Category: Book reviews

Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong. 2/5
This spin-off from These Violent Delights (which I liked) and Our Violent Ends (which was an unnecessary mess of a sequel to These Violent Delights), is also mess. It doesn’t have the same careful meticulous treatment of its alternate Shanghai and its supernatural elements, people, and seekers of (supernatural) power. Readers will definitely need to read the first two books prior to this or it won’t make sense at all–the author tries to provide backstory info via characters’ thoughts, but they are all so fragmentary and spread out that it’s hard to piece it all together. The book feels like it was rushed, and could have used more time for revisions and smoothing things out.

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan. 5/5
This novel is a devastating history of the Tamil fight for independence in Sri Lanka, told through the perspective of a girl who grows to become a medical student who works for the Tamil Tigers at one of their clandestine field hospitals. Protagonist Sashi grows up with four brothers and a boy from down the street whom she secretly loves. Her idyllic childhood ends with the growing abuse of ethnic Tamils by the governing Sinhalese: her eldest brother is killed in riots; two other brothers join one of the militant groups fighting the Sinhalese; her crush becomes a leader of the independence movement and eventually dies after having embarked in a hunger strike, Sashi at his side. At first I felt the book slow-paced, but by the middle I realized why the author chose this pacing–it helps make the reader feel what Sashi and her parents and friends felt as they waited for news of their loved ones, as they waited in rubble, waiting for a safe time to flee. I felt like I was holding my breath as I read, experiencing that waiting. This is a book of great importance–I think few Westerners really understand what was happening in Sri Lanka during the period of the book, and this will help them learn about it.

Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth. 4/5
A romp through horror both psychological and bodily, told by a main character who clearly has PTSD and may or may not also be a psychopath. I sympathized with Abby’s frustration in dealing with her husband and his mother’s ghost, and understood her compulsion towards her patients. The ending, though, was the pièce de résistance, which quite honestly left me gobsmacked, until I burst into laughter. Perfect for anyone who likes unexpected twists.

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers. 3/5
A solid thriller til the ending–where many readers will throw the book across the room for its enormous and unsatisfying ambiguity. Readers will also have to suspend their disbelief regarding how newspapers and magazines actually work, although the sexism and misogyny depicted is all too real.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. 5/5
This is a fantastic book set in a wonderful world where faeries and other supernatural creatures co-exist with humans. Emily Wilde is a scholar of such people, a faerie anthropologist. She’s on a research trip when her thorn-in-the-side colleague shows up to, well, showboat around and work his way into her investigations. There’s a slow-burn romance, lots of mysterious and beautiful and dangerous faerie-ness, and an adventure to help and save the people of the small town that serves as Emily’s base.

Jackal by Erin E. Adams. 2/5
Jackal needs at least one more round of developmental editing to tighten up what could be a great horror novel that involves race and class. As it is, though, there are just too many messy things that need to be strengthened or clarified: how Anubis–or a worshipper of Anubis–brought the jackal to the town; what the ramifications of the flood were, as relevant to the story beyond class; the in-book issue of solstice events vs non-solstice events; the oddity of the narrator’s memory/dream recollections, typeset as right-justified and hard to read; a number of character interactions and behaviors that are given weight and then abandoned; and pacing. I think this will have a lot of fans, but it would be so much better if it was just a bit tighter.

Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal. 3/5
I enjoyed this fictionalization of the lives of several real-life spies who went undercover in American Nazi organizations during the 1940s. MacNeal clearly did significant research for the book–I appreciated the list of her sources–and it shows nicely. The characters are a bit one-dimensional, and MacNeal doesn’t take the opportunity to flesh them out as the book progresses, which is a shame. Overall, it’ll be a compelling read, particularly for readers who don’t know about Nazi activities in the US. Book clubs will like the stories of two women at very different times in their lives, the question of keeping personal boundaries vs. getting potentially important information from a source, the concept of “nice” not being the same as “good,” and other issues the book bring sup.

