SOUND MAN – Glyn Johns

Posted by Daniel on April 15, 2022
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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When you are one of the most influential sound engineers/music producers ever, it would be difficult to write a biography or memoir without a whole heck of a lot of name-dropping … as evidenced by Glyn Johns’ memoir, Sound Man.

Seriously … Johns worked with groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Steve Miller Band, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, and individuals such as Joe Cocker, Boz Scaggs, Leon Russel, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and hundreds of others. There is even a recording method (for recording drums) named for him.  This man has been on the inside of some of the most influential music of one of the most influential times for music. The influence he had… the insight he must have!

Learning of Johns’ early years provided some of the most interesting information. It would make sense that Johns began as a musician, recording several singles between 1962-1965. He began sound engineering in 1964 and continued through 2017 (working with Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton in 2016). Following the process by which he turned to engineering and mixing and producing really was perhaps the most interesting part of this book. Which, given the people he worked with, is a bit disappointing.

I respect that Johns is a man of principle and is not the sort to dish a bunch of dirt, but because of that, the book reads more like a textbook than a memoir. There’s a lot of – “I worked with XX on this album. Then I worked with XX. I was asked to work with XX but it didn’t work.” Occasionally we get something as radical as: “I didn’t care for his attitude so I decided I wouldn’t work with him again, but later it worked out” (my summary, not an actual quote).

From a purely historical/music perspective, this is interesting.  But it’s a dry snapshot of an exciting time.

Looking for a good book? If you just want to know who Glyn Johns worked with, or some of the very basic means by which Glyn Johns came up with some of his methods, then his memoir, Sound Man is for you. If you are looking for some real insight to the art and the artists that made music from the 1960’s through the early 2000’s, you might be out of luck.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Sound Man

author: Glyn Johns

publisher: Blue Rider Press

ISBN: 0399163875

hardcover, 336 pages

SPELUNKING THROUGH HELL – Seanan McGuire

Posted by Daniel on April 13, 2022
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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I’ve read a lot of Seanan McGuire’s books (under her name and under the name Mira Grant) and I’ve really liked most of them, but the InCryptid series is possibly my favorite, and this particular book really turns up the heat.

This is Alice’s story.

Alice Price-Healy once fell in love with a man named Thomas Price. Thomas was a member of the Covenant (and organization that wants to get rid of Cryptids). But love is strange and Thomas and Alice fell in love and Thomas made a bargain with this … what…?  ‘being?’ ‘thing?’ ‘entity?’ … known as the Crossroads (oh … those Crossroads books are good, too!). But part of that bargain was that Thomas couldn’t ever leave his house and that they (the powers that be) could come and take him at any time.

Alice and Thomas have a child together and they are expecting their second child when Thomas is taken away without any warning.  Once she has the baby, Alice then goes looking for Thomas.

For fifty years.

This is the story of that search, through other worlds and other dimensions, Alice will stop at nothing and let nothing stand in her way so that she can be reunited with her only true love.

This is a wild adventure. This is sort of like going through all of McGuire’s Crossroads series, InCryptid series, and October Daye series books in one sitting. We get so much here it’s almost hard to digest. And on top of it all, there’s a love story that works.

I also appreciate that underneath everything we read, there’s some angst and some energy ready to burst. There could, and should, be another Alice story in the InCryptid series.

In some ways, those who’ve been reading the series for awhile already know the basic Alice story, but being there to see her in action bring her story to another level. We also know the kind of trouble Alice is likely to get into, and we know the fierceness to which she’ll fight anything that attempts to hold her back.

Like all the books in the series, this book contains a novella or novelette at the back of the book. It is very possible that I liked this story (“And Sweep Up the Wood…”) even more than the novel.   This is a story of a very young Alice with her father and an InCryptid encounter that …. well, I don’t want to give anything away.  This is a must read.

