foxandfiction

[foxandfiction]

so i havent written anything in a LONG while (since 2017?) for a very good reason: i was going to school fulltime. good news: i finished! i finished in december and i walk at graduation in may. hopefully i learned something about writing. i enjoyed myself, at the very least, and i was grateful to have made myself write frequently about literature, even if it wasn't the way and type of lit we were looking at in school. i don't know that i will come back to this frequently. after all, it's february and i've been free from the school grind for months now. but sometimes a book sparks an idea in me that i have to write out. so here we go. niko rides again.

truly devious / the hand on the wall by maureen johnson.

so here is a thing: i like maureen johnson enough as a person that i will usually read her books, despite the fact that she writes mostly YA hetero romances, and infrequently anything fantasy and never sci fi. when she announced she was writing a mystery i was interested because i do like mysteries but the genre as a whole is often difficult to enjoy for other reasons. and so, expecting it to be a stand alone novel because i am a fool and an imbecile, i picked up truly devious.

this isn't to say it is a bad book. it's just 3 books.

a brief summary: stevie bell has just been accepted into ellingham academy, a prestigious private boarding school with a checkered past. the site of several famous kidnappings and murders of the ellingham family that established it, the school is known for inviting brilliant students with very specific passions to study there. stevie is invited because of her expertise on the ellingham case-- her goal being to solve the murder while she attends the school. of course, when accidental deaths seem to be more than accidents, the case may not be solely located in the past.

intriguing.

the case itself is interesting and fun, relying on the weird school and its strange inhabitants, both presently and in the past, their penchant for secret passages and riddles, to propel the mystery forward. yet the mystery is not the sole content of any story. recently i caught up on the magnus archives (if you like audio horror.... please give it a go) and in the q&a after the most recent season they were discussing constructing a mystery. horror, of course, must have some sort of mystery. as they discussed character arcs coming to head, they brought up how such a thing can sacrifice the mystery-- poirot's character development consists of not knowing who killed someone to knowing who did it.

this is not to say that truly devious sacrifices some mystery or some character development for the sake of the other. rather, truly devious operates as two different stories with the same cast, contained in one trilogy. stevie solves the mystery. and stevie gains friends and a romance.

i prefer the mystery.

the mystery, at the very least, does not stand on weak willed politics.

there's two main issues here, in my opinion. one is the issue of representation while still wanting to write a straight romance between two white teenagers. the second is that johnson wrote this during the results of the 2016 american election and its awful aftermath. these are understandable-- at least the latter one-- because no one worthwhile has been positively impacted by this. there are of course several problems with this. the first is what i'll call representation lite. "representation" or "diversity" is something in these cases that are dolled out to a larger cast of characters so there is a variety, instead of any real issues impacting a singular person. instead of any real depth these "representations" get to have, the audience can see them and, if they want, feel included. or they can ignore them. the audience in the know can pick up on them -- stevie's best friend janelle is a lesbian, and janelle's partner is nonbinary. there is a minor character with a physical disability. stevie herself suffers from an anxiety disorder, which is the only one of these things that is talked about beyond mentioning for mentioning's sake.

one thing that struck me as a very sour note occurs in a chapter from the perspective of a witness to the original crime, a friend of albert ellingham, founder of the school. leonard holmes nair (subtlety is for adult novels), talking to some students about how he knows dorothy parker, says, verbatim, "i am a friend of dorothy's".

now. several things. i didn't need this line to know he was gay. you nailed that one maureen, without having to discuss sexuality at all. to a modern audience, that's what this line specifies. in certain contexts it would be amusing-- it is innocuous in 1935, but in 2020, it's full of meaning. the film did not even come out until '39, and i'm not sure when the phrase came to mean what it means now. a kind of circular joke, that is meaningless both to the joke teller and his audience, yet full of subtext to both the author and the readers. it's interesting. it's also a little bit insidious and what i dislike about this novel revolves around it. it is a joke under layers and layers that you must already know something about to know what it means. and yet if you don't you miss it and you miss nothing. it's the "representation" in this novel-- it's buried and it's minor and you can miss it easily, and while it may be well intentioned, its existence is more insulting than inviting.

