Sharpe's Triumph - Bernard Cornwell

Richard Sharpe. I cannot wait until I catch up to the Napoleon books and can actually tune in to see Sean Bean survive past the first episode. Also, I love that Bernard Cornwell decided to write these prequels because he loved Sean Bean's performance so much. It's the same way Cornwell loves Alexander Dreymon who plays my boyfriend Uhtred in the Last Kingdom series.

If it means more books, then I'm all for the love of page to screen. This book happens right after Sharpe's Tiger. Sharpe is still in India, but now he's a sergeant. It's great to see that Sharpe hasn't witnessed any real fighting yet and is afraid of how he'll perform. But he is sought out by Colonel McCandless to try to track down a Lieutenant Dodd who has left the East India Company after being accused of murder and has taken up with some local militias to fight the British.

Of course there is some intrigue and blast it! Obediah Hakeswell has survived and is out to kill Sharpe. There is a damsel in distress as well. Sharpe manages to dodge it all and fight with distinction on the battle field saving the general's life and earning his ensign rank in the process. Of course the battle is immense and difficult but Cornwell does such a good job describing military maneuvers and tactics. I quite enjoy all of it.

On to Trafalgar for me and Sharpe.

4/5 Stars. 

Down Among the Sticks and Bones - Seanan McGuire

 

I just love these little Wayward Children stories. Down Among the Sticks and Bones follows the backstory of twins Jacqueline and Jillian as they find a doorway to the Moors. Children of cold distant parents, Jacq and Jill each find their way in the Moors. Jacq becomes the apprentice to Dr. Bleak. Jill becomes the child in training to The Master, a vampire who both protects and feeds off the local village.

The Moors is a hard place but both Jacq and Jill seem to find their place. Except that Jill is under the tutelage of a jealous narcissistic vampire and she's already terribly insecure. Their parents had assigned roles for them to play as children and they were not allowed to deviate. So when the Master assigns Jill her role she plays it to a T, all while basking in his supposed love. We all know from Every Heart A Doorway where this entire thing ends up, but it was still very shocking to see the twins before they ended up at the Home for Wayward Children. Little surprise their parents placed them there after their return from the Moors.

For such short books, these stories are bursting with detail and imagery. I'm already teeing up the next one to listen to.

5/5 Stars

The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett

Stella and Desiree are twins who grow up in Mallard, Louisiana where the lightness of your skin is prized above all else. When the girls leave as teens, they shock the town who see nothing wrong with the place they live.

The book begins with Desiree returning to town with her dark child in tow. What has become of Stella we don't know but it is eventually teased out over the course of the book. Desiree rebelled against Mallard by going to DC eventually and working for the FBI as a fingerprint examiner. She married a dark man and had a dark child. But when the man ended up being violent and abusive she went back to Mallard. Preferring to live a smaller life of safety even if it meant returning to Mallard. Desiree puts no value on the lightness of her skin. And she guides her daughter through the difficulty of living in that environment.

We then find out that Stella left New Orleans without telling her sister. Passing as white and living under a cloud of shame. She can never fully relax, can never be herself truly as she knows the cost to her life if anyone were to find out her secret. She makes a life for herself and then eventually, through her daughter, finds some way to pursue the studies and qualities of herself that she has suppressed for so long. There is so much narrative tension created through all the Stella chapters. Brit Bennett does a remarkable job stretching that out for the reader.

The book then moves on to Stella and Desiree's daughters. The two could not be more different but as they learn about each other it makes them explore the ways they are similar and what their lives have meant. This book is beautifully written. Even the minor male characters are so well drawn by the pages I can see them in my mind.

The Vanishing Half is a joy to read, even as it tackles some very deep family rifts and personal traumas.

5/5 Stars. 

The Dutch House - Ann Patchett

I loved this book. I love Ann Patchett. I love siblings. This was a definite five star read for me. Danny and his sister Maeve grow up in an architectural gem of a house in suburban Philadelphia - The Dutch House. The house was purchased by their father Cyril, a real estate prospector who built a thriving business. Their mother hated the house. Hated the opulence that was associated with the house. She felt out of place and not useful to the world shut up in the house. So she leaves. And the children are bereft. Maeve is diagnosed with diabetes - a dangerous disease in the late 60s.

Everything develops a new rhythm after their mother leaves until their father begins dating a woman named Andrea. When their father eventually married Andrea, Maeve has gone off to college and two little girls move into her room. Danny is aghast at the way Andrea is obsessed with the house. He wants nothing to do with her, and she with him. But when their father dies unexpectedly, Danny finds himself at Andrea's mercy. And she has none. She kicks this 16 year old boy out on his own to fend for himself.

Luckily the love between Danny and Maeve is the strongest in the whole book and she is there for Danny. She's always been his mother figure and she remains so. Their love is also tied up in their shared childhood trauma and the vengeance they feed between themselves. The hate they have for Andrea is almost a tertiary character in the book.

I love the nuance Patchett drives into Danny and Maeve's relationship. I love the way she teases out the characters and their motivations, the ripples their childhood creates through their life. It's so well done.

