A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Charlie, a low-level BookToker, is invited to join five female influencers on a luxury yacht, where they'll all live together and advertise both the yacht and their own brands. The yacht is semi-beached on a private, uninhabited island. (By semi-beached, I mean it's on giant, semi-movable posts so it's basically dangling above the water like a cocktail sausage on toothpicks.) Charlie, who is mourning the drowning death of her ex-best friend/roommate who wrote a phenomenally best-selling romantasy about sexy mermaids hilariously titled A Song of Scales and Salt, reluctantly accepts. Once she gets on the yacht, she's weirded out by the vaguely cultish vibes and the DROWNED GHOST THAT KEEPS HAUNTING HER, but not enough to leave. Then a storm blows up, they all get trapped on the yacht with their billionaire boss, and someone dies!

This novel has a fun premise and a solid start, but ended up being overly predictable and far too repetitive. The ghost element never felt completely integrated - it felt like two different types of thrillers stuck together. Charlie kept mentally rehashing and rehashing the same points, which was both tedious and made the story even more predictable than it already was.

It was completely obvious that ( Read more... )

I very much enjoyed Schaefer's Trad Wife, which also had issues with repetitiveness early on, but was pure wild fun once the action got going. The Last Time We Drowned is much more conventional, to its detriment. I didn't hate it but it wasn't memorable - something no one will ever say about Trad Wife.

Love the cover.

This big blockbuster climate change novel got an avalanche of reviews calling it a masterpiece. I am baffled. To be fair, I DNF'd pretty early on. On the other hand the parts I did read were the bad version of The Ministry of the Future and grossly male-gazey and objectifying about women, and especially women of color.

I am excerpting portions so you can share the WTF. The first set are from chapter one, from the POV of a male climate scientist. I'm not even excerpting all the sexist and male fantasy parts in that chapter, just the worst ones. I'm using * to separate passages so there won't be huge blocks of text in italics.

* Milling outside a Yale lecture hall years ago Tony found himself unexpectedly talking to a young woman, Black and wide-hipped with round breasts stretching a T-shirt with a picture of Lando Calrissian lying seductively on a bearskin rug. He thought she was gorgeous then and would continue to think that past a decade and two children whose faces grew into hers year by year.

This was the kind of woman you needed when the world was teeming with morons, and you got hate mail for studying the phase transitions of methane hydrates. *

Here he is talking about his DAUGHTER, who he's nicknamed "Khaleesi." (All else aside, about 95% of the pop culture references have aged like milk.)

* And he felt it then again, years later, when a teenage Khaleesi got into a car accident, and the idiot father of the idiot boy she’d been with couldn’t remember the name of the hospital they’d been taken to. He felt it when he saw the Mother of Dragons in a hospital bed with her arm in a sling, dried blood in her kinky red-brown hair, and a couple of nasty black eyes that would set her accelerating beauty back for a few months. *

UGH UGH UGH.

Here's a chapter narrated by a different person. Kate is a sexy politician of the sort white liberal men with unexamined biases love to write. She's hot! She's wild! She's a woman of color (Jamaican grandfather) but it never comes up other than just stating it! She's bisexual and has wild sex with absolutely everyone!

*I’d quickly realized Colter Bay wasn’t exactly awash in attractive women, and our clientele was mostly Asian tourists and the minivan set. Even if we’d been renting canoes strictly to beauties, Kate would have caught anyone’s attention. Tall and athletic, her stride registered in the world. First, I took in her dark skin and huge head of curls. Then, as she got closer, her pretty snub nose, full lips, and a wide, hungry smile. She held out the slip and looked at the three of us like she’d caught us comparing scrotums.*

About two pages later:

*“How about dinner? I’ve been meaning to try that Thai place everyone raves about.”

“Ugh, dinner?” she moaned. “You are going to be a total cornball, aren’t you?”

Before I could fire back, she stopped, grabbed my face, and brought her lips to mine. I wasn’t prepared, and her open mouth locked over my closed one. Then I got with the program, and her tongue corkscrewed through the tunnel of our lips. *


* So much of that summer was learning how to be with her and her blunt, unapologetic approach. She’d lost her virginity at thirteen to a college freshman she picked up in Powell’s Books; when she was nineteen she booked a flight to Honduras, spent a week in a place called the Mosquito Coast by herself hiking and meeting people, and found out only after she got back that the US government had issued a travel warning for drug cartel and kidnapping activity; she had an abortion in college and the nurse invited her to her birthday party. *

BARF. Love the total lack of agency given to the college freshman who RAPED A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD. Oh, but it totally wasn't rape! The thirteen-year-old picked him up!


Here's an in-book news article about her:

* Until six months ago, no one but a handful of infighting climate activists even knew who Kate Morris was. Now she takes fire from all sides. She’s been called, among other things, “a feminist traitor making nice with Trump country,” and “the manic pixie dream girl of global warming.”

