Review: A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato

Review: A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth CatoA Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, historical fantasy
Series: Chefs of the Five Gods #1
Pages: 411
Published by 47North on June 13, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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A world on the brink of war and a mother and daughter on the run, in a thrilling novel of swashbuckling adventure, culinary magic, and just desserts.
Adamantine “Ada” Garland has an empathic connection to food and wine, a magical perception of aromas, flavors, and ingredients. Invaluable property of the royal court, Ada was in service to the Five Gods and to the Gods-ordained rulers of Verdania—until she had enough of injustice and bloodshed and deserted, seeking to chart her own destiny. When mysterious assassins ferret her out after sixteen years in hiding, Ada, now a rogue Chef, and her beloved Grand-mère run for their lives, only to find themselves on a path toward an unexpected ally.
A foreign princess in a strange court, Solenn unknowingly shares more with Ada than an epicurean gift. They share blood. With her newfound magical perception, she becomes aware of a plot to kill her fiancé, the prince. It’s part of a ploy by adversarial forces in the rival country of Albion to sow conflict, and Solenn is set up to take the blame.
As Ada’s and Solenn’s paths converge, a mother and her long-lost daughter reunite toward a common goal, and against a shadowy enemy from Ada’s past who is out for revenge. But what sacrifices must be made? What hope is there when powerful Gods pick sides in a war simmering to eruption?

My Review:

There are a thousand quotes about revenge and most of them are not kind to the person seeking it. But it’s possible that the one in the world of these particular five gods is the most bitter, literally and figuratively. “There are a thousand recipes for revenge, and they all taste like scat.”

In other words, revenge tastes like shit. In a world where the ability to perceive and even enhance the qualities of every single thing a person might eat or drink is the highest form of magic, that has to be one of its world’s greatest curses.

And a warning that entirely too many people have refused to heed in this fantastic story that has only just begun.

At first, we’re following two women who don’t seem to have much to do with each other. And even though we don’t know it yet, someone’s revenge has reached out, seemingly from beyond the grave, to do its best to turn both their lives into shit.

Or perhaps something a bit worse but surprisingly edible – even if it really, really shouldn’t be. Which is where this world’s magic comes in.

Ada Garland is one of the chefs blessed by Gyst, the God of Mysteries and Unknowns. Her tongue is literally magic. She can tell whether something is clean or polluted, poisonous or just badly prepared, too salty, too sweet, or perfectly balanced. Her magic allows her to make the dish that a person wants and needs most in that moment – and do it perfectly every time.

And she has the power to turn certain special ingredients, called epicurea, into magical items that will pass their magic on to whoever eats them.

It’s a gift and a curse at the same time, as all blessed chefs in her country are automatically conscripted into the royal service the moment their talents manifest. It’s a service that led Ada to her husband and their child. And it’s a service that split them apart when the alliance between their countries dissolved.

Ada is on the run, and has been for over a decade, taking care of her increasingly unstable grandmother while avoiding the grasping, greedy mother who wants to use her and her talent for ends that are even more unsavory than Ada first believed.

The revenge that reaches out for Ada, her friends and her family threatens to expose all of her secrets – and theirs. If it doesn’t get them all killed first. Or worse. Much, much worse.

Escape Rating A+: I picked this up because I was looking for something else with magical cookery after The Nameless Restaurant. Both stories do feature cookery as Magic with a Capital “M”, but that is the only thing they have in common. I’m still grateful for the push from the one to the other, because A Thousand Recipes for Revenge is just plain awesome and I’m so glad I read it, even if it is making me give the side-eye to pretty much everything I eat.

The magic system here is both fascinating and unsettling at the same time, because it’s all wrapped around magical foods, the ability to create them and the ability to taste them. This is a world where many people can cook, and unsurprisingly so or everyone would starve, but where it takes a gift from the actual gods to be a chef. But the silver lining of that gift comes with plenty of cloud wrapped around it, as both Ada and Princess Solenn discover to their cost.

This is also definitely one of those stories about being better off – or at least sleeping better at night – if one did not know how the sausage was made. It’s a secret that has been brutally suppressed in this world for excellent if entirely terrible reasons.

At first, this seems like a rather typical military type, gaslamp set fantasy. Ada is AWOL from her military service, while our second perspective on this story, Princess Solenn, is in the midst of being married off for a political alliance.

But then Ada’s old comrades start getting killed, Ada’s hidden existence is suddenly under threat, and it seems like she’s on the run from awful but otherwise mundane forces. Until things go completely pear-shaped and the gods start getting involved. At which point it’s off to the races – against time, against death, against the forces of oppression and most especially against petulant beings who would rather play with their food than either nurture it, treat it as a pet or kill it as prey.

And then things get really complicated.

I thought I knew where this was going. And then I thought I knew where this was going. But it didn’t go any of the places I thought it would, but where it did end up was both head spinning and stomach churning as well as a tremendous tease because there had to be more and at first I didn’t realize there was, but there is and oh thank goodness!

Ada and Solenn give readers two heroines to route for, as this is both Ada’s story of picking up the pieces of the life she left behind and Solenn’s coming of age story and both are fantastic. The world’s setup at first seems fairly standard epic fantasy and then goes to places that are fresh (if occasionally rotting) and new and unexpected. There are bits of Bujold’s World of the Five Gods and Jenn Lyons’ A Chorus of Dragons in the way that the gods of this world operate, as well as Guy Gavriel Kay’s and Jacqueline Carey‘s use of real world geography and history as a way of creating a fantasy world’s map and political divisions, but the magic system is just completely off a new wall and it’s marvelous in the way it suffuses the story.

Which, as I squeed earlier, thankfully isn’t done yet. There’s a second book in the Chefs of the Five Gods series, A Feast for Starving Stone, coming in January. And I can’t wait!

