And again, Titania is an ass.

 Finished Seanan McGuire's The Innocent Sleep yesterday, which is kind of Sleep No More extended out, starting when Titania changed Fairie and ending roughly 3 months after Halloween. However, it's written from Tybalt's point of view, so we get a better idea of what life was like during the revamp for folks who weren't locked up in Titania's illusions, like Undersea and the Cait Sidhe. 

Which is to say, mostly ugly.

Undersea is cut off from the land, and Simon of course got shunted back to being Amandine's loving husband, which is mildly upsetting to Dianda and Patrick, not to mention both of their sons being trapped elsewhere. The Cait Sidhe are pretty much all trapped in the various Courts of Cats, as only those of Royal blood can get on the Shadow Roads. Which leads to a bunch of starving cats and kittens. Eventually, this leads to a very fun heist cleaning out a few of San Francisco's Costco's to feed the courts. 

A Roane in Undersea makes a prophecy letting all parties know that around Moving Day is when any moves to break the illusion must happen. Given that Moving Day is roughly 4 months away from the first part of the narrative, one can imagine the amount of angst involved. We do eventually get to a point where the previous narrative of these events starts intermingling with this newer perspective, and we finally get a few answers to things not stated in the past volume. 

After the narrative ends, we get a novella about one of the Octopi Fey native to the seas. Dianda's protector, actually. The book is downstairs, and I'm not attempting to spell her name or race without it sitting in front of me.) By far the biggest reveal in this is that Dianda is probably having a new girl baby pretty soon, fathered by both Simon and Patrick. Why the girl is so important we don't know, but I'm guessing it will eventually tie in to one of the last missing threads, what happened to the Other Queen (Maeve) after Janet broke the ride. 

Fun story, worth reading.

And now for something fairly serious.

 So, many years ago, when I was really starting to be more open about being gay, a lady I knew from Cub Scouts and church gave me a book about a Presbyterian minister and his quest to become an ordained minister within the Presbyterian Church (USA). (Bit of obscure history. The Denomination split during the Civil War ear into the Northern United Presbyterian Church and the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States. There are a few other shards running around, but they tend to be...different. The two branches reconciled in 1982ish, which I remember. So, when this starts, it would have been the United branch, but by the end, we're in PC(USA).)

Anyway, Rev. Glaser tells us of his growing up Baptist, and finally realizing he's gay in college during the Vietnam era. He speaks of his calling to ministry and how he found himself joining the Presbyterians in Los Angeles before attending Divinity School at Yale. 

Eventually, we enter the fun of the 1970's Presbyterian Task Force on Homosexuality (I may have the name wrong, but basically, the General Assembly [the national governing board, which more or less makes decisions that the local Presbyteries approve or decline] appointed a task force to see about making recommendations on ordaining LGB people. (Trans folks weren't particularly included in the conversation at that point in time.) 

There's also whole sections on his work ministering to gay folks in college, and the problems he runs in to with being open about his avowed homosexuality from both the gay and straight students.  And the few openly gay ordained ministers in the era, one in the United Church of Christ and of course the Metropolitan Community Church. Anyway, the task force's majority report, suggesting guidelines for ordaining gay folks, got shot down and a watered down minority report instead got approved. 

Now, in between this, is an exploration of Glaser's thoughts on God and his personal dramas. When I read this roughly 26 years ago, I spent a lot of those sections going "Oh Guuuurl" or "Oh, get her". Much further on, I better understand what he's talking about, and how odd attraction and love are. While a lot of his more intellectual thoughts on faith tend to be Boomer reformation stuff, particularly in the epilogue he gets into some more meaty thoughts on sexuality as an expression of God, which given that just about everyone likes to ignore Song of Solomon, is something one really doesn't hear about often. 

And frankly, This was likely addressed more to a straight audience, helping heterosexuals better understand what it means to be gay and Christian, with a secondary focus on letting gay Christians know they are not alone. However, given it took PC(USA) until 2011 to finally reconcile on a national level with LGBTQ+ parishioners wanting recognition and acceptance, his happy ending really didn't happen until 30 years after where this book ends. (To be fair, individual churches and Presbyteries did make their own decisions prior to this, but mostly in the Out of Sight of the General Assembly, Out of Mind of the General Assembly sense.) This makes an interesting continuation of Congregations in Conflict by Keith Hartman, showing some of the same arguments happening 10-20 years apart in different settings. Supposedly, Glaser has written more books since this one, so I may eventually check it out and see how his story continued during AIDS and ENDA/DOMA.

I feel very attacked

 So, as part of my mild Keith Hartman obsession (Ok, so I love his writing, I'm not stalking him or writing fan letters), I picked up a copy of his first published work, Congregations in Conflict: The Battle Over Homosexuality, written, near as I can tell, when the author was at Duke. 

I had read this previously, in maybe 2005ish, which meant even then, some of the conclusions herein are a bit outdated. (Copyright is 1996, even if most everything discussed tops out in 1995.) Nearly 30 years on, much of what's happened in the intervening years has shown that progress has happened, although at different rates among different factions. However, what I missed the first time I read this, was that all 9 situations explored are in the North Carolina Research Triangle Area. (While two of my brothers live there these days, I doubt either would have an interest in doing follow up for me.) 

Anyway, we start with a Methodist congregation and two Southern Baptist congregations, and how they deal with ministers trying to minister to gay members, and the problems that happen with that. (The Methodist congregation has an older population, and a younger population, with no in-between membership to kind of help reconcile the differing generational views. And since the older folks have the purse strings... Both Baptist churches, which eventually work out to be accepting congregations get expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention.)

We then move into the Episcopals and a bunch of drama concerning a same sex union and the Duke Divinity School dramas of 1992. 

Discussion gets into the Metropolitan Community Church of Raleigh (for those who don't know, they were founded as a church specifically for LGBTQ+ people), and the adventures in what to do with a growing congregation who've moved beyond being just celebrating Gays and God, and also dealing with a minister who's being pulled in several directions due to parishioners dying of AIDS. 

Then we get two chapters of Non-programmed Friends gatherings and the fun of trying to find clarity on blessing unions in both meetings, before getting involved in Dignity, the organization for Black Catholics, and the friction between them and a Jesuit church founded as an all Black congregation, made more complex by edicts from John Paul II and the now Benedict XVI. 

The Epilogue deals with congregations on a national level and the author's predictions on how the drama will play out over the next few years (as the book was written.)  

Thankfully, not all of them came true. Of particular interest to me was discussion on the dueling sexuality reports in the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1991. (I seem to recall perusing both reports in High School for an argument paper on gay rights I was writing. Yeah, that whole, explore gay issues by posing as an outsider trying to understand. Worked out soooo well.) While he (like everyone else) predicted that the Minority report would get adopted, I seem to recall it didn't, and the denomination wound up compromising one way and another. It was ugly, since while Homosexuality was main event, there was a whole "fidelity in marriage, chastity in singleness" clause that had a few folks asking if the ministers were going to become bedroom police. Of course, I also recall an agreement between a few Protestant denominations in the Reformed tradition that would require each denomination to recognize the other's ordinations, and that a few of those in that agreement (like the United Church of Christ) whole heartedly ordained the gheyz. In terms of the Roman Catholics, while they're still not where a lot of us would like to see them, the Scandals of the past few decades and the Promotion of Francis I have moved the needle a bit with them. As for the Episcopals, this was written before V. Gene Robinson became a household name for a few months and nearly broke the Communion. 

This remains a fascinating time capsule of church history and exactly how far things have come in 30 years.

So, pretty much everyone on Athas is an ass

 Finally finished up Troy Denning's The Prism Pentad with The Cerulean Storm, in which we find out everyone left alive in this series is an ass. 

So, when we left off Tithian had more or less killed off his rival Agis, had sent two dwarf banshees to encourage the Mul son on Neva and Caelum to kill the dragon, and had taken possession of the Dark Lens. Rajaat, who isn't dead so much as imprisoned in anextraplanar prison, is plotting to take revenge on his former champions (the current Dragon Boris and the Sorcerer-Kings) as well as escape from Shawshank. Sadira is still married to Agis and Rikus, although she's widowed on one front. The Sorcerer-Kings know the Lens is running loose and want to recover it before Tithian does something remarkably stupid.And the Half Giants are coming for Tyr, since the Lens lets them gain intelligence. 

All of which turns into a very long extended chase to the Dragon's lair, where pretty much everyone gets what they deserve to a degree. 

Again, it's epic sword and sandal and sorcery, with a bunch of characters you love to hate. I do love the ongoing visual of the silt skifs, riding the tides of dust in the dried up waterways of the desert. I like the idea that the villains in here were all Evil, but doing what they thought was best for the world. 

All in all, the series holds up as a memorable D&D adventure series, although one probably not as high quality as the DragonLance Sagas.

Titania is an ass.

 So, finished Seanan McGuire's Sleep No More yesterday, which finally sort of resolves the cliffhanger from the last book. Essentially, we pick up 4 months after Titania was found and essentially remade most of north and central California in her image of what a perfect Fairie would be. Which isn't exactly what anyone living in Fairie would particularly want, beyond certain elder pureblood sidhe.

As such, in this version of Fairie, October is living in Mom Amadine's tower with Dad Simon and Sister August, being a nice subservient changeling girl who knows her place among the purebloods. Quentin is now an utter asshole who likes tormenting her on the rare occasions she enters Shadowed Hills. However, it's a trip to the Hills that leads to October being taken to Tamed Lightning where the local Dryad April gets awakened and begins the long slow process of unraveling the Umbridge-esque pink of Titania's illusions. 

Oh, but it's fun. With the few mixed breeds and a few free changelings living well outside of San Francisco, all of Maeve's descendants either exiled or missing, and much of the kingdom being returned to the state it was in at the outset of the series (including at least 3 dead/elfshot characters coming back for the fun), and everyone's favorite sea witch being trapped in a tree...

Quite a bit is going on here, and the fact that the Summer Queen is a master of illusions means we're not entirely sure of how much of what's returned is real. (Indeed, the finale has a character observe something is up, but what that something is never really gets quantified, so I wonder if that will be the plot hook in the next book.) 

