Arctic Light

Only short notes per book because I should probably have written these up right after I finished them ...

Over Sea, Under Stone - I really liked it!

( Over Sea, Under Stone )

The Grey King - A really lovely, evocative book; I enjoyed it even though I don't have a lot to say about it.

( The Grey King )

Silver on the Tree - I could see why this was a lot of people's least favorite.

( Silver on the Tree )

I'm glad I reread the series; it's been an entertaining read and now I'm feeling like I might want to do a similar dive into another series I haven't reread in a while.

Just for the record, I bought this book because it had a biplane on the cover.



(And also because I like Golden Age murder mysteries; I mean, I likely wouldn't have done it if the book overall didn't look interesting. But the airplane on the cover was certainly a factor.)

And it was interesting, although it's also a very weird book. In fact it feels almost like two books stapled together; there is a very convoluted and occasionally very weird murder mystery plot with multiple murders and three detectives (two professional, one amateur). There is also an interesting, quirky, and often funny portrait of a working aviation club with a female manager.

The sheer number of women in this book was honestly very surprising to me, doubly so because the characters just take for granted that of course there are a lot of female pilots around and treat them just like any other pilots. (I mean, it's the 1930s so you have to account for language a bit, grown women being referred to as "girls" and so forth, but on the whole the book itself treats them in a very evenhanded and non-stereotypical way that I find really fascinating given that it's written by a male author in the 1930s.) There is also a tremendous range of female characters, from transcontinental aviators to a troop of small girls who are given the opportunity to help out with an aviation show. The book was published in 1935, so the author is presumably working off firsthand experience and/or expectations of the period.

And the book also leans into the aviation aspect; the airplanes are not merely set dressing. The book also deals quite a lot with the day-to-day workings of a small aviation club and charter flying business in the UK.

Things I have learned from this book about the general state of aviation in the 1930s (other than that there were a lot of women in it) include:

- Aero clubs were a bit like racehorses in that they were owned/funded by rich people who were vaguely interested in aviation, and then managed by people who were actually pilots, and visited by their rich owners occasionally.
- There were a LOT of aviation events just going on normally: exhibitions, airplane races, stunt flying shows and so forth. I cannot believe that there is not a single Biggles book that involves an airplane race, at least none I've encountered so far.
- Open cockpit 2-seat biplanes had a telephone connecting the two seats that plugged into the user's flying helmet, so that they could talk to each other without shouting while in the air.

And probably more, but these are what occur to me off the top of my head. There's a lot to do with ordinary aviation as practiced by normal people, the then-very-new field of using airplanes to fly consumer goods around, and that sort of thing.

Another minor thing that interested me as a general 1930s milieu thing is that the characters swear a lot, including the women - mostly mild stuff like "damn," but there's also the amusingly described:

Miss Sackbut's feelings found relief in an expletive which in the ordinary way would have staggered Creighton, as he had been brought up to suppose that it was a word ladies did not know, much less make use of.

(She definitely said "fuck" right there.)

Anyway ... the plot concerns the death of a flight instructor, at first appearing to be a fatal aviation accident, which then turns out to be a lot more complicated, of course. I found the actual murder mystery a bit dull just because it involves a lot of characters who aren't that interesting - a student at the aero club, a local policeman and (eventually) a Scotland Yard detective, all of whom are pretty bland. The solution to the mystery is interesting and it is a really fascinating puzzle, a seemingly impossible murder that happened in the air with a lot of witnesses who watched the flight - essentially it's a locked-room mystery in the cockpit of a biplane. But I was really more interested in everything happening around it.

The author doesn't shy away from making his characters likable, which can produce a bland effect in places, but also gives the book a cozy and pleasant flavor - it was actually more like modern cozies (sweet, funny, not too violent) than the sharper edge that a lot of Golden Age mysteries can have. Rather than the most unlikable person in the book getting murdered, it was a very appealing guy who everyone liked and no one - on the surface of it - had any reason to kill. (His death is actually really sad, which is something I don't feel in most murder mysteries.) Most of the suspects are also varying degrees of amiable and pleasant, and even their petty jealousies and resentments (as assorted motives start to emerge) are relatively minor, and the murderer, although ruthless, turns out to have a surprising amount of conscience.

