Book Review

Book Review: ZERO DAYS by Ruth Ware

| Jessica Crawford

The comps for this book to The Fugitive crossed with Mr. and Mrs. Smith are spot on.

Jack and Gabe are a married couple of pen testers who work as a team when companies hire them to test their organizations for any weaknesses in security. When Gabe winds up murdered, suspicion automatically falls on his spouse, and Jack finds herself Suspect Number One. While the police are focusing their efforts on her, if Jack wants to figure out who is actually responsible for her husband’s death, she’s going to have to go on the lam and do some investigating of her own. On the run from the police and with few resources at her disposal besides a particular set of skills, Jack must try to uncover what her husband may have gotten mixed up in…and what it might mean for her.

As propulsive as this story was, it is far from Ware’s best work in my opinion (I am still waiting for another The Death of Mrs. Westaway!) The writing here seemed very plain and uninspired, making it a bit boring to work through at times. The dialogue was often overly simplistic, kind of silly, or straight up unbelievable, like when police officers discuss very pertinent details of a case in the corridor just outside the room where they have been questioning a person of interest, where they are easily overheard. Jack is alternately described as making herculean efforts to hold back tears at inopportune times and wondering if there is something wrong with her for not having cried yet–we are told how broken she is by the turn of events, but I never really felt that was the case. And I guessed the baddie the moment they were very first introduced in the story.

Things did pick up in the second half of the book, and it kept me flipping pages like a good thriller should. By then I was engaged by the balanced mix of mystery and tension. Overall I’d say this was a 3 star read for me.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Book Review: REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt

| Jessica Crawford

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is heartwarming literary fiction about the relationships that sustain us throughout the course of life.

POV alternates among three characters:

  1. 👵 Tova Sullivan, an elderly widowed Swedish immigrant whose son drowned in the sea under mysterious circumstances when he was 18 years old, and who works cleaning at the Sowell Bay Aquarium because she feels the need to keep busy even if she doesn’t need the money
  2. 🤷‍♂️ Cameron Cassmore, a highly intelligent yet deadbeat 30 year old whose search for a means to pull himself up out of the rut of his life leads him to Sowell Bay, Washington

and

  1. 🐙Marcellus, a(n even more?) highly intelligent Giant Pacific Octopus who resents being captive at the aquarium and who just can’t even with humans anymore

The relationships that develop among these characters are quite touching. Family and growing old are themes throughout the book.

The parents will grow old atop this mountain of a family they’ve built, and even if parts of it crumble from time to time, there will be enough left to support them.

The characters that comprise the Knit-Wits, the groups of septuagenarians who get together for regularly scheduled lunches, were each so realistic—I could picture people from my real life who matched each of them almost to a T.

Overall this is a sad but ultimately heartwarming tale, and it gets bonus points for naming a secondary octopus Pippa the Grippa!

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Book Review: NETTLE & BONE by T. Kingfisher

| Jessica Crawford

Nettle & Bone is fantasy from T. Kingfisher, and it’s lovely! There’s a good deal here that is more original than your standard fantasy fare these days.

Marra wants to protect her sister, even if that means killing a king. She isn’t some chosen one with supercharged powers, just a concerned relative and almost-nun who can embroider a mean stitch. It’s her determination that sees her completing unpleasant and even “impossible” tasks in order to recruit allies that can help her with her Quest.

The resulting fellowship is just plain wonderful: a wicked fairy godmother who enjoys gardening and animal husbandry, and who chooses blessings over curses; a warrior enslaved in the goblin market; a dust-wife who can communicate with the dead and who is accompanied by a hen possessed by a demon; and one Very Good Boy resurrected from bones. They must deal with a sorceress cursed with immortality and a catacomb filled with the royal dead, among other things.

And it’s FUNNY! If you like humorous cozy fantasy that still has high stakes, you should give this book a try.

How far would you be willing to go in the name of protecting your loved ones? And, perhaps more importantly, are you for or against demon chicken?

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Book Review: THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA by Ray Nayler

| Jessica Crawford

🐙 Come for the octopuses, stay for the story about communion, consciousness, and control!

The Mountain in the Sea is science fiction set in a near future when many industries are fully automated with AI. The Con Dao archipelago of Vietnam is a wildlife sanctuary for many species, including octopuses so intelligent they just might rivals humans. A tech corporation with a vested interest in seeing what can be learned from these animals has sent in researchers and sealed the area off, protecting it by deadly means if necessary.

