How dark is it? Um, it’s hard to say. On the one hand, people are dying in droves and every character’s life is a horrorshow. On the other hand, none of this is told in a dark way at all so . . . maybe that makes it even darker? Technically, darkest of dark. Drenched in blood and sap. But I was personally more fascinated than horrified.
How good is it? On a scale of 1 to 10 pests. 9/10 pests. But it’s also very weird and not for everyone. Read a few pages in the store before you decide.
This book is a glorious chaos. From beginning to end, I was just barely hanging on as I followed the various characters on their adventures through this splendidly horrific fantasy city. I’m still not sure I understood it all because no one ever explains anything in this book, but I think I loved it. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I loved it.
Tiliard is a city tunneled into an impossibly large tree stump straddling a river. At the top of the stump are the rich, obsessive about their opera and perfumes and fashions. They’re also, it seems, always caught up in deadly political drama. We’re following the Laurel Chancellor and his right hand man, the Marshall Revenant, as they attempt to defend their positions against any and all upstarts. We’re also following the Marshall’s head perfumer, Aster, as she befriends an exciting newcomer to town. Who is this new guy, this Mallory vant Passand? Is he part of the latest group of starving artists trying to overthrow the Chancellor? Is he angling to meet Olaf Aufhocker, the reclusive author of this era’s most popular operas? Is he just really into Aster? Who knows?
While that drama unfolds, we’re also following denizens of the city’s underbelly, who literally live on catwalks and bungalows hanging from the giant stump’s underside. Guylag is a humble exterminator, doing his best to look out for his little sister Tyro and willing to do literally anything to give her a better life than he has. Since this entire city is built in a rotting stump, there are always new and exciting vermin to smoke out and extermination is a booming but dangerous business to be in. Guylag (Guy for short) and his partner Dawn answer a particularly tricky call that results in a nasty sting for Guy and a whole new species of pest for his team to hunt down. Pretty soon the hunt for this particular pest becomes all-out war between the various extermination companies of the undercity, and Guy and Dawn are on the front lines.
It’s clear that the rulers on top of the city must somehow connect with our plucky undercity exterminators, but it’s not at all clear why or when or how. Since the book hurtles ahead at full speed and never explains anything ever, I was utterly surprised when these questions were answered. I can’t remember exactly what page it was, but I was well over halfway through and still confused (though increasingly delighted) when everything snapped into focus. Suddenly it all made sense. Or, well, nothing in this book quite makes sense but it all came together in the most satisfying way. I read a whole lot of books and it’s become hard to surprise me, but I did not see this twist coming. That made me love this book all the more.
This book is part horror, part fantasy, part I-don’t-know-what. You need a strong vocabulary and a high tolerance for confusing experimental vibes to enjoy this book, but if you can get past that it’s a unique brand of excitement and fun. It’s always on the verge of becoming nonsense but Hiron Ennes manages to keep it just barely together, and amid the chaos I found myself really attached to most of the characters, hero and villain alike.
Now for a slight spoiler.
Stop here if you hate spoilers.
Okay.
Ready?
Mallory vant Passand is a trans gentleman. Or possibly genderfluid. Or nonbinary? Mallory is beyond labels. This is clear from very early on and seems of zero importance to any of the characters, including Mallory. Tilliard is a very accepting tree stump city, possibly because everyone’s so distracted by all the operas and murder. Eventually, as Mallory’s history is revealed, it becomes key to the plot in a way I should have caught onto sooner. In my defense, I was distracted by the many assassination attempts and the exterminator war unfolding. I mention it at all because I was thoroughly excited by Mallory as a bold adventuring character. As the book progresses Mallory’s loose relationship with gender becomes a very cool part of the adventure and I can’t review this book without mentioning how much I love how it plays out. It felt like an inspiring call to transcend our hang-ups around gender and sex and just live freely, without ever actually saying anything like this at all. Because, as I’ve said before, this book never explains anything ever. It doesn’t have time; it’s too busy living its best life.
What’s the book?Expert Witness by Ann W. Burgess and Steven M. Constantine
How dark is it? A nice greige, maybe? It’s not very graphic but it does discuss real crimes.
Is it good? On a scale from 1 to 10 gavels. I give it 8/10 gavels. Thoroughly gripping.
A few weeks ago I joined an online book club with a subscription service. Every month they send me a new bit of dark non-fiction and at the end of the month, they discuss it online. While I devote myself generally to fiction on this blog, I also like a true dark story. This seems like a perfect way to get my non-fiction fix.
I thoroughly enjoyed this month’s book. It starts with a bit of history, explaining how expert witnesses became a part of the legal process, but after that it becomes a deep dive into Ann Burgess’s greatest hits. I was hooked immediately; Ann Burgess has been involved in some monumental court cases.
She’s generally an expert in trauma responses and the psychology of sexual violence, so the stories center around perpetrators and survivors of sexual violence. After discussing one of the first cases she worked on (which is not famous so she vagued up the details to protect the innocent) she tells us about her harrowing interview with Erik Menendez, her work on the Duke lacrosse team case, and her involvement with survivors of the horrendous crimes of Bill Cosby, among others.
