Post-mortem
I rarely read nonfiction any more. Life has been so fraught for the past few years (escalating to seriously effed up for the final nine months) that my goal for reading is escape from—not analysis of—current events. But I must admit I was a little excited when I heard Kamala Harris’s book 107 Days, the recap of her run for the presidency, was coming out. It was a combination of desires for me: I hoped that she could give a more definitive idea of what happened (i.e., how we ended up watching masked men in camo gear kidnapping citizens off the streets instead of celebrating healthcare for all), and I also, probably along with many others, hoped she would “dish the dirt” of all the behind-the-scenes machinations of the political campaign that was the shortest in history, with the most abrupt of beginnings, that so very nearly succeeded.
Some of what I was hoping for was there. She talked somewhat candidly about being a Vice President who was associated with an undeservedly unpopular administration and what it was like to try to remain loyal to Joe Biden for the remainder of her tenure while simultaneously attempting to differentiate herself for the voters. It was clear from this part of the narrative that her loyalty (despite how—in my perception—she was ignored and downplayed for her substantial contributions during Biden’s four years) ended up hurting her. She had limited control over his administration’s agenda, but was held accountable for all of it by many and, despite her team’s desire for her to speak out about that, her realization that she still had to work with him in her VP role for another three months inhibited her characteristic forthrightness.
I enjoyed the format of the book, which narrates the campaign day by day and gives a realistic look at the unbelievable schedule kept by a candidate for the highest office, particularly constrained as this one was by an impossible time-frame for making a good and lasting impression before the polls opened. In this respect it was engaging and felt like a quick read because of the short “chapters” encompassed by one day’s activities.
We did learn some things about the other actors—Biden, her list of candidates for vice president, people who campaigned for her, and some of her close friends and family—but a lot of that information was revealed in quick asides rather than being the subject for candid discussion.
She talks a little bit about how her lack of a definitive stance on Gaza affected the campaign, and also how frustrating she found it to bring up her multitude of talking points about what she was excited to accomplish once in office, only to be shunted back into her current role and criticized for a lack of distinct policy differences from Biden. And she talked, of course, about other barriers—racial bias, misogyny, a massive disinformation campaign on the part of her opponent’s campaign.
I’m glad I read the book, but I admit I had hoped for more. I was looking not only for reflection, but for a little more critical self-analysis. There were reasons she didn’t prevail, and although these included outward forces, they also involved her platform, which apparently failed to engage crucial segments of the population. I wanted to read about whether and how she accepted accountability for some of these things, but it just wasn’t there. The narrative was insightful, but not particularly revelatory of weaknesses alongside her admittedly many strengths.
Reading it also gave me a sick feeling in my stomach all over again to realize what we could have had versus where we ended up. No matter what you might have considered Harris’s flaws or disliked about her policy positions, I can’t imagine anyone (although they apparently exist) who doubts, after nine months of this new regime, that we would have been exponentially better off if our country was currently being shepherded by Madame President. No disappearing of people to prisons in El Salvador or the Florida swamps. No National Guard troops strolling our streets opposing our right to protest.
We’d have ongoing health care with an eye to improving it, paths to citizenship, student loan forgiveness, substantial infrastructure jobs, a strong economy unfettered by tariffs, and a good ongoing relationship with our allies. We’d still be exporting soybeans to China and supporting Ukraine in its war with Putin. And I like to think that there could have been a breath of fresh air as regards encouraging the younger, more outspoken generation of liberal politicians to begin, finally, to take their rightful place in the halls of government as the previous dominant power structure retires.
But I digress. I’m glad I gained what insight was available from reading 107 Days; I simply wished for more.
Scary season
It’s Decorative Gourd season, and I should be coming up with a great list of scary reads to share with you. But…I’m going to be exceedingly lazy here and post a link to last year’s book recommendations for the spookily inclined. I am not a horror reader and, although I do like a good ghost story, I haven’t read any new ones this past year except for Wyrd Sisters and Mort, by Terry Pratchett and, while they do have a resident ghost or two (not to mention Death) as characters, they aren’t exactly fright-inducing! So if you haven’t read any of last years’s selection, try one, and if you have, you could always suggest one to me! Be convincing about its merits and I might post it!