it's second major flaw is its attempt at a political message. it suffers as much liberalism suffers, by drawing an arbitrary line in the sand where doing the right thing is the goal, if you have someone you like pushing you to do it, but it's ok to fall short if it inconveniences you, scares you, is considered illegal in any way.

here is a minor example: a character who studies environmental science talks about writing a paper about all of the plastic in the ocean. not two chapters later he talks about how he likes tuna salad, as if the majority of plastic in the ocean didn't come from the fishing industry. i'd chalk this up to author ignorance (and not character ignorance because i think teenagers are smarter than that) but johnson is vegetarian, maybe vegan; she is at the very least a big fan of isa chandra moskowitz, noted vegan cookbook author. (if you care about the environment.... go vegan).

here is a bigger example: throughout the novel there is a commentary on a fictional senator who could very well be a number of real senators. he's your run of the mill republican, in my opinion: racist scaremonger who wants a "return to personal responsibility". stevie's parents work for his campaign, despite her personal objections to him. after making out with a housemate several times, she discovers he is the senator's son. the kid is supposed to be just as against his father as stevie is, although he is, in perhaps the politest way i can phrase it, chaotic as fuck.

maybe i am just jaded but i can't imagine anyone with money not being tainted by their parent's politics that work to get them this money. yet they do end up together, and a large part of the secondary, non-mystery plot is her love interest's work to ruin his father's bid for presidency.

there is a turning point where, the boy and some friends (not stevie and her friends, because it Felt Wrong) find out that his father has been blackmailing shady people for campaign finances. great. until, instead of exposing them, they decide to destroy the information, because it is less illegal.

oh..... ok? i mean, if he got dirt on these people i don't think he couldn't do it again. if he reports it to the press, he destroys his father's bid for presidency and the lives of the awful people he's extorting. it's a win-win scenario. will the kid go to jail? maybe, but even if his father is pressing charges against him, he's still a rich white boy. he'll be ok. doing something illegal for the greater good is ok. lots of things were once illegal. that doesn't make them immoral. maybe doing the right thing, like absolutely destroying any chance your awful father has at holding a position of power, is better than taking an easy way out.

maybe, if you want to write a mystery, write a mystery, and if you want to write something political, don't feature the police as a trustworthy organization.

but what do i know.

[foxandfiction]

hi hello just a preliminary transfer of all existing content that i want on this blog. will be going back to fix/change links & to add tags, add a page for archive & the lgbt book list, open ask box, etc. 

can be reached at @sloblesbian in the mean time

[foxandfiction]

the best books i read in 2014, and a tiny review for each one of them

Keep reading

[foxandfiction]

last year i made a list of my best books read in 2014. this year i did best & worst!!

Keep reading

[foxandfiction]

hello! good news, bad news, ambivalent news? well, one of those, depending on your opinion. so i’ve decided i’m probably going to take down my review blog as i don’t really get as much enjoyment or use out of it as i hoped. i haven’t actually posted anything in a few weeks & i feel pretty good about that. (the only thing i’ve posted in december and therefore not linked here is this review right here) i’m going to be moving the reviews to a tumblr i think, i’ll let you know when i do that. i’ll probably hold on to the domain name because well. that’s still pretty cool. 

also i finished my reading challenge and i wrote my top 10 books of 2017. i’m going to post them here rather than on the soon to be demolished site, and i’ll link to my goodreads reviews, if i wrote them. 

here’s a cut for people who don’t care

Keep reading

[foxandfiction]

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

Originally read December 2017

The best thing about this book is its premise: in an alternate United States, based on plan that this country actually considered and debated, feral hippos roam the Mississippi and surrounding marshland. Like any Western, a colorful cast of characters populates the pages of River of Teeth, and it's full of action. However, the foreword might be the most enjoyable part of this novella. Learning the inspiration behind the book was great, but its execution is not, and it was a tedious read that contained far too much eye-rolling.

While every character is interesting in their description, in actuality there is so little development I found it hard to keep them straight. Houndstooth's characterization seemed to be very inconsistent. Is he a fickle flirt or a romantic? His fling with the government official at the beginning of the book was far more compelling than anything that happened in the main romance. Archie's main character traits seem to be that she's fat and French. I can't decide if I like how Hero was handled or not. They certainly were representation of a nonbinary transgender person, existing outside of a story about their gender, but the writing in this book is so poor it's hard to judge whether they are a character beyond what the book needs out of them. Is a character just a token if everyone else is also flat and only there for their skills?