5/5 Stars

Beneath the Sugar Sky - Seanan McGuire

I really enjoy these Wayward Children books. This is my fourth in the series but definitely not my last. While the others have been prequels to the first book (Every Heart a Doorway you can read that review here), Beneath the Sugar Sky occurs after the events in the first book.

Jack and Jill have returned to The Moors following Jill's violent spree and Nancy has moved on to her own door to the Halls of the Dead. Cade has taken up Lundy's old tasks of running and managing the school as Eleanor grows older and more distracted. New girl Cora has arrived, fresh from a land where she was a mermaid. Cora has made one friend in her time at Eleanor West's and is out in the turtle pond with Nadia, who came from a land where she was a drowned girl among the turtles.

Their sojourn is interrupted by a girl falling from the sky. This girl introduces herself as Rini, a girl who has come from Confection to find her mother, Sumi. Whoops. Sumi died way back in book one. But Rini is insistent on finding her because the Queen of Cakes has returned to Confection and their whole world is in upheaval. How could Sumi, a teenager who died before marrying her true love, the candy corn farmer and fulfilling her destiny of defeating the Queen of cakes, have a daughter you ask? Well because Seanan McGuire is a genius and the lands of nonsense where a prophecy has been made don't give two hoots about whether someone is actually there to fulfill said prophecy.

Cora and Nadia get Cade and Christopher and they have to travel to a couple different worlds to get all the parts of Sumi back together again. This culminates with a showdown against the Queen of Cakes and a real revealing of the land of Confection and what it all means. I love how each of these books really explore different worlds. Book one really focused on Nancy and the Halls of the Dead, but we get to revisit it here and see the world more fully fleshed out. Book two took us to The Moors and we got to see just how Jack and Jill came to be. This book explores Confection, and the fourth, which I already read out of order, explores Lundy's time in the Goblin Market.

Each book explores so much about these hidden worlds where children who have need of it, are given exactly the world they need, that understands them. Cora is no different. She's visually overweight although she's an amazing athlete and swimmer. She goes to a world where her swimming is the most important thing about her and no one is constantly judging her outward appearance. In each book, McGuire really tackles some aspect of children that are overlooked or shamed and makes them into the unique aspect that makes that child feel at home.

Wouldn't we all be better off if we could make children feel welcome and essential in the world in which they already live?

4/5 Stars. 

Dear Edward - Ann Napolitano

When I was in undergrad and had recently changed my major from chemistry to English, I took a creative writing class where a guest speaker read a short story of her about a plane crash. It was 2002 and she noted she'd probably never get the story published given the events of 9/11. I thought about this a lot when I picked up this book for the first time. There are young adults now who were not alive on 9/11 and perhaps this type of story doesn't feel as jarring for them. But there was something about this story that was deeply sad and unsettling for me.

But that's not to say that the book wasn't well written or worth reading. It was. But wading through individual trauma through the lens of national trauma of 9/11 was uncomfortable.

Dear Edward tells the story of a plane crash. 12 yo Edward Adler and his family are moving from New York City to Los Angeles where his mother is taking on a job writing for a TV show and his father is moving to a new university to be a professor after losing his bid for tenure. Along the way they meet several other passengers going through their own minor dramas.

And then the plane crashes. And Edward is the only survivor. To say that his life is completely changed is a drastic understatement. The PTSD alone is immense. Survivor's guilt. Orphan. He goes to live with his aunt and uncle who could never have kids of their own. But he's not ready to be folded into a family. And all this makes sense. Edward's reaction to everything is detailed and nothing seems out of the question.

The book alternates between Edward's life after the crash, and the hours and minutes leading up to the crash itself. This led to some confusion on my part since I was listening to the audio book and it interrupted the flow of the story somewhat. The actual events in the cockpit were lifted from an actual crash and that somehow makes the entire thing terrifying. Eventually Edward starts to process his trauma and one of the things that helps him is finding a trove of letters written to him by family members of those on the plane. Corresponding with these people feels cathartic for him. And in a way, it's cathartic for the reader as well.

4/5 Stars. 

Song for a Whale - Lynne Kelly

I really loved this book. I occasionally snag my middle reader's books and it makes me so nostalgic for all the books I read in my room in my own middle reader days. I would have loved this book as a kid too.

In high school, I was lifeguarding at a local water park and started to take sign language classes with my mom and St. Rita School for the Deaf in Cincinnati. I really loved watching the students communicate and loved learning about how ASL changes and adapts with slang and regional "accents" just like spoken English. We not only learned ASL there, but we learned about the history of ASL and why schools like St. Rita's were so important to the deaf community.

I loved seeing these sentiments reflected in Song for a Whale. The main character, Iris is a sixth grader in a main stream school where she can't communicate with anyone. Her mother and brother have a strong grasp of ASL but her father struggles. Her mother was born to two deaf parents and grew up knowing how to sign. When I was learning ASL, I learned that kids of deaf parents knew ASL, but that parents of deaf kids rarely learned. This is a sad reality and leads to a lot of miscommunication between kids and their parents, further isolating deaf kids if they don't have access to other ASL signers.

Iris feels lonely and isolated until she learns about a whale, Blue 55, who sings at a different frequency from other whales. He travels alone through the ocean with no one to talk to since no other whales can understand his song. Iris feels and instant connection and sets out to help Blue 55.