Go HERE to find them.
Culture war
In Hazel Says No, by debut novelist Jessica Berber Gross, we explore the intricacies of the MeToo movement and the consequences of cancel culture in a small town in Maine. This author is being hailed by many as a new voice in feminist contemporary fiction, but for me it was an interesting exercise that didn’t quite make the transition to a leap-off-the-page story. There were fascinating nuances that explored areas I think no one considers, and for that I appreciated it, but the story dragged out far beyond the original dilemma and became less impactful as it did so.
The basic premise also had me wondering, Would this really happen at this moment in time?
The Greenberg-Blums, a Jewish family from Brooklyn, move to a small town in Maine after the father, Gus, receives an attractive job offer from a college there. His daughter, Hazel, is 18 and will start her senior year in high school in the fall, and his son, Wolf, is going into middle school. They move at the beginning of summer, and the kids spend most of it at the public pool, where Hazel encounters the high school principal, Richard White, there to supervise his daughter, Gracie, a future classmate of Wolf’s. He strikes up a conversation with her after noticing that she is reading a variety of fairly high-level literary novels while basking on her lounge chair, and suggests that perhaps Hazel should consider initiating a reading or writing club when she starts school in the fall. Their encounters are friendly but strictly surface, confined to a casual greeting or comments about reading and classes.
On the first day of school, a voice over the P.A. system calls Hazel Blum to the principal’s office. When she arrives, the principal chats with her for a few minutes, then sits down beside her, puts his hand on her knee, and informs her that each year he chooses one student with whom he will have sex during the year, and this year he has chosen Hazel. Her mind whirling with all the responses to this unbelievable statement, Hazel finally blurts out “NO!” and runs out of his office.
The rest of the story involves what happens when Hazel tells her parents, they confide in the college dean (a feminist studies scholar), and from there the news becomes public.
The first thing that hit me about this set-up was, Who in their right mind, in the aftermath of the immense blow-up of MeToo in the media, would actually do this? Smith not only propositions Hazel, but also explains that he has done this repeatedly in the past; although he has apparently gotten away with it up until now, does he really think that, after the profound cultural shift that came about as a result of the “outing” of sexual predators in powerful positions, his behavior could continue to go unremarked? Or that, once acknowledged, there would be no repercussions? Part of the MeToo phenomenon was the public scrutiny and accountability it promoted, paired with support for the survivors of sexual harassment and violence. For that reason, I was unable to overcome my disbelief that anyone would so blithely and transparently risk exposure by trying this on.
The parts of the book that I did like were how everything played out to conclusions that were not always expected. For instance, it explored the insular nature of a small town unable and unwilling to believe this accusation of a beloved public figure and how, for some, it provided an outlet for bigotry as they not only slut-shamed Hazel but also targeted her family because they were outsiders. It took into account the effects on Hazel and her family, but it also explored the consequences of being the wife and young daughter of the sexual predator. And, as Hazel’s story goes wide, we were also privy to how a story like this is taken up by the media in ways that go far beyond the initial scandal to perhaps exploit the situation to enhance their own agendas.
On a separate note, there is a scene in the book that was reminiscent of something that happened to me when I was a professor of library science teaching Young Adult Literature. The father, Gus, is an American Studies professor who teaches a class that considers the historical evolution of the family on television, as a microcosm of the larger culture. In his first class lecture he begins with Leave It to Beaver, the picture of 1950s traditionalism, then transitions through a few other sitcoms to All in the Family, with Archie Bunker’s misogyny and racism battling against his daughter and son-in-law’s wider sensibilities. After this, he moves to The Cosby Show as an example of the shift in the way black people are portrayed on television, featuring a family in which the father is a doctor, the mother a lawyer, and the children are benefiting from a lifestyle not previously seen on TV as part of the black experience. But although the show was a legitimate historical landmark, the minute he mentions the show in his class, certain of his students are outraged that he would dare to represent Bill Cosby in any way except as the outed serial predator we all later discovered him to be. Dr. Blum attempts to explain that the show, which aired from 1984 to 1992, could be looked at separately from the later discoveries about its star, but his students are unwilling to consider Cosby in any context, and several of them promptly start a petition to “Fire Gus Blum” that goes college-wide and then begins to attract attention that threatens his position.
