Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #9 Probably

Hi, salutations, popcorn in your bucket, and maybe some peanut butter and jelly on your sandwich?

I’ve been writing, sure. The “Summer Project” is about to be merged with the 2023 draft, and that’s exciting. I have to … grow up? the 2023 draft a bit more because the character is older and some of the stuff is youthful.

Been reading. Finished The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (highly recommend). Read through a few others this afternoon, actually, and had the thought that I don’t think all people who can discuss books should write them. A lot of “thrillers” and “mysteries” are being churned out by the booktok machine and it’s clearly written for popularity rather than substance. That’s okay. The world does need books like that for the readers who want them. I am not one of them, it seems, so I will consume with caution from now on.

I don’t consider those books beneath me, but I prefer the books I read to offer a satisfying conclusion to a building of tension and “thrill.” Both endings of the books I read today were rushed and one of them I predicted well before the reveal of the “twist” and I felt let down. This is why I don’t tend to read modern mysteries. I usually figure them out before the halfway point and I get frustrated.

That’s all the spokes from this wagon wheel, darlings. I hope you’re well, and I hope the heat isn’t keeping you down.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake book review

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

“If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?”

I was 102 pages in when the violence finally made me pause. It was a long pause. I don’t usually annotate books I read, but this one I started underlining and writing in margins (in pencil, as I’m not an entire heathen). My note on page 102-103 is, “this is the first instance where the violence struck me. Up until now, it’s almost been a desensitization, but the nonchalance of Glanton and the visceral description of the woman’s death is such a stark interjection within the sleepy atmosphere.”

Glanton, the person I’d consider the main antagonist of this book (although others would call the Judge the antagonist, but we’ll get to him), kills this old woman by pointing one direction, and once her head’s turned, he shoots her point blank. Before this moment there are dozens of descriptions of violence, but it is the taciturn way in which Glanton takes this life that caught me so abruptly I had to step out of the story for a few days.

I read this whole thing slowly.

I needed to take my time with it because of a few things, but the biggest reason is how comfortable with the violence I got while reading. It’s a morbid lullaby, the way it weaves in and out of the ride through the untamed West. It seeps into your bones as you read, reminding you that you are part of it.

It brought me back to how I felt about Tender is the Flesh last year, where I felt like I’d been the one to do the killing.

Page 142: “The leaves shifted in a million spangles down the pale corridors and Glanton took one and turned it like a tiny fan by its stem and held it and let it fall and its perfection was not lost on him.”

My note: “Glanton noting the perfection of a leaf is such a stark contrast to him killing the old woman a few chapters ago.”

That is where I decided Glanton was the villain of this book. A man without true empathy wouldn’t be able to recognize the absurdity of pondering the machinations of a leaf while having spilling innocent blood.

Page 184: “They passed through small villages doffing their hats to folk whom they would murder before the month was out.”

My note: “How many people were killed during this time? How many forgotten because no one was left to remember them?”

McCarthy is an acquired taste. He’s known for his rambling passages and infatuation with leaving punctuation out of his life. He has wisdom in his words, but sometimes it’s so buried within the mire of his writing style that one has to attempt multiple readings.

This is not a book to read twice. It left me feeling heavy and empty at the end of it. All the violence, for what? To prove he could get away with it under the guise of literature? It’s very much a book that people say they love because it makes them sound and feel edgy. Like they’ve seen some things, man.

Not everything needs to be a contest of sufferings.

There’s such an absence of emotion from most of the characters as they go around killing for their government. Getting rid of the people there before them. It leaves a sour taste all through my digestive system as I try to empathize with any of the riders in Glanton’s crew. The one I could not find any sort of understanding for was the Judge.

He and Glanton are made for each other in their insensate glorification of the blood they spatter. The Judge is the metaphor for the Devil, I assume, although I would say he’s the one who acts on behalf of the Devil, who as I said before is Glanton. But the darkness inside the Judge is a level that had me react physically to several of the lines he said.

Page 207: “Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”

And shortly after on page 208: “The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos.”

In all the books I’ve read in my life, there are two villains I’ve come across: the broken and the batshit. The broken ones, I’d toss Glanton in that category. He’s got a smidgeon of humanity in him because even though he doesn’t care what happens to the men on his crew, they are his crew and he treats them with a modicum of respect.

