‘Light from Uncommon Stars’ by Ryka Aoki is a delightful romp! It reminded me of the children’s books by TJ Klune, but ‘Light from Uncommon Stars’ wil‘Light from Uncommon Stars’ by Ryka Aoki is a delightful romp! It reminded me of the children’s books by TJ Klune, but ‘Light from Uncommon Stars’ will be appreciated for its underlying romantic irony by an older audience. The story is a magical kaleidoscope of genre tropes - science fiction, fantasy, and lgbtq romcom. It is smart, witty and very much a happy treasure box of lighthearted crazy. Fans of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett should pick it up and try it. Uncommon stars have much more to applaud than common stars.
I have copied the book blurb because it is accurate:
”An adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.
But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.
As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.”
A lot of what makes being alive sing in our souls daily is included in these pages, reminding readers that excellent music, food, family, love and good company are heavenly. People forget to stop in their rushing about and getting ahead to smell the flowers! It’s a sin!
The characters ring true, especially Katrina Nguyen. My soul quivered in sympathetic harmonies for her. Katrina’s life was damned by being born to terrible abusive parents - cue the elegiac cellos. But she makes a leap of faith, driven by fear and despair. The instrument of her salvation was her decision to save herself and run away. Cue the violin vivace section!
I did find Shizuka Satomi a bit much - she entices six young musicians to accept eternal punishment in hell in exchange for fame and fortune. But I suppose for talented musicians, desiring fame and fortune more than creating beautiful music has already blackened and poisoned their souls. Readers should expect satirical tongue-in-cheek music commentary….
The space aliens are coming! Maybe. However, Earth sees a lot of humans as alien, too, often without justification or fairness. Well. The author obliquely answers the question of what to do when all of society is sliding down into a dark pit. A self-made family of chosen like-minded loved ones will provide music for the soul. And a donut or two would be nice....more
‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller is a play based on a real witchhunt! The Salem witch trials, a real-life event which occurrArthur Miller got it right.
‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller is a play based on a real witchhunt! The Salem witch trials, a real-life event which occurred in 1692-1693 in Salem, Massachusetts, ended up convicting and murdering 19 people on evidence obtained from spirits, which were invisible beings which could only be seen by young teenagers. The teens writhed, screamed, rolled on the ground, pointed at people, and fainted in the courtroom. This testimony was accepted as true evidence, and so 19 people were hanged because of these antics.
Miller conducted extensive research into the trials. He condensed the material and wrote ‘The Crucible’, a partially fictionalized story since much of it is based on actual documentation.
Gentle reader, I wish this story was one I could laugh at as having been a strange hysterical delusion by primitive religious fanatics, a relic of the past to never be repeated, but I can’t.
Miller was inspired by the hunt for Communists in the 1950’s by Congress to write this play. The similarities on how Congress conducted its search for Communist traitors eerily mirrored how the Salem witch trials were conducted.
There have been many such mock trials in following centuries and by current (2022) conspiracy fanatics of all types, of late primarily being ex-President Trump, Republican MAGAs, White supremacist gangs, and evangelical apocalypse cults, who, without any evidence, are spreading dark horror stories based on innuendos, personal visions and dreams, gossip and social media claims.
These conspiracies are initially spread by people with hidden agendas for power and attention. They are absolutely aware the conspiracies they are talking about do not exist. Deluded followers, many of whom seem to have devolved into paranoid psychotics from their fears which have been raised by leaders whom they respect, have bought guns and went hunting for secret Democrat basements in pizza restaurants where they hope to rescue children they’ve read online exist. Social media articles described how Democrats will defile and kill children for the Devil’s promise of riches and election success. This story was believed, and is still believed by many of ex-President Trump’s followers.
So, gentle reader, be afraid, very afraid….the rules by which the Salem witch trial were conducted have been revived, and MAGA believers might be coming for you because you vote Democrat!...more
‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ by Gillian McAllister is, eventually, a book I couldn’t put down! But at first, after a murder which takes place in the first‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ by Gillian McAllister is, eventually, a book I couldn’t put down! But at first, after a murder which takes place in the first chapter, the book slowed down a bit, becoming a domestic read with a science fiction time-traveling trope driving the plot. It seemed for a number of chapters that the novel would be mostly exploring the relationships of the main characters, a family. I almost decided against finishing the novel because Romance and Domestic reads usually bore me, even if the author HAS introduced time traveling into the story in this case. It really looked initially like a domestic genre book reflecting about how the family ended up where it did, using the mundane happenings of ordinary middle-class married life over a twenty-year period. But the author does these scenes with brief sketches, not extended into long descriptive details at all. I think in this case, the second looks at a domestic event were not only necessary to the plot, they increased meaning and emotion.
The main character, lawyer Jen Brotherhood, is mum to seventeen-year-old Todd and wife to construction worker Kelly. After the day she watches Todd stab a man to death in front of her house on October 30, 2022, she wakes up the next morning, which should be the 31st, Halloween (!!!!!), but instead it is the 28th of October. She relives the 28th, which happens exactly as she remembered it happening. Then after she goes to bed and wakes up, she is in another day that happened earlier in the week. After her next sleep and awakening the next morning, she is reliving another day which occurred a week before. Then she wakes up to a day which happened months before, then years before. She sees Todd and Kelly get younger. She revisits all of her married past - sees Todd growing up again, sees how her relationships with Kelly and Todd evolved. She sees her dad alive again. Her cell phones becomes clunkier and less functional as she travels through the past, from 2022 to 2003. She sees businesses like Blockbuster Video stores again, which no longer exist in 2022. She sees that people are wearing clothes that are no longer in style.
If this is all that happened, I definitely wouldn’t have finished the book. But as she wakes up to each day in her past, she notices things she didn’t the first time she lived through that day. Clues about the murder begin to accumulate. She introduces changes in the day she is revisiting, changing how things happened the first time. She introduces conversations and asks questions about the behaviors of Kelly, her father Kenneth, Todd, their friends, questioning people about puzzling events and facts which she had completely missed the first time. Everything she thought she knew was a lie!
I have copied the book blurb below because it is accurate:
”Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened?
Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed.
You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered.
That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake... and it is yesterday.
And then you wake again... and it is the day before yesterday.
Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime—and you don’t have a choice but to find it...”
The chapters Jen narrates are interspersed with narrations by a police officer, Ryan Hiles. Ryan’s story does not appear to be connected to Jen’s for a long while. I figured it must have something to do with the murder, but actually, it was about, well, the reasons behind EVERYTHING.
Most of the people who have read it who are also my GR friends, didn’t like ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’! They rated the novel from two stars to three, generally, writing very gloomy reviews. The reviewers seemed to indicate a dislike of the time-traveling device. Others couldn’t suspend disbelief enough. (view spoiler)[It might be the ‘deus ex machina’ feel to the way the author uses time travel, which enables Jen to fix all of it. Yes, gentle reader, there is an unlikely happy ending! Bite me. (hide spoiler)]
For me, the story became a thriller! It also IS a domestic read, AND a slow-burn mystery. The touch of speculative science fiction - namely the traveling back in Time to crucial days where things went sideways - is a twist on introducing backstory memories that usually show readers how the characters get to where they got to. I thought the author got those bits right. I was often touched by Jen’s reflections on parenting Todd. There is a lot of nested mysteries within mysteries like Russian Matryoshka dolls. Of course, since mysteries and thrillers are two of my favorite book genres, the story did take off eventually for me. So. For myself, I couldn’t put the book down after I had read halfway through it. I liked it. It seemed a very good story to me....more
‘Circus of the Damned’ by Laurell K. Hamilton, the third book of dark horror in the vampire executioner/necromancer Anita Blake series, is a novel abo‘Circus of the Damned’ by Laurell K. Hamilton, the third book of dark horror in the vampire executioner/necromancer Anita Blake series, is a novel about very flawed people driven by incredibly destructive impulses. Anita is particularly annoying because she refuses to accept anyone’s common sense advice or help. I really really mean she has zero tolerance for advice or help or assistance of any kind. She has absolutely not a bit of any common sense if it involves someone having tried to tell her something important, no matter how true the information is or even if it means saving a life, including her own. Gentle reader, it will depend on your tolerance for such a character whether you appreciate this series or not. Anita also controls her fear with the lamest snark I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.
