Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 49
August 27, 2022
Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala
This fun, fluffy cozy centered around a Filipino family restaurant is an Anthony Award nominee for best first novel.
Lila Macapagal moves back home after a breakup, along with her dachshund Longanisa (sausage), aka Nisa. When her high school boyfriend and restaurant-extorting asshole critic drops dead at their restaurant, Lila becomes embroiled in a truly incredible number of crimes, all of which the local cop accuses her of. She starts investigating, mostly by eating at local restaurants and interviewing the owners. Cue food porn.
This is a fun, lighthearted cozy with lots of nice food and cultural details. The writing is a bit clunky due to either the author or her editor thinking she needs to define every single term that might not be familiar to white Americans ("I took a bite of pan de sal (Filipino bread rolls)"), and the plot isn't the most plausible even for a cozy. For instance, Lila gets framed for some extremely serious crimes, but hangs out with her friends and the Korean-American dentist she's semi-dating rather than freaking out or pointing out that she has an alibi for some of them. But the hanging out is great and I'd happily read a whole book of that.
If you can overlook the implausibilities, it's quite charming and enjoyable. I read it in a day.
Currently $2.99 on Amazon
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Lila Macapagal moves back home after a breakup, along with her dachshund Longanisa (sausage), aka Nisa. When her high school boyfriend and restaurant-extorting asshole critic drops dead at their restaurant, Lila becomes embroiled in a truly incredible number of crimes, all of which the local cop accuses her of. She starts investigating, mostly by eating at local restaurants and interviewing the owners. Cue food porn.
This is a fun, lighthearted cozy with lots of nice food and cultural details. The writing is a bit clunky due to either the author or her editor thinking she needs to define every single term that might not be familiar to white Americans ("I took a bite of pan de sal (Filipino bread rolls)"), and the plot isn't the most plausible even for a cozy. For instance, Lila gets framed for some extremely serious crimes, but hangs out with her friends and the Korean-American dentist she's semi-dating rather than freaking out or pointing out that she has an alibi for some of them. But the hanging out is great and I'd happily read a whole book of that.
If you can overlook the implausibilities, it's quite charming and enjoyable. I read it in a day.
Currently $2.99 on Amazon
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August 26, 2022
Verity by Colleen Hoover
Hoover is a huge bestseller and has an immense TikTok following, so I decided to check out her most popular novel, Verity. (It's also her darkest and she warns that people who like her other books might not like this one.) Oh boy was that a good decision. At least, it was a good decision for you. This book is NUTS.
Verity is absolutely batshit literally from page one.
It opens with one of the most accidentally hilarious scenes I have ever read. Lowen, a midlist writer who moved to New York City ten years ago, sees a man fall in traffic and get his head "crushed like a grape." His head "pops like a champagne cork!" She's splattered with blood!
...and all the New Yorkers totally ignore this, because New Yorkers are so hardened that seeing a man's skull get unexpectedly crushed and blood splatter everywhere isn't worth a backward glance.
Her own reaction to this is to muse on New Yorkers vs other people.
A hot dude, Jeremy, helps her exchange her blood-splattered shirt for his so she can get to her job interview, mentioning that he wasn't bothered by the guy's head exploding in front of him because he's seen worse things.
I assumed he meant he was a combat veteran because war is literally the only way anyone ever gets used to heads exploding. Instead, he says his eight-year-old daughter drowned in a lake.
...okay, yes, that is more traumatic than seeing a stranger's head explode. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE USED TO HEADS EXPLODING! I HAVE SEEN A BUNCH OF CORPSES BUT I WOULD STILL BE FREAKED OUT IF SOMEONE'S HEAD WAS UNEXPECTEDLY CRUSHED IN FRONT OF ME!
Lowen rushes to her job interview, which coincidentally is with Jeremy. He is the husband of bestselling author Verity, who was disabled in a car crash and is unable to finish her book series. Lowen is hired to finish it for her. For literally no reason it's a big secret that Verity was injured so this is announced as her randomly collaborating with Lowen.