The judge is the one I’d put in the batshit category. He says some of the most unhinged garbage I’ve ever read, and he says it with such an authority behind it. Like he knows that someday someone will find what he’s spoken and will choose to live by it. He believes himself invincible. One has to be crazy to truly believe that, right?

There is a plot to this book, somewhere. What it is, I don’t know that I could say it’s linear. It’s more of a character study, where the Kid is placed in unbearable circumstances right from the beginning. It’s a test of who we really are at the end of whatever day. Do we stand by and allow ourselves to be swept into the current of hell racing toward us? Or do we fight that flushing of refuse and black bile back? Do we dig our feet into the earth and demand that darkness do its worst?

We do not have to be heroes, but we have to be able to look at ourselves at the end of this romp through the meadows of life and say we were our truest selves. That no one ever made us compromise on who we are for safety. For the luxury of silence.

7.5/10

*******I read the 1992 First Vintage International edition*******

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Atonement by Ian McEwan

“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

I had this book sitting on my “I’ve read this” shelf and recently went looking for something else when I spotted it. It sat on my “I haven’t read this” shelf for a while because I knew the story already. I’m a big, big fan of the film adaptation of this book, and from the synopsis, it followed the story pretty accurately.

I was not prepared for how deeply beautiful this book is. In the beginning, it’s told from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old girl who misunderstands something she sees out a window. A few more things happen within the space of an afternoon and evening, and as a result of her incorrect assumptions, lives are shifted into irreversible directions.

The film follows the book nearly scene for scene, which I felt incredibly kind of Hollywood. The story is rather important in all its moving parts, as most are, but with something so delicately perched on the bevel of catastrophe, anything left out would render the whole thing meaningless.

In reading some of the reviews, there were several people bothered by the fact the main character, Briony, doesn’t seem to “grow up” over the course of the book. This mainly stems from how she interrupts the rape of her cousin, and because of her false accusations sends an innocent family friend to prison.

The book stays mainly in Briony’s perspective, so we see her grow into a young adult at the precipice of a country at war. She doesn’t take her place at Cambridge, and goes into nursing–like the sister who fled the family on the arrest of the family friend. Briony comments on knowing she was wrong in her youth, and several of the reviewers were upset the rape isn’t discussed past a certain point.

My response to that is why would Briony talk about something that didn’t happen to her? I don’t mean that to sound callous, but as someone who’s experienced sexual violence, I don’t really find it pleasant to discuss. I don’t think the few people who know the situation sit around and talk about it amongst themselves either, so placing a responsibility on the main character to go into such an experience feels a little beside the point. She does eventually attend her cousin’s wedding, and it’s revealed her cousin marries the man who raped her (very much not the family friend). That and a few things Briony says at the end of the book are the only time it’s really mentioned again.

I don’t find it her responsibility to process such an event. McEwan could have written Lola’s perspective into the book, but she wasn’t a main character, and so having her show up to think/talk about her experience would have disjointed the story entirely.

The other thing people commented on was how the whole situation wasn’t important enough for a book. To that, I say, they missed the point. No one wants to read about a wealthy family crumbling because of misplaced accusations and a war. Not truly. But the depth of perspective we get from Briony shows us how penance cannot be achieved perfectly. By the end of the book, she is an old woman and discussing her regrets, so to speak, and what I love so much about it is the vast scope of her understanding, and the pain she has at not having her sister in her life.

I know my opinions are not the right ones. But they are mine, and I see Briony as faulted, someone who caused tragedy and bore the weight of that tragedy the rest of her life. Some would say rightfully so, but I feel like those people forget what it was to be thirteen and not understand the world the way we see it as an adult. We know right from wrong, but if we don’t know the reason or the why for something, it’s hard to articulate the responsibility.

9/10 stars

*******I read the First Anchor Books 2003 paperback edition*******

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Logos by Nicholas Nikita

Image taken from Amazon.com e-Book

First read of the year and it’s a dang doozy. I found this while browsing the genres in Kindle Unlimited and the premise intrigued me enough to pop it in my library. It was a quick read in that I was able to read it in a few hours. The time it took me to read it should not detract from the quality of the story being told.

