2025 read #74: Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 7 by Itaru Kinoshita.

Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 7 by Itaru Kinoshita

Research consultant: Shin-ichi Fujiwara

Translated by John Neal

193 pages

Published 2025 (English translation published 2025)

Read September 30

Rating: 3 out of 5

Goddamn, but it’s been a tumultuous six months since I read the previous volume of Dinosaur Sanctuary.

This time around, I’m keeping my expectations low. Sanctuary is light workplace drama first, dinosaur fiction a distant second. That’s as true as ever in this installment. Still, we do get some good dino zookeeper interactions, like when Suzume has difficulties feeding a blind Deinonychus named Trom, or when she has an unexpectedly busy day in the Psittacosaurus petting zoo.

I haven’t quite located the sense of charm I felt in the early volumes, but odds are that’s the fault of the world we live in right now. I had a nice time reading it all the same.

2025 read #73: The Forest Primeval by Leo J. Hickey.

The Forest Primeval: The Geologic History of Wood and Petrified Forests by Leo J. Hickey

62 pages

Published 2003

Read September 29

Rating: 3 out of 5

Earlier this month, my partner R and I visited the Yale Peabody Museum. (It’s free!) I’m currently hyperfocusing on fossil plants and ancient ecosystems, partly because of the novels I’m writing, partly because it’s a dang cool topic. When I found this slim volume in the gift shop, I couldn’t pass it up.

It’s a scientist’s idea of a primer for non-specialists, which means we get thrown into a welter of terminology with only the barest effort to define it. I’m still shaky on the distinction between a wood section’s radial face and its transverse face. One shoddy diagram is considered sufficient explanation; the terms aren’t defined in the glossary. And because the book is over twenty years old, I can only surmise how much of it has been superseded by more recent lines of evidence.

Still, I love paleobotany, and this is a neat appetizer for the more technical books I’ve been pricing in recent weeks. If you ever happen to read my forthcoming paleo-fiction and find a reference to Cretaceous highland meadows of Ephedra plants, you can credit this book.

2025 read #72: The Skylark of Space by Edward E. “Doc” Smith.

The Skylark of Space by Edward E. “Doc” Smith

159 pages

Originally serialized 1928; first book publication 1946; revised 1958

Read from September 25 to September 26

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

A foundational text of what would become space opera, Skylark begins as an edisonade, with athletic, handsome, motorcycle-riding chemist Richard “Dick” Seaton discovering a stable transuranic metal with strange catalytic properties. “But wait, that’s basically Wells’ First Men in the Moon,” you might say. And you’d be right.

But “Doc” Smith takes us well beyond the moon. We accompany Dick into interstellar space, along with his fiancée, sensible and musically talented Dorothy “Dottie” Vaneman, and his best friend, wealthy explorer, archaeologist, sportsman, engineer, and confirmed bachelor M. Reynolds “Mart” Crane. They are dogged every step of the way by coldblooded, greedy, stick-at-nothing rival scientist Marc DuQuesne. He too has a nickname, but it feels next door to a slur here, given the swarthiness inevitably assigned to a 1920s villain. There’s also Margaret “Peggy” Spencer, secretary, who doesn’t really get any characterization beyond “kidnapped damsel.”

Skylark is, shall we say, not a sophisticated narrative.

It is plotted and paced exactly like a pulp film serial, the sort where we spend more time with kidnappings and private eyes and industrial sabotage than we do with spaceborne adventure. Hell, the first flight of the Skylark happens off-screen. I don’t know what floated readers’ boats in the Twenties, but I can assure you, I would rather read about adventures in space travel than about some millionaire heir commissioning out steelworks.

Once we do get into space, Skylark is a mixed bag. A desperate rescue from the orbit of a dead star is a thrilling read to this day. An encounter with a noncoporeal alien who takes the form of Dick and threatens to dematerialize our heroes, on the other hand, feels stale, a perfunctory first draft of some lesser Star Trek script. Speaking of Star Trek, we get some nearly naked green humanoids who traffic in slaves. This latter plotline is tedious enough to make me miss the terrestrial crime fiction (and is stuffed full of eugenics, besides).

Here’s where I say I’m glad I read it, history of the genre, and so on. Which is true. But sometimes I ask myself why I bother with books like this.

2025 read #71: Raptoriva by Victoria Rivera.

Raptoriva by Victoria Rivera

472 pages

Published 2024

Read from September 23 to September 25

Rating: 2 out of 5

Years ago, after Jurassic World nudged a modest new dino fad back into the mainstream, I wondered: Where are the YA dinosaur novels? Sure, we got The Evolution of Claire. But where were the plucky, misunderstood teen heroines who shoot arrows into raptors and fret about which boy to kiss while they overthrow the tyrannical (or perhaps tyrannosaurical) government?

A couple months ago, I got a TikTok by this author promoting this book, and my questions were answered: Self-publishing. That’s where the YA dinosaurs went.

You know I just had to read it, out of professional courtesy (as a future self-publisher of dinosaur fiction) if nothing else.

As I’ve said before, I’m not in the habit of trashing self-published and indie press books. Honestly, as self-pub books go, Raptoriva is solid. There’s the occasional typo and malapropism, but Rivera’s prose is standard for YA romantasy, neither better nor worse than you’d expect. YA romantasy isn’t my genre, though, and my biggest dissatisfaction with this book—that it’s a drip-feed of tropes and archetypes instead of a novel—is the fault of a highly commercialized genre’s increasingly formulaic expectations. Blame capitalism, as with so many other ills in life.

Raptoriva is The Hunger Games meets Dinotopia. Misunderstood teen archer (Qora) and teen fighter with a secret princely past (Ninan) both volunteer for the Venture, a deadly ritual gauntlet with a significant prize at the end. Even though the setting lacks electronic technology, competitors are still expected to have reality TV-grade storylines. The Venture’s twists and turns are broadcast back to audiences in Runaqa’s cities via sketch artists and heralds. There’s even a tryouts scene where entrants have to prove themselves with a special talent.

I liked the Andean flavor Rivera gives her setting, but the extinct animals, jumbled together from all time periods and every region of the globe, are mostly just Latin names checked off in the background, rarely charismatic presences in their own right. Most of the action involves fighting with other contestants. The characters even have magic rocks that keep dinosaurs away. You could do a search-and-replace for most species, swapping them for horses and drakes and griffins and the like, and change basically nothing about the story.

The one dinosaur that has any screen time, a giant Spinosaurus, is straight out of Jurassic Park III. No research on the animal’s potential ecology or behavior, no updated depiction to follow more recent hypotheses, just pure unreconstructed movie monster from a quarter-century ago.

Still, I enjoyed Raptoriva enough that I’m open to keeping up with the series. We can only hope dinosaurs figure more into the sequels, as something more than their names.

2025 read #70: The Coming of the Terrans by Leigh Brackett.

The Coming of the Terrans by Leigh Brackett

157 pages

Published 1967

Read from September 20 to September 23

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

My partner R and I went to a lovely book barn the other day, one with a better than usual selection of old pulp paperbacks. I’m not in a position to buy much these days, but I had to snag this one.

Terrans is a collection of five of Brackett’s Mars stories, published between 1948 and 1964. The last of Brackett’s Martian books I read, The People of the Talisman, was way back in 2016; at the time, I found it fairly middling. I’ve become much more interested in classic Sword & Planet stories since then, though, so now’s a good time to try again.

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“The Beast-Jewel of Mars” (1948). Grieving the presumed death of his girlfriend, Burk Winters has had it with the soulless greed of 1998. Paying exorbitantly for the privilege, he undergoes the Martian rite of Shanga, which, by means of mysterious rays, regresses him into a “primitive ape-man,” whom the Martian crowds promptly jeer and scourge through the streets. This story could’ve been a critique of colonial capitalism, but alas, we get the standard “We’re a young race and we’ve made mistakes, but we’re out here civilizing the solar system” line of bullshit instead. I’m not keen on Brackett’s of-the-time talk of “evolutionary levels,” nor her hero’s even more of-the-time casually domineering violence against a woman. A solid pulp story, but it hasn’t aged well. C+

“Mars Minus Bisha” (1948). In the distant future of 2016, Fraser is a doctor stationed in a Quonset research hut outside a dusty Martian village. He suddenly becomes a single dad when a Martian mother drops off her cursed child. Could’ve been cute, but because this was published in the ’40s, Fraser strikes young Bisha and calls her a little idiot. Plus, it all stinks of white saviorism. Still, the story explores an emotional dimension rare in sci-fi of this era. C?

“The Last Days of Shandakor” (1952). The most fascinating aspect of Brackett’s Mars is the way she takes the Schiaparellian trope of Mars as an ancient, dying world, and extends it to a logical sci-fi conclusion: Mars as a de facto “Dying Earth” setting, with the addition of cocky, fresh-faced off-worlders arriving by rocketship to experience it. Our narrator is a planetary anthropologist who happens to meet the scion of an unknown-to-Earthly-science type of Martian, the last survivor of a place called Shandakor. All the other Martians act like the survivor isn’t there. Hoping to make his name by mapping out more of the ancient tangle of Martian history, he pressures the stranger to take him to Shandakor. The answer to the mystery is disappointingly mundane after all that setup, and there’s a romance subplot that’s needlessly icky in the most midcentury way, but overall, it’s an entertaining story. C

“Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon” (1964). With a title like that, I wanted to like this more. But once again, it’s a lot of setup with minimal payoff. It’s another case of bureaucratic “civilization” not knowing how to process the Dying Earth strangeness of Martian life, this time a vast subterranean mystery that must be propitiated by human sacrifice. I would’ve liked to read more about the cave and its uncanny presence, but we barely get anything before the main character must decide which path to take. C-?

