Posts Tagged ‘mythology’
Sometime in the late 70s, the American military tried to kill a god.
They failed.
Thirty years later, the god’s children are all grown up. And one of them has a murderous intent to kill her Father.
I came across Scott Hawkins’ 2015 debut novel The Library at Mount Char in some book listicle about “books that don’t make any sense until you’re half way through”, and yep, this book is exactly that. If you’re the kind of reader who wants a prologue, wants a ton of history before the main plot gets going, if you want to know the character’s histories . . . yeah this is not the book for you.
This book is absolutely and gloriously bat shit insane.
I spent the first hundred pages thinking things like:
Ok, that’s weird.
Huh. that was even weirder. And gross.
Damn that was a well placed joke!
Well, that’s creepy as fuck.
Wait, what?
Good kitty. Stay calm kitty. You’re a really big kitty, sweetie, aren’t you.
Here’s a taste of the prose:
“On the morning after she murdered Detective Miner for the second time, Carolyn came awake on the floor of Mrs. McGillicutty’s living room.”
The prose, the dark humor, the characters who struggle to relate to each other but must work together, the forbidden knowledge, people with god-like powers, the long game, the author forcing the reader to be patient, the way everything (yep, that too!) is explained at the end. . . you know what The Library at Mount Char reminded me of? It reminded me of Gideon the Ninth, but with a lot fewer swords and a lot more guns.
If I even attempted to explain the plot of this book, I’d sound like I’m just grabbing random words in no order, but I’ll try.
Carolyn is one of twelve orphans adopted by Father. He set each child to study a different section of his vast library, such as languages or medicine, and the children were forbidden to share what they had learned with their siblings. Break the rules, and punishment was swift, often including death. But that was okay, Father would just resurrect the dead child. He might then kill the child again, just to make a point. This is how these children grew up, they forgot their lives before they were adopted. They adapted. They developed some truly epic coping mechanisms. One of them figured out how to be invisible.
Now adults, and forced out of their home, the adoptees must figure out how to live like Americans. Which usually involves wearing shoes. And something called cell phones. Robbing banks is frowned upon. Give Father’s children a break, they really are doing the best they can, even Margaret. It’s not entirely her fault she smells like death warmed over.
And one impossibly painful piece at a time, Carolyn’s dangerous, crazy, and inevitable plan is coming together. The only person she can trust is that klutzy American Steve. He’s such a dork. But he has a pick up truck, and he knows how to break into houses. . . . And oh yeah, what did eventually happen to Erwin?
This books sounds super dark, and it is super dark and very, very fucked up, but it’s also super hilarious. Part of the humor is that there’s a chapter at the end entitled “So, What Ended Up Happening with Erwin?”
And OH THE LONG GAME! Kage Baker would be proud! the last few chapters of this book was a masterclass in invisible guns on tables. it’s as if the entire thing was backwards origami, and then it unfolds, again.
The Library at Mount Char was written in 2015, and as far as I can tell, Scott Hawkins never published another book.
If you’re looking for something weird AF and brilliantly written, The Library at Mount Char is the book for you.
A couple of weeks ago, i needed yet another comfort read. I didn’t want to read anything new, I didn’t want to read something that reminded me of now. It was the week of the election, and all i wanted to do was escape anything and everything that had anything to do with the year 2020.
So I picked up N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I’d read this book for the first time back in 2013, as part of a read along hosted by Dab of Darkness, and I remembered liking it, and enjoying the whole trilogy, and there was something about enslaved gods, and the middle book in the trilogy was really funny?
Woah. I forgot how sexy The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is! There isn’t like, a ton of sex, but damn is this book sexy and hot! And those handful of sex scenes? WOAH. like, DAMN.
And this was Jemisin’s debut novel, are you freakin’ kidding me? I’m not surprised at all that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula, and won the Locus award for best first novel, cuz, you know, Jemisin.