Logos follows an unnamed boy for the majority of the book as he survives a primal land. He loses his parents to the night-beasts, and saves his newborn brother. The first part of the book covers the brothers purely surviving the harsh landscape as they travel to the mountains, where the eldest believes their parents are waiting with the sun god, Aeos. It shows the desperation of people simply trying to live, where water and food are dangerously scarce. The boys are attacked by men and beasts over the course of their journey, and when they finally reach the mountains, the boys are old enough to be considered young adults (or that’s how I read them to be). Lightning strikes a tree and starts a fire. This fascinates the boys and they cultivate the fire, feeding it so it stays alive. The youngest convinces his brother to keep it large enough to be a signal to others in the vicinity, hoping their curiosity about the light and smoke will bring people to them.

The rise of this community is such a fascinating look at how socialization works. The boys are considered gods because they can hold the fire (on a stick, without burning their hands), and they can carry the fire. This sets up a dichotomy between them where the eldest becomes the more determined to build solidarity, to have sameness. Make sure people can speak the same language, ignoring the fact he’s bulldozing over other languages and practices in favor of his own creation. The boys are given names, Leos (the younger) who wears the skull and fur of a lion he killed, and Ra who wears the skull of an eagle (or some other large bird) he battled.

There is an inevitability toward the end I won’t spoil, but what I liked so much about this was how clear the progression of understanding and coherent thought became as the story went on. The boys grew into men and their minds became their own, and that strong characterization showed how even when the world is full of unknown dangers and death, the more their minds worked, the more the world made sense.

I don’t feel as though I’m properly explaining myself because it felt like recognizing something from before, like there’s an inherent desire to be. The brothers went in different directions with their curiosities and understandings of the same world they were presented. The eldest had far more experience in the danger than the younger, and so his was caution until it became maniacal. The youngest had the innocence of curiosity unfiltered by those experiences.

I think this was a solid book to start the year off with, and I recommend it. It is rather dark and depraved in places, but I found that added to the primitive nature of the world in which the brothers lived. When one exhibits too radical a deviation from the comfort of routine, the other offers a balance and a command to return to familiarity. By the end, it’s a book about a boy trying to do the best he can for his little brother. It’s a deeply thought provoking book. I give this 8/10 stars.

Salisbury.Fake book review

January Book Dump

Okay, listen, I know I’m behind. I know, I know. I’ve decided to do a quick “hey, here’s what I read, maybe you’ll like it, too” post because while I could go through and review each of these individually, some of them are too short for a full post, and the others I don’t want to ramble as I’m wont to do.

Kicking things off here we have two books I received in a book subscription box probably almost five years ago and I started them but never finished them. So, I told myself not to let them sit unread on the shelf any longer, and wouldn’t you know it? In one, I only had ten pages left of it to read. Good job, past me. Fantastic work. Livin’ that dream.

Blue Fox by Sjon

This book follows a hunter on his trek to take down an elusive fox. The air is absolutely frigid, and the sun is harsh. It’s a stark, desolate sounding landscape, and yet there is life within. Sjon creates an atmosphere so well, one can almost see their breath while reading this book. It may sound trite and pretentious, but I thoroughly enjoyed the hubris of it all. A quick read if you don’t take five years to finish it.
******I read the 2008 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux paperback edition******

Gutshot by Amelia Gray

Another quick read, this is full of short stories, almost flash pieces (some are definitely not flash). When I first started reading it, I was enthralled by it. When I finished it, I was disturbed. This is not to say the writing is bad. It’s very unique and has a way of sticking into your brain after finishing one of the pieces. I felt like I’d witnessed something I probably shouldn’t have, and kept walking, left to ponder the choices I’ve made in my life to this point.
*******I read the 2015 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux paperback edition*******

So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano

I found this book on a trip I took with my stepmom and I picked it up because the title was so intriguing. It’s translated from French, and sometimes I worry that the translations can miss the nuances of the original language (I’m lookin’ at you, Witcher books). What can be lyrical and absolutely beautiful in one language can sometimes be stilted and jarring in another. That is not the case for this book. I’m going to say it’s very French, something I have only my preconceived notions about what is “French” to back me up on, but it’s charming, somewhat dark, and left me wondering if I solved the mystery or if I just needed to enjoy the ride. It follows the story of a man trying to figure out a distant memory from his childhood, brought about by a mysterious man who shows up with a folder and a name. The name brings him back to memories he’d tucked away for later, maybe never again. It sets him on a small trail of wonder and intrigue. It’s a lovely told story. The ending is kind of unclear, but I also finished it when I was really tired, so that is probably on me.
*******I read the 2015 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardback edition*******