Review: The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong

Review: The Nameless Restaurant by Tao WongThe Nameless Restaurant (Hidden Dishes: Book #1) by Tao Wong
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Hidden Dishes #1
Pages: 168
Length: 3 hours and 10 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Starlit Publishing on June 1, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

There is a restaurant in Toronto. Its entrance is announced only by a simple, unadorned wooden door, varnished to a beautiful shine but without paint, hidden beside dumpsters and a fire escape. There is no sign, no indication of what lies behind the door.
If you do manage to find the restaurant, the décor is dated and worn. Homey, if one were to be generous. The service is atrocious, the proprietor a grouch. The regulars are worse: silent, brooding, and unfriendly to newcomers. There is no set menu, alternating with the whim and whimsy of the owner. The selection of wine and beer is sparse or non-existent at times, and the prices for everything outrageous.There is a restaurant in Toronto that is magically hidden, whose service is horrible, and whose food is divine.This is the story of the Nameless Restaurant.

My Review:

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger,” or so the t-shirt goes. There’s a wizard’s corollary to this that goes, “Wizards should not meddle in the affairs of jinn, for they are not subtle at all and very capable of schooling foolish wizards who overstep while they are spooning up dessert along with the wizards’ deflated egos.”

But that dessert occurs at the end of this tasty meal of a book. There are plenty of delicious courses before you get there.

The story in The Nameless Restaurant is also the story of a day in the life of this nameless restaurant, a tiny, hole in the wall place hidden in downtown Toronto where the magic of delicious meals happens at the hands of the restaurant’s magically adept owner-chef.

That chef-owner’s day usually begins with prep for the evening meals for his usual, but mostly supernatural, customers. On this day, Mo Meng, has to alter his routine due to an interruption by a spoiled brat of a jinn demanding that he serve her and her wizard companion a meal, right that minute with whatever he might have on hand.

Mo Meng grumps about both the interruption to his routine and the overbearing willfulness of his “guest” but still complies with her request-couched-entirely-as-an-order. She doesn’t even bother to pay for her meal when she’s finished the best meal she’s ever had.

But the destruction she might leave in her wake if he calls her on it simply is not worth the trouble.

Not that trouble doesn’t follow her back to the restaurant that evening. And that’s where things get truly fascinating, as we hear not just the details of the mouth-watering dishes that Mo Meng prepares, but we also get a ringside seat for an epic confrontation between a jinn who has, in fact and really truly, seen it all and done it all for millenia, and a gaggle of human magic users who think they’re all that when they really, really aren’t. A fact which Lily is more than happy to school them ALL in while she savors her dessert.

Escape Rating A-: Anyone who loved Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes is going to eat The Nameless Restaurant up with the very same spoon. If you’re looking for something to tide you over until Bookshops & Bonedust comes out, The Nameless Restaurant is definitely it!

The format of this little chef’s kiss of a story is “a day in the life”, but what a day and what a life! At first, the fantasy aspects are pretty minimal. It’s clear from Mo Meng’s musings and grumblings that he is a magic-user of some kind, but the details are covered in the sauce of his meticulous descriptions of food preparation.

It’s only when the pot of the story is fully on the boil, when the irregular regular denizens of the restaurant gather for what sounds like a spectacular meal (as all meals in that restaurant seem to be) that the reader gets some real hints about the nature of both the place and community it serves and why Mo Meng serves it.

Which is where both the fun and the tension come in. While everyone in the place is magical in one way or another except for Kelly the waitress, the Nameless Restaurant is warded to be a place where most of that magic gets left outside – except for Mo Meng’s cooking skills, of course.

So the tension in the story ratchets up slowly as the reader gets hints – and picks sides! – in the upcoming conflict. Which, when it comes, is explosive – but not in the way that the urban fantasy setting might lead one to believe.

This is, after all, a cozy fantasy. So what is brewing in that little place isn’t a battle – but it most definitely is going to be a takedown. With dessert. And leaves the diners eagerly anticipating another night at the Nameless Restaurant, while the reader is left salivating for the next installment in this delicious series!

One final word of caution. You are probably familiar with the warning about not going to the grocery store hungry, out of the very reasonable fear that you will attempt to buy the entire store because in your hunger it ALL looks good? This book takes that one step further, as it should be issued with a caution not to drive to the grocery store while listening, as not only will you be tempted to eat the entire store, but you’ll end up disappointed because nothing you consume will measure up to the temptations described in the story.

Review: For Love of Magic by Simon R. Green

Review: For Love of Magic by Simon R. GreenFor Love of Magic by Simon R. Green
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, historical fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 240
Published by Baen on May 2, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

History isn’t what you think it is. It’s been rewritten to remove all the magic. Together, two people decide to put things right. A new novel of magic, history and true love from Simon R. Green.
When they fall in love, it’s magic!
History can change and has changed. Magic was and is real. 
Once upon a time, there was a forgotten era of magic and monster. But the remnants — and all memory — of the old world have been replaced by the sane, the scientific, and the rational. But sometimes the magical past isn’t content to stay past. That’s where Jack Damian comes in. It’s his joy to protect our present from the supernatural remnants of an earlier time, a different history.  It’s his job to make the past safe.
Jack is called to the Tate Museum, where dozens of people have disappeared beneath the surface of a painting. While investigating, he finds himself smitten with a mysterious art expert Amanda Fielding. But Amanda has plans of her own, and soon the two are traveling through time — back to the Roman Empire and then forward through history, from King Arthur’s court to Sherwood Forest. As they explore histories past as written and overwritten, the balance of magic and science shifts, and the choices the two make could change the world forever.

My Review:

The fun of For Love of Magic begins with the title, as there are SO MANY possible interpretations. And all of them are applicable and all of them are fascinating.