Ok, so anyway, if you’ve not read Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, it’s fantastic. And if you read Jemisin’s three years in a row Hugo award winning Broken Earth Trilogy and it freakin’ destroyed you and you are still picking those little pieces up off the floor . . . The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (and the rest of it’s trilogy, The Inheritance Trilogy) is much, much gentler.
What’s the premise of the book, you ask? Once upon a time, there was a war among the gods. And after the war the humans enslaved the gods.
Yep, you read that right – the gods are the servants of the humans.
And because humans shouldn’t do terrible, amoral, depraved things, we make the enslaved gods do those things for us. And the gods have their own set of morals that don’t quite mesh with ours, so it’s all ok, right?
Yeah, um, no it isn’t.
I’m a sucker for mythology. And I’m a double-sucker for gods to have the same weaknesses and failings that people have, and for gods to talk to each other and to people, and for gods to have really, really long memories. I am a triple sucker for gods who are trapped in their own mythologies.
The mythology in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? Oh, it is so exactly the kind of thing that I love! I kinda want to reread the novel AGAIN (even though I read it two weeks ago?) just for the mythology! A god of chaos, a god of order, a god of twilight/dawn/birth/death/change, a godling who is the embodiment of childhood? And they all (ok, some of them) talk to each other, and to us? Yes please! And all that mythology I love so much? In this book, it’s happening right now, in the present tense! eeee!!!!
Oh, the plot, you want to know about that too, I suppose.
- In: interviews | John Adcox
- 4 Comments
Hey, so my WordPress Editor just an hour ago spontaniously switched to the Block Editor. which means I have NO IDEA how this post is going to turn out, because everything is super weird.
I met John on Twitter a while back, and we’ve chatted back and forth a few times. He’s a fellow science fiction and fantasy fan, a writer who loves mythology, a writer who seeks out wonder.
What started off as a project between friends, for their family, has turned into something much, much more. Several years ago, John and his wife Carol started a tradition of creating a Christmas book for their friends and family, with John writing the prose, and Carol doing the illustrations. These stories are now ready to shared with everyone, and every year, starting in 2020, Story Plant will publish one of John and Carol’s books. The first one, Raven Wakes the World, hits bookstore shelves next week. (Indiebound ordering link)
A tale of an artist rediscovering her own strength, Raven Wakes the World is a magical realism with a touch of romance, and the unforgiving environs of Alaska. If you are looking for a unique holiday gift for someone who loves modern mythology, this could be it! Click here to read a free preview.
You can learn more about John and his work at his website, JohnAdcox.com, and by following him on twitter, where he is @JohnAdcox.
ok, so funny story – when I emailed John these questions, I knew the illustrator’s name was Carol, I didn’t know that was THE Carol, John’s wife! That’s what I get for not doing my research, that’s for sure!
Little Red Reviewer: Congrats on your new novella, Raven Wakes the World! What inspired you to write this book?
John Adcox: That’s hard to answer. I’ve always had a fascination with mythology, and I love stories where myth bleeds out to enchant and maybe even heal our own more mundane world. I truly do believe that stories have the power to change and heal us. Sometimes, story might be the only thing that does. Not too long ago, I heard a pastor friend define religion as communal response to a story. Why not? After all, the language of God is parable and story. I think other people’s stories might have a power to reach us in a way that our own, more familiar ones can’t. And it’s telling, I think, that so many of our most sacred stories have echoes in cultures all around the world. The inspiration, I think, was to look at Christmas, and healing or rebirth, through a different cultural lens.
LRR: Tell about this story – what’s the elevator pitch?
JA: Katie Mason is an artist wounded in the soul after the end of a broken relationship. She’s fled all the way to Alaska to heal and to make art, but she hasn’t been able to do either. She’s cocooned herself, like the world in winter. But in the town of Aurora, Alaska, she meets a mysterious stranger who wakes her passions, and who has secrets. Soon she finds herself caught in an Inuit myth made real, and in a world where winter seems to last forever. If you’d like to know more, the opening chapters are online at http://ravenwakestheworld.com/.
What was your favorite scene to write in Raven Wakes the World? Where there any scenes that were unexpectedly difficult to write?