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

This book left me for dead. I know that sounds really dramatic and kind of problematic, but the amount of weeping I did after reading this is almost embarrassing. It is beautiful. It isn’t for everyone, but if you are ready for a look at sexuality, race, immigration, prejudice, a whole slew of things, please read this. So many moments in this are heart wrenching, but there is always this underlying hope. A potential for it to end well. It is stunning.

Written as a letter to the speaker’s mother, the young man tells the story of love and loss in such a way that leaves you breathless. It asks why, hypothesizes the answers, but then never fully commits to one, letting you work on it for yourself.
*******I read the 2021 Penguin paperback edition*******

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Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

Everyone Brave is Forgiven grabbed me by the title and I pulled it from the shelf without much other thought. From the cover, it looked like it was going to be about London during WWII, and I was correct, but I still put it on my to-read shelf and forgot about it. I don’t know if I’ve ever said so on here, but WWII is one of my favorite times to read about, fiction or not, and so I tend to gravitate toward those stories. So many of them are similar, and yet all of them are different. I find sometimes they can be a bit predictable, and while at times this book was to me, I still enjoyed what I read.

What I liked about this book the most was the main female character, Mary. She comes from an upper middle class family (fairly more well-to-do than a lot of people), and when mobilization begins, she decides to join up in the form of becoming a spy. Well, they don’t need her to be a spy, but they do send her to a school to be a teacher. She has no experience in this field, but she takes to it easily, loving the children instantly. She becomes a teacher right before the evacuations took place and children were sent to the countryside of England.

Mary befriends a black boy, Zachary, and she promises to write to him while he’s away. Racism is a theme in this book, and while Mary sees nothing wrong with being friends with Zachary (he’s a small child), her family and friends tell her she’s being impertinent and socially incorrect. There’s quite a bit of language used that made me uncomfortable, and I know it’s “how they talked at the time,” but it still gave me some pause as I read it.

Zachary is abused by the people in the country, and eventually he’s brought back to London where he goes back to school with Mary as his teacher. Mary has a unique talent for getting what she wants, and when her class is evacuated, the first thing she does is go to the man in charge of her district and asks for another class. He tells her there isn’t anyone to teach, but she points out those who were left behind for “difficult circumstances.” Sometimes Mary’s privilege shows when she can’t understand why certain things are done the way they are, but by the end of the story, she’s learned. Mary is vibrant, sarcastic, and determined. Her enthusiasm for doing what she believes to be right is never quite squashed by the bombs dropped on her city.

There is heartbreak and absolute tragedy throughout the story. Depictions of violence and some graphic details of war wounds and building devastation. It all adds up to a well told story that by the end of we are possibly just as tired as the characters. The few moments where I was dragged out of the story because of my stretch for belief were few, and hardly significant past the moments they were.

I give this book an 8/10.

*******I read the 2016 Simon and Schuster hardback edition*******

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The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Technically I haven’t finished reading this, but I reached the appendix and the notes, so I’m going to discuss my thoughts on this book today. When I picked this up, it was kind of on a whim. The title caught my eye at the store, and the yellow grabbed me, too. I’ve been struggling with personal habits lately, so I thought this would be an interesting perspective to read through. I was right. This book is incredibly readable. Typically when I grab non-fiction, I struggle to read it because it’s very factual and very thoroughly researched (hopefully, anyway). That’s not to say this isn’t well researched or full of facts, because it is that, but Duhigg approaches it from a reader perspective. Something I feel non-fiction writers tend to forget is how to appeal to readers of all genres and types. They get caught up in the truth they’re telling and the presentation is much like a lecture hall PowerPoint by someone at the end of their career and they’re waiting for retirement.