The best part of Song for a Whale is that Lynne Kelly has made sure that Iris is proud of her deaf heritage. She doesn't spend the book longing to be like other kids, she really is just longing to find her place in the world and yearns to be around people she can talk to. She stands up for herself and her identity. It's a great message for kids (and me, I really loved this one). 

5/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Summer 2020 - Guest-edited by Celeste Ng

I loved reading the introduction to the Summer 2020 edition of Ploughshares and finding out it had been curated during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when we were in the early stages of lock downs and uncertainty was swirling in the air. Celeste Ng did a fantastic job reaching into those moments and finding stories that echoed the feeling of the time. I always appreciate the diverse voices I hear in Ploughshares and I often feel I've lived so many lives by the time I finish.

In the very first story, Wandering Gliders, we are introduced to Manu and Eve as they sit in the hospital awaiting the arrival of their twins. The story is told from Manu's point of view as he tries and fails to fully capture Eve as a person, as his wife. The story has the feeling of always being on the cusp of connection, until it's gone.

Jamel Brinkley's painful story Comfort is about a woman who has lost her job and is a bit adrift following the death of her brother at the hands of a police officer. Terribly timely, the story is full of grief and the simple comfort another human can bring when our hearts are not quite ready to let new people in.

Go Forth, Miss Trout! tells the story of a group of writing students awaiting the arrival of their teacher only to find out she has died. Having a grandmother that lives in Toronto and having been a visitor to the city for more times than my brain remembers, I loved all the Toronto specific details in this story.

Doers of the Word was an great story of a woman healer who helped escaped slaves on their way to freedom. Told from the point of view of Liberty, the healer's daughter, a man shows up in a coffin and is thought to be dead only to be brought back to life by her mother. Liberty, having grown up free, struggles to understand the anger boiling inside the man.

Code W by Sonya Larson was a great story of a new ranger at Glacier National Park learning the ropes of which Park visitors need rescuing, and which need toughening up. The Code W is a visitor who insists on help but is not actually in danger, but because of their own incompetence has become scared and insists they are likely to die without rescue from a ranger. It is the ranger's job to determine if an attempted rescue would put more people at risk. Chuntao, the new ranger struggles with this idea and thinks at first her fellow rangers are being callous.

Susan Shepherd's Goats about a wildfire and a man living off the land and the generosity of a woman with a hoarding problem was wonderfully complex and I really felt the tension of the fire as it moved closer to the house. This was just a really well drawn story that had a lot of feel to it.

Those were just my favorites that pushed this edition into a five star read. The other stories I don't mention specifically were just as good.

5/5 Stars. 

The Last Wish - Andrzej Sapkowski

 

I love Geralt of Rivia. In my world of fictional boyfriends, he's basically roommates with Uhtred. He's a bit snarky, a bit cool, and yes I read this after watching the first season of the show and I can't quite get Henry Cavill's portrayal out of my brain. So there were some minor changes from the TV show that my brain had trouble overriding. Essentially, in The Last Wish, a completely new world is created in which some children are taken and manipulated to have special learning and powers to deal with evil creatures that populate the world. But as the world turns away from fantasy and into an agrarian fiefdom somewhat like our own Earth's middle ages, the need for Witchers and sorcerers and magic at all is fading. It's an interesting look at a world on a precipice of losing those things that would make it a fantasy realm at all. There's a big deal in the book about destiny and can we avoid it and how are we wrapped into it. In the TV show, Geralt seems to decry the idea, but in the book he's all in, which was a hard thing to reconcile. But in any case, the motivations of people, and how their choices affect the future, is a big theme in the story. Geralt tries to thread the needle by keeping his head down and doing his work, but his actions seem to entangle him further in the politics of the realm. I'm looking forward to getting into the next installment of the series and ahead of the world I've already seen on TV. I'm going to be sticking with this one for a while. 5/5 Stars

The Secrets We Kept - Lara Prescott

 

Sometimes history sets down a series of events that include colorful characters, international espionage, romantic devotion, complicated and flawed heroines and heroes and it all sounds so fantastic, but when putting pen to paper, some of the magic of the real life humans does not get translated to the page. 

In theory, The Secrets We Kept should have been thrilling and heart breaking. And as a historically based novel about a famous author and his even more famous book, this novel should have been right at the top of my likes. But the rotating points of view and full chapters from a plural person narrator left two bland sides of a story that includes so much flavor individually.

So what happened? The Secrets We Kept centers around the publication of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. An epic love story spanning events in Russia from the Russian Revolution through World War II. Given the breadth of time and characters included in Zhivago it's impossible to write a succinct plot summary but suffice it to say, Yuri Zhivago is a physician and a poet, he has hard times, falls in love with Lara, war and famine and etc., and death. This is Russian literature after all. You want weddings and happiness look up Jane Austen (not a dig, I adore her). 

Anyway, because Russia at the time Pasternak wrote Doctor Zhivago was the USSR and Stalin was in charge, this novel was never going to see the light of day. The book included descriptions of Salinism, Collectivization, the Great Purge, and Gulags, and apparently that was a little too on the nose for the Soviet government so they were absolutely not going to let this get published. Then along came an Italian publisher who obtained a copy and published it in Italy and then quickly licensed the book into 18 other languages. This should have made Pasternak richer than Dan Brown after the DaVinci code, but he wasn't about to be able to accept foreign money for a book he was not allowed to publish in the first place.

