Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 8

Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle

Rose is a young autistic woman living with her parents in a small town largely inhabited by members of a giant church that combines elements of Prosperity Gospel with your basic right-wing evangelicalism. It's best-known for Camp Damascus, the world's only gay conversion camp with a 100% success rate.

Rose is a true believer. Until weird things start happening around her. Then to her. And she starts to investigate Camp Damascus...

I don't want to give away too much of the plot, because it has some nice surprises. In general, the plot was very nicely constructed and well-structured, with a lot of things that initially seemed like writing errors (like how Rose is 20 but everything would make more sense if she was 18) turn out to have reasons.

The main things that are notable about the book are Rose, who I loved more than possibly any other fictional character I met this year, the complex and thoughtful exploration of homophobia, community, religion, and love, and how much emotion the book evokes. In particular, I liked the depiction of what people actually get out of religion - not just beliefs but a community - and that people who abandon the religion they were raised in may swing around to atheism, or may join a different religion, or may create spiritual beliefs from scratch, and there's no judgment on any of that.

I was raised in a cult, and though mine was completely different, the cult dynamics are dead-on. Rose's journey to find her true self and figure out what she believes and who she loves are dead-on for the person she is, and while it goes to some dark places, it also has so much warmth and humor and joy. It's got enormous heart, and it's one of the most uplifting books I read all year.

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As for the buckaroo himself, all I can say is that I once wrote an enormous amount of bizarre porn to make money, but I'm capable of writing in a more literary manner too. There are some odd quirks to the book that did make me think, "Yep, this is indeed Chuck Tingle," such as habitually referring to anything anyone drinks as a "beverage." There's other overused phrases, largely due to his refusal to use the words "said" or "asked," plus some awkward transitions. But overall, this is a really accomplished book, and one that I've been pressing on people at the bookshop. It has a clear message but it's not simplistic, the horror elements are solid but it's also often quite funny, and it's just deeply enjoyable to read.

This is an adult novel but it's completely suitable for teenagers, and would make an excellent gift for teenagers in your life who would appreciate it.

Content notes: mild horror scariness, bug-related grossouts, depictions of homophobia and religious control.

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My Year in Reading: 2024

This was a great year for reading. I read so many good books, and got so much happiness from reading and writing about and talking about them. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, so apologies to the excellent books that I accidentally left off this list. I've ranked them according to how much pure enjoyment and happiness I got out of reading them, not objective merit.

My Personal Favorites

All That's Left in the World, by Erik J. Brown. Two teenage boys, one gay, one questioning, after a covid-informed pandemic apocalypse. I adored this and insta-bought the sequel, which I haven't read yet. Full review to come.

LA Son, by Roy Choi. Is this the best-written chef's memoir I ever read? No. Does it totally leave out the work he's most famous for? Yes. Was the audiobook of him reading it a wonderful experience? Oh hell yes.

The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins. Very weird, very dark, very polarizing dark fantasy; every content warning ever; I loved it.

Dr. C. Lillefisk's Sirenology: A Guide to Mermaids and Other Under-the-Sea Phenomenon, by Jana Heidersorf. Absolutely gorgeous art book/guide to mermaids. Fantastic art and really interesting and original worldbuilding. Full review to come.

The Reappearance of Rachel Price, by Holly Jackson. Incredibly fun, incredibly twisty mystery where it all, for once, actually made complete sense by the end.

You Like it Darker, by Stephen King. The anthology as a whole was mixed, but it's here on the basis that my favorite stories brought me so much joy.

Moon of the Turning Leaves, by Waubgeshig Rice. Sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow. Immersive, compelling, creates a whole world and community that I wanted to live in forever.

A Succession of Bad Days & Safely You Deliver, by Graydon Saunders. Complex, difficult, weird, attention-demanding, deeply enjoyable, and often oddly cozy fantasy with some of the most interesting worldbuilding I've ever encountered. I shall re-read these then proceed to the next books when I have a stretch of time that will allow me to really sink in.

House of Hollow, by Krystal Sutherland. Dark, lush fantasy reminiscent of The Belles and Tanith Lee.

Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle. Light horror/dark fantasy about fundamentalism and homophobia; also one of the most joyous and uplifting books I read all year. Review to come.


Excellent and Enjoyable Books That Didn't Quite Hit My Arbitrary Top Ten List

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, by Alison Arngrim.

