Jul 13 2022

It’s A Sign by Jarrett Pumphrey and Jerome Pumphrey

Mo Willems is a staple in our household, so when I (belatedly) discovered that he had an imprint called Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! I knew I had to check it out. More importantly, I had to check it out with my kids. Jms grew up on Knuffle Bunny, while Joseph had always seemed more partial to Elephant and Piggie (tho that latter might have been because he wanted to read more about trumpet players like Jms, who took the instrument up for a year in fourth grade.)

It’s A Sign begins and ends with short (and hilarious!) vignettes featuring Elephant and Piggie, with a cameo from Pigeon at the end. The book itself is about four friends who decide to start a club but run into various sorts of trouble naming it. Each of the friends has a strength, however, that they can all combine to this purpose. Perhaps they can even… find a sign as to what they ought to do next?

I read this first with Jms, and he and I fell about with laughter at the lighthearted antics depicted here, even if Jms did precede his appreciation with a “Dad jokes!” proclamation. To which I said, “Excuse me, Mom jokes, too!” Joseph was insistent on reading the book himself out loud, but I had to read the book to Theo in order to engage him with it. Not the fault of this very entertaining book, which even Theo admitted was “okay good” when I asked him whether the story was okay or good. He’s a fairly reluctant reader to begin with, alas.

But Jms, Joseph and I really enjoyed it. The jokes were funny for all of us, with adorable, tho fairly minimalist, illustrations perfectly underscoring the script and emotions. The sixty or so pages are also a perfect length for young readers, and the E&P bookends are a terrific way to get Willems’ fans into something new. As a grown-up (who is, coincidentally, baby stepping her way through learning a foreign language,) I really appreciated the sneaky way in which beginner-to-intermediate language skills were introduced, as well as the brief, humorous biography of the Pumphrey brothers who wrote and illustrated this.

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Jul 12 2022

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

So I requested this novel ahead of reviewing Sarah Pearse’s upcoming follow up to it, The Retreat. Interestingly, the publicist seemed a little reluctant to send it over — not a problem I’ve usually had with books from larger publishing houses, who don’t have to watch their margins as closely as smaller presses do. I put it down to maybe them not wanting to give away a Reese’s Book Club selection for free, but after reading the book, I’ve come to an even more practical conclusion: this book just isn’t that good. Worse, it’s been poorly reviewed, even by my most generous friends (who seem to prefer the sequel anyway!)

The Sanatorium is the first in the Detective Elin Warner series. Elin is a British police detective on extended leave from her job after a murderer she was apprehending attempted to kill her, too. Now she’s accepted an invitation from her estranged brother Isaac to come to an isolated Swiss hotel to celebrate his engagement. Her boyfriend Will is along for moral support, tho she hasn’t really told him much about her troubled relationship with Isaac beyond the fact that he pretty much left her to care for their dying mother on her own, not even coming back for the funeral.

When Isaac’s fiancee, who happens to work at the hotel, goes missing, Elin reaches for a reasonable explanation despite Isaac’s belief that something terrible must have happened to Laure. But as a snowstorm descends on the sanatorium-turned-hotel perched precariously in the Swiss Alps, Elin’s concern grows. The simultaneous announcement of an avalanche cutting off the roads with the discovery of a body floating in one of the heated pools spreads fear throughout the staff and guests trapped on the premises. With the Swiss police unable to make it through the snow, Elin takes charge, securing the scene and collecting as much evidence as she can. But a cunning killer is ready to strike again and again, and Elin soon finds herself overwhelmed as she strives to secure her loved ones from the threat looming over them all.

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Jul 11 2022

Discovering The Underground With Snow White by Tom Velcovsky & Jakub Cenkl

I had a blast spending time at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference 2022 recently, and one of the highlights was definitely coming across the Albatros Media booth. They’re a small Czech press and this was their first time exhibiting at ALAAC, and I was so pleased to be able to chat with the publisher of some of the most beautiful educational books I’ve had the pleasure of reading this past year.

At the end of our conversation, the lovely people of Albatros pressed on me this volume to go with the postcards and stickers I’d already picked up from their booth. Now that I’ve had time to sort through most (but not yet all: it was a lot!) of my haul from ALAAC, I’m pleased to present this as my very first selection for review!

And it’s not just because I dearly love fairy tale adaptations, which this is, or cleverly constructed papercraft, which this also is. It’s because this beautiful and thoughtfully created volume pleases so much the polymath in me. My only regret is that childhood me never got a chance to enjoy a book quite like this, because she would have adored it even more than I do.

For Discovering The Underground With Snow White, the traditional fairy tale is adapted ever so slightly to more prominently feature its subterranean elements. The mining occupation of the dwarves is an obvious hook, but from the very start the Evil Queen summons a prisoner from underground caverns, instead of the traditional huntsman, to dispatch Snow White in exchange for his freedom.