The author states it's fun writing stuff down finally that's been in her head since the outset. And it's fun to read. And I'm happy she didn't start here, since the series has given us characters whom we've come to know and love, and therefore are much more emotionally involved with as this apocalypse happens.

Tithian is an ass.

 So, I'm a lot behind on a lot of things, due to issues of a personal nature. I actually finished The Obsidian Oracle a few weeks ago, but...

Anyway.

This is actually an ugly read. Tithian, King of Tyr, gets in trouble at the outset by sending slavers to the Dwarf city near Tyr, which in turn sets off Neeva, since the slavers nearly take her son. This gets Agis involved, since he gets tasked with tracking down Tithian to bring him back to Tyr to face justice. 

Tithian, it would seem, was actually also after some Dwarven artifacts to get his hands on the eponymous Oracle, currently in the hands of giants. 

The narrative swings back and forth between Agis and Tithian, as they are forced to work together to get the Lens and survive a battle between two factions of giants, one with normal heads, and ones with animal heads. 

And a hell of a lot of betrayals.

For a D&D novel, this is really heavy material to deal with, as even the dering-do is overshadowed by some really ugly actions on pretty much everyone's part in the narrative.

Elves on the run

 Book 3 of The Prism Pentad by Troy Denning concerns Sadira, The Amber Enchantress, who again proves there aren't any particularly nice characters in this series. At the end of the last book, we heard about The Levy owed to Borys AKA the Dragon, and in this one, Sadira heads off on her own to find the Pristine Tower, where the dragon was born, to find a way to stop or kill him. This is made complicated by several factors, among them, Nok, the halfling wizard whose staff she bears wants it back and is a bit annoyed by her holding on to it. We also have King Tithian riding the mind of her Kank (a horse sized ant) trying to get her killed. Oh yeah, and her long lost father, chief of the Sun Runners elf tribe and her half brothers and sisters. 

Now, to say Sadira has Daddy Issues is an understatement. Daddy left her mom to rot in the slave pits of Tyr. When she eventually gets around to confronting him, he doesn't even remember her mother's name. Mind you, the worst comes in the City of Nibenay, where Sadira and her half sister get wrapped in a plot to incapacitate Daddy, but they also have to keep giving him the antidote due to various complications. 

Mind you, the half centipede prince is out to get Sadira after being tipped off by Tithian, and half of her allies want her dead because she keeps abusing her magic. (This book delves deep into how magic works on Athas. Most magic users draw energy from plants. Problem being, you grab too much, you kill the plants, making you a defiler. Certain users can draw on the energy of animals, although again, it's possible to kill people by drawing too much. Thus the levy. Anyway, Sadira does manage to kill several plants along the way, instead of dying as her allies feel she should have.) On the other hand, when she does eventually reach the Pristine Tower, we find it has a strange metamorphic field that causes any wound to start transforming the bearer into....something else. 

By the end of this, we know the Sorcerer Kings are keeping something imprisoned, and the shadow people aren't happy about it. We know the Kings are afraid of something. Oh yeah, and Tithian wants to be a true Dragon King. 

Fun book. Not a single good person in it.

Legion of DOOM!

 So, we're back in Athas for The Crimson Legion as Rikus and his partner Neeva lead the Tyr legions to defeat Hamanu of Urik, who's trying to take over Tyr. Added drama by the love quadrangle or Rikus sleeping with both Neeva and Sadira, and Sadira sleeping with Agis, leading to a bunch of relationship drama that would fit right in in Genoa City or Port Charles. (Or maybe Passions, since Rikus gets possessed by a racist wraith halfway through the novel.)

Anyway, plotwise, we're dealing with an "odds are against us" military story, as the free legions are far outnumbered by Urik forces, who also happen to be led by Rikus's first owner. Said owner, is also a master psionicist who is able to get magic from Hamanu, as well as having a shadow giant he can summon. 

We play cat and mouse northeast through the desert as both belligerents try to outwit one another. We find a Dwarven city that happens to have a bit of metaplot within, as well as two maguffins for Rikus to survive combat. (One is the sword of Borys, which cuts through everything AND lets the bearer hear conversations from some distance; the other a belt that catches any missiles aimed at the wearer.) We find out Tithian isn't at all happy about the Senate not respecting his authority. (That King Tithian has two floating shrunken heads as advisors should have tipped us off.)

Anyway, by the end, we know that Borys was on a quest to exterminate the dwarves, and we also know he's since become The Dragon, and the Dragon will eventually demand tribute from Tyr. (We also find out gnomes don't exist in this setting.) We also get our first look at one of Kalak's old buddies and get a better look at how Dragon Magic works. (In this setting, sorcery mixed with psionics. Dark Sun was famous for giving everyone psionic stats. Which, to me, was basically more math is the math game that can be D&D.) 

Overall, a good continuation, and we get to know Rikus better by the end, even as he loses almost everything.

Slavery is bad, ya'll

 It's been several years since I last slogged through Troy Denning's Prism Pentad (which is pretty much the story of D&D's Dark Sun setting), and I'd forgotten how much I occasionally enjoy the desert soap opera. 

The Verdant Passage sets the stage for the next four books (which mostly focus on individual characters in here), as fate aligns the lives of Slave gladiators Rikus and Neeva with escaped slave and sorcerer Sadira, and again with Noble senator Agis and Templar Tithian in the city state of Tyr. 

Basically, the King of Tyr (Kalak) is holding gladiator games to celebrate the building of his ziggurat. Well, except the edifice is actually part of his goal to become a dragon. 

Rikus and Neevah as selected by the Veiled Alliance to kill Kalak during the games. Sadira, who works with the alliance and has been schtupping Rikus, starts schtupping Agis to get him on board after finding out he's all about taking down Kalak. Agis, in the meantime, thinks that because he doesn't abuse his slaves, he's an ok slave owner. His majordomo, on the other hand, would rather become a dwarven banshee than remain a slave. 

Tithian agrees to not interfere, since he has his eyes on becoming king if Kalak buys the farm. (He's also terrified of what Kalak intends to do.)

We end book 1 with Kalak dead, the slaves of Tyr freed, and Tithian wearing the crown. 

It's torrid and turgid, but it's engaging. Worth reading.

Captain Caveman!

 Technically Murder Beneath the Buried Sky by Keith Hartman is a novella, but when it came out, it was the first writing from the author in quite a while. 

We follow Calvin around, in the cave system his parents and several others followed into the cave to escape "The Burn", a nuclear holocaust. While indications remain that it started off as a cult of religious types, it comes clear that isolation had kind of ended the more religious mania of the area, as free love regardless of gender seems to be the norm among most of the folks in the caves. 

The problem is, as we find out, Calvin's dad is found dead at the opening, and Calvin is the prime suspect. 

What follows is a rather engaging mystery, as to who killed Dad and, more importantly why someone would kill the Quartermaster. 

To go into too much detail on everything would spoil the plot, although I think I can get by with saying the author himself expresses its inspiration came from Plato.

Lots of fun, although darker than much of what else Hartman has published.

Merry Go Round the world

 So, Morgan Brice wrote Roustabout in both her universe and in a shared universe involving the Carnival of Mysteries, which I'm taking to be basically like Thieves World back in the day, where different authors write with a shared setting. In this case, a unique carnival that's kind of secondary to the romance budding between Tennessee Supernatural Investigator Bart and RJ (aka Ghost Boy), a con man out to expose the sins of people who hurt his family. (Supposedly, older versions of these guys show up in the Kings of the Mountain series, but it's been a while since I read those.)

Anyway, Bart is called to take on the Ghost boy case in Memphis after the previous agent died of a heart attack. He and RJ actually meet in a hookup bar, although neither realizes who the other is at the time.

Anyway, while they both touch themselves thinking about their encounter in a stall, RJ is busy bringing down his former foster family and a warehouse owner who's disregard for OSHA regulations killed his brother. Bart in the meantime is using his Necromancy to try to figure out what RJ's game is. 

Things go sideways when the RJ finds out the Warehouse owner has a witch on staff. Said witch curses RJ before he can have another date with Bart. Bart in the meantime has figured out what RJ is doing and arranges to have RJ join the Bureau as his partner, although when RJ gets cursed and ghosts him...

Anyway, RJ ends up at the Carnival of Mysteries, figuring dying of a curse among his people (he worked carnivals after running away) is better than dying alone. 

Eventually, everything works out, we get some smut, and everyone is happy, except the bad guys. 

Fun read, although I'm unsure if I feel like looking up other books with the Carnival just to find out more.

Secret identity issues

 I was really happy to see that Keith Hartman released a new novel this year, since his other 3 novels have been entertaining and fun and rereadable. 

So, Confessions of a Former Teen Superhero has what we want from a novelization of a four color comic, with cosmic powers, supervillains, and angst. Since it's Hartman, the hero we're getting as a POV character is queer, and his life without the cape is a shambles. 

Poor Josh. He lives in his mom's basement, and due to his need to go save the world, he has issues getting and keeping employment. Yes, he moonlights as Kid Quasar, complete with a Superman-esque backstory of being an alien sent to earth as a baby, but who gained superpowers when his transport got too near a quasar on the way. He can fly and is invulnerable to bullets, plus he has super strength. Problem is, outside of his skin tight black and gold costume, he has the body of Clay Aiken back in American Idol season 2. 

Josh's mom sets him up with Rick, who leads us in to the idea that Superheroes in this world get sponsorship deals. Rick is part of an agency that works for the current wunderkin Comet Boy, a super speedster who leaves flames in his wake, and seems to always rescue celebrities or save the world where people can film it. 

Not that Quasar Boy doesn't have his fans, there's Tiffany, the obsessed stalker girl who puts herself in jeopardy to get Quasar Boy's attention, plus a few "Mean Girls" men who basically love screwing capes. (Due to my own censorship and the fact I like to keep this blog PG-13 at the outside, I'm sure adults can read between the phrasing on that one and get the idea.) He also has a super scientist Arch-Nemesis, Doctor Nightmare, who winds up providing a heck of a lot of humor through the book. (Really, it's a bit like if Batman and Joker went out for beers and started discussing their personal lives at one point.) 

