Category: B- Reviews

#BookReview: The Mausoleum’s Children by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Mausoleum’s Children by Aliette de Bodard"The Mausoleum's Children" by Aliette de Bodard in Uncanny Magazine Issue 52, May-June 2023 by Aliette de Bodard
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, ebook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, science fiction, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 52
Pages: 20
Published by Uncanny Magazine on May 2, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The May/June 2023 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine .

Featuring new fiction by Aliette de Bodard, Kylie Lee Baker, Lindsey Godfrey Eccles, Fran Wilde, Ewen Ma, Theodora Ward, and K.S. Walker. Reprint fiction by Chimedum Ohaegbu. Essays by Caroline M. Yoachim, LaShawn M. Wanak, Hana Lee, and Sam J. Miller, poetry by Nnadi Samuel, Jennifer Mace, Tehnuka, and Angela Liu, interviews with Kylie Lee Baker and Ewen Ma by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Antonio Caparo, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, & 2022 Hugo award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Meg Elison, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.

My Review:

Welcome back to my bounce through this year’s Hugo nominations. Today’s foray into my quest to read the nominees that I didn’t get to last year is back in the Best Short Story (under 7,500 words) nominees with Aliette de Bodard’s “The Mausoleum’s Children”.

I put this particular story towards the front of the list because of the author. I’ve very much enjoyed her Universe of Xuya series – which is nominated for Best Series, BTW – and hoped for something in that series – although I should have known better because that’s against the rules – or at least something like that series – which would have been allowed.

I didn’t get what I was hoping for, but I think it did help that I have dipped into Xuya, as this is a story about returning to a place of former trauma, which just so happens to be a crashed ships’ graveyard.

Those crashed ships were once the kind of ship minds – at least sorta/kinda – who are some of the marvelous characters in Xuya. So I had the feeling this story was walking through their graves – and that bits of those minds still lingered, battered and broken and lost in endless nightmares.

But they’re not really the story. Instead, the story follows one human – or maybe I should say one person – who escaped from that ships’ graveyard as a child. Thuận Lộc is now an adult, forever scarred by her experiences, never fitting in anywhere in the world outside the mausoleum and desperate enough to return and attempt to save the people with whom she belongs – even if that attempt might mean her death.

In other words, she’s been living her whole, entire, supposedly ‘free’ life with a heaping helping of survivor’s guilt and she’s come to the conclusion that the only way out is through. One way or another.

Escape Rating B-: There’s a lot to unpack in this story and perhaps the suitcase it’s packed in wasn’t quite big enough in the first place.

The obvious bit is wrapped around Thuận Lộc’s need to belong, her guilt about not bringing her peeps out with her, and her attempt to assuage just a piece of that trauma. But there’s also more than a bit about abuse and its victims, Stockholm Syndrome writ very, very large, and the rapaciousness of greed for power in all forms and the way that some people try to escape evil by getting on top of it or allowing themselves to be co-opted by it.

I was, honestly, hoping for better from this story than I got. It wasn’t bad, I did like the central character and did feel for her, but the ending only worked because I was equating the ships in the mausoleum to the living ships from Xuya and that wasn’t in the text at all, it’s just the connection my brain went to in order to grasp something.

The premise at the heart of the story, trauma and survivors’ guilt and Stockholm Syndrome and the dangers of getting sucked back in but needing to go to expiate one’s demons – well, that’s been done much, much better in Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest – a story that seems even better in comparison with “The Mausoleum’s Children”.

Two down in the Short Story category, four to go in the weeks ahead.

#BookReview: One Man’s Treasure by Sarah Pinsker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: One Man’s Treasure by Sarah Pinsker"One Man's Treasure" by Sarah Pinsker in Uncanny Magazine Issue 50, January-February 2023 by Sarah Pinsker
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, ebook
Genres: fantasy, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 50
Pages: 29
Published by Uncanny Magazine on January 3, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The January/February 2023 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine .

Our landmark Issue 50, a double sized issue! Featuring new fiction by Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim, Mary Robinette Kowal, P. Djèlí Clark, A. T. Greenblatt, A.M. Dellamonica, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Sarah Pinsker, E. Lily Yu, Marie Brennan, Christopher Caldwell, John Wiswell, and Maureen Mchugh. Essays by Elsa Sjunneson, John Picacio, Annalee Newitz, A.T. Greenblatt, Diana M. Pho, and Javier Grillo-Marxuach, poetry by Neil Gaiman, Terese Mason Pierre, Sonya Taaffe, Betsy Aoki, Theodora Goss, Ali Trota, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Elizabeth Bear, and Brandon O'Brien, interviews with Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim by Tina Connolly; interviews with Eugenia Triantafyllou, E. Lily Yu, and Christopher Caldwell by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Galen Dara, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Meg Elison.

My Review:

This second entry in my very informal and scattered series of reviews of this year’s Hugo nominated works is focused on one of the nominees in the Novelette category – meaning a story between 7,500 and 17,500 words.

The title isn’t quite as evocative as last week’s “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” – which is absolutely one of the most attention grabbing TITLES on the entire ballot. But this one came next because it’s from the same issue of Uncanny Magazine so I decided “Why not?”

For my next pick from the ballot I may have to resort to “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” – or I will once I get through all the works by my faves that are on the list.

The title of this story, while not quite the claxon warning that Kraken should have been, does bring a scenario to the top of one’s mind – even if it’s a much different scenario – as well as a potentially less dangerous one.

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” as the old proverb goes. There’s also a variation about “one man’s meat being another man’s poison” but that’s not nearly as applicable in this story.

Because this is a story about the way that the trash gets taken out in a magically powered world, as seen through the eyes of the garbage collectors.

It’s kind of a “lower decks” story, in other words, a view of the world, not from the top where the movers and shakers do their moving and shaking and where stories are often set, but rather from much nearer to the bottom, where the nitty gritty is very gritty indeed and where shit gets done and disposed of – in this case one truckload at a time.

But this particular story is also a story about class and labor organizing and the rich being different from you and me, and especially from Aden, Blue and Nura.

