Month: January 2025

#BookReview: The Devil’s Due by Bonnie MacBird

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Devil’s Due by Bonnie MacBirdThe Devil’s Due (Sherlock Holmes Adventure #3) by Bonnie MacBird
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #3
Pages: 384
Published by Harper Collins on October 10, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

After Art in the Blood and Unquiet Spirits, Holmes and Watson are back in the third of Bonnie MacBird’s critically acclaimed Sherlock Holmes Adventures, written in the tradition of Conan Doyle himself.
It’s 1890 and the newly famous Sherlock Holmes faces his worst adversary to date – a diabolical villain bent on destroying some of London’s most admired public figures in particularly gruesome ways. A further puzzle is that suicide closely attends each of the murders. As he tracks the killer through vast and seething London, Holmes finds himself battling both an envious Scotland Yard and a critical press as he follows a complex trail from performers to princes, anarchists to aesthetes. But when his brother Mycroft disappears, apparently the victim of murder, even those loyal to Holmes begin to wonder how close to the flames he has travelled. Has Sherlock Holmes himself made a deal with the devil?

My Review:

Two competing quotations ran through my brain as I read this third entry in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series, quotes that could not be further apart if they tried. One is the famous and often misquoted, mistranslated and/or misappropriated quote from the French writer, journalist and critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who wrote in 1849, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”. In English, that’s the more familiar, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and it’s a phrase that Holmes and Watson would have been well familiar with.

The other quote is considerably later, and is also frequently misquoted and misappropriated. “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain!” As Montgomery Scott commented, or will, in 2286.

Together, those quotes encapsulate The Devil’s Due in some rather surprising ways.

On the surface, this is very much a classic mystery conundrum, as a serial killer is stalking London. One that it seems that only Sherlock Holmes recognizes as such. The police, in the person of the odious new Commissioner Titus Billings, are MORE than willing to take the various rulings of accidents and suicides at face value. Then again, Billings is obviously more interested in convictions than justice – in more ways than one.

Billings clearly hates Holmes to the point of mania, and is well on his way to infecting all of Scotland Yard with that hate along with the gutter press who are always in search of sensational news. Painting Sherlock Holmes as being in league with devils and demons is VERY sensational indeed.

That Billings sees everyone not of his race, class and national origins as an actual devil of one sort or another just adds to the furor. Or at least Billings’ fury. Billings wants to lay every crime in London at the feet of immigrant anarchists who are naturally inferior in every way to good Englishmen. He’s even lobbying for permission to arm and militarize Scotland Yard to see all those he hates harshly regulated and eventually expelled.

Even from very early in the story, it’s clear that Titus Billings is “A” villain in this story. Whether or not he’s “THE” villain is another matter entirely.

The case, or rather cases, that Holmes is investigating in spite of Billings’ interference are puzzling in the extreme. A group of philanthropists are being cleverly murdered in ways that appear as accidents or suicides. All by different means, all by different methods, often in different parts of the country, but always including collateral family damage in the form of yet more accidents and suicides.

Holmes is doubly captured by this case because it is both so diabolically clever and because his brother Mycroft is on the list of possible victims.

And again, there’s a character who stands out as “A” villain but not necessarily “THE” villain.

So Holmes is distracted and at cross-purposes with himself in this investigation even as he does his damndest to evade both the police and the reporters who are determined to catch him in a compromised position. Even if they have to arrange it for themselves. Which they have. And do. And most definitely ARE at every turn – or perhaps that should be wrench – of the screw.

Escape Rating B-: And this is the point where those quotes come in, along with the good old British expression about “over-egging the pudding”. Because, as much as I did enjoy this entry in the series, I didn’t like it nearly as much as the others. I ended the story, and actually middled the story, feeling like the pudding had been over-egged in every direction.

Previous entries in this series have read as if they owed some of their portrait of these beloved characters to late 20th and early 21st century portrayals. That’s both to be expected and at least a bit necessary, as Doyle’s Holmes was a man of his time, and we like to at least think we’ve moved beyond some of the extreme bigotry of that era – whether we actually have or not.