“The Road to Sinharat” (1962). Carey is a former tomb-robber turned bureaucrat. More in tune with Mars than most Earthmen, he’s been sabotaging a colonialist project meant to improve living standards on the Red Planet by destroying and uprooting its culture, all while Martian resentment builds against the newcomers and their New Culture. The powers of progress refuse to respect indigenous lifeways, so Carey must go on a quest to ancient Sinharat to find academic proof that natives know what they’re talking about. The story shows its age, but it scratches an “Indiana Jones on Mars” itch I didn’t know I had. B-

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I went into this collection expecting more Sword & Planet after the Eric John Stark pattern. Clearly, this book went for a different vibe altogether, one not necessarily critiquing but certainly in conversation with contemporary independence movements and the construction of extractive, World Bank-style capitalism out of imperial colonialism. Like with all such “aliens stand in for colonized peoples” narratives, you can’t escape the conclusion that the author is being just as patronizing as the busybody colonists.

Still, making Mars a “Dying Earth” setting, and having clueless tourists and scientists and bureaucrats drop into the middle of everything, is an inspired twist on the formula.

2025 read #69: The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip.

The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip

137 pages

Published 1988

Read from September 18 to September 19

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Unless you count The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which was marketed as such, this is my first exposure to McKillip’s fiction for younger readers. Fifteen year old Peri has lost her father to the sea and her mother to grief. Her mentor, who taught her ineffectual hexes in a hut on the beach, has disappeared. Then a bedraggled prince and a sea-dragon on a golden chain show up in quick succession. Could there really be a strange country under the sea, like the one Peri’s mother daydreams about?

McKillip’s prose is perfect for a young adult novel from this era, communicating complex feelings with beautiful clarity, layers of loss and yearning and frustration, of having no world to return to. Peri and her island village are vivid presences from the first page.

2025 read #68: Weird Tales, October 1934 issue.

Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, October 1934 issue (24:4)

Edited by Farnsworth Wright

132 pages

Published 1934

Read from September 17 to September 18

Rating: 2 out of 5

I want to write better sword & sorcery, which means I want to read a lot more of it, both contemporary and classic. C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry series is foundational to S&S. This issue of Weird Tales features the first Jirel story, as well as entries from Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Could be a fun issue!

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“The Black God’s Kiss” by C. L. Moore. This story fucking rules, in a “throwing the horns while playing D&D in the basement” kind of way. Her castle conquered by the grinning Guillaume, Jirel escapes only to delve into the extradimensional dungeon beneath, braving a realm worse than hell in order to gain a weapon of vengeance. It is a story of a woman’s agency at a startlingly early date, but above all, this is classic weird fiction at its finest, crossing gritty Dark Ages warrior fantasy with alien world cosmic horror. By 1934 standards, this gets an A!

“The Seven Geases” by Clark Ashton Smith. First an unearthly idol, now geases and strange gods—this one issue seems to have been a major source for D&D all on its own. This is a Hyperborean tale of a cocky hunter trespassing in a sorcerer’s mountain fastness. Smith throws as much weirdness as possible at the wall; some of it even sticks. Being me, I was particularly taken with the references to dinosaur leather, extra-planar allosaurs, and the fact that the sorcerer’s familiar is an Archaeopteryx, which is just enough to add it to my list of dinosaur fiction. Maybe B-?

“Old Sledge” by Paul Ernst. After two extravagantly imaginative cosmic fantasy pieces, we’re brought back down with this ho-hum eccentric inventor story. Cantankerous old man Sledge invents a machine that enables him to see any point in the coming five hundred years. He attempts to gain the help of our narrator, a fellow-boarder who happens to be a writer, to write the history of the future. An unremarkable story. C-

“The Sleeper” by H. Bedford-Jones. Crossover in the Orientalist cinematic universe. Mystical powers of bodily control attributed to India share a facile storyline with an Egyptian sarcophagus. The best I can say for it is, it’s not as racist as something with these trappings could be expected to be in 1934? Maybe D+

“The Pistol” by S. Gordon Gurwit. Interminable ghost romance set in an Old Southern mansion, sprinkled with all the casual racism that implies. Tedious. F

A poem, “The Hill Woman” by Frances Elliott, is pretty good for its time.

The next story is part four of a seven(!) part serial, “The Trail of the Cloven Hoof” by Alrton Eadie. Rather than beginning in the middle, I decided to read the first part instead, which was published in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales. Young new doctor Hugh Trenchard, walking on a misty night in wild Exmoor, hears gunshots and runs to help. He stumbles into what I’m supposing is a rustic Island of Doctor Moreau scenario, though one given an occult gloss appropriate to the 1930s. Purple, pulpy, and prone to tedious quips, but mildly entertaining. Rather reminiscent of old black and white movie serials, with that same geography of fresh twists rising from a sea of padding. Who knows, I might try to read the rest soon (though how are there six more installments?). Maybe C-?

Another poem: “Children of the Moon (The Moths)” by A. Leslie. It’s kind of cheesy, but amusing.

“Supper for Thirteen” by Julius Long. An eccentric host holds a macabre dinner party, himself and his twelve guests strapped into electric chairs. This has the vibe of a Weird Tales clip show, as the guests recount a variety of murder tales but fail to entertain their host, who relishes the idea of murder for murder’s sake. You’ll never guess what happens next! Yawn. D-

Another poem: “Old House” by Marvin Luter Hill. Rhyming poetry about ghastly ghosts in a house. Fully in keeping with the magazine it’s in, but reads like children’s Halloween verse now. Imagine a mid-’80s Tim Curry, paying his rent in a made-for-TV warlock costume, is reading it to you.

Another installment of a serial follows: part two of three of Robert E. Howard’s “The People of the Black Circle.” We turn instead to the September 1934 issue to read part one. Conan gets tangled in court politics and sorcerous betrayals at the foot of the “Himelian” mountains. The setting is a jumble of vaguely subcontinental names and Orientalist vibes, but the first installment, at any rate, lacks the grotesque full-bore racism I’ve come to expect from Howard. A solid start; I certainly want to read the rest at some point. B-

“At the Bend of the Trail” by Manly Wade Wellman. Botanical horror besets white explorers in generic Africa. Quite predictably racist in a colonial cliché sort of way; not much else to it. F

“The White Prince” by Ronal Kayser. Set in the Great War, apparently based on (credulous) contemporary reports. Serbs hurl ethnic and religious invective at Turks occupying a castle on the high ground, until an ethereal folk hero appears to lead the charge. Nationalist drivel, and not well-written. F

“Fioraccio” by Giovanni Magherini-Graziani (1886). A translation of an Italian tale of a fencer of stolen goods who lives a blasphemous life and dies, but won’t stay buried. I think I’m impatient to finish this issue; this didn’t charm me. F+

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And that’s it for another issue of Weird Tales! It started out strong, only to peter out at the end. Still, surprisingly solid overall.

2025 read #67: The Box-Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner.

The Box-Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Illustrated by Dorothy Lake Gregory

146 pages

Published 1924

Read September 17

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

One of the great contemporary British nature writers, probably Roger Deakin (though it might have been Robert Macfarlane), first piqued my interest about this series. It sounds right up my alley: Abruptly orphaned, refusing to be sent to their grandfather, four young siblings learn to subsist on their own, avoiding the clutches of meddlesome adults. For shelter, they luck into an old boxcar on an abandoned logging spur in the woods.

Children’s literature of this era lacks depth. The characters are little more than outlines, the plot only a series of incidents culminating, inevitably, in a fortune. But I grew up on fantasies of Mississippi River islands and running away on a raft, so the concept is immensely appealing. And small but skillful touches of natural beauty (not to mention the comforting descriptions of food) add to its appeal. I would have loved the hell out of this book had I read it when I was 8.

2025 read #66: Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley.

Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley

319 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 13 to September 17

Rating: 3 out of 5

Another installment of the British Library Tales of the Weird anthology series, this one naturally centers stories set in London. Dearnley’s introduction is especially interesting, evoking the danger and weirdness of befogged London, a shifting terrain of social anxieties amid tumultuous change. Her story introductions also provide vital context to the authors and the topics they addressed.

