Book Review: A SCOUT IS BRAVE

TITLE: A Scout is Brave

AUTHOR: Will Ludwigsen

155 pages, Lethe Press, ISBN 9781590216606 (softcover, e-book)

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Will Ludwigsen’s new novella A Scout is Brave is almost too many things at once: young adult coming of age story (the narrator and main character is thirteen-year-old Bud Castillo), nostalgic historical (the time is 1963), a paean to the glory days of Scouting … and Lovecraftian eldritch horror. It almost shouldn’t work. In Ludwigsen’s deft hands, all the elements mesh for a story I couldn’t put down. I wasn’t surprised, of course. Ludwigsen’s Acres of Perhaps: Stories and Episodes is one of my favorite genre short story collections, and I will take any chance to tout it, including at the top of a review about a completely different book by the same author.

But let’s speak of A Scout Is Brave.

In the summer of 1963, Bud Castillo’s father loses his construction job in Queens NY. Just as the family is starting to worry about whether he’ll find work again, Bud’s father is offered an incredibly lucrative job: to help install and make operational an oil rig … off the coast of Massachusetts, near the small town of Innsmouth. Of course, weirdness is going to ensue. Bud finds he is the only kid in a town full of mostly elderly folks descended from the town’s original inhabitants … except for one other boy, Aubrey Marsh.

Readers of cosmic horror are well familiar with the history of Innsmouth, and with the Marsh family, as detailed in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” There have been countless pastiches, prequels, and sequels over the years, and yes, this is a sequel. One of the better ones, since Ludwigsen doesn’t try to imitate Lovecraft’s style, as so many of the writers who have visited Innsmouth in Lovecraft’s wake have. He tells the story in the simpler, less purple-prose, style of a man reminiscing about a year that changed his life. There’s no doubt, from the very first pages, that Bud and his family are walking into something they can’t imagine. The reader knows it, and the narrator, from his decades-later vantage point, knows it. Ludwigsen expertly portrays the language of someone whose fondest memories (of a friendship he’ll never experience again, of the time he came to understand his parents, and himself, better) are tinged with unimaginable horror.

The cosmic horror builds slowly: the little hints at the start, with descriptions of the odd behavior of the few returning residents of Innsmouth, slowly grow into scenes that are both rife with jump-scares (a visit to an abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town) and eerie cultish religious ceremony (when Bud’s family finally agrees to attend a service led by Reverand Pritchett at the Evangelical Progress Temple, the only church in town), which eventually lead to the story’s action-packed, frightening dénouement on ice-packed seas. The slow ratcheting up of the eeriness and the tension is perfectly paced. And what I find particularly brilliant is that the story feels Lovecraftian without ever actually teetering over into full on cosmic/eldritch horror.

These moments that teeter on, but never full embrace, the cosmic horror are interspersed with what I can only call a “skewed Rockwellian normalcy.” Bud meets Aubrey, introduces him to the concept of the Boy Scouts, they form a troop. They roam the town looking for good works to do, and through Bud’s eyes we get to meet the town’s denizens, most of whom have endearing, if odd, personalities, and who become the boys’ de facto teachers in whatever subjects they are expert it, since Innsmouth doesn’t have a school. I was a Cub Scout, a Webelo, and made it through a couple of years of Boy Scouts before the unexpected passing of a favorite Scoutmaster. I recognize Bud’s idealized attitude of “what Scouts should be,” and his joy at finding someone who embraced it in the same way. I also recognized the tint of nostalgia in older Bud’s narration – a tint that doesn’t quite cover up the things he’s learned since leaving Innsmouth, the scars that belie some of the nostalgia.

There’s also some insightful commentary about the negative aspects of nostalgia (through the citizens of Innsmouth who cannot move on even though they were left behind) and charismatic leaders who will say anything and do to get their way.

A Scout Is Brave is a perfect mix of nostalgia, horror, coming-of-age, and social commentary. It is going to be on my list of favorite reads of 2024.

