Lost in the Valley of Death

Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad, 286 pages

Justin Alexander Shetler was always a person interested in exploration and isolation. He learned how to live off the land at a young age, and connected his spirituality to nature and learning about the world. He was also a handsome social media star who documented his world travels through his Instagram and Facebook pages. Seven years ago, Justin traveled to the Parvati Valley in India, a place known for its seclusion and spiritual pilgrims, and also as a place where foreigners have often gone missing, never to be heard from again. As can be assumed from the title, Justin vanished there, during a multi-day hike to a lake with a spiritual guru.

Rustad tells of Justin's life before his final voyage, but he also offers up tales of others who have gone missing in the Parvati Valley, as well as the many theories for what happened to them. I read this with a bit of a cynical eye, perhaps because I'm a bit skeptical of anyone who talks about dedicating their life to connecting spiritually or physically with the natural world but doesn't leave Instagram behind. However, I may be in the minority here, as Justin certainly had a lot of followers, and his disappearance was certainly intriguing. Give it a read and let me know your theories.

Roommates Wanted

Roommates Wanted by Lisa Jewell (2007) 461 pages

Leah lived with her boyfriend across the street from a rather distinctive three story tall building in need of updating. For three years, they watched the comings and goings of the people inside, wondering who the people were: a rather reclusive man with thick curly hair and muttonchop sideburns, a young woman with a guitar, another woman who frequently changed her appearance, a young man of nineteen, and more.

We learn that a poet named Toby was given the house 15 years ago as a wedding present by his absent father. There was one old man, a sitting tenant, who remained in the house when they moved in. When Toby's wife left him after a month, Toby advertised for more roommates to fill the house, preferring to have artists and other creative types, with the rent negotiable. He had no trouble filling the rooms in the house, but basically withdrew from the world, seldom even interacting with his tenants.

Toby learns that his father will be visiting in a few months and wants to see if Toby has been successful in his poetry career and improved his house. (He has not.) When circumstances bring Toby and Leah together in an extraordinary incident, they become friends. Toby confesses that he needs to find a way to get his tenants to leave so that he can sell his house and move on with his life. Leah helps Toby find a contractor to renovate his house and she and Toby plan ways to help his quirky tenants at the same time.

Braking Day

Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji, 359 pages

After more than 130 years in space, the colony ship Archimedes is approaching its destination. As an officer-in-training, Ravi McLeod is one of those preparing the ship for Braking Day, the day cycle on which the ship will flip its thrusters and fire them up — basically, hitting the brakes on their decades-long drift. As he's preparing a remote area, however, Ravi comes across a mysterious un-spacesuited girl floating outside the airlock, and as he sees her again and again, he begins to suspect that he's either going crazy or his cybernetic implants have been hacked. Either way, it's not good for Ravi, the first of his family to break from the criminal life and seek a legit life on Archimedes.

It's hard to describe everything that happens in this book without giving away some major plot details, but the plot is not really where Oyebanji shines. What he's done amazingly well is create a lived-in complex society on the ship, with believable class differences and criminal elements, a water-based economy, and a realistic maintenance schedule for the ship. It's so well done that it's hard for me to believe this is a debut novel. Can't wait to read more from him!

Shades of Milk and Honey

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal, 272 pages

Jane is talented, intelligent, and — at age 28 — an assumed spinster, thanks to her plain looks and awkward social skills. Her younger sister, Melody, is everything that Jane isn't, and her lovely looks and flirtations have garnered the attentions of more than one suitor, much to the delight of their parents. However, as the sisters get to know Melody's suitors and the mysterious glamourist who is creating a magical mural at one of their homes, Jane begins to suspect that something foul may be afoot. Can she convince Melody of the suitor's detriments without Melody blaming Jane's jealousy?

If Jane Austen or the Brontes had added magic into their works, I suspect their books would have been remarkably like this, Kowal's first novel. Having previously only read Kowal's Lady Astronaut series (which is based on hard science and astrophysics), I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this one. Turns out, it was fantastic, and I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series, which is already on my TBR shelf at home.

The Fountains of Silence

 The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys, 512 pages.