This is not the case for Duhigg. He starts with a story of a man with short term memory loss who can’t tell you where he lives, but he can go on a walk at 2 pm every day and still end up at home without knowing why. There are several intriguing studies presented throughout the book that made me realize I know very little about my own brain. He goes through how Febreeze became a household name, and how stores can predict your buying habits by going through your purchases when you scan your rewards cards. Something stores may not want put in the public eye, but while that’s creepy, it’s also incredibly fascinating.

The first part of the book focuses on individual habits, why we do what we do (which is the sub-title of the book). We create what’s called a “habit loop,” which consists of three parts: a cue, a routine, and a reward. As we receive the same cue, then follow the same routine, and expect the same reward, a habit is formed. This is true for negative habits, too, which makes sense because even though we don’t typically think of the negative outcomes as rewards, they become ingrained as part of the routine, so we follow them. Sometimes unwittingly.

I’m not saying this book has changed my life completely, because I still have habits I consider unhelpful to the person I want to be, but it’s certainly opened my mind to a new realm of understanding. One of the key factors in habit change is belief. Duhigg uses the coaching style of Tony Dungy to approach the topic of belief and he talks about how no matter what Dungy did, the teams would revert back to their old habits in times of stress simply because their belief in the new ways faltered. This is honestly the stage of change I struggle with the most.

This last year I’ve been trying to revamp my thought processes–before I read this book, even more so now–and the process has been almost excruciating. I’ve spent almost 2 decades hating myself, and trying to switch gears and think differently feels like an impossible thing. But that’s the thing about it all. It isn’t impossible because I’m doing it in small ways here and there. I’ve talked about how my depression manifests itself as dishes to wash and laundry I move from hamper to mattress back to hamper. Well it still does, but not as badly. My dishes are never more than a few days left unwashed, and I fold my laundry within a day of doing it. I don’t know specifically what changed my brain to do this, but somehow I’ve convinced my depressive side that this is unacceptable and there needs to be something different we do when I get caught up in my head for too long.

I think this book is worth a read if you’re interested in habits, but I don’t think it’s a book everyone should read. Some people are living their best lives and have no need to go this far into their own heads. I give this book an 8/10.

********I read the 2014 Randomhouse Trade Paperback edition*******

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Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams

Hey. How’s it going? Doin’ all right? Weather’s getting nicer. Finally. Today we’re talking about a collection of stories I picked up as research for some of my own work, and eventually just read it for enjoyment. Everyone has an apocalypse theory. A reason for why the world will end. Plague, natural disaster, humanity eating itself. Endless possibilities. It’s difficult to write a review for a collection of stories as a whole book, so I’m going to give my thoughts on the ones that stood out to me. The big draws for this book are obviously Stephen King and George R. R. Martin, but only one of those big names had a story that stood out to me. So, let’s get in to it.

There are 22 stories in this collection, and I’m going to touch briefly on eight of them. These are the ones that I’d consider the better of the tales being told, but that’s not to say the others don’t have their merit. My preferences tend to be on the more emotional side, the more “hit in the feels” kind of storytelling. That said, the opener for this was Stephen King’s, and I felt nothing for it. He’s not someone I actively seek out to read, and that’s not me trying to say he’s a bad author. He has a massive fanbase, and my opinion is more like a bloop in the ocean. My first choice of story that stood out, hah, is:

Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels by George R. R. Martin
This story centers on Greel. Greel is a man. He’s what’s left of humanity on Earth after the apocalypse forced most others off the planet. But the others have come back. What happens is a misunderstanding of the new life on a radiation ravaged planet, where life began anew underground. It feels almost like a commentary on the differences between cultures being mistaken for aggression, and instead of waiting to figure out a compromise or a way to communicate, it escalates to fatal proportions. It does have an expected feel to it, where as reading it becomes fairly obvious what’s going to happen, but I still found myself thinking about it after I’d finished. One of the things I like about Martin’s style is his descriptions. He’s very good at showing exactly what he wants you to see. I give this story an 8/10.

Waiting for the Zephyr by Tobias S Buckell
Mara is the girl who knows there’s more to life than her small town offers, and this story is all about that hope. One of the shorter stories in the collection, that doesn’t take away from the power of that hope. This story deals with expectations of small town life (I say small town, but really it’s more like a spot of life in a desert), and the ambitions of someone not willing to be tied to that life. It’s written well, and Mara is memorable. I give this story a 9/10.

