Scott Graham
The latest collection of easays by David Sedaris is a tasty flight of wines of a lesser vintage. Although expertly and perhaps flawlessly narrated by the author, the tales ran between droll and chuckle inducing, most leaning toward the former. My particular favorite was the poignant “Good Grief”, where the author recounts the dualistic grief of finding out about the death of a former best friend, and experiencing the loss of one once so close while re-experiencing the memory of the death of a close relationship of youth. The humor in the memory of the hijinks of the two friends is perhaps overahadowed by the schadenfreude Sedaris lets leak through in his description of the deceased as ultimately haviing lived a lesser life, and looking much older. Even though the author has been accused of gilding the lily in some of his essays, one can’t help but feel the humanity in the truth of that sentiment; as Gore Vidal has been supposed to have said, “It is not enough to succeed. Others muat fail.” That may perhaps be no more true than when you had a close friendship with the object of that comparison — a friendship that died ignominiously a long time ago. The other tales are all interesting, but this reader can’t help but feel that Mr Sedaris has already mined the best nuggets of golden memories from his life, and he is now offering us the silver ones.
The Grace Of Kings was interesting, but not enjoyable. This story with a Far East Asian sensibility relates the tale of the end of one dynasty at the hands of a fractured rebellion that evolves into a second dictatorship (hegemony) at war with another faction of the original rebellion could also be seen as the War of the Roses in England, or the infighting between the players of the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. It was work keeping track of the world of characters and place names. It was akin to watching a tennis match at Wimbledon where the advantage for the characters in the story was the ball. And it kept getting swatted back and forth. Early major players have nothing to do with the bulk of the story. Gods appear with a wink and a nudge and parallel the battles between the factions in the story but at the level of sibling rivalry. Liu’s writing was difficult to follow at times, primarily due to the difficulty in maintaining a strong frame of reference. To me, he seems to write better short stories than this one experience with his novels. I will continue on with the other two novels in the trilogy, and pray that I don’t reach a point of diminshing returns (à la the Red Rising Trilogy).
Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series continues the story of gay hockey players and their partners, Troy Barrett and Harris Drover, respectively on Role Model. Troy has been recently traded to Ottawa as the hockey version of a Siberian exile due to a recent public accusation toward a teammate. He personifies cognitive dissonance as a toxically masculine player hiding his homosexuality until he runs into his emotional counterpoint in Harris, the Ottawa team’s openly gay social media PR person. For me, the best part of the series (apart from the expected happy ending) is how many of the previous novel’s characters are woven in like a tapestry (well, maybe more like a needlepoint), with Ilya Rosenov returning as an all seeing and knowing presence, dropping wisdom and support where needed, but always standing apart just a little, even when he’s the center of attention, with his trademarked sang-froid.
It’s difficult to write a review of The Ruined Gods series with all the pitfalls it contains: it’s historical fantasy that plays havoc with the historical elements that it emulates. It contains a Greek flavor, classical Greek terminology, personification of the Titans and Gods, but it does not remain faithful to the accepted anthropology and archeology of proto-classical and classical Greek periods. That caveat being said, it was a fun series to read. Robins creates a new mythology for his universe, with new inventions, new roles for women, a new concept for a war within the pantheon and the effects on humanity. Centered on a new Greek general and his wife and son, marital tension and hero worship by a son for his often absent father is established early. Other characters are introduced, mostly other soldiers, politicians, and tradespeople (not to leave out Gods and Titans) that round out the cultural of the central town, Thena. A neighborong city-state calls for help per a treaty drawn up earlier and things do not go to plan. As in classical Greek mythology where the gods liked to influence outcomes in the wars, you can imagine how things turn out when gods with mutual animosities start to affect how battles and alliances play out. The reader traverses battlefields, barely aligned cities, the afterlife and other worlds by the time the story concludes. Reimagined minotaurs, centaurs, harpies, cerberus, and a guest role by the Colossus of Rhodes make things much more interesting. Recommended for the non-pedant where ancient Greek civilization and mythology is concerned.
Cringy dialogue and dei ex machina abound. But the story is entertaining, with a unique approach to the Greek gods and classical civilization. Souls are retrieved from the afterlife by Zeus, to aid in the resumption of his control of Mount Olympus and the worship by his less than loyal human devotees. At the same time the warring Greek city-states meet in an unlikely battle with an expected outcome. Leave all expectations of competent storytelling at the title page. Like a horror film with a lot of jump scares but no suspense, or a murder mystery with clues that don’t appear until the big resolution, this story offers action with no compelling plot; much of it seems to be made up as we go along. Betrayal lurks behind every page, and character capabilities appear out of nowhere. However, the family at the center of this tale and the surrounding characters are likeable and are up against a menacing obstacle or three. Alex Robins interlaces the threads of the story very well; now if he could just make the characters speak a non-cliched sentence or two, this reader could more easily overlook the amazing coincidences of it all. Book three awaits. Wish me luck.
