strange and random happenstance

Why was this on PBS!?! No really, I want to know, why was this on PBS!?! It was made by Amazon. It was released on Amazon. It was still on Amazon when PBS aired it eight months after it dropped and instead of having to wait seven weeks to realize this series was going nowhere you could have sat on your couch for almost seven hours and come to the same conclusion. This is actually worse than when Masterpiece randomly airs feature films because at least in some of those cases, especially in the early nineties, people didn't have access to those films. So while it felt like cheating just airing someone else's work, at least it was with the interest of their viewers in mind. Whereas here!?! Everyone has access to Amazon. Literally everyone. I could have forgiven them this weird decision if the show actually was something. But it isn't. This show is nothing. The Collection has an amazingly talented cast but the story, what was the story!?! Was it about the Sabine fashion house being Nazis collaborators? Was it about the family's complete ineptitude at covering up a murder? Which makes me think that they couldn't have been collaborators because they were just too damn stupid and they so would have been caught. You don't bury a body in the backyard of a house you own! And then, when it's discovered, you don't move it! Nothing here is straightforward. Everything is told in the most roundabout and confusing manner possible. For example, one of the girls in the seamstress shop secretly had a baby. Yet the father of the baby appears to be the closeted brother played by Tom Riley who's the genius behind the house's designs. How did he hook up with a woman? Especially when his current boy toy is fertilizing his mother's garden in the country? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Because, they don't tell us. Even if this show hadn't been rightly cancelled I don't think they would have ever given us answers. They were too interested in things looking pretty, the costumes just so, the photographs in the vein of Funny Face, just right. The irony of a show about fashion being all surface isn't lost on me. Though I honestly think it's lost on them. I really think they thought they were making something important, something of worth, something that made a statement. That statement was look how easy it is to waste Amazon's money. The only thing I am here for is that we are firmly in the era where Frances de la Tour is choosing her roles based on how much she gets to sit around and what delicious foods she gets to eat. She's doing a Maggie Smith, with just as barbed a tongue, but a lot more noms. Vanity Fair, Professor T, she's just living her best life. Sadly, this show wasn't up to her abilities, but at least I could take solace that at least someone enjoyed this series, because I sure as hell didn't.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Amazon, Fashion, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Frances de la Tour, Funny Face, Murder, Nazis, Nazis Collaborators, Paris, Photography, Post War Era, Professor T, Richard Coyle, The Collection, Tom Riley, Vanity Fair, Vichy France

Danger UXB is about a bomb disposal unit during World War II created by the late great John Hawkesworth. The show goes into the danger and minutiae of dismantling a bomb and making it safe. The unit are constantly having to figure out the insidious new ways the Nazis have invented to create the most damage and to make bombs almost impossible to defuse. This even includes the introduction of the dreaded Butterfly Bomb. Now, I'm not saying that I could 100% disarm a bomb after watching this series, but I think I'm definitely in with a chance. Which is actually rather useful because they are still finding UXBs to this day. Not that I'd want to. Watching this show was stressful enough without having real world implications. The show starts with Anthony Andrews as Brian Ash, a man with no experience put in charge of bomb disposal. Which means that we the viewer get to follow him into this world that basically meant your life expectancy was measured in days. The problem with Brian Ash and therefore Anthony Andrews is he's too boring. He's your general romantic hero lead. The blue-eyed blonde haired boy who the women swoon over. In fact he's soon having a romance Susan Mount, the married daughter of boffin Doctor Gillespie who is a specialist in bomb fuses. Their romance is the definition of milquetoast. You don't care because you actually feel that deep down they probably don't care. It's too contrived and trope heavy. Which means, of course, she has a husband who's a codebreaker, who suffers mental breaks and whom she has to see to. Eventually he dies and that means they can be together and in the only moment of their relationship I approve of, she realizes he loves his men and the thrill of defusing a bomb more than he'll ever love her and that's where the series ends. Suck it Susan. Suck it! Because it's the men who make this show. 347 Section, 97 Company is made up of the best of the best in British character actors but Robert Pugh, George Innes, and Kenneth Cranham all deserve a special shout-out. Especially Kenneth Cranham. When I watched this show it happened to coincide with Kenneth Cranham being in everything I was watching. I don't know how he was so ubiquitous, but there he was on the stupidly renamed C.B. Strike, then popping up on the final season of Doc Martin, then on Inspector Morse and Pollyanna, even the nearly unwatchable Reilly: Ace of Spies. I was viewing shows spanning fifty years of British television in no particular order and there he was. There he always was. And he was always fabulous. His character of Lance Corporal Jack Salt was more interesting in one minute of screen time than Brian Ash was for the entire series. He had a wife up north but was conflicted and worried about the safety of this woman whom he'd met. Everything keeps compounding on him, even where he's home on leave and his house, with his wife inside, explodes before his very eyes. He's eventually taken out by a Butterfly Bomb in what I view as suicide by cop. He had so much trauma and that gave us viewers someone to root for. We wanted him to suceed. But, when you're not sure if you'll live another minute every minute is precious. If there's anything this series imparted to us, it was this. Oh, and that Nazis are evil. All Nazis are evil. There are no exceptions. They take delight in creating killing machines. If you're on the side of the Nazis YOU are a baddie.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anthony Andrews, Bomb Disposal, Butterfly Bomb, C.B. Strike, Danger UXB, Doc Martin, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, George Innes, Inspector Morse, John Hawkesworth, Kenneth Cranham, Nazis, Pollyanna, Robert Pugh, Tropes, UXB, WWII

I am perhaps not the best judge of this show. I might be a tad obsessed with the Mitfords. I have poured over everything these prolific sisters have written and therefore know their history. I know what came before and what came after so I don't know if someone who at the very least hasn't read Mary S. Lovell's biography from which this show is adapted would get it. Does Outrageous tell you enough that you understand the dynamic or are you like my Dad asking me questions every two seconds? But in fairness, my Dad asks me questions no matter what we're watching, I just knew all the answers this time around. On the other hand I might be the best judge of this show because I know they got it right. They chose the perfect inflection point in the lives of the Mitfords to show how this family fractured. How the fanaticism of fascism broke this family apart. And the thing is, you don't have to be a British family in the 1930s split by political ideology to understand this. Just look at America today, families are being torn apart, and not just because of evil policies by the government, but by political beliefs within families. This show isn't just relevant, it's so timely it's spooky. Bessie Carter is the perfect Nancy Mitford, she has her mom's hair, her Dad's nose, and the talent to match both. She's wry and exasperated, she is the voice of the audience wondering how her two beloved sisters, Diana and Unity, are drawn into Hitler's orbit. And, like a good sister, she tries to understand, she actually goes to one of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists rallies and she is horrified. How can people she love be drawn in by this hate. And I think the scene where Diana and Unity go to their first Nazi rally captures it all. It's terrifying. The fervor, the fanaticism, the fashionable branding. Really, the Nazis had the branding, which is why to this day the swastika brings such primal fear and hatred with it. But their expressions show how caught up these two siblings are in the Reich. Joanna Vanderham playing against type as Diana is luxuriously evil. She is genuinely shocked that people don't love what she stands for. As for Shannon Watson as Unity? She is sheer perfection. When reading about Unity it's hard to get a read on her because of what came after coloring her history. Unity was so split by her loyalties between her family in England and her love for Germany that she attempted to kill herself when war was officially declared. That hasn't happened here. Yet. God willing we get more seasons. But the enfeebled state in which her life continued after she put a bullet in her brain makes her be treated in a certain light by historians. She reads as developmentally disabled or autistic. She may very well have been autistic with her fanatical obsession with Hitler. She literally went to the same cafe Hitler went to day in and day out just for the chance of seeing him. And Shannon Watson plays this to Aryan superiority. She portrays that naivete combined with cruelty. A wide eyed innocence that publicly decries the Jews because it's what Hitler believes. She is someone you can totally see killing the family pet. Something this series totally baits you with. If this show has any faults it would be that, for the moment, they are downplaying how dangerous Mosley was, in particular the Battle of Cable Street which was handled so exquisitely in the reboot of Upstairs Downstairs, and there just aren't enough episodes. Six isn't nearly enough. More! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Bessie Carter, Blackshirts, Diana Mitford, Hitler, Joanna Vanderham, Mary S. Lovell, Mitfords, Nancy Mitford, Nazis, Oswald Mosley, Outrageous, Politics, Shannon Watson, Unity Mitford, Upstairs Downstairs, WWII

