Fifty Forgotten Books, by R.B. Russell

I like books on books, and I'm a sucker for books highlighting forgotten books, or books that never have received their due attention. In his "Introduction" Russell warns that the word "forgotten" is a slippery word, and that in recent years some of the books in his list have been revived, some by Tartarus Press, run by Russell and his wife Rosalie Parker. In fact, what Fifty Forgotten Books really is, as a book, is a shadow history of Tartarus Press and other books that have led Russell in that direction as a reader and publisher. The result is a pleasant, light-reading traipse around Russell's book collection, including memories of shops where he bought various books, and of the friendships he made because of them. Oddly, this small paperback has an attractive cover which is hidden by a more plain dust-wrapper.

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Babel is an intriguing novel, set in an alternate Oxford of the 1830s, where there is a titular tower housing students who study languages, primarily for the magical manipulation of silver, upon which much of the world economy, and England's dominance therein, is based. The world-building is first-class, but there are problems in other areas. The story follows four students, three of whose minority races are treated appallingly by the dominant culture. This set-up allows for extended criticism of both colonialism and its inherent racism. Part of the problem with the novel, though, is that the four students act mostly like young twenty-first century kids transplanted into the early nineteenth century, and their political opinions and resistance strategies vacillate into simplistic and at times sophomoric manners. Despite these criticisms, Babel is still quite entertaining, and very readable, if overly long. The first half seems impeccably done, while the flaws begin to creep in in the second half. Overall I quite enjoyed the book, primarily for its self-evident love given to languages and linguistic thought. 

The Call, by Peadar O'Guilam

The Call begins with an interest idea. Modern Ireland is now separated from the rest of the world, as the ancient Sidhe are working to take back their land from the descendants of the people who stole it from them. They enact this by "calling" all children, randomly, from around the ages of 11 to 17, to their own Grey Land. Most children do not survive the calling, though it happens for a little over three minutes in this world, while a day passes in the Grey Land. The touch of the Sidhe twists the children, physically and mentally.  The few who survive are strangely altered, as are the bodies of those who have died. The novel follows young Nessa, a girl who had childhood polio and who thus has crippled legs. She and her friends are gathered at a school which attempts to teach them ways to survive their inevitable calling. This works pretty well for setting up the first half of the book, but gradually the plot unravels, as only a few of the characters become more than cardboard ciphers, and the motivations of any of them (as well as the Sidhe) shift without cause or reason on a dime. And the writing is fairly pedestrian. By the time one gets to the end one is relieved for the book to be over. There is a sequel, but I simply don't care to know about it. 

Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

Noughts & Crosses imagines an alternate modern Great Britain where the Noughts (light-skinned people) are politically and economically oppressed, while the Crosses (dark-skinned people) rule over them. A young woman Sephy (a Cross, whose father is high up in government), falls in love with Callum (a Nought, whose family has ties to the radical underground).  Of course they encounter many problems. This book is the first of a series. It is lightly written, and engaging, but I often felt the plot and scenario was developed on the fly, and not as well done as it could have been. This book was subsequently made into a television program (two series), and the scriptwriters deserve major kudos for altering and matching the motivations of the characters and the plot in ways the novel didn't. This worthwhile and interesting idea is better realized in the tv series, which (unusually for me) I recommend over the novel. Still either (or both) is worthwhile. 

The Adventures of Egg Box Dragon, by Richard Adams

In 2015, at the age of 95, Richard Adams wrote a short tale for five year olds. Adams died in 2016, and his book, with illustrations by Alex T. Smith, came out the following year. It tells of a dragon made by young Emma out of egg boxes. The dragon has a peculiar ability for finding lost things, and so the dragon comes to help the Queen find her lost diamonds. The story is, of course, slight, and the exaggerated illustrations help it along nicely. For what it is--an illustrated picture book for younger children--it works nicely, and shouldn't be compared to Adams's greater achievements like Watership Down. 

The Maracot Deep, by Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle is best remembered for his Sherlock Holmes stories, but he wrote many other types of books. The Maracot Deep is a very late work. Most of it appeared in The Strand Magazine from October 1927 through February 1928, but it was followed by a chapter sized sequel in The Strand in April. These installment were collected, with other works, in The Maracot Deep and Other Stories in 1929, the year before Doyle’s death. Later editions, like the one I read, contain only the single work. And it is an odd one. Professor Maracot and two companions descend into the ocean and discover survivors from the destruction of Atlantis many thousands of years earlier. Mostly, the story is underdeveloped, and often it is even silly. The science of the deep ocean is laughable now, and must have seemed ridiculous nearly a century ago when the story was first published. In the final sequel chapter Doyle adds an encounter (conveniently left out of the earlier recounting) with a very long-lived demon, which causes the materialist Maracot to succumb to spiritualism. The result is a strange hodge-podge of a book, not particularly worthwhile for reading.