The Catch by Alison Fairbrother. 2/5
I think the moral of this story is that people are awful, and we should just all be cognizant of that. A young woman feels slighted by a bequest in her father’s will, so she lies to a bunch of people and intrudes on their privacy and finally gets to the reasons her dad did what he did. Why did he do it? He was a terrible person. The poem that takes center stage in the book is good, and it’s interesting to see how it gets analyzed by fictional characters, but the narcissism of so many of the characters is overwhelming, and it’s ultimately a depressing read without much to recommend it.

Egypt’s Golden Couple by John Darnell; Colleen Darnell. 1/5
I love reading about archaeology and what it tells us about the lives of the past, but this was written in such an incredibly dull way I could hardly drag myself to the end. It needed much more editor intervention and polishing, particularly evening out poor transitions, tone, and exposition.

Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King. 2/5
As readers of my reviews will know, I’ve been disappointed by many of King’s more recent Russell/Holmes books. So I thought perhaps a stand-alone with new characters would be better. Alas. King gives her protagonist many of the same attributes as her earlier characters–she’s queer, she’s disabled, she breaks professional rules–but without any charm or appeal. Other characters are paper-thin and created for single uses, it seems: the agoraphobic sister with the big true crime internet network, the love interest who blushes a lot, the older wise woman on staff, etc. King also gives her protagonist the ability to read micro-expressions, a technique that pushes the book into SFF space, making everything about the book a bit unwieldy. They mystery itself is fine, the idea of a commune taking over a mansion a great setting and device, but the wit and erudition of King’s previous work is still very much MIA.

We Are All We Have by Marina Budhos. 4/5
We Are All We Have is a solid novel about immigration and asylum, and the damage ICE and other government agencies do in their pursuit of “illegals.” Told by a young woman who finds herself on the run with her younger brother when their mother is detained, the story reminds me of Cynthia Voight’s Homecoming, a classic about being unable to rely on family, making your own way, and navigating–avoiding–agencies like Child Protective Services and others. The characters can be a little one-dimensional, but the story itself is important enough to overlook it. Recommended for book clubs and in-school reading.

Wild Is the Witch by Rachel Griffin. 2/5
Well, this was a little better than Griffin’s previous witch novel, but it’s still got a terrible forced romance–including the protagonist’s mom hugely inappropriately pushing the protagonist into the arms of her mom’s intern–and suffers from some pretty contrived plot ideas. Some of the ideas about magic are interesting and well-developed and the world-building provides just enough info to be tantalizing. Maybe Griffin could focus on the development of magic and characters and leave out the bad romances for the next one.

High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson. 5/5
This is an adorable and hilarious book set in an alternate England where humans and fairies–all women–make coalitions and develop relationships that–ultimately–find a way to end the filibuster keeping the government deadlocked. I was charmed by the characters, their yeast highs, and their smarts. It’s an utter romp with terrific world-building and character development –the perfect antidote to current politics.

Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young. 1/5
Secrets. So many secrets, Lots of secrets. Everybody has secrets. Most of which are banal and boring. The plot centers around a land grab, which is incredibly dull, and is written from multiple first-person points of view that all sound alike–it’d have worked better as omniscient 3rd person. The language is trite and embarrassing: a man saying a woman “gave herself” to him? Ew. The use of “phased” for “fazed”? Come on, copyeditors. The magic often seems like an afterthought, and the compensation narrative used for a blind character is old and offensive. As for the secrets, I don’t think any readers will be surprised by any of them–are they supposed to be? It’s clear from the beginning that one character dies because of a spell, that two characters are in a relationship, that a man who “disappeared” was murdered by townsfolk. The ambience of the broody, gothic island is repeatedly broken, and the writing describing it and other things is often overdone. I round of revisions could have made this much, much better, which is a shame. Readers can skip this one.

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. 5/5
Thistlefoot is the brilliant, clever, deeply and well thought-out magical realist book about the Jewish diaspora from Eastern Europe I have been waiting for. It’s beautifully written and original and heartbreaking and joyous. And it is the best re-telling/use of Baba Yaga as a figure ever. Two siblings, mostly estranged and each dealing with hidden traumas and magical gifts, inherit a house, shipped all the way from Russia. It has chicken legs, and responds to commands in Yiddish. Bellatine and Isaac, inheritors, make a deal: they will revive their parents’ professional puppet show, go on tour, using the house as home and stage. Isacc will get all profits, and at the end, Bellatine will own the house in full. But someone–something–somewhen–is trailing them, intent on finishing the destruction it began long ago.

