A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Jennifer thinks she hates Brooklyn, until her mother suggests she go to Prospect Park. There she meets Mike, a neighborhood boy, and makes her first friend. She and Mike discover that Prospect Park is full of magic, from a mysterious man who likes to feed the birds to a disappearing tree.

I'd never read this book before, and it's one of Chew's best. She's wonderful at hitting on childhood "what if" fantasies, like "What if I could travel underground and see tree roots from underneath and pet moles in their burrows?" There's also a hilarious plotline in which Mike gets turned into a pigeon and he and Jennifer have a lot of awkward conversations with birds. The bird-feeding man's identity was unexpected and very numinous. And it all feels more real for being set in a city where you have to watch out for broken glass and bicycle thieves.

I report with sorrow that I have now finished all of Liu's Dirk & Steel series, and can't read any more till her new one coms out. Apparently that one's about a dragon prince! Too bad, I was hoping for one about Eddie, that little angst-muffin.

These two books, the first a stand-alone and the second a novella in the book Dark Dreamers edited by Christine Feehan, make an unintentionally good paired reading set. Both are about a non- or part-human man enchanted and enslaved by a witch, and rescued by a bi- or multi-racial human woman.

I loved "A Dream of Stone and Shadow." It might be my favorite Dirk & Steel yet. The short length kept the focus clean. D&S agent Aggie is a bad-ass pre-cog who rescues children from sexual abuse. She is contacted by a gargoyle who is imprisoned by a witch, along with his three brothers who have been turned to stone, and can only escape into the astral plane when the witch cuts out his heart and eats it with a nice Chianti. He and Aggie bond, rescue a little girl, and have psychic orgasms. Amiri guest-stars. And it's even more awesome than it sounds!

Dark and gruesome as a fairy tale, it's also full of black humor and action. Aggie is excellently tough and sweet, the gargoyle is charming, and while the finale was a borderline nonsensical deus ex machina, I didn't even care.

Click here to buy it from Amazon: Dark Dreamers

I knew Soul Song was "the one with the merman" but for some reason I thought that meant the hero was amphibious and/or could turn into a dolphin. No, he's a merman with the traditional fish tail! He's the abused slave of a witch who forces him to work as a prostitute and assassin, and who is ordered to kill Kit Bell, a biracial violinist who can see when people are about to die. There are bad cops, a vampire, a society of merpeople whose bones are too soft for them to live on land, and cameos by assorted D&S agents.

I liked Kit a lot. Alas, M'Cal, the merman, has lots of angst but little personality. There's a lot of running around and a storm at sea, but to little purpose. Enjoyable but not one of Liu's better works. Though it did have one truly excellent moment...

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