And it’s a story about karma being a real bitch – but in a way that might just possibly teach someone a few lessons as she goes.

Escape Rating B-: It’s lucky for this story that it is not in the same category as Kraken because in spite of having potentially twice as much space to tell its tale, One Man’s Treasure doesn’t stick the dismount half as well.

The best part of One Man’s Treasure is the world creation and character creation by way of slice of life. On the one hand, it’s fantastically familiar on multiple levels.

While we might not think about how the Wizarding World in Harry Potter gets rid of its trash, it does have to happen somehow. In a magical world where everyone has a bit of magic, and a leisure class that has even more leisure, there would be neighborhoods where more magical detritus got thrown in the trash because there was more available to waste.

The potential of magical trash to be magically dangerous seems high once you think about it for a minute. That the ritzy neighborhoods would be paying good money to make sure that THEIR trash got taken away quietly and with minimal fuss seems obvious. That’s just humans being human in their ugliness.

The garbage collectors themselves, Aden and Blue along with Aden’s girlfriend Nura, represent an entirely different perspective. They’re the ones at the sharp end of the danger. They resent the waste of material and money that could make their lives better – AND they are frustrated by government budgeting – set by those very same rich people who don’t want to see them – that refuse to fund even basic safety equipment for their very dangerous jobs.

The situation is ripe for some kind of labor organizing and class action – which is exactly what happens. The way that situation comes about is woven into every thread of the story – even if the exact triggering point is a disgusting surprise.

But the denouement of the whole story felt a bit rushed, as though the words were running out – they possibly were – and it had to get wrapped. The character who has been lying all along – and for disgusting reasons – gets found out and gets punished. He seems to have an epiphany but we don’t get the chance to find out whether that’s real or whether it stuck.

So I was happily reading along, really liking the characters and loving the way the whole thing was working out and then BOOM it was over but not in a way that really felt like closure. This is a story where the world is terrifically built and just the right balance between familiar and new – but if you want to feel like it came to a solid conclusion you’ll need to decide that in your own head after you’ve finished – even as you wonder whether or not Aden ever lost the fox ears.

#BookReview: Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Dear Edna Sloane by Amy ShearnDear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: epistolary novels, literary fiction
Pages: 250
Published by Red Hen Press on April 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Edna Sloane was a promising author at the top of her game. Her debut novel was an instant classic and commercial success, vaulting her into the heady echelons of the 1980s New York City lit scene. Then she disappeared and was largely forgotten. Decades later, Seth Edwards is an aspiring writer and editor who feels he’s done all the right things to achieve literary success, but despairs that his dream will be forever out of reach. He becomes obsessed with the idea that if he can rediscover Sloane, it will make his career. His search for her leads to unexpected places and connections, and the epistolary correspondence that ensues makes up this book, a novel infused with insights and meditations about what our cultural obsession with the "next big thing" does to literature, and what it means to be a creative person in the world.

My Review:

There are plenty of variations on the saying that “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” (I’ve always thought this was Hemingway, but a bit of Google-Fu turns up an earlier attribution to sports writer “Red” Smith in 1949.

But the story in this book has things a bit differently – at least from a certain literary point of view.

Writ-ING is actually easy, full stop. Lots of people do it every day in one form or another. We may not write letters much anymore, but we “tweet” tweets – or we did when it was called ‘Twitter’. Do people now ‘ex’ on X? (Just those types of digressions are common in the correspondence that makes up the bulk of this epistolary novel.)

Whatever tweets are called these days, we also write emails, memos and reports, caption Facebook and Instagram posts and text each other incessantly. It’s all writ-ING. Which doesn’t mean that any of it is either good or effective – just that it happens a lot more than we think it does.

But we’re not writ-ERS, and that difference is a big part of what this book is exploring.

Once upon a time in the 1980s, Edna Sloane was a young WRITER, a debut novelist, a literary wunderkind, whose first novel, An Infinity of Traces, took the book world by storm and became an instant classic.

Then she disappeared from the scene – at least the literary scene. The speculation was endless – even without social media as we know it today. Whether Edna Sloane was murdered, kidnapped, walked away on her own recognizance or got locked up in an institution of one kind or another, the woman was nowhere to be found.

Agatha Christie famously disappeared in 1926 but she was found in a spa hotel two weeks later. Edna Sloane wasn’t found at all until a junior editor at an online literary magazine tracked her down in 2017.

Dear Edna Sloane, the book, is the cumulated correspondence between the titular novelist, now nearing 60, and Seth Edwards, the young would-be writer who pretends he’s pursuing the elusive Sloane for an article to save his job. What he’s really doing is pouring out all of his own angst about just how difficult it is to be a WRITER no matter how desperately he tries to hold onto his dream.

And Edna answers. Not with platitudes, but with truth – the kind of truths that her own novel was so rightfully famous for. Seth’s quest for Edna brings Edna back into the world – even as it echoes the plot of her famous novel and pushes him out of it.

Escape Rating B-: There’s a life imitates art imitates life aspect to this story that draws the reader in more than one might expect – certainly more than this reader expected. At the same time, it is also very, ‘lit-ficcy’ in that there’s not a lot of action but there is a ton of angst.

That it doesn’t wallow in itself or its angst – in other words, that it goes about its business without getting carried away endlessly – makes it a relatively short bit of literary fiction, and the quest to find Edna Sloane carries the story along even though the events that take place around it fade into the background more than a bit – much as Seth does in the end.

What Seth’s side of the correspondence brings to the table – or screen – is his desperation to hang onto a dream that is slipping away. Seth is caught on the horns of the dilemma about the circus worker stuck with the job of cleaning up elephant poop who won’t leave because he’d have to give up show business.

Edna, on the other hand, brings back the heady, glorious days of the literary scene in the 1980s, even as she puts perspective on just how naive and innocent she was in her 20s – just as Seth is now. She also stands at the crossroads of her own dilemmas. Then, it was about balancing so-called ‘real life’ with her burning need to write – and being forced to choose and adopt a persona that would get her through the day and get the work of living done.

