Magician (The Riftwar Saga #1) by Raymond E. Feist

Rating: – – – – –
Date read: April 27 to May 3, 2020
Location: in between board meetings and the governor’s daily statewide address

I. . . can’t take the words in this book anymore.

Well, it’s not entirely the book’s fault. Everything makes me want to take a shot of hard liquor at the moment, and this book didn’t do a good job of taking my mind off that.

I guess I’m just not cut out for retro high fantasy. Didn’t grow up reading SFF or playing RPG and didn’t start reading Tolkien until the movies came out. So I have zero memories connected to these genre classics and absolutely no appreciation for chosen farm boys with extravagant destinies to fulfill and/or empires to save.

However, in a way, I did finish this book, by which I mean I skimmed about 80% of it, read the middle until it lost me, and then read the ending to see if I should go onto Part II. I should not as it is clearly not for me.

In all that skimming though, I did come across something interesting around the half-way point. There’s a rift in the space-time continuum–RIFTwar, I see, I see–and a hoard of something from an alien world comes through the portal and invades the world of Midkemia (e.g. Dark Ages Western Europe). This was interesting for about a dozen pages as most wars in secondary worlds are, but I couldn’t get into it because the prose started to drag again. So rather than going back a few chapters to catch what I’d missed leading up to the rift and the war, I skimmed right on to the end.

I think the bones of this story are good and the story itself could have been a lot more interesting if the pacing had been faster and the prose–better? tighter? shaved down to the bare minimum?–had more focus on the scene at hand. I get that you have to show characterization and a character’s inner life, but there are just so many characters to work through, and high fantasy in general has a tradition of dragging these things out, even for minor characters. I’m not sure there is a way around this; I’m just I’m not a fan of explain-y prose styles and uninspired narration.

Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London #7) by Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Date read: November 23 to 28, 2018

Another great installment in this excellent series.

One small caveat though.

I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but now that I’m not reading it anymore, I’m having some trouble recalling the scattered sequence of events. The plot and mystery are fairly clear-cut, as is the ending, but the way in which the investigation is moved along from one point to another is… hard to recall… for some reason.

Or maybe I’m just getting old and my recall reserve is quickly dwindling.

* * * * *

REREAD: April 2020

The best part of this installment for me is easily the addition of Foxglove to the cast of characters, and the single best moment is when Peter brings her to the Folly and she sees Molly and they run toward each other.

Everything else about this book though? All fine and good and serviceable, but like The Hanging Tree, it just didn’t do it for me. That “something’s missing here” feeling I got during HT carried over into this book. It’s because I think of HT as part 1 and LS as part 2, and so they’re like one long installment in my mind. That’s why I had trouble recalling the sequence of events during the first read through; I kept getting them mixed up with HT, and I still do.

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* * * SPOILERS BELOW * * *

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Date read: April 11 to 15, 2020
Location: in between board meetings over Skype, which I prefer more than the old way, which was in person… let’s never go back to the old way…

I am too cold-blooded to appreciate this novella in its entirety, but I am not too dense to see that it wasn’t written for the likes of me or even with me in mind.

This book will appeal to a number of people, as it should because it’s written with love. You could feel it in every sentence. However, the readers who aren’t within its reach will most likely want to set it on fire.

And that’s fine. To each their own. I only wanted to say that, even though it didn’t work for me, I’m sure a lot of readers will love it and appreciate its craft and depth.

More thoughts and spoilers to be added later.

* * * * *

It’s been a couple of days since I finished reading, and I think I got it now.

For me, it boils down to the story not making much sense, and the ending, which should have tied everything together, doesn’t make sense either. So the experience of reading was like wading through a tunnel filled to the top with poetic word salad, only to find absolutely nothing at the end. No closure, no pay off, no sense of what this book is about. I swear I read it from cover to cover, and yet I have almost no grasp on the story itself.

So this isn’t so much a review as it is a whiteboard in which I list what I think happened in this book.

In the far distant future, there are two factions at war. Each side has time-traveling agents tasked with going back and forth in time to alter certain events, called strands, that would presumably ripple through time and affect whatever timeline the two opposing factions currently occupy. If this sounds complicated, it’s because it is and quite possibly too complicated for this pair of authors.

The purpose of altering these stands is all a gamble though, from what I can parse out. Each side thinks that changing, or rather course-correcting, the past and the future will lead their side to winning the time war.