The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: June 15th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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Solving that which no one else was able to solve should be the biggest high a true crime geek will ever experience. And it is. It just doesn't last. The return to reality was a little harsher than Stevie expected. Spending the summer working at a grocery store at the deli counter isn't exactly the glamorous career she had planned for herself. I mean, the apron doesn't even go with her crime solving red vinyl raincoat! Thankfully she is about to be saved from a summer of drudgery by the new owner of a kid's summer camp in the Berkshires. Carson Buchwald is the owner of Box Box, a subscription box company, as in literal boxes, with delusions of becoming a true crime podcaster. Which is why he bought Shady Pines, the new moniker of a camp all true crime enthusiasts know by it's original name, Camp Wonder Falls. In 1978 four local teens who had just graduated high school in nearby Barlow Corners, Massachusetts, all counselors at the camp, were murdered. There was an old hunting blind about four miles from camp where the counselors were known to party. On that fateful July night the revelers, Todd Cooper, Diane McClure, and Sabrina Abbott were stabbed and stacked like cordwood in the hunting blind while Eric Wilde, the local drug dealer, almost made it back to camp. His body was found first. The most disturbing facts about the case were the brutality and the message painted inside the blind; SURPRISE. And yet the case was never solved. It wasn't a drug deal gone bad or the work of local serial killer "The Woodsman" as DNA ruled him out, and a revenge killing just didn't make sense. The case was badly handled and entered the lore of famous unsolved crimes. Which is why Carson wants to hire Stevie. She'd come and work at the camp and solve the case for his podcast. The chance to get away from deli meats means she'll even brave the wilderness. She is so not the outdoorsy type. Which means a support network is needed and Nate and Janelle agree to come with. They are on the case. Unfortunately the town is rather hostile once they realize Carson's intentions. It looks like he was trying to buy them off with a shiny new library. And in a way he was. Because the answer has to be among the townsfolk. It's the only thing that makes sense. Why else was it never solved? Because someone didn't want it solved. That someone isn't Sabrina's sister Allison. She's willing to help Stevie. But that help might cost her her life. Because more than four people have died and the killing will continue unless Stevie connects the dots.

The Box in the Woods is a bit of a reset for this series. The first three books were dealing with one case and all it's connecting repercussions at Ellingham Academy. Here Stevie is removed from that academic setting and into that most classic of teen horror tropes, a summer camp. And as everyone knows the best parts of a summer slasher are technology breaking down and there being nowhere to run. Which makes the seventies the perfect era for the "historical" crime to be set. And thankfully we are all about the historical in this installment and veer away from the hysteria that Stevie's boyfriend David brings in his wake. Seriously, I agree with so many reviewers who are just fed up with him. He brings nothing to the conversation and this book was all the better for his being almost entirely omitted. What really drew me in though was that this small little town and it's summer camp is Gilmore Girls meets Twin Peaks that just happens to shoehorn in a slasher flick and some Nazis. So yes, you might think that sounds all over the place, but if you're the right kind of person, AKA someone who I'd be friends with, you will totally get that all these disparate elements can fit together perfectly if you have the right mindset and sense of humor. Dark humor. But for me this isn't just a series reset it's also a turning point for Stevie. When she was investigating the Ellingham case all the principal characters were dead. She was legitimately investigating a true cold case, as in all the participates were cold in their graves. Here the crime happened in 1978 so, while not recent history weeps the reviewer who was born in that year, it's still a recent enough crime that those people directly affected, like Sabrina's sister Allison, are still alive. This is new and interesting. Stevie has had to deal with the fallout of a case and it's present day repercussions but she hasn't had to deal with the trauma of real people. She's so focused and inward when she's on a case she sometimes doesn't think of the bigger picture. Which is all well and good when it's a true cold case. When the obsession and the drive aren't running over victims. But here she could easily steamroller over someone to whom this case is an open wound. She has to tread carefully. Not just because the actual killer could still be alive but because the family of the victims are in need of support. They can help but there has to be respect and assurances. When dealing with Allison Stevie is growing. She's learning that there's more to solving crime than just the crime. There's the survivors. That aspect is one she needs to work on. But this is a good start.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Berkshires, Camp Wonder Falls, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, Maureen Johnson, Nazis, Podcast, Seventies, Slasher, Stevie Bell, Summer Camp, Summer School, Survivors, The Box in the Woods, Trauma, True Crime, Truly Devious, Twin Peaks

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Harperteen
Publication Date: August 6th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
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The Ralston family were the picture of American exceptionalism. Dr. Philip Ralston and his family summered on a private paradise renamed after the eminent physician in the Thousand Islands region of New York. Morning House was designed to foster good health and creativity for his six children, born within six months of each other, whom he adopted while working in England during the war. When he finally married a stage actress his young song Max increased his brood to seven. At Morning House the children lived in a playhouse worthy of the Brothers Grimm and followed a regimen of nutrition and exercise. But their perfect lives were shattered forever on July 27th, 1932. Four year old Max was found drowned in the waters of the St. Lawrence River. Later that night, overcome by grief, his eldest sibling, Clara, jumped off the roof of Morning House, ending her life at only sixteen. From that point on death stalked the family and Morning House was shuttered. Only one child, Benjamin, survived, returning just the once in 2002 to that ill-fated island. Marlowe Wexler is about to learn all about Morning House. At first, her summer seemed to be looking up. She got a job at the local ice cream parlor, Guffy's, with the girl of her dreams as her coworker and then everything went to hell because of petrichor. She was trying to impress Akilah and got a scented candle. There was a fire. The fallout wasn't good. She needed to put the town in her rear view mirror for the summer and her history teacher, Ms. Gibson, came to the rescue. A friend of hers is a professor of history at Syracuse and is working on a history of Morning House. Abandoned by the Ralstons in the 1930s and empty ever since it's about to be redeveloped and is open to tourists for the summer with a group of local teenagers that live and work there acting as guides and she's down one teen. Marlowe is one teen. But maybe she should have asked what happened to the teen she's replacing? The group at the house have known each other forever and have history. She's walked right into a fairy tale land that looks like it should be fictional and she has no idea what dynamics she's disrupting. Because she's there to replace a dead person. Sure, they say it was an accident, but could this house be cursed? Or is there something more at play? At least she has a clean slate if no one finds out about the fire... Or as long as there isn't another one...

I know some people complained when this book was announced because it is a standalone and not the sixth Truly Devious mystery. I would counter this complaint with the fact that this is the most Maureen Johnson book Maureen has ever Johnsoned. Mysteries in two time periods, check. Teen relationship angst, check. Cute LGBTQIA+ relationships, check. Snark and jokes aplenty, a thousand checks just for that dressing alone. What's more is that it's self-contained. While I love the Truly Devious series the fact that the first mystery doesn't resolve for three books came as a bit of a shock to me and then my wallet as I couldn't wait another six months to get to the head of the queue on OverDrive and had to buy the series. I just had to. So here, it's one and done. You get the mysteries solved, you get the love triangles worked out, and you aren't sitting here for over two years stewing about how David treated Stevie! I mean, how could he!?! Can they ever recover!?! Do I even want them to!?! But those are worries for another day, not today Satan! What really drew me into this book wasn't the teen angst, much like the Truly Devious series, it was the historical crime, and here, the Ralston family. Damn. They are a hot mess. And they're Nazis. So, hot messy Nazis. In this day and age it is more important than ever to stand up and say that Nazis are bad. Because, honestly, Nazis are all around us and it's terrifying. But saying nothing makes you complicit. And I will not be counted as one of those people who said nothing. And Maureen Johnson, oh, she has a conscience and a platform and she uses it for all she's worth. Really, if you do not follow her on her socials you are missing out. Yes, they are sometimes weird, but only in the best possible way, but more importantly, she is politically informed and helps out with valuable information about what is happening and even more pressing, what you can do about it. That's why I love Death at Morning House. A human connection to horror. Through a compelling story she shows why Nazis are evil. She shows how one person without a conscious and interest in eugenics can destroy an entire family. Of course, on person without a conscious and an interest in eugenics almost destroyed the world, but this shows it on a more human level. We connect with Clara and her siblings. We see their lives. We become a part of their lives and then their lives are snuffed out because of Nazis. Two of the siblings more literally because of a bomb during WWII. And the extra creepy eugenics twist? Well, I'll leave that for you to discover because this is a must read book. Though naming one of the kids Unity was chef's kiss brilliant. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Death at Morning House, Eugenics, Fire, LGBTQIA+, Marlowe Wexler, Maureen Johnson, Mitfords, Morning House, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Nazis, Petrichor, Socials, Suicide, The Ralstons, Truly Devious, Unity Mitford

The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
Published by: Mulholland Books
Publication Date: August 30th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 1024 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Edie Ledwell and Josh Blay are the creators of the successful cartoon The Ink Black Heart. An unknown assailant attacked them in Highgate Cemetery, killing Edie and leaving Josh paralyzed. The authorities believe that Edie was targeted by The Halvening, a right-wing terrorist group that targets powerful women. Robin isn't so convinced. Before her death Edie Ledwell had come into the agency to talk to Robin about an online harassment campaign directed against her by someone going by the name Anomie. Anomie is a hardcore fan who co-created the popular Drek's Game based on The Ink Black Heart. Ever since Edie disparaged Drek's Game in an interview Anomie has turned nasty. With film rights for The Ink Black Heart about to be signed the harassment had intensified to the point that Josh was led to believe that Edie herself was Anomie trying to get sympathy by playing the victim. Because Anomie's intelligence is eerily accurate. Not many people knew that Edie tried to kill herself, and yet within minutes Anomie had posted the details, down to which hospital Edie was admitted to. But Robin turned down the case, cybercrime isn't something she and Strike deal with. Though she did refer Edie to some other agencies that could help her. Obviously they didn't otherwise Edie wouldn't be dead and the producers of the film wouldn't be asking Robin and Strike to take on the case. Robin won't let Edie down a second time. Because of Edie's conviction that Anomie has to be someone close Robin and Strike compile a list of her acquaintances, especially those from the North Grove Art Collective, where Edie and Josh met and many of their friends still live. And they develop what they think is a foolproof form of elimination. If someone isn't online when Anomie is, well, then they couldn't be Anomie, right? Proving their ignorance of the internet and the need for an agency that specializes in cybercrime. What's more, it seems that all of their suspects are playing Drek's Game under pseudonyms. Ex's, both romantic and business, agents, family, anyone could be a suspect, but only one is a killer. To find that out Robin is going to have to get close to those in Drek's Game. But is it wise to interrogate someone who could be anyone and who brags that they killed Edie? They are playing with fire and they might just get burned.

