Theatre Thursday: THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA

I’m a bit late when it comes to admiring the work of Jez Butterworth. But after seeing The Ferryman in 2019, the first of his plays I’d ever seen staged, I vowed not to miss whatever came next. (I saw the mostly American replacement cast a month or so after the show won the Tony Award for Best Play, and the show blew me away, even with some not-so-great fake Irish accents in the mix.) So as soon as The Hills of California was announced, I knew I had to see it. We got tickets for what I didn’t realize at the time was the final preview performance, September 28th. The show officially opened the next night. You won’t be surprised to hear that it blew me away.

The Hills of California is set in a family-owned hotel/rooming house in Blackpool, England in 1976, where the estranged Webb sisters are reuniting in their childhood home upon the impending death of their mother. Well, three of them are. Jill has apparently never moved out and been their ailing mother’s caregiver for quite some time. Youngest sister Ruby shows up with her husband Dennis, followed shortly by third sister Gloria with her husband and offspring – but only Jill is convinced that oldest sister Joan will bother to come from America. The play explores, through scenes set in 1976 as well as flashbacks set twenty years earlier, what drove these sisters apart; they were extremely close as kids, with each other and with their single mother Veronica despite her taskmaster-like method of bringing them together as a four-member version of the Andrews Sisters and conflicting stories about what happened to their father. There’s a lot of great four-part harmony singing in the flashbacks; not so much in the 1976 scenes.

As my friend Dave said: “It’s a Jez Butterworth drama. You know from the beginning something bad is coming. It’s just a matter of when it happens and what the fallout is.”

I’m a big fan of stories that alternate present and past to build tension, and Butterworth manages it expertly here, with just enough time spent in each time frame before a switch occurs to move the action forward and reveal something about how each sister has changed, progressing inexorably towards the reveal of the bad thing that happened (which I won’t spoil here) and clarifying what we already know of the fallout in the characters’ present.

As adults, Helena Wilson’s Jill is the people-pleaser, Ophelia Lovibond’s Ruby the most naïve, and Leanne Best’s Gloria the inexplicably bitter one. Each actress was fantastic, and the distance between their character played perfectly. The scenes where they try to confront that distance, without truly getting to the heart of what pushed them apart, were tension-packed and at points heart-breaking. Equally heart-breaking was watching the scenes with their much more joyful, playful, bonded younger selves (Nancy Allsop as Young Gloria, Nicola Turner as Young Jill, Sophia Ally as Young Ruby, and Lara Donnell as Young Joan), knowing where those relationships are headed. Sam Mendes clearly had the younger and older actresses spend time together perfecting matching body language and facial expressions; there was no doubt from the moment the younger versions stepped on stage who was who. The younger actresses are also all wonderful singers, it should be noted.

If there’s a core character the play revolves around (which even in ensemble shows like this there usually is), it’s mother Veronica in the flashbacks. Lara Donnelly was a tour-de-force in the role. Veronica is a strict “stage mother” but also fiercely protective of her daughters, and there are moments when the fight between ambition and protectiveness threatens to overwhelm her. Donnelly’s swings from one to the other, and the internal conflicts that result, were impressive. Donnelly also plays the adult Joan in the play’s final act, and I can honestly say I didn’t realize it was the same actress (obviously, I didn’t read the full cast list in the Playbill before the show, nor did I really pay attention when the adult sisters comment on how much like Mother Joan was…).

If I have any complaint about the show, it’s that Ruby’s husband Dennis (Bryan Dick), and Gloria’s husband Bill (Richard Short) and kids Tony and Patty (Liam Bixby and Nancy Allsop) seem truly extraneous in the 1976 scenes and don’t really add to any understanding of how the sisters are different as adults (particularly the two children, who are in one scene together), whereas the other adults in the flashback scenes (especially Richard Lumsden’s Joe Fogg, Bryan Dick’s Jack Larkin, and David Wilson Barnes’ very skeevy Luther St. John) add to our understanding of Veronica and how far she’ll go to both promote and protect her daughters.

Kudos also must be given to designer Rob Howell and lighting designer Natasha Chivers for creating a set that feels cavernous and claustrophobic at the same time, reflecting the sisters’ closeness and division. Director Sam Mendes uses the rotating stage to move between the present and the past, which further illustrates how the sisters’ relationship has changed: in the past, they are always gathered around the kitchen table, where boarders/guests are not allowed; in the present, they only interact in the hotel’s lobby/common room, as though they are all guests/visitors in what used to be their home.

The Hills of California closed on Broadway in December. I am sure it will be nominated for several Tony Awards this season.

I’ve always loved live theater, and in the past couple of years I’ve been making a stronger effort to see more of it. Theater Thursday is a new occasional series where I talk about live theater, both shows I’ve seen recently and shows I’ve loved in the past.

