2025/178: Nothing But Blackened Teeth — Cassandra Khaw

One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones. [loc. 238]

Talia has always wanted to get married in a haunted house: when she announces her marriage to Faiz, their wealthy friend Phillip flies the couple and their friends -- Cat the narrator and Lin her ex -- to Japan, and sets up a sleepover in an abandoned mansion. They have "“booze, food, sleeping bags, a youthful compulsion to do stupid shit... and a hunger for a good ghost story”" [loc. 202]. And they have a setting rich with stories about dancing girls buried in the walls, and a legend of an aborted wedding where the groom died en route.

Cat is an interesting narrator because she's not sane or sober. Talia hates her, because she once dated Faiz; but everyone in the group seems to have dated everyone else. Cat is more sensitive than the others to the ambience of the house, and to the presence there: the ghost whose kiss she feels. And she's the one thinking of ohaguro, teeth blackened with a solution of vinegar and iron filings, like the dead bride.

A novella with a slow start and a crescendo to horrific violence. Is Cat a wholly reliable narrator?

This was a Hallowe'en read which led me down various Wikipedia rabbit-holes: Khaw drops in various Japanese terms without explication, and though one can appreciate the story without understanding every nuance, my need to know distracted me from the story. I loved the prose, though, and the subversion of horror tropes was splendid.

2025/177: Starling House — Alix E Harrow

It’s something about the way the shadows fell in Eden, after Eleanor died. It’s the way everything soured: the river ran darker and the clouds hung lower; rich coal seams went dry and healthy children sickened; good luck went bad and sweet dreams spoiled. [p. 49]

When Opal's mother died, Opal lied her way into becoming her brother Jasper's legal guardian. In the decade since then, she's been working hard at awful jobs to try to raise enough money for him to go to a decent school. She's haunted by dreams of the car crash that killed her mother, and by half-forgotten fragments of the book she loved as a child: 'The Underland', by Eleanor Starling. And she's strangely drawn to Starling House, the Gothic mansion on the edge of town. 'Town', in this instance, is Eden, Kentucky: a down-on-its-luck, working-class town, blighted by the pollution from the local power plant, and suffering a statistically-unlikely number of accidental deaths.

When Opal encounters the reclusive occupant of Starling House, brooding Goth-styled Arthur Starling, he offers her the perfect job: cleaning and caring for the house. The money will pay for Jasper's education and Opal will get to explore the house that's fascinated her for years. But there's more to the house, and to Arthur, than meets the eye.

Opal is not a reliable narrator, but slowly her story -- and that of her family -- comes together. In parallel there's the story of Eleanor Starling and the house which bears her name. And the house ('a foolish old house with ambitions of sentience', according to Arthur) is wakening under Opal's ministrations, letting in the light. Like Hill House, it dreams, but its dreams are rather more pleasant. Opal isn't the only one who's interested in Starling House, though. Elizabeth Baine, who claims to be from Gravely Power (the company that runs the power plant) encourages Opal to spy and steal. She claims the house is an 'anomalous aperture'.

This is a story about stories: about the variations on a theme of Eleanor Starling, and about the Gravely family, and about dreams, and about homes. Every time Opal discovers another variation on the history of Eleanor and of Eden, her perceptions shift. As well as the obvious fairytale elements ('Beauty and the Beast', though who's who?) there are elements of Greek mythology: the rivers of the underworld, the prohibition on looking back. And there are simpler, uglier stories: 'Once there was a bad woman who ruined a good man. Once there was a witch who cursed a village. Once there was an odd, ugly girl whom everyone hated, because it was safe to hate her. [p. 275].

I am awed by Harrow's ability to make place into character. Starling House is as much a character in the novel as Baines, or Jasper, or Arthur himself. Eden, too, has an ugly kind of personhood to it. The prose is vivid and engaging, and though the focus is mostly on Opal and Arthur, there are some intriguing subplots.

Note that Amazon helpfully tells you that you've finished the ebook before you get to 'SEVEN YEARS LATER: A bonus short story set after the events of Starling House'.

2025/176: Everything I Need I Get From You — Kaitlyn Tiffany

...fans are connecting based on affinity and instinct and participating in hyperconnected networks that they built for one purpose but can use for many others. [p. 270]

The subtitle, 'How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It', is somewhat misleading. The Archive of Our Own -- built by (mostly female) fans, currently hosting over 16 million fanworks, proudly cost-free and independent since 2007 -- gets a single sentence. In contrast Tumblr (owned by a succession of big tech companies) is repeatedly lauded as an archive as well as a medium for sharing and communicating. 

