A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Jay Porter, a struggling Black lawyer with a criminal record, takes his eight-month pregnant wife out for a romantic birthday dinner on a boat when they hear gunshots and a splash. He jumps into the dark water and rescues a white woman from drowning, an act of heroism which he comes to regret greatly when he learns of a white man who was shot to death that night...

Black Water Rising is an ambitious, complex first novel. There's a parallel plotline about Jay's past as an activist in the 1960s, in which he has an affair with a white woman, Cynthia, and ends up framed for inciting a riot. In the present day (1981 Houston), Cynthia is the mayor, and Jay's deeply traumatized and while justifiably paranoid, his refusal to get emotionally close or open up about his past is damaging his relationship with his eight-month-pregnant wife who's too good for him.

Jay's father-in-law is involved with strike negotiations involving a historically Black and historically white union which have recently joined together, and Jay gets involved in that when a Black union member gets beaten up by white union members.

Jay starts secretly investigating the shooting of the white man, which he thinks was done by the woman he saved from drowning.

He also has an actual caseload of low-level clients. I was convinced almost until the end of the book that the client that Jay always calling "the hooker" and ignoring was going to be a "you shouldn't just dismiss people" thing and she would be relevant to the main story, especially since she was claiming to have given a guy a blow job while he was driving and the murder victim was found in the driver's seat with his pants down. She was not relevant at all and her story ended limply. This was unfortunate as the storyline I was most interested in was "Jay Porter, struggling Black lawyer," and that was the storyline Attica Locke was least interested in.

There's also a plotline about oil, because this is 1981 Houston.

This is a lot and it felt like it. The opening scene is fantastic, as are several other individual scenes, Locke's prose is excellent, and the social commentary is dead-on. But the book as a whole felt slow and overstuffed, and while the storylines did come together reasonably well, they came together in an anticlimactic manner. I was really invested in Jay's relationship with his wife, and by the end of the book, I didn't feel like I knew whether things had improved between them or were basically the same. The ending felt like "...that's it?"

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Ambitious, weird, metafictional horror-fantasy set in a magical city where all but three faeries have fled post-war. It’s now occupied by tightropers who spit out ropes and live in the air, and gnomes who live belowground. Faeries are immortal and every part of their body has its own sentience; they shed glitter constantly and each speck of glitter has its own awareness, which they tune out because otherwise they’d lose their minds. They are not considered dead until there is literally nothing of them left, so the heroine carries her father’s ear and eyeball in a jar; it presumably is still able to see and hear, though not speak. Pre-war, faeries had a wary co-existence with the gnomes, which eat faeries, usually bit by bit. Each eaten limb stays aware until digested. I think. It’s a little unclear what you have to do to a faerie part before it ceases to be aware.

And that is just one of the many, many, many things which are unclear in this odd, frustrating book. The ideas are intriguing, original, and horrific; the execution often uses that maddening trick of excusing its flaws by pointing them out and saying that they’re deliberate. The plot makes no sense? Well, real life often makes no sense. The emotions are weirdly distanced? The narrator is traumatized and emotionally numb. Key incidents are incredibly confusing or elided altogether? The narrator is traumatized and doesn’t want to think about them. Basic facts like how the body part sentience is actually experienced, how big faeries and gnomes are relative to each other (the gnomes can eat a faerie in one bite, but can also have normal-sounding sex with them), what the tightropers look like, the characterization and relationships of major characters, how any race survives when almost all females are killed by the act of giving birth to their first child, etc, are vague or confusing or contradictory or make no sense? It’s because the narrator is a traumatized teenager writing about experiences they don’t understand or can’t face, not a professional writer.

Here’s an example:

Once upon a time there was a writer who couldn't write a fucking book.

I don't know what comes next. That whole chapter's going to need to get thrown out anyway. You completely forgot halfway through that you'd said it was raining at the beginning.

Was it raining?

No one's ever going to know and it's all your fault.

Put a fucking map in the next draft.