Below the cut, a few spoilers about the mystery, not whodunnit but as far as generally what's going on and the locked room mystery solution:

( Come on in )

Anyway, A+ leaning into the premise; the cover and title promised airplanes, and the book did indeed deliver airplanes and plenty of them.

When I was accumulating reading material for my anticipated downtime this winter, I came across the Riftwar series (Raymond Feist) in a box of books from my teenagehood in the attic. I've now reread the first one and part of the next, and I just gotta say that while some of my childhood book loves have transferred over well to adulthood, I seem to have had a way higher tolerance for blatantly Tolkein-inspired Fat Fantasy when I was a teenager than I do now. A lot of this is grindingly dull for me now.

I also wonder if this would be marketed as YA now, with the first book's focus on the teenage protagonists' coming of age and first loves.

However, I'm enjoying it enough to keep going, and I still remember my favorite character in these books: Arutha, the brooding prince with the crooked smile. And he's still my favorite, so clearly that much about my tastes hasn't changed in the 30+ years since I last reread these! In fact, while I remember nothing else about the books, I still remember what part of which book in which Terrible Things Happen To Arutha because evidently I reread those parts a lot.

It's been kind of a difficult week for various reasons, and I've been self-medicating with Golden Age murder mysteries (and other period fiction; Biggles of course is a staple).

This started when sovay recommended the Albert Campion books to me, or more accurately, mentioned that one of them has a trope I particularly like and then suggested some others to start with. I found that I really like them, and this made me decide to give Dorothy Sayers another chance (my previous exposure to her books mostly led to me wanting to drown Peter Wimsey in a bucket - I find that I'm liking them better on this go-around).

Period Typical Everything is definitely very much a thing here, including slurs flung around like confetti.

Albert Campion - Margery Allingham

The Crime at Black Dudley - I started with this one because it's the first in the series, a country-house murder mystery with a large cast. It is actually really interesting to see how she introduced Campion as a side character and then he sort of slid into main-character-hood later. It also has a lot of ambiance, action, secret rooms, and everything else you would expect from a bunch of people trapped with killers in a big house the middle of nowhere. The plot is kind of a sprawling mess with an anticlimactic ending including a really bizarre deus ex machina, but it's entertaining.

I started an intermediate one, but found myself still not that enthralled by Campion and decided to move on to the two-book set that sovay had told me has the Thing I Like. And this was a good decision!

The Fashion in Shrouds - I found this one a bit of a slog early on (lots of characters, most of them unlikable, and a fashion designer milieu that I didn't particularly care about). But things improve 1000% when Campion's love interest Amanda turns up and the two embark on a fake engagement for mystery-clue-gathering purposes. Amanda is AMAZING, and I honestly can't think of another character like her from this genre and era: an airplane-designing engineer with a bluntly practical and unsentimental core and a delightful sense of humor. I found myself shipping her with Campion so hard that I ended up skipping ahead a couple of books to make sure they stay together because anything else would make me sad. Also, while a lot of the early plot is pretty draggy, the ending of this book is a masterclass Golden Age murder mystery denouement.

Traitor's Purse - This is the one with The Trope (character with amnesia has to pretend they know what's going on) and it was absolutely fantastic. Aside from a lone quibble with the ending, I loved all of it: characters and plot and Campion spending the entire book stumbling around with a head injury on the verge of passing out all the time.

I will next be finding all the books with Amanda and reading those (which I think is one earlier one and then the subsequent part of the series). I also find Campion adorable once he dropped a lot of the affected manner from the early books.

So then I decided to see if I still find Peter Wimsey insufferable and I think the answer is, not nearly as much as I used to.

Peter Wimsey - Dorothy Sayers

Murder Must Advertise - Currently reading this one, which I picked entirely for the ad agency setting (my day job for a number of years was working in a newspaper advertising department) and I absolutely LOVE that aspect of it; it's great. There was a note that Sayers herself worked in advertising, and it definitely resonates with my own experiences despite the 80-year time gap. (There is a hilarious sequence involving the different departments' loathing for each other, culminating in "All departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons." The entire thing is pitch-perfect accurate regardless of what decade it's set in.) The workplace environment is also a fascinating mix of dated and modern; there are female copywriters as well as male, and a very relatable, casual workplace milieu that doesn't feel too different from offices I've worked in (minus the murder). Also, Wimsey undercover as an ad copywriter is a Wimsey I'm enjoying. Really liking it so far; will continue!

