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Book Review: Wildwood Chronicles Trilogy by Colin Meloy
When crows steal Prue’s little brother, she and her friend Curtis find that the Impassable Wilderness bordering Portland, Oregon, isn’t quite so Impassable after all.
Summary:
Prue and her friend Curtis uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.
Review:
A middle grade fantasy trilogy by the lead singer of my favorite band, The Decemberists. Gorgeously illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. If you’ve ever read The Chronicles of Narnia, this is like that except replace the Christianity with environmentalism and new age spirituality.
My favorite part of this trilogy was the various talking birds. All the animals in the Impassable Wilderness can talk, but Meloy’s love of birds really comes through. (As a fan of his songs, this didn’t surprise me at all.) The dapper outfits all the animals wear are also just too cute. It’s a trilogy with maps, and I do always love a good map to go with a story. I appreciate very much that the hero of the story is a girl with Curtis playing the sidekick.
There are really two enemies in the plot. A civil war style conflict inside the Impassable Wilderness, and the looming threat of capitalism from outside the Impassable Wilderness. I liked the idea of the latter more than the former, but the execution felt a bit too silly to me. For example, the big bad capitalists are all named the Titans of Industry (capitalized like that). One of them uses child labor in the form of orphans collected directly from Portland. It felt quite Victorian for something where the rest of the world outside of the Impassable Wilderness is quite modern.
The books are incredibly long, hitting chunkster length even for adult books. Each is over 500 pages (the last clocking in at 580.) I certainly read some long books when I was a kid, so I don’t begrudge them that per se. I do think it’s a tough sell when even the first book is super long. Regardless, I don’t think that the length is justified by the plot. While the first book is just about paced right, the latter two are not. There’s a lot of pages spent on not a lot going on. The middle book especially suffers horribly from middle book syndrome.
I liked the world, the Impassable Wilderness residents, and the illustrations. I felt the plot lacked depth, and the pacing was too slow for my taste, especially for such long books. I also found the ending to be a let-down.
Overall, this could be a good match for a reader who has a hankering for a through a secret door fantasy. Especially for the reader who loves talking animals and doesn’t mind a slower pace.
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3 out of 5 stars
Books in Series:
Wildwood, 4 stars, length 541 pages – chunkster
Under Wildwood, 3 stars, length 559 pages – chunkster
Wildwood Imperium, 3 stars, length 580 pages – chunkster
Source: Gift
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Book Review: Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory by Constance Bowman Reid & Clara Marie Allen
Explore the world of women working on airplane factory lines in this memoir with hand-drawn illustrations from 1944.
Summary:
In 1943 two spirited young teachers decided to do their part for the war effort by spending their summer vacation working the swing shift on a B-24 production line at a San Diego bomber plant. Welding torches and climbing into bomb bays, they learned to use tools that they had never seen before, live with aluminum shavings in their hair, and get along with supervisors and coworkers from all walks of life.
They also learned that wearing their factory slacks on the street caused men to treat them in a way for which their “dignified schoolteacher-hood” hadn’t prepared them. At times charming, hilarious, and incredibly perceptive, Slacks and Calluses brings into focus an overlooked part of the war effort, one that forever changed the way the women were viewed in America.
Review:
I knew the instant I flipped this book open it would be a new favorite. Two teacher friends set out to help the war effort in WWII in their summer off and document it. Constance was a writer, and Clara Marie (fondly called C.M. in the book) was an artist. The book maintains an upbeat tone throughout, in spite of being written prior to the authors having any knowledge of how the war would turn out.
This is an easy read. It feels like chatting with a friend about their unique summer. It starts off with a brief description of their friends’ reactions to their plan for their summer. It then goes through the process of signing up and their first day on the line. Subsequent chapters talk about specific issues. For example, the time the factory tried to make all the women employees fully cover their hair. Or what it was like to commute in pants. C and C.M. were surprised to find how differently they were treated in public in pants.