But this entry in particular, due to the over-the-top, over-egged and utterly odious Titus Billings, reads as though the story crossed the line into speaking more TO our time than FROM its historical setting. Billings as a character reads like a caricature of all that is odious in our now. Not that his attitudes weren’t common and not that those prejudices didn’t exist and have terrible influence, not that the movements against homeless people (often military veterans), immigrants (popularly ALL believed to be terrorists), women (who are presumed to be hysterical), etc., weren’t prevalent, but the details of the way Billings operated felt just a bit too pointed at now instead of then.

The character very much invoked that saying about the more things change, the more they remain the same, but in his methods and what little reasoning we saw from him, he was a bit too on our time’s nose instead of his own.

On the other hand, the crime spree itself very much lived up to Scotty’s comment about overthinking a system to the point of making it easier to break instead of more difficult. Which turns out, in the end, to be exactly how the true villain gets caught in Sherlock Holmes’ trap instead of the other way around.

But again, the villainy was extremely over-egged. It got so theatrical and so complicated that not only did the right hand not know what the left hand was doing but as a reader I got more than a bit lost in all the theatricality to the point that I stopped caring about the victims and just wanted to get ALL the players off the stage so that they – and I – could recover from their collective shenanigans.

In the end I’m glad I read this one because events in this adventure do get referred to in later books, but it felt a great deal longer than Unquiet Spirits in spite of that story being nearly 150 pages longer than this one.

Speaking of other books in this Sherlock Holmes Adventure series, I’ve been winding my way through this series over the past several months and for the most part enjoying them immensely. I was planning to review the latest, The Serpent Under, THIS month for a blog tour, but the tour organizer has taken ill and postponed the tour. While that is on hiatus, I felt the compulsion to fill the hole in my schedule with a different book in the series, hence this review. This didn’t quite live up to the other books in the series for this reader, but I have to say that The Serpent Under very much did and I can’t wait until I can post that review!

A- #BookReview: The Hero She Loves by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Hero She Loves by Anna HackettThe Hero She Loves (Unbroken Heroes, #5) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Unbroken Heroes #5
Pages: 216
Published by Anna Hackett on January 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

The last thing he wants is to hunt a dangerous fugitive in the Alaskan wilderness, especially with a tough, stubborn US marshal.
Parker Conroy moved to Alaska to be alone. His military career in Ghost Ops ended with an explosion and three torturous weeks of captivity. It’s left him scarred, wanting to avoid people, and hating being touched.
When US Marshal Jenna Sheriden knocks on his door, he has no time for the attractive marshal. But she isn’t taking no for an answer.
A dangerous fugitive is on the loose, and he happens to be a rogue Ghost Ops soldier.
Jenna Sheriden lives and breathes being a marshal. Her past has left her with something to prove. She has zero interest in love, relationships, or anything that slows her down.
She needs help hunting a deadly murderer. She needs Parker Conroy.
The gruff, lean loner radiates a dark intensity she can’t ignore, but he has the skills to help her track down her quarry. Thrust together, they’re sharing the same bed, the same tent, and working together every hour of the day.
As they draw closer to catching the killer, Jenna sees under Park’s scarred exterior to the man beneath. A man who tempts her in ways no one ever has before. A man who will do anything to keep her safe.
If they survive this hunt, then Jenna knows she’ll have the biggest challenge of all—convincing her scarred hero to take a chance on love.

My Review:

I was all in on The Hero She Loves from the very first page for two reasons. One, it’s an Alaska story and I always love stories set in “the 907” (Alaska’s Area Code – still) because I used to live in Anchorage. I still tell Alaska stories, so I enjoy it when someone else tells one to me.

Especially when it’s an author I love.

Second, I always love a romance of equals, especially when the female protagonist is every bit as proactive as her male partner. I want heroes who go out and get it done, not wait for someone to do it for them – especially when it comes to their own safety and rescue.

It’s okay to need a little help from a friend or a loved one, as US Marshal Jenna Sheriden certainly does, but it’s her duty to act and not merely react to situations just like the one she needs former Ghost Ops member Parker Conroy’s help WITH and not FOR.

One of Parker’s disgraced and dishonorably discharged former teammates has gone seriously rogue and it looks like he’s come to Alaska to get himself lost between murders. Alaska is a place where people really do go to lose themselves – but it’s a LOT more difficult to lose yourself when you pop out of hiding on a MUCH too regular basis to satisfy your need to rape and murder.

