Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 76
March 20, 2021
Lord of the Forest, by BB
An atmospheric children's novel that recounts the life of a great oak tree and the humans and animals that interact with it, over the course of 600 years in southern England.
It begins with a young boy planting an acorn, and ends with it dropping its last acorn; other things come full circle as well. In the meantime, badgers dig a set beneath its roots, owls raise their young in a hollow, and many human dramas occur in its vicinity as well, some of historical significance and some purely personal.
If you like this sort of thing, and I do, you will like the book. It has lovely woodcut-type illustrations by the author.
If you click on the author's name tag, you will find the book he's best known for, its bizarre sequel, and me bemoaning the unavailability of his nonfiction. GUESS WHAT? His nonfiction (and The Little Grey Men) is back in print in ebook! I know what my next bedtime reading will be!
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It begins with a young boy planting an acorn, and ends with it dropping its last acorn; other things come full circle as well. In the meantime, badgers dig a set beneath its roots, owls raise their young in a hollow, and many human dramas occur in its vicinity as well, some of historical significance and some purely personal.
If you like this sort of thing, and I do, you will like the book. It has lovely woodcut-type illustrations by the author.
If you click on the author's name tag, you will find the book he's best known for, its bizarre sequel, and me bemoaning the unavailability of his nonfiction. GUESS WHAT? His nonfiction (and The Little Grey Men) is back in print in ebook! I know what my next bedtime reading will be!
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comments
March 19, 2021
Midnight Son, by James Dommek Jr
"Hi, I'm a total stranger, want to tell me the story of the most fucked-up day of your entire life?"
An Audible Original piece written and performed by James Dommek, Jr., an Alaska Native writer and musician. The story, performance, production (which includes interviews), and music are all outstanding. It's a true story.
James Dommek, Jr. is Iñupiaq, born and raised in Kiana, Alaska, population 361. After leaving to live in Anchorage, he played in an Alaska-popular metal band, the Whipsaws, and did some professional acting. He's the great grandson of one of the last great Iñupiaq storytellers, and was always fascinated by stories of Iñukuns, a possibly mythic hidden tribe.
Teddy Kyle Smith, Dommek's contemporary, is also Iñupiaq, also from Kiana, also did some professional acting. But after being possibly involved in a mysterious death, he became a fugitive, sparked a huge manhunt, and after some lost time, reappeared claiming that he'd seen Iñukuns...
Midnight Son has elements of true crime, memoir, Hollywood story, myth, social commentary, a truly hair-raising survival story, and courtroom drama, as well as a vivid portrait of life and culture in a remote Alaskan town.
It's also the story of the making of the story, in which Dommek returns to his hometown in search of the truth of the story, interviewing people he knows and people who they know. His whole process, which he documents, does a double duty of showing the social networks of small-town Alaska. Basically everyone knows everyone, and if they don't, they definitely know someone who knows someone. In many cases, they're even related.
At one point Dommek stops to say hello to a random group of guys in a parking lot, because that's something you do in Kiana, and it turns out that one of them used to know him when they were kids, which is a totally normal outcome in Kiana. And so forth. I especially enjoyed this because on my one trip to Alaska, I was startled by how everyone seemed to know everyone, and if not, they always had some sort of mutual friend type connection. And this was in Fairbanks, an actual city!
It's clear early on that some of the questions are not the sort that will ever get definitive answers, so don't go in expecting all mysteries to be solved. It's more about the journey than the destination, but it's one hell of a journey. I was riveted from beginning to end. Dommek's narrative is often dryly funny, particularly in the sections where he's trying to have an acting career.
Midnight Son isn't the gory/sadistic type of true crime and there's nothing particularly gruesome, but it does involve a mysterious death, some people getting shot, alcoholism, mental illness, and domestic violence. (No sexual violence that I recall.) But it's mostly about a place, a culture, and two men whose lives took different paths.
And Iñukuns.
Midnight Son
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An Audible Original piece written and performed by James Dommek, Jr., an Alaska Native writer and musician. The story, performance, production (which includes interviews), and music are all outstanding. It's a true story.
