convention accidentally gets fed cookies laced with hallucinogens. On a sitcom, hilarity would ensue. And in Snyder’s hands it does, for a moment, before the main character enters something of a Halloween twist on A Christmas Carol, seeing images of her past losses (father, stepfather, mother), her distant family’s present, and her own near future – not necessarily in that order. The sense of grief is palpable, as is the main character’s personal insecurities. And I love how Snyder subtly makes it clear whether this is an actual supernatural encounter or all in the main character’s head.

“Cosmic Cola” starts out with a feeling of loss: the tween-age main character has been uprooted by her mother and stepfather to move to a new town in New England that she’s sure she’s going to hate, until she finds out the town goes all out for Halloween and she’s invited to a limited-access party the entire town talks about. Things are, of course, not what they seem. The Lovecraftian horror element slowly suffuse the story, but the real emotional meat of the story are the scenes between the main character and her overwhelmed mother, which grow more fraught as the story continues.

“Visions of the Dream Witch” is one of the stories in this collection that I read when it was originally published, a jaunt into the bayous as a character seeks help for herself and her injured cousin after an encounter with a particularly powerful Lovecraftian witch and her minions. The loss and grief here are of the impending kind – if help isn’t available, the cousin will die – but the danger, from both the titular witch and another source, drive the story. It’s a trippy, water-drenched story I was happy to revisit.

I have to admit to not being as familiar with Snyder’s Jessie Shimmer character as I should be. I haven’t read any of the novels. So “What Dwells Within” feels like a good introduction to the character and her world, with enough backstory sprinkled in so I didn’t feel lost but still felt intrigued to learn more.

In “The Porcupine Boy,” a young man with a troubled past is trying to build his future by being a home-health aide to an elderly woman. He runs into complications when the woman’s primary doctor is replaced due to retirement. That indictment of the health insurance/private practitioner field is just the set-up of a story that gets wonderfully weird and dark, with a glint or two of karma-based humor along the way.

If any of Snyder’s stories were going to used as an actor monologue, “In the Family” is the best candidate. The narrator is talking to the recently-found child of her sister, years after the child had been put up for adoption. The sense that something is wrong builds slowly, through what the narrator chooses to say and how she chooses to say it, and the payoff at the end is pitch-perfect creepy.

Snyder is absolutely one of the best authors working in Lovecraftian cosmic horror, by making it personal. “The Kind Detective” proves this. The main character decides to investigate a rash of tree disappearances (yes. Trees. Disappearing.) that seem to be driving the people who witness them to insanity or suicide. It’s a dark story from the start and just gets darker, with the conclusion being perfectly in character for the titular detective.

“A Preference for Silence” is a neat bit of sf-horror-comedy aboard a colony ship with only two crewmembers awake and running things. Actually, this is another one that would make a great monologue for an actor.

“Wake Up Monkey You’re About to Die” is one of two Christmas-themed stories in the book and is the more horrific/bizarro of the two. I can’t say I was every completely sure what the background/worldbuilding was, but it was internally consistent and the story is full of great one-liners and comedic timing down to the last sentence.

Likewise, “The House That Couldn’t Clean Itself” is more near-future-sf/comedy featuring classic sloppy roommates and an attempt at a robotic solution to the problem that goes horribly awry. I giggled a lot (and hopefully that was Snyder’s intent).

The final two stories in the collection are preceded by a short poem pointing out that they’re “rated R.” They’re not erotic, and they’re more funny that horrific – and they’re two of my favorite pieces in the book. I’ve read “The Toymaker’s Joy” before. It’s the second Christmas-themed story in the collection, focused on an Elf who might not be cut out for the job she currently has but may be perfect for a spot I Santa’s “toys for adults” division. “The Tingling Madness” brings erotic sensations to the Lovecraft Mythos via local access television channels devoted to Cthulhu cults and … Chuck Tingle? You have to read it to see the connection. It made me laugh out loud at least twice.

Halloween Season hit the sweet spot for me. It has just enough stories to show the diversity in Snyder’s work without being too long as a whole, it shows off the author’s sense of humor as well as her horror chops, and it even comments on our current consumer culture that allows Christmas decorations to go up alongside (and sometimes even before) Halloween decorations. Definitely worth seeking out ASAP!

I received an Advance Review Copy from the publisher.

Review of OVER THE WOODWARD WALL

TITLE: Over the Woodward Wall

AUTHOR: A. Deborah Baker

204 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9780765399274 (hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Avery is an exceptional child. Everything he does is precise, from the way he washes his face in the morning, to the way he completes his homework – without complaint, without fuss, without prompt. Zib is also an exceptional child, because all children are, in their own ways. But where everything Avery does and is can be measured, nothing Zib does can possibly be predicted, except for the fact that she can always be relied upon to be unpredictable. They live on the same street. They live in different worlds. On an unplanned detour from home to school one morning, Avery and Zib find themselves climbing over a stone wall into the Up-and-Under – an impossible land filled with mystery, adventure, and the strangest creatures. And they must find themselves and each other if they are to also find their way out and back to their own lives.

MY RATING: Five stars out of five

MY THOUGHTS: Thinking back, I’m amazed at how few portal fantasies I read as a kid. I have vague memories of reading the first Oz book and parts of Alice in Wonderland and the first two Narnia books, but really I was more familiar with Oz and Wonderland from the movies than the books themselves. So I may not be the best judge of how Seanan McGuire (writing as A. Deborah Baker)’s new middle-grade novel compares to those seminal works. What I do know is that I loved every page of this, and plan to give copies at the holidays to the fantasy-loving middle-grade readers I know. And maybe several of the fantasy-loving young adults and adults and elders I know, as well.

