Winter started yesterday here in the ATL and it looks like it will be over in the middle of next week. I’m joking, but not by all that much. The winters here seem to get warmer and shorter every year. Very much on the other hand, the summers are longer and hotter than Hades.
Still, climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. But it doesn’t feel like we’re getting quite the climate we used to – at least not around here.
Part of the attraction of moving to Atlanta was that we got all four seasons, but winter wasn’t all that much. And that’s the way we’d prefer it. What about you? How much winter is too much? How much is not enough? What’s just right for you?
For more frosty winter prizes, be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!
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A transportive work of historical fiction chronicling the life, loves, and larger-than-life successes of Rafael Guastavino, an influential yet largely forgotten Spanish architect of New York’s Gilded Era
Iconoclast. Genius. Womanizer. Architect Rafael Guastavino’s signature vaulted tile ceilings revolutionized Gilded Age New York City. The Oyster Bar in Grand Central, the Prospect Park Boathouse, and the iconic Old City Hall subway stop, number among his masterpieces. But while his works continue to imbue the city with the glamor of a bygone era, the man himself has been largely forgotten. Until now.
Told through the eyes of Guastavino’s son and business partner, Javier Moro’s magnetic prose brings to life the remarkable rags-to-riches journey of this influential immigrant family. Guastavino was a stubborn man, enamored of his own sense of destiny, but he was also a deeply compassionate father, as committed to his family as he was to his work, and equally defined by his successes in the latter realm as by his failures in the former.
Set against historical events including the Chicago World's Fair and the sinking of the Titanic, The Architect of New York is a moving and entertaining father-son story filled with finely developed and deeply researched real-life characters (including figures like Stanford White) that captures the glamor and drama of a bygone era while offering a perrenial glimpse into the human heart.
My Review:
They called him “the architect of New York” in his New York Times obituary dated February 2, 1908. And he was. Or rather, THEY were. The title in the obituary, at the time it was written, referred to the elder Guastavino, Rafael Guastavino Moreno, but even then it could have referred to either Rafael Guastavino, the father or the son he named for himself and trained to be his protegee, his right-hand man, and his shadow.
As told in this fictionalized biography/autobiography, not even the two Rafaels Guastavino could tell where the one ended and the other began. And by the end of this story, it’s clear that, as much as he might have wanted to stand apart from his father as a young man, once his beloved father was gone he wished he’d never been forced to discover where that line was drawn.
Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908)
The story reads as if it was intended to be a biography of the older Guastavino. But that biography is written as if from the perspective of the younger, and he tells his own story just as much – if not at points a bit more – than he does his father’s. After all, he knows his own story better AND remembers what he thought and felt as the events he witnessed actually happened.
His father was often a closed book, partly because this story begins when the younger Guastavino, called Rafaelito to distinguish him from the larger-than-life persona of his father, was merely nine years old. A boy, recently immigrated to the United States, with his parents and his older sisters, in the midst of his family tearing itself apart due to stresses that he was, at the time, too young to understand.
But also, and more prominently as Rafaelito’s story continues and he grows in maturity and understanding, because the bits of his father’s life in their native Spain that his father reluctantly reveals over the years contains a great deal of truly messy embarrassments and outright scandals, and the father doesn’t want to tarnish the worship in his son’s eyes.
As much as Guastavino senior had been at the (first) height of his career as an architect and builder when he fled Spain for America on borrowed – and possibly swindled – money, as a human being he was a bit of a louse. More than a bit when it came to his relationships with women.
Part of Rafaelito’s growing up included the discovery that his mother was not his father’s wife, that older his sisters were his half-sisters AND that he had older half-brothers (sons of his father’s first and at the time legal wife) that he’d never met, that the woman in New York City who loved him like a mother couldn’t legally marry his father, and that dear old dad cheated on her, too, repeatedly.
Senior also sent the family – however untraditionally it was constituted – into desperate financial straits over and over again because he could not manage money to save either his soul or whatever building company he was operating at the time.
He always meant well, but he didn’t always do well – at least not personally. Professionally, Guastavino senior was a bit of a dreamer – but he was often right and always visionary. His ability to execute those visions, when he was forced to rely on others outside himself, was hampered by his inability to see the way the world really worked.
But his buildings assuredly did – beautifully so – and in many cases, still do.
The elder Guastavino’s story is a compelling one. It’s a riches to rags to riches to rags to riches story told from the perspective of a person who knew him intimately, shared his life, his work, his profession and his company – and loved him much too much to have anything like an unbiased opinion on anything to do with the man he saw as larger than life until long after the end of it.
That their identities became so intertwined that the many, many buildings they created or helped to create, including parts of Vanderbilt’s famous Biltmore Estate, the Boston Public Library, the Spanish Pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and several glorious and iconic New York City Subway Stations are now often credited to the company they shared rather than either of them individually.
So, in the process of telling his father’s story, a labor of love for a man now old enough to look back and see a bit more of his father’s truth, Rafael Guastavino, Jr. also does a heartfelt and heart wrenching job of telling his own.
Guastavino Vault in the Boston Public Library Entrance TODAY
Escape/Reality Rating A: To quote Mark Twain, one of the elder Guastavino’s contemporaries, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” The story that Rafaelito tells in The Architect of New York is so wild that it seems over the top at many points – and yet it’s all based on the known facts of the man’s life and the work that he – and his son – left behind all over New York City, most of the Eastern Seaboard and all the way across the country.