As well as discovering that she could either be feted for the work or do the work when it came to writing, but not both. Writing was easy, but being a writer in the sense of being part of the star-making machinery and finding a way to support herself as a writer was damn hard and in the end she set it aside even if that was not what she planned or desired.

And yes, there’s plenty about the emotional labor of women in that part of her life but it’s not the whole of the thing at all.

Still, Edna needs her writing to reconcile her past – and even more so the effect of her father’s past as a Survivor (of Auschwitz) – whether she’s feted or celebrated for it or not. So she’s never really stopped, even when it seemed like she really, truly, seriously had stopped. She stopped being ‘a writer’ but that vein was still open so she never stopped writing after all.

#BookReview: A Mischief of Rats by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: A Mischief of Rats by Sarah Yarwood-LovettA Mischief of Rats by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery
Series: Dr Nell Ward #3
Pages: 420
Published by Embla Books on February 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

When a driver dies during a glamourous classic car event at her family's estate, Dr Nell Ward is in a race against time to uncover the truth and prevent the killer from making a speedy getaway...
Back in her natural habitat, Dr Nell Ward heads to a woodland pond to survey local newt populations. She's shocked to discover a car submerged in the water - with the driver dead behind the wheel.
Nell recognises the dead man as professional racing driver, and tabloid love rat, Jack Rafferty, whose performance on (and off) Finchmere's racetrack had earned him enemies.
Suspecting this isn't the tragic accident it appears DI James Clark calls upon Nell and her ecological skills to help find the murderer. But she soon finds that more lurks under the surface than she could ever have imagined. Despite the danger, Nell is determined to dredge up the truth from the murky depths of this case, before it's too late...

My Review:

Whichever of her two personas is her alter ego, both of them are entirely too busy during the jam-packed weekend this story takes place.

As Lady Eleanor Ward-Beaumont, daughter of the Earl of Finchmere and his wife, Imelda Beaumont MP, heir to the estate of Finchmere – the weekend of the Finchmere Classic – a Classic Car race, car auction, fun fair and general all purpose extravaganza may be one of Lady Eleanor’s favorite events at the estate but is also a showcase for her family’s stewardship of the land, maintenance of the estate, and everything she’s doing to keep the whole business self-sustaining and profitable for the ones who come after her.

That she is personally involved with one of the cars in the race, a formerly derelict but classic ‘gullwing’ Mercedes-Benz 300 SL that has been converted to an all-electric vehicle just adds to the heightened atmosphere – and the tensions among the car’s crew for the race add bucketloads of stress to a situation that is already fraught.

As Dr. Nell Ward, ecologist and environmental surveyor, she has committed to help a former intern at a nearby nature reserve do some surveying in preparation for an upcoming certification visit early on the morning that the festivities at Finchmere begin.

And both of her personas are on pins and needles as she hoped that she would be able to get to know her romantic partner’s parents as they attend the Classic – in between all the other demands on her time – which are legion even at the start.

When Nell and her friend Mai discover that the reserve’s pristine habitat has been compromised – if not outright ruined – by a car that crashed through and then sank in what had been a carefully rehabilitated pond – WITH a dead body in it – everything crashes along with the car.

Not that the dead man hadn’t honestly earned more than enough enmity for someone to have seen to his demise. But he was supposed to drive Nell’s car in the race. Her partner’s young sister left her custom-made earrings on the dashboard of the wreck. His parents, who already disapprove for multiple reasons – are about to blame Nell for the girl’s involvement – as well as everything else that continues to go wrong over one of the longest weekends in Nell’s life.

At least the police can’t arrest her for the murder this time around. Not that some of them wouldn’t still like to – if only to stop Nell meddling in the investigation. Again.

Escape Rating B-: This third book in the Dr. Nell Ward series, after A Murder of Crows and A Cast of Falcons, follows a pattern that this series seems to have hit in my brain. I keep having mixed feelings about the whole thing – and this entry more than most for reasons I’ll get to, appropriately as you’ll see, at the end.

I’ve been following the series because I like Nell as a character, but I like her nerdiness about her earned profession more than I do her persona as Lady Eleanor, so this book didn’t get as near to a mystery sweet spot for me as others that I follow. All of which means that I hope she gets back a bit more to her environmental work in the next book A Generation of Vipers. We’ll certainly see. Eventually.

But in the meantime, back to A Mischief of Rats. It could be claimed that the dead man was the chief rat in this mystery, but he actually wasn’t. The chief rat, that is. He certainly was one of the rats. That his rat-nature got him killed isn’t a surprise at all. That the road to figuring out how his rattiness rattled the chief rat to the point that it got him killed made for a marvelously twisty mystery, which I want to say had plenty of tasty red herrings but in this case no because rats and tasty do not belong in the same sentence or even the same paragraph.

Still, you get the point. Unlike the first book in the series, while I knew it wasn’t any of the obvious suspects fairly early on – I just didn’t figure out who the real killer was until the point where Nell does – with the police following along behind her. Literally.

The part that left me with extremely mixed feelings was the ending. Not the resolution of the mystery because that was fine and wrapped things up with a really cathartic and rat-free bow. But the personal parts of this story and the way they ended on a terrible crash of a cliffhanger gave me a lot of pause. And that’s literal, as in I will continue the series but I’m going to pause for a bit to let the ending settle.

While part of what I love about cozy mysteries revolves around getting to know the characters and the gang of friends and assistants that they gather around them, Nell seems to have a lot of personal angst and romantic drama that, for this reader at least, takes away from the fun and coziness of the mystery. There’s been a ‘torn between two lovers’ undercurrent going on through these first three books, and I’ve gotta admit that isn’t a place I want this series to go. (It’s part of what turned me off of the Stephanie Plum series – not that she changed her mind but that she couldn’t seem to make it up at all.)

I admit that this is a ‘me’ thing that may not be a ‘you’ thing. Howsomever, for this reader it feels like Nell’s romantic trials and tribulations are a bit over the top, particularly as her rich and aristocratic background – along with her surprisingly functional relationship with her parents – seem to have insulated her from a whole lot of regular stresses and issues to the point where over-the-top is the only direction left.

