Moving Forward

I have finally finished Shadows on the Water Short Stories. This literal brick of a book has taken me from last Friday to today because it is so stuffed full of tales, some of which are too old fashioned for me to read quickly and easily. The cover also informs readers that this is “Gothic Fantasy”, although I think some of the stories are just plain Gothic with fantasy being only read between the lines.

If I ever revisit this book, I am going to skip so many of these older works. They are, almost all of them, dry. Often boring. Divorced from context, particularly the excerpts. Or poorly laid out, leading to confusion. There are so many reasons why I generally prefer the modern stories which are, first and foremost, stories. Not lectures or dissertations. But I should discuss what was read in this final section.

It starts with “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson, specifically chapter twenty-four. The protagonist (is his name Jim?) is adrift in a coracle, wanting to get back to land, or at least to the Hispania, where there’s water to drink. The only reason I can guess at what’s going on besides these details is because I’ve seen Muppet Treasure Island, obviously the best adaptation of the book. Actually, I have an abridged copy of the original novel on my shelf. My dad got it at the Scholastic Book Fair as a kid. After reading this, I think it’s going in the sell pile and I’m sticking to Muppets.

This is followed by Bram Stoker, yes of Dracula fame. But here are the first five chapters of “The Mystery of the Sea”, a different book that I’d never heard of before. Near as I can tell, a man is drawn to the sea at Cruden Bay and there he, with aid from a woman named Gormala, discovers that he has the second sight and a conduit to things others can’t even imagine. Actually, it was pretty decent, and I might be willing to read the rest of the book. Not online though, despite the book advertising that the rest is available on their website. I don’t need to stare at a screen that long.

Next is a collation of Polynesian myths concerning “Maui Seeking Immortality”. I’m not much impressed by W.D. Westervelt, who collected them. He lists a bunch of variations without actually telling the story all the way through. In fact, he often interrupts the story with his own observations. I’m not saying these things have no value, but I really wish he would have separated story from cultural, geographical, and observational data. It’s like…footnotes. Footnotes say “there’s an expansion on this information available, but you don’t have to interrupt the story if you don’t want to”.

Westervelt does it again with the (nominally) Hawaiian myth of “Hina and the Wailuku River”. This one is slightly better than its predecessor simply because there’s fewer variations on this myth than that of Maui. But it still suffers all the same problems.

“Kauhuhu, the Shark-God of Molokai” is from Hawaii as well and is the best of Westervelt’s collections. This is almost entirely story, with few if any notes about “real world” elements. It’s a fairly straightforward, if old-fashioned in execution, retelling of the myth. And wow, what a bloodthirsty myth. Then again, there’s a shark god to contend with.

The book concludes with Lucy Zhang’s story “Leftovers”. A young woman is dissatisfied with her life, doomed to be single forever. So she seeks after a strange creature that lives in the water. It’s an oyster that becomes a crocodile that becomes a dragon that becomes a woman. And it’s rumored that it can grant wishes to those it favors. The narrator isn’t so sure, but supports her friend.

And with that, it’s just the author bios and sad excuses for a copyright page. I mean, yes, as part of the author bio they say when the text was originally published and where, but it’s remarkably inefficient as a copyright page. I’m accustomed to a long list or a tight paragraph that functions more as a citation than a flourish. And true, all of the older works wouldn’t actually be listed because they’re past copyright. I just prefer my copyright page to be concise and easily located at the front or back of a book. Or both, as the case sometimes is. The actual copyright page here doesn’t even say that the author bios constitute an extension of the page, which it should.

Shadows on the Water has been a long and often frustrating read. Frustrating in that I really want to toss it into the sell pile…but I also really want to keep a lot of those modern stories. It comes back to the question of “how many is enough”. How many stories out of the fifty-five here need to be good enough to keep to justify the shelf space? How many of these stories are going to be a pain to find other copies of if I don’t keep it? If I find some other anthologies to go into the sell pile, can I then keep it?

If I’m counting accurately, there’s about a dozen stories I’m really invested in keeping. I could be generous and say that’s a quarter of the book, which still doesn’t sound like much. But…some of those are really good. I really think that I can make it work so long as I get rid of enough other anthologies to make the necessary space. I’m going to (finally) sell books tomorrow, so this is a prime time to evict more volumes. I don’t expect to bring home many, if any new books, but that’s fine. I still have more library books to finish.

Okay so, I did manage to clear enough space to keep the brick and as I was adding all the stories to my database – because I absolutely must keep track of my distinct short stories – I realized why the editor chose such a weird order. They’re alphabetical by contributor’s last name, except for the Foreword, which is of course at the front of the book. So all those bits of mythology that are just listed as “from Hawaii” or “Celtic Legend”? They’re in order based on the last name of the person who collected them. Which you don’t realize because those names are only at the end of the stories and in the author bios.

Honestly, alphabetical is just the laziest way to organize an anthology. And it shows that while someone wanted to find some really good stories as well as ones that span centuries of actual publication time, they didn’t care to put for the effort in order to maximize the reader’s experience. So, this is meat as a coffee table book, no more. Which is a shame because there really are good stories here.

And when I specified “modern” stories, I apparently meant “stories from the twenty-first century”. Because the only twentieth century stories are from the first decade or two, completely omitting everything from the 1920s through the 1990s. Considering that one of the later stories was originally published in Uncanny magazine, I think this shows a real blind spot on the part of the editor. We had to have multiple stories by Herman Melville and Jack London, but nothing from the 1950s? I’m pretty sure you could’ve found at least one great water story from that decade if you’d looked.

Ugh, I’m almost talking myself out of keeping this book after I just spent all that time updating my database. I should go poke at other things to read for a bit.

Other things like…comics. Next Saturday is Free Comic Book Day and I figured it might be nice to have a clean slate to start from. The big one this week is, of course, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #119. We get to see what happened when Zedd took Rita off into the depths of her own castle. Or at least, the end result. And Kiya is, thankfully, imprisoned again for the moment. But Billy has a bold new idea for how to reinforce barriers and protect the rangers when they morph. It just has a high cost. This is another quiet issue with things bubbling under. But I’m sure they’ll explode again soon.

Today I also had Robot + Girl #1, a free preview that was available. An adorable little robot is wandering a city, reflecting on how most humans are focused on their social media interactions more than anything else. It sees a girl holding up a sign saying “Free Hugs” and that’s exactly what she offers. The robot gets one for itself before heading off to its final resting place: a used robot parts warehouse.

