Review of Scott Von Doviak's CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL

TITLE: Charlesgate Confidential

AUTHOR: Scott Von Doviak

383 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785657177 (Hardcover and e-book)

DESCRIPTION: A group of criminals in 1946 pull off the heist of the century, stealing a dozen priceless works of art from a Boston museum. Burt while the thieves get caught, the art is never found. Forty years later, the last surviving thief gets out of jail and goes hunting for the loot, involving some innocent college students in his dangerous plans. Thirty years after that, in the present day, the former college kids, now all grown up, are drawn back in to danger as the still-missing art tempts a deadly new generation of treasure hunters. A twist-filled narrative that moves from 1946 to 1988 to 2014 and back again.

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS:

(Disclaimer: although this review is very late in being posted, I did receive a print Advanced Reading Copy from Hard Case Crime / Titan Books in return for an honest review)

In Charlesgate Confidential, Scott Von Doviak expertly weaves three crime novellas with a common location into one narrative whole. Von Doviak could have taken the easy route in telling the story, presenting each novella in chronological order as a separate whole; by interweaving them, alternating chapters between the three time periods and sprinkling in newspaper articles, Von Doviak made his own work harder but made the story as a whole infinitely more interesting and tense.

The 1946 section of the story is a classic heist tale with a dozen twists, dead-ends and reversals. The 1986 section blends a college marijuana comedy with investigative journalism and “The Big Job.” The present-day section weaves a very NYPD Blue vibe with a possible serial killer thread. The tone of each totally captures the feel of the crime fiction of the decade in which it takes place, down to the ’86 section being told in first person and the 2014 detective being rumbled and unhappy in his personal life.

Cast-wise, the 1946 section’s POV is more of an ensemble noir with several disreputable main characters sharing the spotlight as the story moves from illicit gambling den to bars to the heist itself and the job’s repercussions; the 1986 POV is entirely first person with a lot of typical college-guy male-gaze asides; the 2014 section straddles the line with a limited third person POV that sticks mostly, but not entirely, with our disgruntled detective. The shifting styles of POV took only a few chapters for this reader to become comfortable with, but your mileage may vary.

While the POVs are almost entirely male, it’s the female characters who really propel the plot towards every key moment (whether the reader realizes it in the moment or discovers it later). Von Doviak subtly subverts the tropes of the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, the unattainable-college-crush, and the hot-lonely-crime-victim-who-might-know-more-than-she’s-letting-on. The men make mistakes out of hubris or ignorance; the women get the real work done methodically if not always legally.

There are several scenes of striking violence, thankfully not all perpetrated against the women in the cast (although the 2014 section does start with a brutal murder of a woman we barely get to know). Von Doviak doesn’t shy away from showing the physical/emotional costs of being involved with these crimes.

Through it all, the Charlesgate itself looms larger than life, its unique architectural design and varied history (from crime den to flop house to college dorm to gentrified condos) calling to mind equally impressive fictional edifices like the Bramford and the Overlook. It may seem odd to name-check two classis horror novel locations in a noir novel review. Charlesgate Confidential is not a supernatural novel, but the author repeatedly mentions the building’s possible occult history and the feel of the building is the same I felt reading the Levin and King novels.

Charlesgate Confidential is an excellent addition to the Hard Case Crime line, and a great example of how the genre can be reimagined for modern audiences, renovated like the titular building to accommodate new voices and styles while retaining what makes it classic and dependable.

READING ROUND-UP FOR January, 2019

Reinstating what I intend to be a monthly summary of everything I’ve read. Here’s the January 2019 round-up:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 11 books in January: 10 in print, 1 in ebook format, and 0 in audio (no long work drive trips in January, which is when I usually listen to audiobooks. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #92 (January 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories and novellas. This month’s favorites for me were Sarah Micklem’s “The Book Collector,” Ashok K. Banker’s “Son of Fire and Water,” and Maria Dhavana Headley’s “What There Was To See.”

2.       Exits Plans For Teenage Freaks, by ‘Nathan Burgoine.  Burgoine’s first sf gay YA novel is a fast-moving, character-driven wonder. Cole discovers he can teleport, just another thing to make him standout on top of being openly gay and that kid who got kidnapped when he was four years old. Of course, he’s not the only one who can do what he does, and that could lead to trouble. There’s also a wide range of LGBTQIA supporting characters and an adorable romantic subplot.

3.       Kingdom of Needle and Bone, by Mira Grant. Another truly disturbing, very realistic bit of near-future science/medical-based horror by the reigning queen of the genre. What happens when our herd immunity disappears and the old diseases not only return but mutate to something even deadlier?

4.       Bartleby The Scrivener, by Herman Melville.  I love novellas, as witnessed by how many I read this month. I don’t ever remember reading this classic by Melville in any high school or college literature course. It’s possible I just wiped it from my memory, because I didn’t really like it. I dug the gothic feel, but it felt like it went nowhere slowly.

5.       Elevation by Stephen King. Third novella of the month, a new Castle Rock story from a master of the novella length. It starts out intriguing (man is losing weight but not mass), bogs down a bit in the middle with a bit too much attention to subplots, and ends on  … well, I’m not sure how to describe the notes it ends on. Maybe hopeful, maybe just depressing.

6.       Parents Day (Lumberjanes Volume 10), by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh and company.  I was excited to finally meet the parental units of the girls of the Roanoke Cabin. I felt like the story could have given us a bit more of the parent-child relationships among the usual fun Lumberjanes weirdness. It wasn’t my favorite installment of the series so far, but even the disappointing installments are still great reads.