Looking for a good book? Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire is the book we’ve been waiting for (even if we didn’t know it) in the InCryptid series. Read it; tell your friends about it; read it again.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Spelunking Through Hell

author: Seanan McGuire

series: InCryptid #11

publisher: DAW

ISBN: 0756411831

paperback, 352 pages

THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON

Posted by Daniel on April 11, 2022
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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Wow.  This is a really remarkable book. In so many ways, reading these vast collection of letters – both personal (to her boyfriend [later her husband] and to her parents) and professional (to her agent and to publishers) – is a better autobiography than if she’d sat down to write specifically about her life. We get a pretty honest look at her personal life – from her snarky letters to then-boyfriend Stanley to the raising of her children to her feelings about the fact that her son and his girlfriend/fiancé are living together and then are expecting a child before their wedding (as well as how that doesn’t go well with the young woman’s family).  Everyday occurrences, from driving to child-care are covered.

Based on this, she would seem to have a pretty common life.  But we also get letters that she’s written to agents and publishers and editors.  Also the occasional fan or letter-writer.  A fair number of these are requests for money or questions about when will the money come in.  Because, we learn, that Shirley’s writing is the main source of income for the Jackson’s and there’s always a need for a new dishwasher or a new car or to pay off a creditor.

From the business letters, we learn about publishing numbers and advance sales and being selected for anthologies or having a work optioned for film or television. We learn of her reactions to lecturing at schools and her attempts to write other genre material. These letters really are a perfect storm of personal and professional life and they show the absolute mundanity of being a writer along with the sweetness of success.

Like many writers I know, Shirley faces procrastination (“This is not a letter, this is a way of killing half an hour.”) and writers block (“I must stop writing letters and get to writing a novel. If you think of any good scenes for a novel covering about forty pages send them right along. I can use anything I get.”).

What surprised me was how the letters to her agent were often quite personal and casual in manner (and sometimes showed an odd streak in her nature):

Due to circumstances presumably within my control, I find work almost impossible right now. Every morning I plug away at doing one whole page and every evening I throw it out. If I ever get together three or four un-thrown-out pages I shall send them to you. Also I can’t go outdoors because one of our strange cats has completely covered the doorstep with dead frogs.

That strange nature … really, a dry sense of humor.  I certainly never appreciated it from the works of hers I’ve read (I’ve only read two novels and a small handful of short stories), but the comment about the cat and the frogs is not totally unusual.  We see it a little more in her youthful days, but it shows up once in awhile later on as well:

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas together; everybody but me drank to your health in eggnog, but eggnog is 350 calories, so I used bourbon which may have as many calories but I don’t want to know about it.

I admit I knew nothing about Shirley Jackson other than she wrote one of the most famous short stories ever (“The Lottery”) and a couple of novels which, together with “The Lottery” were enough to classify her as a ‘horror’ writer. (I never felt that was a good classification, personally.) But this book really brought forth a woman with some personal demons, such as severe anxiety and agoraphobia, who had an incredible talent for writing and somehow managed to both write and raise a family in the 1950’s.

I am excited to go back and read more of her work.

Looking for a good book? The Letters of Shirley Jackson, edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman, is better than a memoir as it captures moments as it happened, rather than an authors reflections on events. This should be required reading for budding authors as well as fans of Shirley Jackson’s work. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Letters of Shirley Jackson

editor: Laurence Hyman Jackson

publisher: Random House

ISBN: 0593134648

hardcover, 623 pages

QUESTLAND – Carrie Vaughn

Posted by Daniel on April 7, 2022
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

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Dr. Addie Cox is a literature professor – very happy with her job and the assumption that she is making a mark on impressionable young minds. It’s a comfortable life and she’s happy with it. Then her status quo changes when Harris Lang, a billionaire tech genius offers her a job.

Lang owns an island off the western coast of the United States.  His intention was to create a high-tech fantasy resort with unicorns and dragons and magic of all sorts.  But one as real as possible, not just simple animatronics like many theme parks.

