Disney Mania

I thought I was a serious Disney fan. Turns out, I'm just a pixie duster with mildly naughty aspirations.

That's okay, though, especially since I landed in the world of warped Disney fic--that is, stories set around WDW, often involving rather adult themes, such as drug use, trespassing, physical violence, and assorted mayhem. My portal to the chaos was Leonard Kinsey's The Dark Side of Disney, a non-fiction, sort of Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole look at the World:





Now, I've been to WDW six or seven times in the last twenty years, and I must admit that while I love it, I do often wonder about what I'm not seeing, or not knowing, if you will. What other dimensions am I missing?

Apparently, a lot. Utilidors, ticket scams, the truth behind the cast members' (what Disney calls its employees) cheery, semi-permanent smiling faces. Aaaand more. Dark Side is essentially a tourist guide to WDW, though many of "tips" aren't for the vast majority of travelers, but for those seeking a... different perspective on the happiest place on earth.

Kinsey wrote Dark Side after having spent a good part of his misspent youth at WDW; he grew up nearby, and when other teens are sneaking into movie theaters, he was attempting to sneak into DisneyWorld. Kinsey can tell you the best rides to go on while stoned, where to attempt a furtive grope--and more--and how to save money on food. Yeah, how did I not know you could get groceries delivered to your frickin' room?

I loved it, not just the tips and advice, but the endlessly entertaining misadventures of Kinsey and his friends. He's got great "voice," as they say, but be forewarned: the man drops f-bombs like my neighbor's oak drops helicopters all over my lawn. Yo.

Wow, I did say I was a pixie duster with aspirations, right? Or maybe just one who likes to live vicariously through far more daring, and interesting, people, people like Leonard Kinsey.

Uh, it should go without saying that the entire book The Dark Side of Disney is NSFW. Language, subject matter, pics, you name it. And a couple of those included links, whew! I have been educated, yes, sir, I have.

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After Dark Side, Kinsey wrote an entirely fictional book called Our Kingdom of Dust. Blaine McKinnon is disillusioned, depressed, and filthy rich. He decides to return to Walt Disney World, a place where his happiest childhood memories were made.

And here, I relate. Personal story: my entire childhood, I wanted to go to Walt Disney World, but my parents couldn't afford it. When I got my first job at age 14, washing dishes in a restaurant, I knew that I wanted to save up for a trip. At 18, newly graduated from high school, I was able to do just that.

And it was everything I expected and more. I fell in love, hard, and I will never forget that trip. It was 1990, the era of Horizons at WDW, and it spoke to me and filled my heart to bursting.

I've been back a number of times since, but I will say this: I will never recapture that initial overwhelming joy. Yes, it is my favorite place to vacation, and yes, I adore it as much as ever, but as they say...

You can never go home again.

Someone tell that to Blaine McKinnon.

Blaine sets up camp at one of the Epcot resorts in a swanky suite, and immediately makes a few acquaintances of dubious character. In fact, the book is filled with colorful characters, all of whom are making vastly poorer choices than Blaine. Not the least of those choices is their drug use, a designer drug called "Pixie Dust," which recreates the feeling of being in the parks, that incredible joy, when one cannot be there. He becomes intricately involved with this group, and very quickly, things reel out of hand.

OKOD is a fast read, and capitalizes on Kinsey's unique voice. Exciting, it never fails to hold the reader's attention. And of course, it's loaded with atmosphere--WDW is as much a character as any of the humans in this book.

I'm a bit on the fence with this one due to some editing issues, which honestly, seem like first-time author issues. It's stuff I can grant a pass on. Kinsey has talent and voice, and you can tell he's really learning to hone his craft.

Where he's strongest, though, is in the unwritten lessons he's imparting, about learning to accept your past, and more than that, to accept each day as it is. Not all of them are going to be pixie dust. Some are going to be Tinkerbell's asshole after a Taco Bell run. And whether it's drugs or, in my case, yearning to be in DisneyWorld because that's "where I'm happiest," you need to realize that it's all in you. Nothing can fill that void.

My own reflections sometimes made this an uncomfortable read. So, hey, the guy swears a lot. And the writing is sometimes a tad rough. It's rare that a book really makes you think and feel. This one did.





Kinsey does have a new book out, Habst and the Disney Saboteurs. You can listen to the Creepy Kingdom podcast with guest, Leonard Kinsey, and hear him read some of it. I wanted to keep listening! Yes, I've got the book, so I'll be reading that soon. And Kinsey's a great guest; sometimes, podcasts make me cringe, and I have to turn them off, but this one was intelligent and interesting and, well, made me want to buy the guy a tequila some night and keep him talking.

By the way, there's a whole universe of "Dark Siders," as I call them. You start with Dark Side, and you're going down the rabbit hole too. See you there.

Review: Into That Forest by Louis Nowra

Hannah and Becky are 6 and 7, respectively, when they go on a picnic with Hannah's parents in a rural area of Tasmania. A sudden storm causes the river to overflow, and the boat they rowed in on to capsize. Lost, half-drowned, and panicked, the girls are found on a riverbank by two Tasmanian tigers, who keep the girls safe and, ultimately, adopt them as if they were their own pups.

"Into That Forest" by Louis Nowra is set in 1920/30s Tasmania, at a time when bounties on tiger hides were slowly causing the destruction of that species. Narrated by an elderly Hannah, the book has a strong sense of place and character, but it is the assimilation of Hannah and Becky into tiger culture (and their departure from human social "norms") that is incredibly fascinating. Hannah and Becky are two very different little girls; while Becky yearns for home and her father and doesn't want to lose her language or clothing, even memorizing the colors of the rainbow and counting as high as she can, Hannah adapts quickly, mimicking the tigers' vocalizations and body postures and pushing away thoughts of her parents' probable deaths.

Ultimately, in order to survive, both girls learn to hunt, eat and live with the tigers, becoming very nearly tigers themselves in the four years they spend in the wilderness.

Of course, they are eventually discovered, and their forced reintegration into human culture has inevitably tragic consequences.

Filled with thrilling moments and brilliant descriptions, "Into That Forest" could be just another tale of orphaned children growing up with animals--see the Jungle Book or the eastern European "wild" children raised by packs of dogs or any number of such tales--but it is so much more. There is a meditational quality, as there must be, not just on what it means to be human or animal, but also on our impact on species. The last Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936.

Despite being a fairly fast read, do not underestimate the book's emotional punch. Keep tissue handy.

