Stayed home from work today, not because anything was wrong with me but because my son was sick, and he spent the day asleep, so I spent the day sitting around and feeling vaguely guilty for no Goddamned reason at all except that I’m a teacher and apparently I’m supposed to prioritize other people’s kids over my own, I guess.
Meanwhile, the world is visibly ending in about twelve different ways, and this is really starting to feel like the run-up to Katrina, where it was plainly obvious to anyone paying attention that New Orleans was about to be wiped off the map and that didn’t seem to be nearly as frightening to most people as it ought to be. This thing’s going to be a fucking monster, and if you’re anywhere in central Florida, please swallow your ego and get the hell out of town. Unless you used to be President, in which case, please drive west.
I’m gonna vote tomorrow. I’m gonna vote, and then my role, at least, in at least one of the impending apocalypses will be done. Then maybe I’ll drink myself into a coma until the second week of November and see what’s still left of America.
And now the third review in a row of a book I got sent as a free ARC, thus discharging all of my current review obligations. I feel kind of bad about how long it took me to get to this; I didn’t get a release date when they sent me the book, and I put it on a sort of mental “find out when this is coming out” list, only to discover it had already been released when they sent it to me. So this is not timely; my apologies.
This is a hell of a concept for an anthology, really; the back cover describes it as “a hopeful, empowering science fiction anthology filled with own-voices stories from neurodivergent creators”– in other words, stories about neurodivergent people encountering aliens, written by people who are themselves neurodivergent but presumably have not encountered aliens. I find the word “neurodiversiverse” immensely fun to say, and while anthologies aren’t always my thing, there are certainly some gems to be found in here. Cat Rambo’s Scary Monsters, Super Creeps is about a young woman with an anxiety disorder who discovers it gives her superpowers, and Ada Hoffman’s Music, Not Words is about an autistic girl who is the first contact for an alien race.
Most of the authors in the collection are people I’m not familiar with, though; I sort of jumped around rather than reading the collection straight through (how do people usually read anthologies? Is that weird?) and Lauren D. Fulter’s The Cow Test is probably the standout of the rest of the anthology, for me at least. It involves cows. It’s a short story, I’m not spoiling the details. 🙂 There are art pieces and poetry as well. Some of the aspects of neurodivergence that get explored here are really interesting; Jody Lynn Nye’s A Hint of Color is about synesthesia, for example, and Keiko O’Leary’s Close Encounter In the Public Bathroom is the only poem I’ve ever read that combines being about OCD and aliens.
No, seriously, this anthology made me recommend a poem. That’s worth picking up, right?
It’s possible that my review of this book is going to be slightly unfair.Rumor Has It is the third volume of Cat Rambo’s excellent Disco Space Opera series, which started with You Sexy Thing and continued with Devil’s Gun. It’s also the third volume that their publisher has been nice enough to send me an ARC of. Cat actually lives in South Bend, and they did a reading at my local Barnes and Noble last weekend, and unfortunately I didn’t find out about it until about an hour beforehand. I reviewed both of the first two books, and I’m a big fan of the series.
… which I thought was a trilogy, and I read the first 2/3 of Rumor Has It under that assumption, and only when I realized that there were not remotely enough pages left to wrap up the storyline did I Google around a bit and discover that nobody was calling it a trilogy. I currently have no idea how many books are planned in the series, as I can’t find that information anywhere; it’s possible that it’s meant to be open-ended. Ordinarily the idea that there was going to be more of something I liked is good news, but reading it with an ending in mind kinda screwed up my perception of the story. Also, while “the secret ingredient is intrigue” is a perfectly cromulent tagline for a book about a group of mercenaries turned interstellar restauranteurs, the secret ingredient is not intrigue. The secret ingredient is phone:
Every time and I mean every time I picked up the book, I heard Krieger’s voice in my head.
So here’s the thing: this book still has all of the strengths I talked about in my reviews of You Sexy Thing and Devil’s Gun. Rambo’s writing is punchy and funny, the characters are absolutely unforgettable, and the basic premise, elevator-pitched as Farscape meets The Great British Baking Show, is absolutely packed with flavor potential.
Unfortunately, it also has the weakness of the second book, which I referred to as “one of the most second-booky second books I’ve ever read.” The good bits are still good, but the overall story really isn’t advanced at all in Rumor Has It, and the book suffers from both being (remaining?) incomprehensible if you haven’t read the first two and it’s also quite wheel-spinny in a way that Devil’s Gun wasn’t. The characters spend the entire book at a single space station trying to drum up some money, and while that space station is cool, if you could have replaced the whole book with the ultra-rich owner of the intelligent bioship they’re riding around in simply cutting them a check, you have a bit of a problem. Some character arcs get advanced a bit, but what felt like the most important character storyline of the book ends up literally being nothing worth worrying about at the end. The big villain has now spent two entire books entirely offstage. I genuinely don’t even remember why they’re mad at him at this point.
(Okay, he sort of shows up. But not really, and going into further detail would be a spoiler, so I won’t do that.)
