Edgar's Book Round-Up: September-October
In the immortal words of my father confessor: “Another day gone; another day closer to death.” We won’t know the final results of last night’s referendum on who gets what rights where in the US for a while here, though Missouri has committed to another several years of mediocrity with our international embarrassment of a governor. But the work continues, and we try to make things better where we can (and since you’re here, consider directing some time and attention this way, too) — and when we can’t do that, we distract ourselves!
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Picking up where my last round-up left off: Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth was billed to me at one point as “lesbian necromancers in space,” and if that description sounds as good to you as it did to me, you too will enjoy it as thoroughly as I did. Balancing an aesthetic that blends the best of the gothy end of ‘70s sci-fi art, stuff you paint on the side of vans, and every meme about the Skeleton War with a lead character who is basically just the girl version of an ‘80s Kurt Russell character, Gideon the Ninth follows the title character, an orphan brought up in the sepulchral Ninth World, as she and the greatest necromancer of the Ninth are dispatched to compete against seven other necromancers and their bodyguards to become (basically) a necro-god. It is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
Here’s Edward Miller’s cover wrap for the Subterranean Press edition, which is fine but doesn’t have enough skeletons.
But as anyone who’s encountered Doom Patrol can tell you, ridiculous becomes transcendent when you commit — and Muir is very committed. Full of sword fights, dumb jokes, and zillions of fucking skeletons, Jesus fucking Christ, Gideon the Ninth is as well-crafted as it is fun. The characters are closely observed, and Gideon’s internal experience played perfectly against the perceptions others have of her, often to comedic effect; the plot is twisty and gripping. I’ve been yelling at everyone I know about this one basically since I read it — and when I’m that enthusiastic about something, I’m usually right. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, which I have on hold at the library.
As an aside, all but one item in this round-up I experienced through the Libby app from my local library, and, once again, I strongly encourage the broke and bored to get on that shit. It’s a life-saver.
The English first-edition cover, from here. The link also has images of the interiors, at which I highly recommend looking.
In need of comfort, I turned here to one of my all-time favorite novels, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, translated into English by Ralph Manheim. Yes, the beloved movie is based on a novel — and frankly, the novel is ill-served by the adaptation. As we all know, Bastian Balthazar Bux is a lonely outcast, who happens upon the tantalizing titular book in Carl Coreander’s bookshop. In the novel, Bastian steals the book and hides out in the attic of his school, trying to escape from the vicious bullying to which he is subject. He reads the story of Atreyu, and is eventually called to Fantasia to save the Childlike Empress. This much we all know, more or less, from the movie — which ends there. As the novel progresses past this point, however, it gets substantially more interesting. While the sequel movie covers some of the territory of the novel’s back half, the transformation and personal growth that Bastian undergoes is frequently uncomfortable and extraordinarily thoughtful: in his wish-fulfillment fantasy adventure, Bastian loses his integrity as a person, and it is only through hard work and sacrifice that he can return home again.
That’s all just plot, though, and fails to convey the electric intensity of invention, or the beautifully-wrought structure of the novel. While the technicolor Native American-inspired culture whence Atreyu comes is not exactly a high-water mark for thinking things through, it’s certainly better than, say, Lewis’ Calormenes — and that’s the only thing that really grates here. Ende cycles through characters and potential plots and settings and stories with ease and endless delight. Manheim’s translation, too, is gentle and sweet without becoming cloying. While I revisited The Neverending Story by means of an audiobook, it is worth noting, too, that print editions are often gorgeous, originally printed in red and green ink, with full-page illuminated letters at the beginning of each chapter, illustrated by Roswitha Quadflieg — junior’s first House of Leaves, as it were. I really just can’t say enough good things about this book, so I will stop now and hope I’ve been even a little bit convincing.
I followed this with The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley, of Thank You For Smoking fame. Rather than the cutthroat lobbyists of DC, though, The Relic Master follows Dismas, a mercenary-turned-relics dealer in sixteenth century Germany, as he and his friend Albrecht Durer (yes, that one) attempt first to forge and then to steal the burial shroud of Christ. Also included are a beautiful lady apothecary, a bunch of crude mercenaries, theological debates, shenanigans, and a bunch of hilariously gross stuff about feces, penises, and wounds — which is basically to say that this was a keyboard smash of stuff I was going to like anyway.
It’s a very nice looking book. Image from NPR, apparently.