As a side note, some readers find Hannah's dialect to be off-putting. I thought it was easy to understand, and enriched to the narrative.

Grimdark Voting! And review: Chris Beckett's Dark Eden

Only two days left to vote in the Grimdark challenge over at Fantasy Faction! Thirteen flashfic stories of the grimmest, darkest horrors around. One of those is my own entry, Chirp.

Grimdark Stories Thread

No mention of party cake in any of the stories, I might add. An oversight, which I'll try to correct in future grimdark stories.

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Finished Chris Beckett's Dark Eden, which won the Arthur C. Clarke award last year. It was not what I expected, and in fact, was so different from anything I've ever read, that I'm still having muddled feelings about it.

John Redlantern is one of 532 people in the Family, who are all descended from Tommy and Angela. Approximately two hundred years ago, Tommy and Angela, along with three others, crashed their spaceship on a planet after having, presumably, crossed through a wormhole from our galaxy. This new planet is nothing at all like Earth, although it is capable of sustaining life, and when their ship is unable to return, they send the three others in another ship that is also damaged but may be able to make the journey back. Tommy and Angela procreate while waiting for someone to rescue them, they live and die, and the family continues on, intermingling, increasing their numbers, and holding on tight to the stories Tommy and Angela told of a place called Earth, where the Sun shines and there is technology they can't begin to understand.

The Family lives in one valley, where the ship originally crashed, and is divided into groups. They hunt and fish and have sex indiscriminately with one another. If their culture is beyond imagining, then so too is their world, which has no sun but receives red and blue and yellow light from the trees and creatures, which all have light-emitting globes.

Eventually, as it has to happen, one person wonders what is beyond their valley, and what if no one from Earth ever comes for them, and how will they survive as resources dwindle. John Redlantern is only fifteen, but he has ideas and a restlessness that makes others in the Family uncomfortable. When he decides to speak his mind and then act on it, the Family begins to fragment, and real violence comes to them for the first time in their two hundred years.

Despite being fast-paced and eventful, Dark Eden is also thoughtful and questioning. The secondary characters are fleshed out well, and Beckett seems to have considered a multitude of issues that would arise in such a particular situation.

Most of those who did not like Dark Eden seem to have had a problem with the language, which has, naturally, degraded over time from the English that Tommy and Angela spoke. In addition, the entire concept of five hundred people descended from only two, and the incest (and all the genetic problems that come from such inbreeding) make for a very, very strange experience. However, John and the others are so incredibly human, and the storytelling so vivid, that the book ceased to give me a headache by about a quarter way through -- yes, I found this book so strange at first, so difficult to comprehend, that I had a headache trying to understand it. But once I grasped it, I was along for the ride, and read it very quickly.

It's a challenging read in many aspects, and worthy of praise and awards. The ending was sort of a letdown, and that's my main criticism of it. I understand, I think, why Becket wrote it that way, but I'm not pleased.

I do highly recommend Dark Eden. You absolutely won't read anything like it.

Review: Kathe Koja's The Cipher

Read Kathe Koja's The Cipher yesterday, which won the Bram Stoker in '91, among other awards, and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick. I mention the awards first because it will give you a clue as to the nature of the novel: intense, horrifying speculative fiction. Young Nicholas and his sometimes-girlfriend, Nakota, discover a black hole in the janitorial closet of his apartment building one night. Not too large, square-shaped, and black beyond black. Nakota is instantly fascinated, and while her fascination turns to obsession and becomes--extremely quickly--darker by degree, Nicholas is more or less along for the ride.

Until he accidentally touches it.

You're pulled into the story right away, dropped right into awful happenings, and Koja lets you know you're in for a roller coaster of terror. And then she makes good on it. Because of course, someone has to put things in it, someone must touch it, and the mystery and tension and horror can only grow, spiraling into sick, twisted desperation.

Ultimately, it's not about a black hole--it's about loneliness, about marginalization, about outsider culture, and about the darkness inside all of us. But except for the last couple of pages, you're never hit over the head with it. The Cipher could easily sit beside Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

If I've got a quibble, it's that I don't care for Koja's writing style. I previously read Under the Poppy, an alt-historical fiction that has some of these same themes, and I honestly hated it. But let me state that Koja has many fans, who adore her style, and find it "lush," "evocative," etc.

And be aware, it's a mindfuck. Big time. Made me have weird, weird dreams last night.

Review: Poe by J. Lincoln Fenn, winner of 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

This year's deadline for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest is almost upon us: March 2, my dears. Time to finish that novel you've been working on and get it submitted by Saturday.

Or, if you think that's a tad outside your reach, you could read the winner of last year's contest in the SFF/Horror category, Poe by J. Lincoln Fenn.

I chose option two.

Poe is the story of Dimitri, a recent college grad working at a newspaper in a small town in New England, writing obituaries. His parents recently died in a fiery car crash, and he's stashed some of their belongings in a closet in his tiny apartment. One day, he finds his father's ring in one of the boxes. He puts it on and...

Ghosts. Spirits. Murder. Demons! A magical grid of evil numbers. Grimoires.

As the small town of New Goshen loses citizen after citizen, Dimitri must unravel the truth of what's going on, from why he woke in a morgue after having been submerged in an icy well for three hours and declared dead, to the unknown ghost who's leaving messages in magnetic poetry on his refrigerator, to who his parents really were.

I don't know what I expected from the contest, but I was somewhat surprised. Poe is a fairly deft mystery with solid writing, and the voice of Dimitri, the main character, is clear enough that you can picture him in your head. He's engaging, sometimes a knucklehead but bright enough, and he's much like any young guy in his twenties--a feat many writers would like to pull off, but usually don't. The mystery itself is twisty, and while it never truly scared or even thrilled me, I enjoyed figuring it out along with Dimitri.

If I had any criticisms, it's that the writer seems a bit enamored with shows like Supernatural and Buffy--hey, is that a bad thing? No, but I think the writer aspires to Joss Whedon-clever and falls a bit short, though the dialogue definitely is a cut above most books. And the motifs are a bit, "Seen that before." And, of course, our hero occasionally makes the dumb move that we just know we wouldn't make! Minor crits, though. Really. Overall, Poe is a fun read. As Publisher's Weekly called it, "gothic pop with a literate edge." Yep. Enjoy.

Reviews: Hill's NOS4A2 and Cline's Ready Player One

Three stellar reads in two weeks. I reviewed Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth yesterday, and today, it's Joe Hill's jolly Christmas tale, NOS4A2, and Ernest Cline's totally awesome Ready Player One.