The book's focus is very much on One Direction (1D) fandom, and the author's personal experience is part of the story. She explores how fandom can be a coping mechanism, a creative outlet, a way of life: and she doesn't shy away from some of the more troubling aspects of fandom, such as outspoken fannish certainty that (for instance) two members of One Direction were in a committed relationship. The prevalence of this notion affected the band, as well as the multitude of believers.

Tiffany discusses 'affirmational' vs 'transformational' fandom (terms she attributes to a Dreamwidth post from 2008): affirmational fandom celebrates the source for what it is, transformational fandom transforms it. She describes how fans use and abuse the internet and associated technology to connect and communicate, to celebrate, but also to protest and organise. The Black Lives Matter activism on various high-profile blogs is one instance of the latter: Tiffany also cites the ways in which fans use technology to circumvent local restrictions, for example spoofing IP addresses to upvote a band's singles for the Billboard charts. (Guess which band?)

My vague sense of disconnection with this book clarified on page 126, when the author says 'My mother was born in 1965'. Aha! Tiffany is very much part of a younger generation of fandom than mine: digital natives, people who grew up with the internet and with internet fan communities.

And, the excesses of 1D fandom aside (there is a thorough exegesis of the Harry Styles Vomit Shrine), I think that quite a lot of the themes discussed in this book also apply to old-school SF fandom. At the start of the book, Tiffany says 'Before most people were using the internet for anything, fans were using it for everything' [p.7]. Like many of my readers, my initial reasons for getting online included the urge to connect with other people who liked the same books. And in those long-ago days of Yahoo Groups (closed, apparently, in 2020) and that newfangled thing called LiveJournal, I discovered my tribe.

Hello, tribe.

2025/175: Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera. [loc. 1023]

Love in the Time of Cholera is the long and rambling love (or 'love') story of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. They fall for one another as teenagers, and have a romantic correspondence by letter and telegram -- but never a conversation. When Fermina sees Florentino again after an absence, she realises she feels nothing for him, and rejects him. Instead she marries Doctor Juvenal Urbino, a young doctor determined to eradicate cholera, and they make a life together.

Meanwhile Florentino embarks on a life of promiscuity. Six hundred and twenty two affairs, plus casual (and not always consensual) liaisons too numerous and nameless to count. His worst conquest is saved for last: his young ward América Vicuña, who's a teenager when Florentino is in his seventies. "...he won her confidence, he won her affection, he led her by the hand, with the gentle astuteness of a kind grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse". [loc. 4548]

Still, he has to pass the time somehow until Fermina's husband dies: then he will 'have' Fermina. (The thought that she won't 'have' him never seems to enter his daydreams.) Between affairs, he becomes President of the Caribbean Riverboat Company, which destroys the ecology of the local river system in its insatiable greed for firewood to stoke the boilers. A metaphor, you say?

Though this is not a long novel in terms of page count, it felt interminable. Fifty years of Fermina's marriage (culminating in Dr Urbino's death while trying to catch his pet parrot): fifty years of Florentino's sexual predation. It's a sweeping saga that explores love in its many forms, and how an individual's definition of and perception of love changes as they grow older. But it also 'explores' racism, promiscuity, paedophilia, murder and suicide, misogyny, illness... 

If we knew nothing of Florentino's story -- only that he reappears after Dr Urbino's death, and helps the widowed Fermina come to terms with her grief -- it would be a glorious romance. Sadly, I can't stop trying and failing to balance that romance with América Vicuña's fate.

I have never quite got around to reading Marquez, and I wonder if I would have appreciated this book more in the 1980s, when it was published. But surely even then I would have found the behaviour toxic? I will read One Hundred Years of Solitude at some point: I'm told there's more magical realism and less sleaze. Not yet, though. It'll wait.

“Love is the only thing that interests me,” he said.
“The trouble,” his uncle said to him, “is that without river navigation there is no love.” [loc. 2768]

2025/174: My Name Isn't Paul — Drew Huff

I don't want to be a sentient empathy-filament-abomination, so I only eat human food. [loc. 65]

Paul Cattaneo is dead: to begin with. He's been replaced by a Mirror Person who wears a 'skinsuit' replica of Paul Cattaneo's body. His friend 'John O'Malley' (formerly Noonie) is another Mirror Person. 'We are forty-something blue-collar human men. We aren't fuckin' bugs.' Unfortunately, (a) they are bugs and (b) they will soon go into heat, which involves fornicating with another Mirror Person, finding a human in whom to deposit the eggs, and watch the larvae feed. So, yes, fuckin' bugs.