She did it. She actually fucking did it. She wrote over a roman à clef that clocks in at over a thousand pages about how she, a white billionaire, is the victim at the hands of her unhinged fans. Talk about a persecution complex! Talk about an ego! I mean, the words almost fail me because I can't believe that anyone would be so lost in their own little bubble that they would think that writing this screed would be acceptable. Though it's not just the whole "woe is me" of it, because that might have been slightly tolerable, it's how she is the victims of her fans. Her fans have killed her for being who she is. Well, if this is what you really think of your fans, well, can anyone blame them? The fans are just, I mean, I really can't believe she would say this stuff let alone write it, but then again I hang my head every time she opens her mouth these days. She vilifies them and degrades them and makes them the obvious choice for who killed "her." Because they are all so beneath her that any one of them was capable of doing the deed because she betrayed them by being true to herself. I mean, the rage I feel on behalf of anyone who has ever loved her writing just infuriates me. How could you say these things about the children who literally made you a billionaire!?! Who lived in your magical worlds only to be told that they aren't worthy of the worlds anymore. They have been expelled from Narnia for being disabled and overweight and victimized and abused. Oh, and let's not forget that after creating this mammoth cast of characters with online personas and elaborate backstories she decides that the killer is the incel son of Josh's agent. An acne riddled mess who never leaves his room and doesn't limit his death toll to just Edie. That ending was a cop-out! I mean, at least it wasn't the Nazis, but remember, those Nazis are also out to take down powerful women. But if you can't beat them join them. And while you're at it why not totally forget that this book is set in 2015 so there wasn't a female Doctor yet and no one used Karen as an insult. Unless the "K" in J.K. stands for Karen and she's actually the OG Karen!?! And the thing is, I don't want to bait this Karen, especially because she's left behind a certain tax bracket. She's vindictive, as this book shows, and she'll come for you. And I just want to stay away from this fucking toxic dumpster fire. If you don't believe me and don't feel like reading this, watch the show. Having to distill down this toxicity to only four hours was a fete that succeeds while also making you feel physically ill. There's a lot of hate in the world and why someone would want to pile on, and pile on their supporters, is beyond my comprehension.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anomie, Cartoon, Cormoran Strike, Degradation, Drek's Game, Edie Ledwell, Fandom, Highgate Cemetery, Internet, J.K. Rowling, Josh Blay, Murder Most Foul, Nazis, Robin Ellacott, Roman A Clef, The Ink Black Heart

An English Murder by Cyril Hare
Published by: Faber and Faber
Publication Date: 1951
Format: Paperback, 240 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

This will be Viscount Warbeck's last Christmas. Which is why he's invited those near and dear to him to Warbeck Hall, rumored to be the oldest inhabited house in Markshire. Which is why Dr. Wenceslaus Bottwink, a survivor of the Third Reich and the concentration camps, is visiting the house; not because he's near or dear, but because of the history within the walls and the manuscripts. To think, letters from the reign of George III with magnificent marginalia! He is perusing just such a document when the butler, Briggs, informs him of the Viscount's wishes. Dr. Bottwink had assumed that this holiday season would be more circumspect at Warbeck Hall given the circumstances, but these are a dying man's wishes, so guests are coming! Just a few members of his lordship's family. There's Sir Julius Warbeck, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Warbeck's first cousin, and his securty detail, James Rogers, Lady Camilla Prendergast, a niece of her late ladyship's first husband, Mrs. Carstairs, whose father was the rector of the parish and was practically raised in Warbeck Hall, and the son and heir, Robert Warbeck, whose arrival leads Dr. Bottwink to ask a favor of Briggs. Because Briggs has informed Dr. Bottwink that he has been placed for the duration with the family party, which Dr. Bottwink is loath to have happen. He wishes to eat with Briggs and his daughter Susan rather than the son of his host because Robert is the leader of a Fascist organization, The League of Liberty and Justice. Though Robert's antisemitic views are also abhorred by Sir Julius and Mrs. Carstairs, Dr. Bottwink knows that this is not a man he could take a meal with. Though Lady Camilla has a soft spot for Robert. Even if lately he has been cold to her. With so many tensions right from the start it's a wonder they make it through tea and dinner, but it is Lord Warbeck's dying wish, so they all try to get along. They bury their hatred and carry on. As the bells ring out Christmas Day Robert proposes a a toast hinting that he has a secret to be revealed. A secret that won't pass his lips as he drops down dead. Dr. Bottwink is sure it's potassium cyanide poisoning and suggests the police are called. Which is when they realize they are on their own. They are snowed in and the lines are down. It would be logical for James Rogers to head the investigation as he's a sergeant at the Met. But it's obvious he's in over his head and Dr. Bottwink worries that being Jewish and a foreigner that he will be the scapegoat. Therefore it is up to this historian to catch a killer before he or she strikes again! The marginalia will have to wait.

When reading books from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, any informed reader knows that there are bound to be outmoded ways of thinking that were common back then. Or at least outmoded to those who aren't alt-right. I am of course talking about racism and antisemitism. And these outdated viewpoints aren't relegated to murder mysteries written in the early to mid twentieth century, just look to Mark Twain and the controversy about the bowdlerized edition of Huckleberry Finn which was re-released with the n-word removed. I don't believe in censorship, and I believe it's important to read books as they were written because it's a reflection of the time period and our culture just as much as it is a story. Changing that text, bowdlerizing it, changes it's impact and is done to make people feel better. We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable and try to continually be doing better. Literature is a reflection of us and our times, if you feel uncomfortable, perhaps you should look into why and try to change what you can in the world. This problem though is exacerbated within the Golden Age of Detective Fiction because of the five big name authors, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, and Margery Allingham, while they all have been known to have dated viewpoints, Dorothy L. Sayers is an out and out antisemite. Many people I know revere Dorothy L. Sayers as the pinnacle of writing. But I came to her late, I was thirty-four years old when I first read her, which is far too old to brush any objections under the carpet. When you read something as a kid or during your formative years, you can embrace it without fully understanding it and then it just becomes a part of your DNA, which explains why so many people can turn their backs on J.K. Rowling but still read Harry Potter. All this is to say that while this book is from 1951, firmly in the wider circle of the Golden Age, I was so pleasantly surprised by the lack of cringe. I didn't have to wince as Nazis walked across the pages, because they were, rightfully, the bad guys! I know that having this book come out after World War II contributed to Nazis being evil and there being a sympathetic Jewish lead, but, seriously people, we did not need a world war to know right and wrong. And yes, I am glaring at Dorothy L. Sayers. We need more Dr. Bottwinks and less Robert Warbecks. Which is why I like this book so much. It gets it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: An English Murder, Antisemitism, Bowdlerize, Christmas, Cyril Hare, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dr. Wenceslaus Bottwink, Fascists, Formative, Golden Age of Detection, Jewish, Mark Twin, Murder Most Foul, Nazis, Poison

The Mitford Trial by Jessica Fellowes
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: January 19th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Louisa Sullivan is finally Louisa Cannon. Her and Guy's wedding was the best day of her life. Until a couple of the Mitfords snuck off to Sir Oswald Mosley's BUF rally and her husband was called in to police said rally. But a wedding isn't a marriage. And Louisa is finding it a harder adjustment than she would have thought no matter how almost perfect the big day was. Living with her in-laws, if only temporarily, is a strain, especially when her mother-in-law is constantly complaining about her to Guy. Not that Guy would ever hurt Louisa by telling her this, she just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and overhears them. But despite how hard her newly married life is at least she's not playing dogsbody to the Mitfords. Nancy practically begged Louisa to go on a cruise with Lady Redesdale, Diana, and Unity. The plan being to keep Diana away from Sir Oswald until her divorce to Bryan Guinness is finalized. Just thinking about escaping that fate has put a spring in her step. Until she realizes someone is shadowing her steps. Very closely. She has seen the same man at her wedding, outside the Mitfords after she talked with Nancy, and now outside her stenography course. He eventually approaches her. His name is Iain and the government would like it very much if Louisa were to take Nancy up on the job offer and report back anything unusual that might happen on Diana and Unity's travels. Who they meet, what they talk about, general surveillance from someone who already has the access to get close to them. While Louisa hates the prospect of working for the Mitfords again, as well as keeping secrets from Guy, this might be the first time in her life she's been approached to do something that uses her unique skill set. She hesitates, but knows in her heart that she will accept. Who wouldn't want do their bit for king and country? The Princess Alice departs from Venice for an excursion around the Italian coast. The three Mitford women are in first class, while many flights below Louisa is very happy to have a bed and not a hammock like some of the lower class passengers. At first her job is nothing more than what she's done before, fetching and carrying while pretending she's invisible. Pretending to not notice Unity's attraction to a German SS officer while squirreling away the information for Iain. Ignoring Diana's mild obsession with the twice divorced woman down the hall and thinking that this couldn't possibly interest Iain. That is until the woman's husband is murdered. That's when Louisa tries to contact Iain and realizes she's in over her head. But thanks to her husband's well-timed arrival they can work the case together. Until she's told to look the other way. Until she's told that the truth could get her husband killed. Playing at spies is far more dangerous than she realized. And this isn't her first murder!