Never Despair by Jack McDevitt
Another short piece of the collection, this is almost on the same level of optimism as “Waiting for the Zephyr.” It follows Chaka as she goes in search of answers. The world’s ended, obviously, and she wants to find out more, to understand what happened to those who’d gone before. Chaka talks to a projection of Winston Churchill, and they have such a charming conversation. That may sound sarcastic, but I don’t mean it to be. It’s really almost like a granddaughter telling her grandfather about her day at school. It’s in this story that my favorite quote of the book can be found: “The turnings of history are never directed by crowds,” he said. “Nor by the cautious. Always, it is the lone captain who sets the course.” I give this story an 8/10.

Artie’s Angels by Catherine Wells
This is the first one that kind of made me sit back and contemplate life for a while. It’s about a rough neighborhood and turf wars (that’s my very basic level description, it’s more than that), and a hero trying to live out a dream. It’s got the desperation for something more than what the world is offering, the frustration at never being enough for that success, and just so much more to it. By the end, I wanted to spend time with the people who matter to me. To ease the loss of something that wasn’t real in the first place. I give this story a 9/10.

Inertia by Nancy Kress
Holy balls, this one knocked me backward. It was a bit predictable in some places, but by the end of it, I was ready to go to war and fight battles for people that didn’t exist. It’s the story of an old woman in a neighborhood cordoned off for being a colony of diseased people at the end of the world. There’s lots of talk of “before,” and there’s lots of talk of how to make life better for everyone inside the colony. The best line from this story is, “She cannot change the world. It’s too old, too entrenched, too vicious, too there. She will fail. There is no force stronger than destructive inertia.” I give this one an 8/10.

Speech Sounds by Octavia E Butler
I feel like when Adams was putting this collection together, he saved the best stories for last, because this one is almost perfect. It takes a look at the scenario almost like the Tower of Babel from the Bible, where language fails at the end of the world, so no one knows how to speak properly or really communicate well. Grunts and hand gestures mean different things to different people. There’s no real way to say what is meant. Except for the main character, Rye. She can speak, which is a rare thing and seen as dangerous. It’s something she keeps to herself. The story would be perfect if there weren’t a lag in the later quarter of it. I give this story a 9/10.

The End of the World As We Know It by Dale Bailey
This story is almost meta in the way it calls itself out for being a story about the end of the world. It approaches the topic from the point of view of a lone survivor of some mysterious thing that’s caused everyone to die. He roams the leftover world to find something of a purpose, and it’s just pure desolation. I like this one because it gives a bit of a different perspective on apocalypse stories while still being cliche at places. I give this one a 7/10.

A Song Before Sunset by David Grigg
In the whole collection, no story ever made me close the book and set it aside because of the despair the apocalypse usually brings. Until this one. I would have cried if I’d let myself think about it too much. It follows Parnell, a man who lives by himself in a rundown city. It’s rough, as these stories are, but for Parnell, he tries to hold onto the beautiful things. The books, the art, the music–all past things now essentially obsolete because no one has a need for beauty in a broken, dead world. Parnell finds a way to get into a concert hall where a grand piano is waiting on the stage for him. He used to be a pianist. He trades with a kind of “general store” merchant, the Tumbledown Woman, for tools to repair this piano. And he plays it. There is a huge undercurrent of “what do we do with the beautiful things when the world ends?” running through this, and it is an excellent question. Because there will always be reason to hold on to the beauty, the bits of the past that aren’t useless, not entirely. But there will also be a need for necessity. It becomes a delicate balance of what is needed for survival and what is not. Practicality over frivolity. This story felt the most apocalyptic to me. I give this one a 10/10.

Episode Seven: The Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers by John Langan
The last story in this collection was one of the more interesting stylistically. I’ve never read work by most of the people in this, but I was not prepared for this one. Written entirely in one sentence over the course of forty pages, I was ready to hate this. Episode Seven is about a woman and her best friend running away from a pack of hyenas (maybe hyenas? I don’t think it was fully said they were hyenas, but they were animals like hyenas). These animals are smart and tracking them through all kinds of terrain, and all kinds of metropolitan destruction. There’s an added level of fear for her because she’s also pregnant and nearing the end of her pregnancy. Her best friend, Wayne, somehow knows all the things he has to do in order to help them survive in the busted up world. But there’s something not quite right about him. Something has been off the entire time, but she’s been unable to figure it out. I loved the ending of this story, and by the time I’d reached it, I hadn’t paid too much attention to the punctuation situation. This was a fun thrill ride of a final story, and I think it gets an 8/10.