First up is Joe Hill's NOS4A2. A story of a woman with the power to access the inscape -- which, Hill subtly tells us, is available to all of us, in a darker version of If you can dream it, you can do it! -- Vic McQueen can find things by riding her Raleigh bike across a bridge that was demolished years before. Years later, the Raleigh gone and Vic convinced that her past troubles and adventures are all the product of psychosis, she comes face to face with the reality of the inscape when another person, whose own inscape is a demented version of a Christmas wonderland populated by ghoulish children, returns to finish the job he started years before, when Vic escapes his clutches and burned down his Sleigh House.

I hear there's a lot left unexplained by Hill, and I'll agree, to a point. But in a book as chock-full of stuff as this one, what do you want? An epic? It would have to be The Stand in length to answer every question. And frankly, I don't want all the answers. (BTW, I seem to be reading a lot of Amazon reviews lately where people criticize an author's too-neat ending, everything tied up, all questions answered--jeez, louise, what do you folk want?)

Here's why I'm satisfied: like each of Hill's books, it's a fast, sharp, ride, where you're hanging on for dear life as you barrel along with Vic over the bridge and into the place where monsters live. It's got some damn fine writing, and some likable characters. Including Charles Manx, riding along in his 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith, picking up children and delivering them to Christmasland, where they can play forever and ever and ever... (cue Have a Holly Jolly Christmas! and pictures of desiccated skulls hanging from rollercoasters while kiddies with needle teeth and rusted kitchen knives dance around)

If I've got one problem with the book, it's that Vic doesn't realize until nearly the end that Manx actually believes he's doing something good for these kids. It's sick, it's twisted, but those are his children. Manx is a far more believable villain than many I've read, because despite the fact that he's sucking these children dry in order to live forever himself, he cares for them.

NOS4A2 is also, for better or worse, an homage to his father and, indeed, to any number of horror books and films. I loved finding the references (probably missed more than half of them), almost like Easter eggs in video games. Which brings me to....


Ernest Cline's rad dystopian, Ready Player One. In the near future, civilization is in tatters, but if there's one thing you can count on, it's that technology will save the day! Or at least provide a total escape from the fact that you live in the bottom trailer of a stack twenty trailers high, with fifteen other ragged souls ready to beat your ass for whatever little you've got.

Wade Watts, senior in virtual high school, has got it slightly better than that. I do mean, slightly. He's got skillz, yo, and a few friends (who, of course, he has never met in person), and he's got something a lot of high school seniors haven't got: a goal. His goal is to find the Easter eggs left behind in the OASIS by its creator and, ultimately, win a few billion dollars.

The OASIS is the virtual world nearly everyone inhabits when they aren't working. Everyone's got an avatar, everyone's got a place they like to hang out, somewhere far different than the reality they all live in. The best part? The worlds of the OASIS are mostly '80s reference material: villages, dungeons, entire planets that are detailed recreations of, say, Blade Runner. (dude, that's what I'd hit first) And because the OASIS's creator was a child of the '80s and a total nerd, he's hidden the clues to his little puzzle around the OASIS and you won't find them unless you've totally boned up on your '80s trivia. So--and this is awesome--eighties culture is back, baby!

Because it's the key to a better life, everyone's involved, peripherally or in a big, all-consuming way.  Wade Watts is in, big-time. In fact, he solved the first clue! Except, now, everyone wants to know who he is, how he did it, and most of all--they want to stop him from making it the rest of the way.

Maybe I adored this because I'm a child of the '80s and a total nerd. Maybe it's because, like NOS4A2, it's a fast, thrilling ride. But there's a real sense of glee here, as, like in NOS4A2, you recognize the references. FFS, there's a Q*bert reference! And all the worlds, man... I could've put on the glasses and spent a few days (weeks, months) exploring the OASIS.

My only (tiny) niggle is that while I liked Wade, he didn't have a real hero's journey. There was no change, no metamorphosis happening. Some might argue there was, but it's very small. On the other hand, I really just loved tagging along with him, and meeting--finally!--his online friends.

And I really want to play a few hours of Ms. Pac-Man now.





Three great books--I recommend them all. What a way to escape the dreary fuckwittery that this winter has become. Now, anybody got any recs? I really need a new one. Besides these three, I attempted two others--attempted. One was a self-pub, and it was free, and I won't say anymore except that the problem I continually run into with self-pubs is that the authors have not gotten themselves an editor. GET A GOOD EDITOR. I can't get into a story that's filled with grammatical errors, spelling errors (HOW is that happening in this day of spellcheck? HOW?), and punctuation errors. If I'm re-reading sentences to understand what you meant, you did it wrong. And frankly, a lot of them read like first drafts. I know you're excited to have finished it, but please, spend some time and polish it.

I've been there. I've put out drivel. Maybe I had a good idea, but it needed more work. This I've learned. Now my output is slooooooow, but honestly, the stuff I've been working on is way better than previous work. It's tough, but it's fun. :)

The other book was a Brandon Sanderson fantasy. Quickly becoming one of the most popular and, I think we can say this now, prolific fantasy writers around, I had to finally give one of his books a try. Not for me. I can see why many love his stuff, but I couldn't finish the one I started, and I won't be giving any of his other stuff a try. It's totally a YMMV situation. You may want to check him out if you haven't already and if you're into fantasy.

That's it! Tell me what to read next!

Review: Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth

Three books in less than two weeks. What wonderful reads they've been! I can't pick a favorite. Okay, maybe Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth, because I finished that one last night and my head is still full of dog dreams, of running in the desert and eating carne asada tacos.

Sharp Teeth is written, as you may have heard, in free verse. Before you roll your eyes and skip this one, let me ask you:

How do you know
your dog is not a werewolf?

Maybe you don't have a dog. But you see them all the time. Or don't see them, if you are not inclined to see things that have no meaning to you. Yet they're there. Eating our food (in good restaurants?), watching our cars pass, fucking, sleeping...

Anthony is a dogcatcher, almost by accident, just dumb luck. The last two men to have his job have disappeared. One was found in his house, not much left of him, besides the pools of blood. Anthony doesn't care so much; he has found a job, and maybe, now, a woman. Life is easy when you want it to be.

But there are packs running in southern California, lawyers and veterans and ex-addicts. They're interested in what is happening at the pound. They're interested in the other packs.