7.       Fence, Volume 2 by C.S. Pascat and others. The second volume of this boarding school fencing team story continues to develop the rivalry between the two leads and develops some of the supporting characters beyond the “stock” feel they had in volume one. The art is solid throughout as well, and I think I actually learned a thing or two about the sport in amongst all the character drama.

8.       In An Absent Dream (Wayward Children #4), by Seanan McGuire. I continue to marvel at the twists and turns McGuire brings to the “portal fantasy” genre. The great thing about this series is that you can seriously read them in whatever order you want. You do not have to have read the preceding three volumes to really fall into this story of a girl who repeatedly visits a fairy-tale “goblin market” realm where giving fair value is the rule and failure to do so has lasting consequences. I’ve been intrigued by every portal world McGuire has introduced us to, but this might now be my favorite (alongside the Gothic horror world of “Down Amongst The Sticks and Bones.”)

9.       Roar of Sky, by Beth Cato.  Cato wraps up her magic-based alternate history of a United States allied with Imperial Japan in fine style. The story is still totally character-driven, as Ingrid comes to terms with her growing powers, Cy comes to terms with his family’s legacy as weaponizers of war, and Fenris continues being Fenris. The Pacific Island and Asian mythology woven throughout is wonderfully deep and not just window-dressing. I will miss reading these characters.

10.   Resist Fascism, edited by Bart R. Leib and Kay T. Holt.  Crossed Genres’ first (and hopefully not last) themed “micro-anthology” of 9 stories about resistance and revolution – both in small acts and large. Not a bad story in the lot, but my favorites were Rivqa Rafael’s “To Rain Upon One City,” R.K. Kalaw’s “3.4 oz,” Barbara Krasnoff’s “In The Background,” and Santiago Bellucco’s “Meg’s Last Bout of Genetic Smuggling.”

11.   A Time To Scatter Stones, by Lawrence Block.  The final novella read for January is a classic Block modern noir tale with a thick veneer of nostalgia sans regret. Matthew Scudder, the only one of Block’s series characters to age in real time, has pretty much hung up his private investigator shingle, but when a member of his girlfriend’s “AA”-like group for women trying to leave “the life” needs help with a stalker, Scudder jumps back in. Problem is, he’s not as young, spry or sharp as he used to be. Block doesn’t shy away from the downsides of getting old, but he doesn’t ignore the enjoyable moments either. There’s a lot of whimsy, a lot of cute nods for long-time readers, and just a bit of erotic talk as well.

So eleven books in January, which Goodreads told me was a few ahead of goal for the month/year. Only two graphic novels, so I failed to meet my “one graphic novel per week” reading challenge, and nothing I read in January helped meet the To Be Read Challenge.

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 did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “With Teeth Unmake the Sun” by A. Merc Rustad, from Lightspeed Magazine #104 (January 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Engine at Heartspring’s Center” by Roger Zelazny

3.       “Midway” by Tony Ballantyne

4.       “The Book Collector” by Sarah Micklem

5.       “The Emerald Coat and Other Wishes” by Emily B. Cataneo

6.       “Son of Fire and Water” by Ashok K. Banker

7.       “The Pilgrim and the Angel” by E. Lily Yu

8.       “Endor House” by Meg Elison

9.       “What There Was To See” by Maria Dhavana Headley

10.   “Sweet as Sugar Candy” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “The Duke of Riverside” by Ellen Kushner, from Uncanny #26, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

12.   “Infernal Affairs” by Jordan L. Hawk, from Devil Take Me, edited by Tricia Kristufek

13.   “Phases” by Chris Vanjonack, from One Story #249, edited by Patrick Ryan

14.   “To Rain Upon One City” by Rivqa Rafael, from Resist Fascism, edited by Bart R. Leib and Kay T. Holt

15.   “3.4 oz” by R. K.Kalaw

16.   “In The Background” by Barbara Krasnoff

17.   “The Seventh Street Matriarchy” by Marie Vibbert

18.   “We Speak in Tongues of Flame” by J.L. George

19.   “Meet Me At the State Sponsored Movie Night” by Tiffany E. Wilson

20.   “Ask Me About My Book Club” by M. Michelle Bardon

21.   “Pelecanimimus and the Battle for Mosquito Ridge” by Izzy Wasserstein

22.   “Meg’s Last Bout of Genetic Smuggling” by Santiago Bellucco

23.   “Christmas Eve” by Jim Butcher, on the Evil Hat website

24.   “Burning, In You” by Brayden Meket, from One Teen Story #57, edited by Patrick Ryan

25.   “An Archangel’s Defiance” by Lydia M. Hawke, on the author’s website

So that’s 25 short stories in January, putting  me slightly behind for the year so far.

Review of Carrie Vaughn's THE WILD DEAD

TITLE: The Wild Dead (Bannerless, Book 2)

AUTHOR: Carrie Vaughn

264 pages, John Joseph Adams Books, ISBN 9780544947313 (paperback, audio and e-book)

DESCRIPTION: A century after environmental and economic collapse, the people of the Coast Road have rebuilt their own sort of civilization, striving not to make the mistakes their ancestors did. They strictly ration and manage resources, including the ability to have children. Enid of Haven is an investigator, who with her new partner, Teeg, is called on to mediate a dispute over an old building in a far-flung settlement at the edge of Coast Road territory. The investigators’ decision seems straightforward – and then the body of a young woman turns up in the nearby marshland. Almost more shocking that that, she’s not from the Coast Road but from one of the outsider camps belonging to the nomads and wild folk who live outside the Coast Road communities. Now one of them is dead, and Enid wants to find out who killed her even as Teeg argues that the murder isn’t their problem. In a dystopian future of isolated communities, can our moral sense survive the worst hard times?