People of the Sky, by Clare Bell. Batshit 80s SF is the best.

A Scent of New-Mown Hay & For Fear of Little Men, by John Blackburn. Pandemics! Spies! Weird science! Hypnotism! Nazis! The kitchen sink!

Light a Single Candle, by Beverly Butler.

A Heart that Works, by Rob Delaney.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett. Utterly charming.

Into the Drowning Deep, by Mira Grant. MURDER MERMAIDS.

Briardark & Waywarden, by S. A. Hadrian.

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales, by Nathan Hale. The WWI one (review to come) was my favorite but I've enjoyed them all.

Cold Moon Over Babylon, by Michael McDowell. Apparently the only book of his I read in 2024? I must remedy that in 2025.

The September House, by Carissa Orlando.

Rite of Passage, by Alexei Panshin.

The I Survived series, by Lauren Tarshis.

Bury Your Gays, by Chuck Tingle. Really fun, inventive dark fantasy that wasn't quite as good as Camp Damascus. Review to come.

Wilding, by Isabella Tree. Probably the single most influential and important-to-me book I read all year, just not in my top eight most enjoyable reading experiences.

Looking Glass Sound, by Catriona Ward. One of the most technically accomplished books I've ever read. Enormous fun to read but not as emotionally involving as her others. Review to come, hopefully.

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Book Review Poll

Contrary to what everyone says, owning a bookshop is actually great for getting more reading done because your customers REALLY want your personal opinion. Plus, if there's downtime, there's all those books!

View Poll: #32473

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

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Yuletide Reveal

I wrote three stories this Yuletide!

Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey

Fireblossom

Phèdre has an unusual, botanical assignation with Melisande Shahrizai.

I never tire of writing sexy stories for this fandom or those two. The prompt was great and I took enormous pleasure in filling it. Tagged for chemical play, Flowers, Language of Flowers, BDSM, Botany, Heavy BDSM, Whipping, Recreational Drug Use, kinks we don't even have names for, Worldbuilding, Clothing Porn, Boot Worship, Sensation Play, thorn play if that's a thing, Dildos.


Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

The Crystal Cave

James Ritter returns to the House.

I had requested a different minor character for Yuletide this year (Sylvia D'Agostino) so it was fun to match on a request for James Ritter. His time in the House went very badly for him and yet he clearly loves and misses it.


"Sandkings" - George R. R. Martin

WO. AND. SHADE. IMPORTERS. ARTIFACTS. ART. LIFEFORMS. AND. MISC.

Wo and Shade launch their shop.

I've been wanting to fill this prompt for a while, to focus on a pair of intriguing secondary characters in Martin's SF horror classic "Sandkings." Wo and Shade are the proprietors of the shop which sells the main character a set of interesting new pets. I also love them and was delighted to get a chance to fill in a bit of their backstory.

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Yuletide Recs

Normally I like to make Yuletide recs throughout the week. This year I woke up on Christmas/Hanukkah to a black screen on my phone, which of course I couldn't get fixed for a while as it was Christmas Day and nothing was open. And then my bookshop opened the next day, and it's open Thursday - Sunday, so I was busy when I wasn't frantically driving around trying to get my phone fixed. But I did encounter many excellent stories despite the unusually limited time I had to read, let alone rec. I hope you enjoy them too.


Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle

known now in part, to be known in full

Meg realized that the woman seemed very familiar. She had glasses and shorter hair, but otherwise looked very much like Meg herself; indeed, almost identical.

After Polly's adventure back in time where she's almost human sacrificed, Meg meets her double from an alternate timeline. A lovely and thoughtful exploration of the choices Meg made and the choices she didn't (or did, in wnother world).


"Barrett's Privateers" - Stan Rogers

"God Damned Them All"? Documenting the Loss of the Privateer Antelope

A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.

Hilarious, plus rather impressive pastiche.


Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

through fog in grey horizons

There's a special magic in bodies of water, and it always seems to make its presence felt when Jane Drew is around.

Utterly gorgeous story of Jane's lingering connection to water and magic, with an absolutely perfect ending. Also a possible nod to Seaward.


The Fall of the House of Usher - TV

Raven Wings as Dark as Below

If souls existed you'd sell them with your first choice. With the blood of those you kill.