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“The Telegram” by Violet Hunt (1911). This story was a bit of a speed bump right at the start of the anthology. I went into it expecting a specific vibe from these Tales of the Weird collections, which this literary character study of a woman who just wants to enjoy her own life and flirt with men without settling for any of them did not meet. It’s a good story, a fascinating document from a leading writer of the New Woman era, and its eventual ghostly turn plays well with the story’s examination of women’s autonomy. But I had to get into the right headspace for it, and the story itself sure takes its time. B-

“In the Séance Room” by Lettice Galbraith (1893). Sociopathic men and patriarchy are the horrors of this piece, which portrays both with a frankness all too rare even today. More so now than ever, I understand the fantasy of supernatural justice depicted here. Heavy-handed and melodramatic as fiction of this era often was, it still works. Kinda. C+

“The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen (1941). Wartime retelling of the namesake ballad, brief but atmospheric. C+

“The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth” by Rhoda Broughton (1868). Suspiciously cheap apartments in Mayfair lead to supernatural death. Mildly entertaining, ends rather abruptly. C+

“War,” an extract from London in My Time by Thomas Burke (1934). Fascinating essay on London’s attitudes during the Great War. It’s an eccentric choice for an anthology of London Weird, with the surreality of zeppelin raids and dimmed streetlights supplying the weird, but it’s not entirely misplaced.

“Street Haunting” by Virginia Woolf (1927). Another creative non-fiction piece, a sensorium of walking and daydreaming through interwar streets, rather reminiscent of Hope Mirrlees’ Paris: A Poem. Dreamlike and mostly enjoyable. Like Mirrlees, however, Woolf can’t resist throwing in some riff on marginalized populations, here making a spectacle of the disabled segment of society for several paragraphs. 

“Pugilist vs. Poet,” an extract from A Long Way from Home by Claude McKay (1937). My first exposure to McKay’s writing, a too-brief extract on his experiences in London in 1919. Scintillating. I want more!

“N” by Arthur Machen (1936). I read and reviewed this story in the British Library’s Weird Woods anthology. There I wrote: “Machen’s primary interest here appears to be the art of reproducing rambly conversations between older men. All of which is a roundabout path to not much in particular. Only the last page hints at the story this could have been, had Machen been inclined to tell it instead of what we got.”

“The Lodger” by Marie Belloc Lowndes (1911). An early novelette treatment of what, a couple years later, this author would turn into the very first novel about Jack the Ripper. Working-class protagonist Mrs. Bunting, onetime foundling and former maid, wants to avoid the obvious conclusions after her lucrative new lodger proves suspicious. The story is less of a murder mystery and more of a complex psychological study in how financial insecurity leads to complicity. B

“My Girl and the City” by Sam Selvon (1957). An absolutely stunning mood piece about the fluctuating city. Again, not sure why it’s in a Tales of the Weird collection, but it’s lovely. A

“The Mystery of the Semi-Detached” by Edith Nesbit (1893?). Quite brief but well-written mood piece of suburban unease. B-?

“The Old House in Vauxhall Walk” by Charlotte Riddell (1882). A disinherited young gentleman, kicked out by his father that morning, shelters for the night in the antique grandeur of a Vauxhall house lately turned into a rental. The hauntings of the house pervade his dreams, and he decides to stay and find the late miser’s treasure. Interesting mainly as a document of how useless the upper classes are without working folk to take care of them. C+

“The Chippendale Mirror” by E. F. Benson (1915). A more conventional eerie tale, in which a secondhand mirror discloses glimpses of the murder it witnessed. Perfectly adequate. C

“Spring-Heeled Jack” by Anonymous (1884). Straightforward write-up of the titular urban legend, detailing alleged exploits then fifty years in the past.

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And that’s it for London Fog! A major departure from other Tales of the Weird volumes, which all tended to feature tales of the, well, weird. Not much eeriness to speak of, but a good collection all the same, if you ignore its title and the vibe of the rest of the series.

2025 read #65: Quag Keep by Andre Norton.

Quag Keep by Andre Norton

192 pages

Published 1978

Read from September 12 to September 13

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I learned about this book the other day in a fantasy-themed chat channel. It has the distinction of being what appears to be the very first Dungeons & Dragons novel ever published, so early in the evolution of D&D (and the TTRPG genre) that Norton describes it as a “war game” throughout the book.

We begin with a scene to remind us that dorks have been dorks for at least fifty years: Eckstern, the war game’s “referee,” dramatically unboxes a painted miniature, much to the fascination of his friends. Norton attempts to introduce the then-esoteric concepts of miniature gaming and collecting to the normies, while also not talking down to aficionados. She fails at both. It’s an awkward way to open a novel.

If you guessed that perhaps the weirdly detailed miniatures might enchant our everyday dweebs into the strange realm of Greyhawk, you win, uh. Not much. Because it’s pretty obvious. If you guessed that mystical dice would be built into the costumes of the characters the lads inhabit, that’s a weirder choice, so good job foreseeing that. (“They are like gamers’ dice,” our warrior helpfully explains, “save that there are too many shapes among them to be ordinary.”)

I think the way Norton consistently shoves game-manual concepts into her story is both a bad storytelling choice and a fascinating look into how fantasy and gaming, two musty old subcultures on the precipice of terrific evolution over the ensuing decades, overlapped and fed into each other at this early juncture. Witness this totally natural bit of exposition from page 14:

He had no fear of the berserker even though the huge man might well be deliberately working himself into one of those rages that transcended intelligence and made such a fighter impervious to weapons and some spells.

It’s the “some spells” that sets it over the edge for me.

Quag Keep is the original and archetypal “I turned my campaign into a novel” book, and perhaps it just wouldn’t have been the same without magical dice bracelets and two warriors compelled to chat when they meet in a shady tavern. Contrast it with a much more recent D&D isekai, Perception Check by Astrid Knight, which has decades of genre familiarity behind it and doesn’t need to integrate game mechanics into its descriptions (and is much better as a result).

While this would probably work better as someone’s meta game campaign than as a novel, and nothing here is particularly good, it isn’t wholly unenjoyable, in a masticated, regurgitated pulp sort of way. A fight against undead in a dust-swallowed ship would be a solid D&D encounter to this day. However, this being Norton, we cannot escape without some “women are as alien as the thoughts of a dragon” bullshit. 

2025 read #64: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire.

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

174 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 6 to September 12

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Another standalone entry in the Wayward Girls series, this one introduces us to Regan, a young girl who is desperate to conform and to correctly perform femininity, and the Doorway to the Hooflands, an equine realm of centaurs, kelpies, and unicorns.

I had wondered why this entry’s Goodreads rating was noticeably lower than the other books in the series. Spoilers: The answer arrives when Regan learns from her parents that she’s intersex, with XY chromosomes and androgen insensitivity. Representing any of humanity’s vast biological diversity in your book will inevitably result in review bombing. Some people have nothing better to do.

I doubt the folks wetting their pants about epigenetic representation even got far enough in the book to pick up on its themes of racism, conformity, and how putting ourselves into neat little boxes merely perpetuates a cycle of generational trauma. Spoilers again: At one point a group of shopkeepers kidnap Regan from her loving, accepting adopted family. One of the kidnappers tells Regan, “Surely a little slice of your freedom is a fair price to pay for knowing our families will never go hungry.” I’m sure the Goodreads crowd would be furious about that, if they got that far (and understood the rather blunt metaphor).

Do I think Fields is as good as the high point of the series, In an Absent Dream? Of course not; that’s the high point for a reason. But Fields is every bit as insightful and meaningful as the rest of the Wayward Girls, and rating it noticeably lower than the others says a lot about people who probably don’t even get the books in the first place.

2025 read #63: The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip.

The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip

231 pages

Published 1991

Read from June 17 to September 6

Rating: 4 out of 5

I began reading this one in the middle of my couldn’t-focus-on-anything phase early this summer, hoping to squeeze it in before hosting my teenager for his school break. I made it roughly seventeen pages in before abandoning it on my nightstand for the following three months.

Part of the reason for that is McKillip’s prose. She was always a groundbreaker when it came to making fantasy fiction a thing of beauty. At her best, she was like a less-horny Tanith Lee. McKillip’s prose in this book is especially lush, often so dreamlike that the only way forward sometimes is to stop trying to make sense of it and just let it carry you along. That’s hard to do when you have an energetic teen at home with you for the summer (and a world that’s burning down around you).

It’s September now, and I’m happy I decided to persevere.

A wandering wagon-dweller is marked with white hair from his mysterious, mystical ancestry, which links him to strange powers. He stumbles into a quest in order to free his people, and his love, from dreamlike wanderings in an unreal place. From such tired, conventional materials, McKillip crafts tales within tales, stories recorded in the stars, in the wings of swans, in centuries of magic moving through the wood. It isn’t a perfect book, but it is spellbinding.

2025 read #62: Seed & Bone by Hatteras Mange.

Seed & Bone by Hatteras Mange

84 pages

Published 2021

Read September 3

Rating: 2ish out of 5

I’m not in the business of ripping down self-published books. If I don’t like one, I’ll opt to DNF it rather than post a review (since the whole point of this blog, from its inception, is to record every book I read).

That’s exactly what I did with this little book (really more of a novelette than a novella) a few years back. But its plot of corporate time travel in the near future is just close enough to one of my own long-simmering WIPs that I decided I had to give it an official go, just to make sure I don’t unconsciously crib anything from it.

Dr. Yvette Coradi is a fastidious young paleobotanist in a future where that means experimenting with paleoflora brought back by Quantum Travel expeditions for new pharmaceutical compounds. She gets recruited for one such expedition to the early Pliocene of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, a corporate stooge from Bionext comes along with a pharmaceutical team of his own, and gets up to secretive things in the prehistoric woods.

