What is it good for?

Wielding a Red Sword by Piers Anthony still remains one of my least favorite entries in Incarnations of Immortality. I mean, it's not that it's ever dull, but honestly, it's entire raison d' etre is to set up the eventual payoffs down the line, rather than give us something as interesting as the previous three books.

We start with Mym, "Pride of the Kingdom", a Brahmin stutterer on the run from his father and responsibilities of  being the second born prince of the king. He joins a traveling circus (wearing a remarkably familiar snake ring that answers yes/no questions), shacks up with Luna's cousin Orb, and winds up being dragged back into his Kingdom as the circus tries to leave India. Seems Mym's brother died, leaving Mym the heir. Because we have to, Orb is payed off like a common whore, and Mym goes home, where Daddy dearest starts executing concubines until Mym agrees to marry Princess Rapture.

He and Rapture do wind up falling in love, but things happen, Mym happens to be the angriest person in the world when War flares up after a small break in fighting around the globe, Mym gets the Red Sword and becomes Mars, incarnation of War. (One should also mention Mars has a few Minor Incarnations [Slaughter, Conquest, Famine, and Pestilence] associated with him. Given Death is a separate Incarnation, and they never do explain how the minors work....)

Anyway....

Long story short, Satan sends a succubus to annoy Mym. Lila does her job, helping Rapture become an independent woman. Heaven forbid that Mym be without a subservient woman, so Lila sends him after Ligea, who's unfairly damned. Mym winds up trapped in Hell, so, being a rational man of War, he starts a revolt of the Damned.

Anyway, long story short, Mym winds up foiling Satan and having Ligea as wife and Lila as concubine.

It's all kind of silly, and really only seems to be written to explain where the heck Orlene came from.

But, it's readable.

Oh what a tangled web we weave

With a Tangled Skein is the book in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality wherein we see that the Earthly Incarnations are basically the Skywalker family from Star Wars.

We start with nubile Niobe, the most beautiful girl in her generation, being forced to marry Cedric, 5 years her junior. They eventually do come to love each other, befriending a dryad in the wetlands in the process. Cedric goes to college, becomes a wetlands advocate. Niobe births Junior. Cedric gets shot by developers. Niobe, being emotional, floats on a boat and sets it on fire to get Death's attention. Death, Time, and Nature all get involved, and we learn Niobe is destined to become Clotho soon. Which she does, foiling a few plots of Satan in the meantime.

Junior and his cousin Pacian go with Fate to a carnival where certain prophecies come to light, namely, their children will become interesting beings... one to love Death, one to marry Evil. Pacian thinsk he's stopped it by marrying Blanche, it didn't work, since Niobe leaves Fate to marry him.

Junior, in the meantime, married Blenda and births Luna. Niobe and Pacian birth Orb.

Later, Niobe comes back to Fate as Lachesis, since all three aspects wind up switching at the same time, which is unheard of.

Eventually Niobe risks hell to get information from The Magician (aka Junior).

While it does help put the timeline back in order after the previous two books, it still turns the series into "One Family to Rule Them All, and in the darkness bind them."

Oh yes, Chronotons

After rereading book two of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality, Bearing an Hourglass, I got a sterling reminder of how much of a headache it is. Not that it isn't fairly well written, but the set up is involved.

We start with Norton, who's more or less an uninvolved drifter, living in different wilderness areas on and off. He's approached by a ghost, Gawain, who needs someone to sire his heir. Seems Gawain died fighting what he thought was a dragon, but was really a dinosaur, and he died without a child. As such, his family married the ghost to Orlene, who is supposed to bear a child to continue the line. Enter Norton.

Norton and Orlene do hit it off, and she indeed bears a child, Gawain II. However, Gawain I made arrangements with Gaea to make the child a true heir, which includes some vaguely defined genetic defect that causes the baby to die before a year. (As I recall, this gets better defined in Book 8.) Thanatos does show up and explain the situation to Norton, which doesn't help when Orlene commits suicide in her grief later on. Gawain does attempt to get Norton to provide stud service with the new ghost wife, but it doesn't happen. Eventually though, Gawain does get Norton into the position of Chronos, Incarnation of Time, as a way of apologizing for getting him into the situation in the first place.