Sunday Shorts: Valentine's Dave

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.

At the start of the month, editor Lee Blair published Candy Hearts: An LGBTQIA2S+ Charity Anthology, an e-book collection of 16 romance novellas featuring, as one might be able to guess from the title, LGBTQIA2S+ characters. The collection is available for only a limited time, and all proceeds go to the Transgender Law Center and the National Center for Transgender Equality – in my opinion a pair of organizations that absolutely deserve our support. So I’m urging anyone who loves romance to pick the anthology up while it’s available – and even if you don’t love romance, pick it up anyway! Then gift it to someone you know who does love the romance genre while supporting an excellent cause.

Upon opening my copy, I did something I almost never do with anthologies. Instead of reading the stories in order (which I prefer to do because I know how much effort anthology editors put into determining story order), I jumped straight to ‘Nathan Burgoine’s novella – because it is set in the Little Village, and thus connects to the novellas in Burgoine’s “BitterSweets Club” series, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. (A neat little bit of timing/serendipity/whatever you want to call it, that my first “Sunday Shorts” post of the year directly connects to my first “Series Saturday” post.)

Valentine’s Dave by ‘Nathan Burgoine

Dave has had a pretty disastrous streak of Valentine’s Day dates – from the married man to the barfer to the “coffee incident” – but he’s hopeful that this year he can break the streak through a “Secret Admirer” messaging program administered by the Village Business Council and with a little help from his roommate/best friend Asher. Asher is a recent cancer survivor, coming out the other side of chemo, and seems content to help his bestie find romance rather than seek it out himself. Dave has a crush on Victor, a “silver fox” of a veterinarian. Problem is: Dave is not at his most eloquent when it comes to sending secret messages to a cute guy. Luckily, Asher has a way with words. Of course, complications ensue on the path to happily ever after.

Burgoine is not the first author to run a gay spin on Cyrano de Bergerac, to be sure (although I can honestly say I’ve never read another such book, I’m sure they must be out there). But in standard Burgoine fashion, he tweaks the original story by merging it with another standard romance trope (which, if I made it explicit here, would spoil the ending, and I am loath to do that). This combination of tropes makes the story a little twistier, adding just enough inter-character angst to keep the story interesting without causing the reader undue anxiety.

I found Dave’s verbal and physical awkwardness endearing, and his obliviousness a bit too relatable (I tend to be, shall we say, a bit blind when it comes to whether other men are interested in me). Asher’s post-chemotherapy struggles with energy, and his declaring “Are you okay” a forbidden question, was also relatable as a colon cancer survivor myself. I remember the on-set of sudden, unexpected (even though I should have expected it) fatigue in the midst of an afternoon out with friends very well, and I think Burgoine captured it perfectly. I also enjoyed the view of Dave and Asher’s friend group; I think it’s always important to recognize that love doesn’t happen in a vacuum, that outside forces, including caring support from found family, have an effect (thankfully, in this case, positive) on the way romantic relationships form.

As a regular reader of Burgoine’s work, I was overjoyed to see references to members of the BitterSweets Club, and I loved how this novella gives us a tour of the various queer-friendly (and queer-owned) businesses in the Village. If you’ve never read anything by ‘Nathan Burgoine, this novella is a great introduction to the world his characters inhabit – but not in a way that detracts or distracts at all from the main story, which is a wonderful romance.

I’m hoping to post about other novellas in Candy Hearts between now and Valentine’s day. In the meantime, you can read my thoughts on ‘Nathan Burgoine’s other holiday-themed romance novellas featuring the BitterSweets Club in this Series Saturday post.

I’m not a total stranger to writing romance, either. My supernatural gay love story Paradise Fears can be read free here on my website.

Book Review: THE SALT GROWS HEAVY

TITLE: The Salt Grows Heavy

AUTHOR: Cassandra Khaw

106 pages, Tor Nightfire, ISBN 9781250830913 (hardcover, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

The Salt Grows Heavy cements Cassandra Khaw as one of the modern masters of the horror novella. Tonally, the book is very different from Khaw’s magnificent, ethereal 2021 novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth, which just proves the author’s range, as both books kept me engrossed through very different means.

