Well, it gets credit for participating, I guess

In one of the book forums I follow on Facebook, someone suggested Garth Greenwell's  What Belongs to You. It sounded interesting, the library had a copy, so I gave it a shot. I'm kind of happy it came from the library, because I can't imagine actually paying money for it.

The book, written in first person and masquerading a a memoir, at its most basic level is the story of a teacher at an English School in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the relationship between the narrator and a male prostitute he meets in a bathroom in the National Palace of Culture. Mitko, the prostititute, seems to enjoy tempting and teasing the narrator, hitting him up for money here and there and occasionally satisfying the narrator's physical needs. That's it. Other than giving the narrator syphilis, which he dutifully passes on to his Portuguese boyfriend, Mitko has no real purpose. Nor does the narrator.

We gets and pieces of our narrator's upbringing, including a request from his father that he come home so he can see him before he, the father, dies. This leads to a two page reflection on Dad disowning the narrator after the narrator comes out. Most of the reflection deals with narrator realizing he's gay after watching his male friend make out with a woman. We never do find out if he went to say his goodbyes to his father.

Towards the end, his mother visits, and we listen to him whine for several pages about how adults can't cuddle up with a parent the way a child can. When we last see Mitko a few pages later, Mitko's kidneys are failing, so he's given money for food and train passage to his mother. Our narrator, despite his desire, rejects Mitko's final offer of sexual gratification, which at a guess was supposed to be a symbol of acceptance of self, but honestly, having heard about pus discharge, jaundice, and other such fun things about Mitko a few paragraphs ago, this falls short.

Based on what others have said, I guess this is supposed to be about sublimating desire and passion and instead embracing comfort, but that gets lost amongst the purple prose, the whining, and the dangling plot lines. I'm assuming that the constant harping about how Bulgaria is dying is a metaphor for the narrator's inner death, but that falls flat as well.

Really, about the only two things I enjoyed were the setting (I have a coworker who was raised in Bulgaria, so it made for some fun conversations), and a brief discussion on coming out during the height of the AIDS epidemic and how it was assumed that your life progression was sex, infection death, with no stops in between. That isn't enough to justify a glowing review of what really amounts to an aimless jaunt of a letter to an adult magazine discussing loving a hooker but not even giving any spicy details about the relationship.

Here We Go Again and Again

Funny note about Mercedes Lackey's The Hills Have Spies: The description on the book jacket has absolutely nothing to do with the actual plot. Indeed, the description mentions Mags's son Justyn and Hawkbrothers. Then you read and find out it involves Mags's son Perry and a trip to the Pelegir Hills. Indeed, none of the children is named Justyn.

So, anyway, at the outset, we learn that Mags and Amily have four children that they're raising along with the current King's brood. While all the children are being raised to be escape artists, Perry is in the running to be the next Herald Spy, unless he doesn't get chosen. Perry has Amily's gift of Animal Mindspeech, which while good, doesn't allow him some of the fun things his father can do.

After everyone's been properly introduced and roles established, Perry and Mags end up taking a father and son trip out to the Western edges of Valdemar to investigate something a semi-retired Herald is noticing with odd disappearances among the people out that way.

Posing as traders, they get out to Herald Arville, where upon Perry promptly gets chosen by the neuter kyree Larral. They help the village form a mining pact for the garnets in the ground, then wind up finding out about the kidnappings happening from an inn in the forest.

Perry, with Larral's encouragement, ends up leaving his father while he sleeps to scout out where the people are being kidnapped to, which leads to a city in the hills. (We're skipping over various species of intelligent animals they encounter, like raven Bondbirds and dyheli, and eventually firebirds.) Said city is controlled by someone using blood magic and mind magic to control a mercenary company and those they kidnap. While it's not mentioned if this is another incarnation of Ma'ar, it could be, although Ma'ar's incarnations usually were more subtle in their intrigues.

Perry disguises himself as a dog trainer and takes over the kennel.

What follows is cloak and dagger type things, as father and son try to outwit and outlast the Master and figure out how to come away from this alive.

While parts of this could use more fleshing out, it's a pretty good entry in the larger world that it's set within. If we're going to continue to be stuck with Mags, adding in others will help.

Death of a Nation

As I said, twofer day.

Finished up Robert Jackson Bennett's Vigilance at a soccer game this morning. While some of the set up has been done before, it's always interesting to see different narrative threads escaping from what could be an overused idea.

We center on two characters in the novella. One is John McDean, an executive producer at ONT, which is essentially a biased news/entertainment channel that's focused mainly on older viewers. The other, Delnya, works at a dive bar. The two never meet, but the actions of one eventually have a big effect on the other.

One of ONT's biggest programs, which doesn't have a regular broadcast schedule is Vigilance, in which 3-4 active shooters are chosen from a pool of applicants and sent in without warning to an inhabited area to, well, basically start a mass shooting. If they survive, they win a bunch of money. If a civilian survives, they win a bunch of money. Point being, since no one knows where or when it's going to happen, most civilians have no idea they're about to be on TV.

Set in 2030, the basic set up is that due to global climate change and the death of American industry, most of the youth have moved abroad to South America or Asia. China's economy has far surpassed the US, so the majority of the Us population is now older, insular, and convinced they're still relevant. The show itself came about after a live streamed mass shooting that was rebroadcast across multiple digital formats that due to being digital, had advertising attached. While companies were understandably initially upset about their logos being broadcast during this, it turned out it actually made their sales skyrocket. In the end, a compliant government gave their tacit approval, and the show was born. Using AI color commentary, encouraging viewers to Remain Vigilant and Armed at all times to prevent being shot in public and to be able to FIGHT BACK against the Other....

Delnya's bar is showing the episode when it goes live. We see how the viewers at home react to the carnage through her eyes, as the bar goes to Happy Hour pricing through the event as the patrons start betting on outcomes. Delnya, who;s father was a cop who got shot in a dark alley after being mistaken for a perp, tends to view the show as a terrible idea, and tends to think that patron's view that guns answer all questions instead of raising other more pertinent questions and better risk analysis, is not happy about watching people get shot in a South Bend mall.

We watch as John uses the AIs to change a woman who takes out a shooter from Vietnamese to Irish to satisfy the viewers who feel threatened by dark skin. We see how the team behind the show use technology to lead one of the other two shooters to her so they don't have to pay her.

It's really ugly after a while, and no one gets a happy ending.

While we've seen similar set ups in books and movies (The Running Man, Series 7: The Survivors), this is a different thread to pull on and Bennett does so quite well. While I'm sure some readers would likely start screaming at the book due to some of the politics, much of what he has to say should be considered before outright rejecting it, or rejecting it just for being presented. 

And you thought Seattle Geography was bad before

Finished C. E. Murphy's Thunderbird Falls on Thursday, but been busy trying to catch up on other things. As such, we're getting a twofer today.

Anyway, we're back to following our favorite shaman, Joanne Walker, as she continues to avoid training her Shamanic powers outside of Earth ending events. Indeed, early on, she projects herself into the Dead Zone with no protection and winds up nearly getting eaten by a giant snake and banishing Coyote. Oops.

A Witch finds Joanna and passes on that she dreamed of her, and invites her to join the Coven to help invite an ancient spirit into reality to fix the wounds Joanne's magic has caused.

What follows is a case of "Who can you trust?", and Joanne, acting without guidance, makes a few major mistakes and Seattle's geography gets rearranged via an earthquake.

It was fun to return here, although I think there's a story in an anthology that comes between the first two volumes. It gets referenced, so I spent most of the book feeling like I was missing part of the story.

On the other hand, it remains fun reading with even better characters.