Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

The Halloween Moon

The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink (Welcome to Nightvale, Alice Isn’t Dead) is a middle grade fiction tale about a single Halloween night that takes a very long time. It was reminiscent to me of The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury in that same spirit of a spooky book for young readers that really does its best to celebrate being young. I actually went back and reread The Halloween Tree after reading The Halloween Moon because of it. The main plot concerns Esther Gold, a young Jewish girl in a gentile town who in many ways feels separate and has a ….gentle sprinkling of bullying and being ostracized, while delicately skirting over the heavy implications of references to her Judaism being an alienating force in the town. Esther finds solace and acceptance through her love of Halloween. She wins the school costume competitions every year, knows the best horror movies, and pins much of her personality on her love of Halloween, this community activity which she more or less brings her visibility to her classmates. Of course there is an actual Queen of Halloween who isn’t particularly pleasant and Esther’s parents have issued the challenge that she is now too old to go trick or treating. This is a very sweet, shorter novel for young adults about losing those elements of childhood that once defined you, as you instead learn to define yourself. I think, in a child-friendly way, without slapping you over the head, it gets to the root of why so many people gravitate toward horror and fantasy and science fiction under circumstances of feeling separate and ill defined within the ominously beige ‘larger society’, and frames how overcoming those demarcated lines is a part of growing up.

Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

Aristotle and Dante and the Waters of the World

Oh boy.

I’ve made some edits to this review because I feel like I didn’t do it justice, but also because it’s a story that I keep coming back to mentally. I tend to get hooked by certain lines and passages in things, and I cannot underscore enough how beautifully written this book is.

As I have come to expect of Benjamin Alire Sáenz, it is beautifully written. His dialogue is almost foreign to me in how tender it is. His characters have a way of showing emotion so strongly through their prose that you almost forget that they struggle to communicate effectively with one another. It seems frustrating that Ari, who writes in his diary or pushes to understand others so empathetically and offer forgiveness and understanding, is someone who in his world is accused of being a delinquent. He is a fighter, that’s there, but that’s so tertiary to who he is and that is such a remnant of who he thought he had to be.

It says something so devastating about the treatment of Hispanic men and Hispanic people that this vibrant inner world means nothing on a surface level, unless Ari pushes against type and opens himself to others. And even then, there are racist characters, homophobic characters, who no matter the effort Ari makes or who he is, who the reader knows him to be, it doesn’t matter. This could easily be a story of discouragement that focuses on those interactions.

Ari’s efforts to meet his brother, to repair a meaningful relationship with his father, to confront his ideas of manhood and masculinity, is full of setbacks and tragedy and I found myself drawn to those storylines the most strongly. Yet, this is still a love story. This is the perspective of a boy in high school, who despite these very adult confrontations of masculinity and familial pain, is also navigating his first relationship.

I was a little dissatisfied with the ending. It seemed too romantic to me, less grounded in reality like much of the book is. Ari engages in this gesture to show his love for Dante, but I didn’t know that Dante had earned it. I had reservations about his behavior toward Ari, rooted in not having that same insight into his inner world as the reader has to Ari’s. Ari, however, is able to see through that. By the nature of his own experience and treatment, knowing who he is versus knowing who he is to other people, Ari continues to take the risk of reaching out.

How often does a queer story get to end romantically? How many examples are there, really, of a big, showy, romantic gesture in queer media? I think we worry that it’s cringe. That it’s too loud, that people will see us. The fact I was deeply invested in Ari’s relationship with his father and masculinity, with his brother and letting go, knowing when to let go of toxicity, more than I was Ari’s relationship with Dante, says something about me and the age that I am at—-it doesn’t say anything about the necessity of stories like this. How often are Hispanic men allowed a romantic ending with another man? I cannot imagine the pressure of writing this book. 

Making an effort to post a book review every Friday!

The City We Became

The City We Became by NK Jemisin (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Inheritance Trilogy) is the first of her Great Cities series in progress and it’s been a long road between it and I. I loved this book, I did, but I struggled with this book, taking longer to read than usual, and it is my own fault. I got too attached to particular characters. I more or less proved its thesis.

