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.

You enter a tavern and cast magic missle at the darkness

 In another Goodreads selection, I finished Slaying the Dragon by Ben Riggs today on lunch. 

As compared to last week's, this one was a lot better.

Mr. Riggs, who does geeky journalism, has basically gone and written a story to TSR from its inception to the buyout by Wizards of the Coast; which is very interesting, with a few drawbacks, which we'll come to. 

Now, much of what he reports is known, like Gary Gygax founding TSR in his Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, basement, and the general growth and domination of the RPG marketplace. We hear about the hiring of various talents, and how people were paid. I finally found out what the heck the entire D&D vs AD&D was. (I think my first D&D campaign was in 1980. Much of this would have gone over my head at the time.) We hear about Gary Gygax losing control of the company to Lorraine Williams. We hear of the highs of sales, and the novel department. And we watch as two California expansions crash and burn, and finally find out how the financials were crashing and why no one really knew. We learn of talent developed and alienated.

Frankly, accounting isn't my strong point, so much of the later discussions on why TSR nearly went bankrupt went over my head, but he does an OK job of explaining what was going on, particularly in the 90's when many of the geek industry (comics, RPGs) went into a major slump. (Something about the contract with Random House meaning they would get loans on royalties for everything shipped to them. Having financial issues? Over print and ship more than you'll ever sell, then collect the money. Which works well, until the sales slump, everything gets returned, and suddenly you owe the distributor more than you ever going to be able to pay. And it worked ok, particularly during the Reagan era.) We hear about Williams, who own the rights to Buck Rogers, trying as hard as she could to get any sort of game/novel/comic done with a character she owned. We hear of TSR managing to screw themselves by deciding to compete against DC comics, who had happily been publishing D&D comics prior to TSR deciding to make comic modules. 

So, there are a few problems, which he does his best to work around. The biggest one is that Williams declined to be interviewed, and Gygax died before he got started on the book. This means we're missing input from two very major people around whom this all revolves. The other problem is that the prose goes beyond purple into magenta at a few points. However, Riggs obviously loves the game as much as the rest of the player base, and that love shines through the entire book. There are conclusions he reports from WotC that while I see what they're saying based on the numbers (basically, the conclusion they came to from the sales numbers was that multiple settings are competing against each other, and a generic rule book sells better than a specific setting book, and therefore games are turning their noses up at an setting which isn't their very specific favorite...), in my experience, while I may not like certain settings, there are a few I love, but like every other gamer, finding a group to play with and choosing a setting tends to influence what I'm inclined to buy. 

By far the best parts of the books are when his love of the game is front and center, discussing different settings, authors, artists, and designer, and making me want to go look up the evidently really bad video on how to play DragonQuest. Or Riggs waxing poetic about the really underrated Planescape setting. I was sad to read that most people used SpellJammer as a was to switch settings in a hurry, since the whole setting was so much MORE than that. 

I'm also happy he cut off with the production of 3rd Edition, and the less said about DragonLance 5th Age and the SAGA rules, the better. 

IF you're a gamer, it's worth a read. You won't find the whole story here, but you'll at least get a fairly good rendition of one.

Not so much Bad Gays as Bad History

 So, while the end of November and all of December was rereads, I started off the New Year with a bit of non fiction courtesy of Goodreads.com's best of 2022 lists.

Unfortunately, the book that starts off 2022 is Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. Which is not to say the book itself is bad, but it has some fairly major issues.More on that in a minute. 

The format is little mini-biographies of famous gay people who are considered bad using the authors' politics. 13 chapters, one lesbian, and a few chapters discussing 2 or more figures from the same period. 

Things get off to a bad start with the first biography, discussing Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antonius. Now, I can point to three different sources that give three different stories of how Antonius ended up taking a permanent bath in the Nile. To label Hadrian as a Bad Gay, they state as gospel that Antonius was sacrificed by Hadrian to preserve his youth. (Honestly, and this is my personal opinion, I'd guess the two had been drinking heavily and someone stumbled. I can't prove it, but no one else can disprove it either. Although the original version I heard was that Antonius drowned himself to keep from losing his looks.) 

At any rate, this is a springboard for their entire premise that Bad Gays are ones who are Imperialists, Colonizers, or support right wing ideology. Which, ok, I can sort of agree with that, but in a few chapters, the person they're supposedly discussing only shows up in a few sentences, while we get diatribes on how higher class gays could get away with buggery, while the proles would be imprisoned or executed. Which....sort of? Depends on who's running the moral panic in each age. And frankly, listing James VI and I, but not his descendants kind of misses some really bad gays. Not that Cromwell really won any awards....

Then there's the whole chapter on Weimar Republic gays, where they assert that the left wing had absolutely nothing to do with the problems in the republic. Um, yeah. 

While I understand that the authors are both European and likely Democratic Socialists, there's a hell of a lot of what reminded me of Adam's reaction to Fortean Magazine in Good Omens. Just assume the reader will swallow it whole without argument. 

I mean, I do agree with their more modern chapters discussing gays of privilege getting what they want then saying screw you to the lesser gays (this book is a great example of this ) however, idealism doesn't put food on the table. And you may bitch about capitalism (I think we all do), but short of going completely ascetic, there's no real way to survive without finding a way to exist in the system. (Seriously. The last chapter, dealing with Pim Fortuyn, spends a lot of time talking about how by letting the movement focus on things like marriage and joining the military really cut a lot of people out who were suffering from AIDS. While I can't speak to European laws, legal marriage here in the states is basically shorthand for bypassing a bunch of legal paperwork.) 

Oh and the whole Philip Johnson chapter. Yeah, based on what he did, he is a BAD GAY, but while they claim some of his badness is taking Modern Architecture from Utilitarian and Proletarian to something just for the elites, they don't blame him nearly enough for unleashing the abortion that is Modern architecture on an unsuspecting world.   

So, while they book did have some high points, (like T. E. Lawrence, who evidently spent much of his later years being a land bound Billy Budd), the cardinal sins of not exactly being profiles of the people they're discussing, never really proving their points, and inserting opinion as fact really makes me not want to recommend this book. Or if I did, suggest people dig through their bibliography and get a fuller story.