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS:

(Disclaimer: although this review is very late in being posted, I did receive a print Advanced Reading Copy from John Joseph Adams Books in return for an honest review)

The second book in Carrie Vaughn’s post-apocalyptic murder mystery series builds on the promise of the first without being a static retread. Like the first book, this one is about as “cozy” of a mystery as you can get set in a world where electricity, and thus forensic crime labs, stopped working decades ago. But Vaughn builds more on the world itself, on how disparate communities are tied together by commerce and law more than mutual respect. On the one hand, everyone on the Coast Road knows they really can’t survive without working and trading with others. On the other hand, they still have fierce independent (and sometimes selfish) personal drives that typify 21st century Americans. In both Bannerless and The Wild Dead, Vaughn explores the rubbing up of rugged individualism against communal necessity.

This struggle, and several others, are represented most obviously by the community disagreement Enid and Teeg are sent to resolve: whether a remote community’s households should be required to pool resources to help one household repair and retain a pre-apocalypse structure. The community has worked together for the greater good before, but personality conflicts and varying interpretations of what is necessary for the whole versus selfish nostalgia threaten to overwhelm everyone. The point is made all the more clear when an outsider is discovered dead – is it worth Enid and Teeg’s time, is it worth the community’s resources, to investigate the death of a nameless girl from beyond the Coast Road, from a nomadic society the Coast Roaders don’t trust or see as equal/deserving? Enid, perhaps because of her past, feels it is worth the costs; her partner, not so much. The cozy mystery becomes part of a deeper personality/societal conflict which Vaughn explores through dialogue and nuanced description of the two communities Enid must navigate to find her answers.

The “Us vs. Them” mentality, the distrust of those who are different, is also prevalent. Is the Coast Road’s settle small community crops-and-barter system really any better at preserving civilization than the Wild Land’s nomadic scavenge-and-hunt structure? Vaughn doesn’t choose one over the other, and leaves her main protagonist undecided while other characters’ opinions are obvious.

No-one in the book ever actually utters the idiom “don’t look back, you’re not going that way,” but the conflict between nostalgia and moving forward is there from the battle over a failing structure to a 15-year-old community conflict that potentially affects current events. How long do we hold onto the past regardless of its usefulness? How long do we hold onto things we should have let go of for our own mental health? What does institutional memory look like when technology has failed and how do we learn from a past we can no longer access?

The murder mystery that brings all these interpersonal conflicts to light is a fair-play one. All the hints needed to put together what happened and why are laid out for the reader – some obviously, some so subtly you don’t realize what you read until much later. Vaughn’s ability to structure and spool out the details, including a fair number of red herrings, is so good I would gladly read any non-SF/F mystery she might choose to write in the future.

There’s so much more I’d love to comment on in the book: Teeg’s impatience, so trope-ily “millennial;” the sly winks at long running “amateur sleuth” series; Enid’s continued growth as an individual and as a member of a family unit; how easy it would be for a new reader to start with this book and still understand the characters and their world. But I’ve rambled on quite a bit already.

Vaughn really does a wonderful job of mashing the “apocalyptic SF” and “cozy mystery” genres, drawing on the strengths of each and occasionally conflating or subverting the tropes. If you know mystery fans who want to dip their toes into the SF genre, or vice versa, Vaughn’s Bannerless Saga books are the place to start them off.

2019 To Be Read Challenge

Most avid readers have a “to be read” pile, in our office or near our bed: books we bought intending to read, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  Some of us, to be honest, have “to be read” bookcases.  This year, book blogger RoofbeamReader is once again running his To Be Read Challenge.

You have to go to RBR’s website to officially sign up for the challenge if you want to be entered to win a gift card to Amazon or the Book Depository at year’s end, and there’s less than a day left to do it (because I’m signing up ridiculously late this year): https://roofbeamreader.com/2018/12/19/announcing-the-2019-tbr-pile-challenge-tbr2019rbr/ but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are:

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile (within 12 months).

Specifics:

1.       Each of these 12 books must have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2018 or later (any book published in the year 2017 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile). Caveat: Two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the “can’t get through” pile.

2.       Crossovers from other challenges are totally acceptable, as long as you have never read the book before and it was published before 2018!

*Note: You can read the books on your list in any order; they do not need to be read in the order you have them listed. Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Poetry collections? Essay collections? All good!  As you complete a book – review it, go to your original list and turn that title into a link to the review.

ANTHONY’S 2019 TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:

1. Back Street by Fannie Hurst (published 1931, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

2. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick (1947, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

3. The Bad Seed by William March (1954, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

4. Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (1967, re-released by VMC 2014)

5. The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb (1953, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

6. Cimarron by Edna Ferber (1929, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

7. Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds (1936, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

8. Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1921, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

9. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (1964)

10. We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) - Read March 2019

11. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (2013) - Read March 2019

12. Iraq + 100: The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged From Iraq, edited by Hassan Blasim (2016)

Alternates

1. Under the Sunset by Bram Stoker (1881) - Read May 2019

2. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993)

As I complete each book, I’ll come back to this post, italicize the title, and add a “read date” and a link to the review.

I have a few other reading challenges that I’m setting myself for 2019 that will overlap partially with this, including “Read The Book, Watch The Movie” and “Complete The Series” Challenges that include the first 8 books listed above. I’ll be posting about those soon.

2018 Holiday Poem

‘Tis The Season…

To set the table and lay the feast

However plentiful or meager –

The intent matters more than the amount

To welcome those who bless us with their presence

However long or short the stay –

The quality matters more than the span

To celebrate the good and acknowledge the bad

As they affect us in equal measure –

What matters is how we grow from them

So lay out the cookies and milk for Santa with cheer,

And fruit and nuts for Dasher and the reindeer;

Lay out bread and water for the holy husband, mother and child,

And wine and cheese for the roaming revelers wild;

Lay out fishes and meat for the loved ones living,

Leave equal amounts for the dear departed, midnight-visiting.

