The Talisman (Book Review)

It’s always interesting when you try and try to read a book, and you can’t get into it, and then either the time is right or you switch mediums and it just works. Sometimes a book needs to be listened to, or it must be read with physical pages to work for me. I can’t always explain it, but that’s what happened here with The Talisman. On my chronological Stephen King read-through, I just could not get into it, and I tried four or five times. So, a few years later, I decided to try it as an audiobook, and it just clicked, and I barreled through it in just a couple of weeks.

Jack Sawyer must travel across the country, sometimes in a parallel world and sometimes in our awful one, trying to read the west coast to retrieve an object of immense power that will heal his mother’s illness. This is engrossing, disturbing, heartbreaking, disgusting, and beautiful.

As for any Stephen King novel (and this is co-written with Peter Straub), I can’t really recommend it to anyone younger due to content issues—I discovered him in college—but this is a coming-of-age tale, one of brutality and loneliness, of a calling and responsibility, of purpose and growth, of friendship and loss and love. It’s at times poignant and beautiful and a page later filled with wretched people doing despicable things. It’s both fantastic and all too realistic. I enjoyed my journey with Jack and Wolf and Richard, and I’m curious how there could be a sequel.

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes – Book Review

S.A. Barnes’ second space thriller, Ghost Station (a follow up to 2022’s Dead Silence), gives the exact vibes of an Alien movie, which is exactly what I was hoping for. We’ve got evil corporations, an isolated crew in an abandoned hab on a snow-swept planet with the eerie remains of an alien civilization. This is precisely what I wanted.

Dr. Ophelia Bray and the crew of the Resilience are tasked with fairly routine sample gathering and investigation of a far-off planet, Lyria 393-C. She is a psychologist with a hidden past who just wants to prevent a form of space psychosis, which is all too common now that humanity has taken to the stars. So she’s been tasked with trying to test a new tech and research how her crew is reacting to their situation. So, of course, dark hijinks and paranoia ensue! I really enjoyed this novel, though it was maybe 30 pages too long at times, for its worldbuilding. I want all of Barnes’ books to be in a shared spacefaring world!

I will always pick up an S.A. Barnes Book—she writes fast-paced, mind-bendy, suspenseful space thrillers that compel me to keep reading!

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark – Book Review

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins is a fantastic upcoming novella from one of my favorite working fantasy authors, P. Djèlí Clark! He builds immersive worlds that I want to explore, to dig into every nook and cranny, to uncover the magic system (or just let it all wash over me). 

Eveen the Eviscerator is a Dead Cat Tail Assassin in the service of the goddess Aeril, “Matron of Assassins, The Silent Blade, the Lady of Knives, Snatcher of Souls—and, sometimes, the Crafter of Delectable Culinary Delights.” Aeril resurrects people (wiping their memory, but making them nearly invincible) who have pledged themselves to her service, and she has a strict code that her assassins must abide by. That’s how Eveen finds herself in a tough position: she’s sworn to carry out her contract, but can’t, because killing her latest mark might break all the rules, and maybe the world.

Clark’s writing is witty, wry, action-packed, and filled with nuance. I highly recommend this book for fantasy-lovers, for Assassin’s Creed fans, for fans of non-European-set fantasy. Heads up, there’s a lot of swearing, but it’s a lot of fun, regardless.

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte – Book Review

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte is a beautiful, poignantly-written, thoughtful exploration of the bleak tragedy that was (and came from) World War One, intertwined with the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. They served separately in the Great War, meeting in a faculty meeting years later, but their experiences and love for literature bonded them and changed their lives (and Lewis’ eternal life) forever.

This book is one part overview of the history of World War One, another part philosophical timeline, another part biography, with a final part literary analysis synthesizing all of the other components together. Loconte fills it with emotion, bolsters it with primary sources and rich textual evidence. It’s rich, powerful, moving, and filled with glory and grief. 

A Memory Called Empire (2019) – Book Review

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is a book I wish I could have written. It takes place at the turning point in the Teixcalaanli Empire, after the ambassador from Lsel Station (on the fringes of known space, with maybe an impending alien invasion?) tries to investigate the death of her predecessor. As the murder investigation heats up, so does the unrest at the heart of the Empire.

Arkady Martine’s prose is gorgeous and lush, and the world she’s created is exemplary, a sandbox for a host of series, if she wanted. The political intrigue, the machinery of empire, and the murder mystery are perfectly balanced, pulling the reader along one thread at a time. Martine recalls the Aztec Empire in her diction, and the Byzantine and aging, crumbling, stretched-thin western Roman Empire. There are shades of Panem’s sci-fi-Versailles debauchery, but on a galactic scale. The character development is fantastic and subtle, and the world building is expansive and truly epic.

This is another book that I wish I could’ve written. I really enjoyed the immersive world that Arkady Martine put us into: a distant future space opera featuring a vast empire, political intrigue, the threat of war, and almost cyberpunk technology at times. The political machinations and the interpersonal intrigue and the murder mystery at the heart of this book were incredibly engaging and thought-provoking. I can’t wait to read the sequel!