What surprised me, though, was the treatment of the various characters traumas. Dismas is tortured (off the page, fortunately), and suffers unexpected PTSD triggers, as do a number of other characters in different ways. And rather than being castigated for these things, when the characters struggle with them, they attempt to comfort and care for each other in a very natural, human way. This unexpected tenderness, and the psychological realism that underpins it, elevated the novel beyond my expectations. I anticipated a romp, but I didn’t anticipate actually, you know, caring. Apparently, even former Republican speechwriters can understand feelings — who’d have thought?
A lovely photo of Rosewater, from The Grimdragon’s delightful review.
Going from the sixteenth century to the nearish future, I next finished Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, the first book in the Wormwood trilogy. I’ll discuss this in more depth once I’ve finished the trilogy, but it’s a very compelling start: after the arrival of an incomprehensible alien consciousness on earth, which makes it home in Nigeria, humans must deal with not only the geopolitical fallout of first contact but also with the spread of the xenosphere, to which some humans have access. Kaaro, the narrator, is one such sensitive, as they’re called — and the others are dying off. It’s extremely compelling and delightfully inventive, if a bit of a slow burn, and I strongly recommend it. I’m very excited to see how the rest of the trilogy goes; I’ve already started on the sequel, of which more eventually.
Honestly, this cover design is super fun, too, and really captures the vibe. Image from Goodreads.
Next up was Rin Chupeco’s The Never Tilting World. The author offered a few clarifications about it on Goodreads, and it definitely lives up to the expectations one might have on reading those clarifications. I had read The Bone Witch a while back, and enjoyed it, though I didn’t follow up on the other installments in that series (I’ve been meaning to, but… you know… stuff). It definitely made an impact, especially with respect to the worldbuilding — and if anything, The Never Tilting World is even more luxuriously robust in its setting. As the title suggests, the world of Aeon stopped turning on its axis within living memory, because of a feud between its sovereign goddesses. But as the story starts, the goddesses’ daughters, themselves divine, must journey to the border between the two halves of the planet to try to right what their mothers put out of place.
While I will spend more time on both books, again, when I’ve got my grubby little paws on the sequel, I want to note that, while this book, and Chupeco’s other work, is typically characterized as YA, I would really strongly urge anyone interested in high-quality writing to read her. She deftly creates settings, and her characters’ relationships are compelling and fun. (Also, in this one, one of the two main ‘ships is two girls, which I’m always about.)
Getting into the spirit of the spooky season — I finished it on 1 October, and actually the timing was an accident — my next read was Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. The novel, Thomas’ debut, follows Yadriel, a young trans man, as he tries to find acceptance as a brujo in his extended family of brujx. But the situation is complicated by the fact that Yadriel’s cousin has died, and the family cannot locate his spirit — and Yadriel is dogged by the spirit of his high school’s resident bad boy, Julian, with whom Yadriel finds himself falling in love.
Since I read this as an ebook, I was not aware of the lovely embossed marigolds on the cover; this image comes from the publisher.
Look, I’ve been gushing about this one about as much as Gideon the Ninth. It’s fucking great. It’s sweet, it’s well-structured, it’s really fucking good on every single level. The difficulties Yadriel faces with respect to his transness — relatives misgendering him, his family’s resistance to him becoming a full brujo, the pain of binders just, like, in general — are especially resonant; Thomas themself is trans and Latinx, and they relate Yadriel’s experiences with grace. But there’s room for humor and bonding, too. I really just cannot recommend it enough.
The cover, courtesy of Goodreads.
In an attempt to stick to the spirit of the season — god, I wanted to give a shit about Halloween this year, and by the time the day arrived, I was too tired for any of it — I turned next to The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The book had been on my radar for some time; I love del Toro, and the show was pretty fun, so I figured I’d give it a go.
The novel tracks the arrival of a vampire plague upon the earth, moving among several narrators to provide a robust picture. Structurally, it’s great: the pacing and plotting are just beautiful. The nature and spread of the plague are well-designed and also extremely gross, which I generally enjoy. Fundamentally, though, I had much the same problem with the novel that I had with the show: Ephraim Goodweather, the CDC guy at the center of the story, along with his ex-wife and their child, are so fundamentally uninteresting that I actively wish them ill every time they appear on the page or screen. Fortunately, there are excellent supporting characters, and when a favorite from the show finally appeared — halfway through the book — my opinion of the book improved substantially. I will probably return to the rest of the books at some point, but I still feel that I need a break from Ephraim Goodweather.
The cover does a good job of summing it up, and this image comes from Horrorbound’s review.
Fortunately, I followed that with Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead. The novel, Starling’s first, follows Gyre, a desperate young woman living on an unfriendly satellite, settled but not actually a good place to live. Gyre falsified her credentials to be allowed to go on a spelunking mission, which must be undertaken by one person guided by a surface team because of the Tunneler, and mysterious creature that has killed many other unfortunates. But instead of a team, Gyre is guided by a single, single-minded point person: Em, who is, it rapidly transpires, not telling Gyre everything.
