Warren Rochelle's Blog, page 17

Love and Horror: The Cult of Ocasta, by Mark Allan Gunnells

The Cult of Ocasta by Mark Allen Gunnells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I’m a big fan of Mark Allan Gunnells, and especially of his Limestone stories, at least one of which he wrote in my class, waaay back when I taught there. I’ve been following his career over the years with great pleasure. The Cult of Ocasta is the sequel to The Quarry, a dark tale indeed of the creature, an ancient Cherokee god, which lurks in the depths of this quarry-now-lake on “the edge of the Limestone College campus. Years have passed since Emilio Gambrell fought [this] creature,” then a student. He defeated it then, but suffered an enormous loss, his lover, to achieve this victory, a loss that he still grieves. Emilio has been on guard ever since—and in this case, literally, as he is a lieutenant in campus security. He is ever vigilant, ever ready, and now his wait is over, the “time has come” to face this monster again.

Emilio has been warned in his dreams. Ocasta has told him, I’m still here … I’m not alone. His followers are coming. “Soon they will arrive. They will feed me, nourish me with me the souls of sacrificial lambs, and I will grow strong again… I will walk the earth once more, doing as I please. Manipulating, tormenting… I have big plans for when I am liberated. Especially for you … Emilio” (3).

Emilio’s struggle is not over, he cannot let down his guard. Can he face this coming horror? Can he face his worst fears? Can he trust anyone? Can he even trust Marty Stillwater, the new history professor at Limestone, a man who is clearly attracted to him, a man for Emilio just might be having feelings?

This story, told in the conversational style of a storyteller that Mark does so well, invites the reader into its world, a world that is both dark and dangerous, and one in which there is always hope and the possibility of love. Here the reader will find an ancient god of the Cherokees, Ocasta, the god of knowledge, who apparently couldn’t make his mind if he was good or evil—and so it is with all knowledge. It’s what we do with it that matters. The mythic Ocasta seems to have chosen both, and “helped the Creator one day and caused destruction the next.” Mark’s interpretation of Ocasta has chosen evil. The reader will also find Emilio’s terrifying dreams, his confused feelings, friendship and betrayal, and a deep darkness, waiting.

Yes, this is a horror story, set in a small South Carolina town, on the campus of a small college. Bad, horrible things are going to happen. But The Cult of Ocasta is also a love story and a story of hope and the indomitable human spirit, and where else will we need hope and love the most, except in the darkest and most horrific of places?

I am looking forward to Mark’s next tale. I do regret that this is the “Final Limestone Story,” as Limestone has proven such a rich fertile territory of story for him. But, there will be other places.

Recommended.



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A Short Review of Mother of Souls, by Heather Rose Jones

Mother of Souls by Heather Rose Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Viva Alpennia!
I can only hope there are more tales of this country somewhere between France and Switzerland, a realm of magic, a magic of the Mysteries, woven by words and music and gems and the evocation of saints and other powers.

Serafina Talarico has traveled across Europe to study with Margerit Sovitre, the Royal Thaumaturgist, to find a place for her own mystical talents that don't seem to fit in with traditional practices. But Serafina doesn't find a place in Margerit's circle of scholars: she "can perceive, but not evoke, the mystical forces of the Mysteries of the Saints and even Margerit can't awaken her talents." Then Serafina finds a place to stay with Luzie Valorin, a music teacher and composer. In Luzie's music there is power to "rival the Mysteries, and Serafina alone has the vision to guide her talents" (back cover).

Can Serafina help Luzie fulfill her ambition to "write an opera on the life of the medieval philosopher, Tanfrit?" (back cover). Can this opera release the sorcery that has created an "malevolent storm," a storm choking the mountains in ice, preventing the life-giving spring waters from flowing down?

Jones' world-building is deft and sure and complete, as are the characters that inhabit this world.
While reading the first two in the series does help in understanding who the characters are and how they are connected, and Alpennia's magic works, this novel does stand alone.

Recommended indeed.



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A Short Review of Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: Hammer of Thor

The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Riordan fans won't be disappointed. The well-researched and thoughtful use of Norse mythology, the fast-paced adventure, the wit and humor between the characters and with the running joke of popular culture--it's all there. What I note especially is the character of Alex who is gender fluid and able to change from one gender to the other, as is her/his mother, Loki.

Hallelujah! Well done. I know there will be kids who will see themselves in this character, as there were, I am sure, kids who recognized themselves in Nico and Will, two gay characters, and Apollo, a bisexual character. This matters.

Thanks for a great story and thanks for the diversity.