It's about lycanthropes, sure, but it's about community, belonging, and love. There is such tenderness, nestled among the tearing and rending and gut-sliding. There's brotherhood and comfort.

What a fantastic, gorgeous, book. And a ripping good yarn! Helluva mystery. Read it, read it, read it.

Book Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Finished book one of Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy. Will I read book two? Eh... 

The Divergent trilogy is about a teenage girl who must choose in which faction she wants to spend her life. Her world (the crumbling city of Chicago, after some unnamed worldwide disaster) is divided into five factions -- or, for want of a better word, houses -- each known for the qualities they hold highest. Ravenclaw Erudite prizes intelligence and knowledge, Hufflepuff Amity prizes friendship, etc. She chooses to leave the faction she grew up in and switch to Gryffindor Dauntless, known for bravery.

And then the shit hits the fan, and female Harry Potter Tris finds out that she possesses a quality -- Divergence -- that allows her to fight against the mind-control set up by Erudite, and she is at the center of a revolution. 

The book is fast-paced and loaded with UST (as YA dystopian/paranormal/etc typically is), and the writing is solid and the characterizations are fairly good. This series, it should be noted, is about to be turned into a film series, a preview of which you may have seen if you went to see Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Did I mention that Katniss Tris spends her first few weeks in Dauntless learning to fight, even to kill others? 

Look, the capable female heroine is a good thing in novels. We need more of them. But if I read another YA where the teenage heroine is, you know, not really pretty, kind of short, average in most every way, doesn't know anything about defending herself at the beginning but shows REMARKABLE aptitude for causing physical damage (due to her amazingly intense brain!) and is then the love interest of an older boy who is daaaaaamn hot and also a fierce fighter, and then the two of them are at the center of a Revolution and are humanity's Only Hope for averting war, I shall shoot myself in the eye with a bow and arrow.

But let's get back to the basic premises, where most of my issues lie. Because people like to read about girls kicking butt, and if it's decently written, I could probably go along with it yet again.

I just didn't buy that people would separate into these factions and that, especially, they did not interact, to the extreme that their children are told that if they switched factions during the Sorting Ceremony on Choosing Day, that they could never see your family again (okay, once a year for a couple of hours). Even in HP, the houses -- while having their own dormitories and sports teams -- interact during classes and at mealtimes and, well, whenever they like. Dating, etc. That's natural. The system in Divergent does not, in any way, seem natural. 

Also, the folk in each faction seem to be wrapped up completely in the cloak of their faction. Where are the free thinkers? There should be rampant underground groups, worriedly discussing the choices they've made personally and as a faction. And who among us is just one set of ideals? There are radicals everywhere, to be sure, but we are all multi-faceted and far more subtle in our opinions and thoughts than Divergent would have us believe.

Also, there seems to be a tremendous amount of technology in the book, yet most people are living in near-poverty. I understand that in the aftermath of worldwide disaster, there would be no processed foods and luxury goods. But these people, as a whole, have little. And yet... They've got crazy-good computer programs and a rainbow's array of mind-altering serums. The people in Amity seem to have some advanced hydroponics going on, developed in conjunction with Erudite, but they don't have loads of fresh produce?

And why, pray tell, are the "factionless" (those who chose a faction but it didn't work out) forced to live in outlying areas, nearly starving? What sort of "ideal" community of the future thought that that  was a good idea? "We're going to raise ourselves up, and be better than our stupid forefathers, so let's marginalize these people for no good reason!"

So Tris learns to fight, must make some tough decisions, finds out that there is more going on than meets the eye (and the brewing war is not thrust upon us suddenly; there are loads of small clues), and ends up in the middle of the revolution. There's tension, suspense, lots of action, and it's fast-paced. A page-turner. If I could just get past all those niggling questions...

One last, little thing: Eric is a pierced Snape. Just saying. Longish dark hair, hooked nose (!!!), casual cruelty while teaching, suffers from jealousy and insecurity, makes bad decisions by joining with the Death Eaters Erudite evil-doers. I bet you that in book three, Eric has a change of heart forced by some dramatic incident that tears him apart, and he must join with the rebels, but they don't trust him. Someone tell me if that happens!

Review: The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon

It's a hot August morning in 1963, and 16-year-old Dwight is mowing the front lawn, shirtless. Along comes his two best friends, Slim (a girl) and Rusty, with a flyer that Rusty pulled down in town, advertising a Traveling Vampire Show. One night only, at midnight, adults only--natch.

And so begins the game of "Where's the shirt?"

Just kidding. Kind of. Richard Laymon's novel, winner of the 2001 Bram Stoker award, is replete with violence and a few truly terrifying scenes, and finishes with a nuclear boatload of WTF horror and gore. But I think I'm going to remember this one for the escalating sexual tension that laces nearly every page of the book (including those WTF gore-tastic scenes at the end), a sexual tension carried along by a nearly unending swapping of shirts: Slim is often borrowing one of the boy's shirts, or their shirts are ruined and must be abandoned, or they swap for odd reasons. This leaves our boys with typical teenage angst regarding their bodies, and typical teenage boy lust over seeing a naked female back or one of the many, many, many side-boobs. In addition, there is much abandoning of underwear for dubious reasons (it's in the dryer??? you couldn't find another pair? in your own house? and no shorts?), and except for the females over forty, bra wearing is mostly disregarded. Actually, we may assume that the mothers in the bridge club aren't wearing bras, either, because. Just because. It's that kind of a book.

Here's the thing. The events of this book take place over a single day, starting in the morning with Dwight mowing the lawn and culminating in their eventual visit to the Traveling Vampire Show. Stretching the various movements of a pack of teenagers on a summer day might be okay--look at Stephen King's Stand By Me, to which this is inevitably compared. The swirling emotional maelstrom that is a teenager is well-documented here, if taken to extremes. The issue is that, eventually, the reader just wants them to get to the damn show, already.

By the way, when they do, it's pretty much well-worth it. And it keeps entirely to the over-the-top sexual tension and violence of the rest of the book. Is there really a vampire? Are they really in danger? Will Dwight and Slim ever get it on? Why the hell are there so many vicious dogs running around this little town?

Find out the answers to the first three yourself. As to the fourth, if you figure it out, let me know.




And should you be confused by this review, let me say this: I'm confused. The writing is clear, the characterizations are strong, the story is unlike any other I've ever read, and to be fair, there are apparently a legion of Richard Laymon fans who appreciate his style of blatant eroticism and horror. But it was the kind of book which left me feeling disturbed for atypical reasons. And wondering why people would swap worn, sweaty socks with each other. Because eww.

