Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler (2014) Open Road Media.

Two very well written science fiction stories.  The first, “A Necessary Being” about a face on another world, one tribe coming to its end, the other fearful that they are at their end.  Communication is supplemented by a chameleon-like ability to display color, limited by the person’s caste.  The other story, “Childfinder” is about attempted protection of pre-psi children.  Both are satisfying.

This was published posthumously.  "Childfinder" was originally sold to Harlan Ellison for his Last Dangerous Visions project but that was not published before Ellison died in 2018.  There is an existing project to publish three volumes of Last Dangerous Vision in 2024 by Blackstone Publishers.

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo (2009) Candlewick

DiCamillo is a wonderful writer.  There is a distinct plot, there is a full cast of characters who are important to the story and who you come to care about, including the elephant, a dog, an orphan, a boy, a policeman and his wife, even an old soldier and a beggar, and of course, a magician.  Every promise in the book is fulfilled, even those you do not realize are promises until they are fulfilled.

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike (1984) Knopf

Updike is a two-time Pulitzer winner and was awarded other prizes as well.  This book was made into a movie (which I have not yet seen).  But I am critical of the book for multiple reasons.  First is the apparent lack of plot.  The story wanders through the life of three ‘witches’ who believe they have power primarily because their husbands left them for other women.  They are not written as a woman would write them, but as a man might fantasize about them; promiscuous, coupling with adulterous men.   The book is written from their points of view.  But the women are neither powerful, nor very believable as anything other than wandering lost souls.  This is not to say that Updike produced a poorly written book.  His mastery of the language appears on every page.  It is just that the constant digression through every character’s self-doubt holds no more interest for me than so-called unscripted television shows.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip

Ms. McKillip weaves a tale of wizardry, love and revenge with magical creatures, wizards and a witch.

A wizard establishes his home on the mountain of Eld.  He has a son.  His son has a daughter.  She has a talent for calling special beasts.  Beasts she can talk to with her mind; a Boar who likes to ask riddles, a Lyon who is fierce, a black Swan, a Cat, and a falcon who protects her.  She is tasked with raising a boy, the sone of a king, brought to her by the king’s enemy.  She comes to love the boy, and the man who brought him.  The king, wants her, or rather her power.  To try to entrap her, he makes the mistake of using a wizard.  This enrages her, and she calls another creature to crush the wizard.  Then she calls the man who brought the boy to her and marries him.  To plot with his older brother to overthrow the king.

I’m Tired of Keeping My Mouth Shut 

Here I go again. 

I’ve been way too quite for way too long. I’m tired of seeing radical opinions from both sides. I’m tired of the co-opting of the English language by people who want to say something bad about someone else. I’m tired of the flim-flam and the misdirection. I’m tired of the lies and the liars. 

I’m an independent because I make up my own mind on every candidate and issue when I vote. I don’t care if they’re a democrat or a republican - and yes, I made those lower case on purpose – I’m not of the opinion that either party has stayed true to their historical claim of what they stood for. When I first started voting, it was the Republicans who felt they had to watch out for the marginalized, the people of color, and the poor. At that time, Dixiecrats were the party of States Rights who were segregationists. They didn’t like the idea that Truman, a Democrat, ordered the military to integrate. They wanted to retain the Jim Crow laws and promote white supremacy. Does this ring a bell about some of the Republicans today? 

At the time, most ‘blacks’ (and remember if you had the slightest trace of African blood, you were called black and worse) were disenfranchised by the Dixiecrats and were members of the Republican party. As people of color migrated to the North and the West, they found the Democrats in those areas more accepting. 

When I started voting, the word conservative meant you were careful about making radical change or spending what you couldn’t pay. Now it seems to have taken on additional meanings like bigotry and trying to disenfranchise the poor, the minorities, the elderly and claiming that anything said by anyone else to be fake or a lie simply because they don’t agree. 

Here's my advice to everyone who thinks they can’t do anything about the ‘politics as usual’ – VOTE, and do it in every election. 

If you don’t like laws that prevent a woman from standing up for her own body for whatever reason, then vote for candidates who want to change those laws 

If you don’t like that people find ways around security and psychology checks and are able to buy arsenals of weapons, and laws that say they must be allowed to do this, until and only until, they take those weapons to a public place and shoot innocent citizens and children, then get out and vote for candidates who will change the laws. (Read the second amendment carefully and then decide yourself what it says and what it doesn’t say). 

