I’ve been a fan of Meg Shaffer since I first read her debut, The Wishing Game, several years ago. I liked The Lost Story as well, and when I found out that she had a new novel out this year, I was eager to see what she’d concocted. Though it was worth it to endure until the end, The Book Witch‘s corny writing nearly smothered the more earnest sentiments at its heart.
Rainy March is a Book Witch, an umbrella-wielding magician with a sworn oath to protect the fictional realm from real-world threats. Two years ago, she made the gravest mistake a Book Witch could possibly make: she fell in love with the Duke of Chicago, the main character in her favorite series. A slap on the wrist and a demotion later, and Rainy has accepted that she’ll never see the Duke again. But when her grandfather disappears, leaving cryptic, bookish clues behind, she may have to turn to him again to solve this seemingly unsolvable mystery.
TW/CW: loss of loved ones, grief themes, mild violence, terminal illness, brief descriptions of injury
WARNING: This review contains spoilers! If you haven’t read The Book Witch, tread lightly.
Let me start off by saying this: I didn’t enjoy most of The Book Witch, but it’s worth sticking it out until the ending. That being said, the payoff is excellent, but Jesus Christ, the road there was awful.
For the first 2/3rds of the novel, Shaffer’s prose in The Book Witch was insufferable. The recurring feeling that I had was that this was some kind of Sherlock x reader fanfic circa 2012 that had breached containment. It just reeked of that overly meta, quirky millennial humor that’s only become more grating with time. Rainy kisses the book boyfriend of her dreams, and mid-kiss, she says something to the effect of “Um, am I actually kissing the Duke of Chicago right now? 🤪” PACK IT UP. Who is this, y/n? Just put me out of my misery right now. And all of it is in that juvenile, cloying adorkable style, from the too-perfect Duke of Chicago (a book boyfriend made manifest) to the comically-evil, mustache-twirling, black-horse-riding stock villain, a book burner named X (I wish I was kidding). Even for a somewhat silly and whimsical concept, it just felt lazy to lean this heavily on tropes; knowing that Shaffer is capable of better writing than this made it even more sour.
On top of all that, the scaffolding of The Book Witch was barely there. There were just countless plot and character elements that didn’t feel believable at all. Rainy was meant to be somewhat exhausted, a bit jaded and beat-up after her dalliance with the Duke and the trouble she got in. We’re supposed to see the peppy Penny as a contrast to her, but they have the same cloyingly happy-go-lucky personality. Like X, all of the characters had one stock trait to go on that stayed static for the whole novel. I feel like there were more plot conveniences than actual plot, and therefore no tension, since I knew that everything would magically work out in Rainy’s favor. If this were a different author, I would’ve DNF’d it on the spot—it was just too convenient and juvenile to hold water.
Then came the last third of the novel. The Book Witch is one of those books that’s difficult for me to talk about without verging into spoilery territory, so here goes nothing. After 150+ pages of corny galumphing through fictional worlds, we get hit with the twist that Rainy March was never in the real world to begin with: she is a fictional character herself, and her author, Maxine Blake, is terminally ill and needs to pass the torch to a new author to finish her bestselling series. This is where the Meg Shaffer I know and love finally came through. This part of the book cemented some genuinely touching moments about the power of reading, the impact that authors and stories have on us, and the sanctuaries that books provide for reader and author alike. For how predictable the rest of The Book Witch was, this part hit me upside the head, and it was a glimmering lighthouse of sincerity in a sea of eye-roll-inducing prose. With that guiding the rest of the novel (and Rainy March’s journey), it actually managed to have some real heart.
With that said: does the end justify the means? Despite the poignant story behind The Book Witch, I don’t think it excuses any of the heinous prose that happened before the big reveal. Just because the story is a book-within-a-book doesn’t mean that fictional authors can’t write well. I just don’t believe that a dying old woman would write like a millennial in 2012 on Wattpad with too much time on her hands. Even though the Rainy March series is a bestselling series in-universe, I just don’t buy that something with such juvenile writing would be aimed at adults and gain the traction that it did. Having these books be a fluffy series of bestsellers doesn’t excuse the mountain of plot conveniences and tired tropes. It’s like Shaffer got so caught up in how a fictional bestseller would be written that she stumbled headfirst into every possible writing pitfall. The sad thing is that The Book Witch could’ve been so much more enjoyable and touching if not for that—the bones were here, but the meat (the book-within-a-book itself) was completely spoiled.
All in all, a novel that was worth the poignant message about the books that change us…but as a book, it didn’t change me. Honestly, it just really annoyed me. 2.5 stars.
The Book Witch is a standalone, but Meg Shaffer is also the author of The Wishing Game and The Lost Story.