Light a candle in the window,

Leave a seat at hearth or table,

For the homeless wanderer or

Neighbor in need, as far as you’re able.

“For whatever you do for the least of these,

You do for me.”

May the light and love of the season bring you

Love, Hope, Peace and Prosperity.

MERRY CHRISTMAS,

HAPPY HANUKKAH,

JOYOUS SOLSTICE,

AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Sunday Shorts: Alex Jeffers' YOU WILL MEET A STRANGER FAR FROM HOME

TITLE: You Will Meet A Stranger Far from Home: wonder stories

AUTHOR: Alex Jeffers

196 pages, Lethe Press, paperback and e-book formats, ISBN 9781590211038

DESCRIPTION: (from Amazon): From the acclaimed author of Safe as Houses and The Abode of Bliss, ten wondrous tales of yesterday, today, and tomorrow--of our familiar world and others. An American teenager meets Adonis on a sailing cruise off the coast of Turkey. A merchant of the Silk Road encounters an odd dog--and a brother--from another world. An old lady on a distant planet attempts to help her great-grandson grow up in a world that will soon forget women ever existed. A Massachusetts boy refuses an offer to visit fairyland. Another American teenager on vacation encounters three fallen angels and is transformed. Alex Jeffers's first collection of fantastical stories is a treacherous box of delights.

MY RATING: Four out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: The stories in Jeffers’ 2012 collection run the gamut from full-on fantasy to stories that feel like they have almost no speculative element at all. Some take place in our recognizable “real” world and some in realms of purest imagination. Some have concrete resolutions and some leave the reader, and characters, wondering what just happened or what comes next. What the stories have in common is Jeffers’ style – a style that explicates the commonalities of the lived gay experience across national and religious borders even while keying in on the individual differences that make each of our stories unique. We’ve all felt the thrill of first interest, the sting of unrequited love and first rejection, the fear that our families will not accept who we are, the wish that we could literally and permanently alter the world around us to be (or escape to a world that already is) safer for us than the one we know. Jeffers melds these commonalities, in a number of these stories, to specifically middle-eastern mythology and history, and he wrote these stories just long enough ago that he might have been on the leading edge of the current push to expand fantasy outside of the traditional Western European trappings and tropes.

“Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy” is one of the stories in the book that has a fantasy aspect so subtle I’m still not sure the author even intended it.  An American teenage boy is on a sailboat cruise where he encounters a startingly beautiful Turkish young man among the small crew. It’s a story of infatuation and the struggle to know whether the man you’re attracted to is also gay, it’s a story about coming of age, about navigating other cultures’ norms, about communication. All of these strands weave together to make a wonderful story. There are some dream sequences implied to be more than just dreams, and there’s the possibility the Turkish man is a literal “living legend” from the past, but those hints of the fantastic neither added to nor detracted from the story. “Turning,” about a cast-out young middle eastern man who turns tricks to survive but also gets swept up in the feverish turns of a Dervish dance performance, hinges more on the broken relationships of the protagonists’ past than it does on any possibility that the Dervishes’ dance is in any way actually magical. “The Arab’s Prayer” likewise felt lacking in a speculative element (other than the speculation that eventually same-sex marriage will be legal everywhere in the world).

“Firouz and His Brother” and “Haider and His Dog” are inter-connected stories with a clear narrative through-line that starts with trader Firouz’s discovery of a baby in the wilderness, the titular brother (Haider), defended by an obviously special dog. The action in the first story is clearly in our own world’s past, while the latter moves into a fantasy world that may, if I picked up the clues correctly, also be the world featured in “Then We Went There,” but even in the real-world story the fantasy element is fully realized and key to the story. Gender fluidity is at the core of two of these three stories, as are themes of love and sacrifice. I found myself hoping that neither Firouz’s nor Haider’s stories are really over but have no idea if the author has ever returned to these characters either in the real-world setting or in the fantasy world. “Tattooed Love Boys,” about a girl’s visit to a mysterious tattoo parlor of behalf of her shy older brother, also hinges on changing genders through magical means. It’s the final story in the book and perhaps the strongest in terms of feeling complete and satisfying for both the reader and the characters.

"Jannicke’s Cat" is the one science fiction tale in the collection, dealing with life on a colony planet where something has happened to prevent the birth of female children. Women are dying out, and one of the last few remaining is dealing with family loss and cultural shift. Jannicke is in a situation that mirrors how drastically life has changed for people born in the early 1900s who lived to see the early 2000s, feeling left behind, anachronistic, but still wanting to contribute something to the future of her world. “Liam and the Wild Fairy” is the only story in the collection I had previously read, and this revisit in the context of the rest of the connection really brought out the themes of found family and being comfortable with who we are versus who we were born as.

One note that did not affect the number of stars I gave the book. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Simon Relph. I loved Relph’s voice; smooth and warm (and sensual when appropriate), inviting you into each story and into each new character. But there were some editing choices that stuck out to me – the primary one being in the story “Turning,” where distinct breaks between scenes of the present, recent past, and legend needed to be clearer that they were. I had a hard time following the story because the clear breaks indicated by the story were not present in the audio format.