There’s been one problem with Lang’s plan … one of his lead designers has gone rogue and has taken over the island and put in place a powerful defensive system.  A Coast Guard ship that tried to pass through the invisible barrier was destroyed with all hands lost.  Now, Addie is to join a highly trained military attack squad to infiltrate the island and wrench control back for Lang.

Why Addie? Well, for starters she’s a Dungeons & Dragons fan and in the course of her teaching she teaches a lot of pop-culture and geek-culture – the sorts of things one might run into on an island of this sort. The other reason is that the designer who’s taken over is Dominic Brand, Adie’s ex-boyfriend.

I really wanted to read this because of how much I enjoyed the last two books that I read by Carrie Vaughn – Bannerless and The Wild Dead. I could tell from the description that this wasn’t likely to be set in the same universe, but any book by Carrie Vaughn is worth reading.

For the most part, the book reads just like what it appears to be … a D&D adventure. What’s different about this is that it makes no bones about it. In fact, it is played up.  Addie jokes about it being a D&D adventure and her role in it (“I’m not the wizard. I’m the Bard.”).  She is the ne who often has to figure out the answers to the clues around them, and she has to step in and stop the fighters from just killing everything in front of them.

The island is set up like a D&D game, so this all makes sense, and it’s kind of fun to see this game, inside a story, which is set up like a game.

Addie’s joining this excursion is a little bit of a stretch (really … there was nobody better qualified?) and while she talks about slowing down the squad, and they talk about her (when they think she isn’t listening) slowing them down, she of course rises to the occasion and proves herself – again and again.  In this sense it’s a bit of a Mary Sue story.

Categorizing this book is a challenge.  It’s an adventure story, but set in a false fantasy world.  All the fantasy elements are artificial, no matter how ‘real’ they appear.  Even one of the main characters has their ears cosmetically changed so that they are pointed elf ears – they’re real, but fake.  So is this a fantasy?  No, and yes.  Does it matter?  Only in the sense that while this is set up like a thrilling adventure where the main characters could be killed at any moment, it reads like a light-hearted fantasy. No amount of explaining how dangerous it all is, or even deaths among the characters actually mkes it feel dangerous.  Not once did I worry about how this was going to end.

The characters are  nicely established and the overall plot works well and author Carrie Vaughn’s writing is just really nice and straightforward.  I wanted something a little tougher, something with some ‘grit’ (maybe because of the previous books I’ve read by her?) but I did enjoy this.  This is a perfect book for an airport read or beach read.

Looking for a good book? Questland by Carrie Vaughn is a D&D style adventure that takes you to a remote island that has been converted to a D&D style theme park and a group will have to work together to defeat the evil currently ruling the island. Fans of the genre will love this.  Geeks will geek out.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Questland

author: Carrie Vaughn

publisher: Mariner Books

ISBN: 0358346282

paperback, 304 pages

QUIET NEIGHBORS – Catriona McPherson

Posted by Daniel on April 5, 2022
Posted in: MYSTERY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

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Ooooooh.  What should be one of the best, dark reads on my shelf turns out to be one of the dullest.

Jude needs a safe haven.  She remembers finding some dusty old treasures in the oldest bookstore in a town full of old bookstores; Lowland Glen Books. This seems as good a place as any in a pinch. It so happens that Lowell, the bookshop’s somewhat scramble-brained owner, needs an assistant and also knows of an affordable rental. So what that the rental is the grave-digger’s cottage?  It just means Jude will have quiet neighbors.

But the books in the shop, as well as the people in the graveyard, have stories to tell.

Seriously … what a great premise!  A dusty, old bookshop in a remote Scottish village.  Throw in a neighboring graveyard, and you’ve got the makings of one heck of a great dark thriller.  So where did this go wrong?