The characters that this book primarily follows are:

Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist who struggles with the indifference people feel for the things that don’t personally affect them, and who learns the importance of connection, making oneself understood, and striving to understand others even if it doesn’t mean always agreeing with each other.

Rustem, a Tartar hacking genius who may have gotten involved in something bigger than he realized.

Eiko, a young Japanese man enslaved on an automated fishing rig.

Other characters include a badass mercenary security specialist from a nunnery, a scientist seeking mastery of creating consciousness in an attempt to fend off her own loneliness, and an android whose very existence puts them at risk from those who feel threatened by the idea of a nonhuman mind. Some of the verbal exchanges between the android and the security agent were a joy, very funny!

The octopuses feature a lot less in this book than I thought they would – I mean, a good portion of it is ABOUT the octopuses, but they actually only show up in a handful of scenes. It’s more about the people studying them, and how the world both exist in has been shaped by conscious ingenuity and all the good and bad it creates.

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Book Review: WITCH KING by Martha Wells

| Jessica Crawford

I was very excited to dive into this new fantasy novel from the creator of Murderbot, Witch King by Martha Wells! It comes complete with map, dramatis personae, and a gorgeous color palette.

Kai is a demon prince of the underearth. The book opens with him coming to, looking down at the corpse of his most recent host body in a glass coffin, and realizing he must have been murdered and then his consciousness trapped by magical means inside the tomb, preventing him from taking up residence another body. Lucky for him, a mage foolish enough to think he could control Kai and bind him as a familiar just unwittingly sprung him from his prison. Now Kai and his ride or die Zeide, who was also imprisoned, are on a mission to discover who betrayed them, and why.

This book presents alternating timelines. After a few chapters detailing this quest, there will be a chapter explaining Kai’s past, beginning more than a mortal lifetime ago: Kai as a young demon new to the mortal world, when a treaty between the underearth and a nomadic grassland peoples had resulted in the bodies of the latter’s dead being honored by hosting a demon, who will then briefly have access to the deceased’s mind and be able to share their final thoughts; Kai as a captive of the Hierarchs, a powerful civilization that came from the south and wiped out all societies in their path; Kai meeting the Witch Zeide, the Imortal Marshall Tahren, and the Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik when the conquered peoples planned to rise up in rebellion against the Hierarchs and in hopes of ushering in a new world order. Along the way the reader is treated to plenty of action, adventure, and found family.

“How did it come to this, Kai? I remember how we started. Now you’re all razor blades and I’m an angry shrew.”

“No…You’re righteously furious. You’ve always had the high ground, Zeide…You’re right about me and the razors, though.” Most of the time he felt like he was made of razors, bleeding from the inside.

“I’ve always loved your razors, Kai. They’ve cut us out of a number of tangles. But it would be good if one day you could stop bleeding.”

There were many lovely characters and sentiments in this story. However, as much as I liked the world, the worldbuilding was rather complex and dense. There were also so many descriptions of what people were wearing, all the time. Descriptions of locations left me feeling a bit lost, as did the particulars of the different magic systems.

I liked Kai, but I’m a sucker for antiheroes and morally gray characters, and while even though Kai possesses (ha, a little demon humor there) some badass abilities, he is 100% teddy bear. Which will probably make him more sympathetic to some readers, just not as spicy. He is amusing at times, though!

“…why shouldn’t I sit next to a demon?” He turned to Kai. “Will I die if I touch you?”

“No,” Kai said, eyeing him. He seemed utterly sincere. “But don’t touch me.”

As much as I thought I was liking the story, I did find I had to keeping talking myself into picking it back up, so clearly I wasn’t 100% engaged. Then the final resolution of the “current day” timeline felt kind of anticlimactic. The things I mention here stopped me from loving this book, but I certainly still appreciated many things about it.

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Book Review: LEECH by Hiron Ennes

| Jessica Crawford

Leech by Hiron Ennes is Gothic horror set in a post-apocalyptic future. After climate disaster and the backfiring of man-made technology drove people underground, they finally resurfaced when it was safe(ish) and rebuilt, reclaiming some of the knowledge that was lost through records that were spared.

The main character is actually a gestalt intelligence formed by a parasite that takes control of the human hosts it infects. It hoards the world’s recovered medical knowledge for job security, in order to stay relevant and needed by humanity, and to maintain its evolutionary niche.

While working as a doctor for the draconian baron in the frozen wilds of the North (stalked by beings with unknown origins, but plenty of mythological possible origin stories), they discover a new (probably ancient but newly resurfaced) parasite that threatens everything.

The world-building here is truly impressive!

