Snippets

I’m a little behind on sharing some of the interesting (and not so interesting) things I’ve been reading. Let’s get caught up.

what I’m reading

Suburban Warlock by Noah Layton. Just in case you thought I was a classy reader. This is a harem cozy progression fantasy.

Translations:

• ‘harem’ - one dude with a lot of special lady-friends

• ‘cozy’ - low-stakes conflict

• ‘progression fantasy’ - in a context where the characters are self-aware of their own skills and powers, often with textual references to statistics and abilities

Translation of translation:

• This was never going to be a great book.

That’s a little harsh, and the many, many readers of the above would undoubtedly disagree with me. Furthermore, if you boil Suburban Warlock down to the elevator pitch, it is right up my alley. A badass warlock wants to retire to the suburbs, but keeps getting dragged into his neighbours’ hijinks. That there’s a fun concept.

Unsurprisingly, the best moments for me where those when where Trent, a badass dungeon-clearing warlock, solves small town problems in explosive and direct ways. It is the stuff of daydreams, and I’m always a sucker for Scouring of the Shire-type ‘adventurers come home’ narratives. Trent also spends a lot of time describing his wagyu steak, overtipping with gold bars, driving around on his motorcycle, and showing off his cool scars. Trent can also do basic DIY. Trent is a MAN, y’all. Plumbing is less my particular daydream, but I get the appeal.

That’s all harmless - and, honestly, pretty fun. But one of the great failings of the progression fantasy subgenre is the persistent trope of treat women like achievements. They’re something you collect, or - at ‘best’ - earn. They’re not, y’know, people. In this case, the lootboxes are, well… particularly ridiculous. See the covers. This book uses the word ‘busty’ fifteen times. Including one truly impressive reference to ‘her round, busty breasts’. It is, very much, what it is. I don’t judge the (waves hands) escapism of it all: as noted, we all deserve our daydreams. But the very specific daydream of Suburban Warlock is not really one for me.

A Man for All Women by Chandler Brossard. I haven’t read one of my beloved Gold Medals for some time - basically because I haven’t found any for ages. But this lovely book, complete with Robert McGinnis cover, fell into my lap from eBay.

Guy is a member of the ‘nouveau jet set’. Handsome and ruthless, he makes a life for himself in Paris as a kept man and petty criminal. He has a string of wealthy lovers, trading his company for expensive gifts. He also mingles with the underworld, dabbling in smuggling and fraud to stay afloat.

Guy dresses well, eats well, and lives a life of (largely) carefree ease. He’s so handsome his tailor gives him a discount. He’s such an excellent lover that beautiful prostitutes refuse to take his money. There are no stat blocks, a la Suburban Warlock, but there are some similarities in terms of the shameless escapism.

That said - and where they differ - Guy is subconsciously, if not self-knowingly, self-loathing. He pays a local journalist to include stories of Guy as a ‘successful businessman’ in the Parisian papers, so he can send clippings back home. He has self-destructive gambling urges, which prevents him from ever building enough seed money to break free of his life. And, perhaps most tellingly, he has horrific nightmares of being ordinary: when his looks have faded and his charm is worn, and he is no longer able to slide by on magnetism. The book opens with one of these nightmares, creating an unsettling tone for the story to follow - the reader knows that Guy’s life is time-limited, and that there is an inevitability looming sometime in the future. Perhaps during the course of the book, perhaps just beyond it.

A Man for All Women needs, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, a bit more Suburban Warlock to it. Guy detests himself - and the environment he swims in - so much, that it is hard to find any fun in this as well. We can see, objectively, how Guy has been ‘trapped’. Conceptually, his life as an International Dodgy Sex Dude is probably appealing to the bored and miserable reader… but the actual joy - the enticement - is few and far between. Guy is so jaded that the debauchery he needs to feel is beyond escapism and straight into misery. If Warlock lacks depth, A Man for All Women badly needs more light to it.