In my YA Lit class, several students took issue with the fact that the first few weeks’ reading list consisted of books by and about white people. They demanded that I feature books by and about people of color, people of different socioeconomic status, and so on. I explained that since the first few weeks were dedicated to the history of young adult literature, which began to be considered a separate segment of fiction early in the 20th century, the assignments were consistent with the books that were being published at the time, which were written for white teens and did not begin to include people of color or LGBTQ+ as characters or talk about real-life issues until the 1960s.
I did however (like the father/professor in Hazel Says No) take a good, hard look at my syllabus and came to the conclusion that while i stood by my decision to represent those historically significant books, I could have done a better job with diversity when it came to updating my selections for the rest of the quarter, so I revised the choices by adding or substituting more inclusive works, both as regards authors and characters/stories. I also allowed the students themselves to suggest and select alternative books to read, if they found one that spoke to them. But, as happened in this novel, a certain small number absolutely refused to give up their first conclusions about me as an old white woman who was, at best, tone-deaf, and at worst, discriminatory and offensive. They felt free to gossip about me with each other, complain about me to my supervisor, and malign me in written comments that affected my livelihood.
The incident in this book that was reminiscent of my own experience of feeling canceled made me consider so many issues that are confronting our culture, and wonder how they will ultimately be resolved. On the political front right now, the current regime is intent on hurting people: They are whitewashing the past by removing historical websites about slavery, refusing to provide healthcare to women and others who don’t strictly conform to their restrictive view of humanity, and considering everyone not exactly made in their image to be “other” and open to attack. But there is also the faction who refuse, for example, to read the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of its lack of “political correctness,” despite historical context, or the fact that the main character rises above his culture with an epiphany that causes him to choose empathy over “doing the right thing.” (See my review, here.) These are the people who refused to vote for a candidate who represented 90 percent of their views because they disagreed with the other 10 percent, despite the fact that their refusal would plunge us into fascism. My hope for us is that we can manage to keep dialogue open, and calm the extreme pendulum swings so that both reason and empathy may prevail.
At any rate, Hazel Says No is definitely a conversation-starter (with others or in the privacy of your own mind!).
Through-story
I ran out of time and out of steam before completing Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven this week, and didn’t make it to the finish line. To tell the truth, I lost impetus before the library due date arrived, and switched to another book.
It’s not that I disliked Horse Heaven; in fact, the stories, characters, and language are actually quite wonderful. But that’s what it seems like—not a novel, but a series of short stories, strung together because they are all about the same subject—horses and all the people who surround them (owners, trainers, jockeys, etc.) in the racing business. And while I love horses and stories about them, I have never been a short story person. Short stories are, to me, like all the worst parts of starting to read a new book, with none of the payoff of getting to enjoy it once I’m invested.
As I kept going, the anecdotes and vignettes were beginning to add up, and I had hopes they would eventually converge into something, but it was taking a long time. I liked the picture she was painting, but a “through story” never developed, so the book didn’t drag me along in the way a novel would, making me want to know what would happen next.
While “through-story” isn’t a concept commonly used in readers’ advisory when we talk about appeals, maybe it should be. Without it, a compelling quality of story—momentum—is missing, and without momentum some readers have trouble getting to the end of a book. Even those of us who revel in language, character development, and world-building can have trouble with a book essentially lacking a plot—that ordered sequence of events that includes exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. While a plot may exist in Horse Heaven, its presence is so diffuse as to be indiscernible (at least to me).
After reading it for at least an hour a day for about a week, I received an email notice from the library that my book would be due in three days. I felt sure I was getting close to the end, or at least the three-quarter mark, and could beat my deadline, but when I checked the page count on my Kindle I discovered that I was at page 267 out of 543! At that point I decided to go read something (shorter) with a beginning, middle, and end that is all of a piece. I’ll come back to Horse Heaven someday when I’m in a different mood.