Anita is a suicidal fool, but she definitely is brave, a hardass assassin of bad guys, and wants to save good people. However, her insistence on believing nothing, trusting no one, which causes her to often get good guys killed and allows bad guys to walk away, is frustrating. She is very neurotic, basically. Sometimes it got on my nerves, to tell the truth. But these are fun books, if one doesn’t mind extreme gore, a lot of bloody killing, and a frustrating woman warrior as the main character and narrator. She wants to like people, even love them a bit, but once she becomes aware she is attracted to anyone, she intentionally does whatever she can to not do so, even to the edge of killing herself to kill her feelings for anyone.
I’m not sure I like her, she is WAY too antisocial, but her life is definitely exciting. The snarky humor is a plus. I think she appeals to me because she deals with the reality of evil, recognizing evil exists. Other characters make her life harder than it has to be because of their sunny irrational beliefs in a civilization where nice always comes out on top simply because they believe in niceness as a protection or cure against evil. Anita and I agree that is not true.
I have copied the book blurb below:
”In Circus of the Damned a rogue master vampire hits town, and Anita gets caught in the middle of an undead turf war. Jean-Claude, the Master Vamp of the city, wants her for his own - but his enemies have other plans. And to make matters worse, Anita takes a hit to the heart when she meets a stunningly handsome junior high science teacher named Richard Zeeman. They're two humans caught in the crossfire - or so Anita thinks.”
I do not recommend starting to read the series with this novel, but instead start with Guilty Pleasures. I don’t think any of the books are standalone because each book adds more information to the previous reveals about the vampires, werewolves, zombies, other weird creatures, and the alternate American cultural world Anita lives in. She is also attracted to a male vampire that she refuses to admit she likes - a typical romance trope.
The books are extremely violent similar to any horror-military thriller involving supernatural science gone wrong, like a Jonathon Maberry novel (see Patient Zero). The only difference I can see between violent male-oriented military novels and the universe in these novels is the main character, Anita, is a woman. She describes things from a woman’s point of view, while most novels involving a lot of shooting and killing and sex usually involve an ex-military black-ops dude. In any case, if a reader enjoys exciting military action with a supernatural twist, kinky sex, horror and gore, I recommend this series. I admit I skim some of the action....more
I think people will believe me to be insane, but 'The Atlas Six' by Olivie Blake appears to be, to me, a book of dense creativity similar to Dune by FI think people will believe me to be insane, but 'The Atlas Six' by Olivie Blake appears to be, to me, a book of dense creativity similar to Dune by Frank Herbert. The book is clearly part of a planned series involving a complicated landscape of imagination and world building. The characters have personal ambitions that they slowly realize are being used against them and that they have enabled a powerful organization to manipulate them because of their ignorance of its overarching plan for them. Besides the world-building differences, the two books differ in that 'The Atlas Six' leans heavily on magic instead of science in its fictional alt-world of the present. However, 'The Atlas Six' is similar to 'Dune' in how much it depends on descriptions of internal mental experience, and self-talk dialogue, to move forward in chapter after chapter.
I still can't decide if I actually like the book, and I definitely do not feel much attraction to any of the magicians. So far. They all seem like different versions of "mean girls" to me, even the male characters. Is there some sort of fantasy rule magicians are somewhat or a lot narcissistically or blindly immoral? The main characters are very immature and arrogant. But during the challenges in the novel, each character develops a bit more recognition of the legitimacy of the needs other people have, and are moved to introspection and self-examination. They each reluctantly begin to respect the other characters, and reassess how they've always seen others as tools to use or enemies to be conquered.
I copied the book blurb because it is accurate:
"The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few...
-Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds. - Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself. - Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched. - Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe. - Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.
When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them."
Even though the characters are not admirable people, they are extremely interesting. The magical powers each one possesses are fascinating, and until the contest, they were unaware they had not yet reached the top of their powers. They already know themselves to be exceptional human beings who stand above "mundies" - ordinary unmagical or weakly magical people. All of the invitees given the offer to compete for membership in the Alexandrian Society are young and eager to compete, and they each are used to winning at every endeavor they attempt. None of them know the word 'humble', but some are angry at their crappy parents. They do love learning and want access to the library's amazing books, many of which were in the original library of Alexandria, established probably between 285 and 246 BC - yes, that legendary library created in Egypt which supposedly had been destroyed. Surprise! It had been hidden by magic.
But as the months go by, and as they check out books pursuing individual interests, attending classes that the Society wants them to be in, they learn the Society is not as benevolent as it seems. Something is going very wrong.
The fantasy novel ends on a cliffhanger. Will I plan to read the next one? Yes! I want to see what happens. But I still do not know if I will ultimately like the series. Each of the different kinds of magic each character has is almost entirely explored in mental word-salad concepts as dense as the descriptions of political machinations in the book 'Dune'. I understood Dune, though. But these descriptions of the magical talents of the characters caused me to re-read many a paragraph in trying to grasp what was happening. I think the author's vision of how these magic abilities worked was beyond me to a small degree. I needed a movie art director to help me visualize each of the Atlas Six's mental experience of their magic, like the way the CGI in Doctor Strange movies are designed! However, I managed. Eventually....more
‘The Satanic Verses’ by Salman Rushdie is about the larger influence of what other people think who you are, and how your thoughts about yourself can ‘The Satanic Verses’ by Salman Rushdie is about the larger influence of what other people think who you are, and how your thoughts about yourself can mutate because of what other people think of you. People will treat you, and act towards you, based on what they think you are. Two different things -You vs. the image of you. Or the third thing - you having internalized their vision of you into yourself.
Identity can be a demon living inside of you. And if you try to escape the self other people created for you, you can’t, not really. Neurons seared by struggles with identity feed unwelcome self-doubt.
One’s Culture affects thinking. But Culture changes and mutates as Time passes. Since religion is culture, it mutates your image of who you are as well. People are their culture. But culture is always mutating. What was beautiful or holy or admired, or what social rules were a hundred years ago, might not be beautiful or holy or admired or what the rules are today. Also, what is beautiful or holy or admired, or what the rules are, in one culture is not beautiful or holy or admired or what the rules are in a nearby culture of another territory or country, either, something a traveler can experience in the same day. An airplane trip can change your entire image of what people used to think of you, the whole of how you are perceived by others, in an hour or two. East meets West on common ground? Not bloody likely. You are who you think you are in the West as you were thought of in the East? Not bloody likely either. Fricking mutable identity - POW. Identity is apparently a flimsy masquerade, easily knocked awry. Each of us is the last one to know who we are when, during, after, who we think we are is put to a test.
People can mutate the harmless you you desire to be into an evil monster or a saint. Celebrities know very well the mob can love you one day and hate you the next. People are thinking they know you from only the images of you but they are actually mutating your airbrushed third-hand image.
