Book Review: MAMMOTHS AT THE GATES

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

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

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

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Shorts: Two by Sharang Biswas

Sharang Biswas is a game designer, writer, and artist based in New York City whose stories and poetry have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Baffling Magazine, Sana Stories, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Look him up on his website. Today, I’m going to look at his two most recent stories that appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams. Lightspeed Magazine contents are free to read on the website and e-book subscriptions are also available.

“Real Magic” (Lightspeed Magazine #153, February 2023)

Three townspeople visit the Witch in the Woods to ask for help with their problems. She extracts a different price from each, something either cherished or endemic to the person’s sense of self. Each visitor ultimately finds what they are searching for (or searching for relief from), but not in the way they or the reader expects. The witch uses their ingredients to do real magic. This is a beautifully told story, a fairy tale in style but cloaked in Biswas’ beautiful sense of character and community. Biswas uses the needs of the visitors (and their resolutions) to show that every individual action has an effect outside the moment in which that action is taken or that choice is made. Nothing happens in a vacuum, no one person’s fate is theirs alone. What one person discards (willingly or not) may be picked up by another (who may or may not benefit from it). I also loved how Biswas doesn’t spoon-fed the connections between the villagers’ stories but lets them come out organically and not all at once.

“Season of Weddings” (Lightspeed Magazine #166, March 2024, story goes live on the website March 28th)

Nate receives seven wedding invitations in one year. Okay, two of them are for his job, which is maybe a little less fun than attending as a guest. Especially because it quickly becomes apparent to the reader that Nate is Thanatos, god of death. Sometimes, people die at weddings. Still reeling from his most recent relationship break-up (with Thor, who has moved on to loving a mortal woman), Nate must navigate these weddings, new singlehood, his job, his perhaps too-pushy best friend, and a cute guy he keeps bumping into at the weddings. This story is so sweet, so romantic and wistful. I recognized some of myself in Nate’s self-esteem issues around romance and relationships, which made me connect to the work even more. The world-building is also wonderful, bringing together characters from all sorts of world mythologies and religions but tweaking them in new and interesting ways (for instance, the Thor is this story is neither the “drunken jock” we often see nor the blond-tressed super-hero). I won’t spoil who all shows up, because part of the fun of the story is the reveals of Nate’s friends’ circle. I’m a sucker for “deities and personifications of human concepts walk among us and act like every-day people” types of stories (think the classic issue number eight of Neil Gaiman’s the Sandman, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg, among others), and this one fits the description very well. It also fits very well as a paranormal romance, and I love it when authors blend and blur genres.

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

Series Saturday: CHEFS OF THE FIVE GODS

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

cover designs by Philip Pascuzzo

Chefs of the Five Gods duology

Written by Beth Cato

published by 47 North (2023 – 2024)

Titles:

·       A Thousand Recipes for Revenge (2023)

·       A Feast for Starving Stone (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Review: PERILOUS TIMES

TITLE: Perilous Times

AUTHOR: Thomas D. Lee

485 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN 9780593499016 (hardcover; also e-book and audiobook)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee blends Arthurian tropes with a near-future, post-climate change dystopia which asks, among other ideas, how bad things need to become before King Arthur returns as prophesied. The “once and future king,” said to be destined to return in the time of England’s greatest peril, has yet to reappear – despite two world wars and multiple other conflicts that surely could have benefitted from Arthur’s strength and expertise. Along the way, the novel also investigates the nature of heroism, the ways in which doing the right thing sometimes leads to the wrong result, and how hard it is to alter our own ingrained beliefs and sense of self-worth.