At this point I started liveblogging over email:
- We have just learned that Jeremy has TWO dead daughters, not one. They were twins who died six months apart.
Also, the heroine's mother just died slowly of colon cancer.
- Lowen is now staying at the house of the Jeremy and his mysteriously disabled wife Verity. She has been placed in the master bedroom, which has human toothmarks on the headboard, she presumes from extremely hot sex.
- Verity is in a coma. I'm calling it now: she murdered the kids and framed her husband, and she's faking the coma.
Lowen discovers that Verity has written a memoir, which she proceeds to read veeeery sloooooowly, at a pace of one chapter per day maximum. The revelations about Verity all come from the memoir.
Spoiler cut. ( Read more... )
The exploding head has nothing to do with anything, except for a thematic thing about some people having lots of random bad stuff happen to them.
I can tell why Verity is a bestseller despite being batshit, melodramatic, and kind of nonsensical: it is pretty compelling reading. I finished it in a day.
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Verity is absolutely batshit literally from page one.
It opens with one of the most accidentally hilarious scenes I have ever read. Lowen, a midlist writer who moved to New York City ten years ago, sees a man fall in traffic and get his head "crushed like a grape." His head "pops like a champagne cork!" She's splattered with blood!
...and all the New Yorkers totally ignore this, because New Yorkers are so hardened that seeing a man's skull get unexpectedly crushed and blood splatter everywhere isn't worth a backward glance.
Her own reaction to this is to muse on New Yorkers vs other people.
A hot dude, Jeremy, helps her exchange her blood-splattered shirt for his so she can get to her job interview, mentioning that he wasn't bothered by the guy's head exploding in front of him because he's seen worse things.
I assumed he meant he was a combat veteran because war is literally the only way anyone ever gets used to heads exploding. Instead, he says his eight-year-old daughter drowned in a lake.
...okay, yes, that is more traumatic than seeing a stranger's head explode. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE USED TO HEADS EXPLODING! I HAVE SEEN A BUNCH OF CORPSES BUT I WOULD STILL BE FREAKED OUT IF SOMEONE'S HEAD WAS UNEXPECTEDLY CRUSHED IN FRONT OF ME!
Lowen rushes to her job interview, which coincidentally is with Jeremy. He is the husband of bestselling author Verity, who was disabled in a car crash and is unable to finish her book series. Lowen is hired to finish it for her. For literally no reason it's a big secret that Verity was injured so this is announced as her randomly collaborating with Lowen.
At this point I started liveblogging over email:
- We have just learned that Jeremy has TWO dead daughters, not one. They were twins who died six months apart.
Also, the heroine's mother just died slowly of colon cancer.
- Lowen is now staying at the house of the Jeremy and his mysteriously disabled wife Verity. She has been placed in the master bedroom, which has human toothmarks on the headboard, she presumes from extremely hot sex.
- Verity is in a coma. I'm calling it now: she murdered the kids and framed her husband, and she's faking the coma.
Lowen discovers that Verity has written a memoir, which she proceeds to read veeeery sloooooowly, at a pace of one chapter per day maximum. The revelations about Verity all come from the memoir.
Spoiler cut. ( Read more... )
The exploding head has nothing to do with anything, except for a thematic thing about some people having lots of random bad stuff happen to them.
I can tell why Verity is a bestseller despite being batshit, melodramatic, and kind of nonsensical: it is pretty compelling reading. I finished it in a day.
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August 25, 2022
Podcast interview with me
An interview I did several months ago for a podcast is now up. The podcast is IndoctriNation by Rachel Bernstein, a therapist who specializes in cult survivors. It's about my childhood and how that affected my work as a therapist and life coach.
It's on Spotify, Apple, and other places where podcasts are found.
Content Notes: At about the 50 mark, I say, "Let me tell you about the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me." If you don't want to hear a fairly graphic account of child abuse and a suicide attempt, skip to 1:01.
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It's on Spotify, Apple, and other places where podcasts are found.
Content Notes: At about the 50 mark, I say, "Let me tell you about the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me." If you don't want to hear a fairly graphic account of child abuse and a suicide attempt, skip to 1:01.
