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There is a simultaneous childhood fascination with the outre and a world-weariness swirling around in the narrator of The Jade Cabinet. The eccentricities of her family, in particular her father, who had a bout of madness (at least one so far) probably have a lot to do with that. Oh, and her older sister, Etheria, who, while beautiful and socially-adept, does not speak. And did I mention Lewis Carroll yet?

"Alone With the Guru" was adequate and unsurprising. A decided "meh" if I'm being honest with myself (which the narrator of this story was not). Three stars.

This is a year of re-reading works that have sunk deep into my mind. I recently re-finished Malpertuis and now it's time to revisit The Jade Cabinet. This time I shall write up a proper review!

Just finished a re-read of Malpertuis and it is even better the second time through. More thoughts on that later (as an addendum to my initial review). Also, I'm re-reading Rikki Ducornet's The Jade Cabinet starting now. Rikki is an amazing author whom I've had the pleasure to correspond with from time to time (and published some of her short fiction in a bygone age).

I had hoped that Grains could, with a longer work, have the textual room necessary to let his prodigious vocabulary and strident style breathe more freely. This is exactly what happend with "Under the Sun of Yabalon-Xi," another Smithian tale, but one that features an inevitably doomed quest through bizarre landscapes and corners of reality. Five stars.

This principal of "editing" is a keeper. I use it in my writing, of course, but applying it to "life" is a potential gamechanger. I've dabbled in it, inadvertently, in my work life and the older I get, the more I see it as essential to my mental health.

The poetic reaching of "Dark Starlight" is about right, but maybe a smidge over the top. I still like the thematic thread and the central conceit of the discovery of one's own clone (and the fact that the narrator may have unwittingly been replaced by and become that clone) is original, if familiar. Three stars.

I'm feeling much more validated about my slowness to respond to some requests. It seems so "anti-business," but it frees me up to take care of important business and gives the asker a chance to think about how important their request really is . . . or is not.

I am enjoying my second reading of Malpertuis even more than the first. As a result, the books in my "currently reading" list are going more slowly than usual. And I couldn't be happier about that. I'm really learning the joys of slow reading, rather than frantically feeling like I "ought" to read more quickly. Screw hustle culture.

Had this been the first horror story I ever read (say at age 13), I would have been very impressed by "Nightgrim," a tale of being absorbed into, then becoming nightmares. Alas, this isn't my first horror story, and the most horrible thing about this story is the obscene abuse of adverbs. 2 stars.

Grains' profuse usage of adjectives can be overwhelming, at times, but in "Metamorphosis" the style works perfectly well. Here, in an apocalyptic horror story somewhere between Clark Ashton Smith and China Mieville, the narrator embraces the inevitability of change on the cosmic level, accepting fate with a philosophically stoic attitude that masks the shock of an undeserved fate of extreme horror. Five stars.

"The Dreamer Awakens" is sometimes beautiful wordcraft and at other times just a wilty vocabulary salad. I liked the richness of the presentation, but the narrator behind the words comes across as excessively expressionistic and narcissistic. As a story, it is flat. As a weird prose poem, it's adequate to the task, if needing another editorial pass. 3 stars.

Reminder: Play. Play a lot. Play for real.

We begin with an appetizer in the form of "How the God's Feast," a decadent tale with a mildly-surpising ending, probably not as shocking as intended, but effective nevertheless. I'm trying my best to ignore any quirks of translation, as Grains' English is much better than my German will ever be. Kudos to him for hiring good translators to assist. This is, I can see already, a labor of love.

These roman boys need, in the words of my late father, "an ass whuppin'".