#TBRChallenge – Animals: Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drape

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

And now for something completely different! I went with horse racing as the sport for this month’s theme. Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drape is a biography of Black jockey Jimmy Winkfield (1882 – 1974), winner of the Kentucky Derby in both 1901 and 1902, the last Black jockey to do so and one of very few who managed it back-to-back.

Winkfield was the youngest of seventeen children; his father had been freed from slavery via joining the Union army during the American Civil War. His parents both worked to support their family in Kentucky, his father a sharecropper and seasonal worker and his mother taking care of the children, which would have been the equivalent of several full-time jobs. Winkfield loved horses and learned the business by hanging around nearby stables; at the time, Black horsemen were considered to have a special skill with the animals and found it relatively easy to find work. This didn’t last.

When Black jockies, many of them very successful, were being pushed out of the sport by Jim Crow laws, Winkfield traveled overseas to work. He went on to have successful careers in Russia and, after the Russian Revolution, in France, where he became a trainer until expelled by the Nazis, who confiscated his horses. He made and lost several fortunes; he loved a number of different women, marrying three of them, and having several children. His eldest son with his Russian wife Alexandra, George, was also a jockey, but died from tubercular meningitis at twenty-four. Winkfield himself passed away in France in 1974, and is buried there.

Black Maestro was informative about the subject and the surrounding history. I particularly enjoyed the section about horse racing in Poland and Russia, as that history was completely unfamiliar to me. The author researched extensively, using translators when necessary, and interviewed Winkfield’s surviving children. The author’s note and bibliography are an interesting window into all the different angles from which Drape researched.

Now for two birds with one stone! The second biography of Winkfield, also from my TBR, is Wink: The Incredible Life and Epic Journey of Jimmy Winkfield by Ed Hotaling. It’s more journalistic in tone, and with a few additional photos not seen in the Drape biography. Though I’d found Drape’s prose a little dry, I ended up preferring it to Hotaling’s; however, Hotaling’s sometimes anecdotal approach was an enjoyable read as well. Hotaling’s research also included interviewing surviving family members.

Here’s a brief documentary I found on YouTube:

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My August Reading Log

Posted on September 9, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Prisoner of Midnight by Barbara Hambly is eighth and most current of the James and Lydia Asher series about vampire hunters and their uneasy vampire ally, Don Simon Ysidro. I was excited to find it’s set in 1917, with James on leave from serving as a spy at the front and Lydia recently returned from the front herself. I definitely need to find volume seven soon, as it’s set in the beginning of World War One. After a desperate call from Simon, who’s being held captive, Lydia and daughter Miranda end up on a luxury ship to America, trapped with a killer and hunted by German submarines. Hambly emphasizes the differences between first and third class passengers. A wealthy American capitalist, his thug/private detectives, and union labor struggles form a background. Meanwhile, back in Europe, James must negotiate with Paris vampires to help Lydia solve the mystery. Content warning for child deaths. There are assorted anti-Romany/anti-Semite/anti-Muslim/anti-Catholic/anti-Protestant sentiments among the passengers, including a little anti-black racism; a powder keg in a confined space.

Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly is fifth in the series, set in 1913. I continue to read these out of order! This volume, like number eight, also includes a wealthy American capitalist with his own bully-boys, though he’s secondary to vampire villains, one the Master of London, Dr. Lionel Grippen. Gripped is on the trail of another vampire who fled the Balkans when war broke out; he forces Lydia’s help by kidnapping James and Lydia’s small daughter Miranda, along with her nursery maid. Meanwhile, Lydia has been dragooned into chaperoning her niece’s comeout, which unsurprisingly leads to have uncovering some vampiric connections. This one had a cinematic feel to me, especially the dramatic ending sequence.

Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge by Ovidia Yu is third in the Singaporean Mysteries series. I figured out a key element of the mystery almost immediately, but there were enough indications of more going on with the murders that the plot held my interest. Familiar characters mingle with new ones as always-busy Aunty Lee struggles against feelings of uselessness while recovering from a sprained ankle. It turns out she can still solve a mystery even when she can’t walk far. Content warning for past animal harm, mental illness, and internet abuse; before the story begins, a fostered dog is euthanized unnecessarily, resulting in a storm of internet abuse aimed at the perpetrator, who very probably was mentally ill.

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather is a novella about Nuns! In! Spaaaaace!!! Basically, a small group who travel in a living ship to be of service. So they do things like weddings and baptisms, but also healthcare, especially for nasty futuristic contagious diseases. They’re roughly a generation past a devastating war caused by Earth trying to bring all the other worlds, both in its solar system and two others, under their thumb. The effects of the war are still very present. The sisters of the Order of Saint Rita have almost no contact with Earth and get news from the Vatican only sporadically, but they’re beginning to see disturbing hints of another attempt at central governance, which nobody in the colonies wants. The characters were great, each one having a different reason for having taken vows, including one who wants to be of service but has no faith. There’s also neat worldbuilding around the living ships, how they’re grown, and how they’re modified to be used by humans.

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars by Lina Rather built on the conflicts established in the first novella. It left the Nuns in Space ready to spring off into a new chapter, which I am totally ready for.

My August TBR Challenge book was Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart.