Have His Carcase - Concurrently reading this one because sophia_sol happened to write a review of it and I decided to also read this one so that I could read the whole review. (I usually have several books on the go at once, so this isn't unusual for me.) I'm enjoying it, particularly the sense of humor - in both of these, actually - and Harriet trying to solve the mystery by channeling her fictional detective and using her mystery writing research is adorable.

But it's really interesting to read this back to back with the Campion books that are focused on the Campion/Amanda romance, because of how utterly sold I was on them, and how I sort of go back and forth on how I feel about Harriet and Peter as a couple; they have their charming moments and their moments that make me back off. (It is also interesting that the roles are reversed between the two couples - Peter is actively pursuing Harriet, but it's Amanda who is gone on Campion and he's the one who has to be talked around to it.) I don't mean to set up the two couples against each other - they're very different! - but it's just very interesting for me to examine my different reactions to their respective courtships.

Actually, talking about Amanda and Campion ... what is really interesting to me about The Fashion in Shrouds is that the entire book is absolutely full of bizarre gendered bullshit that appears to have the authorial stamp of approval - except that Amanda and Campion's relationship is very much not like that; while the other couples are flirting coyly and cheating on each other and their narration is filled with authorial editorializing about Women Being Feminine and so forth, Campion and Amanda are sincere and sweet and absolutely devoid of game-playing or coy, combative flirtation. Even their fake engagement is absolutely straightforward, and the one actual gender-coded fight they have (she slaps him; he picks her up and pitches her into the river) turns out to be faked as part of a mutually agreed-upon con. I genuinely can't tell if the author actually believes all of the book's gendered editorializing and backed accidentally into the more low-key Amanda and Campion relationship, or if they are supposed to be intentionally contrasted against the toxicity of the other couples (even the happy ones!) by being genuinely supportive and sweet with each other. Whereas Peter and Harriet in Have His Carcase have some truly delightful, sparkling banter but also often feel at odds in a "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" kind of way that the other book absolutely does do with most of its couples but not the central one. It's just intriguing to be reading these back to back.

Will definitely continue reading both series, in any case. (Since I haven't finished either of the Sayers, I don't have a verdict on the mysteries yet.)

And naturally I'm still reading Biggles.

Biggles - W.E. Johns

Biggles Flies North - Biggles goes to Canada, where he ends up in hand to hand combat with a polar bear because of course he does. This book has some absolutely amazing aerial fight scenes. Outside of a wartime context, the author has to improvise and so do the characters; at one point they end up in a sort of dogfight with another plane shooting at them and no weapons, which they make up for by first of all using a flare gun as a weapon and then chucking boxes of canned goods out of the plane at them. I think one of the things I like best about these books is how wildly creative the author is at finding brand new things to do with airplanes.

I'm almost done with this one, and next I think there will probably be pirates and U-boats in some order. :D Regrettably I've already read the "Biggles solves a murder mystery" one, because it would match my current reading theme nicely. (Biggles as an amateur murder mystery sleuth is hilarious because he aggressively does not care about most of it but keeps stumbling into clues anyway. The actual canon version is very much what I would imagine a fanfic version of Biggles Solves a Murder Mystery would be like, except it would probably have more h/c.)

Back when I was a small bookish child reading everything I could get my hands on, I read my way through my parents' shelf of Louis L'Amour westerns, and I absolutely loved this one. Featuring a child protagonist faced with a wilderness survival situation, Down the Long Hills was my very favorite, and I read it over and over.

And rereading it now, for the first time in probably 30 years or more, I can see why! The survival scenes and scenery descriptions are very tense and vivid, and it's a fun fast read. I think for me as an adult, the child protagonist is a bit young for the amount that he's capable of - he's seven; I think I would believe nine or ten more easily - but at the same time, I'm willing to accept adult characters doing a lot of unrealistic things, so why not a kid? It certainly appealed to me when I was only slightly older than the book's hero.