A solid, entertaining smash-up of historical mythology and the author’s invention. A backstory war amongst the gods of Mount Olympus has left Hera in charge, and Zeus and his loyal pantheon “ruined”, cast out, never to be mentioned or worshipped. On the human side, an ages old story of jealousy and treachery plays out partially between fellow soldiers from the same military graduating class. This is book one of a series, so nothing much is concluded and the fates of many of the main or prominent secondary characters are unknown. But the story is compelling and drives this reader on to book two.
Beware the book that includes a glossary. Run away if it’s just a novella. The author took more pleasure in trying to impress the reader with his use of ancient Greek nomenclature than he did in writing decent dialogue. Decent story of a post-polytheistic Greece, where the ranks of the gods had been culled after some type of upheaval. This short novel concentrates on one battle but relegates much of the decisive action to exposition.
Two teen boys plan a rescue of two horses meant for the slaughterhouse owned by a prominant but not upstanding family. With the avaricious and violent family of men and boys on their trail, they undertake an epic trek across a mountain to the eponymous Tom’s Crossing to release the doomed horses into the wild. This is a dense multilayered book with hints of the paranormal, or possibly the third man factor, and a difficult read, requiring constant translation of an antiquated western U.S. english dialect and vernacular into modern english. Running digressions into future artistic renditions of the events of the perilous journey are presented and inconsistencies in the story abound that add color and verisimilitude to a story that is witnessed by only a few but told by many in the finest of oral traditions. The adventure at the core of the book is extremely compelling and even compared within the book itself to the Iliad and The Odyssey. It would make one heck of a lmited series, do you hear me Apple TV+?
Excellent tale of a war of trebuchets and trolls and goblins vs humans and their terrible and barely faithful corvid battle familiars. There is plenty of blood and gore to be found herein, with a soupçon of magic to aid the greatly overwhelmed humans. Galva dom Braga from The Blacktongued Thief is our protagonist, and she makes a fine and valiant knight in service to kynd. This novel is a fine introduction to the Galva you meet in TBT, and develops well her hard and soft sides and explains what was almost a trait offered in passing in Thief, of her hard stance against any type of dereliction of duty. The Daughter's War is more sober than The Blacktongued Thief, without the occasional lighter moments, and is all the better for it - making it that rara avis, a sequel (prequel) better than it's parent novel. At the very least, it answered the question raised by a line in a poem from my childhood, Little Orphant Annie by James Whitcomb Riley: what do goblins do to bad children? "An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out!
Absolutely fun story of a young male thief and the commoners, royals, witches, soldiers, sailors, goblins, and giants he encounters in his quest to clear himself of a debt to his guild and his evolution from morally grey to more thoughtful about his actions and their consequences. It is written very much like historical fiction during the late middle ages. At times dark and at other times a bit tongue-in-cheek, it is consistently entertaining.
Contains spoilers
Dex, the monk, and Mosscap, the robot embark on their journey to find the answer to the robots’ question: what do human’s need? As you would expect, Mosscap becomes a handyman for hire of sorts. Dex continues their dark night of the soul; they’ve lost their raison d’être. More philosophical than narrative, literally not much happens. It ends with them figuratively riding off into the sunset, having discovered their need for human(?) contact, and finding it in each other.
A gentle parable of seeking your purpose or finding contentment in simply existing with consciousness and self-awareness. The monk named Dex travels a circuit of towns listening to the problems or trials of the people they come across and blending a tea to ameliorate their concerns. During a circuit, they decide to go off course to see an abandoned building called The Hermitage, once known as a refuge for those monks or laypeople with weltschmerz, because Dex hasn’t discovered it quite yet, but they are in the midst of their own dark night of the soul. While off their normal curcuit on the not maintained road to the Hermitage, they encounter Mosscap, a wildbuilt robot descendent of the robots who first became self aware and amicably separated from humans. Mosscap is fulfulling the promise the robots made on their separation, to come back and ask humans if they need anything. Dex is in pursuit of their own purpose in the world and Mosscap is in pursuit of fulfilling its predecessors’ promise. Dex declines helping Mosscap in its promise, while Mosscap presses its help on Dex in their quest to reach the Hermitage. Lessons are gently taught, and the segue to A Prayer For The Crown-Shy is set up. The only issue that I had with the short novel was the unexplained and seemingly unmotivated use of non-binary pronouns for Dex, which results in the more than occasional lack of reference. At first, the use of they/them/their suggests Dex is with another party, until the reader susses out that the undeclared non-binary Dex is in fact non-binary (or Becky Chambers is engaging in prosaic battle in an undeclared literary war). Later the they/them/their usage suggests reference to both Dex AND Mosscap when it only refers to Dex. It’s a little murky, but not insurrmountable.