Lee tweaks the “Arthur will return” trope by giving us a version of our world in which it is not Arthur but his core knights, ensorcelled by Merlin, who secretly return when England is in peril. Kay, Lancelot, Galehaut, and others find themselves occasionally revived long enough to do what needs doing to preserve the realm. This time, Kay and Lancelot, who have a not-pleasant history, find themselves on opposite sides of a battle between a group of environmentalists (and other revolutionaries) and the oil barons and oligarchs who control a collapsing political state and whose policies have resulted in a flooded, impoverished, crippled “United Kingdom.” Equally important to the narrative are Miriam, the idealistic but insecure environmentalist Kay rescues from death when he first awakens; Regan, an older friend of Miriam with secrets of her own; and Lancelot’s also-immortal government spymaster Marlowe (yes, that Marlowe).

Into the already near-apocalyptic world the characters inhabit (Lee’s descriptions of flooded towns, disease- and prejudice-plagued refugee camps, and massive oil rigs are viscerally palpable) comes magic that may save the world or may doom it. The magic is as much of a threat as the changed climate is, depending on who ends up wielding it. At the heart of many Arthurian retellings is the idea of “Might for Right” (as opposed to “might makes right”) and Lee plays with that concept throughout the book, with characters debating the proper use, if any, of force to solve problems. The various POV characters allow for a nuanced discussion in the context of many of our current societal problems – not just climate change, but white supremacy, xenophobia, misogyny, and more.

Lee also gives us a more diverse cast than traditional Arthurian retellings (a trend I’ve noticed the past handful of years and for which I’m happy): Miriam is a woman of color; her peers include an older woman, a transgender character, and a lesbian couple; Kay, Arthur’s adoptive brother, is a man of color with pagan beliefs; Lancelot is homosexual (and yes, Lee does give us an in-flashback tweak to the standard Camelot love-triangle). This allows the author to explore the idea of who gets to be a “hero” and how that might be perceived by less open-minded people. Through Kay and Lancelot, the author also gets to investigate how we process grief and grudges and what both might look like for the eternally reincarnated.

Arthurian purists, who want the king and his knights portrayed only in the noblest of lights, may want to pass this one up because the author does not shy away from showing the characters’ flaws. But for those like me who enjoy retellings in which “infallible” legends are revealed as having been fallible/human should pick this up, as should those who like their fantasy creatures mixed with modern real-world concerns.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Perilous Times published on May 23, 2023.

Book Review: THE LIES OF THE AJUNGO

TITLE: The Lies of the Ajungo

AUTHOR: Moses Ose Utomi

98 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250849069 (hardcover, also in e-book)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: In The Lies of the Ajungo, Moses Ose Utomi gifts us with a story that turns that basic concept at odd and poignant angles, serving as commentary on the politics and societal maneuverings of our own world while still giving us a heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in an intriguing secondary fantasy world. The main character’s journey from innocent boy facing a brutal rite of passage to a man knowledgeable about the way the world really works is neither rushed nor dragged out. His path is not easy and involves un-learning “facts” and opinions that have been ingrained. Utomi also beautifully captures the “fairy tale / fable” voice in his omniscient narrator – I truly felt at times like Tutu’s story was being told around a campfire for a community of listeners. The style kept me engaged.

LONGER REVIEW: The Lies of the Ajungo could easily have been a grand multi-book YA fantasy series: young boy goes on a quest to save his city from the machinations of a more powerful, evil, city-state. Instead, Moses Ose Utomi gifts us with a story that turns that basic concept at odd and poignant angles, serving as commentary on the politics and societal maneuverings of our own world while still giving us a heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in an intriguing secondary fantasy world.

Tutu lives in the City of Lies, a drought-stricken city on the edge of the Forever Desert where what water is available is provided to the city by the Ajungo, a domineering foreign city-state. The Ajungo’s price? The tongues of every citizen at or above the age of thirteen, so they make speak no ill of the Ajungo. With his mother on her deathbed, Tutu approaches the city’s leader for a camel and supplies to go in search of a better water source. He is granted one year, with the reminder that “there are no Heroes in the City of Lies,” and that once he’s outside the city limits, “there are no friends to the City of Lies.” He heads out expecting no help from anyone he might meet along the way.