Obviously the story doesn’t end there. This is just issue one after all. And it’s pretty cute. I don’t know that I have any interest in it, but it is probably decent in the long run.

Sweeping Waves

As has been mentioned, I desperately needed a break from my brick. Fortunately, I stopped at the library yesterday to pick up my hold. And oh, it does make me happy. This is Clean Sweep: The Graphic Novel. Still by Ilona Andrews, but adapted by ChrossxXxRodes and illustrated by Shinju Ageha. It reminds me very much of The Dark-Hunters manga. It even will take two volumes to retell a single novel, like that series. Although Clean Sweep is in full color where the manga was black and white. It does still have a distinctly anime style though.

This first book is true to the novel, as far as I can tell. Maybe not everything is quite how I imagined it, and I certainly understand why they added visual cues to Dina’s magic, but I did enjoy reading it. I also enjoyed the little details you can notice. For example, Caldenia’s sharp teeth are visible, if barely. And Sean’s eyes change between brown and gold as his werewolf blood becomes more active.

I also love the vampires in the trench coats. Actually, I love how Ageha switches between a standard style and a more chibi version when comedic elements take over for a moment. I appreciate stories that don’t take themselves too seriously, and embrace lighthearted moments as needed.

Clearly a lot of work went into this graphic novel and it shows. The book is quality work, and I find myself wondering how the peace summit in the next novel will be portrayed. True, Andrews does a lot of great description, but there’s something wonderful about seeing visuals given to text.

I also snickered at the Reader’s Letter where the husband and wife team point out that, if there’s errors in this book, it doesn’t fall solely on them this time! Which…fair. Hopefully more people involved means more errors were caught.

I don’t know that I’m going to buy my own copy of Clean Sweep as a graphic novel. I have no objections to listening to the GraphicAudio production again, but Sweep of the Blade is still the only novel I might physically buy in the future. But who knows. The series has definitely grown on me, and I can’t wait for book two.

I finished that relatively early so, you guessed it. More Shadows on the Water Short Stories. It’s going to take me a literal week to read this book it seems, but I will finish it.

The first story from it today is “The Encantadas; or, Enchanted Isles” by Herman Melville. Near as I can tell, this is sort of a travelogue. Akin to a Travel Channel hour-long segment. It’s about a location that most people won’t have cause or ability to visit, but provides a fair amount of detail so that you can appreciate it and pretend you were there. It’s also quite boring and not very short, taking up a full thirty pages in this book that utilizes smaller type than usual. I didn’t bother finishing it after I had to flip fifteen pages or so just to see what the singular footnote had to say. I think I mentioned before that footnotes should be on the same page as the indicator, not at the end of the tale. In this case, it solidified my noninterest in finishing.

Since the last was by Herman Melville, I think the next segment is quite obvious. It is, of course, “Moby-Dick”. Specifically chapters 133-135. Which, can we talk about that? That is an insane amount of chapters. Rhythm of War, the fourth brick in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, has 117 numbered chapters. It takes Melville 133 to get to the climax of his book (which is what this excerpt is). I’m going to assume that the novel was originally serialized and Melville was probably paid by the word. But I still found his writing dry, and having never made the attempt, I had no idea who most of the characters were and didn’t much care.

By the way, I am very glad that I chose to stop where I did last night. Reading Jack London followed by Herman Melville directly would have been an extremely poor choice. I don’t know why the editor chose to arrange the book this way.

Next is “She Who Devours” by J.M. Merryt. The titular She is a goddess of the marshland, its embodiment. She was nourished and worshipped in ancient times, but the modern day is less kind. And yet, she is herself still.

Wendy Nikel explores mermaid life in “Silver Spears and Sea-Songs”. It’s very much about the choices we make and the choices made for us, wrapped up in a fantastical setting.

“The Bittersweet Glimmer” follows that up. Jessica Peter’s protagonist is brushing her hair. It seems harmless, though brings up mermaid imagery again. Then we see that she’s in a home of some sort, and cared for by staff. But that’s not what she was, once.

Marisca Pichette comes after with “The Jewels o the Mermaids”. A man goes to get his mail, but only gradually do we come to understand that the island he lives on is a type of prison. And there are mermaids on the nearby rocks. Wonder why? Have to read…

“The Sea Inside Her Skin” by D.S. Ravenhurst does have some horror elements. But it’s also somewhat predictable and just very sad. How many times can a girl drown?

It’s Y.M. Resnik’s “Catch and Release” that has me thinking I should probably actually keep this brick. The more old stories and publications I’ve read, the less I’ve felt it was worth the space, despite the first publication stories being largely good. But this one? About a rusalka in a mikva (ritual cleansing bath Orthodox Jewish women use after their period ends)? This won me over completely. It might be my favorite story in the whole brick.

Then we go to “Some Sea-Folk” by Phil Robinson. This is an extremely dry, academic look at the various mythical peoples of the sea. It’s also another of those “classic” reprints. It was too boring to read much of.

Next is Abhijeet Sathe’s “Leviathan”. This is a distinctly Indian look at pollution, particularly that of plastics going into the sea. It’s enough to annoy Varuna, god of the sea, and cause him to wake the titular Leviathan and send it to do his bidding.

I get Indian (or from some part of southern or southeastern Asia) vibes from “Waiting for Karaga” by Amal Singh, although I’m not familiar with the festival in the title. Yes, it’s a festival, not a person. The person is Rani, and she’s a human that the lake is close to. Close to as a person, because the lake is sentient. It’s fantasy and seems based on folktale or mythology so I’m not going to question it.

Finally, for tonight at least, is “The Picts and their Brochs”, a collection of information from the Shetland Islands. John Spence is the man doing the collecting and he seems to be an academic of some sort with an interest in history and archaeology. The text itself is a bit dry, but the information is generally interesting. He discusses the brochs, stone towers that served as defense and early warning system against sea-borne raiders, and how pervasive they were, lingering to this day. And the word “broch”, in various forms, permeates the region. It definitely sounds like this was written a century or more ago and so some of the research presented here should probably be taken with a grain of salt or three, but there’s a lot of good stuff here. It most reminds me of Bury’s Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians, which was a historian’s collection of university lectures on the subject. I only hope that Spence was a better lecturer than the text alone conveys because this could’ve been a great series of talks.

