Well, we’re off to the god-awful races this year. Here are some places to put some money. If you’re in Missouri or one of the other states trying to pass anti-trans legislation, become familiar with who your state reps and senators are so you can bother them, which I know sounds unbearably lame but if you’re getting into granny hobbies — as I long since have — you might as well go all-in. Title links for the books under review go, as usual, to Bookshop.

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The cover of *The Saint of Bright Doors*, which I admit, I absolutely love.

The first book that I’ll review this round-up is The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera, which I read in audiobook after Amal El-Mohtar mentioned it as one of her favorite books of ‘23 (link to NYT; sorry about that). On the strength of that recommendation, I had high hopes, and they weren’t disappointed. We follow Fetter, a young man raised to be a chosen one (there are quite a few around), who is now trying to get his life together in the bustling, cosmopolitan Luriat, a city beset with mysterious doors leading to parts unknown — and, increasingly, with the threat of religious extremism prowling at its gates. The novel feels like the closest possible secondary world: similarities to contemporary life abound, but so do old magics and secret histories. There’s an odd tonal shift partway through that I’m not sure quite worked for me, but that may have been a me-problem. This is Chandrasekera’s debut novel, and on its strength, I am very excited for his sophomore outing.

My current copies of the Westmark trilogy

Next up, I finished The Beggar Queen, the third and final book in the Westmark Trilogy by Lloyd Alexander, having read the first two, Westmark and The Kestrel (the latter of which is the only one that seems to be available on Bookshop) right at the beginning of the year. These books have been favorites of mine since I first encountered them as a child, and while I reread them multiple times through my teens, it’s been a few years since I revisited them. The novels broadly follow Theo, who, when the story begins, is a printer’s devil in a small town, using his position to read philosophical and political texts more or less for funsies; as the novels progress, he falls in with lovable rogues, firebrands, and an urchin with a mysterious past — all brought together, if not united, by the end of the Westmark’s monarchy and the beginning of its new government. Drawing on historical elements (the French Revolution is an obvious antecedent, but there are elements of various peasant rebellions and the Thirty Years War in there, too), Alexander offers a relatively nuanced approach to political turmoil. For me, these novels offered a way to think about history as personal: Alexander’s close focus on specific characters, whether established of hitherto unknown, as both agents and subjects in an historical moment is incredibly compelling, while his taut prose style keeps his cinematic plot structure and approach moving briskly along. None of the books tops 200 pages, if I recall correctly, which can lead to some things being passed over perhaps too lightly for an adult reader, and Alexander allows for a little more good-people-on-all-sides than may be warranted — but I don’t think that assuming good faith is a bad thing in itself. And if 600 pages of no-magic fantasy isn’t quite the complex, politico-philosophical treatise I long held it to be, I think any of Alexander’s characters would appreciate that I too have grown ideologically and cognitively since our first encounter, and be glad to have been party to it. Criminally underrated, and I’m pleased to report that these stay safely on the lifelong-favorites shelf. I’ll probably write about them at greater length in future.

I followed these with a stack of books from the library, the first of which was Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus. While I am not familiar with Tingle’s prior works, except memetically, I had heard good things about this one, and it more or less delivered: prerelease copy had focused heavily on the conversion-therapy aspect of the story, but Rose’s sudden visions of frightening, demonic beings leans much more into the experience of ambient evangelicalism, the titular camp and its much-touted 100% success rate at “praying the gay away” looms in the background much more than it appears on the page. As the threat posed by Rose’s visions, both to herself and to others in community rises, she must try to uncover the secrets in her own past, and the wicked deal stricken by local faith leaders, in which her whole community is complicit. The prose is workmanlike, though there is an argument that it’s operating in conversation with the genre of Christian coming-of-age fiction; the pacing and the terror of unaddressed cruelty in the community is where the novel truly shines. I burned through it very quickly (as I did with much of this month’s reading) because I was recovering from surgery, and it was a fun and rewarding experience.