One of the main things that draws me to true crime is learning what goes through the heads of everyone involved, and this book focuses on exactly that. It’s detailed and insightful while still being quick and readable for the average citizen. It also feels like Burgess chose cases not just to highlight her high profile work but also to give us a well-rounded look at the psychology of victims and perpetrators alike. She puts a heavy emphasis on experts trying to be objective and careful in their assessments, without jumping to conclusions based on how sympathetic (or unsympathetic) a person is. The Menendez interview she details early on is a great example of her approach, I think.
In some ways, the book feels a bit shallow. I wouldn’t have minded a little more history and discussion of the big picture, or a deeper dive into the state of research on the psychology of trauma. I’m sure Burgess knows a lot about that and it sometimes feels like she’s holding back, expecting most readers to be focused on the famous cases and less interested in her actual research. I loved the former but I also would be fascinated by the latter. Still, this was a page-turner and I did enjoy her insights, which went much deeper than the average podcast or true crime documentary. It was definitely worth my time if only for that.
How dark is it? Eh, not that dark. Lot of sex, very little murder.
Is it good? On a scale from 1 to 10 vampire kisses. 2/10 vampire kisses. Did not love.
Man, I wanted to like this way better than I did. I love the vibes of Dark Academia and I was excited to read this mashup of Carmilla (lesbian vampire classic) and The Secret History (elite New England college, charismatic professor teaching a hypercompetitive literature class). I’d seen this in all the stores and heard a lot of good buzz, but I was deeply bored and disappointed once I actually got to reading. The book felt like a rough draft that was rushed to publication way before it was ready.
Laura is a shy Southern girl away from home for the first time. She wants to become a priest, but also secretly longs to be a dominatrix. Carmilla is a rich jaded Austrian whose parents gave her everything but love, who came to this school specifically to study with their charismatic poetry professor, Doctor Delafontaine. Delafontaine is a vampire searching for her lost lover while grooming Carmilla to be her . . . her thrall? Acolyte? Replacement lover? Probably all of the above.
Laura and Carmilla totally get together, of course, but not before Delafontaine turns Carmilla into a vampire. This happens as Delafontaine reawakens her own sire, Isis, hoping they can get back together. (Delafontaine clearly has her own dramatic relationship history that is hinted at but barely explored.) Isis, however, turns out to be more of a bloodthirsty monster than the average vampire and this causes some exciting problems for our trio.
The bits with Isis are pretty bloody and exciting, but there aren’t many of them. This is mostly a romantasy with fairly typical tropes and moderately steamy sex scenes between Laura and Carmilla. If you’re a big fan of romance and really only care about steamy sex scenes then sure, read this book. If you want more than that–coherent characters, good pacing, and a solid storyline to your romance–this book will come up short.
Carmilla is a pretty undeveloped character, and since she’s underdeveloped the weird relationship she has with her vampire professor feels awkward and forced, especially since Delafontaine’s character is also underdeveloped. She’s a predator who has clearly groomed Carmilla in some deeply inappropriate ways, and it’s implied that Delafontaine’s sire maybe did the same to her so . . . something something generational trauma? There could be something interesting there but it’s not well explored and in the end *Spoiler Alert* Delafontaine seems to sensibly feel bad about what she’s done to Carmilla and leaves, setting up Carmilla and Laura for a happy future without her. It’s unbelievably sensible and empathetic behavior for a predator. And I mean that I literally don’t believe it would happen that way. It feels cheap and anticlimactic.
Laura’s character is explored more but not enough. She’s deeply religious yet unashamed of her lesbian dominatrix urges yet terrified for anyone to know yet confident enough to have public sex yet deeply insecure about her body yet . . . you get the idea. With careful handling, Laura could be a complex woman struggling with desires that don’t fit together easily, but instead of being explored and struggled with these contradictions are just thrown out there and then ignored when they become inconvenient.
I was also a bit frustrated that despite the heavy fantasies both girls have about domination and submission, this part of the plot doesn’t really come together. There are several explicit sex scenes and some of them sort of have these overtones but they feel quite tame. I mean, the tameness would be realistic for actual new lovers who don’t have much experience but nothing else about this book is realistic or nuanced, so it’s odd that the author pulled her punches so hard here.
Next to all that my last complaint might seem kind of petty but I’m going to add it anyway. This book is set in 1968, and to establish this the author throws in every random thing from the 1960s she can think of, along with a few things that definitely didn’t happen until the 1970s and ‘80s. My best guess is the late ’60s vibe was supposed to enhance the themes of sexual liberation but it felt so forced that it detracted instead.
Yeah, like I said. Decent for a rough draft. Lots of good ideas that just don’t come together. Needs a lot more work to become an actually good book. Honestly, I expect this kind of sloppy writing from a cheap romance, which is why I don’t generally read them anymore. At this age I’m looking for something more. But this isn’t marketed as a cheap romance so it caught me off guard. Money wasted. Lesson learned.
How dark is it? Maybe a deep cloudy gray. Major haunted house vibes, family secrets, several sort-of-graphic rapey bits.
Is it good? On a scale of 1 to 10 ghosts. Solid 6/10 ghosts. I’d bump it up to 7 if you’re really into atmosphere.