Full of stories and history and compelling characters and magic that has been thought through in ways most SFF books and games never even approach, Thistlefoot is my new favorite book.

Into the Forest by Foreword by Christina Henry, Lindy Ryan (Editor). 1/5
It’s really kind of a shame that this collection is full of very similar, mostly boring stories. Baba Yaga is a great folklore figure, but I didn’t find anything new or interesting in these stories, just a lot of takes from the POV of BY and her acolytes as “from the villain/yes children are tasty” perspective. Couldn’t anyone do any better? (See my review of Thistlefoot, a Baba Yaga story that blows these away.)

All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell. 1/5
Well, the author admits that she has–and has always had–an interest in death, particularly its more morbid effects. And while she takes on writing this book as a way of exploring that urge in herself, it also seems that she does it for the kicks. Even when she’s slightly humbled by the care a funeral director takes with a body and has a long moment of parental care take hold when seeing a baby’s autopsy, she never convinces the reader–this reader, anyway–that she’s ever gotten over the desire to revel in death and to be thrilled by seeing dead bodies. Unlike similar books by Mary Roach or Caitlin Doughty, Campbell’s fascination is self-centered and exploitative, making this an uncomfortable read. not because of content, but because of her handling of it.

The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman. 1/5
Oh my goodness what an exploitative hot mess! A serial killer stalks the halls and undercroft of a badly-run institution for the mentally ill and disabled, but it’s the oh-so-brave abled sister of one patient/inmate who arrives to uncover the mystery of her sister’s disappearance and save all the other inmates! Gag. Yes, these institutions were–and still are–in use. But using one as the setting and using its inmates as victims all so an abled character can be a hero? Not a book I’d want anyone to read.

Valley of Shadows by Rudy Ruiz. 3/5
A magical realist novel set in the American West and drawing on historical conflicts between white colonialist settlers and Indigenous groups, this book brings together Native American magic and generically white ritual magic to create a mystery. The characters are a bit stock–the evil, racist, white guys, the indigenous woman with magic, the stoic man who sees and communicates with ghosts. But even so, it’s a complex and entertaining read, good for long hot summer days when you can easily imagine the setting alongside a river run dry and heat mirages flickering like phantoms.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill. 2/5
A novel within a novel within letters? The conceit of the book is ok, but not used to its best advantage, and the mystery of the novel inside the letters is just ok. It felt like the author had read The Westing Game a lot as a kid and had decide to try to write an adult version, albeit with people of far more (potentially) nefarious backgrounds. While there was a lot of detail and backstory for some characters, others were just suggestions on the page. Overall, more contrived that it could have been.

All Dressed Up by Jilly Gagnon. 1/5
I think the “actual murder at a murder-mystery event” trope is all used up. It certainly doesn’t work very well here, where the characters are cut-outs, everyone drinks so much they can’t use their brains, the instructions and “clues” are all vague and dull, and the real mystery of the plot drags on and on.

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings. 4/5
In an alternate America, women must be tested as witches or married to men before they turn 30. Registered witches are tightly controlled by the government. The protagonist’s mother disappears when her child is young, and when Josephine, now 28 and needing to decide what to do about registering, testing, and marriage, is given instructions in her mother’s will, she embarks on a trip to find out where her mother went, and why. The magical realism of the novel works well, and the alternate US is deftly drawn and relevant. While some of the tropes of speculative fiction–like time passing in different ways in different places–is a bit common and used as a convenience for the plot–aren’t always original, they are often used in fresh ways. The title is a bit awkward, but I understand it comes out of traditional storytelling practices.

Lucky Girl by Mary Rickert. 2/5
A ghost story/horror novel in the tradition of Christmas-time ghost stories in the UK, this novel tries hard to have a twist but it’s so easy to know what’s coming that it rather spoils the tale. The whole thing feels rushed, and while it doesn’t need to be longer, it could have used a lot of tightening up and editing to make it a stronger story.