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The Werewolf and His Boy Giveaway!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Werewolf and His Boy


by Warren Rochelle

Giveaway ends October 14, 2016.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

An Interview/Review of The Werewolf and His Boy on Edge Boston, written by Kilian Melloy

I wanted to share this first interview/review of my forthcoming novel, The Werewolf and His Boy (Samhain, on September 27), written by Kilian Melloy.

http://boston.edgemedianetwork.com/en...


Warren Rochelle

Some thoughts on Hallow This Ground, by Colin Rafferty

Hallow This Ground by Colin Rafferty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a beautiful book, with stunning, lyrical prose. The essays are about monuments and memorials, and thus about memory and remembering, and why and how and where we choose remember, and what marks our memories, and our personal memories intersect an with history and with place.

Rafferty begins with Columbine and its library where ten students died (two more outside the building), and then the shooters themselves. When Rafferty goes by there, the library was in the process of being destroyed. He notes he has no direct connections to the place,but even so, he takes time out of a trip home to "see the place ... to see what they are going to do with it ... to see what happens afterward" (2). He ends, almost twelve years later, on the fields of Shiloh National Military Park. Along the way, he makes other pilgrimages, to both places of public and personal memories and history, perhaps the most powerful to Auschwitz.

He says he wants the light to shine through. It does, even if sometimes it feels too bright. That's okay. That's how it should be. That I write this on July 4, a day to remember the past and to celebrate it and to celebrate the past and the present as connected, the former shaping the latter, both shaping the future, is quite appropriate I think.

Highly recommended.



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Collaborators, by Deborah Wheeler

Collaborators by Deborah Wheeler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Collaborators.
The first thought I had when sat down to write this review is what does this word mean? Traitors, opportunists, those French and Dutch and the others in Europe who supported the Nazis in World War II when their countries were occupied.

To collude, to conspire, to be in cahoots.

But, maybe I have seen too many World War II movies growing up.

I also remember that those who collaborate are those work together on an activity to create something. To cooperate, to join forces, to team up.

Collaboration is a term often used in composition circle as part of how to teach writing and to understand the writing process. To invent, to create, is a social act. Despite the romantic image of the poet in the garret, no story or poem or painting is solely the creation of one person. The books read and studied before, the people who influenced the creator—all contribute.

The second thought, or rather question I had was what does it mean to human? And how does one define being human? Just look in a mirror? We are homo sapiens, human beings, are we not?
But is human a state of the mind and the body? Does being self-aware count? Robert Heinlein in Star Beast offers a legal definition of being human: “Beings possessed of speech and manipulation must be presumed to be sentient and therefore to have innate human rights, unless conclusively proved otherwise” (167).

This broader context of what it means to be human is the one at work in this provocative novel. That Wheeler uses it to refer to the inhabitants of a planet that we—Terrans—would call alien, is, frankly, disturbing. These aliens, these citizens of Chacarre and Erlind (two nation states), seem to be like us—sort of, mostly, or rather just enough for assumptions to be made that aren’t questioned or examined until far too late. Their definition of “gender has a very different meaning and [their] instincts can drive a crowd to madness” (back cover).

Enter the crippled Terran spaceship and its well-meaning crew with all good intentions.

There are misunderstandings between the native species and the Terrans, misunderstandings that lead to violence and retaliation and interference and open conflict. “Soon everyone—scientists and soldiers, rebels and lovers, patriots and opportunists—are swept up in a cycle of destruction” (back cover). Who is at fault? And what does it mean to collaborate? To betray one’s species? Does loving an alien, as does Lexis, a Chacarran, and it seems, so CelestiniBellini, a Terran, make one a collaborator? And collaboration, cooperating, working together, joining forces, this seems to be the way to fight back—or is fighting the way to stop the violence? Can there be reconciliation? Peace?

Can something be created that is new and different? Of value? Is there common ground?

These two cultures, alien to each other, are explored in depth through the lives of such people on the planet as Hayke, a farmer, who follows a way of life, a philosophy—or is it a religion (there are echoes of Taoism and Christianity)—called the Way, Alon and Birre, lovers, then mates; their families, and Lexis, a professor who takes a Terran lover. On the ship, we find intense scientists, such as Vera Eisenstein, the resident genius, and her protégé, Sarah Davis, and Celestin Bellini, a soldier and Lexis’ lover, and the captain, Hammadi.

Can there be forgiveness? Compromise? Understanding? Will collaboration result in good or ill, no matter which definition is used, or is it somewhere in the murky middle?

