Three Slices. Anthology by Kevin Hearne, Delilah S Dawson and Chuck Wendig

These collection of three short stories have two themes:

One is Tyromancy. The ancient art of predicting the future using cheese (traditionally by cheese making) beyond just “we’re going to have something tasty to eat.” This is actually a thing and our ancestors were odd odd people. I do appreciate this rather unique little twist uniting them,

The second is the old Polish saying “Not My Circus, Not my Monkeys.” A saying basically saying (simplistically) “not my problem.

This is most excellently done in Prelude to War from the IronDruid Chronicles a story between Shattered and Staked which nicely fits into the main plot line of the series, filling in some gaps and expanding on some points. In fact, if I have any criticism about this short story at all it fails one of my tests for a short story: it’s probably pretty incompressible if you don’t follow the main series of books. Since I do, I loved it because it excellently added to that main series, showing how Atticus got the information he needed to track down what he finds in the next book

I also always appreciate Kevin Hearne’s dedication to research – as while the other authors have come up with their own ideas for what Tyromancy involves, Hearne has actually gone to the original definition and method.

The “not our circus” comes in when he finds – and learns she “betrayed him”. A definition she gloriously rejects by pointing out she doesn’t owe him anything. He bought services from her once. He is now buying services from her again. She didn’t swear loyalty. She isn’t his friend. She doesn’t owe him anything – she certainly isn’t required to risk her life or die for the sake of protecting Atticus or helping in a fight or war that doesn’t remotely involve her. I appreciate this even more since Mekera is a Black woman – and a Lesbian or bisexual woman. This genre – and the media in general – is absolutely full of minorities being sidekicks for straight white men, serving straight white men and, of course, sacrificing for straight white men that having Mekera declare firmly that she didn’t sign up for any of that, she isn’t responsible for any of that and Atticus has no damn right to expect that from her is a wonderful subversion of that continued expectation. This isn’t her circus. These aren’t her monkeys. She isn’t involved and she doesn’t want to be and won’t be shamed into it or feel guilty because her loyalty was expected

The story also nicely touches on her last relationship – a deep and abiding love that led her to seek isolation when her lover died which is a nice element of character building I appreciated along with examination of her ethnicity and history. It’s a short story and she’s a briefly appearing character, I could understand her not being well developed. I like that some effort was made to make her more than just the woman who tells the future using cheese.

Mocking Bird (Miriam Black #2) by Chuck Wendig

Miriam’s life is turning around. She has a home, after a fashion, a job and a long term relationship with Louis.

And she hates it. She hates her job, she hates her boss, she hates being trapped in the trailer, she hates not moving around and, as much as she hates to say it, she hates not seeing people’s death any more – she needs to see those images.

Unable to live in this little box she hits the road again, only to be derailed by the seemingly infinitely patient Louis who has a job for her – a friend who thinks she’s dying and needs it confirming. Seems simple enough for Miriam, albeit odd, but when visiting a reform school for troubled teenaged girls to see this woman she touches one of the students – and sees her horrific death at the hands of a serial killer.

This is a death that Miriam has to stop – and there’s only one way to cheat death; to balance the scales with another death.

Grim and dark and grim and dark. Am I sounding like a broken record? That’s right it’s the problem with reviewing sequels again! How do you review a second book in a series that has many of the same strengths as the previous book without sounding repetitive?

The answer is, of course, that you do sound repetitive – but if it’s repeating the same comments that still apply, then is that a bad thing? This book continues the darkness that the first book established. Miriam lives in a very dark, gritty, unpleasant world only exacerbated by her own self-destructive impulses. Her outlook is bleak, she has no time or patience for sugar coating everything – she knows she’s odd, she knows everything around her is pretty awful and she won’t pretend it is otherwise. She has little time for hope and largely dismisses it – things are bleak, when she has a good thing she screws it up and, due to her extremely broken self-esteem, if things were good then she wouldn’t deserve them. And probably drive them off.

But, despite those same opinions being prevalent, we still see a glimmer of Miriam’s hope. The fatalism that so characterised Blackbirds isn’t gone – but it’s reduced because she does have a way to change things – fate isn’t written. But that method of change involves killing people which means it’s not something she can use casually – but also flows into her own self-loathing and moral crisis. Her spending most of the book trying to save the victims of a serial killer means she has embraced the power of change – she doesn’t accept the inevitable fatalism of the deaths she sees – but she has to balance the cost of stopping those deaths. But this, in turn, leads to her moral crisis and further self-loathing: she is a killer. She may be a killer with the purest possible motives, but she remains a killer which is something else to beat herself up over. Especially when she realises that the killer themselves are actually approaching their kills from exactly the same viewpoint – they’re killing for what is, in their eyes, a pure motive. We’re left with the very difficult question of what separates Miriam from the killer? Where is Miriam’s moral high ground – and does she actually have any at all?

