Favorite Reads June 2018
Yo. Here’s some of what I read and liked over the month of June.
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton: I like the spy novels that tumbled in on the wake of Ian Fleming’s James Bond and which positioned themselves as being distinctly anti-Bond. The nebbish cuckold of John Le Carre’s George Smiley and Len Deighton’s working class paycheck and expense account obsessed Harry Palmer. This is the first in Deighton’s Palmer series (which isn’t even the character’s name but the one Michael Caine gave him in the film version) and it’s an enjoyable spy romp involving nuclear tests, brain washing, and the international trafficking in prominent scientists. Sure, the scheming is topsy-turvy and the plot exhausting after a bit, but the voice carries you to the end. Dry, acerbic, and bemusedly aloof is my jam.
Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield: It’s 1328 and the Chatelaine of Hell has besieged the city of Bruges with her army of chimeras and the widow Margriet de Vos is mad at Hell and not going to take it any more. Also her husband won’t stay dead and still puts claims on the property Margriet sees as her inheritance, an ill-gained hoard of riches and a magic weapon that just happens to be the key to Hell. This forces her to flee Bruges with an assortment of companions, nearly all of whom are wronged women like Margriet herself. For such a small book there’s a lot going on in Armed in Her Fashion and while there were a few moments where I wished Heartfield zigged instead of zagged, I overall enjoyed the ride. Novels based on Brueghel paintings are my jam. Check out Dulle Griet.
Apocalypse Nyx by Kameron Hurley: I am a huge fan of Hurley’s Bel Dame series and this book is a collection of short stories that serve as something of a tangential prequel to that series. Former Bel Dame, turned mercenary Nyx is still a battered and rebuilt veteran of the ongoing brutal war on her world, and here she’s putting together the team she’ll have around her in God’s War. If there’s something of a through line to the book’s stories, it’s Nyx’s struggle to be slightly less awful than the default awfulness of her surroundings. She might not have a completely functioning moral compass, but it works from time to time. Violent bug-fueled science-fantasy is my jam.
Favorite Reads April 2018
Imaginary Lives by Marcel Schwob: Schwob’s one of those decadent fin-de-siecle French fellows I’m crazy about. Here he plays with biography by writing a short set of in-depth profiles of various ne’er-do-wells, nobodies, and the corrupt. While the profiles aren’t absolutely accurate, they dig deep into the mundane and dredge up moods and ideas that resemble truths.
A fun little book, it’s easy to read this and see how its influence on later writers such as Borges.
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland: Zombies rise in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg and pretty much put a stop to the American Civil War. Now years after the War’s end some semblance of society has returned. In the wake of the Native and Negro Reeducation Act certain children get combat training so they might serve the wealthy as attendants, protecting them from zombies and other threats. Jane McKeene is one such woman studying at Miss Preston’s Combat School in the walled enclave of Baltimore where she ends up stumbling upon a conspiracy that soon puts her life and those of her friends in jeopardy.
While the larger setting here feels vague and put in with broad strokes, it’s the day to day stuff and the picture of Jane and her friendships that I found most endearing.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente: This is one of those books that has a buy in. So if the notion of a washed-up glamrock act having to compete in an intergalactic “Eurovision” style contest to prove humanity’s worth a damn sounds like something you might want to read, then yeah, this is that book. This is that book in spades. Part Ziggy Stardust, part Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s fun and funny, and even when it’s not you only have to read a few more pages for the funny fun to return. And if David Bowie Douglas Adams, doesn’t sound fun at least the book didn’t try to fool you by pretending to be anything other than what it was.
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks: Hooks as always is insightful and unflinching, but there’s a lot of love and kindness in her words as she attempts to provide a frame work for men whom she feels have been either maligned or left behind in a lot of feminist theory. What she creates then is a call to action for men that instead of prioritizing patriarchal dominance and hierarchies challenges us to the heroic task of creating lives of integrity as nurturing presences within our communities.
Jade City by Fonda Lee: Wow. This book takes Game of Thrones and Hong Kong action movies, mixes them together, and makes a Kung Fu gangster epic around dueling families of magical jade-fueled warriors as they vie for dominance in the imaginary island nation of Kekon. This is secondary world fantasy, but set in a time period that feel like the 1970s/80s in a place somewhere like South East Asia. Whether the city of Janloon is Hong Kong, Saigon, or Singapore doesn’t really matter so much as the world Lee creates there is unique, vivid, and masterfully executed, so that by the end when she pulls back some to depict the brewing Cold War elsewhere in the world we have a clear understanding of what’s at stake.