Which is why this is both an Escape and a Reality rating. As a reader/listener (mostly listener), I certainly escaped into this story. As someone fascinated with history, that the bones of this story are both true and not well known made for a delightful voyage of discovery. The Guastavino designs remain gorgeous examples of New York City’s Gilded Age and Art Deco periods, with their sweeping vaulted ceilings and glorious ceramic tilework.
At the same time, because this is a fictionalized version of a real life it’s difficult to separate what happened from how it’s being told. I both don’t want to critique the man’s actual life – but I also do because his personal life was, to put it in 21st century terms, a hot mess. One of his own making, at that. While he didn’t actually marry all of the women involved, he did also kind of bypass bigamy on the way to trigamy – just not in a legal sense which would have gotten him in even more hot water than he was already in up to his neck.
By telling the story through Rafaelito it allows the author to put a bit of gauze over the lens of objectivity, and also puts the focus more on the work they did together. It turns the story of a truly wild life into a story about the relationship between fathers and sons, the relationship between the immigrant generation and the more formally educated second generation, and, in a business sense, the relationship between the hard driven founding generation and the softer, more privileged generation that comes after them. Those stories, those relationships, are universal and are beautifully explored here.
Rafaelito’s later-in-life reflections on just how much he STILL misses his father, on how much he regrets their frequent arguments, how heartbreakingly often he wishes he could go back in time and tell his father how much he loved him just once more, will bring tears to the eyes of anyone with a heart – especially those who lost their own fathers before they had a chance to realize everything they would miss.
The Architect of New York is a beautiful, absorbing LOT of a story. The audio, read by Robert Fass, was also very well done. Something in the narrator’s voice allowed me to sink right into the story, and that was just right as the story is more than dramatic enough to the point that too much vocal embellishment would take away from it.
Rafael Guastavino, Jr. (1872-1950)
In the end, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book, both for its story and for its peek into the Gilded Age and turn of 20th century America, as well as for its tale of love and independence and fathers and sons. If you enjoy stories of fascinating characters with big dreams, even bigger accomplishments, and feet of clay up to the knees, it’s a compelling journey from beginning to end.
One final note; Throughout my absorption in this book, as I listened to the narrator there was a song running through my head. The song, which has reached earworm status and I can’t get it out, is “Leader of the Band” by Dan Fogelberg. Because, the story in that song, the story of Fogelberg’s love for his own father and appreciation of his legacy, may refer to a different shared profession but is very much the same story. A story about a son whose life “has been a poor attempt to imitate the man” and feels as though he’s “just a living legacy” to the father he loved and worshiped.
"A humorous yet poignant queer romance in a fantasy-period setting. Just the thing for grown-up fans of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, Kevin Panetta’s Bloom, or Jarrett Melendez’s Chef’s Kiss who are intrigued by the occult." —Library Journal, starred review
A half-demon socialite-turned-exorcist and his disgruntled bodyguard have no trouble facing down the hordes of darkness—but facing their feelings for each other? Well now, that’s a whole different story . . .
Helianthes is a Cambion—a child born touched by demons. Horned, clawed, and tailed, Helianthes—Hell for short—is a devil-may-care exorcist whose devil-may-care attitude has succeeded in alienating those closest to him—all save for his long-suffering bodyguard, Elias, who sees him as less a strange, mythical being and more just a . . . nuisance.
Together, the two venture into the streets of this psuedo-remix of Victorian London to exorcise demons (and maybe cause a little mischief on the way). But as Hell becomes increasingly drawn to his enigmatic bodyguard—and as Elias becomes increasingly aware of his feelings for his trouble of a charge—the two find themselves faced with a growing, chaotic dark that might threaten everything they’ve been working toward . . .
A world of half-demons and the boys who love them await in this epic queer romance by writer/artist Mari Costa!
My Review:
I originally picked this up because I fell in love with the author’s cozy fantasy novel, Shoestring Theory, about a cat and his wizard. I fully admit that I was there for Shoestring a whole lot more than I was for Cyril, Shoestring’s poor, incompetent human. I doubt anyone is surprised by this one little bit.
I don’t read a lot of graphic novels, but I loved Shoestring a lot, and this was recommended to me as part of a panel I was asked to moderate for Library Journal (LibraryCon Live) and it looked like fun. I had a ball with all of the books for the panel, but read them really fast and wasn’t planning on reviewing them all.
This one stuck with me. Or Shoestring was prodding me to come back to it. Perhaps a bit of both. Because it’s a bit of a devil’s food cake kind of book, literally and figuratively, and I’m always a sucker for sinfully dark chocolate.
Something like that, anyway.
The story you start out with it not the story you end with, while the ending makes you realize that the story you started with wasn’t the real story in the first place.
Cryptic enough?
Because we start with half-demon Helianthes Beausoleil being absolutely railed by his future brother-in-law. Well, his erstwhile future brother-in-law, as their romp is interrupted by the arrival of Hell’s sister and needless to say the engagement is OFF.
At first it seems like Hell is just a chaos agent, causing destruction wherever he goes, living down to the opinion that everyone has of him. After all, he’s a cambion, a half-demon, supposedly filled with all of a demon’s sins and all of a human’s weaknesses. Breaking his sister’s engagement with a sex scandal is EXACTLY the sort of thing that everyone expects of him.
This is where the story goes in a direction that the opening does not lead the reader to expect. Because Hell’s parents throw him out of the house, but send a bodyguard with him. Forcing him to make his way in the world while still trying to keep him safe.