This short novel lives up to its reputation as a mind f*** read. It almost induces a sense of vertigo in the reader in its refusal to describe what is actually happening while decribing what appears to be happening. As all of the previous expeditions into an area cut off from the real world end spectacularly badly, the expedition in the book starts off poorly. Deceit and paranoia set in amongst the four members of the team, each known only by the name of their profession (the biologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor, and the psychologist). The otherworldliness of the environs and wildlife, presented very much like The World Without Us, Lost, District 9, and Cloverfield rolled into one, closes in on the main character and narrator. The organization, Southern Reach, that sponsors these expeditions is only mentioned in the abstract, except perhaps in the person of the psychologist who is the tacit leader of the group, exerts some level of control over the other members, and acts as the putative villain. It is obvious that Southern Reach and she know more than the other members of the team, ostensibly to keep from affecting the results of the exploration, but ulterior, perhaps nefarious, motives begin to suggest themselves. In the open ended conclusion, the reader is left off balance with what will happen, but the obvious suggestion is “nothing good”.
Contains spoilers
Anxiety ridden hockey enforcer, Ryan Price, is in love with Fabian Saleh, a femme violinist he’s known known since his high school days. The characters are sympathetic and likeable, but they lack the depth of Ilya Rosenov and Shane Hollander from Heated Rivalry, or the sturm und drang of Scott Hunter and Kip Grady from Game Changer for that matter. Each character has some deep seated insecurities, but their mutual affection is finally revealed well into the narrative. The obstacle for Ryan and Fabian is so manufactured and transparent as to be almost inconsequential, but the positive potrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in Rachel Reid’s series is difficult to fault. Ilya Rosenov and Ryan Price even get to meet at the funeral of a fellow player, which brings Ilya’s and Shanes charity and relationship back into the ongoing story. Lighter than the other stories, certainly, but overall just as enjoyable.
A total mess of the death bed visions of a dying oil magnate play out like an Our Gang comedy and a Douglas Sirk 50s melodrama. Thank goodness it was a long novella and not a 700 page chunker because the idea had nowhere else to go except to its quick nonsensical end. The stream of consciousness writing made it difficult to attribute thought to characters at times and the actions of the “angels” and “demons” were performative without being motivated. This one is going into the donation box for the local library.
Contains spoilers
A charming fable ending with Schrödinger's rose, which has both been eaten and not eaten by the Little Prince’s sheep. The tale has been made all the more charming by the passing of the years since it was written; all of the meaningless (perhaps more appropriately described as feckless) activities being performed by the people he encounters are even more meaningless or feckless now, as the 2 billion inhabitants of Earth at the time have multiplied into 8 and a quarter billion people at the time this review was written, each performing their own meaningless or feckless task of lighting lamps, making maps, getting drunk, being vain or ruling over nothing but the things of your imagination. On Earth, it was the animals that taught him the meaning of his flower and the duty you owe to the things you tame, be it a rose or a fox, or another person, making him homesick enough to embrace death to return. Both sad and hopeful at the same time.
Book 2 of the Game Changers series and the source novel for the phenom Crave/HBOMax streaming series tells the story of arch rival hockey stars engaging in a series of clandestine sexual encounters lives up to the hype. The main characters are both immensely likeable, Canadian boy-next-door-type Shane Hollander and snarky, arrogant Russian Ilya Rozanov become entangled almost from the first moment of their non-meet-cute. The built-in animosity is emotional for Shane but more performative for bad-boy Ilya and isn’t much of an obstacle to overcome. Ilya is the more sexually experienced of the two as Shane almost blindly feels his way into new territory beyond his awkward, unfulfilling prior encounters with women. As the characters wrestle with their emotions and the relationship evolves, the author does not shy away from being descriptive, so warning to those squeamish over descriptions of homosexual activities.
Very pleasant LGBTQ+ hockey romance, book one of the Game Changer series, of which the current hot commodity, Heated Rivalry, is book two. The romance is pretty standard, save for the lack of any but the most self created obstacles. The characters were likeable; not much world building was required since the author made use of modern day hockey franchise cities. It was an easy breezy feel good read, and just the thing to break up the chunky dialect heavy book that I am reading concurrent to this series.