It’s a tense, fairly brisk novel, focusing closely on these two women, one a cruel cypher, the other cruelly mistreated by life and society (think Belters and their situation, and you’re basically there). And Starling has an excellent instinct for when to provide the reader a moment of respite in Gyre and Em’s fucked-up relationship: as the novel progresses, the moments they share of vulnerability or even tenderness are brief and work perfectly to whet the edge of the novel’s horror. And the horror isn’t limited to what’s in the caves: Gyre must remain encased in a life-support dive suit, and prior to the expedition had to have her guts rearranged to be able to eat through a feeding tube for the duration. The moment when Gyre realizes she can no longer touch her own skin is every bit as terrifying as any spelunking accident.
And this is when I finally got my hands on a copy of Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf. I will definitely be writing at greater length on it as soon as possible, but I will limit myself now to these two points: all the hype is true and this is a phenomenal achievement; this is the only paper book on this list, and I got it from Wise Blood. I devoured it in an afternoon, and the introduction alone almost made me cry twice.
Even the cover of the paperback edition seems calibrated to make me love it.
Clearly, these last two were tough acts to follow, which may explain some of why Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea didn’t blow me away as much as I had hoped it would. It is, after all, a book about books and the people who love them, which is one of my favorite genres since it’s always basically about me (as these round-ups probably demonstrate). It loosely follows Zachary Ezra Rawlins as he becomes embroiled in the conspiracy surrounding the Starless Sea, a locus of stories and magic. Woven in with Zachary’s story are many others, often fabulistic tales of people telling stories to each other, rife with heady symbolism: bees, keys, swords, honey and truly striking imagery abound. I really wanted to love it.
I think a part of me did and does: this, too, hits multiple of my buttons at the same time, and Morgenstern’s prose is truly lovely. The problem, for me, is that fundamentally, The Starless Sea is attempting to have two different books occupy the same binding. It wants to be both The Castle of Crossed Destinies and a fairytale-themed version of The Club Dumas — and it just doesn’t quite make it on either count. Or rather, each one makes it fine, but they never come together, one suspended in the other without ever dissolving together. It frustrates me, frankly; I will probably revisit this one at some point. But for me, for right now — and this may be a function of reading a book about books in ebook form, which changes the tactile experience, rather — it never quite coalesced into the kind of beloved tale I wanted it to be.
Up next, I finally got around to reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. I’ll spend more time on it when I finish the trilogy (god, I’m saying that a lot here and I feel like I will be punished for it somehow), but I very much enjoyed it. Pullman’s early-20th-century-but-a-bit-to-the-left is fun and weird, and I like his explanations for magic. I am very excited to start into The Subtle Knife — but we’ll come back to that.
The last one for this round-up is Borderline by Mishell Baker. Fuck, man, I wanted to like this: it got a Nebula nom in 2016; the author is a Clarion grad, which is generally a good sign; I was definitely looking for a good urban fantasy thing to vibe with, and this seemed really promising. The reviews were so good! The concept is so interesting!
And yet. The novel follows Millie Roper, former wunderkind indie director, now languishing at a psychiatric facility in an attempt to address her borderline personality disorder and the physical fallout of an unsuccessful suicide attempt, which resulted in both of her legs being amputated. But one day, she is approached by a mysterious woman who offers her a place at the Arcadia Project — which she accepts, only to learn that the Arcadia Project specifically deals with the fairy population of LA. This all sounds great, right? I wanted it to be great. And a lot of it was: the way magic worked in the story was really cool, and the sensitive portrayal of Millie’s struggles, both with her physical disabilities and her mental health issues, was extremely compelling. The author is very open about her own BPD diagnosis (as was I about mine, when it applied), and I’ll admit that, with the amount of stress I’ve been under, Millie’s reliance on dialectical behavioral therapy techniques was a nice refresher course.
The problem, unfortunately, is Millie herself: we’re informed that she was a rising star as a director, but other than her enthusiasm for a (fictional) director in the novel, those abilities, or indeed, any particular interest in film, never make it to the page. This would be annoying by itself, but Millie is also, frankly, really really basic. Beyond that, the Arcadia Project’s reliance on mentally ill people was never properly explained, and that, too, grated.
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I don’t know, man. That’s all I’ve got. I’m working on some fun stuff right now, reading-wise and art-wise. Godspeed us, I guess — some god, an appropriate speed.