Review of Arion Golmakani's SOLACERS

TITLE: Solacers: An Iranian Oliver Twist story: a memoir

AUTHOR: Arion Golmakani

331 pages, Bowker, paperback and e-book formats, ISBN 978-0989898157

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Solacers tells the touching story of a boy's search for family life and safety following the divorce of his parents in Iran during the 1960’s. The first child of a heartless father and a discarded mother is left to fend for himself on the streets of Mashhad, seeking food and shelter wherever he can. His lonely early years are an unbelievable tale of cruelty and betrayal on the part of nearly everyone who might be expected to help, save for one aunt who does her best to keep him from starving. But living a harsh and solitary existence has one advantage for this little boy: other than forcing him to be self-reliant, no one attempts to indoctrinate him on Iranian society's archaic cultural values and religious beliefs. And so, he never accepts his wretched state as fate, choosing instead to dream big dreams about getting an education, having his own family, and starting a new life – possibly in the faraway land called America. He makes a plan and by the age of 17 he boards a plane to the land of possibilities, where his dreams eventually also take flight.

MY RATING: Four out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: Solacers is not an easy book to read. The author’s storytelling style is breezy and friendly enough, but the subject matter is almost unrelentingly raw. I kept having to set the book down, thinking “how could anyone treat a child this way?” As unfathomable as the behavior of most of the adults in Alireza (Arion) Golmakani’s childhood might be to me, a middle-class American with parents who weren’t perfect but were always present, it is entirely real and too common still. Poverty of the level Golmakani describes isn’t a thing of the third world countries past – it still exists today even in prosperous nations like the United States and Canada. And that’s what makes this very personal memoir so universal and so eye-opening.

It is the 1960s, well before Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Alireza’s childhood is spent mostly homeless in a small northern Iranian city. He and his life are about as far removed from politics as one can get, so we don’t really get an eye towards how Iran was interacting on the world stage at the time – Golmakani leaves that to history books to discuss (except towards the end, when a nearly-adult Alireza joins the military and applies to be sent to study abroad in the United States). Th book otherwise is a very street-level look at family, city and religion and how they intertwine to keep Alireza in the horrible conditions he somehow (with the limited aid of those he calls ‘solacers’) to survive.

The book’s subtitle comparison to Charles Dickens’ classic work is apt, as Alireza is bounced between his estranged parents and a multitude of foster homes and fending for himself on the street. I suspect that had Golmakani totally fictionalized the story, reviewers would have said the tale was almost too Dickensian in terms of the characters. There’s the plucky street rat kid; distant but ultimately loving foster mother and brother (the true ‘solacers’ of the title, although there are points where even they spectacularly fail the boy); the brute of a birth father who physically and emotionally abuses everyone; the heroic stepfather with feet of clay that prohibit him from being the man Alireza needs him to be; the loving grandfather who dies too early; the birth mother whose own abuse at her ex-husband’s and lack of self-worth enable her to abandon her son. Alireza’s relationship with any one of these people would be the stuff of awards-nominated novels and Oscar-bait films, and in real life the boy dealt with, and survived, all of them.

And here’s the remarkable thing: despite how horribly most of these adults let the pre-teen and teen Alireza down, often putting him in dangerous, potentially life-threatening situations time and again, the author chooses to concentrate on the love (as limited and fallible as it was) he was given, the solace he received from sometimes unexpected quarters. He returns time and again to complimenting the foster mother and brother who made sure he got an education even though they often left him alone for the summer months, and the aunt and grandmother who occasionally were able to give him a place to sleep and hand-me-down clothes even when they were too poor to feed him along with their own families. Even his descriptions of his mother’s abandonment, moving with her new husband and children to Tehran, is tempered with a hindsight understanding of why she was the way she was (obsessive-compulsive, guilt-ridden, and beaten down).

Throughout the book, it is clear that the adult Arion Golmakani is grateful for what little scraps of support and affection he was shown. It is telling that he chooses to name the book in honor of those providers of limited solace rather than focusing on those who so drastically failed him. I marvel at his ability to see the positive in the worst situations as much as I marvel at how he managed to survive and rise above.

READING ROUND-UP: MAY 2018

Being the fourth of my monthly reading summaries for 2018. Here’s what I read in May:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 15 books in May: 9 in print, 2 in audio, and 4 in ebook format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #96 (May, 2018) edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual great assortment of science fiction and fantasy short stories and non-fiction. Favorites this issue were Martin Cahill’s “Godmeat,”, Kodiak Julian’s “Our Side of the Door”, Xia Jia’s “Night Journey of the Dragon Horse,” and Tobias Buckell’s “Sunset.”

2.        E is for Evil edited by Rhonda Parrish. The latest in Poise and Pen Publishing’s “Alphabet anthologies” is another fun collection of stories of varying lengths built around the title theme, in this case “evil” in all its forms. The fun of this series is not knowing the story title (“A is for [fill in the blank]”) until after the story concludes. Some entries are easy to guess, some are nice surprises that make you look at the story differently after the fact. Two of my favorites in this volume were by Beth Cato and Jeanne Kramer-Smyth.

3.       Scourged (Iron Druid Chronicles #9) by Kevin Hearne. The concluding volume, at least for now, in Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles is, without spoilers, a very satisfactory finish: every major plot and pretty much every sub-plot introduced in the previous 8 novels and various novellas and short stories is wrapped up without sacrificing story flow, action, or urgency. It literally has all been leading to this. If I have any complaint, it’s that Owen’s subplot feels a bit too disconnected from the rest of the book.

4.       Perennial: a garden romance by Mary Anne Mohanraj. A beautiful little romantic novella featuring a cancer patient, a flower-shop owner, and poetry the author wrote during her own cancer struggle. I re-read it several times, and posted a longer review a few weeks ago.

5.       Iceman Vol 2: Absolute Zero by Sina Grace and Robert Gill. I enjoyed the second volume of Grace’s run as writer on Iceman’s solo series almost as much as I enjoyed the first volume. Grace continues to show the coming out process for the occasional mess it can be – I can’t pick out just one or two moments out of the many that felt so real. As a fan of relatively-obscure super-teams, I loved the way Grace scripted, and Robert Gill illustrated, the reunion of Marvel’s 1970’s Champions team in the first half of the book.