Still, Kyle Olson has the skills to continue his spree for entirely too long of a time. Jenna is excellent at what she does, but this bastard is seriously next level and she needs someone on that level to catch him. While Vander Norcross (his book is The Powerbroker), former head of Ghost Ops and still the badass ‘mother hen’ for all of them, knows that Parker Conroy is doing his damndest to lose himself in Alaska – albeit much more peacefully – and needs a way to expiate his own demons. Preferably on someone who really, really, deserves it.

Jenna needs Parker to help her catch Olson, Parker needs Jenna to bring him back from the wilderness. And Olson seriously needs to get caught. Or dead. Whichever. As long as he ends up somewhere he can’t manage to escape from. Again.

Escape Rating A-: Clearly, I went into The Hero She Loves expecting to enjoy it – and I absolutely did!

First, this does feel like the Alaska I knew through other people’s stories when I lived there. Anchorage is nothing like the Alaskan bush, and Valdez is tiny in comparison, a city of 4,000 compared to Anchorage’s not quite 300,000. (The local joke is that Anchorage is about 45 minutes from the “REAL” Alaska. Valdez is way closer than that.)

But still, it felt like the place I knew enough that nothing took me out of the story.

What made the story work for me is that Jenna was absolutely Parker’s equal, both for good and for bad. Not just that they’re equally badass and kickass in their own ways, but that they are each weighted down by emotional baggage trains filled with equally terrible demons. It’s not that they have the exact same demons, but that their demons are as big and bad as each other’s.

And neither of them believes that they can afford to look for love – let alone find it – no matter how much they both need it. And, of course, each other. Even if it does take a while for them to see it.

I found myself a bit torn, however, when it comes to the villains of this piece. There’s a little villain (and I mean that in any way that you might want to take it) in the person (using that term a bit loosely) of Jenna’s almost, sorta/kinda ex who just so happens to be her current boss in the Marshal service. He doesn’t even rise to the level of asshole. He’s just a little pisser. Repeatedly, often, and I’m surprised Jenna never gave in to at least dreaming about decking him. I want to say his actions and his character don’t ring true, but the problem is that they do – to the point where I’m left questioning her judgement a lot more than I’d like to. I wish he’d slunk away after he caused this entire debacle at the opening and I really wish he’d gotten exactly what he deserved at the end. But in real life, guys like him don’t. Dammit.

Howsomever, the real villain didn’t feel, well, real. While on the one hand that’s a head I’m really grateful not to have ever been in – I’d have hated reading anything from his perspective – at the same time he was so over the top he was mostly a caricature rather than a character.

On my third hand, the one behind my back, I’m not supposed to like him, he’s the villain. And I certainly did have a great time with Jenna and Parker visiting at least the vicinity of one my own old stomping grounds and watching them stomp all over someone who really deserved it even as they snuck into each other’s hearts.

The Hero She Loves marks the wrap of the author’s Unbroken Heroes series, barring any happy ever after all around epilogue – and I’d love to see one. I’m hoping that what comes next from this author is the first book in her NEW science fiction romance series, because those are always my favorites! We’ll certainly see in the months ahead.

#GuestPost: Martin Luther King Day 2025: Number 21

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | Guest Posts> Holidays> Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Maude Ballou and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Picture from the Ballou family)

The job of secretary to a minister is generally not associated with any particular risk to life or limb. But there are exceptions. From an interview published in the Washington Post (and republished by the Chicago Tribune in 2015:

Four days later [after the bombing of Ralph Abernathy’s house], Montgomery Improvement Association leaders supplied the chief of the highway patrol with a “List of persons and churches most vulnerable to violent attacks.” King registered at the top. Mrs. Maude Ballou was No. 21.

“Maybe I didn’t have the sense to worry,” says Ballou, who later spent three decades as a college administrator and a middle and high school teacher in North Carolina. “I didn’t have time to worry about what might happen, or what had happened, or what would happen,” she says in the cadences of a Baptist minister. “We were very busy doing things, knowing that anything could happen, and we just kept going.”

