This book had me at magic. And magicians. I always expect pure literary magic out of books about magicians and oftentimes that’s the case, but in this instance not so much. It is literary and has magic in it, and a magician, and a magician’s assistant and their compère and the three find themselves in a love triangle that seemingly only magic can resolve, but the overall effect is somehow muted. At least, it’s nowhere near as excited as The Amazing Pablo’s performances.
It’s almost frustrating, because it definitely has all the right ingredients in play, interweaving historical fiction and romance and mystery over the decades as these three lives remain forever tangled in a way, but the triangle here is far from equilateral, Jack the compère gets the shortest side, Eve and Ronnie share the rest fairly evenly, only Eve gets to travel forward in time and Ronnie backward. Ronnie is by far my favorite and the most interesting character, from his impoverish childhood to a chance meeting that sets him on course to perform magic to building a career for himself, finding a perfect assistant, proposing…and having to contend with the unfair distinctly unmagical tricks of real life. Eve is less explained or maybe to me less explicable and Jack isn’t all that developed altogether. So isosceles as far as triangles go. This is my first time reading the author I believe, though he’s so well known and acclaimed, and it’s easy to understand the attention, the man produces a uniformly high quality narrative. There was something about it, though, something too gossamer like, too dreamy, too heavily leaning of a tell instead of show that didn’t quite work for me. It was an easy enough of a read and quick too (however funny it might have been to end up with a slow and ponderous book from an author named Swift) and I did it in one sitting late into the night, but not quite as magical as I’d hoped. Worthy read and a reasonably good introduction to the author, but left something to be desired. It would make a lovely BBC adaptation, though. Someone should get on that, really.
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I realize I don’t know if I’ve ever read Chizmar. Which is ridiculous for a devoted long time genre fan. I know of him, of course, I’m familiar with Cemetery Dance, I even own one of their gorgeous signed editions in my collection and there’s a very good chance I might have read a short story of his at some time in some anthology, but never actually dedicatedly read him as an author. Until now. And boy, does that man know how to make a first impression.
And at first impression, this is a true crime book. A properly (in fact, overwhelmingly so) steeped in nostalgia throwback to a more innocent (was it?) time some three decades ago when Chizmar as a young man fresh out of college and temporarily staying with his parents back in his picturesque small Maryland town finds himself tangentially involved in investigating the brutal murders of the local girls. The small town idyll straight out of any King story, the geehaw aw shucks good naturedness of the, well, almost everybody, and specifically the saintly Chizmars and their son’s fiancé contrasts strikingly with the horrific nature of the crimes and the sinister presence behind them. It makes for a pretty riveting read. There are plenty of photos with each chapter to…take you there, if you will. It’s first rate suspense fiction with a stunning resolution, but wait…it isn’t over yet. You got to read the entire thing, including the author’s note. In fact, it is crucial that you do. And beware, minds might be blown if not properly secured. I mean, that ending…that ending made me kind of wild with joy at its sheer cleverness and originality. And the thing is, I can’t talk about it, of course, don’t want to give things away, but it’s so good. It elevated my opinion and rating of the book immediately. And…oh so frustrating not to be able to discuss it…but yeah, you just gonna have to find out for yourself. Suffice it to say…wow. Awesome. And this terrific potentially ingenious blend of memoir, true crime and metafiction is perfectly singular it its awesomeness. What a ride. Loved it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Quantum thrillers seem to be the new thing. That’s fun. I’m not sure if it all began with the success of Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, but here they are. I’ve just read another one, Infinite by Freeman and now this book. But then again I would have read this book no matter the genre, I’m a huge Max Barry fan. I’ve loved his work back when he did clever social satires and now that he’s genre hopping, the interest hasn’t waned, despite his somewhat underwhelming science fiction venture Providence.