Chronos has issues, not the least of which being her travels backwards in time in relation to everyone else. In other words, when Norton takes the Hourglass, his natural progression is now from the moment he took the office until he reaches his birth or conception. As such, he takes the office roughly twenty years after the events of On a Pale Horse, but before the events of And Eternity. (As I stated at the outset, the timeline in the series is a bit wonky. Chronos makes it even worse.)

Anyway, Norton gets an offer from Satan that leads to a changed timeline, and Norton has to go fix it. Satan gets mad and keeps throwing Norton into what he claims as contraterrine worlds, made of antimatter, where time runs the way Chronos lives. Which leads to three really cheesy adventures involving Bug Eyed Monsters and Alicorns.

Oh yes, and Orlene give Norton Sning, a snake ring that can answer yes-or-no questions as well as indicate the passage of time. And other things. Sning is awesome.

The problem is, a later part of the book involves a really involved explanation of General Relativity, which, while presented in ways to make it easier to understand, still is just as lofty and migraine inducing as the 10 page chaos theory explanation in Jurrasic Park.

Still fun to read after all these years, and I remain amazed at how many clues to other volumes are hidden within.

The Final Ride

Many years ago, someone I haven't thought of in probably as many years, told me of a book series he was reading and how I should check it out. Thus how I was introduced to Piers Anthony and his Incarnations of Immortality series. I've read the series a few times in the intervening years, although the final book, released 17 years after what had been book 7, I've only read once. However, I had some Amazon gift cards and they had a good deal on the first 7 as a boxed set, so here we are.

On a Pale Horse gets attention quickly in chapter one, after showing us this alternate Earth where magic and science coexist fairly easily. Indeed, when we meet Zane, he's at a literal Sky Mall in a magic stone store looking for something to improve his existence. The proprietor, showing Zane stones that show Zane is destined to meet a great love and his own death within the hour, ends up talking Zane into using the love stone so that the shop keep can have his love in exchange for a wealth stone that will lead Zane to money. Zane makes the exchange, gets home to find his wealth stone is really a junk stone that finds loose change, and decides to fulfill the Death Stone prophecy with a gun he got off a mugger. As he pulls the trigger, Death himself walks in, which Zane reacts to by turning the muzzle at the last second, actually shooting and killing Death.

And thus begins our interactions with the Five major Incarnations; Death, Time, Fate, War, and Nature. Later on, in books 6 and 7, we meet Evil and Good, and book 8 concerns Night. But right now, we're dealing with Death, and ignoring the problematic timelines that come into play later. After killing Death, Fate herself shows up and informs Zane that since he killed Death, he now gets to assume the role. Kind of like The Santa Clause, only more entertaining. It takes a while, since the position doesn't come with an instruction book, and his pale steed, Mortis, isn't good at communication. Indeed, on his second or third collection, Zane saves his client from dying and tries to get said client to kill him and take on the position.

Eventually, though, we meet The Magician and his daughter Luna, which is when some of the greater threads come into play. The Magician is a Black Magician, and has put some of the smut from his soul onto Luna's soul, thereby bringing his soul into balance, as it's only balanced souls that get direct attention from Death (also known as Thanatos.) Most souls either find their own way to Heaven or Hell. Anyway, Luna is foretold to thwart Satan's plans in 20 years, so The Magician gives her to Zane as a gift, to protect her from Satan's wiles.

Which, well, Satan does have plans, and Zane does eventually figure out that the other 4 non alignment Incarnations set him up the bomb. He got chosen for this role, since he was one of the only candidates who would fight for Luna.

After all these years, I find myself still loving this book. Yes, I could live without Anthony's rampant sexism and belief in male and female archetypes, but he's still less obnoxious about it than other authors I could name, like David Eddings. I love the world building, and the PR campaign Satan runs on Earth to convince humans that Hell is the place to be in the afterlife. I love the meditations on Death that occur throughout, and how Death works. Even knowing where all of this eventually leads, and the formula that repeats quite a bit through the next few books, this particular volume still remains on my influential book list, and one I would highly recommend to folks.