I swear, I am going to finish Shadows on the Water tomorrow. I have less than forty pages left, so I see no reason why it shouldn’t happen. I just really, really want to be done with this book. I don’t like taking so long to go through a single volume of any kind, given how unaccustomed I am to it. The only other book I can think of that has taken so long was Les Miserables, which is unabridged and close to fifteen hundred pages. Plus, you know, Hugo got very wordy for no good reason at times.

Still, I look forward to being done. So I might as well wrap up this post and get to bed, with dreams of finishing the brick in my head.

Still Wet

Today was yet more Shadows on the Water Short Stories because I couldn’t devote enough attention to picking a different book. Well, I could, but I really wanted something light and fun and there isn’t really any of that in the Pile right now and pulling something from my library would require more thought. Hence I returned to the brick.

I even got through another quarter of it today, putting me something like two thirds in. And I’ve noticed more patterns. If there’s multiple items from a single contributor, they’re all next to each other. Which is…far from ideal. I’ve complained before about anthologies putting similar stories, whether in terms of culture, premise, or something else, next to each other. It can drag a reader down and often fosters unfair comparisons. There’s nothing wrong with multiple contributions from a single author, but they should be spaced apart.

Today started with “Fair, Brown, and Trembling” out of Celtic legend. The story was collected by Joseph Jacobs and could be referred to as “Celtic Cinderella”. The words of the title are the names of the three sisters, no stepsisters needed.

Next is Rachel Jones and her tale “Who Binds and Looses the World with Her Hands”. First and foremost, the protagonist here is deaf and mute, communicating primarily with sign language, although she has some ability to read lips as well. She dwells on an island made of a giant, petrified tree. Her partner keeps the lighthouse flame lit. But they are wary of strangers, so what’s to do when one washes ashore? And how will his presence change everything? A great tale that wouldn’t be out of place in any genre anthology.

This is followed by “On the Muddy Shores Where the Oracle Writhes” by Amanda Cecilia Lang. A woman makes her living telling fortunes with her whalebone teacup. She welcomes a guest, prepared to make a bit of money. But what she finds will leave her, as the title suggests, writhing. And yet, perhaps not for the reason you think.

There is something entirely bizarre about reading a Greek myth when the story starts by telling you it was published in 1914. The story is “Icarus” and the reteller is Jean Lang. Still, it’s a weird note to start a myth on.

Speaking of myths, “Lorelei”, the German siren myth, is next. Also courtesy Jean Lang. I was more disappointed than I should have been to realize this would be a more straightforward retelling, and not the Patricia Wrede story of the same title I encountered many years ago.

Frazer Lee’s story “To Take the Water Down and Go to Sleep” is more science fiction, I feel. It’s about a man in the near future whose vacation is a sensory deprivation tank. Which sounds absolutely awful. At least, until you start to see what he experiences once inside.

Then there’s a Scandinavian tale of “The Fisherman and the Draug”. It was collected by Jonas Lauritz and Idemil Lie and has footnotes for the vocabulary and idioms included. I appreciate this, but wish that the footnotes were…actual footnotes on the same page rather than requiring me to constantly flip to the end of the story for a translation or definition. It’s not like they couldn’t have done it that way given the smaller font size the book utilizes.

The same pair of Lauritz and Lie also collected the Scandinavian legend about Jack of Sjöholm and the Gan-Finn. This is about a man named Jack (I’ve never before wondered about the origin of the name but now I am) who fell afoul of the Gan-Finn. This creature sold the Scandinavians winds to push their ships around. But Jack conceived a better way to build ships, earning him Gan-Finn’s emnity.

And yes, “Finn Blood” is also a Scandinavian story from Lauritz and Lie. This one is more in line with what you’d see in a genre anthology. It introduces us to a village where Finns are considered lesser. And the protagonist grows up friends with a Finn girl, but drifts away from her the more the village influences his thinking. Until one day, when the real story happens.

I think Samara Lo’s story “After Me, The Flood” may be set in China. A young woman seeks to escape her father’s heartless and controlling clutches after he sold her older sister to a cruel man who married her, then beat her to death. What she finds is not at all what she hoped for, but damn if she won’t use what she’s been given. You go girl.

“The House of Mapuhi” is by Jack London. I’ve never read any of his short fiction before, but the man must have been even more widely traveled than I realized, spending time in Fiji and other islands. Also, Haru-Haru is an obnoxious person and everything in the story is his fault.

Jack London also wrote “The Whale Tooth”. The titular object is beautiful and significant, but the protagonist is a Christian missionary. He’s trying to convert the people and put an end to cannibalism and polygamy. Shall we see how that goes for him, and what role the tooth plays?

The last story I read today is “The Seed of McCoy”, yet another Jack London tale. It’s a bizarre one. A fire broke out in the ship’s galley and they weren’t able to smother it, meaning that it’s still going and the deck is warming up. The captain means to beach the ship, but the island they’ve arrived at is unsuitable for the goal. Now he’s taking on a native guide in the hopes of finding a final resting place for the ship somewhere in the Dangerous Archipelago, where currents can change directions with ease. How the ship lasts so long I do not understand and it’s such a weird tone for a story.

Like I said, I really don’t care to have all stories by a single author next to each other in an anthology. I like Jack London. I have Call of the Wild and White Fang here on my shelves and should probably reread them at some point. But three stories of varying strangeness from him all in row is more than a little overkill. And it lessens the value of the stories.

Just like I don’t want three Scandinavian folktales in a row. I’d rather mix them in with things from Ireland, Fiji, Africa, China, and more. Variety is the spice of life, but only when sprinkled evenly. Otherwise, it’s like making a chili burger, but all the chili powder is a single hunk in one part of the patty, with the rest just being plain burger meat. Not bad in and of itself, but not as enjoyable as a well-mixed chili burger would’ve been.

I do feel like today’s stories were overall better than some previous days. There have been days – and I’ve been working on this book for several – where reading it definitely felt like work. But this, more than any anthology I’ve read in a while, is one where I really feel I should stick it out to the end. There’s so many very different types of stories here, and no easy way to predict them. I mean, yes, I know there’s more classics to come and I’ve recognized some of those authors and titles. But most of the modern stories have been really good and worth reading.

Perhaps I’ll skip some of the classics in the future. I haven’t decided. And I won’t have to for a day at least. I have a new library book and it definitely fits the bill for what I’ve been looking for to break up Shadows on the Water. But don’t worry. I will come back to this brick. I want to finish it sooner rather than later.

Do Bricks Float?

It irritates me that I haven’t been able to finish a book in a few days. I knew it would happen, but I’m still annoyed with myself. Even though I’m the one who picked the book I haven’t yet finished. And yes, I do mean to finish this one.