One time a man came down from Birmingham. “He said the White Citizens’ Council had sent him down there to tell me to stop working for civil rights or they would get my children. And that’s what got me, when you think about your babies. That really shook me,” says Ballou, with considerable equanimity. “But it didn’t stop me.”

Another night, working late in the office, alone, “somebody was outside watching. They were outside there in the car. And I found out later it was the KKK. But I was not afraid, for some reason,” she says. “I was a daredevil, I guess.”

What was the Montgomery Improvement Association? The organization that organized the Montgomery bus boycotts.

Who was Number 21, Maude Ballou? Martin Luther King, Junior’s first secretary. She worked in that role from 1955 to 1960, handling King’s voluminous correspondence (including putting off Malcolm X), keeping his affairs in order, and helping to set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference office when King moved to Atlanta.

Ballou went on maternity leave in 1958, so Hilda Stewart Proctor, a niece of Harriet Tubman and active in other civil rights organizations, filled in for seven months. King clearly made an impression on her; later that year, after she had moved on to other work, she still offered to help with his correspondence prior to his trip to India:

If I do 100 letters between now and the time you leave for India that will peel down the pile a little won’t it?

AND I WOULD LIKE TO DO IT AS ANY FRIEND WOULD DO WHO IS INTERESTED IN GETTING YOU OFF TO INDIA. I shall donate my services to the cause.

Please do this. Of course, as usual, all your work will be held in the strictest confidence.

PLEASE LET ME HELP BECAUSE I STILL FEEL AS THOUGH I AM YOUR SECRETARY WITHOUT PORTFOLIO, SECRETARY AT LARGE, SECRETARY ON ‘MATERNITY’ LEAVE, not mine, of course.

King also had a significant effect on his final primary secretary, Dora McDonald, who worked for him from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. From a profile of her by Dudley Percy published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1989:

Working for Dr. King was her political awakening. Unlike many of those who found themselves aligned with the movement, Miss McDonald did not initially join because of a deep-felt conviction. Dr. King sought her out when he moved back to Atlanta from Montgomery, Ala., to co-pastor his father’s church.

…

Once she agreed to join his staff, his spirit was contagious.

“After I got into my job, and what I was doing, what we were doing, and what the movement meant, I never wanted to be doing something else. I was a part of something momentous.”

King’s spirit may have been contagious, but the Civil Rights Movement could not have been sustained on spirit alone. It was a collaborative, thoughtful effort that depended on organizational skills to pull off. Consequently, on this MLK Day, please give a thought not only to King and the other luminaries of the movement, but also to the secretaries, the bookkeepers and the office managers who kept things running.

As with my 2022 MLK Day post, I am grateful to the The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford for making many of King’s papers available online.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 1-19-25

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

This was an excellent reading week! Well, it was from my end of things. However, the end of the week went whack in an unexpected and unfortunate way. I was expecting Friday’s post to be The Serpent Under  by Bonnie MacBird for a blog tour from Random Things Tours – and clearly it wasn’t. The tour organizer for Random Things Tours is in hospital and may not be well for a while. I wish her all the best and hope for a speedy recovery. In the meantime, I’m holding onto that review (I really liked the book!) until I hear from her.

Second note, on this coming week’s schedule I have The Baby Dragon Cafe, because I honestly can’t resist the thing. That cover is just adorable and I’m expecting the same from the book inside. I debated whether to review it now or later, because it’s being published both, well, now AND later. The ebook is already out – and it’s only $2.99! The paperback, however, won’t be out until July 1. I have no idea what’s up with that but if, after reading my review you can’t resist, you can get it immediately and dive right in. Or perhaps that should be FLY right in. We’ll see.

Because Hecate has been the featured kitty three out of the past four weeks, I decided it was time to let the boys have their place in the spotlight this week. And so we have this gorgeous picture of Tuna and George, not just together but actually touching and not pretending that the other cat isn’t really the other cat. Although they look a bit disgruntled about it in the picture, they’ve actually become buddies over the last couple of months! Even if they don’t look all that happy about it!

 

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Winter Wishes Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the January Wellness, Super Bowl & Valentine’s Day Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Books in the Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the New Year, New You Giveaway Hop is Angela C.