Noemi Taboada is a bit of a party girl. She’s not into anything bad, she just loves being young and enjoys all the excitement 1950s Mexico City has to offer. She’s in college and loves school, but she has no idea what she wants to study or who she wants to be when she grows up. Of course, this is the 1950s, so her parents want her to settle down with a nice boy from a good family. Noemi wants to settle down someday with a nice boy, too, she’s just not looking to do that anytime soon. She might even want to go to grad school first.
Noemi’s dad is not in love with the grad school idea. Some of his objection is basic 1950s sexist stuff and some is a healthy suspicion that grad school is just another passing fancy. Really, Noemi changes majors almost as often as she changes boyfriends. Still, he loves his daughter and wants her to explore her options. He’ll pay for grad school if Noemi agrees to take a trip up north and visit her cousin.
Cousin Catalina was an excited newlywed last time Noemi and the family saw her. After a whirlwind romance, she married the handsome Virgil Doyle and moved up north to his family estate and silver mine. When her letters slowly stopped coming, everyone assumed she was busy with her new life. But Noemi’s dad has just received a very disturbing letter. Catalina seems to be sick, paranoid, not making much sense. The Doyles insist everything’s under control and their family doctor is taking care of everything but Mr. Taboada is not so sure. If Noemi went up for a friendly visit, she could check up on her cousin and maybe even convince the Doyles to bring her to Mexico City for a second opinion.
This quick trip ends up being way more than Noemi bargained for. The Doyle family is simultaneously very boring and very creepy. Their silver mine is defunct and they’re slowly running out of money. They live in a once-grand manor house that everywhere shows signs of dirt and decay. It’s also very damp and moldy and none of the family seems to care anymore. Everyone is sour and silent and looks down on Noemi; they’re an Anglo family (most of them refuse to even learn Spanish despite living in frickin’ Mexico) who really believes in eugenics and racial purity, so Noemi’s mestizo coloring fails to impress them. Well, except for the family’s aging patriarch, who has a grudging admiration for her strong constitution. Their disdain was already bad, but disdain plus creepy fascination? No thank you.
The only one nice to Noemi is Virgil’s sickly younger brother, Francis. Francis is about the opposite of the type of guys she’s usually into but he seems sweet and with Catalina barely coherent most of the time, Noemi doesn’t have anyone else to talk to. He also seems to be the only family member who’s bothered to learn Spanish, which makes it easier to pump Francis for information without fear of eavesdroppers. As the two develop an awkward friendship, Noemi learns more about the family’s history but comes no closer to understanding what’s wrong with her cousin.
To be honest, not much happens in this book in terms of plot. I can’t say much else about it without spoiling the few plot points there are. Instead, this book relies heavily on spooky gothic atmosphere and a deep sense of mystery. These carried me through the book–I was aware that not much was actually happening but I enjoyed the creepy house and family so much I was enthralled anyway. The ending is also quite dramatic and action-packed, all the more jarring because of the slow buildup to that point.
I also enjoyed the characters a lot. Noemi was young and flighty in an endearing way; she never felt dumb or vapid, just inexperienced and totally unprepared for this weird crisis she’s stepping into. Francis is also endearing, clearly used to being ignored and pushed around by his family and, until he meets Noemi, entirely resigned to it. He’s clearly got a crush on this sparkly city girl but it’s more helpless and adorable than creepy. As the book progresses, Francis becomes more and more likeable while his charming brother Virgil becomes more and more gross and creepy. Their contrasts were a delight to follow.
I picked up this book because I read Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate a while ago and liked it. That story was solid while also teaching me a bit about the Mexican film industry. This story is also solid (even better than Silver Nitrate in some ways) while again drawing on aspects of Mexican history I could stand to learn more about. The story explores race relations and colonialism in ways that enhance the drama and tension of Noemi’s situation without bogging down the story. It was excellently done. If all my history classes included horror novels, I’d probably remember a lot more about it.
How dark is it? It’s pretty dark. Slasher movie levels of gore and some of it involves children. There’s also a lot of graphic sex but that’s generally between consenting adults.
How good is it? On a scale from one to ten poisonous mushrooms, I give it a seven. 7/10 poisonous mushrooms.
The description on the back of Moonflow talks about the King’s Breakfast, a magic mushroom that creates truly transcendent experiences. The cover art is super psychedelic. This book is obviously about drugs but somehow I did not make this connection when I bought it. I feel a bit silly and hopelessly uncool for missing this.
This book also comes with a content warning, as a lot of books do these days. I don’t pay much attention to these, as a rule. When I pick up a horror novel I expect, even want, to read disturbing material. Most of the time the actual novel isn’t nearly as disturbing as the content notes warn/promise. This novel, however, was even more graphic than the content note suggested, and I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Literally. On the first page. I was also warned about the heavy drug use depicted, though I really should have known that already.
We follow Sarah, a trans woman. She’s a grower and seller of magic mushrooms on a bizarre journey of weirdness and discovery. She is, indeed, looking for the King’s Breakfast so she can cultivate and sell it. This most magic of magic mushrooms grows only in the mysterious Pamogo forest way up in northern California. Her guide is Andy, who works in the State Park visitor’s center near the forest no one seems to ever visit. Only a few hours into their little forest jaunt we begin to see why there are so few visitors. It’s one of those dark and creepy forests where the landmarks seem to shift when you’re not looking. There are weird piles of racoon bones and Andy seems to navigate using dead hikers as landmarks. If you’re looking for a pleasant day hike, maybe a beautiful vista or two, the Pamogo will disappoint. This forest is more about mushrooms and mayhem.