An uneven fantasy mystery/comedy of mistaken paternity, mistaken identity and mistaken beliefs that provides some comedic relief in the slapstick proceedings but loses the mystery in the labyrinthine plot. The author flexes his writing muscles more in the creation of absurd, rather than colorful, cartoon characters and less in the design of a cogent mystery; in other words, it was not my cup of tea.
A charming tale of the intersection of the real world and the faerie world, told from the perspective of sisters, one who is able to straddle the two worlds and the second who, like the willows they tend to, is firmly rooted in the real world. I didn’t appreciate the gender politics in the story which otherwise detracted from the power of the musical folk tale. Male suitors bad, female suitors good. I might have written my thoughts off as possibly overwrought, except the bonus story, called John Hollowback And The Witch included from a subsequent short story collection, contained the same moral: male suitors bad, female suitors good. All of that is not to say that there is something inherently wrong with that lesson per se, but it was not my cup of tea.
Wow… This book deserves 6, nay 10 stars. Twelve children are taken from their families to be taught by “father”, a man of unbending standards and draconian methods. There is an immediate sense of something *like* magic in the air as the ultimate “Lord of the Flies” plays out and coincidences accumulate. The fantastic meets the mundane as talented people of the real world act with and against the adult versions of the 12 children who have all been taught special yet differentiated skills in the titular place of higher learning by a “father” whose person, values, and methods are revealed in flashbacks - because “father” is missing. Did he leave? Was he taken? Are his enemies involved? Fantasy meets cosmology meets suspense in the Garrison Oaks development with the Library at Mount Char at its center.
I will admit up front that I have not read any Brandon Sanderson prior to this short story amd novella collection. That being said, I found Tailored Realities to be an entirely engaging collection of scence fiction based narratives with some fantasy injected where appropriate. After all, doesn’t every science fiction tale involve a little fantasy to get it going?
The strongest selections are the long novellas that bookend the collection, although Snapshot, the first, does seem a bit derivative of the Dennis Lahane novel Shutter Island. But it uses a different modality in creating the world and ends with an Inception-esque result. The last, longer novella, Moment Zero, looks at a wormhole created apocalypse, multi-universe theory, and a little fantasy planted in the form of the true menace. It was compelling and I found it to be the strongest piece in the collection. All the remaining stories are varying levels of good, but that undersells some of them to refer to them as “good”. The world building ranges from adequate for the tale, to lush and full, generous for a short story or novella.
The postscript for each story is a welcome touch. Brandon Sanderson indulges the reader with the germ of the story and/or some information about its publication if it appeared elsewhere in the past.
I wholeheartedly recommend the volume to any fan of imaginative literature and look forward to dipping my second toe into other Sanderson worlds. I think I have the forst volume of The Stormlight Archive in my stacks somewhere. Wish me luck…
This anthology of popular Christian belief topics examines the Biblical source texts for support. As you would guess from the title of the book, the author, popular social media scholar of ancient Hebrew and Christian texts Dan McClellan, finds shaky evidence for some of the beliefs, but argues against God inspired sources for such as the virgin birth, the condemnation of abortion and homosexuality, Satan as God’s enemy, and Hell as the place of eternal punishment. If this was already your bag*, there isn’t much new here, but the running citations are an invaluable reference. The book loses a point for its dense prose, and lack of almost any definitive answers. Mr. McClellan provides a verdict for each questionable belief, but the justification is rarely absolutely convincing. Believers will walk away believing and doubters will leave the exercise continuing to doubt.
*with apologies to Mike Myers as Austin Powers
To start I’ll address he buffalo in the room, and admit that this book would only appeal to a cohort of readers either already of the belief that Native Americans were, and continue to be, better stewards of the land of North America than the European colonizers, or are willing to approach that thesis with an open mind. Anthropologist Jordan Thomas weaves a history of the suppression of the practice of proscribed burns in America’s forests, grasslands, and prairies by its indigenous peoples, with the travesty of a policy of fire suppression at all costs on the environment, and the valiant efforts of understaffed, undersupplied, and underpaid front line firefighters of California. By regaling the reader with a selection of tales from his season as a Los Padres Hotshot with the history and politics of fire suppression in the American West (mostly), he provides a strong argument for adopting the traditional practice of proscribed burns. Thomas argues that they act as a prophylactic against the ever increasing number of megafires ocurring due to rising global temperatures and more frequent and longer lasting droughts. A very interesting peek behind the curtain on the practices of the frontline firefighters on the ground, their stressors, and their lifestyle for more than half of the year.