In the beginning, Jack Daimon doesn’t love magic. In fact, his job is to eliminate whatever bits of it sneak into our rational, scientific world. But he does fall head over heels in love with Amanda Fielding the moment he meets her – in the middle of closing up an abyss to an extremely nasty and highly magical place. And there’s more magic in that meeting – and in Amanda herself – than initially meets the eye.

Jack Daimon is the Outsider, the one person who exists outside of magic AND the various and sundry organizations and armies that are attempting to stamp it out. His job is to eliminate the chaos of magic whenever it appears.

He’s very, very good at his job. But his job requires that he have an open mind about pretty much everything. The people who don’t believe in magic tend to become gibbering wrecks whenever it appears – which in Jack’s line of work turns out to be frequently and often.

What Jack doesn’t know when we first meet him – and he first meets Amanda – is that magic is dying. Not of natural causes, but by being ruthlessly stamped out by some very mysterious secret masters of the universe who plan to control everything and everyone.

For fun, profit and their own benefit, of course.

Jack is magic’s – and Amanda’s – one last chance to set things right before it’s too late. But first he has to learn a lesson. Or two. Or ten. Whatever it takes to stand up and hold his ground in the face of everything he’s ever believed – and every force that has ever tried to remake the world in its own dry, humdrum, ruthlessly rational and utterly tyrannical image.

There’s supposed to be magic in the world. It’s Jack’s job to stand his ground so that Amanda has the chance to bring it back. If he can. If he decides he should. If he can make up his mind – and his heart.

Escape Rating A-: I had a great time with For Love of Magic, but whether you will or not probably depends on how much you like snarky characters with even snarkier commentary – even though this Jack isn’t filled with nearly as much of the snark as some of the author’s previous protagonists.

Jack isn’t nearly as snarky as Gideon Sable or Eddie Drood, because Jack needs a sense of wonder to make his way through the magical mystery history tour that Amanda takes him on. Her plan is to convince Jack, or use Jack, or a bit of both, to bring the magic back before it – and she – are gone forever.

That’s where the fun of the whole thing comes in, as she takes Jack to the times and places where magic made life, well, magical – before the forces of rational science rewrote history for their own purposes.

She doesn’t work through logic, because that’s the enemy’s strategy. She grabs for the heart, both Jack’s and the reader’s, by going back to times and places that were filled with wonder. She makes this adventure a tour of what rational science has reduced to mythical Britain, and draws Jack to Camelot and Sherwood Forest. Not to show him that magic will make things perfect – because human beings are NOT perfectable. But by showing him that some things are worth fighting for and that one of those things is a world that is not reduced to humanity only.

So she gives him a dream – and she gives it to us too. All the better because it hits a few contemporary issues squarely on the nose – and promptly punches them several times.

Like much of this author’s work, it does borrow a bit from his vast canon, but not in any way that’s overt or requires previous familiarity. Personally, I saw elements of Shadows Fall and Hawk and Fisher, as well as the Nightside. But then I also felt like I was seeing bits of the Iron Druid’s perspective, and Amanda was often referred to by some of the same terms that that series uses for the Morrigan.

By throwing King Arthur and Robin Hood, Boudicca and Gloriana, Frankenstein and Faust, into the mix, it stirs up a heady brew of the possibilities of where magic in the world might take us – if we still have the chance to let it. And that always makes for a fantastic read!

Review: Wings Once Cursed and Bound by Piper J. Drake

Review: Wings Once Cursed and Bound by Piper J. DrakeWings Once Cursed and Bound (Mythwoven, #1) by Piper J. Drake
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, urban fantasy
Series: Mythwoven #1
Pages: 304
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on April 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Sarah J. Maas and Jennifer Armentrout comes a bold and captivating fantasy by bestselling author Piper J. Drake.
My wings unbound, I am the Thai bird princessThe kinnareeAnd no matter the cost,I will be free.
Bennet Andrews represents a secret organization of supernatural beings dedicated to locating and acquiring mythical objects, tucking them safely away where they cannot harm the human race. When he meets Peeraphan Rahttana, it's too late—she has already stepped into The Red Shoes, trapped by their curse to dance to her death.
But Bennet isn't the only supernatural looking for deadly artifacts. And when the shoes don't seem to harm Peeraphan, he realizes that he'll have to save her from the likes of creatures she never knew existed. Bennett sweeps Peeraphan into a world of myth and power far beyond anything she ever imagined. There, she finds that magic exists in places she never dreamed—including deep within herself.

My Review:

It’s fitting that Wings Once Cursed & Bound is the first book in the Mythwoven series, as it weaves beings and artifacts from myth and legend into a captivating story that mixes urban fantasy and found family with legends from around the world into a series that draws on familiar tropes and traditions while introducing plenty that is fresh and new.

This story opens when a vampire chases down an artifact from one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and finds himself falling in love with a being out of Thai mythology. (It’s a rare urban fantasy world when a vampire is the most mundane creature around.)

Kinnaree Statue in Chiang Mai – Thailand

The red shoes are designed to seduce humans into putting them on – at which point the shoes are wearing the human until that human is worn to death dancing at the shoes’ command. But Peeraphan Rahttana is more than just human. She’s a kinnaree, a Thai bird princess. She feels the compulsion, but once she becomes conscious of it she can resist.

Not forever, but perhaps for long enough for vampire Bennet Andrews and the secretive Darke Consortium that he represents to find a way to get the damn things off her feet before it’s too late.

Neither the Darke Consortium nor Bennet Andrews himself knew about Peeraphan or her heritage – Bennet was on the track of the shoes. That’s what the Darke Consortium does, they hunt down powerful supernatural, mythical and legendary artifacts and store them safely out of reach. The Consortium reads like a supernatural version of Anna Hackett’s Treasure Hunter Security series or the TV series Warehouse 13.