The 170 pages dragged on for an eternity, and I'm still not sure what happened, or why it happened. Reveals came that I had figured out without even thinking they were something I was supposed to be surprised about. Gailey's attempt at humor and character banter was abysmal. I rolled my eyes at least once a page, and it took me two months to force myself the read the last 6 chapters. But it's such a pity, because it really has so much potential. What a premise.

I don't have anything else about feral hippos roaming the Mississippi to recommend, but Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory is a wonderful Western with science fiction elements, if you're looking for something similar.

[foxandfiction]

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Originally read November 2017

Oh boy do I love a good artificial intelligence/robot book. All Systems Red delivers exactly the kind of thing I want to see in a book told through a robot's eyes, in a tight little novella. Murderbot is a security bot, who has hacked itself and overridden its security protocols, partly so it can make judgment calls on its orders, and partly so it can watch countless hours of TV. When the research expedition Murderbot is working for starts having problems much bigger than the brochure advertised, things get interesting.

The book is very short so I don't want to talk too much about the plot, but Wells keeps things comprehensible and entertaining, all while touching on many of the interesting questions that come up when we talk about artificial intelligence. What makes someone a human, what makes someone a being? I think the argument of whether something non-biological can have sapience really brings up more questions on what it means to be human than what it means to be robot. And when it's well done, it's fascinating, it's compelling, and it's great fun to read.

Murderbot is also a very lovable character, which might be surprising for a being that calls itself 'Murderbot'. But being broken and flawed and terrible at social interaction give this robot more character, illicits more sympathy, than many human characters manage to.

All Systems Red also manages to contain a story that feels complete in itself, while still setting up for future books. Which is fantastic, because I love Murderbot, and would gladly read only about Murderbot for as much as I can.

[foxandfiction]

Provenance by Ann Leckie

Originally read November 2017

There have been a lot of follow ups to great books lately, with Stiefvater's All the Crooked Saints after The Raven Cycle, the final Magnus Chase book, and now Ann Leckie's standalone book, set after the events of the Imperial Radch trilogy. Throughout this book I thought that maybe Provenance should have been Leckie's debut, and the storm that was Imperial Radch should have been the follow up. It's hard to follow a series like that. And while this book didn't have quite the bang that the previous ones had, it was still a captivating sci fi adventure with an interesting way of looking at society. It had many of the things I love about Imperial Radch, and some new things to enjoy, as well.

Provenance introduces us to a new culture, a world outside of Radch space, on Hwae. Ingray, the adopted daughter of a noblewoman, is constantly trying to best her brother and impress her mother to become her heir. The book starts off with Ingray in the midst of an uncharacteristically harebrained plan. If it succeeds, she might impress her mother suficiently to at least feel like she's earned a place in the house. But if she fails, she might as well never come home. In it, we see some of the aftermath of the events of Imperial Radch-- everyone has an opinion on the rogue Radch AI, and people are preparing for the conclave. The Geck, who rarely leave their planet, make quite an appearance in this book because of it.

Leckie again manages to make the reader consider gender differently, without mentioning it at all. As opposed to Imperial Radch where every pronoun was the same one, Provenance has a multitude of them. Besides the traidtional he and she that we are familiar with, there's also a commonly used third gender pronoun, e/eir/em. People who use this pronoun are referred to as nemen, as opposed to men or women. It also appears that people decide their genders and their pronouns as they come of age in this world, though it isn't explicitly stated. Children are all referred to with they/them pronouns. It's all very interesting, and a nice contrast from both the singular pronoun of Imperial Radch, and the lack of a standardized, universally used third gender pronoun for English speaking society. It's nice to see how different ideas of gender in society could work.

It's also nice to see Leckie tackle characters from much different backgrounds as those in Imperial Radch. Family, which had no bearing on Breq and Seivarden, has a big role in Provenance. Ingray's relationship with her mother and her brother are both important and strained, and matter a great deal here. It's wonderful to see Leckie deal with both similar topics and much different ones, while still having a lot of fun in this universe. It almost makes me wish this wasn't a standalone, but the beginning of another series. This world has a lot to offer, and I hope it's not the last we see of it.