Some quick reviews:

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer. Two boys disappear into the woods, return years later. Spoilers: they were in a magical kingdom! Now they’re adults, and circumstances mean they have to return. There are a few revisionist portal fantasies out there, exploring ‘what next?’ after the wardrobe closes. The Lost Story stands out to me as being a ‘realistic’ take on the question without slipping into the nihilistic (e.g. The Magicians, which did it well, but is undeniably grim). There are real human issues here, and the advent of MAGIC! is incorporated as a way of working through and beyond them. But no touch of the grimdark. Also, great banter. Recommended.

The Complete Short Stories of Roald Dahl. I really, really have issues with Dahl - as a person, and also a writer. But his (adult) short stories are undeniably great, if relentlessly, grindingly bleak. He’s not someone that celebrates the best - or even the ok-est - of human nature. Recommended, I suppose, but I wouldn’t canter through all of them like I just did.

The Accidental Detective by Laura Lippman. Great collection of short stories. Snarky, funny, clever. You needn’t be a fan of the Tess Monaghan series to appreciate them, although my edition was padded out by some unnecessary Tess ‘content’. Recommended.

IOU by Kirsty Marie. A college-based romance that feels like an attempt at writing a Mafia romance with students. Not much else to add. Not really recommended though.

The One Month Boyfriend by Roxie Noir. I love Romance author names. ‘Roxie Noir’ has penned a small town fake dating book that is largely by the numbers. This is very much About Mental Health as well - he has PTSD and she struggles with anxiety. Like many other romances that use mental health to add Depth and Conflict, this left me a bit squeamish. They don’t cure one another with their magical gonads, which is a good thing. But I’m also left thinking that they both needed a lot more help than was provided over the course of these pages. Not really recommended.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez. I read Our Share of Night for The Kitschies two years ago and it stuck with me as one of the best horror novels I’ve read, well, ever. I’m not sure this collection is necessarily ‘horror’, in that there aren’t nine foot bugs or monsters, but it is certainly horrific. Enriquez applies an unflinching scrutiny of the darkest parts of human nature. The stories with a light touch of the supernatural are actually easier to read as you can wave them off as ‘not real’. Honestly, these are great. Highly recommended.

Merry After Ever by Tessa Bailey. I don’t know why I keep trying with Bailey. Maybe this was the Christmas spirit. That well has run dry. Instalove between a GIANT FARMER and a quirky single mom. It doesn’t matter that they’ve never spoken, because she made him jeans that fit and he has an enormous [tract of land]. No, not recommended.

The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie Liu. I really like Liu. I think The Tangleroot Palace is a better showcase of her range than her depth, if that makes any sense. The stories are all very different, ranging from historical fantasy to secondary worlds to fairytale retellings. And they’re all bit dark and weird. “Sympathy for the Bones”, I thought, was quite solid. Liu at her most ok is still pretty good, so if you like decadently gothy vibes, this might be one for you. Recommendedish.

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. TIKTOK MADE ME BUY IT. (Or, it would’ve, were I on TikTok.) Pros: a rock-hard magic system that gives Brandon Sanderson a run for his money. Plus, hot, disturbed protagonists that bang a lot (not like Sanderson). Cons: A shocking failure to stick the landing. Genuinely one of the worst cop-outs I’ve read in some time. In a few hand-wavey pages, it renders hundreds of pages of tension and character-building to absolute naught, and undermines the central conflict of the book. Deeply frustrating. Interesting world-building, but not sure I’d recommend this one either.

The communities and institutions of science fiction and fantasy have many, many deeply embedded issues, but one thing they do well is archive. SF/F geeks, of which I am proudly one, are remarkably good at making sure that stuff is catalogued.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database is not 100% accurate or 100% complete, but it is still an overwhelmingly comprehensive resource, and, for researchers, an absolute god-send. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia is also a remarkable tool. Romance has some pretty impressive resources (search by trope is such a Romance-y thing, I love it) of its own.