Today’s song:
saw phoebe bridgers live for the first time last night (!!!!) and I’m still reeling from it!! I was really hoping she’d play this, and I just about spontaneously combusted when she did…what a magical night :,)
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
So last week, I got a comment on one of my Sunday Songs posts commending my song/book pairings. At first, it was nice to be recognized…and then I realized that the comment reeked of AI, was inexplicably posted four separate times, and came from a website that makes AI-generated playlists based off of book pairings. BOO, TOMATO, TOMATO!! USE YOUR BRAIN! Anyway, as always, you can get your completely AI-free, human-made, pretentious book-music pairings from an exhausted post-grad right here, and you don’t have to use up enough water to fuel a city to do it. There’s no excuse to use AI for much of anything these days. But this? Why deprive yourself of fun?
This week: Ziggy Stardust didn’t need a lawyer, but I’m defending him anyway. Plus, Björk does show tunes and Cate Le Bon enhances everything that she touches.
I need to relinquish any shame that I have left about discovering great songs via social media. Sometimes you can stumble across random gems just from seeing some art on your cousin’s story. That’s the case with “Mefus,” and man, am I glad to have found this. How else would I have found a sunny, ’60s-inflected instrumental from some Welsh-language band that I’ve never heard of before? (I listened to all of this album, Fel Efeilliaid, the other day—it’s worth a listen, but “Mefus” remains my favorite track.) For all of the musicians desperately trying to sound like the ’60s and nosediving, Pys Melyn make it look easy; their plinking organs and shuffling drums seem like they were plucked straight from 1966. It sounds like what Wes Anderson would listen to on his morning jog. (Can’t you see this song soundtracking some of his meticulously-framed shots?) “Mefus” means strawberry in Welsh, and for a wordless song, it perfectly evokes summer sunlight and the carefree happiness of picking strawberries. Normally, I don’t gravitate towards instrumentals in terms of songs I have on repeat, but “Mefus” is nothing short of enchanting, a time capsule of the ’60s and of summers without a timestamp.
For all of the innovation on Post, I feel like there’s a case for “It’s Oh So Quiet” being one of the more solid pieces of proof of Björk’s genius—and the song isn’t even hers. It’s a cover of a Betty Hutton song from the ’50s, a show-tuney B-side that Björk’s tour manager at the time would frequently play in the van on tour. (That version is also a cover, in a way—it’s an English translation of a German song from 1948, “Und jeszt ist es still.”) Hutton’s version is loads of fun, but having listened to this cover for so long, it makes me weirdly anxious—it’s not supposed to be that fast! It’s too compressed! But it’s one of those covers that’s all but eclipsed the original, and it’s easy to see why.
Post is already a fairly weird album, considering how mainstream it got back in the mid-’90s, but nothing gets weirder than a solid stretch of cutting-edge electronics being unceremoniously interrupted by a ’50s show-tune popping up behind you like a jack-in-the-box. Strangely, the transition is barely jarring. To be fair, “The Modern Things” has the right kind of rhythm to ease you into “It’s Oh So Quiet.” But to me, it’s proof of Björk being a truly mercurial, unexpected presence in music. She morphs her tales of mysterious, post-apocalyptic, moss-covered presents and futures into a Broadway-like tune complete with clicking heels and a ’40s-style big band. And though Betty Hutton was doing some pretty impressive yelling on her own, you can’t talk about “It’s Oh So Quiet” without how Björk punctuates it with ecstatically wild screams. It cranks the intensity of the original—which already evoked the devil and bombs exploding—up to a thermometer-shattering level. It goes beyond love or lust and into something so all-consuming that it’s scarcely quantifiable in words—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! And that’s why I think that mouse-quiet feinting between each chorus, slowed down from the original, works so well; it stretches out that tension like an accordion, truly lulling you into a false sense of security before the brass section detonates in your face. WOW, BAM! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
And I can’t not talk about Spike Jonze’s music video, and not for the plain reason that it’s an iconic touchstone in the history of ’90s music videos. “It’s Oh So Quiet” was the first Björk song that I ever fell in love with. I remember being genuinely spellbound by it when I was around six or seven (no way of getting around that). On its own, it felt like some part of my impressionable brain had been cracked straight open. But paired with the music video, which I distinctly remember watching with my mom huddled in the dark around the family computer, it was like tapping into some magical, unknown realm that I had no access to before. Of course, the magical realm was Björk, and I’d never be the same again. But the music video is just a pure joy. I’d fully believe it if this was just the effect that Björk naturally has on her environment: turning a sketchy tire shop into a dance floor, bringing mailboxes to life, and compelling entire hordes of strangers, from goths to businessmen in their suits and ties, into a spontaneous dance routine. And then she flies off. Manic pixie dream girl activities for anybody else, but that’s just Björk, and she’s naturally like that. It’s all very Amelie, pre-Amelie. Inexplicably, I started welling up when I rewatched the video for this post. Maybe it’s because it will always be that portal’s entrance to somewhere wondrous.
My formal apologies: sorry, Crane Wives, I wasn’t familiar with your game.