And it’s the making of him. That’s the story. The story of half demon Hell going into business as a demon hunter, taking on the jobs that only he can, getting those very dangerous jobs done and making himself an entirely different kind of reputation along the way.
Not that it does anything to erase his reputation as a self-indulgent wild child, because that scandal is just too damn delicious for anyone to let go of.
But underneath that story is the real Hell. (Pun possibly intended, but sorta/kinda not). Because Hell is alone and lonely and a bit desperate for love and companionship and the only one he can trust for either of those things is his dog Cerberus. (The panel of Hell hugging Cerberus because no one else could ever love him is utterly heartbreaking.)
Meanwhile, standing right beside him – and occasionally in front defending him – is his bodyguard Elias. A man who tells Hell he’s being an absolute ‘bellend’ when he’s being an absolute brat, doesn’t take any shit, has no clue about fighting demons but sticks by Hell through thick and thin.
And it’s their story, the story of a lonely young man getting by on his wits and bravado, and a man just barely older using his size to cover up his soft heart, trying to be brave for each other while not revealing – or seeing – that they are so far gone for each other that nothing and no one can get between them.
Not even Hell’s obsessive, possessive ex who thinks that turning Elias into an actual monster will win back a Hell that he only thought he once had – but never really knew. At all.
Escape Rating A-: I was charmed by the grumpy/sunshine relationship between Helianthus and Elias. That Hell is the literal sunshine in their relationship while Elias is the grump is deliciously ironic. And I was captivated by the slow build of the reluctant romance between the two.
The story exists on two levels almost all the time, but not in the same way. The story on the top is the action/chaos/hellraising/hellbeating story, where Hell seems to be the optimistic fool rushing in where angels fear to tread. But then he would because he’s half demon.
At the same time, as Elias observes, whatever Hell looks like or dresses like or sounds like or acts like, he’s out there working, for real, as a vigilante, exorcising demons and saving ordinary humans. He may play at being a thorough reprobate, but he’s clearly one of the ‘good guys’ if you look beneath the provocation and flamboyance.
Hidden in the artwork, however, is the true story of their growing relationship. No matter what either of them says – and Hell says a lot while Elias doesn’t say very much at all – every scene shows them looking towards each other for reassurance, for acceptance, and for a love that neither is brave enough to admit.
One of the terrific things about this format is that their eyes are telling a quiet romantic story while the lion’s share of each panel is showing a whole lot of action and danger even as the dialog delivers some truly epic banter to devastating effect.
In the end, this is a charming, steamy, romance AND a beautiful story about being loved and accepted for who you really are and not settling for anything less. I’m very happy I picked it up to reread – more thoroughly this time, and I’m looking forward to the author’s next, especially if I get to catch up with Elias and Hell and especially Cerberus – so that he can steal the show again!
When you lose your way in life, the Elsewhere Express just might find you. Step aboard the train that can take you to your life’s purpose, in this cozy and inspiring fantasy from the nationally bestselling author of Water Moon. This whimsical, deluxe first edition hardcover includes designed sprayed edges, a full-color illustrated book case with character art, and interactive endpapers with a scene you can color in—while supplies last!
You can’t buy a ticket for the Elsewhere Express. Appearing only to those whose lives are adrift, it’s a magical train carrying very rare and special cargo: a sense of purpose, peace, and belonging.
Raya is one of those lost souls. She had dreamed of being a songwriter, but when her brother died, she gave up on her dream and started living his instead.
One day on the subway, as her thoughts wander, she’s swept off to the Elsewhere Express. There she meets Q, a charming, handsome artist who, like her, has lost his place in the world.
Together they find a train full of wonders, from a boarding car that’s also a meadow to a dining car where passengers can picnic on lily pads to a bar where jellyfish and whales swim through pink clouds.
But they also discover that the train harbors secrets—and danger: A mysterious stranger has stowed away and brought with him a dark, malignant magic that threatens to destroy the train.
But in investigating the stowaway's identity, Raya also finds herself drawing closer to the ultimate question: What is her life's true purpose—and might Q be connected to it?
My Review:
The Elsewhere Express is a train. Well, it takes the form of a train. Whether or not it’s actually or exactly a train is up for a bit of a debate. It’s mostly a metaphor. Well, sorta/kinda. And does that EVER need some explanation.
Which is not what the two most recent passengers on the Elsewhere Express get. Also not exactly but sorta/kinda.
There’s a LOT of that going around this particular train.
The Elsewhere Express is where people find themselves when they want to or need to be, well, elsewhere. When they’re wishing themselves someplace else. When their burdens are too heavy to carry. When life is too much and they want to escape.
And all of those thoughts and griefs and daydreams, right and wrong and good and bad, make up the Express. Literally. Every single car, every single device, every single bit of food and drink, everything, everywhere all around the passengers is built on thoughts and dreams – and maybe just a few nightmares.
So the Express is a place to get away from all of that, where a passenger can leave all their troubles behind. But the problem with people is that, no matter where you go, there you are. You bring yourself and all your worries and griefs with you wherever you are, no matter how much you want to get away from them.
But the Express has a solution for that, too. A potion that each passenger is expected to take that makes them forget all the excess emotional baggage they brought with them on the train.
Which is both a relief and a gigantic problem, as its our memories that make us who we are – even if who we are is depressed and grief-stricken and weighed down by worries and expectations.