Blog Recap:

A- #BookReview: The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks
Grade A #BookReview: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire
A+ #BookReview: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Winter Wishes Giveaway Hop
January Wellness, Super Bowl & Valentine’s Day Giveaway Event!
Stacking the Shelves (636)

Coming This Week:

Martin Luther King Day 2025: Number 21 (#GuestPost by Galen)
The Hero She Loves by Anna Hackett (#BookReview)
The Devil’s Due by Bonnie MacBird (#BookReview)
The Baby Dragon Cafe by A.T. Qureshi (#BookReview)
Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (636)

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Stacking the Shelves

Well, this is certainly a group of pretty curious books that I’m looking forward to! Although not all in the same way – of course. I think the pretty cover in this bunch is The Amalfi Curse – I love all the blues in it. The book or that should be books, I’m most curious about are Death at the White Hart, because the author was one of the recent showrunners for Doctor Who as well as Broadchurch (probably the more relevant experience to this book!) and Dana Stabenow’s Eye of Isis series because the setting is so, so far from the Alaska mysteries that she’s known for. The two I’m most looking forward to are Infinite Archive because I’m enjoying the series, and Roll for Romance because it reminds me a lot of a previous book I really liked, Role Playing by Cathy Yardley, and I’m hoping for something equally good!

What are you looking forward to reading this week?

disappearance of a scribe by dana stabenow
roll for romance by lenora woods
theft of an idol by dana stabenow
death at the white hart by chris chibnall
amalfi curse by sarah penner
death of an eye by dana stabenow
infinite archive by mur lafferty
recluce tales by le modesitt jr

For Review:
The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner
Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall
Infinite Archive (Midsolar Murders #3) by Mur Lafferty
Roll for Romance by Lenora Woods

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Death of an Eye (Eye of Isis #1) by Dana Stabenow
Disappearance of a Scribe (Eye of Isis #2) by Dana Stabenow
Recluce Tales (Saga of Recluce) by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Theft of an Idol (Eye of Isis #3) by Dana Stabenow

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:


January Wellness, Super Bowl & Valentine’s Day Giveaway Event!

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Blog Hops> Giveaways> January Wellness> Late Winter Giveaway Event> Super Bowl & Valentine's Day Giveaway Event> Valentine's Day

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Welcome To The $100 Amazon eGift Card or PayPal Cash Giveaway!

Giveaway: 1 lucky winner a $100 Amazon eGift Card or PayPal Cash. The event is running from January 16th to March 12th. Giveaway open Worldwide everywhere PayPal is negotiable & age 18+.

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JanW-ValD-SupB '25 – Giveaway

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This giveaway/sweepstakes is in no way endorsed, affiliated, or associated with Facebook, Twitter or any other Social Media Networking Site. This event is not sponsored or endorsed by Amazon or PayPal Company. The winner will have 48 hours to email their information back to Versatileer at gmail dot com or a new winner will be drawn, you may want to put this email address as safe as it could go to spam. The giveaway is not valid where prohibited! Once a winner is drawn and confirmed, the name will be announced on the Rafflecopter form. Versatileer will be responsible for sending the winners their prizes. By entering you are authorizing us to collect the information on the form below, this information is used only to contact the winner! No purchase necessary, Void where prohibited by law, and the number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Winners are chosen randomly by Rafflecopter through the use of Random-dot-org. Twitter and Facebook dummy/fake accounts are ineligible for entry and will be blocked. Authentic accounts only are eligible to win. Next seasonal giveaway starts 3 hours before this giveaway ends, and the two giveaways will overlap for the three hour period. More giveaway terms and conditions are listed: HERE. No blog associated with this contest are responsible for prize fulfillment. If you would like to become a sponsor in a giveaway like this please email Jerry Marquardt at versatileer at gmail dot com or you can use the Contact Form. If you take an entry you must stay following for the entire contest or you will be disqualified.

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That’s a LOT to celebrate in one giveaway event, even on as big as this one, so there’s also a giveaway here at Reading Reality:
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Winter Wishes Giveaway Hop

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Blog Hops> Giveaways> Winter Wishes Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Winter Wishes Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews!