Bennet Andrews may have found Peeraphan by accident – but those red shoes certainly did not. Someone wanted her dead or at least subdued, someone with unsavory motives and entirely too much money to in finding and even capturing supernatural creatures.

The Darke Consortium wants to put the shoes in a safe place. Peeraphan wants them off her feet before they kill her. Bennet Andrews isn’t quite willing to admit what he wants when it comes to the supernatural but probably not immortal woman with wings.

And someone is out to get them both.

Escape Rating A: This was my second read of Wings Once Cursed & Bound, as I read it several months ago for a Library Journal review and utterly adored it. I chose it in the first place because I loved the author’s science fiction romance back in the day (and it’s being re-released, YAY!), and was hoping this would be every bit as good if in a different genre.

Those hopes were most definitely realized.

What made this so much fun was the way that it was like “Old Skool” urban fantasy, Treasure Hunter Security and Simon R. Green’s Gideon Sable series had a book baby that blended all the familiar aspects of all those books and genres and mixed in fresh elements from classic fairy tales with new-to-me myths and legends with an otherworldly found family and a fantasy romance that eschewed the tried-too-many-times tropes and archetypes.

Bennet Andrews may be a vampire, but he’s not giving off any of that “I’m unworthy of love” vibe. Instead he’s heartbroken and grieving and not sure he can face another loss. That the Darke Consortium is run by a dragon is just too fantastic for words, especially when you acknowledge that the dragon, Bennet the vampire and Peerophan’s “cousin” Thomas the werewolf are the most mundane members of a rather eclectic household and crew.

The creepy villain is very creepy, and Peerophan’s situation gets very desperate, but in the end she rescues herself – which is always my favorite way for the heroine to get out of the jam the book has put her in.

There was just a lot to love in Wings Once Cursed & Bound, both in itself and as the opening of the Mythwoven series. I’m really looking forward to the author’s next forays into this magical version of our world. Her blog indicates that she has a novella series set in this world planned for later in 2023 and I’m highly hopeful for another magical read!

Review: Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

Review: Untethered Sky by Fonda LeeUntethered Sky by Fonda Lee
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy
Pages: 160
Published by Tordotcom on April 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Fonda Lee comes Untethered Sky, an epic fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs.
Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.
Ester’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated rukhers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

My Review:

I picked up Untethered Sky, as I suspect many readers have or will, because I utterly adored the author’s Green Bone Saga (Jade City, Jade War, Jade Legacy and the prequel short The Jade Setter of Janloon) to the point where I’m still suffering from the book hangover a year later.

Which means I’m delighted that there is a collection of prequel short stories coming out this summer, Jade Shards. If I had the damn thing in my hands right now I’d be reading it instead of writing this review. Because WOW! And DAMN! And OMG I’m squeeing with glee because this is a world that just hasn’t let me go.

Untethered Sky is not set anywhere near Janloon. And it’s not the same kind of story. But it is still based on some of the same concepts. Love. Duty. Honor. But instead of adding criminal enterprises and gang warfare, it adds something a bit different.

Rocs. Gigantic birds that are mythical in our world, but entirely too real in Untethered Sky. As are the great birds’ great enemy, manticores.

Both rocs and manticores are monsters, but rocs are trainable, using similar principles to falconry, just on a rather grand scale. So to speak. Manticores are equally wild creatures, and equally monstrous, but unlike rocs their preferred diet is human beings. As the country grows and expands, the manticores treat each new settlement as their own version of Grubhub, at least until the rocs and their rukhers, trained by the King’s Royal Mews, sweep in to beat back the threat.

On the surface, the story here is the story of one young roc, Zahra, and the apprentice rukher Ester who has won the right to train this magnificent beast.

But the surface of the story isn’t the whole story. Because Ester loves her monster, knowing full well that the monster won’t love her back. She also comes to love the life of the rukhers, finding it a duty and a balm for the damage to her soul. And it fulfills her desire for revenge against the manticore who killed her mother and her baby brother, and broke her father’s spirit as well as her own.

‘Roc feeding its young on elephants’ by Charles Maurice Detmold (1883-1908),

She makes Zahra her life, knowing it can’t be forever. But it’s what she discovers about herself that raises Untethered Sky high on Zahra’s wings.

Escape Rating A-: At first, the story does seem to be drawing from familiar elements, beginning with Ester’s childhood trauma at the claws of a rampaging manticore. (Not that manticores seem to do much other than rampage.)

The early parts of the story take her from the grief-stricken farm to a desperate desire to strike back against the monsters that stole her family and her childhood into a deep dive into an extension of real-world falconry scaled up to work with birds that can break a monster in one dive – let alone a puny human.

Still the parts of the story where Ester bonds with Zahra AND with the life of the rukhers is both familiar and fascinating to anyone who loves a good story about training and being trained. (The falconry aspects reminded me a LOT of H is for Hawk). But it’s the friendships that Ester makes and the lessons that she learns from those friendships – both good and bad – that make the book.

Along with a disastrous military campaign against the manticores that any reader will recognize as embodying the old cliche about military intelligence being an oxymoron.

But Ester learns hard lessons on that campaign, and even harder lessons after it. Lessons that she can forge a life out of, with or without the great winged monster that lifts her high and strikes her heart.

So, the beauty of the writing certainly carries over from Janloon, but this is a story that is writ much smaller using some of the same tools. Ester’s love for the monster Zahra, but also for the found family and true – and false – friends she makes among the rukhers. Her loyalty to her true friends and her envy of the false ones. The honor of serving her bird, her people and her king – not necessarily in that order. And the duty of knowing when it serves her people best to obey, when it serves her bird best to let go, and when it serves her friends best to hang on.