James Dommek, Jr. is Iñupiaq, born and raised in Kiana, Alaska, population 361. After leaving to live in Anchorage, he played in an Alaska-popular metal band, the Whipsaws, and did some professional acting. He's the great grandson of one of the last great Iñupiaq storytellers, and was always fascinated by stories of Iñukuns, a possibly mythic hidden tribe.
Teddy Kyle Smith, Dommek's contemporary, is also Iñupiaq, also from Kiana, also did some professional acting. But after being possibly involved in a mysterious death, he became a fugitive, sparked a huge manhunt, and after some lost time, reappeared claiming that he'd seen Iñukuns...
Midnight Son has elements of true crime, memoir, Hollywood story, myth, social commentary, a truly hair-raising survival story, and courtroom drama, as well as a vivid portrait of life and culture in a remote Alaskan town.
It's also the story of the making of the story, in which Dommek returns to his hometown in search of the truth of the story, interviewing people he knows and people who they know. His whole process, which he documents, does a double duty of showing the social networks of small-town Alaska. Basically everyone knows everyone, and if they don't, they definitely know someone who knows someone. In many cases, they're even related.
At one point Dommek stops to say hello to a random group of guys in a parking lot, because that's something you do in Kiana, and it turns out that one of them used to know him when they were kids, which is a totally normal outcome in Kiana. And so forth. I especially enjoyed this because on my one trip to Alaska, I was startled by how everyone seemed to know everyone, and if not, they always had some sort of mutual friend type connection. And this was in Fairbanks, an actual city!
It's clear early on that some of the questions are not the sort that will ever get definitive answers, so don't go in expecting all mysteries to be solved. It's more about the journey than the destination, but it's one hell of a journey. I was riveted from beginning to end. Dommek's narrative is often dryly funny, particularly in the sections where he's trying to have an acting career.
Midnight Son isn't the gory/sadistic type of true crime and there's nothing particularly gruesome, but it does involve a mysterious death, some people getting shot, alcoholism, mental illness, and domestic violence. (No sexual violence that I recall.) But it's mostly about a place, a culture, and two men whose lives took different paths.
And Iñukuns.
Midnight Son
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I got the vaccine!!!!!!
Moderna. I'm so so so so so happy.
I was only able to get it because I had been pestering a friend of my parents who works in county health, who tipped me off that there's a vaccine clinic today. Going through the websites and calling had gotten me nowhere, and the clinic was never mentioned. Maybe once I'm fully immune I can volunteer with getting the word out/helping people get appointments and get to the shot, because "my parents knew someone" is not ideal as a method of getting the word out.
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I was only able to get it because I had been pestering a friend of my parents who works in county health, who tipped me off that there's a vaccine clinic today. Going through the websites and calling had gotten me nowhere, and the clinic was never mentioned. Maybe once I'm fully immune I can volunteer with getting the word out/helping people get appointments and get to the shot, because "my parents knew someone" is not ideal as a method of getting the word out.
comments
March 18, 2021
The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones. Audiobook by Shaun Taylor Corbett
"You're just making that up!" Cassidy tells him. "Everything that's Indian, you just make it up!"
"Shit, somebody's got to," Gabriel says.
Ten years ago, four young Blackfeet men went on an elk hunt. Something went wrong, but not the usual sort of wrong I've ever read in a horror novel before: they didn't accidentally shoot another hunter and cover it up, like they might have in a thriller or realistic horror novel, or trespass on an Indian burial ground or Indian curse, like they might have in supernatural horror written by a non-Indian author. What actually happened was different, a wrong that had to do with their particular culture and lives.
And then they moved on. Two of them stayed on the reservation, and two of them left. But the ten-year anniversary is up, and their past is coming for them...
The Only Good Indians works on every level: as a horror novel that revels in the tropes of horror (chapters have titles like "The House That Ran Red" and "It Came from the Rez"), a clever reconfiguration of those tropes, a vivid portrait of a specific place and people, and exploration of cultural loss and identity.
It's violent, gory, often darkly comic, with lots of likable or at least very human characters (many of whom die), some very scary scenes, a really cool ambiguous monster, and some absolutely bravura pieces of writing. It starts out very male-centric, but there's a major female character who comes in later and instantly rocketed to a place in my all-time favorite female characters.