The City We Became begins with Sao Paulo informing the avatar of New York City that he is soon to become the embodiment of New York City Itself, under threat by an interdimensional, existential, eldritch horror—and in order to evade said threat as the city is birthed, Sao Paulo is here to act as midwife. All cities, all great Cities, eventually develop this pulse, this living embodiment, that becomes a protective factor for all of its citizens. Naturally, under cosmic threat, the birthing is not without incident. New York City, a queer black homeless young man, is incapacitated by an attack. The five Burroughs, in an attempt to save their city, in turn birth their own avatars, in the hopes of coming together to save the primary and New York itself. These five unlikely characters, each representing the spirit and character of a particular place, are forced into fighting eldritch horrors and confronting their own cultural and personal biases, examining both how the cultural make up and flavor of New York works for and against itself. This story is beautiful. 

By the end I loved each character or at least understood their perspective.

Manny I got instantaneously. Staten Island, yeah, I got right away just the sort of person she is, for better or worse. The queen of Queens, Padmini Prakash, I felt like was a love letter. I have known people like Brooklyn Tomasin and I like them. I had to reread sections with Bronca Siwanoy, the Bronx, a few times. It wasn’t that she was dense, it was that her character was the most different. This story is detailed, and those details are important to the characterization of the city itself, and I found myself not wanting to misunderstand anything. Bronca ultimately stood out to me the most. A queer Lenape woman in her 60s, Bronca  I had the hardest time visualizing her in my head. I found myself backtracking and trying to understand her better.

I’ve worked in museums and art houses. That’s not a brag. If you’ve been done it, you know it’s not a brag. I know people, technically, similar to Bronca yet I had to really consider who she was to appreciate her better.

Despite taking my time with it, I was very excited about this book. I told people about this book. I told people I was wrestling this book. It makes so many bold decisions, the best of which are to know when to excise someone toxic and elevate others in your plot. By the ending, I was very much happy with the characters who came together and how they did so. And Manny, who I was too attached to for probably person reasons I should reflect on, actually had me cheering. I don’t…I’m not a person who does that, you understand.

The narrative is broken between large chapters of each character’s perspective and the story is very much about how these characters live, their personalities, their way of handling problems, and their coming together. It is a story that culminates not just in battle with eldritch horrors but primarily in understanding between the characters.

And I’ve skirted over one of my favorite elements of this book, but because the chapters are so divided amongst characters, the most consistent presence, who you spend the most time with as a reader, is the The Enemy; the Woman in White, Dr. White, various fungal appendages, x-wing spider monsters, or whatever form she takes—she’s funny. She’s charismatic. It’s not us, it’s her; she’s just doing her job here, man.

Making an effort to post a book review every Friday!

Alice Isn’t Dead

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink  (Welcome to Nightvale, The Halloween Moon,) is a book I struggled with.

But don’t let that first line fool you. It’s not often I struggle with a book. It doesn’t mean anything negative so much as it means I needed to take time with it.

I didn’t listen to the podcast beforehand though it has been one of those things on my to do list for ages; I tend to get too overwhelmed by a podcast’s backlog that when someone suggests a new podcast to me I say ‘oh hot Jesus Christ I have ten solid days of material to work through before I can feel mildly competent talking about this with another human’ and I rarely have ten days to floss consistently let alone p’dcast.

The Alice Isn’t Dead podcast is by Fink and features amazing voicework by the lovely Jasika Nicole. I like Joseph Fink’s writing style, I like his humor, I thought I could read this book going in blind without the emotional hook of time already invested. But as someone who reads very quickly, this book took me weeks to read. I took breaks from this book to read other things. That may be normal for a sane person, but not I. And it comes down to narrative structure.

I like this book. I enjoy the characterization, voice, pacing, forced, stilted nature of some of the interactions. There’s a certain terse quality to Keisha, our heroine, who is struggling with anxiety while under threat. There is nothing disingenuous about Keisha’s anxiety, no false starts, it isn’t until the midpoint of the book that she discusses an earlier road trip that hints at the severity of her anxiety prior to her current circumstances. And that’s enormous, that’s a huge reflection of how anxiety functions. People with anxiety do well under threat. So from Keisha’s perspective, her frustration with Alice is very justified. Alice abandons Keisha under the belief that Keisha won’t be able to handle the circumstances Alice has found herself in; Keisha’s anger is well earned. Later in the book after the two reunite, Keisha makes a point to say that she is the one who saved Alice’s life and for Alice to remember that the next time she tries to justify leaving Keisha behind. It was a moment where I really appreciated Keisha’s development throughout the story.