If you ever wished John Woo put more magic in his gangster films, then this is the book for you. For serious.
Favorite Reads March 2018
Here we go with what I liked and loved in the way of books for the month of March.
Lotus Blue by Cat Sparks: This is a fun, picaresque science fiction novel. Star and her sister Nene are orphans living in a wagon caravan that travels between the far flung outposts of a blighted post-apocalyptic landscape. Star has hopes of ditching the caravan as soon as they reach the next big settlement, but events interfere with her plans and soon she’s traveling across the Obsidian Sea to do battle with a recently awakened war machine. The thing I liked most about this was that the world feels populated by all these characters and the plot’s not so much what they want, but how they react to this bigger event outside themselves.
So you have caravan scavengers, sheltered collapsing technological societies, half-dead super soldiers, and decadent merchants all put in motion and trying to make sense of this one war machine returning to life.
Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad: There’s this old RPG called Fading Suns that I never played but devoured every book I could find for it. It’s basically an intergalactic medieval society and while I’m not a 100% sure I would like to play it, as a setting I love it. Anyway, Child of Fortune is sort of like that. I love the setting, but not sure I completely love the execution. In more than a few ways I wish someone else had taken whatever notes Spinrad had for the setting and written their own novel for this.
On the other hand, I did really, really like this. It’s basically people in rockets traveling the universe looking for drugs, and that’s a sub-genre I can get behind.
So, in the far future people have figured out faster than light travel (via orgasms natch, because this book’s very much in the Hugh Hefner school of SF) and it’s become a rite of passage for youngish people to enjoy a wanderjahr after their main education is over but before they commit to whatever their adult work may be. Moussa Shasta LastnameIcan’tremember is a young woman who sets out on her own wanderjahr and in true classic bildungsroman sense grows from being a callous youth into a full-fledged adult. Along the way she joins a youth gang, the Gypsy Jokers, seduces their leader, Pater Pan, and barely escapes a planet made out of drugs, the Bloomenveldt, before she discovers the true purpose of her life as a ruespeiler.
Part of this book had me rolling my eyes, and part of me adored it. I suspect if I had read this book between the ages of 16 and 23, I would have loved it.
Silent Hall by N.S. Dolkart: I described this as a smarter Dragonlance novel and the more time that passes from when I read it, the more I am impressed by how smart it is. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s still very much Dragonlance, with a Breakfast Club‘s worth of unlikely heroes brought together to complete quests for a wizard, BUT within that framework Dolkart has fun and subverts with the conventions by bringing some ugly reality to the tropes. The character injured early in the quest is permanently disabled by it, the character trained as a warrior is unnerved by killing, and the character “chosen” by a god is completely twisted by the event that he second guesses everything he encounters as being a further sign from his god. Not to mention the character raised by wolves who has a decidedly cavalier attitude towards sex and menstruation that fuels at least a few chapters worth of subplot. And none of which takes into account the dragons, the elves, the wizards, and the quests. Overall, if you have fond memories of David Eddings, Terry Brooks, and Weiss and Hickman, but wish they were a little bit more socially engaged and relevant, you might be surprised by how much you like Silent Hall.
Wagner the Werewolf by George W.M. Reynolds: I can’t even. Literally, I can’t. This book… this book has plot enough for maybe four or five other books.
To say this book is a mess is to insult both it and messes. To say it’s some of the worst prose I ever read with some of the most breakneck thrilling plot I’ve ever encountered is another matter. Both those things are true. This book was both a delight and a chore to read. All of which I feel is spot on for something that’s an actual, honest to god, Penny Dreadful. There are evil nuns, bandits, pirates, werewolves, demons, assassins, nobles, the Inquisition, and progressive Victorian views of the Other that are still racist, but slightly more palatable than their contemporaries. While I do think The Monk is a better book, Wagner is dizzyingly enjoyable as long as you don’t get hung up on the actual words and just keep turning pages.
Favorite Reads February 2018
Here are my three favorite reads from last month.
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley: Easiest way to describe this is it’s like Watership Down except only the really trippy bits and about crows instead of rabbits. But it’s more than that. It’s a series of linked stories centered on the interaction of Dar Oakley an immortal crow and various humans – a bronze age shaman, an Irish monk, a Native American storyteller, a spiritualist medium in the 1870s, and a near future professor. But it’s more than that too. It’s about language, memories, names, love, and death.
