Review of A BLOODY BUSINESS

TITLE: A Bloody Business: The Rise of Organized Crime in America

AUTHOR: Dylan Struzan

640 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785657702 (hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): On the 100th anniversary of Prohibition, learn what really happened. In 1919, the National Prohibition Act was passed, making it illegal across America to produce, distribute, or sell liquor. With this act, the U.S. Congress also created organized crime as we know it. Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs sprang up to supply the suddenly illegal commodity to the millions of people still eager to drink it. Men like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz and Bugsy Siegel, Al Capone in Chicago and Nucky Johnson in Atlantic City, waged a brutal war for power in the streets and on the waterfronts. But if you think you already know this story… think again, since you’ve never seen it through the eyes of one of the mobsters who lived it.

Called “one of the most significant organized crime figures in the United States” by the U.S. District Attorney, Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo was just fifteen years old when Prohibition became law. Over the next decade, Alo would work side by side with Lansky and Luciano as they navigated the brutal underworld of bootlegging, thievery and murder. Alo’s later career included jail time and the ultimate Mob tribute: being immortalized as “Johnny Ola” in The Godfather, Part II.

Introduced to the 91-year-old Alo living in retirement in Florida, Dylan Struzan based this book on more than 50 hours of recorded testimony – stories Alo had never shared, and that he forbid her to publish until “after I’m gone.” Alo died, peacefully, two months short of his 97th birthday. And now his stories – bracing and violent, full of intrigue and betrayal, hunger and hubris – can finally be told.

MY RATING: four out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: The only appropriate word to describe Dylan Struzan’s A Bloody Business is “epic.” Dozens of major characters, court intrigue, romance, god-like manipulations, massive bloodshed, a decade-plus time-span in which characters are born, age, and die … change the names and the time period and you’ve got Homer, add mythological creatures and you’ve got Tolkien or Martin. The story of Prohibition, as told here, is every bit the compelling story The Iliad and The Lord of the Rings are.

Struzan’s style, from first page to last, is clipped, staccato, like the tommy-guns the protagonists wield (although not as frequently as gangster movies would have us believe). She keeps the pace fast even in the quieter moments, squeezing 13 years of machinations and scheming into 640 pages in a combination of history text and novel. It’s “creative non-fiction” and Struzan makes it work; the dialogue (mostly, I’m sure, invented from Jimmy Alo’s memories and hearsay) mingled with non-mob-related historical data (mostly confirmable pop culture and government changes) keep the story from feeling stale. The sensory details of city life are used sparingly, but when they pop up they add verisimilitude. There were a few moments when I really felt the cold of NYC winters, the salt tang of Coney Island and Atlantic City boardwalks, thanks to a few well-placed phrases. Interestingly, I don’t recall now the same level of sensory detail used in the Chicago, Cleveland, or Florida scenes.

Struzan resists the twin temptations of setting Lansky, Luciano and company on a pedestal or demonizing them. Meyer Lansky, Benny Siegel and Charlie Luciano are the protagonists of the story, but Struzan doesn’t pretend they were heroes or perfect. All of their flaws and foibles are well on display, alongside the character traits that made them men other men wanted to follow. Al Capone doesn’t come off quite as well-rounded: Struzan concentrates on his unpredictability both before and after the Valentine’s Day Massacre took such a toll on his mental well-being. The antagonists of the story are the Sicilian-Italian “old guard” (Joe the Boss, Salvatore Maranzano, and others) who are waging all-out gang war. Struzan tries to get into their heads as well, but it doesn’t feel as successful. Of the men named in the back-cover copy, I had to feel a little bad for Nucky Johnson. Even the scenes set in Atlantic City barely featured him. Irish mobsters like Legs Diamond and Eddie McGrath get more screen-time, being in New York City and northeast New Jersey, than the more southerly-located Johnson does. The implication is that while Johnson’s control of AC was integral to the movement of booze during Prohibition, he wasn’t as important to the actual growth of organized crime as his peers were.

The author also doesn’t shy away from the violence that was part and parcel of these men’s lives. The gun-play, the beatings, the bombings, are all spelled out – as are the details of who made the decisions and how they felt about it. The Valentine’s Day Massacre isn’t the only big event spelled out in bloody detail. Some scenes are definitely not an easy read.

If there’s any disappointment I felt with the book, it’s that Jimmy Alo – whose fifty hours of recorded stories the book is based on – gets short shrift in his own story. Granted, he came into the picture later than Lansky, Luciano and Siegel. But I expected, once he did join the story, to see more of what he was doing even when it was tangential to the story of the “big three.” Maybe Struzan has another book in the works specifically about Jimmy Blue Eyes. I’d like to read it.

The cover and copious interior illustrations by Drew Struzan enhance the story. They’re almost photo-realistic, a bit Norman Rockwell, a bit art deco, often with an interesting balance between innocence and violence.

SERIES SATURDAY: Beth Cato's Blood of Earth Trilogy

This is the first of a new series of posts 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.

For this inaugural edition, I’m going to ramble on a bit about a recently-concluded trilogy which I absolutely loved:  Beth Cato’s Blood of Earth Trilogy.

The Blood of Earth trilogy is a magic-infused alternate history with steampunk trappings. The setting is various cities in the western United States, plus a short jaunt to Hawaii at a pivotal moment. It is 1906, just before the great San Francisco Earthquake. The United States and Japan have formed a powerful alliance called the Unified Pacific. China has been subjugated by Japan while Chinese in America are ghettoized, stereotyped, and removed from all chances at equal opportunities. Tensions along the western seaboard are mounting as Chinese residents are treated with less and less humanity – at the same time that the Unified Pacific also seems to be having political disagreements with the British (who have their own insurrection going on) and Russians (who are moving to control the Alaskan oil market).

Kermanite, a mined ore that can hold earth-generated magical energy for later use, is the “power behind the throne.” It’s used to power items small and great, allowing this alternate Earth to have flying ships and weapons which are steam-punk in design and execution if not operation. Some people are more capable of wielding this earth-magic than others; Wardens are stationed around the world to monitor, absorb, and control the energy released by seismic activity. The Wardens are all men – because the idea that a woman could wield such power is just unthinkable in this society. And the idea of a woman of mixed heritage holding such power is not only unthinkable, it’s unfathomable.