It's hard to write about Provenance without comparing it to Leckie's previous books, but Provenance isn't lacking in comparison. It's more a comedy of manners than it is a space opera, but if you loved Imperial Radch, what made it great is still present here.

[foxandfiction]

The Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan

Originally read November 2017

It's hard to find new things to say about each subsequent Riordan book, because he continues to delight in the same way. His writing improves with each new release, he writes entertaining and genuinely funny books for both kids and adults, and he works his hardest to show people from all walks of life as characters in his books. He gives them all stories; they are all fleshed out and fully realized, whether they are the protagonists or supporting characters. Everything that was great about the first two Magnus Chase books is still great about the third.

But while it's hard to find new things to say about these books, it's not hard to enjoy them. The Ship of the Dead wraps up Magnus' story (while sewing seeds for future stories, and some PJO tie-ins, I assume). The journey ends on a positive note-- the whole book is brimming with positivity, in fact. What makes Magnus a hero isn't his ability to fight or do magic, but his ability to support his friends. He is a genuinely kind kid at every turn, despite all he has been through.

The Ship of the Dead takes Magnus and friends through the rest of their journey, touching on more Norse mythology, and ends on a truly uplifting note. It's just as entertaining and funny as all of Riordan's middle grade novels. If you enjoyed The Hammer of Thor for the appearance of the delightful Alex Fierro, like I did, you will be satisfied by this one as well. The book also takes us through the month of Ramadan for Samirah handles it wonderfully. I think it really speaks to the spirit of this series as well, the melding of so many cultures to create some young heroes who save the world for us one more time.

[foxandfiction]

All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater

Originally read November 2017

Stiefvater's first novel since finishing her previous series is both starkly different yet still reminiscent of The Raven Cycle, and does a masterful job of highlighting where her writing talent lies in a single novel. In the dusty desert of Colorado is a family of saints, performing miracles for all who come to seek them. The miracles take on many forms, big metaphors of our inner demons we have to grapple with. If you can defeat the monster on the outside, you can defeat the monster on the inside, you can heal and you can move on. But the saints cannot help you once they have performed the miracle, though from outside the problem is sometimes much more easily apparent. There is a darkness inside of them that would overtake them if they did. So they live among the pilgrims, the miracle-seekers, without acknowledging their existence.

In All the Crooked Saints, Stiefvater showcases the best of her writing. She crafts beautiful imagery, parallels and big metaphors, wrapped up in sentences that are a delight to read. They're funny without being jokes, deep without being too serious. The parallel imagery of radio waves and prayer is set up in the first paragraph and carried wonderfully throughout the rest of the novel. In this book, Stiefvater takes a lot of the things she accomplished in The Raven Cycle, and accomplishes them again, quicker, more elegantly, and from a different angle. Here, magic and religion are one and the same. Here, love is tender and weird and overwhelming. Here, our ambitions can propel us great distances, make us great heroes, and here, family is something tumulteous and fiery and important. In this book, our protagonists are cousins, and not siblings like in some of her others, but still, they could be, they are as close as siblings. Beatriz, whose story this is the most, is the middle child out of the three of them. I can't presume to know the author's life, but if I had to guess, I would say she is the middle child of three. I am too, and I have to wonder if it's a universal experience, to be shaped by the order of your birth in regards to your siblings.

All the Crooked Saints has all the magic of The Raven Cycle, set up and developed and brought to its poignant peak quicker than in the four-book series. The fact that it's only one book, that it doesn't draw the story out for longer, makes me think it won't be as popular. But in my opinion, it's just as good, if not better than The Raven Cycle. It took everything Stiefvater learned there, and put it to good use here. For fans of The Raven Cycle, it's the exact kind of magic from that series, in a smaller dose, in a different flavor.

[foxandfiction]

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Originally read October 2017

I do have to start off this review by saying Robin Sloan's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, is one of my favorite books. I read it before I started writing reviews, so there isn't anything to link back to, but it influenced so much of my taste that I've brought it up many times since. In Sourdough, Sloan manages to hit on the same notes that enchanted me the first time. They're books filled with a cast of characters both unique and charming, weird but realistic. They both introduce the reader to cool things that don't seem real until you Google them, and lo and behold, there they are. I had never heard of the Lois Club but I'm glad it exists. But most importantly, and I think this is what makes me like these books (and other books that manage to hit this theme, though they are few and far between) so much, is how they introduce the blending of technologies both new and old. Things that are thought of and shown as rivals in nearly every other instance, here they broach the subject: what if instead of fighting over which way is better, we worked together, and created something new? In Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, the competing technologies were for books: Amazon's Kindle and Google's book scanning, versus the paper book, the printed word, Gutenberg. In Sourdough, Sloan focuses on something perhaps even more vital to the soul: food.