It occurs to me to dwell on what a microcosm we are of the war as a whole, you and I. The physics of us. An action and an equal and opposite reaction. My viny-hivey elfworld, as you say, versus your techy-mechy dystopia. We both know it’s nothing so simple, any more than a letter’s reply is its opposite. But which egg preceded what platypus? The ends don’t always resemble our means. But enough philosophy.

The importance of this quote is to showcase the first time this book made me cringe.

As interesting as it sounds, the time war doesn’t play out in the book, which is what I’m most frustrated about. That this over-the-top concept doesn’t get adequate page-time, because it’s only an elaborate backdrop for a much lesser story–pseudo love story?–between two opposing agents, called Red and Blue, is a waste. Not only of what could have been quite good, but of my time as well.

The book opens on a battlefield sometime in the distant future where bodies are strewn about everywhere. Red walks among the corpses, and we’re told that her side has won this battle. Then she sees a vaguely familiar face across the field and stumbles across a letter from Blue, written in a mocking tone about setting a trap.

The next chapter opens with Blue, somewhere in time, on a mission. In the middle of doing whatever she has been tasked to do, she finds a letter from Red, also written in a mocking tone. It teases about a trap.

We make so much of lettercraft literal, don’t we? Whacked seals aside. Letters as time travel, time-travelling letters. Hidden meanings.

I wonder what you see me saying here.

I, too, wonder the same thing.

They alternate from chapter to chapter, and at the end of every chapter they find a mocking letter from the other agent. The letters contain a mix of references to a number of things, most of them literary and obscure. They also contain what seem to me like inside jokes between the authors and their writer friends. Red and Blue also call each other cutesy names on the variations of the colors “red” and “blue.” That gave me indigestion.

Although the chapters and letters are short, wading through them and working out the syntax seemed to take hours for me. I didn’t get or cared about most of the inside jokes and couldn’t see the point of this back-and-forth exchange between Red and Blue.

I veer rhapsodic; my prose purples.

You definitely do. The other one, as well. On that, we are in agreement.

Over the course of these letters and at around the half-way point of the book, Red and Blue “fall in love” and their regards for each other intensify with each correspondence. This came out of nowhere to me. I had to back up a few chapters to see what I’d miss, which was nothing. It literally came out of nowhere. I think Red was the first one to say it, and then Blue agreed. They are in love with each other from that moment on. At no point during the story do Red and Blue meet face to face, and their letters are a confounding tangle to work through. So this falling in love business is a head-scratcher to me.

Sometimes when you write, you say things I stopped myself from saying. I wanted to say, I want to make you tea to drink, but didn’t, and you wrote to me of doing so; I wanted to say, your letter lives inside me in the most literal way possible, but didn’t, and you wrote to me of structures and events. I wanted to say, words hurt, but metaphors go between, like bridges, and words are like stone to build bridges, hewn from the earth in agony but making a new thing, a shared thing, a thing that is more than one Shift.

[…]

Do you laugh, sea foam? Do you smile, ice, and observe your triumph with an angel’s remove? Sapphire-flamed phoenix, risen, do you command me once again to look upon your works and despair?

[…]

PS. I write to you in stings, Red, but this is me, the truth of me, as I do so: broken open by the act, in the palm of your hand, dying.

This last one literally gave me indigestion.

It just occurs to me that the language of the letters has underlying tones of sadism and masochism. There are many mentions of the violence Red and Blue wish to inflict on each other before they “fell in love.” Then after they fell in love, they continue to wax poetics about violence through imagery, but this time it’s of the violence of their affection for each other. Violence wrapped up in over-the-top romanticism–not a new invention, but it adds another layer to the progression of their relationship. I guess?

Warning: all spoilers from this point on.

Both of their agencies eventually catch onto their dalliance. Red is forced by hers to lure Blue into a trap, but she warns Blue via a letter hidden in a letter of her agency’s intentions. Blue, however, doesn’t want Red to be punished for failing the mission, so she goes along with the trap and sacrifices herself instead. Red is too late to save Blue. She grieves, breaks off from her agency, and goes on the run.

It gets even more convoluted from here. Red decides to go back in time in an attempt to save Blue. She finds Blue when Blue was a child and breaks into Blue’s agency to “infect” Blue with her “essence.” The idea is to “mark” Blue when she was young, so that when she grows up, she can find Red again.

