Oct 15 2019

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

One of the unusual things that Naomi Novik does in Spinning Silver — so unusual, in fact, that I can’t think of another fantasy book that does it — is to state that some of her main characters are Jews. The first chapter lays out the hints: the characters are moneylenders in a small town whose other contextual clues point to it being in an analog of Eastern Europe; they are held separate from most of the other townspeople, who cheat them when they can; the main characters celebrate a different mid-winter holiday than their neighbors. They are not named as Jewish until the third chapter, when they go visit more prosperous extended family in the nearest city.

Spinning Silver

Another unusual thing that Novik does is to show unsentimentally what it meant to be poor in the kind of medieval setting common to many fantasy novels. This is not the Shire of mushrooms, elevenses and gentleman farmers. This is a family running out of food at the end of winter because the mother has died, the father is an alcoholic and sold the kid goat for drink, so not only was there no meat from it, the mama goat stopped giving milk.

Miryem, the first first-person narrator of Spinning Silver, is the daughter of the only Jewish family in a small town so unimportant it does not even have a proper name. Her father is the local moneylender, but he is too kind, or perhaps too softhearted, to be very good at it. The villagers bully him, and pay back as little as possible. But the year that she turns sixteen, the winter is colder than ever before, her mother is ill, there is no money for medicine, and they are scraping together wood for candles, having burned the last of the oil. Miryem goes through her father’s books, finds out what everyone owes, and sets out before dawn to go collecting.

They tried to put me off, of course, some of them laughed at me. … I stood on their doorsteps, and I brought out my list, and I told them how much they had borrowed, and what they had paid, and how much interest they owed besides.
They spluttered and argued and some of them shouted. No one had ever shouted at me in my life: my mother with her quiet voice, my gentle father. But I found something bitter inside myself, something of that winter blown into my heart: the sound of my mother coughing, and the memory of the story the way they’d told it in the village square many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else’s gold, and never paid her debts. I stayed in their doorways, and I didn’t move. My numbers were true, and they and I knew it, and when they’d shouted themselves out, I said, ‘Do you have the money?’ (pp. 9–10)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/15/spinning-silver-by-naomi-novik/

Oct 15 2019

Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle #1) by Rosaria Munda

This was such a surprisingly grounded, even-handed look at revolution and its toll, emotional and material, on the survivors. While very much a cross between the Harry Potter and Red Rising books — except with dragons instead of magic or advanced technology — it felt at its heart closer akin to Jo Walton’s The Just City, another story of radical experiment in government that threatens to go horribly awry. Whereas TJC was a cautionary tale, however, Fireborne is an epic in the heroic mold, eventually becoming as lyrical and deeply moving as the classical poetry it “quotes”, inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid (also, the made-up poetry was beautiful and appropriate, which already sets Fireborne head and shoulders over most of its peers that try and fail to do the same.)

Told from the points of view of Lee, last surviving son of an aristocratic family murdered in the revolution, and Annie, orphaned daughter of a peasant family murdered because they could not meet their pre-revolutionary lord’s production quota, the story begins as the two have advanced through training to become squadron leaders of dragon riders. They and several others will square off in sanctioned tournaments to see who becomes flight commander and de facto heir to Atreus, the revolutionary leader who betrayed his patrician roots to lead the uprising. But not all of the previous regime were exterminated: some survived even as Lee did, and are plotting their vengeance in exile.

Lee and Annie are best friends but have a complicated relationship burdened by rivalry and secrets. I liked that the emotions were never pat, and especially liked how the friendship between Annie and Crissa worked out. To be honest, I thought the beginning of this book rather shaky, but around the time that Cor yells at Lee that Crissa doesn’t deserve to be a consolation prize, I was all in (even tho I maybe envisioned Crissa as Hailey Bieber from then on out, lol.) There are parts I wish had worked out differently, but what did happen worked in service to the story being told, one less of dragons and their heroic riders — tho that was engrossing too — and more of the real costs of regime change and war.

Rosaria Munda doesn’t make the easy choices when it comes to her narrative, which gives us readers a far richer experience than works by authors who go for tidy conclusions. Fireborne is meaningful social commentary in the guise of fantasy fiction, and I was dead impressed by Ms Munda’s skill at examining particularly the French and Russian revolutions through this lens. I’m very much looking forward to reading more, tho am also so, so happy that this book reads complete on its own. Cliffhangers are all well and good but stories that can stand on their own are just so much more satisfying. Really terrific debut.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/15/fireborne-the-aurelian-cycle-1-by-rosaria-munda/

Oct 13 2019

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

That was wild, if you can ignore how incredibly unlikely the technology for the framing device was. Like, how did they have the personalities of all those other people on file? And what kind of punishment is it to essentially be in a murder mystery party forever? Hannibal Lecter would just solve all the world’s unsolved homicides in a year. Tho I suppose if one subscribes to the idea that most criminals are impatient dumbasses, then this absolutely works. Anyway, it’s weird to me when authors construct meticulous plots but decide to handwave nearly all the tech. I get it, science can be hard, but I feel like this has become more prevalent in recent years as mainstream writers attempt what’s essentially science fiction.