But the second choice, when you decide to make a Deal, that is when your fate is sealed.

A strange, fascinating, beautifully written take on what it is to be Verna.



"FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense" - Luke Burns

Honestly all of these are hilarious so I'll just link you to them all.

Snakes on the Yuletide Main Collection

And one from Madness


Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey

floating upon dark waters - Phèdre nó Delaunay/Melisande Shahrizai, Phèdre nó Delaunay/Original Male Character

Some New Pleasures Prove - Phèdre nó Delaunay/Joscelin Verreuil

Both those stories are very in-character and hot as fuck.


Southern Reach - Jeff Vandermeer/Annihilation (Movie)

Explosions Inside of My Head

Experiments sending rabbits into the Shimmer. Haunting, beautiful, horrific.


The Stand - Stephen King

She Knows That It Kills Me. My gift!

Frannie Goldsmith gets a chance to face down Randall Flagg. Extremely satisfying eucatastrophe.


Watership Down - Richard Adams

A Chief Rabbit. My gift!

A Hyzenthlay story from her days within Efrafa.

A very sweet story in which Hyzenthlay gets some well-earned peace and recognition.

Silverweed's Lament. My gift!

A gorgeous, chilling poem.

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Rolling in the Deep & Into the Drowning Deep, by Mira Grant (Seanan Maguire)

These are companion works about DEEP SEA MURDER MERMAIDS. Scientifically justified and science fictionally depicted DEEP SEA MURDER MERMAIDS. I am there for that, and for once this is a Seanan Maguire/Mira Grant book where I not only liked the premise, but liked what she did with it. By far my favorite of anything I've ever read by her.

"Rolling in the Deep" is a novella set several years before Into the Drowning Deep, concerning an expedition to the Mariana Trench to make a fake documentary "proving" the existence of mermaids, a la the garbage fake docs on the History Channel. They hire some human mermaid performers for the purpose. The novella starts out by informing us that the ship was found later with no one onboard and weird footage that looks like it was attacked by mermaids, which is largely assumed to be fake. But no one on board was ever found.

It's a fun horror novella with a killer premise - and it really is about the premise. I enjoyed it a lot.

Into the Drowning Deep is a novel about an actual scientific expedition to the Mariana Trench to try to figure out what happened to the ship and if mermaids could possibly be real. The characters are just plausible and likable enough to make us care what happens to them, but really it's all about horrifying deep sea creatures, which is what the murder mermaids are. It's a lot of fun, especially if you're freaked out by deep sea creatures, which I totally am. The mermaid descriptions are very fun in terms of how they work out a plausible way for mermaids to be deep sea horrors. I would absolutely love horrifying mermaid art, and may request this for the next fic/art exchange I do.

Though I was mostly in it for the mermaids, I also appreciated the look at human mermaid culture in the novella, and the number of disabled characters in both. Like in real life, some people have disabilities which are relevant to their lives, but aren't all they are.

My biggest quibble with both books is that they both have a big twist, which ends the novella and is heavily involved in the climax of the novel. But it's the same twist, so if you read them both, you will spend one of them waiting for the characters to figure out the thing you already know. Which can be fun, but they're both written like the readers should also be shocked. In both cases this supposedly shocking and horrifying moment is just stated rather than described, so by the time you get to it for the second time, it falls doubly flat. I'm really baffled by this choice.

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That aside, I did enjoy both books quite a bit. This is very light horror - it's creepy and people die and there's violence, but it's juuust to the horror side of science fiction action - Aliens rather than Alien. I suggest reading the novel first (the opposite of what I did) if DEEP SEA MURDER MERMAIDS piques your interest.

Content notes: Mermaids kill people.

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Winterset Hollow, by Jonathan Edward Durham

A very striking cover and title, don't you think?

This book was talked up in some corners of the internet as a brilliant and original dark fantasy, one of the best books they've ever read, etc. The premise is that fans of a Wind in the Willows-esque book go to visit the author's historic home, and find that the book was based on reality... and the reality is much darker than he portrayed. "Evil Narnia" has been done quite a bit, but not "Evil Wind in the Willows." And I'm always a sucker for "fans of a book interact with the reality behind the book."

Here is an excerpt from a scene early on with the three main characters eating French fries.