As the book progresses, we meet other minor superheroes, like Super Surfer (whom just about everyone refers to as Super Stoner) and La Tarantula, the female Mexican Wrestler. And of course, a finale when the masks more or less come off everyone out of camera range.

I found myself loving this book, less because it manages to humanize Superheroes in a way the DC Shared Universe movies have decidedly failed to do (Ok, that was uncalled for. But the DC animated universe has done a better job of making the characters more relatable to viewers than the Live Action one have ever done.) and more because I can better relate to Josh than I would like to admit. (I realize Marvel downplays queer characters for International sales, but with 4 phases, we deserve more than one guy mourning his husband at a support group at the end of Phase III.) I mean, yeah, Josh is fighting the fact he feels ugly because out of costume, he finds himself unattractive surrounded by underwear models and fitness trainers. While I'm surrounded by less...athletic...body tyoes, I feel his pain, as siomeone who's been a fatass most of my life. (Off topic. Even when I got down to 180, I still felt like a fatass.)

Two good things come out of this. One is that it seems to be the start of a series *fangirl squee*, and two, it gives me a chance to recommend another good read to people.

Vampires in fin de siecle St. Louis?

 So, a recent Amazon search turned up another new series by Morgan Brice, this one set in 1896 Missouri. (That search turned up other happy things, as we'll see over the next few entries.)

Peacemaker inaugurates another new series for Brice, this one centered on two (in modern terms) gay men working for the Paranormal Secret Service of the US. Neither knows the other one has an interest in men. Both are attracted to each other. However, in this era, when such things were illegal...

Anyway, Owen Sharps is a medium, who can see and occasionally speak with ghosts. His partner, whom he meets on the train from New Pittsburgh, is Calvin Springfield, a psychometrist, who can read objects. They are replacing tow missing agents in St Louis who were investigating some rather shady land deals around train rail spurs. As part of their compensation, they get a rather Steampunk pullman car and a witch butler named Winston. 

Both have a female contact in St. Louis; a woman muckraking reporter and a pinkerton showgirl. 

While the story follows the beats of a normal meet/cute, they do get involved in a plot by an ambitious vampire to open the gates of hell in a limestone mine, and do eventually realize the attraction is mutual.

While anyone who has read Brice before (or probably her Gail Z. Martin books as well) will recognize the plot devices and pacing,I am giving her credit for doing her research on homosexuality in the era, finding the least offensive slang for the men involved and presenting ways they could seek companionship in an era where such things were highly verboten. 

While this book shares several bones with other series by the same author, the setting drew me in, and I really did wind up enjoying it.

It's a nice day for a white wedding

 Finally getting around to Point Blank by Morgan Brice, the latest book in her BadLands series. (Much as I enjoy her writing, I kind of wish all of it was available in print, since tablets are inconvenient for me to try to read on when I'm travelling to and from work.)

Any rate, Simon, our psychic medium tour guide and shop owner is finally tying the knot with homicide Detective Vic. However, since nothing is ever that easy, we wind up with 3 powerful witch ghosts out to destroy each other and most of Myrtle Beach before the blessed event. 

If you're reading this series, you have an idea of how the plot works, although this time there's a bunch of subplots about wedding jitters and exactly how just how many things can go wrong before you reach the altar. (Yes, I was nodding along quite a bit, although we didn't serve shrimp at our reception.)

Of the numerous Brice series, this is by far the most realistic, since both main characters are older, neither are particularly rich, and much like Agatha Christie, the mysteries come to them. That, and they have actual refraction times. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my smut erotica, but the first Witchbane novel really made me wonder how either POV character had energy to do anything after screwing 5 times in 12 hours.)

And it is nice to see them get the wedding they deserved, and finding out how much their friends actually do care about them. 

A fun addition to the series.

I'm Thor, show me where it hurts...

 I know Neil Gaiman took some flack when Norse Mythology was first released mainly because he wasn't so much making new mythology for the Aesir and Vanir as much as he was retelling his favorite tales from the Eddas, but honestly it's kind of nice to have an introductory text to the myths, since there really aren't that many accessible texts introducing readers to the stories. And given this one is written in a PG tone, it would probably help children reading/watching Marvel's Thor get a better grip on the source material.

That being said, I'm not a huge fan of Norse mythology, so it's taken me some time to delve into Gaiman's book.

The first thing to note is that this isn't a complete retelling of the cycle. He glazes over Odin hanging on the world tree and Odin's eye in the Well of Mimir. Many of the Gods who get brief mention in the more complete sources aren't even mentioned in here.Which is fine, since Norse mythology doesn't lend itself well to Greek style retellings, where you can isolate a particular God for one story or two that illustrates who they are and how they function in the pantheon. 

Was there information in here I wasn't overly familiar with? Yes, more than a few of the stories were one I had not heard, or had not heard quite as much of as what's in here. (Freya's marriage to the ice giant, for one; Thor drinking 2/3s of the ocean another. Was also nice to get a fuller story on how Tyr's hand wound up in Fenrir's stomach.)

Ultimately, I ended up enjoying it. As much as I loathe the Norse, Gaiman does a good job of making an engaging narrative out of the stories he decided to retell. And it would be a fabulous resource for folks looking for something that doesn't cure insomnia like the Eddas.

A gay old time!

 Before we dig deep into reviewing Mabel Maney's Nancy Clue and the Hardley Boys in A Ghost in the Closet, I should preface this with some background. I first read this in 1995, having bought a copy at a now defunct bookstore across from Wright State University. I don't quite know what I was expecting (at 19, likely angsty erotica with the Boys realizing their long buried love of other boys... You know, Brokeback Mountain, with its 90 minutes of angst and 1 minute of pleasure, although that came out LONG after this one), but at any rate, I wasn't particularly thrilled with it at the time. Here, in 2023, I found myself laughing hysterically and appreciating it in its full 90's irony. 

So, evidently two books precede this one, although I have never seen them, let alone read them, that set up the messy love triangle between Jackie, a San Francisco detective; Nancy Clue, a plucky girl detective of societal import in River Depths; and Nurse Cherry Aimless, who can't decide which girl she loves more. 

Nancy and her friends and rivals start the book off at a dog show, where men in trench coats try to purloin purebred poodles! Nancy, concerned about losing Cherry's love, winds up dragging her chums Frank and Joe Hardly in to solve the mystery and win Cherry back from Jackie. With a lot of help from Uncles Willy and Nellie, the plot careens deep into 1959 High Society as everyone gets wrapped up in a mystery involving the kidnapping of not only dogs, but Frank and Joe's parents, Mr. and Mrs Fennel P. Hardy, with an emphasis on the Atomic Age!

That's the basic plot, and anyone who ever read the series being parodied here can probably guess some of the twists and turns contained within. Although, with the addition of Velma and her girlfriend Midge, we also get a few Scooby Doo traps late in the book. 

Maney does an excellent job of capturing the revisions made in 1959 to both series, when the hardcovers were heavily edited and repackaged for the new age. (Evidently, the original versions from the 30s and 40s were really racist and overly wordy.) It's all here, from Nancy's glove box being a bag of endless holding and being able to disguise herself with a mere change of clothes to Frank and Joe's patented Detective kits and the random ability to have learned whatever skill was needed for the narrative by a sentence insertion describing how they got the merit badge in boy scouts. 

Double entendres and innuendo fly like scared geese throughout, although some of the best funny bits point out to modern readers exactly how much language has shifted since the era this is set in, although there are some rather serious bits hidden in the humor, like the Sanitorium where troubled women wind up. Honestly, in many ways, it reminds me of The Brady Bunch Movie released the same year, except in the case, the characters aren't anachronisms in the setting. 

While I can't say it's on my list of favorite reads, I will say it's a hell of a lot better than I judged it in 1995.

Catch a falling star

 I'll be honest and say the first time I read Neil Gaiman's Stardust, I wasn't particularly impressed. However, this most recent rereading was a much more fun experience, and I can't help but wonder if the edition I have no isn't expanded from the original novel, or if I somehow just missed things the first time. 

Anyway, the novel is set in the Victorian era, in the town of Wall, where the wall has a gap in it that leads to Fairie. Once every nine years, a great fair happens on the other side of the gap, which is also the only time the people of Wall let people pass through the gap. Young Duncan Thorn, in love with a barmaid, winds up enchanted by a slave girl held by an enchanted chain, and winds up...er...conceiving Tristran under her influence. As Tristran grows up, he's not allowed to go to the fair. However, one night a star falls in Fairie, and he promises the woman he longs for that he will go retrieve it for her in exchange for his fondest desire. 

Said star, Yvaine, is not happy about falling after getting hit with a Topaz necklace thrown by the 81st lord of the Stormhold. (Neither are the 3 surving princes of Stormhold, who have to find the topaz to claim Lordship. The Lilim, are quite happy she fell, since they can use her heart to regain their youth.) 

Anyway, Tristran does find the star, and the other 2 major plotlines resolve themselves with very little interference from Tristran. And in the end, everyone gets what they deserve.

The movie, while really well done, did change around a few plot elements, and greatly expands the role DeNiro did so well. (In the book, he has maybe 2-3 lines.)  

While not my favorite book by Gaiman, it's still an exciting read that has improved with age.

Welcome to Manderley. I'm sure you'll be very happy here.

 So, the novelist known as Riley Sager has released a new thriller/mystery in The Only One Left. Like previous volumes from Sager, it doesn't quite stick the landing, but the rest of the performance is strong enough to make up for that. 

Now, as I mentioned on FB as I was reading, the book starts off strongly in Gothic tradition, and veers sharply into Hagsploitation (AKA Grand Dame Guignol) before synthesizing into a curious mix of both. We'll return to this in a sec.

We spend the book following Kittridge McDeere as she becomes a caregiver in 1987 for the local Lizzie Borden, along with typewritten pages from her patient, as her patient narrates past events. 

So, Kit gets assigned (after a 6 month suspension) to caregive for Lenora Hope out at the Hope's End mansion on the Maine coast. Lenora, in 1929, was accused of slicing her father's throat in the Billiards room, stabbing her mother in the hall, and hanging her sister Virginia from the chandelier. However, there was no evidence to prove the accusations, so Lenora was never punished. However, Lenora did get polio and lose use of her legs, and a stroke took her speech and use of her right arm. 