The only people who seem to live in the Pamogo are a cult of mushroom-fueled radical feminists with nicknames like Skillet and Hell Slut and Mother Moonflow. Mother Moonflow is their visionary leader and their paragon of feminine power. She’s also constantly high and maybe not the most stable and grounded of people. The Moonflow cult seem to be on a quest to birth an avatar of the Green Lady, a spirit of pure plant-based feminine energy. There are a lot of psychedelics and female orgasms involved. Also murder. There’s lots of murder involved.
When Sarah and Andy meet this cult they’re not sure at all what to think. The cult, likewise, isn’t sure what to think about Sarah and Andy. They’re all lesbians for political reasons, so Andy’s pretty useless to them, but they’re split on Sarah. Mother Moonflow agrees that trans women are women and it’s cool to have Sarah there but some of the other cult members aren’t so sure. Sarah and Andy would be happy to leave, only they’re hopelessly lost by the time they meet the cult so they’re pretty sure they’ll die in the woods if they can’t get directions from one of these women. Plus, Sarah figures out pretty quick that Mother Moonflow has access to the King’s Breakfast. Maybe they can get along with these women long enough to get hold of some.
That’s the basic story but none of that explains how fast-paced, weird, and at times gruesome this story is. Maybe get really high and read this while fighting your way through a few hallucinations? (No, wait, don’t do that. I’m not recommending that to anyone.) What you should maybe do is go watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s cult classic Stalker. Andy, as he leads Sarah into the freakiness of the Pamogo, starts telling Sarah about Stalker, surprised she hasn’t seen it. I dutifully looked it up on YouTube (it’s free there) to see what the hell it had to do with anything and a)Stalker is also about a creepy dangerous forest where landmarks seem to shift when you’re not looking and b)both places seem to confront wanderers with the deepest truths about themselves.
Many of Sarah’s deepest truths, and many of the cult members’ deepest truths, involve their complex feelings about humanity and femininity. Sarah, in particular, becomes ever more entranced by thoughts of the Green Lady and the cosmic femininity she embodies. She’s really not sure the cult has the answers she seeks but maybe the King’s Breakfast could show her a transcendant thing or two.
This book is funny and gross and horrific but it’s also deeply beautiful and visionary in parts. I don’t want to add details because the summary wouldn’t capture the book’s essence anyway, but Sarah really does find a kind of transcendence in the Pamogo.
If you like fast pacing and weird twists and turns, and if you have a strong stomach and aren’t easily traumatized by books, you should give this one a try. It reads like gory splatterpunk fun but there’s a lot under the surface that will stick with you long after the bloodstains fade.
How dark is it? Barely. The darkness is implied and discussed but rarely seen.
How good is it? On a scale from 1 to 10 murder weapons of choice? Pretty low. Maybe 3 knives. At best.
As you can see, I got this on sale.
It’s called Girl Dinner and there’s a bloody fork on the cover, so I hope I’m not spoiling anything when I say it’s about cannibals. Cannibals who are also sorority girls. Sounds great, right? Girl Dinner is very much billed as a satire making fun of the dog eat dog world of elite colleges and the pressure women feel to be perfect and successful in every way at all times. Unfortunately, this book is about 97% college stuff and 3% cannibalism, at best. I wanted more cannibalism. Also more actual humor. This satire didn’t work for me.
We alternate chapters between Nina Kaur and Doctor Sloane Hartley. Nina is desperate to get into The House, the best sorority with the most beautiful classmates and successful alumnae on campus. Sloane is sought after by one of those alumnae, who hopes Soane will become the sorority’s new faculty adviser. Nina is desperate to fit in and be validated by the most exclusive set of girls on campus. Sloane is desperate to avoid the disappointing “mommy track” to nowhere as she gets back into teaching after having her first child. Both are drawn deep into The House’s sisterhood even as hints appear that something darker is at the heart of it.
Both our heroines are basically just bundles of feminist buzzwords and endless anxiety spirals. It’s a constant barrage of both. “Nina . . . didn’t care what a bunch of frat guys thought of her. She also understood that many of these disgusting frat guys would be competing with her for the same law schools and that, eventually, whether she liked it or not, their acceptance would determine her success in the workplace and in life.” “‘I’m glad she’s in daycare now,’ the pediatrician said, implying heavily that any given stranger would be much better for Isla [Sloane’s baby] than Sloane, a decorated academic who nonetheless could not nurture her only child to save either of their lives.” “Sloane looked up, noticing that Max was now gesturing broadly with his hands. She caught Alex’s eye, and there was a moment–a little slip of pretense–where Sloane became aware that Alex was performing attentiveness.” “Nina could finally rewrite the story, reorienting herself on the path. In six weeks, she’d wear the . . . letters like a badge of honor. Like a brand on her blessed, anointed chest.”