To be fair, before one of my dear friends sent me some of their newer material, I primarily associated The Crane Wives with the kind of folk-pop that goes viral on TikTok from really corny DnD edits. I swear that’s happened multiple times. Real shame for a band with a fantastic name. But as with a lot of things, I didn’t dig deep enough—and there’s more to them than meets the phone-sized eye. It seems like a lot of their songs on their latest album, Beyond Beyond Beyond, expanded their palette considerably. I, for one, didn’t expect to come into “Predator” with a bassline faintly reeking of Radiohead, of all bands. (See also: “Black Hole Fantasy,” which has a great six-minute languish to it.) It seems like they’re undergoing a kind of Shakey Graves arc, splintering out from the folk model and into more adventurous territory. Sure, “Predator” has its missteps—easy on the handclaps, dude—but it’s got a real propulsive instrumental, darkly askew and more alternative than I’d given them credit for, a tale of being trapped in your own harmful habits (and getting tangled up in the same harmful habits of other people). It’s refreshing to know that I was wrong about a band—and it was to fun to realize that The Crane Wives had more to them than meets the eye.
I put this on my Sunday Songs lineup because I’d listened to it again for the first time in a while, and predictably, fell in love with it all over again. But I didn’t stop and think that I’d be really writing about “Moonage Daydream.” What do you even say about “Moonage Daydream?” One of the most memorable singles from one of his most iconic albums of all time. The song that gave the name to Brett Morgen’s biopic/documentary/mind exploration from 2022. It was the track they put in Guardians of the Galaxy to great effect back in the day. The lyrics gave me my username on several other social media platforms. What the hell do you even say about “Moonage Daydream” that hasn’t already been said?
In a lot of Bowie fan spaces, there’s a kind of aversion amongst the die-hard fans towards the Ziggy era. I’m behind some of it—I feel like there’s a tendency for a lot of Bowie fans to gloss over all of the other radical transformations (both personal and musical) that he made over the span of his career in favor of only fixating on Ziggy Stardust and the glam era, and maybe a bit of his late ’70s work as a treat. On the one hand, it really is a disservice to disregard decades of his career, and if you listen to Bowie but only acknowledge the ’70s, you’re depriving yourself of so much of the mercurial artistry that he’s praised for. How can you understand that transformation if you don’t see the radical leaps he made from suit-and-tie pop star in the ’80s to the electronic, experimental mastermind of the ’90s, and so on? It’s made it weirdly uncool to like Ziggy the deeper you get into fan spaces.
Yet I find myself so defensive of the Ziggy/glam era; even as somebody who’s been poring through his discography for the better part of my life, it remains my favorite period of his, both aesthetically and musically. Part of that’s purely nostalgic, of course—you never forget your first love, and this is the first version of Bowie that I fell in love with. The specific confluence of the glam rock sound at its finest, the visual aesthetic, and the sci-fi themes combined with the inherent and coded queerness of a lot of lyrics scratches a way too specific itch in my brain. Yes, it was a persona like all the others, but I think we often gloss over the fact that every persona inadvertently represented parts of himself. For me, I’ve always seen it as something of a product of the shock and alienation he felt being thrust into the spotlight after being a struggling folkie barely making a splash in the industry for years. He was alien, no matter how he dressed. He felt like an alien.
And that’s what makes “Moonage Daydream” so staggering and important to this day. Beyond the hastily-crafted concept behind The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it still stands as the cornerstone of what the album represented. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that ZiggyStardust, as grandiose as it is, has so many moments wanting to experience something real; I imagine it was a consequence of Bowie struggling to find a foothold anywhere and feeling alienated himself. From the quiet moments in “Soul Love” to the plastic-clad downfall of the titular “Ziggy Stardust,” there’s a yearning for the real behind the artificial. And that desire is what culminates in “Moonage Daydream,” a more straightforward love song behind all of the classically sci-fi lyrics. Behind the spandex, rayguns, and sensuality, Bowie wants to peel back what’s fake and fully fall in love. Could I be reading too much into it? Probably. But I think that’s what makes the yearning of this track feel authentic. Ziggy was always much more than the makeup and spandex—it was Bowie’s own desire to touch reality behind the artifice of modern life that he found himself suddenly faced with.
Also, the guitar solo just rips. God bless Mick Ronson.
The Cate Le Bon kick was bound to lead me to Dry Cleaning someday, but as with Me Oh My,my older brother was the impetus for listening to their newest album, Secret Love, which Le Bon produced. I’d vaguely heard of them in relation to her, but I’d never gotten around to listening to them. There’s no doubt that Secret Love has Le Bon’s magical fingerprints all over it; her thrumming bass, blasts of saxophone, and angular sensibilities translated well to the palette that Florence Shaw and co. already had going. Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about the album. I think I’m just not fully on board with Shaw’s kind of post-ironic, dead-eyed kind of spoken word style. Sometimes it works in diagnosing the many ills of modern life, but at worst, it feels like some faux-deep thinkpiece I would’ve had to read for my women and gender studies minor. (Lookin’ at you, “My Soul/Half Pint.” That one just made me roll my eyes. “Maybe it’s time for men to clean for like/Five hundred years” pack it up, dude.) There’s only so much deadpan meanderings about how terrible society is before it starts getting old.