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Jul 10 2022

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

“Sleeping Beauty is pretty much the worst fairy tale, an way you slice it” says Zinnia Gray, first-person narrator of A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow. She adds, “Only dying girls like Sleeping Beauty.” (p. 2) And there’s the first catch, because Zinnia Gray is dying, victim of a rare genetic defect, most of whose carriers die in their teens and none of whom has made it to age twenty-two. The novella opens on her twenty-first birthday.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix M. Harrow

Zinnia grins and bears it through a family birthday party that everyone pretends to believe isn’t a pre-wake. Her “best/only friend” (p. 2) Charm — Charmaine Baldwin — rescues the mood with a text that’s a request, a promise, and an omen: “meet me at the tower, princess.” (p. 4) The tower is a leftover guard tower from an abandoned state penitentiary. Charm has done up the highest room in the tower with “strings of pearled lights crisscrossing the ceiling and long swaths of blushing fabric draped over the windows; a dozen or so people wearing the kind of gauzy fairy wings that come from the year-round Halloween store at the mall; roses absolutely everywhere, bursting from buckets and mason jars and Carlo Rossi jugs. An in the very center of the room, looking dusty and rickety and somehow grand, a spinning wheel.” (p. 6) Twelve fairy godmothers, but they all drift off and eventually it’s just Zinnia and Charm. Near midnight, Zinnia dares Charm to prick her finger on the spindle. “You’re the princess, hon,” answers Charm. Zinnia tries to divert her with facts about the original version of Sleeping Beauty — she has a degree in folklore and “alcohol transforms me into a chatty Wikipedia page.” (p. 6) Zinnia takes the dare, though, pressing her finger onto the spindle. “And then something happens, after all.” (p. 8)

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Jul 09 2022

A Scandal in Brooklyn by Lauren Wilkinson

This fun new short story puts a modern-day Irene Adler center stage where she belongs! Told through the eyes of her old friend Tommy Diaz, A Scandal In Brooklyn follows Irene as she answers another friend’s request for aid.

Priya Stein hasn’t seen or heard from her husband Victor in days. Turns out that he’s volunteered to participate in a cutting edge tech experiment sponsored by none other than Irene’s estranged tech mogul husband himself. Irene uses her connections to get Priya, Tommy and herself onto the compound so that at least one couple can be happily reunited.

Priya’s relief at learning of her husband’s safety is, alas, short lived. While undergoing a virtual experiment, Victor is stung by digital bees and dies. Neither Irene nor Tommy believes that Grace, the AI responsible for running the simulation, is responsible for his death. Besides, how could a digital bee possibly cause someone to go into anaphylactic shock?

The characterization was the strongest part of this short story, for me. While the mystery was decent, I felt like the story hadn’t been polished enough action-wise, as things just sort of happened one by one. The experience was more like watching dominoes falling than enjoying a story unfold organically. That said, I really did like the characters of Irene and Tommy, and would love to read more of their exploits together. It was fun to hang out with the two of them in this vaguely Holmesian short story. Perhaps more importantly, I really want to see Irene stick it to her hopefully soon-to-be-ex-husband.

The good people behind this story and its accompanying book tour have also provided us with a short interview with Lauren Wilkinson, as well as an excerpt and a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card! Check it all out below.

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Jul 08 2022

Die, Vol. 4: Bleed by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans & Clayton Cowles

I’ve had time to think about it, and tho this final installment of the RPG-nerd series made me cry, it also made me kind of mad, and this is why: there’s a bizarrely “time to put away childish things” overtone to the ending that really irritated me. Kieron Gillen was trying to tread a fine line here between embracing the real world and showcasing both the benefits but more the downsides of RP and, for me, he ultimately fell too much on the downside. Which makes me sad, because I truly loved Volumes 1 and 2 of this series.

Anyway, in this book, the gang is all back together as they attempt to prevent Die from taking over the real world. After sailing to a creepy island in the middle of nowhere, they find a dungeon that’s equal parts Call Of Cthulhu and Mines of Moria. But the mobs they face within are greater than anything they’ve ever had to defeat before, and the final boss’ challenge a greater conundrum than anything they’ve had to solve to get here.

Interspersed with their adventure/ordeal are brief pages showing what’s going on in the outside/real world while they’re stuck in Die. Mild spoiler: they do make it back out, but not all of them and not all the better for wear. Ash, especially, needs to confront her own demons, not only in her gender identity but in the ambivalence she has about returning to the real world, which she secretly fears might have been the reason Sol was lost to them all that time ago. And, you know, I really like how this series emphasises how useful RPGs are for helping people explore genderfluidity and sexuality, but it was handled in, I hate to say this, a surprisingly old-fashioned conservative manner. Even at the ripe old age of 44, I felt that the thinking here was very end of the 20th century, which I hate to remind y’all was over twenty years ago. I get that Ash’s fears and concerns were realistic, but I wish we’d seen more of their courage in the real world once all was said and done.

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Jul 07 2022

Asterix Omnibus #7 by Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo

ably translated from the French by Joe Johnson.