Who are you now, exactly? The image in the mirror you see? Well, mirrors reverse your image, so its a scientific fact you never really see yourself. The image you see mirrored in the eyes of other people, coming off of you in the form of photons is twisted upside down by the lens in the eyes, and lands upside down on our retinas. People actually see images upside down, which is flipped again in the brain. Then there is the question of is what I see the same as what you see? I have a headache now.
If you become insane in the effort to be authentic, whatever that is, well, yeah. How could you not?
Below I have copied the book blurb:
”One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
~randomhousebooks.com
If you notice how the description of the book by the publisher is a bit obscure, nebulous, I think so too. But it fits the plot. This is an intellectual’s domestic fiction novel, with satirical under - and some sly overt - tones. It is a commentary about the invention of the self, but it is a self that is also curated through culture and the eyes of other people raised within a culture. It is about the perceptions of the human mind, the filtering we do with the brain, to make it all palatable to ourselves, which is in fact the dual function of the brain in interpreting reality. Reality? Wtf is that? The interplay of cells and neurons - our physical wiring - and the visions that serve us, guide us, the visions that often cannot be understood by us whether they are coming out of our dream life and what we call waking life, are they reality?
The novel is full of magical realism, and deep thoughts about culture and immigration, and our place in a culture, and the imagined self.
”The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specialises in playing Hindu deities (the character is partly based on Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan and N. T. Rama Rao). Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his Indian identity and works as a voiceover artist in England.
At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane flying from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gabriel and Chamcha that of a devil. Chamcha is arrested and passes through an ordeal of police abuse as a suspected illegal immigrant. Farishta's transformation can partly be read on a realistic level as the symptom of the protagonist's development of schizophrenia.[editorializing]
Both characters struggle to piece their lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, wants to take revenge on Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. He does so by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realises what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life.”.
Plus there is more and more and more…all told in wonderful writing - densely playful, full of cultural references and sideways jokes. This is a novel which needs to be read again and again.
Rushdie was raised in the Islam religion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_...) which intersects in a number of its basic beliefs with Christianity. Angels and devils are the same characters in both religions. But the image of angels and devils, which might look the same to both a Christian and Muslim, are defined as representing quite different Good and Evils culturally, imho. Image/belief interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, the major theme of The Satanic Verses’ imho, in all of its permutations.
(I am going to use food as an example: food available in India, used for a religion-based meal, cannot be found in England sometimes. So meal preparers use alternative foods, sometimes they start using the foods English Christians use for their meals, making them their own. But does that make an evolving Muslim-Hindu believer Evil to other Muslims/Hindus still living in their homelands? If an Englishman sees an Indian Muslim or Hindu and sees Evil because of religion, skin color and accent, does that make the Muslim/Hindu believer actually Evil - or does it result sometimes in that he only sees himself evil in his own eyes on some subconscious level? Who has the right to define whom? Another case and type of co-opting - many Japanese are Buddhists, but many Japanese Buddhists have wholeheartedly co-opted some Christmas rituals. I read a magazine by an author who talked to Japanese who were shopping for Christmas trees, decorations and gifts. These Japanese Buddhists were mystified by the Christian stories behind our evolved Christian holidays and the forms of Christmas they too were happily embracing, further evolving, co-opting, in a completely harmless manner. Is this natural or against nature? It is natural. Is it Evil? No, imho. )
The story vehicle Rushdie uses in ‘The Satanic Verses as a foundation is the divisions created by immigration and Indian/Islam culture. What can one do to foster acceptance or reduce rejection by people? Can people grok/accept the differing personal mental visions developed/expressed by culture, if filtered by immigrants and White English people who live in or aspire to life in England in this case? Some immigrants completely reject their previous heritage, but they are in turn sometimes rejected by the people of their chosen cultural replacement, the new culture they now love and admire. Other immigrants remain in the bubble of their original culture trying to maintain their homeland inside of another, very different, homeland. The result, at least in ‘The Satanic Verses’ is a cultural chaos. There is immigrant evolution and devolution, described in Rushdie’s vision with deep intellectual amusement, amazement and confusion.
The book is a delirious and hysterical confection of wild hilarity encapsulated in a tale of amazed rage-based misery. The two main characters remind me of the character Candide by Voltaire. Rushdie also kicks around Western consumerism in a major way. I was reminded of Animal Farm ironically - about evil pigs) and 1984 by George Orwell, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee Harper, and The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Saga, Volume 1 by Brian Vaughan, and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon… and even The Book of Enoch. (The Book of Enoch includes the biblical tale of those angels, naming them, who were cast out of heaven because of their desire for human women.) And many more…which apparently have been printed and distributed and read in vain.
People are silly, no matter what the culture, religion, or belief system. I see the silliness of people much the same as Rushdie describes in ‘The Satanic Verses’. But it’s a very deadly silliness to some.
It is the most ironic silliness of all that the author Rushdie had a death sentence passed on him by Iran’s Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 because of this book. For real. He called for Rushdie's death which has resulted in several unsuccessful assassination attempts. So far.
From the article in Wikipedia, a plot analysis with which I agree with completely:
”Muhammad Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that "The Satanic Verses is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. The Satanic Verses is a reflection of the author’s dilemmas." The work is an "albeit surreal, record of its own author's continuing identity crisis."Ally said that the book reveals the author ultimately as "the victim of nineteenth-century British colonialism." Rushdie himself spoke confirming this interpretation of his book, saying that it was not about Islam, "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay." He has also said "It's a novel which happened to contain a castigation of Western materialism. The tone is comic."
But. However. From Wikipedia:
”The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the "satanic verses" was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.”
“The book and its perceived blasphemy motivated Islamic extremist bombings, killings, and riots and sparked a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. Fearing unrest, the Rajiv Gandhi government banned the importation of the book into India. In 1989, Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's death, resulting in several failed assassination attempts on the author, who was granted police protection by the UK government, and attacks on connected individuals, including the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death in 1991. Assassination attempts against Rushdie continued, including an attempt on his life in August 2022.”
”After the Satanic Verses controversy developed, some scholars familiar with the book and the whole of Rushdie's work, like M. D. Fletcher, saw the reaction as ironic. Fletcher wrote "It is perhaps a relevant irony that some of the major expressions of hostility toward Rushdie came from those about whom and (in some sense) for whom he wrote." He said the manifestations of the controversy in Britain:
“”embodied an anger arising in part from the frustrations of the migrant experience and generally reflected failures of multicultural integration, both significant Rushdie themes. Clearly, Rushdie's interests centrally include explorations of how migration heightens one's awareness that perceptions of reality are relative and fragile, and of the nature of religious faith and revelation, not to mention the political manipulation of religion. Rushdie's own assumptions about the importance of literature parallel the literal value accorded the written word in Islamic tradition to some degree. But Rushdie seems to have assumed that diverse communities and cultures share some degree of common moral ground on the basis of which dialogue can be pieced together, and it is perhaps for this reason that he underestimated the implacable nature of the hostility evoked by The Satanic Verses, even though a major theme of that novel is the dangerous nature of closed, absolutist belief systems.””
Can’t we all get along? Apparently not.
I highly recommend this book, but it is a dense literary and satirical read. If it were not for the controversy, I suspect the novel would not be on many bookshelves. It is extremely literary, a high-end modern allegory. It is a not very disguised commentary that describes Western and Eastern societal myths in an unfavorable light. I see what Rushdie saw, I agree with his vision of the chaos and hurtfulness of human cultures and clashes.
All cultures form because of the human need to formulate a paradigm to make sense of reality, a comfortable nest to live within. These cultural formulations, brought into the world in isolation in different parts of the world, showcase the variety of human adaptation. Unfortunately, they also showcase human maladaptivity, too.