Kit, as it turns out, was suspected was suspected of killing her last patient, either through neglect or actual malice, as a bottle of opioids was left by the bed, and the patient somehow swallowed all of them before dying. 

In the meantime, Hope's End is built on the side of a cliff that's slowly trying to become part of the Atlantic. The only servants in the house are Mrs. Baker, former governess to Lenora and Virginia; Archie, the chef who's been with the family since the late 20s; Jessica, the young maid; and Carter, the young and handsome groundskeeper. We find out Lenora's most recent nurse, Mary, packed up and left in the middle of the night. Or so everyone assumed until Kit finds her body in the sand at the base of the cliff. In the meantime, we find out through Lenora's slowly typed memoirs the horrors of growing up in the house, and becoming pregnant out of wedlock with a servant's baby. 

The plot thickens quite a bit, as every secret about what happened the night of the murders and the aftermath get revealed. Most of it, yeah, makes sense and has support in the prose. However, the final twist really doesn't, and is a bit like having aliens show up in a western. (Well, that an a throwaway line of the last page, which feels a bit like a chef throwing an extra seasoning into the broth just to make sure nothing is wasted.) 

While the Sager books are hit or miss for me, this is one of the better efforts, and I found myself quite enjoying the crumbling mansion on the cliff and its secrets.

Blast from the past

 Lightning was the first Dean R. Koontz book I ever read, and for that reason alone, it has a place on my shelf. it lead me to bonding with my 8th Grade reading teacher, who I adored, and lead down the path to other authors in similar genres. I could have sworn I had reviewed it on here, but NaBrO. 

Anyway, the book opens with a OB/GYN being held at gunpoint by a blond man with a gun. Said man keeps a doctor from delivering a baby. Said baby is Laura Shane, whom the Blond visits occasionally throughout her childhood, never aging. We also see a man pursuing the blond, named Kokoshka, who wants to kill Laura once he figures out why Stefan, the blond, is meddling with her life. We see Laura grow up and become orphaned at 11, move in to an orphanage, only to be nearly molested by a custodian. We meet her friends, the twins Ruthie and Thelma, and the occasional roommate Tammy, who tries to commit suicide a few times.  

Ruthie ends up dying trying to save Tammy when Tammy lights herself and the orphanage on fire. 

Laura goes to college, meets her husband Danny, becomes a successful novelist, has a kid named Christopher. 

Then comes a fateful day when her Guardian appears again, this time saving her from a truck crash. Which is all great, until Kokoshka shows up and tries to kill everyone. Danny winds up dead, Stefan vanishes with his beacon. Laura gets a year to prepare, during which she becomes a marksman with a rather large arsenal of weaponry. (In the late 80's, Koontz was always obsessed with weapons and technology, and half the time speaking either for or against both.) Anyway, Stefan comes back after being shit, along with several pursuers. Which leads to Laura, Stefan, and Chris going on the lam. We finally find out where (or more precisely WHEN) Stefan is from, and the rest of the book concerns destroying The Institute in the era it exists in. 

While it is a bit dated, and really silly in a few places, not to mention the slobbery kiss to Reaganomics at the very end, it's still a good yarn a few decades on,

Gryphons of Love

 In what I was hoping was the next Volume of her Founding of Valdemar series, Mercedes Lackey instead started a new "Modern" Valdemar series in Gryphon in Light, centering on k'Valdemar Vale gryphon Kelvren and longtime character Firesong. There are other new characters floating around in here, like First officer Hallock, who gets mortally wounded early on in combat during an uprising in the northwest of Veldemar; his wife Ginny, a healer's hand; Jefti, a poor boy who is enamored with Kelvren; Three Ghost Cat warriors; a wing of Iftel gryphons; an unpaired companion; and a Firecat, as well as a few tervardi, dhyeli, and hertasi. Much like the group in Mage Storms, this ensemble (with cameos and callbacks to previous series) are being called by the gods of the world to do something. 

Mind you, it takes half the book for the expedition to get started, let alone off the ground. The first part focuses on Hallock, who gets a gut wound, is dying until Kelvren heals him. This inspires Kelvren to use up what magic he has to heal Hallock, which in turn leads to Kelvren nearly dying. This gets Treyvon involved, and he uses an old rite to recharge Kelvren. Given it hadn't been used since the original mage wars, no one was quite dure how it worked, or how it worked. It more or less supercharges Kelvren, who manages to set off a Diplomatic incident, get treated as a danger at k'Valdemar Vale, and eventually get diagnosed by Firesong as being in danger of spontaneously combusting. 

Eventually, a portable Heartstone gets strapped to Kelvren, and Firesong proposes an expedition to Lake Evendim to see how the Mage Storms affected Ma'ar's old kingdom. Which is great, until just about everyone and their brother sends people to go. Including supernatural creatures with direct pipelines to the Gods of the world.Seems something is happening at the Lake, and those in the mortal realm need to go investigate. 

By the end of the volume, we aren't there yet, but we do see a lot of the Pelegirs, and meet a new as of yet unnamed creature that appears as smoke and may or may not be attempting to possess people. 

As a start, it takes some time to get going, but once it gets going, it gets more engaging, making us wonder what exactly awaits our heroes at the lake.

3fer

 So, being lazy and writing one big entry to cover Amber & Ashes, Amber & Iron, and Amber & Blood by Margaret Weis. 

Picking up not long after the end of the War of Souls, the Dark Disciple trilogy follows Mina around after the death of Takhisis, and helps us better understand the little lady who started this great big war. 

We open on Mina being courted by Chemosh, Lord of Death. This doesn't work so well for Krynn, since Chemosh, annoyed by Sargonas trying to rule the Dark Pantheon, wants youthful followers, which means he imbues Mina with the ability to more or less make people of Krynn living vampires. 

One of the first Beloved being Rhys's, a monk of Majere, brother, who kills off the cloister. Rhys is upset by this, and winds up becoming a monk of Zeboim, the sea witch. Who wants him to track down Mina with help from one of the new style Kender who can speak to the dead. 

Eventually, we get wrapped into a plot involving the Hall of Sacrilege (a store room of relics collected by the Kingpriest of Ishtar) that's been buried under the Blood Sea since the First Cataclysm. Given it's an old Tower of Magic, Everyone is surprised to find ot Nuitari has restored it and plans on moving the Black Robes in, in exchange for giving his brother and sister towers of their own. 

Mina, as an offering to Chemosh, raises the tower out of the sea. Which leads to Majere revealing to the remaining pantheon exactly who and what Mina is. 

Seems ol' Mina is actually the love child of Paladine and Mishakel, who was hidden from Krynn to prevent ruining the balance. Which leads Rhys and Nightshade and Atta (the dog) to try to get Mina to Godshome. 

While the books are a bit far fetched, even for the RPG genre, it's a lot of fun to see the Krynnish pantheon act like Greek deities, squabbling over everything and getting to know them a bit more closely than what we've had in the past series. It's also fun seeing how people who worship one god in particular also leave offerings for others gods just to cover bases. 

Fun reading, if not quite as epic as other stories in teh series.

Krynn in the NEW New Age

 Finished Dragons of the Vanished Moon by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis in the comfort of my own recliner this afternoon. 

One thing I found myself pondering, and unless they release another Annotated version, I'll likely never know, is if this on is again drawing from Mr. Hickman's Mormon root and giving us a parable of maybe Revelation. 

As we found out at the end of the last volume, The One God is really Takhisis, who used the reshaping of the D&D multiverse at the end of 2nd Edition to move it somewhere else, right around the time Chaos got banished. 

We open on Mina and her Queen sort of killing Palin and Dalamar. Sort of, because their spirits remain attached to the bodies, which now amble around. Tasslehoff and Conundrum manage to use the Device of Time Journeying to go back, and wind up in Krynn's actual past, meeting such folks as Huma, before winding up in Sanction after Raistlin's arrival, and then springing forward. We find out this is a plot by both the soul of Raistlin himself and the missing 20 Gods currently trying to figure out where Krynn ran off to. 

And it gets ugly. Malys, the great red dragon over;lord dies, the Qualinesti and Silvanesti join together, just in time for the minotaurs to invade Silvaneti territory...Tasslehoff, ends up grabbing Odylia and Gerard and taking them to where the dragons of good are trapped, freeing them in time to save the elves from destruction by Ogre. 

And then, in Sanction we watch how the old Gods return yet again and the fates thereof.

There is one main trilogy that follows this one (I ordered copies, but they aren't here yet), and it was insteresting how many of the problems in there are foreshadowed here. Galdar tries to get Mina to see the people worship and love her, not Takhisis. Similar problems arise in the next trilogy. 

I remembered more or less how this one ended, but there's a hell of a lot of pathos and tragedy in the closing moments. A much better read than what I remember.

Oh, so that's what's going on.

 Finished Dragons of a Lost Star (book 2 of the War of Souls trilogy) today, and it's improved over my memory of my last reading of it. 

We open on the great green dragon Beryl attacking the Citadel of Light, where Palin and Tasslehoff wind up walking off the silver staircase and somehow ending up in Dalamar's tower, which had been in Palanthis, but now floats around Wayreth. (Don't ask. Krynn's physics are nuts.) Palin and Dalamar want Tasslehoff to go back and get stepped on. Tasslehoff doesn't like this, and escapes through a chimney.

Mina and her army are on the move, and taking over Solamnic strongholds. 

Qualinesti falls, but takes Beryl with it. 

Goldmoon, following a river of the dead (who are sucking everyone's magic), winds up in Solanthus, the meeting her former pupil Mina at Dalamar's tower, where (spoiler alert for a 2 decade old book) we find out the One God of Mina is actually Takhesis. 

Now the fun part here is, having read this when it came out, I noticed all the lovely foreshadowing on this read through, which made me very happy. Doesn't change that the timeline on Krynn is FUBAR.

Krynn in the new age

 As a bit of explanation, spent the past week moving, which has curtailed my time to do things, like write reviews on here. 