Lois Clary is a programmer of robotic arms, newly located in San Francisco, bogged down by the work ethic that's expected of her. Lois doesn't cook; in fact, no one in her family cooks, so she orders takeout from the same delivery place nightly, and has a meal replacement drink the rest of the time, until the brothers who make and deliver her dinner each night show up at her door and tell her they are leaving the country. For their best customer, they have a gift: their sourdough starter. Overnight, Lois becomes a baker, struggling to integrate her (sometimes literally) growing starter and the robot arms she works on into one life.

Right off the bat there's a clever little metaphor running through this book. Beoreg, who gifts the starter to Lois, first calls it a culture, then corrects himself. “There’s a living thing, a culture. I guess it’s more American to say ‘starter.’" But he's correct, it is a culture. Not only is it a culture of bacteria, fungus and yeast, or whatever else is in bread. There's a culture in the baking of bread. His bread, specifically, for his culture- the Mazg, a mysterious, secretive, nomadic people scattered throughout the world, but every culture has its own bread, doesn't it? And what is culture, if not the contents of this book? Food, music, and stories. And here, the truly ancient culture of making and preparing food is combined with the technology of today and of the future. Not only with Lois' robot arm, assiting with the manual labor, but perhaps with food technology that's yet to come, food itself the product of science.

Sourdough is really a story about finding something you love and having it lift you out of the drudgery of life. It's an uplifting read, a nice contrast to the rote work that my life is right now. But throughout the whole thing I kept imagining the perfect slice of sourdough bread, the crispy crust and the light, fluffy inside, warm and fragrant, just out of reach. Where is this bread? Will it live up to my daydream? I don't know that I have the time to bake my own but I did find myself looking up how to while reading this. I hope I get to taste it soon.

[foxandfiction]

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan

Originally read October 2017

I tend to gravitate towards books that are about books. After reading for so long, and loving something so much, it seems only natural that I would want my stories to be about, well, stories. So when I saw the cover, when I read the title, I knew eventually I would read this book. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is not quite a cozy mystery, and it's not quite what I was craving, either; it certainly appreciates books and book lovers, but it's not about them, per se. It uses the bookstore, the library, the apartment of a lifelong reader, and more, as safe and warming settings for what otherwise is a grim story. It's an odd kind of balance for what doesn't try to be and isn't quite a scary story. It certainly toes the line-- at moments it's more of a gruesome murder mystery than I thought it would be. But for much of the book, it was a very enjoyable and gripping reading experience.

Lydia works at a large independent bookstore which is home to many wayward strays: homeless and not quite homeless locals who spend much of their time reading or otherwise occupying themselves within the walls of Bright Ideas. Closing the store one night she finds the body of one of the regulars, a young kid named Joey, hanging in the store. In his pocket he has a picture of Lydia's 10th birthday party, and Lydia's past, which she has spent so long trying to outrun, catches up to her as she tries to unravel what happened to Joey with the pieces of his life he left behind.

The mystery isn't terribly obvious, but it isn't terribly hard to put together, either. The best part of it was Joey's puzzle, clever and making full use of the books that populate the background of every setting in the story. I was hoping that one puzzle would lead to another, but after that it turns into a rather generic murder mystery, be it one that's gone awfully cold. The most interesting character, and certainly the most puzzle oriented one, is also unfortunately very under utilized. Lydia's boyfriend David barely makes it to being a secondary character, but he's introduced right off the bat as a man who likes to solve puzzles. I would have liked to know more about him, but as we solve more and more of Lydia's mystery, he becomes less and less involved. David also is front and center to the major problem with Sullivan's writing. He exists just so Lydia can have an excuse to mention sex at least once every other chapter. She doesn't even have a sex scene in the entire book, but God forbid we think about a woman without thinking about her having sex. (Sullivan also claims she ranks sex as the highest pleasures, before reading and eating takeout. That's just ludicrous. Reading and eating are necessary for life. Sex is just a bonus.)