(In this scene, we see an adult kiss a child, and alarm bells went off in my head. This book went from simply being “not for me” to “wtf did I just read” and why. It didn’t have to be this way. This was clearly the authors’ choice, to have this squicky scene top off their non-story. So now I’m seriously reconsidering reading anything else by these authors.)

Everything Red plans goes according to plan, and they reunite in the future where Red is captured and held prisoner by her agency. Blue breaks her out. They go on the run through time together. The end.

You wrote of being in a village upthread together, living as friends and neighbours do, and I could have swallowed this valley whole and still not have sated my hunger for the thought. Instead I wick the longing into thread, pass it through your needle eye, and sew it into hiding somewhere beneath my skin, time.

I must ask again. What is the point of all of this?

Nobody wins the time war, and I definitely lost time finishing this book.

This story could have and should have been around 30 pages, and it would have been just fine.

Some thoughts RE: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

 

Rating: – – – – –
Date read: around the late ’00s
Location: near the end of the first day job (i.e. that hellscape)

I think if I had been younger when I first read this book, maybe around 15 or 16, I would have rated it highly. I’m sure I would’ve liked it a lot more than I did when I actually got around to reading it at ~25. Ten years really made a difference in the evolution of my tastes in literature and “the classics.” It also made a difference in my ability to put up with boring classics and authors who wrote just to see their words in print. Moreover it’s a wonder how learning of the nuances of American history during the 1950s (not taught in most schools) can drastically change your perspective.

The most memorable thing about On the Road for me is the writing, but only in how whiny and rambling I’d found Kerouac, as an author and a rambler. The narrator (Kerouac) of the story is so obviously full of himself that he fails to realize all he does is whine about first world problems, which apparently had not been invented back then unfortunately. When he isn’t whining, he is waxing poetry about the human condition which goes on for dozens of pages at a time.

Not many people bring this up when discussing Kerouac, not until recently, that is, and I think it’s a major disservice to American Lit as an institution and our younger generations in particular not to do so–ya gotta point these things out or else whole generations will grow up worshipping drivel, and that’s just sad.

Since this book has become part of the “canon,” even fewer people will critique it directly or go as far as to call it boring or call Kerouac boring. So I will step up to the plate. This book is boring. Incredibly so. It’s a boring story about boring characters going on a boring journey during an exhilarating time in recent American history. Jack Kerouac was so taken in by his own self-importance that he ignored the significant cultural and political shifts happening all around him. But if that’s what you’re currently in the mood for, then sure. There are worse ways to spend your time, I suppose.

So 2 stars because, as boring as this is, it’s still better than some of its contemporaries.

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”

OK, so more like negative 2 stars. Read James Baldwin instead. Any book from his collection would do.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Date read: March 23 to 30, 2020
Location: beginning of statewide lockdown

A lovely book and wonderful read. I’d recommend this one to anyone looking for a good laugh.

Just about everything about this book is endearing, and just looking at the cover art immediately takes me back to the story inside.

This book was what I needed this week, a bit of sunny breezy brightness to get my mind off of… things. I had needed something light and engaging to keep me going and keep me from thinking too much about… things. This book was the only entertainment that had the ability to take me out of that circular head-space and into a story in which not much happens. It’s set in a world similar to our own starring a cast of interesting characters with strange abilities and unique personalities, and it’s a memorable story, one that I’m certain I’ll return to for years to come whenever I need to escape a certain head-space.

I think this book can be best summed up as having the delightful weirdness of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, the saturated brightness of  the TV show Pushing Daisies, and the charming narration of the Lemony Snicket book series. It’s all of my favorite flavors of weird and quirky rolled into one book, and the story unfolds with the funniest narration I’ve read in awhile. Real, laugh out loud moments were had with this book.

There’s an ease and comfort to settling into a story in which you know no one will die, nothing terrible will happen to any of the characters, and a happy ending is guaranteed. Low-stakes are what these trying times call for, yeah? One slight downside to this is there isn’t much of a plot here, but that’s okay because it’s character-driven and the characters are alive and real and full of wisecracks.

We first meet Linus Baker–a sweet, lonely, middle-aged, rule-abiding, and nearly invisible government social worker–at work. He’s employed by the Department in Charge of Magical Youths (DICOMY) and his job is to visit orphanages that house magical children to evaluate their abilities to care for these children.

Linus lives a quiet life that consists of his work, his small house, and his finicky cat. It’s all he knows and all he ever wanted. That is until he’s sent on a top secret assignment to evaluate an orphanage unlike any anyone has ever seen before.