Dragons of a Fallen Sun picks up roughly 30 years after Dragons of the Summer Flame, in what was referred to as the Fifth Age. (As I gather, the sales of this era were horrid. That they introduced a whole new set of rules to accompany the setting following the departure of the Gods didn't help.)We open on a bit of setting, as we learn the Knights of Neraka (formerly the Knights of Takhesis) now occupy a bunch of land that used to belong to the "good" races, while the Solamnic Knights now occupy some of the "bad areas". Silvanesti is under a magical dome, Qualinesti is occupied. Into this, Tasslehoff Burrfoot (last seen dying under the heel of Chaos [or sitting by a forge with Flint in the afterlife]) warps in, having used the Device of Time Travel to come forward for Caramon's funeral. 

Which, along with the appearance of Mina (think Joan d'Arc, with a shaved head and amber eyes and healing unseen in the Fifth Age) sets the plot in motion. Mina starts by taking over a division of Knights in the name of the One True God, and leads them on a few really campaigns to take ground the Knights of Neraka have coveted, gaining converts among everyone she encounters, including Silvanoshi, King of Silvanost, son of Porthos and Alhana. 

In the mean time, Tasslehoff is running around finding the survivors of the War of the Lance, including Goldmoon, Laurana, and Jenna. (Palin, son of Caramon, accompanies him, as does Solamnic Gerard.) With magic fading, Palin tries to the use the device to go back in time, only to find there is no past before Chaos was banished. 

Goldmoon has been restored to her youth. She's also beginning to find out the dead have not moved on, and indeed are eating magic. Beryl, a big dragon is coming to destroy everything. 

There's a lot more politicking in here than in previous volumes, and it's obvious that the authors have been writing together for a very long time. It's also fairly easy to construe this book, and really, the series as a whole as an apology for Summer Flame. Having last read this as it released, I know most of the surprises coming up later on, but I still found myself sucked back in wondering how this is all going to work out in the end. 

Really well written. 

It's too damn hot

Much as I remember hating Dragons of Summer Flame by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman the one and only time I read it previously, it wasn't nearly as bad the second time around. This doesn't mean I liked it that much, but , much like the previous rereads of other RPG fiction that once annoyed me, it didn't fill me with bitterness this time around. Mostly.

 So, we open on the Drak Paladin order, the Knights of Takhisis, setting ground on the island of the Irda, a long lost race that in prior times were cursed to become Ogres. The Irda are exceptionally xenophobic, and decide to crack the legendary Greygem open to power a shield over their island. (Background here. In game materials, the Dwarven god, Reorx,  was tricked into containing Chaos, father of the Gods in a gem. It managed to to create chaos in its wake, before vanishing into history.) Needless to say, this is a really bad idea, as Chaos is freed and begins his threat to destroy the world of his children. 

Which brings us to some of the Children of the Heroes of the Lance, particularly Palin, son of Tika and Caramon; Steel Brightblade, son of Sturm and Kitiara; and Usha, supposedly the half Irda daughter of Raistlin. Steel is a Knight, Palin is a White Robe wizard. They end up running through the world together after Palin is captured by the Knights. They end up being joined by Tasslehoff and Usha as the book goes on. 

We get minor updates on other surviving Heroes of the Lance, and the return of a supposedly dead Hero, last seen sleeping in the Abyss. 

And, by the end, alomst everyone is dead, Chaos is banished, and Krynn enters a new age without Gods. 

So, I remember half the reason I hated this had to do with the chump death of a fan favorite. It's still annoying. However, I can say with the amount of crap going on in here, it probably would have worked better as a trilogy, rather than as one big long epic, bouncing around between characters we barely get to know and some major plot points we don't get to see.While I understand it was written to revise the ruleset for the setting (the game itself had undergone a few class revisions that were not present in the setting; they also made a whole new system specifically for the so called 5th Age that as near as I can tell flopped like a lead balloon), I also can't help but remember the next trilogy in the setting pretty much retcons the heck out of this book. 

Yeah, for what it is, it's an ok read, but honestly, it has no real audience, since people who don't read fantasy or know about DragonLance won't read it, and most fans of the series will hate it.

The power of 5

 So, today we're reviewing The Quintessential World of Darkness, a collection of 5 novels/novellas/short stories from each of the original 5 World of Darkness games. (Well, sort of.) As such, I'll be looking at each entry as a separate paragraph or so. 

The book opens with Kevin Andrew Murphy's The Lotus of Five Petals, which centers around the Eastern Vampire courts that became their own game somewhere prior to the Revised editions of the mail line games. Interestingly enough, it's the whole reason I bought a used copy of the collection, since this one amused me more than the game ever did. (In theory, Kindred of the East had a very interesting setting and managed to reconcile the main games into one more integrated world. In practice, it tended to turn into vampires doing Jackie Chan or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.) Anyway, this, the only piece of fiction ever published outside of the sourcebook for the setting, tells the tale of Anchalee, knocked up by Minnesota sailor Howard, who gets killed on the streets of Bangkok. She gets her Second Breath (aka becomes a vampire) and gives birth to Howard's baby, who is now a Dhampir. Lady Miao, one of the more enlightened vampires of Bangkok brings Anchalee into her court, where a prophetic game of Mah Jong suggests Howard should come back in the picture. Howard returns, along with his friends Jim and Warren. Lady Miao claims Warren (who is of Chinese decent) as her choice of playmates during the visit, while her female impersonator secretary, Phat Ho, chooses Jim, who, despite being straight, has more than a few Obviously Gay Traits. Howard gets gifted with a blessing from Kwon Yin, and it eventually resolves as best it can. It's very subversive in its humor, and I love it like candy.

The second book, The Silver Crown by Bill Bridges, I actually have as a paperback, and you can find that review here. 

Third is Mister Magick by Edo van Belkom, which concerns the world of Mage. You can tell this one was written fairly early in first edition, since nothing lines up with more detailed pictures as the line evolved. Our main character, Romano, is an Italian-Canadian who escapes Canada to become a big name Vegas magician. He has two enemies, one of whom is a jealous assistant, and another a televangelist. While Romano is supposed to be a Cult of Ecstasy mage, one gets the sense that all he has in common with the Tradition is Time magic. While it's ok, I had a hard time trying to translate the setting with the later much richer metaplot that the game had. 

Next, we come to the world of Wraiths and Rick Hautala's Beyond the Shroud. I'll be honest, Wraith has a really engrossing setting, but the few times I've played, it runs into the issue of every character actually being Psyche and Shadow, which gets confusing easily. This book does a fairly good job of illustrating this world, with David trying to save his living wife and dead daughter from another Wraith with designs on one of Jack the Ripper's blades that's conveniently in possession David's ex-wife's new boyfriend. 

Last, we have the short story The Muse by Jody Lyn Nye. In this one, a Scottish artists finds a fairy muse who wants to return to Arcadia. Nothing really happens where the narrator can see it, so we're left with a guy who loves to draw the lady doing strange things who eventually disappears on Samhaine. 

As you can tell, the fiction within is kind of a mixed bag, and not all of it particularly resembles the source material. But, if you can find a copy, or just want one of the volumes, it will entertain.

The continuing story of a quack that's gone to the dogs

 We return to brooding with P. N. Elrod's I, Strahd: The War With Azalin, in which we continue the previous Strahd volume and hear the vampire's side of the story that was covered in Gene DeWeese's King of the Dead. Our framing story has the fearless Von Richten listening to his regular book dealer in Mordent agree to consignment sell a book with the further journals of Count Strahd of Barovia. 

So, basically, Azalin arrives in Barovia from his kingdom on Oerth. He and Strahd get on like oil and water, but wind up in a codependant relationship, as both need each other to try to escape the mists. There's also a Vistani prophecy concerning Azalin's arrival, leading to Strahd working more carefully than normal for the years Azalin is trapped in the domain. 

While the "War" is a bit of a misnomer (the only open battle is a big skirmish during a point when Barovia and Darkon shared a border; most of it is married couple bickering between a vampire and a lich), it remains fun reading. Particularly since unlike Azalin, who knows exactly why and how he's being punished, and understands that he could end it at any time, Strahd is fairly circumspect about what's going on in his domain. He understands that additions occasionally crop up on his borders, and everyone begins to forget that they didn't used to be there, but he has no real awareness of exactly what is going on. 

While not as fun as the first vampire confessional, it remains engaging.

On the other side of the proscenium

 I preordered Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco as soon as I found out about it. For those unaware, I've had a great love of Chita since seeing her perform at the Tony's for Kiss of the Spider Woman. This was followed by getting to see her live twice, first on the last preview of The Visit, and later her One Woman show at Carnegie Hall, which also marks when I converted my husband to the Church of Chita. As I've read different Broadway histories and biographies of the stars, she turns up in quite a few places, and it's absolutely wonderful to get the stories in her own words. 

As should  probably be expected, she opens with West Side Story, where she originated the role of Anita, Bernardo's girlfriend. We hear of auditioning at Leonard Bernstein's apartment with Steven Sondheim on piano, and how they taught the role to her as they were writing it, and the sheer joy of getting costumed for the "Mambo" number where Tony meets Maria. We hear of the touches she added to it (things like only wearing one earring, and learning to not show off the dress with flourishes until the time is right, and how even now, she sees men of all shapes and sizes walking through Hell's Kitchen and Midtown wearing her dress, and how she always wants to give them the advice her costumer gave her when she got the dress. 

Then we go back to her family and growing up in DC, and how she got enrolled in ballet school after breaking her mother's coffee table. (There are a few sad moments in here; by far the one that his me hardest was when her mother sold her father's clarinet and tenor sax to pay bills after he died.) 

From there, we hear of her getting a scholarship to the American Ballet Academy in New York City, and living with her Aunt and Uncle in the city. While she trained in classical ballet, she also fell in love with modern dance, and wound up accompanying a friend to an audition for a touring show, which Chita ended up getting in. (Call Me Madam which had Ethyl Merman on Broadway, and Elaine Stritch on tour.) 

From there, it's a whirlwind of tours until West Side Story, and then on to other shows, Los Angeles, and Italy. She had a daughter named Lisa with her husband (a Jet in West Side Story)...

So many stories. We hear of a performance for the Queen where she met Judy Garland for the first time (along with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. There's actually a really sad tale in here about John calling for Judy to show her wrists; seems Judy had likely tried to kill herself prior to the show.) 

