Rachel Manija Brown's Blog

Out of Air, by Rachel Reiss

Just in terms of the premise, this is The Secret History meets Shadow Divers: a poor girl scuba diver falls in with a group of rich kid scuba divers, and they end up bound together by a shared deadly secret. There's other works it also reminded of, again just in terms of the premise, which are more spoilery: (  Read more...  )

In the present timeline, Phoebe aka "Phibs," a poor aspiring underwater photographer, discovers a hidden underwater cave while on a diving trip with her four rich best friends, Gabriel (hot boy she likes), Will (Gabriel's fraternal twin, a joker), Lani (lost three fingers in past timeline, now afraid to dive), and Isabel (Lani's girlfriend). That is all the characterization Phibs's friends get, though Phibs herself gets a little bit more, or at least more backstory: she's the sole caretaker of her grandmother with dementia, and the women in her family have a possibly uncanny knack for finding things.

In the past timeline, Phibs finds five gold coins via the family knack, and something happens that led to Lani losing fingers and someone dying. In the present, Phibs finds a beautiful underwater cave with an air pocket. She and Gabriel rest and kiss in the air pocket... and then learn that there's a legend saying bad things happen to people who breathe the air in the cave. It seems to be true, as deeply creepy things begin happening to their bodies...

The plot and premise are great, and the diving and body horror/transformation scenes are really well-done. Reiss is a professional scuba diver, and you can tell. But the pacing feels a bit abrupt and choppy, which is not helped by the dual timelines cutting between the past and present, so that events that actually are set up still sometimes feel like they come out of the blue. I had a hard time figuring out the geography of anywhere that wasn't underwater, which is not a common complaint I have about books - for instance, I wasn't sure for most of the book whether the island base in the present storyline was a tiny island with only one house on it, or a large one with a town. And of course there's the mostly-nonexistent characterization, which is really the biggest problem with the book. If this had actual characters rather than "hot boy" and "Lani's girlfriend," it would have been so good.

I didn't mind that nothing is explained about what's actually up with the cave and Phibs's family knack, but in case you would mind: nothing is explained. I did enjoy reading the book but more attention to character and taking things slower could have made it excellent rather than just an enjoyable read with some standout elements.

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The Bewitching & Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Three timelines intertwine, connected by witches and women. A grad student in Massachusetts in the 1990s, whose grandmother had a run-in with a witch in the early 1900s in Mexico, researches the mysterious disappearance of a promising woman horror writer in the 1930s.

It's a very nicely constructed, gripping, enjoyable novel of good and evil magic, and women's persistence in the face of what seem to be impossible odds.

Content notes: Cat death.




What it says on the tin: a very gothic-y gothic, set in Mexico. Noemi is a bit of a shallow, selfish debutante in 1950s Mexico. But when she realizes that her cousin who married a wealthy older man may be in trouble in their lavish home in rural Mexico, Noemi sets out to rescue her. She promptly encounters every gothic trope ever, plus a really fun twist on the haunted house/ghost story.

It turns out that being a mean girl debutante used to getting her own way is exactly what's needed to survive this story. I had no end of fun with Noemi bluntly calling out the rule about no talking at dinner, demanding to know exactly what medical treatment her cousin was getting, and generally running roughshod over the creepy atmosphere. A very enjoyable book that I read in a single sitting.

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We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough

This novel appears to be a well-written and enjoyable but conventional haunted house story; it turns out to have a twist on that theme which I've never encountered before. I very much enjoyed discovering that for myself, so if you think you might too, don't read the spoilers.

A young couple, Emily and Freddie, move from London to Larkin Lodge, an old house in Dartmoor, while Emily's recovering from a serious accident. After she fell off a cliff, her heart stopped and one leg was permanently damaged. Doctors warned her and Freddie that she might suffer from post-sepsis mental complications, so when she starts perceiving weird things involving Larkin Lodge, both she and Freddie think it's probably her, not the house. Emily and Freddie's marriage is not the greatest, but is that something that was previously going on, or is it cracking under stress, or is the house having a bad effect on them?

Emily and Freddie are not the best people, but that really works for the story. I thought it was a lot of fun.

Spoilers! (  Read more...  )

Content notes: Not even slightly gory or gross. Mention of a miscarriage (off-page, not described). Some violence, not graphic. No on-page animal harm, but the body of a dead raven is found.