Down the Long Hills follows Hardy, a seven-year-old who ends up stranded in the wilderness with a younger child - a three-year-old orphaned girl - and his father's horse after the adults who are supposed to be looking after them are killed. With no other course of action, they set out for the fort where they have been told Hardy's father is, across plains, rivers, and mountains, with winter coming on. The narration cuts back and forth between the kids' struggle for survival, and several different groups of adults looking for them, some with helpful aims in mind, and some with other intentions.

I really enjoyed the kid protagonists, who have not only the usual problems of being lost in the wilderness such as trying to find food and shelter, but also have issues unique to their age; for example, Hardy is too short to get on the horse's back by himself unless he can find a bank or tree to climb on from. There is a post-apocalyptic element to their survival quest, as they not only try to scavenge food from nature but also, for example, steal items, stumble upon abandoned cabins, and the like.

I went into this braced for Period Typical Attitudes (Subtype: Western), and while there's definitely not none, honestly it's a lot better than I was prepared for. The book opens with a genre-typical "Indians massacre wagon train" scene (it's how the kids end up alone), and the background element of all the white characters being settlers in the West is built into the setup and taken as a given, but from there it's really not too bad given the givens - people may be friendly or unfriendly as individuals regardless of race, the book is aware that different tribes have different relationships with the local settlers and with each other, and while there is an element of Native Americans as threat throughout the book (with a commensurate lack of awareness of why exactly that might be), there's none of the, hmm, the ugly, dehumanizing language that can sometimes go along with this. The only characters who are portrayed as truly evil and awful are white, a pair of horse thieves who try to kill the kids and steal their horse.

So basically I enjoyed it a lot and may need to read some other old L'Amours. The only other one of his that I have around is another I remember liking at the time, Last of the Breed, which involves a modern-day survivalist type trying to avoid Russians in the wilds of Siberia.

I read it! And, uh. I didn't like it. A LOT. SORRY. Details under the cut (squees are harshed, etc). If you liked the book, don't worry - it's me, not you! I hope you continue to enjoy it. Under the cut, I detail all the reasons why I hated this book with the power of 10,000 flaming suns.

( All the spoilers )

Having finished the book, I absolutely LOVED it and can now firmly say that it may be right up there with The Foundling as Favorite Heyer Ever. And the ending was a big part of that. (Possibly the fact that I haven't read any of her books in a while was also part of that. But still, it dovetailed very neatly into Things I Like.)

( Spoilers for an 80-year-old book )

The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor, by Shaenon Garrity & Christopher Baldwin, is an adorable YA-level graphic novel gently and affectionately poking fun at Gothic tropes. I really enjoyed it.

After being told by her teacher that she can't write yet another book report on Wuthering Heights, the Gothic-romance-obsessed teenage protagonist falls through a rift in reality into a place where the tropes are all true, from the gloomy castle to the brooding lord of the manor and creepy housekeeper and near-constant rain. The house is indeed hiding a dark secret, and she has to use her genre-trope savviness figure out what it is and find her way home.

What's actually going on is one of those twists that doesn't ruin the book but makes it even more fun, namely ( Twist which is spoiled in the back cover copy )

I went into it expecting it to be more critically deconstructive than it is, but I was pleasantly surprised by how sweet and fun and affectionate it is towards its subject matter. It's clear that the creators expected and welcomed readers who genuinely like this kind of books and don't want to be told that they're bad and wrong. I really liked everyone, including the characters I was expecting to be set up not to like, and it's very funny and sweet and enjoyable, with extremely cute art.

A lot of books promise circuses or carnivals with their cover/title/premise and then disappoint, but you definitely cannot say this book fails to deliver carnivals. This book is all carnival all the time.

I got it through Amazon Prime's first-reader program so it's still only for preorder (comes out on June 1). On the whole I really enjoyed it, aside from an abrupt and somewhat disappointing ending.

This is a historical fantasy set in a traveling carnival in the Southern US during the Great Depression. The performers are nearly all black; most have magic powers of one sort or another, and the carnival is a refuge from the hostile white world around them. But at the carnival's core is its terrible secret, which is that it's run by Ahiku, a demoness who feeds on children. In exchange for a few children's lives, the carnival remains a refuge for those who need it. But of course it can't stay that way forever, especially not when a Chosen One type shows up who is the fated enemy Ahiku has been using the carnival as a front to search for.