Review: The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle

Review: The Way Home by Peter S. BeagleThe Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn) by Peter S. Beagle
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy
Series: Last Unicorn #2
Pages: 208
Published by Ace on April 4, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBetter World Books
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One brand-new, long-awaited novella, and one Hugo and Nebula award winning novella, both featuring characters from the beloved classic The Last Unicorn, from renowned fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle.
Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn is one of fantasy's most beloved classics, with millions of copies in print worldwide.
Beagle's long-awaited return to the world of that novel came with "Two Hearts," which garnered Hugo and Nebula awards in 2006, and continued the stories of the unicorn, Molly Grue, and Schmendrick the Magician from the point of view of a young girl named Sooz.
In this volume, Peter S. Beagle also presents for the first time "Sooz," a novella that sees the narrator of "Two Hearts," all grown up and with a perilous journey ahead of her, in a tender meditation on love, loss, and finding your true self.

My Review:

I picked up The Way Home because I absolutely adored The Last Unicorn when I finally read it for the very first time back in January. So I had high hopes for The Way Home. Very, very high.

Those hopes were, unfortunately, only partially met, and I’m more than a bit sad about that.

The Way Home is not a single story as The Last Unicorn was, although it is set in the same world. Rather, this is two stories, the previously published Hugo Award winning novelette, “Two Hearts”, and the new and more recently written novella “Sooz”.

Sooz is the protagonist of both stories. In “Two Hearts”, she’s a nine-year-old girl, but by the time of her own story, she’s seventeen and on her first solo adventure as part of her passage into adulthood.

I have a lot, and a lot of good things, to say about “Two Hearts”, but less and not so much about “Sooz”. So I’m going to start at the end, with “Sooz”.

As a story – as opposed to the character – “Sooz” did not work for me. While I was not expecting a happy ending, as this world tends toward bittersweet on the happiness scale, I was expecting this story to feel like it was part of the continuum from The Last Unicorn through “Two Hearts”, which features Sooz as a child, to Sooz’ own story.

But it didn’t.

It’s very much a coming of age and finding your identity story, and a story about learning that your parents – and yourself – are not exactly who you thought either you or they were, and dealing with that knowledge. It’s also a quest story, as Sooz takes herself off to the Fae Lands to find the lost sister that she never knew she had.

As a story, it felt like the themes had been dealt with before – and dealt with better. Beginning Sooz’ journey with a gratuitous – but at least not overly graphic – rape scene did not endear me to the rest of the story. Sooz was already experiencing plenty of angst, her rape read like piling on for no good reason except that she was a lone female and had to experience all the dangers of that state possible.

I’m up on a soapbox, I know. Because it just felt like sloppy storytelling. There is the potential for plenty of angst in the female experience, even in fantasy, without raping the audience surrogate. (I’ll climb down now before the soapbox gets any taller.)

I dragged myself through “Sooz” in the hopes that it would get better. I’m not sure whether I didn’t feel like it did or just couldn’t get the awful taste out of my mouth (so to speak)

But I want to end this review on a higher note than I started, so let’s switch to the book’s opening story, the award-winning “Two Hearts”.

Where “Sooz” read as if it was barely connected to the world of The Last Unicorn, “Two Hearts” read like a combination of coda and swan song to the beloved classic. It’s the ending that the reader knows was out there, somewhere, at the end of The Last Unicorn, both dreaded and inevitable and so, so right.

Young Sooz’ village is being ravaged by a griffin who has graduated from taking sheep and goats to snatching children. The king has sent increasing numbers of men at arms to slay the griffin, but to no avail. Sooz runs away to fetch the king himself to take care of her people, who are, of course, his people. Along the way she runs into Schmendrick the Magician and his partner, Molly Grue. It’s been a LONG time since Schmendrick and Molly have been to the castle to see their friend, King Lir, so they decide to escort Sooz on her way.

The years that have passed lightly over the magician and his partner have not been kind to the purely human King Lir, and neither has Lir’s lifelong devotion to the unicorn Amalthea. But he rouses himself for one last quest, one last job that he knows is his and his alone. He goes with his friends, and Sooz, to slay the griffin.

“Two Hearts” is a beautiful story because it fits right into the world of The Last Unicorn with all of its lyrical language and utter heartbreak, and sits right on top of the pillar of “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”.

I got a little weepy anyway. The ending is the right ending, the necessary ending. It’s the perfect swan song for an immortal hero in a mortal’s body.

In short, “Two Hearts” is a marvelous, if heartbreaking ending for the beloved classic, The Last Unicorn. “Sooz” read like more of an afterthought, or an attempt to get the lightning back in the bottle one last time.

So the Escape Ratings on this book are very much split. “Sooz” was a dragging D of a read, while “Two Hearts” was a tear-spattered A+.

Review: The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna + Giveaway

Review: The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna + GiveawayThe Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: Arthurian legends, fantasy, historical fantasy, retellings
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on May 9, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Four women, four destinies – the future of King Arthur's court…
A new, feminist retelling of the Arthurian legends

The Cleaving is an Arthurian retelling that follows the tangled stories of four women: Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere, as they fight to control their own destinies amid the wars and rivalries that will determine the destiny of Britain.
The legendary epics of King Arthur and Camelot don’t tell the whole story. Chroniclers say Arthur’s mother Ygraine married the man that killed her husband. They say that Arthur's half-sister Morgana turned to dark magic to defy him and Merlin. They say that the enchantress Nimue challenged Merlin and used her magic to outwit him. And that Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere ended in adultery, rebellion and bloodshed. So why did these women chose such dangerous paths?
As warfare and rivalries constantly challenge the king, Arthur and Merlin believe these women are destined to serve Camelot by doing as they are told. But men forget that women talk. Ygraine, Nimue, Morgana and Guinevere become friends and allies while the decisions that shape their lives are taken out of their hands. This is their untold story. Now these women have a voice.
Juliet McKenna is an expert on medieval history and warfare and brings this expertise as well as her skills as a fantasy writer to this epic standalone novel.