Of course the baron lives in a crumbling chateau and his family is comprised of a strange cast of characters (and ghosts?). Consent and bodily autonomy are big players in the story that unfolds.

Not for the faint of heart, this tale is creative, creepy, and really quite wonderful! I can’t wait to see what this author does next.

Between this book, Mexican Gothic, and What Moves the Dead, I’ve learned that apparently parasite horror is my jam!

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Book Review: THISTLEFOOT by GennaRose Nethercott

| Jessica Crawford

“What happens when the walls we raise outlive the dangers they were built to keep out? At what point does a fort become a cage?”

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott is a colorful adventure steeped in Eastern European folklore. It takes place in the current day U.S., and some magical elements borne of momentous events from long ago have left marks so profound they have been passed down through generations of the Yaga family.

“Lies? Of course, lies. But what is a lie if not a story? And ah, what power a story has when whispered into the ear of a man with a gun.”

A family of puppeteers and their newly inherited house on chicken legs are running from the Longshadow Man. But who/what/when is the Longshadow Man?

“We know plenty about what he isn’t,” Rummy offered with forced optimism.

“He’s not a jelly doughnut,” Sparrow contributed.

In essence the story is about bearing witness to past injustices that have taken on a life of their own and haunt the world still.

“A mob has no ears to call to, only a single mouth, yelling. A mob has no hands to hold, only a single finger, pointing. A mob has no head, only a single body, guideless, acting as it will.”

There a several interesting characters filling this tale, with nice LGBTIA+ representation, and a story as fun as it is meaningful. The prose is rather gorgeous. Thistlefoot was born to run, but catching hold of it will be well worth your while!

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Book Review: THE GOLDEN SPOON by Jessa Maxwell

| Jessica Crawford

I’ve recently taken to listening to podcasts about books and reading, and a couple of them mentioned this gem. The problem with this situation is that the podcasts get me excited for new releases, and I have to either take my place on a long holds list through the library, or fork over the money to buy it—the takeaway being that my wallet has become MUCH lighter lately! But in this instance, I was good and waited for my turn with a library copy. Then promptly devoured it in next to no time at all!

The description of this mystery as a combination of Clue and The Great British Bake Off is an apt one! A popular baking competition reality TV show is filmed at the host, Betsy Martin’s, estate. Over the course of a week, contestants vie for the coveted Golden Spoon through a series of baking contests. But things are not going great for Season Ten, as an unwanted cohost has been foisted upon America’s Grandmother, and someone seems to be sabotaging the competition. First a contestant’s salt gets swapped with their sugar, but we know things are going to escalate quickly, as the prologue shows us Betsy discovering a dead body on set.

There was another family saga-type historical mystery with a Gothic vibe going on that I really dug. Many of the characters were a joy, even if I wasn’t 100% buying the characterization for some of them (looking at you, Hannah). There were some plot points I found a bit questionable, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of this read, and consuming almost all of it in a single sitting (much like I do with baked goods). Brava!

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Book Review: A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES by T. Kingfisher

| Jessica Crawford

It’s official: T. Kingfisher is now an autobuy author for me!

I adored the novella retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” that was What Moves the Dead, in all of its parasitic fungal glory; I greatly enjoyed Nettle & Bone, the rather original fantasy about a woman who aims to save her sister, relying on nothing more than sheer determination and her ability to gather a colorful fellowship to help her along the way. Now this Southern Gothic horror has clinched it for me. Take my money, Ms. Kingfisher!

A House with Good Bones follows Sam, an archaeoentomologist from Arizona, who goes to visit her mother in North Carolina in the house inherited from her real character of a grandmother. She is concerned because her mother has made some inexplicable changes to the house and is acting paranoid, as if someone is always listening. Plus there’s the committee of vultures (yes, that is the real term for it!) perched outside the house, watching. The handyman who takes care of her mother’s yardwork is a bit of a snack, but there’s something not quite right with the roses in the garden…

This book was so perfectly spooky with really wonderful characters (both the good and the bad), and it doesn’t hurt that the author and I clearly share some of the same social values. Not to mention I have a degree in anthropology, and so all of the archaeology bits were totally my jam. And the narration is very amusing! What’s not to love?

You have to drink a lot of coffee to cross Texas, but there are not rest stops nearly as often as there should be. Somewhere in West Texas, at the bottom of an off-ramp, a coyote is probably still wondering who left the strange mark in his territory.

Also, psychopomp is officially the word of the month, and the 1994 movie The Crow is the movie of the month, because both have come up in my reading/listening multiple times over the past few weeks (although it did hurt me when the 32 year old main character had never heard of The Crow…).

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