Here’s both *Sorrowland* and *Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind*, reviewed further into this round-up

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon had been on my to-read list (a nebulous, not-actually-written-down, I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-get-to-it sort of thing) for quite a while; it was well-received on release in 2020, and I had heard nothing but good things about Solomon’s writing since their debut, An Unkindness of Ghosts, came out. Miraculously, it didn’t disappoint, and if anything, I’m glad I held off on it, if only because in the interim I read both Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, with both of which it has a great deal in common. Vern, having escaped from the Black-separatist commune on which she grew up, lives in the woods, trying to raise her twin babies using only the survivalist skills she learned in the commune, but when monsters human and animal begin to close in, and a strange affliction begins to wrack her, she must flee to find liberation for herself and learn the truth of her upbringing. Vern is an incredible creation, her Solomon balances her incredible and burgeoning strengths with hardships that feel believable, rather than simply thrust upon her for the sake of the plot — something with which a lesser writer might have struggled. Equally present are striking depictions of nature, of texture, and the miraculous qualities of the story feel well-earned. I’m so excited to read more of their work.

Next up in audio form was Rouge, the latest outing by Mona Awad. Longtime readers will recall that I really liked All’s Well, and enjoyed Bunny even if it connected a little less well (for a variety of reasons, I am less interested in someone failing to fit in to a prestigious writing program than I am with curmudgeonly professors). Rouge follows Belle, a woman who seems to have drifted through life under the shadow of her mother, French-Canadian and obsessed with beauty, an obsession into which Belle has also fallen, and which only deepens when she moves into her mother’s old apartment in Southern California upon her mother’s death. There, she becomes enmeshed in a sort of skincare cult, her attractions torn between two men — but who is the beauty, and who the beast in this meditation on the fairy tale? Awad’s usual strengths are on display here: she writes incredible, drawn-out scenes of madness, which are as uncomfortable to the reader as they would be to witness — no mean feat in novels in the first person — as well as some of her stock characters, including an attractive man who seems more like a golden retriever than a love interest for much of the novel. Equally notable is her ability to develop and thoroughly explore motifs of various kinds (Tom Cruise is one here). Enjoyable, albeit a little difficult for me to engage with, because my own skincare routine is basic at best.

A friend, whose work can be read here and elsewhere, recommended Molly McGhee’s debut, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, and I owe her an immense debt of gratitude: years of casual desire have not turned up a novel that feels so very much like Stranger than Fiction, and I mean that as an incredible compliment. The titular Jonathan Abernathy, stumbling through life under the weight of his own student debt, as well as his parents’ debt, acquired when he was too young to know that he didn’t need to take it on, is offered a literal dream job, cleaning up the messy psyches of America’s workers for a shadowy government agency that is, as the novel unfolds, revealed to be every bit as predatory as the student loans burdening Abernathy. As the work slowly takes over his life, the reader is equally privy to the immanence of Jonathan’s demise, about which we are told on the very first page. It’s a banger of a novel, presently, ultimately, an elegant and complex satire of the precarity of contemporary life, from school to work to home to the very sanctity of the spirit; it would have been easy to get bogged down in the many well-chosen details and systems McGhee holds up to scrutiny, but instead it stays nimble, written through a strong and singular lens. It’s so good, and I’m so excited to read more of McGhee’s work.