As befits a book aimed at younger readers, Over the Woodward Wall doesn’t spend overlong on set-up, and doesn’t linger overlong at any point in the story. The first chapter introduces us to prim, fussy Avery (please, don’t try and call him anything shorter than that) and messy, free-spirited Zib (short for “Hepzibah,” but please don’t call her that), explains why they live on the same street but have never met, and gets them to and over the mysterious Wall of the title – and from there, there’s no looking back. Avery and Zib keep moving from adventure to adventure. They have a goal: follow the Improbable Road to the Impossible City, and ask the Queen of Wands to help them get home. But the Improbable Road isn’t a straight line by any means, and the circuitous route enables the author to introduce us to a large swath of the realm of the Up-and-Under. (“How can a place be both Up and Under,” Avery asks at one point. “Up a tree’s still under the sky,” the Crow Girl answers. A perfectly logical and perfectly magical way of thinking, in my opinion.) It’s a wondrous place full of talking animals, boulders who become men, girls made of crows and of water, and a set of kings and queens who are by turns malevolent and kind, and by the end of this book we haven’t seen near all of it. (Never fear, the sequel has already been contracted for by the publisher – and McGuire hopes to write at least four books in all.)

Portal fantasies, I believe, are about self-discovery. The children who come home from a portal adventure are not the same as when they started. They may not have “grown up,” but they have grown. Avery and Zib’s adventures definitely change them: Avery slowly becomes less certain that everything he knows is true, while Zib starts to realize that adventures and total freedom aren’t always as wonderful as they sound. Avery becomes less stolid while Zib becomes more thoughtful. They learn about each other, with hints of how each one’s home life might not have been as happy as they make it out to be. Each does something to hurt the other in the process of making themselves feel better, and those actions have repercussions. But they also move from traveling together because they need each other (as their only reminders of home) to actual friendship.

And they make other friends as well, with the addition of the Crow Girl and Niamh (the watery girl). These girls have their own mysteries hinted at and their presence has an effect on Avery and Zib that only becomes noticeable near the end of the book: the loners aren’t so alone anymore. McGuire has always excelled at building found families out of very disparate personality types, and the way she builds this group is perfectly paced within such a fast-moving narrative.

Fast moving … and fun, as such books should be. There are, as I mentioned, boulders who turn into men and owls who talk and impart wisdom. There are also thrilling mudslides and fruit that tastes like anything the eater loves (sort of like Wonka’s berry-flavored wallpaper or Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans without the limitations or the bad tastes) and magic swords. There are thrilling fight scenes and literal flights from danger.

Every portal fantasy needs a villain. We’re told early on that the realms of the Queen of Swords and the King of Cups are dangerous places, and of course the kids end up there (not quite of their own doing but through their own lack of understanding of the world around them and their easily-trusting natures). Both realms hold their own challenges for Avery and Zib to overcome – but both monarchs also seem distant and almost secondary to the narrative, just another pair of challenges to overcome. Although the possibility is set up for either one to be the Big Bad of the book/series, I don’t think either is. Because neither one scared me as much as the Page of Frozen Waters. If we’re looking for a Wicked Witch/White Witch/Red Queen analog, I think it’s the Page; she’s not royalty but her actions put the kids at more risk and she doesn’t seem to care if anyone dies as long as she gets her way. I will not be surprised to see her play a larger role in the sequel(s).

In addition to local friends to guide and enemies to overcome, another trope of portal fantasy seems to be the absent or absent-minded benevolent force. The King of Coins and Queen of Wands are mentioned, and meeting the Queen is as much Avery and Zib’s goal as meeting the Wizard was Dorothy’s or meeting Aslan the Pevensie kids’. But benevolent adults are always at a premium in portal lands because the kids ultimately have to learn how to deal with change and challenge on their own. Learning is part of the experience, and if learning comes with danger and injury, well, to quote my favorite band Paradise Fears, “to not have some battle scars is to never have lived.” I’m sure we’ll eventually meet these other two monarchs (however helpful or ineffectual they may be) but that’s not the focus of this book. I also think it’s an important point that the Kings are of Cups and Coins – passive symbols – while the Queens are of Swords and Wands – aggressive symbols. That has to come to play more as the series continues.

It also is not lost on me that our main characters’ names are Avery and Zib: A and Z, alpha and zeta, the start and end of the alphabet – and perhaps the start and end of knowledge? Each thinks they know the way the world is supposed to work while the truth is somewhere between them. They’ll have to work together to get through the adventure.

Lessons must be learned before a portal fantasy can end. Avery and Zib do learn quite a bit in these pages, but they haven’t learned everything they need to. I for one am glad their time in the Up-and-Under is not over yet.

(Note: for those wondering why the pen name for such an established author, “Over the Woodward Wall” is a book every character in McGuire’s novel Middlegame has read as a child, and the book has much significance to the world-building. In Middlegame, “Over the Woodward Wall” was written by Asphodel Deborah Baker.)

I received an e-ARC of this book to review through NetGalley.

SERIES SATURDAY: Sgt. Janus

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.

Cover art by Jeffrey Ray Hayes

While I’m not as well-read in the field as I’d like to be, I really do love the “occult detective” genre. There’s a long history to it, from the Victorian (Thomas Carnacki and Aylmer Vance) to the pulp (Jules deGrandin and John Thunstone) to the modern (Simon Feximal and John Constantine), and it has seeped from the written to the filmed (Carl Kolchak among others). Jim Beard’s Sgt. Roman Janus is an intriguing addition to the genre.