The Book of Ballads and Sagas, by Charles Vess et al

This is an odd collection of more than a dozen old folk ballads, retold by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Delia Sherman, Emma Bull, Midori Snyder, Jane Yolen and others, each illustrated by Charles Vess (entirely in black and white) as a short graphic novel, collected together as The Book of Ballads in 2004, and slightly expanded as The Book of Ballads and Sagas in 2018. (The new, unfinished saga item is based on Old Norse legends.) The whole product is reminiscent of the various fairy tale retellings edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (the latter provides an introduction to this volume) in the 1990s and 2000s. One tires rather easily of such retellings, even when some new ingredient is added. But how many versions can one stand of Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer and other ballads--things that were pretty ephemeral and unengaging in their original forms. Vess's illustrations don't really help, and I'm afraid I found the whole collection tired. Others may feel differently, of course, but there was nothing in here that even mildly piqued my interest.

Where Memory Hides: A Writer's Life, by Richard A. Lupoff

Richard A. Lupoff is probably best-remembered as a science fiction writer, though he also wrote mysteries and non-fiction, and pseudonymous media tie-ins. He was very active in fandom and was a well-known and well-liked figure. His time-loop short story "12:01 p.m." (originally published in the December 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) was filmed twice: first in 1990 as part of the 30-Minute Movie series on Showtime, and then, in 1993, as a feature length film, titled 12:01. Lupoff's autobiography appeared in 2016, four years before his death in 2020 at the age of 85. It has introductions by Gregory Benford and Bill Crider, and lots of encomiums by Lupoff's friends, including Michael Kurland, Robert Silverberg, Christopher Conlon, Ed Gorman, and  others. There is a Lupoff bibliography at the end too. In between is a chatty bunch of reminiscences of Lupoff's life, with anecdotes about friends (like Philip K. Dick and Avram Davidson) and lots of sad stories about publishers and editors. The saddest publishing story at least has a sort-of happy ending. In the late 1970s, Lupoff wrote a massive novel called Marblehead, an alternate history about H.P. Lovecraft. His publisher didn't like it, and thought it way too long, so at their request Lupoff wrote a different much shorter version, which the publisher in turn also refused. Arkham House editor Jim Turner heard about the book a year or two later, and thus the rewritten shorter version appeared as Lovecraft's Book in 1985 from Arkham House. For many years Lupoff thought the original version was lost, but it turned up and was published in 2006 as a print-on-demand trade paperback from Ramble House. This is just one of the horror stories of publishers that Lupoff details. His writer's life is an interesting read about publishing and fandom from the 1960s onward.

This World and That Other, by John Howard and Mark Valentine

This collection of two novellas, one by John Howard and one by Mark Valentine, is another shared volume taking inspiration from the writings of Charles Williams, who is known for his supernatural thrillers, esoteric poems, and theological studies. It follows on the pair's similar previous volume, Powers and Presences (2020), which had one story by Howard and two by Valentine, also written in homage to Williams. In This World and That Other, the first novella, "All the Times of the City" by John Howard, is the more ambitious, and the more deeply-rooted in Williams' thought, particularly in his concept of co-inherence (in which mankind's essential relationship is compared with the unity of God and the Trinity), and with his use of the City in his final novel, All Hallow's Eve. Howard's story has two branches, one set in the mid-1940s just after the end of the War, and the other set somewhat contemporaneously, with one recurring character (a young man in one, a very old man in the other), and a setting around St. Paul's in London (an alternate St. Paul's in the contemporary strand). Howard manages the two strands skillfully, and the result is among the best of his stories that I have read, though I admit I would have understood it better if I were more up on the life and thought of Charles Williams (who appears in slightly distorted form). Valentine's novella, "Armed for a Day of Glory," unveils how some force is attempting to gather a number of ancient relics or talismans of Britain, for apparent sinister purpose, and how this might be thwarted. Both novellas are well-done in their aims and achievements.  

The Voyage of the Proteus, by Thomas M. Disch

Thomas M. Disch wrote a number of odd books during his career, but the oddest are found in the years just before his suicide in July 2008 at the age of 68. The Voyage of the Proteus: An Eyewitness Account of the End of the World, published in 2007, is among these late writings. A novella, published as a small book, it recounts the adventures of an American poet "Tom" who dreams he is on board the ship the Proteus, where he encounters Cassandra, Agamemnon, Socrates, and others of the post-Trojan War era. A wry humor is at play, with occasional touches of satire, directed towards the modern world and then-president George W. Bush. None of it works very well in combination. The satire, for one, is mostly too diffuse to be humorous, but there are occasional scenes (e.g. the attacks by the harpies) that hold the reader's interest.There is a sequel novella, The Proteus Sails Again, published posthumously, in which his former comrades visit Disch in his New York apartment.