It’s all like that all the time. Every single thought receives endless attention and analysis. There’s so much of it that there’s really not much room for the plot and there’s very little to the characters beyond the endless self-analysis. I’m pretty sure the characters are supposed to be flat, so full of education and expectations and anxieties that there’s barely room left for individuality, but that makes them pretty boring and annoying and kind of hard to sympathize with. I often felt like the book was trying so hard to Say Something that it didn’t end up saying anything much at all.
To be totally fair and honest, some of this is just me. Blake’s style reminds me heavily of Don DeLillo, meant to recreate a certain kind of inner landscape and emotional tone. DeLillo is a genius or whatever but his writing doesn’t speak to me at all, so Blake’s knock-off version speaks to me even less than that. If you’re a DeLillo fan, though, this book might speak to your soul.
Everything about this book bored and annoyed me except the ending, which was the only sad and horrific thing about this book (and the twist ending was definitely Saying Something. Finally. After more than three hundred pages of statements that didn’t add up to much.) I don’t want to spoil the twist but if you like Blake’s writing style at all, you’ll probably dig the ending.
I recommend you find this book in person, open it to any random page, and read that page right in the middle of the bookstore. If that page bores or annoys you this book is not worth your time, even for the twist ending. If you find that random page funny and interesting, you’ll like the whole book. Also, you’ll probably love Don DeLillo. Support your local bookshop by picking up White Noise or something while you’re there.
Spoiler alert: Mirrored Heavens is the third book in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between the Earth and the Sky series and I can’t discuss this one without spoiling the first two. If you haven’t read Black Sun and Fevered Star(review here), go do that. The third book makes no sense if you haven’t read the first two. In fact, it only sort of makes sense even if you did read the first two.
I’m gonna be up front with you. I found this book kind of disappointing. By far the weakest of the three. The second book sets a lot of events in motion and the third book tries to bring them all together in grand fashion but, for me, it’s not a success.
We start in a world on the brink of war. Serapio, avatar of the Crow god, and Naranpa, avatar of the Sun god, were supposed to fight to the death in the first book but missed each other due to unforeseen circumstances. They put off their fight to the end of the second book but their hearts weren’t in it. Instead of an epic battle, the second book ends with an uneasy truce between Serapio and Naranpa. It was a crazy twist. As the third book begins, Naranpa has departed for the northern wilderness to learn more about the gods and their dealings, leaving Serapio in charge of preparing Tova for war with the many nations conspiring against it. Naranpa feels that Serapio’s the best chance of uniting Tova’s clans and defending the city from the forces combining to attack it.
This book is setting us up for an epic clash between the Gods as the avatars of several deities each follow their own paths to Tova. Balam, the Jaguar acolyte, is leading an army to conquer the city. Xiala, now the avatar of the ocean goddess, crosses the ocean to avenge her people and aid Serapio. Serapio himself is caught between his own commitment to save Tova and his Crow god’s desire for an epic confrontation with the Sun god. Naranpa, avatar of the Sun, feels inexorably pulled toward that same confrontation, but Naranpa also has her eye on Balam.
Complicated, right? As we’d expect from the third book in an epic fantasy trilogy. I’m fine with a series sprawling a bit, but this one never really comes back together and there are so many unanswered questions and story arcs that either fizzle or veer off course.
We follow Naranpa as she prepares for her epic spiritual battles, we keep following as she wanders off to rescue her friend Iktan, and we wish we hadn’t when she arrives in Tova ready for war and instead (huge spoiler!) just razes a huge chunk of the city without actually contronting either the Jaguar dude or Serapio. This pointless destruction is especially disappointing because it doesn’t fit with anything we’ve learned about Naranpa or the Sun she serves in the last three books. It makes no sense at all.
Xiala’s arc is slightly better. We follow her as she tries to rescue and avenge her people after one of the Cuecolan lords tried to conquer their islands. Parts of this plot feel forced and hamfisted but there’s some exciting action and it’s cool to see Xiala finally connect with the Sea goddess and become truly badass. She does manage to finally reconnect with Serapio as well, so that’s nice.
Serapio spends most of the book waiting for the other gods to show up and fight his god. To keep him occupied, the Coyote god throws him a bizarre multi-part prophecy to fulfill. It all feels a bit forced and random but at least it keeps Serapio busy? He does end up facing the Jaguar avatar (but not Naranpa or the Sun) and it turns out his true battle is against the Crow god within him as he fights for his independence from his destiny. This part is actually pretty underdone. This is an interesting conflict and it’s handled a bit too quickly compared to even the arcs of a few minor characters.
As this series went on the pacing got more and more choppy, and by the end of this book things just felt too disjointed to really enjoy. The trilogy started tight, opened out until it involved everyone on the map, and though it tried valiantly to bring all those threads back together and tie them up neatly, mostly it felt muddled and disappointing.
Still, right up to the end I loved the world building and cosmology of these books. Meroamerican history and mythology feel like fresh and exciting sources for fantasy world building and Roanhorse does great things with them. Even though the series petered out in a way I found deeply unsatisfying, I give her credit for amazing world building and detail. I would love to see what other fantasy authors could do with these influences.
New reviews every Friday. Embrace the darkness and read more books!
Spoiler alert: Fevered Star is the second book in the Between the Earth and the Sky series and I can’t discuss this one without spoiling the first one. You can read that review here. If you haven’t read Black Sun and don’t want it ruined, go read it now. I’ll wait . . .
