Matt

The Wishing Game is a delightfully cozy story about a contest to win the only copy of a book by a mega-popular children's author. A handful of contestants are invited to the author's private island to compete for the prize. Will one of them win? Read the book and find out. With themes of family, forgiveness, seeing others complexly, courage, and hope this whimsical novel is a delight for the young at heart. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Will of the Many is the fantastic start to a fantasy series from James Islington, author of the Licanius Trilogy. Set in the Roman-inspired Catenan Republic, an orphan harboring no love for the nation  stemming from a dangerous secret, is adopted by a Senator to investigate a mysterious death at the country's most elite academy. Vis is quickly tangled in a web of conspiracies and mysteries that play out in a way you have to read to believe. On the outset, this book seems extremely similar to Pierce Brown's Red Rising, but despite the parallels Islington crafts a story that diverges from Brown's work (or at least the first three books that I've read) in significant ways, creating a wholly unique and captivating fantasy experience. Excellent character development, shocking plot twists, and good world building. Readers will be left with many questions, but it's a brilliant ride that left me eager for a sequel. 

The Visitor is a fun bit of Christmas violence. It's short and a bit gory, and that's about it. The ending isn't great. The plot is nothing special. The characters aren't super well fleshed out. It's got some typos. But it's short, easy to read, and has a few cool scenes in it. Think of it as a long short story and enjoy it for what it is. 3.5 stars.

I received a free eARC of The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson from the publisher through NetGalley. I began reading the ARC and then switched over to a purchased audiobook edition (narrated by Hillary Huber). All opinions are my own. Imagine a post-COVID world in which people begin blacking out and suddenly and inexplicably commit acts of physical violence. For some, this strange pandemic of mindless violence may mirror ordinary life. For others it may present an opportunity. The Violence is fundamentally a story about surviving domestic abuse. Following three generations of women, Dawson explores how living with violence and generational trauma impact life and the family dynamic while also offering a rousing good story loaded with elements of speculative fiction, political and economic critique, horror, and feminism. The book, especially at the beginning is terrifying and potentially very triggering. As the novel progresses it begins to widen its scope a bit, lightens it's intensity in some ways, and incorporate elements ranging from humorous to almost whimsical...all while still remaining true to its themes. Counterbalancing the extreme discomfort and darkness I perceived in the beginning are moments of hope and transformation woven into various parts of the book. Dawson has skillfully written both a compelling plot but also some really incredible character arcs. Thematically this book brings a topic to light that is rarely discussed, let alone in such an honest way. The characters are wonderful and compelling and I was drawn in from the very first page. With all of that said, there were a few parts where I thought the plot strained reality a bit, especially in the second half of the book. I also found it a bit weird to be reading a book about a pandemic (The Violence) in which the narrative of the book (frequently) acknowledged COVID but was set post-COVID. Since COVID is still going on, albeit many parts of the world (very much including Florida, where this book is set) are acting as if it is not, it just seemed a bit surreal in some ways. I found myself wondering if The Violence was, in some ways, also about the COVID pandemic? Perhaps the world of the novel represents an alternative present? If so, I found it a bit odd that Dawson established and then critiqued elements in the book about the Violence pandemic response that did not actually happen in the real world (at least not in this country). There were also certain elements and themes that just seemed less developed or important than I wanted them to be. Nevertheless, the book ranged from chilling to heartwarming and was consistently engaging. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone (except perhaps those who might be triggered by domestic abuse and patriarchal oppression). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is a delightful cozy fantasy! Perfect for fans of Howls Moving Castle or Legends and Lattes. Wonderful story about finding a family and being loved.

The Verifiers by Jane Pek is a great mystery novel combining a whodunnit with themes of immigration, family drama, and technology. Claudia, a Chinese-American woman who loves reading detective novels, gets a job at Veracity, a firm which investigates matches on online dating website to verify the claims made on their profiles and conversations for their clients. But when one investigation leads to a potential murder Claudia finds herself on the case, and perhaps in for more then she bargained for.

