The Wendy Erin Michelle Sky, Steven Brown I am a fan of  J.M. Barrie 's  Peter Pan . His dark view of childhood is refreshing, if you have met too many angelic children in literature. Seriously,  J.M. Barrie  uses the word "heartless" eight times to describe children. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked. (Do your own research!  Here  is the Project Gutenberg full text of  Peter Pan . Do a text search for "heartless.") An even stronger selling point for  The Wendy  was the striking cover --    -- yeah, absolutely I want to read that! Don't judge a book by its cover, they say, but every now and then I do, and I am seldom misled. To be honest,  The Wendy  is not much like  Peter Pan . Wendy D...

Soul Music Terry Pratchett Soul Music  is the 16th novel in  Terry Pratchett 's  Discworld  series, and also the third novel in the  DEATH  subseries.  Discworld  is a long series -- 41 novels, not to mention the inevitable short stories. Any series so long is bound to be a little repetitive at times. Soul Music  seemed to me a kind of rehash of  Moving Pictures , on the one hand, and  Mort  on the other. Death (the  Discworld  character) is always slacking off. He gets tired of being Death and tries to take a vacation. The problem with Death taking a vacation is that he is what, these days, we call an essential worker. If Death takes time off, someone needs to fill in for him. In  Mort  that was Death's new apprentice Mort -- in  Soul Music  it is Susan, the daughter of Mort and Death's adopted daughter Ysabell. Susan is thus Death's granddaughter. The problem with putting a human in Death's job, ...

When the Moon Hits Your Eye John Scalzi I found myself disappointed by  John Scalzi 's  When the Moon Hits Your Eye . That's mainly because I was hoping for a novel and didn't quite get one. In his acknowledgments,  Scalzi  summarizes the structure of  Moon ...a book about the moon turning to cheese, have each chapter represent a day in the lunar cycle, each chapter with mostly different characters in mostly different places in the Unites States, reacting to it in ways specific to them alone... Now,  Moon  does in fact have a coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and and end. The problem is that, told as it is, in short day-in-the-life stories with mostly different characters each, it doesn't have the stakes that make a novel really interesting. We don't spend enough time with any of these characters to get to know and care about them. That at least, was how I felt. Instead, it felt to me like a themed short story collection. Some of the stories w...

A Darkness at the Door Intisar Khanani ** spoiler alert ** Intisar Khanani  finished book 2 of her  Dauntless Path  series with a cliffhanger. Rae, investigating the snatchers and their slave trade, was betrayed by Prince Garrin. The book ended with Rae being locked into a hidden chamber in a slave slip with half a dozen children bound for slavery. It's a kind of success! It's the tribute evil pays to competence. Rae now knows she's been on the right track all along, and was getting close enough to be dangerous to the slavers. And now she has the best possible opportunity to investigate how the slave trade works from the inside. It was, in fact, a very dangerous step for Garrin to take, although he probably didn't see it so. He's placing a lot of trust in the slaver captain and his other subordinates. That friendless children cannot escape the slavers does not guarantee that someone who's proven herself as competent as Rae has can be safely put away. Besides, Ga...

Sunrise on the Reaping Suzanne Collins I read  Suzanne Collins 's main  Hunger Games  trilogy years ago, when it was first published. Consequently, while I remembered Panem and the structure of the Hunger Games, I had forgotten most of the minor characters. When I began  Sunrise on the Reaping  I had no idea who Haymitch Abernathy was. That worked to my advantage, because I didn't know the most important thing about Haymitch -- that he would survive. Indeed, Haymitch's death felt like a real possibility almost to the end.  Sunrise on the Reaping  could, I think, be read as the first book of the  Hunger Games  series. Haymitch is a minor but important character in the novel  The Hunger Games , where he appears as the only surviving District 12 victor, and thus as Peeta and Katniss's mentor. He's an old drunken reprobate, but crafty. (In the movie, which I watched last night after finishing  Sunrise , he is played by the reliable Wood...

His Mortal Demise Vanessa Le His Mortal Demise  is the second novel of  Vanessa Le 's  Last Bloodcarver  duology. If you've read the first novel,  The Last Bloodcarver , then you'll recognize the dude on this cover    : it's Ven Kochin, who appeared likely, at the end of  The Last Bloodcarver , to be the last Heartsooth, which is the proper word for what Kochin and Nhika (the heroine of  The Last Bloodcarver ) are. "Bloodcarver" is a slur. His Mortal Demise  has a clever structure. The first chapter is titled "NOW" and begins with Nhika, who is supposed to be dead, having sacrificed herself to save Kochin at the end of  The Last Bloodcarver . The second chapter is titled "SIX MONTHS AGO", and is about Kochin, who is trying to figure out how to bring Nhika back to life. The chapters continue thus, in rough alteration between "NOW" and "SIX MONTHS AGO," except that time creeps on in the past chapters -- before long it'...