This is a banned book in many Middle-Eastern countries, of which most are dictatorial theocracies, who have laws to kill anyone with diverse lifestyles and thinking. Many of these countries have a death penalty for atheists on the books. Many of these Islamic countries have the death penalty for any Muslim who changes to another religion. Many of these countries, depending on what kind of Islam they demand of their citizens, have the death penalty for Muslims of a different religious sect of Islam. Don’t feed this theocratic insanity, gentle reader, wherever you are from. Diversity of ideas and public discussion of many ideas is a good thing! I admire flexible minds and flexible multicultural societies and I try to feel tolerance for harmless religious beliefs, if not exactly respectful, sorry. I hate, yes, hate, censorship and all organized religions. All organized religions censor and murder people with different ideas today, some more than others, full stop.
Considering the many many many many books published about these very same themes - about religious and racial hatreds, gender prejudices, politically-based hatreds, history - which are mostly all about the immoral killing off of The Other for no good reasons other than they are different - why do those who ban books bother? Banned books become bestsellers, sure enough, because they got banned. For millennia. Rushdie is in a long distinguished blockchain of authors whom small-minded evil people have tried to silence. The bad news is every generation births small-minded evil book banners and burners. Humans don’t pass down instinctual memories to their offspring. Unfortunately, every generation repeats the errors of prejudice again and again. Thankfully, we have books. Rushdie’s books will be around forever, somewhere, even if hidden in closets or passed down in the manner of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
The Truth is hard for many to face. We shit in our own nests. We murder others for the motes we see in their eyes ignoring that it looks exactly like the one in our own eyes. How many great humans were almost murdered because of religion (Albert Einstein, for one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_...) and how many genius humans have we murdered or stifled (including a lot of genius women) who could have maybe made it possible for us to have a Mars habitat right now?...more
'Book of Night' by Holly Black is disguised as a dark fantasy, but it also is a mystery, a paranormal romUnique world building and a mindblowing plot!
'Book of Night' by Holly Black is disguised as a dark fantasy, but it also is a mystery, a paranormal romance of sorts with blood-soaked secrets, and a unique thriller! Oh, and it is exciting and well written, whatever the genre definition. I believe there will be a sequel - I hope there will be a sequel! It ended on a sour cliffhanger moment which has made me very unhappy. Nonetheless, I'm in!
I copied the book blurb because it is accurate:
"Holly Black makes her adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.
In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.
Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows....more
'Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles' by Jeanette Winterson is a brain-candy delight! This short poetic novella, a reboot of the well-known tale fr'Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles' by Jeanette Winterson is a brain-candy delight! This short poetic novella, a reboot of the well-known tale from ancient Greek mythology, offers the reader more layers of possible meaning.
I've copied a link to a Wikipedia description of the original story below:
Winterson delves deep into the choices made by the Titan god, Atlas, and the semigod, Heracles. Both heroes offended Zeus or his wife, Hera, and both were given tasks as punishment. Atlas was told to carry the weight of the universe on his shoulders forever. Heracles was told to obey the orders of a King, his human rival, until twelve incredibly difficult assignments given him by the King had been completed.
Below is a Wikipedia link to the myths of Heracles:
Were the heroes forced into their punishments or did they choose to accept the pain and humiliation? In accepting the burdens the gods gave them, if it WAS a choice of accepting - or instead was an offer they couldn't refuse (why didn't they refuse whatever the cost?) - did they justly deserve the punishments given them? Were the punishments proportional to the offense? How much did their personalities affect what choices they made and what Zeus and Hera caused to happen to them? If either one of them walked away from their commitments to endure the punishments, would that have been a catastrophe? A catastrophe for whom?
Is the weight of one's personal character the greatest bitch of all? Maybe so.... ...more
'The Hollow Places' by T. Kingfisher is a suspenseful thriller! It's also a horror story told by a recently divorced woman, Kara, who accidentally fin'The Hollow Places' by T. Kingfisher is a suspenseful thriller! It's also a horror story told by a recently divorced woman, Kara, who accidentally finds and then bravely explores a portal hole in her Uncle Earl's curiosity shop. Kara is a very funny quipster who can find humor in most situations, even those which come close to killing her....
Kara finds a Bible while exploring the watery portal hole world of rivers and islands with her gay friend Simon. Simon runs the coffee shop next door to her Uncle's curiosity shop. A soldier wrote in the Bible of the vacuae, which is what his squad calls the strange portal world on the other side of a different portal door they found. There are many portal doors!
If, gentle reader, it has crossed your mind that a tale of horror written down in the margins of a Bible is possibly a satiric literary joke referencing the horrific multi-dimensions of universes given life through storytellers, you aren't alone!
In any case, the soldiers in the squad had come up against the same murderous mysteries after opening a portal door as Kara and Simon have. There are very peculiar Willow trees 'of life, death and knowledge' (my words) on the little islands. Some of the soldiers died, and some of them became....very different. Will Kara and Simon find the right portal door back to their universe before....things...kill them?
O _ O
I enjoyed this fun novel! It's a fast read with lovable characters, including a huge cat called Beauregard - excluding the weird 'things' living (?) in the portal world, of course....more
''The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig is mostly a dramedy cozy for me! I think it a fun idea there is a purgatory where sometimes a dying person is off''The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig is mostly a dramedy cozy for me! I think it a fun idea there is a purgatory where sometimes a dying person is offered the opportunity to "purify" one's old life through the ability to choose moving one's essence to another universe. Bad choices made by the "root" self have led to crippling regrets, guilts and losses for Nora Seed, the main character. But she is given a chance to do a makeover by moving into her same, but maybe happier better self, into an another universe where her other "Nora" self made different choices.
Nora is currently dying by suicide, but she discovered her essence is drifting out of her body in her apartment into a strange misty place. Why is she trying to suicide by overdose? In the previous nineteen years, she walked out on Dan, her fiance, only two days before they were to marry; her brother Joe has refused to talk to her for years after she walked away from their music band, the Labyrinths, when they were about to sign a contract for an album; and today she was fired from her job at a music equipment store where she has worked for nearly thirteen years. Plus her cat just died in the street (omg) perhaps because she was too inattentive. Her mum died of cancer. Her dad died of a heart attack. Nora is having a lot of troubles piling on top of her.
Although Nora is only 35 years old, she has attempted and failed at several careers. She feels she messed up because she could not make herself push through and persevere with her initial, or her family's, enthusiasms. She wanted to be a glaciologist because she had a strong interest in science, but Nora got a philosophy degree instead of a science one at University. She inexplicably never used her philosophy degree for her choices in jobs. She trained as a swimmer and qualified for the Olympics because of her dad's hopes, but gave up professional sports to join the music group "Labyrinths" to help Joe become a famous musician. She quit Joe's group because her fiance Dan hated her being on stage, and then she called off the wedding because Dan wanted kids. Now, her boss Neil has fired her for being late again. She feels not only has she let everyone down, she feels she is unloved by everyone.
Instead of the nothingness of a suicide death, Nora wakes up in a library. The librarian in charge, who looks like Mrs. Elm, her school librarian when Nora was a child, tells her this is the Midnight Library. It is full of books that represent all of the lives she is currently living in an infinity of universes. The librarian tells her there is a Nora in all of the books who made different decisions than she had at various points in her life. Dying Nora, who is now standing in the library, is "root" Nora. However, she is in between life and death at the moment, which means she has the power to choose a book on the shelves which will temporarily pass root-Nora into a life she might have had if she had made different choices. Nora will be 35 years old in every book, but she will take over the Nora-body in whatever book she selects.
Most interesting to me is the idea in the novel that the choices one makes affects the trajectory of quite a few of other people's lives, including those folks you'd think would be more autonomous instead of dependent on what direction you've chosen to make. Obviously parents affect their children dramatically by their choices, but Haig chooses to have Nora's choices take down or uplift her brother and neighbors and friends!