Warning for lots and lots of gory animal harm. It's central to the theme/plot, but I skimmed some parts due to extreme gruesomeness. Other standard horror warnings apply, plus depictions of racism. No sexual violence.
( Spoilers! )
The flip side of horror is transcendence, like the fearfully and wonderfully altered worlds in the movie Annihilation and the book The Girl With All the Gifts, or the abandoned lot that holds the rose that contains the sun in The Waste Lands. The ending of The Only Good Indians is transcendent.
Excellent reading by Shaun Corbett-Jones. (I always like audio performances in the audio books I review, because if I don't, I don't last more than a couple minutes and switch to the text version.)
The Only Good Indians
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"Shit, somebody's got to," Gabriel says.
Ten years ago, four young Blackfeet men went on an elk hunt. Something went wrong, but not the usual sort of wrong I've ever read in a horror novel before: they didn't accidentally shoot another hunter and cover it up, like they might have in a thriller or realistic horror novel, or trespass on an Indian burial ground or Indian curse, like they might have in supernatural horror written by a non-Indian author. What actually happened was different, a wrong that had to do with their particular culture and lives.
And then they moved on. Two of them stayed on the reservation, and two of them left. But the ten-year anniversary is up, and their past is coming for them...
The Only Good Indians works on every level: as a horror novel that revels in the tropes of horror (chapters have titles like "The House That Ran Red" and "It Came from the Rez"), a clever reconfiguration of those tropes, a vivid portrait of a specific place and people, and exploration of cultural loss and identity.
It's violent, gory, often darkly comic, with lots of likable or at least very human characters (many of whom die), some very scary scenes, a really cool ambiguous monster, and some absolutely bravura pieces of writing. It starts out very male-centric, but there's a major female character who comes in later and instantly rocketed to a place in my all-time favorite female characters.
Warning for lots and lots of gory animal harm. It's central to the theme/plot, but I skimmed some parts due to extreme gruesomeness. Other standard horror warnings apply, plus depictions of racism. No sexual violence.
( Spoilers! )
The flip side of horror is transcendence, like the fearfully and wonderfully altered worlds in the movie Annihilation and the book The Girl With All the Gifts, or the abandoned lot that holds the rose that contains the sun in The Waste Lands. The ending of The Only Good Indians is transcendent.
Excellent reading by Shaun Corbett-Jones. (I always like audio performances in the audio books I review, because if I don't, I don't last more than a couple minutes and switch to the text version.)
The Only Good Indians
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March 17, 2021
The Dragon Circle, by Stephen Krensky
The house was in an uproar. A very angry Jennifer Wynd was chasing her younger brother Perry around the living room. She was terribly quick, but then so was Perry, prompted by the little balls of fire Jennifer was throwing at his heels.
Magic runs in the Wynd family, but Professor Wynd and his five kids live quietly - well, mostly quietly - in a small town in Massachusetts. Nine-year-old Perry's biggest problem is that he's been cast as King Arthur in the school play, while his nemesis Nancy is playing Guinevere. Until the kids' illusions start going wrong, some tiny porcelain gargoyles attack, and a bunch of dragons invade the town. Wynds to the rescue!
A short, delightful children's fantasy which I fondly recalled from childhood. It's now on Kindle and is exactly as charming as I remembered. Also, it cracks me up that of the two Stephen Krensky books I've read, both involve a boy desperate to get out of the school play. As I also once desperately tried to get out a school play, I sympathize.
THE DRAGON CIRCLE: 1 The Wynd Family Chronicles
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Magic runs in the Wynd family, but Professor Wynd and his five kids live quietly - well, mostly quietly - in a small town in Massachusetts. Nine-year-old Perry's biggest problem is that he's been cast as King Arthur in the school play, while his nemesis Nancy is playing Guinevere. Until the kids' illusions start going wrong, some tiny porcelain gargoyles attack, and a bunch of dragons invade the town. Wynds to the rescue!
A short, delightful children's fantasy which I fondly recalled from childhood. It's now on Kindle and is exactly as charming as I remembered. Also, it cracks me up that of the two Stephen Krensky books I've read, both involve a boy desperate to get out of the school play. As I also once desperately tried to get out a school play, I sympathize.