Diana Wynne Jones
I have spent a lot of quality reading time with the novels of Diana Wynne Jones. Although she writes mostly for middle-schoolers, there are also a handful of books that, while ostensibly for the younger set, have content possibly more suited to the adult fantasy reader. My favorite of hers is Howl’s Moving Castle, which is definitely one of those that appeals to a wide range of ages; I also enjoyed its two sequels, which are not up to the first one but are nonetheless good. And I will argue with devotees of Miyazaki that if you have only seen the animated movie made about Howl, you have not experienced Wynne Jones’s version; while the film is a truly delightful visual expression, it doesn’t begin to offer the nuance of the book itself. The other series of hers I have read and enjoyed is the Chrestomanci Chronicles, which are near-perfect fantasies for middle-schoolers. I have not read Dark Lord of Derkholm, but will no doubt get to it one of these days, as I will the Dalemark Quartet.
Her stories often combine magic with science fiction, bringing in fairy tales, heroic legends, parallel universes, and a sharp sense of humor that sometimes verges on satire or parody. There are levels to her books that are the key to making them enjoyable to a wide age range; young children can read them for surface enjoyment while older teens and adults get the jokes.
This past week I discovered that she also has some free-standing novels, and picked up Fire and Hemlock, which had an intriguing story line for which, in hindsight, I should have been better prepared.
The book owes its structure and character line-up to the ballad of Tam Lin, which dates from 1500s Scotland, and also to the story of Thomas the Rhymer, an actual Scots laird who lived from 1220 to 1298 whose story is confusingly similar to that of Tam Lin (both of them were kidnapped by the Queen of Elfland, although their destinies diverge after that initial act). I was embarrassingly unfamiliar with either of those legends going into reading this novel, and should have stopped the minute things got complicated and consulted Wikipedia for the synopses I finally ended up reading after I was done! Take heed of my experience and do that before you read this book if you want it to make sense. There are also echoes of both Hero and Leander and Cupid and Psyche, with echoes of T. S. Eliot. Diana Wynne Jones has written an explanation of her thoughts about the heroic that was included with my Kindle copy of the book, though it doesn’t appear except in later printed editions.
In the book, Polly Whittaker, 19, suddenly realizes that she has a set of double memories that began at the age of 10, which some entity is trying to make her forget. In the mundane set, she has been living an ordinary life: school, books, athletics, friends, irresponsible and uncaring parents, a loving but acerbic grandmother, and a boyfriend she’s not sure she wants. In the fantastical one, many of her actions are dictated by her sporadic but compelling friendship with a man she meets at a funeral, with whom she has an odd affinity. They experience some strange, inexplicable adventures together—are they truly magical?—but their friendship is threatened by menacing characters and events from which Tom Lynn attempts to shield Polly. She finally figures out what’s happening when it’s almost too late, and takes drastic action to secure both the memories and the relationship.
The book is such an odd mix of juvenile and adult that it was hard to read at some points, because it fluctuates between the mind of a young, naive girl and the definitely adult legend of a man in thrall to a wicked force that wishes to control his life. The narrative is carried by Polly, so we see everything through her clever and imaginative but innocent eyes, and if you are reading the book without knowledge of the backstory, it can be both frustrating and confusing, as well as long. I ended up liking it pretty well, and it’s probably Wynn Jones’s most ambitious plot in terms of the multiplicity of strands she introduces, but I was definitely happier with the straightforward, more mature, and somewhat humorous world of Howl’s Moving Castle.
What makes a mystery?
This is a question I have been pondering this week as I started reading Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, a book that has been recommended over and over again by readers on the various Facebook reading groups to which I belong. I am a big mystery fan—in fact, it’s probably my third most-read genre, maybe second, behind fantasy and possibly science fiction. I love a good mystery; but I specifically love one that has some quality of individuality and that arrests my attention and reawakens a somewhat jaded appetite. As I began reading, I discovered that Magpie Murders was not it.
This book has been touted as the heir to Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers (and probably to Conan Doyle), and I can see the attempt, but to me it was a bland, by-the-numbers imitation (possibly attempting to be a parody?) rather than a “brilliant recreation of vintage English crime fiction.” When I was almost 50 percent into the book, I seriously considered posting it as a DNF. I honestly didn’t understand why there was any hoopla at all when it comes to this book.
