Rutabaga's Reads 2022: Part 18

An unusual achievement for me, here is the second adult fiction compilation post for 2022!

A Spindle Splintered (Oct. 5, 2021) by Alix E. Harrow.

*This is the first novella in a series.*

It isn’t the spindle of a spinning wheel that will be Zinnia Gray’s downfall, but industrial pollution. Zinnia has Generalized Roseville Malady, and no person diagnosed has lived to turn 22 years old; Zinnia has just turned 21. It’s her last birthday, and her best friend, Charm (Charmaine Baldwin, “best/only friend”), has pulled out all the stops for Zin’s last birthday. It’s sleeping-beauty-themed (Zin’s a bit of an expert), complete with a tower (of the old state penitentiary), a plastic princess crown and a spinning wheel. When Charm dares her to prick her finger on the spinning wheel, she does – of course she does – but something happens. Someone calls out, “Help.” And Zinnia answers that call. It turns out sleeping beauties do exist, but their stories are not necessarily the stories one’s familiar with. Bits and pieces, yes, but not the entire narrative. In helping another sleeping beauty, will Zinnia be able to alter – or escape – her fate?

            If you’re looking for a fractured fairy tale, consider picking this one up. If you’re looking for a Disney-esque fairy tale, keep looking. “A Spindle Splintered” is the first in the Fractured Fables series. A feminist story that’s acerbic but sometimes sweet, subversive but still charming in a dark, twisted way, and entertaining despite its sometimes one-dimensional feel. (I think its one-dimensional feel came from its novella size, as opposed to a full-length novel where the author could better flesh characters out, especially supporting ones). It’s a story of sisterhood and stubbornness, imagination and fracture. It’s got a queer romance-in-the-making. It is a story gone rogue that still manages to be magical.

The God of Lost Words (Nov. 2, 2021) by A.J. Hackwith.

*This is the final novel in a trilogy.*

*Spoilers included if you haven’t read the previous books in the series.*

The Library of the Unwritten is in trouble. Malphas, general of Hell and the “Grandmother of Ghosts,” is a chief demon in Lucifer’s absence. Although Hell does not govern the Unwritten and Arcane Wings of Hell’s Library, Malphas has learned that the stories are souls. She will do whatever she can, through force and cunning, to harness those souls and gain more power. If that happens, it would mean obliteration for the Library. Arcanist and former Librarian Claire, Librarian and former muse Brevity, rakish Hero and the angel-Watcher Ramiel (Rami) will have to band together to outwit Hell and start a revolution. They will traverse the libraries of other realms to try to gain allies, but the effort seems futile. The Unwritten Wing’s Librarians’ log tends to hide entries until they are needed. That is how Claire discovers the entries of Poppaea Julia. She once rebelled against Hell and almost succeeded. Claire is on the lookout for “a realm, a guide, a library, a god.” That is what will purportedly keep them safe from Hell’s grasp forever. They’ve got to write the Library a new chapter.

            The concluding novel in an inventive trilogy, the fast-paced plot, intriguing world-building and the ​standout characters coalesce into a story that journeys to a hopeful yet bittersweet end. Hackwith’s writing is striking, the prose often thoughtful and deep, but inserts cheekiness as well. The action is both colorful and dark with plenty of emotion. There is queer representation, but what’s most poignant about all the characters, be they fallen, of an unwritten story, once a muse or once a living, breathing human, is that they are complex characters with wants and fears, brave fronts and self doubts, making them feel real to the readers. Though it may sound strange to say about a series titled Hell’s Library, this saga has been a delight to read. What a journey!

            Book One: The Library of the Unwritten

            Book Two: The Archive of the Forgotten​

            Favorite lines: “But that’s what stories did. Let enough impossible things pass through you and they gain a kind of reality. Stories grant the impossible emotional gravity, create new orbits – and your mental universe expands.” (p. 239)

Pachinko (Feb. 7, 2017) by Min Jin Lee.