Eamon chose his next victim from the heaping pile of starch in the middle of the table, swiped it through the thick puddle of ketchup on the side of the plate and popped it into his mouth only to surmise that something was missing and immediately reach for the salt shaker.

"I already salted those," objected Mark. "You watched me do it. I watched you watch me do it."

"I watched you salt the top layer, but we've just eaten the top layer, so now somebody needs to salt the fries that are on the lower layer. It's really not that complicated," Eamon said with a well-intentioned smirk as he gave the newly unearthed goodness a dusting of God's chosen crystal.

They're FRENCH FRIES.

This sort of prose is very love it or hate it. I hated it so much that I'm not sure why I kept reading. I think it hypnotized me.

Eamon, Mark, and Caroline, along with some other fans they don't know, take a ferry to the island where the Winterset Hollow author, Addington, lived. They all got free tickets via a fan magazine, and they are the only passengers on the ferry.

On the island, they discover that Addington's old house is inhabited by four talking animals from the book, who invite them to join in a feast. The animals who should be small, like the fox and rabbit and frog, are human-sized.

All this takes up about the first third of the book. Spoilers I guess but it was SUPER obvious what was going to happen next.

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I was curious both about this bizarre book and its bizarrely warm reception, so I looked into it a bit. Apparently Durham is a popular social media personality, so there was probably some spillover fondness. (One annoyed review of the book wrote, "He seems like the sort of person who owns multiple fedoras.") The book was, very perplexingly, published by what appears to be a self-publishing collective... for Christian books. It is not a Christian book. I remain baffled.

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Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Donner Dinner Party & Above the Trenches

These are a set of beautifully produced one-color graphic novels (each book has a different color, in addition to black and white) about history, with the frame device of Nathan Hale playing Scheherazade for his hangman and a British officer. (The author really is named Nathan Hale and is a descendant of the original.) They're fun and often funny without being trivializing; the end of Above the Trenches is a real gut-punch.

I got them for my shop and read them on a slow day, and was completely engrossed. In particular, the one on the Donner Party made the events more clear to me than they'd ever been before. The graphics there were excellent.

Thanks to everyone who recced them! I hope they sell so I can have the excuse to buy more, because I would like to read more.

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The September House, by Carissa Orlando

Hal and Margaret, who have been married for over twenty years, buy their dream house after their daughter Katherine goes off to college. The house is perfect. Except for the minor detail that it's haunted as fuck eleven months of the year, and every September it really gets bad.

Three years later, Hal has vanished under mysterious circumstances, and Margaret is living in the still-haunted as fuck house, conversing with the ghosts and apparently totally fine with the situation as it, though it gets tiresome cleaning up the blood that pours down the walls every September. Unfortunately, Katherine has heard that her father has disappeared, and is determined to visit to come look for him. And September is right around the corner...

Every haunted house story has to deal with the question of "Why don't they just leave?" (The movie His House had a particularly compelling and brutal answer to that question: the couple are asylum-seekers who were given the house, and will be deported to their deaths if they leave it.) In The September House, the question forms the central mystery to both the story overall and to Margaret's character, as the book is largely a character study. Why doesn't Margaret just leave? Why is she so willing to cope with everything the house throws at her? Sure, anyone who's ever bought a house can identify with the willingness to overlook flaws that maybe shouldn't be overlooked, but this seems a little extreme...

The September House is best read unspoiled. It's a slowly unfolding revelation of character and situation, and also has one plot turn (not a twist, just a thing that happens) that was so unexpected that I burst out laughing at the author's audacity. It's got great dark comedy and character development, and comes to a very satisfying conclusion. Margaret's inner monologue can get repetitive at points, but it's a minor flaw.

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Content notes: Child abuse, ghosts of murdered children, domestic violence, suicide (all of the fromer mostly off-page or in the past), horror-style violence, non-malicious attempt to convince Margaret that she's delusional and put her in a mental hospital, issue of whether any of this is real or Margaret is delusional and/or has dementia.

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Long Live Evil, by Sarah Rees Brennan

Rae is 20 and dying of cancer. For the last several years, her main consolation has been her younger sister Alice and Alice's favorite fantasy trilogy, Time of Iron. Due to brain fog and fatigue, Rae has read the second two novels but not the first, which she knows only via what she remembers from Alice reading it to her and recounting events to her - but that's not all that much, again due to brain fog and fatigue. However, she does have a massive crush on the antihero protagonist, the mortal king in book one who becomes a semi-undead, all-powerful emperor in Book Two.