Of course, Tutu encounters a series of challenges to his quest, from desert wildlife he’s never seen before to humans he assumes are the Ajungo. But he also learns more of the outside world and his city’s relationship to it, through his encounters with three sisters who hail from a city where the Ajungo have demanded a tribute of ears, and a wise man from a city where the Ajungo demanded eyes. I was done with the book before I realized how deftly Utomi had worked in the classic “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” imagery in the form of the body parts the Ajungo choose to demand from the populace of these different cities. The trope is usually used to connote someone’s willful ignorance of the world around them; I think this is the first time I’ve seen it used as a tool of power, to subjugate and control the masses. Subtle and effective!

Tutu’s journey from innocent boy facing a brutal rite of passage to a man knowledgeable about the way the world really works is neither rushed nor dragged out. His path is not easy and involves un-learning “facts” and opinions that have been ingrained. Watching him go from untrusting loner to a team player without ever losing sight of his original mission is painful at times; Utomi doesn’t shy away from the anguish Tutu feels over his mother’s impending death or the inevitable betrayals that are a part of stories like this.

The Ajungo, who seem to have an answer to every city’s problem but always at a steep price, are the evil that looms over the entire book. I will not spoil the big reveals nor the resolution, but I will say that both are well-seeded, well-earned, and extremely satisfactory. And Utomi beautifully captures the “fairy tale / fable” voice in his omniscient narrator – I truly felt at times like Tutu’s story was being told around a campfire for a community of listeners. The style kept me engaged.

According to various online sources, The Lies of the Ajungo is only the first book in the Forever Desert series. While I think it stands perfectly well on its own as a complete whole, I do look forward to returning to this world in future volumes.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. The Lies of the Ajungo released on March 21, 2023.

So Who Publishes Novellas These Days?

When genre readers think of novellas, they tend to think of either TorDotCom, who release a steady stream of awards-nominated novellas every year (including this week’s release Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo, which I’ll be reviewing later today, and next week’s The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi), or of magazines like Asimov’s, AnalogSF, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction which have regularly featured novelettes and novellas in their monthly content over their decades of publication.

But there are plenty of other magazines and small press publishers bringing out novellas every year in a variety of genres, and I’d like to mention some of them. This is far from a complete list, and I encourage readers to mention any I don’t in the comments!

Neon Hemlock Press puts out novellas in the horror/SF/fantasy genres, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ creators and stories. They are currently in the last days of their annual novella crowdfunding event, where you can back (a.k.a. preorder) their 2023 slate in print and/or e-book formats. Go check them out before the crowdfunding effort ends on Thursday, March 16th at 4pm.

Speaking of queer-focused publishers: several items in the catalogs of both Lethe Press (including Octavia Cade’s The Stone Weta) and Rebel Satori Press are novella-length, spanning all the genres of speculative fiction and moving into historical, romance and mimetic fiction as well.

Looking novel-length queer romance? Check out Bold Stroke Books. I’m a particular fan of ‘Nathan Burgoine’s “Little Village” novella series, and I’ve been meaning to check out some of their lesbian romance novella collections.

Stelliform Press’s novellas focus on the on-going climate emergency and intersectional views of environmental justice, and range in genre from horror (The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer) to fantastic science fiction (Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz), and every point in between. Their latest, Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri, comes out May 25th.

If the classics and mimetic fiction are more your thing, look no further than Melville House Publishing. Their “Art of the Novella” collection reissues classic novellas, some in solo book form for the first time ever. They also have a “Contemporary Art of the Novella” series if you’re looking for modern mimetic works at novella length.

Aqueduct Press’ Conversation Pieces series brings feminist science fiction to the demanding reader. While not every volume in this long-running series is a novella (some are poetry or short story collections, others works of non-fiction), quite a few are. Recent releases include To The Woman in the Pink Hat by LaToya Jordan and Apollo Weeps by Xian Mao.