My Review:

The story (or legend, or myth, or history) of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is one of those “tales as old as time.” Whether one considers it a myth, or a legend, or a bit of fictionalized or fantasized history, there’s something about the story that speaks to generation after generation, and has since Sir Thomas Malory compiled his now-famous Le Morte d’Arthur back in the 15th century.

A compilation which was itself based on an earlier popular “history”, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th century History of the Kings of Britain. All of the elements we now recognize as part of the Matter of Britain, King Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, the castle at Tintagel, the sword Excalibur and his final rest in Avalon are all in that 12th century tale, just as they are in this 21st century reimagining, The Cleaving.

Some stories, and some characters, are so profoundly immortal that they must be reinterpreted for each generation and the story of King Arthur is one of those tales. Each generation has reinvented the “once and future king” for over EIGHT centuries so far.

There’s no sign of that stopping any time soon. Rather the reverse. The Cleaving, with its gritty medieval setting and its female-centered perspective on the deeds and misdeeds of the arrogant and autocratic and all-too-frequently abusive men they were supposed to serve and obey, shows the reader a somewhat more-plausible version of a story we all believe we know and love. The Cleaving tells another, rather different side to a legend and makes it all that much more “real” and even believable by that telling.

And it’s going to inform and inflect (or possibly infect) the next generation of tellers of this beloved tale. As it so very much should.

Escape Rating A+: The Cleaving is a compelling conundrum of a book. On the one hand, the story of King Arthur and his knights has been told, and retold, over and over, to the point where it forms one of the foundational tales of western literature along with a considerable number of the archetypes therein.

But very much on the other hand, in order to be considered a good book right now, The Cleaving has to be, and very much is, considerably more than merely a rehash of a story we already know. So it has the hard work of being a book where readers will already know how the story ends, while needing to tell its familiar story in a way that is fresh and new and will appeal to the audiences of its time and not just play on the nostalgia of those already familiar with the story.

The Cleaving succeeds in dancing on that very high and narrow tightrope by telling the story from the perspective of the women who usually exist as mere ciphers in its background while the men perform all the deeds of derring-do and conduct all the important business of their realms.

What The Cleaving does with the familiar story doesn’t change the story nearly as much as an earlier explicitly feminist and fantastically magical version – Marion Zimmer Bradley’s ultra popular The Mists of Avalon – did. Rather, The Cleaving takes that original story of men doing manly things and shows it from the perspective of a group of intelligent, influential women who performed as society forced them to in public – while maintaining their own thoughts and their own council behind the scenes.

It’s a portrait that feels more realistic to a 21st century reader without stretching the bounds of anachronism. These women were expected to manage complicated households, oversee large budgets for those households, keep everything running smoothly whether their lords were in residence or not – and even act in place of those lords when they were away – as many often were.

That level of intelligence and capability can’t be faked for very long at all without being found out. On the other hand, public subservience is easy to fake just by schooling one’s expressions and keeping one’s mouth shut except to be agreeable and above all, meek. It would require getting used to the sensation of swallowing one’s own tongue rather a lot, but it can be done. Especially in front of men who would be inclined to believe it anyway.

So in public they all seem meek, mild and accepting of the inevitable. Because the abuse they suffered, whether physical or emotional, was inevitable. Their choices were few. But in private, they mitigated what damage they could. Even if it wasn’t nearly enough.

So Uther, with Merlin’s connivance, rapes Ygraine while wearing her beloved husband’s face. With Merlin’s connivance, the child of that rape becomes king. With Merlin’s connivance, a whole lot of things happen that probably shouldn’t. (There’s a possible interpretation of this version of the Arthurian legend as Merlin interfered with a whole lot of things that he should have left well enough alone and karma is a bitch.)

Because of the way the story plays out, and just how much the queens are influencing events when the men are too busy pillaging to pay attention, even though we know how the story ends we don’t know how it gets there, and it keeps the reader turning pages to learn what is different and what remains familiar when told from a formerly hidden point of view.

Based on this latest variation of these seemingly eternal legends, we’re clearly not done with Arthur yet. Is it possible that this is what was truly meant by that sobriquet, “the once and future king”?

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Thanks to the publisher, Angry Robot, I’m giving away one copy of The Cleaving to one lucky US or UK commenter on this tour!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: White Cat Black Dog by Kelly Link

Review: White Cat Black Dog by Kelly LinkWhite Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link, Shaun Tan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Genres: fairy tales, fantasy, horror, retellings, science fiction, short stories
Pages: 272
Published by Random House on March 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world, from one of today's finest short story writers--MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellow Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble
Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers--characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.
In "The White Cat's Divorce," an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In "Skinder's Veil," a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers--or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.
Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable--these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.

My Review:

Perhaps it’s a lingering fondness for the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, but I’ve always had a fondness for properly Fractured Fairy Tales. As the author of this collection has long been a writer I intended to read but never quite found the appropriate ‘Round Tuit’ for, this collection seemed like the perfect opportunity to indulge in a bit of cartoon nostalgia while discovering an author I’d heard of – often – but never actually read.

Also, there’s a cat in the title so I figured that I couldn’t possibly go wrong reading White Cat, Black Dog. And I did not.

There are only seven stories in this collection, each based on a different, but frequently familiar, fairy tale. As with all collections there are exceptions to the rules – but always interesting ones.