So powerful was the USSR's dislike of the book that the CIA obtained a copy, had a thousand printed and then handed them out at the 1958 Brussels world's fair. They also made sure a copy made it into the hands of the Nobel committee. All of this was unknown until the CIA declassified some documents in 2014. 

Pasternak was awarded the Nobel, much to his dismay, the USSR's embarrassment, and the CIA's enjoyment. He was forced under threat to turn the award down. Then Premier Krushchev banned the book (although he later read it and liked it, duh) and Pasternak was made to scrape by until he died of lung cancer in 1960. His mistress and inspiration for Lara was arrested and imprisoned for four years for crimes related to the publication of the book.

Yikes. Look at all this drama! What good breeding ground for a novel. Except, when dealing with known facts, trying to create intrigue is just not intriguing. When someone can easily google the outcome of a story, it makes it hard to build tension. I'm talking more about the outcome of the CIA operation here, which was a large portion of the book but lacked a lot of the emotional weight that the Russian portion contained with telling the story from Olga Ivinskaya's point of view. Tales of human woe always contain tension if done right, and I really did feel a lot of that in the Olga parts. 

But the novel as a whole missed the emotional impact it was going for. There are chapters that are really well written, but then they are broken up by points of view from others that create for an uneven and unsatisfactory narrative. 

3/5 Stars. 

Dragon Pearl - Yoon Ha Lee

I've been reading books with my middle reader as he gets more into deeper narratives. I loved that middle reader books have these young protagonists that make the story more accessible. In Dragon Pearl, Min gets disturbing news about the disappearance of her brother Jun. He's off serving on a starship in the Space Forces as a cadet. He went missing during his training mission and is considered a deserter. Rumor is that he was in pursuit of the Dragon Pearl, a rare object that is said to be able to transform whole worlds turning barren landscapes into lush environs - a task currently reserved for the Dragon Guild, who, for obvious reasons, is not interested in anyone else getting possession of the pearl. 

Min's family are fox spirits, able to shape shift into anything their hearts' desire and use charm to persuade others to do their will. They are therefore distrusted and like to keep their identities secret. Min goes in pursuit of Jun and must find her way onto a starship and into the eerie Ghost sector where the terraforming went terrible wrong. Ghosts now populate the colony and space pirates frequent the area. But this is where the Pearl is rumored to be so this is where everyone is gravitating. Throw in a menacing Tiger spirit captain, and Min must best them all to find the truth about her brother, and the missing Pearl. 

I didn't realize this was based off Korean folklore but I really liked that aspect combined with the sci-fi space theme. A well done narrative that will capture the imagination of a middle reader. 

3.5/5. 

Sharpe's Tiger - Bernard Cornwell

So I finally figured out the Sharpe sequence and I'm going back to the beginning to see how Sharpe started. It feels kind of like cheating since early Sharpe fans had to go back and forth in his career rather than chronologically. I actually finished this almost two weeks ago so my fine detail recall is fading. What can I say? I'm a lazy reviewer this month. I just started taking classes for a new masters degree and I'm a little overwhelmed.

But anyway Sharpe. In Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's unit is taking part of the siege of Seringapatam, island citadel of the Tippoo of Mysore. And all of that was news to me. Having not grown up in the UK, all of this marching around the British soldiers did in India is NOT a surprise, but it is all relatively new information. I was trying to keep up.

In any case, a lowly private, Sharpe is considering deserting because his Sergeant, a vengeful, arrogant, disturbed man, Hakeswill, has it out for him. And his Captain, Morris, is lazy and also indifferent. All this over a woman who prefers Sharpe. After a wicked flogging, Sharpe is taken, mid-flog to see a general about a secret mission he will undertake with a fresh faced Lieutenant to rescue a Colonel who has been taken prisoner by the Tipoo.

It's a wonderful thing that Sharpe is clever and resourceful because he pulls off some pretty incredible last minute rescues and success. He also manages to teach the Lieutenant a thing or two about leadership that will better serve the entire unit, all while earning his sergeant stripes to boot. Was it so wrong of me to wish for Hakeswill's demise the entire book? He was a terrible person with no redeemable qualities.

I'm glad to have picked up another of Cornwell's series. He's such a good writer and I really have decided that I want to see how Sharpe continues to move up the ranks and into his field commission.

4/5 Stars. 

Sweet Tooth - Ian McEwan

I wanted to love this book because Atonement really wrecked me a decade ago and I thought McEwan would be able to duplicate the emotional gravitas. But he wasn't.

Honestly the entire story of Sweet Tooth felt stilted and awkward. The narrator, Serena, felt like am imposter in her own skin. The, I suppose, brilliance, of this is revealed in the novel's late pages. But honestly, I would rather have read a well written story, than a clever narrative trick to why the entire novel felt like an out of body experience for the narrator. Think, The Sixth Sense, but the twist is boring.