Nonfiction:
1973: Rock at the Crossroads by Andrew Grant Jackson is popular nonfiction ostensibly about how the popular music of 1973 (with a bit of 1972 and 1974 overlap) reflected and interacted with mostly American current events, including the end of the Vietnam War and Watergate. There is some of that social history I was hoping for, but I felt a lot of the wordcount was extraneous. The book is jammed with anecdotes about musicians’ drug habits, unwise relationships, and infidelity that I found tiresome and repetitive fairly quickly, as well as depressing. As the book wore on, I felt a single interesting point about, say, songs written about Nixon’s dishonesty, would go into a somewhat relevant anecdote about a musician and then spiral down a black hole of other anecdotes that let the topic wander off somewhere else. By the end, I was questioning the relevance of many of the anecdotes; Joni Mitchell’s boyfriends were not the ones writing her songs. Perhaps these rabbit holes were the intent, and those were the transitions. By the last half of the book, I was already tired. Good things: the author included women artists (which seems obvious but doesn’t always happen), and though the title refers to Rock, he also included reggae, rhythm and blues, outlaw country, and the dawn of hiphop.

A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee by Danny Fingeroth didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know about Stan Lee (born Stanley Lieber), which is basically that he was exactly as gregarious and full of hustle and ideas as his public persona would lead you to believe. He seems to have been an extreme extrovert and very dedicated to his career, which was a bonus for some and a massive irritation to others (like Jack Kirby…though it seems to me their relationship had a bit of an “I love you, but I can’t live with you” vibe). Growing up with a father who was perpetually unemployed, after Lieber graduated high school at sixteen he immediately went to work and ended up at his cousin Martin Goodman’s publishing company, becoming an editor at age seventeen; he chose “Stan Lee” for his name pretty early, though he didn’t change it legally for a while. Part of Goodman’s company, Timely Comics, eventually became Marvel, with whom Lee was associated for the rest of his life. He also always had side projects going, just in case he could break into something bigger, or he lost his main job; he was determined to always be able to support his family himself. Numerous times, he wanted to get out of comics, into something more respectable. Instead, without at first realizing it, he made comics respectable.

What I primarily got out of this book was exactly how and how much Lee shaped what Marvel became. The responses he gave on 1960s letters pages, the Bullpen Bulletins and Stan’s Soapbox features, as well as the chatty meta narration in the comics he wrote, were all his creations and his voice, not something that other comics publishers did in that same way. (I wondered how much his comics narration owed to the radio shows he’d loved as a kid.) Fingeroth pointed out how those prose features created a community of readers who felt like insiders, which of course made them buy comics, but ended up helping to keep the company going through some rough times. The comics themselves were important, of course, and even when he didn’t script them in detail he added a gloss of his narrative voice to them, like a polish atop the storytelling provided by his collaborators. There were many, many battles, legal and otherwise, over who actually “created” the early Marvel characters, and the battles were never entirely resolved (I think it’s impossible that they could have been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction). But I am pretty sure the Marvel brand as it is today would not be at all the same without Lee’s input.

Fanfiction:
gold in the seams of my hands by napricot is a post-“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” story in which Bucky discovers he has a measurable psychic power, with interesting implications. There’s also a good plot and a lovely romance between Bucky and Sam. Recommended.

To Be Where You Are by roboticonography is a lovely WWII-era Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers romance story, positing that Steve is demisexual.

this ocean is yours, and mine by inmyriadbits and rosepetalfall is a Star Wars AU set in our contemporary world; all the characters are academics at Theed University in Connecticut. Unusually, there’s a sweet romantic pairing between Religion professor and science fiction novelist Luke Amidala-Lars and new history faculty Poe Dameron. I enjoyed the cleverness of the conceit and how the characters were shifted in their new reality. It was fun.

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#TBRChallenge – Blue Collar: Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart

Posted on August 17, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart is one of those books I pre-ordered and then kept on my TBR for years afterward. Stewart is one of my all-time favorite fantasy writers, but he has gotten away from writing novels in recent years, and I don’t know if he’ll ever write another. These days, he writes interactive fiction and “mixed reality” games. My response to this change in his career was hoarding this last novel, waiting for the perfect time to read it. Rejoice! The time is now!!!

This review contains some plot spoilers for this 2004 novel.

Perfect Circle, which I belatedly learned was named for the R.E.M. song, fits this month’s theme, “Blue Collar,” like a glove. Protagonist Will “Dead” Kennedy grew up in Deer Park, a suburb of Houston mostly occupied by workers at nearby chemical plants. Most of his family members still live and work in the area. Will decamps to Houston proper, where he lives near his ex-wife Josie, his daughter Megan, and Josie’s husband Don.

Will has never gotten over his divorce or moved on with his life; he works a series of retail jobs while trying to stay ahead of rent and expenses. He only feels joy when seeing his daughter once every two weeks, and clings to the ghost of his marriage. In parallel to the gray drabness of his daily life, Will sees ghosts everywhere, and sometimes ghost roads that lead to unknown lands; he can recognize ghosts and ghost roads only because he sees them in black and white. Will has to learn how to deal with the presence of ghosts in his life, both real and metaphorical.

On several occasions, he sees the ghost of one of his uncles, who was vaporized in an industrial accident when Will was in elementary school. Though the chemical company was at fault, his uncle’s family was not compensated for their loss of income, a stark example of how corporations victimize workers and through them, their families.

Eventually, Will learns or rather is taught to monetize his ghost-spotting skills, but the main theme of the novel, to me, is depression. Will has a constant sense of futility; he can’t advance because he doesn’t have enough education or the means to obtain it. He has no examples on how to get ahead in life except for one cousin, who learned about computers while in Boy Scouts. A loner, Will is reluctant to reach out to his family when the book opens. Part of his journey is realizing, as the story progresses, that he has that resource, and that he has the ability to help his family in return.