We hear about her affair with Sammy Davis Jr. during the run of Mr. Wonderful.

We hear tales of Fosse and Verdon, of Liza, of Paul Lynde and Dick Van Dyke, and we hear both the good and the bad and the love she feels for all of them, and her love for the creatives behind the shows. 

We hear of her doing cabaret shows during the hiatus of Chicago when Fosse had a heart attack, and how she, like a lot of up and coming and come back artists were performing at gay clubs and bath houses. We relive the bad part of every Broadway history, the early 80's when Broadway literally died. 

The last two chapters deal with Kiss of the Spider Woman and The Visit and the sadness involved in the death of Roger Rees during the run of the latter. 

There are so many other things I could add here, but honestly, I'll suggest everyone get a copy and read it. There's a reason Lin-Manuel Miranda calls her out as a legend in In The Heights. This was worth every penny I paid too get it at release.

The great granddaddy of them all

 So, one of the biggest releases in the Ravenloft line (I think it was the only one released in  Hardcover), and I can now say I've read it 30 years after the fact. 

I, Strahd by P. N. Elrod covers the Dark Lord himself, Strahd, and explains his life story in his own words. (There's a nifty framing device where Van Richten sneaks into Castle Ravenloft and reads Strahd's folio of recollections on Eternity.) 

And what do you know? It's actually both well written and entertaining and not wholesale ripping off other works for plot points!

We hear about it all. Strahd's conquest of the castle from a bad Baron, his brother the Paladin who fell in love with Tatyana, only to have Strahd kill him to make Tatyana love him instead, his deal with the Dark Powers that turned him into a vampire, the greedy soldier who slaughters almost everyone in the castle on the day of Sergei and Tatyana's wedding. We see Strahd bind the land to him, thus causing the mists to encroach...

Oh so much. And so juicy to read. While I assume Elrod had canon that had to be included/not changed for plot purposes, they do a great job keeping the sound of dice rolling in the background out of the plot, fleshing out a character who isn't exactly an anti-hero, but for whom evil is a way of life. 

Honestly, as much as I've avoided this one for a few decades (I thought there were more interesting Dark Lords; the only other P. N. Elrod book I ever tried reading I couldn't get in to), I kind of wish I had read it in release.

Finishing up

 I had hoped Planar Powers by J. Robert King would finish out the Blood Wars trilogy in a readable style, but sadly, it was not to be. 

Let's start with Aereas. As we found out through the last book, he's now a disembodied spirit working as a Judge-Excecutioner for the Lady of Pain. However, now he has a closet, a cantrip allowing him to shrink people and things. Which he uses to smuggle condemned prisoners out of the torture/execution rooms and create a world as The Closet Lord. 

Nina, on the other hand, is living in Celestia with Phaeton, as well as Aereas's kid Tara and Nina's son Aegis. The Devas aren't happy to have lesser beings among them, so we get a rehash of Milton as everyone gets kicked out of heaven. 

We also have Leonin, last seen standing in the Beastlands waiting on Nina to return, now realizing he's missing his ribs and picking up a hag and passing through the machine realm. (Which includes a parody of a Disney song that actually made me laugh. And we get a side story (a few paragraphs after every chapter) discussing the disposition of the door in Boffo's shop that opens on a Prime Material world. 

While this was the most cohesive of the series, it's also really really deeply...flakey? I mean, the wonder I felt reading the setting is nowhere to be found anywhere in the trilogy. Even the war the trilogy is named after really had nothing to do with much of anything in the series. 

While I'm not sorry about reading it, I don't think it rates a reread any time in the near future.

Speaking of Hell...

 So, I returned to Planescape with Book 2 of the Blood Wars Trilogy, Abyssal Warriors by J. Robert King.

While this one was much more entertaining than Volume 1, it suffers from a few issues. 

Anyway, Nina, last seen following a Tiefling into the Abyss, has gone looney and is raising an army to take over Layer 337 of the Abyss. Aereas, last seen being denied audience with The Lady of Pain, is still looking for her. The Dead God Leonin, who's sort of living his life as a cafe in Sigil, is instead being reanimated on the astral by insect demons. Before he loses all control, he does summon a Deva (Angelic being) name Phoeton to go help Nina and Aereas. 

Let me see if I can get this straight, since time in the Planes operates according to the needs of whomever is telling the story. Seems Uncle Artus adopted a girl in the Beast Lands, who was unbalanced with fire. That would be Nina. Using an artifact, Aereas tries to find Nina, but instead finds another girl like Nina, in similar straits. Whom he ends up mating with and having a daughter. 

In the mean time, Nina is raising 12 legions of demons/fiends/whateves and making her Tiefling love her. 

Eventually, the Lady summons Aereas to lead her armies into the Beastlands to defeat Nina's army. There's a lot going on here, and we get a few chapters of what amounts to Nina and Aereas flying through Sigil in giant acorns. We're also lead to believe Artus and Boffo traded bodies somewhere along the line. 

Any rate, we're left with everyone mostly unhappy or dead. 

By far the biggest problem in here is that one of the big twists at the end makes zero sense. Like literally, it would involve on character being in two different states of being at the exact same time. 

But, like I said, it's easier to get through than the first one, so...

Not today, Satan!

 So, we return to dark academia and Leigh Barduga's follow up to Ninth House, Hell Bent. 

AKA how Alex got her Virgil back. 

So, again, we're kind of floating around the timeline, with the beginning chapter returning as present about 2/3 of the way through. Alex and Dawes are trying to figure out how to get Darlington out of Hell, made more difficult by the fact that the Emeritus members of Lethe don't want them fooling with Demonic Magic. That and a new Praetor who doesn't think women should be at Yale, let alone one of the Societies...

Anyway.

There's yet another unrelated murder everyone gets involved in prior to Alex and Dawes finding out the library actually has a portal to hell in it, requiring them to get Turner (AKA the cop who works with Lethe) and a random Bonesman who evidently failed out to descend into hell to free Darlington. Oh yes, and Alex is also dealing with her old California drug dealer, who wants her to be his enforcer, which in turn leads her to finding out Vampires are real, and generally don't like humans.

We also get into a bit of revelation as to what the hell Alex is, since the villain in the last book (and a few of the demons in the one) refer to her as a Wheel Walker. Mind you,l she can also call ghosts into herself for extra stat bonuses with a bit more ease now, so...

Any rate, I rather enjoyed this sequel more than, say, The Atlas Paradox, and even if it is getting in to an "eat the rich" message slowly, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Through the tobacco stand

 As I may have mentioned previously, found a bunch of my old D&D novels recently, and got a wild hair and decided to try rereading J. Robert King's Blood Hostages, the first book in the Blood Wars trilogy, which is set in the Planescape setting. Let me preface this with saying while I at one point had a bunch of D&D boxed sets, I rarely if never actually played with any of them. I hate being a DM, and during the era, all anyone who wanted to game would play was Forgotten Realms. Planescape was cool, expanded a bunch on a supplement I loved, and basically really solidified an idea we're seeing a bunch of again in several fictional universes, The Multiverse.

Anyway, this particular novel either wants the reader to be as clueless as the main characters (cousins Nina and Aereas) or just assumes anyone picking it up has read the boxed set in the past 6 months. While some of it was still familiar to me, a heck of a lot of it had me checking different fan wikis trying to refresh my memory. 

Anyway...

Aereas and Nina live with her father/his uncle on a non-supplement detailed world. Artus, gives his journal on his travels over to Aereas at the outset, saying he's old enough to appreciate it now. A few pages later, Artus is being dragged through a portal in his tobacco stand by gargoyles, with Nina and Aereas jumping in behind them a few hours later. (Which, when they arrive in the city of Sigil, turns out to be a week later.)

We meet a gnome named Boffo, who in turn leads the pair through the city of Sigil first to the spirit of a Dead God, and then a Tiefling who knew Artus. (For the record: Sigil is/was the starting city for the setting. Basically a city that's an enclosed ring at the center of everything. Kind of like a pumpkin roll where the filling has buildings.) We find out Artus worked as a spy for the nominal ruler of Sigil, The Lady of Pain. And then, we follow the kidnappers through a fight in a foundry, which ends up with everyone falling through a portal into the 665th layer of the Abyss, which it seems is a bottomless hole.

Eventually, they wind up in Gehenna at the palace of Sung Chiang, who is the Power behind the kidnapping in the first place. Seems Artus had keys to all the portals to the planes from Sigil, and he's now on sale. Which brings in the Baatezu and Tanar'ri, two of the major factions fighting the not really defined in this volume Blood War. (If I remember the lore correctly, it was something about Demons on one plane fighting devils on another plane.) This again leads to another chase, where the wind up on the corpus of the dead Power they met early on. And then the tiefling and Nina wind up in the Abyss again, while Artus and Aereas wind up back in Sigil. 

While the settings are fun, the characters are all kind of flat, beyond Sung Chiang (who as a God of thievery has a bunch of stuff to do) and Jandau (the tiefling, who is playing his own game.) We get lots of Aereas trying to justify incest with his cousin (who may not actually be his cousin, but still, EWWWWWWW), Nina falling for the shady Tiefling, and in what may be the best supporting character in here, Krim, the Wizard with the body of a hovering Manta Ray. 

I'm hoping the next two volumes improve a bit on this, leaving us a bit less confused as to what is actually going on. 

Whne crazy meets crazy

 One of the major themes running through Seana McGuire's new InCrypted nove Backpacking Through Bedlam revolves around the difficulty of reintegrating during homecoming, and it kind of struck a nerve, particularly in the bonus novella tucked in at the end of the book. 

We pick up where the last volume ended, with Alice, Thomas, and Sally leading refugees from the Crossroads bottle dimension to hopefully a new home dimension. Which involves Alice and Thomas learning to love each other again after 50 years apart, and Alice learning to find a way to deal with Sally, who was more or less adopted by Thomas during the exile. 

About halfway through, after visiting the dimension where Sarah ended up dropping a college, they wind up back on Earth, where Rose and Mary wind up sending the trio to New York to help Verity and Dominic chase The Covenant out of New York and away from the dragons. 