In 1957 Spain is ruled by dictator Francisco Franco and there are many things Spaniards aren't allowed to do or say. At the same time, Spain has recently opened up to American business, and the tension between the worlds of the American tourists and the employees at the hotels they stay at a palpable. In the summer of 1957, aspiring photojournalist Daniel comes to Madrid with his parents, and quickly stumbles on some of the stories that Franco would rather the world didn't see. One of his windows into these stories is Ana, a maid at the hotel who wants nothing more than to see the world, and her brother Rafa, who works at a slaughterhouse and a graveyard while training his best friend to be a matador. Sepetys artfully weaves stories of a number of a number of characters with different beliefs from all over Madrid (along with excerpts from primary source documents about the period) into an engaging story that is also a very informative history of a little known time.

I feel like this book is an example of where Sepetys really shines, and found it overall stronger than I Must Betray You. This book is, like all of her others, very informative and very sad, and I definitely found myself drawn into Daniel's story in particular. This book is very multifaceted, and definitely worth the read.

Dead Man in a Ditch

 Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold, 416 pages.

This is book two of the Fetch Phillips archives and things have not gotten much better for our friend Fetch. The lights are still out, the magic is still gone, and people are still dying slow deaths without it. So when an industrialist shows up looking an awful lot like he was killed by magic, people get pretty excited. And since Fetch has accidentally gotten a reputation as the guy who's investigating the magic coming back he finds himself right in the middle of the mess. 

This was a really twisty mystery and I enjoyed it. There were multiple times in the first hundred chapters or so when I thought the case was solved and wasn't sure what the rest of the book was going to do, only to find out that the solution we were just given was practically nothing in the grand scheme of things. I really like this setting, and I feel like this book dug deeper into the details of how it works, which was also cool. This was a strong sequel, and I'm looking forward to reading the next one. 
 

A Calling for Charlie Barnes

 

A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris (2021) 342 pages

I have to admit that this novel had what I considered a slow start. Charlie Barnes—a 68 year old guy from Danville, Illinois who never made it big, who had several failed marriages, who told stories that might not have been exactly true—is convinced that he has pancreatic cancer and will die soon. No one seems to believe him, because he's been that sort of man. He just wasn't that loveable or relatable for me. But after I looked again at the cover of the book and saw a glowing blurb by Andrew Sean Greer, whose own character, Less, has been one of my favorite quirky characters, I gave Charlie another chance.

At first there was the mystery of the narrator (which was also a thing in Greer's book), but once that was settled (or was it??), then the story improves by leaps and bounds, yanking my brain with surprising turns. Entertaining and philosophical. I recommend it!

House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery

 House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery by Liz Rosenberg, 339 pages.

A reading challenge I'm participating in includes a task to read a biography of an author you admire. On seeing someone recommend this book I realized that, despite having read Anne of Green Gables *a lot* of times, I didn't know anything at all about the author. 

This is a really effective biography. It follows Lucy Maud Montgomery (who usually just went by Maud) from the time she was born to her tragic death. Rosenberg draws heavily on Montgomery's own journals and letters, but also other archival sources, which prove useful for when Montgomery is either not seeing her own life very clearly or is unwilling to admit to difficult truths. Montgomery's story is often sort of beautiful and hopeful, and many of the nicer and more uplifting aspects of it went into her novels (I had not realized how many things in the Anne books are at least semi-biographical). The biography, much like her own books, is also an interesting look into life at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. It's also often quite sad. Maud suffered a lot of terrible things, both internally and externally, and it can be hard to read how much everything fell apart for her in the later years of her life. I would definitely recommend this book to fans of L. M. Montgomery, but don't expect a very happy story.

I Must Betray You

 I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys, 321 pages.

Under the rule of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu seventeen-year-old
Cristian Florescu is unwillingly recruited as an informant for the Romanian secret police. Many things are illegal in communist Romania in the 1980s; making fun of the regime, talking to foreigners, accepting American currency, and certainly the secret journal where Cristian records his honest thoughts. Cristian is recorded as an informer, but he's far from the only one, and the mistrust of every citizen for every other is a life-draining weight on the country. Here we follow Cristian as he desperately tries to find a way to have a better life not just for himself, but for his country as well.

As always Sepetys is a master of extremely sad and well-researched historical fiction. This wasn't my favorite of her books (I found the first half a little slow and repetitive), but it was still quite good, and it was good to learn about a historical period I knew literally nothing about going in. I would probably recommend Between Shades of Gray as the better introduction to the author, but this was still definitely worth the read.