Overall this was a really fun book. I loved the protagonist and I was really into all her asides and the references she made to the detective novels she loves. I thought there were a lot of interesting and quirky characters, as well as really compelling family dynamics. It was cool to see some really serious topics be represented in this narrative too. The plot was interesting, even if slightly confusing, and I liked how the book ended.

I did think a few characters and themes were under developed, but overall I really loved Claudia and was enthralled by her efforts to discover the truth. The audiobook narrator, Eunice Wong, did a great job too. I hope to read more from this author and perhaps about these characters too! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is a charming, funny, and thrilling mystery novel. A group of seniors meet every Thursday in their retirement community for their true crime murder club, but when a murder occurs in their very midst will they be able to solve the case? The great strength of this novel is its cast of characters. Osman has created a large ensemble of distinctive and interesting human beings to populate his story. From the four central retirees to the many supporting roles throughout the book, every character seems to be brimming with nuance and life. Most of the characters are very relatable and, as Osman says on his interview at the end of the audiobook, present a view of aging in which we see just how much these older characters really do still have in them, even while facing the challenges of aging. In many regards this is a profoundly human book, addressing so many facets of the human condition with courage, complexity, and grace. In addition to being a compelling whodunnit, this is a compelling novel about so much more. With that said, it might be argued that the book suffers a bit from that large cast and it's reflective introspective nature as the pacing can be pretty slow. It takes a while to get going, and then even once going it still meanders a bit and is just wordy. There are, perhaps, characters and story elements that could simply be cut from the book all together. I don't read a lot of cozy mysteries, and I'm not sure if that's the appropriate description for this book, but readers of fast paced thrillers might struggle with the leisurely tempo found in much of this book. Overall I think this is a solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read.

A great fantasy mystery. Set in an empire where great sea walls are all that separate civilization from annihilation at the hands (claws, fins, etc.) of the titans beyond, Dinios Kol is assigned to assist investigator Ana Dolabra in looking in to some strange and mysterious deaths...which may put the very existence of the empire in peril. Din is an engraver, one who has been magically augmented to have a perfect memory, and Ana is an eccentric if brilliant detective who wears a blindfold. This was my first book by Bennet and it was compelling, if sometimes confusing. I loved the world building and character development (Ana is amazing), although I sometimes felt a bit lost in the names and norms of the world. Overall I'm looking forward to the sequel as well as trying other books from this author. Thanks to the publisher for an eARC of this title. 

Moon Lake by Joe Lansdale is a great East Texas gothic story that is a creepy and thrilling combination of horror, history, mystery, and gothic elements. A journalist returns home to the town of his youth and begins to unravel a shocking mystery. The book kept me on the edge of my seat and was full of surprises. The protagonist is mostly likable and the other characters are mostly dynamic and well-developed too. Overall it's a great book! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wonderland by Zoje Stage is an atmospheric story combining survival and wilderness with psychological and supernatural horror. Orla, a recently retired dancer, moved from NYC to a small house upstate with her family. The change from the city to the North Country is challenging for both the expected, and some frighteningly unexpected reasons. The publisher describes this book as “if Shirley Jackson wrote The Shining,” which is a considerable stretch, but nevertheless like those masterworks before it Stage has composed a chilling story that traps characters and readers alike in haunted frozen isolation as questions of identity, self, and spirit are explored. The book has several unsettling scenes and a lot of interesting ideas, but somehow both the pacing and terror were lacking for me. Perhaps Stage also tried to tackle too many different ideas and themes in this book too? Although I enjoyed the book, I do think it could have been a bit shorter and faster paced in some sections. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan is a dystopian story about parenting, mothering, and the ways in which society judges. The story begins with Frida having a very bad day in which she left her baby alone while she went into the office. Though no harm came to baby Harriet, Frida gets caught and there her troubles begin. Frida is sent to a residential education program to learn to be a better parent, but the place is totally off-the-rails and each outrage is surpassed by the next. This is a really thought provoking book. Although what Frida did was dangerous and irresponsible, Chan does an excellent job highlighting how society (including its non-parent members) judges parents in general and mothers in particular. Several of Frida's classmates were there for things that either weren't actually abuse or weren't their fault. It was clear that in the world of the novel poverty, bad luck, or simply different parenting styles could be perceived as crimes equal to actual abuse. The expectation that women's dreams, needs, and identities will be wholly subsumed into raising their child was cast in stark relief as well as the ways in which society privileges some over others, and tries to quantify things that are, at least somewhat, subjective. The book seemed all too reflective of real attitudes toward parenting combined with a light sci-fi element to present an all to plausible dystopia. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Night Swim by Megan Goldin was a good thriller following a true crime podcaster covering cases in both the past and present. Timely, but potentially triggering. I loved how the audiobook had sections that really sounded like a podcast. 