The novella concerns James learning that Sally has been rescued, and dealing with his feelings therein. 

While the first half of the novel really doesn't quite feel as intense as previous novels in the series, the second half and the novella strike the chords I've come to love from this particular series. Really fun read.

They're building landing strips for gay alien martians!

 So, I technically finished Stuff The Don't Want You to Know by Ben Bowlin, Matt Frederick, and Noel Brown yesterday, but it's been a week. 

The setup is almost opposite what we normally see in conspiracy compilations, as they move from downright preposterous (with roots in what is real) into very real, provable discussions. 

But honestly, it's fun to go through, since some of it is a fuller story on things I knew already (Tuskeegee in particular.) 

Honestly, there isn't that much to say here, beyond it being a fun if occasionally disturbing discussion on things that increasingly are being presented as truth, and why it is people are inclined to believe them. (Case in point, one of the reviews I read about it spent a paragraph complaining that the debunk of one theory was false, since a particular cable news station said differently.)

So yeah, if you want an exploration of modern folklore, it's worth reading.

In the Lich of time....

 As a warning, along with sporadic library reserves, I found a bunch of old RPG novels among the remnants of mom's house, then found a few other volumes on used book sites, so expect some really odd entries over time. 

Today was King of the Dead by Gene De Weese, which is more or less the origin of Azalin, who's later stories are found in Lord of the Necropolis. (If you click that link, there's an awesome picture attached to the post.) For those not versed in such esoterica, Azalin is a lich who rules the Ravenloft Domain of Darkon, and is pretty much the arch nemesis of Strahd, the Vampire Lord around whom the entire setting is based. Firan, as he was known as a human, started in Oerth, aka the Greyhawk setting, middle son of a King who thoughts magic users were evil. So, because of course he does, Firan learns the arcane arts, manages to get his younger brother possessed, then runs off to follow his mentor somewhere outKingdom. 

He learns tricks to siphon off the life force of those he kills, and becomes king after his eldest brother dies. Firan rules by executing anyone who breaks his laws. He marries, finds out the wife cursed him, erases the curse, and she bears him a son. Irik, named after his possessed younger brother, ends up commiting treason against daddy dearest, since he doesn't agree with Firan's policies. Firan beheads Irik, and then regrets it, thinking he should raise his son and teach him to be more like his father. Well, that doesn't quite go as planned, and Firan starts hearing taunting voices of those he cared about, which in turn leads him to turn himself into a lich. (An observation: most of the art depicting Azalin makes him look a bit like Skeletor right before He-Man kicks his ass.) 

So, Firan eventually gets sucked into the mists and winds up in Barovia. He refers to himself by his old title on Oerth (Aza'Lin), which the Barovians take to be his name. We get a short chapter on his working with and against Strahd, before Azalin enters the mists again, and eventually becomes the leader of his own Dark Domain, and his punishments of never being able to learn new magic, and finding the only way he could fully resurrect his son is to torment himself. Or, he could forgive himself, but that would mean him admitting he was wrong. 

It's fun, and frankly, Azalin more than Strahd understand the nature of the realm and its torments. He's probably the only Darklord who understands how to end his imprisonment, but is too stubborn to do so. 

It's a tad silly in places, but it's a fun read none the less.

Let's split up! That always works!

 So, Cradle of Ice, the second book in what's allegedly going to be a trilogy, opens with our team of intrepid protagonists splitting up to accomplish different goals. 

Nyx, our major heroine, is accompanied across the Frozen wastes in the dark side of Urth by Shiya, Rhaif, Graylin, and a company of pirates, as well as her friend Jace to discover one of the places where they can get the Urth rotating again. Along the way, they discover The Cradle, an area under the ice that is warm that supports human life. A different race of the hive mind bats live there, but they're under the control of something else.

In the meantime, Prince Kanthe and Freyll have gone to the southern Crown to the Empire of Klashe, where intrigues abound. Kanthe winds up engaged to the Emperor's daughter, who is in love with the leader of the faction that opposes the caste system in place in the Empire. (Not that Kanthe doesn't have his own suitors, the Princess's brother makes his desire failrly clear, as does on of the female assassins running around. 

By the end, the plot has advanced as several goals are met, we have much more information as to what Shiya is (courtesy of a "lesser" bronze being who's been disguised on Klashe for a few centuries), and we have a set up for the next book which suggests either it's probably going to be rushed to a conclusion or expanded into 5 books. (Between the private war between Kanthe and his Twin brother, who now rules the Northern kingdom, the fact that they still have to go to the center of the desert wasteland on the always sun facing side of Urth, and they have to get a third relic from the now rather hostile Northern Kingdom....)

Yeah, I've gotten sucked into this series. I look forward to seeing what the next volume brings.

On a midnight dark and dreary

And we're back in Sithicus, as Lord Soth faces down his own misrule of the dark domain in Spectre of the Black Rose. In my last post, I mentioned how Soth's imprisonment by the dark powers was mildly controversial, and here, we see his release back to Krynn. (Theoretically for a second time, if one takes the adventure World of Krynn as canon.) 

Essentially, Soth has sat on his armored ass for a very long time letting Sithicus run itself. His torment on Krynn has changed, as his Keep in Sithicus is not quite the same as Dargaard Keep in Ansalon. His skeletal knights and banshee tormentors also change number, as memory in Sithicus is an illusion. 

Which has left Azreal the Dwarven Werebadger to run the country as he sees fit, annoying Magda's daughter Inza. (Magda is alive for the first part of the novel, but we quickly find out her daughter doesn't much like her.) War threatens with Invidia, as the ruler (not the actual Lord) wishes to exterminate the Vistani. 

We also have the mysterious Cobbler, who cuts off people's feet who publicly break oaths; The Whispering Beast, who calls those who break oaths to him as food; and the mysterious White Rose, who has her own connections with Soth. We have Azreal trying to take control of all the shadows of Sithicus, and Inza, who ultimately wants Soth's throne. Almost everyone is plotting with and against everyone else. 

In other words, Gothic Horror.

In the end, Soth regains his memory and returns to Krynn, and we see again how his pride prevents his redemption. Pretty much every other character gets an unhappy ending, which works just as well. 

This was actually a heck of a lot more fun than the first volume, since by this point, we know everyone in here is up to no good, which makes the ending that much more satisfying. Soth is home, so he can find his redemption a few years down the road. (I ordered the War of Souls trilogy today, so I'll eventually get to relive that silliness. Although given that plot line involved Takhisis moving Krynn across the universe, I feel like Soth's sojourn into Ravenloft kind of foreshadowed that plot twist, although I think most readers tend to think of that trilogy as an apology for Dragons of Summer Flame, which seems to be pretty universally despised.) 

If you can find a copy, this is one of the fun ones.

CONTROVERSY!

 Before I get deep into this, let's discuss some of the fun behind James Lowder's Knight of the Black Rose, or what happens when creators clash with property owners. According to the copyright, this got released in 1992, which was after Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis were on the outs with TSR, However, their DragonLance novels and game accessories were quite popular even then. (Of note, the game module that inspired the entire setting of Ravenloft was written by Tracy and his wife..) Anyway, Lord Soth was a secondary antagonist in the DragonLance setting, a Death Knight who was working with Kitiara for his own reasons. His backstory was tragic, and he was an inveterate scene stealer. Plus, he just LOOKED cool. So it wasn't a particularly great surprise that TSR decided to make D&D Reese Cups by having the Mists swallow Soth on Krynn and drop him in the new Gothic Horror setting. Now, he eventually escaped and wound up back on Krynn (with one partial escape assumed to be during The Grand Conjunction as chronicled in the debatebly canon source book World of Krynn), only to die a final and noble death during The War of Souls. As far as Soth's creators are concerned, Soth never left Krynn. As far as D&D canon goes, he did, although most people reconcile it by assuming he escaped to return at the moment of his exit. Anyway, info dump done, let's discuss.

So, we open towards the very end of the Blue Lady's War, when Kitiara went to Palanthus to greet whichever Krynnish god wound up coming out of the dragon portal. (The entire story is told in Legends.) Kitiara dies, and Soth heads back to his lovely Dargaard  Keep with his banshees and skeletal men at arms. However, we expand here on Soth sending his seneschal Caradoc to the Abyss to go get Kitiara's soul, so Soth can reanimate her body to be his eternal companion. (Soth has relationship issues.)

Caradoc winds up hiding Kit's soul, thinking Soth won't return him to mortality. (Mind you, some of the discussions here closely mirror the Planescape setting. Which I think came out somewhere around when this got written.) Soth strangles the ghost (perk of being undead, I suppose), the mists close in, and hey, everyone's in Barovia. 

What follows is a showdown between a Chaotic Evil vampire and Lawful Evil Death Knight. We also meet a Vistani lass named Magda (the Vistani during this era were basically stereotyped Roma, straight out of central casting) and a werebadger named Azreal. They cross Barovia into Gunderak and back, and eventually, Soth winds up in the Mists again, and ultimately refuses redemption, so he becomes the Dark Lord of Sithicus. 

By far the best part of this story is how in depth we plunge into Soth's days before the Curse. We hear the tale throughout DragonLance, but here, we're on Soth's shoulder as he has his first wife killed, married his second, gets expelled from the Knighthood, and ultimately fails in his redemption and gets cursed by wife #2. It adds a lot of humanizing effect onto the character, showing us his tragic nature. He's really a dark mirror image of the stereotypical paladin. Yes, his honor is tarnished and rusted, but the iron is still strong under it all. 

Now, I first read this when it was published, having picked it up at the local bookstore/smoke shop a few blocks from my house. At the time, I had not read the earlier source material, and had no real idea of who Soth was. Now, having read all of it, this made a hell of a lot more sense. I'm really happy I found my copy again, it was fun to reconnect with it after all these years.

When the Sky Falls....

 So, on a whim, I checked out James's Rollins's The Starless Crown out of the library, thinking it looked interesting. Which it wound up being, although given the large amount of queer adjacent fiction I've been reading of late, the lack of anything resembling queer folks in here was kind of a shock.(Yeah, I know.)