Enter Ingrid Carmichael: a powerful magic-user hiding in plain sight as a secretary to a powerful San Francisco-based Warden because women shouldn’t be able to do even an eighth of what she can do. Trained by Warden Sakaguchi from childhood and past the untimely death of her mother, Ingrid is strong-willed. But also knows how to blend in – half Black, half Pacific Islander, and a woman, she kind of has to be able to navigate the anti-Asian, and specifically anti-Chinese, sentiments around her.

Ingrid’s best friend is Lee – a Chinese teen servant/surrogate son to Mr. Sakaguchi who has secrets of his own that come into play as the series progresses. Mr. Sakaguchi is a surrogate father to Ingrid as well, given the disappearance of her own father when she was a small child.

Early in the first book, Ingrid meets the handsome, smart, secretive Cy, who is on the run as a Deserter, trying to leave warmongering family history behind. Cy is accompanied by his best friend from the military academy, Fenris – an incredible mechanic/engineer/pilot who is full of heart but acts gruff and uncaring. Fenris, as it turns out, is transgender. Cato works this fact in smoothly, as just another character fact no more or less important than Ingrid’s heritage or Cy’s family history.

Outside of Mr. Sakaguchi, the rest of the Wardens we meet are questionable at best, enemies at worst. When we meet Warden Blum – a powerful Japanese politician – and Warden Roosevelt – yes, Teddy Roosevelt – we’re not sure if they will be friends or foes to Ingrid. Roosevelt is the one “real” historical supporting character in the series. His presence grounds the story in our own history. Cato’s portrayal isn’t always flattering, but I think she captures the real Roosevelt very well – for every national park he created, he said or did something to marginalize people of color, and Cato captures that dichotomy so very well.

But while the presence of Roosevelt and cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and such make the world familiar, it’s the magic and the way it works (for peace and for war) that is the most impressive part of the world-building. Magical creatures exist, ranging from the almost-unknowable (giant snakes that live in seismic fault lines and whose movements generate the earth-magic at the core of the story), to the mighty (Chinese guardian spirits called Quilin, the goddess Pele) to the human-ish (kitsune, selkies) to the tiny (colonies of sylphs). Cato’s explanations for how magical energy is generated, the sickening effects it can have on those not talented enough to hold and control it, the way the Kermanite stores it and releases it – all feel so complete, so true, that every time the ground shakes I wonder if someone nearby is absorbing the energy to protect the rest of us. And the uses to which the magic is put feel very true to our own world. Some people just want to use it to heal (Reiki and acupuncture specialists), help (Ingrid) or build (Cy and Fenris, peripherally), while others want to use it to control (various wardens/politicians) or destroy (the Japanese government and certain insurrectionists). And while our main characters clearly choose sides/roles early on, there are many characters who start out believing one choice is correct and come to see the opposite (telling you who would spoil too much of the second and third books).

The character-building is as impressive as the world-building. Almost every main and supporting character has an arc to be explored. Some of those arcs build slower than others, and there’s at least one character I wish had had more of a storyline, but they all get to have their own moments and lives even while serving the main plot. Even tertiary characters have personality and a living energy often missing from characters who come on stage only to serve a brief purpose / propel the action forward. Ingrid is a wonderfully strong-willed lead character, but that’s not her only trait. She’s insecure about her abilities and what effect they will have if she can’t control them; she’s sometimes head-strong to a fault; she swings from too-trusting to too-suspicious (sometimes at inconvenient times); she pushes herself beyond her limits to save others; she is funny, smart, and romantic. In other words, real and well-rounded. And Cy is almost totally the same – the old saying “opposites attract” is put to the lie here – without subverting Ingrid’s lead role in her own story. And make no mistake: though surrounded by interesting subplots for her group of supporting characters, this trilogy is Ingrid’s story – Ingrid’s fight to hone her abilities, uncover her family’s past, defeat the enemies and save the day. Beth Cato is a fantastic author, and I’m sure she could tell interesting stories in this world without Ingrid if she really wanted to – but she couldn’t tell this story without Ingrid involved every step of the way, up to the very satisfactory end of book three, in which all plots and important subplots are wrapped up.

So: read the Blood of Earth trilogy if you like magic-infused alternate history, strong female leads, diverse supporting casts, steampunk-ish technology, and legends come to life. I’d be surprised if you were disappointed at all.

Review of BROTHERS KEEPERS

TITLE: Brothers Keepers

AUTHOR: Donald E. Westlake

304 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785657153 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover) “Bless Me Father, For I Have Rented.”  What will a group of monks do when their two-century-old monastery in New York City is threatened with demolition to make room for a new high-rise? Anything they have to. “Thou Shalt Not Steal” is only the first of the Commandments to be broken as the saintly face off against the unscrupulous over that most sacred of relics, a Park Avenue address.

MY RATING: four out of five stars (check this on Goodreads to be sure)

MY THOUGHTS:

While the cover art by Paul Mann makes the novel look like a Bondian spy adventure, Brothers Keepers is yet another fun caper novel from the great Donald E. Westlake (and seriously, I know I say this every time I review a Hard Case Crime Westlake re-release, but … how did I make it so long without reading any Westlake at all? Every title of his HCC has released, I’ve loved).  It’s almost a Shakespearean comedy: there’s manipulation, mistaken identities, sexual innuendo and actual sex (on the beach and near it), cunning wordplay, and (spoiler alert) a happy ending, of course. It’s light, frothy, funny – but also a bit philosophical.

The monks in question are of the Crispinite Order of the Novum Mundum – dedicated to the contemplation of Travel, but not to Traveling itself, unless absolutely necessary. Yes. An order founded by an immigrant who was visited by the patron saints of Travel wherein the members actually dislike the very idea of Travel and do their best to stay safely walled off from the world. So of course, some of them end up having to leave the monastery for more than just the time it takes to go buy the Sunday paper at a nearby newsstand, and hilarity ensues. But in among the humorous stuff, Westlake allows us to think about the nature of Travel, of how it’s changed over the past few centuries as technology has made it easier for us to work farther from home and to get from point A to point B, and of how the increased ability to Travel has changed the way people relate and react to each other. That he accomplishes this without browbeating the reader is a testament to his ability as a storyteller.