Domestic violence is also a theme. Will’s favorite cousin was murdered by her boyfriend in her early twenties, and Will sees the ghost of a young woman murdered by a more distant cousin, Tom Hanlon. Will manages to escape being killed by Hanlon in his turn by causing a deadly fire; he’s subsequently haunted, and taunted, by Hanlon’s ghost, who exacerbates his fears that he or former Marine Don will harm Josie (spoiler: she makes it out of the book just fine).

There’s a lot going on in this story, but thanks to Stewart’s lyrical prose style and period-specific, location-specific significant detail, I read the entire novel in two days, unable to put it down. I highly recommend this author and this book; the unexpected ending felt like a transformative gift.

Perfect Circle was a Nebula and World Fantasy Award finalist; a Book Sense Notable Book; and Best of the Year at Booklist, Locus, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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My July Reading Log

Posted on August 12, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Abandoned in Death by J. D. Robb is the fifty-fourth in that series, wow, and there are currently two more scheduled to follow. These are comfortingly repetitive despite being about sometimes truly gruesome serial murders, because the killer is always caught and jailed in the end. I also find it interesting to watch the near-future worldbuilding shift and change as it gets closer to present-day. In Romance, the plot is Happily Ever After; in Mystery, the plot is Justice is Served. This series began publication in July 1995 and is set in the mid-twenty-first century; time creeps very slowly forward from book to book, so as it now stands, I think the history of this alternate future needs to shift and is shifting, very gently, from book to book. Robb (Nora Roberts) early on has the “Urban Wars” or “Urbans” as a landmark event in that world’s history that seems to have resulted in mass destruction of neighborhoods, and induced societal changes such as the creation of paid professional motherhood, android servants and beat cops, and sex workers becoming Licensed Companions. Offworld resorts and prisons have both been frequently referenced but only shown once, if I recall. Early in the series, I thought of the worldbuilding as a Jetsons future. But it’s been quite a while since androids have shown up; I think it’s become clear to the author that they don’t really work with the timeline. Likewise, this current installment flashes back to the 1990s, but at no point are The Urbans mentioned as a cause of any difficulty in obtaining records, as has been an issue in past books. I am wondering when The Urbans are supposed to have happened. When did this reality split off from ours? I am overthinking this because I’m using my speculative fiction brain. Anyway. I enjoyed my trip back into this world and am glad it continues to make me think.

Prisoner of Midnight by Barbara Hambly is eighth and most current of the James and Lydia Asher series about vampire hunters and their uneasy vampire ally, Don Simon Ysidro. I was excited to find it’s set in 1917, with James on leave from serving as a spy at the front and Lydia recently returned from the front herself. I definitely need to find volume seven soon, as it’s set in the beginning of World War One. After a desperate call from Simon, who’s being held captive, Lydia and daughter Miranda end up on a luxury ship to America, trapped with a killer and hunted by German submarines. Hambly emphasizes the differences between first and third class passengers. A millionaire American capitalist, his thug/private detectives, and union labor struggles form a background. Meanwhile, back in Europe, James must negotiate with Paris vampires to help Lydia solve the mystery. Content warning for child deaths. There are assorted anti-Romany/anti-Semite/anti-Muslim/anti-Catholic/anti-Protestant period typical sentiments among the passengers, including a little anti-black racism on the side; a powder keg in a confined space. But justice is ultimately served.

Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly is fifth in the same series, set in 1913. I continue to read these out of order! This volume, like number eight, also includes a wealthy American capitalist with his own bully-boys, though he’s secondary to vampire villains, one the Master of London, Dr. Lionel Grippen. Grippen is on the trail of another vampire who fled the Balkans when war broke out. Grippen forces Lydia’s help by kidnapping James and Lydia’s small daughter Miranda, along with her nursery maid. Meanwhile, Lydia has been dragooned into chaperoning her niece’s comeout, which unsurprisingly leads to uncovering some vampiric connections. This one had a cinematic feel to me, especially the dramatic ending sequence in Scotland.

My July TBR Challenge book is Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Two different library books were DNF this month. One of them was a bit darker than what I was in the mood for; the other just bored me within the first chapter because the point of view character had no hint of vulnerability.

Fanfiction:
One of my favorite fanfiction writers, whom I did not know personally but whom friends did, passed away in June. Since then, I’ve been revisiting A.J. Hall’s wide-ranging, witty, beautifully-written work. I particularly recommend The Queen of Gondal, an epic “quasi-historical AU of the BBC Sherlock series set (more or less) in three fantasy kingdoms devised by the Bronte children.” There’s also a bit of Pride and Prejudice, and Cabin Pressure, and Life on Mars mixed in there, to pleasing effect. You do not need to be familiar with any of the source material to enjoy the stories.

Angel in the Architecture by bluflamingo is an AU story set after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Canon did not show us what Hawkeye was doing when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell; in this story, he’s being held captive in a foreign country until he’s rescued by The Winter Soldier, who’s recently escaped the destruction of the crashed helicarriers. Clint is injured and Bucky is recovering bits of his memory as they flee together and form a bond. For two deadly assassins, they’re surprisingly sweet together, and I would read a lot more about them. They should totally take a road trip.

Ordinary Love by audreyii_fic, also an AU, starts with the idea that MCU Thor and Loki are banished to Midgard together; Thor becomes best buddies with Darcy and Loki forms a relationship with Jane. The epic story started as a series of humorous drabbles but then acquired a rather good plot, using Hydra as the antagonist instead of Loki, with similar results to the first Thor movie. There are some fun original characters and appearances by Hawkeye, Coulson, Erik Selvig, and Iron Man, among others from the Thor universe. This was a lot of fun.