Which is exactly where this installment of the series ended – up and over the top of the wall and landing upside-down with traction. I’m still kind of reeling over it, to the point where I had to thumb the next couple of books to make sure that this story thread does get resolved no matter how much more angst will be involved in that wrapping.

So, for the most part, I was enjoying the mystery right up until that end, when I crashed right along with it. I’ll be back to see what murders Nell trips over and what terrible things happen in her personal life in A Generation of Vipers, but probably not for a couple of months at least.

We’ll certainly see the next time I get into another murder-y mood.

#AudioBookReview: The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B- Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Mystery Writer by Sulari GentillThe Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill
Narrator: Katherine Littrell
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Pages: 400
Length: 10 hrs 52 mins
Published by Dreamscape Media, Poisoned Pen Press on March 19, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

There's nothing easier to dismiss than a conspiracy theory―until it turns out to be true.
When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. Will her brother support her ambition or send her back to finish her degree? What will her parents say when they learn of her decision? Does she even have what it takes to be a successful writer? What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience.
When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die. 
USA Today bestselling author Sulari Gentill takes readers on a rollercoaster ride in The Mystery Writer, a literary thriller that turns the world of books and authors upside down and where a writer's voice is a thing to be controlled and weaponized, to the peril of everyone who loves a good story.

My Review:

The mystery – and the mystery writer herself – both kick off when a bedraggled, desperate Theodosia Benton knocks on her big brother’s door. Theo is uncertain of her welcome, but when her flight from Canberra fetches her up in Lawrence Kansas, she’s hoping against hope that the one person who has never failed her will rescue her one more time. Even if she and Gus haven’t seen each other in years.

Her hope in her brother is not misplaced. But her arrival pushes a small stone down a long, steep hill that gathers more than enough moss, snow and really big rocks to crush the lives that they are trying to build. And sweeps entirely too many people around them into its destructive path.

Depositing Theo – along with poor Gus and his ginormous dog Horse  – and the heart of the deepest and darkest conspiracy theory that neither of them could have possibly seen coming. Not even their best friend’s family of obsessive, true believing conspiracy nuts.

Escape Rating B-: I picked this up because I LOVED the author’s previous book, The Woman in the Library, and was hoping for more of the same. That isn’t what I got – emphasis on the “I” because I think that the reasons this book didn’t work for me until the very end were a “me” thing that may not be a “you” thing. Before I explain, let me state for the record that the dog is a VERY GOOD BOY and he’s doing FINE at the end of the story.

Even though I loved Horse nearly as much as Theo did, this book drove me bonkers. I was listening to it and it turned into a rage listen, but as much as the whole thing frustrated me no end, I couldn’t stop even though I couldn’t stand another minute. So I switched to text just to find out who done what and how and why a whole lot faster.

The audio was fine, and the narrator did a terrific job of dealing with Gus’ deliberately strong Aussie accent and Theo’s less pronounced one among all their American friends and neighbors. It was the story itself that was making me crazy, to the point where I tried thumbing to the end of the book just so I would know – but it didn’t make sense because things get very, very twisty at the end.

However, that twistiness did manage to redeem a great deal of my frustration, because the macguffin that powers this whole twisted mess that Theo has been dropped into was definitely a WOW to the point where it’s entirely too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of it being real. Really plausible anyway, in spite of itself. Or myself. Or both.

But it definitely middled in a place where it seemed obvious to this reader that there was a malign agency of some kind behind the way that Theo’s life goes so far down the road to hell in that handcart so fast. (Like Wednesday’s audiobook, people just aren’t THAT unlucky unless someone really is out to get them.) So I had a pretty good guess fairly on who was doing the dirty deeds – I just didn’t have the whys, the hows or the wherefores.

Which also frustrated me because I thought that at least one of the main characters, probably not Theo herself but either her older brother Gus or his friend Mac.

And that’s the point where I worked out that the part of the story that was not working out for this reader was that the entire house of cards relies on the protagonist’s innocence and naivete in order to work at all. And since the story is told from her perspective we get a lot of that naivete to the point where I just wanted to shake some sense into her. It’s not that she’s too stupid to live, it’s that she’s young and has led a rather peculiarly sheltered life in the remoter parts of an entirely different country.

Gus or Mac should have had a better perspective on just how high the terrible coincidences were piling up, and just how unlikely that was, as they are both a decade older than Theo and have, particularly in Mac’s case, considerably more knowledge of the way the world really does and doesn’t work. But the way the story works means that they are dealing with most of the events through what Theo tells them, and her naivete bleeds all over everything.

Plus, they are both trying really, really hard to protect her – even from her frequently misguided self.

In the end, I think the whole story and the way that it works can be summed up by the tagline that the most prominent group of conspiracy aficionados uses in their messaging, “We know what we know.”

The full quote, from Nicolaus Copernicus, feels like it’s a key to understanding the conspiracy theorists in the book as well as the book itself and how it hides its real mystery in plain sight.

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” Clinging to what they know, the conspiracy theorists have no clue about all the many, many things they don’t know. Neither does Theo. And neither, as the book takes us on a not-so-magical mystery tour of the way that Theo’s, Gus’ and Mac’s lives go so very, very wrong, does the reader – at least not until the bitterly climactic end.

#BookReview: The Holy Terrors by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Holy Terrors by Simon R. GreenThe Holy Terrors (A Holy Terrors mystery) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal
Series: Holy Terrors #1
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on February 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Six people locked in a haunted hall . . . Cameras watching their every move . . . And then someone dies . . . This first in a spine-tingling new paranormal mystery series from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green will make you doubt your judgement - and believe in ghosts!
Welcome to Spooky Time, the hit TV ghost-hunting show where the horror is scripted . . . and the ratings are declining rapidly. What better way to up the stakes - and boost the viewership - than by locking a select group of Z-list celebrities up for the night in The Most Haunted Hall in England (TM) and live-streaming the 'terrifying' results?
Soon Alistair, a newly appointed Bishop, actress Diana, medium Leslie, comedian Toby and celebrity chef Indira are trapped inside Stonehaven town hall, along with June, the host and producer of the show. The group tries to settle in and put on a good show, but then strange things start happening in their hall of horrors.
What is it about this place - and why is the TV crew outside not responding? Are they even on air?
Logical Alistair attempts to keep the group's fears at bay and rationalise the odd events, but there are things that just can't be explained within reason . . . Can he stop a cold-blooded would-be killer - even if it's come from beyond the grave?
This locked-room mystery with a paranormal twist is classic Simon R. Green, featuring his trademark humour and imagination, irresistible characters, and thoroughly entertaining plotting.