This is the story of 'Paul', a.k.a. Uxon, who's consumed by self-loathing, mourning a friend's suicide, and trying to deny his own nature. It's about being a person as well as being an eldritch abomination: about Paul's relationship with Paul Cattaneo's wife (who spotted the change in the man who was pretending to be her husband, because he no longer beat her) and about how the other Mirror People -- refugees from another dimension, probably -- rally round to support him when he goes off the rails. It's about living in the 'wrong' body and rejecting the biology of that body.

It's a neat idea, but perhaps would have worked better as a novel than a novella. Some truly icky scenes (there are content warnings at the start of the book, hurrah!) and multiple viewpoints. For me, this was interesting rather than engaging, but your mileage may vary.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th November 2025.

2025/173: Slow Gods — Claire North

They like to make sure I am observed. When no one is looking, that's when I forget to be ... acceptable. Normal. Part of this world. [loc. 1116]

This is the first-person account of Mawukana Respected na-Vdnaze ('Maw'), who's born into poverty and debt in an uber-capitalist civilisation known as the Shine. When the Slow -- a huge, ancient construct that is something like a god -- sends a message warning of a future supernova that will destroy all life within a radius 100 light years, the Shine suppresses the warning. People are afraid, and furious: there is civil unrest: Maw is imprisoned, sentenced to what's effectively slave labour, and then forced to become a Pilot.

Pilots are necessary to interface with machine navigation in order for spaceships to travel through 'arc-space', where the darkness seems alive and aware, where people are haunted by hallucinations and the sense of presence. ('Various words are ascribed to the 'otherness', the unknowable 'thing' waiting in the dark. Common ones are: uncanny, malign, sinister, slippery, clawing, cruel, malevolent, mischievous...' [loc. 1686]) Most Pilots go mad or die after a few trips. Maw dies, it seems, on his first trip: but it isn't permanent. The darkness has somehow got inside him.

But he is useful. Other worlds are taking the supernova warning seriously: organising the mass evacuation of hundreds of worlds; reacting to the certain deaths of the billions who can't be saved; racing to preserve cultural treasures. Maw, the Pilot who's lasted longer than any other, is at the heart of it all.

I read Maw as being on the autism spectrum even before his first death: he talks about 'always doing something a little bit wrong', about not really having emotions but picking up on the feelings of others, about not getting the hang of smalltalk. Whatever happens to him in the dark changes a great deal about him, but at heart he is still an imperfect person -- or an imperfect copy of one.

This book has a plethora of pronouns: he and him, she and her -- but also, in the Shine, hé and hím, shé and hér, for individuals who exemplify the current concept of 'man' or 'woman' (the Shine does not accept other gender identities); qe and qim for AI individuals; xe and xer, te and ter, and more. There's an amusing interlude about pronouns and about how different cultures assign them differently and for differing periods. "So... the important thing is your genitals?" blurts one character when this is explained.

There are, to be fair, a lot of infodumps, signposted as Interludes: this is a huge and cosmopolitan universe, with many civilisations and many inhabited planets. Most of the non-AI characters are more or less humanoid, but there are aquatic and avian sentient species too. There are also sentient, organic, plant-based spaceships, like the splendid Pride of Emni. The universe-building is a delight: each culture, each society, distinct and idiosyncratic. I was reminded, at times, of Iain M. Banks' Culture: at other times, of Ursula Le Guin's gift for depicting a society.

I loved Slow Gods, even through the misery and cruelty of the first few chapters. I like Maw as a character, though I can see why he needs constant supervision so as not to become 'dysregulated'. I like his quan (AI) companions, especially Rencki, and his gentle let's-not-call-it-love affair with a curator (whose gender is never specified, because irrelevant). I like that Maw gardens, and that he learns to accept himself. I love Claire North's writing: every new project of hers is a surprise, with a different flavour and a different focus. (See Ithaca and the rest of the 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy; The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Touch, The Sudden Appearance of Hope.) And I am quietly joyful that, amid the genocide and murder, the slavery and war, this is a novel about life as a miracle and love as its guiding principle.