Okay. In Black Sun, Serapio (avatar of the Crow god) sets out to kill the Sun Priest (named Naranpa) and all the priests who follow her. He crashes their winter solstice ceremony, the moment when the sun is at its weakest and the shadowy Crow god is strongest. Everything goes according to plan for the Crow god, except that mere days before, Naranpa had been assassinated and replaced by a sort of puppet Sun Priest. The Crow god can tell the difference–all that killing and the Sun is not defeated.
Which means Naranpa must not be entirely dead; somewhere, she must be alive and still holding the Sun’s power within her.
Which means Serapio s mission is still unfulfilled. He was supposed to crash the Solstice ceremony, kill everyone on behalf of the Crow god, then die. His little crow friends sacrificed themselves to save Serapio but the Crow god isn’t too thrilled with the defeat and Serapio was not prepared at all for life after that battle. The Crow clan, who he thought would embrace him as family, has decidedly mixed feelings about their god walking amongst them. Some of them worship him as the Odo Sedoh, the Crow Grandfather, but many of their leaders wish their god had never returned. He’s upset the balance of power and the Crow Clan’s matron is afraid of reprisals from the city’s other clans.
While Serapio navigates life as a living god (but also a nice young man), Naranpa is back in Coyote’s Maw, revived by her estranged brother and his witch friend. Once Naranpa is revived, she begins to realize she’s become more than just a priest of the Sun. She seems now to be the sun’s vessel on earth. Instead of escaping certain death, she’s still on a collision course with the Crow god.
The book rocks back and forth between three stories this time. We follow Serapio’s story as he forms an uneasy relationship with Okoa, brother of the Crow Clan’s leader. We follow Naranpa as she attempts to find allies in Coyote’s Maw. We also follow Xiala, Serapio’s Teek friend, as she travels with Iktan, another surviving priest (an assassin, the Priest of Knives) to distant Hokaia. In Hokaia, the Eagle clan conspires with Hokaia’s spear maidens, a band of Teek warriors, and a couple of Cuecolan merchant lords (one of whom was briefly Xiala s boss in the first book. Small world.) Together, they make plans to attack Tova now that the Watchers are dead and the city is in confusion. Well, all those other people want to attack the city; Xiala just wants to find Serapio and help him out if she can. She misses her weird crow-loving friend. They really bonded in the first book and now that she knows Serapio survived his big revenge mission, Xiala desperately wants to see him again.
As epic fantasies tend to do, this one sprawls a bit. There are a lot more moving parts than the first book had, and a lot more secondary characters. We still have the central conflict between the Crow and the Sun, represented by Serapio and Naranpa respectively. Along with that, we now have impending war, with representatives of several nations planning to invade a fractured and weakened Tova. One of the Cuecolan lords, Balam, is also trying to master the magic of dream walking in order to defeat Tova and ultimately become the avatar of his own god, the Jaguar. As all this is brewing, Xiala’s mother is head of the Teek contingent and none too happy to see her daughter. Xiala is, in fact, sent packing back to Teek against her wishes, only to find Teek has become a shell of itself while she’s been gone.
This book is messier than the first, not as tight or touching, but there are some interesting twists and turns, and the ending really surprised me. It ends, as the first does, with a confrontation between the Sun and the Crow, but this one turns out much differently than either of the avatars expect. In some ways it’s a much weaker ending but I respect it for going in a direction I did not see coming. At the end of this I was immediately itching to start the third book and see how Roanhorse was going to bring all this back together.
You’ll find out how that went next week. Until then, embrace the darkness and read more books.
Technically Black Sun (by Rebecca Roanhorse) is epic fantasy instead of horror and I actually didn’t pick it up for the blog at all. I was talking to a friend about the upswing in indigenous horror writers and she said she was reading this fantasy series set in the ancient Americas. It sounded cool so I got myself a copy and started reading. (I didn’t do this on purpose, but my copies of all three books are signed by the author because she’s got New Mexico connections. So that’s neat.)
The first chapter features a mother doing some very bloody ritual magic on her son, attempting to turn him into a vessel for the Crow God, and then throwing herself off a cliff as a sacrifice to complete the ritual.
It was intense. It was dark. I loved it. I read the whole trilogy and now I’m gonna review it for you, one book a week, for the rest of the month.
Black Sun is set in a fantasy world inspired by various Mesoamerican cultures. There’s no one-to-one correspondence, just a fantasy mix of ancient fashions, hairstyles, beliefs and cultures. I found these inspirations refreshing and fun, and I enjoyed the truly polytheistic perspective Roanorse creates in this world. As the series progresses, more gods, through their various avatars, try to work their will in this world. She sets up an epic battle between spiritual forces without any of them being clearly good or evil. This first book was especially successful at that.
The book alternates between Serapio (the Crow God’s intended vessel but also quite a nice young man) and Naranpa, the Sun Priest Serapio is divinely mandated to overthrow. While Serapio sails from the Cuecolan coast toward the holy city of Tova (don’t worry, there’s a map in the front of the book), Naranpa is trying to revitalize the city’s priesthood and battling politics between the city’s four great clans and the poor clanless folks of Coyote’s Maw (don’t worry, there’s a map for this, too).