On the mystery side of things, The Mysterious Bookshop’s Bibliomysteries series are usually novelette length excursions into everything from noir to cozy mysteries.

And in addition to the magazines listed at the start of this post, I would be remiss in not mentioning Clarkesworld, which also regularly includes novellas in their pages.

Book Review: BACKPACKING THROUGH BEDLAM

TITLE: Backpacking Through Bedlam (InCryptid #12)

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

340 pages, Daw Books, ISBN 9780756418571 (softcover, also available in e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: Backpacking Through Bedlam, the 12th installment in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, wraps up one of the series’ long-running subplots: Grandma Alice’s decades-long interdimensional search for her missing husband Thomas. At the same time, the book begins in earnest the Price-Healy clan’s efforts to prevent the Covenant of St. George from invading North America and “cleansing it” of its Cryptid population. Throughout the book, McGuire has a lot to say about the lengths family (biological and found) will go to protect each other and how hard it is for family to forgive each other. There are raw and honest dissections of how the images we build of the people we love but haven’t seen in a while can be unrealistic and how hard it is to reconcile who someone has become with who we thought they were. Likewise, Alice’s years of absence, even with the quest successful, weigh heavily on every scene between Alice and Verity and Alice and Sarah. The pain, the mistrust, the slow lowering of guards, is palpable. But even with all the discomfort and pain, the book is a celebration of the family we build around ourselves from biology and adoption. As is the accompanying novella, “The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went!”

LONGER REVIEW: Backpacking Through Bedlam, the 12th installment in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, wraps up one of the series’ long-running subplots: Grandma Alice’s decades-long interdimensional search for her missing husband Thomas. At the same time, the book begins in earnest the Price-Healy clan’s efforts to prevent the Covenant of St. George from invading North America and “cleansing it” of its Cryptid population. Throughout the book, McGuire has a lot to say about the lengths family (biological and found) will go to protect each other and how hard it is for family to forgive each other.

Alice was also the narrator of the previous volume, Spelunking Through Hell, in which (spoilers, sorry, but necessary here) she found Thomas trapped in a bottle dimension (the kind you can be thrown into by sketchy double-crossing cosmic entities, but from which escape is darn near impossible), alongside a whole passel of others in the same position. Backpacking picks up with Alice and Thomas’ efforts to find a safe new dimension for these cosmically-displaced refugees before they (and Thomas’ adopted daughter Sally) can return home. I honestly expected this part of the story to take up more of the book and was surprised it wrapped up so quickly. Not without some life-threatening action one expects from the early pages of an InCryptid book, and still totally satisfactorily in a way that ties back to previous books in the series. It’s a solid start, re-establishing the Alice/Thomas/Sally dynamic, which is not the smoothest. Some of their interactions are hard to read, but they’re also raw and honest dissections of how the images we build of the people we love but haven’t seen in a while can be unrealistic and how hard it is to reconcile who someone has become with who we thought they were. Alice and Thomas have a lot of lost years to navigate through, and I have faith they’ll get there, but it’s not going to be an easy road. Likewise, Sally and Alice’s road to understanding each other and their roles in Thomas’ life is fraught with defensiveness and, dare I say, possessiveness that these women will have to find common ground on.