Haig did not go in deep into the questions he raises with his remarkably entertaining brain candy of a plot. I wish he had! But he does stir up dust with a storm of existential possibilities for his main character, Nora Seed.
I noticed some Goodreads' reviews by reviewers I adore panned this novel. I did see the same issues they do. For readers accustomed to sophisticated reads, there ARE a lot of obvious revelations and hopeful (and often repeated by many self-help books) messages/advice/platitudes, especially in the last third of the book. Maybe because it's Christmas, or maybe it's the isolation of the year-long Covid-19 lockdown, but I enjoyed this feel-good, if a little edgier than normal, cozy. Sometimes reminders that we CAN always change our frequently ingrown or blinkered perceptions by widening out our horizons and/or looking at a problem from a different angle, giving ourselves permission to think outside of our customary mentalities, no matter how odd or weird or different, are exactly what a reader wants from a novel! Personally, I loved being reminded of these old suggestions for making lemonade out of lemons right now -bite me....more
'Heartless' by Marissa Meyer is a fun YA fantasy! Catherine Pinkerton is a charming young girl of the Wonderland aristocracy. Her parents want her to 'Heartless' by Marissa Meyer is a fun YA fantasy! Catherine Pinkerton is a charming young girl of the Wonderland aristocracy. Her parents want her to marry the King of Hearts, but she wants to open a bakery. Her baked goods are in high demand. She is certain she can change her parents' mind. She has been invited to a ball being given by the King, something she is not really wanting to attend, but oh well. Things begin to look up when she meets the King's new joker! He is gorgeous! And mysterious! He tells her his name is Jest.
She meets with Jest several times. She is in love! This is going to be a happy ending! Somehow, she will open a bakery, and refuse to marry the King without upsetting her parents.
Wonderland is a very cool place where croquet is played with hedgehogs and flamingos, her friend the Cheshire Cat tells her secrets, and she went to a lovely tea party where she meets new friends like Hatta the hatter.
Everything is looking good! At least, up to chapter 46. The story turns dark and our heroine changes (view spoiler)[to a villein, the Red Queen, but we fans of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland series knew it would happen (hide spoiler)].
The only question we readers have is how did the Red Queen become such a fearsome proponent of chopping heads off? She must have had good reasons. It is a mystery I know we all have been waiting to be solved, right? Right? Reader, my advice is you better be saying yes, or the Red Queen will be coming for you! She is a powerful being and she is queen of a magical kingdom and she doesn't like it when people don't obey or give her the respect due her. I think I see her staring at me from my wall mirror, a frown growing between her eyes. And...wait. There is definitely a man all in black standing behind her, an axe on his shoulder. Personally, I've ALWAYS admired her majesty, right? I am SURE she had good reasons, and we ALL are enormously sympathetic even before we know her story despite her irrational cruelties...not that she is ever irrational or cruel! Sorry, sorry, I apologise, your majesty!
'A Book of Bones', number 17 in the Charlie Parker paranormal detective series by John Connolly, won't make much sense unless the reader has read the 'A Book of Bones', number 17 in the Charlie Parker paranormal detective series by John Connolly, won't make much sense unless the reader has read the previous books in the series.
Despite the complexity of the continuing and connected stories, a quick perusal of 'A Book of Bones' by a curious first-time reader will discover impressive atmospheric prose describing eery and graphic gothic horrors. However, I strongly suggest beginning with book one, Every Dead Thing. The continuing parts of the plots appear more densely interconnected and ever evolving to me, with new characters being introduced and older ones being violently retired.
Not every Charlie Parker novel involves his pursuit of demons and their evil enablers. In fact, Parker is mostly a regular private detective, if a very dark and sometimes angry one. He has suffered enormous emotional traumas throughout his investigations beginning with the horrific murders of his wife and child. He tracked down his family's killer at the cost of his job as a policeman and maybe his sanity. Along the way, he met two criminals, Louis and Angel, who joined him in his continuing personal crusade against the most terrible killers - ordinary and mystical - who walk the Earth.
Parker accepts normal private detective jobs and some of the books are about 'normal' evil killers only. Others in the series introduce mysterious, somewhat nebulous, creatures, who might be familiars or agents of serial killers, and others who, maybe, are possessing killers, or who have hooked up with flesh-and-blood admirers hoping to bring about an Apocalypse. Are they 'demons' from another universe? Are they fallen angels? Are they creatures given actual existence from the imaginations and desires of Humanity? We readers still don't know. Clues point to all of the above. But they exist and are causing mayhem, seen only by an unlucky few. Academics track them through ancient books and strange events, and somehow end up asking for Parker's help. Ordinary folk touched by the evil of senseless murders that police can't figure out seek Parker's door. Business people and others who find their deals with demons have become soul-eating disasters fear Parker's discovery of their crimes and the retribution he enacts. There are sometimes ritualistic murders which official investigators believe to be caused by the insanity of the members of whatever cult is involved. When Parker is hired by distressed or fearful victims who feel the police disbelieve their experiences with the cult, he can tell after an investigation that some of the clients are facing an evil beyond normal reality. After all, he has seen and felt the presence of.... things.....often.
In 'A Book of Bones', a dead body found in a refrigerator in Arizona leads Parker to The Netherlands and to London. Ross, a mysterious employee of the FBI with unusual contacts and the freedom to pursue unusual cases, has asked Parker once again to investigate. Parker doesn't trust him for good reasons, but they are on the same page in working against the evil entities. The body has been altered to look like a murderous woman Parker fought against in the previous novels. Witnesses describe other people who delivered the refrigerator that are familiar to Parker and Ross. There are videos, pictures, paperwork which lead to possible clues on who and where the bad guys have gone. These people had escaped or had been presumed dead in the preceding novel in the series. Have they tracked down the lost page of the Fractured Atlas after all? If they have, they have the means to bring on the Apocalypse...
Parker is uncertain for several books in the series whether he has any mental stability or sanity. He is haunted by his dead daughter and his wife, and he is contacted by or speaks to, well, evil non-corporeal or monster beings, on many of his cases. But he can definitely kill their flesh-and-blood confederates! After several novels, he has accepted that the occult happenings and beings are real. He is becoming tired, I think, but he can't stop. Yet. ...more
'The Priory of the Orange Tree' by Samantha Shannon is an epic! Those readers who enjoyed the A Song of Ice and Fire series (begin here: A Game of Thr'The Priory of the Orange Tree' by Samantha Shannon is an epic! Those readers who enjoyed the A Song of Ice and Fire series (begin here: A Game of Thrones) and The Wheel of Time series (begin here: The Eye of the World) will enjoy 'The Priory of the Orange Tree'.
The novel has many of the same elements other fantasy epics have: flawed characters from dozens of countries and Houses; and the dense and many threaded world-building with more than a thousand years of ancient history driving the current conflicts. The characters in the other fantasy series - kings and queens and knights and magical sorcerers and sacred religions/beliefs and best of all, dragons (one difference from the other books - they be sentient dragons who talk!) have their counterparts in this novel as well. Maps are included, of course, because there are the dozens of countries. There also is a list of characters and their families in the back.
The various nations are all enduring a simmering cold war with each other. and are competing with each other. Readers will soon recognize these fictional nations are lightly disguised real-life countries on Earth. As in our real Middle Ages and seventeenth-century history of France vs. England vs. the Netherlands vs. China vs. Russia vs. Scandanavia vs. etc. etc. etc., the kings and queens leading each nation sponsors pirates and homegrown culturally-relevant religions (each nation has a time-altered version of the same religion). The religions believed by the neighboring nations consider the other country's religion heretical and a damnation offense as is done today in the real world.