Let’s start with the story.  First off, it’s not a thriller.  It’s not a horror story.  It’s a cozy mystery.  A cozy mystery. Meaning nothing bad is going to happen on the page. That gorgeous dark cover … ?  Totally misleading. But assuming we like ‘cozies’ (we don’t, typically) even a cozy mystery has a mystery that is integral to the story-telling.  And while there are mysteries here (more than one), they aren’t satisfactorily addressed.  Jude tries to solve the mystery of Lowell, but the biggest mystery hits the reader at the beginning – why does Jude have to get out of town so fast? – and is barely addressed until quite late in the book.

So if the story isn’t building and piquing the reader’s interest, what are we doing for 300+ pages?  We’re developing characters, of course.  I mean, a great character can carry a book through a weak plot if we are interested in the person. But here, too, we’re out of luck.  These characters are completely flat. Instead of boosting a story with energy and letting the reader get comfortable with either a familiar or loveable character, we’re given two main characters who talk a lot at each other but don’t ever seem truly interesting or interested in the other.

And finally, the writing itself.  The author’s writing style here is more chaotic than the character of Lowell (who feels like he should be chaotic). Sometimes I just couldn’t follow a sentence.  Sometimes I didn’t understand what was going on.  The writing style definitely didn’t help the dull characters or the slow-developing plot.

Two stars seems a little high, given how much I didn’t care for this, but I still think the premise is outstanding and worth a star just for that, and I also learned something … something interesting enough to write down and research later.  That’s worth half a star, which rounds up to make this two stars.

Looking for a good book? Don’t be fooled by the cover art or the hyperbole from a marketing copywriter, Quiet Neighbors by Catriona McPherson is a slow, dull, cozy mystery.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Quiet Neighbors

author: Catriona McPherson

publisher: Midnight Ink

ISBN: 0738747629

hardcover, 341 pages

ALL THE HORSES IN ICELAND – Sarah Tolmie

Posted by Daniel on April 1, 2022
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, SHORT FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland is beautifully poetic novella which, like the Edda‘s and the Heimskringla by Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson, lays forth the story behind a national legend.  For Tolmie, that’s the story of all the horses of Iceland. And like all good legends, there’s magic and the supernatural, there’s good and evil, and there’s a wanderer who encounters many things.

On the surface, this might appear to be a tale of the horse of Iceland. In fact, we open with a poetic moment:

Every horse in Iceland, like every person, has ancestors who sailed here in a ship. What has a horse to do with a ship? In a ship, a horse cannot hold on. A horse cannot row or trim sail or bail out water. A horse has no business on the sea at all. Horses were carried here, cold and sick and protesting, in open boats, frost riming their manes, from Norvegr and the Føroyar, from Irland and Hjaltland and the Suthreyar. Their sturdy kin can be seen in all those places, long-haired in winter, working around farms and fjords. These little horses of the North, strong as oxen, carry tall men in their endeavours of work and pleasure and war, all the way to Garthariki. The mare of whom this saga speaks, she came from a land beyond even these, a great ocean of grass. Her journey here was long and the wealth she brought with her was considerable, but no rune stones speak of them. What are the most important words, after all, that rune stones record?

Names.

But a horse can’t tell its own story and as the narrator suggests, a horse had no reason for being on a ship to Iceland.  Except for Eyvind.  Eyvind of Eyri was a trader who brought the horses to Iceland.  Focusing on one mare to whom the ghosts spoke and who was somehow able to command the attention of other hardy horses.

It really is a marvelous idea and the language is so captivating. It is so disappointing, then, that the story itself is so ponderous.

Though barely a hundred pages, this book reads like a 500 page epic. Not because there are so many lofty ideas, but because it moves so slowly and sometimes incoherently (“Who’s speaking?  That’s the ghost? No, that’s the horse?  No, it’s a merchant we haven’t met yet?”).

I was so eager to read this book, I moved it ahead of all my other books in my ARC-to-be-read queue. It was so disappointing then to be so let down.