There will come soft rains by Silence89 crosses over Leverage with The Laundry Files books by Charles Stross. You don’t need to have read the Stross books for this story; it’s almost better if you haven’t, I suspect. Eliot Spencer was badly injured helping to fend off an interdimensional invasion of Earth which he literally cannot speak about; Hardison and Parker are determined to save his life. This story gave me serious old school hurt-comfort vibes while also having an excellent plot and a some emotional rollercoaster moments. Content warning for hospital ICU, difficult medical decisions, and fear of loss. The story has a happy ending, it just gets rough for a while.

From the Top by garamonder spins off from the end of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, crossing over into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Peter B. Parker gets dragged off course on his way home and ends up having to defeat another version of Kingpin with the help of his younger counterpart Peter, Ned Leeds, and Tony Stark. The author did a beautiful job fleshing out Peter B. Parker’s emotional life and continuity, including the character growth he’s just experienced. It’s essence of Spiderman as he sticks to his principles. Also, it was a cracking good adventure story.

Hotel Heart by Laughsalot3412 is a Leverage AU set in a universe where psychic powers are a Thing, and because of those powers, terrible things have happened to Parker at the hands of a shady government agency and to Eliot Spencer at the hands of evil empath Damien Moreau. Alec Hardison has helped Parker to recover somewhat, but Eliot was on his own until Eliot is sent to kill them. Eliot ends up in their orbit, drawn in despite himself; angst and healing and victory over Moreau ensue. I love that because of life experience, telekinetic Parker often understands how to help baseline human Eliot better than empath Hardison.

Two Colors, White and Gold by Carelica for frostbitebakery is a surprisingly cozy snowy post-apocalyptic Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers story set in an alternative universe where an apocalypse happened while Hydra still had Bucky in cryofreeze. He awakens and heads from Siberia to the Altai. He finds an animal friend and starts to make a home for himself without knowing what’s happened to the world or what’s going on elsewhere. Luckily, Steve is looking for him. The dog wolf does not die. The story has a happy ending.

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#TBRChallenge – Vintage: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

On one of the few occasions when I met the late Ursula K. LeGuin, I asked if she would recommend me a book to read. She suggested Lolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner, published in 1926. Though I bought a copy of the book fairly soon after, it was soon buried under books I was reading for review, and has been languishing on my TBR shelf for a number of years.

I am here to tell you that this was a splendid recommendation. Despite knowing many people who love Sylvia Townsend Warner’s work, I had never read any of her novels or stories before this, but I’m glad I’ve done so now.

Lolly Willowes is the story of Laura Willowes, a single Englishwoman who upon the death of her father in 1902 leaves her beloved country home behind and goes to live with her eldest brother and his wife in London, where she becomes a very useful maiden aunt, called “Lolly,” who is very much taken for granted. When she goes to live with them, she’s twenty-eight; when she finally decides to move to the country, alone, she is forty-seven and it’s 1921. Both World War One and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic are covered briefly but intensely at the end of part one.

She continued to do up parcels until the eleventh day of November 1918 [the Armistice]. Then, when she heard the noise of cheering and the sounding of hooters, she left her work and went home. The house was empty. Everyone had gone out to rejoice. She went up to her room and sat down on her bed. She felt cold and sick, she trembled from head to foot as she once had done after witnessing a dog fight…On the mantelpiece was a photograph of [her nephew] Titus. ‘Well,’ she said to it, ‘You’ve escaped killing, anyhow.’

Immediately after World War One, the number of single young women in England was very high, because many of their husbands or potential husbands had been killed. (Think of Miss Climpson and her agency in Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels.) Many of the jobs women had held during the war were taken from them once the surviving soldiers came home; women were expected to quietly return to the domestic sphere, though many no longer had that option because they had lost the financial support of their job or husband. Laura is from a landowning class, so her immediate needs are met. The passive oppression by Laura’s family, however, confines her emotionally if not physically. They think they are doing the right thing by giving her a home and an occupation; at first, they assume she will marry, but don’t seem to do much to help her towards that goal (which she doesn’t share).

At the beginning of part two, we learn Laura suffers from what seems to be seasonal depression in the autumn. She “dreaded it” and felt “restless and tormented.” She begins to daydream of being in the country, alone, in the dark; eventually, she chooses a location and tells her family she is moving there. They do not take her seriously. She finds her brother has poorly invested her money, but stands up for herself for the first time in order to recover some of her funds in order to move. Once living in the isolated town of Great Mop, Laura needs time to find her feet, but she soon finds joy in solitude, makes a female friend, and begins to be curious about the strange goings-on in the village…which might or might not be supernatural.

I know spoilers aren’t really a thing for a book published in 1926, but I’ll stop there so far as plot details; just know towards the end this novel might become fantasy, or it might not; it’s impossible to tell (though I lean towards the fantastical element being real). What I loved about this book, aside from the wry, engaging prose which swept me along, is how much I recognized myself in Laura, or rather a person I might have been in other circumstances or at another time. (I definitely have never experienced a guaranteed income!) I’m an unmarried aunt, and I felt trapped and frustrated before I was able to live on my own and support myself and make my own way. Laura finds that freedom in her own unique fashion. There aren’t enough stories about that, I feel; not enough stories about how family can love us but not really see us, can keep us static with unacknowledged selfish intentions.

Thanks, Ursula.

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My June 2022 Reading Log

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials is second in this mystery series set in contemporary Singapore. Aunty Lee provides catering, including a dish that can be deadly if prepared improperly, and two people die after eating it. As you might imagine, the dish did not kill them. As in the previous installment, the mystery is very character based, with Aunty Lee being a classic Nosy Old Lady Who Solves Mysteries character; I like her and her sidekick Nina a lot. One of the murder victims is a gay character, and the previous book had a lesbian victim, neither of whom did anything wrong; I’m hoping this trend will not continue. At least one gay couple is thriving! Content warning: human organ trafficking.