Winter is definitely HERE and PRESENT and ACCOUNTED FOR this year. Probably more than a lot of places want. We had a real winter last weekend with actual accumulated snowfall and everything. I thought it would be, not a once in a lifetime event of course, but let’s call it a once in a school career event for the children in the neighborhood. (Cincinnati is colder than Atlanta but it doesn’t get much snow either. I only experienced ONE snow day between kindergarten and high school graduation and I was expecting the same here.)

But NO, we might get more snow next week! Once was fun, especially since it fell on a Friday and was gone by Sunday. No one wants snow on a Wednesday. But climate is what you expect and weather is what you get, so we’ll see what we get around here next week.

What about where you are? Are your winter wishes for more snow? Are you getting more regardless? And are you already counting down the days until spring is sprung?

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Wishing for more wintery prizes? Be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!

MamatheFox, Mom Does Reviews, and all participating blogs are not held responsible for sponsors who fail to fulfill their prize obligations.

A+ #BookReview: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Death of the Author by Nnedi OkoraforDeath of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: African Futurism, books and reading, robots, science fiction
Pages: 448
Published by William Morrow on January 14, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The future of storytelling is here.
Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.
In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.
What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.
Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.

My Review:

Don’t let the title fool you. This book is nothing like what that title leads you to imagine. Or anything like what you might possibly be imagining.

The story is a Möbius strip. The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning in an endless and utterly fascinating loop.

There’s a story here – and there’s a story within that story – and both are utterly captivating but are entirely different.

From the start, it’s Zelu’s story. She’s Nigerian-American, she’s paraplegic, she’s not all that interested in marrying, and her career – such as it is – is one that her large, extended family doesn’t seem to want to understand.

Which is par for their course, as what they really don’t seem to want to understand is Zelu herself. She doesn’t fit into ANY of the boxes that her family expects her to fit into – and she can’t stop beating at the limitations of those boxes even as she does her damndest to expel herself from them.

The thing is, her family might be right about a lot of the things that press her down. On the other hand, her family has done their damndest to emplace many of the attitudes and expectations that weigh her down.

All out of love, of course. No matter how much it hurts.

So when she’s fired from her barely-supporting job as an adjunct professor of creative writing, and she receives yet another publisher’s rejection of the fruits of her own creative writing – a novel she’s been shopping around for YEARS – while she’s at her sister’s destination wedding in Tobago – she has a meltdown. And it’s a big one.

But it’s also a productive one. In the depths of her despondency, her acknowledgement that everything she thought she’d done isn’t working for her – at all – she acts out and breaks out. She pours her heart and her feelings into a novel that she can’t make herself stop writing even though it’s nothing like anything she’s ever done before.

And it turns out to be a literary science fiction masterpiece.

Which is where the other half of The Death of the Author comes in. Because we get to read Zelu’s groundbreaking work, Rusted Robots, as the literary world and the entertainment world do their damndest to chew it up and spit it out in a form that will get the most money out of the most markets.

And if the author becomes a media darling and then a media scapegoat, well that’s the price of fame for a woman who doesn’t fit ANY of the molds that anyone wants to put her in – because she never has.

And never, ever will.

Escape Rating A+: The Death of the Author got its hooks into me early, and those hooks didn’t release until nearly 4 in the morning, when I turned the last page and my mind went spinning as the creator became the created and the act of creation worked both ways and it made me rethink everything I’d read.

Yes, I went into the story expecting Zelu to die in the end. The format of her part of the story, transcripts of interviews of the people in her life telling her story from their own biased perspectives, leads the reader to think this was written after her death.

But it’s the story that captivates, as each ‘contribution’ is set against Zelu’s own narrative of her own journey, when we get to hear the screams she kept on the inside because no one EVER seems to have truly seen her or listened to her or believed in her.

It’s also a story about the facile judgments of the anonymous faceless masses of the internet, and the way that their approbation never fills her up because it’s always manufactured and false and just as easily turned against her as their narrative requires.

And then there’s the story she wrote, the story that seems to consume everyone it touches, Rusted Robots. It’s a post-apocalyptic, post-human story of robots and artificial intelligences acting on their programming. We are their creators, we made them in our own image, and they act entirely too much like us whether they look like us or not.