In long running series it's common for authors to have a series bible. This will help them remember basic details like descriptions of characters, ages, potted histories. This will not help them if they've forgotten the sun has already risen in the previous chapter or if a witness has already been called to the stand or if they somehow transported a boat from the east coast to the west coast of Italy defying space and time. Jessica Fellowes is in desperate need of this because she actually forgot the ENTIRE PLOT of the previous book in this series. Part of me was like, FFS, she did it again. Because as I've pointed out in previous volumes, she desperately needs an editor to remove all her anomalies, the above examples all being taken from this book, but forgetting the entire plot of The Mitford Scandal is a cut above. I kind of am in awe of this complete amnesia. So what exactly did Jessica Fellowes forget? She forgot that her last book was set entirely on the continent when Louisa was lady's maid to the newly married Diana Guinness. Because when Nancy approaches Louisa about the job offer in this book all Louisa can think about is how she's never traveled. She's lived a small life and never got to see the world before her marriage. In her own words she says she has "barely left England, bar a short trip to Dieppe with the Mitfords years and years ago." And that is by far not the only time she mentions this desire. The chance to see the world is just an added bonus for doing her bit for king and country. A world which she's already seen. As has her husband, because they ran into each other in Paris when Louisa was working there. There's a slight backtrack when Jessica Fellowes has Louisa musing on taking the night train to Paris a few times when she worked for Diana, but it was too little too late. So, why all the musings and wanderlust for a place she's forgotten she's been to? Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, if fictional characters could take a bump on the head I'd say that this happened to our heroine but instead it had to have happened to our author AND any of her beta readers. Because this is a serious plot hole. It's a gaping maw that it was hard to get past. But oddly for me, get past it I did. Why? Again, I couldn't explain it if I tried. It was a combination of Jessica Fellowes knowing that Nazis are bad and my love of a good gruesome death on a cruise ship. Last year at this time I was watching the entertaining, if flawed show, Death and Other Details, about murder on a Mediterranean ocean liner. The Mitford Trial hit the same note and made me feel a little nostalgic. This book isn't perfect and occasionally veers to the absurd with Louisa taking a catnap at a crime scene, but compared to the rest of this series, it was stellar.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Amnesia, Cruise Ship, Death and Other Details, Editor, Guy Sullivan, Jessica Fellowes, Louisa Cannon, Mitfords, Murder Most Foul, Nazis, Plot Hole, Series Bible, Spies, The Mitford Scandal, The Mitford Trial, Travel

The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: January 21st, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★ 
To Buy

Louisa Cannon has turned her back on the Mitfords. She had such hopes, such dreams, and here she is a temp hired for a glamorous party at the Guinness household in London. Nothing but a domestic and not even one with a reliable salary. But this is also the night her life will change again thanks to the Mitfords, whether she wants it to or not. The debonair heir, Bryan Guinness, has been wooing Diana Mitford and what transpires at the party makes him realize life is too short and he and Diana should be wed. A maid tragically dies in what appears to be an accident and Bryan pops the question to Diana and she accepts! Now that she's the wife to a Guinness the world is Diana's oyster and she needs her own personal lady's maid, and who better than dear old Louisa? As for dear old Louisa, she isn't exactly in a position to turn the offer down. Such prestige, power, and pay, it's worth putting up with Diana's tempers. Yet murder seems to shadow Diana and Bryan when there's a death at their Paris residence three years later. No one thinks back to that poor maid on the eve of their new lives except Louisa. Louisa senses that they are somehow connected. Two accidents that shouldn't have happened is too much of a coincidence. And who better to ask for help than her old friend Guy Sullivan? He happens to be in Paris following a missing persons case with his best friend Harry and Harry's new wife, Guy's partner, Mary Moon! They sadly get nowhere on either case and Louisa is whisked off in the wake of Diana once again. Though the company Diana is starting to keep is far more political. She's turning away from the bright young things and turning towards Oswald Mosley. Louisa knows it isn't any of her business, she's paid to be Diana's friend and secret keeper, but these secrets are dangerous. And it doesn't help that this confidence doesn't go both ways. Diana won't hear about there being a murderer amongst her friends, even when a third body appears. What is Louisa to do?

If you haven't guessed by now we're working our way through the Mitford sisters in Jessica Fellowes's series, the ironically titled "Mitford Murders Mystery." So the third book means it's Diana's turn, with Unity, Decca, and Debo waiting in the wings, and yes, I feel sorry for them in advance with whatever Jessica Fellowes has planned for them. The problem with Diana is she's a deplorable. She is a genuinely horrible human. The fact that she was married to Oswald Mosley in Goebbels's drawing room with Hitler in attendance is the one sentence bio that adequately covers what a horrid human being she was. While this series has always been more concerned with the "look" of the Mitfords than the "spirit" of them I have to say that Jessica Fellowes did a good job portraying Diana, because not only did I hate the book for myriad writing and plotting reasons, but I hated it for Diana. And thankfully it feels like Jessica Fellowes hates Diana too, because I've come to terms with her being a bad writer, but if she was also a bad human, if she made Diana a heroine, well, I don't think I could stomach that. Though her hatred of Diana made the writing at times a tad heavy handed with the Nazi side of things. But I think that can be forgiven, because now, more then ever, people need to be reminded that Nazis are bad. As I write this Nazi Germany is trending on Twitter, that is how relevant Nazis are. But the Diana hatred oozing off the pages made me dislike this book on a level not seen since I read Diana's autobiography A Life of Contrasts. It's really hard to like a book with an unappealing villain as the star. Add to that my myriad issues with the series as a whole, and there was no way I was going to like this. Throw in the weird timeline with us jumping years ahead at random intervals and we're supposed to believe that the crimes committed are in the front of everyone's minds all that time later? That's preposterous. Much like calling this series "A Mitford Murders Mystery."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Life of Contrasts, Bryan Guinness, Diana Mitford, Guy Sullivan, Jessica Fellowes, Lady's Maid, Louisa Cannon, Murder, Murder Most Foul, Nazis, Oswald Mosley, The Mitford Murders, The Mitford Scandal

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville
Published by: Del Rey
Publication Date: August 9th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
Rating: ★ 1/2★
To Buy

In 1941 at the Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles Aleister Crowley's disciple Jack Parsons channels the objective chance of the refugee Surrealists living their into a device that Jack hopes he can use against the Nazis. He had originally planned to travel to Prague and raise the golem, but travel to that city is impossible and he thinks that this new plan will work. Only he doesn't have a chance to try it out as the device is stolen and taken to Paris where it explodes. What comes to be known as the S-Bomb detonates at Les Deux Magots changing the face of Paris. Soon Surrealist paintings, sculptures, drawings, even ideas, the very dreams of the movement have come alive and are walking the streets of Paris. The manifs destroy all in their path except for those who are aligned with the beliefs of their creators. La Main à plume before the S-Bomb was a collective created by friends of André Breton that distributed their published manifestos, but now, with the advent of the manifs, they are the leaders of the resistance in Paris. Main à plume IS the resistance! The Nazis do not take kindly to the manifs and Main à plume. Their control of Paris wavers and the battle limps on. When the S-Bomb was detonated Thibaut was only fifteen years old. Shortly thereafter when the Nazis rounded up and killed his family he saw his first manif. As an acolyte to the ideals of Surrealism he was in awe. Now he is twenty-four and disillusioned by the war. He has worked his way up in the ranks of Main à plume, but devastating losses have been too much for him. He plans to get out. Even if it kills him. And that's when he meets Sam. She claims to be a photographer who has entered Paris to document "The Last Days of New Paris" and she wants to see it all. She has ulterior motives, and it might involve the exquisite corpse he's travelling with. But Thibaut realizes, even if she does he wants her ersatz book to exist. Even if he has to write it himself. Though Thibaut is troubled. When he met Sam she was being attacked by manifs that the Nazis seemed to control. That has always been the Nazis goal, their own manifs. But they have never succeeded. With the help of Alesch, the traitor-priest, and Mengele, the Nazis first raised demons from the very pits of hell to have creatures capable and competent enough to take on the manifs. Now they might have created a hybrid. Something so dangerous that the very denizens of hell have sent someone to stop it. Can Thibaut save this dreamlike Paris that is his home from the enemy, or will it fall to the ultimate Nazis weapon?