Anyway, what this leads to is that for the second book in a row I’m writing the phrase “It’s not a bad book, but …” about something I wanted to like more. Again, the strengths of the series are still here, and even if I don’t get sent an ARC I’m spending money on the fourth book. I’m invested, there’s no doubt about that, and it’s possible that had I realized that the series wasn’t coming to an end with this novel I’d have more positive feelings about it. But right now the entire book kind of feels like a subplot that went on for too long, and I’m really hoping the fourth book slaps the status quo around a little bit more. You Sexy Thing still retains my full-throated support, and you should pick this up if you’re into the series already, but know what you’re getting into before you start reading.
You might remember a post about some new shoes I ordered a couple of weeks ago, and how before the shoes had even been shipped much less arrived in my home the company was hassling me about becoming a “brand ambassador” for them, to the point where I eventually dropped the name of their company into my spam filter.
Well, they have committed two additional sins since then: first, the shoes shipped directly from China, which, well, I’m fully aware that a number of the goods I use on a daily basis originated there, but each and every time I’ve gotten a tracking number and it’s been from a Chinese shipping company I’ve had to brace myself to either receive nothing at all or to get a piece of fucking junk. I’m fairly sure that’s been a literally universal experience. Every single time.
Then I did something I really should have done before ordering the shoes, and Googledreviews of the company, and to put it charitably they are utter shit. I have got to learn how to deal with any new company that I’ve never ordered anything from online; I’ve gotten caught up in stupid shit too damn many times at this point and I’m too old to be this Goddamn dumb.
Today, the shoes showed up. These fuckers didn’t even put the shoes in shoeboxes. There are literally four shoes wrapped up in a polybag and taped up.
I’m not even opening the packaging; I’ve already initiated the return. It’s gonna cost me a few bucks to ship them back and I’m anticipating additional bullshit once they receive them (the refund is apparently contingent upon “inspection” of the product once the return center, which is in Utah, receives it) but I feel like “the package was literally never even opened and I’m returning these because I hate you” is about as ironclad a reason to return something as I can give them. If I didn’t open the damn package, it’s hard to suggest I ruined the shoes.
So, yeah. Fuck Gatsby Shoes. Don’t give them your money or your email address. That’s me being a brand ambassador right there.
I remain open for actual brand ambassadorship if Kizikdecides they need a fat Internet guy to hawk their shoes, though.
I was hoping to have another book review ready for you today, but in order to have that written I’d have to have finished the book, and instead I’m maybe 40% of the way through it. Today was an eleven-hour day since I had to stick around to help out with a soccer game, and so I’m certainly not going to be finishing the book before writing a post, which sort of leaves me without a ton of material.
.. and my computer’s just informed me that it’s going to restart in 45 seconds to install system updates, so … see you tomorrow? Sure.
I was sent author Micki Janae’s debut novel Of Blood and Lightning by her publisher in exchange for a review. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while now, mostly because I wanted the review to come out close to release date and the book comes out next Tuesday. I felt like it was going to be right up my alley based on the description I got. And any time the cover of a book features a young Black woman holding a sword, I’m gonna pay attention. The blurbs about Micki Janae make it clear that a big part of the reason she wrote this book is she wanted to see representation of Black people and specifically Black girls in fantasy, and I absolutely, wholeheartedly support that goal.
The problem is the book really needs some more time to cook. Don’t misunderstand me; I know I was sent an uncorrected proof, and I’m not talking about, like, grammar errors or typos or the occasional clunky sentence. There aren’t that many to begin with, and “uncorrected proof” means uncorrected proof, and I’m not holding that against the book. No, this needs structural edits. Story-level edits. Big chunks of it need to be either beefed up or rethought entirely, and especially for something that boasts of the worldbuilding on the back of the ARC, I feel like a lot more thought needs to be put into the book’s basic premise.
And that’s all very general, I know, and it’s entirely possible that one of the problems is a me problem, which is that Micki Janae didn’t write the book I wanted her to write, or at least the book I wanted to read. And I don’t really like criticizing books for not being different books.
The problem is that my specific gripes about this book are probably not gripes that a white guy has any real business making about a book about a Black girl written by a Black woman. Particularly when it’s not like anyone is sending my books to her for review. And I think that rather than sticking my hand into the buzzsaw that that conversation could very well turn into, I’m going to refrain from going into details.
Of Blood and Lightning is not a bad book. But there’s a much better book hiding inside it, and I feel like it’s a missed opportunity, particularly in a world where Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn or Ladarrion Williams’ Blood at the Root exist, or, perhaps, a certain Greek mythology-themed megaseries that is already dominating the YA fantasy market. If you read those books already and you’re looking for more, or if you’ve got a young person in your life who you think might enjoy a book about a young Black woman who inherits the powers of Zeus, well, pick it up. I’d be happy to see this book be successful! I really would! I just wish I could be more enthusiastic about it.
Realistically, the Book of the Month has got to be Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, but if you wanted something that wasn’t insanely, unbearably depressing we could go with S.A. Maclean’s The Phoenix Keeper instead.
I would not have guessed that I read this much in September, to be honest.
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