[Kate says] “I get it. I get why people look at me like, ‘I’m fucking sick of these whacky socialist bitches trying to take away my hamburger.’ Hell, even I’m sick of Greta! I’m sick of AOC!"

An unbuttoned flannel flaps in the wind. Her skin has the weathered quality of a woman who’s spent a great deal of time in sun and dry air. She never wears makeup. Her curls must require maintenance, though, and her hands never leave them alone, always sweeping, tugging, or corralling.

Since Morris arrived on the scene, the apostasies of A Fierce Blue Fire have stoked controversy: She allies with pro-life groups; she decries antinuclear activists as “climate denialists in their own right”; and she once called President Hogan’s version of the Green New Deal “a five-trillion-dollar healthcare bill with a green coat of paint.” Yet nothing has stirred more outrage than FBF’s strategy of aggressively recruiting, cultivating, and supporting Republican candidates to run primary challenges. Forget about stances on abortion rights, gun control, LGBTQIAA+ issues. All these Republican challengers have to do to access FBF’s money is run campaigns based on “the scientific consensus of anthropogenic climate change” and pledge to vote affirmatively on FBF’s model legislation. *

The white male liberal asshole's wet dream: a fuckable woman who'll solve everything by throwing all those pesky women and minorities under the bus, because obviously that's what you gotta do, while being an every-minority herself (but not in any way that matters) so he can point to her and say it's okay.

I skipped to the end. ( Read more... )

Forgot to mention that the real-life mass murderer of children, Anders Breivik, is elected Norwegian Prime Minister, which is possibly the most offensive thing in the entire book.

Fuck this gross book.

First of all: what the hell is that cover and why does it look like something from a remix of Severance and The Blair Witch Project? What exactly is that one-eyed, four-fingered monstrosity composed of insane scribbles straight out of a 1960s psychology textbook labeled "Drawing by patient in insane asylum," and why is a bulls-eye vomiting fire over her head? Is it meant to be a visual image of how it feels to live in 2026? If so, good job I guess.

I read this (from Netgalley, so I only now saw the cover) because I was looking for a good, easy-read book on climate change/collapse from more of a psychological/philosophical than prepper, science, history, or politics angle, for the shop. (I also read Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World by Kate Schapira, which is a much better book but also not exactly what I was looking for - it's extremely self-help oriented, with specific self-help exercises in each chapter, and geared toward people who have only just started to worry that maybe climate change is serious.) So I am still looking. I know the obvious answer is Rebecca Solnit and I do carry her books but I'd also like something a bit less historical/political-focused. More "how we can live now," less "this is why we're here."

Wilson's thesis is that collapse is inevitable and the apocalypse is already happening, but if we acknowledge and accept that rather than clinging to the hope that a miracle will avert it, we will have mental energy freed up to live our lives in the actual world that we have. Knowing that we did not avert the apocalypse does not mean we should stop fighting, stop creating, or stop living - all those things are still important, or if anything even more important. And who knows? Maybe the world that emerges after the current one will be less cruel and destructive.

I basically agree with all that. So I was initially well-disposed toward the book. BUT.

Mum struggles with what I'm writing about here. One afternoon, when the three of us [her parents and Wilson] were sitting on the verandah having a SAO biscuit and a pear cut three ways, she said, "I don't understand, how can you write and talk about the possible end of the human race and be so... okay?"

I replied: "I think it's because I love and honor the beautiful flow and perfect balance of life more than I value humans. I live for this. It gives me energy."

WHO TALKS LIKE THAT.

This is one of the most self-congratulatory books I have ever read. She literally quotes her editor commenting in the margins about what a brilliant passage she wrote! Her response to climate grief is to do ayahuasca, move to Paris, wail and dance at a cliff for an hour on the daily, and call up Liam Neeson for advice and emotional support! (He is only one of MANY celebrities who are her personal friends, as she reminds us at every opportunity).

It's maddening to hear how sad she feels about climate change from a member of the 1% who will only ever have to feel sad rather than facing any actual consequences, or at worst have her fancy house wrecked and have to crash with Liam Neeson while she selects her next place to jet off to.

I did not realize when I got a copy of this from NetGalley that Wilson is mostly known for I Quit Sugar. She is basically the Tim Ferris of climate grief.

In a small town in northern England, a woman spots a man digging in a graveyard. When she confronts him, he tells her a story about the graveyard, the boy he once was and the man he became, a monster, and a dog...

This slim novella by the "Talking Scared" horror podcaster has the vibe of a much older British horror story, like M. R. James with only the language and the period updated. It's chilling in a quiet and understated manner, and as much about the rewards and costs of responsibility as it is about a monster. It's also a very touching "a boy and his dog" story.