And really, the novel should not have been so slow. Serena Frome is a decent maths student in high school but when she gets to Cambridge she is wildly out of her league. She scrapes by with a third and is recruited into MI-5 based on the strength of a recommendation from a professor who is also her lover. She starts work as a secretary but is then recruited onto a project recruiting writers who will secretly work for MI-5. The secret is they have no idea, and MI-5 is hoping they will write anti-communist works. But it's really up in the air as to whether this will happen.

Serena ricochets between a couple more affairs before she botches something up by not being very careful. It seems an inevitable end for a not very skilled MI-5 employee with some warped sense of her own abilities. A bit of a disappointment.

2/5 Stars

The Unhoneymooners - Christina Lauren

Man, another enemies to lovers book. When I read Red White and Royal Blue, I thought, wow I guess I like these. Then a bookish friend casually mentioned I was a huge dope since my favorite book is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Um, total enemies to lovers action.

In The Unhoneymooners, Olive and Ethan are sworn enemies. On the day of her sister, Amy's wedding to Ethan's brother, Dane, Olive has a laundry list of tasks to perform as the maid of honor. One of those is to make sure she and Ethan have a separate meal not part of the extravagant seafood buffet, to which Olive has an allergy and Ethan a philosophical aversion. Both escape a vomitorium reminiscent of that scene in Stand By Me when everyone is barfing up blueberry pie that results from contamination of the seafood.

The story could have ended there but Amy is a notorious sweepstakes winner. So much so that almost everything at the wedding was the spoilers of her contest entering, including electric lime bridesmaids dresses. So when she's too ill to attend the all inclusive honeymoon to Maui, she offers her spot to Olive. As identical twins, Olive can take her spot. Since Olive is recently unemployed she's available for this week long pampering. Since she lives in Minnesota and it's January, she has the desire to go to Maui. The only wrinkle? Dane has offered his spot to Ethan.

What follows is fairly predictable but entertaining nonetheless as Ethan and Olive explore the island, their mutual attraction, and a budding...well you get it. I've already said it's an enemies to lovers book. So the situation is complicated by some unexpected run-ins in Maui and their families' belief that they hate each other.

Ethan and Olive are asked to figure out some core principles of their relationship and the foundation upon which that relationship is built. It's a rough go. I was pleased with the way it turned out. Again, fairly predictable but with some steam and laughs.

3/5 Stars. 

Every Heart a Doorway - Seanan McGuire

I really fell in love with the Wayward Children series when I picked up a "prequel" giving the backstory of Katherine Lundy in In an Absent Dream (you can read that review here). I hadn't realized it was a part of a series until halfway through but a prequel is a decent way to start a series anyway.

In Every Heart a Doorway, we are first introduced to The Home for Wayward Children and its headmistress, Eleanor West. It seems some children are special. Disappearing through doorways and down wells and into other lands and other realities where the rules are different. Sometimes there are no rules. In Lundy's case, she had gone to the Goblin Market, a place of high logic and wickedness. It seems every world that children fall into go into one of four cardinal directions - nonsense, logic, wickedness, and virtue, as they are explained to Nancy on her first day at the Home.

While In an Absent Dream was a very specific journey into the land of the Goblin Market, Every Heart a Doorway introduces many different worlds through their former inhabitants. Those former inhabitants now reside at the Home, mostly waiting, wishing to return to the worlds from which they were expelled. Having lived in a reality particularly crafted for their personalities, existing in our world, the normal existence is painful.

Lundy is a teacher there, trying to help the children cope with the reality that most of them will not be going back. Nancy refuses to believe this. She has come from the Halls of the Dead and wants very much to return. "Be sure" all the doors tell their travelers and Nancy's was no exception. But how can you be sure when you go only the one time? How can you be sure when you don't know what is lying beyond the door? The Lord of the Dead wants Nancy to be sure. So she heads home where her parents are aghast at her black clothes and bleached hair. They pack her off to the Home with a suitcase full of clothing that would make a flamingo blush.

But once she arrives at the Home, she is quickly shunned by the other students except her new roommate Sumi, Sumi's friend Cade, and the odd twins Jack and Jill. And this would be fine to bide her time while she waits for the Lord of the Dead to send another door, but... Sumi is murdered. Then another girl, and another girl. So this doesn't seem like it's going to work out very well.

So this is part fantasy and part mystery and all just very very good. Because at its core, the Wayward Children series takes those things about us that as teenagers or younger we had such a hard time defining and living with, identifying them as special and then making those traits work somewhere else where we get to really be ourselves. It shouldn't be a surprise that LGBT themes are prevalent in the books or that the characters come from diverse backgrounds. It makes the series really great. There's so much richness in the language and the visuals of the created worlds. Seanan McGuire is a treasure.

4/5 Stars. 

War of the Wolf - Bernard Cornwell

Oh Uhtred. What am I going to do with this irascible hunk of man? He's supposed to be 60 in this latest book (he'll always be 28 to me) but I digress, because no way a 60 year old man is riding his horse for days and then hopping off to swing a big sword around to kill Saxons. Just, not, happening. But he does it with such swagger that I'm willing to forgive him.