The characters are memorable, even with the authors doing due diligence to anonymize real people. In From the foremen to women colleagues to men colleagues to the folks they encounter on their commute. Everyone feels real. Some are of course more well-rounded than others. (The foremen or “Red Buttons” are particularly flat.) But this simply adds to the realness of the memoir. Isn’t that how we all encounter people in our lives? With some developing into full-fledged members of our lives and others staying two-dimensional background characters.
The illustrations are utterly charming and are throughout the book.
The authors reflect on things like the fact that while they will be returning to school in the fall, others will be working on factory lines throughout their life. They also consider the impact the war is having on gender roles in society, although not in academic language. They simply discuss things like how more women are wearing pants and how men treat them when they do. In general, though, the women try to keep the tone light.
Overall, this is a compelling primary document in memoir form of the women on the factory lines in WWII. It’s interesting they had the foresight to realize this was an important moment in history. Immediately writing the book and finding a publisher. They were published in 1944. Their factory work was just the year before in 1943. An easy gift for any WWII aficionado. Also, check out my other reviews of books dealing with WWII.
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5 out of 5 stars
Length: 200 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Gift
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Book Review: My Husband by Maud Ventura
The view of one week in a French woman’s marriage gradually demonstrates the obsession she displays for her husband.
Summary:
At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she’s never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife’s hand when they’re sitting on the couch together?
Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him–setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.
Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .
Review:
This was listed as a “readers also enjoyed” book for Rouge by Mona Awad. The title drew me in right away, and the description had me intrigued. From the first chapter, I was drawn in by the narrator.
It is immediately apparent that not all is right with either the marriage or the wife narrator. She acts like she is young in love. In other words, she’s obsessed with him. She’s uncertain about his love for her. In spite of the fact that they’ve been together many years and have two children together. It’s exhausting just reading about how she overthinks every little move he makes. This also begs the question. Is she really in love with him? Or is it an obsession?
As time progresses, the reader becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the narrator’s behavior and starts to worry about the husband. This all comes to a head at the end of the book. The twist didn’t shock me per se. I suspected it might be where it was going. Unlike some readers, though, I wasn’t disappointed by it. I felt it made for a richer overall picture of the marriage. This review sums up the issues others have with the ending. (Be warned it does disclose the twist.)
This is a book in translation. It was originally written in French. It also won France’s First Novel Prize in 2021. While I don’t know much about translation, I thought that the translator, Emma Ramadan, did a phenomenal job. The narrator of the book is a translator herself and teaches English in a high school. There are a few passages all about the differences between French and English. I can only imagine what a challenge that was when you can’t deliver the original lines in French! It still worked, though, and I was able to get the narrator’s point.
In spite of this book being relatively short, it did take me a while to read. It wasn’t quite as engaging or forward-moving as a thriller typically is for me. That could be down to it being translated. It could have something to do with the scenes of infidelity. (Not a spoiler, this happens early.) I don’t enjoy reading about infidelity. It can sometimes even make me put a book down entirely. In this case, it slowed me down a bit.
Overall, this is a different thriller. A mix of an analysis of a relationship with what one might expect from a psychological thriller. It is decidedly French. The translation hold up well. Recommended to those with an interest in different psychological thrillers and/or in modern French literature.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 272 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis’ Fortress Prison by Ben Macintyre
The true story of the Allied Prisoners of War in Colditz, a German fortress turned into a prison.
Summary:
During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.
Review:
This is a rare combination for historic nonfiction. Well-researched and engagingly written. As easy to read as a well-paced thriller. Yet chock-full of fascinating facts.
The book is organized into sub-sections chronologically by year. Each year then has however many chapters it needs to tell the story. This made it quite easy to keep track of what was going on. There are two insets of wonderful photographs, clearly labeled. This allows the reader to easily put a face to the name of the person being discussed at various points.
Here are just a few of my favorite things that I learned in reading this book.
