Fiction
Diana Rowland, My Life as a White Trash Zombie: Angel is not too long out of jail when she wakes up in the hospital after an apparent overdose that left her naked on the side of the road. And she’s weirdly hungry, but not for food… A mysterious benefactor gets her a job in the morgue, if she can keep it despite the involvement of her loser boyfriend, abusive father, and varyingly suspicious/welcoming coworkers. Also there seems to be a spike in the number of headless bodies found in the parish. A decent zombie book about how your life can improve after a kind of death.
Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell, The Tangled Lands: Magic causes bramble to grow; bramble poisons people into endless sleep and eventually into death, if they don’t get a mercy killing before that. Refugees clog the city of Khaim because they’ve magicked their own city-states to death; raiders kidnap children and kill young women to prevent further magic-users from being born and poisoning the lands around. When a brilliant inventor figures out a way to better destroy bramble, he also invents a way to detect who’s been using magic-and the latter turns out to be a lot more useful to the existing power structure. This is a series of setting-linked stories centered around the ways in which families are broken by power, climate disaster, and greed; the people who can’t stop using the magic that’s killing their society are very familiar, as are the people who would rather rule the ashes than have a voice in governing a healthy polity.
KJ Charles, Any Old Diamonds: Alec is eking out a living as an illustrator, because his terrible duke of a father exiled him and his brother and sister for not showing enough deference to their stepmother. A scheme to steal his stepmother’s jewels brings him into contact with the Lilywhite Boys, expert jewel thieves. Sex and intrigue ensue. I like the fantasy Charles better, but this was pleasant enough.
Mira Grant, In the Shadow of Spindrift House: A Scooby Doo-like gang of ghostbusting kids is growing up and possibly breaking up, when one of them (the Velma) puts together one last big score-if they can find the deed to Spindrift House, they’ll make millions, but they can’t leave once they’ve entered and others have died in the attempt. Quickly things go full Lovecraft, with not!Velma’s heretofore unknown family secrets playing a big role. Grant doesn’t rely on her usual repetition/fairytale tics here, which I really appreciated; a brisk and different novella.
Ben Aaronovitch, The October Man: A spinoff! Peter Grant is referenced, somewhat enviously, but not seen in this novella about the German magical bureaucracy, which isn’t supposed to exist post-WWII but does anyway. Many of the spirits are dead, or deeply embittered (or probably both), because of Nazi crimes, but our guy is just trying to do a job, which happens to be investigating some rather odd wine-related deaths.
C.L. Polk, Witchmark: In an alt-England powered by aether and in which the nobility are secretly magicians and witches are imprisoned as mad, Miles Singer ran away from his noble family to avoid being bound-enslaved-to his more weather-talented sister. Now a battle-weary psychiatrist treating soldiers home from alt-WWI, he’s trying to investigate the mysterious illness that is driving many of them to murder while hiding his magical status. Then a man dies in his arms, charging him with investigating a secret, and also a stranger who knows he’s a witch approaches him, offering even more danger. There’s a lot going on here, and I would’ve appreciated a bit more on the effects of the torture Singer himself suffered, but it plays very well on the fact that some people will enslave their own family members when it serves their interests-even if some of them feel bad about that-and there’s a nice m/m romance as well.
Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood: Cas, at seventeen, has already developed a justified reputation as a ghost hunter. With his mother, he moves around North America dispatching the violent dead. But when he comes to a small Canada town on the trail of Anna Dressed in Blood, it quickly develops that she’s much stronger than he expects-and also she shows him mercy. But a ghost story can’t turn into a love story so easily, especially when Anna just killed one of Cas’s new classmates-and when Cas is still seeking revenge against the monster that killed his father ten years ago. Unusual premise, entertainingly executed. (And yes, it did throw me off a bit that the character's name is Cas and the ghost mechanics are very similar to SPN logic.)