THE DRAGON CIRCLE: 1 The Wynd Family Chronicles
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March 16, 2021
A very horny record
Unicorn Vet launched at # 61 in the Amazon store! Yes, that does indeed mean that out of every ebook on Amazon, it was the 61st most-read. That is my all-time record and I am thrilled that so many people also want to read about vets caring for magical creatures.
(This doesn't make me as rich as you might think. It's a very short book and you can borrow it through KU in which case I get paid per page, so it won't make me as much money as a longer book with fewer readers. But as a signal of enthusiasm for vets vaccinating flying kittens (yes that is an actual scene in the book), it warms my heart.)
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(This doesn't make me as rich as you might think. It's a very short book and you can borrow it through KU in which case I get paid per page, so it won't make me as much money as a longer book with fewer readers. But as a signal of enthusiasm for vets vaccinating flying kittens (yes that is an actual scene in the book), it warms my heart.)
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rachelmanija @ 2021-03-16T12:08:00
My primordial forest book nook. Despite the caption, it actually is done. I was going to add some vines, but I liked it better without them.
Jake Chambers finds a door.
I'm going to do some figures in larger sizes, so I can make little animals and sandwiches and other accessories for them. These are 1/64 scale, which is too small for me to sculpt. I think 1/24 might be just right for that purpose. Of course I'd have to make suitably sized environments for them...
(Now you understand why I'm listening to so many audio books.)
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Jake Chambers finds a door.
I'm going to do some figures in larger sizes, so I can make little animals and sandwiches and other accessories for them. These are 1/64 scale, which is too small for me to sculpt. I think 1/24 might be just right for that purpose. Of course I'd have to make suitably sized environments for them...
(Now you understand why I'm listening to so many audio books.)
comments
March 15, 2021
Unicorn Vet, by Zoe Chant
Ever since reading The Magic and the Healing, I've wanted to write a book about veterinarians for magical creatures that doesn't have any torture or genocide.
Ta-da!
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Who do you call when you find a tiny baby dragon? Shifter Vets!
Angel is a small-town veterinarian with a horny secret. Everly is a stressed-out manager on vacation who just found a darling baby dragon. He knows they were made for each other. But a few things stand between them and true love, namely...
1. A truckload of mystery fish.
2. His suspicious werewolf colleague.
3. Her job that won't leave her alone.
4. The flaw in his magic that got him rejected by the other unicorns.
5. A deadly creature whose gaze turns living things to stone.
6. A teleporting chicken.
Her life is in the city. His is in the country. But Vets For All Pets--and the magical animals its shifter vets care for--have a lot of practice at bridging different worlds...
Unicorn Vet is a novelette (25K). It has no explicit sex, but it does have lots of adorable magical creatures, plus a cameo from some Defender Cave Bear characters. If you'd like to buy an epub or would like a free copy in any format, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com.
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Ta-da!
[image error]
Who do you call when you find a tiny baby dragon? Shifter Vets!
Angel is a small-town veterinarian with a horny secret. Everly is a stressed-out manager on vacation who just found a darling baby dragon. He knows they were made for each other. But a few things stand between them and true love, namely...
1. A truckload of mystery fish.
2. His suspicious werewolf colleague.
3. Her job that won't leave her alone.
4. The flaw in his magic that got him rejected by the other unicorns.
5. A deadly creature whose gaze turns living things to stone.
6. A teleporting chicken.
Her life is in the city. His is in the country. But Vets For All Pets--and the magical animals its shifter vets care for--have a lot of practice at bridging different worlds...
Unicorn Vet is a novelette (25K). It has no explicit sex, but it does have lots of adorable magical creatures, plus a cameo from some Defender Cave Bear characters. If you'd like to buy an epub or would like a free copy in any format, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com.
comments
March 14, 2021
Steel Magic, by Andre Norton
Two brothers and a sister go exploring with a picnic basket, and cross over into a magical land where their help is needed. They go on three separate journeys in which they each face their fears... armed with the implements of cold iron they brought with them: a stainless steel spoon, knife, and fork.