Of those seven stories, my favorite was the first – and titular story, “The White Cat’s Divorce”. I’m not at all familiar with the fairy tale it was based on, The White Cat, but this is one where I honestly didn’t care. It’s a story where the reader does guess what’s coming fairly early on, but it’s such a glorious delivery of just desserts that one doesn’t mind. Also, the concept of a clan of talking cats running a marijuana farm and dispensary is just too funny for words.

My next favorite story was “The Lady and the Fox”, based on Tam Lin, which I DO remember. It’s probably the story in this collection where the grimdark is on the lightest shade of darkness, as it’s a holiday story that leans into the warmth of the season and does result in at least the possibility of a happy ending. The romance at the heart of the story could go either way after the end, but by ending where it does it is possible for the reader’s mind to wrap the whole thing in the glow of its season.

The story that creeped me out the most was “The White Road”, based on The Musicians of Bremen, a fairy tale which rings only a faint bell. Its setup actually has a lot in common with Station Eleven, but it’s not a pandemic or lawless scavengers that come creeping for those who stray into the wrong places or in the wrong ways, but rather a road that comes for the dead but can be put off by really good – or even really hammy acting.

Several stories hit the middle of their road for me. “Prince Hat Underground” just went on too long. I loved the concept, even though it reminded me more of Orpheus and Eurydice than its intended fairy tale. Something about it just didn’t work for me, although many readers loved it. My feelings about “The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear” were similar in that it also did not work for me.

“The Game of Smash and Recovery” was supposed to be a take-off of Hansel and Gretel and I just plain didn’t see it. It did remind me of a combination of Medusa Uploaded and In the Lives of Puppets, which made it a very weird place to be even though the fairy tale was fractured completely beyond recognition.

Last, but not least in either size or scope, is the final story in the collection, the story that includes the titular Black Dog, “Skinder’s Veil”. This story about a waystation for the denizens of fairy and the house-sitter substituting for an absentee owner who may or may not be Death and who may or may not be a dead-ringer (pardon the pun) for its protagonist had a fascinating premise as well as characters who told some equally fascinating stories. And who probably would feel right at home in Bill Willingham’s Fables. I liked the story a lot as I was reading it, but at the end it felt like something had either just slipped through my grasp, or that the entire point of the thing was in the implications it left behind.

Ultimately a fascinating conundrum but too puzzling to be a favorite. Which may very well sum up my thoughts about the collection as a whole – but I’m glad I read it just the same.

Escape Rating B: In any collection, there’s usually at least one story that doesn’t work for a particular reader, and that was certainly true for this reader. Howsomever, a sign of a good collection is that when one looks at reviews for it, that story or two that turned out to be not quite what the individual hoped are different for each reader.

And that’s certainly true with White Cat, Black Dog.

So, if you’ve been meaning to become acquainted with this author, or curious about the work of someone who won one of the MacArthur “Genius Grants”, White Cat, Black Dog is a great place to be introduced to Kelly Link and her eclectic tales that merge fantasy, SF, horror and the most classic of classic fairy tales into a twisty, spellbinding whole, this is a great way of going about it.

Review: And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Review: And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian TchaikovskyAnd Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy, horror, portal fantasy, science fiction
Pages: 208
Published by Solaris on March 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Harry Bodie’s been called into the delightful fantasy world of his grandmother’s beloved children’s books. It’s not delightful here at all.
All roads lead to Underhill, where it’s always winter, and never nice.
Harry Bodie has a famous grandmother, who wrote beloved children’s books set in the delightful world of Underhill. Harry himself is a failing kids’ TV presenter whose every attempt to advance his career ends in self-sabotage. His family history seems to be nothing but an impediment.
An impediment... or worse. What if Underhill is real? What if it has been waiting decades for a promised child to visit? What if it isn’t delightful at all? And what if its denizens have run out of patience and are taking matters into their own hands?

My Review:

If the title of this book sounds familiar, it’s because it’s from the New Testament quote from Chapter 13 of I Corinthians below. But as much as the first line is directly referenced in the title, the second line is every single bit as applicable to this story and the way that it all works out.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

The first question the story raises is “who decides?” Who decides what a childish thing is and when we should put it away. The second revolves around what it takes to truly be known, by oneself as well as by others.

Because as the story opens, Felix “call me Harry” Bodie doesn’t know himself or where he came from very much at all. And honestly doesn’t seem to want to. What he wants is to hide himself behind the mask of a working – if barely – actor and bury his past as the grandson of a famous juvenile fantasy author.

His grandmother, Mary Bodie, was the author of the Underhill books, a story and a world not all that different from Narnia. Or at least a Narnia without Aslan and the overt Christian allegory that seemed to exude from the lion’s mane.

Underhill was a place with quirky, intelligent animals and not too perilous dangers just perfect for a pair of young human scamps to slip into for adventures. Harry is more than happy to cash the decreasing royalty checks that still drop into his accounts and forget the rest. Or so he believes.

It’s only when he takes a rather desperate chance on a spot in the British equivalent of the Finding Your Roots program that he learns that Grandma Mary was born in an insane asylum to a woman who claimed to come from fairyland, and that she told her daughter all about it. It’s those stories that became the roots of the Underhill series.

The revelation of his great grandmother’s insanity draws the most rabid side of the still-active Underhill fandom out into the light of day – just as the real-world pandemic is about to drive everyone, everywhere under quarantine.

The world is going insane, and Harry is all too afraid he’s going with it. Especially when he starts seeing a diseased, desiccated version of Underhill’s resident trickster faun in the alleys behind his apartment – while a woman who claims to be a private investigator stalks him on the street.

Together they drive Harry straight out of this world and down into Underhill, which is rather more real than he ever imagined. And considerably more dangerous than his grandmother’s books EVER led him to expect.