My Review:

Four strangers locked in a haunted building overnight with two TV “personalities”, their every action and emotion covered by hidden cameras, all in pursuit of a payday that’s not going to be nearly as generous as their agents led them to expect.

Sounds like the perfect setup for a “Reality TV” program. Or a joke. Or, in this particular case, a joke of a reality TV show that is desperate to recapture the market share it lost much longer ago than its presenter is willing to admit. Or allow.

Put another way, a has-been comedian, a wannabe almost-celebrity chef, an outspoken bishop and an actress whose career isn’t what it used to be, walk into a haunted town hall to film an episode of ‘Spooky Time!’ with its resident medium AND its indefatigable host.

There should be a punchline coming for that joke. And there certainly is for at least some of the participants. At least for the ones that survive the night.

Anyone who has any illusions left about the exact amount of ‘reality’ present in a so-called reality TV show needs to check those illusions before the first page – because they’ll all be spoiled although the plot of the book certainly is not.

From the moment the time-locks ominously click shut and the lights start to go out, it’s clear to the participants that something has gone even wronger than they expected after seeing the dilapidated state of the place they’re supposed to be spending the night. But in the gloomy, shadowed and downright spooky atmosphere, it’s all too easy to chalk up their fears to the idea that something supernatural might be stalking their number.

But as the Bishop says to the Actress, that doesn’t add up. It’s clear, at least to him, that they are being led astray by their own guilts and fears. And even though there is an entirely different sort of ‘leading astray’ that the Actress would prefer to do to the Bishop, she’s willing to trust him to see her through this long and particularly dark night.

Escape Rating B-: I ended up with a LOT of mixed feelings about this one, some of which may have to do with having no love or even liking for so-called reality TV. (Although, honestly, if the author has any love for that genre it’s a particularly twisted version of it.)

It’s clear from the outset that all of the so-called ‘supernatural’ events are planned and prepared, that the show is on its last legs and the guests were chosen for their gullibility, their expendability, or both. And because they were relatively cheap – just like the all-night rental of the supposed ‘Most Haunted Hall in England.’

Particularly as, in spite of all the horror implications of the blurb and the Goodreads genre assignment, the title of the series to follow has it right, The Holy Terrors is a mystery and not horror at all.

Which means that the reader’s enjoyment of and/or absorption in this story relies on either getting caught up in the mystery or being charmed by its characters – many of whom are not charming at all.

Although the Bishop and the Actress certainly are, and their increasing charm with each other does help carry readers along. Which is a good thing, because ‘whodunnit’ was obvious long before the big reveal – complete with a bit of good old-fashioned villain monologuing – at the end.

As the first book in a series that looks like it will follow the adventures of the Bishop and the Actress as they have more mysterious and possibly spooky adventures, there’s a fair amount of heavy lifting to be done that doesn’t feel like it’s completely done by the book’s end.

Because I’m not totally sure what the newly christened “Holy Terrors” will actually be doing in their future adventures – beyond that they’ll be doing them together. It’s not clear even at the end of this book and I’ve been guessing throughout.

Not that I won’t ‘tune back in’ to find out when the next book appears. I just hope it’s a bit more clear by then AND that it doesn’t sidle quite so close to the territory the author has already occupied by Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt.

One final note to say thanks for the memories, the facepalm and the headslap – not necessarily in that order and definitely not as the Actress said to the Bishop – which is what all of the above are referencing.

This entire story – and quite possibly the series intended to follow – is part of a long-running British tradition of jokes and/or clichés (your mileage may vary on which they are) of double entendres that begin or end with “as the bishop said to the actress” or the other way around. Phrases that take on a sexual overtone, undertone, or alternate meaning by adding that phrase that either way is roughly equivalent to a joke ending, “that’s what she (or he) said”.

It niggled at me through the whole book as something familiar, but I was caught up just enough in the mystery at hand and the bell didn’t ring until AFTER I finished the book. Because that phrase, in popular parlance in British in the 1930s, was one that Simon Templar, The Saint, used frequently and often in the original books by Leslie Charteris – of which I read as many as I could find back in the dark ages after seeing bits of the TV series starring Roger Moore in syndication way back when.

I don’t remember that phrase from the TV series, but in the books, Templar used it frequently, often and as intended. Honestly, I’m not even sure I was quite old enough to get the double entendres at the time I read the books, but the whole thing stuck in my memory and thereby hangs that facepalm and headslap.

Because if this series continues, the whole entire thing has the potential to be a series of investigations where the Bishop and the Actress are going to have a LOT to say to each other. And quite possibly do with and to each other between solving mysteries.

Review: Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie HannahHercule Poirot's Silent Night (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #5) by Sophie Hannah
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: New Hercule Poirot #5
Pages: 384
Published by William Morrow on October 24, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot – legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice – puts his little grey cells to work solving a baffling Christmas mystery.
CAN HERCULE POIROT SOLVE A BAFFLING MURDER MYSTERY IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS?
It’s 19 December 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are called to investigate the murder of a man in the apparent safe haven of a Norfolk hospital ward. Catchpool’s mother, the irrepressible Cynthia, insists that Poirot stays in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while Poirot solves the case. Cynthia’s friend Arnold is soon to be admitted to that same hospital and his wife is convinced he will be the killer’s next victim, though she refuses to explain why.
Poirot has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders, if he is to escape from this nightmare scenario and get home in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, someone else – someone utterly ruthless – also has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot . . .

My Review:

Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool and his friend and mentor Hercule Poirot are just settling in to a two-week staycation (even if that term had not been invented yet) in London, staying in Poirot’s rather palatial apartment at Whitehaven Mansions, attended by Poirot’s inestimable butler, George, for the duration of the holidays.