*This is a standalone novel.*

“A woman’s lot is to suffer.” Kim Sunja is no stranger to this when her father dies when she’s 13, and she takes on more responsibility in helping her mom manage and take care of a boardinghouse. As a teenager in the early 1930s in Yeongdo, Sunja becomes pregnant with a married man’s child, and she refuses to be his mistress. Baek Isak, a kindhearted but frail minister, feels called to marry Sunja if she’ll have him and will give their child a name, though the baby isn’t his by blood. They marry and immigrate to Osaka, Japan, where Isak’s brother and sister-in-law live (Yoseb and Kyunghee). Sunja’s son, Noa (inspired by the Bible’s Noah), is her world, and later, so is Mozasu (inspired by Moses), her son with Isak. But life in Osaka is not easy. It is difficult for Koreans in Japan to find work, as it seems impossible to any of them that they could become Japanese citizens, so even with Noa and Mozasu being born in Japan, they are treated like foreigners or worse, like scum. The boys grow up and go different directions, having families of their own, and their dynamics are so different from each other. The story goes through 1989, when Sunja is in her 70s. Through these decades, never completely out of the picture is Noa’s birth father, Koh Hansu, who married into the second most powerful yakuza (gangster) family in Kansai (a region of Japan, which includes Osaka and Kyoto).

            As a National Book Award Finalist, I expected this book to be impressive, and it is. It is amazingly well-written, but the story is replete with hardship. It isn’t only about hardship and suffering with nothing else to go on, but hardship and love, suffering and family, sacrifice and ambition. From the dusty streets of the poor in Ikaino (the ghetto where the Koreans in Osaka live) to the pachinko parlors of the gambling-obsessed and from Korea to Japan to one character’s stint in New York for school, “Pachinko” is a multifaceted story filled with strong women, devoted families, moral crises, survival and anguish, even as the characters rise to thrive. It makes a reader think about history in a way that’s harsh but exquisite. It is haunting and brilliantly presented. Those who love Korea should read this, as should those who know nothing about Korea outside of K-dramas, K-pop, kimchi, Hyundai and Samsung, because, wow, this book has soul.

Rutabaga's Reads 2022: Part 10

Hello, first adult fiction compilation of 2022. While I branch into adult fiction a very slim margin more than nonfiction, it remains a book group that I don’t often read. Update: My reading from this genre has improved somewhat since working in a library.

The Archive of the Forgotten (Oct. 6, 2020) by A.J. Hackwith.

*This is the middle novel in a trilogy.*

While Hell’s Library of the Unwritten has been saved from total devastation, the loss of books still number in the hundreds. When the remnants of those destroyed books manifest a pool of ink in the Arcane Wing, Claire and Brevity make their own decisions on how to deal with the ink. Their relationship is currently rocky. Claire is no longer Brevity’s boss, now that Brevity is the Librarian and Claire the Arcanist. Tensions rise when Claire’s actions in the damsel suite come across as an attack (her relationship with the Unwritten Wing’s books was fraught at best) and, essentially, get her kicked out of the place she used to be Librarian. Meanwhile, Brevity has accepted assistance from the Muses Corps, especially since the representative present is Probity, once a young muse that Brevity took under her hypothetical wing. Probity says Brev is the rightful Librarian, but with the choices she makes with Probity’s ulterior encouragement, rightful is a shaky adjective. There are also their companions Hero, who’s made from a book, and Ramiel (Rami), a fallen angel. Hero is acting as the Apprentice Librarian, while Rami assists in the Arcane Wing since he couldn’t return to his Watcher duties in Heaven. Together, Hero and Rami embark on their own quest, visiting other realms to search out clues to the mythical origins of the unwritten books. They must discover what lies at the heart of each story or the ink will “bury her under its own existence.”