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Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher

After disliking both The Hollow Places and The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher, and for similar reasons (idiot heroine who refused to believe in magic when it was happening right in front of her; annoying tone), I gave up on her works. But since lots of my customers like her, I ordered this book. And when it arrived, it was so beautiful that I had to pick it up and examine it. And then I figured I'd read a couple pages, just to get an idea of what it was about. Those couple pages quickly turned into the first chapter. Then the second. The next thing I knew, I was actually enjoying the book, and finished it with great pleasure.

Anja is a scientist specializing in poisons and antidotes, who regularly takes small doses of poison to understand their effects and test out antidotes. She saves the lives of poisoned people, sometimes. This gets her enough fame that one day the king shows up, asking her to save his daughter, Snow, who he believes is being poisoned...

This is a very loose retelling of "Snow White," making clever use of elements like the apple, the mirror, and the poison.

Like the other books of hers I read, this one is set in an unambiguously magical world and/or has a portal to an unambiguously magical world, and has a heroine who doesn't believe in magic. I guess this is an obligatory Kingfisher thing? At least in this one, Anja doesn't deny that things are happening when they're clearly happening, she just thinks that maybe there is some underlying scientific explanation. This makes at least some sense, as she's a scientist. (Though in my opinion, science is basically a framework and a worldview, and a scientist in a magical world would be doing experiments to figure out how magic works, not denying its existence.) In any case, Anja does not act like an idiot or a flat earther, but pursues the clues she finds and doesn't deny what they suggest. She's kind of monomaniacal, but in a fun way.

Hemlock & Silver meshes multiple genres. It's not a horror novel or even particularly dark for a fantasy, but it has some genuinely scary moments. It's often very funny. And one aspect of the story, while technically fantasy, is so methodically worked out and involves so much science (optics) that it feels like science fiction. There's also a murder mystery, a romance, a surprisingly agreeable rooster, and a talking cat. It all works together quite nicely.

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Labor Day Book Poll

View Poll: #33561

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Fic in a Box Letter

Full letter to come!

Thank you for writing for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you write for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, story lengths, etc.

My AO3 name is Edonohana. I am open to treats. Very open. I love them.

I like hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror, domestic life, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, difficult choices, survival situations, mysterious places and weird alien technology, food, plants, animals, landscape, X-Men type powers, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, miniature things or beings, magic, strange rituals, unknowable things, epistolary fiction, found footage/art/creepy movies/etc, canon divergence AUs anf alternate versions of characters. And many other things, too, of course! That list is just in case something sparks an idea.

(  Opt-in Tags  )

(  General DNWs  )

(  Caught in Crystal - Patricia Wrede  )

(  Dark Tower - Stephen King  )

(  Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey  )

(  Marvel 616  )

(  Piranesi - Susanna Clarke  )

(  The Stand - Stephen King  )

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The Disaster Days, by Rebecca Behrens

13-year-old Hannah, who lives on a tiny island off Seattle, is excited for her first babysitting job. Then a giant earthquake hits, cutting the island off from the mainland... and leaving Hannah alone in charge of two kids in a devastated landscape.

Hannah is not having a good day. She was recently diagnosed with asthma, forcing her to drop out of soccer and always carry an inhaler. Her best friend Neha, a soccer star, is now hanging out more with another soccer girl than with Hannah. Hannah forgets to bring her inhaler with her to school, and her mom doesn't turn around the car to get it as Hannah is desperate not to be late. When she arrives for her babysitting job after school, minus her inhaler (no doubt looming ominously on the mantelpiece at home, along with Chekhov's gun), she gets in a huge fight with Neha over text and the girls say they no longer want to be friends...

...just as a giant earthquake hits! Hannah gets her charges, Zoe and Oscar, to huddle under a table (along with their guinea pig) and no one is injured. But the windows break, the house is trashed, and the power, internet, and phones go out. The house is somewhat remote, an all-day walk from the next house. What to do?