6.       Strange Weather by Joe Hill. This collection of four novellas felt sort of hit-or-miss to me. “Snapshot” (narrated on the audiobook by Wil Wheaton) and “Rain” (narrated by Kate Mulgrew) were my favorites: tightly-told stories in first person POV with high stakes that were believable despite the supernatural aspects. “Aloft” (narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris) felt about a third too long for the story Hill was trying to tell. “Loaded” (narrated by Stephen Lang) is a topical and politically charged story that feels like it should be an “all-star cast” ensemble movie.

7.       The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories by Alex Shvartsman. A really wonderful collection of science fiction and fantasy stories, many of them humorous. Favorites included the title story and “The Race for Arcadia.” Posted a review earlier this week.

8.       The Wicked and the Divine Vol 2: The Faust Act by Keiron Gillen, Jamie McElvie, Matt Wilson. The first volume of a graphic novel series that’s been around a while but which I’m just getting around to reading. The premise (every 90 years or so, a small handful of gods are incarnated into human form to influence world culture) feels simple enough, but within the first 25 pages the story starts to take interesting turns. And of course the volume ends with a hook (but not a cliffhanger) to get you to keep reading. McElvie’s art is expressive and dynamic.

9.       Captain Marvel, Vol 1: Higher, Faster, Stronger, by Kelly Sue DeConnick and David Lopez. There’s a lot of DC and Marvel stuff I’ve been meaning to read, including DeConnick’s run as writer on Captain Marvel. I suspect I started with the wrong “volume 1,” as back-of-book ads and story subplots indicate there’s an earlier DeConnick run I probably should have read first. Nonetheless I found the story accessible for someone who hasn’t picked monthly comics up in years. The story builds and has legitimately interesting twists (rather than twists present for shock’s sake alone). Lopez’s art is clean and stream-lined.

10.   Red Sonja / Claw the Unconquered: The Devil’s Hand by John Layman, Andy Smith. I loved both of these characters back in the day. I only liked this story. It was decent, but I didn’t feel drawn in to either the story or captivated by the art.

11.   Hercules: Still Going Strong by Dan Abnett and Luke Ross. I remember ads for Marvel’s “all-new, all-different Hercules” run, but didn’t realize it was short enough to fit into one graphic novel and basically incomplete. I like what Abnett attempted to do, turning what we know about Marvel’s Hercules upside down, and was intrigued by the new gods / old gods threat (shades of Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”). I would have liked to have seen where he would have gone with the story given more than six monthly issues. And I really liked how detailed and realistic Luke Ross’s art was.

12.   You Will Meet A Stranger Far From Home: Wonder Stories by Alex Jeffers. A really solid collection of fantasy (or fantasy-tinged) stories featuring a cast of gay, mostly Arabic characters and hinging heavily on Middle Eastern legends and mythology. One or two of the stories have fantasy aspects that are barely even noticeable, and several of the stories are clearly inter-connected. Favorites included "Tattooed Love Boys," "Jannicke's Cat," "Farouz and His Brother" / "Haida and His Dog," and "Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy."

13.   Solacers: An Iranian Oliver Twist Story by Arion Golmakani. One of my “To Be Read” 2018 challenge titles, a more detailed review will be forthcoming on the blog. Short version is that I found this an intriguing look at Iranian culture before the Shah fell couched in a very personal, and often very painful, life story.

14.   Madman Walking (Janet Moodie #2) by L.F. Robertson I found the second entry in the Janet Moodie legal thriller series easily accessible even not having read the first entry. As I was sent an ARC of this to review, there will be a more detailed review coming up next week on the blog.

15.   The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag. A really wonderful middle-grade graphic novel about a magical family in which the boys are shapeshifters and the girls witches, and in which very strong gender roles are enforced, resulting in a dark family secret that title character Aster must deal with. The art is expressive without being over-detailed, never quite jumping into cartoony. A world I hope the author will continue to revisit.

That’s 15 books in February, to a Year-To-Date total of 68, which Goodreads says me puts me 26 books ahead of schedule for my 100 Books Challenge.  Solacers was this month’s read for the 2018 To Be Read Challenge. I read 6 graphic novels for the “one graphic novel per week” reading challenge (I’m at 23 graphic novels for the year, and as the last full week of May was week #21 of 2018 I’m now a little ahead for the year-to-date). Solacers also counted towards the Bustle Challenge. I didn’t read anything towards any of my “Complete the Series” challenges in May. All but the To Be Read Challenge were described HERE.

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 did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “Sunset” by Tobias Buckell, from Lightspeed #96, May 2018, edited by John Joseph Adams

2.       “We Will Be All Right” by Carolyn Ives Gilman

3.       “The Crystal Spheres” by David Brin

4.       “A Green Moon Problem” by Jane Lindskold

5.       “Godmeat” By Martin Cahill

6.       “Night Journey of the Dragon Horse” by Xia Jia (translated from Chinese by Ken Liu)

7.       “Our Side of the Door” by Kodiak Julian

8.        “His Artist Wifee” by John Grant

9.       “Great Work of Time” by John Crowley

10.    “Goodnight, Sleep Tight” by Seanan McGuire, from the author’s Patreon page

11.   “Snapshot” by Joe Hill, from the author’s collection Strange Weather

12.   “Loaded” by Joe Hill

13.   “Aloft” by Joe Hill

14.   “Rain” by Joe Hill

15.   “We Go Together” by Eric McMillan, from One Story #239 (March 15, 2018)