But “Hit My Head All Day?” Now this is something special. Unfortunately, it kind of ruined the rest of the album for me because nothing was quite so good as this (save for “Cruise Ship Designer,” one of the album’s more energetic tracks that reminds me a lot of Wire/Talking Heads). In a gloomy, six-minute sprawl buoyed by slinking, ’80s bass, Shaw sings as though she’s trapped in an ever-shrinking box, contorting her limbs to sharp corners. The lyrics muse on extreme desensitization and the desire to feel anything, everything, even if it means, well…hitting your head all day: “When I was a child, I wanted to be a horse/Eating onions, carrots, celery/I simply must have experiences/Manipulate me, wiggle my arms.” It’s reminiscent of Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch” in its desire for connection, though this is decidedly drier and angular than Gabriel’s synthy, impassioned pleas. Here, Shaw’s dreary delivery makes the case all the more for the narrator’s lack of stimulation; you really do believe that she’s desperate to the point of banging her head against a wall.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Translation State – Ann Leckie – “I simply must have experiences/Manipulate me, wiggle my arms/I hit my head in different places…”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Here we are, back at the confluence of Latine Heritage Month and spooky season. I try to read at least a few books that fall into both categories around this time of year—something spooky or marginally horror-adjacent (because you know me, I can barely do full-on horror). Chicano Frankenstein isn’t horror by any means, but I was intrigued by its Frankenstein-inspired premise. Unfortunately, this novel felt more dead than its reanimated protagonist.
In a near-future United States, reanimated people are the hot-button issue. As the president decries these “stitchers” who are stealing jobs from living Americans, an unnamed, reanimated paralegal navigates this hostile landscape. As the stigma against him increases and his social situation becomes more dire, he becomes more desperate than ever to uncover something he’s been searching for all his life: his history before he was brought back to life.
TW/CW: racism, discrimination (fictional), xenophobia, medical content, murder, hate crime, sexual content, descriptions of injury/car accident (past)
I’ll get this out of the way: I wanted to enjoy Chicano Frankenstein, but I really didn’t. But as fun as indulging the righteous haterism within me is, I do try and make an effort to at least find a few positive elements about books that I don’t like. Thankfully, Chicano Frankenstein made that easy. Although most of the novel was a slog, Olivas’s worldbuilding was excellent. He goes into exhaustive detail about the history of reanimation technology, how it’s affected legislation and the daily life of Americans, the stigmas surrounding it, and how it has affected politics. It’s a pretty obvious satire of the anti-immigration rhetoric that’s run rampant in the U.S. for centuries, and it’s effective as a satire. The integration of news segments, transcripts from the Oval Office, and all of the discussions about the midterms made this feel like it could easily be a hot-button issue the day after tomorrow. The President—who I imagined as very Marjorie Taylor-Green-esque, basically a genderbent Trump—felt appropriately beyond bigoted, and the bits of her flagrantly insulting her cabinet were funny…until I remembered that this is normal in the White House now. I appreciated the nods (obvious as they were) to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and even though this novel is thematically different, I enjoyed all the tips of the hat to the source material.
Olivas has a very detached narrative style for Chicano Frankenstein, which was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it suited the protagonist, who is only referred to as “the man.” I liked that detachment since it made so much sense for the character, and it gave it an interesting stylistic bent—it reminded me a lot of Ole Munch from Fargo, strangely. A man is grateful, etc. Olivas employs a lot of short, choppy sentences, which worked for the man’s one-track mind. But while that detachment worked for the man, the same detachment was glossed over the entire novel, which gave me little reason to care for everybody else. Even when the POV switched, that same style carried over, which didn’t make much sense to apply to everybody else. When the novel should’ve been right at the heart of the human side of the reanimation issue, I felt about as omniscient as a satellite watching from space: I just felt miles of distance between myself and the characters when I really shouldn’t have.
Learning that Daniel Olivas is mainly a short story/novella writer made a lot of sense. Chicano Frankenstein is just shy of the 200-page mark, but even then, it felt like Olivas was trying to inflate the page length to make Chicano Frankenstein feel like a full-length novel. That isn’t always a problem in and of itself, but it was just so obvious; I’ll get back to this later, but you’ve got entire passages of characters explaining landmarks and places like they’re reading straight from TripAdvisor reviews on too many occasions. The man finds a picture book in his old belongings—intriguing glimpse into his past life, right?—but then Olivas proceeds to paste in the entirety of said picture book into the narrative. Chicano Frankenstein would’ve been so much more effective as a novella, but as it is right now, Olivas just added so many erroneous elements that had no business clogging up the narrative.