The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia McKillip: I think the cover oversells the magic in this book and doesn’t depict the rather mundane majority of it, but so it goes. Phelan’s a teacher at the local bard college working on a dissertation about the legendary bard Nairn when strange things start to happen to him and his friends, all of which are tied to the riddle contest Nairn lost in the remote past. McKillip’s fantasy is more Ren Faire than Renaissance, but she uses that to her advantage. The fun for me was that she’s writing a story centered more or less in one location (a literal college town), and in a world that’s menacing but not cruel. (Also, am I wrong to see nods to William Kennedy’s Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game in this? Both novels are about guys named Phelan who have dads who are drunks.)
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans: 1890s French novel about the ailing, misanthropic aristocrat Des Esseintes who decides to move to an isolated villa where he can indulge his taste for luxury without any interruptions. What follows then are chapter long musings on art, literature, nightmares, and diet as Des Esseintes roams about his home decorating and organizing his library. It’s a bit of an absurd book, and I don’t know how much of that’s intentional. Des Esseintes is a pretty awful human being, but sometimes comically so. I went back and forth between reading this as a black comedy and a horror novel. I also wanted to scream “Get a f—ing job!” at Des Esseintes. It almost made me happy that the Great War came along.
Favorite Reads January 2018, and more
Before I get into a rundown of the books I wanted to acknowledge the passing of one of the greats, Ursula K. Le Guin. I fell in love with The Wizard of Earthsea as a kid, and later when I was in my 20s and doing a lot of thrift and second hand book store prowling I knew anything I found by her would be a treat. At some point I had the chance to see her speak and it was great. She was fierce and funny and kind in all the best ways.
Now, about the books… you see I went back to the USA in December and that meant a lot of time on planes and in airports and jet-lag making me to keep all sorts of odd hours. In other words I read a ton over the past two months, but as not to bore you all (my two readers) I’ll keep my reviews to a sentence or two.
So sit back and relax as I blather.
The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter: A Gothic novel set in 1960s London about a teenage girl sent to live with her creepy toy-maker uncle after the death of her parents. The first of the books I read that featured incest as not an awful thing.
The Faithful Executioner, Life and Death, Honor and Shame, in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel F. Harrington: A fascinating read about the life and times of one Franz Schmidt, an executioner in 16th century Nuremberg, using Schmidt’s own journal as its source. A must read for history and true crime fans.
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon: A woman seeks to solve the mystery of her mother’s death on board an intergalactic generation ship that’s managed to replicate an approximation of the slave society of the American South. A rough read at times, but worth it.
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel: All the movers and shakers in the French Revolution knew each other from middle school and carried the hurts and rivalries from those days into the revolution, except for Danton. The sadness of this book is not simply the tragedy of the Terror but that it’s not hard to see your high school self in the various characters.
Head Lopper, The Island or A Plague of Beasts by Andrew Maclean with Mike Spicer: Head Lopper’s a barbarian swordsman who carries around a cackling hag’s head for reasons. Fun and weird.
The Giant, O’Brien by Hilary Mantel: Set in London during the 1780s, this is a tragedy about the conflict between the folk wisdom of the Irish giant O’Brien and the cold scientific materialism of Scottish Surgeon John Hunter. It’s a short, savage book, and a quicker read than A Place of Greater Safety.
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz: Pirates and robots in the later half of the 22nd century. This was a great book to be stuck with on a trans-Pacific flight.
Collected Folk Tales by Alan Garner: Garner’s goal with this was to write a collection of folk tales that read less like anthropology and more as oral accounts you would hear spoken by family or friends. In that he largely succeeds.
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng: The truth about Fairy land is that there is no truth, and the search for answers is less about the answers and more about the search. A great read, despite the inevitable incest.
Solution Three by Naomi Mitchison: A utopian novel set in a future where all the best gay pot smoking college professors have taken over and a poor heterosexual couple hopes to find a bigger apartment. Fortunately everyone learns the real enemy is greed.
Favorite Reads of 2017
A dozen of my favorite reads from the past year in no particular order. Not all books were published in 2017. In fact, most weren’t.
Day of the Arrow By Philip Loraine: Folk horror among the 1950s jet set. If you like William Sloane and Shirley Jackson this might be for you.