Alien Hunter: Underworld, by Whitley Strieber

Having not especially liked the first Alien Hunter book, which I just reviewed recently, you may wonder why I went on to read the second, Alien Hunter: Underworld. Well, there were two reasons. One, I already had a copy of the second book; and two, the blurb on it revealed that much more about the aliens themselves would be unveiled in this book, and that sounded interesting, as well as thereby filling a noticeable gap in the first book. Flynn Carroll returns, along with other characters from the first book, and another series of increasingly implausible scenarios quickly develop in which Flynn and his friends attempt to defeat the evil alien. This time he is helped by a more informative alien called Geri from the same planet, Aeon, and thus Flynn learns that the alien he is hunting, called Morris, is a psychopath mercenary from a planet where the biorobots are revolting against their creators. Morris escaped to earth with second rate tech and equipment, and apparently hopes to take over this world. Secretly but in only limited ways assisting the humans are some other alien species, including the grays, and much of the plot is tied in with alliances and conspiracy theories that would make Q-Anon followers proud. My curiosity about the Streiber's aliens is sated, and I feel no interest in tackling the third and final novel of this series. If I try another Strieber book, it should be one of his earlier pre-Communion novels that I haven't read, just to see if he did have the talent back then to write a satisfying novel as opposed to his self-evident ability to string together scene after amped-up scene to make for a mostly mindless thriller.

Alien Hunter, by Whitley Strieber

I read a few of the early Whitley Strieber novels decades ago, and found them good enough that I felt I should return sometime to read more. So I picked up Alien Hunter (2013), which is the first of three "Flynn Carroll" thrillers. Either my memory is wrong, or Strieber has gone down the tubes in the post-Communion era. Though it begins carefully, fleshing out the characters and situation, it's not long before all that is dropped and Streiber moves completely into thriller mode--a relentlessly paced, illogical, and at times nonsensical story. The back-story of the book is actually intriguing--some criminal mastermind (the title gives it away as an alien) has been abducting selective humans, and a secret government organization is on the case. Flynn Carroll, a Texas police officer, is recruited, so the story unfolds to the reader as it does to Flynn Carroll.  But soon (as the story reaches Las Vegas, appropriately enough) it becomes simply ridiculous. Hollywood evidently saw some potential in the book, for the Sy-Fy channel based a series on it, titled more simply, Hunters (2016), but other than the basic set-up, the series bears little relation to the plot of Strieber's novel. Thus, two failures, from the same idea. For decades I have had an annoying mind-worm in that every time I see Strieber's first name, I hear in my head the young girl Newt, in the film Aliens, screaming "Whitleeey!" Now you have the mind-worm too. You are welcome.

Of Solids and Surds, by Samuel R. Delany

This short book is part of the "Why I Write" series based on some annual lectures delivered at Yale University. Delany was the lecturer in 2020. It is a series of some 67 numbered sections, some short, others long, which meander around the subject of why Delany became a writer, wrote a particular way, or wrote a particular book, with many asides and random anecdotes. As a dyslexic, gay, black American man his viewpoint can be especially interesting. And so the book is, fascinating here, less interesting there, occasionally too discursive and even cryptic (e.g., even having read the book I'm unsure which meaning of surds is implied in the title). Delany also distractingly adds footnotes detailing his conversation with his copyeditor over specific points in the text. It could be an interesting way to define more clearly why Delany has written what he has written, but overall it feels more like an empty gesture, adding little to the text. Thus the book is a meandering collage of thoughts, but coming from Delany they are mostly worth reading. Here are a few of the passages I noted in the book:

I believe that if there were a god, it would have to be such a complex entity that for a human being even to say that he or she "believed" in it would be tantamount to an ant saying that it believed in the black hole at the center of our galaxy. (p.61)

I write because certain aspects of writing are difficult--and, as Yeats said, the fascination with what's difficult has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent spontaneous joy and natural content out of my heart, which is another way of saying it keeps me calm in a world where there are often things to get upset over. (p. 77)

Parnassus on Wheels, by Christopher Morley

This short novel is about a spinster women (of about forty) who buys into a travelling book wagon run by a bookloving single man of a similar age. Of course it turns into a romance. Parnassus on Wheels was published in 1917, so it is over a hundred years old, and the century does not sit on it well. The root problem is that the travelling Parnassus is based upon the idea that all rural folks love books, and are eager to buy and read them. I doubt that was true in 1917, and following the advent of radio, television, gaming, internet, streaming services, etc. etc., it's very clear today that rural folks young and old are interested in doing almost anything other than reading. And the writers admired by Christopher Morley's characters in 1917 haven't withstood the test of time either. But the story itself has some attractions, and one doesn't need to buy in to the story's applicability to enjoy a few quick hours of pleasant silliness. There is a sequel, with the appealing title The Haunted Bookshop, which takes place after the couple settle into running a bookshop, but it, alas, contains nothing supernatural.