The various continents have home-grown dragons as well, excepting Inys. Inys is the most powerful nation in this world. The people of Inys have no acceptance for the dragons, or wyrms, as they name them. Inys hates all of the types of dragons, of which there are three main types, and kills any dragon on sight. So does the Priory of the Orange Tree. But the people of Inys despise the 'sorcerers' of the Priory despite their mutual dislike of dragons. They hate each other because of their slight differences in their shared religion.
Each type of dragon is considered a god. Some countries worship their type of dragons. But all countries hate the fire dragons who are evil. The Unnamed One is the King of the fire dragons and was defeated a thousand years ago. But it was a temporary imprisonment. The creatures of the Unnamed One are restless and are attacking ships and cities again. The thousand years is almost up. However, the nation of Inys is unaware of this history of the Unnamed One's imprisonment being temporary. The religion of Inys teaches the Unnamed One will stay imprisoned as long as their royal house, headed by Sabran the Queen, continues. This is a fallacy of their religion. If Inys refuses to hear the truth of the stories of history known by other nations and institutions and schools, Inys could be burned to extinction by the return of the Unnamed One and his minions. No one in Inys can face the fact of their religion being based on sand. Nor can any of the other countries face any discrepancies with their variants of the dragon-god religions.
Will these competing nations pull together to fight the Unnamed One? Will the rulers face the fact and reality of the return of the Unnamed One at the expense of long-cherished cultural and religious beliefs? It all depends on a dozen characters with a variety of talents and beliefs, gentle reader. Some are young, and some are elderly. Some are magical, and some are aristocrats, and some are poor and some are ordinary folk. Each one has been taught to distrust the others from foreign countries. Each of them begins a journey of self-discovery, failures and disillusionment. I liked most of them, cared about their near-death experiences and romantic problems. But not all will survive....because Evil is in the heart of traitors, which some of them are...
I enjoyed this novel, but it suffers from being near the last in a long line of similar books that have been written in the last thirty years. One good thing - it is a single 800-page novel, not a continuing series of ten doorstoppers. It also is well-written, but it felt a little rushed in the final chapters. No matter. I judged it by its own merit and did not pay attention to any ennui I may have had, or that of other experienced Goodreads reviewers, because of its palimpsest qualities, created by my familiarity with other similar epic fantasies. It is a good read, imho!...more
'Saga' is a graphic science fiction/fantasy comic, book one, vol. 1-3. But the story is much more than a superhero mosh pit! It is exciting, fascinati'Saga' is a graphic science fiction/fantasy comic, book one, vol. 1-3. But the story is much more than a superhero mosh pit! It is exciting, fascinating, and vulgarly overdone in symbolism. It also has attractive space aliens and horrible ugly obscene creatures all done with beautiful art work that is mindbogglingly creative! And oh yes, it's a space opera about a Romeo and Juliet couple on the run from their respective governments!
Marco's people are from the moon Wreath. Alana is from the planet Landfall, around which Wreath orbits. Alana, a winged being, meets Marco, a horned being, whom she is guarding in a prison. Unexpectedly, they fall in love. Alana helps Marco escape. They have sex which no one thought possible. Even more impossible, they have a baby. Both enemy nations see the child as an abomination. Assassins are hired by both sides to track down the couple and kill them and the baby.
The fight is on! This is even harder than you'd think because Marco and Alana have sworn not to kill anymore. Ffs. Still, many deaths happen and are graphically drawn in each chapter. Warning - this comic isn't for children.
The Horns and the Wings would destroy the other's world gladly, but if the moon or planet were blown up, the other world would spin out of orbit. So. Both sides are locked into less explosive murderous warfare that is nonetheless quite lethal with lots of injuries, torture and deaths. They also have outsourced their battles to proxies all over the galaxy, no holds barred so to speak. The war between Wreath and Landfall not only spans entire planetary systems, forcing everyone in the galaxy to take sides, but the war has gone on so long people can't remember how many centuries it has been since anyone was at peace. Many planets and moons have become post-apocalyptic wastelands with survivors who no longer feel anything lighthearted or kindly about any visitors to what's left of their homelands.
Adding into the mix is a world of robots. They are sentient, with human bodies, and a computer monitor for a head. The robots have a royal aristocrat class, and one in particular is having a bad day. The robots are allies of the winged beings. Prince IV has been specifically tasked with hunting down and killing the pacifist couple and their multiracial baby by his father the King. He reluctantly accepts. He was supposed to get two years off to start a family, and he is suffering from PTSD. Nonetheless, he hates the Horns and he can't even understand how a winged woman could bring herself to mate with such ugly 'animals'.
The Wreath, Landfall and the royal robots all have human forms, btw. However, almost no other characters do. Be prepared for shocking and gory images, gentle reader! I love the Lying Cat, partner of a human assassin called The Will, of course.
This should be a totally dark, visually obscene story, but there be jokes, snarky humor and in-law complications as well as pretty drawings and interesting artistic creations. Marco and Alana spar with and adore each other in equal measures. They are fun to watch! Their babysitter, who they pick up in a haunted forest, is a bit creepy, but she is a smart and loyal girl ghost despite missing her body below the waist, intestines draped below her like an interesting hippie skirt. Remember Lady Gaga's meat dress? I think Izabel is a symbol similar to the meat dress. I think. Anyway, that is the kind of joke readers will be constantly seeing.
I want a space ship like the one Marco and Alana find. It's a sentient tree, hollowed out, outfitted with rooms and pilot controls. It's way cool, gentle reader. So is 'Saga'! I highly recommend it....more
Reading 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' by L.Frank Baum had me in pins and needles! My head felt like it was bulging with astonishing thoughts when I finReading 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' by L.Frank Baum had me in pins and needles! My head felt like it was bulging with astonishing thoughts when I finally put this book down. I was eating bran cereal - which always makes me feel stuffed. My heart was rattling around in my chest as I pondered strange ideas that were as amazing as the new sights one sees traveling through a foreign territory. I felt my joints stiffening up, though, from sitting so long of a time reading. I quickly drank a mysterious juice from a green square bottle to give myself the courage I needed to attack the writing of a review for this book.
A fluttering sound at my kitchen window startled me. I quickly turned my head and saw it wasn't a monkey with wings at all as I first thought in seeing it out of the corner of my eye, but only a crow. I almost knocked over a glass of water in my fright! That would have been tragic to spill it all over myself.
I got up from my chair and walked in circles over my yellow linoleum, which is artfully covered with a design to look like bricks. Could it be possible 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' has no moral, and nothing to teach me? That the book is one for enjoyment only? The story seemingly had no ax to grind whatsoever. Of course, it maybe was about the value of good friends, but really, was that it? The friends of Dorothy, the main character, aren't even flesh and blood people, but only a scarecrow of straw, a tin man and a lion!
I have it! Each of them wanted to be given a personal quality which would make them happy about themselves! They were unaware each already had that quality! So. Well. What was the rest of the crazy plot for? A wildly imaginative children's adventure story that is mostly just for fun? I didn't know such a book existed!
Ok then! Plus a lot of beasts' heads get chopped off.
I think some children's books written in 1900 as this one was might have been possibly more fun for kids to read, even if it is not exactly as uplifting or nonviolent as what some parents think their kids should be exposed to. I really liked it, but I can be such an evil witch sometimes....more
‘Guilty Pleasures’ by Laurell K. Hamilton is the first novel in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, paranormal mystery series. I have seen the books here‘Guilty Pleasures’ by Laurell K. Hamilton is the first novel in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, paranormal mystery series. I have seen the books here and there but I never picked them up until now. I liked it! There is a lot of thrills and chills! However, Blake must have been covered in scars from head to toe by the end of this exciting action novel.