Don't Sleep with the Dead Nghi Vo Nghi Vo 's  Don't Sleep with the Dead  is a sequel to  The Chosen and the Beautiful , her brilliant retelling of  The Great Gatsby .  The Chosen and the Beautiful  is, in my opinion, an improvement on  Gatsby . (However, to evaluate that claim properly you need to understand that I have never liked  Gatsby , so improving on my estimation of it is not a great feat.)  The Chosen and the Beautiful  was told from the point of view of Jordan Baker.  Vo 's version of Jordan is a far more attractive and interesting character than Jay Gatsby ever was. Also, there is magic in  The Chosen and the Beautiful . Aside from the ordinary, utility kind of magic everyone knows about, characters of Southeast Asian descent (including Jordan) practice magics based on folding and cutting paper. Don't Sleep with the Dead  takes place some 22 years after the end of  The Chosen and the Beautiful , in a New Yo...

The Theft of Sunlight Intisar Khanani Intisar Khanani 's  The Theft of Sunlight  reminded me of two other books that I really liked. The first is  The War That Saved My Life , by  Kimberly Brubaker Bradley . The central character of  The War That Saved My Life , Ada Smith, is a brilliant person, bold, smart, and overflowing with ambition and initiative. The heroine of  Theft of Sunlight , Amraeya ni Ansarim (Rae) is similarly brilliant. There are also superficial similarities: both suffer from talipes (clubfoot), and both love horses. There is, however, one big difference. Ada is a child who grew up abused by her mother because of her foot. She is, in many ways that matter, a broken person when the story begins. Rae's family, in contrast, supports her. She is a strong person, and her foot is just a cross she bears. The second book  Theft of Sunlight  reminded me of is a longer stretch:  All the President’s Men , by Washington Post reporters...

Mihi Ever After: Home Sweet Home Tae Keller Off the Rails , book 3 of  Tae Keller 's  Mihi Ever After  series, ended on a cliffhanger. Mihi, Savannah, and Reese rain into the Evil Librarian Ms Lavender, who informed them that they had destroyed the three gates from the Rainbow Realm. So, when we begin  Home Sweet Home , they're trapped there, with no way to go home. Will they find a way home? Well, you would probably guess the answer, even if the title didn't give it away. Yes, of course they get home. But it's a fun story. Also, it ends with a little plot twist that I didn't see coming. This is, I think, the best book in the series. Mihi Ever After: Home Sweet Home  on Amazon Goodreads review  

The Summer Tree Guy Gavriel Kay Guy Gavriel Kay  writes historical fantasy. He doesn't like to be categorized, but he has borrowed the phrase  "a quarter turn to the fantastic"  to describe his work, so I think we're allowed to use it. I am a fan. I first discovered his  Under Heaven  series, which is about China, called Kitai in the novels.  Under Heaven  is brilliant. GGK  got his start editing  J.R.R. Tolkien . When  Christopher Tolkien  started getting  The Silmarillion  ready for publication, he hired this young Canadian philosophy student,  Guy Gavriel Kay , to assist him. Looking for more  GGK , I picked up his debut novel,  The Summer Tree . The Summer Tree  is not historical fantasy.  GGK 's  Tolkien  history shows.  The Summer Tree  is the first novel of the  Fionavar Tapestry  trilogy. I felt  Tolkien 's influence in the long flowery names containing lo...

Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics Steven Weinberg In reviewing  The Impossible Man ,  Patchen Barss 's biography of  Roger Penrose , I remarked, "If I were asked to name the greatest physicists of the second half of the twentieth century, I would probably choose three:  Richard Feynman ,  Steven Weinberg , and  Roger Penrose ." It is broadly agreed that the greatest physicist of the twentieth century was  Albert Einstein .  Einstein 's great work was relativity, the Special and General Theories. Ironically, it is the General Theory of Relativity that is special. The Special Theory was in the air -- had Einstein not existed, the Special Theory would have been worked out by other physicists at about the same time in much the same form. But General Relativity is  Einstein 's. It would eventually have been found in some form without him -- indeed,  Weinberg  might well have discovered it as the force mediated by a massless spin 2 gauge...

They're Made Out of Meat and 5 other All-Talk Tales Terry Bisson I couldn't help imagining, as I read each one of these stories,  Terry Bisson  chuckling to himself, "Oh, what a clever boy am I!" And as I came to the end of each one, I found myself thinking, "Really? That all you got?" So, yeah, I was underwhelmed. But it was short. There are less amusing ways to spend an hour. They're Made Out of Meat  on Amazon Goodreads review  

Installment Immortality Seanan Mcguire I read  Seanan McGuire 's  Discount Armageddon  in May, 2021. It was the first book by  McGuire  I had ever read, and I was immediately hooked. It was full of life, and so funny! The Aeslin mice alone were worth the price. I subsequently went on to read every extant  Incryptid  novel and story, as well as  McGuire 's  Octboer Daye  series, and eventually every work of fiction she's published that I could find. The first two thirds of  Installment Immortality  are puzzling. They do all the obvious, concrete things right. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. This is the second  Incryptid  novel focused on Mary Dunlavy, who has long been one of my favorite  Incryptid  characters. The plot is intricate, complicated and unpredictable enough to be interesting, and yet not so complicated as to be difficult to follow. It continues the old Price Family vs Covenant of S...