Book Review: WILD SPACES

TITLE: Wild Spaces

AUTHOR: S.L. Coney

121 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250866837 (paperback, also e-book and audio)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Puberty is strange and confusing for everyone no matter how much your parents may tell you about what to expect. It’s especially so for the twelve-year-old boy at the center of S.L. Coney’s novella Wild Spaces, who comes to learn that all the things he doesn’t know about his mother’s family are connected to the changes he’s beginning to experience. Generational/hereditary trauma is hard enough when it’s purely emotional; what happens when it’s genetic, and those genes aren’t human?

Wild Spaces takes genres that perhaps shouldn’t work together (Southern Gothic, Eldritch Horror, and Coming of Age) and melds them so seamlessly that not only do they work together, they become something that feels fresh and new (Southern Eldritch Boys Adventure, perhaps?).

The story opens with a classic “boy meets stray dog” scene straight out of a Tommy Kirk/Kevin Corcoran Disney movie that melds a high level of wholesome adorableness (waiting to see if anyone will come to claim the dog before deciding on its new name (which ends up being the boy’s favorite pirate, Teach)) with a fair warning that this is about as light-and-fuzzy as the story gets, and that a monster is on its way. I loved this opening salvo of nostalgia tinged with danger. But from there, the story takes darker and darker turns beginning with the arrival of the boy’s maternal grandfather, who has clearly been estranged from his daughter for a long time. It’s the first time the boy and his father are meeting the grandfather, and the scene is wrought with awkward introductions that more than hint the grandfather is not a good man. Even Teach doesn’t like him. Exactly how the grandfather is not a good man is doled out slowly at first, until his true nature is revealed. These early scenes take place in a two-story house on the Carolina coast during a sweltering summer that builds to a massive storm (a storm that is both a physical danger and a metaphor for the havoc the grandfather is wreaking on their previously calm lives). If “remote house during a hot and stormy summer during which family tensions spill over and secrets are revealed” doesn’t make this book a Southern Gothic, I’m not sure what would. The reveal of the grandfather’s true nature alongside the physical changes the boy is experiencing eventually tip the story into very clearly Eldritch Horror. I don’t want to reveal too much about that aspect of the book. It took me by surprise and a few scenes actually scared me.

Even when I wasn’t outright scared, I was still uncomfortable (in all the right ways), and it took me some time to pinpoint why: the author’s narratorial voice leaves all the characters excepting Teach nameless, and that set me at a remove from them and their situation. They are the Boy, His Father, His Mother, His Grandfather. The physical details given make them real, while the use of titles (for lack of a better term) in place of names makes them a little surreal. I kept thinking “I should know these people at least well enough to know their names … why don’t I know their names?” It’s a really, to me, effective way of keeping the reader slightly off-kilter – which is exactly what the boy is feeling as he learns how much he doesn’t know about his mother, her family, and thus himself.

I highly recommend Wild Spaces. It’s a fast moving, discomfiting novella that will make you consider how family secrets affect a child’s development, and how unconditional love can help a child overcome trauma.

(Side-note: It occurs to me that Wild Spaces and Will Ludwigsen’s A Scout Is Brave make excellent companion pieces, and even though the authors did not intend it they do seem to be in conversation with each other. Both meld coming of age boys adventure and a gothic-style seaside setting with eldritch horror but with vastly different stylistic tones and narratorial voices. I’ve read both books twice now, and I suspect both will be on my “occasional rereads” shelf going forward.)

Tuesday Top Ten(ish): My Trip to London

I recently took my first trip outside the continental United States (barring one short work trip to the Toronto area 15 or so years ago). I journeyed to London the week of Thanksgiving (in the US). Why there and why then? Well, my friend Paul Spiteri has been inviting me to visit (as he invites lots of people) … and my goddaughter Morgyn was spending the fall semester of her senior year of college over there for an internship. So I thought, “maybe it’s time to take Paul up on his offer AND give Morgyn a family visitor a little bit sooner in the semester (her mom and sister spent 10 days surrounding Christmas with her). So I had two wonderful, knowledgeable tour guides to the city, which eased my anxiety about being in a new place for the first time. (Yes, I know: I travel for a living for my full-time job. I should be used to being in unfamiliar places by now. And yet, 18 years in, I still get various levels of anxiety — and my first international travel by plane certainly added to it.)

My tour guides: Paul and my goddaughter

We packed a ton of stuff into 5 short days, to the point where Paul and I had to sit down and have a recap session over tea and a late-night snack so I wouldn’t forget where we’d been and what we’d seen. We prioritized what I wanted to see/do into three groups, and we got to most of the “1s,” several of the “2s,” and a few places that hadn’t been in the plan but occurred naturally as we wandered. I came home with a head cold / ear infection, some souvenirs, a small handful of books, and toooo many photos that I neglected to post daily to my Instagram. So, to make use of at least a few of those photos and to kick off the TOP TEN(ISH) feature for 2025, here are my Top Ten(ish) Experiences from my London trip, in no particular order:

The Wold-Newton Meteor, Natural History Museum

Paul and first met online thanks to our shared interest in the works of science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer. Farmer was the author of biographies of Tarzan (Tarzan Alive) and Doc Savage (Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life), in which he posited that not only were the great heroes and villains of literature actual living people, but also that many of them shared a genetic history that could be tracked back to the first meteor to land in England and be recognized as having come from outer space: the meteor that landed at Wold Cottage in 1795. The village of Wold Newton was too far to make a visit to during my short visit, but the meteor itself is in the Natural History Museum. (But not in the section the guidebook says its in, which was closed for renovations. Thankfully, we found it in a different section.)