And with this book he’s back to awesome. Just like that. One or twenty two spins around the multiverse later. This is a story of a serial killer. Or a story of a misbegotten romantic obsession. Or a story about a world with entirely too many possible outcomes. You decide. Things can change subtly but unalterably in a blink, but then again some things remain constant. Like Maddie May, an aspiring actress and Felicity, a determined reporter with a potent altruistic streak, determined to save Maddie, and Clayton, a disturbed man so madly in love with Maddie, she’ll need protection from him in any world. And these three will tangle through different timelines, until arriving at a satisfactory resolution. And it’s tons of fun to behold. The thing that Crouch got so right and Freeman did ok and this book nailed is the world building (or worlds, more accurately) for the multiverse. If you’re doing it all the way up, prepare to lay out some science. If you’re doing it on a more superficial level, cover the basics and stick to the uniform rules. Barry goes with the latter approach, forgoing oversciencing which can often go by the way of overspicing, and relying instead on the interesting, likable, compelling characters. And it works like a charm. Which is to say, I was completely charmed. I enjoyed the story, appreciated the pacing, loved the narrative and the original concept and was completely engaged with the characters. All in all, an excellent awesomely entertaining read from a clever, talented and versatile author. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. This is my third read by the author, so guess I’m officially a fan. Wasn’t sure at first, thought maybe the art would be too cartoonish for me, but it actually it surprisingly effective for how minimal it is. Delisle manages to do a lot with seemingly such simply crafted panels. It works especially well for this story, because it is by nature a bare minimum story, a real life tale of an NGO worker kidnapped and (quite inexpertly, albeit not too brutally) held for ransom for four months. I say inexpertly…well, you’ll find out why.
So this is a fresh territory for Delisle who’s made his name writing first person travelogues to so conventionally inhospitable corners of the world. The location here stays in line, but the story belongs to another, Delisle is just a conduit. And there isn’t much to the story, most of it in a man locked up in an almost bare space, so it really showcases the author’s talent, not to mention the protagonist’s spirit, just how compelling of a read it is. And it’s a very quick one too, don’t let the page count intimidate you, it took me maybe all of 95 minutes to finish. Delisle understand the graphic medium well enough to rely on images to speak, so it isn’t very text heavy. And it isn’t as bleak as you’d think it might be, oddly enough. While I may never understand the maniacal altruism of people like the main character here that drives them to such dangerous far away places in desperate attempts to improve, care for and save (and this guy went back into the field after taking just six months to recover and continued at it for 18 years), it’s certainly impressive to know they exist, quietly heroic and psychologically resilient. So it isn’t just an interesting story, it’s also an inspiring one. Recommended. I’m absolutely delighted to be the first one to review this book on Goodreads and maybe anywhere, because I really liked it and I can only hope my words will persuade more people to check it out. And to think, I didn’t even expect much out of it. Never heard of the author. Selected it almost strictly by the cover and let’s face it, that’s a great cover and lo and behold the book turned out to be just as good. Way to match the cover appeal.
There’s a quality to it, a very specific British darkness that lives in the everyday ordinary lives, a slow building dread, a slow boiling pot of normalcy that hits a certain degree and goes ballistic. It involves seemingly nice people who aren’t really all that nice and normal scenery that isn’t really all that normal. In my mind, this is a style most closely associated with the late great Ruth Rendell. Unlikable characters doing increasingly terrible things to each other. And, as it often the case with these things, it all starts with an obsession… The Ashes is a grand old dilapidated place at the end of a quiet street. For sale, but expensive, requiring much work to bring it back to shape, and prohibitive in its innate spookiness, it doesn’t have much of a curb appeal, but for Wendy, it’s a dream come true. She immediately becomes enchanted with it, something neither her spouse nor her three kid share, and when a happy chain of events leads her to have the means to purchase and renovate it, she does. Soon enough The Ashes is alive once again…and maybe entirely touch so. Are there voices in the night? Creaks in the attic? After all, what old place doesn’t have a murderous secret or two. Wendy is determined to know all there is to know about her beloved Ashes, but in following her obsession she ends up driving away all she previously held so dear… Each chapter is prefaced with something like a diary entry chronicling living with a grave and deadly secret, but only at the end do you really find out the details, so there’s a nice plot twist there. But the rest of the novel is more of a drama, family drama, with some slight supernatural aspects and some mystery elements. It’s well crafted, albeit leisurely paced. For me, it read so slowly I suspected the page count to be off, but in a very enjoyable way. I liked the descriptions, The Ashes alone takes up the first 10% easily. The pacing really worked here, though, it’s that kind of a story, Just like the Britishness really worked. Just like setting it back some decades worked, providing certain more traditional family dynamics, which are necessary to the story. It’s bleak, of course, but it’s such a well rendered bleakness. Wendy’s love for The Ashes, like some of the best love stories, is a tragic affair, but it’s such a strangely compelling one. I enjoyed reading it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. If profoundly disturbed is how you want to walk away from a book…well, look no further. And sure, women have been going mad in fiction for ages, they’ve been secreted away in the attics and madhouses, there was fire, wallpapers, other women to contend and compete with and usually a man behind it all, a brute or sadist or bastard or some combination thereof. But what if there was a madness that needed no assist to descend, something more…organic, if you will. What if a woman went mad from within, after years of internalized emotional child abuse from an uncaring mother after an unwanted sexual experience, after decades of social conditioning right to a marriage that offered comfort and entirely too much time to let all the ingredients simmer together into something combustible. That’s pretty much Mrs. March’s tragic trajectory. The eponymous protagonist, the owner of the spiffy gloves on the cover, a woman who is a star of her own show to such an extent that her entire life is structured in a precisely performative way.
