Uncomfortable territory

 So, based on an odd recommendation in a LGBTQ+ book group I follow, I picked up Target by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson. Really kind of regretting that decision now. Indeed, really tempted to go wipe the dust off LJ and blog about it rather than try to keep shit off this rather public blog. 

So, we open on 16 year old Grady, who's walking home from a concert he attended with friends. A guy asks for directions, then he and a friend grab Grady by the hair and beat the shit out of him, followed by anal and oral rape. We cut to roughly a year later, the "After" as Grady thinks of it. Grady is starting at a new school, repeating 11th grade, having dropped out in November at his old school. Grady, frankly, has survivor trauma. He's got a definite eating disorder, eating very little, and puking up what does go down. He needs tactile stimulation to function. He can barely talk. 

What follows is a tale of finding the courage to talk about what happened in the van, however long it takes. Grady is helped by new friends who more or less treat him like a personal mascot, not caring that he doesn't speak often, and almost never in complete sentences.

But we get a very good look at the guilt that comes with it. The whole "Why was I a target?" "Why did the cop assume it was a boyfriend of mine and I having a fight?" "I'm bigger than they are, so why couldn't I fight back?" along with (since Grady was a virgin who had touched boobs once) "Am I gay because they convinced me they'd quit if I climaxed?" Oh yes, and the fucking goddamn shame of it all. The whole "I can't fucking tell anyone because they'll ask the same fucking questions I keep asking myself!"

We also briefly get into him getting molested by a neighbor as a kid (admittedly not as intense as what happened in the van, but still...)

I'm also proud of our fictional character for going to the cops after it happened (not that he had a choice, some lady found him bleeding on the side of the road), and for getting help by the end. Two things that are sadly the hardest part. 

It's ugly, but it's cathartic.

Radio Free Europe

 Signs and Wonders by Morgan Brice has our heroes heading into the National Radio Quiet Zone to take down the next witch disciple, one who happens to also be both a cult leader and running a compter based business that's laundering money for the other disciples. 

Along the way, we get Brent and Travis from one of her other series, plus a gay couple in WV who are looking to go to Pittsburgh for obvious reasons. That one of them is the current descendant complicates things. 

At any rate, anyone reading this who has read the rest of the series has an idea of the basic structure, although now that there are only 5 disciples left, Evan and Seth are discussing what to do with retirement. Even if Evan is constantly becoming the Daphne of the series, constantly getting himself in unnecessary danger. 

Fun read.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

 So, a while back, CT Phipps reached out and asked me if I'd be interested in reading his new book Moon Cops on the Moon! I told him I'd ordered a copy, but it was behind a library book in to TBR pile. Then employment got crazy, and finding time to read got a bit odd, but....I read it.

So, first thing to note, this is evidentially a shared setting with a few other series he's written, although this one is set further in the past than the other ones. Which is fine, since I'm kind of wanting to read other books in this setting now. Second, It helps if one has a mildly twisted sense of humor to read this particular volume, since it's very much what would happen if say, Dashiell Hammett wrote Shadowrun novels. (For those of you not up on such esoterica and are too lazy to google, he wrote several hardboiled detective novels, including The Maltese Falcon.)

Anyway, we open on our narrator, Neal Gordon, as he's getting ready to land on the moon to start his new assignment with Ares Electronics as a police officer. (Like much cyberpunk, much of what is civil service here in the present is private in the future. Neal has a lifetime contract. But at least the Moon is somewhat better than Antarctica.) Problem being that as soon as he lands, everyone, from the cybermen to the 90 year old woman landing with him, want him dead or alive. He winds up getting rescued by his new partners, Miss Lucy Westerna and a Corgi AI named Barksley who doubles as a flamethrower. (There's a running joke in there about Barksley, who is a sentient AI police officer listening to NWA and Ice-T. I'm sure most of you can guess the songs.)

Anyway, along the way, we get wrapped in in an intergalactic slave trading ring, other corporate agents with coking fetishes, and a lot about the last partner Neal had on Mars, who literally burned him. 

That's about as far as I want to go with this to avoid many many spoilers. 

I will say it was worth the price I paid to get a copy, and the references thrown in had me laughing quite a bit alongside some of the deeper questions about human rights and sentient AI, as well as the author's postscript about how the world may end, but capitalism will continue. 

Worth the read.