Unfortunately, that mixed bag of Olivas’s sparse prose had no positives when it came to the dialogue. I left Chicano Frankenstein wondering when the last time that Olivas had interacted with a real person was. The protagonist’s dry, unvarnished dialogue was understandable, because he was, in a way, born yesterday. Everybody else? There was no excuse for what was going on there. Everybody talked so damn stiffly, with a complete lack of natural speech rhythm. Characters would reference books, and the entire conversation would get derailed so they could point out facts about the book or the author, high school book report-style. There’s a whole fucking sequence where one of the protagonist’s sassy coworkers regurgitates factoids about this one museum like she’s a college tour guide reading off bullet points from a clipboard. It was ridiculous. It was just blatantly out of touch from how any real person speaks.
An extension of the issue of Chicano Frankenstein’s grating dialogue was that, in addition to Olivas not being able to write natural dialogue, he apparently also can’t write women to save his life. It got to a point where I had to brace myself whenever any female characters were introduced. Faustina was the main woman in the story, and although there was a smidge of potential with the classic Frankenstein dynamic with the love interest being the only one who sees past his monstrosity, there was no followup whatsoever. That’s mostly because Faustina only functioned as a sexy love interest with no depth or purpose beyond saying “hey guapo 😏” to the protagonist and cooking for him. I think the only reason that Faustina barely passes the sexy lamp test is that she serves to cook for the man and drive him places, which still puts her firmly in service to him at all times…even though SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A LAWYER. (My best friend suggested that she’s instead a “sexy Uber,” since she still retains mobility, but it’s all in service to the male protagonist.) With the other women, Olivas was clearly attempting to make them sassy and cool, or something, which crashed and burned with a combination of the already heinous dialogue and Olivas only seeming to understand women to the degree of sass vehicles who dispense catty but worldly dating advice. (The scene with Faustina and Grace at the bar was particularly awful. I wanted to take a bite out of my walls by the end.) Bottom line: Olivas needs to remember how real people talk, but also remember that women are autonomous beings that do more than cook, be sexy, and produce dating tips.
All in all, a scathing critique of our current moment that succeeded with its commentary and worldbuilding, but fell short on…well, everything else. Daniel A. Olivas knows how reanimated people work, but apparently not living, breathing people. 2 stars.
Chicano Frankenstein is a standalone, but Daniel Olivas is also the author of several novels, novellas, and short story collections, including The Book of Want, How to Date a Flying Mexican, Anywhere but L.A., and many others.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Noisier, more metal-adjacent music isn’t usually my forte. I used to hate most forms of industrial or metal music when I was younger, up until about high school. This was true for all but a few Nine Inch Nails songs (admittedly, I did love a handful of songs from Pretty Hate Machine in middle school…fitting, and also, “Head Like a Hole” will always be a banger). To this day, I still can’t decide how much I regret not seeing them with the rest of my family back in 2018, at a Red Rocks show where they ended up playing one of the only live performances of “The Perfect Drug” up until that point. Cruelly, it took me until a few years ago to like that song, too.
Nowadays, I can appreciate Trent Reznor much more as an artist, having gone from the throes of addiction to sobriety but still keeping true to his mission of making art to exorcise pain and create a safe space for those working through similar issues. Anybody with that mindset automatically has my respect. But of course, everything goes back to Bowie with me—I think I heard “I’m Afraid of Americans” around the same time as I started sort-of-kind-of liking Nine Inch Nails, and I don’t think there’s a way that you can come away from that experience without thinking that Bowie and Reznor are the coolest people on Earth. Hearing “God is an American” for the first time in the Trump era was certainly pivotal. But to hear of their relationship—Bowie taking Reznor under his wing, seeing pieces of his younger self in him and helping Reznor work his way out of his addiction and help his artistry blossom—is such a critical part of the Bowie and Nine Inch Nails story that a lot of Bowie fans who only fixate on the ’70s or ’80s woefully miss. The ’90s marked a turning point for Bowie musically and personally, with his no-holds-barred dive into experimental music and the peace of his private life, which allowed him to become that stable mentor for people like Trent Reznor, and many others afterwards. And then, of course, there’s the legendary tour they did together.
So understandably, Bowie’s death left an indelible mark on Reznor. Even before I got into Nine Inch Nails, I could understand that if anybody could, nay should cover “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” it was him. That’s not even mentioning his concrete song about grieving Bowie, “This Isn’t the Place.” Yet even if “God Break Down the Door” wasn’t directly about Bowie, it kinda still is, in its warped way. It’s a writhing mass of tentacles frenetically squirming ever outwards towards entropy. Reznor’s blares of saxophone are the most obvious Bowie (specifically Blackstar) callback and a connection point between them, as they both played the instrument in their younger years. But amidst all of the seemingly disparate aspects of the track—the writhing beats (almost goes into yoinky sploinky territory), the marimba, the persistent drone of it all—it creates something so singly whole. That fleeting beat of silence amidst Reznor’s droning and the explosive exorcism of sound that comes afterwards bottles a kind of feeling that I can only describe as a black hole being reversed, like all of the matter of the universe being shot back out from the point of oblivion. It’s the door that God’s broken down, from my interpretation. But to me, it’s not just the sound of Bowie that Reznor inherits: it’s the floodgates of creativity being busted open in the ’90s, wiggling free of all corporate and fan expectations to create something nobody expects.