But of course what you want to know is, does the dog die? There are two answers to that. The first answer is yes, of old age after a very long and happy life. The other answer is spoilery for the entire book, and it goes under the cut:

( Read more... )

While I'm at it, let me recommend Neil McRobert's Podcast Talking Scared. He interviews a very wide variety of horror and horror-adjacent authors, and he's extremely good at interviewing. His interviews are fun and insightful and interesting even if you never read the books in question. I particularly enjoy his interviews with Johnny Compton (multiple), Stephen Graham Jones (multiple), Carter Kean, Ally Wilkes (multiple), Natasha Pulley, and Zakiya Delila Harris (my entry drug to the podcast.)

I was excited to read this book. Based on the back cover and the excellently spooky first chapter, I thought it would be a Choctaw horror novel about witches.

It's partly that, the parts being the first and last couple chapters. What's in between is an interminable police procedural about artifacts stolen from a museum, interspersed with lectures about the politics of Native American artifacts. The latter part was pretty interesting, actually. The problem was that the police procedural parts were stultifying, the dialogue was incredibly stilted, and the characters were one-dimensional. They look at surveillance footage where nothing happens for hours, and it felt like the scene was happening in real time. I would have rather read a nonfiction book about artifact politics.

At first glance, Amatka seems like your basic fantasy/science fiction version of a Communist regime: it's cold and gray, everyone is depressed, everything is both scarce and generic, people don't get to choose their wretched jobs, etc.

At second glance, oddities start to seep in. Everything is labeled with its name - suitcases are labeled SUITCASE, houses are labeled HOUSE, etc. People get worried when the labels start to get worn and will quickly replace them with fresh ones. They habitually/ritualistically repeat facts and name things.

That is probably all you should know before you read this book - that, and that it's not just dark, but also very upsetting if you're bothered by things like betrayal, book destruction, and lobotomy used as punishment for non-conformism. It's got intriguing mysteries with interesting solutions, and a a good balance between giving us enough of an explanation to be satisfying while still leaving some things up to our imagination. At points it reminded me of Kafka and at others of Jeff Vandermeer. It's cold and chilly and intellectual, and either that is your jam or it is very much not.

( Read more... )

The title is a pun; it's about the Gold family, but also about a very strange treasure hunt for gold.

Weer's present and past are increasingly confused and flowing into each other; he often appears in scenes from his past as if he's inhabiting his younger body, remarking on his stroke and so forth. He did this earlier at times, but only when he was explicitly imagining his present self into past times. Now it's frequent and unmarked.

This chapter was great - beautifully written, unexpected, sometimes funny, and just full of holy shit moments, not to mention several bits that literally made the hairs at the back of my neck stand up. I'm putting everything behind a cut. Please don't spoil me for the final chapter, as I haven't read it yet.

( Read more... )

I very rarely walk out of movies I'm watching in the theatre. In fact, this is so rare that I can tell you the last one I walked out of. It was about thirty years ago and it was Things to do in Denver When You're Dead, a dark comedy gangster movie that both failed to be funny and had all the gangsters talking in incomprehensible made-up slang. This is the point where me and my friend walked out. It's been thirty years and this is from memory, so this will a representation of how it felt listening to this rather than exactly correct.

The gangsters are meeting. Gangster # 1: "They say Jimmy Womp Womp bought boat drinks."

The gangsters react: this is big news! Gangster # 2: "And I hear Tony the Gecko is painting a purple rainbow."

The gangsters react: this is also big news. Gangster # 1: "So we all know what this means."

Gangsters: "Mmm-hmm, yep, yep, yes we do."

Me (whispers to friend): "I don't know what this means!"

Gangster # 3: "Let's tarantula."

At that point we walked out.

I went to see Her Private Hell with a friend, not knowing anything about it other than that it was an indie horror movie. She'd bought two tickets but the person she was supposed to go with couldn't make it, so this was very last minute.

I was surprised when it opened with a giant demon head on top of a futuristic cityscape buried in clouds, as I had assumed it would be contemporary. Nope, science fiction. A group of women and one man are shooting a movie in a giant tower in the futuristic cloud city. It seems like the clouds are dangerous though it's not explained why.

The costumes and makeup are gorgeous. But the dialogue is bizarrely stilted and it's incredibly hard to follow what's going on. The characters kind of drift around the tower, making portentous, meaningless statements. One of the actresses is the daughter of the man, and another is his wife. There are two Asian costumers - everyone else is white - who undulate and make faces in a way that felt very racist in a way that's familiar if you've seen very old racist movies. This goes on for what feels like forever.

Then we get a loooooong scene that I think is the movie they're shooting which is based on a comic book called "Candyfloss." A woman in a Star Trek type uniform goes through hyperspace, which is a series of circles, for what felt like ten minutes. Then she lands and everyone else onboard, who are all women in Star Trek type uniforms and white go-go boots, start shooting at her with laser rifles - I have no idea what. This goes on for basically forever.