Overall? This is unusual, unique horror, and for four bucks, it's well worth the price of admission to the show.

Free Short Stories from Tor

I love Tor for the single reason that they publish an unending stream of high quality short stories -- for free.

In the weekly email, this gem: The Oregon Trail Diary of Willa Porter by Andy Marino. Willa's in the care of her aunt and uncle, after her father's DISGRACE and her mother's resulting breakdown. Her guardians have decided to move across country, and so Willa, her aunt and uncle, and her cousin are traveling by wagon across the open plains of the midwest towards Willamette, Oregon. All is going as well as can be expected with two pre-teen girls, one of whom can roll eyeballs with the best, when dead birds begin to fall from the sky and a rain starts that won't end.

And the rot starts.

A perfect juxtaposition of black humor and growing, seeping dread, told in Willa's voice, I loved this one and read it twice.

Tor also recently released an e-book, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2013. Also free -- did I mention I love Tor for all the superb, free short stories?



There you go. Get yourself a cup of hot tea and a nice fluffy blanket, a soundtrack of snoring dogs and purring cats, and curl up on the couch today.

FF Monthly Contest; Review: Equoid by Charles Stross

Fantasy Faction, one of the largest fantasy (and SF and horror and...) sites, has a monthly flash fiction contest. November's theme is "Doors." Subs must be between 500-1500 words, and both prose and poetry are accepted. I've submitted my first entry, The Dragon in the Attic, a 1300-word YA dystopian horror about a little girl with her very own dragon. Sort of.

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So have I enjoyed anything I've read lately? Well, yes! Until recently, I'd never heard of the Laundry series. Then Charles Stross's Equoid was a KDD and I picked it up. Thanks to Worlds Without End, who tweet Random Reads of past F/SF award-winners and Kindle Daily Deals in the genres.

Apparently, the Laundry in question is a secret agency in London that investigates and battles aliens, Eldritch horrors, urban myths come alive, and that sort of thing. From what I gather from reviews, Laundry tales are typically full of biting humor and satire, and no small amount of gruesome, chilling scenes. Without having read any of the others, I'd have to say that Equoid is perfect.

*note: Many reviewers thought that this book could be read as a standalone, but they weren't sure. As a reader new to the series, I can definitively say yes, one can read this by itself. I understood enough of the Laundry and the world it inhabits to enjoy this novella immensely.

Bob Howard is dispatched to Ruralshire to investigate a report of a unicorn infestation. Equipped with a series of letters written by H.P. Lovecraft, a number of requisition forms for carnivorous equines that begins around the early 1900s, and his trusty ward and warrant card, he soon realizes he is in way over his head.

Foully, viciously, disgustingly, horrifically over his head. Think tentacle pr0n and demon horses with mouths full of steak knives for teeth, not to mention a side of zombies and computer programs that suck the soul out of those who open them. And unicorns, it should go without saying, are not at all sparkly and lovely creatures.

How this all makes complete sense and ultimately, cleverly, snaps into place for a thrilling ride is testament to Stross's writerly abilities. And the whole thing is, indeed, full of bits of humor, gallows and a heap of bureaucratic satire, both.

My only problem -- and this is a personal thing, for which I should probably be thankful -- is that I have quite a difficult time imagining tentacled, gelatinous, amorphous Eldritch horrors. Always have. You can describe the thing as much as you like; until I open the garage door and find one waiting behind the kiddie pool and snow blower, I shall not likely ever be able to understand it.

Equoid is a novella. I read it in an evening, and loved it. As Stross writes a fair bit of these Laundry stories, long and short, I'll be picking up more.

Book Review: Horde by Ann Aguirre

Holding your breath for that other book review? Sorry, I work weekends, and I'm just getting to it.

I talked about two books, both the third in their respective series, being disappointments. And while I've found much less to grumble about with this one, there are still a few issues.

Prolific author Ann Aguirre, who writes a lot of YA and who competently handles genres from dystopian, sci-fi, to steampunk while melding genres at will, took on the zombie novel with the first of her Razorland sage, Enclave. It was a Kindle Daily Deal in September, and with its fairly solid reviews and interesting premise, I was intrigued.

Deuce is a young girl living underground, in what used to be the subways, in a small enclave. Her people divide themselves into three archetypes, Builders, Breeders, and Hunters. She's always yearned to be a Hunter, has trained for it, and is about to be given her opportunity to prove herself against the "Freaks" as they're known. Her only problem is that she's just been paired with the outsider, Fade.

Fade's already lost one partner, and because he wasn't born into the enclave but rather found them and was warily accepted into their ranks on the basis of his fighting skills, everyone pretty much avoids him. Deuce isn't pleased.

Soon enough, she and Fade are caught up in dangerous assignments and, worse, Deuce is beginning to realize that perhaps the enclave isn't as well governed and well-run as she thought. Independent thinking comes with some difficulty to her; Deuce long ago drank the punch. But with the evidence piling up in front of her eyes, and with their own ouster and her friends' apparent backstabbing, she must learn the truth of the world below and, frighteningly, above.

As she and Fade learn to rely on each other and fight their way through a post-apocalyptic landscape, they develop a more intense relationship that goes beyond hunting partners.

And if you've ever thought that what a good zombie novel is lacking is hot and bothered romance, you would be right!*

I finished Enclave in a single day, immediately purchased the second book, Outpost, finishing it in a day, and then I waited impatiently for a month until the last of the series, Horde, was released. Are the first two that good? Oh, yes. The third? Well...

Let me get past some basic issues with the series: While Aguirre is a terrific plot master, and she can write action scenes like nobody's business, and she deftly handles the "hot and bothered" parts with spine-tingling aplomb, the actual nuts-and-bolts of the writing is difficult to ignore -- if you're as anal as I am about things like tense and, mostly, paragraph and sentence structure. Clunky sentences abound, not to mention an astounding number of paragraphs that consist of unrelated ideas. There's an awful lot of telling, not showing, as well. And sometimes, dialogue -- especially Deuce's -- comes across flat.

I used to be heavily involved with the Harry Potter fandom, and I was always receiving rec's for fics. Some of them were awfully written, and when I would say that, people would say, "Yeah, but the story is GREAT!" I learned that for many, story trumps all else. I, personally, like a total package -- a well-written, grabs-you-by-the-throat story. But since I managed to get past my misgivings and fly through the first two Razorland books, I imagine many of you will, too.