Blackbirds (Miriam Black #1) by Chuck Wendig

Miriam has a talent – when she touches a person she can see when and how they will die. And they will die that way – there’s no way to change it; she has tried and has herself been part of the cause of their death.

This has left her with a rather bleak view of the world as she travels around, following visions of the dead, living on the money she scavenges from the recently deceased.

But her talent has been noticed by a more ambitious con-man who is decides to blackmail Miriam to his own ends, dragging her along with him. Worse, the ambitious con-man has already reached above himself – provoking far worse enemies.

And Miriam has seen a death of a truly decent man; a man she wants to grow attached to, but what can she do with his inevitable, horrific death looming in front of her?

This is the second book by Chuck Wendig I’ve read, after Blue Blazes, and I now feel a vague need to track down the author, give him cake and a fluffy kitten and assure him that there are nice things in the world. This book is grim and dark and gritty. In fact it’s Grim and Dark and Gritty since capitals are definitely needed for this. The scenes are bleak and filthy and stark. The dialogue is harsh, takes-no-prisoners and a brutally clear look at the world. Nothing is white-washed over, nothing is gently covered and there’s nothing we don’t look at in all its detailed awfulness – be it the grimness of the world, of Miriam’s situation, the brutality of murder or the stench of death.

Part of what makes this book so stark in its grimness is that the writing is a true work of art. The descriptions, the exposition, the flow of the story all comes together to really give an excellent sense of time and place, with no detail untouched no matter how unpleasant. It’s the kind of writing that treads a fine line between being wonderfully evocative and being overwritten and repetitive. It’s a fine line – but it hits the balance perfectly which is extremely hard to pull off.

This ultra-grim starkness is also a perfect way of presenting Miriam’s gift (grim), Miriam’s past (grim) and Miriam’s current attitudes and beliefs (really really grim and hopeless). Even the interludes we have of Miriam explaining her gift add to the grimness by the way they end. There’s no positive in Miriam’s life, no reprieve and even this seeming intermission is just another step on Miriam’s grim past as a scavenger of the dead.

Her gift was really well presented – the horror and hopelessness of constantly seeing how everyone around her will die – and even when someone dies “well”, of, say, old age after a long and happy life, there’s a reminder that death itself is never pretty or pleasant. But not just seeing it – but seeing it and being unable to change it. Even seeing your own attempts to change

Fangs for the Fantasy Episode 124

This week we discuss Save Me, Orphan Black, Grimm and Continuum.

Our book of the week is Blue Blaze by Chuck Wendig.

27th May - 3rd June: Shapeshifted by Cassie Alexander

3rd June - 10th June: Binding the Shadows by Jenn Bennet

10th June - 17th June: The Fury by L.J. Smith

17th June - 24th June: The Mermaid’s Madness by Jim C Hines

Blue Blazes (Mookie Pearl #1) by Chuck Wendig

Mookie Pearl is a thug. He knows he’s a thug. He has always been a thug, working for the Organisation to ensure the supply of Blue – the mystical substance that brings an incredible high but also opens your eyes to the real… things out there – keeps flowing while the denizens of the underworld remain down where they are.

It’s a hard life and not a happy life – not getting easier or happier with his daughter makes a play against the very Organisation he works for; and organised crime isn’t kind to those who mess with it.

Her upsetting things is adding to more trouble – the boss is getting old, his heir isn’t ready to take over, there are new players in town and there are things stirring in the depths – among the snakemen and the goblins and the dead that walk.

This book is, perhaps, the hardest review I've ever written.

Because so much of this book is stunning. The writing is a true work of art. The structure, the description, the sentence length, the word choice all telling as much about the scene as much as the actual description. I’ve rarely seen writing that is so expertly crafted

And the theme and setting come through extremely well. The grittiness, the grimness are all well portrayed. The land without laws or order, where life is cheap, the sense that anyone could die at any time, nothing is pretty or shiny or beautiful and no-one can really be trusted. The otherness of the underworld, of the down below, how dark and terrifying and alien the underworld is. The weird eye opening power of the Cerulean. Even the surreal violence of the gangs and their odd themes and looks. All of the themes are excellently maintained to give a powerful atmosphere you rarely if ever find in books.