            I maintain that I still want to visit Hell’s Library; location is inconsequential, for, if I could visit this one, I’d also be able to visit the library at Valhalla or the Unsaid Wing in Elysium. As with the first story, I was swept up in the story from the first page. It is a fantasy adventure novel imbued with powerful storytelling, thanks to the friction of two of the main characters, the author’s brilliant world-building and exquisite plotting across library wings and realms. Hackwith’s imagination is dazzlingly creative and undeniably phenomenal. She really gets to the soul of what it is to tell an intricate story!

            Book One in the Hell’s Library trilogy: The Library of the Unwritten

The Return (Sept. 29, 2020) by Nicholas Sparks.

*This is a standalone novel.*

Returning to New Bern, North Carolina, wasn’t expected, but it comes at an in-between time for Trevor Benson. A Johns Hopkins-trained orthopedic surgeon, he was on active duty in Kandahar when a mortar explosion sent him back to the States with devastating injuries, and the Navy let him go for disability reasons. Because of the injuries he sustained, returning to work as a surgeon is out of the question, so he’s soon to start a five-year psychiatry residency back at Johns Hopkins. He’s in New Bern, because his maternal grandfather, Carl Haverson, unexpectedly passed away, and he’s staying at his grandpa’s place. It needs fixing up, though he doesn’t think he’ll sell it, but he does want to make sure all is well with the bees and honey production. He meets Natalie Masterson, a local deputy sheriff, and is immediately taken in by her physical attractiveness. While his attraction to her is immediate, hers may be reciprocated, but at a distance, though Trevor does not understand why. He knows he’s fallen in love with her and would re-consider his new residency to stay in New Bern permanently, if it weren’t for whatever is causing Natalie’s hesitancy to move the relationship forward. Further complicating his stay is Callie, a teenage girl who lives in the trailer park down the road from him. She’s sullen and mistrustful and says she’s 19 years old when she doesn’t look older than 16. He mostly leaves her alone until a medical crisis prompts him to figure out Callie’s true past. Her life may depend on it. Trevor will struggle to understand what holds Natalie back, to discover Callie’s history and to piece together his grandfather’s last words to him. Some of it he can hash out with his therapist, Dr. Eric Bowen, but he’ll have to figure out plenty himself. Like what it is to love and understand how complicated it can be. And what it is to forgive oneself despite tragedy. And even, what it is to return to a place so that you can move forward.

            For fans of Nicholas Sparks, this novel is signature. It’s a love story featuring a charming town with beautiful sunsets, trips on a very unique boat, busy bees and even a farmers’ market. Multiple characters, not only Trevor, wrestle with personal demons, and so it’s a drama as well as a romance. It has secrets and a puzzle to piece together that will help another cog in the story, making it part mystery. It should make for an ideal beach read as well as a winter story and for many, it probably is, but for me, the story fell flat because of Trevor. I was impressed with Sparks’ inclusion of Trevor’s struggle with PTSD and the use of CBT and DBT (both are types of behavioral therapies) to help control/manage his symptoms associated with PTSD. Where the story fell flat for me was his instantaneous attraction to Natalie. I’m not saying that it’s weird for someone to look at someone and right away find that person attractive, but the way he fixates on her – wants her to text back right away or go out to eat with him that same week, want to run his fingers through her hair and sleep with her – is creepy. Is this fixation exacerbated by his continued struggle with PTSD? I don’t know. But it didn’t warm my heart; it creeped me out.

The School for Good Mothers (Jan. 4, 2022) by Jessamine Chan.

*This is a standalone novel.*

On Frida Liu’s one very bad day, “she needed to get out of the house of her mind, trapped in the house of her body, trapped in the house where Harriet sat in her ExerSaucer with a dish of animal crackers.” That one very bad day may cost Frida her parental rights. This will be determined by spending a year in a secret pilot program where bad mothers (bad fathers are at a different site) will participate at an institution that will measure their successes and failures. Is her motherese convincing? Did she give the correct hug, the one for soothing fear versus the one for allaying aggression? Is she displaying enough empathy or is her anger showing? The scans will show, the cameras will tell. This includes the video capture within Emmanuelle, her toddler doll. She will learn as Frida teaches her, though the dolls can also be programmed in various ways for training. They require maintenance, and they do not have to tuck them into bed each night. The dolls are stored in the equipment room. Frida yearns to have her daughter returned to her, and it’s her love for Harriet that carries her through the year. “I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good.”