Knot of Shadows by Lois McMaster Bujold is the most recent of the Penric and Desdemona series; it felt a bit thin in comparison to a recent longer installment, despite centering on a tangled theological issue tied into a mysterious not-death that Penric and his demon Desdemona must unravel. See what I did there? I’m in this series for Bujold’s narrative voice and for her characters, so I’m always happy to visit again. Content warning for reference to a child’s death.

Personal Paradise by Barbara Hambly is a short fiction tie-in to the Windrose fantasy series; there are a number of these that I’ve slowly been working my way through. In this one, exiled wizard Antryg Windrose of the Empire of Ferryth and computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, living together in 1980s Los Angeles, encounter aliens who’ve created a series of pocket universes for elites that are starting to fail, possibly destroying the multiverse in the process; both of them are needed to solve the problem. Just Like Real People by Barbara Hambly, more with Antryg and Joanna, begins with a missing person and ends with grief and a meditation on making reparation and whether true justice can ever be achieved.

The Magistrates of Hell by Barbara Hambly is fourth in her James and Lydia Asher, and Spanish vampire Don Simon Ysidro, series; I skipped the third but will be going back to it. I read the original novel in the late 1980s, when I was first getting into Hambly’s work, and the second several years later. It’s been about fifteen years since then! I only recalled a very few things about the previous two books: James was older than his wife Lydia and studied linguistics; Lydia wore glasses (Hambly has multiple glasses-wearing characters); Simon had white hair and unrequited something for Lydia. All of those things seemed to carry over. I had forgotten that James had been a secret agent for the British Empire, though, and that Lydia trained as a doctor! This installment, set in 1912 Beijing (Peking at the time to the English-speaking characters), features The Others, zombie-like vampiric creatures that can control rats and work as a hivemind; they were apparently introduced in volume three. Asher and an old mentor, the Rebbe Karlebach (also probably introduced in volume three), fear the Others have made their way from Prague to Peking. Then a woman is murdered, but not by the Others, and it’s not even a major part of the plot; it’s almost dropped completely. This book has a lot going on. There are bandits, and gossipy colonialist diplomats, and a diplomat who is abusive to women and has murdered a couple (he’s not a vampire), and on top of all that there’s organized crime, and Japanese diplomats who are handy with swords, and the late appearance of a mysterious Chinese priest with psychic abilities, and of course Simon Ysidro fading in and out of places and dreams. Also rats. Content warning for many rats. Blankets of rats. Face-chewing rats. Did I mention the rats? This was one of the more grim and piteous Hambly books I’ve read; it reminded me a bit of Hambly’s Darwath books, but on a smaller scale. I feel bad for the rats, who didn’t ask for the plot they got.

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske is a fantasy male/male romance set in a 1908 England which has a secret community of magicians who hide their existence via a drug called lethe mint and occasional dangerous memory spells. Unmagical Robin Blyth is “unbusheled” when his new government job turns out to be liaising with the magical community. He’s swiftly embroiled in a dangerous and deadly magical plot; he relies on magical Edwin Courcey, his magical liaison counterpart, to get him out of it while discovering he might not be as unmagical as he thought. Robin is an athletic extrovert; Edwin is an intellectual loner with very little magic, who’s spent his life bullied by his older brother. I loved that the looming threat of World War One is part of the villains’ motivation. The characterization is great and multiple systems of magic are shown, that I suspect will be explored more fully in future installments. I’m looking forward to more from this author. This book is first in a planned trilogy.

Blood Maidens by Barbara Hambly is third in the James Asher series, and it does indeed reference his mentor Karlebach and the vampiric “Others” of Prague, but more briefly than I’d guessed given their appearance in book four. Also, there are significantly fewer rats. In 1911, Asher travels to St. Petersburg with the vampire Ysidro to investigate the disappearance of a vampire friend of his, which might be linked to vampires allying with Prussia. Eventually, Lydia Asher follows there to investigate a German scientist’s mysterious experiments involving blood. There are many train journeys between Russia and Germany, the danger from vampires sometimes less worrisome than danger from humans, because Asher used to be a spy for the English government, and could be recognized and jailed or killed at any moment. This was a tense thriller, and I loved the many plot twists. I did want more interaction between James and Lydia; they are mostly working separately throughout. Content warning for brief description of Lydia’s past miscarriage.

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison is the newest from this author, a sequel to The Witness for the Dead. It’s a secondary world fantasy with a mystery plot; really there are several mysteries. If you liked the first one, I am pretty sure you will like the second one; first-person narrator Thara Celehar continues to be a quiet badass who does not realize he is a badass, and who also has trouble recognizing that other people like and value him as a persongiv. This gives an extra layer of emotional intensity to his various griefs and struggles. The opera composer from volume one is back and his agonizingly slow burn potential romance with Thara takes another step or two. A fascinating new female character is introduced and I have hopes she will be a bigger part of volume three (I’m told there will be three total).

I reread The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison after The Grief of Stones; it features the initial appearance of Thara Celehar, and I caught a few things I’d missed before.