Professor Plum in the Conservatory with the Knife

The last library sale was slim pickings by the time I got there, although I did pick up Margaret Truman's Murder at the National Cathedral, figuring with the weather cooling down, a nice mystery might be nice.

And it was.

While this is evidently a series by the former First Daughter (complete with claims of being ghostwritten), I had never heard of it. None the less...

We start with Mac and Annabel, a lawyer/teacher and an art gallery owner, getting married at the National Cathedral by Reverend Singletary. Rev. Singletary is very much involved in The Word of Peace, a non denominational movement he's pulled Bishop St. James in to supporting, much to the chagrin of some of the other Cathedral Canons.

When Rev. Singletary is found dead in the Bethlehem Chapel, all heck breaks loose, as Mack and Annabel get sucked into the mystery. Even on their honeymoon in England, where another Anglican priest and friend of Singletary is found murdered in the Cotswald.

With MI5 and several DC based Alphabet agencies involved (as well as several suspicious Canons), who killed the priests and why?

I found this to be well written, if a but stuffy and slightly dated. The resolution made sense and one could see that the trails lead there. The thing which was killing me, though, was the 1990 publication date, when I would have been starting High School, and realizing how much the world has changed since then. I mean, no internet, so everything is going via post, everyone in the book is feeding change into pay phones, Mac and Annabel fly Pan Am to London. Perhaps it bothered me more than say, Agatha Christie, since I was actually alive in this period, and remember these things, even if I kept thinking about how the plot would play out in the contemporary era. Worth a read, if you need a good yarn.

Swine Flu

There's a lot to like in Madeline Miller's Circe, but there's also one scene in there that made me very angry.

Let's start at the beginning. Circe, witch of The Odyssey, who kept Odysseus and his crew on her island of Aiaia,. is born on the halls of Oceanus to Helios, Titan of the Sun, and a nymph. She has 3 siblings; one births the Minotaur, one goes to Persia, and one sires Medea. All four children have the powers of witchcraft, which worries the gods, since it's outside of their powers.

Circe, who confesses to using her power to turn Scylla into a 6 headed monster after Scylla steals one whom Circe loves and turns into a god after a fashion, gets exiled to Aiaia. She also meets Prometheus in Tartarus before he becomes all like Same vulture, New liver. (That scene is really interesting.)

Circe get released from exile temporarily to help Pasiphae birth the minotaur, which does introduce her to Daedalus and Icarus. Later, her brother Aeetes's child, Medea shows up on her island with Jason and the golden fleece. While Circe does warn Medea that her story will not have a happy ending, Medea doesn't listen.

Circe does get to entertain Hermes on occasions, as he likes to drop by and gossip and share her bed.

Anyway, occasionally sailors wash up on Aiaia. And here's where the problem I had with the book shows up. One round of sailors shows up, and rape her. She then turns them into swine and makes pork chops and bacon. I have two major issues with this. Among other things, I really hate it when female characters, particularly powerful ones, have their agency removed for no real reason. Frankly, Circe could have turned the lot of them into sausage any time prior to the event. (I know, in real life, folks who should be able to fight off an attacker can't. Well aware.) Second, she had the right and duty to punish them earlier on in the scene as they violated the rules of hospitality long before the attack.

Anyway, this does lead to Circe swining anyone visiting, until Odysseus shows up. He spends a year sharing her bed, and leaves, and has his own story. Circe, in the meantime, has little Telegonus, whom someone wants gone because of his destiny. When that someone shows up, Circe manages to fight off her second Olympian.

And this leads into sources I was unaware of, as we explore fragments and summaries of the Telegony (attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene) and Odysseus Acanthoplex by Sophocles. In which Telegonus finds his father, and like so much of Greek mythology, kills him. Telegonus winds up bringing Odysseus's wife and son (Penelope and Telemachus) back to Aiaia. Circe is concerned, since she thinks Telemachus will kill Telegonus to avenge his father. (There's a scene prior to this where Circe delves the deeps to challenge one of the monsters and winds up with a tail that will kill mortals and make gods feel pain. It's well written and a testament to the love a mother has for a son.)

