Jun 26 2023

Father Under Fire by Neil Boyd

The fourth in Neil Boyd‘s Bless Me, Father series finds the irascible Father Duddleswell laid up with lumbago just as the priest with whom Duddleswell began his career settles in for an extended visit. Father Abe — most definitely not Father Abraham, with seven sons — is getting on in years, but still sly and not above using his age to get what he wants. Boyd does not directly ask how many times Father Abe has rolled out the “this could be my last chance to …” argument, but he shows that it is often enough that he’s having several last chances at things.

Father Under Fire by Neil Boyd

The pillars of St Jude’s populate pages of Father Under Fire just as faithfully as the other books of the series: Father Neil, the young Catholic priest nearing the end of his first full year out of seminary; Father Charles Duddleswell, longstanding priest of the parish, a stickler for rules unless they get in the way of the greater good; Mrs Pring, the housekeeper who appears to get on Duddleswell’s last nerve but is his steadiest supporter; Billy Buzzle, bookmaking neighbor with a keen eye for profitable joint ventures; Dr Donal Daley, boon companion and prodigious drinker of whiskey.

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Jun 23 2023

Strangers In Paradise: Vol I by Terry Moore

It’s been almost thirty years since I first saw this title and wanted to read it. I’m so glad I finally got the chance, even if it has been decades since it first came out!

But mixed in with the glee of long anticipation is a note of dissonance. Even while I was reading this, I was fairly certain that I would have enjoyed it way, way more had I been reading it closer to the turn of the century. And this isn’t just because I’ve learned how to be more comfortable in my own skin since then. So many ideas of acceptable behavior change with the times, and so often for the better! Twenty years ago, the thought of a throuple would have seemed weird and seedy to me, but nowadays I can only think that Francine, Katchoo and David should really be a polyamorous unit, instead of being uptight and angsty over their feelings for one another.

Not, ofc, that they don’t have plenty of reason to be angsty outside of their relationship drama. Francine is probably the most normal of the bunch, and even she has a lot of codependency issues. As the graphic novel (and series) begins, she’s fending off the sexual advances of her long-term boyfriend Freddy Femur. She believes that sex has always been a turning point in her relationships with men, so wants to foster a deeper connection with Freddy before introducing sex into their relationship too.

Her best friend and roommate Katchoo (short for Katina Choovanski) hates Freddie, and not just because she’s in love with Francine herself. Into this already complicated relationship steps art student David. His persistent pursuit of Katchoo — despite her telling him to piss off as she’s uninterested in men — is meant to come across as romantic. Despite their differences, and through the trials that beset them, the three form a supportive bond that is not without its jealousies.

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Jun 22 2023

Farm Boots by Lisl H. Detlefsen & Renee Kurilla

I pretty much live in comfy, faux-fur-lined, water-resistant boots from the first really cold night of autumn till spring warms up enough that I can venture out in sneakers. So I was really excited to pick up this look at all the ways boots are worn in one of their most practical settings: on a working farm.

Written in verse throughout, this children’s book talks about the many kinds of boots you’d use for different agricultural tasks, from tending crops to livestock, following the turn of the year. It starts in the spring, goes through all four seasons, then ends a year later by checking to see whether the kids in the book need new boots. There’s a nice glossary page on the different kinds of boots at the end, and the book itself features gorgeous end papers showcasing boots, produce and blue ribbons.

The text is cute and gets the point across in a way that isn’t too difficult for young readers to follow. As an older reader, I felt that some of the rhymes were forced, but kids probably wouldn’t notice or care. I did love how the book covered so many different aspects of farm life, from growing to showing to snowing. It was nice to see the kids at both work and play.

The art was also lovely, with so many people and scenes. The animals and the kids’ interactions with them were outright adorable: a personal favorite of mine was the panel showing a Black girl putting the horse out to pasture with a kiss before mucking out its stable. There’s so much diversity representation on display that it was a little weird to realize that there weren’t any East Asian people pictured. If I squinted, maybe the dad and son in one of the first panels were of East Asian descent in a mixed race family, but they could just as easily have been white. This felt like a really weird oversight in a book filled with Black and brown and white faces. There was even a girl with a hijab and another in a wheelchair, which made the exclusion stand out even more.

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Jun 20 2023

The Love Report by BeKa & Maya

Secondary schoolgirls Grace and Lola are bffs, united by many things but, most recently, by an utter bafflement as to the meaning, if not outright point, of love. In an effort to figure it all out, they begin a project called The Love Report, filling out a notebook with observations of people in love at their school, and interviews with same whenever possible.

Each girl has her own reasons for wanting to know more about love. Grace has had plenty of little boyfriends that she meets outside of school, falling in and out of love, and moving on to the next with scarcely a thought for the boy she’s just broken up with. Lola, however, has had a huge crush on classmate Noah since seemingly forever, and doesn’t understand why he never talks to her any more.

As the girls set about investigating the relationships between the other kids at their school, they gain unexpected allies in Charlie, the girl who always knows the best gossip; Felicity Sunshine, the beautiful, aloof girl all the guys want to be with, and Adele, the Goth girl with a Reputation. Grace and Lola soon find their expectations entirely exploded as they learn not only the truth about relationships but also the truth about the girls who quickly become their friends, even as their own friendship begins to fray under the pressures of new love and the secrets they’ve been keeping from one another. Will the girls be able to find their way back to each other before love tears them apart for good?