‘Guilty Pleasures’ is one of the first fiction series to feature a continuing main character who is a woman and an action figure who is indistinguishable from the fictional male ex-military protagonists in many popular action thrillers. Blake is an “animator” - she makes zombies by raising dead people using a method which seemed like voodoo to me. But in 'Guilty Pleasures' she is hired as a detective by a powerful leader of a vampire coven residing in St. Louis, Missouri. Blake is an employee of Bert Vaughn, owner of Animators, Inc. The business has an investigator on staff, but it isn’t Blake's job. Usually.
The vampire client, Nikolaos, is insane, unfortunately, and very evil. She can’t seem to stop herself from wanting to torture Blake to death even while Blake is trying to solve the mystery of who is killing vampires. There is a law in this alternative United States that forbids the killing of vampires unless sanctioned properly by legal authorities. But clearly the powerful of any kind, dead and undead and living, can do whatever they want in this alt-universe of ghouls, werewolves, vampires and zombies. Nikolaos is using blackmail and threats to coerce Blake to work for her. Blake hates vampires.
Published in 1993, the technology in the book is at the beeper notification stage of communications with phone calls being returned when in the field by finding a convenience store with an AT&T phone booth standing outside of the store. (If you, gentle readers are completely mystified by that previous sentence, Google is a good search engine to use to find out about ancient technology before cell phones and the internet.)
The gory graphic violence in an Anita Blake plot has never gone out of style. John Wick, Mad Max, every Quentin Tarantino character in every Tarantino movie ever made, for example, has continued the tradition of graphic body-destroying ass-kicking in most modern blockbuster actions movies. Of course, graphic stomach-turning scenes have been in most noir detective novels since they were invented, even in the strict regulated eras of media in American history. Fans will find the action in the Blake series familiar territory. If you enjoyed Tarantino’s ‘Dusk to Dawn’ movies, you will LOVE ‘Guilty Pleasures’!
I have not read the other books in this Dark Romance action series, but all of the reviews speak of the novels becoming pornographic around book ten. I suspect, based on the reviews I’ve read on GR, the porn in the Blake series will be a turn off, but for others, maybe not. After all, sexual pornography is the number-one type of entertainment consumed by people all over the world. I do enjoy moderately graphic vampire horror novels. To a point. Punishment/retribution/revenge porn induced by or for the purposes of schadenfreude on evil adults, or things - well, ok then, I admit I’m mostly good to go, especially if it's funny. I might end up skimming scenes of way too much violence between my fingers held over my eyes. But I also have the curiosity of the proverbial cat to my regret.
I am not exactly a reader of gentle genres in the first place. I can already see Anita Blake is not developing into the usual Dark Romance horror heroine. She is definitely without snowflake liberal sensibilities (indeed, I am detecting a distinct self-sufficient libertarian vibe). She possesses an obvious Catholic Christian circa 1990's faith. She IS developing a bloody romance with a vampire, Jean-Claude, manager of the vampire club “Guilty Pleasures”. Is Hamilton the author practicing a "give the suckers (hehe-pun alert) whatever low-rent entertainment they will pay for"? series? Very likely.
I never said I didn’t read or investigate trashy novels (see my profile). Perhaps you are a GR member of breeding and discernment, and maybe sensitivity. I absolutely cannot recommend this book to you. I’m going to read book two in the series. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯...more
'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman is a ghastly Halloween story! The book also adds overt bildungsroman themes involving being changed by adversity and becomin'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman is a ghastly Halloween story! The book also adds overt bildungsroman themes involving being changed by adversity and becoming a fully formed, rounded-out, responsible self-efficient person. But don’t let the teaching moments frighten you off. The underlying themes are buried under a lot of terrible happenings! Especially button eyes…. Oh no!
I loved 'Coraline' even though it is a story meant for young children. Not all young children though. It really is quite a ghastly dark fairy tale....more
I finished 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' by J. K. Rowling with a tear threatening to spill out despite that I knew how the story would end. I finished 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' by J. K. Rowling with a tear threatening to spill out despite that I knew how the story would end.
*sniffle*
As everyone knows - everyone - this is a very good bildungsroman story hiding under the guise of a middle-schoolers fantasy novel. I highly recommend it to everyone (as if there's a single soul on Earth who hasn't read it or seen the movie).
If you really love the Harry Potter series, I suggest The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. It has even more wonderful fantasy adventures of the imagination for the young and young at heart. (Or maybe just the, maybe demented, elderly like myself - shut up)
Below is a personal opinion about Rowling's recent statements on current events, specifically bathroom access for transgender women:
(view spoiler)[Perhaps I will upset some on Goodreads by accepting Rowling's genuine horror at male-to-women transgenders sharing bathrooms with born females. Her heart is in the right place - fear of rape, so I can't fault her on that. She speaks from the place of fear that all rape and assault victims of male violence and criminal behavior reside in. I know.
There is philosophy and then there is fact of experience which lives on quite sharply and bloodily in the memory of victims. There is no way to determine the difference of a person who has genuine body dysphoria from a male rapist using the cover of being a transgender to rape a woman alone in a bathroom or anywhere. I cannot help feeling scared myself on every occasion a man walks behind me or when I am in an elevator alone when a man gets on. This is not due to imaginary fears. I have been assaulted on a public street (attempted rape) and I was sexually attacked in an elevator (a co-worker I barely knew). Now that I am past the age of being a sexual target, I worry about being assaulted for the contents of my purse. Like it or not, gentlemen and lefties, men are the gender which primarily commits assault, rape and robbery with violence. In my six decades I have been sexually assaulted (to different degrees, from being grabbed for an unasked kiss to an unexpected and unwanted tit-grope to rape) many times - and my assailants have been all men. No matter that I am a leftist politically, unknown or barely known men scare me to death a lot. Perhaps you think it a stupid kneejerk response, but to me it is a learned response based on real life.
That said, I believe body dysphoria is real. But as a biological woman, I will also carry keys in my hand with the keys pointing out of my fingers, and I watch carefully the approach of every (apparently) man whether dressed as a woman, man, or clown, wherever I go. Bite me.
For the record, I have been using single occupancy gender-neutral bathrooms located in medical buildings and places of business like gas stations since the 1960's. Nobody ever cared - NoBOdy - that both a stall and a urinal were in there for use of either sex before the current kerfuffle.
She seems unable to avoid becoming a lightening rod. First, it was hatred directed at her because her novels’ characters are wizards; now, she is speaking out from her real fears for the safety of young women alone in bathrooms with male rapists masquerading as transgender women. I really can’t work myself up to a wrath against her for these fears, gentle reader, having been attacked, too. Often. I wish the world was different- more kind. I vote for single occupancy multi-gender bathrooms, to be made available everywhere. I don’t know how else to help genuine transgender folk, weighing their rights against the very real threat of male violence against women. I swear, some men appear that they’d rape trees with rotting gaps.
'Shadowshaper' is book one in the Shadowshaper series by Daniel José Older. This YA fantasy is a remarkably positive novel about identity and gender! 'Shadowshaper' is book one in the Shadowshaper series by Daniel José Older. This YA fantasy is a remarkably positive novel about identity and gender! If you are tired of teenage dystopias, then I recommend reading 'Shadowshaper'!
Sierra María Santiago is an American-Puerto Rican. She also is a terrific Manhattan street artist, an expert in painting murals. Unknown to her, she possesses an amazing power to channel dead people through her body into her drawings, bringing them briefly into life and motion, their actions under her control - well, more or less, at first.