Which isn’t to say that this is a bad book at all: it’s a really good mystery and I’m just the kind of person whose tech background makes me twitch when bad tech stands in counterpoint to good story. Because The 7 1/2 Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle maintains a wonderful internal logic, once you learn to accept or ignore the plot twist near the end that explains how this is all happening. So a man with no memories wakes at the start of an 8 day stretch in which he will inhabit a different body every day. At 11 p.m. each night, Evelyn Hardcastle will die. He must solve her murder or stay doomed to repeat that 8-day cycle forever.

Set in a post-war England at the crumbling estate of Blackheath, this is a twisty Agatha Christie murder mystery with a very cool Quantum Leap bent. That Quantum Leap bent is, in fact, what makes this book truly stand out in a crowded manor house mystery market (tho gosh, I wish the tech made as much sense as QL’s admittedly shaky intertwining of quantum physics and moral philosophy did!) It’s a solid whodunnit with excellent pacing and some really deep thoughts on morality and redemption. I would have liked to see what happened to our hero and Anna next but can understand why Stuart Turton chose to end the novel where and how he did. It’s a thought-provoking novel that relies on technology as its catalyst, tho I rather wish as much thought had been given to the details of that tech as were clearly given to everything else about this finely crafted mystery.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/13/the-7%c2%bd-deaths-of-evelyn-hardcastle-by-stuart-turton/

Oct 12 2019

Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Anna Waterhouse

I really enjoyed about 80% of the book, but towards the end, I kept thinking, wait, that can’t be all. Beyond the completely mystifying headstands in the garret (I get the point of them but could not for the life of me decipher what was actually going on while reading their depiction,) I was annoyed by what short shrift the apprehension of the serial killer earned. There was so much rich, exciting material in the lead up to the solution of this case that for the book to end as abruptly as it did felt odd and unearned, never mind that completely unnecessary letter at the end.

Of that rich, exciting material: Mycroft Holmes is hiding his health issues from his loved ones while also pursuing a personal vendetta against a hated nobleman. During the course of this latter, an acquaintance asks Mycroft for help in locating his abruptly vanished prospective son-in-law. Bingwen Shi is the scion of a noble Chinese family, who happened to be working with a known international arms dealer. Ordinarily, Mycroft would think nothing of assisting, but Bingwen Shi’s intended is Ai Lin, the beautiful, spirited woman he secretly pines for himself.

To further muddle his emotions is the return of his incorrigible younger brother from Cambridge. Sherlock has become obsessed with the so-called Fire Four Eleven serial killer, who seems to choose his victims at random and leave no trace besides a calling card with those three words on it. In fact, no one would even guess that the deaths were anything but natural and unrelated were it not for said calling cards. Mycroft tries to discourage his brother from putting himself in danger but when the next victim proves to be a relation to the queen, he must reluctantly allow them both to get involved.

So this will be the kind of story that aficionados of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s more exotic solutions will enjoy. I’m mostly iffy on those, but think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse did a decent job of grounding their plot devices in reality while still painting with Sir Conan Doyle’s palette. I do think they could have done more with telling us the background of the killer instead of just scattering the various hints over the last few chapters. I don’t think we ever actually find out his name, for example. Not that it matters, in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like an odd oversight.

One thing I did very much enjoy and hope to read more of was the burgeoning friendship between Sherlock and Huan. Huan already feels like a much more useful sidekick than Watson, though the former’s steadying influence is likely far more necessary on a young, rash Sherlock than the good doctor will have to exert some years in the future. It was also really nice to see the dynamic between Sherlock and Mycroft from the latter’s perspective. Sherlock is insufferable, as always, and Mycroft’s concern for him understandably verges into scolding, even as Mycroft’s own personal proclivities begin to calcify. Our authors absolutely shine in the way they hint at the canon they’re writing towards with this series. I didn’t enjoy this installment quite as much as I did Book Two, but I am very much looking forward to reading more.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/12/mycroft-and-sherlock-the-empty-birdcage-by-kareem-abdul-jabbar-anna-waterhouse/

Oct 09 2019

Always North by Vicki Jarrett

I went into this thinking it would be a bit like Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, partly due to the cover, but also due to the prospect of a young woman going on a dangerous expedition into the unknown, and the resulting ecological devastation she witnesses firsthand. But that’s about where the similarities end. Izzy is a restless young woman with a middling sense of morality who rationalizes illegally surveying the protected Arctic wilderness for her corporate bosses with the thought that someone else would do it if she didn’t. She embarks on the Polar Horizon with a crew that includes wary Captain Bjornsen, sexy second officer Jules, her partner in tech and occasionally bed Grant, and the irritating pencil pusher Max, sent by corporate to breathe down everyone’s necks about profitability.