The Original Bambi by Felix Salten

The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten is here translated and introduced by Jack Zipes. This edition, published by Princeton University Press in 2022, is illustrated by Alenka Sottler and follows the text of the original 1923 German novel, not the 1928 English translation by Whittaker Chambers, which Zipes notes as doing a disservice to the original. A further disservice came in the form of Walt Disney's 1942 animated film Bambi, which sentimentalizes and twists the original into a sugar-coated confectionary for very small children. (Zipes notes wryly that Disney had "a well-known technique for carrying cuteness to an extreme"--surely an understatement.) Basically, Salten's novel tells the story of a young deer's life and growth in the forest, though it anthropomorphizes all the animals too much (not only the deer, but rabbits, squirrels, etc.--there is even a short chapter comprised of a conversation between two leaves), giving a sentimental basis upon which Disney expanded. But Salten's novel doesn't shy away from evil and death, as man (always denoted as He) terrorizes the forest with his strange and deadly Third Arm. Salten's novel is perhaps an antidote to the Disney movie, but it isn't itself a very engaging book.

Spear, by Nicola Griffith

I've seen a lot of hype about Nicola Griffith's new short novel, Spear. It's a take on the Arthurian cycle, highlighting some Celtic (Welsh and Irish) aspects. It tells the story of a young woman, who is evidently magical in some way owing to her (mysterious, for most of the book) parentage. She leaves her mother (a single-parent) and ranges about Wales as a (male) knight-to-be, and thus journeys to the court of Artos in Caer Leon, romancing women there and along the way. The story is well-written (much better than the off-putting blog-style found in most Tordotcom books), and the queer take on the Arthurian court is interesting. However, the book does have some problems--the start-up is too slow, and at times the actions and motivations of the characters don't jibe precisely with the narrative, pulling the reader out of the story to wonder what is happening and why. Sometimes, too, the depiction feels a bit like a Mary Sue novel. It's still pretty good overall, but it could have benefited from another deep critical look at the structure and the expression of character motivations.

Serpentine by Philip Pullman

Serpentine is a very short tale by Pullman, written for a fundraising concern in 2004, and finally published in 2020 as a small book with illustrations by Tom Doxbury. It basically fills in a small gap of the story of Lyra Silvertongue after the events of the three-volumed His Dark Materials. As a story it is even less substantial than the similar small books Lyra's Oxford (2003) and Once Upon a Time in the North (2008). But it has a pleasant epilogue-styled feel, and whets one's appetite for further tales in the same universe.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red (2017) by Martha Wells is the story of a security bot (a murderbot, in this case) who is hired to protect some scientific explorers on an early expedition to a new planet. The conspiracies multiply: is the (cheap, corner-cutting) corporation behind the sabotages and attacks on them?  Or is it a competitive expedition?  Or something even more subversive? It's a moderately engaging tale, though I wouldn't have suspected it capable of winning (as it did) a Nebula Award for Best Novella.  It's also the first of several related novellas that comprise The Murderbot Diaries. While I enjoyed this first one, I don't feel at all compelled to continue the series. Too many other things to read that look more enticing.

Maiden, Mother, Crone, edited by Gwen Benaway

I was directed to this book, published in 2019, to read one specific story, but as I've never before encountered an anthology made up of stories about "fantastical trans femmes" I thought I'd read the whole thing. It's fairly short, eleven stories spread out in under 150 pages.  A few stories were underdeveloped, and clearly by writers still learning the craft. Most were okay or passable stories, but they all encompassed some similarities: the trans protagonists all have a sense of being very special, together with an aggrieved sense of being misunderstood and looked down upon. With one exception, all the males in the stories are there to be evil. One story ("Freeing the Bitch") reads completely like fanfiction--all the boxes of representation and identity are successively checked, as if that is the point of storytelling. The story that was recommended  to me ("i shall remains"--yes the author refuses conventional punctuation and capitalization) was indeed interesting-- a deliberate response to Ursula K. Le Guin's famous story "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas," which is quoted in the  headnote to the story. The book's editor (who also contributed one story) Gwen Benaway described herself as "a trans girl of Anishinaabe and Metis descent"--indiginous peoples of the Great Lakes area of Canada and the U.S. The truth of this assertion was questioned (on Twitter and elsewhere) in 2020, and Benaway has since been cancelled. The publisher of this book, Bedside Press, ceased operations in 2021.  I have no idea if the two events are related, but the book is now out of print and copies are scarce. So it goes. 