- An Indian officer was a prisoner at Colditz – and Indian soldiers were prisoners of war in general. Indians fought in WWII on the British side. The Germans tried to get them to come over to their side by appealing to the desire to be free of British rule. This appeal worked for some but not for others.
- A real person inspired the character Q from James Bond. He was responsible for some very creative methods of getting supplies through to the Allied POWs. (For a read about spies in WWII, check out this other book review.)
- The demographic with the most successful escape attempts were the French.
- It’s not so much that officers had a duty to escape as that the Germans would treat them with the courtesy “due an officer” so it was safer for them to attempt escape than for enlisted soldiers to do so.
- The British had a fighter ace who was a double amputee. He was missing part of both legs. He was an excellent flyer but, by all accounts, a real jerk to other people.
- Class structure existed within POW camps. Officers were sent to Colditz with enlisted men who acted as their servants. These men were called orderlies. These men even had their escape attempts denied to continue serving the officers. In one case, a man was given the chance to go home with German consent, but his officer blocked it, insisting he couldn’t go home until the officer did.
My one complaint about the book is this. There were some POWs who the Germans called “Prominente.” They were men with prestigious ties in the West. (For example: a relative of Winston Churchill.) The Germans oversaw them much more closely as they thought they might be valuable as a bargaining ticket. When the Allies were approaching Colditz, these Prominente were sent deeper into German territory, along with their orderlies. Given how attentive to detail this book is, I found it jarring that the two Maori orderlies who accompanied the Prominente were left nameless in the book. (They were Ben McLean and Reginald Mitai.) There were also no details provided on if they escaped the war with their lives. This in spite of the book providing a very detailed run-down at the end of what happened to most of the named prisoners and Germans in the book.
Overall, this is a well-written and enjoyable read on a specific area of WWII. Anyone with an interest in the experience of Allied prisoners in WWII will enjoy this one.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 368 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
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Book Review: Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm by Emmeline Clein
A woman in eating disorder recovery explores the world of eating disorders and treatment in the west through a pop culture lens.
Summary:
Emmeline Clein tells the story of her own disordered eating alongside, and through, other women from history, pop culture and the girls she’s known and loved. Tracing the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and orthorexia, Clein investigates the economic conditions underpinning our eating disorder epidemic, and illuminates the ways racism and today’s feminism have been complicit in propping up the thin ideal. While examining Goop, Simone Weil, pro-anorexia blogs, and the flawed logic of our current treatment methods, Clein grapples with the myriad ways disordered eating has affected her own friendships and romantic relationships.
Review:
This collection of essays consisting of research intertwined with memoir was an engaging read. I particularly liked how Clein approached talking about the negative aspects of Big Pharma in a historical context. That wasn’t something I was expecting in this book, and it was well done. Expect to learn about how amphetamines were marketed as a weight loss drug post WWII because the manufacturers needed a new market now that soldiers were no longer using them to stay awake. Or about how it was Big Pharma who advocated for the labeling of obesity as a disease in the early 2000s (so insurance would pay for drugs to “treat” it.) Or about how the company that originally marketed amphetamines for ADHD was fined for “inappropriate marketing.” (For more about the impact of big pharma on our everyday lives, see my review of Drugs for Life.)
Another thing I appreciated as a person in recovery from addiction was how Clein analyzed addiction and eating disorders as systemic, rather than personal, issues.
The addiction model still requires that we understand ourselves as addicts, rather than see our culture, our food systems, and drug and diet companies as conspiring to encourage addictive patterns. When we believe we are sinners and criminals who deserve to be punished because we are out of control, we don’t demand change to any of the underlying structures that are actually out of our control, controlled by corporations. In it current iteration, the addiction model still makes us blame ourselves and then retrofit our stories into some fictional hero’s journey of abstinence and discipline over the compulsion to consume–stories rooted in the very values at the heart of anorexia and its hold on so many minds.
There were a few things that I did not like about the book, though.