It’s very succinctly summed up in this YouTube comment:
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Redsight – Meredith Mooring – “God break down the door/Everything all at once/There aren’t any answers here/No, no, not anymore…”
mary in the junkyard is a band I expect to come forward with something fresh lyrically, whether it’s feral people in the woods, reincarnated mice, or people turning into trees. Clari Freeman-Taylor has an eye for the left-of-center, the unloved creatures and inherent weirdness that reveals itself once you peer beyond the space between branches; her songwriting cradles spiders, mice, and impish creatures and nurses them back to health, patting them on the head when most people would run away and abandon them. So it’s no surprise that “Jane” is similarly unique. It hung in unreleased but often played live-limbo, where it was introduced by Freeman-Taylor as a love song about her period, who she named Jane and is “too annoying and honest.” Ain’t that the truth.
Writing affectionately about your period is a daring undertaking, given that it’s the bane of pretty much every AFAB person’s existence. But I think that the same tenderness Freeman-Taylor offers to the unloved creatures translated naturally to menstruation, which frequently makes you feel like an unloved creatures, and is a kind of unloved creature in her hands. The understated combination of electric guitar and Saya Barbaglia’s plaintive viola makes it feel like an apology, the sort of intimacy of cupping your hands over somebody’s chin as they weep. (Which, once again, very much a period feeling.) For me, it evokes the fear when I went through puberty as a young girl, developing at a rate that felt entirely too fast for the uncertain body I was in, doddering around like a foal: “It’s hard to be a woman, is it harder to be here?/It’s hard to be someone when everything is new.” To me, it’s both about that womanhood/AFAB experience as well as Jane herself being new in the world, emerging like some nocturnal creature every month. I never considered that my sentient period didn’t want to be brought into this world either. Maybe I’m the bad guy. Nobody’s having a good time here. But that’s where “Jane” finds sympathy, for both herself and Jane being constant, confused, and cramping companions.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Greenteeth – Molly O’Neill – to be honest, I haven’t exactly read many books that are a) about menstruation, or b) sentient periods, but Greenteeth gives me the tenderly, whimsically dark yet sympathetic feel of a lot of mary in the junkyard songs.
Have I gotten to the point where I’m ambivalent about Soccer Mommy? I don’t think so, but I think I’m dangerously close. “Rings of Saturn” is a nice song. That’s about it. It’s a nice Soccer Mommy song. But I feel like it’s not a huge leap from any of her other work. I feel like this could be an outtake from color theory, which isn’t necessarily a complaint. Yet with somebody like Soccer Mommy, I expect at least something new with each new release—there was the color-coded concept behind color theory, the experimental daring of Sometimes, Forever, and the acoustic grief cataloguing of Evergreen. Other than the production, there’s not much that separates “Rings of Saturn” from the rest; but I do enjoy the production, with its spacey, retro graininess. The lyrics are solid too—certainly relatable, and they would’ve been even more so when I was in high school. “Rings of Saturn” is perfectly fine, but I just wanted more. At worst, Evergreen’s tracks blended together, and I’m just afraid that it’ll happen again. Then again, back when she released “Shotgun,” it felt like she was playing it safe, and then came Sometimes Forever. So who knows? I want more from “Rings of Saturn” because I know she’s capable of something more. Tentatively, I’ll follow Soccer Mommy wherever this constellation leads.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
This Is the Year – Gloria Muñoz – “The stars, they hardly shine/In the city lights, but I/Point my finger to a halo in the sky, I see your light/Rings of Saturn, do you hear me when I cry?”
Blackstar was always going to be an album that I needed to sit with. It took me years to even listen to it all the way through. A second time around, and I could barely handle the crushing weight of grief coupled with the ecstatic art-jazz-rock freakouts. And then I bought the record because it was within my self-imposed budget, a fine addition to my collection, etc., and that final piece clicked for me. Granted, most of the tracks still make me cry like a baby, but once I vomited up that initial onslaught of sadness, I could peek back and not just appreciate but genuinely enjoy the artistry behind it. It’s not that I didn’t get it before—even while I was actively weeping, I recognized all of the snatches of odd time signatures and how flooring pretty much all the lyrics are—but the immediacy of it had worn off.