Escape Rating B+: The thing about this book, at least for the first half of it, is Harry. And it’s not exactly a good thing, because Harry himself isn’t exactly a good thing. Nor does he have a good thing. Nor does he believe he has or is a good thing. Harry’s a bit ‘meh’ at best, pretty much all the way down to the bone. He doesn’t like himself, he doesn’t like his life, he isn’t going anywhere and he thinks nobody likes him because he honestly works at not being likable. He’s no fun to be with, not as a character and not even for himself.

So the beginning of the story is a bit rough because we don’t care about Harry – because he doesn’t even care about himself. At least not until he goes through a wardrobe, even though that’s the other fantasy series, and finds himself in Underhill. Or what’s left of it.

The place is dying and diseased and scabrous and NOTHING like the books. But for once in his life Harry is not being paranoid – everything left in Underhill really is out to get him. Or at least to find him.

Because he’s the heir to the entire blighted mess. Whether he wants to be or not. It’s the first time he’s been important in his whole, entire life. So he decides to seize the day – or at least the creepy twilight that is all that’s left in Underhill.

Only to discover that being the heir to the place isn’t remotely what he thought it might be. But then again, nothing and no one in this adventure has turned out to be anything like he expected. Not even, in the end, himself.

And that’s where things get interesting. At last. One way or another.

While it’s the off-kilter resemblance to Narnia that initially hooks the reader, it’s the subversions of any and all expectations – about Harry, about Underhill, about pretty much everyone and everything he’s met along the way – that give the story its, well, everything.

Initially, I thought this was going to be a bit like Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, which is also a play on Narnia. But The Magicians plays it more or less straight, turning Fillory into a version of Narnia that, while still fantastic, doesn’t mess with religious allegory and simply turns into an adult version of Narnia with a heaping helping of dark academia on top.

Instead, And Put Away Childish Things mixes the central theme of Never Too Old to Save the World with Carrie Vaughn’s Questland, and Tchaikovsky’s own Ogres to create a story about being called to save a portal fantasy world in midlife only to learn that the whole setup is SFnal and not fantasy after all, and that the person who can really save the place – or at least its heart – is the folklorist who everyone believed was just hanging on to prove her weird theories about literature that so-called “true academics” have discounted as either childish or merely unimportant and uninteresting to “real scholars”.

At the end, the seemingly childish things turn out to be not so childish after all, and Harry is known, to himself and to others, in a way that he never would have let himself be or even feel in the so-called real world. And it’s the making of him and the making of the story – even though – or perhaps especially because – he turns out not to be the true hero of after all. Although a hero he certainly becomes.

Review: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

Review: A House with Good Bones by T. KingfisherA House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, Gothic, horror, paranormal
Pages: 256
Published by Tor Nightfire on March 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A haunting Southern Gothic from an award-winning master of suspense, A House With Good Bones explores the dark, twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family.
"Mom seems off."
Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone.
She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.
But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.
To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.

My Review:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all,” or so goes the sampler. Sam Montgomery is experiencing something even weirder and creepier – she’s watching her mother turn into her frightening and downright abusive grandmother – and it’s scaring them both to death.

Sam is worried that her mother is going through early-onset Alzheimer’s. Or some really bizarre stage of delayed grief over her grandmother’s death. Or that she’s just fallen off her trolley. And there’s just a bit of worry on Sam’s part that whatever is going on with her mother is genetic – and that someday it will happen to her.

Although channeling her mother – as she was before this whole thing started – wouldn’t not be all that terrible. Her mother was cool. Her grandmother, on the other hand, was cold as the grave even before she was put into one herself.

But still, Sam is an academic, specifically an archaeoentomologist. Research is what she does. So she does. Research, that is, into what is happening to her mother, when it started, how it’s progressing, and whether or not there is anything at all that Sam can do about it.

What she finds are a whole lot of secrets that really, truly should have remained buried. And that the house her mother inherited from Sam’s grandmother doesn’t just have good bones – it also has very strong teeth.

Escape Rating A-: I never expected to find a story at the intersection of gothic horror with “I am my mother after all” and “academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small” – but here is A House with Good Bones and that’s exactly where it sits. With a vulture circling over it.

At first, the horror is the kind that happens all the time. Sam comes home for a long visit when the dig she’s supposed to be on gets postponed, only to find that her mother isn’t quite right. As we reach middle age and later, if our parents are still with us at that point, we all come to realize that they aren’t quite what they used to be as time and possibly illness or tragedy take hold. As we see their mortality and we begin to feel our own.

And that’s what Sam fears most. At first. It’s a very real fear but it isn’t usually the kind that leads straight into gothic horror and then down into the depths of something even creepier. But this time it does. And does it ever!

As Sam digs deeper into the family history, she learns that that history wasn’t nearly as above-reproach or nearly as respectable – as her late Gran Mae made it out to be. There are some real skeletons in the family closet, and more than a few of them are still haunting the house.

Then again, so is Gran Mae.

Sam will have to dig deep, under the house and into her own reserves in order to lay all of the family skeletons to rest. One way or another.

Two things made this story for me. Actually three. One is that I will read anything T. Kingfisher writes, even in genres I don’t read much of – like horror. Second is that the initial horror is so very mundane and real, making it easy to get sucked into the story. Third is the character of Sam Montgomery herself, as in this book she represents the snarky, sarcastic and self-deprecating voice of the author.

Which is where that element of “academic politics” comes into the story. Sam is able to triumph over Gran Mae not because she’s all-knowing or all-powerful or any of those standard heroic tropes. Sam wins the day because she knows herself, in all her faults and all her virtues. Gran Mae’s insidious voice has no place of entry into Sam’s mind or heart because she’s survived so much worse in the bloody (not literally), hallowed (not exactly) halls of academe.

So I read – and loved – A House with Good Bones not for its horror but for Sam’s snarkcasm and the wry smiles and chuckles and occasional guffaws that it engendered. And it was terrific.