As they head further and further north through the Arctic wastes, their path seems to mirror that of a polar bear that appears to be much older than it should be. The polar bear can’t possibly be tracking them… could it? As the intensity of near-endless daylight begins to take its toll on Izzy, the Proteus programming she and Grant have set up for the expedition begins to malfunction, setting off a chain reaction of events that will send a bloodstained Polar Horizon racing for the safety of southern waters.

Years later, Izzy is barely ekeing out a living in a world devastated by global warming when Grant shows up, offering her a job. Out of desperation, Izzy accepts. And then things get weird.

Always North is a fascinatingly constructed novel that deals with environmental collapse in a way reminiscent of J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, but with an audacious literary technique that I’m hard pressed to find comparisons to (tho this may speak to my idiosyncratic reading habits that gravitate more towards story than art.) Vicki Jarrett does with her narrative what figure skaters do with ice, cutting graceful, nearly symmetrical loops in their media for an effortless beauty that belies the strength behind it. Much like I felt with the afore-mentioned Annihilation, this is a book that grows lovelier in the remembering, tho for very different reasons. The ending of Always North is both unsettling and beautiful, incomplete yet strangely perfect. I want to know more, but any more writing would ruin the plot’s delicate balance. I will say that this book hearkened back, for me, to New Wave science fiction of the 1960s & 70s, exploring climate change and the permeable nature of memory with a stylistic boldness you don’t often find in today’s market. Ms Jarrett is truly one to watch.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/09/always-north-by-vicki-jarrett/

Oct 08 2019

Firefly – The Big Damn Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel (Review Part III)

Welcome to Part 3 of our 4-part series! You can check out part 1 here and part 2 here.

So this week we’re going to take a look at Wash’s Wife Soup, a delightfully hearty vegetable soup that Zoe makes for him as a special treat. The picture in the cookbook had me absolutely salivating, as does most of Chelsea Monroe-Cassel’s food photography: to add to her talents as a cookbook author, she’s also a terrific food photographer. I’ve stated before that this is an absolutely gorgeous volume, in large part due to her photos, which are both creative and evocative. This is the kind of volume you could just flip through for the prettiness, though the substantiveness of content makes it more likely you’ll actually want to cook from it rather that just admire it (not that both activities don’t have their own utility.)

Unfortunately, this leads to the only thing I didn’t care for with this book, something that no one in the publishing business can help in this present age. Since Firefly and Serenity were filmed long before our present era of photography standards, the contrast between the film/series stills and Ms Monroe-Cassel’s food and atmosphere photography is marked. While you could almost reach in and touch some of the food (the roast duck, in particular, glistens with deliciousness,) a lot of the show photos look like you’re viewing them from a turn-of-the-century TV. Gosh, I remember re-watching Serenity several months back and being struck by the lack of HD — ironic because it was one of the first movies, if not THE first, to embrace digital standards. But that’s a very tiny criticism of aesthetics far beyond the control of the people who came up with this otherwise delightful and wholly rewarding cookbook.

Now let’s look at one of the Recipes For Shipboard Living (lightly edited for format):

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Wash’s Wife Soup

1 leek, sliced in half lengthwise
1 potato, cubed
3 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 cups vegetable broth
2 Tbsp white miso
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 cup peas
3 Tbsp heavy cream
Zaatar, to garnish

Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Toss all the vegetables (except the peas) and garlic cloves with olive oil and spread out on the baking sheet. Roast for around 20 minutes, until all the vegetables are soft but not too browned.

Add the broth, miso, and rice vinegar to a medium saucepan over medium heat and stir until the miso is dissolved. Add in the roasted vegetables and cook for another minute or so. Add the peas, cook for a further minute, then puree everything in an upright blender or with an immersion blender. Immediately pour into serving bowls, garnish with cream and zaatar, and serve.