Looking for a good book? All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie is beautifully poetic and appears to be not unlike classic Scandinavian myths and legends, but perhaps the story gets lost behind the words.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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All the Horses of Iceland

author: Sarah Tolmie

publisher: Tordotcom

ISBN: 125080793X

paperback, 112 pages

THE COWARD – Stephen Aryan

Posted by Daniel on March 30, 2022
Posted in: SF/FANTASY. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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Kell Kressia is a living legend.  A hero about whom tales are told. This stems from an incident when Kell joined a band of rugged warriors to slay the Ice Lich. The Ice Lich was killed, thereby saving the world, according to legend, but Kell was the only human to return.  Since then, he’s tried to maintain a low profile, embarrassed by any fawning attention, and prefers to work the fields as a farmer.

But a new terror has come to light.  Up north, taking residence in the Ice Lich’s lair, is something possibly far worse than the Ice Lich.  The frozen land is spreading south and the clans of the area are calling for men to gather and save the region once again, and the man they want to lead them is the legend himself, Kell Kressia.

What Kell has never told anyone, is that he is no hero.  He was lucky the first time and in truth, he’s a coward who wants only to be left alone.

So… this is a ‘reluctant hero’ story, taken to the extreme.  Not just reluctant, but a coward.  Such an extreme that the book is titled for him …. The Coward. He’s a coward.  Coward, coward, coward.  The word is there to make sure you know … Kell is a coward.

Except, well, he’s not.  Something happened once and he got lucky and now he doesn’t want to have to go through that again.  That makes him a coward?  No.  He’s a reluctant hero, and reluctant heroes are a dime a dozen in fantasy these days, so of course the author (and publisher?) are trying to make him stand out by being different.  But again, he’s not.  He’s not different. And that’s one of the biggest problems with the book – there’s nothing about Kell or any of the other characters to make them stand out or rise above all the other reluctant heroes on the bookshelves.

The Reverend Mother Britak is memorable (in a good way) but terribly under-utilized and disappears quite suddenly from the book.  (I would suspect she’ll make more of an appearance in the second volume of this duology, but I won’t be reading it myself.)

One of the other problems with the book is that nothing unique happens. There is one storyline, centered around Kell being a coward and even if you can accept the idea that he’s less coward and more ‘reluctant hero’ – well, what happens to reluctant heroes?  They eventually follow through and take on the mantle of hero that everyone hopes or expects of them. Just exactly the way it happens here. There’s no surprise.  No thrill.  From the moment we learn he’s a coward (reading the title of the book) we can pretty much assume he’s going to turn out to be the hero, and yup… there it is.

A fantasy actually about a coward (someone who avoids the danger at all costs but somehow, accidentally manages to save the day) would have been vastly more interesting than this book. I was bored.  I lost interest in the characters (and it seems the author may have as well because many of them just pass right through for no reason, never to be seen again). And for a book as straight-forward as this one, it was a long, forceful read.

–later–

Since writing this, I’ve seen both the author and some of the other reviewers compare this book (and/or the author’s writing style) with David Gemmell. I’ve never read Gemmell (and now probably never will) but if you’re a fan, perhaps this will appeal to you.

Looking for a good book? Stephen Aryan’s The Coward is a singular-focused story of a reluctant hero who gives us no reason to want to see him achieve something.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Coward

author: Stephen Aryan

series: Quest for Heroes #1

publisher: Angry Robot

ISBN: 0857668889

paperback, 412 pages

SUMMER OF LOVE AND EVIL – Michael Kinnamon

Posted by Daniel on March 28, 2022
Posted in: OTHER, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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It is 1967 and drugs, Vietnam, and family farms giving way to corporate farming are the topics of conversation in many Iowa communities. Charles Weaver is graduating from his small, Iowa farming town high school as the valedictorian. He has great plans for his last summer in town before going off to Des Moines to attend Drake University – including finally having sex with his long-time sweetheart. But life plans are rarely as well ordered in reality as they are in desire. Charles and his girlfriend break up, and Charles gets a summer job working with the local street crew.