Mrs. March’s greatest role is that of a wife to Mr. March, an acclaimed author and, with his latest book, the toast of the town. She is his wife, a mother of his child, a woman hosting his swanky soirees, a getter of his clen shirts, a manager of his maid, etc. So much so that she doesn’t even get a first name until the last page, her entire personality built around her marital title. Every action, every word…a finely tuned performance. A laborious difficult to sustain act. It’s no surprise it can’t last, but it’s the way it all goes off the rails that’ll have you absolutely riveted. This descent into madness is rendered with all the mesmerizing wrongness of a car crash magnetism. It’s a novel of a certain time and place, say 70s, when women roles in the society were define with claustrophobic strictness, but not so much that there were no other options, which implies a certain complicity. For, just because Mrs. March was brought up to be a certain kind of a proper young lady, doesn’t mean she’s made no choices along the way. Once upon a time she was thrilled to bag the handsomest professor on campus. And she has enjoyed years of a certain quality of glitz on his arm and by his side. The toll it’s all has taken on her psyche is difficult to estimate, because she’s such a tightly held together character for so long and when she unravels, it’s a spectacular and dangerous mess. But it’s so good, it’s really good. This is for fans of Yellow Wallpaper, who thought the protagonist there was too likeable. You won’t have to deal with that here. There are virtually no likeable characters, but lately I’ve been finding a nice line up of books that are good enough to not need that easy attractor. Just terrible people doing terrible things to each other, with or without intent, sometimes just because they can’t help themselves, sometimes thoughtlessly and yes, sometimes with a frightening purpose. And of course, something they are just completely mad. You can make your own assessments of Mrs. March. She’d expect no less, being her own worst enemy and all that. And to think it all began with Mr. March’s new book and a character in it who everyone thinks must be based on his wife. And oh, did it snowball from there. Such small things, such careless acts… I was initially interested in this book after finding out that Elizabeth Moss optioned it for a movie, a Blumhouse movies no less. So reading it, she was impossible not to picture. And if the movie’s done right and taken seriously, this can be award material, finally, for an actress who very much deserves it. Not sure how she found this book, a random debut by a Spanish author and all that, but that’s a great find. And Moss, being easily one of the best actresses of her generation with incredible versatility and talent, is going to kill this one, appropriately enough. For now, though, it’s only in book form, you’ll have to use your imagination, though not too much, the author does a terrific job of bringing a cinematically vivid quality to it all by herself. Brain punch of a book. Must read for fans of dark psychological fiction. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Vera Johnson has lived a long, long life and in all of her years none have proved to be as momentous, as exciting, as devastating as 1906, the year San Francisco was nearly leveled by an epic earthquake. In 1906 Vera was 15, a bastard child of SF’s most popular madam, given to and paid for a Swedish single mother to raise alongside her own child. Vera has a scant relationship with her birthmother, a potently ambitious well connected woman who for all her admirable qualities doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body. Until the earthquake rips through the city permanently altering all preexisting arrangements and Vera and her (nonbiological) sister Pie find themselves taking possession of a fancy mansion she never got to grow up in, her birthright. But the girls are not alone, they are antagonized and cared for in equal measures by her mother’s former employee Tan and his family, just as the position of Chinese people in the city gets suddenly quite precarious. There’s a love interest that slowly makes his way into the picture. There are all the terrific variegated players who slowly come to populate the place. And then there are real life characters cleverly integrated into the fabric of the plot, from politicians to socialites. All set against the backdrop of the city ravaged by nature and yet poised to make yet another comeback, to live up to its flag, to rise from the ashes. There are great many things this novel gets right the first and foremost of them being creating a genuinely excellent young protagonist in adult fiction. It isn’t often than a 15 year old can carry a story with such aplomb. It’s a bildungsroman in a way, of course, 1906 shapes Vera into a person of steel, will and drive she becomes, albeit possibly stealing away too much softness through teaching some lessons too early and too brutally. Secondly, there are some terrific descriptions of the city. I’ve recently armchair traveled to SF, but a present day version. This was a time machine armchair trip, which is almost as good as hot tub time machine and by some accounts more so, especially in the summer. The writing is good, the characters are enjoyable, it’s sad without being depressing. Not sure why I didn’t love it, though I definitely liked it a lot. A transporting sort of entertainment, Great for fans of historical fiction. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley
Podcasts and true crime seem to be all the rage these days. And I don’t get it. No, I mean, I intellectually understand the appeal of it on, but viscerally those things do nothing for me. Fictional crime on the other paw, yes, please. Even fictional crime involving podcasts, which is most definitely a thing, since this is the second such book I’ve read in just the last two weeks.