J.A.:Wow, that’s also really hard to answer! I think my favorite scene is the one where Katie first hears the story about how Raven stole the sun, the moon, and the stars and brought light to the dark world. It’s also the scene that inspired my favorite of the illustrations. The hardest to write, I think, was the end, when Katie faces her pain and starts to make hard choices. It’s always hard to write about pain and heartbreak. Sacrifice isn’t especially easy either, especially when it is for love.
LRR: I read on your blog that you and your wife have a family tradition of creating original Christmas stories. How did the tradition get started? Has it changed over the years? What are the elements that all Christmas stories must have, to be a good holiday story?
J.A.:My friend Carol Bales — she wasn’t my beloved wife yet; we weren’t even dating back then — and I had the idea to collaborate on a book to give our friends as a Christmas gift. I’d write a story and she’d draw the illustrations. We bound those first books by hand. People seemed to really like them. Raven Wakes the World was the first of them … although this version is extensively revised and expanded. Over the following years, we tried a number of different genres, including drama, an urban legend/ghost story, action/adventure, and even screwball romantic comedy. If there’s a connection between these books (aside from the fact that they take place in winter, which is absolutely my favorite season to write) it’s has to do with people who are somehow isolated and hurting, and who find their way back to home, family, community, and joy. Christmas is about birth and rebirth, and homecoming, and that seems almost universal in so many cultures. I think all of these stories have to do with people who are broken finding a way to be less broken, sometimes through a miracle. I’m not sure that’s true of all Christmas or holiday tales, but it’s certainly true of a lot of them, from A Christmas Carol to Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
what’s this, a book review? I know, right?
Shorefall, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Published April 2020
where I got it: Received ARC from the publisher (Thanks Jo Fletcher books!)
I meant to reread Foundryside before reading Shorefall. But then i was like do I really have time to reread Foundryside? And I liked that book, but did I like it enough to want to reread it?
So I dived into Shorefall, with very, very fuzzy memories of Foundryside. I remember really digging the magic system, really liking Clef and his whole deal, being kinda meh on Sancia even though she has a tragic backstory and a metal plate in her head, and really digging the magic system. Yep, that’s about all I remember from the first book. I don’t remember all the details about Valeria from the first book, but she must have been really important. That said, I do NOT recommend jumping into Shorefall if you haven’t read Foundryside. (Altho I am SUPER curious about people who did read Shorefall first. Could they get into it? is this a series that can maybe be read in any order?)
Shorefall opens with Sancia, Berenice, Gregor, and Orso putting the final touches on some new invention they’ve created in their workshop. What exactly is this thing? First I thought it was some kind of printing press, then it seemed more like a magical photo copier, and finally I settled on that it was some kind of magical quantum button thing, that whatever one button does, the other button does it.
Even they have a tough time describing their invention, and that makes a specific merchant house even more interested in getting their hands on it.
Of course, getting their invention inside that particular merchant house is just the first step in their grand plan . . .
Something I’ve loved from the start of this series is the magic system. It functions sort of like computer programming – you etch a set of sigils, and lines of sigils become commands, and the commands that are etched into something, such as a metal plate, make that something want to break the laws of physics. Now, imagine if all the commands and how to combine them weren’t yet known, but scrivers messed around with things (a la mad scientists) to figure out new combinations that would make something work without it exploding. Larger discoveries effectively creating programming shortcuts, and new knowledge akin to a more advanced computer programming language. Oh, and there are no computers, and hardly any advanced technology. It’s all very Girl Genius, but with way less humor.
I was worried this book would suffer from “middle book syndrome”, and the book ended up being quite the opposite! In fact, in my opinion, Shorefall is all around a better book than Foundryside.
I *think* I was supposed to connect with Sancia, and really follow her plotline and be super interested in the politics of what was going on in Tevanne.
What ended up happening was that Sancia had a scene or two that tugged at me, and then I lost track of all the fancy merchant families, and then I got super invested in Gregor and Crasedes and Valeria. And then buckets and buckets of hella cool shit happened at the end of the novel. And I mean really, really hella cool shit!