Janus has now appeared in three books: Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker; Sgt. Janus Returns, and Sgt. Janus on the Dark Track. Flinch! Books has recently reissued the first two books as a precursor to their release of the third (and hopefully not final) book in the series. All three have beautifully painted new covers by Jeffrey Ray Hayes that capture the otherworldly nature of the characters.

As a character, Sgt. Janus fits the mold of the occult detectives who have preceded him into print: his personal background is shrouded in mystery (at least at the start), he’s a bit aloof, he doesn’t often explain fully what’s going on (and assumes, I think, that most people believe he’s up to shenanigans and the supernatural can’t possibly be real), and he does what he has to do regardless of personal cost.

What really makes the series stand out from the rest of the field is the way Beard tells Janus’ stories. He plays with genre conventions and delivers stories that feel daring and original within a pretty well-traveled realm.

One of the tropes of “consulting detective” fiction (both occult and not), dating back to the inestimable Sherlock Holmes, is the presence of a narrator who is also usually the detective’s aide-de-camp. Most detectives have their Watson, Parker, Caldwell, etc.. In Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker, Beard replaces one reliable narrator with eight sometimes unreliable narrators. Each tale in the book is told by the client for whom Janus was working, part of his fee being that the client must send him a written description of how the case came to Janus’ attention and how it unfolded. This gives far more diversity to the way the stories are related – some of the clients are happy to be doing it and believe in Janus’ abilities, while some are disgruntled and imbue their stories with a healthy skepticism. This also allows Sgt. Janus himself to remain a mystery, his personal background and that of his female assistant and the house they occupy all only hinted at in the little tidbits he drops to his clients when they ask. And while each case stands alone, they also very clearly build on each other. The reader makes larger connections the characters themselves don’t, and the final story makes those connections as explicit as possible in revealing what it’s all been building towards.

The second book, Sgt. Janus Returns, follows the more traditional trope for narrators, introducing us to Joshua Hargreaves, a disaffected young man who meets an amnesiac woman who exhibits many of Sgt. Janus’ personality traits and abilities. Hargreaves becomes her aide-de-camp and chronicler while she tries to figure out who she is and why she feels connected to the house the missing Sgt. Janus used to occupy. Similar to the first volume, the stories herein are still episodic and still build towards a climax that reveals all – and in fact reveal a great deal more than the climactic story of the first book. Beard takes a huge chance by replacing his main character in the second book of the series – and it works. Perhaps it was because I read the books back-to-back-to-back, but I was invested in discovering “Lady Janus’s” secrets and how she was connected to Sgt. Janus from the very first page. I was also interested in Joshua Hargreaves’ development as a character – and he does have his own arc throughout the stories – as well as that of two new characters, Valerie Havelock-Mayer and Wendy Jackson.

The third book, Sgt. Janus on the Dark Track, breaks again with traditional by giving us a full novel instead of a series of connected short stories. It’s not really a spoiler to say Sgt. Roman Janus is back (although I won’t reveal how) on the case. It’s no secret that I love epistolary novels, and Beard proves to be a master of the form. The events of Sgt. Janus’ ride on a very dark train are told through the journal entries, telegrams, letters, and newspaper clippings of several different characters (although  notably once again, never in the words of Janus himself) including Valerie Havelock-Mayer and Joshua Hargreaves and another interesting new character, Gabriel Butters. Dark Track is the most blatantly Gothic of the three books so far, replete with young virginal damsel in distress and unknowable supernatural entity and locations of great supernatural power, and again it all works.

Three books with three different narratorial approaches should be highly annoying to a series reader. We like consistency in the way a series’ individual entries are told. But Beard’s experimentation and willingness to take risks keeps the series fresh and keeps the reader on their toes. I really hope there are more Sgt. Janus volumes forthcoming, and cannot wait to see what new ways Beard finds to tell the tales.

Reading Round-Up: August 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to. Better late than never, August’s tally!

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 21 books in August: 13 in print, 5 in e-book format, and 3 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #123 (August, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Caroline M. Yoachim’s “The Shadow Prison Experiment,” Carrie Vaughn’s “The Huntsman and the Beast,” Sam J. Miller’s “My Base Pair,” Eden Royce’s “Miss Beulah’s Braiding and Life Change Salon” and Katherine Creighton’s “Sing In Me, Muse.”

2.       Hawkman Volume 2: Deathbringer by Robert Venditti, Bryan Hitch and others. Venditti, Hitch and company’s run continues to deepen and expand the concept of Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s reincarnation cycle in a way that is faithful to what’s gone before while still breaking new ground. Loved this second volume.

3.       If It Bleeds by Stephen King. Four excellent new novellas by King. I’m a sucker for his stories about writers and their muses/psychoses, so “Rat” was probably my favorite of the four. “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” was my second favorite, and “Life of Chuck” moved me in unexpected ways. The title novella ties heavily into King’s “Bill Hodges Trilogy” (Mr. Mercedes, etc.) and The Outsider, none of which I’ve read – but I never felt lost, just intrigued by the hints of what I’d missed.

4.       Sorcerers by Maurice Broaddus. A really terrific new addition to the urban fantasy genre, focused on a young black protagonist who finds out that his grandfather’s stories are more than just stories, and that he’s been groomed for a job he didn’t know existed. I am really hoping there’s more coming in this world ASAP.

5.       Sgt. Janus: Spirit-Breaker by Jim Beard. Flinch Books recently re-issued the novel that introduced Beard’s occult detective. The covers are beautiful, and the lead character is intriguing, but it’s the way Beard tells the stories that really hooked me. There’s a Series Saturday about the Sgt. Janus series coming soon.