It’s a typical cozy setting in a small town in the English countryside, with the requisite landowner, vicar, shop keepers, eccentric spinsters, surly handymen, and so forth. The detective’s only point of uniqueness in this setting is that he is German by origin; but given all his mannerisms, quirks, and habits, he might as well be Sherlock or Poirot or Jessica Fletcher. He has the slightly dense assistant, he asks seemingly unrelated questions and makes leading remarks that he won’t explain, and then he claims to know who the murderer is before anyone could possibly expect him to have solved the crime, given the vast number of suspects and the meager number of clues. The publisher described this book as “masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful,” and my response was, sadly, “none of the above.”
When I hit 50 percent, though, we stepped out of the book and into the office of the publisher of Alan Conway’s series about the detective Atticus Pünd, and I realized that the page I quickly skimmed past at the beginning of the book actually had something to do with the story and wasn’t just an introduction or something. So I went back and read it with attention this time, and realized that this was a book within a book and we were now getting to the real story.
I’m going to say here that although it was my fault that I wasn’t paying sufficient attention at the beginning, I’m also going to hold both the format and the author accountable for a little of my confusion. First, I’m reading it on my Kindle, and the way it was structured didn’t lead the reader to recognize that the start of the book was before the start of the book! As for the author, do you really tell the entire story within the story without its reader ever breaking away from it? I mean, Susan Ryeland sits down on a rainy afternoon with a bottle of wine and some chips and salsa to read a long manuscript; it’s more than plausible that she gets up at some point to replenish one of those (it says later that she had gone through more than the one bottle of wine), get something more substantial to eat (she would have needed it, to cushion the effects of all that alcohol), use the loo (I repeat, lots of wine!). A break halfway through that 48 percent of the book to remind the reader that this is a false construct, so to speak, of what the book is really about would have been helpful—and also both realistic and logical.
Anyway…
Once I hit the end of the manuscript and returned to the “real world” of Cloverleaf Books, a small publishing company whose owner and top editor were both reading the manuscript of Alan Conway’s ninth Atticus Pünd novel over a long weekend, I thought things would pick up and we would get the explosive and fascinating book we were promised by reviews and cover blurbs alike—but alas, that faith was misplaced. Others have commented how much more exciting they found the actual mystery that unpacks itself from the pages of Magpie Murders (the book within the book called Magpie Murders), but if so, I certainly wasn’t reading the same book.
Susan Ryeland was a dull and ambivalent character who constantly expressed her frustration that she couldn’t “do” the mystery thing the way all the great characters of literature were able to master it. When she wasn’t being tentative and indecisive about her attempts to solve the mystery, she was whining about her boyfriend, Andreas, who wants to whisk her away to Greece to run a small hotel with him. What an inconsiderate guy!
The other characters are likewise less than charismatic, and Alan Conway himself is written as a cold, devious, and thoroughly unlikeable person about whom it was hard to care. And there were too many instances of clues that were discovered to be clues, but then weren’t explained. Maybe Horowitz is saving something for the next novel? If so, it yielded an unfortunate sense of frustration while reading this one.
I hung in there and finished the book, but it was a near thing, and I regretted spending the time on it once I was done. I won’t be visiting the next in the series, which is 604 pages of the same, according to another Goodreads reviewer who characterized it as “ponderous, overly complicated, and too long.” I spent a decade recommending Horowitz’s Alex Rider series to many teen readers, but I can’t do the same for this one. There are so many better mysteries out there, and I’m going to go find one to expunge the irritation from my brain!
Best or worst?
It is almost unprecedented that contemporary romance writer Emily Henry would have a rating under 4.0 on Goodreads for one of her books, but Great Big Beautiful Life is scoring a 3.99. It is even more rare for people to actually write “DNF” (did not finish) and discard one of her books before finishing it but, again, that has happened here. And yet, minus a few issues, it has been my favorite of her books to date.