And all of this is before the three return to Earth and get shuffled off to New York City to help granddaughters Verity and Sarah and their friends fight off the latest incursion by the Covenant of St. George, the evil, self-righteous Cryptid-killing organization that Alice’s grandparents and Thomas himself defected from. Thanks to Verity’s actions in a previous book, the Covenant has decided to take the long-thought-dead Price-Healy family “off the map” for good. (Which is going to be much harder than the Covenant thinks, because, well, Price-Healys, man.) In between several fantastic fight scenes, we get to watch Alice introduce Thomas to some of the grandkids (and great-grandkids) he only just found out exist. And that does not go well at first. Verity and her siblings and cousins have always known about Grandma Alice’s quest, but none of them really thought she’d succeed. And that quest came at the price of strained relationships even with the grandkid who most understands her. The years of absence, even with the quest successful, weigh on every scene between Alice and Verity and Alice and Sarah. The pain, the mistrust, the slow lowering of guards, is palpable. Moreso because there is no sudden “oh, okay, we forgive you and we accept this stranger you say is our grandfather and this girl who is now our adopted aunt even though she’s younger than us” moment. But even with all the discomfort and pain, the book is a celebration of the family we build around ourselves from biology and adoption. Alice has a lot of rebuilding to do, and Thomas and Sally have a lot of learning-how-they-fit-in to do. But the door, at least, is open. I for one am looking forward to learning where that door leads, as well as what the Covenant’s next move is going to be. I’m also looking forward to learning, eventually, who will be narrating the next installment since McGuire changes narrators frequently in this series.

The book also contains a novella, “The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went!” which focuses on the Price family compound in the immediate aftermath of Alice, Thomas, and Sally’s brief visit at the end of Spelunking Through Hell. Some family members are happy Alice has found Thomas and will be returning to the fold. Some are still very angry at Alice. But the focus is on the newest adopted Price sibling, James, and his reaction to learning that his childhood friend Sally, thought lost to the Crossroads, is alive and coming home. I loved this close look at how James has been adapting to being a member of the family and being worshipped by the family’s colony of Aeslin mice, at how it has not necessarily been an easy road for James to follow (but still much better than the horrible life he left behind). The Aeslin mice are fan favorites, and we get a really solid look at how new clergy and new rituals develop in their belief system (where every male in the Price-Healy family is a God and every female a Priestess) through the eyes of James’ first Aeslin priest. Both James and the two mice featured are unsure of their footing, of their place, of what their futures will hold. I look forward to seeing where their paths take them as the InCryptid series progresses. I’m also not ashamed to say that James has become my favorite character in the series.

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

Book Review: WILL DO MAGIC FOR SMALL CHANGE

TITLE: Will Do Magic for Small Change

AUTHOR: Andrea Hairston

464 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250808738 (hardcover; also e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: In Will Do Magic for Small Change, Andrea Hairston weaves strands of story across two centuries into a beautiful, occasionally heartbreaking but ultimately joyful, tapestry about the transformative powers of love and art and about how we break each other and help each other heal. Hairston does not shy away from the uncomfortable details of racism, homophobia, suicide, abuse (physical and emotional). Violence is at the core of the book, each time frame’s action incited by the death of a loved one. Because of this, Will Do Magic for Small Change is not always an easy read. The book is not all doom-and-gloom, though. It centers joy – from the blush of first love to the comfort of family and friends who truly love you, faults and all. And the moments of honest reconnection and reconciliation after misunderstandings are cleared up and secrets are shared are some of the most powerful and affecting in the book. Also powerful are the scenes where characters get lost in making their art. Will Do Magic for Small Change moved me through the full range of emotions – joy, grief, anger, love – in equal measure and sometimes all at once. It’s a challenging and fulfilling read.

LONGER REVIEW: In Will Do Magic for Small Change, Andrea Hairston weaves strands of story across two centuries into a beautiful, occasionally heartbreaking but ultimately joyful, tapestry about the transformative powers of love and art and about how we break each other and help each other heal.

In 1987, teenager Cinnamon Jones’ life is upended by multiple tragedies and their aftermaths: her father Raven Cooper is shot and falls into a coma, her older half-brother Sekou dies, and her mother Opal struggles to hold herself together and care for her daughter. Her mother’s family are mostly judgmental and not helpful, her father’s family initially too far away to be of help. Cinnamon’s only source of comfort is a magical book left to her by Sekou, “The Chronicles of the Wanderer.” This book chronicles the adventures of a Dahomean warrior woman, Kehinde, and the alien Wanderer who accompanies her, in the 1800s. Somehow, the book connects to Cinnamon’s family history. Hairston skillfully alternates between the two timeframes, neither rushing the reveal of how everything is connected nor pretending there is no connection. The shifts in time are not just indicated by chapter breaks, but also by the way in which new pages of the book reveal themselves to Cinnamon, her closest friends, and her father’s family (whom Cinnamon refers to as “the Elders”).