That’s where, and when, Raya and Q board the Express. Raya, musician turned medical student, can’t get over her grief or her guilt over the death of the brother she was born to save. Q, an artist, can’t get past the loss of his sight – and his dreams – or the suicide death of his father.
Q would love to forget all of his griefs and just live for today on the Express, because his today on the Express has magically restored his sight. Raya doesn’t believe she deserves to stay and forget, because the emotional baggage she’s unwilling to drop is her guilt.
But Q and Raya are unique on the Express in that they are the only passengers who have not taken the forgetting potion – at least not yet. And the Express desperately needs people who have not forgotten what it is to feel pain and most importantly, break the rules.
Otherwise the Express is going to die, because no one, not even the staff entrusted with her care, has enough fire in their belly to risk everything in the hope of saving someone – and especially each other.
Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I enjoyed the author’s previous book, Water Moon. Howsomever, having read that I was expecting this to also hit some of the same notes, meaning that I expected magical realism filled with sad fluff that goes to bigger questions but leaves the reader to work out the answers in their own heads.
And I certainly did get all of that. Along with a combination of the movie Somewhere in Time (or the book of the same title by Richard Matheson), Alice in Wonderland and even The Wizard of Oz. Meaning that the characters have been dropped through the ‘looking-glass’, that there is more than one someone hiding behind the curtain, and that they fall in love in spite of not being in sync in time and space.
That story, and this book, are underlaid by the desire to forget the things that bother us, and include a fantasy/SFnal means of doing so. The stories that follow, both Ross’ short story and this novel, deal with the collateral damage of actually doing it. In (or on) the Elsewhere Express the long-term consequences are only dealt with by implication, along with the question of just because a person is comfortable and busy, does that mean they are actually happy.
It’s a question that doesn’t get answered in the story, but then it can’t. It’s left to the reader to wonder. A LOT in the case of this particular reader.
What this story turns out to be is a quest and a chase, about caring enough to make a selfless sacrifice for the one you love, and about doing a duty to make that sacrifice feel worthwhile. I was expecting this to have a bittersweet ending – because that’s where everything was heading.
That it squeaked out a happy ending in spite of all the expectations that were set was a bit of a surprise and an absolute delight.
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Nine Goblins, a tale of low fantasy and high mischief.
No one knows exactly how the Goblin War began, but folks will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, henhouse-raiding, obnoxious, rude, and violent. Goblins would actually agree with all this, and might throw in “cowardly” and “lazy” too for good measure.
But goblins don't go around killing people for fun, no matter what the propaganda posters say. And when a confrontation with an evil wizard lands a troop of nine goblins deep behind enemy lines, goblin sergeant Nessilka must figure out how to keep her hapless band together and get them home in one piece.
Unfortunately, between them and safety lies a forest full of elves, trolls, monsters, and that most terrifying of creatures…a human being.
My Review:
Before you begin reading Nine Goblins – and you SHOULD read Nine Goblins – expunge everything you think you know about goblins from your head. Because these goblins are not like that at all. And considering the way that goblins (and orcs and other supposedly born evil creatures) are used in fantasy as substitutes for whatever foreign element of the population is the enemy of the day, they probably never were.
I digress, but it fits right in because Sergeant Nessilka of the Goblin Army does that too. Think about how things really are and how they’re really going to go and what’s really going to happen to her squad – even though the Goblin Army brass always leads with big hopes and high expectations that are unlikely to be realized by anyone at all, let alone the band of misfit grunts that she has the dubious privilege of herding around more or less in the direction of a battlefield.
Then again, the Goblin Wars, the wars between the humans who took over all the land that used to be goblin territory, and the goblins who gave way until they reached the far ocean and discovered that there was no place left to go except backwards, aren’t exactly what the high muckety-mucks say they were about, either.
Especially the ones on the human side. The goblins are pretty clear about where they stood, and that they’d run out of land to stand on. And if you hear the echoes of ‘manifest destiny’ in the human position on all this, you’re not imagining things. Or we’re imagining the same things.
This particular story in the midst of those terrible Goblin Wars isn’t about blood and battles. It’s absolutely not a story about the battle between good and evil, neither of which are present on the battlefield or anywhere else – which is kind of the point.
Sergeant Nessilka and the nine members of her squad who find themselves in the middle of this mess are pretty much lost and doing the best they can to get home. Because magic isn’t half so codified or functional as a whole lot of fantasy stories might lead one to believe, and they got caught up in a wizard’s spell that went very, very wrong. For select definitions of wrong – which is where magic usually goes in this world.
The wizard was just a kid who wanted to go home, and had the magical ability to make that happen. The story begins when he scoops up those nine goblins and takes them along for his ride, leaving him unconscious and a bit short of his goal, while putting the goblins 50 miles INSIDE enemy lines with no easy way to get back home and no desire – or possibly even capacity – to cut a bloody swath across human territory.
Which is how they sneak their way into the home of an elven veterinarian who prefers animals to people and goblins to humans or even elves most of the time. He’s happy to help them get home, but there’s another wizard in their way. One who is cutting a bloody swath through the countryside – and doesn’t care at all if she includes a few goblins – and at least one elf – in her bloodbath as long as she gets her way.
Escape Rating A: Nine Goblins is cozy fantasy from before cozy fantasy became cool. It’s probably a grandmother or a godmother (or both) for the whole cozy fantasy thing in one way or another, and I think that Sergeant Nessilka would be absolutely fine with that. If she had time to think about it for a minute – which she generally doesn’t.