Our narrator is Brother Benedict, who came to the monastery on the rebound from a failed relationship. If that’s not a trope, I don’t know what is – but Westlake tweaks it in subtle ways, giving Benedict depth and a compelling character voice. He’s a simple man and the life, and lack of temptation, suits him. Of course, temptation gets thrown in his lap, in the form of the daughter of the landlord selling the property.  For me, Eileen Flattery was the weak point in the novel. She never quite rises above being a spoiled, disaffected rich girl, just as the rest of her family and close circle of friends never rise about being selfish (at worst) or self-absorbed (at best). Benedict’s interest in her catches her attention, but it’s more the novelty of getting a monk to renege on his vows, and how her parents will react, than love of Benedict himself that motivates her.

It turns out that while the monastery itself can’t be sold, the land it was built on certainly can be, and the transfer of ownership is virtually complete. There’s a clause in the lease that would give the monks options to fight, but the original lease can’t be found, even though it should rightly be in the monastery office. The shenanigans involved in attempting to find the lease and other primary documents that would support court action are probably the funniest in the novel. Dusty attics, illuminated manuscripts made from mundane documents, art projects left behind by previous Abbots of the monastery … all are props the author uses to shine a light on the personalities, and previous life experiences, of Benedict’s fellow monks. The monks aren’t treated as one-note jokes or as a uniform species; all of their backstories are explored in small moments and bits of dialogue that give them real dimension. There’s a former banker, a former lawyer, a former conman, a former political activist, and more. Each of their knowledge bases comes to play, but it’s Brother Benedict who ends up having to Travel further than any to convince Eileen to help them.

It’s no surprise that our narrator turns out to be the least worldly man among his peers, and this sets up an interesting counterpoint: the monk most willing to Travel on the monastery’s behalf is the one with the least experience in navigating the world outside the monastery. Benedict’s travails and temptations make up the middle of the book and his wide-eyed innocence makes them funnier than they’d be if told in any voice but his own.

I don’t want to give away too much about how that previously-mentioned happy ending comes about, because Westlake slyly tweaks the typical “third act reversal and reveal” model. Suffice to say, the last third of the book is as fun and tongue-in-cheek as the rest of the book.

If you’re looking for a fun romp, this is definitely a book worth picking up.

Review of EXIT PLANS FOR TEENAGE FREAKS

TITLE: Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks

AUTHOR: ‘Nathan Burgoine

234 pages, Bold Stroke Books, ISBN 9781635550986 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Being the kid abducted by old Ms. Easton when he was four permanently set Cole’s status to freak. At seventeen, his exit plan is simple: make it through the last few weeks of high school with his grades up and his head down. When he pushes through the front door of the school and finds himself eighty kilometers away holding the door of a museum he was just thinking about, Cole faces facts: he’s either more deluded than old Ms. Easton, or he just teleported.

Now every door is an accident waiting to happen – especially when Cole thinks about Malik, who, it turns out, has a glass door on his shower. When he starts seeing the same creepy people over his shoulder, no matter how far he’s gone, crushes become the least of his worries. They want him to stop, and they’ll go to any length to make it happen. Cole is running out of luck, excuses, and places to hide.

Time for a new exit plan.

MY RATING: five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS:

‘Nathan Burgoine’s YA science fiction debut is fast, funny, heart-warming, angsty (without being angst-ridden), refreshing, authentic … and it is populated by one of the most diverse casts of teen characters I’ve ever encountered.

The first-person narration by Cole is so authentic -- he’s not just another snappy-sarcastic gay boy (although he has his moments). He is occasionally clumsy (physically and verbally), sometimes confused about where his life is headed, but always thinking about his friends and family. He self-describes as a bit of an obsessive-compulsive when it comes to list-making. He really just wants to be “normal” – and while in other authorial hands that might mean a trip down “self-loathing gay lane” before coming to terms with his sexuality, Burgoine gives us a character who is already out, has a great support system, and really just wishes he could just not be “the kid everyone talks about because of what happened thirteen years ago.” I was drawn to him not because he’s who I was as a teen (I was nowhere near out, nowhere near as organized, and nowhere near as sure of what I wanted to do with my life), but because he expresses himself in such a way that you feel what he’s feeling, all of the anxiety and confusion and exhilaration and joy of his arc.

The supporting cast share a love and concern for Cole, but otherwise they are as different as it’s possible for a group of friends to be. There’s the Rhonda and Lindsay, the intimate lesbian couple: Greyson, a fellow gay boy who is as bombastic as Cole is shy; Nat, the gender neutral calming influence with their own insecurities to overcome; Alec, the asexual best friend at odds with Greyson; and the athletic, somewhat mysterious, outlier of the friend group, Malik. Listed like that, it sounds like Burgoine just ticked off boxes on the queer spectrum, but these characters are more than just “what kind of queer they are.” I loved seeing a YA novel where the main character’s circle is full of other gender and sexual identities rather than being the token gay guy coming out to a group of straight friends. These characters are already out to each other at the start of the book, and most of them are out to their families (although we never see them), to their schoolmates, teachers, even local business folk. I also loved reading a novel where the bullying of queer kids is addressed without it becoming the main plot. The bullies in Cole’s life are tertiary characters at best; acknowledged but not empowered.

But Cole’s friends are not the sum-total of his support group. The adults in Cole’s life, from the local game-and-coffee-shop owner to teachers to Cole’s parents, are actively involved and support him. They may not be aware of the unusual things he’s experiencing, but they do their best to react with love and helpfulness to what they do think is going on (for instance, thinking a bully shoved Cole in a locker, since Cole can’t come right out and admit he teleported himself in there). Not only are Cole’s parents loving and supportive of their son – Dad (who is deaf) is a role model for Cole in terms of personality and career choice (Dad is a translator and advocate for other hearing-impaired folks).