I hate hearing the sound of breathing. Not even consciously heavy breathing, that’s obvious, but just any audible breathing. It’s very much a sensory issues thing, but hearing breathing (nay, any kind of mouth noises), chewing, sniffing, it all makes me fucking squirm. Something about it sets my perpetually askew nervous system on high alert. And that’s how “‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” begins. David Bowie breathes into the mic, then licks his lips. You can almost hear how chapped they are. It’s laborious. The exhaustion, the energy sapped out of him, is immediately apparent in seconds, and even when the saxophones and pounding drums kick in, you can hear him heaving. Bowie never gave a statement as to what the lyrics were about: all he ever said about the track was that “if Vorticists wrote rock music, it might have sounded like this.” Keeping the art movement in mind, characterized by cubism, harsh angles, and secrecy, it’s very apt. But that no-frills, human panting and breathing inclines me to believe one of the more popular interpretations of the song; Bowie describes a woman (in quite disparaging terms) who “punch[es] him like a dude” and “steal[s] his purse with rattling speed”…what could said “whore” be if not cancer?
Even if the language is more sparse than the usual flowery, cosmic Bowie epic, “‘Tis a Pity” is an epic in every sense. There’s no shortage of aspects to pick apart. There’s the gender dynamic of the cancer personification, clearly marked as a woman but whose violence takes on distinctly masculine language (“Man, she punched me like a dude”). There’s the title, taken from a 1633 play by John Ford, which is only tangentially related to the song’s themes, but nonetheless contains that same undercurrent of violence. The literary references continue with an interpolation of Robert Southey’s Sonnet 1, part of a collection of poems condemning the Transatlantic Slave Trade, where Bowie gets “hold your mad hands.” (Thanks are due here for the no doubt exhaustive research from the blog Pushing Ahead of the Dames.) Through it all, it paints an image of Bowie as a frail boxer, battered but impossibly full of energy until his last breath. It’s a harrowing song, especially with that final ragged yelp he lets out at the end. He sounds beaten. And yet, he was ready to throw those creative punches in the ring until the bitter end.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The DSM-5 – American Psychiatric Association – we all need therapy after this, let’s be real…
Are you imagining me somehow serenely, sitting stationary while writing this post? Wrong. I’m still vibrating at the thought of Lost Weekend, mainly because I’ve got tickets to see Miss Phoebe (!!!!) very soon!! I’ve come back to the album constantly—easily one of my favorites of the year so far, and it only gets better every time I revisit it. This week’s pick was a real tossup—I could’ve easily gone with the enchanting slow dance (and brief Gracie Abrams diss) of “The Governor’s Waltz,” the bittersweet, country-fied healing of “Haunted,” or the visceral existential pleas of “As Above.” Now that I’ve had almost two months to sit with it, I think Lost Weekend represents the height of Phoebe Bridgers’s powers (no pun intended) so far. Dare I say that it’s better than Punisher? I do dare say it. She’s skyrocketed in fame and artistic ability, a rare combination; she’s only strengthened the emotional, raw pull in her lyrics without sacrificing a subtly adventurous spirit. The soundscapes have turned from artfully sparse to cosmically expansive, doffing shoegaze, country, and electronic hats with an ease that most musicians of her standing couldn’t attempt.
Yet I keep coming back to “I Can’t Wait.” There’s about a million puns I could make about this song and the fact that I can’t wait for the concert, but I’ll hold back. Another aspect of Lost Weekend that endears me is the fact that, in spite of the tragedy that led up to the album’s release, Bridgers has started finding peace of mind. Despite being labeled as such by the press and her fans, she’s frequently chafed against both a static sound and being pigeonholed as a sad girl; and, yes, while that’s part of why I love her, seeing her write songs of unabashed hope and love is like watching a depressed friend start healing and doing better for themselves. “Bobby” is the more obvious example, but “I Can’t Wait” hits me in the gut the most. With its juddering, harmonized sprint at the start, it’s brimming with anticipation. This time, it’s not the end-of-the-world prophecies of Punisher, but being excited for the first time about what’s on the horizon: romantically, emotionally. Bridgers paints herself as more than a little bruised and beat up, but she’s ready to run towards the finish line no matter how much dirt she’s got smeared over her bloodied knees: “I’m not good, but I’m better/Missed my cue, but whatever/It’s now or never.”
And of course, as if “I Can’t Wait” wasn’t one of Bridgers’s best already, it also solves one of the problems that she’s had for her whole career: her duet partners. She’s finally picked somebody with a lower vocal register than her to duet, and it actually works. They said it couldn’t be done…but if anybody could do it, it was obviously Cameron Winter uh [cough] excuse me, Son-John Johnson, my bad. The beat where the electronic skittering dissipates into folksy embers around a campfire, where Bridgers and Winter’s voices delicately intertwine, feels exactly like the song’s excellent music video; at that moment, the fly that the video’s POV has been from, gets gently cradled in Bridgers’s palms. It’s so secure, warm, and the moment that their voices coalesce feels like home, somehow. Incidentally, that’s where the real love song part of “I Can’t Wait” comes in, but that brimming, brilliant nucleus of hope and genuine excitement for the future gets me choked up. You can change your mind, but you can’t change mine…
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Idolfire – Grace Curtis – “Baby, baby, if you leave me/Can you take me with you?/I can sit in the back seat…”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I read The Sun and the Void back in 2024 and really enjoyed it; although I didn’t remember everything about the plot, I figured I would go ahead and pick up the sequel. Thankfully, I didn’t have too much trouble readjusting to the world, but that was the least of my problems. The River and the Star had its moments, but I feel like I read a book from a completely different series.