But the third book. Woe, the third book.

Much as I discussed in my previous post regarding my disgruntlement with Lynch's Republic of Thieves, authors with great ideas tend to start out gangbusters, but then fall flat. So did the Razorland series. It's my opinion that Aguirre wrote herself into a corner, starting out with Enclave and not really visualizing how this all might turn out. Book three, Horde, ends with a deus ex machina -- of sorts. Yes, some hints were dropped in book two, but still, there are so many holes that it loses a lot of credibility. In addition, someone really needs to be in charge of continuity. For instance, in book two, Deuce catches her first sight of the Freak encampment, and she thinks, "It must be a thousand strong." In book three, Morgan asks her how big the horde is, and she replies that she can't count that high, but she saw 500 beans once and it might be more. What? Unfortunately, that happens way more than it should.

Additionally, there's some pseudo-science thrown in to validate the change the Freaks/Mutants are going through, and the speed with which they are changing. There's an entire timeline that doesn't make much sense.

Suspension of disbelief is paramount in order to enjoy most fantasy, sci-fi, etc books. Just don't stretch it too much. Horde, unfortunately, stretched mine to breaking.

Aguirre is a very popular author, for good reason. While I'm ultimately dissatisfied with the ending to the Razorland series, there's a lot to like, and I would certainly give her other books a chance. As for the Razorland series, if you like dystopian YA, and you want a female protagonist who is bad ass while still caring deeply for her friends and partner and who is often altruistic, look no further. It's got that in spades.





*As you probably realized, it's not about zombies at all, in the typical sense, but mutated humans. I thought it was a zombie novel at first. But mutated humans are every bit as good as zombies and deserve the same respect! ;)

Book review: Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

It's Friday, and I just finished the second of two books I have been eagerly awaiting for quite some time now. Both are the third in their respective series. They came out within a week of each other, and I raced to finish the first so I could get to the second.

And for the second time in two weeks, I am muddled in confusion and very disappointed.

Let's start with Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves, one of the most highly anticipated books of the year--or the past five, as, much like GRRM, Mr. Lynch slowed down considerably since his first two books: the fantastically inventive and genuinely charming The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies. Also much like GRRM, the first book hooks you, drags you breathlessly along to a heart-stopping finale, and drops you back in your chair, blinking and wondering what happened to the last twenty-four hours of your life.

I never expect subsequent books in a series to live up to the first. You're living a life of unmet expectations if you do, my friend. But I'd like them to be solid additions, even if they are a bit uneven in places, a bit lacking of that original luster.

I found RSURS to be just that, a solid sequel. It was quite different, but at the end of the day, it's all about the magnificently scheming Locke getting in over his head and losing nearly everything. Here's a man who lives by the adage, Nothing gained if nothing tried. And boy, does he try. In spectacular and spectacularly clever, over-the-top fashion.

So far I've left out the details of the first two books, because A) I expect if you're here wanting a review of RoT, you've already read the first two, and B) because, at the end of the day, despite my disappointment with RoT, I'm hopeful later books will rectify it, and so I'd love you to pick up Lies if you haven't read it.

But here be spoilers for Republic. Stop reading now if you haven't read it.

...

...

...

Okay, first issue: Sabetha has been built up for two books, a mystery woman who looms larger than life over Locke, and it's clear he worships her.

Why the fuck why?

Seriously, that's my question. Is she strong, independent, ambitious, and smart? Yes. She's also self-centered and selfish, plagued by bizarre insecurities, and incapable of considering Locke's feelings in any matters concerning her. Look, either let the guy down permanently and don't lead him on (and don't misuse his deep love for you to, I don't know, POISON HIM), or make a commitment. Have you ever seen a flightier character? The slightest reason to go running from him and she's gone. "Ack! Locke is only interested in me for my red hair! He's the least shallow person I know and has spent years devoted to me but ACK! It can only be for my hair!" Or here's another, in case you think I'm trotting out teen Sabetha unfairly: "Gasp! He may or may not have been a bondsmage in the past who lost his memory but still has some buried love for a deceased red-haired wife and, while I have no evidence but a shifty bondsmage's tale, I shall leave him after at last having passionate coitus! The ultimate sock-it-to-the-balls!"

Please insert multiple other accounts between the years Sabetha was a snotty, self-centered teenager and when she was a self-centered grown-ass woman who should have gained some perspective. If she had changed over the years, I could've gone along with her treatment of Locke when they were young, because we're all stupid between the ages of 13 and 18. But she hasn't changed, and while she constantly demands Locke see things her way and apologize for shit he hasn't even done, she never stops to consider his point of view or his feelings.

I could go on about Sabetha, but let's stop here. Sadly, I think Patience's prophecy in the final section alludes to her becoming pregnant. If so, I will be even more disappointed because two very intelligent characters who understand that their chosen lifestyles are dangerous have had unprotected sex. Come on.

Next issue: Flashbacks are somewhat annoying and almost always add nothing to the plot. So they are here. Cut all the play stuff from the flashbacks and the reader would still understand the dynamic of the Locke/Sabetha relationship. While little was said about it in earlier books, there's enough to go on. The flashbacks to their youth felt like filler.

Which means there wasn't enough meat on the bone for the current storyline.

Lies and Red Seas both had twisty plots that I scrambled to keep up with, and I marveled at the intelligence of Locke (and so, Mr. Lynch). Republic feels like two parties slinging stones at each other across a field. I never quite bought that their actions were in order to secure election wins. If you look at modern-day elections, there's quite a bit of mudslinging and bending the truth and secret deals coming to light and scandal, scandal, scandal, not to mention that it's clear what the parties stand for. I never understood the difference between the Deep Roots and the Black Iris parties; they seemed to be mostly a stage for Locke and Sabetha to work out their relationship. Which, as it turns out, never happens.

Harmless alchemical smoke bombing of party headquarters? Rousting of spies? Bureaucratic annoyances? *yawn* The closest we came to real intrigue was Sabetha's use of Nikoros's addiction to infiltrate Locke and Jean's inner circle.

Last issue: Patience's reveal of Locke (maybe, possibly, if you squint and want to believe it) as a bondsmage with extraordinary power and talent, who fucked things up and has now re-homed his soul, as it were, in another body. I adored Locke from the first book because he was nothing special at first glance: he's short, kinda thin, undistinguished brown hair and eyes. He looks like an average Joe, maybe less than an average Joe. There's no tall, strikingly handsome, broad-shoulder thief with a mouth full of blindingly white teeth here. No movie star. He's not even a Luke Skywalker, who looks like an average guy but who apparently has a midi-chlorian count that's off the charts, dude, due to his impossibly powerful parentage.