Hannah is a pretty realistic 13-year-old. She's generally sensible, but makes some mistakes which are understandable under the circumstances, but have huge repercussions. She enlists the kids to help her search for her phone in the wreckage of the house, and Zoe immediately is severely cut on broken glass. The kids freak out because their mom (along with Hannah's) is on the mainland, and Hannah calms them down by lying that she got a text from their mom saying that she's fine and is coming soon. The next morning, she lets Oscar play on some home playground equipment. Hannah checks the surrounding area, but doesn't check the equipment itself. It's damaged and breaks, and Oscar breaks his leg. So by day one, Hannah is having asthma attacks without her inhaler, Zoe has one arm out of commission, Oscar is totally immobilized, and there's no adults within reach.

Well - this is a HUGE improvement on Trapped. It's well-written and gripping, the events all make sense, and the characterization is fine. It was clearly intended to teach kids what can happen during a big earthquake and how to stay as safe as possible, and the information presented on that is all good.

But - you knew there was a but - as an enjoyable work of children's disaster/survival literature, it falls short of the standards of the old classic Hatchet and the excellent newer series I Survived.

The basic problem with this book is that it has a very narrow emotional range. For the entire book, Hannah is miserable, guilty over her friend breakup and the kids getting hurt, worried about her parents, and desperately trying to keep it together. The kids get hurt so seriously so early on that they never have any fun. Even when Hannah tries to feed them S'Mores to cheer them up, nobody actually likes them because they're not melted!

The I Survived books have much more variety of emotional states and incidents, as typically the actual disaster doesn't happen until at least one-third of the way into the book. The kids have highs and lows, fun moments and despairing moments and terrifying moments. This book is all gloom all the time even before the disaster! Hannah eventually saves everyone, is hailed as a hero, and repairs her friendship, but we don't get that from her inner POV - it's in a transcript of a TV interview with her.

The information provided in the book is very solid, but I would have preferred that it didn't have BOTH kids get injured because of something Hannah does wrong. (That is not realistic! ONE, maybe.) It also would have been a lot more fun to read if the kids' injuries were either less serious or occurred later. The situation is desperate and miserable almost immediately, and just stays that way for the entire book.

Still, there's a lot about the book that's good and there should be an entertaining book that provides earthquake knowledge, so I'm keeping it. But I'm not getting her other book about two girls lost in the woods.

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Tiny House, Big Fix, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Of the MANY bait-and-switch books I've been tricked into reading, this takes the prize for the biggest switch. The back cover says it's about a single mom carpenter who builds a tiny house for herself and her daughters to live in. The title is about tiny houses. There is a tiny house on the cover. I read the book because I thought it would be about building a tiny house.

The book is actually about the events leading up to her building the tiny house. She doesn't build the tiny house until the LAST CHAPTER. It takes up about four pages.

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Trapped, by Michael Northrop

Seven teenagers get trapped in their high school during a blizzard when they miss the bus that evacuated the rest of the school.

This was easily the worst book I've read all year, and I've read some doozies. I read it because I'd bought a copy for the shop for the niche of "children's/younger YA survival books for kids who've already read all of Gary Paulson and "I Survived."" I am going to return it to the publisher (Scholastic, which should be ashamed of itself) forthwith, because it is AWFUL.

Why is this book so bad?

1. It's incredibly misogynist. The narrator, Scotty Weems, is constantly thinking of girls in a gross, slimy, objectifying way.

The two girl characters, who get trapped in the high school along with five boys, never do anything useful. One's entire personality is "hot" and every time she's mentioned, it's with a gross leering description of her body. The other girl's entire personality is "hot girl's friend."

2. The characters have exactly one characteristic each, and even that one often gets forgotten, to the extent that I kept mixing up "normal boy" with "mechanically inclined boy." The others are "dangerous boy" and "weird boy." The latter gets downgraded to "not actually weird, just funny" (as in makes one supposedly humorous comment once.) We get no insight into them, their backstories, their home lives, etc, because none of them ever really talk to each other about anything interesting despite being trapped together for a week!

3. SO MANY gross descriptions of pimples, peeing, and pooping.

4. The book is boring. No one does anything interesting on-page until the second to last chapter, when it FINALLY occurs to Scotty to make snowshoes. Most of the book is Scotty's inner monologue about pimples, pooping, peeing, and hot girls. The kids barely interact!

5. The kids keep saying that help won't come because no one even knows they're missing, but that makes no sense. Every single one of them was supposed to get picked up. It's never explained why SEVEN DIFFERENT FAMILIES wouldn't notice that their kids never came home.