Sierra slowly becomes aware her family and neighborhood friends are under some kind of mysterious attack by zombies! Also she suddenly can see spirits all about! She learns her family has been keeping a secret from her. Her family is full of Shadowshapers! Maria, Sierra's mother, never wanted to be involved, so she had forbidden anyone to tell Sierra about the family talent. However, the spirits are not giving Sierra the choice of opting out, especially since an unknown enemy is sending enslaved ghosts to try to kill her and her friends!
Determined, Sierra begins the journey of learning what she really is, who the mysterious enemy is, and how to save herself and her loved ones. Sierra is the one the ghosts want to kill. She is at the center of this mystery! Why?
All ages can enjoy reading 'Shadowshaper', but I think middle-schoolers will best find the book exciting and empowering. The characters are mostly people of color, and the main ones, mostly teenagers, are generally happy kids living amidst loving family members and a close-knit neighborhood (think Sesame Street, only for older teens). Cultural foods, language and styles easily become intermingled within the different families in the neighborhood, and especially and easily picked up and passed around the teen friends. So, when the ghosts begin gathering, and dead people begin walking, the friends quickly work together.
'Gods of Jade and Shadow' by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia is a cool fictional update of ancient Mayan mythology! The author has reshaped the fascinating Mayan'Gods of Jade and Shadow' by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia is a cool fictional update of ancient Mayan mythology! The author has reshaped the fascinating Mayan gods found in a text called the Popul Vuh into a tale for YA fantasy readers as well as older fans of YA fantasy. It is more accessible than reading centuries-old texts.
Main character Casiopea Tun is unhappy. Most of her childhood has been in Uukumil, a very backwoods and backwards Yucatán town. She is eighteen and it is 1927. She dreams of leaving her grandfather's house where she and her mother are mistreated, beaten for minor misdemeanors and forced into being slaves of the rest of the family (similar to the Cinderella story). Her cousin Martín in particular verbally assaults and smacks her around, picking on her to "teach her humility." Casiopea's mother made the fatal error of marrying an indigenous Mexican man for love against her proud father's wishes. Then he died young. Grandfather Cirilo Leyva, Casiopea's mother's father, is mean down to the bone. He delights in beating and forcing the two women to serve him and the rest of the family for their sin of loving an indigenous man.
Once a month grandfather goes to visit a sinkhole reputed to have healing waters. It is an hour's ride away from Uukumil. Casiopea is always given a list of chores the day before the trip, mostly to prepare grandfather's clothes by washing, starching, ironing and brushing. Then the entire family would travel to the sinkhole. But this time Casiopea is tormented by Martín while she is fixing up grandfather's clothes, and when she refuses to be cowed enough to satisfy his sadistic impulses, he later spitefully reports to grandfather she insulted him. She is ordered to stay home.
Alone at home, she explores grandfather's bedroom. She finds a key which grandfather normally wears around his neck. It opens a chest. Is it full of gold coins? Opening it, she discovers bones. Maybe there is a secret compartment? Pushing aside the bones, a shard pierces her arm. Blood drips from her flesh.
The bones jump up! A skeleton forms! Quickly a body of a man forms around the bones! He is a gorgeous beauty! He says, "You stand before the Supreme Lord of Xibalba. [...] Long have I been kept a prisoner and you are responsible for my freedom."
Awesome, right? Right? Well, no. Hun-Kamé the Supreme Lord of Xibalba (the home of the dead) has been exiled. He is the rightful Mayan God of the Dead, and the shard of his bone in Casiopea's arm is slowly killing her by transferring her life force into Hun-Kamé. His twin brother God, Vucub-Kamé, tricked Hun-Kamé, stole his throne, and imprisoned him. Vucub-Kamé cut off body parts from Hun-Kamé and hid them around Mexico in order to take many of Hun-Kamé's powers away.
Guess what comes next! A quest! Her first trip away from Uukumil! Ok, well, not so cool, it's about chasing down an eye, an ear and an index finger (ick), along with a magical jade necklace, but it could have been worse. Actually, it is worse. The body parts are guarded by magical beings who are more scared of Vucub-Kamé than Hun-Kamé. Hun-Kamé needs a lot of help from Casiopea involving sacrifices from her (?!?) to defeat mystical traps and beings. She continues to weaken from the bone shard, too.
Survival and success is NOT a sure thing. Plus, these gods are all psychopathic, as are all gods. But Hun-Kamé, in the soaking in of Casiopea's life force, is changing to a human. Slowly. Ultimately he might be a kinder gentler deity, except he will no longer be a deity. Humanity will be the death of him as a god. For Casiopea, it will be plain death.
Casiopea has traded a life as her grandfather's slave for being a God's slave. At least she gets to see more of the country, dress better, fight monsters and even gets a chance to bob her hair! It is the era of flappers and jazz clubs in the cities, a much desired change from the restrictions of conservative small towns. But will she survive? Can she solve the challenges of magic she faces?
I liked this novel! It is very entertaining. And as a plus, it uses rare Mayan myths as the background for the adventure. And grrlpower, right? Right!
The myths I am most familiar with are those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Indian gods and their underworlds (both continents) I have learned about have been difficult to understand. Chinese and Japanese gods (and ghost spirits) seem to me the most capricious about bestowing any favors and scare me more than others, but ALL ancient gods are capricious and often vindictively mean or unexpectedly kind. Ancient Celtic and Norse gods are also mercurial and volatile as hell. (As hell, hehe, get it? I love punning. My bad.)
Mayan gods are as psychopathic as the other gods we might know better, but all of these myths feature the same basic dramas with fascinating cultural twists. They all definitely are seeds for terrific and interesting storytelling in the right hands! Sylvia Moreno-Garcia brings it!
Editorial: The moral of every religion (Judaism, Christian, and Islam included) is humans better watch their step! There are rules! Rules which often are secret or changeable as the weather, and they often depend on the man who is interpreting the God's rules in this or that community or country, gods being all somewhat shy of appearing to crowds. Somehow the interpretor always ends up a leader and richer with benefits of leadership, while his fellow believers end up a lot less rich and happy, forced to accept new rules every so often which seem to increase in sadistic elements as time goes on. Personally, I think religions are better as fantasy fiction novels like 'Gods of Jade and Shadow.'
As for myself, the fantastical quest undergone by the main characters in 'Gods of Jade and Shadow' brought to mind The Wizard of Oz - the often-watched, to me beloved, although cheerfully tame, 1938 movie https://youtu.be/H_3T4DGw10U.
[Shameless 'about me' digression: I do not enjoy G-rated Hollywood family movies (a few, yes). I grew up in 1950's America. My introductory 101 mythology/fantasy education came from sanitized American movies for kids, 1950's children's books from the library and garbled interpretations of heavily censored Bible stories. So my childhood introduction to mythology was baby pablum compared to actual World myths. I probably would have enjoyed more of my childhood fantasy reading if Americanized fairy tales had not been censored into dull-witted morality lessons. Upon finding a book in the library of uncensored Grimm's fairy tales I finally got a clue why fantasy attracts kids of all ages! I haven't stopped reading stories based on myths ever since. Nothing like being forbidden to read a more intelligent and fun grown-up book to compel the breaking out of "protective" childhood restrictions.
I really envy readers of teen and YA novels today! You have access to real cultural history and honest storytelling of the older and uncensored tales, as well as access to the ancient literature of your culture! I had to wait until I was in my thirties and college and for Wikipedia to pick up uncensored versions of history and literature.]
Here is a Wikipedia link about the source document describing Mayan gods:
aPriL does feral sometimes
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