Yes, I’m an independent, that means I don’t take the word of other people to make my decisions. I read the source material; I check the candidate's voting record. Then I make up my mind. 

If you don’t vote, don’t cry about who got elected, you could have made a difference. 

-Ben Firetag

 

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (1937) Alfred A. Knopf

A classic detective story about a man who wears many names.  He is wanted for the murder of a Jewish money lender, an attempted assassination of a Prime Minister, various robberies, drug smuggling, even the betrayal of his own criminal gang.  A British writer of detective stories becomes friends with Turkish commander of secret police who shows him the body of the notorious Dimitrios.  The writer, Latimer, wonders if such a man’s activities can be traced backwards, as an academic exercise to see how his own story plots match with reality.  This quest takes him from Istanbul to Athens, to Bucharest, Geneva, and Paris.  People help, but people are suspicious of the motives of a man looking into such a criminal.  During his quest, he meets one of the people Dimitrios betrayed and is caught-up in a blackmail scheme.  Will he survive?  Was the corpse he saw really Dimitrios?  If not, will Latimer become the next victim in this sordid tale?

Crescent City by Sarah Maas (2020) Bloomsbury Publishing

In a world where there are shapeshifters and vampires and fae and angels, Bryce, a half-human-half fae is the illegitimate daughter of the Fairy King.  Her best friends are an alpha wolf shape shifter, an assassin and a faun who is a famous dancer.  It’s the angels who run things and they’re not very nice.  Mix this with someone causing rifts into Hel, letting demons into their world who kill people.  When the wolf is killed along with her entire pack, by a demon, Bryce is blamed by the wolf’s mother who is in line to be the Prime wolf.  When a vampire is killed the same way, Bryce becomes a suspect.  The Angel’s fallen angel assassin is assigned to help her find who is summoning the demons.  Only things don’t go the way anyone expects.
The Plot is well done, the basic outline is that of a murder mystery, but there is too much bodice ripper imagery and way too much unnecessary foul language that does not move the plot forward.

Stick by Elmore Leonard (1983) Arbor House

In which Ernest Stickley, or Stick, has just got out of prison for armed robbery and is back in Florida hoping to see his little girl.  He is riding with his friend who is delivering a package to a drug dealer.  They don’t know they’re supposed to be killed.  His friend is shot down and Stick escapes.  He goes to work for a very rich guy who drops hints about who to invest in on a regular basis.  His advisor is also an advisor to the man who wanted Stick killed.  People are crazy to invest in things they can’t pass up.  Stick is no dummy and he finds a way to make the killer his friend and invest in a movie that will never be made.  He’ll be rich if he can stay alive and ahead of the law.

The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly (1995) Little Brown

Bosch has done an almost unforgivable thing by attacking his lieutenant.  Now he is on paid involuntary leave pending a report from the department’s psychiatrist.  And he’s trying to get around his home having been condemned because of an earthquake.  To keep busy, he starts investigating the twenty‑five-year-old murder of his mother.  But there are people still alive who don’t want that done.  Old detectives are either dead or clear across the country.  Witnesses and workers start getting killed – including Bosch’s boss.  How can he uncover the truth without losing his job and his self-worth.

The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas (2020) Berkley Books

In which Charlotte Holmes, the pretend sister of the fictional Sherlock Holms, is seen through by a former friend of Mrs. Watson.  They embark on a dangerous mission to retrieve a particular piece of artwork that will be up for bid at auction.  The auction takes place in a chateau in France outside of Paris and has heightened security.  Which seems reasonable since it is owned by Moriarty. 

Blue Moon by Lee Child (2019) Delacorte Press

In which Reacher comes into a town run by two rival foreign mobs and sees an old man treated unfairly and harshly by a loan shark.  When he helps, he finds a much deeper problem going on that involves a whiz kid who didn’t pay his employee’s health plans – and the old guy’s daughter is in the hospital with cancer and no coverage.  When he tries to provide help, it spirals into the kind of situation only Reacher can solve.