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August 20, 2022
Help Ukrainian Refugees
I have a very close friend who is involved in helping Ukrainian refugees in Bulgaria. With her permission, I have copied her explanation of the situation from her initial post on it:
"there's one of the bases near [her city] where the government dumped over a hundred of ukrainian refugees who're either elderly or disabled in various ways, with some children. they get some governmental support, but it's fairly minimal and mostly limited to plain food, and they can't work (and don't have an official right to, or they'll lose their accommodations, such as they are), and there's a lot of daily needs that are, well, endless and unmet. medication, additional or medical diet food, stuff for kids, adult diapers, underwear, cooking implements, something to occupy themselves with, everything, you know? it's like a black well of misery. several people are trying to visit them every week and bring something, and there's impromptu fundraising, but, again, a hundred people, and it's not something you could fix once."
And then, after people who saw this post sent donations:
"so far they've ordered a huge batch of underwear (not delivered yet) and bought a ton of pampers, food, hygienic stuff, and cat stuff for the three cats who're there, and the next run will probably go towards canned meat and such - we'll see.
(the underwear is just, like, killing me. because it's been a huge chunk of money all at once, it meant they were able to order a 100 pairs or so, at least one for everybody, which means like… people not literally fighting over three pairs of underpants as they get brought in a bit of a time by volunteers, likely secondhand. jesus wept.)"
The person who posted is someone I vouch for (I actually lived with her for a couple months, it's a long story) and the person who is doing the purchasing is very transparent and shows receipts.
If you're interested in contributing, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com, and I will give you my friend's PayPal address. You can send donations to her.
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"there's one of the bases near [her city] where the government dumped over a hundred of ukrainian refugees who're either elderly or disabled in various ways, with some children. they get some governmental support, but it's fairly minimal and mostly limited to plain food, and they can't work (and don't have an official right to, or they'll lose their accommodations, such as they are), and there's a lot of daily needs that are, well, endless and unmet. medication, additional or medical diet food, stuff for kids, adult diapers, underwear, cooking implements, something to occupy themselves with, everything, you know? it's like a black well of misery. several people are trying to visit them every week and bring something, and there's impromptu fundraising, but, again, a hundred people, and it's not something you could fix once."
And then, after people who saw this post sent donations:
"so far they've ordered a huge batch of underwear (not delivered yet) and bought a ton of pampers, food, hygienic stuff, and cat stuff for the three cats who're there, and the next run will probably go towards canned meat and such - we'll see.
(the underwear is just, like, killing me. because it's been a huge chunk of money all at once, it meant they were able to order a 100 pairs or so, at least one for everybody, which means like… people not literally fighting over three pairs of underpants as they get brought in a bit of a time by volunteers, likely secondhand. jesus wept.)"
The person who posted is someone I vouch for (I actually lived with her for a couple months, it's a long story) and the person who is doing the purchasing is very transparent and shows receipts.
If you're interested in contributing, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com, and I will give you my friend's PayPal address. You can send donations to her.
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August 19, 2022
Runner, by Tracy Clark
On the Anthony Award ballot for Best Novel. This is the fourth in a series about Cass Raines, a Black former cop turned private investigator in Chicago, but it's the first I read. I didn't have any problem jumping in here.
In the dead of winter in Chicago, when everyone is freezing their asses off, Cass is approached by the mother of a runaway teenager to find her daughter. This is immediately complicated by the mother being non-custodial due to drug use, and the daughter having been in foster care. With bulldog-like tenacity, Cass starts knocking on doors...
Runner is a quick, page-turning read, with a little action but mostly just following Cass around as she interviews cops, ex-cops, social workers, foster parents, and street kids. Cass is notable for her kindness - she has some issues stemming from a bad childhood, but she's the opposite of the jaded, alienated, cynical type of PI. You can tell that if she'd made a few different choices, she'd probably have been a social worker herself.
The balance of dealing with dark social issues and skating over them fell just a bit too heavy on the "skating over" side for me. I don't need all the gritty details of human trafficking and child abuse, but if they're going to be a part of the story, I think they need a bit more weight.