This is all relevant because a weird woman walks into her hospital room and offers to transport Rae into the body of a character from the novel, with the deal that if she can pick a highly guarded flower that blossoms once a year, she'll be cured and returned to her own world. Rae takes the deal, only to discover that 1) she's in the body of the villainess, 2) the villainess is slated to be executed the next day by the very angry currently-king, emperor-to-be.

Rae quickly realizes that she needs to assemble Team Evil from the people she has, consisting of one angry maid destined to become an axe murderer and one cheerfully sociopathic guard who she doesn't remember from the books at all. Lucky for her, she does know what's going to happen. Sort of.

"Person gets transported into their favorite fantasy novel" is a big genre in Asia, but this is the first one I've read (and the first western one I've encountered.) So this is a review from total ignorance. I'd be very interested to hear how it's similar to and different from other isekai novels, from people more familiar with the genre. For instance, I enjoyed how Rae was actually not all that familiar with the novel, but for all I know that's a totally normal trope of the genre.

I had mixed feelings about this book. There were parts that I loved. There were parts that I thought were extremely well-done. There were parts that left me cold. And there were parts where I wished the story had gone in a different direction that would have appealed more to me personally.

All the parts involving Rae's cancer were extremely good. Sarah Rees Brennan had cancer herself (she discusses this in the afterword) and it's one of the more realistic depictions of severe illness - including the social repercussions - that I've come across. Unfortunately, that was all so realistic and heartfelt that it made me want the rest of the book to have at least a little more realism and emotional heft.

This is an extremely quippy book. Rae is a quip machine, and so are several other major characters. Unfortunately, I didn't find most of the quips actually funny, so I spent a lot of the book wishing she would just stop. But most readers loved the banter and jokes, so your mileage will probably vary.

Quips aside, there were a couple areas where I really wished for more emotional weight. The whole book is about Rae being in a villainess's body and celebrating being evil. But she's not actually evil. She's just hot. The villainess is very curvy and it's a puritanical world, so Rae just wears low-cut dresses and lives in goth quarters, and that's "evil." It's like goatees being evil in the Star Trek Mirrorverse - it's a fashion statement. Plus commentary on how we view sexual women as evil, which is certainly true in real life, but not so much a thing in fantasy books nowadays.

Rae never, not once, does anything even slightly evil to anyone. Some of her decisions have bad consequences for others, but that's always because she made a mistake, not because she intended to harm anyone. I found this frustrating, because I wanted Rae to be tempted at least a little by actual evil. When I had a life-threatening illness, I sometimes wondered what I'd be willing to do in exchange for getting a healthy body back. That's Rae's entire motivation, so I wanted her to actually wrestle with "What would I be willing to do to be healthy again?" But she doesn't get put in a position where she would have to do something actually bad in order to save her life until the last few pages, so there's only like 30 seconds of dilemma.

For a lot of the book Rae thinks the characters aren't real, but she still never does anything bad to them. So when she finally realizes that they are real, it doesn't feel meaningful because she's been treating them like real people all along.

But! There was also a lot that I did like. I loved Key, the cheerful sociopath bodyguard. He was by far the most fun character in the entire book, and the only one I got emotionally invested in. This was also the most clever part of the book - it explains exactly how writers get people to fall in love with a villain, and then goes step by step through the process and makes us fall in love with Key. Brilliantly done.

I loved Key and Rae's relationship, which was very iddy for me. It was "sociopath attack dog on a leash who loves only you," plus femdom overtones. And their banter was often actually funny - I'm thinking especially of when Key is trying to tell her he wants to go down on her, and she doesn't know any of his euphemisms. I was totally invested in them as a couple.

I also enjoyed Emer and Lia, a pair of supporting characters. They had sympathetic motivations, and they didn't constantly wisecrack.

Also, the ending was KILLER. (A killer cliffhanger, just so you know.) (  Read more...  )

I also appreciated that the fantasy book excerpts are extremely plausible as an actual popular book series.

So, will you like this? I think that depends on how funny you find it. If I'd been more charmed by the banter and musical numbers and the comedy in general, then the goatee evil would have been perfect. I'm definitely going to read the sequel, though.

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