Jack the Ripper Tour, Whitechapel

Tour guide MP Priestley in the white hat, pointing.

Can’t go to London and not do a Jack the Ripper tour, especially when your goddaughter’s student flat is in Whitechapel! We had a truly fantastic tour guide by the name of MP Priestly. He was supposed to split the group with a coworker, who called out sick. So he took all 40 (or so) of us, adjusting the tour to stop at places where bigger groups could fit. Along the way, we passed at least a half-dozen other such tours. I think we lucked out. Priestley’s style kept the group involved and interested even as he had to adjust for the larger than normal group size. He had copies of his book One Autumn in Whitechapel with him. So of course I bought it (not pictured). He also carried a small projector with him and showed images of the crime scenes (some pretty gory) on building walls.

Boat Ride Down the Thames

Friday was the one day Morgyn was completely free of work and school obligations, so we spent the day walking along the Thames to Westminster (passing the original and new sites of the Globe Theatre, the National Theatre, the Golden Hind, the Clink Museum, the Anchor Pub where Shakespeare likely drank and wrote, and many other such sites), then we boarded a tour boat down the Thames. We got a lot of architectural history delivered by a very witty man who made it clear he was not a tour guide, just a crewman who happened to know a thing or two. Here’s me with the Tower Bridge in the background.

Greenwich/Royal Naval College/Royal Observatory/Market

“Legs Astride the Meridian!”

One of my favorite movies is Beautiful Thing (from which stems my longtime crush on Ben Daniels), and one of my favorite lines of dialogue (delivered by said Mr. Daniels) is “Anyone fancy a trip to Greenwich? Legs astride the Meridian, as they say? No? Me neither.” So of course, Morgyn made sure we did the Thames boat tour all the way to Greenwich. We saw the Cutty Sark, we did a quick trip through the Royal Naval College, then did the trek up the hill to the Royal Observatory. The view from up there is fantastic, well worth the shortness of breath. The Observatory is now a museum, filled with fascinating history and artifacts – but for me, the big moment was, you guessed it, standing with my feet astride the Prime Meridian, with Morgyn’s feet facing mine. After we made it back down the hill, we ate a late lunch at a wonderful tavern, and then hit the Greenwich Market, in which I found some British editions of Phil Farmer books, along with the novel Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (my father’s favorite Hitchcock film) was based.

Baker Street/Praed Street/Slough House

Go to London and not seek out the digs of The Great Detective, The Great Detective’s Protégé, and the great Jackson Lamb? Perish forbid! Thankfully, there’s an actual Holmes Museum with a front door that claims to be 221 Baker Street (geographically, that number is really a few buildings up the block, but whose quibbling?), and what a fun tour that was. So much great Holmes-connected memorabilia. And a very friendly and photogenic (and maybe a bit flirty?) police bobby out front.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing Holmes’ adventures (the second time), American author August Derleth asked if he could continue the series. Doyle said no, so Derleth created Solar Pons, a protégé of Holmes and placed his offices at 7 Praed Street. There’s no blue circular plaque denoting the literary importance of the location, but that didn’t stop Paul and I from finding it.

I have become a big fan of Mick Herron’s Slough House books (thanks, like so many, to the very excellent television adaptation starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb). What I thought was just a filming location (126 Aldersgate Street, near the Barbican train station) is actually the building that inspired Herron to write the first book!

Peter Pan, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Paddington too

Trying to hit as many landmarks related to my favorite fiction as I could, we had to stop by the Peter Pan stature in Kensington Gardens.

My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Milne. Until someone proves otherwise, I am content to believe that I am (distantly, at best) related to Christopher Robin. Paul located a house in London where AA Milne lived for a time. No sign of Pooh Bear.

My favorite bear in childhood was Pooh. My sister’s was Paddington. Had to visit Paddington Station and take a photo with the statue (and also buy my sister a Paddington Bear, of course).

Sir Richard Francis Burton’s Tomb (Mortlake)

One of the few trips Paul and I took out of the city proper was to the village of Mortlake to see the ornate tomb of Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer, translator, and subject of a short biography written by Philip Jose Farmer (a fictional Burton also plays a large role in Farmer’s Riverworld books). There is a plexiglass panel at the back through which you can see the caskets of Burton and his wife. Eerie, but cool.