I don't know how you're meant to be this small in a universe this big, this insignificant in a galaxy where every decision matters, where every life is precious. I don't know how to feel so huge and so loud inside, and so small and quiet before the dark. [loc. 4061]

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th November 2025.

2025/170-172: Whiskeyjack, Blackcurrant Fool, Love-in-a-Mist — Victoria Goddard

Perhaps it was not the blind malignancy of fate making my life so complicated. Perhaps it was me. [Whiskeyjack, loc. 4159]

Rereads to sustain me through a bad cold and the aftermath of my birthday celebrations: I can think of few better remedies.

Whiskeyjack (original review here) introduces layers of complication, curses, several people who are not who they say they are, and Mr Dart's magic becoming more obvious to those around him. After reading Olive and the Dragon, Jemis' mother's letter has new poignancy.

Blackcurrant Fool (original review here) is the one where they all go to Tara: there are highwaymen, kittens, dens of iniquity, and Jemis' toxic ex-girlfriend. Also a devastating denouement, and some healthy post-colonialism. In some respects this is my least favourite of the novels, though it can't be because of the setting...

Love-in-a-Mist (original review here) is a country-house murder mystery, with a unicorn, the revelation of the Hunter in Green's identity, coded messages in the personal ads, and a missing heiress. I think this might be my favourite so far.

Even just rereading my old reviews is making me want to plunge on to the currently-final novel, and the novellas... but I will save those for especially awful days between now and Bubble and Squeak.

2025/169: Careless People — Sarah Wynn-Williams

...the board gets into a conversation about what other companies or industries have navigated similar challenges, where they have to change a narrative that says that they’re a danger to society, extracting large profits, pushing all the negative externalities onto society and not giving back. ... Elliot finally says out loud the one I think everyone’s already thinking about (but not saying): tobacco. That shuts down the conversation. [loc. 3242]

The subtitle is 'A Story of Where I Used to Work', but it's being sold under the strapline 'The explosive memoir that Meta doesn't want you to read' -- with good reason, as this article indicates: "Meta has served a gagging order on Sarah and is attempting to fine her $50,000 for every breach of that order.". I quit Facebook a while back (though I did miss it in the first year of the pandemic, when so much of everyone's social life was online) but if I hadn't, I would have deleted my account well before I'd finished reading this book.

Wynn-Williams survived a shark attack when she was a teenager: there's probably a metaphor about working for Facebook here, but instead it made her want to do something with her life, to make a difference. After working for the New Zealand government's diplomatic service, she identified Facebook as a powerful political force, pitched a global policy role, and was hired. Six years later, she was fired for toxicity and poor performance. Or so say Facebook. The book says something rather different, about a company with a toxic culture, a lack of accountability and a determination to grow at any cost.

I engaged with Careless People on two levels: firstly, as someone who's worked in an environment where unreasonable demands were a daily occurence; secondly, as someone who had suspected Facebook of unethical behaviour, but hadn't realised its extent. I recognise that desire to change things from the inside, the desperate hope that things will improve. I recognise a culture where the employee's personal life is regarded as something less important than work. One horrific passage about the birth of the author's first child:

Dr. Veca reaches over and gently closes my laptop. She says, “It’s a very special thing to give birth to your first child. I don’t think you should be working through it. Sheryl will understand.”
“She won’t,” I say. “Please let me push Send.” [loc. 1457]

To make it worse, 'Sheryl' is COO Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which encourages women to assert themselves at home and at work -- though apparently not to any extent that might inconvenience Sandberg personally. Sandberg strikes me as a hellish boss, and Wynn-William's other superiors aren't much better. After the author's second pregnancy, there's a surreally negative performance review on her return from maternity leave, where she's told that colleagues found her 'challenging to engage with': “I mean, you know, I was in hospital, in a coma and near death, but I accept that this did make it hard to engage with me at times.” [loc. 3540].

It may sound as though I care more about the author's personal experiences than about the incredible damage Facebook has done to global culture and politics. Yes and no. I found Wynn-Williams' narrative easy to relate to, though magnitudes worse than anything I have experienced myself. And Facebook's crimes have been documented extensively: supporting the junta in Myanmar (while having one (1) employee -- actually a contractor in Ireland -- who was fluent in Burmese); funding and supporting Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election; supporting the Leave vote in the Brexit referendum; providing data allowing cosmetics advertisers to target girls between 13 and 17 who've posted and then deleted a selfie; misleading Congress about the extent of its (illegal) operations in China; supporting right-wing governments, viewed as less likely to impose restrictions on Facebook's operations in their countries...