This was the first YA/MG book I read recently where the adult characters are not sidelined, oblivious, or actively working against the main character. (The second was Carlos Hernandez’s Sal & Gabi Break the Universe). Okay, that’s a bit too much of a blanket statement, as the creepy bad guys, when we finally encounter them, turn out to be mostly adults. But they’re the exception which proves the rule governing the rest of the adult characters.

The SF aspect of the book is as well developed as one expects from Burgoine’s short stories – there’s an underlying “science” to how and why the teleportation works, there are hints that this is the same universe as the stories in Burgoine’s collection Of Echoes Borne. The slow reveal of exactly what’s going on with Cole, why he’s being watched, who the creepy watchers are and what they want … it’s all really excellently paced. And even the nominal villains of the piece are more than just tropes. They have personalities.

While the focus of the book is on Cole’s developing teleportation ability and the danger it puts him in, there are also subplots for the friends – interpersonal relationship and trust issues endemic to any high school group – and of course there’s the slow-burn romantic arc around Cole’s crush on Malik. I like slow-burn romance, and this one is so well-paced you can’t imagine the book without it.

Here’s hoping we get to see much more of Cole, his friends, his stalkers, Malik, and this world.

READING ROUND-UP: March 2019

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and writing.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in e-book format as “books.” I read or listened to 14 books in March: 13 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 0 in audio. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #106 (March 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 Maria Romasco Moore’s “Self Storage Starts with the Heart,” Ashok K. Banker’s “A Hundred Thousand Arrows,” Kat Howard’s “Those Are Pearls,” and Vandana Singh’s “Of Love and Other Monsters.”

2.       The Backstagers Vol 1: Rebels Without Applause, by James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh, others.  Sort of a “male Lumberjanes in a high school drama department instead of a summer camp” in set-up and tone. Wonderfully diverse cast (gay, straight, trans, white, black), very very cartoony art. The characters are wonderful, but the world-building feels a bit loose and the plot progression a bit slow; I personally would have liked a bit more sense of the underpinnings but your mileage may vary.

3.       The Backstagers Vol 2, by James Tynion IV, Rian Siygh, others. This one swings a bit in the other direction, with tons of details about the world-building and a much faster moving plot, including a resolution I thought would be much further along in an on-going monthly series (and I have no idea if the book is still being published, so maybe the quick resolution was because of impending cancellation?).  I really do like all of these characters, though, and their interactions make the cover price worth it.

4.       Firebrandt’s Legacy (Space Pirates Legacy #1), by David Lee Summers.  It is not easy to take a bunch of short stories published separately and out of order and whip them into a cohesive novel, especially if you’re trying not to lose the episodic feel of the stories themselves. Summers pulls it off excellently. There’s great future world-building, very likeable characters and several consistent believable threats to the main characters’ lives and livelihoods.

5.       Sal & Gabi Break The Universe by Carlos Hernandez. I posted a full review of this earlier. Short version: near future SF with middle-grade protagonists without the usual dystopian trappings and with a very healthy sense of humor. I loved it.

6.       That Ain’t Witchcraft (InCryptid #8) by Seanan McGuire.  The third InCryptid novel featuring youngest Price sister Antimony, her boyfriend Sam, and their friends brings several plot threads to a wild conclusion. In the process we learn more about the legend of the Crossroads and Crossroads Ghosts. Fast-moving and tons of comic-book trivia snark.  There’s also a back-up novella featuring oldest Price child Alexander, his girlfriend Shelby, and their Gorgon friends investigating a mass kidnapping. The novella has hints of what the next novel will likely be about, so perhaps don’t read it until after you’ve finished the main novel.

7.       Hexhunter (Hexworld #4) by Jordan L. Hawk. Hawk continues to develop this alternate history, magic-is-real-and-the-cops-use-it, world full of romance and sex. Each book follows the development of a new witch-familiar pairing, and this volume brings together two long-term supporting characters who must work through much personal baggage while investigating the murder of a nun by a snake familiar. This one also advances the series over-arc about corruption and the distrust between “normal” humans and those who wield magic.

8.       We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. The first book I’ve managed to read this year for the 2019 To Be Read Challenge is one I should have read a long time ago given my love for Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” and novel The Haunting of Hill House.  A full review appeared on this site a week ago.

9.       Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn.  I’m still not completely sure what to make of this novella from 1688. It’s a compelling story by an early female author not writing under a male name, and it’s very clearly anti-slavery. At the same time, it trades on the “noble savage” trope quite heavily.

10.   I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb.  The second book this year from the 2019 To Be Read Challenge list, I posted a full review earlier this week. I wish there were an audiobook version of this narrated by the author herself; I think I’d have connected more with her voice if I could hear her voice. Still, I learned a lot about Pakistan history as well as Malala’s personal story.

11.   Captain Marvel, Volume 2: Stay Fly, by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marcio Takara, David Lopez and others.  This one’s been sitting on the graphic novel pile for a while, and I’m glad I read it a few days before seeing the Captain Marvel movie. It’s a fun read, although not quite as fun or engrossing as the first volume in this iteration of Carol Danvers’ adventures.

12.   Liars, Mistruths, and Perception, by Kate Fox.  I am not, as I’ve said often, a big poetry reader. Still, Kate’s short ruminations on real life speak to me. Definitely recommended.

13.   Ms. Marvel, Vol 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and others.  I’ve heard good things about Wilson’s Ms. Marvel since the first issue collected in this volume came out back in 2014, but as with DeConnick’s Captain Marvel run, I am only now getting around to reading the series. I really enjoyed the way Wilson set up the origin so that I didn’t have to understand, or run out and buy, a big Marvel event that I missed because I haven’t bought monthly comics issues since approximately 2010. Probably my favorite graphic novel read of the month.

14.   Forget the Sleepless Shores: Stories, By Sonya Taaffe.  A great collection of densely written, horror-tinged short stories. Can’t say more here because I’ll be writing a review for Strange Horizons later this month.

So fourteen books in March, which Goodreads tells me is twelve ahead of goal for the year.