It’s an anthology, which hasn’t stopped me from leaving a book incomplete before, but this is a very different case from those others. The anthologies I’ve abandoned have tended to be DAW anthologies or similar from other companies; relatively closely themed genre stories, between eight and twenty to a book, generally published in the last thirty or forty years.

But the current book is a very, very different case.

I’m sure many people have gone into Barnes & Noble and seen their fancy books. Big hardcovers with stylish debossed designs, and usually including metallic foil in some capacity. You always see classics, like Dracula, Jane Austin, Star Wars, etc. Well, some of those are anthologies. And yes, that applies to the H.G. Wells volume, but there’s others too. Books that have not just classic material, but also new stories, published here for the first time.

Books like Shadows on the Water Short Stories contain both types of stories. But when I say they include classic material, I mean things like chapters five and six from The Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ by Frank T. Bullen, the first chapter of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and even book twelve of The Odyssey by Homer. Actually, it reminds me a lot of The World Treasury of Children’s Literature collections I have. Those too include a lot of segments from classics, not the full text. Although Shadows on the Water, being a modern book, ends each of these chapters with “go to our website for the full text”. Which they can do because those truncated sections are from books that are long past copyright. Although I don’t actually know how copyright applies to translations.

Anyway, this book is a brick. It’s over four hundred pages long, and the stories/excerpts tend to be on the shorter side. So there’s a lot inside, which is why (besides a very busy past week) it’s taking me a long time to read. This is also not helped by the fact that, for all this is a hardcover and so has physically larger pages than most of my books, it uses a smaller font size than normal. So there’s many more words per page and again, there are over four hundred pages.

Honestly, it’s probably for the best that I break the book up this way, and make more regular posts of what I’ve read since the last and not wait until I’ve gotten through the whole thing. That would be an insanely long post…or most of the stories would get short shrift.

But before I actually get into the stories, I did want to point out that this is yet another book from the last convention! Yes, one of the authors tabling there has a story in this book. Hence, she had copies to sell. And a bit cheaper than you’d pay Barnes & Noble too.

The first story, like the introduction, starts on the lefthand page. Which is weird, but less so when you consider how very many stories are inside the book. They probably have to keep the page count fairly rigid to accommodate the cover size.

Anyway, the first story is “Pale Reflection” by Gustavo Bondont. I’m not entirely certain where it takes place – definitely some location that would be colonized by white people after the time period of the tale – but I get Australia vibes. It’s about a girl who, in some pools and lakes, sees the same world but different. The world of the far future.

You can guess from Melinda Brasher’s title alone that “Vodník” takes place somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia. It’s a folktale about a lake creature that steals people’s lives and souls.

This is followed by “The Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’” excerpt from Frank Bullen’s novel. I’ve never heard of it before, but I know I’m not going to look it up. I suspect that this would’ve been somewhat contemporary with Moby Dick, and that people had a fascination with whaling in the day. Kind of like that reality TV show with the crab fishermen.

Ramsey Campbell’s in this with “Raised by the Moon”. I think the protagonist is a grad student, given that he’s both a student and a teacher. Anyway, he’s driving out to meet friends at a house for the weekend and his car breaks down. He gets it to an almost deserted village and I think everyone can guess what happens next.

“The Passing of Mogul Mackenzie: The Last of the North American Pirates” comes from Arthur Chute. It reads like a modern author aping the style of authors like Bullen. Lots of descriptive, flowery language, but not so much that you’re screaming “get to the point”.

Rebecca Clarke’s story “The Water Kelpie” is similar to the last except that this time it’s a modern author aping a classic fairy tale. I think she does reasonably well, and I like this version of the story. I think if she wanted to get closer to the old versions though, she should’ve gone darker.

I’ve also never heard of “The Sea Lions” by J. Fenimore Cooper. This particular excerpt deals with a pair of ships (and I have no idea which is which) getting trapped by ice.

The next story is simply attributed to the Maori people up front. It’s the tale of “Te Reinga”, providing an understanding of Maori grief and mourning. At the end, it says this information was collected by James Cowan.

Which makes me wonder if this is going to be a particularly white book. I have no issues with seeing other cultures represented – I think I’m going to be heartily sick of selkies by the end of this – but I know there’s no shortage of authors from these peoples today. So I would much rather see them tell stories from their heritage instead of some enterprising white guy. Because it’s usually a guy too. Anyway, moving on.

“The Loneliness of Water” by Lyndsey Croal gives me some crazy post-apocalyptic vibes. And yet, it’s a charming little story. Not even really a love story, but still features two leads.

Daniel Defoe follows that with the first chapter of “Robinson Crusoe”. I am never reading this book.

“Malefactor” by Jess Gofton opens with a person waking up on a beach, and only gradually coming to remember details about themself. Sure, some elements are predictable. But others make it a satisfying, slow reveal.

Then comes “The Children of Heaven and Earth: Ko Nga Tama A Rangi – A Tradition Relating to the Origin of the Human Race” which is just “from Polynesia”. It’s the origin story it sounds like, although it definitely feels like a dry recitation. So I guess we can blame Sir George Grey for that.

Grey also collected “The Art of Netting Learned by Kahukura from the Fairies (Ko Te Korero Mo Nga Patupaiarehe)” from Polynesia when he was there. It’s about a human who sneaks out at night and finds himself unquestioned long enough to learn the trick.

“The Last Dance” is by J.E. Hannaford and is a story the selkies tell each other of why they let a tradition lapse. (Spoilers: it’s because of humans.)

M.K. Hardy depicts a woman who may or may not have much left to live for in “To the Sea” as she helps wildlife endangered by an oil spill. It strips away all glamour to this mitzvah, this good act, and shows the exhausted people who could be thieves and criminals for all anyone takes note at the end of the day. But that’s just the setting. There’s also a mysterious woman that seems to brighten everything around her.

“In the Mouth of the Eel-King” by Derek Heath is one of those stories that could easily have a mundane explanation for things…but could also have a supernatural one. One is obviously more interesting.

The next story is “from Medieval Welsh Legend” because it’s “Taliessin of the Radiant Brow”. Complete with poetry for prophecy. It’s definitely a more polished version of the story, which I think is kind of a shame. The retelling is credited to Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Then “The Swan-Children of Lir” comes from Old Irish Legend (and also Higginson). This is another that definitely feels cleaned up because the children are cursed until the coming of Saint Patrick. And given some things I’ve learned about that story, this version probably comes from the Brits, not the Irish.