Without going deeper into the plot, let's just say everyone's relationships are strained, the Olympians show up again, and Circe does in the end confront her father to get what she wants.

While I really enjoyed this, I feel a bit like some of the story is a bit of Glinda telling Dorothy she had the power to go home all along. Because Circe is seeking her own agency, not knowing she's had it the entire time.

Spin the Black Circle

As I may have mentioned, up until now, I had only read through the last third of the Tales of the City once, as they got released. So, this makes my second read of Mary Ann in Autumn, and I was amazed at how much I missed the first time through.

Unlike Book 7, Book 8 is back to the more rambling narrative following around several characters instead of being a first person narrative. Which is good, since it introduces us better to some of the newer or better aged characters that we caught glimpses of in the last volume. In particular, transman Jake Greenleaf, who's become transson to Anna, as well as a particular caretaker of her. Mind you, most of his narrative here involves his attraction to a Mormon missionary who needs a man to help him through his desire for other men. (Given how bad Jake's dysmorphia is, there's a lot of underlying irony here.)

We also get more of Shawna, Brian and Mary Ann's adoptive daughter, who writes a sex blog of sorts, although a chance meeting with a homeless woman helps her transition into some new styles of writing and a less Bettie Page look. (Her story crosses into her adoptive mother's towards the end, and we'll return to that here in a bit.)

However, as the title suggests, most of the narrative revolves around Mary Ann. Mary Ann is headed back to San Francisco, ready to divorce her husband following him leaving his Skype up while having a European affair with her life coach. This is right after telling him she might be pregnant, but she hasn't told him the real diagnosis of uterine cancer. Thus her return to the City, since she and Michael have evidently mended fences quite a bit. Michael and Ben put her up in their guest cottage until the surgery and during her recovery. In a surprise to both of them, Ben and Mary Ann bond, with Ben getting her on FaceBook, and taking her along on a trip to the plot of land they've bought near Tahoe where they plan on eventually building a getaway home.

Mary Ann also picks up a bit of a stalker via FaceBook, who reveals himself in the final reel.

There's quite a bit of sadness in here, as Anna gives Jake money to get his hysterectomy, the same surgery that Mary Ann is dreading, as we see Michael trying to become more of the man he wants to be, rather than who it is he wants to transition out of (again, Michael and Ben are open in their marriage, but one of Ben's tricks giving him fruit from the farmer's market sets off a large amount of jealousy). We also see Shawna and Mary Ann beginning steps towards becoming a bit closer, as the actual story of her homeless woman is directly related to Mary Ann's stalker.

The major theme here is is transition, as Mary Ann at 57 tries to change her life again, as Michael and Ben try to become the people they want themselves to be, as Shawna transitions from riot grrl to more standard writing, as Anna prepares for her time to come, as Jake learns more about what it means for him to be a man. That ride is not without bumps, but in many ways, particularly returning to themes from the beginning and wrapping up a mystery from 1976, the ride is well worth the final destination.

As a side note, my next entry will be a book I'm starting as part of an online book discussion, which may or may not add to my review, since the reread of Song of Achilles with them really makes me want to go back and redo that entry.

Fi-diddley-dee, a sailor's life for me

So, book 13 of Seanan McGuire's October Daye novels finally landed, and I finally finished The Unkindest Tide.

The basic set up is Octopber and friends travel out to a knowe/demesne out in the Pacific so that Luidaig can keep her promise to restore her children, the Roane, from those who wear their skins, the Selkies.

What we end up with is a mild murder mystery topped with the overthrow of Saltmist by Dianda's brother. We also get to meet the Firstborn of the Merrow in the process. Oh yes, and a bonus novella at the end shows us Raj's fun while everyone is at sea, and gives us a date of 2014 when all this is going on.