The Lost Storyteller by Amanda Block. 2/5
A woman whose family has long been estranged from her father decides to seek him out when a reporter declares that he’s hell-bent on find ing the man, who disappeared from public view many years earlier. Together, the woman and the reporter do some digging, begin a relationship together, and find her dad, whose story is one of mental illness, the stigma of such, and the fear of lack of control, reprisals from the woman’s mother and her family, and society at large. It’s a slow read and a bit pat, and the characters are all pretty awful people–privileged and snobby and not very thoughtful. Not entirely terrible, but not something I’d recommend to most people.

Bone Weaver by Aden Polydoros. 5/5
I loved this fantasy novel about three young people trying to find the protagonist’s unusual sister and end up creating world-shaking changes through magic and love and smart thinking. The world, its magic, and its peoples are well-crafted and deep, full of detail and character. It’s easy to get pulled in by the adventure and fast pacing, and the elements of hope and resistance and persistence are part of what makes falling into this story so welcome. I also love the way the character relationships evolve, and how it models a lovely romantic trio of a straight woman, a bi man, and a gay man. I hope there will be more books set in this universe from the author.

Keya Das’s Second Act by Sopan Deb. 1/5
For a book that is about honoring a dead lesbian estranged from her family, the author of this book almost never actually uses those words. The book tiptoes around both the queer character and her death, and everything that her family and friends do is about making themselves feel better….by spending a ton of money to produce a play that the dead woman wrote with her girlfriend and endow a scholarship in her name. The characters start small and don’t grow or learn or become compassionate; they just sigh a lot and happen to have connected and/or rich friends to throw money at their guilt. They even talk about throwing money at their guilt, but they don’t talk much about the dead lesbian whose “second act” the events of the novel are supposed to be. Maybe that’s the point; I don’t know. What I do know is that if that’s the point, then it isn’t clear, and it the point is a feel-good book about honoring a woman who “passed” and “was they way she was,” then it’s a terrible, terrible book that perpetuates euphemistic, anti-queer language and indulges in the avoidance of talking about facts in factual ways.

The Unbalancing by R. B. Lemberg. 5/5
The Unbalancing is a book about survival and being realistic (even in a world of magic) and consent and neurodivergent life, all set in Lemberg’s fantastical Birdverse. There’s a lot here that is philosophical and intellectual, but Lemberg always manages to keep the storyline moving forward. The book nods to the traditional Western shape for storytelling–intro, conflict, crisis, resolution–but also avoids this form, making the book somewhat circular and focused on personal decisions, sharing, attraction, and action. It’s also a different way of approaching climate fiction, and is meditative and full of beautiful language even when describing catastrophe. I love the pace of the novel, the way the characters become involved and care for one another, and the introspection of the narrator. I’d love to read this with other people who know Lemberg’s other BIrdverse work; having said that, though, I think it can stand on its own with newcomers to the author’s writing.

Screams from the Dark by Ellen Datlow. 4/5
The typical mix of good and less good horror stories. I always look for collections edited by Datlow because I know that within them I’ll find some clever and original stories (as well as some I don’t like as much but can–when I’m not reviewing them–skip over). Here I’ve read them all, and especially enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones, Joe Lansdale, Nathan Ballingrud, and Gemma Files’s contributions.

Haven by Emma Donoghue. 5/5
This is a beautiful book about the agonies of the soul and the desperation of self-appointed religious leaders. Three monks set forth to live on a rocky and stark island today known as Skellig Michael.. Artt believes he has been chosen by God for this path, only to put faith before survival and pay the price for it; Cormac and Trian labor for Artt only to finally come to a decision that will not involve him. It’s a quiet book, capturing the natural world of medieval Ireland. It moves in a slow and steady pace and presents and develops the world and the monks with great care. Early on, I knew there was a secret–Donoghue’s books and stories often have these–that would led to betrayal, but I was surprised by the way that the betrayer realizes his mistake and seeks to rectify it in very real ways. This will be great for book groups.