And so, any one of us could be a Locke Lamora. We can rise above our current station merely on brains alone!

But what if Locke isn't just some average guy with determination and smarts? What if he's actually a powerful bondsmage?

I liked it when Locke and Jean defeated the Falconer on their own terms. I liked their non-magical solution to, essentially, tethering the motherfucker. Good stuff. Go, Team Muggle!

Now it's like Locke just got his letter to Hogwarts, and so he isn't one of us, after all.

Le sigh.

While I have some major issues with Republic, I can say I immediately felt at home upon the first page, for Lynch has a straight-forward, engaging writing style, and one comes to the Locke books for, among many other things, the colorful banter (at which he excels) and well-drawn characters. Jean, for example, is still not just the muscle but the heart of the duo, and remains as intelligent as ever. And Lynch's worlds, so different in each books, are fascinatingly immersive.

And then there's that last part, in which we find out the Falconer is ambulatory once again.

Now we're set for a great fourth book.

Do I hope for less Sabetha and a Locke returned to form? You bet.

*

The second disappointing read, which I referred to many thousands of words ago above, will be deferred until tomorrow. I feel drained after having vented my frustration with Republic. But let me say this: I read a lot of books. For one to inspire me to this level of frustration, while making me desperately wish for the next book now, it can't be all bad. I still recommend The Lies of Locke Lamora to those who've never heard of it with all my heart.

Reviews: Lindqvist's Horror Short Story "Itsy Bitsy;" SF classic "Flowers for Algernon"

As far as vampire books and movies go, nothing can touch the cold, brutal elegance of Let the Right One In. With Halloween around the corner, I may have to watch it again (the Swedish version; I hear the American film is quite good as well but I'm not interested). In the meantime, author John Alvide Lindqvist has a free horror short story available, Itsy Bitsy.

Frank is a paparazzi photographer intent on getting a debt-clearing photo of an actress and her  secret boyfriend. To this end, he's set up camp in a tree on the property beside theirs, with his camera trained on their pool area. When the elusive couple finally appears, Frank clicks away. The results are not what he expected, and when he returns to the spot to figure out what happened, he finds that he was not the only one waiting for someone to come to the pool.

I read reviews before I buy. While I try to avoid spoilers, in this case, it was the lack of spoilers which threw me -- not well reviewed, most readers found the story vague and confusing, and often said they had no idea what happened at the ending or what it meant.

I decided, hey, it's free, and Lindqvist's style and imagination appeal to me, so I'll give it a shot. That said, if I had gone in without reading reviews, I would have figured out what was going to happen by the middle. Instead, I thought that I must be wrong, and I waited for the inevitable cloud of doom to descend on the ending.

While I can't speak for everyone, obviously, let me say this -- the ending is not ambiguous. Lindqvist laid the groundwork and left clues all along, and while the requisite horror "monster" in this case is completely strange and somewhat amorphous, it's just what he puts on the page.

Was I horrified? Not really. The last horror book to electrify me was Hill's Heart-Shaped Box. That's a pretty high bar. But I was quite fascinated and, truly, felt tension and dread at Frank's demise. In addition, the style is fantastic (I'm starting to believe all Swedish writers have a terrifically crisp style that turns words and phrases on their heads) and the pace is brisk. It's not bad, it's a quick read, and it's free. Get it.

*

Flowers for Algernon is often called science fiction (sure, sure, I can see it), but it's far more potent as an allegory for man's search for knowledge. To that end, Keyes often clubs the reader over the head with references to the Biblical Garden of Eden, characters in the university's science department who are arrogant and cold (and therefore destined to fail), and Charlie's own insistence on being seen as a real person. Despite that, Keyes has written an astoundingly powerful and clean, subtle story arc that delivers the message and leaves the reader transformed and emotionally wrecked.



Yes, I was a wreck when Flowers ended. All along, Keyes kept me uncomfortably glued to the page, with scene after scene of the awful, joking treatment that Charlie receives at the hands of his "friends" in the bakery or the distant repugnance he's handled with by the professors at the university where he receives experimental surgery to turn him into a genius. Deft and knowing, Keyes exploits our fears of the mentally retarded, our feelings of superiority, and puts us squarely in Charlie's place. And when Charlie's intelligence grows--past the point where it can be measured--he is once again beyond the realm of understanding, and left alone, by himself, to bear the brunt of fear and hostile jealousies.

Charlie's humanity is apparent throughout, and his struggle to understand, in an extremely short amount of time, what has happened to him not just after the surgery but during his entire life, is compelling. With flashbacks to a tortured, misunderstood childhood and present-day fumblings with women, he is a fully-rounded character like no other in fiction.

I'll make the assumption that everyone, even if you haven't read it, knows Charlie's and Algernon's stories. But that's no reason not to read this; while I felt Buck's Pavilion of Women was thought-provoking (see my previous review), Flowers far outstrips it and packs a wallop of an emotional punch, as well.

                         

Review: Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck

 After a year and a half reading drought, broken only by spots of tortured page-turning, I've been on a reading roll. Four books in two weeks.

It's hard to say which has been the best of the lot, but certainly Pearl S. Buck's Pavilion of Women has provided some of the most engrossing and thought-provoking reading. The story of a woman in China in the early 1900s, it traces the spiritual growth resulting from her fortieth birthday decision to no longer engage in sex with her husband, but to instead move to a building in their compound and live a "peaceful" life. She buys a concubine for her husband to take her place in bed (a decision which, even then, was somewhat shocking). Additionally, she's a bit of a meddler, and wants to see all of her four sons married and producing children. To this end, she hires a foreign tutor for one of her sons, in order that he might become more attractive in the eyes of a "modern" Chinese woman. Of course none of her carefully planned and orchestrated decisions turns out as she might wish, as the emotional lives of people are far more complicated than the cool reserve she herself portrays.

I must admit that the description of Madame Wu initially put me off. It was as if she was made of marble, perfect in every way, and her husband's vision of her as some sort of goddess seemed appropriate--for she barely seemed human. This must be Buck's intent, to create a chasm between the reader and Madame Wu, for our confusion in not understanding this woman is certainly, at last, reflected in the journey that Madame Wu must take as she realizes she does not understand her own heart.