Salt is narrated by a mermaid who married a king, but this is no happily-ever-after tale. The King has tortured his wife (including cutting out her tongue) and forced her to bear his daughters who, just prior to the start of the novella, have devoured their father, his court, and most of his kingdom. Among the survivors are the now-free mermaid and the court’s mysterious non-binary Plague Doctor, who flee the castle in search of safe haven. Which, this being a horror novella, they do not find, encountering instead a group of nearly feral children and the men they worship as gods. And this is when the story gets really disturbing.

The mermaid’s narrative voice is lush and detailed, bordering on archaic, while still being relatable to the modern reader. The weight of her experiences at her husband’s hands, the pride and fear she expressed about her daughters, inform every sentence. The developing bond between mermaid queen and plague doctor as they learn each other’s secrets, is the beautiful core of an otherwise horrific and bloody story; the fits and starts of awkward mutual attraction are so real that I recognized myself in each moment. But fair warning: this is not a cozy romance. The mermaid also narrates, in visceral detail, moments of brutal body horror that disturbed me even while I was unable to look away. The mermaid and the Plague Doctor each have experienced debilitating trauma at the hands of people who should have cared for them, through which the author explores the abuses of power endemic to so many fairy tales.

In The Salt Grows Heavy, Cassandra Khaw comingles threads and themes from fairy tales both famous (The Little Mermaid) and less-so (The Three Army Surgeons), along with works as seminal as Frankenstein and The Lord of the Flies – a combination which in lesser hands maybe would not work, but in Khaw’s hands becomes a vessel for exploring othering, outsidership, and the myriad ways in which we find ourselves controlled and confined.

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 Salt Grows Heavy was published on May 2, 2023

Book Review: THE HOUSE OF DROUGHT

TITLE: The House of Drought

AUTHOR: Dennis Mombauer

106 pages, Stelliform Press, ISBN 978177709178 (paperback, e-book)

MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: Mombauer expertly weaves threads from different times through the common ground of a haunted house, keeping the reader guessing as to how it will all come together. The taste of dust and a sense of desperation permeate every page, with hope blooming unexpectedly in small corners.

LONG REVIEW: In The House of Drought, Dennis Mombauer combines the tropes of classic Gothic literature – an abandoned mansion with a questionable history situated in a remote location – with the contemporary climate emergency and Sri Lankan history to create a tightly-written novella that keeps the reader guessing how it will all come together as it spans multiple time frames and drips with atmosphere. The taste of dust and a sense of desperation permeate almost every page, with hope blooming unexpectedly in small corners.

The mansion at the hear of things is a Sri Lankan colonialist relic, long abandoned by the Europeans who built it when a caretaker named Ushu brings four children there to protect them from racially biased violence. When thugs arrive to collect a debt, eldest child Jasmit leads most of the children into a bathroom whose running tap is a portal to a mystical Dry House. The Dry House is both haven and horror. One child runs into the forest that surrounds the plantation, encountering the supernatural Sap Mother, who has her own agenda.

Parts of the story are told through Jasmit’s eyes, and parts through those of a climate disaster documentarian who has become obsessed with the plantation and begins investigating its history and reputation – including another family who lived there after Ushu’s charges disappeared. The shifts between POVs, the stories within stories, are sometimes jarring – but that adds to the overall sense that something is very not right with this house and the forest surrounding it, something dangerous that continues to threaten adults and children alike. I think this is part of the reason the story has lingered with me months after my initial reading: I feel as off-kilter as the characters do.

The generational similarities and differences, the backgrounds the characters are coming from, also add to that overall atmosphere … almost, but not quite, a “the more things change, the more they remain the same” feeling. I know very little about the history of Sri Lanka, and I do wonder how this book resonates with readers more familiar with the actual history.