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.       “The Synapse Will Free Us From Ourselves” by Violet Allen, from Lightspeed Magazine #106 (March 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “On The Shores of Ligeia” by Carolyn Ives Gilman

3.       “A Temporary Embarrassment in Space-Time” by Charlie Jane Anders

4.       “My Children’s Home” by Woody Dismukes

5.       “Self Storage Begins With The Heart” by Maria Romasco Moore

6.       “Ambitious Boys Like You” by Richard Kadrey

7.       “A Hundred Thousand Arrows” by Ashok K. Banker

8.       “Those Are Pearls” by Kat Howard

9.       “Of Love and Other Monsters” by Vandana Singh

10.   “Emergency Landing” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “Bridge of Sighs” by Kaaron Warren, from Nightmare Magazine #78 (March 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams

12.   “Carry On” by Seanan McGuire

13.   “The Measure of a Monster” by Seanan McGuire, novella published as a free extra story in the paperback of her InCryptid novel That Ain’t Witchcraft.

14.    “Tiends” by Sonya Taaffe, from her collection Forget the Sleepless Shores: Stories (Lethe Press)

15.   “Chez Vous Soon” by Sonya Taaffe

16.   “Little Fix of Friction” by Sonya Taaffe

17.   “On the Blindside” by Sonya Taaffe

18.   “Notes toward the Classification of the Lesser Moly” by Sonya Taaffe

19.   “Another Coming” by Sonya Taaffe

20.   “Last Drink Bird Head” by Sonya Taaffe

21.   “The Boatman’s Cure” by Sonya Taaffe

22.   “The Dybbuk in Love” by Sonya Taaffe

23.   “Like Milkweed” by Sonya Taaffe

24.   “Imperator Noster” by Sonya Taaffe

25.   “The Salt House” by Sonya Taaffe

26.   “And Black Unfathomable Lakes” by Sonya Taaffe

27.   “The Face of the Waters” by Sonya Taaffe

28.   “The Creeping Influences” by Sonya Taaffe

29.   “Drink Down” by Sonya Taaffe

30.   “Exorcisms” by Sonya Taaffe

31.   “When Can a Broken Glass Mend?” by Sonya Taaffe

32.   “On Two Streets, with Three Languages” by Sonya Taaffe

33.   “The Trinitite Golem” by Sonya Taaffe

34.   “All Our Sal-Bottled Hearts” by Sonya Taaffe

35.   “The Depth Oracle” by Sonya Taaffe

36.   “Latvian Angel” by Matthew Lansbaugh, from One Story #250 (February 14, 2019), edited by Will Allison

So that’s 36 short stories in March, leaving me still slightly behind for the year so far. (March 31th was the 90th day of 2019.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 2 of 14 read.

365 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  36 read; YTD: 88 of 365 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 4 read; YTD: 14 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 14 read; YTD: 43 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 1; YTD: 3 of 24 read.

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

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

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I may not do something like this every month, but since March was Women’s History Month, I decided to try to read primarily women authors, and I did a pretty decent job of it. Of the 14 books I read, 8 were written by women. Of the 35 stories, 9 women authors wrote the majority (32 total; Sonya Taaffe accounts for 22 of them, Seanan McGuire for 3).

April’s challenge: read titles primarily from small press publishers.

Review of I AM MALALA

TITLE: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was Shot By the Taliban

AUTHOR: Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

330 pages, Little Brown, ISBN  9780316322423 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (From the back cover): When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. In October 2012, when she was fifteen, Malala almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala’s heroic recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she emerged as a global symbol of peaceful protest. A year later she became the youngest recipient ever of the Nobel Peace Prize.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: I’ll admit, I have a hard time writing in-depth reviews of memoirs. Who am I to judge the authenticity of an author’s recounting of their own life? But as Malala’s memoir is one of the books I chose for this year’s To Be Read Challenge, and as that challenge requires me to post a review of each book, I’m going to make the attempt.

The first thing to note is that while this is a memoir, Malala tells more than just her own story. I’ve seen some complaints in other reviews that she effectively turns herself into a subplot for most of the book, spending so many pages on Pakistan history in general, the history of the Swat Valley in particular, and her family’s history in specific. My take-away, as someone who really was not familiar with Pakistan’s history or geography, is that it was vital for Malala to help people like me understand why her world was as it was – things like what happened to Malala do not happen in a vacuum. Understanding the culture surrounding the event, and especially the upheaval that culture has been experiencing not just politically but geologically (earthquakes, flooding, mudslides), made it easier to understand the event itself and its aftermath. No, this is not a textbook on Pakistan history, but Malala gave me enough detail that I wasn’t completely lost as to the socio-political attitudes around her.

Not surprisingly, Malala is at her most passionate when she’s writing about the cause that matters to her above all else: education for all. When she’s talking about the Taliban shut-down of schools, or her first sighting of illiterate children scouring garbage heaps for something to sell just to be able to eat, or even her mother’s struggles with learning to read and write, her voice is clear and her call for change is compelling. The portions of the book that do deal with Malala’s day-to-day life and schooling prior to the shooting are perhaps the least interesting to read: she talks about friendships and her relationships with her brothers a bit more dispassionately, almost as if someone (co-author Christina Lamb, perhaps) told her the book needed more slice-of-life to make her seem like a “real” kid and she included them grudgingly. I find myself wishing that she’d been able to directly include the reports about life under the Taliban that she wrote under the pen name Gul Makai; those might have lent a different view to the everyday-life sections of the book. Even Malala’s descriptions of what happened after the shooting are a bit clinical, which makes sense given how little of it she actually remembers.

The final chapters, about her new life in England and how she wishes to return to Pakistan, bring the passion back to Malala’s voice. She renews her call for education for all, for an end to the Taliban’s bombings of schools and other terrorist acts, and in these final pages it’s easy to see the effect all of this has had on her. I cannot imagine, at sixteen or sixty, being told you can never return to a place you loved, and that the immediate family you have with you are likely the only people from your childhood you will ever see again.

My preferred method of “reading” memoirs lately is in audiobook form, when narrated by the author. So I also have to wonder if I’d feel differently about the levels of passion/interest if I’d been able to hear Malala read her own words.

This is the second book I’ve read this year for the To Be Read Challenge.