*******I read the 2015 Titan Books paperback edition*******

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Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Y’all. When I sat myself down to write a blog post for this week, I was not expecting to do another book review so soon, but I need to be an absolute mess about this series. I love Neal Shusterman. 10000000% his storytelling is one of my favorites out there, and this series, hoo buddy. I haven’t enjoyed a series so much since Lord of the Rings (to be fair to the other series out there, I only read it in its entirety probably three or four years ago, so in reality, I’ve read quite a few other series before Lord of the Rings). Anyone who knows me knows that is a ridiculous amount of love, and I to this day annoy my brother with Boromir dying memes. Never forget the ones you love.

Anyway. Yes. The Arc of a Scythe Series. I was recommended this by someone who’s reading opinions I trust, and she did not let me down in the slightest. I want to go on such a ramble about this set of books, but I won’t because I don’t want to spoil it for those who want to read it. As far as modern fiction goes, I am not well informed. I have my collection of books to read and I don’t really deviate much from them. I’ll add classics and sometimes WWII non-fiction and fiction to my shelves, but very rarely do I branch out and get taken in by more recent leaps into the world of reading. I see all kinds of fervor over the Court of Rose and Something Something series on Instagram, but that’s not my cup of coffeecake. I like action driven, over the top dramatic sometimes, and at the end a very emotionally draining book.

This series has everything in it I love about reading. I read the first one, Scythe, back in January and I had to wait until I had my tax refund to get the second and third one. I read them both over the last three days. They’re not small books. They’re hefty enough that they’d hurt if you had one thrown at you. I regret nothing because I haven’t been so happy with a book in so long and I tell you what I need to ramble.

I went into this thinking I knew what was coming and I am very, very happy to say I was incorrect. What I expected happened in maybe two places, but everywhere else, I was not prepared. The level of intrigue, the level of depravity, it is so far beyond a standard YA fiction to me. And maybe I’m not as up on YA fiction as I could be, but one of the things I was concerned about (and my brother said this, too) was how young the protagonists are. The first book centers around Citra and Roman, two teenagers plucked from their lives to begin training with the ever mysterious group of people called Scythes. See, in this future world, no one dies. The omnipresent being called the Thunderhead has eradicated disease and misery in most forms. People are ageless, and so in order to maintain some semblance of balance (or population control as it’s referred to a few times), the Scythes were created. They are the ones who choose who dies, and they’re beholden to their own set of laws or commandments. The Thunderhead controls the general population, but it cannot have any bearing whatsoever on the world of Scythes. They govern themselves. People are either fearful or indifferent to the Scythes. Most go about their lives not really caring about death until they see a Scythe, and then it all gets real. To be selected for an apprenticeship is no light thing. Once one is chosen to become a harbinger of death, normal life is upended. Family no longer knows how to treat you. People bend over backwards to accommodate a Scythe, often giving them free access to things since they don’t make any money doing what they do. And while people die frequently (there are people who die for fun just to be revived at a revival center. The morbidity of this whole idea of death is so deep it’s mind blowing), no one stays dead. Unless a Scythe gleans a person selected for death, that person is dead. They can’t be taken to a revival center and be brought back from “deadish.” I’d go into more detail, but I really want people to read these books, so I’m going to leave it there.

The first book sets the scene so dang perfectly for the following books. While the two main protagonists are indeed teenagers, they are not left to fend for themselves, and often are in the presence of their mentors, or other fully instated Scythes. Of course, there are a few “save the world” challenges they face, but in the end, the teens work with the adults to accomplish what they must. They’re less burdened with the pressure and it’s kind of spread across the few good people remaining. There’s the standard bad guy who corrupts the meaning of good to fit his narrative, there are religious zealots who cause unmentionable suffering. There’s moments of levity and love. It’s intense in its drive to find the truth in all things, and when the secrets are finally revealed, I admit I held the book high as I screamed in delight.