Then it cuts back to the tower, and we FINALLY get some horror. Two of the women see another woman in a tower across from them! A demon attacks her and either rips her in half or makes her explode!

Then we're back to drifting portentously around the tower. One of the women, still in the Star Trek outfit and on the Star Trek set, delivers a portentous monologue, periodically dropping to the floor and writhing around, which I assumed was part of the movie but it vaguely involves the demon murder so maybe not? No one seems at all bothered by or interested in the demon murder.

The man leaves his daughter a golden hatchet and a note saying "Let's bury the hatchet." She portentously flicks a lighter that I think was his.

We then cut to a dude who I guess is supposed to be her father as a young man, because he has the lighter, in some Japanese city straight out of every racist movie ever about Japan. He portentously flicks the lighter, which is given a very loud sound effect. At about the fifteenth portentous lighter flick, I lost it. I burst into an extremely loud cackle of laughter.

I should mention that there were only five people in the theatre, on a Friday night: Me and my friend, a couple, and a guy alone. Also, that the sound design alternated an incredibly bombastic and sappy score, extremely loud sound effects, and utter silence. Needless to say, I started cackling during the utter silence part. About the next fifteen minutes of the movie went like this:

Lighter flicks: SNAP!

Me: BWA HA HA HA HA HA!

[repeat about twelve times]

The white dude with the lighter slaughters multiple Japanese people who are keeping sex slaves maybe? Then he's stripped and fetishistically whipped with a belt by a Japanese cop.

I should mention that the whole movie was shot very fetishistically. Everything was extremely sexually charged without actually being hot.

We then cut back to the tower. The three main actresses are sitting around, then start barking like dogs. This goes on and on and ON.

At this point, we left. Outside, we sat down on the steps to figure out WTF was with that movie. We watched the trailer, which cleverly cut together lines and scenes to make it look like it was actually about the demon murder. My friend theorized that it was based on a video game and would make sense if you'd watched the game, but it turns out it was an original screenplay.

While we were doing this, the theatre door opened and the other couple walked out.

During the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, one girl in a school never showed up for class one day, and never returned again. Years later, as adults, her former classmates still think and dream and talk about her. She and a friend exchanged letters even though they also saw each other in class every day. A boy had a crush on her, and maybe she had a crush on him too. A friend came to her house to play "Space Invaders," and her father showed them his prosthetic hand. A bodyguard began to drive her to school. Her classmates went to a protest. And then she was gone. Memories, dreams, letters, and imagery intertwine, then twist into a knot that can never be undone.

A perfect little book, incredibly sharp and precise despite being largely about dreams and uncertain memories. There's not a single wasted word; I think the translation must be excellent. I read it with gathering dread, as if I was in the sort of nightmare where nothing overtly violent is happening but but you somehow know that something will appear at any moment, something so terrifying that just seeing it will destroy you. Which is probably what it felt like to be a child during the Pinochet regime.

I was right to read the book with dread, though what happened to the missing classmate is less predictable than what I'd assumed. It's a very quick read but one which sticks in your memory and haunts you. It was recommended to me by my friend/occasional employee Ana, who is from Chile. I recommend it to you.

As per usual for Jo Walton, this is an irresistibly readable novel with great characters and a truly peculiar premise.

The Serenissima is a magical echo of Venice which is also a sort of interdimensional space port, home to people from eight (or possibly nine) planets, including Earth. Humans are called Venetians, as the Serenissima is also a gateway to Venice at different time periods. (The Serenissima is publicly known on all planets except Earth, where it's a secret known only to the Venetians who are humans living in Venice.) It's a city without sunlight, permanently cloaked in mist, beset by plagues, where magic is real and anything enough people believe in becomes reality.

All the people living there have human bodies and different heads - cat heads, dog heads, heads with garlands of living flowers, etc - so that if they visit Venice, Venetians will know them for what they are but tourists will assume they're wearing masks. They have somewhat different biology from humans and very different cultures.

Each chapter is narrated on a different character, one from each planet, each with their own concerns. It took me quite a while to figure out what the plot even was, but I didn't care at all as the Serenissima is fascinating, the different cultures are fascinating, and I was happy to just hang out there indefinitely.

It's beautifully written and very immersive, strange enough to be fun in a science fictional way but also magical-feeling, and also very human and relatable. There's political intrigue, struggles for survival, love affairs, and even a couple of plot twists. The plagues are very reminiscent of the landscape of AIDS right after the first wave of life-preserving drugs came out, too late for many but just in time for some. It's small-scale, with the main event that the plot revolves around something whose significance isn't entirely clear; of Walton's work, it reminded me most of Lifelode. In terms of other books it reminded me of, it does have slightly Piranesi-esque vibes.

I really loved it. It's easier to experience than to describe.