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Jun 19 2023

Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal

By mid-1916, British forces fighting in Europe have mastered the logistics of spiritualism well enough to gain occasional tactical advantages in the never-ending trench warfare of the Western Front. Men die; they report in to the Spirit Corps; the knowledge that they bought with their lives — a sniper’s location here, a hidden advance there, a flanking attempt somewhere else — goes back out to the field, in hopes that it arrives fast enough to make some sort of a difference in the unending slog of mud and blood. The mediums who take the reports give the dead soldiers something in return: comforting words that their sacrifice had meaning, and a chance to send a last message home.

Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal

Kowal makes it visceral for readers. Here is how Ghost Talkers starts: “The Germans were flanking us at Delville Wood when I died.” The young man giving his report to Ginger Stuyvesant, a medium in the Spirit Corps, is proud of his training. Despite a fatal wound from an artillery shot, he has his comrades prop him up so he can see more, remembers to note the time, and manages to report back within minutes of his death.

In a warehouse in Le Havre, dozens of spirit circles, each led by two mediums, take in the reports of the dead and send that information to the commands and to the front. The British think the work of the Spirit Corps is important enough to have a multi-level deception in place to cover details of its operation. Harry Houdini’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s debunking tours are meant to hide the truth that spiritualism is real, has been mastered on an industrial scale, and is playing a role in the British war effort that the high command considers vital. The soldiers are trained to think that they are posthumously reporting to London. The spiritualist operations in Le Havre take place under cover of the larger Spirit Corps that provides recuperating soldiers with a spot of tea and a bit of normalcy, something that also took place in the history outside of Ghost Walkers.

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Jun 18 2023

The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle

Two novellas in the world of The Last Unicorn? Yes, please.

“Two Hearts,” the first, is closer in tone to Beagle’s classic novel. Sooz, who is nine when the story begins, tells of what happens when the griffin who has settled into her village’s woods stops eating sheep and goats, and starts taking away children instead. Wilfrid, her older brother, says that Sooz screamed for three days after just seeing the griffin in the distance at night, “but he’s lying, and I didn’t hide in the root cellar either like he says, I slept in the barn those two nights, with our dog Malka. Because I knew Malka wouldn’t let anything get me.” (p. 4)

The villagers don’t know what to do, and when the griffin starts to take children they send messengers to the king to ask for help. And help duly comes, but it does not go well.

The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle

The first time, it was one knight, all by himself. His name was Douros, and he gave me an apple. He rode away into the Midwood, singing, to look for the griffin, and we never saw him again.
The second time—after the griffin took Louli, the boy who worked for the miller—the king sent five knights together. One of them did come back, but he died before he could tell anyone what happened.
The third time an entire squadron came. I don’t know how many soldiers there are in a squadron, but it was a lot; and they were all over the village for two days, pitching their tent everywhere, stabling their horses in every barn, and boasting in the tavern how they’d soon take care of that griffin for us poor peasants. They had musicians playing when they marched into the Midwood—I remember that, and I remember when the music stopped, and the sounds we heard afterward.
After that, the village didn’t send to the king anymore. We didn’t want more of his men to die, and besides they weren’t any help. (p. 5)

Then one day the griffin takes Sooz’s best friend Felicitas, and that very night she sets out to see the king herself. She hides in her uncle’s cart and rides along towards town—she figures the king can’t live far from there—and slipping out again just about dawn with her uncle none the wiser. Only then does Sooz think that she doesn’t even know the king’s name (“He’s just the king“), and she doesn’t have the faintest idea where his castle is. Beagle shows a nine-year-old’s view of trying to find the right direction, getting increasingly lost and regretting that she only took a piece of cheese from home. She’s run out of path and is pushing into a forest when she hears first a stream, then horses whickering, then two people talking, a man and a woman.

Sooz thinks they haven’t noticed her, even though the woman said to the man “The greatest wizard walking in the world, and your back hurts?” but then a little later he says “Child, there’s food here” and Sooz approaches: “I started remembering how hungry I was, and I started toward them without knowing I was doing it. I actually looked down at my feet and watched them moving like somebody else’s feet, as though they were the hungry one, only they had to have me take them to the food.” (p. 15)

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Jun 17 2023

The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

In Apex City, known in former centuries as Bangalore, meritocracy and sound scientific management principles have produced a city that has not only survived the environmental catastrophes, it is home to thriving humanity and extraordinary individuals extending what is humanly possible in many fields of endeavor. In the Virtual society inside Apex City, seventy percent work to support the excellence of the top twenty percent, whose personal merit and achievements bring them every possible comfort and all the resources necessary to become ever better versions of themselves, and thus keep improving humanity itself. The Curve is constantly updated, and it cannot err. The bottom ten percent cannot be allowed to drag Virtual society down to their level, so they are given opportunities to become more Productive. If they cannot even manage that they are given support for their transition to Analog lives outside the city. It is humane and objectively correct.

Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

The Ten Percent Thief is a mosaic novel of the dystopia in and outside of Apex City, and by implication the other cities around the world governed on the same principles by Bell Corp. Because of course despite the indoctrination and nearly omnipresent surveillance, there is life outside of Virtual society and unhappiness leading to opposition within. The book is classic “If this goes on…” science fiction extrapolation applied to South Asian parts of a global society, with equally classic underground opposition to the well-meaning utopia that has, unsurprisingly, turned dystopic.

Everyone is striving against unforgiving norms, and they are afraid of sliding down the wrong side of the Curve. People with great power take pleasure in using it on people lower on the Curve, and they also do their best to keep as much for themselves and their immediate circles. And while the Curve is by definition perfect, the people have human foibles that Virtual society refuses to acknowledge. One striver comes from the wrong background; another falls into grief, Productivity dropping like a rock, when their mother dies. Others refuse to play the roles foreseen for them, for example, by being unwilling to carry a child designed to be a genetic step up, but conceived with someone selected by Bell Corp rather than with their spouse.

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Jun 16 2023

The Nightmare Brigade #3: Finding Alice by Franck Thilliez, Yomgui Dumont & Drac

I really admire how well each of the books in this engrossing urban fantasy series lead in to one another. In this volume, Esteban, Tristan and Sarah, a.k.a the intrepid explorers of the Nightmare Brigade, are finally ready to plunge into the sleeping mind of Leonard, one of the Clinic’s most difficult patients. They’re going to search for Alice, the researcher who is also Tristan’s mother, and hopefully bring her home. Trouble is, Leonard has been so warped by what’s happened to him that he won’t let her go without a fight.

As the Brigade attempts to sort through his nightmares and find Alice, a greater problem hits the Clinic, with the shadowy military group that’s been on their tail finally homing in on them. The soldiers have surprisingly sophisticated tech and are completely ruthless, as they show in these pages, resorting to wanton destruction no matter the cost to either the Brigade… or themselves.

In the final chapter of this volume, the Brigade is rebuilding in a beautiful lighthouse. The structure and the land it’s on gives them new opportunities for research and discovery, especially with the hard pivot they’ve made from exploring dreams to exploring memories. But the new power structure that comes with the move sees our lead scientists arguing over the ethics and methods used. Each of their concerns are heightened by the dangers the kids of the Brigade are exposed to in the course of enacting their experimental therapy. Will the tenuous happiness and sense of purpose the Brigade has found in the aftermath of rebuilding be able to survive this schism in their leadership?

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Jun 15 2023

Gay Poems For Red States by Willie Carver

or Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr as he’s credited on the cover of this volume.

In 2022, Willie Carver was named Kentucky Teacher of the Year. A homophobic vendetta led by just one woman caused him to decide, only months later, to leave the public school system, but not before testifying before Congress about the targeted harassment both he and his students received as a result of him living as an openly gay man.

Despite fleeing a system that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, protect him and his kids, he found that he couldn’t just turn his back on the ones he left behind. Thus was Gay Poems For Red States born, as he channels his hard-earned wisdom into a collection of poems meant to speak to queer Appalachians, telling them that they matter and are seen and loved more than they know.

And this is an extremely powerful collection of verse, as Mr Carver talks about his own upbringing, what it felt like to be a queer kid himself and how difficult it was for him growing up. Through his poetry, he details both the mortifying moments (as in the powerful opener Minnie Mouse Toy) and the moments of grace that helped him survive. It helps so, so much that he had supportive parents who were ready to accept him even when he wasn’t ready to accept himself, as he describes in both that first poem and in the equally moving Someday Child.

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Jun 13 2023

Constellations by Kate Glasheen

My only regret is that the ARC I received of this wasn’t completely in color. This is understandable — graphic novels ain’t cheap! — but I was so in love in with the illustrations on the few pages that were full-color glossy that I know I lost a little bit of the story’s impact by only reading the rest on a cheaper b&w paper (plus it was harder to differentiate between some of the characters in grayscale.)

But oh, that full-color art that I did have! Kate Glasheen works in watercolor and ink, and the effect is magnificent. I mean, I appreciate digital art as much as the next person, but I adored the manual paint effects achieved here. The spills of color felt exceptionally well-suited to telling a story set in the pre-Internet era, before the digital world gave us a greater expectation of precision. Even more subtly, watercolor’s tendency to resist definition really suits a book about a protagonist who feels very much the same way.

Claire is a teenager in 1980s upstate New York, growing up in the struggling industrial town of Troy. They dress like a boy and don’t feel comfortable thinking of themself as a girl, which raises a lot of eyebrows from both strangers and people closer to them. Some people are awesome, like their best friends Greg and Josh, and their Mom and older brother Owen. Some are less great. Into that latter category fall, unfortunately, Claire’s dad and other brother Brad.

Claire just wants to have a normal life, but society keeps insisting on slapping a label on them and being really fucking awful when they do anything perceived as stepping out of the box they’re allowed to exist in. To cope, Claire turns to that mainstay of small town American life: alcohol. After they drunkenly run someone over on their bicycle, they’re court-ordered to rehab.

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