First, her take on the intersection of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and eating disorders is woefully short-sighted and lacking empathy for not only those with IBS but other chronic illnesses that the medical industry offers little to nothing for. (Strange for a book that takes down big pharma so aggressively.) Clein presents the opinion that IBs is essentially always second to developing an eating disorder. That IBS symptoms are the body’s natural response to being starved or facing binges. But EDs can be and are triggered by IBS. The fact is, for many people, an ED develops in response to suffering from IBS.
Second, her choice to exclude men from a book about ED is troubling. The overall thesis seems to be that a minuscule number of men have EDs so it’s not worth talking about. In fact, approximately 1/3 of those known to have an ED are men, and there is concern that EDs in men are underreported. Even if it was the case that very few men have EDs (which again, it is not), leaving them out of the book hurts the overall arguments about EDs.
Third, Clein does not talk at all about the interplay between EDs and OCD. This is a more glaring lapse given how much space is given to discussing depression, anxiety, and EDs.
Fourth, while drinking is mentioned repeatedly, drunkorexia is not discussed at all, nor is alcoholism, something which, again, often comes hand-in-hand with EDs and is even seen in vignettes in the book but not addressed.
Fifth, there is a chapter about religion and ED. It completely ignores all other faiths except Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism. Clein does not understand Protestantism enough to discuss it in the ways that she does. Every time she brings up Protestantism, it’s clear she doesn’t have a high level understanding of it. She basically makes comments about Protestantism being all about asceticism and self-denial and then moves on. Unlike Catholicism, she does not limit her comments about Protestantism to only the chapter when she’s discussing religion explicitly either. It trickles in throughout the book. (She does also discuss Judaism throughout the book, but she is Jewish, and her faith comes up in the memoir portions, which makes sense.)
As you can perhaps tell from both the featured quote and how long this review is, this is a long and dense book. It seems to have attempted to do something very large when perhaps it might have been better served with a narrower focus and more memoir.
Overall, this book features important information on the intertwining of Big Pharma and eating disorders in the west but it does fall short of an inclusive portrait of eating disorders in the west.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 288 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
An elderly woman recalls the time in her 20s as a young chef living through a worldwide food shortage.
Summary:
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.
There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.
In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
Review:
The central conflict in this book is that a young chef on the cusp of her career finds herself suddenly inhabiting a world full of food shortages thanks to smog. Day in, day out instead of cooking the food she wanted to, she’s having to find new ways to use the mung bean powder the government is providing. When an opportunity comes up for a high-paying job working as a chef at a wealthy newly formed, secretive nation-state with the promise of using traditional ingredients, she jumps at the chance. It’s a beautiful set-up for a book.
Another strength of this book is its depiction of Asian-American and Asian-European women. In a book with limited characters, one is Asian-American and one is Asian-European (biracial). These two women love each other and also face racism. One of them from her own father who is white. This book contains one of the most impactful depictions of the harm of exoticizing Asian women I’ve seen.
This is also a sapphic book. The main character has a relationship with another woman for part of the book. It’s not exactly a healthy relationship. It is not explicit. This isn’t a romance novel. It’s a scifi novel with a relationship in it.
What did not work for me was that the tense the story was told in removed all the tension. It’s told in first person past tense. It’s an elderly woman recalling her life, primarily during a great environmental crisis. But because she’s telling the story as an elderly woman, we know she survives everything. Right from the first page. It removed all tension for me.
Also, this is another book where quotation marks aren’t used. What is going on with this trend? It’s not for me. (This one uses italics for everything – whether it’s spoken or thought – making it difficult to understand certain scenes.)
Overall, this is an interesting set-up for a book exploring sustainability and what it is to exist as an Asian woman in a Western society. Recommended to those who are ok with a lack of tension in this type of read.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 240 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon
A contemporary retelling of Demeter and Persephone featuring a Hades who is a pharmaceutical company executive with a private island.
Summary:
Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears.