6. The incredibly contrived scene where Best Friend Girl comes staggering in screaming and disheveled, repeating, "Les, Les!" This is the name of Dangerous Boy. One of Indistinguishable Boys assumes Les sexually assaulted her and runs out and attacks Les. Best Friend Girl recovers enough to explain that she went to a room and it was dark and cold and she got lost, and she was trying to say there was LESS light and heat there. Because that's what you'd naturally gasp out when freaking out, instead of, say, "Dark! Cold!"

I feel like the existence of this scene in a PUBLISHED BOOK lowered the collective intelligence of the universe by at least half a point.

7. No interesting use is made of the school setting. The kids open their own lockers to get extra clothes and snacks, find pudding and canned peaches in the cafeteria, and spend the rest of the time silently huddled in classrooms, occasionally checking their useless cellphones that don't have any signal. Toward the end, they start a fire, and then, OFF-PAGE, construct a snowmobile (!).

Things they don't do: Break into other kids' lockers in the hope of finding useful stuff. Attempt to cook the cafeteria food. Search the library for survival tips. Get mats from the gym so they're not sleeping on freezing floors. Search classrooms and the teacher's lounge for useful stuff. Have a pick-up ball game to keep warm. Find ways of entertaining themselves without cell phones. HAVE GETTING TO KNOW YOU CONVERSATIONS - WHAT IS THE POINT OF DOING THE BREAKFAST CLUB WITHOUT THIS?

Spoilers! (  Read more...  )

Truly terrible.

ETA: I just discovered that it went out of print soon after I purchased it (GOOD) and so is not returnable (DAMMIT).

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Hominids, by Robert Sawyer

A Neanderthal from an alternate universe where Homo Sapiens went extinct and Neanderthals lived into the present day is sucked into our world due to an experiment gone wrong. The book follows his interactions with humans in one storyline, and the repercussions in Neanderthal World in another.

I picked up this book because I like Neanderthals and alternate dimensions that aren't about relatively recent history (ie, not about "What if Nazis won WWII?"). The parts of the book that are actually about Neanderthal World are really fun. It's a genuinely different society, where men and women live separately for the most part, surveillance by implanted computers prevents most crime, mammoths and other large mammals did not go extinct, there are back scratching posts in homes, they wear special eating gloves rather than using utensils or eating barehanded, etc. This was all great.

The problem with this book was everything not directly about Neanderthal society. Bizarrely, this included almost the entire plotline on Neanderthal World, which consisted of a murder investigation and trial of the missing Neanderthal's male partner (what we would call his husband or lover), which was mostly tedious and ensured that we see very little of Neanderthal society. The Neanderthal interactions on our world were fun, but the non-Neanderthal parts were painful. There is a very graphic, on-page stranger rape of the main female character, solely so she can realize that Neanderthal dude is not like human men. There's two sequels, which I will not read.

It got some pretty entertaining reviews:

"☆☆☆☆☆1 out of 5 stars.
No. JUST NO.
I am sorry, but the premise of inherently and innately peaceful cultures with more advanced technology than conflict-driven cultures is patently absurd. Read Alistair Reynolds' Century Rain for an examination of how technological advancement depends on strife: necessity is the mother of invention, and the greatest necessity of all is fighting for survival. I will not be lectured for my male homosapien hubris by a creature that would never have gotten past the late neolithic in technology."

Hominids won a Hugo! Here are the other nominees.

1st place: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian)
2nd place: Kiln People by David Brin (American)
3rd place: Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick (American)
4th place: The Scar by China Miéville (British)
5th place: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (American)

Amazingly, I have read or attempted to read all of them. My ratings:

1st place: Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick (American)
2nd place: The Scar by China Miéville (British).
3rd place: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (American)
4th place: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian)
5th place: Kiln People by David Brin (American)

If I'd voted, it would be very close between Bones of the Earth and The Scar, both of which I loved. I made a valiant attempt at The Years of Rice and Salt. Like all of KSR's books, I'm sure it's quite good but not for me. I know I read Kiln People but recall literally nothing about it, so I'll give Hominids a place above it for having some nice Neanderthal stuff.

The actual ballot is a complete embarrassment.

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