Oh this book!
What started out as a cute little adventure story, turned into the most wonderful hero(ine)’s journey!!
yes, I admit, when I first started reading Gods of Jade and Shadow, I was like “this is super cool, 1920s Mexico, we’ve got a fun adventure starting, looks like there could be some cute romance happening here”. and for the first half of the book, that sorta is, what is happening. AND THEN.
Lemme tell you ALL about it!
Because reasons, Casiopea Tun has a bit of Cinderella situation going on. She and her Mom live with their extended family, but Casiopea is treated like a servant. She cooks, cleans, goes to the market, runs errands for her awful cousin (is he that awful? really? actually YES), and takes care of her angry, bitter grandfather. She dreams of a way out of this life, but can’t see one. this is starting out very fairy tale-ish, yes?
one day, when the family is on an outing, having left Caseopea at home, as a punishment, she takes special notice of an old trunk in her grandfather’s bedroom. And she opens the trunk.
What’s in the trunk? oh, only the bones and soul of Hun-Kame, Lord of Xibalba, and one of his bone shards gets lodged in Casiopea’s hand. no biggie, right? He can just, remove the shard, and then he can go back to Xibalba to dethrone his brother, and then Casiopea can pretend none of this ever happened, right?
hahahaha, NO.
Hun-Kame immediately starts his plan to return to Xibalba and dethrone his brother Vucub-Kame. But first, he must locate his missing left ear, left index finger, and left eye, so that he can be whole again. But what about that bone shard?
The bone shard is part of Hun-Kame, and so long as it remains lodged in Casiopea’s hand, she has a glint of the supernatural about her, the protection of a god. On the literal other hand, the longer it stays in her hand, the more human Hun-Kame becomes. If the shard isn’t removed in time, he will forget who he is, and she will die.
Casiopea and Hun-Kame thus leave on an adventure across Mexico, visiting demi-gods, demons, and other friends of Xibalba, so he can regain his missing body parts before time runs out.
Sounds serious, isn’t it?
Ok, so I’m sure this book wasn’t planned to be cute and adorable and funny and flirty and heartwarming, but it was all of those things. I’ll bet this book was planned to have an amazing ending that was an absolutely joy to read, and it was that too.
See, here’s the thing:
Casiopea is a good Catholic girl. She shouldn’t be alone with a man in a train compartment, especially a man she isn’t related to. She doesn’t even know this guy! But. . . Hun-Kame is not a man, he is a Lord of Xibalba. So it’s ok, right?
and Hun-Kame has no idea how to talk to mortals. he has no idea how to talk to women. He also has no idea how a train schedule works. For goodness sake, he doesn’t know what coffee is! To me, he was adorably clueless.
Watching the two of them travel across Mexico was the most adorable and heartwarming thing I’ve seen in ages. in AGES.
One non-sequitur after another.
Posted on: March 21, 2020
I finished Kage Baker’s Sky Coyote yesterday, and immediately started reading Mendoza in Hollywood. I’ve been reading a ton in the mornings. And at lunchtime. And at night. At this rate, I’m going to be done with this series in two weeks. I’m thinking of rereading Kaoru Mori’s Bride’s Story next, we recently got volume eleven. Each volume of that takes me about two hours to read, so I can draw it out to . . . eleven days? Eleven days of gorgeous artwork, I think I can handle that.
How are your bookshelves organized? Mine are by “height”. All the mass market paperbacks together, so I can stack more MMPs on top of them. All the hardbacks together, all the “tall” books together. My Baker’s are a mish-mash of every type of format – hard back, mass market paper back “tall” paperback, an odd-size ARC from Tachyon, I even have one or two hard back special editions from Sub Press. What I’m getting at is that they’re all different sizes, so are somehow scattered throughout this house. Nothing is more entertaining that watching me tear bookshelves apart looking for specific books!
Ok, so here we go, with random thoughts on Sky Coyote:
Sky Coyote is feel-good humor, feel-good pop culture references, it’s got characters I want to hang out with all day long. This book feels like I’m watching Back to the Future. it feels really low stakes. I may just come back and reread this, when later books in the series get super heavy.