Crime? Mystery? No such luck. Crime is, by far, the most popular genre of fiction (in terms of self-identified readers). But it isn’t as associated with ‘fandom’ in the same way as those other genres. One may be a Sayers fan or a Christie fan or a Cozies fan or whatnot - and all of those have their own catalogues - but there isn’t a cross-author ‘crime reader’ communal identity in the same way. Maybe it is also that Crime isn’t as much a ‘digital’ fandom as the other two? There’s also (Holmes aside) less of a fan fiction heritage. And fewer, smaller conventions. Maybe Crime is simply ‘mainstream’ enough that Crime readers have never needed to herd for protection?

Anyway, to land that particular helicopter: the lack of a crime ‘catalog’ is a pain in the butt for anthologists. I’m working on a Secret Project now. I’m surrounded by a toppling pile of mystery anthologies, all of which have been found, more or less, at random. Relying on gossip and serendipity is fun, but wasteful.

what I’m reading (online)

First, Andrew Griffin for Indy/Tech, as always talking about social media trends (in this case, Twitter) far better than I ever could:

I figured I wasn’t the first person with the notion of - or even the phrasing of - the ‘quiet internet’. And I wasn’t! Continuing the theme - this long discusson with Kristopher Tjalve about ‘the poetic web’ puts my musings to shame, as he considers the mythology of the early internet:

Tis the season for ‘end of year’ lists and all that. The two that demonstrably have the most impact on me: GoodReads Choice and Gosh! Comics’ Best of Year. Of all the awards and critical round-ups and whatnot, these are the two that actually get me to buy lots and lots of books. For GoodReads, it is a fun opportunity to surf the ‘mass market zeitgeist’ in a lot of categories I don’t regularly read. Especially when publishers are smart enough to discount their finalists. For Gosh!’s year’s best list, it is the reverse. Awards as are simply recommendation engines, the trick is to find a recommender with good taste. Gosh! nail it, and I always wind up shopping the hell out of both their adults and kids’ lists.

I was discussing favourite fried chicken restaurants with my parents (Top four Shurin family conversations: food we have eaten, food we are currently eating, places we will travel, things we will eat at those places). My mom dropped the bombshell, ‘well, of course we like all those chicken restaurants, because they’re all Chicken Betty’. Which is one of those sentences that makes perfect sense if you’re from Kansas City and is totally befuddling if you aren’t.

The best fried chicken in Kansas City was the singular work of one ‘Chicken Betty’ Lucas. She, herself, was a commodity - poached by a succession of restaurants over time. Chicken Betty would appear, the restaurant would have a chickeny boom time, and then she’d move on to a regional rival. Not unlike the plot of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. If you had a Venn diagram of niche fandoms, local drama, and quality food, this would be at the center. That may also be the Venn diagram of my brain.

…and, in fact, straight into that space - this essay on Vittles about the decline and fall of ‘pie and mash’:

It is a great essay that touches, excellently, on the changes of London’s ‘indigenous’ culture and the power of nostalgia. In full disclosure, Anne and I sought out, and enjoyed, one of London’s traditional East End pie and mash shops. The service was great, the decor was spectacular, the proprietor was super-cute with our small, stinky child, and we really enjoyed it. I’d go so far as to say that we liked absolutely everything about it except for the actual food. It was a brief glimpse into the experience that people miss, but the true, de jure reason for said experience was undoubtedly the worst part. In conclusion, and echoing Jonathan Nunn’s sentiments in the Vittle piece: add some butter.

…and also on ‘awkward Venn diagrams’, I’m doing some research into the cheery intersection of extremism and fantasy, and stumbled on this (JOKE) article: ‘Lovecraftian Campaign has no Cosmic Horror, just Racism’:

Also this (NOT JOKE) article by Adam Roberts on orphans and robots, and why the ‘orphan story structure’ recurs in science fiction and fantasy:

Katee Hui writes about founding the Laces, women’s football, and how a sport can make a family. Katee is amazing, and I’m delighted she has her story out here in the world. Also, books make the best stocking stuffers.