It’s great with some crusty garlic bread.
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I used frozen peas with this recipe tho I image you could use canned at a pinch, since the general mushiness of the latter won’t work against them here. I also used all of the leek, feeling it rather silly to toss the perfectly edible tops. The biggest surprise for me with this dish is that I didn’t need to add salt or pepper to it: it’s perfectly seasoned as is. The zaatar is definitely a nice touch, tho, and if you need a little more kick, adding more of that to your soup will definitely satisfy. Vegans can skip the heavy cream part, but even a confirmed omnivore like myself finds this vegetarian soup to be extremely craveable. Gosh, even my kids liked it and they never like anything I cook (insert crying emoji here.)

Next week, we close up the series with a recipe and food philosophy near and dear to my heart. Do join me!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/08/firefly-the-big-damn-cookbook-by-chelsea-monroe-cassel-review-part-iii/

Oct 05 2019

The Young Queens (Three Dark Crowns 0.2) by Kendare Blake

It’s a happy coincidence that whenever I get a break from covering new fiction, there’s an installment of the Three Dark Crowns series waiting for me from the public library. It’s like it’s meant to be or something!

Anyway, this novella looks back at formative chapters of the early lives of our three queens of Fennbirn — Mirabella, Arsinoe and Katharine — and the awful, no-good choice their mother made shortly after they were born. I mean, I get why she did it, and the system is as much to blame as she was but yikes. And it sure as hell didn’t do what she intended, to break the stranglehold of the Arron family of poisoners on the politics of the island. Tho, granted, there’s still another book in the series — that I’m anxiously panting for — so who knows, perhaps her choice wasn’t so misguided after all. I just… God, I feel so bad for Katharine. At this point in the series, 3 full-length novels in, she’s clearly a villain but she is so much the product of both her upbringing and the terrible, terrible things that were done to her since the fight to rule officially began, that all I want is for her to be able to find a safe place to live a quiet, happy life, redemption optional tho preferred. Anyway, this book answers the main question of why two of the queens were “giftless” growing up, and goes into more detail on their childhood bonds and what it took to break them (among many other things!) Lots here for series fans: newcomers should probably start at the beginning with Three Dark Crowns tho.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/05/the-young-queens-three-dark-crowns-0-2-by-kendare-blake/

Oct 03 2019

Structuring the State by Daniel Ziblatt

At the start of the nineteenth century’s second half, Germany and Italy were both patchworks of states; by century’s end, both were united kingdoms taking their place among Europe’s great powers. Similar ideas drove the leaders of unification in both regions, yet the states that emerged from the wars and negotiations were quite different. Though both were monarchies, Germany had a strongly federal structure, with an upper house representing its constituent states, significant financial responsibility at the state level, and even included semi-autonomous army units from the kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony and Württemburg that had been incorporated into the German Empire. Italy, by contrast, was a unitary state along French lines. The Italian regions, the Papal States, polities that had been jealous of their independence for centuries were subsumed into Piedmont’s rule, with practically no trace of their structures left in the new Kingdom of Italy. Why did two similar processes end so differently?

Structuring the State

Daniel Ziblatt’s brief book (152 pages of primary text) looks at the historical and political science literature on the subject, at least as it stood when his book was published in 2006, and finds that the prevalent explanations do not adequately answer the question. He finds that Prussian and Piedmontese leaders held similar ideas about the desirability of federal solutions to the challenges of governing Germany and Italy. Bismarck and Cavour were both well aware of the significant differences among the regions of the nations they sought to unify; they knew the loyalties commanded by local identities. Both wrote that a centralized state modelled on post-Napoleonic France would not be ideal. Thus ideology could not be the main reason that the outcomes differed so strongly.

Some of the literature on state formation assigned a crucial role to military strength. The greater the military strength of the unifying group, the more it will be able to impose its will on the constituent parts, and the more likely it is to dominate the resulting state. This argument clearly does not apply to the cases of Germany and Italy. The disparity between Prussia and the other German states was much greater than the difference between Piedmont and, for example, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Yet it was the smaller military that won the unconditional surrender of its regional competitors.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/03/structuring-the-state-by-daniel-ziblatt/

Oct 02 2019

Firefly – The Big Damn Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel (Review Part II)

So last week, I showed you how I prepared the Five-Spice Mix from the section on basics. This week, we’re going to sip on something delightful while I wax poetic, as promised, on the way this Big Damn Cookbook is organized.