Anyway, we open on a knight helping a "Pleasure Serf" escape into a swamp. Said serf gives birth to a girl not long after the knight runs off to prevent pursuit of the surf. 

Over the course of the story, we find out the girl survived and was raised by human sized bats, giving her access to certain ancestral memories. Nyx, as she is now known, gets dragged into what looks to be a trilogy, along with her support scribe, Jace, as the King of Halandii wants her in relation to a prophecy that she will destroy the world. Along the way, we get involved in the crown prince trying to kill his brother, a thief who found an alchemical wonder of an animated copper woman, and Nyx's long exiled father. So, yeah, fairly standard for fantasy story lines.

The setting (planet Urth) is a bit more original, although there are hints we're in the old trope of a future Earth. The Urth is tidally locked with the Son, so that one hemisphere is constantly light, and one dark. (Much like the Moon here in the present Earth.) As such, as far as we know, everything mostly lives in "The Crown", towards the area where twilight would be the norm. (The sun doesn't really set, and there are seasons, so axial tilt is still a thing.)  The two major factions present in Halandii (and rumored to have a different integration in the enemy state Klashe) are the Alchymists and the Religious, although there are Orders on both sides who have mastered both mysteries. And as we get hints of throughout the book, it's likely the moon will crash into Urth within a few years of they can't find a way to stop it. 

I enjoyed reading this, even if nothing in here is particularly original. Still fun though.

I'm sensing a recurring theme here

 Olivie Blake's The Atlas Paradox has now joined the done reading list, and I find myself confused by, well, just about everything.

This is not to say it's not an enjoyable read, it's more a case of trying to figure out exactly what the heck is actually going on. 

So, we pick up where the last one left off, with the 5 remaining trying to figure out where the 6th initiate is. (Short answer, 30 years in the past.) With that member trying to find their way back to the present, we spend much of this volume swinging back and forth in time, as time is passing for all characters, and various plot boil around during all eras. Add into this various conversations being presented, and then flowing back to other conversations happening earlier then catching up with the narrative, there is much going on. 

I still have no idea who the actual antagonist is in this. We have 2 possibilities, plus a dark horse (Dalton, who has a whole subset of things locked up in his mind). We have an entire narrative on whether or not the initiates are actually Gods of some sort because of their powers. We have entire conversations about alternate universes (or Quantum realities if you prefer), and whether you could insert yourself into one, or even create your own universe. 

On a much less lofty note, we end with a same gendered kiss between a couple I'd assumed were together, so ya know...

I'm unsure if the author is going for a trilogy or an ongoing series. Either way, I'm curious what direction this is going in next.

Another take on Dark Academia

 So, I'm not quite sure how I found Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, but I'm really happy I did. 

The general premise here is that the secret societies (Houses) of Yale (Skull and Bones, Manuscript, etc) all have access to various schools of magic, with Lethe being the society designated to keep an eye on the Ancient Eight to prevent magical problems. 

Lethe involves about 5 titles, Virgil, Dante, Centurion, Oculus, and Dean, plus a society of alumni we don't really meet. Alex (aka Galaxy) is our Dante, newly initiated into the House, under the guidance of Darlington, her Virgil, who was the prior Dante. Dawes in the Oculus, a grad student who spends most of her time researching and crushing on Darlinton. The Centurion, Turner, works for the New Haven Police. 

Alex was chosen for the position of Dante by Dean Virgil, who found out she can see ghosts ("Greys" or "Quiet Ones") without the aid of a rather poisonous magical potion. That she was a street rat in Cali before getting uprooted to Ivy League Connecticut makes her life more difficult. 

Anyway, as we jump between Fall and Winter, we see Alex and Darlington supervise other House's rituals, prior to Darlington getting sucked into a portal. We watch as Alex undertakes an investigation against the wishes of the Dean into the death of a drug dealing townie that interrupted a Bones rite involving reading the entrails of a live victim. We watch as she violates a few rules in the name of solving a murder of someone no one on campus cared about. 

It's a really engaging read I couldn't put down easily. While I did figure out a few twists ahead of time, there were plenty of other surprises lurking behind the doors. I can't wait for the next volume.

What not to read while dealing with an estate

 I ordered Grady Hendrix's How To Sell A Haunted House because I enjoy his fiction. Unfortunately, some of the subject matter cut a little close to the bone, which made getting through the first third a bit rough. 

We have Louise Joyner as our focus character, whom we meet right as she announces her pregnancy to her parents. She gives birth to Poppy, and five years later, both her parents die in a car accident. Which means going back to Charleston and dealing with her brother Mark. 

So, like I said, the first 1/3 of the book involves them trying to deal with funeral arrangements, dealing with the extended family, and the quite natural pettiness the two exhibit towards each other. I mean I could only aspire to the levels of just sheer petty these two get into, as we find out that since Mom died after Dad by a few minutes, her wishes get honored. Which means the estate goes to Mark, while Louise gets all of her art.(Like I said, this was touching my nerves, since, while my situation doesn't exactly mirror this set up, there were a lot of echoes.) 

So, we start getting inklings of what's going on as Mom's odd collections (she was a Christian Puppeteer, collected taxidermy and dolls) seemingly rearrange themselves in the house. Louise blames Mark, right up until the Nativity Squirrels attack. 

And then, oh lord, do things get moving. 

Much of the drama surrounds a puppet that comes off as Dunham's Peanut, only evil instead of dull. Pupkin, one of Mom's first dolls, who evidently inspires his wearers to do things like get people to drown, burn houses down, etc. (There's a few moments of how much of this is unresolved psychological trauma, but as Louise and Mark compare notes at Waffle House, it becomes clear that there's something very real there. Particularly when Pupkin starts attacking them in the house without a hand up his butt.)

Eventually, the extended family comes together to do an exorcism on the demon puppet, which leads into a moment of pure Hendrix, as Mark's atheism gets dismissed ("You're Presbyterian, just like your parents") to a debate on whether or not ghosts are demons. 

While the fantastical elements are well done, I still feel the reconciliation between siblings is the most far fetched thing in here. 

Enjoyable read. Just make sure you're not in a similar set up before reading.

Hogwarts After Dark

 I'm evidently behind the curve on reading Olivie Blake's The Atlas Six, but I'm happy I caught up. 

We're in a world on a similar trajectory of history as the world we live in, but magic is a real thing here, with roughly 15% of the population having some kind of magical powers. (My math may be off here. Point being, it's not so rare as to be unheard of, but rare enough a vast majority of the population has no magic.) As we open, six major practitioners are invited to join the Alexandrian Society, which is presented as the original Library of Alexandria, now protected by the best of the best. Once a decade, the library will select 6 to join for a year, 5 will be initiated for a second year, after which they're allowed to return to their life or join fully. 

In this, we get Libby and Nico, two physical mages who just graduated from NYUMA as co valedictorians; Raina, who is both a battery and a plant master; Parisa, a telepath; Callum, an empath; and Tristan, an illusionist who can see through illusions. 

Each has several layers of outside baggage we get occasional in depth peeks at. In particular, Nico has a friend/lover who is the son of a mermaid and a fawn. Tristan's father is a criminal witch, Libby has a mundane boyfriend. Which all seem to matter less as they bond, even after finding out that the reason 5 get initiated is they're expected to sacrifice one of their own. 

In many ways, it's a grown up Hogwarts (most of the characters could be considered Pansexual; while none of it is presented in steamy terms, gender doesn't seem to matter to most of them as they begin to hook up), but rather than having a specific outside villain, we never are quite sure who could be considered the embodiment of the antagonist. While we end with a much clearer picture of whom is probably a bad guy, we really don't end knowing exactly who is moving which pieces and why. By the time I reached the last page, I had multiple possibilities swirling through my head as to how I think the story should progress, which I won't go into here, since there would be spoilers....)

Really well written and fun, since you spend most of the book both loving and hating the central six. I am looking forward to the next book, just to see what happens next.

Crecesnt Lake memories

 So, Mercedes Lackey finally finished book two of her Founding of Valdemar series, which was really a lot of fun.

Into the West picks up not long after the last book ended, with all of the Duchy of Valdemar that wanted to escape the Empire living on a lake far west of the Empire. We're again focused on Kordas and Delia, as they work to make their way west for the lake, looking for the perfect place to establish a kingdom. 

On one hand, we see Delia becoming more independent of Kordas, whom she spent the first book mooning over, just as we see Kordas doing his best to do right in the situation he has brought his people in to. On the other hand, given how many of these books end with a lifebond or a romance, I remain worried Kordas's wife will die/leave him and he'll wind up with Delia by the end of it. 

Any rate, the story is well presented, resolving several problems from the first volume, while introducing the problems of people from a highly advanced society giving up things and starting over. We encounter a really fun carnivorous forest, and encounter the Talydras.

Really enjoying this one. Kind of hoping a continuation comes sooner than later.

Figaro

 I'll admit, I was predisposed to dislike Darcy Coates' Gallows Hill early on, as the narrator referred to her parents television from 1997 as an antique. While it did improve, it's not particularly among the best horror fiction I've ever read. (Once again, Goodreads lied.)

We spend the book following around the recently orphaned Margot Hall as she returns to her ancestral home on Gallows Hill following the death of her parents. What we know at the outset is that her parents sent her to live with her Grandmother at the tender age of eight, and she has no memories of her parents. Her parents died the same night or heart attacks in bed, their faces frozen in a rictus of fear. As the sole child, she now owns the cursed Winery of Gallows Hill,. built on a hill that stood in for the local gallows until the town incorporated. 

Most of the non seasonal workers live on site. 

Her first night, Margot gets awakened by what she assumes are service bells, and is convinced someone is in the house with her. She finds a tape with her name on it that has a puppet show her parents made talking about the family outside who don't like her. 

From there, we find out that indeed, the dead of Gallows Hill roam the grounds at night, and are prone to attacking people outside, or even breaking in to houses to get at the living. 

Fairly standard, right down to the curse. 

While the writing is actually pretty good, my problem came in with the fact I figured out the cause of the curse fairly early on, the logical issues with everyone just accepting zombies are something you get used to, and the absolute silliness of the finale. 

I mean, it's fun for spooky reading, but ultimately as forgettable as the long dead hanged men's names.