This book makes me feel sad and stupid. Sad because I remember when I first read this book my friend Sarah was in Paris and I was talking to her about it. I thought she'd enjoy it because she was walking in the footsteps of Thibaut and she could have my copy when she returned home because at the time I never planned to read it again. She died in July of 2020. She was only thirty-two. Stupid because instead of providing us context China Miéville just namedrops, but not logically, he does it in the way Mark Z. Danielewski does in House of Leaves, just lists and lists of names, both people and places. I should not need an episode of Drunk History and a miniseries about Varian Fry I just happened to watch on Netflix to actually understand anything of what is happening. Almost all of his characters are real people but how is the reader to know this? What makes it a thousand times worse is that I'm not a neophyte. I have a degree in art, albeit not in art history, but I took five art history courses and three of those specifically covered this period in art and I was just lost. So who exactly is this book written for? Not for those ignorant of Surrealism, because they'd be totally lost. Not for those familiar with Surrealism, because they'd be totally lost as well. So did he just write this book for himself? With the occasional pretentious art history professor at some painfully small liberal arts college thinking it's genius because of that one trip they took to Paris thirty years before and they've made it their entire identity. Because that's all I've got. And there could have been something here, some alchemical combination of Jasper Fforde and R.W. Chambers if only the world had been expanded and explained. For example let's take what an exquisite corpse is. Everyone has played this game even if they never knew it by name. I remember doing it in first grade so obviously my teacher wasn't going to mention it's rather grotesque nomenclature. As MoMA states, it's a "game in which each participant takes turns writing or drawing on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal his or her contribution, and then passing it to the next player for a further contribution. The game gained popularity in artistic circles during the 1920s when it was adopted as a technique by artists of the Surrealist movement to generate collaborative compositions." This is information vitale to the plot of the book but it's only badly explained by Surrealist Simone Kahn in the footnotes and not explained at all in the story. I mean, explain just one thing Miéville, just one! And for the love of all that is holy, stop going all meta! YOU did not need to be in this book! In fact, my recommendation is to just go watch Strange Angel on Paramount+ and Transatlantic on Netflix and never read this book. It was really a waste to read it a second time.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: China Mieville, Exquisite Corpse, For the Love of Book Clubs, Jack Parsons, Jasper Fforde, Manifs, Nazis, Paris, R.W. Chambers, S-Bomb, Strange Angel, Surrealism, The Last Days of New Paris, Transatlantic, WWII

Blitz by Daniel O'Malley
Published by: Little, Brown and Company
Publication Date: October 18th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 688 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
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Lynette Binns was raised in care and has a deep suspicion of government and bureaucracy. She has created a life for herself and her family. She's a librarian, her husband is a respected cop, her daughter is the light of her life, and her dog, well, he might just be a dog but she loves him. Then one day lightning arcs out of her body destroying her kitchen. The Checquy swoop in. They tell her she has dangerous powers, but they can help her learn to control them. She's not really given an option. She is back in the system and attending school with children on a remote island while her family thinks she's fighting for her life with some rare disease. Well, at least they're right about the whole "fighting for her life part." But surprisingly she learns control, she becomes strong and powerful. She likes the new Lynette, the Delouser. And yes, it's best not to ask about the nickname. Oh, how she wishes it was cooler. She works hard at her new life and just when she thinks everything will work out a report crosses her desk. Someone is killing criminals in London, someone whose signature matches her own. Because whenever she uses her power she leaves behind a double circle. The Checquy have assured her that all powers are unique and that if anyone uses their power for nefarious purposes the policy is to shoot first and ask questions later. Knowing that she has been handed her own death warrant, she goes on the run. If she can find the real killer before the Checquy catch up to her perhaps she has a chance of holding on to her new life, or any life for that matter. Little does she know that her problems are linked to a string of deaths that happened during the Blitz. Bridget Mangan and her two best friends, Usha and Pamela, were on the tail of a Nazis whose plane Pamela downed. If it hadn't been bad enough that Pamela broke the rules, the Checquy is to avoid escalating the war at all costs by using their powers, the fact that there was a surviving witness who could identify them is catastrophic. A surviving witness who happens to have powers. But they can't tell the higher ups. They have to find the powered Nazis while also going about their day to day assignments, and for Bridget that means finding out how certain artifacts have gotten into public hands when they were safely in the Checquy vaults. An assignment that brings her into the orbit of the criminal madame, Tillie Murcutt. The problem with Tillie is she knows more than the public. She knows about powered people. Which means, could it be possible she knows about the Nazis?

Blitz is an odd entry into the Checquy Files because it feels like it's suffering from a split personality disorder. It can't decide if it wants Lynette Binns to be the heroine or Bridget Mangan to be the heroine. Which means it can't decide if it wants to be about the present or the past. Daniel O'Malley's workaround to this problem was to make the book about both of them instead of thinking what would best service the narrative. Which, given his writing style of stacking infodumps like nesting dolls and letting his book run to blunt weapon size, wasn't unexpected. And yes, I can see the appeal of Lynette, an "older" woman joining the Checquy and having to navigate this strange world, and I won't say that Daniel O'Malley wrote this entire book just to get some quality boarding school scenes in, but I think it's pretty obvious that he did. Also, the truth is, Lynette's story does have heart, and a connection to Bridget, it's just that it wasn't enough of a connection to justify her story. Because honestly, the only reason to have a modern section is to include our previous heroines, Myfanwy Thomas and Odette Leliefeld. Which he did. Barely. I think Myfanwy has two lines, Odette a few more. And just getting glimpses of them might actually have been more painful than if they hadn't shown up at all. Which is why this book should have been entirely set during World War II. On the whole I tend to avoid historical fiction or historical fantasy set during World War II because I feel that it's an overused time period. Enough is enough already, there were other wars! But Daniel O'Malley did the impossible, and through unique characters and their highly unique powers, made me actual embrace World War II after many years of avoidance. The more a thought about Blitz I likened it to when Torchwood showed us what it's third iteration was like during the Victorian Era with Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd. I really enjoyed that dip into the past to see how the organization developed over time. And just like Torchwood, here we know about the present day power structure, so we didn't need Lynette, we just needed Bridget. We just needed a terrifying and delightfully different romp through the Battle of Britain. Because during the War, I might not have had Myfanwy, but I at least had Tillie Murcutt. And Tillie Murcutt is one in a million.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blitz, Bridget Mangan, Daniel O'Malley, London Calling, Lynette Binns, MyFanwy Thomas, Nazis, Odette Leliefeld, The Battle of Britain, The Blitz, The Checquy, The Checquy Files, Tillie Murcutt, Torchwood, WWII

The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch
Published by: Subterranean
Publication Date: May 28th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 216 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Tobias Winter works in Meckenheim, Germany, under the Director at the Abteilung KDA, the Department for Complex and Unspecific Matters. In other words, he is Germany's answer to Peter Grant, and Peter Grant has a lot to answer for. Tobias has been called to Trier because the death of an unidentified male ticked the right boxes to alert the KDA that they might have a possible supernatural infraction. Kriminalkommissarin Vanessa Sommer, AKA the local fuzz, is on hand to take him to the crime scene. The body was found in a ditch abutting the vineyard of Frau Stracker. It has since been sent off to the KDA's pathologist of choice, Professor Doktor Carmela Weissbachmann, which means that Tobias is to assess the crime scene for vestigia before meeting up with her. Very faintly there's something like wriggling roots but it's not enough to be sure that this case is his. That is until he sees the body. It's covered in fur. But the "fur" is actually fungus. Fungus that Carmela delightfully informs him is unique to grapes. Noble rot is a fungus used to make a sweet wine. And the Stracker winery used to be renowned for it, so says resident wine expert Vanessa Sommer. That can't be a coincidence. Nor can the fact that Tobias gets that same sense of wriggling roots from the corpse, this time with hints of turned soil and half-discordant musical notes. The only lead that Winter and Sommer have is a recent tattoo the man had gotten, which leads them to All Art is Transitory, a tattoo studio where they learn the identity of their victim, one Jörg Koch, and that he came in with a group of friends to have Dionysus tattooed on his arm because of a dare. These friends could be suspects, witnesses, or even potential victims. Soon another body turns up, this time the victim choked on his own vomit, but that was due to an astronomical blood alcohol content. Which means it's imperative they find Koch's friends. The murderer is changing their modus operandi, or are they? Here's hoping they can stop the killer before they escalate again. Because if there's one thing that Tobias Winter has learned in his short time in Trier it's that the town is about wine and Romans, and those two things are inextricably linked so therefore they have to be at the heart of these crimes.