This is a good solid mystery and had I read it in high school, when I was extremely into the "female PI" genre, I would have run out and bought the entire series. It's entertaining and atmospheric - you can feel the bitter cold - but unless it's a bad year for mysteries, it's nowhere near a best of the year book.
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In the dead of winter in Chicago, when everyone is freezing their asses off, Cass is approached by the mother of a runaway teenager to find her daughter. This is immediately complicated by the mother being non-custodial due to drug use, and the daughter having been in foster care. With bulldog-like tenacity, Cass starts knocking on doors...
Runner is a quick, page-turning read, with a little action but mostly just following Cass around as she interviews cops, ex-cops, social workers, foster parents, and street kids. Cass is notable for her kindness - she has some issues stemming from a bad childhood, but she's the opposite of the jaded, alienated, cynical type of PI. You can tell that if she'd made a few different choices, she'd probably have been a social worker herself.
The balance of dealing with dark social issues and skating over them fell just a bit too heavy on the "skating over" side for me. I don't need all the gritty details of human trafficking and child abuse, but if they're going to be a part of the story, I think they need a bit more weight.
This is a good solid mystery and had I read it in high school, when I was extremely into the "female PI" genre, I would have run out and bought the entire series. It's entertaining and atmospheric - you can feel the bitter cold - but unless it's a bad year for mysteries, it's nowhere near a best of the year book.
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August 18, 2022
Black Water Rising, by Attica Locke
Jay Porter, a struggling Black lawyer with a criminal record, takes his eight-month pregnant wife out for a romantic birthday dinner on a boat when they hear gunshots and a splash. He jumps into the dark water and rescues a white woman from drowning, an act of heroism which he comes to regret greatly when he learns of a white man who was shot to death that night...
Black Water Rising is an ambitious, complex first novel. There's a parallel plotline about Jay's past as an activist in the 1960s, in which he has an affair with a white woman, Cynthia, and ends up framed for inciting a riot. In the present day (1981 Houston), Cynthia is the mayor, and Jay's deeply traumatized and while justifiably paranoid, his refusal to get emotionally close or open up about his past is damaging his relationship with his eight-month-pregnant wife who's too good for him.
Jay's father-in-law is involved with strike negotiations involving a historically Black and historically white union which have recently joined together, and Jay gets involved in that when a Black union member gets beaten up by white union members.
Jay starts secretly investigating the shooting of the white man, which he thinks was done by the woman he saved from drowning.
He also has an actual caseload of low-level clients. I was convinced almost until the end of the book that the client that Jay always calling "the hooker" and ignoring was going to be a "you shouldn't just dismiss people" thing and she would be relevant to the main story, especially since she was claiming to have given a guy a blow job while he was driving and the murder victim was found in the driver's seat with his pants down. She was not relevant at all and her story ended limply. This was unfortunate as the storyline I was most interested in was "Jay Porter, struggling Black lawyer," and that was the storyline Attica Locke was least interested in.
There's also a plotline about oil, because this is 1981 Houston.
This is a lot and it felt like it. The opening scene is fantastic, as are several other individual scenes, Locke's prose is excellent, and the social commentary is dead-on. But the book as a whole felt slow and overstuffed, and while the storylines did come together reasonably well, they came together in an anticlimactic manner. I was really invested in Jay's relationship with his wife, and by the end of the book, I didn't feel like I knew whether things had improved between them or were basically the same. The ending felt like "...that's it?"
( Read more... )
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Black Water Rising is an ambitious, complex first novel. There's a parallel plotline about Jay's past as an activist in the 1960s, in which he has an affair with a white woman, Cynthia, and ends up framed for inciting a riot. In the present day (1981 Houston), Cynthia is the mayor, and Jay's deeply traumatized and while justifiably paranoid, his refusal to get emotionally close or open up about his past is damaging his relationship with his eight-month-pregnant wife who's too good for him.
Jay's father-in-law is involved with strike negotiations involving a historically Black and historically white union which have recently joined together, and Jay gets involved in that when a Black union member gets beaten up by white union members.