First off, I have to admire Chelsea Monroe-Cassel’s ability to blend creativity with organization to present a seamless cookbook experience. There are five main food sections: the Basics; Shipboard Living; Recipes From The Border And Beyond; Recipes From The Core Worlds, Upper Crust, and Recipes From The Core Worlds, Underbelly. These distinctions provide a distinct narrative flow, beginning with the background before introducing the crew and gradually giving you an idea, as with the series, not only of the setting but the overarching plot as it goes from space western to planet-spanning sci-fi conspiracy. Not a lot of cookbooks are actually fun to read, but this one definitely is, even if you’re unfamiliar with (or perplexingly, not a fan of) the Firefly ‘verse. To add further utility to the volume, Ms Monroe-Cassel then adds indices for courses as well as for nutrient information and culinary conversions. I’ve stated previously that I’m a fan of her very clear directions: added altogether, this makes for a cookbook that I’ll actually reach for again and again because it collects information I both want to and can use with ease.

Also, as a Firefly fan, I loved so much how Ms Monroe-Cassel presents this as a tome started by Kaylee for keeping in the Serenity’s galley, with in-character notes from each contributor (and the occasional interested party.) I could hear each crew member’s voice in my head as I flipped through the book, with each of the recipes definitely according to what we know of their contributor. It really feels as if the characters compiled this book together, which makes for such a satisfying read.

So let’s toast the very talented Ms Monroe-Cassel with glasses of Shimmerwine, using a recipe from the Upper Crust of the Core Worlds contributed by Inara (and lightly edited here for format):

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Shimmerwine
4 servings

1/4 cup orange liqueur or water
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
Dash of edible gold luster dust
Chilled champagne or other bubbly wine

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the liqueur, sugar, and ground ginger. Stir occasionally until the sugar has dissolved, then remove from heat. Stir in the luster dust, just enough to give the syrup a good shimmer, then let the syrup cool.

When you are ready to serve, pour about 1 Tbsp of the syrup into the bottom of your glass. Top up with champagne and adjust the level of shimmer, if needed. Serve immediately, as the shimmer will settle over time.

~~~~~

My lovely assistant Karin and I tried this on an empty stomach while we were prepping other foods and got absolutely slizzard. It is a shockingly potent, extremely delicious drink that had us giggling through an evening’s worth of cooking — insert parallels to Inara here. It’s also a fun and easy twist on the usual champagne cocktails: definitely a drink to make when you’re looking to impress. Pictures don’t quite do it justice, but the one on the left comes closest, I think, to depicting in it all its gleaming glory.

If you haven’t already, check out Part I of this series with the terrific Five-Spice Mix basics recipe. Next week, we’ll talk about the graphics of this gorgeous cookbook and try out a delicious (and healthy!) soup from shipboard life. Do join me!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/02/firefly-the-big-damn-cookbook-by-chelsea-monroe-cassel-review-part-ii/

Oct 01 2019

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery edited by Christopher Golden & Rachel Autumn Deering

Oooh, 18 brand new tales of witchcraft from some of the finest female fantasy and horror authors working today? Sign me up!

Now some of these stories are set in certain of said authors’ established universes, which is super great for fans but can seem daunting for newer readers. For the most part, these stories work well as stand-alones. I was actually really pleased with how easily accessible Home, Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires story, was for me given that I’ve never read any of her books. Kelley Armstrong’s Black Magic Momma was also a strong addition to her Otherworld universe but honestly, I don’t think she’s ever written a bad thing in that series. I was also a big fan of Theodora Goss’ How To Become A Witch-Queen even as I hesitate to group it with her Victorian-era novels of lady explorers: it’s set in a much earlier Europe but still features accurate period detail with a strong dose of Ms Goss’ trademark female agency in the retelling of familiar tales.

That said, the best stories in this volume were, for me, the ones that fell decidedly on the horror side of the scale rather than the fantasy. Sarah Langan’s Night Nurse is a nightmare of modern motherhood, while Amber Benson’s This Skin gives us a glimpse into the mind of a budding psychopath (I was also glad to remedy my prior lack of Amber Benson reading, and need to look out for more of her stuff in future.) On a lighter, if no less gruesome, note, Hillary Monahan’s Bless Your Heart is a wickedly witchy story of small town Southern motherhood. Parenthood is a prominent theme in this collection, perhaps unsurprisingly given the historical association of witches with midwives and other independent women.

There were certain stories I think I would have enjoyed more were I smart enough to understand the endings, and some where the link to witchcraft seemed rather tenuous, but overall this was an excellent contemporary, popular showcase of women writing specifically on this supernatural theme. And, in keeping with Titan Book’s other productions, it’s a simply gorgeous volume, from the intricate dust jacket to the interior illustrations. Definitely a perfect read for the Halloween season, especially for women with a bent for the fantastic and bizarre.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/01/hex-life-wicked-new-tales-of-witchery-edited-by-christopher-golden-rachel-autumn-deering/