As we follow both of them, we’re given tantalizing bits of the events that set both Serapio and Naranpa on their current paths. We learn about the Watchers, the priestly hierarchy Naranpa rules, that were created a few hundred years ago after a great war between several nations and their various gods. We learn that much more recently, a generation ago at most, the Watchers led a raid against the Crow clan. In attempting to stamp out worship of the Crow God with bloody finality, they drove one rebellious Crow to find a way to bring back her god in human form and exact revenge on the Watchers. Serapio, of course, is that vessel, born for revenge. This is mostly local politics but since Tova is officially the spiritual center for several nations, fights between Tovan factions can have much broader ripples.
Serapio knows this. About the Crow Clan and the revenge, I mean. Not about international relations. He was born and raised for revenge on the Sun Priest and educated in war and pain and dedication by his mother’s allies. He embraces his destiny. But he’s also barely an adult and this boat ride to destiny is the first chance he’s ever had to get out of the house and meet people. He becomes friendly with Xiala, the boat captain in charge of delivering him to Tova. She’s a Teek, a sort of Siren or mermaid from a small reclusive island nation. She tells him stories and he keeps her company as she guides the boat through the starlit night. For the first time in his life, Serapio finds a friend and for the first time in a long time, Xiala finds someone who just likes her instead of being fascinated or repelled by her Teek heritage. (There are a lot of superstitions about Teeks. They can speak to the sea and calm its waters so everyone wants one on their boat, but the minute things go wrong guess who they blame?) It’s a beautiful little relationship that deeply affects them both.
Meanwhile, Naranpa is dodging assassination attempts while trying to revitalize her city’s faith. Naranpa is originally from that poor clanless Coyote’s Maw, while pretty much everyone else in the priesthood are honored members of the four major clans. She’s the Sun Priest, the head of the whole council, supposedly the greatest power in Tova and owed allegiance by most of the surrounding nations as well. Ever since that raid on the Crows, though, the Watchers’ reputation in the city is tarnished and to make things worse, the Clan leaders look down on Naranpa herself for her background. She’s got a tough road ahead if she wants to reform the city.
I won’t spoil the inevitable confrontation but I will say it’s spectacular. The book takes its time, letting us really get to know our lead characters and several supporting characters, but this battle is always looming ahead of them. What I loved most is that I couldn’t decide who I was rooting for. Serapio is so sad and endearing, Naranpa is so idealistic and embattled. I loved them both but by the end I also understood there could be no agreement between these two. This made for a moving and complex ending I thoroughly enjoyed.
New reviews every Friday. Embrace the darkness and read more books!
I don’t usually do content warnings because I consider them implied in a blog about horror novels and murder mysteries, but this book deserves a content warning. SenLinYu’s Alchemized is awash in body horror, torture, creepy medical experiments on unwilling subjects, and a little bit of sexual assault. These are so integral to the book that I can’t even review it without talking about some of these subjects, so skip this review if you’re not up for this much darkness.
My second warning is that SenLinYu is apparently famous for writing a Harry Potter fanfic where Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy get together and Alchemized is an expansion and reworking of that. Once I found that out (around 300 pages in, I think) I couldn’t unsee it. Hermione and Draco are definitely still visible in the main characters and that drew me out of the story at times, but the rest of the story is different enough that it didn’t bother me. If you feel a lot of feelings about the Harry Potter series or its author, it may affect your experience of this novel.
That said, if you’re still here and game to try it, this is a pretty enthralling read. At over a thousand pages, it’s a brick of a book, but I’m glad the author resisted the temptation to break it up into a series. I loved being able to follow the long sweep of the story from beginning to end without interruption, and SenLinYu did a great job of keeping the story cohesive and moving forward even as it got bigger and more complex.
Now, the details.
Fantasy novelists love inventing new magical systems and societies, and this book is no exception. Alchemized is based on, unsurprisingly, alchemy. Historically, alchemy was a blend of art, science, and occult religion, and in Paladia it’s the same. In Paladia, though, a person’s alchemy ability depends on resonance, a sort of natural energetic affinity to various natural substances. If you have a resonance with iron or copper, for instance, you can learn to manipulate it and transmute it into other substances. If your resonance is especially strong, you might be able to affect quite a number of metals and natural elements, including human bodies and souls.
Paladia is the worlds’ main source of Lumithium, an element that amplifies resonance in humans and can enhance alchemical effects, and the key to scaling up alchemical processes to industrial levels. Paladia was founded and is still ruled by the Holdfast family; they’re both political and religious rulers, and they also run an elite alchemy school to train the best and brightest students with the strongest resonance, and to further the study of alchemy. The Holdfasts are in constant tension with various Guild families, mostly talented alchemists of various metals who perfected ways to industrialize the process and grow rich.