This rich novel, with its “first-rate world-building from a writer gifted with a soaring imagination and good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder” (C.J. Cherryh, back cover) asks the reader to think and think again




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City of Refuge, by Starhawk

City of Refuge by Starhawk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am a big Starhawk fan. I have read The Fifth Sacred Thing many times and have taught it as well in a first-year seminar on utopia. I was very excited to find out that not only had she written a prequel, Walking to Mercury (which I quickly ordered and read) but that she had written a sequel to Fifth!

Hurray!

Now, City of Refuge is utopian fiction. There is a preferred society juxtaposed to one not preserved, a less desirable society. There is a third and a fourth juxtaposition, here. The third, to the society of the reader as well. The fourth, history as it is, and history as it could be, and as it might be. It is the year 2048 and there has been one ecological catastrophe after another, and American society has collapsed. "Yet amidst the ruins stands a green and flourishing city where four things are sacred--Air, Fire, Water, and Earth." The Southlands, ruled by the evil and ruthless Stewards (patriarchy unhinged) invade. The good guys win, "using nonviolence and magic" (back cover).

The City, San Francisco, or Califia, is the preferred: egalitarian, ecofeminist, in harmony with and protective and supportive of the environment, open, free, nonviolent. In the South, slavery and male domination, women forced out of the professions, men bred to be murderous soldiers, women, sex slaves, the whiter the more power and privilege, closed... You get the idea. Starhawk is making an argument for a vision of how the world could be, might be, and she is giving a warning of how it might be, if things don't change.

The Southlanders will be back, unless the Califians can liberate them. But are they just too deeply wounded to build a new world? Bird and Madrone, two of the central characters in Fifth, take the road to the South, to "build a city of refuge in the heartland of the enemy," once again juxtaposing one way of life against another. River, a soldier who defected from the Stewards' army, leads the Army of Liberation to the South. Can they do it? Or is some damage beyond repair?

Some will find City of Refuge heavy-handed. Sometimes the escapes from danger verge on deus ex machina, but the good guys do suffer defeats, they do die. Star notes in the Afterword that writing a sequel twenty years after the first book was a daunting task. She had "to continually fight those nagging inner voices that whispered, 'What if it's not as good as the other one? What if people don't like it?'" She also notes that she "tried to stay consistent with the earlier books, but over the course of two decades, the world has changed, and so [has she], The astute reader may notice some differences" (661).

This reader did. I liked that she paid more attention to language. The speech of the "sojuhs" of the Southlands "has many more quirks and unique characteristics than in Fifth" (661). If the Califians believe sexuality is sacred, would they use "fuck" as a swear word? She also asks the question if "our strategy of peaceful nonresistance work against a truly ruthless opponent?" So, we have possible choices, from "the prefigurative creativity of the Refuge to the out-and-out gun battles of the Army of Liberation" (662). I would have preferred more consistency to the world of this series, but so be it. I liked that in Fifth the city in the north was still called San Francisco, among other things. I felt the link between us and this world was more defined in Fifth.

As with Fifth, I am drawn to the ongoing celebration of life, love, and the five sacred things that the reader will find here. The fifth is the human spirit and that it triumphs in both small and large ways, and that, as always in our stories, we explore these triumphs, makes them possible in the real world.



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Looking for Gaylactic Spectrum Awards Nominations: Deadline June 30, 2016

Gaylactic Spectrum Awards 2016:
Nomination Deadline for Best Novel:
June 30, 2016
The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are juried awards that have recognized outstanding genre works with significant LGBTIQ+ content since 1999. Our 2016 awards process is underway and we want to ensure that we don;t miss any eligible works - and that's where we need your help!
The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards judges have begun their reading period for the Best Novel award for 2016 (for works published in North America in 2015).
We'll continue to accept nominations for the Best Novel category
through June 30, 2016.
If you authored, published, or know of a novel with significant positive LGBTIQ+ content originally published in 2015 in North
America - we encourage you to nominate it. We also encourage you to spread the word!
To nominate, visit our nominations page at:
http://www.spectrumawards.org/nomform...
To see a list of titles already nominated:
http://www.spectrumawards.org/2016.htm
General information about the Awards:
http://www.spectrumawards.org/

The City of Mirrors

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A most satisfying ending to an amazing trilogy--a hybrid of genres--science fantasy, vampires, adventure, quest, apocalyptic. Light and dark and the final battle, between Amy, the Girl from Nowhere, and Fanning, Zero, The First, the Father of the Twelve, a battle haunted by "the anguish that shattered his human life" (front cover).

I won't spoil the ending, except that the reader does know humanity survives, from the reports of the Indo-Australian Republic that have been shared since the trilogy began. How and what price is another matter.

Cronin said in an interview that ultimately this trilogy--with all its darkness and death and blood and pain and torture--is about love.

Yes, it is. This, I think, is what it means to be human.



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