I picked this up because Kingfisher. Really, truly, that’s the reason. I fell in love with her work when I read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking and have been working my way both backwards and forwards ever since. In fact, I was listening to her latest, Hemlock & Silver, as I was reading Nine Goblins, which is one of her early works for adults. The comparison and contrast between this earlier work and her latest has been fascinating!
But she’s become so popular in the last few years – and rightfully so – that Tor Books/Tordotcom is bringing out a lot of her earlier work in spiffy, new and more widely available editions (like this year’s re-release of Swordheart with the glorious new cover) than was originally the case considering that Kingfisher originally self-published Nine Goblins on SMASHWORDS in 2013.
I’m going to squee more than a bit because I had a fantastic time with this book. It reminds me a lot of both Mary Gentle’s Grunts and Jacqueline Carey’s books Banewreaker and Godslayer and Jonathan French’s The Grey Bastards, as they are all fantasy stories told from the perspective of ‘the other side’, the folks who are supposed to be ‘evil’ but are instead just people with a different agenda. If the winners write history – and they do – then these are stories told from what usually turns out to be the ‘losing’ side.
Sergeant Nessilka and her squad just want to go home. They’d also like to stop the war, but Nessilka, at least, knows that’s impossible at this point. Both sides are much too invested in revenge to come to a negotiating table, and both sides have spent lives and years in demonizing the enemy to the point that there is no trust on either side to make such negotiation possible.
But this is a cozy fantasy, which means it’s not about making war. It’s not even about waging peace – although it turns out to be. Instead, it’s about small groups on both sides who, instead of taking the knee-jerk way out when they find themselves face to face, unite against a common enemy and discover that the enemy of my enemy may not exactly be my friend but absolutely IS a person who isn’t all that different from themselves in spite of just how different they look from each other.
The story is told with wry and self-deprecating humor – as Kingfisher’s stories often are – from the first-person perspective of Sergeant Nessilka. A character who very much reads and feels like the author’s own avatar, just as Mona is in Wizard’s Guide, Halla in Swordheart, and Anya in Hemlock & Silver.
Nessilka is a ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ kind of character, and the reader empathizes with her from the beginning because she’s honest and true inside herself and honestly and truly knows that her squad is FUBAR’d but she’s still doing her damndest to get them home in the same number of pieces that they started in.
The story rollicks along, partly because of Nessilka’s marvelous internal dialog, but also because there’s just so much going on, they’re jumping from the frying pan into the fire every step, and they’re all trying so hard to succeed but the deck is so stacked against them and they keep trying anyway in spite of their collective ineptitude at almost but not quite everything. They screw up over and over, all the time, and still keep going.
And even in the messed up situation they’re in, they do it without turning to whatever the dark side would be for a squad of goblins teamed up with a grumpy elven veterinarian trying to convince a human commander that ‘no, they did not commit the murders that surround them on every side.’
For a really, really good reading time, sign up with Sergeant Nessilka. You’ll be glad you did, because the comment on the cover of Nine Goblins is absolutely right, this IS “A Tale of Low Fantasy and High Mischief.” Nessilka and her squad are just the kind of ‘friends in low places’ that everyone needs for a reading pick-me-up and a grand escape from our reality into theirs.
Last week, it seemed like there was all the time in the world. This week, not so much. Not nearly so much. Possibly not even enough. And how was your first week back to the full-on daily grind?
It’s not that I’m not actually enjoying the return to routine – just that’s there’s so much of it!
Even Tuna is tired by it all. So exhausted, in fact, that he’s practically disassembled himself in his search for a good position to nap in. The picture also does an excellent job of showing that there is rather a lot of Tuna to love. Which we absolutely do!
The books I’m most looking forward to are The Bookseller – when I get that far in the DS Cross series, and Mortedant’s Peril, because that’s a fantasy/gaslamp mystery and I’m always up for one of those.
What about you? What’s catching your eye in YOUR stack this week?
The next adventure in the Intergalactic Archives series from Audie Award-winning author Ash Bishop brings more swashbuckling action, will they or won’t they romance, murder, and a ruthless galactic mafia.
Someone’s got to clean up the cosmos. It might as well be them.
Former Intergalactic Exterminator Russ Wesley has found a new gig at Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC alongside old allies, in what promises to be a cushy job processing space debris on a state-of-the-art salvage vessel. But when he finds the dead body of a good friend stashed among the space wreckage, Russ is determined to learn how and why she died. Once again teaming up with Nina Hosseinzadeh and Steven Applebum, their investigation takes them back-and-forth between the criminal underbelly and the upper crust of intergalactic society, where their quest for the truth turns the murderer’s attention in their direction.
I’ve decided that I need to review this second book here just so that I can process it fully inside my own head – and maybe get it out of my brain a bit more.
The story in this book, just like it was in the previous, is the kind of out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire, crazy madcap romp that can be a fun time when one is in the mood for such a thing. Which I was because the book I just finished was seriously dark and this was my antidote.
So, what is it? Like the first book in the series, it’s about a gang of misfits with a spaceship, doing a dirty job and hoping to, if not make it rich quick because that ship has already sailed – pun intended – at least make enough of a living to keep the ship flying.
And yeah, that sounds a bit like Firefly but Russ Wesley a) isn’t the captain of this particular ship and b) isn’t nearly as noble as Malcolm Reynolds. Fictionally, Russ Wesley is a LOT more like Fergus Ferguson from the Finder Chronicles than he is Reynolds. Both Ferguson and Wesley are chaos magnets and both are always on the cusp on their universes going to shit with them in the middle. The difference is that Fergus does his damndest to avoid the chaos however he can, while Wesley jumps into feet first with a “Yippee-Ki-Yay” every chance he gets.