16.   “Mt. Adams at Mar Vista” by Gwen E. Kirby, from One Story #240 (April 19, 2018)

17.   “Sanguinary Scar” by E. Catherine Tobler, from Black Static #62 (March/April, 2018)

18.   “The Golem of Deneb Seven” by Alex Shvartsman, from the author’s collection The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories

19.   “A Perfect Medium for Unrequited Love” by Alex Shvartsman

20.   “Burying Treasure” by Alex Shvartsman

21.   “Noun of Nouns: A Mini-Epic” by Alex Shvartsman

22.   “Whom He May Devour” by Alex Shvartsman

23.   “Letting Go” by Alex Shvartsman

24.   “The Fiddle Game” by Alex Shvartsman

25.   “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Monsters” by Alex Shvartsman

26.   “Islands in the Sargasso” by Alex Shvartsman

27.   “Catalogue of Items in the Chess Exhibit at the Humanities Museum, Pre-Enlightenment Era” by Alex Shvartsman

28.   “Fifteen Minutes” by Alex Shvartsman

29.   “Masquerade Night” by Alex Shvartsman

30.   “The Poet Kings and the Word Plague” by Alex Shvartsman

31.   “Golf to the Death” by Alex Shvartsman

32.   “Staff Meeting, As Seen By the Spam Filter” by Alex Shvartsman

33.   “Invasive Species” by Alex Shvartsman

34.   “One in a Million” by Alex Shvartsman

35.   “Grains of Wheat” by Alex Shvartsman

36.   “The Ganthu Eggs” by Alex Shvartsman

37.   “The Practical Guide to Punching Nazis” by Alex Shvartsman

38.   “Dante’s Unfinished Business” by Alex Shvartsman

39.   “Forty-Seven Dictums of Warfare” by Alex Shvartsman

40.   “How Gaia and Guardian Saved the World” by Alex Shvartsman

41.   “He Who Watches” by Alex Shvartsman

42.   “Recall Notice” by Alex Shvartsman

43.   “Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Chanukah” by Alex Shvartsman

44.   “Die, Miles Cornbloom” by Alex Shvartsman

45.   “A Man in an Angel Costume” by Alex Shvartsman

46.   “Future Fragments, Six Seconds Long” by Alex Shvartsman

47.   “Parametrization of Complex Weather Patterns for Two Variables” by Alex Shvartsman

48.   “The Race for Arcadia” by Alex Shvartsman

49.   “Departures” by Sara Batkie, from One Story #241 (May 17, 2018)

50.   “Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy” by Alex Jeffers, from the author’s collection You Will Meet A Stranger Far From Home

51.   “The Arab’s Prayer” by Alex Jeffers

52.   “Then We Went There” by Alex Jeffers

53.   “Farouz and His Brother” by Alex Jeffers

54.   “Turning” by Alex Jeffers

55.   “Haida and His Dog” by Alex Jeffers

56.   “Jannicke’s Cat” by Alex Jeffers

57.   “Liam and the Wild Fairy” by Alex Jeffers

58.   “Bann’s Dream of the Sea” by Alex Jeffers

59.   “Tattooed Love Boys” by Alex Jeffers

So that’s 59 short stories in May, way more than one per day, bringing me Year-To-Date to 177 stories. As May 30th was the 151th day of the year, this puts me 26 stories ahead of schedule for the year so far.

Review of L.F. Robertson's MADMAN WALKING

TITLE: Madman Walking (Janet Moodie #2)

AUTHOR: L.F. Robertson

376 pages, Titan Books, paperback and e-book formats, ISBN 9781785652837

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Howard Henley is not an easy case. After a disastrous attempt to defend himself, his only chance of escaping the death penalty is an appeal, and lawyer Janet Moodie is called in to work the investigation. The client is uncooperative, likely schizophrenic, although he’s never let a psychiatrist near him long enough to get a proper diagnosis. Convicted of arranging the shooting of a drug dealer, even on death row Howard doesn’t seem to understand the severity of his situation. It is up to Janet to discover just what was done and by whom, and to determine whether to risk putting her client on trial again.

MY RATING: Three out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: disclaimer: I received an Advanced Reading Copy from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review. I’m a bit late in providing that review, as the book was released on May 15th, 2018.

I’ve struggled a little bit with composing this review, wanting to judge the book on what it is rather than what I expected it to be. Based on the back cover copy, the trailer-park cover art, and the set-up of Howard Henley’s character in the first few chapters, I was expecting something a bit grittier, more fast-paced and action-packed. What we get instead is a slow-paced, character-filled series of courtroom scenes interspersed with potential witness interviews and a large dollop of what series lead Janet Moodie’s personal life is like. While it wasn’t at all what I was expecting, it was still an interesting read.

What I found most interesting was Robertson’s far more real-life-like description of the legal proceedings. Television police procedurals and movie thrillers make it seem like police investigation and court proceedings resolve themselves in the space of a few sound cues, and of course that’s far from true. Janet Moodie’s involvement in Howard’s case takes the better part of a year in the characters’ lives, overlapping with other cases she’s involved in which are peripherally mentioned. (And that’s outside of the over ten years Howard is in prison for the crime after his own botched self-defense.)  The slow, meticulous descriptions of the hearing scenes as Janet and co-counsel Mike try to convince a judge that there’s sufficient new evidence to warrant a new trial pulled me in, and really made me think about what the legal process is like, how slow the gears of justice grind. They were the most compelling parts of the book.

