Silk: A World History Aarathi Prasad I have mixed feelings about  Aarathi Prasad 's  Silk: A World History . It belongs to a nonfiction genre I call "history of substances". Notable books in that genre are  Amy Butler Greenfield 's  A Perfect Red , which is about cochineal, the red dye that comes from the cochineal bug, and  Sophie D. Coe 's  The True History of Chocolate . I loved both of those books -- they were as fascinating as novels. I am sorry to say, though, that  Silk  was less gripping. By the time I reached the end, I was eager to get there. There was one specific problem and some more general ones. Cochineal is a very specific thing -- it comes from the cochineal bug and no other source. That made  Greenfield 's job in  A Perfect Red  circumscribed.  Coe  likewise had a well-defined job in describing the history of chocolate -- it's a product of the cocoa tree  Theobroma cacao . Silk is NOT just one thing....

Long Live Evil Sarah Rees Brennan The publisher's blurb for  Sarah Rees Brennan 's  Long Live Evil  makes it sound like a funny book about a real-world character who slips into a book and finds herself the villain. And it IS that! There were many laugh-out-loud moments, such as this one Books often described kisses as ‘searing’ which made Rae think of salmon, but characters seemed to enjoy the seared-salmon kisses. or this “You saw this horse born,” Marius reminded ... “I told you his bloodline could find their way anywhere. You named him.” “That was a joke,” ... Marius didn’t see what was humorous. He’d thought it was a nice name. ... “So this is my noble steed, Google Maps?” Rae, our heroine/villainess, is a fantasy book lover, who knows all the plot tropes, not to mention the movies and songs. Plugged into a fantasy novel (à la  Inkworld  or  Thursday Next  -- both are referenced in the Acknowledgments) Rae reacts like the thoroughly modern young wo...

I am AI Ai Jiang I picked this up because it was nominated for the 2024 best novelette Hugo award. I was disappointed. So, here's a story you've heard before: someone invents something new. This new technology enables all kinds of stuff that was not possible before. There are winners and losers. The winners become powerful and rich, and they oppress the losers. Many people are unhappy, and human spirits are crushed. Then maybe, just maybe, a hero arises who, through the power of her humanity and art and soup redresses the injustice. (OK, I admit the soup part may be a novel touch.) Or maybe that doesn't happen, and we never get back what was lost. The horses don't return to the stables, hand-copied books very nearly vanish from the Earth... This is an old story. It dates back at least to the people who realized they could plant seeds and later harvest food, instead of the natural way, which is to find food growing wild. Soup was involved. It's a true story. Ai Jiang...

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic Alberto Manguel, Gianni Guadalupi, Graham Greenfield (Illustrator), James Cook (Maps and Charts) Seanan McGuire  recently published a story-like thing called  A Traveler's Guide to Fantastic Countries . It purports to be advertising copy for a travel agency that can arrange trips to such places as Avalon, Niflheim, and The Lost City of Z. This naturally made me think of other, less tongue-in-cheek reference works of fantastic lands. Two that I used to own are this one,  The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic  and  An Atlas of Fantasy  (which I  reviewed yesterday ). The Dictionary of Imaginary Places  is a serious version of the joke that  McGuire  was making with her story. In the first (1980) edition  Alberto Manguel  and  Gianni Guadalupi  described a little over a thousand places (according to the Forewor...

Island of the Blue Dolphins Scott O'Dell I was five years old in 1961, when  Scott O'Dell 's  Island of the Blue Dolphins  in 1961, it won the Newbery Medal. Thus, I didn't read it until many years later. I still remember the impression it left on me -- like a jewel, perfect in its simplicity. The only thing I can compare it to is  Gary Paulsen 's  Hatchet , another survival story that left me with much the same feeling. Amazon review Goodreads review  

Charlie Thorne and the Royal Society Stuart Gibbs We knew from the ending of  Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra  that the next historic secret Charlie would chase after would be something discovered by Isaac Newton. In fact, as the title suggests, it is broader than that. This one involves not just Newton, but many of his colleagues and fellow members of the Royal Society of London. In fact, at 413 kindle pages, this is the longest  Charlie Thorne  installment so far, and that is partly because in addition to Newton, we end up chasing the history of several of his contemporary Fellows of the Royal Society. Although I really have no information about  Stuart Gibbs 's creative process other than that revealed by the end matter in his books, I have long suspected that he writes his novels backward -- that is, that he imagines the end first, and then writes the earlier sections in order to move his people and pieces to the place where that ending can transpi...

An Atlas of Fantasy J.B. Post Seanan McGuire  recently published a story-like thing called  A Traveler's Guide to Fantastic Countries . It purports to be advertising copy for a travel agency that can arrange trips to such places as Avalon, Niflheim, and The Lost City of Z. This naturally made me think of other, less tongue-in-cheek reference works of fantastic lands. Two that I used to own are this one,  An Atlas of Fantasy  and  The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic  (which I will also review one of these days). J.B. Post  was the map librarian of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and also an avid fantasy reader. (I get these facts from  Lester del Rey 's introduction.) Because of this he was aware of something most readers didn't know: that maps existed of the lands in which many fantasy stories take place. Many of these maps were unpublished. For instance,  C.S. Lewis  drew a map of Narnia, a repro...

