The Ballad of Perilous Graves

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings, 480 pages

Music = magic in this amazing book of dual New Orleanses. (Is that the plural of the city? I'm going with yes.) I first read and blogged about this creative debut novel last summer, and I just reread it for Orcs & Aliens next week. While I have a couple reservations about the timing of this read and discussion (the giant cosmic storm in the book seems a bit ill-timed with Helene and Milton hitting the southeast right now, but how was I to know that when I scheduled the discussion), my thoughts on the overall book haven't changed at all. In fact, discovering the existence of the book's companion Spotify playlist (thanks, Regan!), greatly enhanced my reading of it this time around. Can't wait to see what the Orcs & Aliens think of it on Monday.

The 22 Murders of Madison May

The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry, 322 pages

Madison May is a beautiful young real estate agent when a showing goes awry and she ends up murdered in the house she's trying to sell. She's also an aspiring actress who gets murdered in the alley outside her house on the way home from an audition. New York Daily News reporter Felicity Staples is researching the first of Madison's murders when she accidentally slips into a parallel universe and learns about the second murder. Soon Felicity is on a parallel universe-hopping race to keep Madison's obsessed killer from murdering her yet again.

This sci-fi-tinged thriller is gripping and fast-paced, particularly because you're never exactly sure what's going to be different in each world. Sure, the science of the movement between universes is very hand-wavy, but it's still an intriguing premise for a thriller, and a very quick read.

The Book of Accidents

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig, 544 pages

Nathan grew up with a violent drunk father and when his old man dies, bitter and alone, he offers Nathan the chance to buy the house for a dollar. Nathan's hesitant, but his wife Maddie convinces him to agree to the deal, arguing that it'll give her a place to work on her art and give their teenage son Oliver a chance at a fresh start, far away from the pressures of the city. At first it seems like a great plan, but strange things start happening soon, from Maddie going into a fugue state while carving with a chainsaw to a creepy older kid hanging around with Oliver to vision's of Nathan's late father showing up in the front yard. Something isn't right, and it doesn't seem interested in leaving the family alone until it's over.

There is a LOT going on in this book, including demons, parallel worlds, kids with superpowers, serial killers, art coming to life, abusive parents, and even some light cannibalism. In short, it makes it hard to follow what's going on. That said, I absolutely loved the nuclear family, which is ultimately honest, caring, and supportive of one another, no matter how weird the situation. I also enjoyed Wendig's humor throughout. Honestly, if this book lost just one or two of the weirder plot points, it'd be a home run for fans of Stephen King and T. Kingfisher's novels.

This book is scheduled to be published July 20, 2021.

The Hollow Places

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, 341 pages

Thirty-something divorcee Kara has recently moved in with her Uncle Earl, in part because she wants to help him run his weirder-than-weird museum of oddities, but also because she REALLY doesn't want to move back home with her mother. One day, while Kara's manning the museum, she discovers a hole in the wall, though it turns out that this hole is not your normal hole and is in fact odder than anything in Uncle Earl's museum. Armed with nothing but sarcasm and a thermos of spiked coffee, Kara and her friend Simon head through the wall into a foggy world filled with spooky, mist-covered islands (each inexplicably housing a cement bunker), lots and lots of willows, and, well, not a lot else. As they explore, Kara and Simon discover more and more unsettling things about this strange land, and hope to close up portal between the museum and the islands, hopefully with themselves safely on the museum side.

This is a wonderfully creepy story, made more so by the presence of all the taxidermy (I mean, when DOESN'T that make a story creepier?). But the shining star of this book isn't so much the atmospheric creepiness as it is Kara's quirky personality and matter-of-fact way of looking at things. As Simon panics in one scene, she rightly notes that only one of them can panic at a time if they're going to make it through the situation; in other scenes, her brain focuses on small details (fonts on a school bus, the official name for a particular shade of gray found in the mist) rather than take in the enormity of the situation. I found her a winning protagonist, and not just because she has an excellent name, spelled correctly. Anyway, the book was awesome, and I'll definitely be checking out more by Kingfisher (better known in the kid book and graphic lit worlds by her real name, Ursula Vernon). Highly recommend this funny creepfest.

The Doors of Eden

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 627 pages

Four years ago, Mal disappeared while monster-hunting on a moor with her girlfriend, Lee. Lee assumed that Mal was dead, but as it turns out, she was simply trapped on an alternate Earth, living with the dinosaurs there. It turns out that there are several Earths, each with a different evolutionary path that branches off at different catastrophic points in time. Oh, and the walls between them are slowly becoming more and more porous, leading to what may be the final, all-Earths catastrophe. 

Massive in scope and insanely creative, this book brings together the smartest (or at least most dogged) beings from several Earths, fending off their own prejudices (and evil opportunists) to try to solve the problems of the multiverse. I particularly liked what Tchaikovsky had to say about human intelligence, as well as our consideration of "the other." The interstitial chapters from an academic book about the multiverse are sometimes a bit plodding, but they're much shorter than the action-filled chapters and they do have a point, so it's better to read them as you go. It's a big book, but for someone looking for a new take on evolution and the idea of parallel universes, it's definitely worth the time.