Review: SOMEDAY DAUGHTER by Ellen O’Clover

Feb 122024
 

Booklist: Audrey’s mom, Camilla St. Vrain, wrote the self-help book Letters to My Someday Daughter that made her a household name; Audrey only wants to spend time with her boyfriend and work toward her own someday medical career. But Camilla has other plans, bringing Audrey on a tour to discuss the book Camilla wrote years ago. Pushed to answer invasive questions and constantly surrounded by her mother’s interns—including the irresistible Silas—at least Audrey gets a national tour of doctors out of the deal. But will her future even matter if she can’t make peace and connect with her mother? Full of themes around found family and forgiveness, O’Clover (Seven Percent of Ro Devereux, 2023) neatly layers the road-trip narrative over clever family drama and adds a surprise twist. Readers will find discussions of mental health, while immersive romantic relationship drama adds additional substance as Audrey navigates her complicated mother-daughter relationship. A solid addition to any contemporary young adult collection and no doubt resonant for teens growing up in front of their parents’ social media.

Review: THE LADY IN GLASS AND OTHER STORIES by Anne Bishop

Feb 092024
 

Library Journal: This collection contains Bishop’s (The Queen’s Price) previously published flash fiction and short stories, along with a handful of new tales. Bishop has organized her stories based on theme and provides a short introduction to each section. Her notes about the stories are intimate and often set the scene for the upcoming titles. The stories themselves consist mostly of high fantasy or dystopian science fiction and include much of her early fiction, fairy-tale retellings, and some stand-alone stories. While Bishop includes a few stories set in the worlds of her beloved series (“Black Jewels,” “A Novel of the Others”), readers can also expect a wide variety of new worlds that still contain the familiar themes of feminine power and justice. The book will likely hook her tried-and-true fans with extra stories from her successful series, but this collection’s strength lies in its other tales, with “Friends and Corpses” being the highlight.

VERDICT Recommended for fans who are curious about Bishop’s journey as a writer and are interested in reading about the inspiration and motivation behind her stories.

Review: THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST by Premee Mohamed

Feb 082024
 

Publishers Weekly: Mohamed (the Void trilogy) turns from cosmic horror to dark fantasy in an enchanting, bite-size adventure that will put readers in mind of Robert Holdstock’s classic Mythago Wood. Legend has it that an otherworldly realm full of mysterious humanoid creatures exists deep within Elmever forest, but no one who’s gone into the woods has ever returned to confirm or deny these rumors—save for Veris Thorn, who, before the start of the novel, saved a child from the forest, though it was more a feat of luck than skill. When Eleonor and Aram, the children of a cruel emperor referred to only as the Tyrant, disappear into the woods, the Tyrant gives Vern 24 hours to bring them back. If she fails, the Tyrant will kill her family and raze her village. This tense quest through the eerie and atmospheric forest propels the story forward at a breakneck pace. Though the page count doesn’t leave much room for character development, lending the cast a flat, fairy tale-like quality, it’s easy to buy into the high stakes. Readers will be rapt.

Review: BENNY RAMIREZ AND THE NEARLY DEPARTED by José Pablo Iriarte

Feb 072024
 

Kirkus: When Latin music great Ignacio Ramírez dies, his path to a rewarding afterlife is hindered by unfinished business that demands resolution.

Not only is Benny Ramírez the grandson of a famous Cuban American musician, but everyone else in his family has a talent, too: Papi is a well-regarded Hollywood producer, Mami has a gift for languages, older sister Cristina is a star dancer, and younger brother Manny is a promising actor. When the family inherits Benny’s estranged grandfather’s Miami home after his death, they leave Los Angeles, and the Ramírez kids enter the South Miami Performing Arts School, where Benny, who feels like he isn’t special, struggles to fit in. Fortunately, his musician abuelo’s spectral presence is tied to his mansion, unable to move on. Ignacio must figure out what his unfinished business is and resolve it by New Year’s. Only Benny can see Abuelo, who insists that helping Benny follow in his footsteps to become a world-famous trumpet player must be his unresolved task. Unfortunately, Ignacio has a history of egocentric behavior and little respect for boundaries, which leads Benny into many scrapes. The plot is reminiscent of other ghostly redemption tales, reinforcing the moral that family and community are more valuable than riches and fame. Iriarte writes with a lighthearted touch and includes ample physical comedy; the humor and Cuban American cultural touchstones make this work a welcome addition to the genre.
A humorous and haunting riff on a classic storyline. (Paranormal. 8-12)

Review: CURSED CRUISE by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

Feb 062024
 

Booklist: The second installment of Fulton and McClaren’s Horror Hotel series (Horror Hotel, 2022) finds the Ghost Gang attempting to recover from the traumatic events of their last adventure while growing their popular ghost-hunting YouTube channel. An invitation to a voyage on the RMS Queen Anne, a ship famously haunted by a woman in white, seems like the perfect opportunity to increase their viewership and test-drive the new romantic relationships that have recently developed within the group. Rival YouTubers and a complex haunting throw the foursome for a loop and keep the plot moving along at a steady clip. The first-person narration shifts between the four main characters, which offers readers insight into the personal relationships playing out alongside the spooky stuff but also results in a choppy and slightly disorienting reading experience. A quick read for fans of the first novel and readers who can’t get enough light horror.

Review: EXORDIA by Seth Dickinson

Feb 022024
 

Bookpage: Dickinson’s obsession with detail greatly enriches the atmosphere of Exordia, which rockets across many points of view and locations as various team members look for clues to unravel the mystery. Dickinson has crafted a number of very human stories in a book ostensibly about aliens. Trauma, morality in the face of disaster, forgiveness, guilt, lost love and the bond between parents and children all find their way to the page.