The Marsyas Orphanage is located on Marsyas Island off the coast of a little seaside resort town, and in it lives the master of the house, Arthur Parnassus, who is kind but weary of all things government, especially social workers. On the island, there also lives the island sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, who helps to look after the children. And the children are more special than the average special super-powered child. In no particular order:

• Lucy, short for Lucifer–six years old, the antichrist, wicked sense of humor, likes to make threats for fun
• Talia–two-hundred-something years old gnome, bearded, expert gardener, likes to hit people with her shovel and bury them in her garden (although that rarely ever happens)
• Chauncey–green amorphous blob, has eyes on stalks on top of his head, wants to be a bellhop when he grows up
• Phee–young forest sprite, distant, standoffish, has the power to make plants grow
• Sal–extremely shy teenage boy who turns into a Pomeranian when scared or startled
• Theodore–a wyvern who speaks in chirps, has a secret hoard of treasure (and buttons) under the couch

Together the inhabitants of the island are a quirky, unorthodox found-family who care for one another and keep mostly to themselves. The biggest obstacle to their existence, other than government officials sent by DICOMY to check up on them, is the seaside townsfolk who are sometimes weary and other times hostile toward magical beings in general.

Linus, with his cat in tow, comes to the island and orphanage with the purpose of evaluating and reporting on Arthur’s fitness as guardian for these special magical children, but gradually over the course of a few weeks, he loses his rigid DICOMY mindset and is charmed by the island and its inhabitants. He even helps them reconnect with the town, although some bigots will always remain bigots no matter what.

Before he realizes it, Linus becomes enamored by the children and their guardian, and shortly thereafter, he begins to fall for Arthur. It isn’t all happily ever after from this point, as there are a few bumps in the plot to keep things moving along, but the story does end on a happy note.

I realize I’m making this book sound super sappy and precious, and it’s not. There are precious moments within because of the nature of the story (it’s about orphaned children–it couldn’t be helped, really), but they are few and outnumbered by a bunch of laugh out loud ones. I’ll stick a few moments here without context just for fun.

“Think of this as a promotion, Mr. Baker. One that I believe is a long time in coming.”

“Don’t I have a say in this?”

“Think of this as a mandatory promotion.”

[…]

“Are you Mr. Baker? If you are, we’ve been expecting you. If not, you’re trespassing, and you should leave before I bury you here in my garden. No one would ever know because the roots would eat your entrails and bones.” She frowned again. “I think. I’ve never buried anyone before. It would be a learning experience for the both of us.”

[…]

“You don’t know him. You don’t know us. You have files, but they only tell you the basics, I’m sure. Mr. Baker, what’s written in those files are nothing but bones, and we are more than just our bones, are we not?” He paused, considering. “Except for Chauncey, seeing as how he doesn’t actually have any bones. Though my point remains the same.”

[…]

I haven’t seen Lucy’s room. I haven’t asked. He has offered many times; once, he cornered me and whispered that I wouldn’t believe my eyes, but I don’t think I’m ready to see it yet. I will make sure to view it before I leave. If it is the last thing I do, my last will and testament has been filed with Human Resources. If enough of my remains exist, please see that they are cremated.

[…]

Besides, it was a perfectly lovely day. Perhaps it would do him some good to be outside in all this sunshine. Ten minutes later, he wished for death.

[…]

“You know, for a leader, you seem to delegate more than actually lead,” Linus said dryly.

Lucy shrugged. “I’m six years old. Well, this body is. Mostly, I’m ancient, but that’s neither here nor there.”

[…]

“You look fine,” Linus said. “Dashing even.”

“Like a spy hidden in the shadows about to reveal a big secret,” Sal told him.

“Or like he’s going to open his coat and flash us,” Talia muttered.

“Hey! I wouldn’t do that! Only if you asked!”

[…]

This isn’t simply an orphanage. It is a house of healing, and one that I think is necessary.

The dialogue and narration are easily the highlights of this book, and the built-in humor is the author’s specialty.

Around this time last year, someone I came across briefly on twitter recommended TJ Klune to me on a recommendation thread and said I should give The Bones Beneath My Skin a try. Normally, I’d ignore random people’s recommendations of authors I’d never heard of–they’re almost always self-published authors pushing their own books at everyone they come across–but this was different. There was something about the title of this book that made me look it up, and the blurb made me give it a try. It only took a few chapters in for me to realize that TJ Klune was damn good writer. Bones became one of the best books I’d read last year. So thank you, random person on twitter who pushed the right book at me at the right time and introduced me to a new favorite author.