This one was definitely the superior of the two, though. Superior, in fact, to a great many other thrillers I’ve read recently. This book grabbed me from the get go and did not let go. Which is, presumably, the appeal of a good podcast, too. The basic plot revolves around Elle, the podcaster extraordinaire, who utilizes the platform to do investigative journalism/mystery solving, specializing in crimes never solved and oftentimes forgotten by many, though never the victims’ families. Because podcasts and true crime are so popular and because Elle is great at what she does, her show is trending and her fans are many. And so for her latest season she decides to go after the mysterious and terrifying TCK, The Countdown Killer, who terrorized Minnesota 20 years ago and then got dead, allegedly. At any rate, the killings were over, the countdown ended…or maybe just hit a prolonged snooze. The thing is, though, Elle is convinced TCK is still alive and a string of recent deaths and kidnappings is making that theory increasingly plausible. The police may not be on board and Elle might be going into this entirely too emotionally involved, her own childhood trauma colorizing her perspective, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t onto something. It’ll be a great story, if she lives long enough to tell it. So…just how dangerous it is to not let the sleeping serial killers eternal lie? Short answer…very. For longer answer…read the book. Seriously, do. It’s so freaking good. I’m a fan of dark psychological fiction and I read tons of these thrillers and it is so infrequently I stumble upon one so strikingly well done. This book is smart, dynamic, it lets you tag along on Elle’s journey and solve the mystery at her or your own pace, it doesn’t cheat its readers, the clues are laid out as they are discovered, plus you slowly get to know both Elle and the killer (when the time is right), find out what made them as they are. Elle remains a single narrator throughout and makes for a terrific compelling protagonist on her obsessive, sleep deprived quest. The wintery Minnesota provides a very apt canvas, after all what’s more striking than read blood on white snow. And yes, I did read it on a now unusual (thanks, global warming) snow day. I liked the story, the characters, the mystery. I really liked the writing, it realized the story with cinematic vividness. And I loved what the book had to say about the modern day serial killer obsession. Because we do, in so many ways, feed into their twisted psychosis by never shutting up about it. Not the things that solve crimes and actually make a difference, but the books and the movies about the crimes already solved, from attempts to understand their aberrant psychology to pure entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Most of the time these killers crave attention and we continue to give it to them, loads of it. Does the world need Zac Efron as Ted Bundy? It’s entertaining, sure, but isn’t all of that just feeding (posthumously or otherwise) the outsized egos of maniacs? Are they not best left forgotten or at least not Efroned? Might it be enough to just have your serial killers fictional, enjoying some well prepared livers? Should the abyss be stared at quite so intently? Are we so moral, good and conscientious that a contrast needs to be provided? Anyway…some food for thought there. Back to it…the book…very impressive, especially for a debut. In fact, as much as I abhor serials and adore standalones, I’d definitely check out the next season of Elle’s podcast, should the author decide to do a sequel. Finally, a properly thrilling thriller. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Being the first person to review this book for Goodreads I’ll try to make it as objective and informational as possible. So here we go, you probably heard this before, but 25 years ago something terrible took place in a small town in Maine, something involving kids and a depraved evil being. Fast forward to the future and the past comes creeping back, slowly, through nightmares of a boy, now man, who thought he was so good at forgetting.