I will probably read this again at some point, because it’s that good to me, but I will lament I can’t read it for the first time again. It’s a series I will recommend highly to anyone who enjoys reading.

I give all three of these books, individually and together, a 10/10. I’d go higher if I could.

*******I read the 2017, 2019, and 2020 Simon and Schuster Paperback editions*******

Salisbury.Fake book review

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

Let me begin this by saying I’m someone who prefers books over visual adaptations of those books. I say this because I think this is one of the rare times I prefer the show over the book. I feel blasphemous saying so, but hear me out. I’ve not played the games or seen a playthrough of those games, so I can only compare the book to the show (I’ve heard it said that the games follow the books more closely). While all of this sounds as though I’m about to take a dump on this book, I’m not. I’m going to try and look at the book as a separate being from the show and discuss my feelings on it.

I don’t think it’s bad. Let’s get that out of the way first, here. It’s not a bad story being told. For me, the disconnect comes from the writing style. It’s not that I think Mr. Sapkowski can’t write, he can, it’s just a different style than I am used to. With that in mind, I read through this book in the space of about two days (because I had to work, yo), and I appreciated the quickness of the read. There were several spots where it fell very flat, however, and it felt, as one of my friends said, like we were waiting with the characters for something to happen. Part of me wonders if that’s because we lost something in the translation (originally written in Polish), but I know nothing about the original language, so I don’t even want to speculate further. I didn’t approach this as something that would blow my book lovin’ mind, but I did expect a little more than what I got.

This is the introduction to Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde, or simply “Geralt of Rivia.” He’s a witcher, a mutated not quite sorcerer, not really human anymore, not really anything but a badass of fighting skill and ability to take down the world’s scary things that go “oof” in the night. Witchers are rare. They’re a dying breed (?) because the lore used to create them has been lost over the centuries. They’re pretty cool characters, and one thing I appreciate in the book is how there are other witchers. Geralt is not the only one. In the show (shhh, I know I said I wouldn’t), Geralt is presented as one of the last of his kind. That’s true still for the books, but there are at least five in the books (that I remember at the moment, but I started reading them out of order, so I got ahead of myself… It’s high school and Harry Potter all over again). So Geralt isn’t the last surviving hope for humanity.

In the first book, it’s mainly set up for the characters who come later. There’s some oddly sprinkled in fairy tale references that kind of made me feel weird after their appearance. I’m not 100% sure on the effectiveness of trying to link those to this world, because it kind of took me out of what I was reading. We meet Dandelion, Geralt’s bard friend, Yennefer, the love interest (or is she?), a priestess named Nenneke, who I was pretty fond of although I’m not sure of how much of her we’ll see later on in the story. Mousesack, the sorcerer to Queen Calanthe (who is absolutely a badass woman and I loved her so much). Pavetta and Duny, the two deeply in love people who first bring up the Law of Surprise (a thing which becomes important later).

The Law of Surprise is something I don’t fully understand. In the show, it’s very briefly touched on in the episode where Geralt defends Duny and Pavetta’s relationship against Calanthe’s sketchy underhandedness. As I understand it, from the book, basically what you don’t know you have waiting at home is now the thing the person who helped you receives as payment for that assistance? It seems to be used mostly when lives are saved. Which is useful. But another way the book and the show deviate is Geralt knows Pavetta’s pregnant in the book. On the show, it’s truly a surprise, which then makes it a bit touchy later on when certain events happen.

I’m a fan of the show because the story is told in a way that moves itself along and is faster paced. Plus, Henry Cavill is Geralt, and I don’t know that I’d want to see anyone else in that role. Not because I have a healthy (shut up it is) appreciation for the man, but Geralt isn’t a flashy character. He’s very reserved, and he’s very observant. He’s doing his best with the job he’s been given, and the world just seems to get in the way because people aren’t very keen on difference. The parts of the book within the show are done very well and stay true to the story Sapkowski is telling. It’s rare to me to see something so close to the source material. Though these days, Netflix starts out strong with their adaptations.

I’ve reached the point where I’m rambling, so I will go ahead and close this out by saying I don’t regret reading this, but I’m not in a hurry to read the second one.

I give this book a 7/10.

*******I read the 2017 First Trade Paperback Edition*******