Bram Stoker’s Ashes (Golder’s Green)

The other trip outside the city proper that Paul and I took was an absolute must for me: the resting place of Bram Stoker (and his son), in Golder’s Green Crematorium. I didn’t realize you needed an appointment because Stoker’s urn is in a locked building but thankfully groundskeeper Dan (Paul’s new best mate!) showed us around. So many people have been cremated there. I could fill a post just with the plaques and urns we saw (including Sigmund Freud and his wife; Anna Pavlova; Keith Moon and Peter Sellers to name a few. I somehow missed Sir Cedric Hardwicke who starred in some of my favorite Universal horror movies).

Abbey Road and the Globe

I mean, again, can you love music, go to London, and not walk the zebra crossing at Abbey Road? And can you be a fan of theatre and not pay a visit to the original site of the Globe Theatre, the current site of the Globe Theatre, and the portrait of William Shakespeare?

Sir John Soane’s Museum

Of all the museums we visited (The British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery), the one I wish we’d had more time in was the less well-known Sir John Soane’s Museum. I’m so glad Paul suggested it, even for the short half-hour we had in there. When Soanes turned his townhouse collection over to the Nation, he stipulated that the building be left as is. Which means nothing in this eclectic collection is labeled, and the basement (where much of the collection is) and certain interior rooms are very dark after the sun goes down … which in London in November is about a half-hour before the Museum closes.

Thanksgiving Dinner

In addition to being a fantastic tour guide, Paul and his wife Claire were veritable saints for hosting me all week, feeding me, and making sure I got on the right trains. On Thursday, while family and friends in the US were celebrating Thanksgiving, Claire cooked a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving dinner and Paul and Claire’s daughters (and soon to be son-in-law) joined us. One of the highlights of a highlight-filled week.

Book Review: THE CITY IN GLASS

TITLE: The City in Glass

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

215 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250348272 (hardcover; also e-book and audio)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Nghi Vo has quickly become one of those handful of authors whose work I will buy without even reading a synopsis about the plot and whose new books I will usually read as soon as I purchase (See also: Seanan McGuire, ‘Nathan Burgoine, Silvia Moreno-Garcia), even if I’m a bit slow when it comes to posting the reviews.

The City in Glass, Vo’s latest novel, is a stunning portrait of responding to grief, recovering from trauma, and finding common ground. The demon Vitrine has been the largely unseen patron of the city of Azril for hundreds of years. Very few of the citizenry know her as more than a legend, and the few that do know she’s real tread a careful path with her. She has loved the city since she first arrived from another continent and has guided it to its current glory. And then a group of angels arrive, declare the city sinful, and destroy it. The angels begin to depart to their higher realm once their “work” is done, but Vitrine manages to curse one of them who then must be left behind. This all happens in the first chapter of the book and is the impetus for the rest of the action, so I’m not really spoiling anything. This first chapter is a master class in how to set a reader up, going from joyful immersion in a new setting to the complete destruction of that setting in a few short pages. Again, since I hadn’t read the front cover flap synopsis, I had no idea what was coming, and I was as devastated as Vitrine.

Vitrine, being immortal, does not have to move on from the ruins of her beloved city to find life and sustenance elsewhere. And so she begins the slow process of watching the land heal and foster new life – and thus, eventually after hundreds of years, a new settlement for her to watch over. We watch Vitrine move through various stages of grief for the loss of not just so many loved ones (both human and animal) but for the mementos and landmarks of the city’s long history. (I cannot help, in retrospect, compare Vitrine’s reactions to what I’ve watched friends in North Carolina go through thanks to last fall’s hurricane, or what I imagine the people of Los Angeles will be going through as they strive to move on from the current fires of winter 2025.) Vitrine cycles through sadness, anger, depression, and excitement for what develops – but Vo makes it clear that these emotions are not compartmentalized or managed on a straight timeline. They overlap, they recur. Setbacks for the city inspire setbacks in Vitrine’s mental and emotional state.

And the presence of the angel she cursed, the being she holds partly responsible (not fully, because the blame lies with the angel’s cohort as well, but they are beyond Vitrine’s reach), does not help her recovery and in fact hinders it for quite some time. Thanks to her curse, the angel is tied to the land that once held Azril and thus is tied to Vitrine. He also goes through a cycle of defiance (that he did anything wrong), regret (at what’s he’s done), and hope (that he can be part of healing the damage to Vitrine’s heart). It is never easy to heal from trauma when the cause of your trauma is still present and a part of your life, and Vo explores that emotional territory beautifully and without attempting to provide any kind of easy “one size fits all” answer to how to navigate the situation.

I also loved the time-lapse “development of a civilization from small settlement to world power” aspect of the book. Vo takes the new city through the stages of agriculture-based to commerce-based and gives it threats domestic, foreign, human, and natural (including a plague). This could have been a much longer, much more detailed novel about the city’s history alone, but viewing the highlights (and low points) of that history through the eyes of an immortal felt more appropriate. This story really is Vitrine’s, and so much can change in the relative blink of an immortal’s eyes.