The characters in both time frames are living rough lives. Kehinde and the Wanderer are searching for someone named Somso across war-torn Dahomey while being hunted themselves, often subsisting just off the land. Cinnamon is searching for answers to questions about her father’s injury and brother’s death while she and Opal are living in increasingly squalid poverty-level conditions in the midst of the worst winter storm Pittsburgh has seen in decades. The pain in all their lives is palpable throughout the book. Hairston does not shy away from the uncomfortable details of racism, homophobia, suicide, abuse (physical and emotional). Violence is at the core of the book, each time frame’s action incited by the death of a loved one. Because of this, Will Do Magic for Small Change is not always an easy read.

The book is not all doom-and-gloom, though. It centers joy – from the blush of first love to the comfort of family and friends who truly love you, faults and all. Those same family members can be infuriating and secretive and inconsistent. Sometimes, the people who love you break you – but they might also be the ones who help you heal. And the moments of honest reconnection and reconciliation after misunderstandings are cleared up and secrets are shared are some of the most powerful and affecting in the book.

Also powerful are the scenes where characters get lost in making their art, which ranges from painting to music to acting to cooking. Almost every major character, and a good number of the supporting cast, find strength, solace, or both, in the art they create or partake of. Tradition also plays a strong role, but in Hairston’s world traditions are a foundation to be built off of rather than an immutable set of rules to be obeyed.

Will Do Magic for Small Change moved me through the full range of emotions – joy, grief, anger, love – in equal measure and sometimes all at once. It’s a challenging and fulfilling read.

I received and read an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Will Do Magic for Small Change released in hardcover on October 11, 2022.

Book Review: INTO THE RIVERLANDS

TITLE: Into the Riverlands (Book three of the Singing Hills Cycle)

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

100 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250851420 (hardcover, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: Into the Riverlands is the third entry in Nghi Vo’s excellent series of novellas chronicling the adventures of Cleric Chih, a non-binary monk from the Monastery of Singing Hills, whose mission is to collect stories for preservation so that cultural memory might extend beyond the passing of the participants of the stories and those who tell them. This time, a chance encounter in a remote inn brings Chih into contact with fellow travelers straight out of a Wuxia film: a talented young martial artist, the martial artists’ traveling companion, and a husband and wife pair who know the Riverlands better than anyone Chih could hope to encounter but who may have secrets of their own. The travel scenes are full of excellent stories-within-the-story and crisp dialogue. The fight scenes, when they happen, are beautifully choreographed and come with a palpable sense of danger.

LONGER REVIEW: Into the Riverlands is the third entry in Nghi Vo’s excellent series of novellas chronicling the adventures of Cleric Chih, a non-binary monk from the Monastery of Singing Hills, whose mission is to collect stories for preservation so that cultural memory might extend beyond the passing of the participants of the stories and those who tell them. As with the previous entries, there is just the right balance of introspection and action, of listening and doing, propelling the story along and leaving questions for the reader to ruminate on.

Chih and their Neixin travel-mate Almost Brilliant (do not call her a bird, thank you very much) have dined with the former lover of an empress and faced down sentient tigers, usually using a combination of storytelling and careful questioning to resolve conflict. This time, a chance encounter in a remote inn brings Chih into contact with fellow travelers straight out of a Wuxia film: a talented young martial artist of the “Southern Monkey” school, the martial artists’ traveling companion and sworn sister, and a husband and wife pair who know the Riverlands and its history better than anyone Chih could hope to encounter but who may have secrets of their own. The trip of course is not without excitement thanks to the apparent resurgence of a legendary bandit group. The travel scenes are full of excellent stories-within-the-story and characters disagreeing with each other on some details. The fight scenes, when they happen, are beautifully choreographed and come with a palpable sense of danger. I genuinely wondered if everyone we met at the beginning of the book would survive. (No spoilers as the that.)