I love Joseph. This isn’t his first rodeo, which is good thing, but he’s also compartmentalized everything in his mind to justify his actions, which is not a good thing. Being around people who remind him of home, he needed that. I’m happy he got that, I wish he’d had more time with the Chumash. Everytime I read this book again, that’s more time he gets to spend with them, right?
I was howling with laughter at Puluy and Awhay’s dialog, they talk like Valley Girls!
I love living mythology, and that’s what this book is. You can read Sky Coyote as a stand alone, so if you like mythology, if you like humor, get this book. Everyone knows it’s ok for mythology stories to be made up, and everyone knows it’s ok to feel like those stories aren’t made up.
Do we get more of Joseph thinking about Budu? I hope so. I think so? Budu and his kind were designed to kill humans who were killing other humans. But what happens when soldiers like Budu aren’t needed anymore. Hmmm . . . . suddenly seeing Will McIntosh’s Defenders as a companion book to The Company.
The performance the Kantap puts on! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, oh are you in for a treat! When they do the “comedy act” of Sky Coyote and his, well, um, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe!
Omg, the scene with the Looney Tunes cartoons! I was crying-laughing! Actually, because me, I was crying-laughing for like the last 50 pages of this book. They were happy tears.
The year 2355. You can’t outrun it, you can’t avoid it. You are rushing towards it, inevitably, relentlessly, and one day per day.
Because I have vague memories of what’s coming in books 3 – 6, I can’t stop thinking about Mendoza and Nicholas.
We watched the movie Rocketman, the other day. Freakin’ excellent movie! It’s very Baz Luhrmann! I lost track of all the costume changes and started getting a kick out of the dozens and dozens of glasses. If you like musical biopics, this is well worth your two hours.
And I swear I saw Nicholas Harpole in Rocketman. You can’t tell from this picture, but he is tall and very lanky, and usually wears severe dark suits. and that voice! and those eyes! No wonder Elton thought this guy loved him, how could anyone think otherwise?
I spent the afternoon today binge watching Star Trek: Discovery season 2.
I freakin’ love Tilly. You’re either going to love her or hate her, and it took me a few episodes in season one to warm up to her, but I wish they would just call Discovery the Tilly & Stamets show.
isn’t she adorable?
More non-sequiturs in a few days, ok?
Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein
Posted on: July 29, 2019
Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein
publishes on Sept 17th 2019
where I got it: Received ARC, Thanks Tachyon!
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So, this book is going to get a lot, and I mean a LOT of hype in the next few months. Hype makes me nervous. It makes me worried that some slick salesperson is trying to separate me from my money. Here’s everything you need to know about Ivory Apples, and hype:
- the hype is well deserved. This book was everything I want storytelling to be
- Ignore the hype, go get the book
- My literature hot take is that Neil Gaiman hasn’t written anything half as good as Ivory Apples.
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This book is mythology given new life, it’s folklore happening in your backyard. Remember a few weekends ago, when I disappeared off the face of the earth, when I wasn’t online, when I wasn’t answering texts, tweets, or e-mails? It’s because I was immersed in this book and I didn’t want to come up for air until I’d finished it. To be honest, I wanted to stay immersed, I didn’t want to come up for air, ever. On page one I fell in love with the narrative voice, by page three I decided I wanted to be Maeve when I grew up, and by that afternoon I was halfway through the book.
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I’m gonna talk to you about mythology and folklore and storytelling and art for a minute, ok? We use mythology and folklore to explain things that we have no explanation for. Our favorite stories are the ones that give us hope that one day we too, can steal fire from the gods. That one day we too, might do something legendary, might go on our own hero’s journey. Storytelling is powerful, it enables us to do things we didn’t think possible. And the storytellers and the artists! They create magic out of thin air, and somehow make it look easy! Imagine if you could have just a piece of their gift. What wouldn’t you give to be as talented as your favorite writer, your favorite poet, your favorite musician, or your favorite artist?