…there’s no question that it will be many sci-fi fans’ favorite book of the year, especially those willing to surrender to it, and be consumed.

Also, author Seth Dickinson gives a full Q&A in Bookpage regarding EXORDIA that you don’t want to miss!

Review: THE TAINTED CUP by Robert Jackson Bennett

Jan 302024
 

Kirkus: Sherlock Holmes meets Game of Thrones.

Call Bennett’s latest a drawing-room mystery, albeit the drawing room is the size of a small otherworldly kingdom. It begins, natch, with a corpse. “You were informed that the nature of his death was an alteration, yes, sir?” So asks a military officer of young Signum Dinios Kol, a.k.a. Din, who’s noted that a tree has torn the unfortunate victim apart. Din works for an oddball private detective, Immunis Anagosa Dolabra, a.k.a. Ana, who combines the wiles of Irene Adler with the eccentricities of Sherlock Holmes, including his penchant for narcotics. Din suspects that members of the Haza clan, corrupt 1 percenters, are mixed up in the nastiness, for they’re in the way of acquiring some real estate in the area, and the victim was an impediment. The whole business is complicated by the fact that someone has been undermining the walls of the empire so that leviathans can slither in from the ocean and add their mischief to the evil doings of errant titans abroad in the land. Ana has a fierce temper and is more loquacious than the subdued but sometimes lethal Din: “I do so admire,” she tells him, “how you can be a flippant shit with a mere handful of syllables. Quite a talent.” Bennett borrows from his own Foundryside series for a detail: Where those books involved a strange art called “scriving,” here Din is an Imperial engraver, “altered to remember everything I experienced, always and forever,” handy when it comes to memorizing safe combinations and the exact wording of past conversations. With plenty of red herrings—beg pardon, red leviathans—and neatly imagined plot twists to work through, the reader fond of faux medieval neologisms and occasional grownup moments (“a glimpse of her body, and a winking tuft of pubic thatch”) will enjoy solving the mystery with our heroes.

A rousing adventure for alt-fantasy fans.

Review: SUCH A LOVELY FAMILY by Aggie Blum Thompson

Jan 292024
 

Publishers Weekly: In this enticing domestic thriller, Thompson (All the Dirty Secrets) zeroes in on the wealthy Calhoun family, who live in the exclusive Somerwood neighborhood of Chevy Chase, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C. It’s springtime, and Ginny and Thom Calhoun are hosting their annual cherry blossom party with their three grown children on hand: Trey, who works for Thom’s real estate development business; Nate, a marine biologist who lives in California; and lifestyle influencer Ellie Grace. When someone’s murdered during the party, it first appears to be the result of a robbery gone wrong, but Montgomery County police detective Jacqui Washington suspects there’s more to the case than meets the eye. News of the murder quickly spreads on social media, and the combination of legal and public scrutiny starts to form cracks in the Calhouns’ carefully constructed facade, causing old resentments and long-held secrets to come tumbling out. Thompson gives each of her vivid characters plausible motives and overlapping secrets, effectively laying the groundwork for a cascade of plot twists, each more jolting than the last. The end result is a decadent, stay-up-all-night page-turner. (Mar.)

Starred Review: SHEINE LINDE by Darcie Little Badger

Jan 252024
 
Kirkus: Two generations before the events of Elatsoe (2020), Shane, a 17-year-old Lipan Apache girl, helps her mother, Lorenza, perform volunteer search-and-rescue operations.

Familiar both with tracking to survive in the wilderness and counting change to survive under capitalism, Shane possesses the resourcefulness of an irresistible protagonist. Her practicality also provides the perfect foil for her extraordinary ability—inherited from her four-great-grandmother—to summon dead creatures, adding texture to her supernatural world. What starts out as Lorenza’s quest to locate two missing children becomes Shane’s journey through Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, and the ghostly land Below to find her mother after she disappears. While faeries and vampires inhabit Shane’s surroundings, the heart of her story is her family’s endurance despite various tragedies, including climate devastation and rich settlers’ betrayal and theft. Frequent flashbacks and late-breaking perspective changes add narrative complexity, alongside rich depictions of cultural identity, generational trauma, and community care. A secondary character’s revelatory discovery offers an empowering narrative of reclaiming one’s stolen ancestry. Shane’s protectiveness toward her younger brother, complex love for her inconstant grandfather, and sturdy bond with her mathematically minded best friend add further relationship depth. Bug enthusiasts will also find kindred spirits in Shane and new acquaintance Dr. Richards, an older Black scholar of biology, magic, and comics.

A classic fantasy adventure and a balm for any soul weary of oppression. (note on the title) (Speculative fiction. 12-18)

Review: Seth Dickinson’s EXORDIA in Scientific American

Jan 152024
 

Scientific American: In Seth Dickinson’s 2015 debut novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, a fiercely willful woman from a colonized island plots her revenge against a brutal empire. This fascination with weighing the value of specific lives against a greater good also powers his new book, a mind-shredding first-contact epic. A spaceship or weapon or something has appeared in Kurdistan, where its mysteries get puzzled over by a sprawling cast. There are nukes, alien brain locks, intergalactic warfare and a scope that keeps expanding long after the stakes seem clear. This thrilling novel grips hardest when Dickinson’s characters must reason through the science of seemingly impossible phenomena. —Alan Scherstuhl

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