6.       JSA Presents: Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. Volume 1 by Geoff Johns, Lee Moder, others. The inspiration for the Stargirl television series. I somehow missed this series when it came out in monthly form back in the day. Moder’s art is cartoony fun, and Johns’s devotion to DC Comics history, especially where the Justice Society is concerned, is wonderful.

7.       Where The Veil is Thin edited by Cerece Renee Murphy and Alana Joli Abbott. A really wonderful short story collection about the darker side of fairies and their interaction with humans. Includes stories by Seanan McGuire, C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez and more.

8.       Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones. Terrific novella that twists the “unkillable serial killer” trope of slasher flicks in very cool ways. Full Review Here.

9.       A Killing Frost (October Daye #14) by Seanan McGuire. Another great installment in what may be my favorite urban fantasy series. McGuire sets yet another roadblock in front of Toby and Tybalt’s impending wedding, but that’s just the set-up of a novel that might turn out to have changed everything about the series going forward. Full Review Here.

10.   The Haunted Mansion: Frights of Fancy by Sina Grace, Egle Bartolini, Nicoleta Baldari and others. Absolutely adorable short graphic novel in which a new, eager young ghost joins the cast of the Haunted Mansion and tries to make her mark.

11.   Bella! Bella! by Harvey Fierstein. Harvey’s one-man (one-woman?) show about Bella Abzug recorded as an Audible original. Terrific monologue and pacing. Alternately funny and emotional.

12.   Famous First Editions: New Fun Comics #1 by various. A hardcover Tabloid-sized edition of the very first DC Comic from the 1930s, in the tradition of DC’s Famous First Edition tabloid sized FFE’s of the late 70s. Very nostalgic.

13.   Sgt. Janus Returns by Jim Beard. Flinch Books’ second Janus re-issue with a beautiful new cover puts an even larger spin on the life and adventures of Beard’s intriguing occult detective.

14.   Life Ever After by Carla Grauls. An intriguing Audible Original. A two-person radio play about the way a relationship starts and changes thanks to every-advancing technology. Lots to think on.

15.   Certain Woman of an Age by Margaret Trudeau. Trudeau’s one-woman show about her life as the wife of Canada’s Prime Minister (and the mother of another) navigating undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

16.   JSA Presents Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. Volume 2 by Geoff Johns, Lee Moder and others. The second half of the original run of comics that introduced Courtney Whitmore and was the basis of the Stargirl television series is just as good as the first volume.

17.   Hoodoo Harry (Bibliomysteries #33) by Joe R. Lansdale. My first exposure (long overdue) to Landsdale’s Hap and Leonard, in this novella about a missing Bookmobile that turns up with a driver who is way too young and a bunch of bodies in the back.  Definitely makes me want to read more Hap and Leonard.

18.   Foxy Heart (Blade and Dust 0.5) by Rhys Lawless. Interesting intro novella to a new series in which a normal human discovers the supernatural world because he’s the fated mate of a fox-shifter.

19.   Lumberjanes Volume 15: Birthday Smarty by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Anne Marie Rogers, Maarta Laiho and others. April goes overboard trying to top her previous years’ birthday parties for best friend Jo. I admit, it made me tear up several times.

20.   Sgt. Janus on the Dark Track by Jim Beard. The first totally new Janus novel in several years continues the series’ strong trend of twisting the tropes of the occult detective genre in surprising ways.

21.   The Gospel of Sheba (Bibliomysteries #18) by Lyndsay Faye. Faye’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches are always wonderful, but I love that in this Bibliomystery about a cursed edition of a long-lost gospel, she focuses on a new character whose life has overlapped with Holmes and Watson but who is very much his own man – a sub-librarian and scholar who is as adept as reading clues as the Great Detective. No idea if Faye has done more with this character and his family, but I hope so.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a 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.       “Still You Linger, Like Soot in the Air” by Matthew Kressel, from Lightspeed Magazine #123 (August 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “My Base Pair” by Sam J. Miller

3.       “Sing In Me, Muse” by Catherine Crighton

4.       “All These Guardians of Order and Clarity, None of Them Can Abide A Free Witch” by Benjamin Rosenbaum

5.       “Miss Beulah’s Braiding and Life Change Salon” by Eden Royce

6.       “The Bone-Stag Walks” by KT Bryski

7.       “The Huntsman and the Beast” by Carrie Vaughn

8.        “What Was I Meant to Do?” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

9.       “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” by Stephen King, from if It Bleeds.

10.   “The Life of Chuck” by Stephen King

11.   “If It Bleeds” by Stephen King

12.   “Rat” by Stephen King

13.   “The Tooth Fairies” by Glenn Parris, from Where The Veil Is Thin, edited by Cerece Renee Murphy and Alana Joli Abbott.

14.   “Glamour” by Grey Yuen

15.   “See A Fine Lady” by Seanan McGuire

16.   “Or Perhaps Up” by Hugh Howey

17.   “The Oracle of Exile” by C.S.E. Cooney

18.   “Don’t Let Go” by Alana Joli Abbott

19.   “The Loophole: A Story of Elsewhere” by L. Penelope

20.   “The Last Home of Master Tranquil Cloud” by Minsoo Kang

21.   “Your Two Better Halves: A Dream, With Fairies, in Spanglish” by Carlos Hernandez

22.   “Take Only Photos” by Shanna Swendson

23.   “Old Twelvey Night” by Gwendolyn N. Nix

24.   “The Seal-Woman’s Tale (A Tale of Arriland)” by Alethea Kontis

25.   “The Storyteller” by David Bowles

26.   “Summer Skin” by Zin E. Rocklyn

27.   “Colt’s Tooth” by Linda Robertson

28.   “Shine in Pearl” by Seanan McGuire, from A Killing Frost

So that’s 28 short stories in August. Not quite “1 per day,” but pretty close and keeping me on track. (August 31st was the 244th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

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

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  28 read; YTD: 245 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 6 read; YTD: 19 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 21 read; YTD: 98 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 9 of 24 read.