The novel held my attention and is certainly plenty weird and ambitious, but using “in real life a traumatized teenager would write an incoherent mess of a book” as excuse to write an incoherent mess of a book did not work for me. The novel was too realistic to work as surrealism, too inconsistent to work as fantasy, and the whole “everything makes no sense because the narrator is a traumatized teenager” device didn’t work for me. These are the exact same problems I had with Moskowiz’s other novel I read, Break, so this is clearly her signature style and I’m just not her audience.

The worldbuilding is really interesting, which made it all the more frustrating that it had so little focus and what we did get didn’t make much sense. However, the novel also does some unusual (spoilery) things with narrative and metafiction, so if you like that sort of thing and don’t mind the issues I had with it, it’s worth a try. The horror is more conceptual than graphic, but dismemberment is crucial to the plot. (One of the things I found most frustrating was that I was really intrigued by the concept of having scattered awareness via shed glitter, eaten body parts, clipped hair, etc, but because the characters tune this out, you rarely get a sense of what that actually feels like.) Note that it contains underage (late teens, not children, but still) sex work (not graphic, but still).

A History of Glitter and Blood

This book is so crazily, beautifully, awesomely bad that it was reviewed as a birthday present for me by two different friends, without either knowing what the other had planned. It’s so awesomely bad that it comes out the other side and becomes almost good. I certainly enjoyed reading it, and frequently laughed aloud.

(Reviews by Coraa, Octopedingenue, and Rushthatspeaks.)

Remarkably, despite having read three extremely detailed reviews of it, I was still completely boggled and amused by reading the book itself, which, despite being a very short, quick read, still contained tons of WTF that none of the other reviews touched upon. All else aside, you have to read the whole thing to get the hilarious number of times that the hero reminds us that he has HOOKS FOR HANDS.

This is a YA retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” in which Beauty is gorgeous, perfect, loving, kind, empathic, (though not smart) teenager Aurora Belle, and the Beast is Lucius Wolfe, a bright, angry, alienated teenager who accidentally blew off both his hands while mixing up chemicals (three guesses what he was trying to make) and now has HOOKS FOR HANDS.

Before I continue, I want to note that I am not mocking actual amputees. I am mocking this author’s depiction of the angst of HOOKS FOR HANDS.

I am dubious about retellings of “Beauty and the Beast” in which beastliness is a disability. It probably could be done well, but it strikes me as a bit inherently sketchy. (My favorite retellings are the very traditional but beautifully done Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
by Robin McKinley, and Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Borders of Infinity,” in which the Beast is a female genetically engineered super-soldier, and Beauty is a disabled soldier who isn’t actually good-looking. (The latter is in Miles Errant (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures))

One of the things which makes this book especially fascinating is that the author has some skills, and is, at times, funny on purpose. That made me spend the entire first third wondering if the entire thing was supposed to be funny, and if everyone was misreading what was actually a brilliant comedy parodying angsty teen romance. I… don’t think so?

It’s understandable that a teenage boy who blew off his hands only a few months ago and now has HOOKS FOR HANDS would be obsessed with having HOOKS FOR HANDS. But the sheer number of times which he mentions his HOOKS FOR HANDS – generally at least once per page, and often two to ten times per page – makes it into a running joke impossible to take seriously, no matter how carefully the author drops earnest paragraphs educating us on prosthetic limbs via Aurora Belle’s sympathetic googling.

Speaking of googling, one of the accidentally hilarious running themes was the total information vacuum the characters all live in. Lucius calls Johnny Cash “Johnny Crash,” has not only never heard of the play or movie Grease but spends some time pondering the nature of a movie about “rendered animal fat,” and, in one of my favorite moments in the entire book, has to google the mysterious, arcane, exotic term "football."

Here are some actual quotes regarding HOOKS FOR HANDS.

( I finish loading the dryer, hookload by hookload, use my hook to set the dial at seventy minutes, use my hook to depress the button. )

Oh, wait. I have to share one more quote. This is Aurora Belle explaining how soundly she has always slept: …it was like trying to diaper a dead baby.