I cannot recommend The City in Glass highly enough, especially to readers who enjoy deep character studies accompanied by intriguing worldbuilding.

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. The City in Glass was published in October 2024, so this review is a bit late.

Sunday Shorts: Two from Knaves

In Knaves: A Blackguards Anthology (Outland Entertainment, 2018), Editors Melanie R. Meadors and Alana Joli Abbott brought together 14 stories about anti-heroes, heroes discovering the darker sides of themselves, and villains discovering their nobler aspects. Here are my thoughts on two of the stories contained in an anthology that covers a variety of genres.

cover art by Daniel Rempel

“Daughter of Sorrow” by Maurice Broaddus

“Our kind is never alone.” I really wasn’t sure, thanks to that opening sentence, what genre of story I was in for. “Our kind” meaning … vampires? Clandestine super-humans? Aliens living among us? So many possibilities, and any of them would have been interesting in Broaddus’ hands. What we get is the tale of Rianna, a teenage girl whose family is part of a secret society that runs the world. Rianna’s father is missing and presumed dead, which leaves her adrift and in harm’s way thanks to the society’s rules. Broaddus reveals the danger she’s in through a series of encounters with classmates and doles out the details of her relationship with her father via flashbacks. The alternating scenes build the suspense of both storylines effectively up to the moment they come together. The story is complete unto itself but did leave me wanting more of both Rianna and the Grendel Society.

The Life and Times of Johnny the Fox by Sabrina Vourvoulias

“The Life and Times of Johnny the Fox” is a story about a classic trickster personality, about community, and about doing the right thing even when it’s not the easy thing.

One of the many things I love about this story is what I can only describe as the “street corner urban legend” style of the narration. Imagine walking through a Philadelphia neighborhood, stopping into a bodega for a bottle of water or soda while you’re in the middle of telling your companion a local legend you’ve heard, and having someone say, “I am here to tell you the truth about the Johnny the Fox.” That first sentence sets that tone, and the rest of the story delivers on it.

Every Sabrina Vourvoulias story has an undeniable rhythm, a musicality that drives it. “The Life and Times of Johnny the Fox” is no exception. There’s the beat of the narration, a very particular style of storytelling that sweeps you up and carries you along. But music, singing especially, also plays a part in the main action of the story as Johnny returns to Puerto Rico at a particularly dangerous time for the island, to try to do what he does best: convince someone not to do the terrible thing they’re about to do. But even the most charismatic people stumble sometimes, and how Johnny recovers from that with the help of a community that loves him (even if they don’t always like him) is just as important as whether he succeeds.

Book Review: BENEATH THE POET'S HOUSE

TITLE: Beneath the Poet’s House

AUTHOR: Christa Carmen

321 pages, Thomas & Mercer, ISBN 9781662513275 (paperback; also e-book, audio)

 MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

There is no “sophomore slump” for Christa Carmen. Beneath the Poet’s House, the standalone follow-up to 2023’s The Daughters of Block Island, is another engrossing New England Gothic tale featuring a strong female protagonist contending with secretive, sketchy men who may or may not have her best interests at heart, friends with mysterious pasts and motives, and a lingering sense that something supernatural may be going on.

Saoirse White has moved to Providence to start over after the unexpected death of her controlling husband. The house she rents turns out to be the historic home of poet and spiritualist Sarah Helen Whitman, who was once engaged to Edgar Allan Poe, frequented by a trio of local writers who invite her to join their occasional seances calling upon Whitman’s spirit for guidance and inspiration. She also meets Emmit Powell, a prize-winning author with a Poe fixation. New friends and new romance seem to respark her lost creativity … but are the odd things happening around her the work of Whitman and Poe’s spirits, or something more mundane and sinister?

Saoirse is a woman fighting the demons of her past, hoping for a fresh start. Carmen doles out Saoirse’s secrets (not all of which have to do with her troubled marriage and her husband’s death) in tantalizing little moments that sometimes go unnoticed until you realize later how well the author seeded them. As someone who has struggled with writer’s block resulting in part from depression after a major life-changing event, I connected with Saoirse’s struggles – and I both reveled in and felt concern for how her creativity comes rushing back to her, wondering if, again, there was something supernaturally malevolent happening.

Carmen is a master at surrounding her protagonists with characters whose motives and intentions are not always clear, keeping the reader wondering which characters will turn out to be truly on her side and which will not. Saoirse’s new friends, new love interest, late husband’s best friend, and parents all contribute to the general sense of unease that permeates the book, and all have moments where I questioned what their true motives were – without ever feeling like any of them were acting “out of character.” (Well, except for Saoirse’s father. He’s in like one scene, and sorry, he’s just an unrepentant asshole.)