The Haunting Season: Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights

The Haunting Season is an odd volume containing eight stories by eight supposed bestselling writers. The writers are seven women and one man. No editor is credited, so one wonders: how did stories get selected for this book? All eight writers are British, and none seem to be especially known on this side of the Atlantic. I've read novels by two of them before, the one by Bridget Collins was reviewed at this site on January 30, 2019. Collins's story opens this volume, and I found it as unsatisfying as her novel. Stories by Imogen Hermes Gowar, Laura Purcell, and Kirin Millwood Hargrave, are somewhat traditional. Stories by Andrew Michael Hurley (the other author I've read before) and Elizabeth Macneal attempt to do something more unusual, but they don't pull it off successfully. The story by Jess Kidd  begins with a photographer called in to photograph an extremely beautiful young dead woman. It pulls the reader in, but soon goes off in tangents, leaving an unsatisfying denouement. The story by Natasha Pulley ("The Eel Singers") is the strangest and most interesting one in the book: odd characters are affected by the landscape and history of an isolated region of the fens. As a themed anthology, the book doesn't work. As a modern example of the ghostly tradition, the book doesn't work. None of the stories are terrible, but none are especially good. Most of them read like first drafts--which could have been bettered with some thought applied to them during revision. A disappointment overall.

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L.C. Rosen

Religious zealotry is once again operating in full force, as increasingly books are being banned on topics that such zealots deem should be silenced. These include ideas related to race and to LGBTQ issues. Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) (2018)  by L.C. Rosen is one such challenged title (which I learned of and read because of the nudnik challenges). It concerns a gay New York City high schooler who conducts a (off-school) website sex column while at the same time being stalked and threatened by an anonymous supposed admirer. Books like this which exhibit sympathy and understanding of sexual (and other) minorities should not be banned by myopic zealots, but stocked openly in every high school library.

Frozen Hell by John W. Campbell Jr.

Frozen Hell is the original manuscript version of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s, 1938 novella "Who Goes There?"--better known via various filmed versions, The Thing from Another World (1951), John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), and the very similarly plotted prequel, also titled The Thing (2011). This new edition is probably the worst example of shameless exploitation and overhype that I've ever encountered. The Preface attempts (and fails) to add excitement to the discovery of this lost first version (it was found in a library archive, wow). A long Introduction by Robert Silverberg puts the story in context. "Frozen Hell" itself is basically the same as "Who Goes There?" but with three slow and uninteresting extra chapters at the beginning. Padding out this slim volume further are five preview chapters of a proposed sequel, to be written by the publisher, but the writing of this is so filled with cliches of phrasing and of situation that one can only hope that the world is spared from any more. Silverberg aptly notes that Campbell's dropping of the first three chapters was a great improvement.  "Who Goes There?" is worth reading.  This resurrected discarded draft is not. 

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

Published in 1998, this is a tale of Carribbean magic transplanted to a future post-apocalypse Toronto. In another sense it is a coming of age family story. Ti-Jeanne has just had a baby, and settles with her grandmother, a folk healer and magic practitioner. The baby's father is ominously tied in with the posse of organized crime, run by Rudy, who is kept young by an enslaved duppy who is fed childrens' blood but who must also follow Rudy's murderous orders.  Ti-Jeanne of course runs afowl of Rudy, who it turns out is her grandfather, and Ti-Jeanne gets some aid from the duppy, who turns out to be her mother's spirit. It's a competent tale, but not much more. 

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi (2020) by Susanna Clarke is an odd and difficult to describe fantasy novel. It begins with the eponymous character nearly alone in a world of massive architectural halls, sometimes underwater, all mapped out carefully over the years by Piranesi. Yet some aspects of the author's world-building don't quite fit (that is, why does Piranesi know of concepts and things from our modern world), but eventually (via reading his old journals) Clarke brings in a mystery of the real world that brought Piranesi to this world, at the same time as the process erased most of his memories. The set-up is initially too long, and (unusually) the middle section of the book, unravelling the real world mystery of academic rivalries exploring mystical dimensions, is the most gripping part, leaving the resolution rather disappointing. Though imperfect in minor ways, Piranesi is still a fine if strange novel.