Many of the issues with self-publication are present here. But honestly, just a tiny bit of polish would bridge the gap between this and the airport technothriller bestsellers that it emulates. I think a big part of my initial frustration with this story was that I wanted something more from this premise, instead of a somewhat bland confetti of Timeline, Congo, and Almost Adam.

2025 read #61: In the Presence of Dinosaurs by John Colagrande and Larry Felder.

In the Presence of Dinosaurs by John Colagrande and Larry Felder

Illustrated by Larry Felder

Foreword by Jack Horner

189 pages

Published 2000

Read from August 30 to September 3

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

One tiny blessing of being born when I was: my teenage years coincided with history’s biggest boom of dinosaur books. There were novels, most of them bad. Short stories in magazines, some of them good. And then there were the big, glossy, full-color illustrated books for adults. I spent substantial portions of the late 1990s reading through some outsize coffee-table book or other (Hunting Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs:A Global View, The Ultimate Dinosaur). Those were glorious times.

One of the very last tomes of that particular wave (that I’m aware of) was this one, which came out during my painful transition into adulthood. I picked up a copy at some point in the early 2000s, possibly back when my then-spouse and I would hang out at Borders every weekend, blowing untold amounts of money on stacks of books we would scarcely look afterward. I got rid of that copy in a subsequent move. It wasn’t until this summer that I found a cheap (if slightly battered) replacement.

Presence is organized into chapters by specific environments: rain forest, plains, coastline, and so on. Grounding dinosaurs into ecological context is something I’m interested in, both as a would-be scientist and as a novelist. So some twenty-ish years later, I’m finally taking the time to read it.

Felder’s artwork is outstanding. Finely detailed, almost photographically sharp, with the occasional startling chiaroscuro. In addition, this might be one of the earliest glossy art books to normalize feathered dinosaurs, which gives it some historical interest.

The written portions of the book are considerably less edifying. The text lacks flow, and is frequently repetitive, resulting in a dull read — even though not all that much information is presented. Clearly the art was expected to be the main draw.

Presence puts into perspective how much dinosaur paleontology has changed in the last quarter century. When I read a confident declaration that “Dinosaurs descended from partially aquatic ancestors,” it’s a reminder of just how long ago Y2K was, and also a prompt to take everything else here with a grain of salt. Perhaps not the most useful research I could be doing for my own books.

Also inspiring caution: fundamental errors, like dating the Morrison Formation to 220-200 million years ago, instead of its actual range of 156-146 million years ago. What do you mean that got through editors and typesetters without getting caught?

Still, the book’s focus on climate and cohesive ecosystems (rather than charismatic megafauna roving through a greenscreen void) is welcome, and perhaps a bit ahead of its time. And I can’t deny that it’s a little bit inspiring. Do I now want to write stories set in Late Triassic Arizona, Early Jurassic Connecticut, and Late Cretaceous Interior Seaway barrier islands? Absolutely!

2025 read #60: Six-Gun Melody by William Colt MacDonald.

Six-Gun Melody by William Colt MacDonald

128 pages

Published 1933

Read August 30

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I had absolutely zero cause to read this book, other than getting unexpectedly drawn into it while browsing a pulp novel PDF archive. It’s a paint-by-numbers western about a fair and lanky cowpoke solving problems and seeking vengeance with his six-guns. There’s the usual bullshit of the time where all the unsavory characters are swarthy. It isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination. But MacDonald hit upon the formula for zippy prose that gets out of its own way, making for much more readable pulp than most of what I’ve read from this era.

2025 read #59: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950 issue.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950 issue (1:3)

Edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas

128 pages

Published 1950

Read August 29

Rating: 2 out of 5

To commemorate F&SF possibly resuming publication in the coming weeks, why not get back into my sporadic project of reading my way through the magazine’s back catalogue? I doubt I’ll ever have the patience (or the access) to read every issue, but I’ve read the first two, so let’s move on to issue number three.

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“Friday, the Nineteenth” by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. A chronicle of bitter suburban heterosexuality that turns into something much more interesting. (If you care about seventy-five year old spoilers, look away now: It’s a time-loop story, quite reminiscent of Groundhog Day.) I truly didn’t expect to enjoy this piece as much as I did. Maybe B-

“Huge Beast” by Cleve Cartmill. Ably written but (to modern eyes) rather formulaic story of suspiciously cuddly alien contact. No doubt it was more groundbreaking in 1950. A respectable enough C+

“The Hat in the Hall” by Jack Iams. A suburban ghost story, mildly amusing. C-

“The War Against the Moon” by André Maurois (1927; English translation 1928). Purporting to be a chapter from a history book of 1992, this satire has some fascinatingly prescient touches, such as the rich buying up newspapers to control public opinion (and thus subvert democracy). Of course, this backroom dictatorship of the billionaires is depicted as a net good that the restive public ignores at its peril. Ah well. Straining to find a cause to unite a bored world and avert war, newspaper owners collude to pull a Watchmen, concocting a lunar invasion (which echoes uncomfortably with how right-wing media invented the trans panic, and the gay panic before that, and the Muslim panic before that, and the Satanic panic before that, and the urban crime panic before that, and…). Not my favorite kind of story, but historical interest and perceptive prognostication merits at least a C

“Dumb Supper” by Henderson Starke. This is actually by Kris Neville, writing not just under a pseudonym but also as a character: a supposed elderly folklorist in the Ozarks. If this is based on actual folklore, it’s modestly interesting, I suppose. C-?

“Ounce of Prevention” by Philip Carter. An extremely 1950s piece, which features global nuclear annihilation, a mission to Mars, a helpful Martian, and time travel. Ends with a typical 1950s twist. Maybe D+

An excerpt from the poem “Death’s Jest Book” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1850). It’s fine. Too abbreviated to make much of it.

“The Case of Summerfield” by W. H. Rhodes (1871). Originally published as a newspaper hoax in the Sacramento Union, this proves to be an ancient prototype of the “mad scientist threatens to destroy the world unless his demands are met” trope. Like Dr. Evil himself, Mr. Summerfield even demands the sum of one million dollars. While dense and slow-paced in accordance with the tastes of the time, and continuing well after the logical end of the story, it’s astonishingly creative in Summerfield’s central threat. C

“Divine Right” by Betsy Curtis. A fascinating blend of aesthetics, mixing suburban paperboys on bikes with space colonization and telepaths with greedy royalty. It’s almost like a whisper of Samuel R. Delany’s later working-class space stories. It’s a bit clumsy as a story, but the aesthetic carries it far. B-

“Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson. Matheson’s very first published story. Pretty typical midcentury “freak kept chained in the cellar” material, little more than a character study, but effective. B-

“Professor Pownall’s Oversight” by H. R. Wakefield (1928). An early prototype of the “evil genius obsessed with his brilliant and charming classmate” trope. The editors’ introduction refers to this as a “chess fantasy,” but it’s really a ghost story centering around chess. Surprisingly enjoyable. B-

“Haunt” by A. Bertram Chandler. Brief but rambling anecdote about a seance with a ghost from the future. The punning twist ending must have felt terribly clever in 1950. C-

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So now I’ve read the first three issues of F&SF, in addition to the most recent eight and a scattering of others in between. This is the first halfway okay issue you reach reading forward. Nowhere near what it would become in more recent years, but still enjoyable.

2025 read #58: More Voices from the Radium Age, edited by Joshua Glenn.

More Voices from the Radium Age, edited and introduced by Joshua Glenn

239 pages

Published 2023

Read from August 27 to August 29

Rating: 3 out of 5

In the bookstore, I was more interested in this volume’s table of contents, but I couldn’t just skip the first book. (One reason that trip was so expensive!) Hopefully this installment lives up to the (mostly) excellent selections of the original Voices. Editor Glenn’s introduction states this volume is a look at the varied genres that fed into the soup of what would become SF. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s somewhat more hit-or-miss than the first.

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“The Last Days of Earth: Being the Story of the Launching of the ‘Red Sphere’” by George C. Wallis (1901). It is thirteen million years from now. The sun’s heat wanes and the Earth enters its final frozen age. And yet we cannot escape Edwardian gender norms. Ah well. It’s fascinating how social change has always been harder for white male authors to imagine than technological or even astronomical change. Also interesting: the way the last humans’ “spacecraft that’s a sphere of unknown red metal” prefigures Jack London’s “The Red One” in 1918 (reviewed here). The story itself is a collection of memorable images conveyed in juiceless prose and “As you know…” exposition. It’s fine? C-

“The Land Ironclads” by H. G. Wells (1903). Wartime sci-fi written before the Great War. Parts of it were prescient (technocracy making slaughter impersonal) and parts of it were almost incomprehensible relics of a pre-war worldview (the dichotomy between the rugged, manly, “uncivilized” regular army and the over-civilized army of button-pushing clerks fielded by the opponent). There’s also a touch of eugenics in the final “degradation” of the victorious army of clerks. An interesting historical artifact that somehow gave us a prototype of drone pilots in 1903. C+

“The Republic of the Southern Cross” by Valery Bryusov (1907; translated 1918). Barely a story, this social satire adopts the form of a historical description of an efficient utopian city at the South Pole, the authoritarian control hidden just under its surface, and the outbreak of “contradiction” that brings its downfall. Interesting as a snapshot of 1907’s concerns about modern life. C?