Careless People is a gripping read about a company whose actions affect billions of people. It provides an insider's view of Mark Zuckerberg and his singleminded (blinkered?) drive to make his company more and more powerful. That it's also an engaging and often humorous account of one woman's loss of faith in her employer is a bonus. (And yes, she could have left: there's only so long you can keep telling yourself that you have more power to change things from the inside. But given her medical issues and the cost of US healthcare, her desire to keep her health insurance is relateable.) I suspect Wynn-Williams will not be called for interview at any tech company any time soon: but I look forward to the biopic.

...working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money... [loc. 131]

2025/168: Stargazy Pie — Victoria Goddard

“—- This is all very civilized and delightful,” Mrs. Etaris burst in, rushing back at us like a dark blue sheepdog herding her flock, “but I’m afraid we really should be going inside if we don’t want our friends and neighbours to be sacrificed to the Dark Kings." [p. 345]

First in the Greenwing and Dart series: reread, to remind myself just how miserable, unwell and generally detached Jemis was when he first returned to Ragnor Bella (the dullest town in Northwest Oriole) after the debacle of his final term at Morrowlea. Original review here... 

This time around I appreciate Mrs Etaris much more (and wonder whatever became of her previous assistant, 'a quite lovely young man'). I'm also fascinated by the offhand mentions of life before the Fall. ('Whistle a few notes and anyone could call light into a dark room, mage or no, before the Empire fell' (p. 144)).

Anyway! A fish pie (and the Honourable Rag eating herring eyes); aphrodisiacs and a Decadent dinner party; the mysterious Miss 'Redshank'; Jemis as apprentice bookseller; and all manner of delicious references to life in Ragnor Bella.

I may now need to read another one...

2025/167: Book of Cats — Ursula Le Guin

He sent his life forth as the crippled tree
puts forth white flowers in April every year
upon the dying branch. He knew the way.[loc. 93]

A birthday gift from a dear friend: it comprises Le Guin's 1982 'The Art of Bunditsu' (a “tabbist” meditation on the arranging of cats, with Le Guin's sketches of her cat Lorenzo); two sets of poems, some of which brought tears to my eyes as they dealt with the deaths of beloved cats; and various cat-letters, anecdotes and blog posts. Even in these small pieces her prose is perfect and precise: I share her love of cats and her preference for treating them as individuals. Beautiful.

2025/166: Death of the Author — Nnedi Okorafor

The rusted robots in the story were a metaphor for wisdom, patina, acceptance, embracing that which was you, scars, pain, malfunctions, needed replacements, mistakes. What you were given. The finite. Rusted robots did not die in the way that humans did, but they celebrated mortality. [loc. 989]

Nigerian-American Zelu, at the start of the novel, is thirty two years old, paraplegic after falling out of a tree twenty years ago, a creative writing tutor, a novelist, and single At her sister's destination wedding, the last three of these change: she loses her job, her latest litfic novel is rejected, and she hooks up with Msizi. And, sitting on the beach in tears, smoking weed, she decides to write a novel about 'a world that she’d like to play in when things got to be too much, but which didn’t exist yet'. This novel -- extracts from which are intercut with the Zelu-focussed narrative -- is called Rusted Robots: it's a story of AIs ('NoBodies') and humanoid robots ('Humes') in Nigeria after the extinction of humanity, and it is wildly successful.

Not that her family believe her when she tells them she's scored a million-dollar book deal. Instead, they accuse her of being high (accurate, but not the point). Though they've protected and supported her since her accident, they also harbour very traditional Nigerian attitudes to disability: 'more interested in who was to blame than they were in how she lived her life.' They infantilise her, patronise her, try to prevent her from making choices about her own body. It's hardly surprising that Zelu is angry with everyone -- family, fans, random strangers -- though her anger does sometimes make her difficult to like.

This is a novel about family and culture, storytelling and identity, technology and how we use it. There's plenty about the publishing industry and the film industry: Zelu is horrified by and furious at the movie's Americanisation (Ankara and Ijele, her protagonists, become Yankee and Dot) and thoroughly fed up of all the fans clamouring for the sequel. There's also a strong theme of how humans use technology, and whether a 'mechanism' can truly create. And it's a novel about disability and how it shapes self-image, as well as how others behave. Having read Okorafor's account of her own disability (Broken Places and Outer Spaces) it was interesting to see how she fictionalised aspects of her experience.