But the real downfall of this book is how grim and hopeless it turns out to be. It's fine up until the last quarter or so, when a light at the end still seems visible, but as the pieces are coming together, it seems like everything is going to turn out okay, except for the people who survived. Justice is served, but the people who lived through it seem emptier. Old relationships seem to only be mended and rekindled at the expense of existing ones, and at the end, there doesn't seem to be any meaning given to deaths the characters lived through. Of course, in reality, there isn't much meaning in death; it's senseless, and it leaves you without hope. But books need to be hopeful; they need to show us a way out of the dark. Stories need to sustain us in times of tragedy. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore uses its comforting facade only to usher in a bleak message: knowing or not knowing, life is just a gray and indecipherable as it was before.

[foxandfiction]

Sovereign by April Daniels

Originally read October 2017

I only recently read and reviewed the first book in April Daniels' Nemesis series, Dreadnought, but as soon as I finished I had put the sequel on hold at the library. I hate to review the two books so close together, but they're both so good and so necessary that I feel like I have to. It feels strange to say that the first book was perfect, and that this one was better, but that's what seems to be the consensus. Dreadnought introduced us not only to a brilliant world of superheroes serperate from the Marvel and DC ones, but it introduced us to Danny, by far the best representation of a transgender person I've read, young adult fantasy or otherwise, and also a fantastic character in her own right.

Danny is exactly the kind of girl I love to read about-- girls with issues. So often I feel like girls only deal with "girl problems" in fiction; they rarely ever deal with problems that I have. There's never any angry girls, hurt girls who want to hurt the world back. In Sovereign, we see Danny in the aftermath of the events of Dreadnought. She's come into her own right as not only a super hero, but one of the most visible super heroes, and out from under the weight of her abusive family. But she's not quite free. Not only is she trying to become emancipated from the family that hurt her so much, but she's struggling with the implications of what being abused your whole childhood can do to you. Sometimes, it's when we are free of danger when things seem darkest. The defenses we put up to protect ourselves can finally come down, and the damage we have suffered has to be dealt with. This is what makes Sovereign a truly great novel. The problems from the first book aren't so neatly solved at the end. They bleed over, create bigger problems, not only in a realistic manner but in a way, I think, that is very familiar to anyone who has ever lived a life like Danny's. And somehow, it's easier to take these hard truths this way. There are superheroes, strange science, and magic, working together. And there are real issues suffered by real people, too, acknowledged here in this book. Together they somehow make things real, sometimes realer than they do when presented in simple facts.

Sovereign certainly surpasses Dreadnought with its eponymous villain. He's another example of real things seeming realer when tied up in fantastical fiction. A man with a lot of money can acquire a lot of power, and with his twisted beliefs, make the world a lot more dangerous. But when he uses that power to become a supervillain, it seems so much scarier and more immediate to us and to Danny than current world politics thriving on the same principle. In fact, so much of this book was much scarier than the first. I was genuinely worried about Danny making it through the whole book. The main plot of Sovereign, the characters, villains, superheroes, and their motiviations, that is where this book really excels.

Really, the only complaint I have about this book was that the romance subplot was resolved a little too quickly. I want you to make me (and Danny!) work for it. But, I wasn't reading this book for the romance, and the fact that I wanted it to last longer means I was enjoying it. In fact all of the relationships in this book are enjoyable, whether they're romantic ones, friendships, or familial ones, forged between people who truly love you, regardless of the blood you don't share.

[foxandfiction]

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

Originally read October 2017

Up until the last 50 or so pages of this book, I absolutely loved it. I'm telling you this now, at the beginning, because something at the end-- not the ending, really, just an element of it-- disappointed me so much that sours the rest of the book for me.