Working with the street crew is a surprise to everyone who knows Charles.  The son of a local attorney and city council member, Charles doesn’t appear to be cut out of manual labor. He’s a scholar, likely to become a lawyer like his father. Could he last more than a day working up a sweat, shoveling tar to fill pot holes or driving tractors?

But Charles will learn valuable lessons from this over-worked, under-paid, mostly uneducated crew. Not only will he last more than a day, but he will seem to thrive in his time with the gruff but resolute men on the crew.  And this won’t be the only surprise for those in town who know the boy … he begins to date the daughter of the crew chief – a girl he knew only slightly in school – who has a troubled history that she can’t seem to shake, though Charles may be an answer to some of her prayers.

While I have the inclination to refer to this as a ‘coming of age’ story, I feel that the term is almost demeaning to a book with this much power.  Labeling the book only puts it on the same metaphorical shelf as all the other ‘coming of age’ stories and really this one is different somehow.

Of course Charles comes of age here … graduating high school is only the first step in the growth that we’ll see along the way. Seeing his father in a new light – the way others see him as well as seeing him man-to-man rather than son-to-father is very much another step on Charles’ path to adulthood.

But we also have his physical maturity – almost overly obvious with the recognizable muscle growth on his skin frame from all the hard labor he performs over the summer.  He’ll also encounter his first dead body and face corruption and evil at its ugliest.

And sex.  Well … perhaps here we’re reminded that Charles is still a boy and hasn’t fully come of age just yet.

Though I’m a tad younger than the main character of the book, I did grow up in a rural Midwestern town during the Vietnam era.  I recognized these people and these situations.  I saw bits of myself in Charles (or bits of Charles in my youth?) which made this particularly poignant to me.

There were moments that I wanted to see a different result – for someone to react differently or to make a different decision.  However, in each case I realized that the author’s choice wasn’t always his to make – sometimes the characters really did seem to have a life of their own.

All the featured characters are strong, unique, and easily identifiable.  Is it because I grew up in a small town and now live in an even smaller town, that I can precisely picture each and every one of the people named here?

Looking for a good book? Summer of Love and Evil by Michael Kinnamon is a powerful story of a young man’s journey through love and evil and death and growth into adulthood.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Summer of Love and Evil

author: Michael Kinnamon

publisher: Publerati

ISBN: 0997913754

paperback, 250 pages

SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN – Shelley Parker-Chan

Posted by Daniel on March 24, 2022
Posted in: OTHER, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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Oh, wow.  This is phenomenal.

It is 1345 China and the Mongol’s rule with an iron fist. Out in the Central Plains of China, peasants toil away and only dream of the possibilities of greatness – something found in prophesies but not real life. Until, that is, the eighth-born son of the Zhu family, Zhu Chongba, is prophesied to come to greatness.  How he’ll do that is a mystery to everyone since no one from the Plains ever comes to greatness.  The family’s second-born daughter is expected to become just what every daughter will become … nothing.

A brutal raid on the village leaves Zhu Chongba and his sister orphans. Zhu Chongba doesn’t take well to this and he falls into a deep despair and dies.

His sister on the other hand, shows a remarkable will to survive at all costs and decides to assume Zhu Chongba’s identity.  She, now posing as a young boy, enters a monastery, finding it easy to be a boy when there are few expectations other than obedience.  But her nature is inquisitive and challenging and she is still willing to stop at nothing to protect her true identity.

When rebels to the Mongol horde seek help from the monks at the monastery, Chongba agrees to serve as their advisor, which she does extraordinarily well.  And later, when the temple is razed because of the help they offered to the rebels,, Chongba sees another opportunity – to take her brother’s prophesy for greatness for herself and lead an army against the fiercest warriors in the land while maintaining the secret of who she really is.

This book is just … it’s truly wonderful.

Chongba’s will to survive, her drive to succeed, and her fierceness are so very powerful. It is, without a doubt, the over-riding arc of the book.  I might normally find it too obvious, but author Shelley Parker-Chan manages to couch the themes within a great story and around exceptional characters.  We want to follow Chongba and we want to see her succeed.  But even her biggest foe becomes someone that we find a way to respect – or at least someone we want to know more about.