Alternating between the two women’s perspectives, Rachel Lyon’s Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration, and America’s own late capitalist mythos. Lyon’s reinvention of Persephone and Demeter’s story makes for a haunting and ecstatic novel that vibrates with lush abandon. Readers will not soon forget it.
Review:
I’ve seen some reviews from folks who entered this book clearly not knowing anything about the myth of Demeter and Persephone. I think that’s a mistake. Knowing the myth helps you know what vibes to expect from this book at least. It helps match the book properly with the readers who might enjoy it. So if you’re not already familiar, take a moment to read a quick summary. Ok. This is not a romance. This is a story of a young girl who gets abducted by the literal god of the underworld and tricked into eating something while there that will make her always have to return. It’s also the story of her mother’s desperate quest to find her.
This is a modern retelling devoid of fantasy. It takes the myth and places it in our modern world. Hades is a pharmaceutical company executive. A billionaire. He’s currently going through a legal battle to do with his very addictive pain pills. (He’s clearly an allusion to the Sackler family.) Personally, I loved the choice of a billionaire drug pusher as the stand-in for Hades.
Persephone is Cory. A just barely turned 18-year-old whose high-achieving mother wants desperately for her to go to college but who did not get in anywhere she applied. She and her mother are not getting along right now. (There are reasons for this rift beyond college that are a spoiler and are revealed later in the book.) She goes to be a camp counselor where she went to summer camp in essentially a huff. At the end of summer camp, the father of one of the children shows up to pick up the child and asks her to come to his private island to nanny the son and a daughter for a month. She has to sign an NDA. She cannot tell her mother where, exactly she is. This is the getting ripped into the underworld bit. nstead of the pomegranate seeds, what Cory is given is, naturally, the pain killing drugs. Her mother, after a bit of time and one very weird phone call, cannot shake the feeling something is wrong, and drops everything to go after her daughter. It’s kind of Taken but with a mom.
I really enjoyed the vibes of this book. It oozed danger even when nothing super insidious was happening. While things do escalate, for a lot of the book it’s not that anything is technically wrong, it just feels wrong. It’s an art form to be able to mimic that gut reaction in fiction. This was one of the stronger parts of the book. I also really enjoyed a part where different plot points came together in what one could have called a coincidence, but also could be called the gods interfering. It was astutely (and kindly) done.
However. This book chose to never use quotation marks for dialogue. Not once. This is a stream of consciousness writing technique. It’s becoming more common in modern books, although you can also see it in James Joyce, for instance. The reasons given by modern authors – like “removing the hierarchy between author and reader” – frankly make me raise my eyebrows in doubtful question. (It sounds like something a dinner party guest of Frasier’s would suggest.) It strikes me as a full-of-oneself literary technique that just forces the reader to work harder. What’s wrong with reading quickly and with easy interpretation? I found it quite distracting in this book. I had to re-read certain passages to try to figure out who said what and whether it was a thought or actually spoken out loud.
Of course the Persephone and Demeter myth is dark. It stands to reason that Hades forces himself on Persephone, and this book doesn’t shy away from that. So there are two sexual assaults. One is described as a memory. The other is described in the moment as the character is living it. There’s also a child sexual assault hinted at in flashbacks but not described in any detail. It’s more that the character is remembering how she felt when it happened than what actually happened. Finally, there’s a self-injury described.
I realize that in the myth Persephone is doomed to return to Hades for half the year forever. This can be a tricky thing to address in an updated retelling. But some aspect of what next could have been addressed. I would like to have seen just a hint of how the mother/daughter were going to try to work through this, even if they might not be successful.
Overall, this is an interesting modern retelling of the Persephone and Demeter myth. It admirably writes pharmaceutical companies as the underworld and a CEO billionaire as their god. Potential readers should be aware that this is a dark story, not a romance. It contains sexual assault. Some readers may not enjoy the complete lack of quotation marks. Recommended to readers interested in modern day retellings of mythology.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 320 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: Rouge by Mona Awad
When Belle’s semi-estranged mother dies falling off a cliff in California, she comes from Montreal for the funeral and soon finds herself sucked into the same “spa” her mother was frequenting before her death.