First, the good stuff. The writing in this story is very fun. The language is used well, fully entertaining, and fast paced. Dialog frequently switches between the traditional he said/she said manner to the style of a script. It's not only a good way to quickly get through a high pace conversation, but it adds a lot of variety to the text on the page. It's nice to see, it's nice to read through. This book also leans heavily on the fourth wall, which is one of my favorite things, when done well. I mean, of course this a book that combines two very pop culture horror references into one novel-- Scooby-Doo/The Famous Five and Lovecraftian mythos. The town of their childhood adventure is Blyton Hills, right over the Zoinx river; some cute pokes at this novel's obvious inspiration. But the narration is even a little more forward than that. The characters don't know that they're in a story, but we do. And the narrator does. And the narrator slides a few quick references to that fact along. It's a nice added element to humor, a finger pointing to the obvious in an unexpected way.

There's also the fact that the main character, or (arguably), one of the main characters, is a lesbian. I really wasn't expecting this when I picked up the book, but she's a fantastic character, butch, Latina, and desperately in love with her childhood friend. And really, it's how well that she's handled that really creates a stark contrast to how bad this one element of the ending is.

Unfortunately there really is no way to write about this without spoiling part of the ending. So, be forewarned.

The nature of the big twist, the sudden reveal, is often times that a character we had liked a lot turns out to be the bad guy. We were deceived, for the sake of the shock. It's really not that original or necessary, I think, especially with regards to how it was handled in Meddling Kids. The "reveal" here is that the necromancer has faked his own death, and, in order to remain in town with no one suspecting him, gotten a sex change. This creates two huge glaring problems immediately-- first, it makes the villain if not transgender, at least having enough in common with transgender people to further villainize them, and second, it frames the fact that someone would use something like a complete medical transition to a different sex than the one assigned at birth as something plausible. Fiction doesn't mirror reality so much as reality mirrors fiction, and if you write it, no matter how implausible and silly and throwaway joke as it seems, people will believe these things to be true-- that trans people are evil, and that they are in disguise. The necromancer also throws out a remark about how it was easy, and if our butch protagonist is interested, she should consult her doctor. I can't imagine anyone who put more than a minute of thought into it would think that transitioning is easy, never mind someone who supposedly went through it. And I doubt it was any easier in 1990, when the book takes place.

It's sad how this nearly ruins the rest of the book for me. I enjoyed Cantero's previous novel, The Supernatural Enhancements, quite a bit, and I would consider reading any book he published in the future. I don't think this was a malicious decision made on his part, just an ignorant one, that could have been easily avoided if he did some research and got more varied opinions. It bugs me that, out of how many people read a novel before it gets published, none of them saw anything wrong with this. I like to think of science fiction & fantasy as a progressive genre, but it's really the same as anywhere else-- it's a place where people can be progressive, but it isn't necessarily by nature.

[foxandfiction]

Crosstalk by Connie Willis

Originally read September 2017

I haven't read a lot of books that I would consider "romantic comedies" but Crosstalk by Connie Willis absolutely fits that description. The fact that it's a science fiction novel only makes the whole thing better.

Briddey's family is relentless in their quest to meddle in her life and ignore her need for privacy, so she is desperate to get engaged to her boyfriend Trent and escape their interference. When he suggests they get an EED-- a medical procedure that will let them feel each other's emotions-- before they get engaged, she agrees wholeheartedly. Trent says he wants her to feel how much he loves her when she proposes. Her family thinks it's a terrible idea, and that Trent is a terrible boyfriend, but everyone in her office is excited for her, jealous of her, or eager to spread gossip about her. Except for C.B., who works in development in the icy basement of the building, all by himself, who emails her all the dangers he can find about, well, anything to dissuade her from going through with it. Briddey dismisses them for the ramblings of a crazy man-- after all, the office considers him their Quasimodo. But when she wakes up after surgery able not to feel Trent's emotions, but hear C.B.'s thoughts, Briddey begins to panic.

I haven't read anything by Connie Willis before, but if all her books are filled with quick wit and baffling absurdism like this, I'll have to check them out. Crosstalk is nearly a blockbuster of a novel, and in fact had me thinking about what a great movie it would make many times throughout its length. It's funny, filled with great dialog, characters who leap off the page into life, and a relationship that flowers into something that even me, a person who purportedly hates romance, can find enjoyable. I think a lot of romances force the people involved with them into roles that I can't get behind-- the man, the woman, the pursuer and the pursued. But in Crosstalk, there are just two people who turn their growing problems into an adventure, and build something lasting between them.

If you like books with lots of dialog, well written romances, funny science fiction, check out this book.