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang is second in a trilogy, but I read it last thanks to the vagaries of my library holds. Heroine My/Esme is a mixed-race single mother in Vietnam who lives with her mother and grandmother. She works as hotel housekeeping because she had to drop out of school. Khai is American-born, on the autism spectrum, and convinced he has no feelings thanks to a traumatic event in his youth. Khai’s Vietnamese immigrant mother offers Esme the chance to spend a summer in California, to see if Esme and Khai might be able to form a relationship and a marriage. Esme realizes this gives her a chance to search for her father, who left Vietnam before her mother knew she was pregnant; he was an American who went to school in California. Though not a Marriage of Convenience plot exactly, the Arranged Marriage plot feels similar, and since I love Marriage of Convenience for the character conflicts it can generate, this story was catnip to me. Esme (the American name My chooses for the summer) and Khai are both smitten by each other on sight, at least as far as physical appearance. Outgoing Esme repeatedly reaches out, and introvert Khai, while bemused and sometimes confused by her efforts, responds swiftly. The largest conflict arises when commitment to marriage grows closer. Khai firmly believes he doesn’t love Esme, though it’s obvious to his family and to the reader that he does. Khai thinks he is “addicted” to her. Esme takes him at his word, since he’s a very truthful person. Though he offers a marriage of convenience, she is too in love with him to tolerate that shadow of a relationship. Meanwhile, Esme works harder toward ways to stay in the United States where she has more opportunities, and Khai helps her to look for her father. As with the other two Hoang books I’ve read, this is a romance between good people who are sweet together but have to overcome realistic obstacles to achieve their happily ever after. Recommended!

Nonfiction:
My TBR Challenge book for June is After the War: The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson.

Fanfiction:
Freedom’s Chance by ladysorka is a space opera AU of Stargate: Atlantis in which Rodney McKay has grown up on an obscure, isolated moon where the chief industry is gas diving, extracting valuable gases In Spaaace. John Sheppard, on the run, is forced to stop at the outpost to get his ship fixed. This had the feel of a wide-ranging space opera even though confined to a small outpost, helped along by a lot of cool details about the larger world mentioned in passing. The outpost’s economic and political conflicts with the hegemonic Fleet and Core were very well-thought-out and realistic.

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#TBRChallenge – After the War: The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson

Posted on June 15, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson is nonfiction about, well, the time after the First World War. I took this month’s theme very literally!

I bought this book because I’d read a previous work by the author, The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, which I wrote about in this 2011 post. At that time, I was doing research for a fiction project set just before World War One and looking forward to reading her next book. However, shortly thereafter, I abandoned that particular project and moved this book into the TBR, where it has languished until this year. This year, sadly, is perfect for reading about postwar angst because there are rather more resonances than one might at first think between 2022 and 1919: conflict and upheavals in economies and labor; a pandemic, which in 1919 also overlapped with the mass destruction and death of the terrible war; and the realization that surviving a time of great upheaval does not mean everyone can go back to how things were before the war began. (We all know there’s always turmoil somewhere, right?)

Nicolson’s description of the two minutes of silence on November 11, 1919 struck me.
“At precisely 11.00 a.m. all movement stopped.
In that silence many prayed that the meaning of death would somehow be revealed. But some questioned whether such understanding would give them relief from unhappiness. No one who had lost someone in the war (and it was estimated that three million people had lost someone close) was immune from grief. Many tried not to give in to it, believing that acknowledgement of the intensity of their feelings would lead them to the verge of collapse. Some found that after the initial shock a state of denial was in itself a comfort.”

This book, like its predecessor, is essentially an armchair trip back in time, giving an overview from above but also diving down closer to examine individual experiences, from several points of view. (Content warning for period-typical racism in quotations, particularly in the chapter “Release.”) You don’t need prior in-depth knowledge of World War One or the period following to understand and enjoy this book, and I feel it’s a good starting point if you’re interested in social change and recovery, or just history in general. There’s a detailed bibliography that I’d like to have a deeper look at. Overall, this book is a great addition to my collection of World War One reference materials.

Another point of interest: the author is the granddaughter of writer Vita Sackville-West and diplomat Harold Nicolson, who was a small part of the English delegation for the Paris Peace Conference; it seems likely this helped her to obtain access to material that gave interesting insights into some elite Britons of this time period.

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My May Reading Log

Posted on June 10, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Strong Wine by A.J. Demas is third in a trilogy about former solider and all-around mensch Damiskos and his spy/dancer lover Varazda, set in a world reminiscent of Classical Greece. I’d recommend reading this series in order, as a lot of book one, both characters and plot, is revisited in book three. Damiskos has been visiting Varazda in Boukos and wants to move into his household there; Varazda and his household want this too, but they haven’t yet sat down to discuss it. Also, Dami still needs to tie up some loose ends back home in Pheme: give up his apartment there, retrieve his horse, get his army pension, and visit his parents. Dami’s parents have gotten themselves into money troubles again, and are hoping to marry Dami off to his former fiancée, Ino, who in the interim married someone else and was widowed. Ino’s awful parents, who originally broke the engagement for a better prospect, are now hoping Dami will take over the fertilizer business Ino inherited from her husband’s family and make them rich. Ino is only interested in being a silversmith, which she learned from her husband and stepson, though, and Dami is in love with Varazda. After learning all this, a chance encounter leads to Dami being accused of murdering one of the villains from book one. Luckily, Varazda had become worried when Dami didn’t respond to his letters, and makes his way to Pheme to help solve the mystery using his badass spy skills. Also solved are various problems plaguing Ino, Dami’s brother, and Dami’s parents, and the story ends happily. I enjoyed this whole trilogy quite a bit and highly recommend it.

The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian is second in the Page and Sommers series, post-World War Two mystery with a male/male romance. The first one, Hither, Page is one of my favorites by this author so far, which is probably not surprising given my interest in people dealing with trauma after a war. Leo Page is an orphaned former spy and James Sommers is working as a country doctor after his wartime experiences as a surgeon left him with PTSD. In this second installment, essentially a Country House Mystery, James has been invited to the reading of his uncle’s will; however, he hasn’t seen this part of his family in decades, ever since the disappearance of his cousin Rose. His legacy turns out to be a photograph, with the bulk of the estate going to whomever solves Rose’s disappearance. Many family secrets are uncovered as Leo and James investigate, and their romance becomes more settled. I solved the mystery, correctly, fairly early on but still enjoyed the book quite a lot, and am hoping his young relative, an actress, becomes a recurring character.