Honestly, it's a fun read, which again succeeds in humanizing the Sea Witch, and giving us a few plot hooks for future volumes, as October has to make a deal with Luidaig to go save Saltmist early on.

I'm always amazed as how entertaining this series is as it stretches onwards among the author's many projects.

(As a side note, while I did start a new book, if I don't finish it by Monday, it will be paused as I read a different book as part of an online book club. Updates may be spotty.)

Go Ask Alice or Madea

I won't say Reginald L. Hall's In Love With a Thug is bad per se; I'm just not sure I'm part of the target audience.

We start with Juan, who at the beginning is in love/fooling around with Darnell, who is one of the title Thugs. Indeed, in order to help Juan achieve his dream of opening his own salon, he convinces Juan to help him rob a bank. Which doesn't go well. Juan does make off with the money, but not before Darnell, a security guard, a pregnant teller, and another man die.

And then we return to Juan as he opens his own salon in Philadelphia. One which caters to so many name dropped celebrities, I'm surprised Mr. Hall hasn't been sued. On the first day of business, we meet the other Thug, Bryant, who appears bearing bootleg DVDs he's trying to sell to Juan's upscale clientele.

It's only a few pages before Juan and Bryant are making the beast with two backs, and Juan is smoking the devil's lettuce laced with white powder provided by Bryant. (Juan, prior to this point, hasn't touched drugs other than a bit of alcohol here and there.)

It gets progressively stupider, as Bryant's baby mama comes in and maces Juan; half the stylists get beat up at various points; we learn all about Juan's daddy molesting him; his best friend needs a kidney transplant, finds out he has full blown AIDS and high blood pressure and dies.... Juan winds up getting arrested when one of the other baby mamas calls in a tip on Juan, and the cops find quite a few drugs under the floorboards in Juan's closet. Juan's time awaiting arraignment and bonding out is filled with sex with a cellmate, doing L'il Kim's hair.... Then he has aa drugged up three way with Bryant and Bryant's cousin, after which Bryant kicks Juan out of his house after beating him again....

Juan's dad dies, his mother never forgives Juan for telling her about the molestation....

We keep hearing how Juan is a good person who has God in his life, yet then he confesses to writing a bunch of fraudulant checks in 3 states....

And then a twist at the end that's remarkably stupid.

I will say I did enjoy the presentation of the Balls and the Houses, which most folks know of through either Pose or Paris is Burning.

Honestly, Juan's descent is almost as fast as the narrator of the old Junior High Classic Go Ask Alice with less subtlety than a Tyler Perry morality play. I spent the majority of the book wanting to smack some sense into him.Like I said, I'm not sure I'm the target audience, since to me this is both unrealistic and gratuitous.

Why?

So, another one of the raffle books I won was Shadows of the Night: Queer Tales of the Uncanny and Unusual edited by Greg Herren. Given my reserves at the library just came in and I can't get there, I'm more or less wasting time until I can get there. (We had inventory this week. I've been busy.)

Anyway, the intro makes it sound like GAY HORROR! and indeed name drops sever queer fictions that meet that criteria. This one struggles to meet bad Doctor Who fan fiction levels of awful.

I mean, of the 14 stories within, most of them are not at all memorable, and the ones that are aren't memorable for good reasons. And while a few of them have horror themes, NONE of the remotely fall into the Horror or even thriller/suspense genre.

How bad is it? "Sic Gloria Transit" by Marshal Moore starts off sounding like a "Monkey's Paw" rip off and ends up being Airplane II. "The Abdominable Snowman" by Lawrence Schimel involves a Sasquatch that wants to work out to Richard Simmons. Even the final story, "Fever"by Victoria A Brownworth, which gets lavished with praise on the back cover makes lesbian succubus sex boring. And let's not forget M. Christian's trite morality tale "Bitch" where in the course of 5 pages a bitter man coming out of a relationship complains online about the twinks partying next door, only to wind up encouraging someone to go kill them.

Frankly, about the only reason to pick this up is to get a bibliography of other, better works of queer horror/thriller/suspense books as listed in the introduction.