In a weird way… I kind of recommend this book. It has more WTF per page than almost anything I’ve ever read, and I have to tip my hat to that.

Crazy Beautiful

A classic epic fantasy with some excellent worldbuilding, striking art, and even more excellent crack, but characters whom I never quite warmed up to.

What was once one united vaguely medievaloid fantasy European kingdom split into three warring kingdoms long ago. In yet another war, both king and crown prince of one kingdom were killed, leaving no one to rule but bookish, war-hating, 13-year-old Prince Asta. Since he doesn’t want to rule and nobody else wants him to rule either, a contest is held to find the possibly mythical Key To The Kingdom.

Asta is one of the contenders. I forget why exactly. He’s accompanied by warrior “Badd” Baddorius, a heroic lecher. Leticia, an aristocrat girl Asta’s age, also sets out, as do Prince Fairheart (yes, really) and several people who will later prove unimportant.

It becomes apparent by the end of the first volume that the true history of the land, which involves dragons and dragon-tamers, is both key to the quest and much more complicated than everyone thinks. The unraveling of this is by far the most interesting part of the story, and one I won’t spoil here.

My big problem with the manga was that I didn’t much like or care about any of the characters. I kept reading because the plot was compelling, but I’m more of a character reader than a plot reader. Though I did enjoy the sorcerer who, since his lower body was burned off by dragons, surgically joined his upper body to an entire giant lizard. He later shows up, after his lizard drops dead, with dog AND dinosaur grafts. There was also this classic speech:

“Look at this... It's [Spoiler A’s] left arm. He cut off his own arm and gave it to me. [Spoiler B]... You have to eat it."

And so the two manga classic tokens of affection, the gift of a body part and “I love you! Here, feast upon my flesh!” are combined.

Key to the Kingdom, The - Volume 1

Note: No disrespect is intended to actual victims of swine flu or other real illnesses. This is about illness as metaphor in fiction.

Thoughts to ponder:

Is there any relationship, either direct or by similarity, between modern hurt-comfort and Victorian fictional illness fetishization?

What is the most current manifestation of illness as metaphor? Do tragically sensitive and artistic characters still always die of heart disease, cancer, leukemia, and/or AIDS, or is there a new preferred disease?

Remember all those YA novels where someone always died of cancer (or occasionally drowning or bee sting) by the end? Are current YA novels less death-laden?

What is the most cracktastic anime/manga/romance illness?

[Poll #1392575]

Oh! THAT arm amputation!

For a character who frequently has people try to rape her (twice in this volume alone) it is surprising how little Lucrezia comes across as a helpless victim.

Cesare rising bare-chested up from the lake totally reminded me of the cover of Soul Song (Dirk & Steele, Book 6)

Alfonso and Sancia are great. And so is Alfonso's little squirrel, too! Actually, it is remarkable how, with the comparatively sensible and rational Alfonso, Sancia, Lucrezia, and Chiaro as major characters, the series manages to achieve the levels of insanity that it does. Cesare, his mad retainer Volpe, and all the demons of Hell exert a powerful counter-rational force.

( I will snuff out your breath with these very hands!!! )

Click here to get it from Amazon: Cantarella Volume 8 (Cantarella (Graphic Novel)) (v. 8)

The art is still gorgeous. The incest is still disturbingly hot, and there was a surprise heterosexual and as far as we know now, non-incestuous affair that was both hot and sweet. The plot, which featured an evil hand and crystal wings of demonic D00M, is so deliciously insane that I ended up live-blogging them to oyceter over email.

Click here to buy or feast your eyes on the exquisite cover art: Cantarella Volume 5 (Cantarella (Graphic Novel)) (v. 5)

Cantarella Volume 6 (Cantarella (Graphic Novel)) (v. 6)

( Cesare: (as Volpe attempts to lick the blood off his chest wound) You'll die. My blood is poisonous. [...] Volpe: If that is so, then I have already been violated by the poison that is you. The sweet poison that is you. My life and my death belong to you! )

Yuri Narushima is the mangaka who created Planet Ladder (Volume 1), a fantasy series noted for the extreme complexity of its background-- and by extreme, I mean that two volumes in, there was a diagram of seven planes of existence, their political set-ups, and the ways in which they were related to each other that looked like a circuit board and was just as easily comprehensible-- and the fact that the character with the most poignant and tragic backstory was the spirit of a Japanese engineering student who was swept out of the Earth during WWII, and eventually transplanted into the body of a giant robot chicken.