Summary:
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.
Review:
Imagine a woman gets pulled into the world of Eyes Wide Shut, only there’s a lot less clarity about what exactly is going on.
The first 10% of the book and the last 25% had me very interested. The middle felt a little repetitive and slow. On the plus side, this book put me to sleep so easily. I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep so quickly when reading. Maybe not a huge positive to say about a horror book, but something about the language and the setting lulled me right to sleep. I only started to be able to make progress when I began to skim. I think the lengthy descriptions of the skin care routine just wasn’t particularly interesting to me as someone who simply doesn’t do skincare.
The main character is half Egyptian, half white. Her Egyptian father died so she lives with her white mother. A lot of the book is about the conflicts that arise for her as a woman of color with a white mother. I liked how the book illuminated the mistakes Belle’s mother made as a white woman raising an Egyptian daughter while also showing how she still loved her daughter and was trying. It’s a delicate balance to strike, and it was well done. She is also bisexual. This is established by her dating two siblings, which wasn’t my favorite way of revealing that. It’s a little too close to the bisexual as cheater trope.
What exactly was going on at the spa and how it ties back to Belle’s childhood remains a little confusing to me, even after reading the ending. I think I understand it. But I suppose what confuses me the most (minor spoiler) is how this society could target people from the other side of the continent many years in advance, and what made them target those specific people. That was a bit fuzzy to me. (Read more about what others thought about the confusing bits here. Be warned – there’s a lot of spoilers in that link!) I also agree with others who say the romance subplot wasn’t needed. I would have been quite happy with full focus on Belle and her mother.
I really enjoyed the way the sentences were put together, even if I thought the story overall could have been tightened. The story itself is interesting, although definitely drawing inspiration from others that I felt were creepier and with a more straight-forward big bad.
Recommended to those willing to dive into scenes of a character’s skin-care routine and atmospherically vague reveals that let you choose what you think happened. I am certain these readers are out there, and I hope they find this book. It feels almost like a love letter to that audience.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 384 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
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Book Review: The Witch’s Lens by Luanne G. Smith
A witch finds herself recruited to WWI’s eastern front to fight a scourge of zombies.
Summary:
With her husband off fighting at World War I’s eastern front, Petra Kurková embraces her fleeting freedom, roaming the city at night with her camera. A born witch, she’s discovered that she can capture the souls of the dead on film. Her supernatural skills don’t go unnoticed by the enigmatic Josef Svoboda. He’s recruiting a team of sorcerers to infiltrate the front lines, where the bloodshed of combat has resurrected foul creatures. Petra’s unique abilities will be needed against the most dangerous enemies of all—those ever present, undead, and unseen.
Deep in the cursed Carpathian Mountains, the ragtag team meets with an emissary of an ancient organization founded to maintain balance between worlds. Photographing the escalating horrors is beyond anything Petra imagined. So are the secrets among her fellow witches. But Petra can’t turn back. Not before she discovers her husband’s fate and the myriad ways her magic is manifesting. To defeat an occult foe, Petra must release the power she’s been concealing for so long, or risk damning a war-torn world to ashes.
Review:
I came into this book expecting a lot of WWI with a dash of witches but it ended up being the other way around.
If it wasn’t for the book’s blurb mentioning WWI and one passing mention of the Archduke’s assassination, it would be possible to read this book and think the entire war was a fantasy. This becomes increasingly so as the book progresses. Perhaps I missed something but at first it sounds like the humans are fighting and unaware of any supernatural folks participating in the war pushing it one way or the other. Then later it seems like everyone knows about witches. So which is it?
The book starts slowly, showing Petra living on her own, lonely and bored, going out at night to take photos since she’s discovered the dead show up in them. I was intrigued by this and wondering why Petra can only see the dead in her photos, but the why is never revealed. The camera is useful to the plot but not in the way you would imagine from what we know it can do.