Jay starts secretly investigating the shooting of the white man, which he thinks was done by the woman he saved from drowning.
He also has an actual caseload of low-level clients. I was convinced almost until the end of the book that the client that Jay always calling "the hooker" and ignoring was going to be a "you shouldn't just dismiss people" thing and she would be relevant to the main story, especially since she was claiming to have given a guy a blow job while he was driving and the murder victim was found in the driver's seat with his pants down. She was not relevant at all and her story ended limply. This was unfortunate as the storyline I was most interested in was "Jay Porter, struggling Black lawyer," and that was the storyline Attica Locke was least interested in.
There's also a plotline about oil, because this is 1981 Houston.
This is a lot and it felt like it. The opening scene is fantastic, as are several other individual scenes, Locke's prose is excellent, and the social commentary is dead-on. But the book as a whole felt slow and overstuffed, and while the storylines did come together reasonably well, they came together in an anticlimactic manner. I was really invested in Jay's relationship with his wife, and by the end of the book, I didn't feel like I knew whether things had improved between them or were basically the same. The ending felt like "...that's it?"
( Read more... )
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August 16, 2022
Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
“Virgil, what do you do?"
I hated that question. It was such a white way of looking at the world, that a person is judged by their job, not their character.
On the Rosebud Lakota reservation, most crime falls through the cracks in the system. The tribal police are powerless, and the feds don't care about anything short of murder or large-scale drug dealing. Virgil Wounded Horse fills that gap by beating the hell out of wrongdoers, both for money and out of a sense of justice.
Virgil doesn't believe in the old traditions. After his sister died and his girlfriend Marie left him, his one source of stability is caring for his 14-year-old nephew Nathan. When Marie's father, a tribal councilman, asks him to investigate drug pushing on the rez, Virgil doesn't want to get involved. Needless to say, he does anyway. So do Marie and Nathan...
Winter Counts is a solid mystery with excellent characterization and sense of place. I really liked a lot of the characters, the plotting is well-done, there's some good action/suspense sequences, and there's a thoughtful examination of the characters' various relationships to traditional ways.
Something totally unexpected but delightful in this book is a running thread about food and how it shows culture and personality. There's a subplot involving a chef reviving indigenous foods that's both integral to the plot and really fun. Weiden has a sly sense of humor and an appreciation for good food that manifests in sending the characters to assorted restaurants, cafes, and cafeterias where can both describe the food and get in a little social satire.
I would have preferred more show and less tell in the epilogue - it wraps everything up too neatly, especially given the highly dramatic events of the climax. There will be a sequel and I'm grabbing it the instant it's out.
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I hated that question. It was such a white way of looking at the world, that a person is judged by their job, not their character.
On the Rosebud Lakota reservation, most crime falls through the cracks in the system. The tribal police are powerless, and the feds don't care about anything short of murder or large-scale drug dealing. Virgil Wounded Horse fills that gap by beating the hell out of wrongdoers, both for money and out of a sense of justice.
Virgil doesn't believe in the old traditions. After his sister died and his girlfriend Marie left him, his one source of stability is caring for his 14-year-old nephew Nathan. When Marie's father, a tribal councilman, asks him to investigate drug pushing on the rez, Virgil doesn't want to get involved. Needless to say, he does anyway. So do Marie and Nathan...
Winter Counts is a solid mystery with excellent characterization and sense of place. I really liked a lot of the characters, the plotting is well-done, there's some good action/suspense sequences, and there's a thoughtful examination of the characters' various relationships to traditional ways.
Something totally unexpected but delightful in this book is a running thread about food and how it shows culture and personality. There's a subplot involving a chef reviving indigenous foods that's both integral to the plot and really fun. Weiden has a sly sense of humor and an appreciation for good food that manifests in sending the characters to assorted restaurants, cafes, and cafeterias where can both describe the food and get in a little social satire.
I would have preferred more show and less tell in the epilogue - it wraps everything up too neatly, especially given the highly dramatic events of the climax. There will be a sequel and I'm grabbing it the instant it's out.