Rusted Robots reads like a different variation on the seven robotic circles of hell in Service Model, even as the rusted robots themselves, Ankara and Ijele, transcend their programming, together. That their world is saved by the power of storytelling gave the whole book a breathtaking, OMG WTF happened, utterly SFnal ‘Sensawunda’, at the same time that it sends the reader’s mind scurrying back to the beginning to watch the whole, marvelous epic unfold again.

Grade A #BookReview: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuireAdrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10) by Seanan McGuire
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, portal fantasy, urban fantasy, young adult
Series: Wayward Children #10
Pages: 147
Published by Tordotcom on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.
Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.
Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.
It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.
It wasn't her.
Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.
But even in Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.

My Review:

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is a bit of an origin story. Readers of the Wayward Children series first met the ‘Drowned Girl’ Nadya in Beneath the Sugar Sky. But that’s the story where her door finally opens for her AGAIN, because she’s sure that she wants to go BACK to Belyyreka, the world under the lake where she’s already built a life that fit her with people that she loves dearly – whether they are human people or not.

This is Nadya’s origin story, how she came to be the girl who loved turtles, found a door at the bottom of a pond, and grew up in a world that her heart called home. Only to be saved, and damned in the same instant, to return to a place she was never intended to fit.

Let’s just say that it’s a good thing that we already know how her story ends – from Beneath the Sugar Sky – because this one doesn’t have a happy ending – not for Nadya and not for the adopted parents who made her so damn sure in the first place that even the possibility of drowning was an improvement.

However, Nadya’s life in Belyyreka, the marvelous middle of the story, is terrific. It’s easy to see why her heart brought her there – and why it eventually let her go back.

Escape Rating A: The Wayward Children series, taken as a whole, is a story about acceptance. Individually they are stories about square pegs who are being shoved into round holes – all too often by their parents. Sometimes there’s a tragedy, often there’s merely a tragedy in the making that doesn’t get made because a door opens.

Even if that door leads to an entirely different sort of tragedy. The difference is that the worlds behind the door allows each of the children to choose their fates. Which is often, as is the case with Nadya, the one thing they’ve lacked on this side of the door. Choice.

In Nadya’s case, among the many choices that have been made for her is one that she is perfectly capable of having made on her own, even at age 9. Nadya was born with one and a half arms. While she’s aware that having two full arms – with hands – would be more convenient – it’s not how she was made and she hasn’t felt less than. Merely different.

Her adopted mother seems determined to make Nadya feel ‘less than’ at every turn, and has fitted her with a prosthetic arm that isn’t even all that functional. It’s a burden and not a help – exactly the way her ‘Mom’ wants her to feel, along with feeling grateful for having her lack pointed out to her and supposedly remedied.

In a way, it’s a bit like Jack and Jill from Down Among the Sticks and Bones in that each of their parents wanted a perfect child, a perfect girly-girl or a perfect tomboy, and didn’t care what either of the twin’s preferences might be.

The world that Nadya falls into is a world of water – a world under the water. She’s not a mermaid like Cora, the other ‘Drowned Girl’ at Miss West’s. Belyyreka is a world of water with weight, where heavy water forms lakes and streams, lighter water forms the air, and giant turtles tug boats from one to the other.

It’s a world where Nadya chooses to be part of a household, she chooses to let the river give her the gift of a water hand, she chooses to contribute and grow up and into herself. It’s not a perfect life, no life ever is – but it’s the life that Nadya chose even with its dangers and its trials. It’s a happy, fulfilling life – one that’s interrupted by a ‘rescue’ she never wanted. This would be a much more difficult read if I didn’t already know that Nadya found her door again and dove back through – although I wouldn’t mind learning what she found there if the series ever goes back to Belyyreka.

(Speaking of Belyyreka itself, the eARC I read spells it Belyyreka but the blurb spells it Belyrreka and I don’t know which is correct. If someone who has a final copy would let me know which is correct, I’d appreciate it!)

The Wayward Children series is a series about, not just love, but mainly about acceptance. Acceptance of self and also finding a place where that self is accepted instead of excepted. It’s for all the children and former children who didn’t quite fit but managed to find or make a life where they did. And especially for those who didn’t, who still need to find a place their hearts can call home.