“The Third Drug” by E. Nesbit (1908). A story in the mad scientist tradition. A Paris doctor patches up a man who comes to his door, but gives him a sequence of three drugs intended to turn him into a superman. Well-written as far as these things go; mildly diverting. C

“A Victim of Higher Space” by Algernon Blackwood (1914). I was gonna make a comment about this era’s quaint overlap between mysticism and higher mathematics, but then I realized the conflation never went away; modern woo dresses itself in theoretical physics to this day. In this story, psychic investigator Dr. Silence takes the case of a man who has fallen victim to multidimensional misfortune. Interesting in a way that Flatland never managed to be. C+

“The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt (1918). I always feel a mix of emotions seeing A. Merritt’s name on a TOC. Excitement, because he wrote some of the strangest, most lurid weird adventure fiction I’ve ever encountered, obviously a direct inspiration for many core D&D vibes. Disgust, because he almost invariably would force in some of the most heinous racism I’ve ever read. This tale takes us deep into Alaska to the mysterious Hand Mountain, where gold flows like putty and luminescent “devils” reign. Miraculously, “Pit” packs in the weird but goes light on the bigotry. It was an unexpected pleasure. More Merritt should’ve been like this. B

“The Thing from—‘Outside’” by George Allen England (1923). I knew that the movie The Thing was based on Campbell’s story “Who Goes There?” However, I hadn’t known (until this collection) that “Who Goes There?” was inspired by this even earlier story, which sees a band of five bickering explorers troubled in the Canadian wilderness by a preternatural “Thing” from “outside the universe.” The character work is stiff, but not every story from this era even bothers with details like “character,” so it’s better than it could be. The plot is a slow, inevitable creep into disorienting horror. A solid B-

“The Finding of the Absolute” by May Sinclair (1923). Well-written afterlife fantasy heavily daubed with philosophy and mathematical mysticism. You can imagine it as a missing link situated halfway between Mark Twain’s “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” and The Good Place. It didn’t have the grounding in sympathetic character that the better afterlife fantasies from present day authors give you, but all in all it was surprisingly solid. B-

“The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis” by Booth Tarkington (1927). Satirical take on women’s suffrage in which the rule of women leads to the destruction of Atlantis. I’ll go with Joanna Russ’ assessment, as quoted in Glenn’s introduction, and say that this stinks of smug misogyny. D

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And that’s it! All in all, a much more mediocre volume than the first, but it still had some delightful stories to enjoy.

2025 read #57: Voices from the Radium Age, edited by Joshua Glenn.

Voices from the Radium Age, edited and introduced by Joshua Glenn

213 pages

Published 2022

Read from August 26 to August 27

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

You ever go to a bookstore in a new city and feel the inhibitions of penury lift enough that you spend way more than you should on shiny new books? That’s what happened when my partner R and I took a roadtrip to Rhode Island last weekend. Part of that overspend: this volume and its follow-up, two anthologies devoted to the forgotten period of sci-fi, the era between the scientific romances and the start of the “golden age,” which editor Glenn dubs the Radium Age.

Spoiled by the contextualization provided by the British Library Tales of the Weird series, I was pleasantly surprised by the historical and biographical detail in Glenn’s introduction. More historical anthologies should make the effort.

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“Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905). Bengali feminist Hossain pens the utopia of Ladyland, where women walk freely in the city while men are shut away and secluded for the public good. Ladyland’s other benefits include solar power, flying cars, and a two hour workday, all thanks to the efforts of its lady scientists. As with most classical utopias, the story is little more than a guided tour of Ladyland and its wonders, with some words about how it originated. Still, it was a pleasant read. B-

“The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson (1907). When I picked up this book, I was excited for another Hodgson story, but alas, I forgot I’d already read and reviewed this one in the British Library’s Evil Roots anthology. There, I called it “Deliciously creepy.”

“The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster (1909). A hugely influential story about a distant future where everyone lives in identical hexagonal compartments, having their needs met and their social interactions mediated through the Machine. It’s an early example of “ease makes the race weak” sci-fi, which is unfortunate, but it also seems to have eerily prefigured aspects of our current era. The Machine doesn’t display video when people call each other, it displays a “good enough for practical purposes” simulacrum. Likewise, food and other necessities rendered by the Machine are “good enough.” Given the way countless contemporary people have settled for allowing GenAI — an elaborate, wasteful version of autocomplete fed by theft — do their fact-finding, their socializing, their writing, even their thinking for them, and don’t seem to understand why that’s bad, “Machine” has an uncomfortable resonance today. It’s also an especially apt metaphor for life under technofeudalist capitalism: “The Machine develops — but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds — but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” B+

“The Horror of the Heights” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1913). Bearing in mind his many faults, I have to admit that Doyle was a consummate yarn-spinner. In his hands, even a “These are the facts of the case”-style framing device somehow works. I was immediately absorbed by this airborne thriller, in which a daring pilot becomes convinced that an invisible menace inhabits the unexplored “jungles” of the upper atmosphere, and sets out to confront it. Entertaining! B

“The Red One” by Jack London (1918). Archetypal man’s-life weird adventure pulp, unfortunately with all the horrific racism and sexism that comes with it. Fever-crazed Bennett, fleeing across Guadalcanal from cannibals, chases a distant unearthly sound. Would’ve been a much cooler story if London had been able to contain his throbbing bigotry-boner for even a moment. If I had to guess, I’d say this was a major inspiration for Sphere. F+

“The Comet” by W. E. B. Du Bois (1920). A Black bank messenger appears to be the only survivor after Earth passes through the tail of a comet. Superb use of science fiction as social commentary. Grim and beautiful. A-

“The Jameson Satellite” by Neil R. Jones (1931). The namesake Jameson, hoping to preserve his mortal remains for the lifetime of the Earth, designs an orbiting satellite as his coffin. Forty million years later, a shipful of robots, their metal bodies controlled by organic brains, happens upon the Jameson Satellite and revives Jameson, placing his brain inside a machine. The quaint early sci-fi conceit comes out half-baked thanks to dull writing and stiff dialogue. Maybe C-?

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And that’s it! All in all, one of the better anthologies of old stories I’ve ever encountered. I’m excited to read the next volume!

2025 read #56: Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites, edited by Katy Soar.

Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites, edited by Katy Soar

238 pages

Published 2023

Read from August 24 to August 26

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is the first British Library Tales of the Weird anthology I’ve picked up since Polar Horrors last October. My partner R gifted me Circles of Stone during the holidays; I’ve intended to read it this whole time, even having it in my perennial to-read stack since December. But do you ever have books sit in your TBR pile so long that you start to feel avoidant of them? No? Just me?

Anyway, now that my teen is back with his other parent for the school year, I’m excited to get back into reading with more regularity. And Circles’ table of contents looks like it could be a lot of fun.

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Extract from Ringstones by Sarban (1951). Excerpting this from a novella, editor Soar deploys it almost as an extension of her introduction, singling out a brief lecture from one character on the folkloric associations of standing stones. Well-written enough, but not really reviewable as a story.

“The Temple” by E. F. Benson (1924). This predictable but competent piece about two friends who rent a cottage near a ring of standing stones in Cornwall is invigorated by crisp prose and evocative descriptions. The ending is the weakest part. A solid start all the same. B-

“The Spirit of Stonehenge” by Jasper John (1930). Brief anecdote about a young archaeologist becoming possessed by the Druidic evil of Stonehenge. Painless, but not much to it. C

“The First Sheaf” by H. R. Wakefield (1940). Soar’s editorial introduction cites this tale of an isolated Essex village as “an early example of folk horror.” The inbred villagers here certainly return to propitiating the Old Gods in order to alleviate a drought the Christian God won’t break. The story is interesting as a prototype, but otherwise I found it middling. C

“The Tarn of Sacrifice” by Algernon Blackwood (1921). John Holt is a hiker on holiday, haunted by physical and emotional wounds from the War to End All Wars. Repulsed by modern man’s hypocrisy, and unable to shake the realization that he enjoyed killing on the battlefield, he finds himself drawn to the (imagined) manly simplicity and stoicism of the ancient pagan Romans. At the titular tarn, he meets a young woman and her father, who quickly convince him he’s the reincarnation of her lover from Roman times. Maybe it’s because I read this story perched on a rock shelf above a lake, but I quite enjoyed it. Reminded me of a gentrified take on Robert E. Howard’s masculinity-fetish tales. B

“The Shadow on the Moor” by Stuart Strauss (1928). This belongs in the category of “an amateur author lucked into a Weird Tales publication.” A dude trying to write horror stories at a Cornwall inn is chilled to see the shadow of a woman walking all alone on the midnight moors — no woman, just her shadow — and inevitably he must follow it to a sinister ring of stones. This is conveyed in correct but lifeless prose: “It was uncanny. Impossible. Yet his eyes told him that the impossible was fact.” The first dud of this collection, which is rather impressive for stories of this era. D

“Lisheen” by Frederick Cowles (1948). Another one not to my taste, affecting a faux-historical style that offers only the driest outline of a folk horror story. A girl is born of the devil (and/or Pan) in a Cornwall village; the vicar entrusted with her care soon loses his faith for lust of her. You could imagine a low budget 1970s flick built from that skeleton, full of latex and nudity, but the text at hand doesn’t amount to much. D?