The city of Providence is also a character – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the city of Providence’s literary history is. Whitman is a strong presence throughout the book because Saoirse lives in the poet’s house, which means of course Whitman’s one-time fiancée, Poe, is a strong presence as well. But so is H.P. Lovecraft. And Emmit Powell calls to might a plethora of “charismatic and charming” New England award-winning authors who moonlight as college professors. I’ve read my fair share of Poe, Lovecraft, and contemporary award-winning auteurs. This book has inspired in me some about curiosity about Sarah Helen Whitman, though, which I think may have been Carmen’s intention.

The general Gothic sensibility of the book (houses with a dark history, characters with secrets and questionable motives, a female main character in danger) really worked for me. Carmen’s atmospherics are on point and kept me in a state of building dread that pushed me to keep reading even when I knew I should be going to sleep, all leading to a satisfactory set of reveals (secrets must be revealed in such a book) and conclusion. I hope the book will have the same effect on you.

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. Beneath the Poet’s House was released on December 10, 2024, so this review is a bit late.

Theatre Thursday: Drinking Glasses!

A little something different for the first Theatre Thursday of 2025.

My cousins gave me this wonderful set of four lowball tumblers, plus a pen and a pin, for Christmas. She found them on Etsy, but doesn’t remember the name of the Etsy shop and so far my own searches have been unsuccessful — although I do find quite a few used sets for sale on E-Bay.

I posted one kind of blurry picture of the set in my Instagram post about the presents I got for Christmas and had been meaning to post a better group picture and some close-ups. The better group pic is above. The close-ups are below.

I really thought that I’d have seen at least a couple of shows, out of the 20 pictured (five per glass), but nope — I didn’t see a single one of these shows on Broadway either during the runs pictured or during any revivals. Ah well!

Book Reviews: Three for the Twelfth Day of Christmas (a little late)

Growing up, January 6th (the twelfth day of Christmas; Three Kings Day; Epiphany; Theophany) was the day we took down our Christmas decorations (which went up, unfailingly, the day after Thanksgiving). For me, that includes putting away all the Christmas books (and I have a LOT of Christmas and winter holiday-related books!) So I figured, why not use today to talk about a few of my favorite Christmas reads from the past month? Maybe you’ll want to seek them out now to have in hand for next year. Or maybe you’re one of those folks who enjoy reading Christmas stories all year long, which is totally cool.

EDIT TO ADD: Somehow, this didn’t post on January 6th like it was supposed to, so here it is on January 8th. I’ll figure this scheduling posts thing out eventually.

cover by Inspiral Design

TITLE: Upon the Midnight Queer

AUTHOR: ‘Nathan Burgoine

202 pages, Dominant Trident Press, ISBN 9781777352363 (paperback, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

For several years now, ‘Nathan Burgoine has been writing a new queer retelling or reinterpretation of a classic Christmas tale and posting it for free on his website. This year, he’s collected them into book form (print, e-book, and audio, narrated by Giancarlo Herrera and Hannah Schooner), and added a new “Little Village novella” not available on his website. He started this project at a time when there was far less representation for the LGBTQIA+ community in televised Christmas movies (and especially, televised Christmas romances). That centered representation (as opposed to stories that just include a seemingly celibate gay best friend or neighbor) still has a long way to go. But the landscape is much more diverse in print, and Burgoine is one of the reasons why. Not just because of the short stories collected here, but also because of his Little Village holiday romance novellas (three of which, to date, take place on or near Christmas).

The previously available stories include twists on the well-known classics (Rudolph, Frosty and Jack Frost, Jingle Bells, the Little Matchstick Girl), expand upon supporting characters from other classics (Peter Cratchit from A Christmas Carol) classic Christmas tales from the well-known (Rudolph, Frosty, A Christmas Carol, Jingle Bells), and bring back to light some less well known Christmas stories from the past (including The Christmas Hirelings by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a novella I'd never heard of before reading Burgoine's story but have come to really love; and The Romance of a Christmas Card by Kate Douglas Wiggin). There's also one story brand new to the collection (that is, not available for free on the author’s website), “Folly,” that is set in Burgoine's Little Village novella series and is an excellent addition to that world, introducing us to characters I do hope will show up in future Little Village novellas.

These are stories that show that no matter the time and place, LGBTQIA people exist and deserve love and to celebrate as much as straight people do. These are stories of hope, love, redemption, and making a place for yourself, during the holidays and all year long.

cover design by Olga Grlic, cover illustration by Nina Hunter

TITLE: The Merriest Misters

AUTHOR: Timothy Janovsky

305 pages, St. Martins Griffin, ISBN 9781250338938 (paperback, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

I’ll be honest: I was sold on this book when I heard it described as “a queer The Santa Clause.” Take one of my favorite Christmas movies and make it less heteronormative? And then tweak the world-building and magic system so that the only real connection to The Santa Clause is the concept of the main characters discovering, through an accident, that “Santa” identity/mantle is passed down (sometimes in a planned way, sometimes not-so-planned)? I’m definitely in.