Catchpool, in particular, was determined to spend his Christmas hols with his friend Poirot and absolutely NOT with his mother, the overbearing Cynthia Catchpool. The moment Cynthia lies her way into Poirot’s office, we understand EXACTLY why Catchpool intended to spend his holidays as far away from his mother as he could manage.

Because Cynthia Catchpool is the perfect example of another term that hadn’t been invented yet. She was a ‘helicopter parent’ long before that term was even on the horizon, someone who swoops into her son’s life – or frankly anyone’s life – and absolutely does not listen to a single thing she has to say.

She is determined that Catchpool and Poirot will return with her to the  blustery Norfolk coast in late December to solve a murder and spend Christmas with her and the friends she’s visiting,and will not take ‘NO’ for an answer, no matter how many times it’s shouted at her.

But when she describes the circumstances of the murder to Poirot, Catchpool knows instantly that he is at least somewhat doomed. Christmas itself may be saved, but Poirot gets a look in his eye that Catchpool knows all too well – that something about this case has caught the attention of Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’.

What fascinates Poirot so much that he is willing to disrupt his holiday plans? The man who has been murdered is someone who could not possibly have been intended to be murdered. So why is he dead?

Poirot must know. He must solve the case. Before the truly execrable cuisine served at Frellingsloe House causes him to die from starvation. Or poison.

Escape Rating B-: Looking back at my reviews of the previous books in this New Hercule Poirot series by Sophie Hannah (The Monogram Murders, Closed Casket, The Mystery of Three Quarters, and The Killings at Kingfisher Hill) I’ve had mixed feelings about pretty much all the books in the series, and this latest entry is absolutely no exception.

I’m beginning to think that the problem is that I like the concept more than the execution (ahem, pun not exactly intended but…) and that’s true in this entry in the series as well. Although I did find this one more readable than The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, I ended this book feeling every bit as sorry for Catchpool this time, if not a bit more, than I did then.

Because this time he’s very much put upon by Poirot AND his mother. Who I fully confess I hated as a character from her very first appearance to the point where I mentally cringed every time she appeared on the page. Her overbearing helicopter parenting, no matter how anachronistic that term, was a trial from beginning to end. The story did need her gossiping nature, I’m just not sure it needed her utter assholishness about it. Or at least I didn’t need it considering that she did not get nearly the bashing she deserved.

The case itself went to some interesting psychological places, as it turned out to be wrapped around the idea of reinventing oneself and how deeply one can get consumed by burying that past so completely that anything that touches on it causes a psychological break. I liked that Poirot and Catchpool had differing interpretations of those causes, particularly as Poirot’s reasoning felt more germane to the times while Catchpool’s was perhaps a bit anachronistic but more humane.

A lot of the ‘action’ of the story, particularly the ‘fair play’ aspects of the mystery and its resolution, were handled as more ‘telling’ than showing, as the two detectives were often working separately, and only caught up at irregular intervals through meticulous reports – which is how the reader gets caught up as well.

I’m left with a bag of mixed feelings about this one. I liked it better than The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, not as much as The Mystery of Three Quarters and Closed Casket, but still enjoying the concept as a whole. We’ll see how I’m feeling about the whole thing if Poirot and Catchpool catch another case a year or two from now.

Review: Stephen Leeds: Death and Faxes by Brandon Sanderson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Stephen Leeds: Death and Faxes by Brandon SandersonStephen Leeds: Death and Faxes by Brandon Sanderson, Max Epstein, David Pace, Michael Harkins
Narrator: Oliver Wyman
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Audible
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: science fiction
Series: Legion #1.5
Length: 5 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Recorded Books on June 7, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

From #1 New York Times Bestselling, Hugo Award-winning author, Brandon Sanderson, and co-authors Max Epstein, David Pace, and Michael Harkins comes an audio-first techno-thriller addition to the universe of Stephen (Legion) Leeds.
Stephen Leeds is perfectly sane. It’s his hallucinations who are all quite mad.
A one-man team of experts, Stephen Leeds is a genius of unparalleled mental capabilities who can learn new skills or master entire scholarly disciplines in mere hours. However, these skills come at a price. Stephen must compartmentalize his brain, with each of his new skill sets being held by an “aspect”—a hallucination his mind creates with their own fully-developed personality, life, and limitations. Without these aspects, and the delicate construct of reality they provide for him, Stephen is unable to control his mind and engage with the real world.
So when an unprecedented Internal Revenue Service data breach stumps the FBI, Stephen is brought in to investigate. With the help of his aspects, he must uncover the connection between millions of stolen tax returns, a mysterious hacker named Enoch, a strange, cutting-edge technology that uses soundwaves to transfer data, and a nearly extinct Mesopotamian religion which once rivaled Christianity. What Leeds discovers along the way will reveal the devastating consequences of this new technology, test the limits of his aspects, and lead him face to face with a man hell-bent on vengeance, for which no cost is too high.
Stephen Leeds: Death and Faxes is a new entry in Brandon Sanderson’s Stephen Leeds saga and chronologically takes place between the novellas Legion and Legion: Lies of the Beholder.

My Review:

The case that finds Stephen Leeds in this audio-only entry in the Legion series is rather more mundane – and initially less personal – than the cases he solved in the three novellas that make up Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds; Legion, Skin Deep and Lies of the Beholder.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is left up to the reader – or in this case listener – to judge.

The title gives a hint, as it’s both a play on the saying about the inevitability of ‘death and taxes’ as well as a mystery that begins with a very high-tech application of a rather old technology. A massive data breach at an IRS datacenter has been perpetrated by using the still-functioning fax machines as both a backdoor into the once-believed secure system AND a method of transmitting sound waves that can either soothe or destroy.

Those sound waves certainly soothed the IRS staff into an entire afternoon of hazy dreaming that allowed the hack to take place while the entire staff was quite literally blissfully unaware – and unremembering.

That’s not the case when Stephen Leeds is finally called in. With the help of his ‘aspects’, his mental projections of the many facets of his strange genius, he was able to determine both when and how the hack took place.