Aunty Lee’s Delights by Ovidia Yu features the titular Aunty Rosie Lee, a widow with her own restaurant in Singapore and an insatiable curiosity. Aided by her employee Nina and the policeman Salim, and the power of being a well-off and well-liked elder, Aunty Lee solves the mystery of a body found on the beach of the Sentosa resort area. There are some great bits involving Singaporean cuisine; I could have read a lot more of those parts! Content warning: there are several queer characters dealing with homophobia in different ways, and one of the murders results from a person being abandoned without medical care, which I found distressing even though it is not shown directly. This being a mystery novel, justice is served in the end.

Fanfiction:
Riptide by sergeant_angel is a very long alternate universe story which integrates characters from the Young Avengers comics with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, focusing on Kate Bishop throughout; she ends up in a relationship with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, and most elements of the Avengers movie series are altered with Kate and other Young Avengers characters in more prominent roles.

before the door of hell lamps burned by basketofnovas (slashmarks) is the first story in a very, very long Harry Potter AU in which Sirius Black survives and becomes Harry’s guardian; Sirius also takes over as official Head of the extensive Black family, and considerable politics ensue, and the plot diverges wildly from canon. The author seems to have intense interest in just how wizarding, especially pureblood, culture might work on a micro level as well as knowledge of real world English medieval culture and law that could be used to extrapolate wizarding history and cultural practices. The author re-envisions canonical events by considering whether characters could be interpreted as unreliable narrators, and/or creating new backstory to cast a new light on their actions. Most of the focus is on Harry and Hermione throughout. Since I love neepery and alternate interpretations of all kinds, this sort of wide-ranging AU casting everything from a different point of view is catnip to me. After a while the story does get bogged down a bit by the weight of its revisionist worldbuilding, but since I wasn’t reading for a fast-moving plot, I didn’t mind. The author eventually rewrites the entire Harry Potter series with a focus on pureblood culture and the many failings thereof, as well as a great deal of speculation about different types of magic; the story has little in common with its canonical origins, overall, and could easily have been original work.

other plans by MyCupOfTea is a Check Please! alternate in which Eric Bittle did not attend Samwell, instead meeting Jack Zimmerman later, when Bitty is finishing college and Jack is playing in the NHL. Bitty is working several jobs and rushing towards graduation; Jack came out as bisexual a year earlier and is trying to discover what being queer means to him, via his photography hobby. It’s a lowkey, sweet story and I liked it a lot.

My May TBR Challenge book was Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson.

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#TBRChallenge – Tales of Old: Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson is set in New York City before the United States has entered World War Two; it seems to be an alternate history in subtle ways. In this world, people of color with mystical/magical talents are known as having “saints’ hands,” which are not necessarily as helpful as one might imagine. The hands or the power that enables them want their possessors to push back against White supremacy, but the humans with powers have difficult decisions to make: how do they fight when the battle seems hopeless? How do they protect the ones they love? How do they save themselves?

Systemic racism is the underlying theme that ties the whole story together. Racism is present both as a constant thrumming background and manifesting in how the characters are treated by those who have power over them. There are overt racist acts, but there’s also the awfulness of bland, ordinary, everyday racism, which continually affects the options available to the characters and the choices they are able to make, explored from a number of angles. It’s ultimately a tragic story for the protagonists, but with a glimmer of hope at the end.

One of the three human point of view characters, light-skinned Phyllis LeBlanc/Pea Green, left her Black family in Harlem to “pass” and use her uncanny accuracy with objects as a knife-wielding assassin for a white mob boss, Victor. She is ostensibly allowed to choose who she kills and does not kill, but she feels trapped in the criminal life after so many murders. She increasingly mourns the growing distance between herself, her remaining family, and her former and future lover, Dev Patil. Dev, the second point of view character, is Hindu and British-Indian who grew up in New York state. Like Pea, Dev walks an ambiguous border between white and not-white that offers him choices but never as many choices as he needs. The third point of view character is Tamara, a Black oracle (who apparently doesn’t have saints’ hands) who fled racist violence and now hides behind Victor’s whiteness and power; she attempts to resist racism through avoidance, and eventually must confront this choice. Finally, there are some scenes from the point of view of the hands/magic itself.

Throughout, the characters face complex decisions with no perfect choices available to them. Throughout, there is nowhere to hide from racist oppression. It’s a lyrically-written, thoughtful, densely layered novel. I’ve only brushed the surface here. I feel it’s best experienced without too many spoilers, so I’ll stop here, but I will say this was, for me, the best and most ambitious of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s novels so far.

Here’s an excellent interview with author Alaya Dawn Johnson at Black Nerd Problems.

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My April Reading Log

Posted on May 4, 2022 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Can’t Find My Way Home by Gwynne Garfinkle is a ghost story that’s also a period piece. Vividly set in mid-1970s New York City, it features Joanna Bergman, a young actress in a soap opera who’s developing an intense crush on a married co-star while simultaneously trying to deal with her guilt and grief over the untimely death of her best friend, Cynthia. The story moves back and forth in time between Joanna and Cynthia’s college years, when they were activists in the antiwar and antiracism movements, and the present day in which Joanna has attempted to move on after Cynthia’s death, for which she feels partly responsible. Joanna’s encounters with a ghostly version of Cynthia result in her experiencing a range of different outcomes from the fateful night of Cynthia’s death. I actually stayed up late to finish reading the novel because I truly could not predict the ending. The characterization is marvelous, and I especially loved the details about the production of daily soap operas. Note that I know this author, but I was not a preliminary reader and did not contribute any critique.

