Sworn Soldier series by T. Kingfisher

by Rebecca

I have started the spooky season off right with a pair of eerie fantasy horror novellas that I highly recommend (although admittedly not to my 6-year-old cousin for whom I had to do some quick page flipping to find a section I could read aloud without introducing any concerning concepts.)

What Moves the Dead
by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon)
2022

This first novella is a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, which I actually only read in full afterwards, although I vaguely knew the gist of it through literary osmosis. The original is a bit of a slog with a lot of words about not much happening. In contrast, Kingfisher goes above and beyond in developing some of those details into full plot arcs and monster development, creating a cozy horror story that is deeply unnerving, with a wonderfully unique character to be the narrator.

Also, not to get into spoilers beyond what the cover already shows, but I feel like this book could be part of a triptych with Entangle Life and Little Mushroom to really cover the full expanse of literary discourse on fungi.

The narrator is Alex Easton, a retired soldier from Ruritania, a fictional eastern European country that apparently has a long history of being a fictional setting, and has — in this story at least — a running gag about how miserable the country is in pretty much every way, but it’s still home. An interesting twist that reminds me of the Cleric Chih series is that in the Ruritanian language, soldiers have their own dedicated pronouns, and thus anyone who doesn’t like their born pronouns can swear in as a soldier and get a soldier’s pronouns as part of the deal along with PTSD and various other injuries.

Easton is fascinating enough, that it’s no wonder that the one-off story became a series, and thus the second book is:

What Feasts at Night
by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon)
2024

This is another cozy horror novella set in the 1880s, that follows pretty soon after the prior one where Easton is hoping to recover from the events at the House of Usher, although would have preferred to do so in an apartment in Paris rather than in an old hunting lodge in Ruritania, but events conspire to bring Easton to rural Ruritania, an unexpected death, and some deeply superstitious villagers. The characters are a delightful as they try to get along, despite having distinctly different perspectives, and the world-building perfectly creepy in the way it presents the world as dangerously uncertain about what is happening and even more uncertain about what to do about whatever is happening.

Kingfisher does an excellent job of both taking advantage of and subverting some of the standard writing tropes to keep both the reader and the characters uncertain. The supernatural elements are introduced into the world building in a way that feels all too natural and realistic.

The third book in this series, What Stalks the Deep, just got published last week and I’m on the list for it as soon as it hits my library, but wanted to give it a call out here as well. It’s coming soon!

How Lucky

by Anna

By Will Leitch

Man, it is my season for finally getting around to reading novels by authors that founded beloved defunct websites. Will Leitch co-founded Deadspin, and while he often wrote about sports, he was so clever and witty that I read all his posts anyway. Anyway, I was very much looking forward to reading a mystery by him, and it only took me four years!

I love an unlikely detective, and this was specifically recommended to fans of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time, which was one of my first of the genre. In this novel, protagonist Daniel suffers from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA, described as similar to infant ALS), with a predicted lifespan of 21 years tops, though he is beating the odds in his early 20s and living independently though with round-the-clock assistance. He can’t speak verbally or move without his wheelchair, but still participates in more of life than many of us, which becomes a clear theme of the novel.

While sitting on his porch each morning, he regularly sees a young college student walking to class, and when one morning she gets in a car and then disappears, he appears to be the only witness. He is promptly dismissed by the police in the face of his disability, and his two closest friends jump in to help him continue to get his statement heard. This brings him to the attention of the kidnapper, which really ramps up the suspense.

The crime itself is fairly straight-forward, and is secondary to showcasing a number of socially-marginalized characters and how much they contribute to society as a whole. The end takes a startling swing toward high action, which felt a little jarring, but I’m not sure that wasn’t intentional as well. If at times the theme felt a little blunt, it is definitely a message that is needed more and more today: that everyone can contribute to our society in large and small ways, and that you get out of life what you put into it.

Wicked River by Lee Sandlin

by Rebecca

Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
written by Lee Sandlin
read by Jeff McCarthy
2010

This is a wild ride. It’s a non-fiction black-comedy history book. It’s a collection of crazy stories about unpleasant people living awful lives and they are hilarious. Except that sometimes it gets grim enough that it overloads my sense of humor and just gets super depressing even in its ridiculousness. But it really is fascinating and an excellent look at American history and social movements. It’s kind of amazing how many patterns of events and types of people I recognize as being present in today’s world.