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

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: August’s mini-challenge was supposed to be “pulp and new-pulp adventure/horror/etc.” I also have several ARCs to read of books coming out in September. So that’s two mini-challenges! I read two ARCs (A Killing Frost and Night of the Mannequins) and the three Jim Beard Sgt. Janus books count as “pulp/new-pulp.” I also started Greatheart Silver, Philip Jose Farmer’s love-song to the pulp heroes, near the end of the month but didn’t finish it til September.

As I’m writing this summary near the end of September, I won’t even pretend I tried to do a mini-challenge.

Review of TARZAN: BATTLE FOR PELLUCIDAR

TITLE: Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar (Swords of Eternity Super-Arc #2, Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe)

AUTHOR: Win Scott Eckert

312 pages, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., ISBN 978194562269 (paperback, hardcover, limited hardcover, ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Tarzan of the Apes, Jason Gridley, and the crew of the airship O-220 return to Pellucidar, the world at the Earth’s core, on a wartime mission to stop the Nazis from obtaining a powerful superweapon. But when the Lord of the Jungle’s murderous adversaries partner with the Mahars—Pellucidar’s routed reptilian overlords—and his adventurous granddaughter Suzanne goes missing on a reconnaissance mission, can Tarzan prevent the conquest and enslavement of all humanity in both the inner and outer worlds? 

Bonus Novelette: “Victory Harben: Clash on Caspak” by Mike Wolfer: Hurled through time and space from her homeworld of Pellucidar, Victory Harben plummets into peril when she finds herself on the island continent of Caspak, the Land That Time Forgot. Using skills learned from her friend Tarzan and the Stone Age land of her birth, Victory fights for her very survival against savage beasts and uncanny Wieroos, the winged humanoid terrors of Caspak. But that is only the beginning of her trials, as a strange visitor arrives with an omen of Victory’s role in the machinations of the Swords of Eternity super-arc!

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS:

Note: I reviewed this book via an electronic Advance Review Copy. The book will be published in October by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote 24 Tarzan novels (25 if we include Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins, which would now be considered a “middle grade” novel, I think, or 26 if we include Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, which Joe Lansdale completed from a manuscript started by Burroughs), and six Pellucidar novels. Burroughs virtually created the idea of fictional universes, linking his various series in ever-inventive ways to create a consistent whole. (See for instance the novel Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, in which the Jungle Lord visits the Hollow Earth for the first time.) Over the years since Burroughs’ passing, the Burroughs Estate has “authorized” quite a lot of novels featuring Tarzan, John Carter, Carson Napier, and other Burroughs creations. But only recently has the estate, through Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., decided to issue new works tied intimately enough to the detailed chronology and characterizations of the original books to be considered “canonical” (as compared to merely “authorized.”)

So how does one approach reading a new canonical novel that once again ties two of Burroughs’ most well-known series together, especially if that book is also the second title in a new “super-arc” connecting even more of Burroughs’ original creations? Must one read all of the Tarzan and Pellucidar novels before opening the cover of Win Scott Eckert’s Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar?

I am happy to report the answer to that question is “no.” I have read only a small handful of the original Tarzan novels and none of the Pellucidar series. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core is not one of the handful of Tarzan novels I have read. Despite these holes in my Burroughsian reading history, I loved this book and was fully engaged with the characters and plot throughout.

Win Scott Eckert has not only crafted a novel that is true to the character of Tarzan as detailed by Burroughs in the original novels (versus what we see in most movie/television versions), he’s given us a novel that is an excellent jumping-on point for readers who are new to Tarzan, to Pellucidar, or to both. There was not a moment in this book where I felt like I was missing out on vital information by not having read the originals. And even though this is the second book in the new Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe “Swords of Eternity super-arc,” one does not have to have read the preceding release (Carson of Venus: The Edge of All Worlds, written by Matt Betts) to jump into this one. Like Burroughs himself, the new ERBU writers are working hard to make every book accessible on its own. Eckert does this by having characters reminisce about previous exploits in just enough detail to fill new readers in without derailing the momentum of the current story, supplemented by footnotes letting the reader know where to go to read the original stories.

Eckert gives us the Tarzan I remember from the few novels I’ve read and from the DC and Marvel comics of the late 70s: imposing, multi-lingual, a strategist when called for and a brute force when appropriate, a man who loves his family and will do anything to protect them, a man who can fit with “polite society” but who always has “the beast” simmering under the surface. Here, he is the focal point around whom everything else orbits, the most compelling character in a cast of compelling characters. The best Tarzan writers understand how to use the Jungle Lord’s personal dichotomies to propel a story, and Eckert proves here that he is among the best.

Eckert also does a wonderful job incorporating the setting of Pellucidar into the novel almost as another character. I’m intrigued by the way time does/doesn’t move in the “hollow Earth,” and how the landscape and stationary sun and moon influence the way characters think and react. I really cannot wait to go back and read the Burroughs originals as well as the soon-to-be-rereleased (by ERB, Inc.) authorized sequels by John Eric Holmes, and all credit for that goes to Win Eckert. (Okay, perhaps a little bit of credit should also go to Mike Grell, whose hidden world of Skartaris in DC Comics’ The Warlord was my first and most beloved exposure to the “hollow Earth” concept and which was clearly inspired by Pellucidar.)

Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar is also as fast-paced as one would expect from a Burroughs novel. There’s a bit of slow set-up in the first few chapters as Eckert moves all of his chess pieces into place, but after that the action is pretty much non-stop. As with Burroughs, Eckert expresses characterization as much through action as through internal monologue. I read the second half of the book in one sitting. Burroughs wrote several books in which Tarzan and Korak fight in World War One, so it’s a natural extension of the brand that a still fighting-fit Lord John Clayton and his family members would be tapped to help protect England from the Nazi menace of the Second World War. Especially when the Nazis are on the verge of discovering Pellucidar and the mind-controlling abilities of the native Mahars.

Much has been made of the “Swords of Eternity” super-arc introducing a new lead character, Victory Harben, into the ERBU. In Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar, we get to see Victory at a much younger age and see the experience that transforms her life and brings her under the care of Tarzan and Jane in England. But Victory isn’t the only “next generation” character being added to Burroughs’ family trees. In Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar, Eckert introduces us to Suzanne Clayton (Tarzan’s grand-daughter, the second child of Tarzan’s son Korak and daughter-in-law Meriem) and to Janson Gridley (son of Jason Gridley and Pellucidarian native Jana). Suzanne follows closely in her father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, plunging into adventure without so much as a backwards glance, equally at home in the jungle as in a city. Janson doesn’t see much action but I loved the almost-sibling interplay between him and Victory (who is Jason Gridley’s god-daughter). I hope that as the new ERBU progresses, we’ll see more of both of these younger characters alongside Victory and Korak and Meriem’s son Jackie Clayton. While it has been well-established by Burroughs himself that Tarzan and his immediate family are very long-lived and essentially immortal (something the Jungle Lord ruminates about a lot in this book, which takes place during World War II), injecting new characters into the ERBU also follows Burroughs’ own tradition.

The main novel is followed by a bonus novelette, “Clash on Caspak,” which connects the current super-arc to yet another of Burroughs’ original on-going series: “The Land That Time Forgot.” I’ve never read the Caspak books, although I remember the movies based on them. Mike Wolfer does a great job relaying what makes Caspak similar to and yet unique from Pellucidar through Victory Harben’s eyes. The novelette advances Victory’s storyline that started in Christopher Paul Carey’s novelette “Dark Heart of the Sun,” giving us more hints about why Victory is being bounced through time and space and what role her mysterious tattoo might play. As I may have mentioned, I find Victory an intriguing character and can’t wait for her to star in her own novel (titled Fires of Halos and due out sometime in 2021, I believe).

Sunday Shorts: Two Bibliomysteries

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.

Today’s Sunday Shorts takes a look at two entries in the Bibliomystery series from The Mysterious Bookshop. The central conceit of the Bibliomysteries is that every story in the series involves books in some way. Thirty-nine individual stories have been issued so far.

The Gospel of Sheba (Bibliomystery #18) by Lyndsay Faye is a wonderful Sherlockian mystery that only peripherally features the Great Detective and his Boswell. The central character is A. Davenport Lomax, a well-regarded but under-paid sub-librarian at the London Library. Because of his prodigious researching skills, Lomax is approached by a patron who believes he’s been in contact with a cursed book, which the librarian then investigates. Is there a mundane explanation for why most people who touch this book become gravely ill, or is there something more supernatural afoot? We all know Holmes’ adage that “ghosts need not apply,” but plenty of Holmes pastiches feature supernatural elements so I won’t spoil that reveal at all here. In general, I enjoy Lyndsay Faye’s Holmes pastiches and this one is no exception. Faye introduces the mystery, builds tension, and reveals the truth with perfect timing and detail. But the mystery of the Gospel of Sheba itself is only part of the whole story. Rather than give us another Holmes adventure narrated by Watson, Faye gives us an epistolary short story (a style I love), the events cobbled together through letters, notes, and journal entries by Lomax, his absent Opera-star wife Colette, and their young daughter. The author paints a picture of a family at a crossroads, caught between Lomax’s low-paying job and Colette’s not-quite-stellar opera tour, and the reader gets to piece together what the characters are not saying in these documents which is also fun. I was as interested in how Lomax and Colette would resolve their family tension for the good of their child as I was interested in the mystery of the cursed book. Holmes and Watson do put in a delightfully droll appearance towards the end of the story that had me almost chuckling.

Hoodoo Harry (Bibliomystery #33) by Joe R. Lansdale is a Hap and Leonard story, and I think it’s the first Hap and Leonard story I’ve ever read (yes, I know. I’m embarrassed too.). It definitely made me want to read more. The story starts with a bang – Hap and Leonard run off the road by an out-of-control bookmobile driven by a scared child – and doesn’t let up. Even the quiet personal moments have momentum. The duo learn that the bookmobile and its former driver (the Hoodoo Harry of the title) have been missing for several years, and that there are several corpses stored in the vehicle’s waste compartment who might be children who have gone missing locally. Naturally, they investigate. They discover numerous suspects along the Bookmobile’s original route, some more potential than others. The conversation scenes with the suspects walked that wonderful line between giving too many hints and not giving enough, and also gave me what I think is an excellent sense of who Hap and Leonard are as individuals. The suspects also felt like well-rounded individuals and not just convenient placeholders in the search for the truth. The story is narrated by Hap, in a very down-home-folksy style that I found engaging; if he narrates the books I suspect I’ll enjoy them when I finally get around to reading them. I also didn’t feel like I was missing anything – if there were nods to other installments in the series in the dialogue or narration, they weren’t obvious in a spoilery way. I do feel like I need to give people a content warning, though: while there’s nothing truly graphic, there is discussion of child torture and murder.