When we enter the story, however, everything has gone horribly wrong and the whole country is now ruled by the horrifyingly immortal High Necromancer and his terrifyingly ruthless right hand man, Kaine Ferron. The Necromancer rules through a combination of cruelty to everyone and the promise of immortality to his faithful followers–only he has the alchemical secret to becoming Undying, and once you accept his “gift” you’re bound to the Necromancer forever. Everyone in this new reality is either miserably oppressed or trying desperately to impress the High Necromancer, mostly to avoid being miserably oppressed. Our hero, Helena, is the last living member of the Resistance. Newly discovered in a forgotten prison tank and missing a good chunk of her memories, it’s Ferron’s job to extract whatever secrets are hidden in that brain of hers. The Necromancer’s minions lock Helena’s wrists into manacles lined with “nullium” that deaden her natural resonance, then she’s packed up and sent to Ferron’s country estate for interrogation. Ferron one of those powerful alchemists who can manipulate all sorts of materials. He’s also a vivimancer, meaning he can manipulate people’s bodies and brains, so Helena’s interrogation less torture and questioning, more direct attempts to magically invade Helena’s brain and unlock the information the Necromancer wants.
The entire story is told through Helena’s eyes, first as she tries to figure out what the hell happened to her and what Ferron’s deal is, and later as her memories come rushing back and we see the war’s last year through her eyes. In part one, we see Helena fierce and almost pathologically self-sacrificing, still willing to do anything to protect a Resistance that no longer exists. She’s repelled by Kaine and his cold vicious ways, but also confused. As far as she can tell he’s a remorseless killer, always seething with barely suppressed rage and totally devoted to the High Necromancer’s every whim. But he’s also got some weird moral code; he seems almost protective of his prisoner’s welfare and he carefully holds himself apart from the casual sadism of his fellow Undying. He’s definitely a monster but not the kind of monster Helena expected. She also suspects he knows her, but whatever their history is, it’s clearly in the locked part of her brain.
The brain unlocking is proceeding pretty slowly when the Necromancer suddenly decides Helena should be part of a program to breed new baby necromancers. One of the few things Helena does remember from the war is being sterilized so she couldn’t pass on her own talent for vivimancy, so she’s pretty shocked to find herself part of a breeding program. One of the Necromancer’s creepy doctors have fixes for everything, it seems, and sure enough she’s “fixed” Helena’s fertility. Yikes.
Unlike the resistance, the Necromancer actually wants vivimancers to breed, and he decides Ferron would be the perfect match for this experiment. Ferron seems utterly horrified (but not totally surprised) by such an order but he has little choice but to make a baby with his prisoner. If he doesn’t do it, the Necromancer’s next choice will probably be worse and Ferron will completely lose control of Helena. This new project is awkward and horrible for them both, and Ferron’s handling of it furthers our suspicion that he’s got more going on than just blind devotion to his leader.
As Helena’s pregnancy takes root, Helena’s stress levels spiral out of control and, ironically, all this stress loosens the locks on those hidden memories and causes them to come flooding back. Part two takes us back into these memories, and one of the first things we find is that Kaine Ferron was actually spying for the Resistance before they fell. That’s how he knows Helena.
The war between the Resistance and the Undying had been going on for a few years before Ferron offered his help, claiming he wanted to avenge his mother’s death at the Necromancer’s hands. Exactly zero people believed this (even though it’s completely true) so he randomly asked for Helena to be his contact, implying some vague romantic obsession with her. This, the Resistance believed. A couple of Resistance leaders, Jan Crowther and Ilva Holdfast, essentially tell Helena to seduce him and encourage his obsession so Ferron will be pliable.
Let’s just say none of this turns out the way any of them planned, and over the course of their alliance the two form a complicated relationship that eventually becomes a fierce love. They both become a bit obsessed with each other and we learn two important things. First, Kaine Ferron is much more a victim of torture and blackmail than anything else, which gives me great sympathy for him and the impossible choices he has to make. Second, the Resistance is a giant bag of dicks. Many of them are either intolerable snobs or self-righteous religious zealots, and almost none of them give the tiniest shit about Helena or what happens to her. She’s both a foreigner and a vivimancer so nearly everyone in the Resistance considers her vaguely distasteful and suspect, but all of them are happy to use her for healing their soldiers and seducing Ferron and literally anything else they need without giving her an ounce of sympathy or credit. Don’t get me wrong, the Undying are way worse than the Resistance, but the Resistance also sucks. They’re convinced with a literally religious fervor that they’re locked in an epic battle of good versus evil, and if only they have enough faith and optimism there’s no way they can lose. As the story progresses, even Helena begins to understand just how far their heads are up their self-righteous asses. It adds a lot of moral nuance to the story when you realize the only person to ever actually hurt the Necromancer is Kaine; even though he’s only doing it for personal vengeance, he’s the secret hero of the war.
Okay, no more spoilers. This review is long enough already. The romance between Draco and Hermione Kaine and Helena gets a little repetitive and overwrought at times; as the war drags on for months in a stalemate, so does their tortured path to love. Eventually the action picks up again, though, and the story does a pretty decent job of balancing their intensely personal drama with the epic events unfolding around them. Helena remains almost obnoxiously self-sacrificing, but also clever and brave and often pretty interesting. Kaine remains morally complex in a way that I really enjoyed–he becomes more and more a sympathetic character as he tirelessly works to bring down the High Necromancer without being suspected, but never entirely stops being a villain. I love complicated characters like that, and I thought Kaine was well done.
This is a very long and very dark book that I devoured as fast as I could. It was tense and compelling, pulling me along nearly the whole time, and it balanced the intense relationship with some great world-building and political drama. I highly recommend it.
New reviews every Friday. Embrace the darkness and read more books!
Darker Books 