We learn a bit more about Chih’s personality (not vain, but aware of how a Cleric should appear; not overtly religious but aware that sometimes their duty is to perform religious ritual; not a fighter by nature but willing to stand up for what’s right and protect those who can’t protect themselves) in this book, and a better sense of the relationship between Chih and Almost Brilliant (who comes across as more bossy and egotistical and less patient than in the first book in the series (having been absent from the second)).

As usual, Vo’s dialogue is crisp and full of hidden meaning for the reader to prise out as the story develops. Characters have depths not apparent when they are first introduced – and the line between the personal, historical, and legendary is not always clear. Vo also trusts her readers to put the pieces together and doesn’t spell everything out by the end of the book, which I greatly enjoy. I found myself, days after finishing the book, thinking about the connections between the characters, the stories they told about themselves, and the history/legends they shared.

Even though this is the third book in the series, the story is completely stand-alone and can be enjoyed/understood without having to have read The Empress of Salt and Fortune or The Tiger Came Down from the Mountain. In fact, I can’t recall any obvious references to either book. If they were there, they hopefully will intrigue readers starting with this book to pick up the previous two.

I truly hope Nghi Vo has many more tales of Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant to share with us.

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

This review is very late. Into the Riverlands published on October 25, 2022

SUNDAY SHORTS: Two from The Deadlands

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. Posts will range from flash to novellas. At some point, I might delve into individual stories/episodes of anthology formats in other media, like television and comics, but for the time being, I’m sticking to prose in print and audio.

I don’t think I’ve yet done a Sunday Shorts about The Deadlands, a relatively new (just a year old) online speculative fiction magazine focused on the Afterlife – or afterlives, more accurately. Stories, poems, and non-fiction about grieving, about ghosts, about what happens after, or sometimes as, we are shuffling off this mortal coil, plane of existence, etc. The Deadlands is published by Sean Markey and E. Catherine Tobler is the editor-in-chief. Here are my thoughts on the two fiction pieces in the latest issue.

In KT Bryski’s “This is I,” Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, crosses paths via a magic mirror with a woman she comes to know as “Gug,” but who is really poet/artist Elizabeth Siddal, wife of Dante Gabriel Rosetti. In a story that blurs not only the lines of reality but also of narrative voice (with sections alternating between first, second, and third person points-of-view), Bryski delves into the ways in which men control women and alter the courses of their lives. Elaine has the curse on her that if she stops weaving in her high tower and looks out over Camelot, Camelot will fall, and she will be cursed. “Gug” has been used as a muse, been manipulated into marriage, and told her womanly nature means she can’t create art the same way a man can. Bryski also plays with the various versions of “The Lady of Shalott” that Tennyson wrote, plus interpretations by others. It took me a page or so to understand what the author was doing with the alternating POVs, but then I settled in, and the story flowed towards a perfect ending.

Maria Haskins’ “The Morthouse” focuses on a mother who has lost her teenage son to a horrific winter illness and who is so distraught she cannot do anything but haunt the village “morthouse,” where the bodies of those who die during winter are held until the ground is soft enough to dig graves, with occasional trips to the church she might no longer believe in, and the fields around the village. She regrets not asking the midwife who brought her child into the world during a problematic birth for help in keeping him alive, and eventually goes to ask for help in bringing him back to life. The midwife sets the grieving mother three tasks to gather items that might help. The mother’s grief is palpable throughout, as is her estrangement from her church and from her husband. The author also nicely explicates the traditional distrust in religious communities for anyone who works with nature to cure illness instead of just relying on God, without going the traditional route of showing the midwife (in this case) being abused by other members of the community. The story takes its time before coming to a satisfying, emotional, conclusion.