Which is when the mysterious hacker struck directly at Stephen and his abilities for the first, but absolutely not the last, time, rendering his aspects comatose and taking Stephen himself nearly to the edge of collapse.

It’s only the beginning, because Stephen is determined to get to the bottom of this case, following a trail of victims around the country even as the structure of his increasingly fragile mental landscape falls into tatters.

While a seemingly omniscient enemy waits in the shadows of cyberspace, blocking Stephen’s every avenue to both resolution and escape.

Except one, hidden in the very place that the hacker has done his best to destroy. Inside Stephen Leeds’ own mind.

Escape Rating B-: I have mixed feelings about this one, and I’m not even sure if I can completely articulate why. But I’m certainly going to try.

I picked this up because I loved this series as it originally stood, which may be part of the problem. Initially, the Legion series was really a single story broken up into three parts that were published as separate novellas. It may not have been intended that way when the first book, Legion, was published 2012, but by the time the third book, Lies of the Beholder, came out in 2018 it seemed as if the trilogy told a complete story that came to a satisfying ending for the whole thing – even if, or especially because – it was a bit of a mind screw at the end.

So I wasn’t expecting to see Stephen Leeds again when I found this audio-only entry in the series. An entry that doesn’t occur AFTER Lies of the Beholder, but instead between the first book, Legion, and the second book, Skin Deep. So it took a bit of mental adjustment on my part to get back into the world of ten years ago and back into what was then still an incomplete story.

In other words, Stephen Leeds had himself and the aspects of his genius a bit better figured out by the end of the final book, so it was weird to see him back to a more uncertain state of himself. A combination of angst, uncertainty and even impostor syndrome that felt like it pervaded this book even more than in the stories published previously.

At the same time, it also seemed as if that very angst and uncertainty was an intent of the mysterious hacker, and it’s a part of Stephen’s perspective that didn’t get fully resolved at the end.

One of the things that struck me about Death and Faxes, and it’s the impression I’m left with now that I’ve finished, is that Stephen doesn’t feel quite like himself in this story – although his aspects are very well drawn. As this production was a cooperative effort rather than just a single writer, it may be that the characterization felt a bit off because this time around it ironically came from more than one mind – just as Stephen’s genius often appears to.

Also, Leeds just plain angsts a LOT in this story, even more than in the other parts of the series, and that angst dragged the resolution of the mystery out even more than the hacker’s admitted genius and manipulation did. This was a case where I would have gladly switched to text, just to get on with it, if there had been one, but there isn’t.

So, a whole lot of mixed feelings, leaving me with the conclusion that fans of the series, like me, will probably enjoy the trip down memory lane to visit Stephen and his aspects again. (However, the comment in the blurb about Stephen being perfectly sane but his hallucinations all being quite mad isn’t merely a bit off – it’s completely wrong. A fair number of his aspects are quirky and/or eccentric, but none of them are actually ‘mad’, and neither is Stephen Leeds. His coping mechanism is just eccentric and sometimes expensive, but works for him and does no harm to anyone else. There are worse ways to get by.)

If you’ve enjoyed the previous entries in the series, Death and Faxes is an interesting but not 100% successful addition to Leeds’ story. And if you’ve listened to any of the other books in the series, that this production is voiced by Oliver Wyman, the same actor who worked on the rest of the series, helps carry the listener along into accepting this later work as part of the whole.

But if the description of Stephen Leeds’ genius and methods of coping with it sound like fun but you’ve not met him before, it would be better to start your acquaintance with the first exploration of Stephen’s journey in Legion.

Review: Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Shark Heart by Emily HabeckShark Heart by Emily Habeck
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction
Pages: 416
Published by Simon & Schuster on August 8, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads


A lyrical and provocative debut novel about newlyweds Wren and her husband, Lewis, who over the course of nine months, transforms into a great white shark.

For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will transform into that of a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams.
At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this daring novel is the story of Wren’s mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents’ crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren’s grief eventually collides, and she meets her fears with surrender, choosing to love fully, now.
An emotional exploration of motherhood, marriage, transformation, and letting go, Shark Heart is an unforgettable love story about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, animals and people—all while examining what it truly means to be human.

My Review:

Thanks mostly to superhero movies, when we hear the term mutant we tend to think of science experiments gone awry and people who have just a little bit extra in the DNA and what they do with that extra – as well as what gets done to them because of it.

This isn’t that kind of story about mutants and mutations. It’s both a bit more – and a bit less.

This also isn’t really a story about a man who became a shark and the woman who loved him. Although I wanted it to be – sort of a shark toothed version of The Shape of Water. But it isn’t that either. Shark Heart is a story about change and the way that love changes when the person we love goes through a transformation that we can’t follow.

And what happens after that. And after that. But also, before that.

Lewis and Wren marry, as so many people do, buoyed on a wave of love and hope. They expect the first year of their marriage to be the beginning of lifelong bliss and joy – albeit with a few of the typical bumps in the road for any couple that plans on being together for the long haul.

But it’s not to be. Well, it’s mostly not to be.

Early in that first year of bliss, Lewis is diagnosed with Carcharodon carcharias mutation. Putting it less scientifically, he’s turning into a Great white shark. Rapidly. Literally and not figuratively. In the version of our world that Wren and Lewis inhabit, this isn’t even all that uncommon. Lewis’ particular mutation is, but this is a world where it seems to have become relatively commonplace for people to mutate to animal form.

There are entire hospitals and specialty medical institutes and protocols and laws to deal with all the issues and medical needs of people who mutate and their caregivers. (And I am so curious about how this world works, but that’s not the story we get, either.)

Which gets back to what I said at the beginning, that Shark Heart is a story about change and transformation, and what happens to the humans when they make a drastic change or when drastic change is thrust upon them.

And definitely, absolutely, about what happens to the people who love them.

Escape Rating B-: Wren isn’t the first person – or unfortunately the last – to discover, after it’s too late in one way or another, that their new spouse is a gigantic, all-consuming predator and that they are now on a menu they didn’t know existed. The question is whether Wren’s situation is literal or merely a metaphor.