[foxandfiction]

The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

Originally read September 2017

The Abyss Surrounds Us is the kind of book that fills a lot of niches, some of which I wasn't aware needed filling. It hits both LGBT young adult and science fiction, which makes it nearly a must-read for me, plus there's pirates, and a sea-monster infested almost-dystopian spin. Any of these alone is enough to intrigue, but together it makes a book I was half in love with before I had even started it. Sure, it could be overkill, too many things coming in from too many directions, but Skrutskie does a nice job of weaving it all together in a cohesive and fun way.

Cassandra Yeung is planning to follow in her family's footsteps of training the giant sea monsters that guard ships from pirate attacks. She's given her first solo mission when things go horribly wrong and she ends up not only ambushed by pirates, but on their ship. Attached, sometimes literally, to the girl who captured her but also kept her from dying, Cas struggles to keep her footing and grapple with her role on the ship. They have a Reckonner pup-- the sea monsters Cas has spent her life working with-- and they expect her to train it to defend their ship.

Maybe I have a heart of stone, but there aren't a lot of romances that really move me. Whether the characters get together or not doesn't tend to interest me as much as the rest of the book. However, the romance in this book had my attention from the get-go. While Cas is an interesting enough protagonist, it's her guardian, Swift, who was my girl. There's plenty of tough girls in books-- Cas herself could be considered one even, as a trainer of sea monsters-- but Swift is a rough and tumble, loud and sloppy girl, with a secret soft side. 100% my kind of character. And any romance that features a fist fight before the confession is a romance I will be interested in.

Though it was a good book, it wasn't without flaws. Skrutskie seems to introduce a lot of ideas that she doesn't follow through on. Without any spoilers, Cas tends to make plans and not stick to them, or just completely forget about them and plan something new. There's also a lot of convenient realizations that bring closure to book-long mysteries. And while Skrutskie does a pretty good job of shifting Cassandra's view from morally black and white to seeing things in shades of gray, I would love to see her come around to the life of piracy, too. It can't be all immoral scoundrels doing what they can to survive-- there has to be a but of freedom and allure to the lifestyle, doesn't there? I think that's why lesbian pirates is genre-- because it's there that women can truly seek the freedom they need to be the person they are. In The Abyss Surrounds Us, we don't see much of the world outside, but it doesn't seem nearly as confining as the ship. Still. There's a sequel I have yet to read, and these flaws are small ones. It's a book I enjoyed, and it's definitely worth the read.

[foxandfiction]

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Originally read September 2017

I don't really like horror, because I don't like to be scared. Or maybe, because I'm easily and frequently scared, of everything. I won't go into the basement at night or if I'm home alone. I inspect my backseat with a flashlight before getting in my car after dark. I run up stairs every time because I feel like something is following me. In my review for Night Film, I admitted that I couldn't watch Scooby Doo, because it scared me. But My Best Friend's Exorcism, while a pretty entertaining book, wasn't all that scary.

It was creepy, sure, but there was never a part where I was on the edge of my seat, afraid of what came next, and it never kept me up at night. The book itself is a pretty fun mix of horror movie tropes, 80s pop culture, and a love letter to best friends. But without any genuine horror, it does feel a bit empty. And it does feed into the perpetual trend of girls loving each other, and being very vocal about how not gay they are. Sure, you can be a heterosexual woman whose most important relationship is your friendship with another woman. But it's disappointing to be a gay woman and hear how not gay everything is, time and time again.

Though Girls on Fire is more a thriller than a horror novel, it's an interesting book to compare and contrast with My Best Friend's Exorcism. I think fans of one will appreciate the other. They're both steeped in pop culture (or counter culture, in Girls on Fire's case) of the era they're set in. They're both about girls whose friendships with each other drives them to extremes. But in Girls on Fire, the friendship quickly turns toxic. In My Best Friend's Exorcism, the friendship elevates and saves the girls in it. Girls on Fire feels much more fascinating and enthralling, whereas My Best Friend's Exorcism feels light; entertaining, but not all that deep.

If you like horror, I don't think you will find My Best Friend's Exorcism all that satisfying. But if you want to read a story honoring best friends, with some campy horror elements and believable '80s references, this is a good book for you. It might not live up to what I had expected from it, but it was a fun read nonetheless.