Perhaps that is because I almost always want more than just the meet-cute, the enemies-to-lovers, the fake relationship, or whatever trope this genre’s authors employ while trying to make the rest of the story unique by the choice of professions for the protagonists or whatever other quirks they can throw in to make it distinctive. And this book has two story lines in it, each somewhat dependent on the other, that to me made it so much more interesting than the standard fare.
Alice Scott is a reliable writer of biographical stories and celebrity puff pieces for a reputable magazine. But she dreams of getting that big break that will take her to the next level and let her write more serious work, whether it’s articles or a book. Hayden Anderson just published his biography of a celebrity who struggled to capture his legacy as Alzheimer’s stole his memories, for which Hayden won a Pulitzer Prize. And now these two writers are in competition for a story that would be a huge score—the biography of Margaret Ives, the heir to a vast family fortune and an enduring social impact.
In her youth, Margaret lived a privileged existence as a frivolous and charismatic fixture of the society pages and the tabloids; but family tragedies and scandal drove her underground, and no one has heard from or about her in decades. Alice, however, fascinated by her for both personal and professional reasons, has tracked her down to a small island off the coast of Georgia, where she is living a secluded and anonymous life, and Alice has gone to see her, to pitch the idea of working with her to write her story. She has competition, however, that she didn’t count on, and is dismayed to discover that it’s a famous writer with a Pulitzer already under his belt. Margaret, both canny about the value of her story and also deeply distrustful of journalists (and people in general), offers them each an opportunity: Stay on the island for one month, meet with her regularly (and separately) to talk about her past and also to outline how each of them thinks her story should be told, and abide by her decision at the end of the month when she picks one of them with whom to move forward.
In addition to being in competition and not wanting to reveal their strategies to the other writer, Alice and Hayden are bound by airtight non-disclosure agreements they signed for Margaret, swearing not to talk to anyone about the contents of their meetings with her, including with one another. But it’s a small island with limited places to stay, eat, walk, and shop, and it’s inevitable they will run into each other; so they have to work out a relationship that is civil while avoiding all talk of why they are actually in this place. This proves challenging for several reasons. (Yeah, you see where this is going.)
The story switches back and forth between Margaret’s first-person reminiscences of growing up rich, famous, and beleaguered by notoriety, and the present-day thoughts and feelings of Alice and Hayden as they weather this month of testing by Margaret and their burgeoning feelings for one another. This is apparently what a lot of her fans didn’t like—both the jumping back and forth between past and present, and the intrusion of another person’s life story into the middle of their romance. But I found it an effective contrast and was caught up in both stories as they evolved.
In the contemporary story, we are much more involved with Alice, while Hayden remains a mystery. The story is primarily driven by Alice’s inner thoughts and by her encounters with and reflections on Hayden, which works with their personalities—Alice’s sunny and outgoing, and Hayden’s secretive and a bit dour. But ultimately we figure out what he’s thinking and feeling too, based on his actions and responses to her, and begin to hope that things might work out between them despite all the obstacles in their path. Picture, for instance, the feelings of a person in a relationship who loses out on a dream job to the person with whom they are involved. Also, they live in different places (Alice in Atlanta and Hayden in New York) and come from and pursue completely different lifestyles. But…there is a spark. More than a spark. So one way or another they have to figure it out.
There was only one thing that didn’t work for me about this story and, while it wouldn’t normally faze me, in this context I found it both inappropriate and awkward. It was all the sex. I wouldn’t normally believe I’d ever say something like that, but in this case I found it positively jarring in the way it distracted from the story. In fact, it was more than just a distraction—I felt like it flat-out didn’t work and shouldn’t have been there.
When Alice and Hayden figure out that they have feelings for one another, they make an agreement that it would be just too much, too weird, too tragic for them to get physically involved during their audition month with Margaret, because of what will happen at the end of that month. So they promise to “be harmless to one another,” and put off a physical relationship despite the attraction between them. That all makes sense. Then they (Alice in particular) do everything they can to test that resolve and flout every rule they make for themselves. I’m sure the author thought that making them irresistible to one another would be exciting, but for me it was offputting to see that they couldn’t stick to their resolve for a month, in the interests of not hurting the other person long-term. And the way that the physical relationship was portrayed was likewise distracting to the story, in that it “just happened” at strategic intervals, almost as if an editor looked over the manuscript and said to Emily Henry, “Oh, your readers won’t put up with no sex in a romance,” and Henry responded by writing calculatedly provocative scenes, and then counted off pages and dropped one in here and there almost out of the blue. It was so inorganic!