This is the first Timothy Janovsky book I’ve read (although You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince has been sitting on my shelf since last Christmas…. Sorry, previously purchased book!), and it won’t be the last because I mostly had a blast reading this. The main characters, Patrick and Quinn, are lovable and relatable (if, near the start, a bit infuriating). Through flashbacks we see how they met, how their romance developed, how they got married and rushed into buying a home (because heteronormative expectations of wedded life…), and how they perceived their families’ reactions to all of it. This is important because, as I mentioned … they’re a bit infuriating at the start. I am not usually a fan of books where everything that happens hinges on a total lack of communication between people who should be communicating. There were several times early on where I stopped reading to shout “Oh, for Kringle’s sake, JUST TALK TO HIM!” But just as I was hitting my limit, the characters did start to talk it out – haltingly, yes, but just enough to keep me invested. And I’m glad I stuck with it, because the second half of the book was even more worth sticking around for. I laughed a lot, and I got teary-eyed as well. And may have cheered once or twice. (Without spoilers, let me hit you with this phrase: Non-Binary Young Elf Poet.)

The world-building is also fun, including looks into the elf society and the existence of a Council of Priors whose guidance isn’t always perfect but at least is heartfelt (including changing the title of Mrs. Claus to the titular Merriest Mister). I would welcome a repeat visit with Patrick, Quinn, their human families and friends, and their new extended family at the North Pole.

Cover art by lilithsour

TITLE: The Nightmare Before Kissmas (A Royals and Romance novel)

AUTHOR: Sara Raasch

356 pages, Bramble/Tor Publishing, ISBN 9781250333193 (paperback, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

I’ve always loved the idea of the personifications of different holidays meeting (perhaps clashing and then teaming up, perhaps getting right to the teaming up part). Through in a little gay romance to move the plot along and all the better. The Nightmare Before Kissmas, the first entry in Sara Raasch’s “Royals and Romance” series (the sequel, Go Luck Yourself, comes out in March) is silly, giddy fun from start to stop. This does not mean that the emotional stakes aren’t real – they are, and range from living up to your parents’ expectations to realizing your parents are not as infallible as child-you thought, to making amends to people you didn’t realize you were hurting – but those stakes are surrounded by a comedy of errors. And all the main characters, male and female, are hot and very human. This is less Nightmare Before Christmas and more Red, White & Royal Blue for the soon-to-be monarchs of the holidays. I liked that we meet Nicholas “Coal” Claus, prince of Christmas, at essentially rock-bottom and slowly get to see why his brother Kris and best friend Iris (the princess of Easter) support him and love him despite all the ways he self-sabotages himself under the weight of the family legacy (and a decent helping of generational trauma). I enjoyed meeting Hex, the prince of Halloween, before we really know who he is, and learning about his own family pressures. These four main characters are the core of the book, although it is narrated in the first person by Coal so most of our views of the other holidays are from his (sometimes skewed) perspective. I also like that most of the drama stems from Christmas’ ongoing, ever-quickening, encroachment of the other holiday. Raasch is not afraid to make that a clear point of contention in this fictional world, as it is for many people in the real world. (If you know me, you know how much I love Christmas – but not to the point that we’re putting Christmas trees up in October and taking them down in March.) While very few are mentioned by name, the author acknowledges that there are a lot of holidays observed and celebrated during the winter months.

I enjoyed this enough that I’m intrigued to see where the sequel, focused on younger brother Kris, will go in exploring holidays other than Halloween, Christmas, and Easter.

I received electronic advance reading copies of these books for free (one from the publisher, two via NetGalley) in exchange for honest reviews. This does not affect my opinion of the books nor the content of my reviews.

Book Review: ADRIFT IN CURRENTS CLEAN AND CLEAR

TITLE: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

146 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250848338 (hardcover; also e-book and audio)

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

 Since this is the tenth book in the Wayward Children novella series, perhaps a quick recap of what the series is about is in order. Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is for children who (like Dorothy, Alice, and the Pevensie clan) have journeyed through a Door to another world and returned to a home they no longer fit into. Disbelieving parents send these “troubled” kids off to boarding school – and if the kids are lucky, that school is Eleanor West’s, where they will find refuge, respite, and adults who understand them while they await the day their Door will find them once again. The odd numbered books in the series take place in the characters’ present day and usually involve a core group of students going on a quest to save a classmate (even though Eleanor has a “No Quests” rule they find ways to work around). The even numbered books, like this one, focus on one student’s backstory – their portal adventure.

As such, Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is a great jumping on point for readers new to the series who may not realize it’s part of a series. We have one focal character – Nadya, who in the odd numbered present-day sequence last appeared in book 3, Beneath the Sugar Sky – and one new world to explore, Belyyreka also known as the Land Beneath the Lake.