Strange Practice (Dr. Greta Helsing #1) by Vivian Shaw

Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Date read: September 18 to 26, 2019
Location: Chicago, O’Hare International

When I first heard of this book and saw the cover, I couldn’t wait to read it. When I finally got around to reading it though, it turned out to be kind of a dud. There was so much of it that just wasn’t for me, much to my surprise because I had fully expected this book to be right up my alley. The writing, as it turned out, was way too sweet and delicate for what I had been in the mood for.

I’m always interested in unique urban fantasies and I’ll always jump on any new UF that promises adventure and a world full of otherworldly creatures. I thought this first book in this new UF would be it since it’s got all the things I love about the genre: modern London setting, historical atmosphere, a multitude of strange creatures, found family, and a sympathetic main character who’s doing her best to survive. But an awkward combination of the main character’s fragility and the fragility in the treatment of almost all aspects of her life and work grated on me. That, plus the plodding pace, was unexpected and a big letdown for me.

I’m not a fan of sweet fragile things at the best of times, which was what the main character was like throughout the read, and so the sweetness made reading this book rather awkward for me. And I wasn’t a fan of her going out of her way to help and heal so many people and creatures, some of whom had meant her harm; or rather, I didn’t see the point of it and thought it necessarily tedious of her to try save so many that tried to kill her. The writing’s strange focus on kindness and inclusivity came off rather forced and heavy-handed.

So yeah, this is another UF miss for me. Too bad really, as I was looking forward to enjoying this series.

“You are not humans,” she said at last, “but you are people . All of you. The ghouls, the mummies, the sanguivores, the weres, the banshees, the wights, the bogeys, everyone who comes to me for help, everyone who trusts me to provide it. You are all people, and you deserve to to be able to seek and receive that care without putting yourselves in jeopardy. What I do is necessary, and while it isn’t in the slightest bit easy , it is also the thing I want to do more than anything else in the world.”

While I appreciated the sentiment, I was mostly bored by the execution.

The Onion Girl (Newford #8) by Charles de Lint

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Date read: April 4 to 13, 2019
Location: Grand Marais, Lake Superior–the last vacation before the new job

“There’s more to life than just surviving . . . but . . . sometimes just surviving is all you get”

So good, but so hard to read because of the realistic portrayal of sexual abuse and its long term effects on an individual’s life and the people and systems that fail victims and survivors. This is the real-est magical realism I’ve ever read, and I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an accusation right at this moment because getting through this book took work. I certainly didn’t expect magical realism to be this real. Didn’t know that it could get this real.

That aside, my main issue with this book was not knowing where it was going. The writing was at times sharp and hard hitting, but also dreamy and lyrical; other times, it was slow moving and seemed to be going in circles or nowhere. I couldn’t figure out where it was leading or what it was setting up for until I was over halfway through. At this point I imagine is where most people would’ve given up if this book had been their entry point into the Newford series, but since I’m a completionist by nature and this was a buddy read with Beth, I pushed on.

Not sure if I can say that the effort paid off or that the ending is worth the struggle that came before it, but I can confirm that the characters do grow on you and you do end up caring about them before you realize what’s happening. I get now what other reviewers mean when they call these books spellbinding–they pull you in bit by bit and you don’t realize it until you reach the end.

Objectively speaking, I have immense appreciation for this book and the depth and range of Charles de Lint’s writing, and I plan to go back and start the Newford series from the beginning one day. But subjectively? I will probably, most definitely, never read this volume again. Not even to refresh my memory.

“I suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel or unconnected to each other. We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.”

 

False Value (Rivers of London #8) by Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
Date read: February 25 to March 4, 2020
Location: several board meetings in a row in which I didn’t have to present anything

The next book in one of my favorite series with a cover done in my favorite color scheme.

* * * * *

Release date now FEBRUARY of 2020…

*side-eyeing every single comic book Ben Aaronovitch worked on this year instead on this book*

* * * * *

Really good. So good that I’m no longer side-eyeing all those other things Ben Aaronovitch worked on last year instead of this book. He can work on whatever he wants from now on and I won’t make snide comments as long as he keeps on producing this level of quality.