“The Ceremony” by Arthur Machen (1897). An evocative vignette centering a stone still venerated in the wood. Brief but vivid. B-

“The Dark Land” by Mary Williams (1975). An unexpectedly late variation on the Edwardian formula of “narrator’s artist friends have an uncanny experience on the moors, here related at secondhand.” There’s potential here, but the narrative distance (and the primly Christian ending) works against it. C-

“The Man Who Could Talk with the Birds: A Tale Told by the Fireside” by J. H. Pearce (1893). Ah, the chokehold that phonetic dialect had on the nineteenth century. This brief number is related entirely in a roughly transcribed Cornish accent. It was fine otherwise, I suppose. C-

“The Stone that Liked Company” by A. L. Rowse (1945). Another tale told by fireside, this one is more substantial and interesting, with the dean of a college rambling out a yarn about an over-excitable young man fixating on a standing stone during a Cornwall rest-cure. A solid enough C+

“Minuke” by Nigel Kneale (1949). A house in a new ribbon development is afflicted with preternatural activity in an anecdote related by a letting agent. Nothing especially interesting in itself (was it supposed to feel more slapstick than scary?); nonetheless I enjoyed it as a glimpse of suburban history, something that seldom crops up in stories older than this. Maybe C

“New Corner” by L. T. C. Rolt (1937). One of the best qualities of this particular volume has been its diversity of subjects. Sure, there’s been a surfeit of Cornish standing stones luring the innocent to devilish doom, but there’s also been items like this one, which brings us to the world of 1930s auto racing. As a story, it doesn’t offer much, and at times feels patronizing in a boy’s-own magazine sort of way, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into a bygone subculture. C-?

“Where the Stones Grow” by Lisa Tuttle (1980). A thoroughly 1980s spin on the subject, in which a man wrestles with traumatic childhood memories of seeing his father crushed by standing stones. Well-written but just a tiny bit silly, as 1980s horror frequently was. C

“The Suppell Stone” by Elsa Wallace (2018). Well-written, as befits so recent a story, but disappointingly bland. I suppose I’ll give it a C

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And that’s it! The second half didn’t hit as well as the first, but overall, I’d say this was the most satisfying British Library Tales of the Weird volume I’ve read so far.

2025 read #55: Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire.

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

206 pages

Published 2019

Read from August 19 to August 24

Rating: 3 out of 5

After some standalone entries, McGuire’s fifth Wayward Children book continues the tale of Jack and Jill from Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Every Heart a Doorway.

It’s a bit of a step backward from the delicately crafted tragedy of In an Absent Dream. We’re back at the Home for Wayward Children, which means a crowd of YA protagonists squeezing into each scene to trade quippy dialogue and gum up the pacing. (There are three iterations of “You died!” / “I got better” punchlines.) Still, Down is an occasionally lovely book full of heart, compassion, and memorable imagery.

Reading a book from the first flush of contemporary queer liberation is a heavy reminder of how far backward we’ve slid in a mere six years. I miss the world of 2019, the impression that the arc of history would bend toward justice and freedom. I miss the way fantasy authors had begun to pepper their stories with progressive messages and wise asides. A perceptive line about how some would be eager to immiserate children in order to ensure the world never changes hits different now that such ghouls have gained control over so much of the world, and plan to entomb us all in a nightmare built from antebellum fantasies. 

2025 read #54: When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black.

When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution’s Greatest Romance by Riley Black

Illustrated by Kory Bing

281 pages

Published 2025

Read from August 2 to August 19

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

We need more paleobotany and paleoecology books. I’m in the process of writing a novel set partially in the Cretaceous, and there are so few avenues for learning what ancient environments would have been like. A particular textbook sells for $500 on eBay. Wikipedia has a couple useful pages, but even a ubiquitous Upper Cretaceous tree like Dryophyllum lacks its own entry. In fact, the most thorough online source of information about Dryophyllum that I can find appears to be a fandom wiki for a video game.

Heading into this book, I’d hoped for more in the vein of the closing chapters of Riley Black’s The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, which linked the Earth’s past with our own contemporary fights for personal autonomy and queer liberation. There are bits of that here and there; the introduction, in particular, can be quite lovely in its musings on life’s interconnectedness and interdependence. Certain chapters, such as the one on fall color in the Pliocene, are beautiful and evocative. The conclusion is, once again, especially impactful, a much-needed reflection of human diversity and possibility.

For the most part, though, Green offers more of the Raptor Red-adjacent pop science that characterized most of Last Days. It’s enjoyable, and Black covers many topics not often seen by the public at large, which is always welcome. This book is a nice first step for introducing the reading public to the plants of the past, but it’s only that — a first step. Let’s hope it starts a paleobotanical revival and leads to more in-depth books gaining publication.

2025 read #53: Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior by David Hone.

Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know by David Hone

Illustrated by Gabriel Ugueto

176 pages

Published 2024

Read from July 28 to August 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Circa 1998, I was as up to date on dinosaur science as it was possible for a semi-homeless teenager with no formal education to be. There were comprehensive popular overviews and specialist encyclopedias in every library. Those were good times for amateur dinosaur aficionados.

In 2025, we’re in the midst of a much smaller dinosaur renaissance. There are quite lovely new books that do innovative, edifying, expressive things with the topic. But none are the lavish, comprehensive pop-science tomes you used to get in the ’90s. So I’m not scientifically “up to date” the same way, and it’s unlikely I ever will be.

This book is a step toward catching up at least a little bit, though. In particular, Behavior provides a solid foundation for considering non-avian dinosaurs as once-living animals with complex behaviors and interactions with their environment. A lot of recent work in dinosaur science has been, shall we say, excessively optimistic about what behaviors can be recovered from the fossil record. Hone’s approach lays out the diverse possibilities of dinosaur behavior, while cautioning against conclusions drawn from sparse fossil data: “[M]uch of the scientific literature tends toward a confidence in interpreting dinosaur behaviors that probably should not be there….”

I would love a greatly expanded version of this book. Its main weakness, to my taste, is its summary nature. Fascinating glimpses of dinosaur behavior are reduced to a single sentence plus a reference to a paper that I lack access to. I’d prefer a book two or three times longer, giving proper paragraphs (if not subheadings) to more case studies. But even as it stands, Behavior helps break down the movie myths of dinosaurs we all absorbed in the 1990s. A useful starting point for anyone who might want to write more realistic dino fic in the near future.

2025 read #52: Land Beyond the Map by Kenneth Bulmer.

Land Beyond the Map by Kenneth Bulmer

136 pages

Published 1965

Read from July 23 to July 24

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Knowing nothing else about this book, I picked it up from a used bookstore a few months back on the basis of its cover. Beneath towering pulp letters, a flivver (perhaps a Model T) putters through a wasteland of broken, flaming ruins. For more than a decade—ever since I read this book, in fact—I’ve wanted speculative fiction featuring old-timey cars. That was enough for me to fork out $3 on a dusty Ace Double.

Unfortunately, nothing about this novella lives up to its pulpy cover. That’s common enough in this era, but it’s worse here than usual.

Wealthy scion Roland Crane dabbles in archaeology and collects maps. He is haunted by childhood recollections of a family roadtrip steered awry by a strange map. Young reporter Polly Gould approaches Crane about her cousin, who similarly disappeared “off the map” five years prior. The two go hunting for the mysterious map, only to find that another man (who might be more than what he seems) is determined to get his hands on it at any price.

Land Beyond the Map is almost remarkable in how inessential it is. It relies on broad stereotypes (all of Ireland is “fey”) and employs the sort of midcentury dialogue-writing shortcuts where people say “Check” and “Search me,” which will always remind me of lazy movie novelizations from the 1970s. (Did people ever really talk like that?) Because the book is a product of its time, the forceful competence of Polly makes Crane fantasize about “tanning her stern.” It’s gross and utterly clichéd.

The narrative doesn’t even arrive at the “Map Country” until page 70. We spend most of the book faffing about the Irish countryside, drawing out a banal hunt for the map instead of doing anything interesting. The Map Country itself holds a smidgeon of interest; tooling along the one road across a shapeshifting landscape filled with clanking robot tanks feels like something from the Pertwee era of Doctor Who. Much like that era, though, Land Beyond pads out maybe a short story’s worth of narrative into an unnecessary novel.

2025 read #51: Seed, Star, Song by May Chong.

Seed, Star, Song by May Chong

13 pages

Published 2024

Read July 23

Rating: 4 out of 5

Between the state of the world and trying to be present while my teenager is here for the summer, I haven’t read a thing for over a month.

This micro-collection is a beautiful way to start over. Chong’s poems are vivid and vital, pulsing with a tangible sense of place. Birds and beetles anchor us to the world too many others would rather shut out of their doors or banish with a swift crushing blow. Absolutely gorgeous.

2025 read #50: In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire.

In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

204 pages

Published 2019

Read from June 11 to June 17

Rating: 4 out of 5

The last of McGuire’s Wayward Children series I read was Beneath the Sugar Sky, way back in 2018. Back then, I found the books solid but perhaps just a tiny bit unsatisfying. Enough years have passed that my reading tastes have shifted; is it time for a revisit?