Vivian Shaw, Strange Practice (A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel): Dr. Helsing, whose family dropped the Van a few generations back, treats supernatural creatures as her father did before her. When murders begin to terrorize London’s human population, an ancient evil threatens all the creatures Dr. Helsing cares for, including the vampires Ruthven and Varney-the latter of whom may be developing a bit of a crush on her. Interesting variant on sympathetic vampires who (mostly, latterly) didn’t kill, along with wayward demons and ghouls.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell, The Tangled Lands: Magic causes bramble to grow; bramble poisons people into endless sleep and eventually into death, if they don’t get a mercy killing before that. Refugees clog the city of Khaim because they’ve magicked their own city-states to death; raiders kidnap children and kill young women to prevent further magic-users from being born and poisoning the lands around. When a brilliant inventor figures out a way to better destroy bramble, he also invents a way to detect who’s been using magic-and the latter turns out to be a lot more useful to the existing power structure. This is a series of setting-linked stories centered around the ways in which families are broken by power, climate disaster, and greed; the people who can’t stop using the magic that’s killing their society are very familiar, as are the people who would rather rule the ashes than have a voice in governing a healthy polity.
KJ Charles, Any Old Diamonds: Alec is eking out a living as an illustrator, because his terrible duke of a father exiled him and his brother and sister for not showing enough deference to their stepmother. A scheme to steal his stepmother’s jewels brings him into contact with the Lilywhite Boys, expert jewel thieves. Sex and intrigue ensue. I like the fantasy Charles better, but this was pleasant enough.
Mira Grant, In the Shadow of Spindrift House: A Scooby Doo-like gang of ghostbusting kids is growing up and possibly breaking up, when one of them (the Velma) puts together one last big score-if they can find the deed to Spindrift House, they’ll make millions, but they can’t leave once they’ve entered and others have died in the attempt. Quickly things go full Lovecraft, with not!Velma’s heretofore unknown family secrets playing a big role. Grant doesn’t rely on her usual repetition/fairytale tics here, which I really appreciated; a brisk and different novella.
Ben Aaronovitch, The October Man: A spinoff! Peter Grant is referenced, somewhat enviously, but not seen in this novella about the German magical bureaucracy, which isn’t supposed to exist post-WWII but does anyway. Many of the spirits are dead, or deeply embittered (or probably both), because of Nazi crimes, but our guy is just trying to do a job, which happens to be investigating some rather odd wine-related deaths.
C.L. Polk, Witchmark: In an alt-England powered by aether and in which the nobility are secretly magicians and witches are imprisoned as mad, Miles Singer ran away from his noble family to avoid being bound-enslaved-to his more weather-talented sister. Now a battle-weary psychiatrist treating soldiers home from alt-WWI, he’s trying to investigate the mysterious illness that is driving many of them to murder while hiding his magical status. Then a man dies in his arms, charging him with investigating a secret, and also a stranger who knows he’s a witch approaches him, offering even more danger. There’s a lot going on here, and I would’ve appreciated a bit more on the effects of the torture Singer himself suffered, but it plays very well on the fact that some people will enslave their own family members when it serves their interests-even if some of them feel bad about that-and there’s a nice m/m romance as well.
Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood: Cas, at seventeen, has already developed a justified reputation as a ghost hunter. With his mother, he moves around North America dispatching the violent dead. But when he comes to a small Canada town on the trail of Anna Dressed in Blood, it quickly develops that she’s much stronger than he expects-and also she shows him mercy. But a ghost story can’t turn into a love story so easily, especially when Anna just killed one of Cas’s new classmates-and when Cas is still seeking revenge against the monster that killed his father ten years ago. Unusual premise, entertainingly executed. (And yes, it did throw me off a bit that the character's name is Cas and the ghost mechanics are very similar to SPN logic.)
Vivian Shaw, Strange Practice (A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel): Dr. Helsing, whose family dropped the Van a few generations back, treats supernatural creatures as her father did before her. When murders begin to terrorize London’s human population, an ancient evil threatens all the creatures Dr. Helsing cares for, including the vampires Ruthven and Varney-the latter of whom may be developing a bit of a crush on her. Interesting variant on sympathetic vampires who (mostly, latterly) didn’t kill, along with wayward demons and ghouls.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.