Review of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE

TITLE: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

AUTHOR: Shirley Jackson

214 pages, Penguin Books, ISBN 9780140071078 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover) All is peaceful at the Blackwood Estate – until a murderer strikes.  Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods – until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murder, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has always been one of my favorite short stories (up there with Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”), and her novel The Haunting of Hill House is wonderful, so you would think with all the American Literature classes I’ve taken and reading I’ve done on my own that I would have long-since read more of Jackson’s work. And yet, I’ve only just read We Have Always Lived in the Castle for the first time. I suspect it will be joining the list of books I reread more often than not.

I came into Castle with no more awareness of what it was about than the back cover described plus the book’s reputation as a classic. It’s great to be able to approach a book that’s been analyzed for decades with fresh eyes and no real preconceptions. I’m not sure how any of what I’m about to say maps onto published literary criticism of the work. Maybe I’ll go looking at reviews after I post this. Or maybe I’ll continue in my own world, as the book’s main character does. That would perhaps be appropriate.

The first thing that struck me, slowly over the opening chapters, is the development of Merricat’s voice, the slow revelation that she is both divorced from every-day reality and hyper-aware of it. I tend to really enjoy unreliable narrators, but it’s not obvious at the outset just how unreliable Merricat will be. Early indications are that she lives in a bit of a dream-world and has some coping mechanisms that help her get through situations that give her social anxiety, but that she’s otherwise a normal teenager stuck in an abnormal living situation as one of only three survivors of a family tragedy; how all-pervasive her dream-world is, how little of what she says is just creative turns-of-phrase by a lonely, awkward teenager, only becomes apparent as the novel progresses. The change in how Merricat expresses herself – the increasingly dream-like quality of her language – is brilliantly crafted and paced.

Chapter One’s description of the town and the Blackwood family’s disconnect from it feel naturalistic. We get glimpses of the locals, and meet a few through whom we start to see how socially awkward Merricat is. We get a sense of the layout of the town in relation to the Blackwood estate, and the first hints that there’s more darkness in this family’s history than just the recent murders. Even that nastiest interaction with locals in chapter one, and there are several, feels light in comparison to what comes later. This could be the lead-off scene of any novel about small-town life in these United States.

But from the very first pages of chapter two, the book veers from slice-of-life to American Gothic and never swings back. We learn, in little bits of detail strung in among Merricat’s less-lucid moments, the Blackwood history: willingly removed from town life, from their richer friends and even from direct family, they’d become a small, insular group of seven, replete with power struggles and mis-communications that festered. Most of this is revealed through the ramblings of Uncle Julian, the regrets of Constance, and the neediness of cousin Charles, as filtered through Merricat’s unique world-view. Insular family cut off from local social life; a dark old estate; family history skeletons hinted at but never fully revealed; the intimation of romantic flirtation between first cousins Constance and Charles … if these aren’t the tropes of a Gothic suspense novel, nothing is.

Perhaps it’s because of her skewed world-view that Merricat is the only one to see the danger that both the villagers and cousin Charles pose. And it’s not that she’s wrong about the danger – she is clearly correct in worrying that Charles’ arrival portends a drastic change in her daily life. But I also can’t say that Charles, as self-serving as he is, is completely wrong when he points out how Constance’s social anxiety after her acquittal have removed Julian and Merricat from the medical/psychiatric help they both so obviously need. But Charles’ selfishness and greed supersede any good he may have accomplished.

The book is also current in a way Jackson could not possibly have predicted. Gossip, the “social media” of the era, creates an expectation of the surviving Blackwoods that is at the very least inaccurate and more dangerous: the angrier the townspeople get about how distant and disturbing the Blackwoods have always been, the more desperate they get to know what really goes on in the Blackwood house, the less civilized they act. Polite veneer falls away even before the tragic arc of the book hits its peak, and a finer description of mindless mob mentality I have never read. I had to put the book down for a while after reading that brutal, raw scene.

If the book starts with a very concrete, naturalistic feel, it ends with a tone that is ephemeral and fantastic. How much time actually passes in the final chapter is a question I’m not sure Jackson herself wanted to answer. To Merricat, it seems like only weeks, but there are hints (the house in now vine-covered; the legend of “the ladies” grows more morbid) that years, if not a decade or more, have passed. Which I think is a brilliant way to end a book so deeply mired in the dream-world Merricat lives in.

The truth behind the murders is almost the least important plot point to be resolved, even though it’s the point the townsfolk are most stridently obsessed with. It’s obvious to the reader, I think, long before the characters actually discuss it – the hints are certainly all there. When it is revealed, it’s done so subtly that I almost didn’t realize what was being said.

Obviously, I highly recommend We Have Always Lived in the Castle to any fans of Gothic suspense. It really is a fast read at a little over two hundred pages, but gives you a lot to absorb and think about. This is also the first book I’ve read this year towards my 2019 To Be Read Challenge.

SUNDAY SHORTS: Seanan McGuire Destroys Air Travel

The “Sunday Shorts” feature is dedicated to reviewing short stories and novellas, two forms I absolutely love.

My full-time job requires me to travel fairly frequently (anywhere from one to three weeks, depending on the month) and much of that travel is by air across the continental United States. I’m pretty comfortable with the process at this point (airport security and airplane seating being what they are), although I find that I’m likely to get motion sick if I try to read or watch anything during takeoff, landing or even slight turbulence. I’ve been in one (admittedly minor) emergency landing and experienced plenty of rough air and less-than-pleasant customer service on the ground. But I’m not afraid of any aspect of flying.

Even so, two recent short stories by Seanan McGuire, both posted on her Patreon, made me squirm uncomfortably. “Carry On” was first published last year (and is reprinted in this month’s Nightmare magazine) while “Emergency Landing” is this month’s Patreon story. Each turns a different aspect of air travel in an opportunity for emotional/psychological horror.

In our present day, airlines are charging more and more for “incidentals” (in-flight snacks and entertainment, extra leg-room, checked and carry-on luggage). “Carry On” is a brutal look at a possible future where the price of fuel justifies airlines charging passengers not just for the combined weight of their carry-on luggage, but also for the weight of the passenger and their clothing. Step on a scale with your bags, and be judged before entering security. Mary, the focal-point character, has saved for ages to be able to fly cross-country to see her sister and meet her new niece; but getting past the weigh-in without having to pay, in money and embarrassment, is not easy. McGuire really captures the indignities heaped, even now, upon travelers who are overweight. The tension of the wait, the bad weigh-in, the events that follow, the recognizable emotions Mary feels at the end, are all so real. Mary feels isolated even in a large terminal with hundreds of other people experience the same trauma she is. This is the second time I’ve read the story, and it once again made me cry for the main character.