Like Tori Bovalino’s Not Good for Maidens, Dream is a modern riff on Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market. Young Katherine Lundy loves books, rules, logic, and staying inconspicuous. When she happens upon a doorway to the strange and rule-ordered Market, where every exchange demands a “fair price,” she finds herself increasingly at home, even if accruing too much debt means turning into a bird.

The Wayward Children books (particularly the first one) fit within the 2010s fad for telling what happens to the heroes after the story ends. This comes through in Dream, with McGuire eliding through the big adventures against the Wasp Queen and the Bone Wraiths in favor of seeing the effect the trauma and loss have on young Lundy afterward.

Either this volume clicked with my current sensibilities, or I’ve simply become less nitpicky with middle age. From the standard fantasy trope of fair bargains, McGuire opens doors onto complicated questions of what we as people owe each other, what love and belonging can offer us, and the cost they extract.

2025 read #49: Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo.

Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

105 pages

Published 2023

Read from June 7 to June 11

Rating: 4 out of 5

Combing through my library for quick reads, I happened upon this near-future sci-fi novella from the author of The Woods All Black. The plot feels like something from turn-of-the-millennium Asimov’s: Scientist Sean gets tech bro capitalist funding to implant a neurological interface between herself and a gray wolf. She argues conservation would benefit from affective understanding, but deep down she questions whether she sold out her own anti-corporate principles in order to make her lifelong dreams of becoming a wolf come true. That’s certainly what her wife Riya thinks.

Mandelo brings queer messiness and climate-change-is-now pathos to the concept, grief for the world already gone beyond our power to save. Silence is a story about connection and alienation in the world capitalism and unchecked colonial destruction have left to us, rendered beautifully in Mandelo’s expert prose.

2025 read #48: The Star Pit by Samuel R. Delany.

The Star Pit by Samuel R. Delany

82 pages

Published 1967

Read from June 5 to June 6

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

An especially brief novella I found reprinted in a line of doubles Tor ran in the 1980s. It doesn’t even appear as a novel on Delany’s Wikipedia bibliography; it’s listed as a short story. Nonetheless, it deserves a slow, appreciative reading.

Delany’s careful poetry shapes a picture of space dreadful and vast and tragic and beautiful, seen from a blue collar perspective that’s become common only in recent years. It also features normalized pansexual group marriage.

I enjoyed the story’s worldbuilding conceit that reality breaks down in the empty space beyond the galaxy, inflicting psychological damage on brains exposed to it; it makes the cosmos strange and threatening in a way rarely seen in classic sci-fi.

The story’s second worldbuilding prop, the golden, are people too sociopathic or unthinking to be affected by the shift in reality. Presaging Gateway ten years later, the economy of humanity is reliant on what the golden bring back from beyond the galaxy. Sociopaths and dumbasses lording over everyone else, controlling new technology and the economy, having free rein to travel where they will, while working class folk get stuck in dead-end spirals on hell-hole industrial worlds? It feels oddly prescient here in 2025.

2025 read #47: Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod.

Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod

100 pages

Published 2024

Read from June 4 to June 5

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

By inverting just one expectation of the usual Bram Stoker mythos — the not-quite-vampires here crave sunlight and hate the dark — McLeod delivers an incisive queer allegory of hiding in the shadows while predators prowl in daylight. She develops the allegory brilliantly for our age of pandemic and authoritarian reaction.

Years ago, “Sunbathers” rejected the scientific warnings that kept everyone else huddled inside; not content with their own transformation, they physically pulled people from their homes to die or transform with them. Tanning beds replace coffins. Puritanism, heteronormativity, and conformity delineate these sunny carnivores, rather than Victorian fears of queerness and death.

Without spoiling too much (no more than the summary on the back cover does, anyhow) our narrator Soph extends the allegory into closeting oneself to purchase safety and acceptance, only to find that a life of empty beige perfection isn’t worth the trade. The Sunbathers’ superstraight utopia is simultaneously hilarious and horrifying. 

2025 read #46: Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller.

Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller

192 pages

Published 1969

Read from May 29 to May 31

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

A classic of queer literature, an intimate and insightful love story set in the early nineteenth century. Miller’s descriptions of the small daily intoxications of love and desire are among the best I’ve ever read. Her prose is at the pinnacle of the mid-century style, simple sturdy phrases that get to the innermost heart of emotions and human connection.

Miller balances her story of queer love with incisive critiques of patriarchal power and heterosexual norms. At one point, Patience’s brother says,

These are the passions marriage is meant to discourage and then extinguish. At first we imagine and hope, but in marriage we learn we are not wanted.

This contrasts with the all-encompassing technicolor love of the two women at the center of our story, in all its possessiveness, eroticism, and need.

2025 read #45: The Harp of Imach Thyssel by Patricia C. Wrede.

The Harp of Imach Thyssel by Patricia C. Wrede

235 pages

Published 1985

Read from May 27 to May 29

Rating: 2 out of 5 (generously)

I bought this book on accident years ago, mistaking it for an entry in the Riddle-Master of Hed series. In my defense, its cover uses the exact same font as the contemporary paperback edition of McKillip’s series, and features similar artwork. A sense that this book desperately wishes to be mistaken for something better pretty much sums up the experience. It isn’t bad, per se, but it’s preeminently forgettable.

You know the stereotype of mediocre 1980s fantasy novels that read like someone else’s D&D campaign? I think the stereotype is overstated, but Harp, at any rate, embodies it. There are generic kingdoms and warring factions and spellworkers around every corner. Backstory gets plopped in with all the subtlety of a successful history check. Puns stand in for clever dialogue. It’s a D&D novel with the trademarks sanded off.

We begin with a bard named Emereck and his companion Flindaran, who is an undercover aristocrat playing at adventurer. They ride into a sleepy town and immediately go to the inn. Flindaran wants to flirt with the mysterious innkeeper, but doesn’t wish for the ire of the redoubtable Cilhar monopolizing her time. But then the inn is attacked by disguised soldiers who are after the mysterious Cilhar. In the aftermath, Emereck and Flindaran stumble upon the titular magic harp, which confers immense power, but at immense cost.

Harp functions okay as a vehicle for empty fantasy cliches. The ending, however, crowds together too many reveals and sudden betrayals by characters we’d never been given a reason to care about. The clunky action is outdone only by the awkward exposition.

2025 read #44: The Star-Treader and Other Poems by Clark Ashton Smith.

The Star-Treader and Other Poems by Clark Ashton Smith

100 pages

Published 1912

Read from May 21 to May 24

Rating: 2 out of 5

I made a couple prior attempts to read this collection, and always found my interest waning by the third or fourth page of the opening number, “Nero.” Poetry nowadays is gorgeous but lean, scything through layers of meaning and confessional trauma with precisely keyed phrases. Antique poetry (and this stuff was a deliberate throwback even by the standards of 1912) tends to feel pompous to my modern tastes. You have to be in a particular frame of mind to appreciate a line like “This Rome… / Is made my darkling dream’s effulgency…”

But I want to become conversant with a broader range of poetry, and this was free to download, so here we are again. If you’re reading this review, I finally made it to the end.

Opening with plodding classical pretensions does Star-Treader a disservice, at least to modern readers. It’s really not as bad as that first poem would suggest. While we do slog through plenty of dusty odes to butterflies and pine trees, Smith is at his best when he (quite literally) reaches for the stars.

The titular poem is pretty good, a versification of the typical contemporary “I traveled through space and time in a dream of my past lives” contrivance. It’s a nice mix of sidereal Romanticism with early science fiction. “Medusa” is equally acceptable, a gothic landscape portrayed in words, bridging from Greek myth to a prototype of the Dying Earth.

Other poems expand on the theme of stars and the vastness of space, written at a time when the immensities of time and emptiness were first becoming understood. At the very least, Star-Treader is interesting as a document of these frightening new vistas and how they shook up anglophone conceptions of the universe and humanity’s place within it. This is demonstrated quite literally in “Ode to the Abyss”: “[God’s] might were impotent to conquer thee, / O invisible infinity!”

Perhaps Smith’s poetry is best appreciated as a vibe, with the occasional outstanding line. Later on in “Ode to the Abyss,” we get this banger: “Dark as the final lull of suns.” That carries more desolate cosmic weirdness than entire novels from later writers. Alas, there just isn’t enough of that to make up for all the rest.

2025 read #43: The Pressure of All That Light by Holly Painter.

The Pressure of All That Light by Holly Painter

71 pages

Published 2022

Read May 21

Rating: 4 out of 5

I tend to orbit the same few topics in the poetry I read, as well as what I write: queerness, nature, childhood trauma, and the American Midwest, plus speculative elements that expand upon or elucidate those themes. This collection checks all of my boxes except for the speculative elements. Naturally, I adore it.

Painter excels at the mythological primacy that shapes childhood, in all its petty glories and vast heartbreaks. “We slice a worm with a spade / and the dead fall out / but we are small gods: / we’ve made another worm,” she writes in “Lone Pine Cemetery.” She also has a deft hand with the confusion of new adulthood, spinning archetypal images of queer college life with its questions and experiments gone wrong.

2025 read #42: Come and Admire Him by Joe Koch.