A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn. 2/4
Filipino folklore meets serial killer lit in A Tiny Upward Shove. Marina is killed by a man who has killed many women, but her body is taken over by an aswang, an inherently evil shape-shifting spirit, But this spirt has been with Marina’s family for a long time, and as it gathers strength to avenge Marina, we learn of Marina’s family tragedies and failures. Ultimately, the aswang gets vengeance for Marina and the other victims of the killer. The author uses a non-fictional killer, Robert Pickton, as a character in the book, and this makes me really uncomfortable. Family members of his victims are still living, and this book exploits their stories and pain. It’s unclear why the author draws on Filipino culture when so many of Pickton’s victims were First Nations Women. And while I appreciate the author’s dedication to showing how federal and state institutions fail young people, especially people of color, but there’s a strange blurring of the US and Canada. Why does Marina go to Vancouver? Finally, readers should be aware that the book contains rape, including child rape, and other forms of violence that will make it hard for some readers to deal with.

Singing with the Devil by Cassandra Rose Clarke. 5/5
This is an excellent supernatural adventure with some nice erotica. I love that Clarke has taken a familiar trope–the family that hunts the supernatural–and flips it, giving us a protagonist who is estranged from her family but still believes in the dogma they instilled in her. She stereotypically falls in love with the devil–or a devil (it’s complicated)–but again Clarke twists that well-worn plot device, making it the protagonist who must truly and fully break with her family to save the devil and his friends when the hunters come calling. Oh, and his friends? A handful of amazing characters, including a rock goddess cunning woman. There are clearly more stories to be told about these characters–the end tempts us–and I am looking forward to reading them. Fans of Seanan McGuire, Jim Butcher, and the like will love this book.

The Last Blade Priest by W P Wiles. 4/5
I enjoyed the world-building of this novel. It’s got recognizable elements from a variety of real cultures, but employs them in subtle and respectful ways. The character-building is slow but progressive, and each character has been thoughtfully given good arcs.This is clearly the first book in a series, but even with the quasi-cliffhanger at the end, it was a satisfying read. Folks who like high fantasy will like this novel; I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Blood Money by Margaret Sankey. 5/5
Blood Money is an outstanding work of research and writing, tracing the ways in which cartels, gangs, political groups, and other Violent Non-State Actors get the money they use to attack people and buildings, create propaganda, and obstruct justice. Sankey chronicles money hiding and laundering, schemes and practices from the Irish bar’s “Derry can” to selling counterfeit goods, and how everyday individuals get caught up in the process. The research is solid and fascinating, and Sankey explains often-complicated deals and arrangements clearly and with panache. The examples she uses are memorable–some for the ineptness of the criminals involved–and help explain terror events and those who create them from all over the world. I’m recommending this to everyone interested in world politics and in making the world better, because understanding what’s going on is a first step to doing something about it.

Undelivered by Jeff Nussbaum. 2/5
A book full of speeches that while written, went undelivered. This is always a popular kind of what-if game especially among armchair historians, and now you can read some of the more recent entries in the genre. The author’s extensive context and analysis is generally too much and often dull, but I’m sure everyone knowns someone will will find this interesting.

Darling by Mercedes M Yardley. 1/5
This is one of those books where you spend the whole time reading it and shaking your head and saying “WHAT” not because of surprises in the plot but because everything from characters to descriptions of places to dialogue seems to have been written without any regard for common sense or reality or any checks or balances on the “would this person do this” or the “how does this make sense” scales. It’s a mess, and a poorly written mess, and is an excellent example for the need for developmental editing in fiction.

Renaissance by Amy Clennell. 2/5
While the language of these poems is often rich, the writer’s use of alliteration, basic rhymes, and forms in which ideas are awkwardly communicated (see the sonnets in particular) were too overwhelming for me to enjoy much of this collection. I didn’t get the feeling that the author had done much thoughtful revision or editing either of the individual poems or the collection as a whole. There are a lot of very similar poems on the same topics, and there was no clear reasoning for the ordering or inclusion of poems.