If this series calls to you, or if it’s been recommended and you’re wondering where to dive in (whether isn’t even a question, the answer is an enthusiastic YES!) Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear would be an excellent place to start, second only to the first book in the series, Every Heart a Doorway. Nothing that occurs in this story relies on any previous knowledge of events – because it happens before all of them – especially the events in Beneath the Sugar Sky. The one thing that one does get from Every Heart that isn’t in this book is a marvelous introduction to the way in which this world that all the doors open from is set up, but the people of Belyyreka explain that to Nadya more than well enough for someone new – as she herself is – to fall right in.

If you’re still looking for your door, step through Nadya’s and see what you’ve missed.

A- #BookReview: The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Way Up is Death by Dan HanksThe Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, science fiction, science fiction mystery
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on January 14, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When a mysterious tower appears in the skies over England, thirteen strangers are pulled from their lives to stand before it as a countdown begins. Above the doorway is one word: ASCEND.
As a grieving teacher, a reclusive artist, and a narcissistic celebrity children’s author lead the others in trying to understand why they’ve been chosen and what the tower is, it soon becomes clear the only way out of this for everyone… is up.
And so begins a race to the top, through sinking ships, haunted houses and other waking nightmares, as the group fights to hold onto its humanity, while the twisted horror of why they’re here grows ever more apparent – and death stalks their every move.

My Review:

When a mysterious tower appears over the English countryside, huge and dark and literally floating in the clouds, it seems pretty ominous to just about everyone. And that’s definitely EVERYONE, as the thing is filmed and photographed from every angle, 24/7, as it’s a fantastic – and possibly also fantastical – news story.

But the human attention span is short, so when the tower just floats there portentously but doesn’t actually DO anything, people stop watching. Even the pontificating stops. Which is, of course, when it finally does DO something.

It kidnaps thirteen people, seemingly at random, from the nearby countryside – including one flight attendant whose flight just happens to be passing through the tower’s catchment zone – whatever that might be.

What the tower’s criteria for choosing are – if they exist at all – is unknown. The assortment of humans it chooses seems entirely random. Worthiness of any sort was clearly not a deciding factor.

There is, however, one anomaly among the group. It’s made up of twelve adults – and one child on the cusp of adolescence. And that, as it turns out, means everything.

Escape Rating A-: It’s easy, as the characters initially face off against the tower, to see this story as a huge exercise in LARPing (that’s Live Action Role Playing) that’s a feature of many a science fiction convention. As the tower’s initial ‘level’ is based on a popular video game, it wasn’t difficult to fall down a rabbit hole of thinking that this would have some resemblance to Ready Player One – but that’s just the beginning.

The participants start out believing – or perhaps that’s hoping – that the whole thing is a ‘Reality TV’ show like Survivor, possibly combined with a bit of Lost. Except for one thing. Before they all enter the tower, the first member of the group dies. And unlike any of the things they collectively think this might be, his death is graphically ‘permadeath’. There’s no coming back from the messy pile of blood and viscera he was chopped into.

The further they go into the tower, the more horrifying the situation gets. That first level is drawn from the video game that young Rakie played over and over until she beat it. But it’s not because this is meant to BE any kind of video game. It’s because the memory was drawn from her head.

The remaining adults on this journey have MUCH scarier things gibbering in the dark corners of their minds. As they rise through the tower, each in turn sees the things born out of their worst traumas come dramatically to life – and to the death of one of their number.

For each level they rise, one person has to die.

What makes this story work aren’t the horrors, although most of them are plenty horrible. What makes it work are the relationships that develop among this random assortment of random humanity. They do not become better people on the journey, they become more of who really are.

For the grieving teacher, Alden, he discovers he wants to live even as he realizes that it’s not going to happen – and that it’s alright if it’s in a good cause. The reclusive artist finds her voice and her inner warrior after decades of pushing those both down, while the narcissist cuts down anyone who stands in his way of whatever grand prize he believes is at the top of the tower until his own inner demons finally catch up to him. Not everyone has their moment to shine and not everyone deserves a shining moment, but it all blends into a very human whole.

Even as they fall by the wayside, one by one.

In the end, the story turns out to be bigger than any of the characters initially imagined, and the ‘prize’ the survivor received at the end was absolutely worth the cost of the frightening, fantastic and compulsively readable journey.