In other words, Wesley is an admitted adrenaline junkie while Fergus tries his damndest not to let his drug of choice – meaning adrenaline – get so close he can’t resist.
Speaking of unwilling admissions, both are from Earths that refuse to acknowledge that the rest of the galaxy is out there, inhabited, interesting and potentially dangerous. Meaning both hide a lot of what they know when they come home – which isn’t often because those kinds of secrets are hard to keep.
The story this time around, for Wesley, is that the events of the previous timeline are coming back to haunt him and all his friends. Because someone really is out to get them – and is even picking them off one-by-one.
An intergalactic megacorporation is guilty of some really dirty deeds that are not being done dirt cheap. And won’t be fixed cheaply either. Even worse, they’re trying to fix their previous expensive screwup with an even more expensive – and expansive – cover up.
All they need to do is kidnap Steven Applebum, the self-aware robot that Wesley and company rescued in the first book from this same evil empire. Since Steven’s rescuers are more than willing to rescue him again, the corporate assassins are going to need to kill all of Steven’s friends first.
The bloodbath is going to be epic – one way or another.
Escape Rating B: I recognize that all of the above is a bit scattershot, but it’s pretty much how I feel about the book itself. On the one hand, it was a lot of fun while I was reading it. On the other hand, it seemed like it was a bit all over the place and had a lot of arrows in its quiver – and not all of those arrows hit their target.
The first book was a bit more focused, as it followed Wesley’s quest to find a way to stay alive and keep his memories intact after his exposure to the wider galaxy. Not that there aren’t plenty of other characters involved, but it had a clear throughline that stuck.
This story is all the consequences of the first. The crew of Intergalactic Exterminators has been forced to change their name and focus to Intergalactic Waste Management to get away from the notoriety – and they don’t all succeed.
Someone really is out to get them, at a level of corporate skullduggery with mayhem that is surprisingly similar to Full Speed to a Crash Landing. Wesley, in particular, is a criminal who is being criminal in order to get in the way of a corporation that is putting profits ahead of the end of the universe – or at least the end of a universe that anyone would want to live in.
Although it must be said that Wesley does simply like living on the edge. He comes by that honestly as he inherited the tendency from his grandfather, who is still around being an intergalactic con man and whose story is semi-entwined with this one. Howsomever, the elder Wesley’s story, along with Russ Wesley’s almost-romance, didn’t quite blend into the whole.
Steven Applebum and the murderous corporate assassins is the part of the story that worked. Russ Wesley’s poke into the corporate assassins and following the trail of the corporate shenanigans behind them mostly worked.
Other parts didn’t quite blend into the whole of the thing, but I still had a fun time while I was there. Which hopefully explains the B rating I ended up at.
Even magical chefs have to eat...
For once, Mo Meng isn’t the one behind the counter. After years of serving dishes at the Nameless Restaurant, he’s taking a rare day off. His destination? The soft launch of a new restaurant, where he’s been invited to sample their debut menu.
At least, that was the plan. But while he might have left his restaurant behind, its patrons and their problems are a little harder to lose. Sorcerous Plates is the fourth standalone novella in the cozy cooking fantasy series Hidden Dishes.Read this if you
🍲 Cozy, lighthearted fantasy🥢 A hidden restaurant in the heart of the city🍲 A reclusive chef with a secret touch🥢 Magical realism & gentle enchantments🍲 Heartwarming stories of friendship and hope🥢 Malaysian flavours, rich atmosphere, unforgettable meals🍲 Perfect for fans of warm, slice-of-life fantasy
From the bestselling author of The System Apocalypse and A Thousand Li comes Sorcerous Plates, a cozy cooking fantasy novella perfect for fans of Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Junpei Inuzuka's Restaurant to Another World.
My Review:
The “sorcerous plates” in this fourth entry in the delicious Hidden Dishes series do not, for once, come from the kitchen of Mo Meng, the seemingly immortal mage who owns both the restaurant and chef’s hat at his hole-in-the-wall Toronto restaurant. A restaurant that is called “The Nameless Restaurant” because he never bothered, and can’t BE bothered, to name it.
He intended the restaurant as his “retirement” – or at least this particular phase of it, but his culinary bolt hole has turned into a foodie’s paradise, at least for every foodie in the Toronto area who can manage to find it.
The ordinary human customers tend not to return – the food may be divine but the ambiance is atrocious while the service is run off its feet. But for his intended clientele, the magic users and outright magical beings who live in the area, it’s a place where they can BE a bit more like themselves even if they can’t exactly show themselves, and where they can talk in safety about the issues that concern their hidden community.
Like the fact that magic is on the upswing and that their hidden community causes a bit more mayhem and is a bit less hidden every day.
The increase in business has been GREAT for the restaurant’s entirely human front-end manager, Kelly, even as the chef himself grumbles that it’s too crowded, that it’s too much trouble to train an assistant in the kitchen and that using too much magic to prepare the food is absolutely NOT the point of having the restaurant in the first place.
Because the hidden world is becoming more exposed, and magic seems to be returning with potentially chaotic consequences, this story takes place, not at the Nameless Restaurant, but at an invitation-only private event marking the pre-opening of a brand new Michelin Star restaurant in Toronto. Mo Meng has received an invitation because the chef running the much-anticipated new eatery is a former protégé of Mo Meng himself.