The Man Who Died Twice is the charming sequel to Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club. The delightful cast of seniors, police officers, and others are back. This time delving into Elizabeth's past and more. I found this book to be strongly character driven, but with a bit more focus on plot than the first book. While still given to meditations on life, aging, etc. this book meandered a bit less than the first and was paced a bit better in my opinion. Overall a great mystery book, but do read The Thursday Murder Club first! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World is an uplifting apocalyptic novel that was enjoyable, but not overly so. The book was filled with moments of suspense, but unfortunately proved a bore between moments of excitement. The author's frequent use of forwards also proved disconcerting to me. I read this book for a book club, and am ultimately glad I read it, but it took me awhile to get through it and doubt I'd reread it.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling is a sci-fi psychological horror novel. Gyer is a spelunker, going down in a cave in a high tech suit hoping to earn enough to get a ticket off-world. The book has lots of twists and surprises. It has a few unsettling sections. Unfortunately I don't have many other good things to say about it. I felt like this book was too long and too repetitive, and therefore kind of boring. The characters kind of just did the same things over and over, with minor differences. Things picked up a bit toward the end, but I found one character (and there were basically only two) pretty unlikable and therefore struggled with how the book ended. I picked this up thinking it was going to be sci-fi horror, and it is, but it's really more psychological in my opinion. Sadly I wouldn't really recommend this one, unless you're super into caves or something. ⭐️⭐️✨

The Lost Apothecary was a fun book combining a period story with gothic tones with a contemporary drama. Overall this was an enjoyable book, although the plot felt a bit too neat and perfect. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers is a collection of loosely connected short stories. Some tales seem connected by a shared cosmic horror mythos of The King in Yellow, and others were simply romantic stories with little if any connection to the former. I read this book because two stories in it were selected by the HOWL Society book club as a reading to accompany our book of the week, The Final Reconciliation by Todd Keisling, which is a contemporary expansion on Chamber's King in Yellow mythos. I enjoyed those cosmic horror stories, and was reminded of Lovecraft as mystery, madness, menace, and the supernatural seemed to weave together throughout The Repairer of Reputations, The Mask, In The Court of the Dragon, and The Yellow Sign. I also enjoyed The Demoislle D'ys which had dark fairy tale vibes and reminded me a bit of Angela Carter. The remaining stories did not interest me as much. Even the stories I liked seemed to lack a certain something to completely gel. Perhaps, like Lovecraft, I felt there was too much non-supernatural content, building up to a climax with too few answers. I would give the stories I liked 4/5 and the stories I didn't care for as much 2/5. Overall I rate this collection ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Kaiju Preservation Society is an excellent new novel by John Scalzi. After losing his job, Jamie discovers a new opportunity that is out of this world. Literally. Now employed by an organization that seeks to preserve giant monsters known as Kaiju, Jamie discovers friends, adventure, and terrifying danger along the way. This book is a lot of fun. It's great for sci-fi fans and those who have enjoyed Scalzi's previous works such as Agent to the Stars, etc. The audiobook is read by Wil Wheaton who is excellent as always. Highly recommended ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Brandon Sanderson is an award-winning famous author, particularly esteemed in the fantasy space, known for the Mistborn Saga, the Stormlight Archive series, and finishing Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. With so many beloved accomplishments in his history, it is a bit funny that my first book by Sanderson would be The Frugal Wizard's Handbook to Surviving Medieval England. I initially picked up the audiobook, along with Sanderson's other “Secret Projects,” a while ago, but I didn't start it until a bookseller told me to avoid it. While it ended up not being to his liking, the title and description reminded me of Scott Meyer's Off to be the Wizard and I decided to give it a try. Here's proof that one man's trash can be another man's treasure, because I really liked it. While it didn't end up being that similar to Scott Meyer's book, I really enjoyed this sci-fi/fantasy white room story about a guy who reviews things online waking up in medieval England with no recollection of who he is, how he got there, or what is going on. Combining adventure, humor, and a pinch of romance this book ended up being a really great standalone story.