Higginson and Old Irish Legend also tell of “Maelduin’s Voyage”. Which is one of those adventures that’s so filled with wonder and excitement that you kind of forget they left for a reason.

I suppose I should be glad that I didn’t have to translate “The Odyssey” by Homer. Because I have translated sections of Virgil’s Aeneid. Anyway, this is the section that covers Scylla and Charybdis, among other adventures.

R.J. Howell is the author I bought the book from and “Betwixt Sea and Sky” was definitely worth reading. I mean, how else would I have known what could happen when a selkie meets a siren?

“Toilers of the Sea” is a book I’ve never heard of before. But it’s from Victor Hugo, of Les Miserables fame, so I was a little more open-minded. The man could definitely write horror when he wanted.

Mackenzie Hurlbert’s story “Lady of the Lake” shows a woman at her best friend’s funeral. Her mother insists she has to know more about what happened. But the narrator will never, ever tell what she’s seen. Though she’ll remember it for the reader.

The last story I’ve read so far is “The Sea-Maiden” of Celtic Legend (collected by Joseph Jacobs). It’s one of those where you start in one place, with a couple characters, but the protagonist is actually born later, after the initial events. I mean, I guess that’s not unusual for a hero story. It can just be a bit of whiplash when I’m unfamiliar with the tale, and everything’s so compressed because of how little extra space there is in the book.

At this point I’m roughly a third in (yes, seriously) and I have mixed impressions. Initially, I was quite pleased. The opening stories are very strong and totally new to me, modern. But I’m not at all enamored of the classes inserted periodically. And I’m not a fan of how the various legends and myths have been handled overall. They feel very truncated, and very white in a way that does them no favors.

I have not at all decided if I’m going to keep this book. But I have some time before I make that decision.

However, I might choose to take a break from the book. As stated, it’s a very long anthology and it’s not easy going at the best of times. It actually takes more physical effort to read the smaller text, which cuts down on how quickly I read. Plus it’s an anthology, plus a lot of the stories are very old or written in an older style. And I’m getting tired of selkies.

So it might be worth taking a break. Of course, if I can’t figure out what I might want to take a break with I might continue Shadows on the Water regardless. But a break is a valid option and I’m seriously considering it.

Audio Considerations

You might recall that I have fallen in love with Kimberly Lemming’s Mead Mishaps series. They tend to have awful, stupid titles, they are exactly what you expect, and yet they’re so much fun all the same. In a world where a lich masqueraded as a goddess for four hundred years and separated humans from demons, this charade has finally ended. A brave human woman, her demon mate, and a bunch of others (mostly demons) saved the day and now the two groups have to learn to live together again.

That’s where we find Mistlefoe, a Mead Realm novella. I noticed it when I was searching for Lemming on the library card catalog. Because, after all, if I’m all in on Lemming, why shouldn’t I read whatever else she’s put out? The only problem was that this book was only available digitally and I really don’t want to have to read a book digitally, novella or not.

But then I noticed the headphone symbol on one entry and got excited. I listen to all my audiobooks digitally, right through the Hoopla app (unless I’ve purchased them). I went and searched and sure enough, there was Mistlefoe, right on Hoopla. I added it to my favorites and forgot about it for a while.

About until I realized Magic Slays was nearly over and I didn’t feel like going back to podcasts so soon. How convenient to go for this little novella next?

When I say “little” I do mean it. Mistlefoe is just under two hours long. It’s an audiobook, so the whole thing is read by Star Williams and the only audio flourishes are some music at the very beginning and end of the entire thing.

The plot is very simple, a condensed version of the same you’ll find in any of the Mead Mishaps novels. Ruby is the blacksmith’s daughter (although she’s in her thirties) and has gone to apologize to the fox demon that’s taken up residence nearby. He cursed her father for stealing ore and now all the weapons he makes are horny, talkative assholes. In case you were wondering where Alexis the talking sword from the novels came from.

The fox is willing to forgive…if Ruby does something for him. She’ll have to go to the demons’ Midwinter Festival and pretend to be his mate for a week.

It’s romantasy, and there’s a couple really long sex scenes that take up a significant amount of the novella’s length, so I think anyone can guess what’s going to happen. The title comes from a…game…the demons play at the very end. Specifically the “human-friendly” version they come up with to accommodate Ruby. But that’s not really the point.

It’s silly like the rest of the series, although with the shorter length the focus largely narrows to the two incredibly horny for each other leads, and the bitch character who just wants all the male demons to be her harem. But it’s fun and mostly light hearted. Did I mention extensive sex scenes? They’re incredibly descriptive, so I can’t quite consider them “light-hearted”.

I am reading a physical book too, of course. But it’s going to be a bit before I finish it. Not just because I am very busy this weekend having a social life and it’s eating up a significant amount of my time. But also because this is a big, fat anthology. So big and fat that the text is actually smaller than what you find in most books, allowing them to fit even more inside. So, it’s going to take at least a few days, because there’s no way I’m going to have much time for reading tomorrow.

Meaning that this may be my last blog post for a few days, because I don’t think I’m going to be listening to any more super short audiobooks in the near future. I just don’t have any queued up.

It’s a shame that none of Lemming’s novels have an audio version on Hoopla as of yet. I might have considered one of those next.

Some Items

Could I have finished this book yesterday? Absolutely. If I wasn’t busy having a very intense social life. And I was polite and didn’t bring my book with me to the socializing. But honestly, there are two reasons why I didn’t. Firstly, it’s a hardcover and would’ve taken up all the space in the bag I was using for a purse. There are so many reasons why I don’t like carrying hardcovers around and this is one of them. Secondly, I’m not really thrilled with it.

That last is a problem, and not just because I’ve been finding so many less than stellar books in my choices of late. All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi is the newest Woven Kingdom novel, the third in the series. I’ve been looking forward to it and it’s very new. I’d found myself enchanted by the first book, and interested in the second. But the third is just…obnoxious.

I’ve talked before about this trend in books where people talk way too much and nothing gets done. And that is the vast majority of All This Twisted Glory. One of the first big scenes of the novel is Alizeh having fallen unconscious after the insanity of the climax in These Infinite Threads, and waking up to find her associates from Ardunia standing around her. All of the sidekicks (Deen, Omid, and Huda) will not shut up and let Kamran or Hazan properly explain things, and then Cyrus shows up and it gets worse.