In the last book, Aethelflaed died and her brother Edward swept in to to snatch Mercia, because somehow this line of kings has it in their head that all of England is to be a English speaking, one God worshiping paradise. They have a very frank surprise coming in 1066 (pun intended). But for now, there are some Mercian's who are not satisfied with the idea of being ruled by Edward and in War of the Wolf, they show their displeasure by trying to overtake Caester in the name of Aethelflaed's daughter.

Uhtred, who is always stupidly giving oaths, promised Aethelflaed he would protect Aethelstan, the bastard/not-bastard eldest son of King Edward. So when he gets notice that Aethelstan may be in danger he rushes to Mercia to help. Surprise, Aethelstan is fine and Uhtred's love for people has been used against him to lure him out of Northumbria just as a new threat from the Norse threatens the last independent kingdom. (The TV show is called The Last Kingdom for a reason).

A Norse leader, thrown out of Ireland by the fierce Irish fighters, has taken refuge in Cumbraland, a lawless area to the west of Northumbria and North of Mercia, marginally held to be part of Northumbria. The leaders, Skoll, a warrior at the helm of a group of berserkers called the ulfhednar (wolf head), seeks to make Cumbraland and all of Northumbria his own. Well c'mon. He has to fight Uhtred first. And my man is not going to let some Norse dickhead roll over Northumbria unchecked.

True to Uhtred form, he underestimates at some point and overestimates at another and then gets a little lucky and... VICTORY. I'll leave the details to you. I will be DEVESTATED when Uhtred finally dies. We've had this thing going for a couple years now and I don't want to give him up. But all good things must come to an end. And a 60 year old man living in the 900s is not long for this world. Wyrd bid ful araed.

4/5 Stars. 

A Foreign Country - Charles Cumming

Being an American and reading a British spy novel is so hilarious to me, because mostly it's "Wow, why would France try to compromise a British intelligence officer?" And then vaguely remembering that England and France have been at war far more in their history than they've been "friends". So, apologies in advance British friends for my absolute incredulity at the idea that France would go so far as to kill two of it's own citizens just to further its attempts at international espionage against a friendly nation.

Have I given enough away yet?

The beginning of this fairly formulaic thriller is a bit scattered. In A Foreign Country, a young au pair leaves following an affair with the father of the children she has been hired to care for. An elderly couple is brutally murdered while on vacation in Egypt. And a small strike force yanks a target off the night time streets of Paris. All to find ourselves with Thomas Kell, a man still in his prime, but hungover after a night of drinking. He's bereft of options following his ouster from MI6 (apparently for something I've seen James Bond do it basically every movie so this is an injustice).

But when the head MI6 officer in waiting goes on an extended vacation, he's pulled back in to find out what she's really up to. Kell is anxious to get back into the good graces of MI6, and also to make a little cash. So he agrees to this slightly skeasy role and follows Amelia Levene to Nice France and then to Tunisia. Now if Amelia is the name of the au pair from twenty years before it's not a coincidence. Looks like our girl grew up to be named as the next chief of MI6.

So it makes sense that her soon to be number 2 wants to find out what exactly she's doing taking a vacation right before taking the helm of MI6. Poor Thomas Kell has some affinity for Amelia, having worked with her before and liked her personally. But he seems less squeamish when going through her personal belongings in an unattended hotel room. Something is going on in Tunisia with the very young man Amelia is spotted spending time with.

In the meantime, some other young man is being held captive by some unsavory folks. I spotted the old switcheroo before Kell, but admittedly that was the author's intent. Recapping anything else will give too much away.

All in all this was a decent spy novel from an author I'd never heard of before but will likely read again.

3.5/5 Stars

The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates

When I first heard that Ta-Nehisi Coates was going to write a novel, I was hopeful that his plot and storytelling could keep up with the beauty and fully alive quality of his narration. I wasn't disappointed. In The Water Dancer, Coates tells the story of Hiram Walker. A slave born on the Walker Plantation in Elm County, Virginia at the beginning of the end of prosperity for the county. Son of his owner, born of the rape of his mother, Hiram is intelligent and equipped with a photographic memory.

It is the hope of his father that he will help his half-brother, Maynard, who has become a symbol of the lazy corruption that has overtaken the white slave-owning class ("quality" in Coates language). Maynard is slovenly, lazy, and ignorant. And when both men are thrown into the river, Hiram's special ability to "conduct" or transport himself elsewhere brings him several miles inland to his home. This gift of conduction is known to be possessed by only one person, Moses, Harriet Tubman herself.

Bereft of his life, and knowing he must seek change, Hiram runs and is caught. And the brutality of his circumstances worsens, until he is plucked out and given a position on the Underground. The complexity of the Underground was fascinating and Hiram's discomfort with his own place in the world was a great exploration on the limits of our own autonomy. Hiram escapes slavery but becomes beholden to the Underground because the very color of his skin puts him in peril.

I felt that the end of the book came a little abruptly given the unhurried cadence of the entire story. What happened to Hiram after the closing pages is something I've been wondering about for days even after finishing the story. Because the narration is done past tense, we know that Hiram grows to be old and live a long life, but he only hints at specifics and it's largely unknown what that long life entails. But perhaps not wanting the story to end is not such a bad way to end it. 