Don’t let my irritation with this stop you from reading this book; it’s interesting, and convoluted enough with its twists and big reveals to be a compelling story. But after you have finished it, see if your reaction was the same as mine, and let me know!
Egypt by another name
I picked up a Kindle deal for a new YA fantasy a few weeks back, and finally got around to reading it. The book is His Face is the Sun (Throne of Khetara #1), by Michelle Jabès Corpora, and it’s being billed as something that the readers of several other teen fantasy writers (Bardugo, Mafi, Tahir) would enjoy. And although I believe that is true, I’m not sure they should have focused it so relentlessly at the Young Adult market. In fact, I often feel that way when it comes to fantasy and science fiction.
In other genres (realistic stories, romance, coming of age), the audience can be clearly demarcated as teens, ages 13-18 or whatever—many adults aren’t interested in teen angst-ridden 15-yo first love stories. But with fantasy, if the world-building is thorough and convincing and the protagonists are engaging, I often feel these books are done a disservice not to be marketed widely. This one, for instance, ended up pretty quickly in the bargain Kindle bin (I think I paid $1.99), and it shouldn’t have, because it’s a really beguiling read. So adult fantasy lovers, pay attention and check it out, because if you enjoy it, there are two more books to come. (Also, this series is directed at more mature teens, due to some frank content, just fyi.)
The kingdom of Khetara is a faintly disguised Egypt, with some of the same gods under the same names and also under different ones, and similar dynasties of rulers and conquered peoples. It could almost be historical fantasy, but the author chose to create her own stage within the auspices of Egyptian history. There are priests and oracles, there are competitors vying for the pharoah’s throne, there are rebellious mistreated commoners, all set against a background of desert, river, village, palace, and temple, brought to life in beautifully detailed descriptions (that don’t slow the story at all). There is a mythology-based magic system that winds through the entire story in an organic manner and, although there is a little romance, this is primarily an epic fantasy focused on history, politics, magic, and destiny.
The main characters are four people who couldn’t be more different: Princess Sita, one of the triplets to whom the current Pharoah is father; Nefermaat, a bewildered young village girl who, after a spontaneous vision brought on by the annual parade for the goddess Bastet, has been whisked from her home to the capitol to train as a priestess; Raetawy, leader of a rebel group of farmers oppressed by the pharoah’s punitive taxes; and Karim, a young grave robber who unearths more than he bargained for and sets in motion some of the events envisioned by Neff and anticipated by Sita’s brother Mery, who is determined to rule Khetara sooner rather than later.
Although four protagonists is a lot, Corpora does a wonderful job of developing each of them with clear personalities and motives, and separates their subplots (politics, magic, rebellion, and fortune-seeking) while intersecting them at the appropriate moments to keep us intrigued. (Oh, and there’s a delightful fifth narrator—only encountered a few times—who further draws things together.)
I was completely involved in this story from beginning to end and, when I encountered that cliffhanger and realized that this book had just been published in May and I would have to wait at least a year for the next one, was sorry that I had read it so quickly. I will do a reread when the sequel comes out, to catch all the delightful detail that I may have skimmed over while trying to absorb the book as a whole. If you ever thrilled to the stories of adventures down the Nile, hotly contested dynasties and mysterious portents, you will want to read His Face is the Sun.
Yours Truly…except…
I wanted something a little more realistic after immersing myself in the sci-fi/fantasy of Discworld, but nothing too heavy. So I picked up Abby Jiminez’s most recent contemporary romance, Yours Truly. I am always torn when I read romance, because there is a tiny portion of my brain (heart?) that wishes things could go the way they do in these books, but a larger percentage that keeps saying “C’mon!” every few chapters.