Death of the Author is suffused with Nigerian, and Nigamerican, culture (including the nightmarish masquerades). Okorafor doesn't rose-tint Zelu's visit to Nigeria, which is quite a different sort of nightmare. It's clear that Zelu's success gives her a lot of options that others, especially of her background, don't have: and she is refreshingly selfish about her ability to make her own choices.

A slow novel, and one which, rather than having a dramatic denouement, simply ... ends. I really liked the different character voices -- there are excerpts from interviews with Zelu's family members, as well as from Rusted Robots -- though I wasn't wholly convinced that Zelu's novel would be that successful. (But who understands popular taste, eh?) I'm looking forward to discussing this for book club: there's a lot to think about here.

I have come to understand that author, art, and audience all adore one another. They create a tissue, a web, a network. No death is required for this form of life. [loc. 6522]

2025/165: Bee Sting Cake — Victoria Goddard

The heart of culture is taking the time to do the unnecessary in the most picturesque manner possible. [p. 204]

Reread, after reading Olive and the Dragon... my original review from the 2023 Nine Worlds rabbithole is here. This is a delightful novel with mystical bees, a baking competition, and a dragon (which may or may not be the same dragon met by Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive). There is also an inheritance, an Imperial Duke, and Jemis beginning to relax.

After this I obviously needed to reread the first in the series, Stargazy Pie... especially as there is a new Greenwing and Dart novel, Bubble and Squeak, coming in the next few months! (Also, these cosy fantasy mysteries are perfect for autumn... though they always make me want to eat cake.)

2025/164: The Atlas Complex — Olivie Blake

The point is there are no villains in this story, or maybe there are no heroes. [p. 11]

Concluding the trilogy which began with The Atlas Six (which I liked a lot) and continued with The Atlas Paradox (which I liked less). Sadly the trend has continued. Having tried and failed to read The Atlas Complex last year, I have screwed my courage to the sticking point (= reread the first two novels) and got to the end.

Lots happens, including a great deal of philosophising, some daring escapes, a plethora of melodrama and some entertaining interpersonal friction. Some people have happy endings. Some people get together romantically and / or sexually. Some people have changed dramatically (though not necessarily credibly) since the first book. Some people die -- or perhaps they don't. If a death happens off-page is it real? If a death happens on-page is it real? 

There is an ending. And then another. The Atlas Complex feels as though it can't commit: as though it needed at least one more edit to chip away the loops and possibilities and reveal something definite and climactic.

NB: 'Rhodesian', used here to mean 'like Libby Rhodes', is a word that will jar anyone old enough to remember the previous name of Zimbabwe.

I wish this had been the finale that the first novel promised. But I will keep reading Olivie Blake's work, because when it's good it's fabulous.

"How many god complexes does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“Six. Five to agree on one to die,” said Tristan. [p. 251]

2025/163: The God of the Woods — Liz Moore

“But also,” said Barbara, “if he hadn’t disappeared.” She did not finish the sentence.
“Then what?” said Tracy.
“Then I wouldn’t have been born,” said Barbara. “That would have been better, I think.” [loc. 4153]

Told from multiple viewpoints in two timelines, this is the story of the Van Laar family and their children: Bear, who goes missing aged eight in 1961, and Barbara, who goes missing aged thirteen in 1975. Are the disappearances linked? Were the children abducted? Murdered? Did they run away? One could make a good case for the latter: the family, though extremely wealthy (they own the woods, and the neighbouring campsite from which Barbara vanishes) is riddled with secrets and dysfunction. Barbara has been 'acting up', using makeup and painting a wild mural on her bedroom wall: her mother Alice is addicted to Valium and alcohol, and still doesn't quite believe that her son Bear is dead. Peter, father to Barbara and Bear, has high standards and little time for his wife.

This is a complex thriller, with themes of misogyny, class and scapegoating. I liked female cop Judyta (who's very much belittled because of being a woman, but who is key to solving the mystery) and TJ, who runs the summer camp and is distinctly queer-coded. Louise, the counselor who first notices Barbara's absence, is a working-class girl with a rich fiance and a history of abuse. Tracy, who's 12, is befriended by Barbara and asked to keep her secrets... Each of these women, as well as Alice, and Maryanne Stoddard whose husband died of a heart attack during the search for Bear and was subsequently blamed for the boy's disappearance, has to deal with sexism, powerlessness and injustice.