4/5 Stars

Clean Getaway - Nic Stone

Scoob's grandma has a secret. Well she actually has a lot of them. Family secrets play a big part in this middle reader book about a road trip between a grandson and his grandma. Suspended from school for fighting and computer hacking, Scoob (William) is ready to get out from under his dad's disapproving looks and into his grandma's newly purchased RV.

Grandma soon tells Scoob that she's trying to recreate a trip she took in 1968 with his grandfather. A trip from Atlanta to Juarez, Mexico which was complicated by the fact that Scoob's grandmother is white and his grandfather was black. With the use of The Green Book - a travel companion for blacks trying to travel in the deep south - Scoob's grandparents made it most of the way but had to turn back. His grandmother is now determined to see the trip to its end, so long as Scoob's father doesn't get in the way and insist they come home. And when Grandma starts to get funny about tossing her phone, well, Scoob starts to get suspicious that there is more to Grandma than meets the eye.

The book was a great reminder that middle readers are starting to see their elders as full humans. They start to realize flaws in the grown ups around them. It's such a confusing and disorienting time in the life of an adolescent. Most children grow up and figure out a way to forgive their parents and elders for being flawed humans. Some can never let that go. It was great to see Scoob struggle with this issue. It was also a good way to build on the history of racism for kids who may be familiar through earlier picture books and other readings. The reader gets to watch Scoob create links between the racism his grandparents experienced and his own. 

4/5 Stars. 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed - Lori Gottlieb

Do I need therapy? Does everyone need therapy? I'm not sure but I feel like I want to go to therapy after reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. I suppose we are all carrying around pain and hurt in our lives. Perhaps childhood trauma or adolescent trauma or adult trauma. Maybe we're carrying around all these things and a therapist is there to help carry that load.

Now really, the author chose her poignant and successful patients here. Maybe therapy doesn't work out for everyone. But there's real heartbreak in this book and it is a heavy read at times. But also hopeful. Whether its the standoffish oaf who tries so hard to push everyone away, the elderly woman dealing with her loneliness, the terminal patient facing impending death, the lonely woman making all the wrong partner choices, or the author herself who faces a devastating breakup- all their stories author insight into the depths of our despair to where hope and growth might lie.

The book is well laid out between the author's own experience and that of her patients. Each patient grows and works along with the author to meet their goals. The cadence is well written and the patients are revealed to the reader as they become known to the author - slowly and through the building of trust.

4/5 Stars. 

Ask Again, Yes - Mary Beth Keane

Generational trauma is a heavy lift. Emotionally, the tendrils of the trauma wrap around each participant and create outcomes as different as the individuals effected. In Ask Again, Yes, Keane delves into the ripple effects of such trauma with themes of abuse, addiction, abandonment, and violence. 

Beginning with Frances and Bryan, who are trainees together for the NYPD and partners at their very first assignment. Frances, serious and cautious approaches his job with a professional air and thoughtful contemplation. Bryan appears more rash. Talks of the pregnant girlfriend he must marry and searches out ways to stop for a pint of beer while walking the beat. 

Fast forward to their children. Frances' youngest, Kate and Bryan's only, Peter grow up the best of friends. Living next door to each other, they never grow close because something is certainly off about Peter's mother. She's distant and abrasive. And it's clear to the reader that she has some elements of mental health crisis probably not helped by her clearly absentee or alcoholic husband. 

Bryan is only interested in an easy fix for his wife and his issues. So once a disturbing incident happens at the grocery store involving Anne, his wife, he's reassured she's on medication and it's business as usual. But of course it's not.

And everyone being willing to let these things slide in the acceptable and neighborly silence has bad consequences, of course. Violence erupts and both Kate and Peter's families are never the same. But their affection for each other, which was just beginning to blossom into young romance is left interrupted and unfulfilled. As they find their way to each other, they are willing to take whatever broken parts of themselves are left. 

I liked the way that Peter and Kate's relationship serves as a central hub in the book. I liked how smart and independent Kate was, and how unwilling she was to let anyone else dictate the course of her life's events. Maybe the book felt a little overlong, but otherwise it was a good read. 

3.75/5 Stars. 

The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life - Brad Stulberg, Steve Magness

A decent book about channeling passion and energy in a positive direction. I appreciated the author's discussion about how passion, when focused on outcomes or external factors, can corrupt someone's motivation and lead to burn out, or more seriously, cheating and destruction of someone's character.

Passion Paradox discusses both sides of pursuing your passion and gives concrete tips on how to maybe not let it overtake and ruin you. And it does away with the notion that Passion leaves room for balance. It may actually do away with the notion of balance at all which was actually quite refreshing in a COVID environment when it seems everything needs to be done RIGHT NOW and I'm personally pulled in five different directions at any given moment.

Each chapter contains summary boxes with the most salient points and the distillation of all the words is helpful in trying to formulate a plan or an understanding for a path forward. The book is ultimately accessible without a lot of jargon and some real life examples of people who got it right, or got it wrong. 

3/5 Stars.  

The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal - Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Justin McElroy, Carey Pietsch

I finished this in one day. My page per day average soared. I finished and wanted to start all over again.