Note: The stories in the Bibliomystery series are written exclusively for The Mysterious Bookshop by a string of great mystery, crime, and thriller authors. The store issues them in limited edition hardcover versions but also in very affordable slim paperback volumes (usually priced $6.95), and so far there have been two hardcover compendiums. Me being me, I love buying the individual stories because of the “trade dress” of the series. The stories fall into the novelette range in terms of word-count.

SERIES SATURDAY: The John Simon Thrillers

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.

Part near-future science fiction, part buddy-cop comedy, part techno-thriller, part family drama: the John Simon Thrillers series by Bryan Thomas Schmidt is such a mash-up of genres that it really shouldn’t work – and yet it does, and pretty brilliantly at that. The series, which has three books so far (Simon Says, The Sideman, and Common Source) with at least two more in the works, focuses on property crimes police detective John Simon and his new partner, Lucas George.

John Simon is a middle-aged, sharp-humored, career detective with the Kansas City Police Department. He’s a bit of a Luddite when it comes to technology and a bit old-fashioned when it comes to his personal relationships, but he’s not quite the curmudgeon he claims he is. He’s devoted to his job and does it well. He’s devoted to being a father, but that’s a harder job in the aftermath of a divorce and his ex-wife’s bipolar diagnosis. And when, in the first book of the series, his partner on the job is killed, he’s devoted to bringing her killers to justice.

Lucas George is an android, one of the relatively new strain in this near-future Kansas City, who just wants to do his job as a night watchman, remain true to the Three Laws (in-world, Schmidt has the android creators follow in Asimov’s fictional footsteps), and be a good member of society. Being present at the bust-gone-wrong that eventually leads to Simon’s partner’s murder pulls Lucas into the action first as a witness, then as a civilian advisor, and by the start of the second book as a cop-in-training and Simon’s new partner.

The relationship between the two men is rocky at first, of course, the circumstances of their meeting being about as far from the definition of “meet-cute” as one can get. But smartly, Schmidt doesn’t drag it out: the “will they or won’t they be friends” subplot is wrapped up by the end of book one, and we get to watch the friendship grow and deepen over the next two books in the series. Lucas becomes Simon’s work partner and confidante and a “big brother” of sorts to Simon’s daughter Emma. Simon and Lucas’ banter is classic buddy-cop movie dialogue (Schmidt is not afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve), but not so over-the-top that it becomes grating or tiresome. The characters’ style of humor is different as well: Simon’s acerbic and dark, Lucas’s pun-filled and replete with movie quotes that sometimes are deployed at precisely the wrong time. Schmidt uses the humor to give the reader breathing space in what otherwise are fast-paced and tense narratives.

The first two books focus on Simon, Lucas, and crew stumbling onto, and then taking down, terrorist threats that feel extremely realistic given these books are set so close to our own time. The books are filled with cinematic car- and foot- (and even aerial) chases, the action enhanced by Schmidt’s deep knowledge of the Kansas City area as both a resident and as a ride-along with local police. In the third book, Common Source, the attention switches to a potential problem with the androids themselves, making it perhaps the most techno-thriller of the series so far.

Other than the presence of sentient androids, the technology of the series is very much near-future. The first book’s action hinges on black market nanotech and the third on the androids themselves, but Schmidt doesn’t project much beyond that. By setting the series in the late 2020s, he is able to keep firearms and cars and household security systems and phones and drones all pretty close to what we currently have. This enables Lucas (and when appropriate, his fellow androids) to stand out. And by having the androids be sentient as well as more capable than most humans, Schmidt sets up an on-going conversation about accepting differences and understanding the other. Lucas faces moments of anti-android prejudice in each book from a variety of quarters, not just the bad guys. Prior to Lucas joining the force, androids have been essentially a servant class. Some employers give them more free rein than others, but they’re still expected to do what they’re told when they’re told. While most of Simon’s fellow detectives and immediate bosses are welcoming of the new person in their midst, there are others in the KCPD who distrust the totally free android among them as well as those who feel themselves becoming obsolete in the presence of someone who can search for and analyze data quicker, run faster, communicate better. The condescension and growing prejudice towards androids, and Lucas and Simon’s reaction to it, is a central theme of the series. And the main characters are not the only ones who see it and act (or fail to act) on it. Simon’s teenage daughter Emma is central to the action of two of the books so far but present in all three, and it’s her bond with Lucas that helps Simon navigate this new partnership.

Simon and Lucas’ world is also filled with a fantastically diverse cast of supporting characters. Fellow cops come in a plethora of genders, sexualities, ethnicities, religious backgrounds and marital statuses (including a wonderful polyamorous grouping), as do the informants and civilians the leads encounter. These characters are more than just token window-dressing; they represent the real-life diverse make-up of Kansas City and most other major cities. Schmidt develops even the tertiary characters as full and complex personalities. The variety of personalities and physicalities among the cops reminds me of Barney Miller (in the lighter moments) and NYPD Blue (in the more serious moments, minus the gratuitous nudity), my two favorite cop shows.

But the books are not all precinct scenes and chases. Each book expands upon Simon’s family life. The tensions with his ex-wife are ever-present and Emma is becoming more and more aware of her mother’s problems and her father’s attempts to keep the peace. Simon is one of those divorcees who works very hard not to put the kid in the middle and even harder not to let his feelings about his ex-wife negatively influence Emma. The family scenes are worked organically into the mix and never feel like they are less important than the rest of the book.