Another reason the book has lingered with me is that pure atmosphere. The sweltering heat of the climate-change present day scenes is palpable, as is the parched sur-reality of the Dry House. Mombauer is at his best with the visceral sensory details (I felt dehydrated just reading the Dry House scenes), as well as in the way he expressed the unreality of the supernatural forces at work. Even his “jump scares” are potent.

I suppose if there’s one thing I wanted more of it was Sap Mother. A looming presence throughout, a counterpoint to the Dry House (both malevolent but in different ways), I felt like she deserved a bit more screen time than she got. But the scenes she does get are chillingly effective.

The House of Drought clocks in at a fast, engrossing 106 pages, and I suspect I’ll be seeing something new every time I re-read it.

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.

Novellas and the Romance Genre

I had the pleasure of getting to know romance author Ginny Frost at a writers retreat a couple of years ago. Since a lot of her work is novella length, I invited her to be a guest here and talk about her relationship with novellas and how they fit in the romance genre.

I’m Ginny Frost, and I write sexy books. Romance is my genre of choice because I love a love story. You know, the part where they fall in love? Whether it’s Elizabeth and Darcy or Han and Leia, the genre calls to me. The novella works wonderfully for love stories.

For me, the shorter format allows me to get to the point of the tale fast. And the point is falling in love. Novellas allow me as an author to focus on the romance (sexy stuff or not). I can write the details about their fears, wants, and needs without having to establish a lengthy backstory. My characters fall into bed quickly and then sort everything else out afterward. Keeping the story concise forces me to push the characters to deal with their issues. They can’t languish in ennui. They must move the plot forward!

Being able to write a short, fulfilling tale is an art form. As a writer, we need to convey everything to our readers in under 40,000 words. Novellas challenge us to tighten our writing and find new ways to express complex ideas. Not to mention, they are much easier to edit than a 100,000-word monster. But I digress…

Recently, there’s been a trend in romance to do MAPs—multi-author projects. Several writers will publish a series of novellas using the same setting, prop, or theme. I’ve taken part in two MAPs and love having my short pieces exposed to other readers. (Wow, that sounded dirty. Good thing I write spicy!) My most recent novella is part of a magical series with seven books. With the shorter format, all seven of us were able to produce and self-pub the novellas within a year. We had time to work on other projects because the stories were under 40,000 words.

Let’s talk about pricing. Unfortunately, the trend is for authors to sell books at a minimum profit. Readers want free or $0.99 titles. It’s hard to mark your work for only a dollar when it takes years to write it. Novellas are a terrific way to lure readers with a book in a low price range. Readers are willing to try out a new author for a dollar. Short works under $2 can entice readers to check you out and then grab that $20 “book of your heart” later.

As a reader, I love the novella. It’s short and sweet. It gives you a taste of the author’s work. With many book titles available, novellas help me weed through the masses to find hidden gems. Romance is not the only genre using this format. I’ve read sci-fi and cozy mystery novellas. These authors show off their skills by creating a satisfying story in such few words. (I’m looking at you, Martha Wells.)

My conclusion? In a world with millions of authors to choose from, mastering the novella format will get eyes on your books. Read widely to see how other authors squeeze a full story into 40k. Then go do it. You won’t regret a thing.

Thanks for letting me visit today. Check out my books here, including my $0.99 newest novella, Artist. I’m all over social media—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I’ve got a fantastic blog for authors called Apps for Writers. And if you like a free book, check out my newsletter for a free prequel to Stonewater Stories.

Ginny Frost is a hybrid author with two traditionally published novels and seven indie titles. She writes contemporary romance with a sexy, funny kick. In her downtime, she plays clerk at the local library—the perfect job to feed her reading addiction. She lives in upstate NY with her very own kindhearted ogre, their two smart and sassy daughters, and an evil cat named Flash.

