2022 read #3: Beetle & the Hollowbones by Aliza Layne.

Beetle & the Hollowbones by Aliza Layne

Coloring by Natalie Riess and Kristen Acampora

256 pages

Published 2020

Read from January 30 to January 31

Rating: 4 out of 5

My partner R asked for this book for Christmas, and I made an attempt to read it myself right after the holiday, but for whatever reason it didn't click with me at the time. Then I picked it up again yesterday, began at the beginning once more, and couldn't get enough of it.

This book is marvelous. It's so adorably drawn, the characters are delightful, and the story was exceptionally sweet and moving. I want to soak in the world's warm pastels and charming details. Of course, as always happens when I get into a graphic novel, once I got to the halfway mark I sped through and didn't pay enough attention to each panel in my eagerness to follow the story, so there's probably a lot I missed.

2022 read #2: Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel.

Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field by John Lewis-Stempel

294 pages

Published 2014

Read from January 9 to January 18

Rating: 3 out of 5

British nature writing, especially the kind that supplies deft insights into the tiny pockets of nature and biodiversity remaining in the British Isles, has long been one of my favorite genres of nature writing, largely thanks to the books by Roger Deakin, Helen Macdonald, and Robert Macfarlane. I had high hopes for this entry, my first book by Lewis-Stempel, and even put it as a suggested Christmas present on the list I gave my partner R late last year.

Despite its lovely cover and intriguing title, Meadowland is merely serviceable, an annual round of both natural events and the rhythms of running a working meadow on a small farm. With my Rust Belt background, for me the word "meadow" invokes a restored wild space, but Lewis-Stempel's more English definition is purely utilitarian: "A meadow is a place where grass and flowers are grown for hay...." While flowers and grasses (and birds and bugs and wild mammals) receive plenty of attention here, cows and sheep and hay-mowing receive almost equal billing.

At times Lewis-Stempel's descriptions approach the ecstatic wonder of Macfarlane or Deakin, but he also has, shall we say, a middle-aged obliviousness to more sensitive phrasing. He employs two casual Nazi metaphors, for instance, both utterly unnecessary and far more distracting than descriptive. I'm not so much offended as struck by how bizarre the choice was.

2022 read #1: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho.

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

370 pages

Published 2021

Read from January 7 to January 9

Rating: 4 out of 5

I love the rhythm and flow of regional English. I especially love it when words from other languages are integrated into the text rather than italicized, the meaning left for the reader to infer or look up rather than explained through awkward parentheses or footnotes. So much of the dialogue in this novel pops with Manglish poetry. It's a delight to read, lingering in my internal narration long after I put the book down.

The story itself starts strong and zips along with satisfying momentum. I adore its rich texture of petty ghosts and gods hungering for closure. 

2021 read #8: The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang.

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

283 pages

Published 2018

Read December 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

I adored this book. It's such a wholesome, heartwarming delight, rich with self-discovery and fabulous fashion. The character designs are winsome, the storyline gently moving, the dresses superbly detailed and astoundingly rendered. It takes place in a vague pseudo-historical Paris full of unmarried princesses and absinthe clubs, where all it takes is a single fashion show to spark social change. I'd move to this world in a moment if I could.

2021 read #7: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow.

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

288 pages

Published 2020

Read from November 10 to November 22

Rating: 4 out of 5

First and foremost, it's a delight to read a YA fantasy novel in which the protagonist-narrators show an actual range of emotions. I've had ill luck in recent years with modern YA narrators with chips on their shoulders, incapable of speaking in any meter but sarcasm. Morrow's two alternating viewpoint characters have depth and dimension to them, which shouldn't be this rare, but here we are.

I love the setting Morrow constructs. Beings of folklore -- sirens, elokos, sprites, gargoyles, oracles -- exist in modern society (or history) and everyone knows about them. Everyone knows the stories attached to them but is at least partially aware that the lore is often prejudiced and mistaken. There's no secret underground away from the mundane world. Everyone goes to high school and has to deal with shitty cops. The magical mingles with the mundane in a wondrous way.

Morrow uses the tools of the fantastic to craft a powerful allegory for the silencing of Black voices, particularly those of Black women. The healing powers of family, community, and having your voice truly be heard are an important through-line.

2021 read #6: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce.

In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce

241 pages

Published 1984

Read from October 31 to November 6

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

It's been a while since I read Alanna: The First Adventure. Three years -- three long, tumultuous years. I can be forgiven for not remembering much at all about the original book. My partner R loves Pierce's Tortall books, though, and encouraged me to give them another go. Especially since we have them here at home, and I'm currently without a library card.

I can't compare Goddess to Alanna more directly. I can say that this volume felt a bit scattershot, an exercise in vibes rather than plot. About three years, coincidentally, breeze by for Alanna in the space of this volume, though the narrative really doesn't feel like it. Major events that feel like they should become the major thrust of the book instead get neat resolutions and on we fly to the next big thing. A war breaks out and gets resolved within a chapter and a half. The nearest thing to an overarching plot, the perfidy of Duke Roger, mostly just hovers in the background while Alanna pretty much lives her life.

In her afterward, Pierce details her struggles as a young reader trying to find any book where a straight girl is an active, ass-kicking warrior protagonist. Given how rare fantasy books about LGBTQIA+ protagonists of any description still are, it reads like a missive from a bizarre parallel universe when Pierce stresses how rare it was to find a warrior girl who liked boys in the books available during own her formative years. Especially when the much-vaunted heterosexuality here involves Alanna pushing away unwanted sexual advances from her friends but secretly wanting them, deep down. Let's just say that part didn't age well at all.

2021 read #5: Witch World by Andre Norton.

Witch World by Andre Norton

222 pages

Published 1963

Read from October 31 to November 3

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

If you browse used paperbacks with any regularity, you've seen this book. Andre Norton was such a prolific and popular SF/F writer during the midcentury pulp period that her books fill discount bins to this day. The Witch World books, in particular, are inescapable. I've orbited around the series for a while, intrigued by their place in the history and development of fantasy fiction yet confident that they would prove to be schlocky trash, and probably not worth the effort.

Sure enough, Witch World fulfilled my expectations. Norton's prose is awkward, written in bulk for a less discerning audience. Our hero is a stock sci-fi archetype, the cool and collected man of action whose unsavory reputation was thrust upon him by an unfair world. At a time when most fantasy was packaged with science-fictiony framing devices, it's almost amusing how our hero stumbles into a crackpot-inventor archetype straight out of a midcentury time-travel tale.

Our heroine is a sorceress from a land of matriarchal power, where mating with a man means losing your spark of magic. You can fill in the gaps of how this is employed as a plot device in a 1960s novel. And surprising no one, at the end our heroine (by implication, at least) proves willing to give up her power in exchange for the big strong embrace of our hero.

I skimmed Wikipedia to get an idea of where the series goes from here. Apparently it turns out that when a magical woman and a magical man love each other very much, their powers complement rather than negate each other, so there's that, I guess. Now that I've done my due diligence, however, I don't feel any desire to revisit Witch World or its dozens of sequels. Give me something newer, gayer, and better written, please!