Parker-Chan never lets us forget that Chongba is female and while it is never acknowledged (because no one else knows her true gender) we also never lose sight of the fact that what she achieves is extra remarkable because of her gender (and that, according to prophecy, she was destined for nothingness).

Of course we also can’t help but wonder if both prophecies have actually come true.  Chongba has left her female-ness behind.  The girl is no more.  She is nothing.  But Zhu Chongba is slowly becoming increasingly ‘great’ – as according to prophecy – even though it is now the female Zhu Chongba.

This is not a light, easy read.  Chongba will grow vicious, even very early on, and it is almost as though she will thrive on her aggression.  Almost.  When she has the best opportunity to truly become ruthless, she lets up, just enough to remind us why we like her so much.

I really got pulled into the story very quickly and on the strength of Chongba’s character, I was held to rapt attention all the way through.  It combines adventure, mythology, and a strong sense of ancient Chinese legend, told in a classic Chinese fashion but for  modern audience.

Looking for a good book? She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is a powerful, motivating adventure story of a strong-willed girl who’s will to survive is a driving force that will be felt all across China.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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She Who Became the Sun

author: Shelley Parker-Chan

series: The Radiant Emperor #1

publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 1250621801

hardcover, 416 pages

THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS – Chuck Wendig

Posted by Daniel on March 22, 2022
Posted in: Dark Fantasy/Horror, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

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I’ve thought, longer than usual, on how to start this review. Often I’ll start with a plot description — too difficult with this book.  Sometimes I’ll start with some general comments about other books I’ve read by the author — been there, done that already with Wendig. And sometimes I’ll dig right in and talk about what I really liked (or disliked) about a book — again, too difficult with this.

Chuck Wendig’s The Book of Accidents is a serious excursion into so many different horrors that it’s difficult to summarize.

We enter with a man in an electric chair. Serial killer Edmund Walker Reese who still maintains that the young girls he killed needed to die and he only regrets that the fifth girl got away. Mysteriously. And when the executioner flips the switch to send the killing volts into his body, he mysteriously disappears.

We meet Nate and Maddie Graves. Nate, a Philadelphia cop, grew up with a nasty, abusive father.  That father is now dying – painfully and slowly, just the way Nate hoped. But the father has left them the house in the country – a house Nate wants nothing to do with but Maddie recognizes the financial benefit to not paying city rent. So they move with their child to the 1700’s-build farmhouse where things that shouldn’t be, are.

And all the horrors that we recognize as deserving of their own book come to be just a drop in the bucket as we discover that alternate universes converge in darkness here.

Wendig combines the best of Lovecraftian horror with his own modern dark fantasy storytelling to deliver a very special, anxious horror.

This isn’t a slasher novel and it’s not full of splatter but it will gnaw at your spine and raise the goosebumps on your flesh, so if you like a story that will do that, look no further. Wendig has taken some risks by expanding on what he does so well, but it pays off.

Looking for a good book? The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig is one of those accidents you can’t stop staring at, even though you know that what you see will give you nightmares. It’s a great dark fantasy/horror story.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Book of Accidents

author: Chuck Wendig

publisher: Del Rey Books

ISBN: 0399182136

hardcover, 530 pages

TOGETHER WE WILL GO – J. Michael Straczynski

Posted by Daniel on March 18, 2022
Posted in: OTHER, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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Things haven’t gone well for Mark Antonelli, a failed young writer with a grim future.  So he puts together a plan…. Mark buys a beat-up old tour bus and hires an ex-vet to be the driver, and he plans to drive/ride across the country. He places ads in newspapers along the route and will pick up a few passengers to join him on the journey.