A short, fun portal fantasy, enjoyable but not terribly memorable except for the unique weapons. Each kid has a solo adventure, none of which gets quite enough page space to really sink in except for the sister's, in which she gets turned into a cat and has to fight giant spiders with a stainless steel knife clutched in her jaws. I would have enjoyed more of the flying horses on the cover, which sadly only feature for a brief ride.
One of Norton's "Magic" series of children's books, in which modern kids get involved in magical adventures. The complete series is now available in ebook.
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A short, fun portal fantasy, enjoyable but not terribly memorable except for the unique weapons. Each kid has a solo adventure, none of which gets quite enough page space to really sink in except for the sister's, in which she gets turned into a cat and has to fight giant spiders with a stainless steel knife clutched in her jaws. I would have enjoyed more of the flying horses on the cover, which sadly only feature for a brief ride.
One of Norton's "Magic" series of children's books, in which modern kids get involved in magical adventures. The complete series is now available in ebook.
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comments
March 13, 2021
Devil to Ride (Jinny of Finmory # 2), by Patricia Leitch
The second book in the series was unexpectedly depressing and annoying.
Jinny turns out to be terrible at riding Shantih, who has horse PTSD, and spends the entire book struggling with no useful help from anyone. Ken, the vegan hippie, is great at riding Shantih and she loves him, but he thinks horses shouldn't be ridden because it's unnatural so he's not much help. Adults lecture Jinny on how Shantih is dangerous and Jinny is doing everything wrong without offering any actual assistance.
Then new girl Clare breezes in with her horrible wealthy family. They're a bunch of mean, snobbish bullies, but Clare is an excellent rider so Jinny gloms on to her, partly out of sheer desperation and partly because she's seduced by Clare's glamour and competence.
Meanwhile, a pair of rare ospreys nest in a hidden valley, and Jinny's family is recruited to guard their nest and keep it secret from people who would love to destroy it and take the eggs as souvenirs. Jinny is extremely absent-minded or possibly has ADHD and is absolutely terrible at remembering to do things or focusing on things she's not interested in, but she's required to take turns guarding the ospreys alone for hours. She's also warned a million times not to tell Clare about the ospreys, no matter how desperate she is to befriend her so someone can help her with Shantih. Guess what happens.
The entire book revolved around some of my least favorite things: thuddingly obvious moral lessons, characters criticizing someone who's doing something badly while refusing to help out, a totally predictable and unfun disaster waiting to happen for the entire book, bad things happening to endangered animals, and people being set up for failure and then criticized for failing.
I bought the entire series on the strength of the first book and am really hoping this was not a mistake. The next one looks like it might be depressing too. Debating skipping to book 4, which involves magic.
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Jinny turns out to be terrible at riding Shantih, who has horse PTSD, and spends the entire book struggling with no useful help from anyone. Ken, the vegan hippie, is great at riding Shantih and she loves him, but he thinks horses shouldn't be ridden because it's unnatural so he's not much help. Adults lecture Jinny on how Shantih is dangerous and Jinny is doing everything wrong without offering any actual assistance.
Then new girl Clare breezes in with her horrible wealthy family. They're a bunch of mean, snobbish bullies, but Clare is an excellent rider so Jinny gloms on to her, partly out of sheer desperation and partly because she's seduced by Clare's glamour and competence.
Meanwhile, a pair of rare ospreys nest in a hidden valley, and Jinny's family is recruited to guard their nest and keep it secret from people who would love to destroy it and take the eggs as souvenirs. Jinny is extremely absent-minded or possibly has ADHD and is absolutely terrible at remembering to do things or focusing on things she's not interested in, but she's required to take turns guarding the ospreys alone for hours. She's also warned a million times not to tell Clare about the ospreys, no matter how desperate she is to befriend her so someone can help her with Shantih. Guess what happens.
The entire book revolved around some of my least favorite things: thuddingly obvious moral lessons, characters criticizing someone who's doing something badly while refusing to help out, a totally predictable and unfun disaster waiting to happen for the entire book, bad things happening to endangered animals, and people being set up for failure and then criticized for failing.
I bought the entire series on the strength of the first book and am really hoping this was not a mistake. The next one looks like it might be depressing too. Debating skipping to book 4, which involves magic.
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