The zombies in the book are the fast type. (See more zombie recommendations from me.) They can move at superhuman speeds. An interesting unique take is that zombies can continue to exist among the living until they’re called upon by another power to act like a zombie. They’re basically Trojan horses among the soldiers.
There is some light romance in the book. Personally, it didn’t work for me because we see Petra starting to long for a man who isn’t her husband. That’s just not a plot point I personally enjoy. The romance is hinted at in the book. There is not even a kiss. I suspect it will get stronger in the sequel. Those who want to read for the romance should know this is a very slow burn.
If we ignore the confusing aspects of whether or not everyone in the world knows about the witches, the plot does escalate in a way that mostly make sense and things come to a head with quite a bit of action. But there is an element of “the chosen one,” which I find dull. Especially in a book about WWI. I wanted to see everyone coming together with unique strengths. Not one overpowered person.
Overall, this book wasn’t a match for me. I wanted a lot more WWI than was in it. Recommended to those interested in a witch’s war with a dash of light, slow-burn romance.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 255 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Book Review: The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Tommy is a hustler just taking care of himself and his dad in 1920s Harlem when an old white man invites him to play at his private shindig in his home.
Summary:
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father’s head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.
A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?
Review:
The Lovecraft universe is a fascinating example of an author creating a world that then becomes the playground for a lot of other people’s imaginations. Legally! Beyond a story being technically set in a Lovecraft universe with Lovecraft characters, though, there’s an entire genre of speculative horror that sprung out of it called cosmic horror. Think Eldritch Gods. Secret societies. Tentacles.
I love cosmic horror. (I even have published a cosmic horror short story.) The thing is, though, most cosmic horror fans have a complex relationship with the genre because of Lovecraft’s blatant racism and xenophobia. So a lot of modern authors, fans of the universe itself but not the person, are writing their own cosmic horror stories that turn Lovecraft’s racism and xenophobia on its head. Enter The Ballad of Black Tom.
The author of this novella is a Black man who decided to take one of Lovecraft’s most xenophobic short stories (“The Horror at Red Hook“) and reapproach it from the perspective of a minor secondary character – Black Tom. Tommy lives in 1920s Harlem with a dad who’s a talented musician while he himself is not. He is, however, able to convince white folks outside of Harlem that he’s a talented musician and so he goes there to hustle them. He also has a variety of other side hustles including procuring magical items for people.
The first thing that struck me about this book was how it put a minoritized Lovecraft character front and center. I also noticed how Tommy doesn’t go by the name “Black Tom.” That comes later and, even when it does, Tommy is claiming the name from a place of power.
Part of the terror that Lovecraft’s characters often feel is that of potentially losing their place of privilege. Tommy is living in a blatantly racist society where he can’t even take a train too far out of his neighborhood without someone questioning or harassing him. Instead, what he has to lose is his community in Harlem. Something it takes him a while to figure out. Some of what tears that away from him is the cosmic horror. But some of that is the day-to-day horror of being Black man in 1920s Harlem. (Warning for police brutality in this book).
This novella hits all the notes a reader might want in a cosmic horror – existential dread, elder gods, a little blood, cult rituals. But it does it without the cringe-inducing racist asides. I found it easier to empathize with Tommy than I had with a main character in a cosmic horror in a while. Of course he wants the elder gods to come tear things up. Of course he does. What I wasn’t expecting was the note of…what have I done?…at the end or that I would agree with that too.
I will say, I didn’t enjoy was when the perspective shifted to that of the police officer. I would have preferred remaining in Tommy’s perspective throughout. There was also a hint that a song Tommy’s dad taught him would come back up in a meaningful way, and it didn’t. Perhaps I missed it.
Overall, this is a wonderful entry into the Lovecraft universe that gives voice to a character Lovecraft had maligned, written from an own voices perspective.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 149 pages – novella
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
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