But this is not a typical site-seeing tour. Mark will screen all the potential new passengers and only those ready to cash it in … to give up their mortal coil … will be riding the bus.  Mark’s plan for the end of the ride is to drive the bus off a cliff in San Francisco for a beautiful sunset view as they crash into the ocean.

New friends will be made, and lost; new romances will blossom; there will be multiple betrayals; police chases; politics in play; and a surprisingly ‘feel-good’ atmosphere despite the aura of pending suicide from cover to cover.

Not many authors could get away with writing a novel about a group of strangers who come together in order to end their lives sooner rather than later; take control of when they choose to see the end; and wish to ‘go together.’  J. Michael Straczynski is one of those few who can.

Because there is a very mellow attitude toward suicide here, I was very concerned about the potential appeal here to students, an area where there is already too high a rate of suicides every year. But then I thought,’ Ah, Straczynski will clear it all up and show us the dark side of taking one’s own life, and why it’s better to keep living later in the book.

Warning: People die. By their own hand. It’s almost glorified (it is certainly accepted). It is not made to be a terrible thing.  For those who’ve known suicide – either family or good friends – this is not a book you will want to read.

And yet…!  I really liked this book.

I know I’ve repeated this quote before, but this is a good time to bring it up again.  Decades ago, I attended a convention with science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon as guest of honor.  He was asked what the difference was between writing a short story and writing a novel (other than length).  His response has stuck with me: A short story is about things people do and a novel is about people who do things.

I think about this a lot when I’m reading and writing reviews, and I’ve realized that the novels I’ve liked the most are definitely those that are about people – and people who draw me in.  This book definitely fits this description.  By all accounts, the people here wouldn’t normally capture my attention, but I really felt as though I got to know these people. I came to understand why they were on the bus. I came to root for them, or to boo them – depending on what Straczynski wanted from me – and, yeah, I liked this book.

Looking for a good book? If you want a good, general fiction read, J. Michael Straczynski’s Together We Will Go will bring you along on a journey with some other heretofore strangers who get to know one another just before their plan to meet their end together.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Together We Will Go

author: J. Michael Straczynski

publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

ISBN: 1982142588

hardcover, 304 pages

SOUL SERENADE – Rashad Ollison

Posted by Daniel on March 16, 2022
Posted in: MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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I was 100% attracted to this book because of the sub-title: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl. The effect of music, particularly in the age of vinyl, holds a lot of interest to me. What I was expecting, then, was a memoir addressing the role music played in the life and growth of Rashod Ollison … whoever he is.

After reading the book I did a little research and even checked out some of the other book reviews (I rarely do that). Mr. Ollison, it appears, was a respected music critic and journalist who wrote for magazines and papers such as Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Journal News (Westchester, New York), Baltimore Sun, and Virginian-Pilot. These are not papers that I read and I think that perhaps the book would be much more interesting to someone who knows who Rashod Ollison is. Or was.  Unfortunately, he has passed away since the publication of this book.

The book is much more an exploration of of Ollison’s homosexuality – at least more-so this than the influence of music in his life. Growing up Black and gay is surely challenging and Ollison didn’t have it easy. But he persisted, and found his niche – writing – with great thanks to a teacher who saw, if not talent, an interest that could be cultivated.

These are great stories.  How many of us can look back and think of one or more teachers who were influential to us during formative years?

But for a man who spent his career writing, this book just never grabs the reader or delivers a punch worth remembering.

The description of the book talks a lot about music and its influence on a boy growing up in Arkansas and I won’t say that this isn’t there, but it’s definitely not the strength of the book. Things perked up in the last quarter of the book and honestly, if I had started with that, I might have had a more enjoyable read throughout (it’s a memoir … you can write things out of timeline order!).

Looking for a good book? Soul Serenade by Rashod Ollison is a memoir/biography supposedly using the background of music to identify the author’s growth and chosen moments, but for someone who has no idea who the author is, there’s not enough here to appeal.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

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Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl

author: Rashod Ollison

publisher: Beacon Press

ISBN: 0807057525 

hardcover, 240 pages