I don't know what the purpose of this book is because so much of it is wading through shit we've heard a million times before but in a better voice until finally we are able to concentrate on the crime. We have to hear Tobias talk down to us like we've never heard what vestigia is. Peter Grant has a way of imparting knowledge in a way that makes you eager to learn, Tobias is no Peter. Tobias is pedantic and just an asshole. I never want to have to read anything in his voice ever again. What I found mildly interesting is the differences that have arisen in how Germany and England categorize and label their magical systems, but these are too few and far between and again, the way it's imparted to us through Tobias is just annoying. I had some hope for the crime, this bizarrely furry situation, but it fell apart because it ended up repeating so many of the tropes of the main series, from baby river goddesses to sequestration, it's just the same thing told in a slightly different way. And not for the better. Plus it went really dark with attempted rape and stalking and Nazis. Oh and don't get me started on the wine. I'm not a drinker. I never want to go to a vineyard or on a winery tour. I want nothing at all to do with the pretension of being a vintner. So to have that be the core of the crime with all this "previously on" swirling around it, it's like I didn't care to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT WINE. I NEVER WILL! Nothing will make me change my stance. Not even one of my favorite authors. Which brings me back to the why of it all. Why does Tobias Winter exist? The only way I can justify his existence in my mind is that he's going to be the next Big Bad. Now on the surface he looks like a normal police officer. He solves the crimes, he gets things done, but in the process we learn some startling things about Germany. Does Nightingale know that the forbidden knowledge that wasn't meant to be kept was kept anyway? That the Nazis research of the Ahnernerbe and the Black Library which was the reason for Ettersberg where almost all was lost still lives? There's a reason it's kept behind a door in the Folly and yet Winter has access to this knowledge. Maybe that's why I hate Tobias Winter so very very much, because I know Nightingale would and I will always side with Nightingale.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Abteilung KDA, Ben Aaronovitch, Big Bad, Ettersberg, Germany, London Calling, Nazis, Nightingale, Noble Rot, Peter Grant, Rivers of London, The Folly, The October Man, Tobias Winter, Trier, Vanessa Sommer, Wine

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Published by: Del Rey Books
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film - and awakens one woman's hidden powers.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she's been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives - even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies."

I am always here for the dark side of film and Nazi occultism!

A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui
Published by: Henry Holt and Company
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"You can check out of Room 9, but you can never leave.

The Haunting of Hill House meets Nina LaCour in this spine-chilling horror YA about the ghosts we carry with us.

Something is building, simmering just out of reach.

The room is watching. But Mira and Layla don't know this yet. When the two best friends are stranded on their spring break college tour road trip, they find themselves at the Wildwood Motel, located in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. Mira can't shake the feeling that there is something wrong and rotten about their room. Inside, she's haunted by nightmares of her dead brother. When she wakes up, he's still there.

Layla doesn't see him. Or notice anything suspicious about Room 9. The place may be a little run down, but it has a certain charm she can't wait to capture on camera. If Layla is being honest, she's too preoccupied with confusing feelings for Mira to see much else. But when they learn eight people died in that same room, they realize there must be a connection between the deaths and the unexplainable things that keep happening inside it. They just have to find the connection before Mira becomes the ninth.

Readers won't be able to put down this edge-of-your-seat thriller that includes over thirty interior black and white photos by the author!"

Because nothing adds to the creepy than being able to see the creepy.

Jackal, Jackal by Tobi Ogundiran
Published by: Undertow Publications
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Paperback, 318 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From Shirley Jackson award-nominated author Tobi Ogundiran, comes a highly anticipated debut collection of stories full of magic and wonder and breathtaking imagination!

In "The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library" - featured in LeVar Burton Reads - a hapless salesman flees the otherworldly librarian hell-bent on retrieving her lost library book.

"The Tale of Jaja and Canti" sees Ogundiran riffing off of Pinocchio. But this wooden boy doesn't seek to become real. Wanting to be loved, he journeys the world in search of his mother-an ancient and powerful entity who is best not sought out.

"The Goatkeeper's Harvest" contains echoes of Lovecraft, where a young mother living on a farm finds that goats have broken into her barn and are devouring all her tubers. As she chases them off with a rake, a woman appears claiming the goats are her children, and that the young woman has killed one of them and must pay the price: a goat for a goat.

These and other tales of the dark and fantastic await."

If it's good enough for Levar it's good enough for me!

The Bitter Past by Bruce Borgos
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"In the tradition of Craig Johnson and C. J. Box, Bruce Borgos's The Bitter Past begins a compelling series set in the high desert of Nevada featuring Sheriff Porter Beck...

Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, north of Las Vegas. Born and raised there, he left to join the Army, where he worked in Intelligence, deep in the shadows in far off places. Now he's back home, doing the same lawman's job his father once did, before his father started to develop dementia. All is relatively quiet in this corner of the world, until an old, retired FBI agent is found killed. He was brutally tortured before he was killed and clues at the scene point to a mystery dating back to the early days of the nuclear age. If that wasn't strange enough, a current FBI agent shows up to help Beck's investigation.

In a case that unfolds in the past (the 1950s) and the present, it seems that a Russian spy infiltrated the nuclear testing site and now someone is looking for that long-ago, all-but forgotten person, who holds the key to what happened then and to the deadly goings on now."

There's something about nuclear testing sites that just exudes mystery and danger.

The Block Party by Jamie Day
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"This summer, meet your neighbors.

The residents of the exclusive cul-de-sac on Alton Road are entangled in a web of secrets and scandal utterly unknown to the outside world, and even to each other.

On the night of the annual Summer block party, there has been a murder.

But, who did it and why takes readers back one year earlier, as rivalries and betrayals unfold - discovering that the real danger lies within their own block and nothing - and no one - is ever as it seems."

Because neighbors are always up to something...

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop
Published by: Grove Press, Black Cat
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Paperback, 432 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"For fans of Lisa Halliday and Susan Choi, The Anniversary is a simmering page-turner about an ascendant writer, the unresolved death of her husband, and what it takes to emerge on her own. Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her former professor, film director, and cult figure, Patrick is much older than J.B.. When they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. But now his success is starting to wane and J.B. is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his. For days they sail in the sun, nothing but dark water all around them. Then a storm hits and Patrick falls from the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick - and the truth about their marriage - begins. Propulsive and fiercely intelligent, The Anniversary is exquisitely written with a swift and addictive plot. It's a novel that asks: how legible, in the mind of the writer, is the line between reality and plot? How do we refuse the people we desire? And what is the cost, to ourselves, to others and to our art, if we don't?"

And what really happens behind closed doors when a older professor marries his ingenue. 

The Wonder State by Sara Flannery Murphy
Published by: MCD
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From the author of Girl One comes a spellbinding adventure about a strange power lurking in the Arkansas Ozarks, and the group of friends obsessed with finding it.

Five friends arrive back in Eternal Springs, the small town they all fled after high-school graduation. Each of them is drawn home by a cryptic, scrawled two-word letter: You promised.

It has been fifteen years since that life-changing summer, and they're anxious to find out why Brandi called them back, especially when they vowed never to return.

But Brandi is missing. She'd been acting erratically for months, in and out of rehab, railing at whoever might listen about magic all around them. About a power they can't see. And strange houses that appear only when you need them...

Told in two enthralling time lines, The Wonder State is a stunning, immersive follow-up to Girl One. Sara Flannery Murphy has created another dazzling, genre-blurring novel - an adventure story laced with nostalgia and magic, exploring belonging and the lasting power of community."

I've always been fascinated by the appearance of strange houses.

Sinners of Starlight City by Anika Scott
Published by: William Morrow and Company
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From the author of the international bestseller The German Heiress, a gripping historical drama about a woman determined to avenge the crimes against her family, set at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.

Vengeance is in the family, and the family is a bond like no other...

It's the worst year of the Great Depression, and America needs all the hope it can get. The Chicago World's Fair, a glittery city-within-a-city, becomes a symbol of the good that's yet to come. But every utopia has a seedy side - and that's Rosa Mancuso's world. As the mysterious Madame Mystique she mixes magic with a dose of bare skin burlesque, bringing customers to the home of the Fair's carnival rides and spectacles.

Rosa doesn't perform for fame, though. She has come from Mussolini's Italy to America, where she's plotting her revenge for the murders of her family. The perpetrator will soon arrive at the World's Fair via a celebrated Italian air fleet, and Rosa is determined to be prepared.

But when her estranged cousin, Mina, comes to her desperate for help, with a dangerous mobster close on her heels, Rosa agrees to protect Mina and her new baby, born across the color line. With the clock ticking, Rosa decides the only way to survive is to make vengeance a family affair and prompt everyone to, at last, confront the sins from their pasts.

A gripping story of retribution, belonging, and survival, Sinners of Starlight City boldly explores the complexity of identities straddling ethnic lines and asks, who gets to decide who we are and where we belong?"

I've always been obsessed with Chicago and the World's Fair. My grandfather actually went to it!

The Madwomen of Paris by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Two women fall under the influence of a powerful doctor in Paris's notorious women's asylum in this gripping historical novel inspired by true events, from the bestselling author of Wunderland.