This is a huge percentage of the book. Sidekick characters, who are significantly less endearing and entertaining the more page time they have, talking too much about things that aren’t important. And I have no patience for it.

It’s like when you watch a Disney movie and there’s that “animal companion” that might fill a minor role, but they’ve expanded it far beyond that in an attempt to merchandise it more. Olaf from Frozen is a great example – I find the snowman to be the most obnoxious character in the film and yet it’s enough of a character to have a musical number.

The type of dialogue in All This Twisted Glory, where people keep focusing on minor crap or talking over each other, reminds me of a talk I went to last convention. Ursula Vernon was discussing one of her least favorite classes that she took, which involved interviewing people and then transcribing the interviews. In their entirety. Leaving no words out. And what she learned from the experience is that good dialogue is not completely true to life. It’s editing out the extraneous elements while not leaving things stiff and bare or turning it into an exposition dump. Writing believable dialogue is an art form.

Mafi’s dialogue in this book is very true to life, which means it’s annoying. The same for how the characters act. It reminds me of actual people and social situations…and not in a good way.

In the end, the book is a severe disappointment. I want plot, not tangential discussions that direct attention away from the main characters. It had so much potential. Now…I have to reconsider whether I want to keep the first two. That’s a decent amount of space I could free up.

I intended to go straight to another book, but because of the logistics of breakfast it ended up being easier to just read a comic while I ate. And fortunately I did still have one around. I hadn’t been up for it last weekend because it’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #118, and so had much more going on by default than any of the others, which were from much shorter series.

The Power Rangers, our main team from multiple universes, are holed up in Rita’s (now Zedd’s) castle on the moon. Along with Zedd because of course. They’re protected by a barrier powered by the power eggs, but it’s weakening and time is running out. The rangers also can’t afford to de-morph, because that would leave them vulnerable to the corruption in the morphin grid. And with the Morphin Masters not available to help, it means our heroes will have to come up with their own salvation.

They don’t manage it before this issue ends. Things aren’t dire yet. Really, this issue is more breathing space than anything else. We see the stakes and the current lay of the land, but nobody has any ideas yet. That’ll be next issue. Or next issue something will go horribly wrong, as the last panels imply.

It’s a quiet issue, all things considered. The sort that a long-running series needs periodically. They can’t all be all action all the time. Not if they want to avoid exhausting their readers. and we all know that I’m not going to turn away after well over a hundred issues. So, this one’s fine, and I’ll wait and see what happens next.

In other news, I finished my audiobook. It was Magic Slays, another of the Kate Daniels books now adapted by GraphicAudio. And, just like the physical copy, this also includes “Magic Tests”, the Julie point of view short. I am so glad that I did finally read Ilona Andrews.

Magic Slays sees Kate installed in the Keep as Pack Lady following her break with the Order of Merciful Aid. And her new investigation service, Cutting Edge, finally has a client. A man being held in a safe house and his invention have disappeared and Kate needs to find both. Except that the invention is much more dangerous than the man and her investigation will teach us as much about her as about the difficulties she’s dealing with.

And then there’s “Magic Tests”. Julie ran away from school and while Kate’s happy to have her around and teach her, that’s no substitute for a good education. And one that’s not entirely created by shapeshifters. So Kate takes her to one of the schools in Atlanta and…gives her a job? Yes, it’s a way to show Julie she’s trusted to investigate as well as getting her to seriously consider the school as an option. Clever, clever Kate.

I do love listening to GraphicAudio’s adaptations. The full casts, the music, the sound effects…it’s a lot of fun. I do have to wonder if the next book will be Kate’s or Andrea’s, given that Gunmental Magic is the next chronologically. They haven’t adapted any of the novellas I’ve read in anthologies that I’ve seen (although some short stories and alternate viewpoints have appeared), so it remains to be seen. Whatever’s next, I’ll still listen.

Sigh

Today I dipped into the convention haul yet again with Twisted Legends. Yes, it’s another anthology and yes it’s again from that three dollar table. All the remaining convention books are anthologies and most are from the three dollar table. That’s just how it’s going to be.

This particular volume is Twisted Legends, edited by Jessy Marie Roberts. And it really wasn’t what I’d hoped for. With a title like that, I’d thought I might get retold folklore, mythology, etc. But no, these are urban legends. Horror stories.

Horror really isn’t a preferred genre of mine. I’ve read some, and even enjoyed some, but generally only the stuff that can fit into a different genre, like science fiction or fantasy. This book appears to be pure horror, and the fantastical elements are in service of the horror, not vice versa.

I wasn’t really a fan of the first story, but when the second also mentioned a ten year old boy as a protagonist, I knew I’d had enough. I skimmed some more because I was at work and on lunch, but eventually called it quits. I didn’t find anything redeemable in any of the stories I read and it wasn’t enjoyable to read. At least I only spent three dollars on it.

I feel bad that I don’t really have much to say about this book. I didn’t like it. I almost instantly regretted the choice. I thought about pulling up an ebook when I was at lunch. I came home and almost immediately chose a new and different book.

There’s a fine line between wanting to know almost nothing and looking enough to know if it is or isn’t a book for me. And, sadly, there’s very few ways to tell without looking too much. I have a book that I’m waiting to read until I forget about the terrible back cover copy. I have other books that I suspect will end up in the sell pile too, but they were free to me so I’m reluctant to toss them so quickly. I like to at least try things unless they give me big, obvious reasons why I shouldn’t.

There’ve just been a lot of books lately that I haven’t bothered finishing and I feel like I should know better. I do, but then there’s the question of how much information is too much. And the answer is different for every book, so it’s impossible to say.

Add in the fact that I’ve had so little time in recent weeks to do anything besides previous commitments and a wee bit of reading, and it’s no wonder I feel stressed, distressed, torn, dissatisfied, and more. I keep trying to find books to be my happy place without rereading the same things over and over again. I genuinely want to read books I’ve never read before. Unfortunately, that means trying things I’m not guaranteed to like.

I have higher hopes for my next book, which I’ve already begun. Theoretically I’ll finish it tomorrow. In reality…well. I have a busy weekend coming up and it starts tomorrow afternoon. So only time will tell what I finish when.

Sailing Around

On Sunday I burned through both romances I’d gotten from the Book of the Month Club in April. However, that wasn’t the whole of the box I’d gotten. Yes, for the first time ever I was curious about a full three of the month’s options. And I decided to just go for it and get all three that had caught my eye.