            Marketed as an adult, dystopian fiction novel, the story is all the more disturbing because it seems so close to present-day. Social media like Instagram and Twitter still exist and entities such as Child Protective Services are active, excessively active. I am as awed by this novel as I am disturbed. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. The story is explosive and astonishing, frustrating and heartbreaking, punishing and infuriating. It’s remarkable. Chan’s plot is complicated, emotive and deep; Frida is tender yet angry, intricate as most humans are. Chan’s tale is imaginative, but it’s her potential real-world flourishes that chill a reader: stereotypes about mothers, stereotypes about parents of color, dealing with the state. The level of mass surveillance, the data and technology are also at an all-time creepy level. This novel is daring and complex, perfect for book club discussions.

            I want to add that I had wondered if I’d connect with this story, as I do not have human children. Chan’s writing is brilliant, and I had no trouble finding empathy. I am; however, immensely interested in discussing this story with others who have human children. How are our perspectives different? How might they be similar?

Rutabaga's Reads 2021: Part 1

Presenting the first adult fiction compilation of 2021! By “adult fiction,” I mean that they aren’t marketed for children or middle-schoolers or young-adult readers; I do not mean that these stories are categorized as erotic fiction or some such potentially eyebrow-raising thing. That said, I’m not saying a story doesn’t make reference to such subjects or include an occasional scene, but it’s not the focal point of the stories.

Dark Tribute (Mar. 26, 2019) by Iris Johansen.

*This is a standalone novel with recurring characters.*

From a tragic childhood to a young woman with stable people in her life, Cara Delaney is making her mark as a violin prodigy. As a professional musician, she is traveling and does not often get to Atlanta where her guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy SEAL Joe Quinn, reside with their 10-year-old son Michael. Life is going remarkably well for Cara lately, except lifelong friend Jock Gavin isn’t in her life like she’d like, and she also gets abducted by a man called John Svardak. The past haunts Svardak in the present and drives him into a madman bent on violence to avenge a dark past involving Cara’s biological grandfather Sergai Kaskov (who is himself a dangerous man). Eve, Joe and Jock rush to rescue Cara, but they’d better be prepared to have Kaskov’s involvement, too. And don’t rule out Cara herself, who does not plan on becoming Svardak’s next dark tribute.

            I’ve mentioned this of Johansen’s books previously, but it is real now. This was the last book of hers that I read. I have purchased zero books of hers since this one. Another Eve Duncan Novel, it does contain the elements that readers expect: thrills, danger, aspects of paranormal suspense, headstrong female characters, super bad guys and the occasional scene of intimacy. The occasional scene of intimacy isn’t going to upset me, but what I found aggravating is Cara’s obvious desire to lose her virginity to Jock, a man who’s gotta be, what, at least 15 years older than her? And there is a lengthy paragraph where she tells Jock that she doesn’t care if she gets pregnant after Jock freaks out that he didn’t use protection (and she willfully didn’t, either). That, to me, just screams immaturity. Characters readers once knew as youth are growing up, but her books have continued to feel the same to me (my opinion only, obviously) despite the different characters. For this reason, I finally stopped ordering her books. I did not make this decision lightly.

The Library of the Unwritten (Oct. 1, 2019) by A.J. Hackwith.