When Josephine arrives at the Salpêtrière asylum, she is covered in blood, badly bruised, and suffering from amnesia. She is quickly diagnosed with what the Paris papers are calling "the epidemic of the age" hysteria, a disease is so baffling and widespread that Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, the asylum's famous director, devotes many of his popular public lectures to the malady. Charcot often uses hypnosis to prompt his patients to reproduce their hysterical symptoms, and to his delight, Josephine proves extraordinarily susceptible to this unconscious manipulation. He is soon featuring the young woman on his stage, entrancing her into fantastical acts and hallucinatory fits before enraptured audiences and eager newsmen - many of whom feature her on their papers' front pages.

Laure, a ward attendant assigned to care for Charcot's new favorite, knows that Josephine's diagnosis is a godsend. Life in the Salpêtrière's Hysteria ward is far easier than in its dreaded Lunacy division, from which few inmates ever return. But as Josephine's fame grows, her memory starts to return - and with it, images of a terrible crime she's convinced she's committed. Haunted by these visions, and ensnared in Charcot's hypnotic web, she starts spiraling into seeming insanity. Desperate to save the girl she has grown to love, Laure begins to plot their escape from the Salpêtrière and its doctors. First, though, she must confirm whether Josephine is truly a madwoman, doomed to die in the asylum - or a murderer, destined for the guillotine.

Both are dark possibilities - but not nearly as dark as what Laure unearths when she sets out to discover the truth."

Male doctors historically misdiagnosing there female patients.

Awakenings by George Mann
Published by: Games Workshop
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Sabbathiel returns! Now, facing mistrust wherever she turns, she must prove her worth once more.

Inquisitor Astor Sabbathiel has a problem: she's been dead for nearly a hundred years... or so everyone believes.

The last thing she remembers is being shot at point-blank range just as a roiling warp storm engulfed the Calaphrax Cluster. Now, she finds herself awakening on a distant Ecclesiarchy stronghold and indebted to a magos called Metik, who has brought her back from the brink of death.

Shortly after her resurrection, Sabbathiel is called to an audience on the planet Hulth by a high-ranking inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, Heldren, who informs her that after being lost for so long, the members of her former conclave no longer trust her. Forced to undertake a mission to prove herself worthy and true, Sabbathiel soon discovers a secret agenda beginning to unfold - one that contains a burgeoning threat to the Imperium that only she can avert. Trying to assemble the fragments of the past to make sense of the mysteries of the present, Sabbathiel will need to act fast and decide who to trust quickly, or else risk the fate of the future."

A new George book!

Batman: One Bad Day: Catwoman by G. Willow Wilson and Jamie McKelvie
Published by: DC Comics
Publication Date: July 18th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 88 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"When Selina Kyle finds out an item from her past is being sold for way more than it used to be worth, it sends her into a spiral, and she'll do everything in her power to steal it back.

2023 Eisner Nominee - Best Limited Series

Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman, is the greatest thief that Gotham City has ever seen. She's effortlessly stolen countless items of immense value over the years and successfully evaded the GCPD and Batman. But when Catwoman finds out an item from her past is being sold for way more than it used to be worth, it sends Catwoman into a spiral, and she'll do everything in her power to steal it back. Batman tries to stop her before she goes too far, and a mysterious figure known as the Forger will change Catwoman's life forever. The all-star creative team of G. Willow Wilson (Poison Ivy, Ms. Marvel) and Jamie McKelvie (The Wicked and The Divine, Young Avengers) unite for this epic story!"

I am always here for Catwoman!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anika Scott, Bruce Borgos, Catwoman, George Mann, Jamie Day, Jennifer Cody Epstein, LeVar Burton, Meriam Metoui, Nazis, Sara Flannery Murphy, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Stephanie Bishop, Tobi Ogundiran, Warhammer

Of the classic detectives that have emerged in recent years P.D. James is responsible for creating two of them, Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray. Considering we've now had three shows spawned just from the character of Inspector Morse it's interesting to note that for most people Roy Marsden is the one and only Dalgliesh, despite the attempt in the early 2000s to get Martin Shaw to take on the mantel. From 1983 to 1998 Marsden was Dalgliesh. Which makes creating a new Dalgliesh an interesting task. It's been fifteen years since Dalgliesh was seen in any form on screen so it feels like the right time to bring him back. And if there was ever a time to remind people that Nazis are bad, it's now. At first I didn't know how I'd feel about this adaptation. Unlike Morse who is forever entwined with John Thaw, I don't think that the public as a whole, despite the two decades of work, felt as connected to Roy Marsden. Plus, as we've seen with the plethora of new Sherlock Holmes adaptations, people are willing to accept that Jeremy Brett isn't the only actor capable of playing the role. Though I did enjoy a new poll that said he was obviously the best. So we welcome Bertie Carvel to the screen as our new Dalgliesh in three two part adaptations from Acorn TV of the forth, fifth, and seventh books. Most people know Bertie Carvel from the juggernaut that was Doctor Foster, or from his Tony winning role as Miss Trunchbull, I of course know him as Jonathan Strange. So there was no doubt in my mind he had the credentials to play the part, but would I like him in the part? That took three episodes for me to decide. "Shroud for a Nightingale" and his investigation of the nurses was a little too typical police procedural, it was "The Black Tower" that let us see behind the facade of stalwart police officer to the man, the poet, beneath. To feel his grief and to see what makes him tick. That is when I connected with him. I want to applaud whomever chose these three Dalgliesh stories to adapt because you go on such a journey and really get to know him. First as the cop, second as the man, and finally as a cop whom you just can't help but admire for his humanity. With only six episodes I feel like I really know the character, and that is something some shows can't do in twenty-two episodes. But I'm greedy. I want more. In fact, I want all fourteen books adapted. Can I talk to someone who can make this happen?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adam Dalgliesh, And the Emmy Goes To, Bertie Carvel, Cordelia Gray, Dalgliesh, Inspector Morse, John Thaw, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Martin Shaw, Miss Trunchbull, Nazis, Roy Marsden, Sherlock Holmes

The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: January 21st, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★ 
To Buy

Louisa Cannon has turned her back on the Mitfords. She had such hopes, such dreams, and here she is a temp hired for a glamorous party at the Guinness household in London. Nothing but a domestic and not even one with a reliable salary. But this is also the night her life will change again thanks to the Mitfords, whether she wants it to or not. The debonair heir, Bryan Guinness, has been wooing Diana Mitford and what transpires at the party makes him realize life is too short and he and Diana should be wed. A maid tragically dies in what appears to be an accident and Bryan pops the question to Diana and she accepts! Now that she's the wife to a Guinness the world is Diana's oyster and she needs her own personal lady's maid, and who better than dear old Louisa? As for dear old Louisa, she isn't exactly in a position to turn the offer down. Such prestige, power, and pay, it's worth putting up with Diana's tempers. Yet murder seems to shadow Diana and Bryan when there's a death at their Paris residence three years later. No one thinks back to that poor maid on the eve of their new lives except Louisa. Louisa senses that they are somehow connected. Two accidents that shouldn't have happened is too much of a coincidence. And who better to ask for help than her old friend Guy Sullivan? He happens to be in Paris following a missing persons case with his best friend Harry and Harry's new wife, Guy's partner, Mary Moon! They sadly get nowhere on either case and Louisa is whisked off in the wake of Diana once again. Though the company Diana is starting to keep is far more political. She's turning away from the bright young things and turning towards Oswald Mosley. Louisa knows it isn't any of her business, she's paid to be Diana's friend and secret keeper, but these secrets are dangerous. And it doesn't help that this confidence doesn't go both ways. Diana won't hear about there being a murderer amongst her friends, even when a third body appears. What is Louisa to do?

If you haven't guessed by now we're working our way through the Mitford sisters in Jessica Fellowes's series, the ironically titled "Mitford Murders Mystery." So the third book means it's Diana's turn, with Unity, Decca, and Debo waiting in the wings, and yes, I feel sorry for them in advance with whatever Jessica Fellowes has planned for them. The problem with Diana is she's a deplorable. She is a genuinely horrible human. The fact that she was married to Oswald Mosley in Goebbels's drawing room with Hitler in attendance is the one sentence bio that adequately covers what a horrid human being she was. While this series has always been more concerned with the "look" of the Mitfords than the "spirit" of them I have to say that Jessica Fellowes did a good job portraying Diana, because not only did I hate the book for myriad writing and plotting reasons, but I hated it for Diana. And thankfully it feels like Jessica Fellowes hates Diana too, because I've come to terms with her being a bad writer, but if she was also a bad human, if she made Diana a heroine, well, I don't think I could stomach that. Though her hatred of Diana made the writing at times a tad heavy handed with the Nazi side of things. But I think that can be forgiven, because now, more then ever, people need to be reminded Nazis are bad. As I write this Nazi Germany is trending on Twitter, that is how relevant Nazis are. But the Diana hatred oozing off the pages made me dislike this book on a level not seen since I read Diana's autobiography A Life of Contrasts. It's really hard to like a book with an unappealing villain as the star. Add to that my myriad issues with the series as a whole, and there was no way I was going to like this. Throw in the weird timeline with us jumping years ahead at random intervals and we're supposed to believe that the crimes committed are in the front of everyone's minds all that time later? That's preposterous. Much like calling this series "A Mitford Murders Mystery."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Life of Contrasts, Bryan Guinness, Diana Mitford, Guy Sullivan, Jessica Fellowes, Lady's Maid, Louisa Cannon, Murder, Nazis, Oswald Mosley, Roaring Back to Reading, The Mitford Murders, The Mitford Scandal