It's been a couple years since The Adventure Zone, Balance Arc finished its podcast and moved on. I'm still not over it. But as the feeling of the podcast grows more distant, these comics that cover the different arcs within the Balance show, become better. Because the show got better over time as the narrative deepened and the McElroy brothers (and dad) got more deeply into the characters they were creating.

Petals to the Metal is really where this all started to happen within the show. When Griffin McElroy took more control over where the story was going, and side characters who could have been throw- aways became fan favorites. This was the arc where Justin McElroy conjured Spirit Steed and instead of a horse, we got a fabulous, deep voiced binicorn Garyl. I mean, no one but the McElroy's could have pulled this off.

Petals to the Metal deepens the mystery of the red robes and the Bureau of Balance. It illuminates the characters but casts huge doubts over their mission and the narrative. It's an excellent turning point in the series. The only thing to regret is the next installments are not immediately available. And, naturally that since my 8 year old is now into graphic novels he mistook this for his own and we had to have a serious chat about the "F" word.

5/5 Duh. 

Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston

I had this book wait-listed for a while at the library but can honestly say it was worth the wait. Red, White and Royal Blue is most shocking in the alternative 2019-2020 it presents. After Ellen Clermont is elected the first female president in 2016 (no one cares about a private e-mail server, says one of the characters, tongue-in-cheek - I could cry but I digress), her family occupies the white house in all their modern splendor. Ellen is divorced from Senator Oscar Diaz, and their two dazzling brilliant and beautiful children, 23 year old June and 21 year old Alex, work together with the daughter of the vice president to create The White House Trio.

What could be more wonderful than these PYTs? Well enter the devestatingly handsome second son of England's Princess and her James Bond movie star husband and voila, you have Henry. And, as it turns out, Henry and Alex get involved in a little enemies to lovers story and this could be trope-y and boring and saccharine. But it's NOT!! It's hilarious, and perfectly paced and just the right amount of schmaltz and edge.

I really fell for Henry and Alex. I liked watching their relationship turn a corner. I thought McQuiston dealt with the sexuality angle perfectly. There was quite a lot of detail regarding US and British politics and it was really all around perfect. I suddenly wanted to be 25 again and have that youthful energy and spirit. And I desperately wanted to live in a 2020 that had a Wimbledon and a DNC and international love scandal between the FSOTUS and a Prince, because the alternative, this current 2020, is just shit in comparison.

4 Stars. 

I Can Make This Promise - Christine Day

I really like thoughtful middle reader books that tackle hard issues. In I Can Make This Promise, Edie has always known she's different, because as someone who is half native, she is constantly asked "where she comes from." I can't imagine the kind of fatigue this puts on people merely for looking different. I like that the book starts with this premise. Of a kindergartner being reminded she looks different from everyone else, and from her teacher no less.

Fast forward to a twelve year old Edie, who is a budding artist with a couple of close friends and a desire to know more about her heritage. Unfortunately, the native side is tied up with her mom's own personal history. A history that involves adoption. Edie accidentally finds a box in the attic which contains some things pointing to her ancestry. She's reluctant to ask her parents about it, certain they are keeping secrets. She's egged on by a less than helpful friend who has some bad ideas about a summer movie project and some worse ideas about the kinds of things that you should keep from your parents.

This unfolds into some erratic behavior by Edie and an eventual resolution with her parents. This middle reader book helps the reader feel a little concerned for Edie but never truly scared regarding her parent's love for her. It's a good mix of independence but also reliance on those relationships which help explain new, more adult concepts. Including painful government practices that led to the removal of native children from their families.

Adult readers may find Edie a little too perfect of a child and her parent's motive a little too serving of the plot structure, but I think it's a great presentation for a middle reader.

4/5 Stars

Ploughshares Spring 2020 - Edited by Tracy K. Smith

This Spring 2020 Edition of Ploughshares really delivered on the poetry front. The crazy thing about poetry is how many different feelings and looks you can get in reading a handful of poems. Perhaps it seems like you could read them faster than a novel, but when you switch to a new poem you have to recalibrate your brain and expectations and feelings every time.

This edition had some great poems. Some of my favorites:

Beer Run by Jared Harel
Love Song with Contradictions by Ellen Kombiyil
Daughter by Danusha Lameris - "I always wanted a daughter, which is to say, I wanted a better self" wow.
Slither by Danusha Lameris - "That was when I knew I'd become a stranger to the world."
After the Funeral by Roger Reeves

As for Fiction
The West We Leave by Kailyn McCord was a post apocalyptic tale of an abandoned California following massive and sustaining earthquakes. I always love a good tale that imagines what will happen if the world completely changes.

Dead Horn by Kirstin Valdez Quade was a great story about a family coping in the aftermath of a parent's death and the way circumstances can bend familial roles when trying to account for an absence.

Plastic Knives by Koye Oyedeji was so intriguing in its development of the story about an elderly lady waiting for her caregiver to take her to the park, but gets a completely different unexpected visitor.

And finally, in Nonfiction

What Money Can't Buy by Dawn Lundy Martin about a back to school shopping trip between an aunt and her nieces. What is the role of a prosperous aunt to her nieces living in less than ideal circumstances? How much will one shopping trip change their outlook and expectations for life?

4/5 Stars.