This is by the same author who wrote Storm Kings , which I enjoyed so much that I immediately checked out their other audiobook. Storm Kings is the better book, with a more cohesive storyline, while Wicked River is more a scattershot of stories and events, but it’s still very good and very impactful. Each chapter looks at a different aspect of life along the Mississippi, mostly pre-Civil War, skipping around in time and location, with a lot of stories about the lives of specific individuals and events. It gets into the nitty gritty of life and death and trade, the horrors of recurring epidemics, the cognitive dissonance of slave-holding societies, the lawlessness of the various settler justice systems, intermittent excesses of debauchery, celebrations of casual violence, ubiquitous drunkenness, and a vast cast of characters from all walks of life.

The book concludes with the Mississippi River Commission being established immediately post-Civil War and essentially taming the river, at the same time that railroads were replacing boats for transport. In the end, there’s a sense of nostalgia for the wildness that has been lost, because the river cultures were amazing and easily romanticized, even though, or perhaps especially because, they sound truly awful to have lived through.

Women’s Hotel

by Anna

By Daniel Lavery

This novel is less about telling a story than evoking a place and time, but it does that so well that I didn’t mind the slight plotting at all. In fact, with everything currently going on, a sort of gentle pastiche of the past might be exactly what I needed.

Daniel Lavery, a favorite author of mine, can just really turn a phrase that had me giggling at basically just clever nonsense (which I mean as a high compliment). Almost every sentence is packed with both witticisms and what I assume is meticulously-researched details of the period, and though it could make for an occasionally dense style, it is also a most welcome distraction from everything in the present.

I’ve seen some low-star reviews complaining that you must love the narrative voice, because there’s not much else going on, and while I suppose I agree, I absolutely love the narrative voice! For me, Lavery does a great job of recalling the absurdist comedy of Three Men in a Boat and Wodehouse. And even with the very light touch, he fits in some poignant themes of personal responsibility, social responsibility, and the frequent conflict between the two, which is very relevant today and helpful to hear, like a gently prodding pep talk. This book won’t be for everyone, but for those of us it is for, it is marvelous!

Unsatisfactory Cozies

by Anna

Only the Cat Knows by Marian Babson

Yeah, yeah, I know… I didn’t particularly like the earlier book I read, but just like that one, I was suckered into the premise. After a suspicious fall puts his twin in critical conditional, a renowned ‘female impersonator’ takes her place in the strange rich guy’s compound where she lives and works. The whole cast of weirdos all hanging on to an enigmatic millionaire is very reminiscent of Elizabeth Peters’ excellent Summer of the Dragon, and this book suffers by the comparison.

As I found in the first book, Marian Babson lacks the key charm necessary to write a standout cozy mystery, though her plots are fun enough. The bare bones are there, but a lot more goes into a decent cozy than the average reader (or writer, I guess) realizes. The end, too, felt fairly abrupt, just wrapping up with the nearest available weirdo being the culprit without much setup, and the happily ever after for the rest of the characters felt fairly unearned as well.

A Deadly Walk in Devon by Nicholas George

Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s 2025, but cozy mysteries are taking an increasing amount of suspension of disbelief, and I may have reached my limit. I already have to accept that the police are concerned with justice and safety in this fantasy world (at least this particular protagonist is already retired), but also that murder is always wrong. Hear me out: maybe if someone is an absolute nightmare to be around at all times, when they eventually push someone too far, that’s just natural consequences.

So, I’m already struggling to believe that our protagonist is a good guy, though he is sympathetically written, and now I have to convince myself that the main investigation is even worth doing. Nicholas George is a capable writer, but this is a steep uphill demand. Overall the majority of the book felt like following a basic outline for a cozy mystery with all the boxes checked off in order, though the end took a bit of a dramatic turn. I’m guessing that George will find a more natural flow in later books, though I’m not invested enough to see.

Storm Kings by Lee Sandlin

by Rebecca

Storm Kings: The Untold History of America’s First Tornado Chasers
by Lee Sandlin
read by Andrew Garman
2013

This is AMAZING! I had expected it to be vaguely interesting, enough to keep me entertained on my commute without being a problem to stop whenever I arrived. I had also expected it to be about modern storm chasers. Instead, it was utterly fascinating and surprisingly funny and I had to turn it off occasionally when I got to tricky intersections in my driving because the story was too distracting. For about two weeks, I started the majority of conversations with “In this book about weather….” because it just filled my thoughts and I wanted to share the fascination with everyone around me.