This omnnibus collects brand new translations of three full Asterix tales, originally written in the 1970s: Asterix And The Soothsayer, Asterix In Corsica, and Asterix And Caesar’s Gifts. Perhaps most interestingly, it also includes an afterword by Alexander Simmons, writer and founder of Kids’ ComicCon, who addresses the casual racism of the comics, tho not to any great extent. Still, it was nice to see those instances of mildly xenophobic humor pointed out, as they definitely don’t translate well to the mores of this day and age.

Which is not however an accusation one can level at the rest of the book! The puns and other associated wordplay still elicit as much, if not more, laughter from me than they did when I first read the Asterix comics back in the 80s. The main characters are Asterix, a small hero with a big heart; Obelix, the menhir deliveryman who is his best friend, and Dogmatix, Obelix’s scrappy little white dog. If you don’t laugh at the fact that some of the surrounding Roman encampments are named Laudunum and Aquarium, then yes, perhaps these are not the books for you. But if you’d like some nimble linguistic jokes to go with the ultimately hopeful, and often well-researched, tales of a small Gaulish village resisting the efforts of the steamrolling Romans to assimilate them into empire, then these are delightful must-reads!

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Jul 06 2022

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I think Doug liked this one a lot more than I did.

Elder Race by Adrian TchaikovskyLynesse Fourth Daughter is a princess who still believes in the old chivalric tales of courage and oaths. When the lands adjoining her mother’s Lanessite Empire are overrun by what the refugees refer to as demons, she chafes at the prevailing wisdom that the refugees are exaggerating and that Lanessite should adopt a wait and see attitude to the threat, while reluctantly allowing refugees shelter on their borders. With the assistance of Esha Free Mark, a woman from an amphibious strain of humanity which counts itself mostly free of Lanessite rule, Lynesse takes it upon herself to invoke the ancient oaths and wake the last of the Elder Race, the sorcerer Nyrgoth Elder. She believes that the demons are an existential threat to humanity, and that the sorcerer is their only hope.

Nyr Illim Tevitch is an anthropologist who freely admits that he probably isn’t as good at his job as he should be. Sent with a team to observe this offshoot civilization that grew out of Earth’s once-active interstellar colonization program, he was the one who volunteered to stay behind when the rest went home to investigate what seemed to be an ongoing breakdown in communications between them and headquarters. The others never came back, and the breakdown seemed irreparable. Still, he has his satellite and his technology, allowing him to go into deep hibernation beneath active phases of observation, in hopes of one day being called back, too. Oh, tho one time he did actively involve himself in assisting Astresse Regent against an usurper who had found a way to reawaken old-Earth technology, telling himself it was better that he use his tech to disrupt the adoption of same by unskilled hands (tho he knows that that reasoning was really an excuse to spend time with the lovely queen.)

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Jul 05 2022

The Nightmare Brigade #2: Into the Woods by Franck Thilliez, Yomgui Dumont & Drac

ably translated from the original French by Joe Johnson.

Now that the clunky but necessary exposition has been established in Volume 1, the creative team behind this series can more fully and poignantly explore the world they’ve built here in the follow-up volume. Esteban has discovered that he’s more than just an orphan discovered wandering in the nearby woods by Dr Albert Angus, renowned dream psychologist and therapist. He suspects that he’s actually a creature pulled out of a real person’s nightmares, and that the same can be said of Sarah, another orphaned teenager who’s come to live at Dr Angus’ sprawling clinic/estate.

But before he can investigate their origins, he has to figure out a way to escape this strange new dream in which he finds himself. His “parents” tell him the clinic was all a hallucination, while a sinister circus takes advantage of the dream therapy machines and Dr Angus himself. Esteban will have to not only fight his way into the estate but also figure out how to survive Dr Angus’ nightmare in order to get to the truth of what’s happening to everyone he holds dear.

The second issue in the volume has Esteban trying to persuade Sarah of their shared past, and taking her with him to investigate further. Meanwhile, local bully Alex draws the attention of a monster while trying to find proof that Tristan can actually walk. The way these two plotlines intersect was tremendously satisfying, as was Tristan’s confession to the two people he regards as siblings. I loved so much how the kids band together, and how even when they fight, they realize that love connects them. It’s refreshing to see angst and trauma dealt with healthily, with minimal wallowing.

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Jul 03 2022

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers dedicates A Psalm for the Wild-Built to “anybody who could use a break,” and the novella is, on the whole, very restful. It’s not without conflict, but it is a break from the grim, from the horrible, and it shows people trying to be their best selves. That’s not easy, and one person’s best self may still conflict with another’s, so the story is not an endless round of happy happy joy joy.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Generations ago, the humans of Panga let their robots and artificial intelligences go. The robots had an Awakening, and departed for the wilderness. Here is how their speaker explained why they were declining an offer to join human society as free citizens: “All we have ever known is a life of human design, from our bodies to our work to the buildings we are housed in. We thank you for not keeping us here against our will, and we mean no disrespect to your offer, but it is our wish to leave your cities entirely, so that we may observe that which has no design—the untouched wilderness.” (p. 2) The humans of Panga did not fight to keep their robot servants; instead, they completely reordered their society to do without robotic help.

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