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August 9, 2022
Bouchercon
I'm attending Bouchercon, the mystery convention, this year (masked), and so am reading books by the Guests of Honor and attendees.
I kept up with the mystery field in high school and college, but then drifted away and only read old favorites and newer books that were recommended or that I randomly picked up. When browsing the list of attendees and their books, I was pleasantly surprised by how much more diverse, interesting, and literary the genre has gotten, while still having all the private eyes, thrillers, and cozies that I used to enjoy.
Here's the Guests of Honor
Here's the list of attending authors.
I intend to read at least one book by most of the GoH and some of the attendees before I go, so look forward to a month of mystery reviews!
On my "definitely read" list:
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Are there any books by attendees that you would recommend or disrecommend? Ellen Hart has a bazillion books with mixed reviews; has anyone read her and have specific picks?
Also, if anyone wants to read along, I am currently reading Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden. So far it's an excellent crime novel set on a Lakota reservation, with a great sense of place/culture and solid characterization. The protagonist is a vigilante who enacts justice for principles and pay due to the tribal police being powerless and the feds refusing to do anything.
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I kept up with the mystery field in high school and college, but then drifted away and only read old favorites and newer books that were recommended or that I randomly picked up. When browsing the list of attendees and their books, I was pleasantly surprised by how much more diverse, interesting, and literary the genre has gotten, while still having all the private eyes, thrillers, and cozies that I used to enjoy.
Here's the Guests of Honor
Here's the list of attending authors.
I intend to read at least one book by most of the GoH and some of the attendees before I go, so look forward to a month of mystery reviews!
On my "definitely read" list:
[image error] [image error]
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[image error] [image error]
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Are there any books by attendees that you would recommend or disrecommend? Ellen Hart has a bazillion books with mixed reviews; has anyone read her and have specific picks?
Also, if anyone wants to read along, I am currently reading Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden. So far it's an excellent crime novel set on a Lakota reservation, with a great sense of place/culture and solid characterization. The protagonist is a vigilante who enacts justice for principles and pay due to the tribal police being powerless and the feds refusing to do anything.
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Blacktop Wasteland, by S. A. Cosby
The wail of an electric guitar made her jump like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Blacktop Wasteland deserves all the praise it got and then some. It marries classic noir prose and plot to a Black protagonist in a southern milieu, a heartbreaking story of fathers and sons, social commentary, and jaw-dropping action sequences featuring some very imaginative things you can do with motor vehicles.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage used to be a getaway driver, just like his long-gone father. But now he's gone straight, supporting his wife and two sons as a car mechanic, his only remnant of the life his father's beloved car and a feeling in the back of his soul that he was always meant to be be a criminal.
A series of unfortunate events lands him in the hole, and his past gets him an offer of some quick cash if he'll just be a getaway driver one more time. However, the people he needs to work with are less than impressive:
The last thing Ronnie remembered was one of the girls sucking his dick like she'd been poisoned and the antidote was in his nuts.
And also prone to double-crossing:
"He so crooked they gonna have to screw him into the ground when he dies," Boonie said.
The robbery goes very wrong, leaving Beauregard with no good options other than pulling off a truly spectacular heist.
The general thrust of the plot is very classic noir, but the individual twists and turns, and particularly some of the action sequences, are startling and original. It has a plot as meticulously constructed as a master carpenter might make a chair, but everything is motivated by in-character decisions and plausible twists of fate, so it feels completely organic.
The prose is something you luxuriate in, and Beauregard's downward spiral is heartbreaking. It's an excellent book on every level, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys noir.
Content notes: violence, drugs, non-graphic child harm, depictions of racism and homophobia.
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Blacktop Wasteland deserves all the praise it got and then some. It marries classic noir prose and plot to a Black protagonist in a southern milieu, a heartbreaking story of fathers and sons, social commentary, and jaw-dropping action sequences featuring some very imaginative things you can do with motor vehicles.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage used to be a getaway driver, just like his long-gone father. But now he's gone straight, supporting his wife and two sons as a car mechanic, his only remnant of the life his father's beloved car and a feeling in the back of his soul that he was always meant to be be a criminal.