Via the focus on tornadoes, the book covers the development of weather research in the United States from colonial days to the present, following the work of maybe a dozen pivotal individuals driving tornado research. And let me tell you: the people who dedicate years, decades, or whole lives to the study of tornadoes are some truly fascinating characters!

Tornadoes by themselves are interesting phenomenon, but more than that, the books focus on tornadoes gives an amazing perspective on a wide range of history of the United States and the history of scientific studies in general, allowing the book to cover a wide range of issues without ever getting too far away from the primary topic. The book touches on Benjamin Franklin’s famous lightning experiment, the establishment of the Smithsonian, the displacement of American Indians, various arctic explorations, the great dust bowl, and a number of wars, all while discussing how these specifically related to the study of tornadoes. Sandlin does a really amazing job of covering long time periods succinctly and then covering specific events in minute-by-minute detail, and not letting the story he’s telling get bogged down in either.

The book also felt rather timely, as the current news reports storms and deaths and political decisions that interfered with factual weather knowledge, because it turns out that none of that is new or unusual to the weather service. This book is full of storms and deaths and the politics that go into deciding which facts to look at and which theories to believe. But it’s also distant enough to not be just one more bit of depressing news.

Overall, this book was fascinating and funny and horrifying and jaw-dropping, and I highly recommend it. Also the reader for the audio book is excellent.

Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival 2025

by Rebecca

I almost skipped the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival, held in the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, because I was tried and busy and distracted and when I went to double-check the time and location, the website was definitely geared towards families with young kids.

I’m really glad that I went though! There were probably about 50 artists’ booths and while the content was all family friendly (some of the artists had left some of their creations at home in order to keep the selection family friendly) there was still plenty of things that I found interesting. I forgot to come with a suitable amount of cash, but a number of the vendors did take credit cards, and I acquired a few more fascinating items.

100 Demons Dialogues
by Lucy Bellwood
This is a sweet little book that has some serious emotional impact, as Bellwood personifies her internal critic as a little demon that follows her around, and she refutes its arguments as she continues to work on her art. It’s remarkably inspiring.

to and fro
by kat tuesday
This is a short (24 pages) compilation of three of the author’s works, including Peek and Plover in Another Blasted Cave, and is just generally kind of adorable. In some ways it feels like the kind of sketch/doodle story that you might create when you’re bored in a meeting with only your note pad available, except that it’s both really well done and finished.

Click
by Duncan Bryk
This has some fascinating background world-building of some sort of magical-realism steampunk post-apocalyptic situation, except that it’s all through the point of view of a mouse that only explores within the one odd mansion and only interacts with the very strange caretaker of that mansion. The caretaker clearly knows more about the situation than the mouse, but the mouse is their only companion as well. The overall sense is a combination of intrigue and melancholy.

Resilience
by Ari Coester
This is a tiny zine (ie, an 8.5×11 paper folded to create an 8-page booklet) about the anti-bird spikes that corporations install in their signs and how the birds build their nests right on top of those spikes. Adorable!

What To Do
by Jackalyn Fleming
This is another tiny zine that consists of a flower wondering what it’s purpose in life is. Having bloomed, it wonders what’s next and asks the people around it. It turns out that the bee has opinions but the bird doesn’t care. It’s both hilarious and feels timely.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare in three panels each
by Mya L. Gosling
I’ve followed this artist’s work for years and was delighted to get a physical copy of some of her work. It’s hilarious, and also really well done. Just, taking each of Shakespeare’s plays and stripping them down to the bare minimum (and perhaps significantly beyond) of plot points. It feels a bit like poetry and a bit like a series of teasers.

Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving by Penny Walsh

by Rebecca

Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving: Essential Guide for Beginners, from the Self-Sufficiency series
by Penny Walsh
2009, 2016

I’ve recently been delving into the basic fibre arts. I’ve taken classes in how to spin wool on a drop spindle, how to dye yarn with natural dyes, and how to “skirt” a fleece that’s been freshly sheered off a sheep. One of these days I’m hoping to learn how to sheer a sheep myself. I already had the basics of weaving, knitting, and crocheting (albeit at the most basic level) and I’m enjoying figuring out the precursory stages. This book seemed like it would be right up my alley.