Which is a bit like The Crane Husband, not just because people transform into animals, but because it’s possible to interpret the transformation as metaphor even more than it is.

There were also a whole LOT of SFnal possibilities, and I confess that I wanted the story to go there rather than into the literary fiction it most definitely is. It’s clear from the bits we see in the story that a whole medical infrastructure has been created to deal with the issue of mutations, but for an SF reader we don’t get nearly enough of it for the world to make sense. (John Scalzi’s Lock In, especially the prequel Unlocked, did an excellent job of showing the institutional effects of the introduction of a planet-wide shift in lifelong medical conditions and their treatment.)

I did get really caught up in the part of the story about Lewis and Wren’s year of dealing with what’s happening to them both and their desperate and increasingly separate paddles up the River DeNial as it goes along. And I think I’d have liked the book a lot more if it stayed with them.

But this IS literary fiction, which means it has to take the reader backwards and forwards in time, both to how Wren got to be the person she is and to what happens to both Lewis and Wren after. Even though he’s a shark. For this reader, those later bits detract – at least until we get to the end and back to Wren and her life after Lewis and what he left behind.

I wanted this to be something other than it was, which is a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing. I would have preferred the story I got if it had stuck with Wren and Lewis in a mostly forward-moving timeline – even if he was forcibly dropped out of that story halfway through. Because a story of her coping, whether literally or as metaphor, would have been enough to carry me through because I liked Wren and empathized with her a lot more than I expected to.

I picked this up because I was flailing, and it looked interesting and different. It was different and the first half was interesting and even sometimes compelling, but the second half just didn’t keep that momentum. But if you like literary fiction more than I do it might work better for you.

Review: The Horoscope Writer by Ash Bishop

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Horoscope Writer by Ash BishopThe Horoscope Writer by Ash Bishop
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, thriller
Pages: 320
Published by CamCat Books on July 18, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Leo: You’ll step out the door, prepared for a normal day. But you’ll never reach your workplace. You will vanish, without a trace.
Who is The Horoscope Writer? It’s not Bobby Frindley. He’s an ex-Olympic athlete who has fast-talked his way into an entry-level position at a dying newspaper. He’s supposed to be writing horoscopes, but someone has been doing his job for him . . .
On his first night on the job, Bobby receives an email with twelve gruesome, highly-detailed horoscopes, along with a chilling ultimatum: print them and one will come true, or ignore them and all of them will.
Working with a skeptical co-worker, Bobby investigates the horoscope writer’s true identity, but the closer he gets to the truth, the more the predictions begin to be about him. Has he attracted the attention of a cruel puppeteer? Or is it possible that, like any good horoscope, it’s all in his mind?

My Review:

Human beings do their damndest to find patterns in things that don’t have them. The whole idea behind that concept, patternicity, is a huge part of what drives the plot and the people in the book Rabbits by Terry Miles, and its upcoming sequel, The Quiet Room.

We want the world to make sense, so we try to force that sense into the world whether it’s there or not.

Which may be part of why people faithfully read their horoscopes and believe the rather vague hints and warnings therein. Because it’s easy to make the predictions and warnings cover the events of the day after the fact, especially if one is looking for such coverage.

But in this story, the new ‘horoscope writer’ for a struggling regional newspaper in San Diego receives a full set of horoscopes from an anonymous ‘benefactor’ with an attached threat – or warning – or a bit of both.

If the horoscopes are published in full, only one will come true. But if they’re not, all of them will. While some are trivial, a few on the list are downright dire – but also very much against the odds. Former Olympian and hopeful journalist Bobby Frindley believes it’s all a hoax.

At least until the rare tiger leaps out of his zoo enclosure and kills a tourist – just as his horoscope predicted.

From that point forward, the story is off to the races as the horoscope writer turned fledgeling reporter becomes caught up in the global phenomenon of figuring out which of the day’s predictions are going to come true – and wondering who is trying to force the pattern and to what grisly end.

And whether that end will be Bobby’s, his friends’, his city’s, or just his soul.

Escape Rating B-: I picked up The Horoscope Writer because I reviewed the author’s debut novel, Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. for Library Journal and had a blast, so I was hoping for more of the same.

I certainly got caught up in Bobby Frindley’s ride to fame and maybe fortune as he tries to cobble out a career as an investigative journalist in the waning days of newspaper journalism. But there were a couple of things that I kept tripping over as I followed Bobby’s trek out of the frying pan and into the fire as he latched onto one flawed potential father-figure after another.

The Horoscope Writer reads like the ‘evil twin’ of the late 1990s TV series Early Edition, where a kind of average guy receives a daily delivery of the Chicago Sun-Times (how the mighty have fallen) that is one day ahead. The protagonist has one day to right whatever wrong he reads in the prognosticating paper before it’s too late to fix.

But that early newspaper delivery turned out to be on the side of the angels, while the horoscopes that Bobby starts receiving are a lot more like horrorscopes, and that’s before the general public starts trying to make them come true – or at least the potentially ‘good’ ones, often with considerably less than good results.

Humans being human, because they are.

As much as Bobby as a character read like more than a bit of a ‘failure to launch’, he also read like at least one answer to a question that I’ve always wondered about, the fate of people like Olympic athletes in sports that don’t have long-term career prospects. He’s achieved a kind of fame and success that people dream of, but at a time when nearly all of his life is still ahead of him.

Bobby’s flailing around for a second act, and the one that lands in his lap turns out to be a doozy – or will be if it doesn’t get him killed.

Howsomever, while I found the story compelling to read in the earlier stages, particularly when it really seemed possible that the story was heading into true psychic or fantasy territory in some way, when Bobby started zeroing in on a more mundane agent – at least for criminally sociopathic definitions of mundane – it lost a bit of its fascination for this reader as it shifted fully into ‘bwahaha’ territory.

All things considered, The Horoscope Writer started out strong, and had some compelling dramatic possibilities along the way, but in the end wasn’t nearly as good as Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. But I still have high hopes for the author’s next – especially if he leans back into SFnal territory.