(On a side note, I suspect this is one of those books that wouldn't work if not being written by an #ownvoices author. There is a lot about the book that I could see going off the rails very easily or just being extremely troubling on its own in a white author's hands, but part of what makes the world feel so rich and deep is that the place of refuge is almost as flawed as the world the characters come from. Nothing is pure or perfect, but the characters are compellingly human in the middle of it, just trying to find safety and family and love.)

As far as leaning into the premise goes, this book does everything it promises. Nearly the entire book takes place in the carnival, with an interesting and compelling cast of carnival performers, following them from town to town as they practice their acts and fleece the locals and leave a trail of suspicious disappearances behind them. The victims are not all innocent; there is also an element of retribution to Ahiku's mischief, with the carnival being used to punish the wicked as well as to collect innocent souls to fuel the demon.

The characters are very shades-of-gray and I liked that. Even the best among them are shysters by trade. Some of the performers suspect what's going on and suppress that knowledge because they need what the carnival offers. Some are actively evil; some are innocent. But most of them are compelling, interesting, flawed and likable, even the ones who really deserve everything they have coming, like the former KKK member who serves as Ahiku's white frontman for dealing with the outside world and secures children for her to eat.

Essentially this book has the same quality that keeps drawing me back to Stephen King's books, which is that there is a lot of ugliness in the world and a lot of evil, none of the characters are without flaws and a lot of people die, but there's an underlying kindness and humanity that shows through everywhere.

Also, there are some excellent scenes with historical Harlem gangster Stephanie St. Clair, who I also wrote into Echo City as a supporting character and therefore have a soft spot for.

I would love to see a movie or Netflix miniseries version of this; it's visually rich and full of imagery that would be fun to see onscreen, as well as a nearly all-POC cast and a lot of African-derived magic and mythology.

The ending was the only part of the book that disappointed me, not to a "throw the book across the room" extent, but mostly because of lack of resolution.

( Vague spoilers under the cut )

Just as a content note, if you have any issues with animal harm, there's quite a bit of it in the book. The protagonist does an animal act using her innate ability to psychically connect to her animal charges; the problem is that she can't control it very well and more often than not causes them to drop dead when she tries to psychically communicate with them. (We first meet her killing an opossum while trying to learn to use her powers, so it's not like it comes out of nowhere, but if that bothers you, there's a lot more where that came from.)

Bacchanal on Amazon.

rachelmanija just posted an absolutely delightful book report on The Plants by Kenneth McKenney, which you should go read. (Her post, not the book. The book sounds terrible.)

While she was reading it, there were some emails passed back and forth which got me talking about The Ice Limit (Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child), a hilaribad thriller I read years ago. What reminded me of it is that the plants, at least early on, are not particularly dangerous and don't really do anything, they're just described with a looming sense of menace as if the scariest thing in the world is a tray of bean sprouts.

The Ice Limit also does this with its antagonist, which is ... a giant rock.

You are constantly told about the air of menace looming around the rock, the way everyone is afraid of it, etc. At one point it rolls and kills a guy because the characters have been digging underneath it and didn't shore it up properly. It is, however, still just a rock. It doesn't move on its own. It just LOOMS. Menacingly.

But THEN I went to look up The Ice Limit on Amazon and now I am DYING because ...

https://www.amazon.com/Ice-Limit-Douglas-Preston-ebook/dp/B001GXP7SK/

.... it has the wrong tag line.

National Book Award finalist Julie Anne Peters delivers a moving, classic love story with a coming out theme and a modern twist.

I hope no one buys this book expecting a moving coming-out story, because that most certainly is not this book, and Julie Anne Peters, whoever she is, did not write it.

But the rest of the blurb is actually about this book!

A frightening truth is about to unfold: The men and women of the Rolvaag are not taking this ancient, enigmatic object anywhere. It is taking them.

IT'S A ROCK. It's not a sentient rock. It's not a radioactive rock. It's just a big rock. It's only a danger to them because they spend the whole book trying to dig it up.

Speaking of which, I have GOT to tell you what happens in the thrilling and suspenseful climax, which I'll put under a cut just in case you decide to read it yourself and want to have the full impact of the characters' apocalyptic stupidity.

( Spoilers )