A Restless truth Freya Marske In the first book of  Freya Marske 's  Last Binding  series, we learned that long ago the fae, upon departing England, made a contract with the people of England, and from that contract they derive their magic. The contract is inherent in three physical objects: a coin, a cup, and a knife. Almost a hundred years ago four women found the objects and took custody of them. Now the English Magical Establishment wants to get its hands on them. "Wants" in this case means "is willing to kill for". Indeed, they killed one of the woman, Flora Sutton, and now hold the coin. Edwin Courcey inherited Flora Sutton's estate and notes -- thus he and his partner Robin Blythe know who held the other two contract bits. One of these, Beth Godwin, married (thus she is now Beth Navenby) and moved to America long ago. Robin's sister Maud has gone to America to meet her and is now accompanying her on her return to England. But on the very first day...

Johnny Tremain Esther Forbes ** spoiler alert **  I was an elementary schoolkid when I read  Esther Forbes 's  Johnny Tremain  for the first time. It quickly became one of my favorite books. It was one of many books I read about American Revolutionary War history, but this one was special. It was special because of Johnny's personal story. For most of the book, Johnny is not an admirable character. As the book begins Johnny is an apprentice silversmith. He is a skilled artist, the chief of Mr Lapham's apprentices. He is not generous to his inferiors -- this is surely how he thinks of the other, less skilled apprentices, and even perhaps Mr Lapham himself. He falls from his lofty position -- an accident injures his hand. From being the lord of Lapham's apprentices he now falls to become the drudge, since his deformed hand allows him no finer work. The other apprentices, whom he treated with hauteur, are now not generous to him. Johnny reacts to his fall by going into ...

So You Want to Be a Wizard Diane Duane When I started  Diane Duane 's  So You Want to Be a Wizard  I had an idea of what it was going to be like. That idea was a lighthearted and amusing fantasy, like  Patricia C. Wrede  or  Sarah Jean Horwitz . I was wrong. That is not at all what  So You Want to Be a Wizard  is. For all that the main characters are a twelve-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl, this is more of an epic than a fun little story. We start with Juanita (Nita) Callahan being bullied by a gang of her classmates. When I say "bullied", I don't mean that they say mean things about her, although they do that, too. Nita is beaten by Joanne and her gang. Taking refuge in the library, Nita finds a book in the children's room,  So You Want to be a Wizard , that purports to tell a reader how to become a wizard. Nita is of course skeptical, but on the "What have I got to lose?" principle takes the book out and begins to read it. Nita f...

Los amantes del Guggenheim Isabel Allende Isabel Allende  is, I think, my favorite Spanish-language author, and one of my favorite authors full-stop.  La casa de los espíritus  is a great work of Magical Realism, better even than  Cien Anos De Soledad  in my personal opinion. Thus I was delighted to learn of the existence of this story. I was taken aback to find that it is not for sale in Spanish anywhere that I could find, although Amazon will sell you an English translation by  Allende  herself under the title  Lovers at the Museum . However, it was easy to find free downloads of the Spanish booklet, e.g.  here . The Museum referred to in the title is  the Guggenheim Bilbao . One morning when the museum opens two lovers are found inside, a naked young man, Pedro Berastegui, and a young woman, Elena Etxebarría, in a bridal gown. (The names in the English version are different.) She is questioned by Detective Larramendi —¿ Por qué ibas v...

Service Model Adrian Tchaikovsky Adrian Tchaikovsky  likes to disguise philosophical treatises as novels. As Uncharles might say, "This is neither good nor bad. It just is." That is to say, some readers enjoy novel-shaped philosophical treatises -- some not so much. If you've read a lot of  Tchaikovsky , you know how you feel about this. For the record, I'd have to classify myself in the "not so much" group. If you love it, please adjust my rating accordingly. There are really only two characters in  Service Model : Uncharles and The Wonk. Uncharles is a high-end valet robot, a gentleman's personal gentlerobot -- a metal and plastic  Jeeves . Except Jeeves never murdered Bertie, although he may at times have felt the urge.  Service Model  begins with Charles, the robot whom The Wonk will eventually rename Uncharles, discovering that his master is dead. Before long he figures out that his master is dead because he, Charles, murdered him. (This is not a sp...

Pocket World in Figures The Economist I have only ever subscribed to two print magazines in my life,  Scientific American  and  The Ecomonist . ( The Economist , for historical reasons  they are happy to explain to you , calls itself a newspaper.) Contrary to what the name suggests,  The Economist  is not particularly a magazine about economics -- it's a news magazine. One of the perqs of subscribing to  The Economist  is that every Christmas they send you an updated version of this little book,  Pocket World In Figures . You can also buy a copy from Amazon, although I don't think you can get the most recent version. It is divided into two parts: World Rankings and Country Profiles. Each item in the Rankings section lists a bunch of things in order of some number. For instance, the first ranking is nations by land area, which begins with Russia, at 17,075,000 square kilometres. This is followed by the highest mountains, then the longest river...

Head On John Scalzi The title of  John Scalzi 's  Head On  is what they call "antiphrasis" in rhetoric, or "flipping it" in Baltimore (at least, according to  The Wire ).  Head On  is about a sport called "Hilketa" (that's Basque for "murder"), in which players knock each other's heads off and attempt to throw them through a goal. But fear not! The players are Hadens using threeps (that is, telepresence robots, as you know if you've read  Lock In ), and they only knock the heads off of threeps. This, of course, is harmless to the Haden piloting the threep. So, as sports go, it is more violent than, say rugby or NASCAR, but less harmful to the players. Until it isn't. In the course of a game, player Duane Chapman loses his head (literally) three times, then dies -- for real. Chris Shane, our favorite Haden FBI agent and World Champion Destroyer of Threeps, happens to be at the game when Chapman dies. Soon he and his partner Les...