We got little of Nadya’s backstory when she appeared in Sugar Sky. Basically we were told that she had spent a “lifetime” in Belyyreka and then fell in a river and found herself back on Earth. So this volume gives us her complete story. Again, I won’t spoil the plot of the current book, but McGuire has a lot to say about both living with a physical difference you don’t consider a disability but others do (Nadya is born in Russia missing one arm, but doesn’t consider herself to be at a disadvantage because of it – but she also recognizes that the kids who are not missing limbs are the ones who are more likely to get adopted and she does what she can to help them make the good impressions they need to make) and how not every adoption experience is the beautiful, loved filled, all-for-the-right-reasons 1980s television movies of the week (and Lifetime or Great American Family Channel movies in the current day) would have us believe (Nadya does eventually get adopted, but for what is obviously all the wrong reasons). Going through the Door that manifests in a turtle pond brings Nadya eventually to a different sort of adoption experience, and we as readers get to see the effect going from a situation in which a child is not understood into one in which the child is accepted as is can have on a child’s mental health and self-image.

Belyyreka is another fascinating McGuire creation, a world where everyone breathes water (including, automatically, anyone who stumbles through a magic Door from an air-breathing world). McGuire’s worldbuilding is always rich and detailed and Belyyreka is no exception. I’m sure there are folkloric antecedents McGuire built this world off of, but I am unfamiliar with them and haven’t had a chance to research before posting this review. The society Nadya finds herself a part of involves humans who fish and farm with the aid of giant turtles. Yes, you read that correctly: giant turtles. Prior to this book, my favorite giant turtle was Gamera. I think now (without spoilers of any kind) it's Burian.

To be clear: reading Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is a complete experience – one could read this and not read any of the other books in the Wayward Children series, and not feel cheated (just as one can read the first Oz or Wonderland or Narnia books and feel like a complete story has been told). But I hope that readers coming to the series through this book will want to seek out Beneath the Sugar Sky to see where Nadya’s story goes next, and then be intrigued enough to read the rest of the series. It definitely made me want to re-read Sugar Sky.

I received an electronic advance reading copy of this book for free 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 from Cthulhu's Daughters

In 2015, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles co-edited Cthulhu’s Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror, in an effort to put paid to the rumor that “women don’t write Lovecraftian Horror / Weird Fiction.” No matter how many anthologies like this come out, there will be some people who still make that claim (heck, there are some who would claim women don’t write horror at all, or that women writing horror is a relatively recent development. Clueless, those people are.)

Here are my thoughts on a few of the 25 stories Moreno-Garcia and Stiles brought together.

Lockbox by E. Catherine Tobler

My opinion is that it takes a certain type of talent to write good serious “footnoted fiction.” (The type of story where as much is revealed in footnotes from the narrator as in the main text itself, that is. I thought about being cutesy and making this parenthetical aside a footnote, but I’m not sure I can get the formatting to work on my blog, and would it really be worth it?) I’ve read a fair number of such stories over the years, and in most of them I find the footnotes an affectation, often a distraction, rather than an enhancement. Not so here. Tobler’s story of two modern college students’ discovery of a long-buried but legendary Priory drips with atmosphere and foreboding from the very first sentence (“If nothing else, remember this: Edgar always knew.1”) and the footnotes enhance those feelings (“ 1 We may debate exactly when Edgar knew at length, but I am not convinced there was ever a single, discernable point one can reference; as the notions herein are circular,20 I feel so to was Edgar’s knowledge.” Yes, there’s a footnote to the footnote, which plays out very effectively later in the story). The narrator reveals the bloody history of the Priory and the history of his relationship with Edgar in just enough detail for the reader to understand how much isn’t be said … either because the narrator isn’t ready or is physically unable to share such details. It’s a fantastic counterpoint to Lovecraft, whose narrators often fell into what we call “purple prose” and shared too much detail; Tobler is as effective, or more so, in ramping up the creeping horror and dread with much less flowery language. And in the female protagonist, Tobler has created a character I find as horrifying as any of Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors.

Queen of a New America by Wendy N. Wagner

What is it about Nitocris, possible last queen of Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty, which draws so many writers of Lovecraftian horror to use her? Maybe it’s simply that Lovecraft himself mentions her in passing in two of his stories, making her a usable hook to expand on Lovecraft’s universe. Maybe it’s that so little is known about the historical Nitocris (including some debate over whether she actually existed at all), which makes her rife for use in all manner of genres from historical fiction to horror. Whatever it is, my experience is that usually in Lovecraftian horror, Nitocris is the Big Bad of the story/novel. Wendy N. Wagner turns that tradition upside down by showing a Nitocris who is far from the height of her power, her influence shrunk to being able to occasionally take control of a young girl’s body. Wagner explores the psychological effect of a drop from such lofty heights as well as revealing how it happened and draws comparisons between an Egypt where magic was commonplace and an America where logic and science have pushed magic to the background. Just when I thought I knew where the story was going, Wagner reveals a detail I hadn’t even noticed was missing and spins the story into a commentary about society we currently live in and where and how structures of power might be found in a world so different from the one Nitrocris knew. I enjoyed the claustrophobic feel of the story and the twist.

I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.