This story begins with an immortal mage, an old vampire, a chaotic jinn’s mage-assistant and the Nameless Restaurant’s entirely human front-of-house manager walking, not into a bar – because that would be a terrible joke – but into what food critics are claiming will be the latest Michelin Star restaurant in the city. As soon as all the critics and influencers post their experience on social media.
Under the cover of plates quietly clattering, silverware discreetly clanking, and glassware carefully clinking, Chef Mo Meng, Marilyn the vampire, Henry the jinn’s assistant and Kelly the wait staff have a quiet but far ranging conversation about the rise of upheaval in the hidden world, as well as their collective worries about the direction the situation will take from there.
That each chapter, and each intriguing bite of that conversation is conducted to the accompaniment by and description of each bite of each and every delicious course in an excellent meal turns this story into multiple levels of temptation.
Readers will wish they had their own seat at that table, to listen in on a fascinating explanation and exploration of the hidden world – and especially to have the opportunity to get their own fork into every dish!
Escape Rating A-: I love this series, and it’s especially good in audio, but I honestly didn’t have the patience to wait this time around. This was the book I wanted to read, and I wanted to read it as soon as it downloaded on New Year’s Day. This book, with its delicious descriptions and its delightful anticipation of the chaos and delights yet to come for the hidden world, felt like a perfect metaphor and was just simply a great story to start the year.
What’s surprising about this story is that it is told almost entirely in conversation. Not that the thoughts of the individual diners, particularly Mo Meng and Kelly, aren’t included, especially Kelly’s thoughts about how delicious everything is to a degree that’s more than enough to make the reader’s mouth water while sharing her anticipation and satisfaction. But that’s all part of the tease.
The movement of the story – ironic in a way because they are all sitting down most of the time – is in what they say to each other – and what they don’t say. We learn a lot about the hidden world (not enough, ever, but more) in the conversation between Mo Meng, Marilyn, and Henry, and we’re just as fascinated as Kelly.
There’s also an opportunity for Kelly to display some typically human perspectives and prejudices, and it’s thought-provoking to listen in as her short-term viewpoint is pitted against that of two people who have experienced centuries – and one who has paid the price to do the same in the future. Oceans rise, empires fall, circumstances and technology change but human behavior doesn’t.
The only thing keeping this an A- instead of an A is that it teases more than it tells – but then that’s true for the series as a whole. As always, I wish I had a bit more about the hidden world – then again, so does Kelly, so maybe both of our wishes will be granted at a later point.
The next book in the Hidden Dishes series will be titled Magical Mains according to the author’s note at the end of this book. In that same note, the author said that he is planning on two more books after that to bring the series to what I’m sure will be a delightfully and deliciously prepared conclusion. But this reader is glad that THAT day is not yet, because I love this series and will be sorry to see it end.
Who stole the king's coronation gift? Owen encounters murder, secrets and spies as he attempts to recover a missing gold lion.
'A standout . . . Robb reinforces her place among the top writers of medieval historicals' - Publishers Weekly Starred Review
York, 1377. Owen Archer is called upon when a lion created by the goldsmiths of York as a gift for King Richard’s coronation is stolen.
A CITY’S ROAR.
The missing lion isn’t the only thing causing outrage in the city. Rumours of merchant spies passing on information to the French and Spanish persist. And then a body is spotted floating in the river . . .
TO CATCH A THIEF . . .
Is there a connection between the theft of the lion and the drowned man? The murder of a suspected spy raises further questions. Are the thief and a ferocious killer the same person? Owen’s quest for answers leads him to uncover passion, betrayal, fiercely guarded secrets . . . and to one of the most powerful men in the land.
A page-turning, intricately plotted medieval mystery from a master storyteller, perfect for fans of PAUL DOHERTY, ELLIS PETERS and C.J. SANSOM.
My Review:
Owen Archer, Captain of the Guards for the city of York in 1377, takes his responsibilities seriously. But his duties to his family, his city, AND to be the eyes and ears in the North of Princess Joan, the mother of the new and very young King Richard II, often pull him in multiple, conflicting, directions.
And that’s certainly true in this latest entry in the long-running series, even though Archer’s part of the story takes place entirely in York and the surrounding area. At least he gets to sleep in his own bed at night – when he gets to sleep at all.
This mystery begins not with a dead body, but with a missing one. Not a human body, but the solid gold body of a lion, made by the goldsmiths’ guild of York, intended to be a gift for the newly crowned king.
The golden lion was supposed to be under lock and key. It was supposed to be safe. But the Guildmaster didn’t take nearly as many precautions as he promised Archer that he would, so an enterprising thief managed to steal the lion while the Guildmaster and his apprentices were distracted by a party that should never have been held so close to such an obvious prize.
While it’s all the master goldsmith’s fault, and he’s going to end up paying for that fault in multiple ways, that doesn’t stop pressure from being placed on Archer to find the golden lion before it’s gone – out of reach either by simple geography or smelted down for its valuable metal.
But that theft is not the only case weighing down on Archer. His wife and daughter found a dead body floating in the river, with obvious signs that the victim had been helped to his demise. In the process of tracking down the victim’s identity and the cause of his death, another man is brutally tortured and murdered. The second death might be linked to the first, or to the theft – but one or both might be linked to rising tension among the merchants’ guild as calamity at sea has followed in the wake of the jostling for power at court. The coastline on which England depends for her livelihood isn’t as secure as it was under the old king, and too many enemies are aware of that fact.