Two Rogues Make a Right by Cat Sebastian is third in the “Seducing the Sedgwicks” series, in which sickly, repressed Martin and traumatized ex-Navy midshipman Will renew their boyhood friendship and finally acknowledge that their feelings for each other are far more intense than friendship. Despite some heavy themes relating to past abuse for both characters, the tone is fairly light and sweet.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers felt like it ended too quickly, but is otherwise utterly charming. Sibling Dex, a tea monk on a far-future utopian moon, is searching for crickets and meaning, both of which they hope to find in a vast wilderness set aside by humans after ecological catastrophe. There Dex encounters Splendid Speckled Mosscap, a self-aware robot who engages them in a number of engaging philosophical discussions. I also liked the backstory: robots who became sentient the Factory Age and were thereafter released by humans from their labors, after which humans began to mend their polluting, capitalistic ways. The robots wandered off into the newly-freed up wilderness and did their own thing; Dex is one of the first to encounter a robot in generations. In the interim before the story begins, both cultures grew and changed; it appears they have much to learn from one another. It’s pleasant and thought-provoking.

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang starts off as an Asian-American contemporary romance between Anna, a socially-awkward professional violinist and Quan, a self-made fashion industry CEO, but there is a lot more than that going on in this story, some of it intensely emotionally difficult. Spoilers ahead. Anna is on leave from her orchestra after unexpected internet fame left her unable to be satisfied with her violin playing; instead of playing through a piece written specifically for her, she keeps feeling critical and going back to the beginning before she can finish, over and over and over. She’s trapped in an awful relationship that her family wants more than she does; then her oblivious, entitled boyfriend tells her he wants an open relationship. Anna subsequently meets Quan on a dating app. Quan is healing emotionally from an experience with testicular cancer; his best friend and business partner encourages him to get back into dating. Meanwhile, Anna learns she is on the autism spectrum and Quan is contacted by Louis Vuitton, who want to buy out their small children’s clothing company. Already a lot, right? While in the midst of developing an incredibly sweet relationship, Anna’s father has a debilitating stroke, and the whole middle section of the book spirals into Anna’s difficulties with her family, and with her father’s condition and care. Quan is there for Anna whenever she needs him, and though she inadvertently hurts him, their support of each other ultimately saves them both. It was upsetting but gripping to take this journey with them, and I stayed up late to finish the book and find out how both their lives were made better by supporting each other. The story has a long tail in which Anna slowly recovers from autistic burnout with Quan’s help, and reconnects with her mother.

Servant Mage by Kate Elliott is a novella set in a world where a magical monarchy has been overthrown by sort-of Cromwellian fascists who forcibly take all magical children and brainwash them into indentured servitude. It’s definitely in conversation with the style of epic fantasy in which the monarchy is always good and right. The protagonist, Fellian, is a fire mage whose mother and Older Father were executed by the government for sedition. She’s rescued from servitude by rogue monarchist mages who need her help; Fellian negotiates with them for a fair exchange, then helps them with a couple of missions. However, in the end, Fellian is still not converted to the monarchist cause, and has plans of her own. What I really would like to see is where Fellian goes from here.

A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney was my TBR Challenge book for April.

Fanfiction:
What Livin’ is For by LadyJanelly crosses over Leverage with the movie version of The Losers for a delightfully slashy romance matching up Eliot Spencer with established couple Carlos “Cougar” Alvarez and Jake Jensen. For a threesome story about three mercenary soldiers, it’s amazingly sweet.

The Distant Sky by fallintosanity (yopumpkinhead) for Alyndra crosses over the television show Supernatural with The Books of the Raksura and really makes it work. Villains on Earth steal the queen Consolation; Moon and his terrifying mother Malachite look for her, soon with the help of Dean and Sam. Then more Raksura arrive, including Jade, Chime, Stone, and Kethel. Sam and Kethel end up bonding. It was great and I loved it.

The Humbling River by mysterycyclone focuses on Tony Stark’s relationship with Peter Parker/Spiderman, but Peter is missing and later presumed dead for a good portion of the story, so there’s a lot of angst. However, spoiler, Peter is not dead, and Venom is biting people’s heads off which is not surprising because Venom. The Venom reveal was in no way a surprise to me, but I enjoyed the characterization knowing it would have a happy ending.

Heart Full of Gasoline by sdwolfpup is a massive Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth romance mashed up with Formula One racing. I have not read or seen Games of Thrones, but I was easily able to follow the characters and plot. Jaime is notorious for having been involved in a crash fatal to a champion driver, and has difficulty finding crew; he hires Brienne, from an out-of-the-way island, to be his chief mechanic. Brienne had a brief foray into the racing world cut short by cruel misogyny; she’s willing to try again because she loves racing. The racing plot focuses on both their journeys, including Jaime’s conflicts with his conniving, villainous father and Brienne’s fight for respect, first as a mechanic and race engineer, and then as a driver. Meanwhile, their romance weaves throughout, and they build up a large Found Family. The characterization is great and there’s a very satisfying happy ending. Content warning related to Game of Thrones canon: Jaime suffers a racing accident and his right hand is amputated. General content warning: Brienne suffers from self-consciousness due to her height and muscular build, and considers herself unattractive; realistically, she doesn’t magically recover from these lifelong issues though they do improve when she’s happy in her relationship.

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