Six sisters raised in an unorthodox manner, with their own argot, Honnish, with education being for boys, not girls, they never had a formal education, yet despite that hindrance, two of them went on to become celebrated writers, with Nancy Mitford regarded as one of the best writers of the 20th century. They are a topic of conversation that would make any Anglophiles sqweee with joy and historians of the bright young things generation pant. In any time period the Mitfords would be called eccentric which made them all the more memorable. As The New York Times said: "A Nazi, a Fascist, a Communist, a Novelist, a Countrywoman, a Duchess...Sisters." The eldest, Nancy, went on to be famous for her novels satirising her family, Pamela's lesbian relationship didn't raise many eyebrows especially because her younger sister Diana married the heir to the Guinness fortune then left him for Walter Mosley, the leader of Britian's Fascist movement, eventually marrying in Joseph Goebbels' drawing room with Hitler in attendance. Unity was much like her sister Diana, in that she too flocked to Hitler, but was so torn when Britain and Germany declared war that she shot herself in the head, but didn't die until after the war, lingering but wounded. Jessica meanwhile was a staunch Communist and ran off with her cousin to the Spanish Civil War, they eventually married. Deborah on the other hand was quite docile, having married the Duke of Devonshire and eventually taking the reigns of Chatsworth, one of the great houses of England, and turning it into one of the most successful country homes and tourist attractions. Of the six sisters, only Pamela and Unity never took pen to paper. While Nancy wrote fiction, it seems that the sisters main literary interest was in non-fiction. Writing biographies, not just of famous people, but also contrasting biographies of themselves. Besides their own writing there has been a plethora of books written on them, even a series of murder mysteries wherein they solve crimes from when they were bright young socialites. Controversial, stylish and notorious... They are an unforgettable family.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Argot, Chatsworth, Communist, Deborah Mitford, Diana Mitford, Duchess, Duchess of Devonshire, Fascists, Jessica Mitford, Mitfords, Nancy Mitford, Nazis, Pamela Mitford, Roaring Back to Reading, Unity Mitford, Writer

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1962
Format: Hardcover, 900 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

The Allied Troops failed. The Axis powers won and divided up the spoils. Nazi Germany claimed the eastern United States while Imperial Japan created the Pacific States of America from the western coast and the Rocky Mountain States became a neutral buffer zone. It has been fifteen years since the end of the war. Fifteen years living under new laws, adapting to new cultures. Fifteen years of trying to forget the freedom Americans once had. But everyone has handled the situation in a way unique to themselves. Robert Childan has flourished under Japanese domination. His shop, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. deals with objects from America's past that the Japanese just love for their historicity. He has learned his trade well and understands the respect and protocol his clients demand. From Nobusuke Tagomi, a high ranking Japanese trade official dealing with a visiting Swedish industrialist, to the Kasouras, a young couple in love with Americana, Childan will go beyond what is necessary to please his customers. But soon his confidence in his life and his store will change forever when an item he has is accused of being a forgery.

Of course it is a forgery, there is no way that there are enough Colt .44s from the "wild west" to supply the demand for them, but Childan doesn't know he's just collateral damage from two disgruntled employees who work for his supplier, the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, trying to go out on their own making jewelry instead of forgeries. One of these two men is Frank Frink, a man desperately hoping no one ever finds out he's Jewish and daydreaming that his wife, Juliana, will return to him. But Juliana is in the Rocky Mountain States where she's gotten involved with a man, Joe, who's obsessed with a book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by Hawthorne Abendsen, The Man in the High Castle. Abendsen never forgot his freedom and his book is about an Allied victory in WWII. A past and present that could have been. As powers are at play trying to once again change history and divide alliances with the Germans wanting sole control of the world, one woman will learn the truth and perhaps it will set everyone free.

Back when I was more of a film buff than book geek I was very much aware of the controversy surrounding Blade Runner and which release of the film was the true vision of Ridley Scott, similar to the issues surrounding Terry Gilliam's Brazil which lead to me buying a cheap VHS transfer for the directors cut at a Doctor Who convention. This desire for truth lead me to seek out and read the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. My introduction to his terse almost choppy writing style is forgotten in the fogs of time, or in this case a really long train trip to New York, but I still remember my film TA's awe that I bothered to go to the source. This has always kind of shocked me, an adaptation doesn't exist in a bubble and the original source material, be it book or play, is always worth reading. When The Library of America came out with a "four volumes of the 1960s" omnibus deluxe edition containing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I jumped at the chance to upgrade my tatty paperback movie tie-in. It wasn't until Rufus Sewell signed onto the adaptation of The Man in the High Castle that I noticed that it was one of the four books in this volume I'd bought.

From that moment I knew I needed to read this book and yet, as so often happens, time was against me but once again my blog's theme months came to the rescue. I would read The Man in the High Castle this November no matter what! As it turned out this book is tailor made for me. I have a love of historical fiction but I also have a love of Steampunk. And think about this, what is Steampunk but a more typical alt history in that it leans towards the fantastical? This book combines all this into a wonderful mashup that occasionally has some over-the-top science fiction elements. But being the type of author Philip K. Dick was I think we can forgive him Nazis colonizing Mars, all the ensuing space race jargon, and those super rockets that get you from Germany to San Francisco in a matter of minutes not hours because he uses them so sparingly. In fact his using these fantastical elements so sparingly makes them have a greater impact than if it was all about aliens. Because the truth is this book isn't heavy on the plot, it isn't about great world changing events, it's about a select few people and how they deal with the world around them and learning their truth. And a search for the truth is how I first found Philip K. Dick in a wonderful sense of synchronicity. The Man in the High Castle is a character study and I loved that.

The lead characters are Robert Childan, Nobusuke Tagomi, Frank Frink, and Juliana Frink, and none of them are fully sympathetic, which makes them human and therefore far more interesting. Childan is grasping and obsessed with his status, think of an Arnold Rimmer not in outer space but dealing antiques in an alternate San Francisco. Tagomi is I think the most fascinating, someone who the readers would see as an enemy, but is drawn so complexly, who is so multifaceted, that he instantly becomes the hero of the book. He's constantly being pushed outside his comfort zone, forced to face situations he could never have envisioned, and yet he rises admirably to all challenges. Childan and Tagomi represent the more Japanese side of the Axis powers, and what I connected to was this glimpse into a culture that is so dependant on status and behavior. This book gets you into another mindset, makes you question how you see the world around you. I couldn't help noticing parallels to Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and how that book also gave us this tantalizing acress. For me Frank was almost a non-character, because he was really just there to connect Juliana to the rest of the narrative. And while Philip K. Dick obviously suffers a bit from the objectification of women who are in thrall to men that was not only prevalent but expected at the time, the turn around at the very end put this trope in it's place.

One thing that runs through this character driven book as a unifying force is the voice of the oracle through the I Ching. While the characters constant reliance on this device of cleromancy might in clumsy hands have conceivably bogged down the narration, Philip K. Dick handles it in such a deft and skilled way that it becomes a character of it's own. He either really knows his stuff or is really good at making it look that way. This device is also where the biggest most thought-provoking elements of The Man in the High Castle arise. The idea that the oracle has access to alternate dimensions that can be achieved through higher thought and belief, that truth can be divined? Shivers up my spine. The scene where Tagomi is trying to come to grips with all that he has suffered and done over the course of the book as he sits on that park bench looking deep into a broach designed by Frank and reaches awareness because the Wu of the piece moved him and for an instant he comes into our world, not the alternate world he has always lived in, it's like the book transcended. In that moment The Man in the High Castle was no longer a character study, but a religious experience connecting all of the universes. This book became MORE than a book. It became an experience to never forget.     

An experience that relies heavily on Philip K. Dick being meta before meta was really a thing. The book that drives Juliana and much discussion about what-ifs and could-have-beens in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. A book that shows the Axis powers losing and the world becoming very much like the one we live in. Just think on that. From our POV we're reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII while the characters in that book are reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII that is similar to how our world actually is. So much fun is derived not in seeing the horror the world could have been in had the Allies lost, but in seeing how Abendsen wrote this other world. The subtle changes that still led to the same result. So much of this book is chaos theory in action. The world is a house of cards, change one thing, change so many things. Because the Allied Forces lost not because of anything that happened during the war but because of the assassination of FDR prior to the war. Change one thing change everything. And yet, somehow, the oracle sees the truth at the heart of it all. Perhaps the changes within Abendsen's book to our truth are inaccuracies on his part. As to why he would have inaccuracies in a book he'd written? Well, you'll just have to read this one to find out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alternate History, Blade Runner, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, I Ching, Japan, Library of America, Michael Crichton, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rising Sun, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Man in the High Castle, WWII