*This is the first novel in a trilogy.*

There is a neutral place in Hell known as the Unwritten Wing. It’s the space where all stories that were unfinished by their authors (sometimes known as unauthors) reside. It is Claire Juniper Hadley’s job to watch over those unfinished manuscripts, her usual duties being to maintain order and repair the books as needed. But sometimes an unwritten book wakes up, manifesting itself as a character. If that character’s author is alive, there will be no fascination stronger than the character pining for its unauthor. So this is why Claire, her apprentice librarian and ex-muse Brevity and a nervous junior demon called Leto find themselves with a day pass to Earth (well, only Claire and Leto need day passes, both having mortal souls, but Brevity needs no such ghostlight). They encounter Hero, who, as expected by Claire, does more harm than good in reaching out to his author. She stamps him, marking him a part of Special Collections, which means the library can IWL it (Interworld Loan, meaning the book can be loaned out or called back from anywhere). Retrieving Hero should be relatively simple, except a fallen angel, a Watcher, known as Ramiel (or Rami) thinks the group from Hell is hiding pieces of the Devil’s Bible (Codex Gigas). Nothing can persuade him or his commander, Uriel, the avatar “Face of God,” otherwise. It does not help that Leto managed to grab the scrap of text from Rami. Rami, getting an unexpected leave from his mundane assignment (punishment?) at The Gates, tending Heaven’s inbound processing, tracks Hell’s residents from Earth to Hell and back again, with stops in Valhalla and even the afterlife of a local dead religion that dealt in “water worshipping and sacrifices.” It turns out that the text of the Devil’s Bible is powerful and would be a significant weapon to Heaven or Hell. And if those realms are affected, Earth will be, too.

            I took a chance on this fantasy novel, first because of the title and then because of the book jacket text, and I was not disappointed. I loved this book and am very pleased that it’s the start of the Hell’s Library trilogy. The entire story is brilliant in its approach, and the story moves swiftly thanks to it. The book is overall clever, the world-building is wonderfully intricate, and the characters are each their own, some of them coming together like the most eclectic family across any dimension. It is tiered like an impressive cake and reads like a robust wine. I could definitely do without the creepy demons, but this is a library I’d happily visit, even though the story does make me feel sorry for those unfinished stories. For anyone who’s ever tried writing their own stories, you might want to take the time to finish them, so they don’t wind up in the Unwritten Wing.

The Starless Sea (Nov. 5, 2019) by Erin Morgenstern.

*This is a standalone novel.*

Devotion is the way of acolytes. Worthiness is for the guardians. Keepers retain spirit and keep it aloft. What is Zachary Ezra Rawlins? Is he the heart or the feather? “We are the stars,” a character says. “We are all stardust and stories” (p. 373), which I like better than another quote taken from the Latin that anyone who’s familiar with the Shadowhunter universe will know: “We are but dust and shadows.” 11-year-old Zachary does not find his way to the Starless Sea. Graduate student Zachary does, but it’s not an easy adventure. It is wrought with questions and forged in mystery. A mysterious book contains a story from his childhood, yet the book is far older than he is. Encounters with strangers will change his life, but are these strangers the sort that he should entrust his life with? There’s Mirabel, the fierce, pink-haired painter, story sculptor and Something Else. And there’s Dorian (not his real name, but the name is his now), the handsome man with shifting alliances who doesn’t like to wear shoes. The fate of the current Harbor is drawing to a close. How far will Zachary venture? And at what cost?

            I was enthralled by Morgenstern’s novel “The Night Circus.” With the magic and inventive plot, it was a fantastical place that I wanted to live in. I was far less dazzled when I began this story. Perhaps my expectations were too lofty, but I felt like “The Starless Sea” tried too hard to be “The Night Circus.” It doesn’t have the seamless magic and gorgeous ease of Morgenstern’s previous novel. It lacked muchness, but then it began to return. Fully restored? No, but the dreamlike quality I’d been seeking flared within, emotion burbled and magic began to restore itself like puzzle pieces fitting themselves together. I became bewitched. Although it didn’t enthrall me from the get-go like I wanted it to, I can appreciate the rich narrative, gorgeous complexity and inventive, lush, magical storytelling. Like “The Night Circus,” it is a timeless tale. Are you ready to sail the Starless Sea (it’s not water, as one might expect)?

            P.S. Those cat-sized bees. I love them, too, and will they please send me cupcakes?

            Also from this author: The Night Circus