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Anyway, Ivory Apples opens in the late 90s. The eldest of four sisters, Ivy is eleven years old when the story starts. All four girls are old enough to understand that they must always call their great-aunt by her not-real name, Maeve. They must never tell anyone her real name, what her phone number is, or where she lives. Their reclusive great-aunt Maeve is really Adela Madden, the author of the runaway hit novel Ivory Apples. She wrote the novel decades ago, and never wrote anything else. Maeve could care less about the royalty checks, she’s not interested in fan-mail or conventions held in her name, she’s not interested in talking about the book that made her famous. She’s mostly interested in staying hidden from the world, and lets a relative deal with the fan-mail and the banking.
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Ivy was such a wonderful character to follow! When we meet her she’s a care-free preteen, who bickers with her sisters and often forgets what adults have asked her to do. She’s too young to understand what she’s stumbled on, but knows she can’t tell anyone but Maeve, because no one else could possible understand. I won’t go into details, but I loved watching her learn about what was going on, and learn to live with what happens to her. Once you get to know her, maybe she’ll remind of someone in your life, maybe you’ll say to yourself “maybe what happened to Ivy happened to them”, and you’ll smile.
The Grass-Cutting Sword, by Catherynne M. Valente
published in 2006
where I got it: purchased used
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Before a girl circumnavigated fairyland, before John fell in love with Hagia, before six super- heroines discussed their stories in the afterlife, and long before Space Opera, Catherynne Valente was taking the poetry and dreamyness of folklore and turning it inside out to show you the shiny bits you hadn’t known were there.
Valente’s novella, The Grass-Cutting Sword, was published in 2006, and if you come across a copy in some used bookstore somewhere, BUY IT. (or even better, find a copy of Myths of Origin, which includes even more of Valente’s early work!) Especially if you like folklore. Especially if you like beautiful / weird / strange writing. If you enjoy C.S.E Cooney or Benjanun Sriduangkaew, you’ll love this.
In the story notes in Myths of Origin, Valente describes The Grass-Cutting Sword as “probably the most textually experimental and angriest” of her work. Yes, it is very experimental! But none of the characters seem overly angry. Driven? Absolutely. Tragic? That too. Oh, and as with all good fairy tales, there is a dragon and there is a sword.
The Grass-Cutting Sword is a retelling of the Japanese folktale of how the storm god Susanoo was banished from heaven by his sister Ama-Terasu. Instead of viewing it as a banishment, he takes the opportunity to seek his mother in her underground realm. Recognized as a god by a worshipful man and woman, he undertakes the quest to save their recently abducted youngest daughter from an eight-headed serpent which has eaten the other seven daughters.
If he succeeds in the quest he has undertaken, the parents have promised him he can marry their youngest daughter as soon as he rescues her. Her parents say she is the most beautiful girl in the world, fit for an Emperor! And Susanoo wouldn’t be so insulting as to disagree, now would he?
The narrative flips back and forth between Susanoo’s point of view, and the serpent’s point of view. Susanoo doesn’t mind hunting down the serpent, he’s not quite sure what else (other than look for the entrance to his mother’s realm) he’s supposed to do on Earth anyways.
As he travels the countryside looking for signs of the serpent, he tells the reader the story of creation – how his parents lived on an island surrounded by jellyfish, how his mother created the islands of Japan, how her fiery child was the last she would give birth to. Susanoo tells of his own creation, and that of his sister Ama-Terasu and his brother Tsuki-Yomi.
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
Posted on: March 17, 2019
Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee
Published in January of 2019
where I got it: purchased new
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About half way through Raven Stratagem, I realized I wanted to read everything Yoon Ha Lee had written. The Machineries of Empire series only has three books, and I needed more of this kind of writing, of this style of story weaving. So, I ordered myself a copy of Conservation of Shadows, and bought a copy of Lee’s middle grade book Dragon Pearl.