No, the third isn’t a romance. Frankly, it’s surprising that they had two romances this month. Usually each book has a different category. That’s not to say that a book can’t be in a different category and still count as a romance – The Collected Regrets of Clover was one of those – but it’s unusual to have two actually classed as romances.

But the third book I got was the young adult option Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier. It sounded intriguing. Then I got it home, got a good look at the cover, and started to get vibes. The protagonist, Hanalei, is shown on the front. In real-world equivalents, she’s Pacific Islander, shown wearing a flower crown, with detailed black tattoos, and holding a scaled object. The titular dragonfruit, of course. And for some reason I looked at this image and thought “pirate”.

Then we get into the premise. It’s said that dragonfruit, which is actually a name for a seadragon’s eggs, can grant a person one wish. But it comes at a cost. Even so, every part of a seadragon has value, and people come from all over the world to get in on the trade.

So you have something called a fruit that might be ingested, giving you something and taking something from you in return. In a region that involves lots of sailing and probably pirates. Is it any wonder my first thought was One Piece? The manga, because I haven’t seen the anime or the live action version. But the manga was serialized in Shonen Jump and I have read more than a few chapters as a result. However, because of the quest nature of the dragonfruit and the wishes they can grant, it also feels like we’re adding a bit of Dragon Ball into the mix. Specifically Dragon Ball, when everything was cute and everyone was young, and not Dragon Ball Z or anything else later and overpowered.

I will say that my vibes were not wrong, but this isn’t a shounen story in the least. It just uses many of the same elements and concepts as those two series.

Dragonfruit is set, as I said, in the Pacific Islands and Hanalei is a native. She travels around from island to island in pursuit of seadragons, much like the dragoner ships who seek to profit from these majestic creatures. But Hanalei seeks only to observe them, to learn about them. She doesn’t like to see them killed, and she certainly doesn’t want to see their children murdered for the sake of human wishes.

And she knows more about the latter than most. Not that she likes to think about it. And yet…she does have a goal. She does want a dragonfruit. But she knows more than anyone else why this is a terrible desire.

There’s adventure on the high seas, there’s clever solutions, and there’s a bit of romance. All the things you’d expect from a young adult novel with this kind of theming. It is interesting to me how the Pacific Islands are portrayed, and what is and isn’t shown concerning Europeans. There’s an archipelago known as Tamarind which I think is meant to be equivalent to the Banda Islands. Let’s just say that things go much better for Tamarind than they did for the Banda Islands. Because if you haven’t learned about the Banda Nutmeg Massacre, wherein Europeans wanted so badly to control all the nutmeg production in the world that they slaughtered the natives, you probably should. This is actually why New Amsterdam became New York; the Dutch traded it to the English in exchange for the last of the Banda Islands.

As for Dragonfruit, it’s a decent story. I found it a little difficult to get past my own preconceived notions and vibes, but that’s my own personal problem. I don’t think it’s quite worth keeping, but it’s pretty close. Certainly I’d recommend it if people were looking for something of that level to read.

It also makes me wonder if fantasy sailing is seeing an upswing. After all, Chakraborty’s newest novel involved sailing all over the Indian Ocean. Not quite the same region as the Pacific Islands, but a lot closer to them than North America. Only time will tell if this is a real trend or not.

Of course, now I have to figure out my next book. So many choices, but I’m out of BotM ones for this month.

Highly Intellectual

There were a number of anthologies on the three dollar table at the last convention. It’s going to keep coming up, at least as long as I have more of these to read. I am making progress though, and am down to a mere handful of books from that con.

Today’s is Salon Fantastique, which I snatched up as soon as I saw it was edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I have all their fairy tale anthologies, so I was ready to see what else they had to offer. I mean, I have learned that I shouldn’t touch Datlow without Windling’s moderating influence, but this is the pair. I’d be fine.

Spoiler alert: I was not fine.

The introduction talks about the salons of seventeenth century France, where all sorts of intellectuals would gather and talk. These gave rise to many movements of art, philosophy, etc. They were also where a huge part of the upper class social life happened, and gaining entry to reputable salons could do wonders for a starving artist. These salons were the inspiration behind the book. You could say the unifying theme of the book is “stories that could have been thought up in one of these salons”.

Which means that there’s a lot of high concept stories, often with a distinctly period feel. Suffice to say, it’s not really my style. I mentioned this to my book friend, who confirmed that, in her experience, Datlow and Windling can be kind of hit and miss. Since my experience of the pair has been limited to fairy tales and a Year’s Best, this is the first time I’ve seen the two fail me.

Honestly, it’s disappointing. Along the same lines as when I realized that Martin H. Greenberg had interests in genres that don’t really interest me at all, like horror and western. I’m not saying that editors can’t have different interests from me, just that I’m sad to learn I can’t rely on their name alone as a recommendation.

I guess it goes along with my unwritten rule for authors, that prolific authors always have at least one series I can’t stand. So it stands to reason that a similar variant of the rule can and should be applied to editors.

My favorite of the stories I read was “The Guardian of the Egg” by Christopher Barzak. Narrator Stephen has an older sister Hester. And Hester has a tree growing out of her head. Why? No one knows. And if Hester knows, she’s not telling. But that’s not the only thing changing about Hester…or their town. It’s kind of a cross between a fable and a veteran’s reminiscing, and worth reading.

And yes, you read that correctly. I didn’t bother finishing the book. I got through Peter S. Beagle’s story, which was strange, long, and somewhat unsatisfying, and decided I was done. The only remaining author whose name meant something to me was Gregory Maguire, and he’s not one I have to read at the best of times. His schtick grew old more than a decade ago and I’ve moved on.

The way the introduction described this book, I thought it would be more like Sisters of Fantasy, where the authors were asked to write whatever story they liked, just make it fantasy. But either there really was a theme here, or the authors thought they needed to work to the title’s theme. And it turns out that’s just not one I want.

I really did want more from this anthology. But I guess I should’ve gone for the small press book with no familiar names instead. Oh well. I don’t think I’m going to read that one tomorrow though. I’ve only got a couple days before things get crazy again (but in a different way) and I have no idea how much reading I’ll be able to do then. So I’ll have to consider my options more carefully. Might as well get started staring.

Love All Around

There’s something freeing about being in the right headspace to actually sit down and read a book. Especially after yesterday, when it was a struggle just to read a few comics. I actually have one more comic, but that one’s from far later in a more complex series and I was not at all up for it that day. Honestly, if stress is affecting my reading (as it has been this week), then things have gotten very bad. Because as readers of this blog may have noticed, I read a lot. It is my go-to relaxation and decompression. So if I’m in a place where I can’t read, that says nothing at all good.