And I appreciate heartily as someone with anxiety, Keisha’s voice as a character. I thought at first, well maybe that’s it. Maybe this is cutting a little close to home and the overall miasma of anxiety is why I can’t just plug my way through this book.

But no. So here’s what Joseph Fink taught me about myself with Alice Isn’t Dead.

Fink does something many writers do, particularly in science fiction, of shifting narrative focus, but he does it without shifting perspective very often. The story is told primarily by Keisha, but Keisha spends the majority of her time alone. By the nature and loneliness of being on the road by yourself, on a quest that is perpetually undermined, her mind wanders. The story shifts between short blurbs of backstory pieces as Keisha thinks on her relationship and history with Alice, it jumps to the present with the fast paced action of battles with Thistle Men, it transitions into investigation and Keisha’s development as she becomes more and more embroiled in the mystery of why her wife has faked her own death.

Fink is absolutely correct, it’s not a story, it’s a road trip. The shifting of Keisha’s focus, from trying to remind herself of the better times she has had, to dealing with the present threat, between action and periods of inaction building to oh-no-action,-fuck, feels very anxious and relatable. It is great for characterization and tone and it’s very intelligently done. But the narrative thread feels frayed, and as someone with difficulty attending to hours of p’dcast, it was difficult for me to be immersed in the material. I would read, put it down, do other things, go back, reread at times, put it down, do other things, because the thread that binds a story together, that driving push of forward action, was anxious and lonely in nature. There are few consistent characters for Keisha to interact with so it is difficult for her to have a strong foothold in the real world.

Science Fiction does this, it’s a common staple to switch between time or perspective, but similar to when I read The City We Became by NK Jemisen, I had a difficult time propelling myself through the book because this is a character driven story written as world building. (That’s very literally the point of The City We Became, and I love that book for it). Alice Isn’t Dead is a character driven story written as a noir-science fiction hybrid.

I love this book. The more that I think about it, the more I love this book. It is beautifully, lovingly written; it creates presence, it gives weight and depth. This is a wonderfully crafted story—and reading it made me want to pull my teeth out. I think that’s a compliment.

Making an effort to post a book review every Friday!

The Wolf and the Woodsman

The Wolf and the Woodsman is the debut novel for Ava Reid and I…..I gotta be totally honest with you, this was an impulse purchase of $1. I knew nothing about it and said ‘hey, I’ve spent a dollar on worse things.’

Which maybe isn’t the most flattering way to start a review of a charming story that uses a number of fantasy tropes in order to pull in an audience and then begins to bluntly address religious oppression. I found this book to be a very nice surprise, perhaps aided by how blindly I went into it.

I like this story because I felt it didn’t pull punches. Everyone is somewhat horrible to each other, each group is mired in flaws with outstanding character exceptions.

The fantasy world building is very strongly woven into narrative and plays into a large number of popular fantasy tropes, especially romantic tropes between the titular Wolf-girl, a pagan analogue, and Woodsman, a paladin figure reminiscent of the strict behavioral code of Knights Templar.  The reliance on tropes could be seen as a criticism; I could see a certain demographic brushing this story off as heavy handed young adult fiction, but the story abruptly changed form, for me, as the Yehuli, an analogue for Jewish citizens in Europe, are introduced and explored.

The Yehuli stand in contrast to the Patritian (Christian) and Wolf people/Juuvi/ others mentioned in passing (Pagan) religions.

The fact that each religion explicitly has its own forms of accessing a seemingly universal magic is one of the highlights of the book’s message. The treatment of oral versus book versus nature based religion is fairly well explained and demonstrated. The diversity of characters, the politics that govern the conflict of the story, are refreshingly not limited to two camps but across several social groups which each have their own social structures.  Overall, I felt the book handled what could have been an easily bungled and lofty goal rather delicately. The action sequences and pace of the story is satisfying so that despite being over 400 pages, it’s a quick read.