“Emergency Landing” takes place almost entirely on a plane already in the air. The narrator describes her dash to make her connecting flight out of Atlanta, her initial impressions of her seat-mates, and then the plane takes off – just before the narrator sees missiles streak towards the airport they’ve just departed. The rest of the story is a tense game of “how much do we tell the passengers about what’s happening on the ground” and “what do we do about landing since our fuel can’t last forever.” The emotional stakes are just as high as in “Carry On,” but from a different direction. While Mary feels invisible among her fellow travelers, Caitlin feels too seen because of what they think she knows. The story moves fast as Caitlin’s fellow passengers move from anguish to fear to false bravado and Caitlin must decide whether sharing her knowledge will make things better or worse. It’s not often I describe stories or books as leaving me breathless, but this one did.  I also think that had this appeared in an anthology (it would have been perfect for Stephen King and Bev Vincent’s recent Flight or Fright), it would appear under Seanan’s Mira Grant name, given that the main character is an epidemiologist.

Review of AT HOME IN THE DARK

TITLE: At Home in the Dark

EDITOR: Lawrence Block

259 pages, Subterranean Press, ISBN 971596069176 (Hardcover) or ebook from LB Productions

Disclaimer: Although I bought the Subterranean Press edition, the editor also sent me a free e-ARC in exchange for a fair review.

DESCRIPTION: (from the Introduction): The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark: “Some of these stories have one or both feet planted in another genre. James Reasoner's story is a period western, Joe Lansdale's is bleakly dystopian, and Joe Hill's novelette slithers through a little doorway into another world. “And now that I've singled out those three, I suppose I should go ahead and list the rest of the gang: N. J. Ayres, Laura Benedict, Jill D. Block, Richard Chizmar, Hilary Davidson, Jim Fusilli, Elaine Kagan, Warren Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed Park, Nancy Pickard, Thomas Pluck, Wallace Stroby, and Duane Swierczynski. “If you're looking for a common denominator, two come to mind. They're all dark stories, with nothing cozy or comforting about them. And every last one of them packs a punch. “Which is to say that they're all very much At Home in the Dark—and we can thank O. Henry, master of the surprise ending, for our title. 'Turn up the lights,' he said on his deathbed. 'I don't want to go home in the dark.'”

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: Man, do I love short stories and novellas that take dark turns or explore the darker end of morally grey situations. Not that such stories are all I read – I like a nice balance of hope and despair in my reading over the course of a month and enjoy a good upbeat ending as much as anyone – but especially when it comes to short fiction I seem drawn to the dark. Which is maybe why Larry Block keeps sending me ARCs of anthologies like this one. I’m practically the ideal audience.

Of course, even the ideal audience can be disappointed occasionally. While I enjoyed most of the seventeen stories Block has curated here, and in fact outright loved more than a couple, not every single story worked for me. I struggled with Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Flagellant.” Despite some beautiful prose, despite the fact that I normally enjoy Oates’ short fiction and am intrigued by unreliable narrators, I could not fold myself into the dense, unhinged mind of the main character. Your mileage may vary.

The stories I enjoyed the most were, interestingly, for the most part the genres other than crime. I’m not a widely-read Western fan, but James Reasoner’s “Night Rounds” engrossed me from first word to last. If it were filmed in the heyday of the genre I’m sure Jimmy Stewart would have played Sheriff Dave Blake; now I picture Jake Gyllenhall in the role. Reasoner works a small frontier town’s night-time silence and moonlit streets into a frenzy of revenge that builds tension perfectly throughout. Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team” manages some impressive dystopian world-building in a short first-person narrative, along with high character tension and plenty of remembered bloodshed. “Faun,” Joe Hill’s novella, combines portal fantasy with “the most dangerous game” in a way that had me guessing and then second-guessing what would happen – and unexpectedly cheering in a public place when a certain character gets what’s coming to him. And Laura Benedict’s “This Strange Bargain” is a fairy-tale retelling with a conflicted lead character and some creative twists. I will be greatly surprised if the Lansdale, Hill, and Benedict stories do not each appear in at least one “year’s best” SF, fantasy, and horror anthology.

Among the crime stories, almost every sub-genre is represented. Thomas Pluck’s “The Cucuzza Curse” is an interesting blend of mob story, cozy mystery, and generational conflict that tweaks not only the characters’ expectations of each other but the readers’ expectations of who these characters should be, and I’m grateful to Block for including a story that touches on issues of perceived masculinity and living in the closet as sub-plots. Jim Fusilli’s “The Eve of Infamy” is a classic con-man narrative that culminates on a particularly infamous day in United States history. Duane Swierczynki’s “Giant’s Despair” is a neat bit of Appalachian family drama with drugs, murder and cover-ups at the core, along with a main character who is hampered in his actions by carpal tunnel syndrome gone too long untreated – too real a situation with the current American health insurance climate. “Nightbound,” by Wallace Stroby, is a straight-up robbery-gone-wrong gun and car battle across Brooklyn (I picture Michelle Rodriguez in the lead for the inevitable adaptation of this one.) And Hilary Davidson’s “Cold Comfort” is perhaps the quietest of the crime stories in tone, centering on a dead pregnant woman, her accused ex-husband, and the family priest. Jill D. Block’s “O, Swear Not By the Moon” plays with the current “guilty until proven innocent” social media mentality while Ed Park’s “The Things I’d Do” is deep psychological horror.

The stories in this collection may all be dark, but they’re not all grim. There are some happy endings (for certain values of “happy”), but the road to them is not particularly easy.  And several are even funny. The ending of “Rough Mix” by Warren Moore will probably not surprise anyone, but the narrator’s voice will feel familiar to anyone who’s ever played in a garage band. “If Only You Would Leave Me” would probably be far less funny in less capable hands, but Nancy Pickard wrings all the morbid humor she can out of the machinations of a husband and wife who each want a divorce without being the one who asks for it. And Richard Chizmar’s short, punchy “Whistling in the Dark” features so much awkward humor I couldn’t help but laugh.