A series of unfortunate events lands him in the hole, and his past gets him an offer of some quick cash if he'll just be a getaway driver one more time. However, the people he needs to work with are less than impressive:
The last thing Ronnie remembered was one of the girls sucking his dick like she'd been poisoned and the antidote was in his nuts.
And also prone to double-crossing:
"He so crooked they gonna have to screw him into the ground when he dies," Boonie said.
The robbery goes very wrong, leaving Beauregard with no good options other than pulling off a truly spectacular heist.
The general thrust of the plot is very classic noir, but the individual twists and turns, and particularly some of the action sequences, are startling and original. It has a plot as meticulously constructed as a master carpenter might make a chair, but everything is motivated by in-character decisions and plausible twists of fate, so it feels completely organic.
The prose is something you luxuriate in, and Beauregard's downward spiral is heartbreaking. It's an excellent book on every level, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys noir.
Content notes: violence, drugs, non-graphic child harm, depictions of racism and homophobia.
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August 8, 2022
Pacific Fire (Daniel Blackland # 2), by Greg van Eekhout
Welcome back to Los Angeles, home of osteomancers and canals.
This book is hard to discuss without massive spoilers for the previous book. The cut will contain spoilers for both this book and the first book.
I regret to say that this book had more of what annoyed me about the first book, and less of what I liked about the first book. The combination of delightful worldbuilding, clever twists, really fun action, and absolutely baffling narrative decisions continues, but my favorite characters from the first book only make cameo appearances in this one.
By baffling narrative decisions, I'm talking about stuff like this:
- At the climax of the first book, there's a jaw-dropping revelation that not only changes everything you thought you knew about the characters and their relationships, but is clearly going to completely change the relationships of the characters in the future.
This is literally never mentioned again.
- Two of the characters in this book are on the run and in desperate straits. A complete stranger pulls up and rescues them, gives them shelter, and provides them with knowledge of and access to something difficult to get which they need to complete their mission. I kept waiting for this stranger to have known about them in advance and for this to be part of the story, but no, he was apparently a completely random good Samaritan who just happened to notice that they were being pursued, felt like rescuing them, had the ability to rescue them, and then just happened to have access to exactly what they needed and was happy to give it to them.
I don't think I've ever come across a bigger case of deus ex machina, and that includes Greek plays in which a deus descends in a machina.
Also, this book does not have enough Gabriel and Max. They're basically just cameos.
( Read more... )
I will read the third book though, because I've been promised more Gabriel and Max, and unlike Daniel, so far their motivations and actions make perfect sense, even if they're not necessarily what a well-adjusted person would do.
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This book is hard to discuss without massive spoilers for the previous book. The cut will contain spoilers for both this book and the first book.
I regret to say that this book had more of what annoyed me about the first book, and less of what I liked about the first book. The combination of delightful worldbuilding, clever twists, really fun action, and absolutely baffling narrative decisions continues, but my favorite characters from the first book only make cameo appearances in this one.
By baffling narrative decisions, I'm talking about stuff like this:
- At the climax of the first book, there's a jaw-dropping revelation that not only changes everything you thought you knew about the characters and their relationships, but is clearly going to completely change the relationships of the characters in the future.
This is literally never mentioned again.
- Two of the characters in this book are on the run and in desperate straits. A complete stranger pulls up and rescues them, gives them shelter, and provides them with knowledge of and access to something difficult to get which they need to complete their mission. I kept waiting for this stranger to have known about them in advance and for this to be part of the story, but no, he was apparently a completely random good Samaritan who just happened to notice that they were being pursued, felt like rescuing them, had the ability to rescue them, and then just happened to have access to exactly what they needed and was happy to give it to them.
I don't think I've ever come across a bigger case of deus ex machina, and that includes Greek plays in which a deus descends in a machina.
Also, this book does not have enough Gabriel and Max. They're basically just cameos.
( Read more... )
I will read the third book though, because I've been promised more Gabriel and Max, and unlike Daniel, so far their motivations and actions make perfect sense, even if they're not necessarily what a well-adjusted person would do.
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