Which leads, by multiple routes, to the true source of Archer’s unease. “Woe to the country whose king is a child,” or so goes the proverb. There is chaos at court as the old king’s remaining sons and supporters scrabble for power under a new, young king who is immature and easily influenced. None yet know it, but the infighting between John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, and Sir John Neville, Baron of Raby, set the first pieces on the board for the family feud that history would refer to as the “Wars of the Roses”.
While that conflict is a century in Archer’s future, in his present he is forced to reckon with Neville’s growing power and influence on the young king, as one of the victims in the mystery that Archer has to solve was a spy, a thief, and Neville’s bastard son. Information that Archer will have to tell the man and pray that his family and his city survive the wrath of a powerful noble with growing influence on the king and the kingdom they both serve.
Escape Rating A: One of the things I love about the Owen Archer series is the place that it is set. York is one of those places where, if you listen carefully, you can hear history walking beside you. While the history that one feels today is the life of Archer’s own time, it’s also true that in the series, Archer and the other characters are very aware of their own histories, as well as the foment and ferment of the time in which they themselves walk.
(I know parts of the above sound a bit fanciful, but it feels right to me all the same. Particularly as I read the first book in this series, The Apothecary Rose, on a trip to York many moons ago.)
Because this story isn’t just about Archer’s present. As has been true in the past couple of books in the series, A Fox in the Fold and A Snake in the Barley, this story manages to solve its mysteries, hint at the future in the growing tensions at court and the (as it turns out correct) fears about the immaturity and outright petulance of the new king, and take a much deeper dive into the personal past of one its long-running characters, Archer’s friend Martin Wirthur. A man who has kept his secrets close to his vest for decades – because those secrets tell a much different – and considerably more villainous – story than the one that Wirthur has presented to his friend.
A Lion’s Ransom is Wirthur’s redemption story, and it works even though the reader never gets the full picture of his sins. We don’t need to and neither does Archer. But Wirthur’s attempt to do as much good as he can in what remains of his life allows the reader to see parts of the city where Archer is not welcome, gives the reader an intimate view of Archer and his wife’s Lucie’s home life with their children, AND provides a surprisingly neat bow for tying off this portion of what likely become Sir John Neville’s growing part of the political story in which this series is set.
Which is also the other thing I love about this series. The way that, while the mysteries may be local, the wider world has a huge influence on the overall story and that the series allows us to see those events from the perspective of the people upon whom the fallout will fall. It’s not about the court, but it clearly shows how chaos and power grabs at court affect the lives of people we can identify with and empathize with.
I always love returning to Archer’s York, and this particular entry in the series had me from the opening. The combination of Archer’s investigation, his running himself ragged to keep all the investigations in motion, AND his fears for his friends and family in the midst of local unrest, along with the missives from court giving him yet more to worry about in the future, made for a very tasty, and absolutely compelling, brew of a story.
I can’t wait to see what trouble comes for Archer in his next investigation – hopefully this time next year.
The Architect of New York by 
The Demon of Beausoleil by 
This one stuck with me. Or Shoestring was prodding me to come back to it. Perhaps a bit of both. Because it’s a bit of a devil’s food cake kind of book, literally and figuratively, and I’m always a sucker for sinfully dark chocolate.
The Elsewhere Express by 
Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I enjoyed the author’s previous book, 
Nine Goblins: A Tale of Low Fantasy and High Mischief by 
I digress, but it fits right in because Sergeant Nessilka of the Goblin Army does that too. Think about how things really are and how they’re really going to go and what’s really going to happen to her squad – even though the Goblin Army brass always leads with big hopes and high expectations that are unlikely to be realized by anyone at all, let alone the band of misfit grunts that she has the dubious privilege of herding around more or less in the direction of a battlefield.
Escape Rating A: Nine Goblins is cozy fantasy from before cozy fantasy became cool. It’s probably a grandmother or a godmother (or both) for the whole cozy fantasy thing in one way or another, and I think that Sergeant Nessilka would be absolutely fine with that. If she had time to think about it for a minute – which she generally doesn’t.
The story is told with wry and self-deprecating humor – as Kingfisher’s stories often are – from the first-person perspective of Sergeant Nessilka. A character who very much reads and feels like the author’s own avatar, just as Mona is in 
Current Giveaways:
Blog Recap:
Coming This Week:
Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC (The Intergalactic Archives) by 
Escape Rating B: I recognize that all of the above is a bit scattershot, but it’s pretty much how I feel about the book itself. On the one hand, it was a lot of fun while I was reading it. On the other hand, it seemed like it was a bit all over the place and had a lot of arrows in its quiver – and not all of those arrows hit their target.
Sorcerous Plates (Hidden Dishes Book 4) by 
A Lion's Ransom (An Owen Archer Mystery Book 16) by 
And that’s certainly true in 
While that conflict is a century in Archer’s future, in his present he is forced to reckon with Neville’s growing power and influence on the young king, as one of the victims in the mystery that Archer has to solve was a spy, a thief, and Neville’s bastard son. Information that Archer will have to tell the man and pray that his family and his city survive the wrath of a powerful noble with growing influence on the king and the kingdom they both serve.
Which is also the other thing I love about this series. The way that, while the mysteries may be local, the wider world has a huge influence on the overall story and that the series allows us to see those events from the perspective of the people upon whom the fallout will fall. It’s not about the court, but it clearly shows how chaos and power grabs at court affect the lives of people we can identify with and empathize with.