If I have any complaint about the anthology, it’s that Block didn’t write a story of his own this time out, as he has for most of the recent anthologies he’s edited. Hopefully, he’ll contribute to the follow-up anthology he’s already planning.

The Subterranean Press hardcover edition is sold-out but Amazon is still mistakenly taking orders. If you didn’t order the hardcover direct from the publisher, you should be able to pre-order Block’s e-book and paperback editions by the time this review posts.

Review of SAL & GABI BREAK THE UNIVERSE

TITLE: Sal & Gabi Break The Universe

AUTHOR: Carlos Hernandez

382 pages, Disney Hyperion, ISBN 9781368022828 (Hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the cover flap): How did a raw chicken get inside Yasmany's locker? When Sal Vidon meets Gabi Real for the first time, it isn't under the best of circumstances. Sal is in the principal's office for the third time in three days, and it's still the first week of school. Gabi, student council president and editor of the school paper, is there to support her friend Yasmany, who just picked a fight with Sal. She is determined to prove that somehow, Sal planted a raw chicken in Yasmany's locker, even though nobody saw him do it and the bloody poultry has since mysteriously disappeared. Sal prides himself on being an excellent magician, but for this sleight of hand, he relied on a talent no one would guess . . . except maybe Gabi, whose sharp eyes never miss a trick. When Gabi learns that he's capable of conjuring things much bigger than a chicken--including his dead mother--and she takes it all in stride, Sal knows that she is someone he can work with. There's only one slight problem: their manipulation of time and space could put the entire universe at risk. A sassy entropy sweeper, a documentary about wedgies, a principal who wears a Venetian bauta mask, and heaping platefuls of Cuban food are just some of the delights that await in this mind-blowing novel gift-wrapped in love and laughter.

MY THOUGHTS: I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to call Carlos Hernandez’ Sal & Gabi Break the Universe a mold-breaker. Any expectations you bring to the book based on the publishing line it’s a part of, the genre it falls into, or the age reader it’s aimed at, are likely to be mistaken. The main characters also don’t fall into expected roles from similar stories.

Rick Riordan’s various series have been mythology-based, and most of the initial titles in the Rick Riordan Presents line have stayed in that mold while lifting up the voices of marginalized peoples to tell stories from their own cultures. In Sal & Gabi, Hernandez makes full use of his heritage, but there’s almost no mention of mythology or gods. Instead, the author immerses us in modern Cuban-American language and cuisine, and … sleight-of-hand magic? Yep. Sal’s goal is to be a different kind of hero: a magician who brings joy to sick kids stuck in hospital just like the magician who did it for him. There’s no demi-god lineage, no monsters waiting to attack. The little bit of the past that impacts Sal’s present is not a mythological past but rather his own.

In fact, there are no fantasy/magic elements at all other than Sal’s sleight-of-hand. The book is, I think, the first under the RRP umbrella to be science fiction. But rather than the far-future we often see in MG and YA books, this is a near future that is recognizably our own world with some hints of advanced (if not openly available) technology. And rather than dystopia, we get loving families, helpful adults, and a sense of community and hope. Even at the book’s darkest moments, and there are a couple, I didn’t feel despondent or mired down.

Hernandez also manages to avoid one of the problems I struggle with in the few middle-grade books I’ve read, including the early Percy Jackson books (as much as I loved them): his characters act and sound like thirteen-year-olds. So many MG characters either read much younger than their supposed age, or much older. Reading the banter between Sal, Gabi, and their classmates, I felt like I was listening to my own nieces and nephews.

At first, the characters seem like they’re going to fall into traditional roles: Sal as the titular chosen one, Gabi as the too-smart-for-her-peers outcast, Yasmany as the bully and “big bad.” But here again Hernandez subverts expectations. Yes, Sal can do something remarkable (rip holes between universes and pulls things – and people – into his own), but he’s not a Chosen One. Nobody is spouting prophecies about what he can and will do, and even the most scientifically-adept characters in the book don’t know why Sal can do what he can do, or what effect it will have on the fabric of the multiverse. Gabi is smart and sassy and a little bit feared, but also well-liked by her peers. Yasmany starts out as the bully, but he’s neither a snob nor a jerk, and his character shows immediate depth that characters like Draco Malfoy only wish they could have exhibited in the first book of a series. Not only is Yasmany not the “big bad,” the book doesn’t have a “big bad” at all! It’s so refreshing to read a MG/YA book where the conflict is situational rather than staged, and where the tension comes from wondering what new situation is going to complicate things rather than wondering when the hero is going to punch the villain. Other than the initial Sal-Yasmany encounter, which never gets as violent as it threatens to, I’m not sure there’s a single fight scene in the entire book.

Sal, Gabi, Yasmany, and their classmates enjoy school, are creative without being falsely eccentric, and are polite even when they’re arguing. Sal’s and Gabi’s parents are involved in their kids’ lives rather than absent, curious and supportive without being pushovers. The other authority figures (principal, custodian, teachers, nurses) are likeable and engaged rather than stern and unyielding roadblocks. Again, there’s that sense of family and community, with good (but not untroubled) relationships almost all around. And people actually apologize when they make mistakes or false assumptions.

Anyone who has heard Carlos read any portion of this book at various conventions and reading programs over the past year or two will not be surprised at the amount of humor the book holds. Everything from slapstick to fart jokes to more intricate wordplay is present, but the characters never engage in humor that is denigrating, embarrassing or vulgar. Even the snark and sarcasm teens are known for is delivered gently.

Finally, I have to acknowledge how empowering it has to be for Cuban-American kids to read this book and “hear” their own language, the beats and rhythms and slang. There were even bits of dialogue completely in Spanish with no direct translation into English. I don’t read or speak Spanish but was able to pick up context clues and go back later to look up translations, but I was happy those moments exist in the text, because they will reach the intended audience and make those young readers smile and feel represented.

Also: the sequel has been announced, and I cannot wait to find out how Sal & Gabi Fix the Universe and what happens before they do.