Come and Admire Him by Joe Koch

15 pages

Published 2024

Read May 21

Rating: 4 out of 5

This is a one-story chapbook, an erotic horror short “in conversation” with the 1981 film Possession. I’d wanted to see the movie before I read this, but I desperately need something quick to get my reading back on track before it becomes an all-out slump, so here we go.

In our contemporary era of prudery and Puritanism, it’s a delight to read a tale this filthy. The poetry of rot and bodily fluids, of murder and dismemberment to feed the birth of divine hunger, is the spine and substance of this story. It is an exercise in decadent description, and Koch succeeds marvelously.

2025 read #41: The Greatest Adventure by John Taine.

The Greatest Adventure by John Taine

256 pages

Published 1929

Read from May 2 to May 5

Rating: 1ish out of 5

The period between 1912 (when Doyle’s The Lost World was published) and somewhere around the end of WWII (when the subgenre appears to have been discarded in the postwar reshuffle of sci-fi) was the heyday of the lost world story. They ranged from the horribly written and horribly racist (The Land that Time Forgot) to the still racist but at least somewhat interesting (The Face in the Abyss). The ’20s and ’30s, in particular, seem to have been rife with lost worlds now forgotten.

The unpromisingly titled The Greatest Adventure is one such novel, a book (and author) I’d never heard of until I happened upon a pulp reprint from the 1960s. With its simple, direct prose, bubblegum-wrapper approximations of humor, and telling-not-showing exposition, it reminds me of a 1930s boy’s adventure novel I read a long time ago.

I’m not wholly convinced that Adventure was intended for an adult audience, though I acknowledge that boy’s-life and man’s-life adventure stories had considerable overlap at the time. An odd beast, the book has neither the just-like-you sidekick of a boy’s-life, nor the horniness and cynicism I’ve come to expect of a man’s-life.

Regardless of its intended audience, this book is not that good. The same character beats / punchlines keep repeating, failing to enliven a rote adventure narrative. (If you took a drink every time Ole Hansen says “I have a theory,” you’d be dead.)

The “dinosaurs” here are some of the least interesting I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It’s as if Taine overheard someone in another room say the word “dinosaur,” and he winged it from there. The monstrous saurians that populate his Antarctic are torpid masses of armored flesh “three hundred feet long.” We’re a long way from Doyle’s active (and relatively well-researched) dinosaurs, which leapt off the page a mere seventeen years earlier.

The discrepancy does get explained in the text (spoilers: they aren’t really dinosaurs). I suppose it’s interesting enough on a history-of-sci-fi level that this is more of a prototype of a genetic engineering story, but I’d have much preferred another retread of The Lost World over what we get here. If anything, with its climactic twist, Adventure turns out to be closer to The Andromeda Strain than to Jurassic Park.

The book’s sole redeeming feature is Edith, a modern young woman who learns to fly airplanes and stabs a pseudo-dinosaur in the eye.

2025 read #40: The Towers of Toron by Samuel R. Delany.

The Towers of Toron by Samuel R. Delany

140 pages

Published 1964

Read from April 29 to May 1

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

One of the local book barns had its season opening recently. For once, they had a pile of old pulpy sci-fi novels, including a few boxes of Ace Doubles. No way I could pass up a Delany novel in an Ace Double for $2, even if it is a Delany novel I’ve literally never heard of. On researching it, I learned that it’s a sequel to another Ace Double book, Captives of the Flame, which explains the density of world-building and backstory in its early pages.

Fifteen hundred years in the future, on an irradiated Earth largely inimical to human life outside certain oases protected by radiation barriers, an isolated kingdom develops teleportation technology. They use this to wage war on the other surviving terrestrial enclaves, but they also discover that the universe is home to two other teleporting races, both of them psychic collective consciousnesses, one benevolent, one amoral. The story also features telepathic giants and neo-Neanderthals. A bunch of characters can turn invisible when the lighting is right. There are lightsabers and a circus and a man with a half-mechanical face.

At its heart, Toron is about war and how the powerful utilize it as a tool for distraction and control. At times, the book gets lost in the weeds of Delany’s worldbuilding; I probably should have waited to get my hands on Captives and read that first, but I’m not convinced it would have helped. That said, even in its half-baked condition, this is undeniably a Delany novel. Its richness of creativity, its dissection of propaganda and the dehumanization of colonialism, the occasional breathtaking prose (including the most poetic description of someone’s death by disintegration I’ve ever read), all of it is solidly Delany, even if the book as a whole feels somewhat lacking. The ending alone makes it worth the read.

2025 read #39: Gateway by Frederik Pohl.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

313 pages

Published 1977

Read from April 21 to April 29

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Does it get any more standard-issue masculine sci-fi than this? Robinette “Bob” Broadhead, a man with psychological issues he can’t bring himself to discuss with a therapy-bot, has longed his whole life to become a prospector, manfully manning his way through space to win manly riches with his masculine prowess. Luckily for him, a new frontier opens through the titular Gateway, a hollowed-out asteroid full of ancient alien spacecraft aimed at the universe, permitting manly colonialist-minded men the opportunity to make men of themselves manhandling the cosmos for fun and profit.

There’s deliberate irony to this, though, because so much of the story hinges on Bob’s cowardice and self-scorn. That said, it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s satire and what’s just 1970s masculinity. I feel I’m on safer footing when I parse the brutal, environmentally catastrophic corporatism of Pohl’s setting as a burlesque of contemporary capitalism, akin to his earlier The Space Merchants.

I only read Gateway for two reasons: I want to return to my old habit of reading classic SFF novels, and I happened to have a copy on hand from a used bookstore I visited years ago. My copy has, in fact, been sitting on my immediate to-read pile for an embarrassing length of time (since at least last summer).

The opening, which features our narrator refusing to open up to his Jungian therapy-bot, put me off reading it several times before now; the recurring therapy chapters of the book remain, to my eyes, its least essential aspect, tacked on to add some semblance of narrative complexity and emotional heft to a genre that had only just begun thinking about such things.

Recalling With the Night Mail, supplementary in-universe materials—classifieds, trip reports, extracts from lectures—are used to flesh out the setting and its perils and peccadillos.

Gateway is noteworthy for how normalized queerness is in its future society. Our narrator, however, is an unreconstructed homophobe, to the point where he (cw: partner violence) tries to kill his girlfriend for sleeping with a bi man, and later masturbates thinking about said bi man, which feels extremely 1970s. It rather blunts any modern appreciation for the setting.

Also extremely 1970s is the obsession with Freud. Pop psychosexuality pretending to be gritty depth: that’s what Gateway means to me.

2025 read #38: Shattered Spear by Otava Heikkilä.

Shattered Spear by Otava Heikkilä

55 pages

Published 2019

Read April 18

Rating: 4 out of 5

Back when I was lining up a future as an archaeologist, I planned to specialize in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic in Southwest Asia. For a little while, at least, I lived and breathed the Natufian, the PPNA, and the PPNB. It’s a world that will always fascinate me.

This is a short standalone graphic novel that I learned about thanks to a sword & sorcery Discord server. It’s set in the Jordan River valley during Neolithic, and follows two women who encounter each other and form an attachment. The artwork is gorgeous, capturing the beauty and vastness of its setting as well as the character of its two leads. The storytelling is marvelously efficient, relating so much in such a brief space.

Absolutely worth a read.

2025 read #37: Children of the Whales: Volume 8 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 8 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2016 (English translation 2019)

Read from April 14 to April 15

Rating: 3 out of 5

Here we are at my library’s last volume of Children of the Whales. Mostly I’ve read this series to shamelessly bulk up my book numbers, which is something I had said I would avoid doing this year. Ah well. At least it’s been enjoyable, even if it didn’t grab me the way Delicious in Dungeon or Witch Hat Atelier did.

When Umeda’s writing hits, it’s stunning. Emotional vulnerability, the importance of community, sacrifice to preserve said community, guilt and absolution, all powerful themes.

But a lot of that graceful mood of grief gets lost under the weight of Umeda’s worldbuilding. I’m just not invested enough for flashbacks to two or three generations previously. And every volume introduces new terms and concepts. It gets to feel like noise after a while. (Though I’m sure a lot of my attitude is modern day anhedonia. I mean, just look outside. The monsters are winning.)

2025 read #36: Children of the Whales: Volume 7 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 7 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2016 (English translation 2018)

Read from April 12 to April 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

It’s difficult to write reviews of long-running manga when I read them back to back like this. I’m still interested enough to read through this series (or at least what my library has of it), but it’s starting to feel like background noise. (Most of that feeling is due to the state of my country, though, to be fair.)

This volume has a grab-bag quality. Each chapter is its own little standalone story, all of them contributing to an ever more elaborate tower of worldbuilding and backstory. Which is fine, I suppose, but it’s a lot of worldbuilding and backstory, so very much. The last chapter is a short story, published by itself years before, that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Children of the Whales aside from commentary on authoritarianism and Umeda’s fixation on jesters and large women.

In case you had any doubts about the series’ overarching point of view, we hop back to the original generation of exiles on Fálaina, who prove to be rebels against the totalitarian control of a government that sucks away its people’s emotions. Said government is the ancestor of the Apátheia pursuing the Mud Whale in the story’s present day.

Maybe that’s why I keep reading this series: it serves as a gentle, emotional refutation of the sociopathy of authoritarianism.