Artfully done, the progression of a woman learning her own heart and mind, and finding love unexpectedly, is as delicate and lush as a Chinese brushstroke painting. As her understanding unfolds amidst the growing chaos of her coldly manipulated family, she is taken from tragedy to spiritual heights that most of us would envy. In the end, that is the only real complaint I've got with Pavilion of Women: Madame Wu, at the finish, approaches once again the marble perfection of the early section, making her distant from we readers, so far from emotional and spiritual divineness ourselves.

On the other hand, the changing philosophies on the page challenged me to consider my own notions of love, to broaden the parameters of my compassion, and to see the world through another's eyes--which last might, ultimately, be Buck's intent after all.

If this makes it sound as if Pavilion is a meandering philosophical read, far from it. Filled with dramatic events large and small and a cast of well-drawn characters, not to mention exquisite writing, Pavilion is a page-turner. And I found myself constantly thinking of Madame Wu throughout the day when I could not read. Even now, two weeks after having finished it, the book lingers in my mind, and that is the hallmark of something truly wonderful.


*

I'm finishing Flowers for Algernon today, and it's filled my mind with more questions and considerations than, perhaps, Pavilion, though of an entirely different kind. My thoughts on that book tomorrow. And if you've now got the impression that I'm only reading last century's classic fiction, fear not: I read two dystopian YA novels in between, and they were DA BOMB. No review? Ah, well, they are the first two of a trilogy, with the third coming out the end of October. I will not praise them to the heavens only to have you find out, tragically, that you must wait for the third -- because trust me, when I went to download the third book and realized it wasn't available, there was much weeping and pulling of hair and storming about the room.

So, Flowers will be finished tonight. After, of course, my yearly trip to the Ren Fest! Assuming I'll be in a state to read after having had more than my fill of pumpkin beer. :)

Review: LoveStar by Andri Snaer Magnason

I picked up LoveStar almost entirely because of its cover.

It's been a long time, I admit, since I've been in a bookstore. Amazon is easier, cheaper, and my wishlist is filled with recommendations of others. It's how I find new books now. But I used to go to bookstores, browse the shelves, pull whatever intrigued me, and this is the test: open to the center. Read a page or two. Is the urge to continue reading powerful? Yes? Get it!

Later, coming upon those two pages read in the bookstore, it's like meeting an old friend again. No. More like someone you shared a glance with, exchanged smiles, maybe you thought you had something in common. Perhaps it turned out to be true. Perhaps it was true love. Perhaps it was death.

LoveStar turned out to be shocking, puffin-sandwich true love. But now it's over, and in the cold light of day, I will tell you this:

You can only read this book for the first time once. Then you will be like me, reeling and wanting desperately to talk with someone about it, to ask them, If you were calculated, would you go to Iceland to meet them under the falling blaze of bodies-turned-comets? Would you sleep inside the wolf? What could make you howl, how much would it take?

LoveStar is traveling to his destination with a seed in his hand. Meanwhile, Indridi and Sigrid are cracking like the earth, their "love" only temporary and put to the test by the arrival of a letter. In a world where birdwaves have made us all cordless and yet more tethered than ever more, where butterflies and plague-flies monitor our every move, and every second of our lives is choreographed by moodmen, what is the meaning of freedom?

LoveStar presents a somewhat harrowing view of our future as it peels back layer after layer of the inevitable outcome of our insatiable curiosity and need to control everything. Moments of clarity chilled me to the bone, as ad campaigns reached sinister heights and the genetic manipulation of family pets became a money-making scheme, despite the savagery of the "pets." The reader undoubtedly will recognize major corporations and the seamless integration they've already achieved in our lives.

Morality tale? Cautionary tale? Bizarro fiction? LoveStar is specfic on speed, a philosopher's nightmare, and the most engaging thing I've read in a long time.

Fafnir, Orm, and "The Long Ships"

Fafnir Leaves Home (Temporarily)

It's the sad dragon who guards the gold of men, sighed Fafnir's mother.

"Well, what would you like me to do? Go about burning villages and battling noble knights?"

"Exactly. That's what your father would've done."

"Oh, and that worked out so well for him." Fafnir mimed getting stabbed in the breast with an immense sword.

"Do not talk of your father like that! He—He—" Fafnir's mother began to sob, her tears sizzling on the rocky floor.

Fafnir squirmed in discomfort.

She cried louder.

"Fine, Mother. I'll go out. I'll... I'll steal a princess or something, all right? Just stop crying."

Fafnir's mother lifted her red-scaled head. "Oh, Fafnir! Would you do that for me?"

So Fafnir slithered out of his mother's cave, with her words of encouragement at his back. How proud his father would be! How much glory to the name of dragon would he bring! And if the princess was single, how much the better!

Still, as he rose into the sky on leathern wings, the fire in his belly tumbled about with sullenness. It had been warm inside the cave, and outside it was all gray clouds and snow-capped pine trees, and soon, angry, shouting Norsemen.

One princess, he told himself. One, and he'd go back home and she'd be quiet for a year.

Just one.

*

Fafnir has exactly one mention, in a single sentence, in the epic "The Long Ships" by Frans G. Bengtsson. It's near the end, and I do think they should've put more dragons in, earlier. Not that I was not entirely charmed by brave Orm, but more dragons never hurt.

"The Long Ships" details Orm's journeys as he goes a-Viking throughout much of Scandinavia, brutally slaying men and making up poetry on the spot, both of which are things I am incapable of, so I found much to admire. He serves exotic lords and becomes lovesick and then, further, refuses to take the birch to his wife. He carries a little priest beneath his arm. His hounds are enormous, his luck unusually good, and the slightest cough or scratch will make him take to his bed and mourn his impending death -- multiple times.

Throw in a best friend who, frankly, can't handle his liquor, treasures and ransoms aplenty, and every page chock-full of humorous reminders that people never change, and you've got a stellar account of life a thousand years ago.

For a tale written in the 1940s about a man who lived about a thousand years ago, this book is incredibly fresh and witty. I love, love, loved it.

Thanks much to A, who sent it to me after I asked what it means to be Swedish. I want to send back a book that might say what it means to be American, but I'm not sure that can be easily pinned down. My thoughts initially ran to Flanner O'Connor or Eudora Welty, but that might be the America of a different time and place.

At any rate, if you're looking for a great book to completely envelop you in 2013, you can't do better than "The Long Ships."