Pure King territory, really, nostalgia steeped past rolling into the increasingly dangerous present. And Rolfe does his absolute utmost to do the oh so familiar theme justice. To be fair, there are very few authors like Rolfe, he’s a lifelong trier and I admire that. Most authors, it seems, are either great right out of the gate or not and never get there, but Rolfe has actually steadily improved over the years, I’ve literally read his progress, it’s all there. Mind you, he isn’t going to hit King level any time soon, but just about every single book of his read chronologically is an improvement upon its predecessor and he’s now at the really decent level, finally. This book showed that off amply. The writing, the dialogue and especially the characters worked very well. Did he go over the top with the dream sequences? Yeah, probably. But you have a nicely creepy atmospheric scary story with some really decent characters and it makes for a pretty fun read. I know I only offered plot generics until now, so here’s some more…main protagonist, 40, nice guy, happily married, good person, helps others for a living, kinda lonely, his only friend seems to be a local enterprising almost 16 year old kid (by far the best character in the book), dreams terrible dreams about the past he can’t remember, but apparently didn’t quite forget either. The wife seemed ok at first, but then her biological clock going off and it’s all you hear, in fact she cries for so much of the book, you almost expect her to just float away eventually. Rolfe also uses her as an homaging tools for some of his favorite authors, it seems. The man has a genuine love for the genre and it’s cute and all, but his fanboy approach results in namedropping (old man Keisling down the devil’s Creek road) that personally I find kind of distracting. Some genre fans might enjoy that sort of thing, though. Like an Easter egg. Anyway, there’s also a highly sadistic pederastic serial killer, Native American legends, nice town with a not so nice (creepy, murderous) past and way too many cemeteries, etc. It’s like Rolfe knows the kind of novel he’s writing and checks every box on the list. Right down to the positively emotionally manipulative and oh so warm and cozy ending. And yeah, it may not be all that original, but it’s genuinely entertaining and it reads quickly and has lots of spooky thrills for genre fans. Thanks Netgalley. just need to quit reading Murderbot books. I don’t have a single good reason for continuing to do so. I didn’t love the first one (unlike so many others) and I didn’t love any of the subsequent ones. I don’t even think I like them very much. It’s really the strangest thing, this appeal they so inexplicably exude. I mean, it’s possible I’m just really trying to get what the huge deal about them is, they are so well received, well liked, well reviewed, lavished with every possible sci fi award out there. And I’m just like…why?
But the thing is all of them until this one at least got one thing right…their length. Always a long novella length, no more. My favorite format. So when I found the latest Murderbot on Netgalley I downloaded it on a whim (who knows, maybe that’ll be the winner) only to realize that was book six. There was book five out there I didn’t read. And for some reason book five is approximately three times the normal length. There’s really no good reason for that page count either, for me it only served to highlight all the things I don’t really enjoy about the series. Because Murderbot himself is a fun guy. It’s the books he’s in that drag. There’s something about the authors writing and plotting that just really doesn’t work for me. It’s so busy, freakishly busy, overloaded with tech, bombarded with space sh*t of all kinds that it completely buries the plot. This isn’t merely that you can’t find the forest for the trees, it’s that the trees are being launched at you so rapidly and indiscriminately that you can’t pause to even consider the forest. Which is why having read the entire book, I can barely summarize the plot, barely. Something about abandoned space colony, something about space fights. There’s a fun blast from the past, ART is back, now the epic machine/man/machine bromance can continue and that’s all warm and fuzzy, but doesn’t get nearly enough screen time, not with all the other crap going on, basically tons of mostly interchangeable characters doing busy work. But overall, what was that all about. Why did the author suddenly decide to go novel length? Obviously the experiment either didn’t work and was completely unnecessary, book six is back to novella length. And I’m probably gonna end up reading it too, bewilderingly enough. And maybe one day Murderbot will live up to all of his acclaim, but it doesn’t seem likely. You have the entire series resting on the mechanized shoulders of a single character, whose main traits are sarcasm and tv series addiction. And his AI buddy’s fun too in a similar monotone way. The rest is muddled plotting, hectic overbusy action, nonexistent character development, one note humorous asides, and so on. It’s essentially a gimmick series that somehow found a very adoring audience. Thing is as social media, most pop culture trends, reality tv, etc. have taught the world is that popularity doesn’t necessarily correlate to quality. For me, Murderbot is a shining example of that. Then again, mine is a dissenting opinion, so take it as such. What seems to me like a giant waste of time, might be a science fiction adventure that’ll wow you. Oh Murderbot, you deserve more. Frankly I do too |
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December 2023
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