It's also a very interesting comparison of parenting values: between the 1960s and the 1970s, as well as between working class and upper class families. (There's a really chilling line in Alice's narrative about 'part of a mother’s duty was to be her daughter’s first, best critic'. This resonates...)

Ultimately, while I was caught up in the story and its complex relationships, I didn't find the resolution wholly satisfactory. Barbara's conclusion just wasn't credible, even for 1975. But the ways in which blame is apportioned and withheld, the ways in which gossip and bias affect everyone in the story, were very well done: and the multitude of narrators, in two different timeframes and out of sequence, maintained their individual voices and never became confusing.

I'm still thinking of the title, The God of the Woods, which refers to Pan and thus to panic. Though there are scenes of panic, it's not a defining characteristic of the novel. But a lot of people do lose their way, mostly metaphorically: and not all of them find the right path again.

2025/162: Magic Lessons — Alice Hoffman

A streak of independence and a curious mind meant trouble. In Martha’s opinion, a woman who spent her time reading was no better than a witch. [loc. 3165]

Prequel to Practical Magic (which I haven't read since the last millennium), The Rules of Magic and The Book of Magic (which I don't think I've read at all), this novel explores the roots of the curse on the Owens women.

The novel begins in Essex, England ('Essex County', hmm) in 1664. Maria is found as a baby, abandoned in the snow, with a crow keeping her company. She's taken in by spinster and wisewoman Hannah Owens, who teaches her the 'Unnamed Arts' -- herbalism, midwifery, and the importance of loving someone who will love you back. These are troubled times, though, and solitary women are suspect: Hannah is labelled 'witch' and killed. Maria, grieving, finally meets her birth father, who promptly sells her as an indentured servant. Maria (and her faithful crow Cadin) are off to Dutch Curaçao, there to work for five years before she can gain her freedom. 

Sadly, she forgets the important lesson about love and -- despite Cadin's best efforts -- falls in love with, and pregnant by, a man who hastily sets sail for New England. Maria journeys from Curacao to New York, and then to Salem: she's imprisoned, her daughter lost, and she lays the family curse: 'To any man who ever loves an Owens... let your fate lead to disaster, let you be broken in body and soul, and may it be that you never recover.' 

The meat of the novel explores Maria's pain and grief, her growing powers, the hard lessons she has to learn, and how she finds her way to a happy ending. Another thread of the story concerns Maria's daughter Grace, denied her heritage and discovering it for herself in ways that disturb those around her.

I found this a rather slow read. Maria is not always a likeable protagonist -- though those she helps adore her, even naming their daughters after her -- and I didn't engage with Faith. I mourned a bird more than a human character. The recipes and notes about magic were fascinating, though: and the underlying philosophy, of love and openmindedness and honesty, appeals to me.

These are the lessons to be learned. Drink chamomile tea to calm the spirit. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Read as many books as you can. Always choose courage. Never watch another woman burn. Know that love is the only answer. [loc. 5059]

2025/161: Bliss and Blunder — Victoria Gosling

Sometimes he’ll be mopping the floor and listening to a couple of the regulars, and he knows it’s not from now. It’s from before. What’s more, time is supposed to be sequential, right? One thing happening after another. Things further back receding, more recent things feeling, well, more recent. Not for Wayne. [loc. 1637]

The Matter of Britain meets Jilly Cooper! The setting is the medieval town of Abury, in Wiltshire: the characters drink at the Green Knight, where Vern the landlord has an odd agreement -- 'anything you gain you give to me' -- with Wayne the barman. Arthur is a tech billionaire, Lance is a veteran with PTSD, Gwen is an influencer, Mo was adopted from a Bangalore roadside, Morgan is ... vengeful. 

The novel opens with the celebration of Arthur's fortieth birthday, a grand gala where several old friends appear unexpectedly. Gwen can't concentrate on the festivities: she's being blackmailed. Could it be the Invisible Knight again? There are flashbacks to when they were all teenagers together in the 1990s: alliances forged and broken, grudges taking root, Arthur already making his mark as a tech genius, Morgan the target of the bullies on the school bus. And then forward again, to 'Right Here, Right Now', and an attempt on Arthur's life, the reconsideration of an old murder, the risk of a computer virus that'd wipe out civilisation.