And it is, sort of. However it’s also absolutely bonkers. It veers wildly between being an extremely basic overview to being an extremely detailed instructional manual, and then back again. Harvesting vegetable fibres such as flax, hemp, or nettle is given a half page summary that mentions the necessity of starting and then interrupting the rotting process; meanwhile, there are 18 pages of recipes for dyes, including ingredients, amounts, temperatures and durations. However, I knew from early on that this book wasn’t going to be particularly reliable when it starts with discussing how easy maintaining a couple of sheep is to have your own steady source of fleeces. That seemed to be the theme of this book: mentioning some elaborate and time-consuming endeavor while narrating that it’s actually very simple.

Overall, I found it inspiring to keep working on the projects I’m working on. In some places, it reinforces some of the things I’ve learned from other sources and while in others it provides alternatives to some of the things I’d previously learned. But I didn’t learned anything new from this book, and not because there wasn’t anything new in it, but because nothing entirely new was explained well enough for me to learn it.

Oddly, the book also tries really hard to be easily readable to both British and American readers, and does so by providing translations between British and American terms as well as between metric and imperial measurements, but every time it does that, it just makes the text that little bit more confusing. For example, writing “2 square metre (21.5 sq ft.)” looks both weird and weirdly specific when talking about a garden plot for raising dye plants. It seemed representative of the variable levels of respect for the reader: we are assumed to be able to understand tapestry weaving from a two page spread including three diagrams and an illustrated loom, but also need clarification about “furniture (slip) covers”.

Overall, I’m not quite sure who the intended audience for this actually is, but it’s really not for a beginner. And while I enjoy learning all of these skills as a fun hobby, it’s not easy, it’s not quick, and it’s not a replacement for store bought: this is not a guide for self-sufficiency. However, reading this did get me off my couch and preparing a fleece for spinning that I’d been procrastinating about. So that’s a win!

Martyr!

by Anna

By Kaveh Akbar

This is capital-L Literary novel about a depressed young poet searching for the meaning of life and death, and I should absolutely hate it, but I was riveted! I guess that’s a testimony to the writing. The protagonist is still quite annoying, the sort of drug-fueled tortured artist that intrigued me in my 20s and just exhausts me now. But even within the first few pages, I ran across lines that I knew would stick with me for a while.

I never would have even picked it up if it hadn’t been recommended by what is becoming one of my favorite e-newsletters, Death by Consumption.* The recommendation includes this quoted passage:

Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty.

And I thought to myself, well, yes, of course we all want to be happy, contented, and rich; who doesn’t? So I felt like I needed to read the book to find the counter argument. I didn’t really get an answer, but instead got a lot to think about over the next few days and weeks. (Danny also calls it “short but expansive” and I believe his definition of short has been warped by the enormous tomes he usually reads, since this comes to a healthy 331 pages, but it was a quick read, with short chapters from rotating viewpoints that pull you in for ‘just one more.’)

Also, about halfway through the book, there’s a surprise twist that adds a significant mystery that I wasn’t expecting at all, but helped balance the tortured artist side of it all. That said, I found the ending both confusing and upsetting, which could have been intentional but I got the sense that I was getting caught up in details and missing the big point of it all. I was incredibly grateful to google for autofilling my search of “Martyr! Kaveh Akbar…” with “ending explained” and finding an hour-long lecture on youtube, as well as a decent sized reddit thread.

*Side recommendation: I first started following Danny Gottleib’s writing when he was doing a tongue-in-cheek Julie & Julia thing called Danny & Gweneth, where he tried to make all of Gweneth Paltrow’s recipes with ingredients he could find locally in the Midwest. He ended up moving to NYC and switched to a general media recommendation newsletter that I look forward to every week.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

by Rebecca

The River Has Roots
by Amal El-Mohtar
2025

This author has a way of using language to create worlds like lucid dreams. She makes metaphors so strong and pervasive that they’re world-building. It lives in the space between poetry and prose, and reading it feels like a way to slow the frantic pace of my thoughts and set my brain to a reasonable rhythm. I’m in awe of her writing.

This story is a retelling/re-imagining of the classic folk song, The Two Sisters. And of all the versions I’ve read/heard, I like this one best. It’s not a long book, only 100 pages, and includes many beautiful black-and-white illustrations.

El-Mohtar is one of the co-authors of This Is How You Lose the Time War, which was extremely good but also complicated in a way that required more focused concentration than this book did. This story feels closer to Nghi Vo’s The Singing Hills Cycle books, which is also a high complement.