The Internet of Garbage by Sarah Jeong: A brief history of the internet’s development, online harassment, and how we got from there to here. The internet is garbage.
Woe to Live On by Daniel Woodrell: If Huck Finn meets A Clockwork Orange sounds like a thing you’d like, then read this.
Laura by Vera Caspary: 1950s murder mystery that’s near to perfect if you overlook the single page near the end where the heroine goes on a racist tirade.
Gilded Needles by Michael McDowell: A criminal dynasty squares off against a moralistic judge’s family in 1880s New York City, but the fun comes from McDowell skewering Victorian morality.
Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip: The book you bounce off the head of those people who go on about “realism” in fantasy novels.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells: A pitch-perfect SF adventure novella. Smart and fun with a character exchange that still makes me laugh to this day.
The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria: Italian journalist investigates mysterious library and learns that supernatural forces beyond time will use terrible magic for ultimately petty purposes.
The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley: Grotty biogunk SF at its best.
The Fortress at the End of Time by JM McDermott: An introspective SF novella in the vein of CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ with an enjoyably frustrating main character.
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng: Stanislaw Lem meets George MacDonald meets VC Andrews meets Sylvia Townsend Warner. If having your expectations swung back and forth sounds like fun give this a go.
The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell: Post-apocalyptic but optimistic novel that shows that the dad in The Road had it easy because he never had to worry about getting his kid into a good school.
Favorite Reads: November 2017
Good books, but do they stick the landings?
First, the books that do.
News of the World by Paulette Jiles: Captain Jefferson Kidd is an old widower and war veteran making his living by traveling through Texas from town to town and reading the news to paying audiences. On his latest trip he gets hired to return a ten-year old girl taking captive by Kiowa tribes people four years before to her relatives in San Antonio. What follows is a very sweet and beautiful western novel that’s part adventure and part elegy to landscape and the interplay between the wilderness and civilization. A great read.
Reynard the Fox: A New Translation by Unknown, translated by James Simpson: If you’re reading this blog I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with the Reynard character. If not, he’s the protagonist/antagonist in a series of medieval tales where he outwits his many enemies in the Lion’s court, by his quick-wit and murderous cunning. I wasn’t quite ready for how horrible and violent these stories were, but I guess they reflect an era where casual violence was a staple norm. Imagine Sam Peckinpah’s version of Disney’s Robin Hood.
Day of the Arrow by Philip Loraine: James Lindsay’s a young painter living in Paris. His former lover Francoise is now married to his one-time friend, the aristocratic Philippe de Faucon, Marquis de Bellac. When Francoise turns up seeking Lindsay’s help she brings a strange story in regarding Philippe’s sudden personality shift. He’s become cold towards her and fixated on his impending death. Francoise wants Lindsay to come to Bellac and investigate. What Lindsay uncovers is a Folk Horror plot that reads like a mix of William Sloane and Shirley Jackson. Definitely track this down.
Now the books that are good but wobble for various reasons at the end.
Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim: This is a fragmentary novel that starts with two Asian-American kids growing up in the Mid-West bond over reading comics. From there it spins sharply into an assortment of superheroes discussing resistance and political action in the modern world, and goes on to careen between the two. I was rooting for this book and had no problem with the jarring leaps, but I fear at the end the threads spun too far and needed a miracle to bring them back. A fun trip even if it makes me wonder how do smart people do anything without analyzing it endlessly?
The Enclave by Anne Charnock: This is very slice of life in some post-collapse but not complete collapse future about Caleb, a young refugee, and the life he leads in England working for a recycling gang. and the people he meets as he travels across Europe to England. While it doesn’t just end, it doesn’t also conclude so I wonder if there’s a sequel to it in the works. From further reading it looks to take place in a larger world, and maybe the other novels set there would fill in the gaps here. Also with a name like Caleb though I have to wonder where he came from originally. He says Spain, but Caleb?
The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson: Molly grows up on an isolated farm with her parents and quickly learns the rules she needs to survive. Whenever Molly bleeds a new Molly is born and intent upon killing her. Needless to say this makes Molly a rather odd person to be around. What I loved in this is that there’s something of Victor Frankenstein to Molly Southbourne as she grows and studies her situation. A cold intelligence involved in a gory investigation. While the ride was great, it may well have ended with a To Be Continued. But I’ll definitely read the next installment.
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