Everything in this installment of the series is exactly what I’d been missing from the last two books, The Hanging Tree and Lies Sleeping, and it’s such a breath of fresh air to see the arch moving away from Lesley May and the Faceless Man mystery and see it heading into something new and exciting.

Rereading immediately.

* * * * *

There were so many things I enjoyed about this installment, and those things brought back all the good feelings I had when I first started the series all those years ago. My mistake was reading it too quickly the first time, so I had to read it again slower the second time and was able to savor all the finer points that made this book such a great addition to the series as a whole.

So this isn’t a review per se, just a list of things I thought were interesting and would like to remember.

*
* *
* * *
* * * SPOILERS * * *

No Name in the Street by James Baldwin

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Date read: January 2020
Location: Chicago O’Hare International–watching the impeachment trials

Whenever things around me become too set in their ways, as though they’d stay like this forever–life, work, news, politics, other current events, the same old charades–I return to James Baldwin for perspective and to rediscover my tenuous link to this world and the people around me. I get like that sometimes, detached and indifferent, when all I can see is a never ending cycle of nonsense and people being complacent (when they should be angry), and it looks like there’s nothing anyone can do to break the repetitive pattern. So I turn to James Baldwin and soak in his immortal words. He wrote earnestly and honestly, and there’s pain but there’s also a glimmer of hope. And that’s what I hang onto.

Some of the things written during those years, justifying, for example, the execution of the Rosenbergs, or the crucifixion of Alger Hiss (and the beatification of Whittaker Chambers) taught me something about the irresponsibility and cowardice of the liberal community which I will never forget. Their performance, then, yet more than the combination of ignorance and arrogance with which this community has always protected itself against the deepest implications of black suffering, persuaded me that brilliance without passion is nothing more than sterility. It must be remembered, after all, that I did not begin meeting these people at the point that they began to meet me: I had been delivering their packages and emptying their garbage and taking their tips for years. (And they don’t tip well.) And what I watched them do to each other during the McCarthy era was, in some ways, worse than anything they had ever done to me, for I, at least, had never been mad enough to depend on their devotion. It seemed very clear to me that they were lying about their motives and were being blackmailed by their guilt; were, in fact, at bottom, nothing more than the respectable issue of various immigrants, struggling to hold on to what they had acquired.

[…]

To be liberated from the stigma of blackness by embracing it is to cease, forever, one’s interior argument and collaboration with the authors of one’s degradation. It abruptly reduces the white enemy to a contest merely physical, which he can win only physically.

Sweep with Me (Innkeeper Chronicles #4.5) by Ilona Andrews

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Date read: March 12 to 16, 2020
Location: home–preparing for the eventual statewide shutdown

This novella was a soothing break from the, you know, thing that’s going on right now all over the world. The reason for all the hand-washing and social distancing and the systematic shutdown of whole countries.

Everything’s fine in my neck of the woods. I don’t know for how much longer that will last though and I can’t escape the constant talking and hearing about it. It takes up all the free space I used to have in my head, and it’s been exhausting.

So I was glad to have read this novella all the while all of the above was going on and is still going on.

Dina and Sean, who is an Innkeeper now, are hosting two new groups of guests and a solitary individual at Gertrude Hunt. The Drifan come to meet with a man from Earth with ties to their leader. The Koo-ko are philosophical chickens from another planet who need a neutral zone to resolve their family/heritage problems. Lastly, the solitary is a Medamoth, and he’s come to learn about the peace Dina had brokered between the Otrokars and the vampires from Sweep in Peace (#2).

The funniest by far are the philosophical chickens who love to argue and then get violent and devolve into fistfights. It doesn’t actually matter who is right. They just enjoy arguing.

Also funny is Oro‘s multiple attempts to replicate a Whataburger to its exact taste and texture, which is not possible. He gets frustrated and decides to take a pilgrimage of sorts to see the taping of his TV chef idol.

I’m kind of disappointed Caldenia couldn’t convince Oro to pop one of those chatty chickens into the oven when no one was looking. I know they’re sentient and that would go against Oro’s code and all that, but they were really obnoxious. Like Caldenia had said, there were lots of ’em, so who would’ve missed just one chicken in the midst of all that excitement.

Anyhow. This novella and the previous books in the series were available for free on the authors’ website, but once the books are finished, they’re taken off the site and published in full. I don’t like to follow the story by the chapter as they’re posted, so I always wait until the end when they’re published to start reading.