The voice Robertson gives her main character, in first-person narrative, is breezy and easy to relate to. There’s not a lot of heavy description of rooms and environment and people – Janet describes things the way most people would when asked “hey, tell that story about the time you defended…” Just enough detail to help us picture, not so much that it feels unnatural as conversation versus journal entry. I left the book feeling like Janet Moodie is someone I could sit and chat with over a nice coffee – or maybe some of her homemade apple cider. She’s nice. She’s smart and efficient, but down-to-earth. Her story is littered with personal trauma (the suicide of a husband) and missed opportunities (her now-grown son lives happily in Australia) and full of neighbors and former co-workers who seem equally nice. The ratio of personal scenes to courtroom events is roughly equal and really gives a good sense of who Janet is. And there’s even an adorable dog companion. There are also a few hints to what happened in the first book in the series, but presented in such a way that a reader new to the series with this book (as I was) will not feel lost; it was only after finishing the book that I read a blurb for “Two Lost Boys” and found out which of the previous clients mentioned had actually been the focus of that book.

Where the book lost me a little bit was in the presentation of Howard Henley. In an effort to prove how disconnected from reality the man is, the author puts just a little bit too much emphasis on the idea that there’s a conspiracy behind why he’s in jail when his innocence is pretty plain. The actions of certain supporting characters throughout the book make it feel like Howard’s theory is not just schizophrenic paranoia. The combination of these two strands, repeated several times throughout the book, had me expecting a twist or reveal that never comes. Don’t mistake me – there are plenty of actual twists and red herrings in the book that all make sense / make for great mis-directs … which is why the emphasis on the conspiracy theory aspect felt even more forced, one more misdirect than the book actually needed. And that detracted from my enjoyment of the book just enough that I ultimately have to say I liked it, but it didn’t totally blow me away. That said, I’d probably read another book in the series simply based on Janet Moodie’s conversational voice and the author’s clear knowledge of the legal system.

Sunday Shorts: Alex Shvartsman's The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories

TITLE: The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories

AUTHOR: Alex Shvartsman

266 pages, UFO Publishing, paperback and e-book formats, ISBN 9781986220613

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): 31 science fiction and fantasy short stories encompassing hard SF, fantasy humor, and everything in-between: Refugees with a salvaged mech suit find that family ties are stronger than armor. Two artificial intelligences in love turn the world into their playground. A modern-day Dante is guided through hell by the ghost of Bob Marley. Ancient gods and monsters stalk the halls of a 1920s night club. A young woman must save her planet by committing an act of terror. In the rekindled space race between the United States, Russia, and India, the winner might be the nation willing to sacrifice the most. And more.

MY RATING: Five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: disclaimer: I received a digital Advanced Reading Copy from UFO Publishing in exchange for an honest review. I’m also a bit late in providing that review, as the book has been available in print and e-formats since mid-March. But better late than never, yeah?

The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories is Alex Shvartsman’s second collection of short stories, following 2015’s Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories. The new volume continues the first volume’s diversity and quality. The stories bounce across, and often combine, genres and frequently have a humorous aspect (sometimes subtle, sometimes slapstick). There’s a winking tone to even the most serious of these stories, a “we’re in this together, dear reader” style that immediately tells you it’s a Shvartsman story. I count this recognizability as a good thing, much in the way you pretty much always know if you’re reading a Neil Gaiman or Seanan McGuire story.

A good portion of the stories in this collection are flash fiction, roughly 1,500 words or less. So it’s easy to discern that not only does the author enjoy working at that length, he’s particularly adept at it. Every one of the shorter form stories tells a complete story and packs a punch (humorous or otherwise). I’m always impressed with authors who can squeeze so much into so small a space and still make me feel for the characters or connect with the setting. These shorter stories are also the more humorous, for instance “Noun of Nouns,” a send-up of epic fantasy tropes (at the opposite end of epic length) and “Recall Notice,” a Lovecraft pastiche. Sometimes, the humor is grim as in “Invasive Species,” which turns on human hubris and our penchant for thinking our way is the only way.

Several of the stories, “A Perfect Medium for Unrequited Love,” “Staff Meeting, As Seen By the Spam Filter” and “How Gaia and Guardian Saved The World” among them, look at Artificial Intelligence and how human-like, or not so, they might be. These three stories have distinctly different tones but share a belief that AI are not necessarily destined to turn on humans and eradicate us – a refreshing change from so much of the sf that focuses on artificial intelligence. (Although not every story about AI in the book carries that theme – “Fifteen Minutes” is a much darker AI tale.)

Shvartsman also excels at the “listicle” style of short story. “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Monsters,” “The Practical Guide to Punching Nazis,” and “Catalogue of Items in the Chess Exhibit at the Humanities Museum, Pre-Enlightenment Wing” are all told in list-form and yet contain both delightful twists on where the narrative goes and great social commentary.

The collection’s start-, mid-, and end-points are longer stories that showcase Shvartsman’s wonderful ability to marry character to plot and make the unusual recognizable. Opening story “The Golem of Deneb Seven” shows us frontier life in wartime and how the past influences the future through the eyes of a young girl distancing herself from parental idolization; “Golf to the Death” is a hysterical twist on interstellar Olympics and codes of conduct through the eyes of a soldier conscripted because he’s the only one available who is any good at the chosen sport; and closing story “The Race For Arcadia” brings the Cold War Space Race into sharp new perspective through the eyes of a terminally-ill scientist. All three stories comment on the way governments will go to any length to win (or at least, not lose) – whether what’s being sought is revisionist history, dominance over another culture, or bragging rights.

A review of this length can’t possibly comment on every one of the 39 stories in this collection, but hopefully I’ve given you an idea of the breadth of genres and depth of subject matter Alex Shvartsman covers; there literally is something for everyone between these covers. (There’s even one story that has no sf/fantasy/horror element at all, just a straight-up mystery!) Highly recommended.