Note: Throughout (but especially near the end) there's some pretty graphic violence that may take people by surprise in a young adult book, so be prepared for that.

A Carnival of Snackery

A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020) by David Sedaris, 566 pages; 17 hours on audiobook, read by David Sedaris and Tracey Ullman

David Sedaris is one of my go-to audiobook authors (I think I've listened to just about everything he's published), so OF COURSE I had to give this a listen too. Covering 17 years of his adult life, this collection of diary entries runs the gamut from inane musings to jokes from book events to the truly random stories that Sedaris tends to attract. While these can sometimes be crass and absurd, perhaps the most unnerving are the entries from the last few years, covering the Trump administration, the early days of COVID-19, and the racial protests of 2020. It's odd to hear him — or Tracey Ullman, who narrates the entries written in the UK and Australia) — discussing things that are still ongoing, when most of Sedaris' previous writing has been about either less impactful things (what to name a squirrel, for example) or well in the past. That said, it's a delightful listen, and I loved it.

The Paris Apartment

 

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (2022) 360 pages

Jess has left London in a hurry after a bad incident with a boss who had harassed her one time too many. She's concerned that the police will be looking for her and she asks her brother, Ben, if she can stay with him in Paris for a bit. Ben agrees, but he isn't there when Jess arrives. All she has is a voice mail message from him, telling her that he'll let her in when she rings the buzzer. 

Jess wonders how Ben could even afford to stay in this massive building on his salary as a restaurant reviewer. The apartment building has 6 floors, one apartment on each floor. It's an old building with secret passages and "a cave" in the basement with a huge amount of wine. There's also a shack on the property that houses a scary old woman who serves as a concierge. 

Jess picks the lock to get into Ben's apartment. There are no towels in the apartment, and there is large section of lighter-colored wood and a strong smell of bleach on the floor near the door, quite troubling. Jess has no money and nowhere else to go, so she stays. She finds some clues that indicate Ben was investigating something big, trying to get a scoop on a story that could advance his career. Everyone in the building seems to be avoiding Jess or trying to get her to leave. Everyone has their secrets in this compelling and suspenseful story.

Strange the Dreamer

 Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor, 544 pages. 

Lazlo Strange is an orphan turned junior librarian, a position which comes with no prestige in Zosma, but does allow him full access to the stories he loves. His favorite of these stories are those of the lost city of Weep, which produced wonders and disappeared centuries ago, and whose name he felt stolen by magic when he was a child, and replaced with the new name of Weep. So when representatives of the city arrive at the library looking for people to help them solve a problem that they refuse to describe until they get to Weep Lazlo has to finds a place in the delegation.

The city is nearly as wonderful as he imagined, even if it is haunted by the shadow of the oppressive gods that the people killed fifteen years ago. A past that is less dead then the people think, as five half-mortal children of the slaughtered gods live in hiding in the floating citadel above the city. When Lazlo comes to know one of them, Sarai, in his dreams they start to dream a way forward for the city together, even past centuries of accumulated hate and fear. 

I remembered that I really liked this book when I first read it a few years ago, but I hadn't remembered why until I reread it. This book is brilliant. It's descriptions are lush and the world is richly imagined. It's also extremely tragic, and the way that Taylor layers tragedies and always seems to find a way to make them just a little deeper and more painful is very impressive. I think a lot of what makes this book so powerful is how the painful, terrible parts and the beautiful, hopeful parts are constantly laid right next to each other. Overall a very underrated book, more people should read it. 

(Also there's fantasy etymology, and I always love fantasy etymology.)

The Kaiju Preservation Society

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, 264 pages

Jamie Gray has been rudely fired from a tech startup and is forced to get a job delivering food right as COVID-19 hit New York City. So when a regular customer offers a high-paying job at the mysterious KPS, Jamie jumps at the chance. Turns out "KPS" stands for Kaiju Preservation Society, and spends most of its time at a parallel world that is home to huge nuclear monsters, a la Godzilla. While most of the people on the KPS team are super-intelligent scientists, Jamie's job is, to quote, "picking things up and carrying them." But even that brings Jamie into way-too-close proximity to the giant creatures and the not-quite-as-giant parasites that feed on them.