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Dragon Pearl was very cute, and it is definitely book aimed towards the 8 to 10 years old crowd. My niece justs turned six, I can’t wait for her to be old enough to read this. I hope this is the book that has her asking her parents a million questions about how the world works, why adults do the things they do, if she can be a fox spirit when she grows up, and how terra-forming works.
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When Min’s older brother Jun joined the Space Forces, his family hoped he’d return home to a better world. When Min’s mother receives word that Jun abandoned his post to seek the Dragon Pearl, the family is shocked. Min knows her brother would never do something like this. She knows what he was looking for, out there in the deepness of space, and she knows why it would tempt him so much. But his letters home make no sense, she knows something is very wrong! Knowing that she can’t let anyone outside her immediate family know that she is a fox spirit who can shapeshift, she leaves home (a little Binti like, actually!), in search of her brother’s ship and his last known where abouts.
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Dragon Pearl is very fast paced, and in short order Min loses her possessions, is embarrassed to learn exactly why her family doesn’t want their children ever using their fox-spirit magic such as shapeshifting and Charm in public, escapes the gravity well of her impoverished planet, gains a ghost, and ends up having to shape shift to imitate a dead boy who was posted on the same ship as her brother. Speaking of not using her Charm magic in public, I got an absolute kick out of the scenes in the casino.
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What started out as “find out what happened to my brother” has now turned into avoid the scary tiger captain, keep a ghost happy, quickly learn how to be a fifteen year old male cadet, somehow gain access to the planet of the dead (literally. It’s covered in ghosts and when you go there they kill you) and most importantly, don’t get stuck in this physical form forever! Some members of her brother’s ship were on a secret mission to find the Dragon Pearl, and if Min can understand what happened, her dusty, unfinished planet could become a paradise. It sounds very convoluted, doesn’t it? Luckily, Lee is a fantastic writer, so while it is fast paced, it isn’t convoluted at all.
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Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Posted on: March 4, 2019
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
published January 2017
where i got it: borrowed from a friend
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I’d thought this book came out way more than two years go? I got quite the surprise when I flipped to the copyright page and saw that Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology came out in 2017. When the book came out, I remember seeing tons and tons of hype, gorgeous cover art, and being so buried in Marvel Thor movies that the last thing i wanted was more Thor fiction.
When my friend lent me his copy of Norse Mythology, I ran my hands over the embossed cover, tried (and failed) to find constellations in the scattering of stars, and thought to myself “yeah, I’m finally ready for some Thor fiction”. Thing is, and and I’m so pleased to say it, this is not “Thor fiction”. This book is literally what is says on the tin – this is not reimagining of Norse myths, or retellings, or modern takes on them. Gaiman studied the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, read the commentaries, and dug into the dusty, cobwebby corners. He sought to understand where these stories may have come from, how they may have evolved over the centuries, he mourned what has been lost because it was slowly forgotten through the oral tradition and never written down. This volume is a selection of Norse myths, told in Gaiman’s signature style of deceptively simple prose that pulls you in, and just keeps pulling. His introduction alone is a brilliant piece of writing.
If you have ever read Edith Hamilton’s famous Mythology (ok, so it isn’t Norse), and wished for something a little easier on the eyes, something that didn’t assume you had already studied for years, something that was a joy to read, Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology is for you.
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Told as short stories, Gaiman starts you with the birth of the Gods and Goddesses, and takes you all the way to Ragnarok. The stories happen chronologically, so once Thor is gifted with his hammer, he has it in future stories. Once Frey gives up his sword in payment, he never has it again. Once Balder is dead, he’s dead. Once it becomes known that Loki has other children that Odin didn’t previously know about, those children become part of the mythology for the rest of time. Once Loki loses the trust of his fellow immortals for the last time, there is no escape for him. And Thor is . . . nowhere near as smart as certain movies would have you believe.
This was the perfect bedtime book. None of the entries are very long, they functioned perfectly as something to read to calm my brain down. Keep in mind tho, that due to the stories being in general chronological order, it’s best if you read them in order. Treat this book like a mosaic novel made up of various smaller, interlinked stories (wait a minute, is this a fix up novel? lol!).
the Little Red Reviewer 
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