I loved this: the resonances with Arthurian myth, the surprising but thoroughly credible identity of old John who props up the bar, the way the characters' opinions and perceptions evolve as they mature. The focus was on the women as much as the men: Morgan bemoans the fact that there are 'no epic poems, no legends, no bardic songs, no Romeo and Juliet, that exist to explain it to her. The record is nigh empty, as though women never adored each other, never went into battle, never fought the monster, never wept and bled, killed and died for each other, who separated, didn’t feel the other’s absence like a missing limb.' [loc. 1037] For me, her relationship with Gwen felt like the core of the novel. And it is a novel about how women -- whores or saints, quest objects or evil sorceresses -- behave, are expected to behave, are punished for not conforming.

I liked the love poem (or is it a confession?) hidden in the comments of a piece of code ('/* Until I found, beneath her fairness/Putrefaction. [she] died choking on roses/Embracing the lover she earned, Death*/' [loc. 2367]) and the nomenclature of the viruses and worms Arthur creates/defeats: Wasteland, the Black Prince...True, there were a couple of false notes: 'pay a ten-pound bill with a hundred-pound note' (sorry, not in this universe); 'the comet goes over a little after ten' (comets don't visibly move). But they are forgiveable in the wit and flow of the whole.

Appreciating this novel definitely requires more than a passing acquaintance with Arthurian mythology, but it's thoroughly rewarding to spot all the little references and hints. Bliss and Blunder interrogates the original stories, highlighting misogyny and re-examining canonical relationships. And it's fun: a cracking read which I galloped through.

2025/160: Olive and the Dragon — Victoria Goddard

Olive had dreamed of the next days a hundred times, for all it was no necessary tragedy for any of them, seeing fragments play out of a hundred different choices.
No necessary tragedy, if she chose aright.[loc. 61]

A novella set well before the beginning of the 'Greenwing and Dart' series, Olive and the Dragon focuses on Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive (deceased before the series proper) and her gift of seeing possibilities and probabilities. She is the heiress to the Woods Noirell, too, and she has not taken up her inheritance. There are some hard choices to make, and her son's futures have so many perils. And she has been summoned by a dragon...

I loved this, and it made me want to reread the entire series (in preparation for a new novel at the end of the year). I also found myself fixing on tiny details: Olive knows that bad times (the Fall) are coming; there is a visible companion to the Morning Star; the fairytale logic of who was and was not invited to a child's naming-day. And I think we see this same dragon again, elsewhere. 

I love the Nine Worlds, and especially Alinor, and the Woods. And, my love rekindled, I do need to reread at least some chapters of Bee Sting Cake.

2025/159: They Called Us Enemy — Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, George Takei

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, over a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans (the majority US citizens) were relocated to internment camps. George Takei's family was among those affected, and this is his account of what it was like, as a small boy, to be taken away from everything he knew. At the time it was a great and often joyous adventure, but as a teenager he raged against his father for not standing up to the authorities. Only in later life did he come to understand how his parents did whatever they could to protect their three children. 

There's a lot here about memory, and about how differently children understand the world -- especially when they are being protected from the worst of its injustices. The Takei family lost almost everything (George Takei's mother, much to her children's disgust, managed to smuggle a sewing machine to the internment camp) and had to rebuild their lives from scratch when they were finally released. It's to Takei's credit that he pokes gentle fun at his younger self, and refrains from judgment on the war games. (All the little boys wanted to be the American soldiers, not the Japanese.)

Takei also shows us the appalling decisions that the interned Japanese had to make: whether to serve in the US military, which Japanese-Americans had been prohibited from doing earlier in the war; whether to 'renounce' loyalty to the Emperor of Japan, which most of them had never had in the first place. And he shows us just how long it took the United States Government to make amends for any of it. In 1988, 'restitution payments' were announced to survivors of the internment camps: Takei received his cheque, and letter of apology, in 1991. In 2000, surviving members of the all-nisei 442nd Regiment had their medals upgraded to the Congressional Medal of Honour.

I found this very moving, and it made me wonder anew about my own family history. (My father, another 'enemy alien', was interned in France during the Second World War due to his dual Franco-British nationality. He was thirteen, and his mother died in the camp. He never talked much about it.) And, as Takei emphasises, 'old outrages have begun to resurface'. This is an important and educational book, beautifully drawn by Harmony Becker: Takei is using his voice and his popularity to draw attention not only to old horrors but to new ones.