An excellent Murderbot short story published in Wired magazine. A prequel to All Systems Red, it does a great job of introducing the character and universe. One of the more overtly dystopian diary entries, it's both horrifying and moving in its brief word count. 

Excellent Graphic Novel

100 Nights of Hero is a beautiful, whimsical, fantastical, and relevant tale about the power of stories, love, and sass! With echos of Scheherazade and other classic fairytales and myths, Isabel Greenberg has crafted a graphic novel of modern myth combining beautiful art with excellence in storytelling. These stories have everything! Sapphic love, dancing, the moon, a BirdMan, and more! Wonderfully paced, throughly engrossing, and stylistically similar to familiar fairytales and myths (combining the fantastic with the darker aspects of life). This book is sure to delight readers of many ages.

The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon was a creepy and atmospheric horror story. This is the story of two sisters, a (magic?) spring, and a family plagued by drownings. Not unlike Alma Katsu's The Deep, this book excels at combining horror with aspects of a period drama. I was drawn into the narrative and eager to see what would happen next to the characters. This is my first McMahon book and I'm eager to read another! With that said, I did find myself noticing that despite the characters being compelling, the narrative well plotted, and atmosphere palpable...the overall premise lacked originality. It's not that this book seemed like a copy of anything else, only that so many of the tropes or concepts used in the book seemed reminiscent of other stories. It's a good book, but if you're well read you may find yourself noticing that this book is a representation of themes you've read before. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is sometimes thought of as one of the classics of the dystopian and post-apocalyptic genres, and it's easy to see why. While listening to The Road, read by Tom Stechschulte, I could see the melancholy blend of destruction, isolation, and hope - which echoes tone, mood, and conventions of earlier films and books - and the influence it has undoubtedly had on later works. McCarthy's writing is seemingly simple, yet also literary and complex. I somewhat regret listening to this book instead of reading it visually, as I feel like I lost a lot of the plot and details by choosing the audio version for this particular title, despite the excellent narration. I may well return to this story of a father and son, traversing the road in post-apocalyptic America, in its print form. I can, however, safely say that while the plot didn't move quickly enough nor was the writing at a sufficiently “popular level” for me to retain this audiobook without intense concentration, the parts I did hear and remember were often moving, infuriating, and/or thought-provoking. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Broken Room by Peter Clines is a weird and thrilling tale combining the sci-fi horror Clines' readers have come to love and expect with a different sort of story. Hector, a spy, is sitting in a bar when he's approached by a little girl who's on the run with a fantastical story. The pair embark on a cross-country adventure with things getting progressively stranger at every turn. The Broken Room is reminiscent of King's The Institute as well as Cline's own Threshold Universe series and Paradox Bound. While I was left wanting to know more about some of the characters and elements of the world, overall I found the journey the two protagonists traveled to be highly compelling. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Angel of Khan el-Khalili by P. Djeli Clark (illustration by Kevin Hong) This excellent short story takes place in the same world as A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Haunting of Tram Car 015, and A Master of Djinn. A fantastic alternative history, set in Cairo around the turn of the last century. In this story a teenager seeks the favor of an “angel,” but at what cost? This story is short and sweet. I loved how it continues to build upon the amazing universe Clark has established in his other works, and expands the readers' view of one of the most mysterious entities in this universe, the clockwork angels that followers of multiple faiths agree are anything but. I would highly recommend this story for fans of any of the other stories I've listed by Clark. I would also recommend this story (originally published in the anthology Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt and reprinted online at tor.com where it may be read for free) as a starting point for the alternative Cairo universe. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️