This as opposed to when I deliberately choose not to read, like when I’ve got a full day of socializing planned or something like that. Or feel like I need a break. Those are different and are normal, healthy breaks.

I’ve been stressed lately. One friend theorized that the reason why I have just a handful of books left from my convention haul is because I was stressed about upcoming busy-ness (which I’m now almost halfway through) and mentally preparing myself for it. Which isn’t a terrible theory. Of course, the fact that a number of those books found themselves in the sell pile rather quickly says more about the choices I made than the mood I was in.

Either way, I am very happy to have woken up today in the mood for an actual novel. In this case it was Just for the Summer, the new Abby Jimenez romance. It’s one of the Book of the Month selections for April and after Yours Truly, which was actually BotM’s Book of the Year for 2023, I was more than happy to see what else Jimenez was offering.

I have to say, I appreciate books (and therefore authors) who can portray elements of modern life in an entirely believable way. Which is why Just for the Summer opens with…a Reddit thread. An AITA thread, even.

If you’re disconnected from the internet, unfamiliar with Reddit, or too old to care, Reddit is a forum site online that has become very popular over the last decade and a half or so. It has subreddits (subforums) on every topic you can imagine. One of the ones you see discussed most often is AITA, or Am I The Asshole? Basically, people explain real life situations and ask if they’re the asshole for how they’ve reacted. Of course, a lot of these are fake, but such is life. If fiction weren’t so compelling we wouldn’t read and produce so much of it.

Anyway, the AITA thread is from a guy whose roommate has just moved out to live with his girlfriend. But their lease isn’t up for six months and the poster can’t afford the apartment on his own. He was able to work out a deal with the landlord to move into a smaller, cheaper apartment in the same building that he can actually afford. He agreed sight unseen, which turned out to be a problem. The only view the smaller apartment’s one window has is of a billboard. A Toilet King billboard. It seems this is a well-known brand of plumber in the Minneapolis area, but it’s not what one would want to see out of their only window. In petty revenge, the poster went to the shelter, adopted the ugliest dog he could find, and named it after his roommate. The roommate and several mutual acquaintances have asked him to change the dog’s name and he refuses, now asking the internet if he’s the asshole.

Oh, and as part of this post, he also mentions that he has a curse. He dates women, and after they break up, the women find The One. Their soulmates. So he’s a good luck charm for everyone but himself.

The female lead is reading this at work and is intrigued, if only because she seems to have the same kind of curse. Men she dates go on to find their forever love. So, she reaches out to the poster. And what do you know, the two become interested. If only for mutual benefit. Surely if they were to date and break up they would then find their own soulmates?

The book is a romance, so it’s pretty obvious where this will lead. But what I’ve found is that what truly makes a romance novel are the details. It’s not simply a meet-cute turning into the best thing that ever happened to the leads. It’s about the things that make them people, the flaws along with the ideals. And learning to deal with their problems, helping with the other’s problems.

After all, the female lead spent a chunk of her childhood in the foster care system because her mother would disappear for months on end with no word. And the male lead is about to become the legal guardian for his younger siblings as his mother goes to jail. So nobody’s perfect, and this says nothing of the personal issues both have as a result.

Okay, maybe the male lead is kind of too perfect. His flaws aren’t really flaws all things considered. He’s stressed and angry, but those aren’t really deep-seated issues. But it’s a romance, the intended audience is usually female, so a male lead who’s a little too perfect isn’t a dealbreaker.

After two Abby Jimenez books, I am noticing some patterns. It looks like she has experience with hospitals, because at least one lead in both novels I’ve read has worked in one. She also likes families. And when I say families, I mean with kids. This puts the leads into a parenting role, which isn’t a bad thing. There’s plenty of people in real life who are looking to date but do have dependents. Children. And I know it has to be hard to even consider dating when you have kids.

One thing I do really like in this book is how over the top the male lead goes. He sends out surveys before planning each date, and then sends actual electronic invitations for each with the relevant information. It’s such overkill, but in the most adorable way. I can respect someone who not only puts in that kind of effort, but also respects the boundaries his date sets.

I liked this book, but I feel like I wasn’t as engrossed in it as Yours Truly. That’s not saying one book is better than the other, or that either is bad. Just that while I enjoyed Just for the Summer, I didn’t fall in love with it. But it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to read more Abby Jimenez in the future.

I mentioned that Just for the Summer was a BotM selection. I didn’t mention that it wasn’t the only one. I don’t usually go for more than one, but this month I was surprised to find my attention caught by multiple options. And I decided…why not? It wasn’t like I hadn’t been trying to bolster my to-read Pile.

My first choice was How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang. Yet another romance, although this one I was more invested in. After all, we’ve got writers again and I’ve established that book-themed romances are definitely my jam. Although this isn’t quite that. Female lead Helen is an author, and her bestselling young adult series is being adapted into a TV series. She’s arranged to be one of the writers working on it. And, of course, the male lead is one of the other screenwriters.

He is also the guy who drove the car that killed her sister. And the book opens at the sister’s funeral. Not that her death was actually Grant’s fault. It was definitely suicide. And he was just the unwitting tool she used.

But that was in highschool. Thirteen years before the book proper. I’m not going to say that either lead should’ve grown past such a horrible tragedy though. That’s definitely scarring and traumatizing.

So, Helen’s got some hate for Grant and now they have to work together. Which, of course, leads to them getting together.

All the ingredients are there, but I just didn’t like How to End a Love Story very much. I think I wanted more of the actual work on the show and less raunchy sex scenes. Actually, the sex scenes had me feeling like I should be reading a paranormal romance. I’m not saying that most of the romances I read are tame, but the scenes here just felt gratuitous and out of place at times.

I’ve never read anything by Yulin Kuang before, but she really suffers in a comparison to Abby Jimenez’s writing. But, to be honest, I’m not sure if I would’ve liked this book any better even if I hadn’t just finished a better romance. Like I said, there’s good stuff here, good elements and scenes. But the whole falls short for me. I knew before I was even halfway through, even before the first sex scene, that I wasn’t going to keep it. I seriously considered putting it down. But I finished it, although I’m not entirely certain why. The ending was disappointing, because I really did want to know what Helen was doing next for a job, or if she was publishing the book we found out she was working on.

Oh well. Can’t win them all. I guess I’m glad I really enjoyed one of today’s books.