I followed that with another audiobook: The Traitor by Anthony Ryan, the third and final installment of the Covenant of Steel trilogy; the previous books have been discussed elsewhere. No longer merely a greasy guy with a sword, young Alwyn is now a morally compromised man with an army and an increasingly untenable love for a woman he now knows is going to bring ruin to the land and to the marginalized Kerith people, with whom Alwyn has forged a bond over the course of the preceding books. Now, he must rally his strengths and leverage his few remaining allies to defeat the woman he once so loved. Ryan does not transcend the flaws of the prior books — Alwyn is still given to sagacious or moralizing asides to the reader, and, while petty, I think it’s fucking weird to have basically medieval France as your setting and have commoners wearing cotton instead of linen, which is repeatedly insisted on by the text and feels deeply silly. But it was fun, and to his credit, Ryan concludes the story well, leaving just enough loose ends to make it feel as if the world continues beyond the bounds of this particular tale but mostly tying them up well. I’ll admit, it sometimes took me a while to remember who these people are, but that’s on me for not going back through the previous books because, quite frankly, I don’t think they merit the attention — which is not to say I regret reading them, nor would I be above picking up more of Ryan’s work in the future. Sometimes you just need a fun romp!

Here’s both *Camp Damascus*, reviewed earlier in this round-up, and *A Light Most Hateful*. Thanks, Kansas City Public Library, for providing almost every book in this review.

The last of my library haul was Hailey Piper’s A Light Most Hateful. Piper and I are both in Bound in Flesh, and I had both enjoyed The Worm and His Kings and heard very good things about this one. It lived up to my expectations admirably. Olivia ran away from home two years ago, after an incident at a carnival, and washed up in Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania, a small town nestled among mountains and forests, where Olivia is finishing high school and quietly pining for her best friend, Sunflower. But a strange storm strikes the town one summer night, leaving most of the residents something like philosophical zombies with a violent streak — except for Olivia, Sunflower, Sunflower’s mom, the brash, nonbinary Christmas, and the monstrous Lizzy — and Sunflower herself is starting to unravel. Piper reveals the truth of the situation slowly, its scope spinning further and further out of Olivia’s sphere of comprehension until the bitter end, teasing out her cosmic horror with the beats of a teen horror movie. I admit, I occasionally found Piper’s descriptions of events difficult to follow, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the novel immensely. I’m very much looking forward to reading more of her work.

Another audiobook: Flux by Jinwoo Chong. I believe I stumbled on this one through a number of filters in the Libby search function, and marked it for later; its time finally came for me, and I’m very glad it did. Through three different perspectives, we encounter time travel, corporate excess, and the fictional ‘80s detective show, Raider, and it is to the title of character of that show that the central voice, a bisexual Asian-American man named Brandon addresses his narration. I hesitate to say too much more about the plot, because quite frankly, this is both delicious satire of “disruptors” a la Theranos and a thoughtful approach to life and regret. For me, it hit similar notes to Harkaway’s Titanium Noir and Bell’s Appleseed, but I liked it more than the latter and I think it was a better novel on a structural level than the former. This is Chong’s debut novel, with a second one due out next year, and I am already very much looking forward to it.

The cover of the edition of *Lost Years of Merlin* that I read, which I still like quite a bit, but it is very much from 1996 and a fantasy novel intended for kids.

We close this roundup with The Lost Years of Merlin, the first in a series of the same name, by T. A. Barron. This is another reread from childhood for me: I must have read this a couple-three times at least, and recalled its use of the bizarre realms of Arthuriana with fondness. I don’t know that it stood up to my recollections, but I scarcely regret revisiting it. As the title suggests, the novel follows the boy who will become Merlin — but here, he’s a child who cannot recall most of his life, marginalized by his status as the child of a single mother, with nascent abilities that lead to his violent ostracization. Plagued by the horror he was able to do to others with his powers, he sets off to find out the truth of his past, leading him to the magical, liminal realm of Fincayra, where the adventure really begins. It’s pretty good! Very much a novel for young people from the mid-1990s, Barron often goes out of his way to talk about the wonders of books and learning, and while I remember being very much enraptured with the sorrows of young Emrys, as he’s known in this book, as a child, rereading the book as an adult left me with a certain wry amusement at the 13-year-old protagonist’s more emo moments. Still, though, I’d happily give it to the children of my acquaintance, and I may even finally read more of the books: Barron wrote twelve of them, apparently.

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Edgar's Book Round-Up, January 2024