The Awakened Kingdom by N.K. Jemisin (2019) Orbit

Sieh, the Trickster god, has gone away.  A new godling is born and unsure how to be his successor.  After hurting the world, she (because they decided to present themselves as a girl) meets a much older sibling who can negate all the hurt she did so she can start over.  But he doesn’t want to babysit her, so he takes her to the Darre to have a mortal companion that can keep the destructive tendency in check.  There, she encounters wrongness and want to make it right.  But can she do that without destroying the world and herself?

Shadow Cursed by D.K. Holmberg (2016) CreateSpace

The second installment in The Shadow Accords.  Carthenne Rel, the shadow blessed girl from Ih-lash whose parents were killed has been spending the last few years being trained by the A’ras.  But that type of magic is different and burns her so much she is slow.  Inside the palace training grounds, she cannot draw on the shadows.  Until the grounds are attacked, and a part of the wall is collapsed.  Then she helps to defeat the invaders by focusing the shadows through her found A’ras knife.  But will the A’ras think her an enemy because of her shadow magic?  Can she keep her secret of will it lead to her being ejected at best, or executed as a suspected motive?

Robert Parker's Kickback by Ace Atkins (2015) G.P. Putnam's Sons

A Spenser novel – where our hero is called upon to find out why a kid was sent to an island on a misdemeanor where his mother cannot see him.  Turns out a lot of other kids are being sent to the same corporate rehabilitation island – enough to pay for the judge to get a nice mansion in Florida and a share in a fishing boat.  But Spenser can’t let a thing like that go, even if the mob is involved.

I didn't think at first that I would like the Spenser novels written by someone else, but Mr. Atkins keeps true to Spenser's voice and Parker's style.  A very satisfying read.

Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman (2013) HarperCollins

In which a man goes to the store to get milk for his children’s breakfast and is kidnapped by aliens, then space pirates, then rescued by a stegosaurus in a time-machine balloon.  He endangers and saves people ready to sacrifice to a volcano god, gets attacked again by the aliens, saves the day by opening a window and taking the bottle of milk from his own hands a few minutes ago, then threatens to end the universe (or having three little people with flowerpots on their heads dance), by touching the two bottles of milk together.  The space police come, and they’re all dinosaurs, the milk bottle touch, the three people with flowerpots on their head appear, dance, and disappear.  He reopens the window into the past and tosses a bottle of milk to himself.  Of course, his children do not believe a word.  But fortunately, the milk is on the table.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016)

At first glance, this book may seem off-putting in that the subject appears to be rather boring.  It is anything but boring.  We follow the life of a Russian Count after the Bolsheviks have come to power.  If not for a poem attributed to him, they would have summarily shot the aristocrat.  Instead, they exile him to the Metropol hotel for life.  Instead of going crazy in his confinement, he makes friends.  He dines with a man from the KGB.  He lets a little girl drag him all over the hotel.  She grows up and has a child, which he must raise after the mother follows her exiled husband to Siberia.  He waits tables in the hotel's restaurant.  All through the narrative, his observations, his wit, his charm is evident.  Mr. Towles has done such a superb job with characterization, that it takes but a sentence to know who is speaking or thinking.  Easily the best book I've read in the past year.

Master Magician by Charlie N Holmberg (2015) 47North

The culmination of Ceony Twill's apprenticeship in magic.  By this third installment, it became predictable that she would place her life and someone else's in deadly circumstances.  But this does present her with new abilities.  Still a reasonable read and a good conclusion to the trilogy.

An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

In which our heroine changeling is called upon to rescue missing children from Blind Michael's Hunt. Everyone wants her to succeed, no one thinks she'll live through the experience, not even her.  

Ms. McGuire continues to evolve as a writer with her characters.  Even the worst of the fae can be seen to have a heart.

Shadow Blessed by D.K. Holmberg (2016) CreateSpace

A girl gets separated from her parents in a foreign city while playing a game of following and being followed.  Her parents are brutally killed and she, as a stray, must learn to use her sills to steal coin purses from unsuspecting tourists.  But her skills go beyond thievery and there are those who search for her.  She does not trust people and that helps to keep her safe, mostly.

Conspiracy in Death by J. D. Robb (1999) Turtleback Books

In which Eve Dallas discovers a conspiracy to remove damaged organs from homeless people – but why, and who is involved and how high up does it go?  And how is she going to solve the case when she’s been suspended and had to turn-in her badge and gun?