This book is not meant to inspire deep thought. It's a popcorn book, just as summer blockbuster movies are popcorn movies. It's fun, it's crazy, it's full of action, and it's a quick read. I loved it, and I'll be recommending it all over the place, particularly to fans of Jurassic Park, Godzilla, and snark.

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason, 408 pages

When she was born, Rory Thorne was given 12 gifts and one curse from 13 fairies (as is the tradition for princesses born to the interstellar Thorne Consortium). The one curse, however, may be the most useful thing of all though: the ability to see through flattery and lies, which will likely come in useful in her future, when she's promised in a marriage that's meant to stop a war.

Rory's "curse" is pretty cool and she does have some neat diplomatic abilities, but there's no multiverse in this book, nor is said non-existent multiverse destroyed. This was a fun mashup of fairy tales and space opera, though perhaps not my favorite book ever. Still, it made for a good discussion last night!

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson, 335 pages

In this collection of essays, humorist, producer, and all-around-awesome businesswoman Robinson offers up her opinions on everything from cohabitating during a pandemic to the racial protests of the summer of 2020 to running a business as a Black woman to the aforementioned rules about Outside Clothes (which I'm capitalizing because I fear her wrath). It's an illuminating, thoughtful, and funny collection, and I highly recommend it.

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse

 How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason, 416 pages.

Rory Thorne is the princess of an inherited monarchy which is also a space corporation. She's also a direct descendant of Sleeping Beauty, and as the first girl born to the line in centuries, she receives thirteen fairy blessings on her naming day. Some are grace and harp skills, but the most dramatic is the ability to see through any lies and flattery. 

When her brother is born she is no longer the heir, and before too long learns that the political role of daughters is often as bargaining chips for marriages. She's shipped off to the space station ruled by her betrothed (who doesn't seem to be around) to wait for the two years before she comes of age and gets married. And if some extremely shady stuff is going on with the regent? Surely she can't be expected to just ignore it.

I really, really liked this book. I was expecting a space opera with sort of fairy tale aesthetics, and was very impressed with how much the author committed to this book truly being both fairy tale and science fiction. I also really liked Rory. She plays a little against type for the archetype of the strong, brash heroine by actually listening to and genuinely respecting her mentors, which I found very refreshing. This book was a whole lot of fun while also having the ability to take it's serious moments seriously, and overall it's something even better than the fun, silly book I was expecting. Also apparently Rory is a space pirate in the second book and oh boy am I excited to read THAT.

The Thief Lord

 The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke, 350 pages.

Prosper and Bo run away to Venice to hide from their Aunt Ester, who wants to adopt Bo and separate the boys after the death of their mother. Soon they join up with a gang of children who live mostly on the generosity of the mysterious thief lord, who is himself a child named Scipio. When the next big score looks like something magical the payout it may be enough to finally buy all of them safety and comfort, but only if they aren't all in way over their heads.

I haven't read this book since I was a kid, when it was one of my favorites. It's still extremely good. Funke's descriptions of Venice are lush and magical, and the story feels refreshingly small and personal. This is a very comfortable book to settle into, and extremely underrated in the field of juvenile lit.

April totals

Jan 4/1312

Kara 7/2347

Regan 5/1910

Total: 16/5569

Ugh, what a rough month! I'll soon be bugging people to start blogging again! You know who you are...

The Husbands

 

The Husbands by Chandler Baker (2021) 346 pages

Nora is stressed: She's under review this year to determine whether she'll make partner in her law firm. Her immediate boss is a huge drain on her time. She and her husband are trying to find a bigger house before their second child is born. While her husband, Hayden, is the sweetest guy, she still feels the pressure of being the primary parent for handling the life of their preschooler and other household duties.

The couple looks at a house in a neighborhood outside Austin, called Dynasty Ranch. The house seems perfect to Nora and the neighbors seem terrific—lots of women of various professions gather regularly and support each other. And their husbands all seem extraordinarily focused on taking care of their children, their homes, and their wives.

Nora is asked by her potential new neighbors to try to find out whether anyone/any company can be held responsible for a fire that destroyed the home of one of the neighbors and killed a neighborhood man, in order to provide for Penny, his wife. As Nora investigates, the situation seems headed in a very weird direction.