Planet Ladder, apparently loosely based on a Japanese folk tale, loosely follows a basic quest framework, in which a Japanese girl is swept into a fantasy world because she's the Chosen One who has been prophesied. (For those of you who hate Chosen Ones, note that this is satisfyingly upended later on.) She meets an emotionless constructed boy with a gold hand (I think he has a twin, but I forget the details) and has a femmeslashy relationship with a bad-ass woman named... er... Bambi.

In an interlocking plotline, a young man rules a world which succumbs to a horrifying disease which makes your limbs, including your head, suddenly fall off. He is saved only by being put in total isolation. By the time the heroine meets him, he is so traumatized that he passes out if anyone touches him. His sole companion is the giant robot chicken. This is because a scientist was trying to save the population by transplanting their souls into robots. But before this plan could be launched, almost everyone was dead, with only one robot finished, so the last dying man's soul had to be popped into that one. That prototype robot happened to be a giant chicken. Just go with it.

There's also a complicated cross-dimensional political story which I found almost totally incomprehensible. It did not help that in an early volume, when I was still trying to remember who was who, Tokyopop's handy character guide switched the descriptions of the hero and the villain.

Complete in seven volumes, with a somewhat rushed finale but pleasing conclusion. Dense epic fantasy with angsty men, tough women, and a giant robot chicken -- what's not to love? The art's good too.

Young Magician, The: Volume 1 (Young Magician (DC Comics)) also uses the narrative strategy of dropping the reader directly into the middle of the action and letting us try to put together the sense of the quite complex story as we go along. One does get the sense that there is a coherent story, but the fly-on-the-wall viewpoint makes us work to understand it.

As best as I can figure out, the Guino clan of magicians adopted a traumatized, amnesiac little boy during the Crusades and attempted to teach him magic. The boy, Carno Guino, bonded with another magician, Rosalite, whose body stopped growing when she was a child.

It's now modern times in Hong Kong (the magicians are either near-immortal or operating out of a timeless dimension) and Carlo and Rosalite are trying to stop a magician from another clan who is imitating Jack the Ripper in order to read the future in human entrails.

Insanely complex, with tons of largely-untold backstory. The foreground has an unusual amount of social realism, with a sub-theme about the difficulties of racial minorities in Hong Kong. (One character is a Filipina maid, and another is East Indian/British.) The conclusion alternates rather gory magical battles with lengthy infodumping about the relationship of magic and genetics. The tough-talking Carno is apparently one of two main characters, and the other one doesn't even appear in the first volume.

I await the arrival of some sort of Fowl of D00M.

...I see what you all meant by "And now I will show you my real power!" Gosh there's a lot of that. And then there was Random Villain # Whatever, who, upon getting his arm cut off...

RV#W (clenching shoulder muscles): "Stop the bleeding, and I'll do without an arm! Still... that arm won't come cheap!"

Kiddie Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke (as opposed to kiddie ninja Uchiha "More Special Than You" Sasuke): "He... used his muscles to stop the bleeding!

Yes, Not!More-Special Sasuke, we noticed.

Some of the fights with people whom I couldn't keep straight got a bit tiresome, but I continue to be pleased by the well-paced plot revelations and consistently interesting character development. Plus, it's about a rag-tag group of badass oddballs who mostly stick together because they all think Kyo is Just. So. Cool. What's not to love?

Volume 10 concludes the Aokigahara arc.

( Ha ha ha ha ha! Die, die, DIE!!!!! )

I feel like with this series, one may as well relax and enjoy the utter shounen-ness of it. A few highlights and lowlights:

( Live, Ichigo! Live so I can beat you up!! )