Book Review: FEED THEM SILENCE

TITLE: Feed Them Silence

AUTHOR: Lee Mandelo

112 pages, Tordotcom Publishing, ISBN 9781250824509 (hardcover; also, e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: In Feed Them Silence, Lee Mandelo’s penchant for characters searching for answers to questions that get to the heart of who they are combines with their felicity with sensory details that immerse the reader in the character’s head and world to create a work of lush, sometimes gut-punching, beauty that questions where the line is between ethical and abusive research practices involving animals who can’t give consent and ruminates on human and animals’ shared need to belong. Feed Them Silence is a moving and effective look at the ways in which we seek connection and how our obsessions lead as much to heartbreak as to breakthroughs. At 112 pages, it’s a fast read but not a forgettable one.

LONGER REVIEW: Lee Mandelo’s new release, Feed Them Silence, is in concept and execution about as far as one can get from their previous book Summer Sons: novella vs. novel, science fiction rather than supernatural horror, cold labs and winter forests in place of hot Southern gothic buildings and summer cemeteries. What the works share is lead characters determined to find answers to questions that get to the heart of who they are, and Mandelo’s felicity with sensory details that immerse the reader in the character’s head and world.

Doctor Sean Kell-Luddon’s lifelong love of wolves has led to her current research project: using a surgically inserted neurological interface to transmit the thoughts and emotions of one of the world’s last free-roaming wild wolves to Sean’s own brain. (At the same time, her research team collects the raw data of the transmission for possible future use by the folks funding the research project.) Mandelo does a wonderful job contrasting Sean’s inner life when connected to her wolf Kate, especially the sense of belonging and emotional connection, with her outer life, which is clearly fraying even before the novella begins (especially her marriage, but her relationship to her team as well). Sean is searching not only for an understanding of, and a way to help, her nearly-extinct favorite species but also for a deeper connection psychologically to replace the one she’s losing in the physical world.

Scientists often speak of the dangers of anthropomorphizing – assigning human thoughts and characteristics to – animals (wild or domesticated) whose brains do not function the way ours do. Sean’s rational intention to avoid it falters the longer and more often she is directly connected to Kate via the interface. Transcribing what she gleans into human terms and being unable to separate her personal life from her project sets up the final conflict of the book beautifully.

If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that the narrow Sean-centric POV, which gives us such amazing insight into Sean’s intentions, history, and altering mental state, does not allow us to get to know some of the other characters as well as I would have liked, in particular Sean’s wife, Riya. Riya does play an important role in the story, she’s not just a prop to hang Sean’s faults on, so I would like to have seen some of the events of the book from her perspective. That’s the joy and the sting of novellas, though. I an avowed fan of the format, but the tight focus that makes novellas so enjoyable sometimes leaves us wanting the deeper insight a longer work might provide. That being said, the supporting cast of Feed Them Silence is all well-drawn and distinct. The world-building surrounding Sean, Riya, the team, and Kate is perfectly evoked: with just a few sentences, we know we are in a near-future where climate change has wreaked havoc on wild animal populations as resources dwindle. Also, a world where corporate interests are willing to fund cutting-edge research projects that academia is hesitant to touch – drawing attention to how hard it is to delineate that line where ethical research turns abusive and teasing questions of intent versus execution when it comes to the uses to which the research results are put.

Through it all, Mandelo fills the book with lush, sometimes gut-punching, sensory details, especially but not only when Sean is connected to Kate. I became completely immersed in descriptions of the cold winter forest, the aches and pains of being undernourished, the smells of fellow pack members, the taste of blood and raw meat as the pack takes down a rare bit of prey. I felt like I was truly there. There’s also a very affecting scene between Sean and her Riya that trades on the same level of sensory detail.

Feed Them Silence is a moving and effective look at the ways in which we seek connection and how our obsessions lead as much to heartbreak as to breakthroughs. At 112 pages, it’s a fast read but not a forgettable one.

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. Feed Them Silence released on March 14, 2023.

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.

It's NOVELLA MONTH!