There were things to like about this book. The male protagonist, Dr. Jacob Maddox, is almost too good to be true, except for one major thing that makes the story much more realistic: He suffers from nearly paralyzing anxiety (and, although it’s not named, possibly a little OCD as well). I liked the way the author incorporated this, because we don’t see much of these very common yet hidden conditions in this kind of fiction. The female protagonist, Dr. Briana Ortiz, is a quirky, interesting person with a hair-trigger temper and a great sense of humor who is currently dealing with some serious issues: divorce, a brother who needs a kidney transplant, work stress. Again, the sensitive and stark way the author dealt with the brother’s need for a new kidney and the likelihood he wouldn’t get one was a positive element. The way the author introduces the two characters and the initial misunderstandings followed by Jacob’s unusual solution to their hostility drew me in. (I love some epistolic fiction…)
Having acknowledged those elements, I now have to say that the book was not ultimately a success in my eyes for one reason: TOO. MANY. TROPES. Yes, I did all that capitalization and punctuation on purpose, because, as I noted earlier, “C’mon!”
We have:
• Workplace competition (rivals to lovers)
• Recovering from a breakup (both of them) so, rebound!
• Fake dating (pretending they’re in a relationship when they are not…or are they?)
• Uncomfortable (but suggestive) situations caused by the above
• Realization that they are soul mates
• Miscommunication that pollutes the relationship
• LACK of communication (bordering on the ridiculous) that rips them apart
The whole thing ultimately made me so tired.
I will admit that I really liked the characters, which is probably what carried me through the rest of the sturm und drang. And there were a couple of hilarious incidents that will make this book forever memorable. (In one case it’s killing me not to drop a spoiler here.) But the completely unnecessary angst that resulted from each of the characters being too cowardly to ask a simple question of the other for fear the answer wouldn’t be what they wanted to hear was not only implausible but became unbearable as the situation was drawn out for about 85 percent of the book. And the interminable inner monologues about said miscommunication made me want to bang their heads together (or mine against a wall).
I don’t quite know what to say; it was one of those books that you liked pretty well when you finished it, and then began to pick apart as you gained the perspective of days away plus other, better books as contrast. I won’t say don’t read it; but go in knowing that it is in some ways almost a parody of its genre.
Best in Show
Today is National Dog Day, and I usually do some sort of post noting books that I have enjoyed that include dogs as characters. This year, however, I didn’t discover any new titles since last time, so I decided instead to be a diligent research librarian—I’d go online to see if someone else had done the work for me!
I found a couple of “best dog books” lists. This is, of course, highly subjective, dependent on what you consider to be the “best” and why. But there were some familiar titles and also some that were new to me, so I’m going to satisfy today’s post requirement with a couple of URLs to other people’s lists.
The first is titled 100 Best Dog Books of All Time, and although it forgot a few of my favorites (such as A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, by C. A. Fletcher, and the Beka Cooper Trilogy, by Tamora Pierce), it did include quite a few favorites.
Then I found something of a treasure—it’s a list, on Wikipedia, of “fictional dogs,” which includes dogs that may not feature in either the title or description of “their” book. While the list is woefully incomplete (I may have to do some Wiki editing myself!), it named some names I hadn’t encountered before, so it was a profitable find.
Esquire Magazine contributed “The Long Tail of Dogs in Fiction,” taken from readers of the author’s Twitter page, while Flavorwire listed the “most beloved” amongst them, and Barkwells’ Dog Blog listed the “Pups who stole our hearts.” The Center for Fiction showcased “Dean Koontz’s Five Favorite Books About Dogs,” with a couple that were new to me. The blog Argos and Artemis went for “The Best Critically Acclaimed Books About Dogs.” (I should note that many/most of these lists are not current, but range back over the past decade.) And finally (because, at 69, I am still a girl), here is A Mighty Girl’s blog post “A Girl’s Best Friend: 50 Books About Mighty Girls and Their Dogs.”
Amongst all of these lists, most dog lovers should be able to find something that appeals to them and their dog(s). (That’s right, don’t forget to read aloud to that face gazing persistently at you over the top of the book cover!)
Or, you can jump back to one of my NDD posts from previous years, Dog Days of Summer and Dog Day Afternoon.
HAPPY DOG DAY!
The Book Adept 