Humor, action, real emotional content, characters who grow and change as the series progresses – I cannot recommend the John Simon Thrillers enough.

Review of A KILLING FROST (October Daye Book 14)

TITLE: A Killing Frost (October Daye #14)

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

351 pages, DAW Books, ISBN 9780756415082 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the inside cover): When October is informed that Simon Torquill—legally her father, due to Faerie's archaic marriage traditions—must be invited to her wedding or risk the ceremony throwing the Kingdom in the Mists into political turmoil, she finds herself setting out on a quest she was not yet prepared to undertake for the sake of her future.... and the man who represents her family's past. Also featuring an all-new novella!

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: I received an electronic Advance Reading Copy from DAW Books via NetGalley.

It should be obvious since I’m about to review the FOURTEENTH book in a series, but: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE OCTOBER DAYE SERIES! DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU ARE STILL READING EARLIER BOOKS AND DON’T WANT SOME BIG STUFF TO BE SPOILED FOR YOU!

Also, though, I am very much attempting to NOT spoil any of the big moments of this particular book. Because I don’t like writing reviews that spoil everything. But regardless, people should proceed with caution.

Okay, with the legalese out of the way…

A Killing Frost contains everything readers have come to expect from an October Daye Novel. There’s some adorable domesticity to start things off, then Toby gets a job/assignment/mission (verbiage dependent on who it is telling her to go do what needs doing) and then it’s pretty much pedal-to-the-metal action with occasional deep breaths to let the readers’ heart-rate (and Toby’s blood loss) slow down a bit right up to the big final scene where everything comes together.

But I’ll admit, Seanan had me scared for a little while. Things were moving so fast, and with such twists and complications thrown in Toby’s way, that I seriously thought this book was going to end on a major cliffhanger. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: I think after fourteen books (and a contract in place already to give us at least one more), Seanan has earned the right to maybe end a book with a Big Whopping Oh Shit Cliffhanger. There’s precedent, after all: Butcher’s done it twice now in the Dresden books, and Seanan has done it herself recently in her InCryptid series. BUT, in true Seanan style, the story takes one last swerve and boom – all is right with the world because the mission Toby starts the book with is more than fully wrapped up by the end. I will NOT be telling you HOW it gets wrapped up, but I will say this:

This book is a game-changer for the characters. Most of them don’t know it, but their world has just been rocked in an even larger way than the return of the Roane in The Unkindest Tide. And let’s face it: that was a pretty big change for the world Toby lives in. I really am excited to see reader response once they get to the end of this book and have time to process what this book means for the remainder of the series.

I think it’s also okay to reveal, since Seanan has said it on her Twitter, that the game-changing event of this book is not the big Toby-Tybalt Wedding. We get to wait at least another book for that. But we do get to see Toby and May discussing wedding dresses, and we get to see Toby’s internal monologue about marrying Tybalt (she never quite says they’ve gone from “frenemies to lover,” but she comes close). And of course there’s both romance and conflict between our star couple throughout the book. I love their banter and their more serious talks. I also love how Toby admires Tybalt in leather … I love Tybalt in leather myself … wait, where was I?

While Toby and Tybalt may act as we expect them to throughout the book, some other characters manage to surprise us, which is often not easy to do in a series as long as this one without the moment feeling contrived or out of character.  One of Seanan’s many strong points is her ability to give us unexpected character expansion at key moments without derailing the narrative. In A Killing Frost, for instance, there are three characters whose selfishness, which we’ve not seen before or at least not seen the depths of, propel the action of the book. The first selfish action kicks off Toby’s mission to find Simon Torquill (amnesiac and returned to his evil ways after earlier events) and comes from a man who has, up until now, been one of the most self-less and giving supporting characters of the series. He’s had some small moments where he emotionally put his family’s needs first, but nothing compared to this moment. It took me completely by surprise, even made me a bit angry (how dare he put Toby in this position?) until I thought about the character’s history as seen in stories on Seanan’s Patreon … and then his action made perfect sense to me. The second act of selfishness comes from a character we sort of expect it from by now – but the depths of her selfishness, the length she is willing to go to assuage her own pain, is what surprised me. It’s a heart-rending, brutal scene for Toby and for those with her in the moment. I wasn’t just angry as the scene ended, I had angry tears. But again, the behavior made perfect sense for the character once I had a chance to think about how she got to this point. The third character exhibiting unexpected selfishness never even appears in A Killing Frost, but her off-screen behavior is mentioned just often enough that I realized even after fourteen books, Seanan is still seeding in new sub-plots for the supporting characters.

There are also characters who behave exactly as selfishly as we have come to expect (Oh, Amandine…), characters who act exactly as self-less as we expect them too (Hi, May!), and characters who are as impulsive as we expect them to be (Quentin, dude…), so Seanan hasn’t turned the entire world upside down. But she has tilted it quite a bit. Even with all the action, there’s almost more than the usual humor and some time spent showing us romantic relationships outside of the Big Three. (For the record, I consider Toby-Tybalt, May-Jazz and Quentin-Dean to be the Big Three Romances of the series. Your mileage may vary) Plus, Spike the rose-goblin gets some great moments, and who can resist an adorable rose-goblin?

As is normal for the Toby Daye books now, the novel comes with a bonus novella at the back. These novellas usually tie to the main action in some way, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that this one focuses on Simon, Patrick and Dianda at a turning point in their lives back before the Great Earthquake wreaked havoc in the Kingdom of Mists. It’s a lovely three-character piece that tugs at the heart in a number of ways.