For no other reason than “I feel like it,” I’m declaring March “Novella Month” here on the blog. As far as I can tell, there is no month-long celebration of what has become for me, and many of the readers I know, my favorite length for fiction. Among the writers I know and whose work I love, a good many excel and revel in the novella realm. My goal for the month is to simply celebrate the form with book reviews, quotes from other readers, and hopefully some guest-posts by or interviews with novella writers, editors, or publishers, regardless of genre. I’ll use the hashtag #NovellaMonth when I post on social media.

So What Is a Novella?

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) define novellas as ranging from 17,500 to 40,000 words, and most other genre fiction awards/organizations appear to agree: the Hugo Awards, the Romance Writers of America RITA Awards, British Fantasy Awards, Paris Literary Prize, the Nero Wolfe Society’s Black Orchid Award, and the Shirley Jackson Awards to name a few alongside SFWA’s Nebula Awards. (The Horror Writers Association’s Stoker Awards lump novellas and novelettes into a “Best Long Fiction” category.)   Even sites that simply discuss the definition of novella quote or refer to the SFWA definition. Some blogs stretch the upper limit to 50,000 words, but none of the major recognized awards seem to. In terms of page length, if the average single-spaced page has approximately 500 words, novellas would range from 35 to 80 or 100 pages.

Per a few conversations with fellow writers, stories in the 150-200 page range tend to be described as “short novels” (for instance, C.S.E. Cooney’s wonderful The Twice-Drowned Saint, recently re-released by Mythic Delirium Books). In my mind even 150-180 page length work fits under the novella umbrella – but I’m not the one creating literature awards season criteria, so take that for what it’s worth. (Also, please don’t come at me with “that’s not a novella!” if I review or talk about books that are less than 50 pages or more than 100 under the #NovellaMonth tag. It’s not a hill worth fighting over, I promise.)

What Is It About Novellas, anyway?

For me, the joy of novellas is that they can be the same type of quick reads as short stories (depending on my mood, other distractions/chores, etc.) but with the world-building and characterizational depth of novels. Robert Silverberg, whose long out-or-print collection To Open The Sky is one of my most-often re-read books, composed of 5 linked novellas originally published in Galaxy magazine, said it more eloquently, in the introduction to his collection Sailing to Byzantium: “[The novella] is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms...it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.”

I’m pretty sure I loved the form before I consciously knew what it was, even having read To Open the Sky for the first time sometime in 5th or 6th grade, although I readily admit that the novellas we were assigned to read in high school didn’t work for me – another quick internet search shows that English Class favorites like The Old Man and The Sea (26,601 words), Of Mice and Men (29,160) and Ethan Frome (34,500) all fall into that definition of novella up above. I struggled with all of them in high school (with apologies to Eugenia DelCampo and the other wonderful English teachers I had), probably due less to quality than to the fact that I have never liked being told what I had to read. I’ve never attempted to read those books again. Perhaps I should give them a second chance. On the other hand, one of my most-reread classics is A Christmas Carol, which clocks in at 28,500, and I also loved The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (25,500), both of which were assigned/recommended by my high school English teachers.

I had no idea that these books were anything other than really short novels – until I read Stephen King’s collection Different Seasons, sometime in 1982 or ’83, in which’s Afterword he discussed how hard it was to get stories of this length published, being too long for the short story magazines and too short for book publishers. That has shifted a lot in the last ten years as many small press publishers, and even some of the bigger houses, are more than happy to publish novellas as stand-alone books rather than in collections. (I’m planning to run a list of such publishers, with a focus on the small presses, sometime this month.)

To Novella or Not Novella?

As a writer, all my published work has been in the short story realm, perhaps bordering into novelette. I’ve started two different novellas over the years, but they’re both incomplete. I haven’t been writing much fiction at all since at least 2018, but I’m thinking I might motivate myself to revisit one of those projects this month.

A small selection of the novellas I’ll be reading or reviewing this month (the bottom half of the pile have already been read)

So, reader friends – what do you love about the novella form? What are your favorite novellas? Please weigh in in the comments. Maybe you’ll introduce me to something new – or maybe you’ll convince me to re-read one of those classics I struggled with in high school!

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