Now, tread lightly! This review contains spoilers for book one in the series, The Sun and the Void. For my review of book one, click here!
Both of them are now in thrall to separate gods—the god of the Sun and the god of the Void. While Reina revels in a new domestic life with her girlfriend Maior, Eva struggles with the dark powers brewing inside of her. But trouble is on the horizon for Tierra’e Sol, with armies of wretched tinieblas invading the shores. As the gods grow hungrier for power, Reina and Eva must choose which side they belong to—and which side is worth fighting for in the first place.
TW/CW: rape, violence, murder, colonialism, religious bigotry (fictional), descriptions of injury
There’s a specific brand of overlong genre fiction book that just leaves you thinking “this could’ve been an email.” I’m all for languishing and having narrative elements that aren’t necessarily practical, but some books have no business being over 500 pages. Unfortunately, The River and the Star was one of them.
It’s been two years since I read The Sun and the Void, and back then, I remembered really enjoying it, for the most part: the Venezuela-inspired setting, commentary on colonialism and war, compelling characters, artful prose. Somehow, The River and the Star treated all of those positive elements as an afterthought, and I think that’s where Lacruz went wrong. Everything about this novel seemed simultaneously overlong and dialed back: the prose is somewhat duller, the commentary feels less cutting, and everything that made the characters compelling is either rehashed or forgotten entirely. At a certain point, I had to accept that this wouldn’t be a satisfying end to the duology just because Lacruz had drained most of the juice out of the narrative. It’s just a shell of book one.
So what, you might ask, filled that void (no pun intended) left by all that? 500+ pages of unnecessary angst. Half of what “drives” the plot of The River and the Star ended up being overwritten angst and yearning. Listen, I’m all for a good yearn, but this was just too cornily written. It almost made me wonder if there was some pressure on Lacruz to make it more of a romantasy, because I feel like we took a hard left from the nuance of book one into “oooooh he’s a morally gray sexy man 😏 but NOW he’s turning into a DEMON 😏” COME ON. Eva and Javier’s dynamic was strange enough in book one, but I feel like it never got rectified in The River and the Star; all of his borderline abuse got swept under the rug, which, for a novel that wasn’t afraid to condemn the ways that men in positions of power use physical and sexual violence as leverage, felt exceedingly weird. As for Reina and Maior, they were all sunshine, rainbows, and overwritten sex scenes, and until the last 50 pages, quite flat as characters. It’s just such a letdown after how layered they were in book one.
That’s not even acknowledging just how boring the Rahmagut/Ches plot turned out to be. It just felt like a disservice to turn the complexity of The Sun and the Void into a very black-and-white story about people being puppeteered by the gods of light and dark. There’s a fancy macguffin, a Big and Bombastic Climax where The End Of The World Is At Stake, ooooooooh, but everything gets wrapped up in a nice bow at the end. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing that in a fantasy novel, but given that The Sun and the Void really got into the weeds about power, the nature of revolutions, and, oh, the moral complexity inside each and every person no matter their chosen cause, it felt especially cheap. Plus, while Eva predictably had some serious consequences to being puppeteered by Rahmagut, it’s like Lacruz just straight up forgot that Reina was a vessel for a whole god. If the synopsis didn’t say anything about her being possessed, I would’ve had no clue. Whoops. Seems like a pretty important detail, I dunno…
To be fair, The River and the Star wasn’t all bad. I’m just bitter that a lot of what I loved about The Sun and The Void got chucked in the trash, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy a few moments of it. I think the political intrigue was at least salvaged, even if it was less nuanced than it was in book one. With the plotlines of all the squabbling families and Eva and Reina being vessels for Ches and Rahmagut (which was, in and of itself, an invasion of autonomy), I feel like Lacruz did an excellent job of continuing the thematic thread of the loss of autonomy and independence, both personally and as a vital part of the revolution. Maior’s subplot with Laurel accentuated that wonderfully, and she was one of the few characters that got spared the fate of the others and was developed more meaningfully. As a kind of end to the revolution/liberation plotline, I feel like this was a decently executed thread, even if the rest of the novel didn’t quite hold water.
All in all, a sequel with enough redeeming moments to keep it afloat, but none of the staying power of its predecessor. 3 stars.
The River and the Star is the final book in the Warring Gods duology, which began with The Sun and the Void. She is also the author of the forthcoming novel Song of Fallen Stars, which is Slater for release in 2027.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
It’s been an embarrassingly long time coming for me to write about this song. I found out about it at least a month ago on the same BBC Radio 6 interview with mary in the junkyard that I discovered Jessica Pratt through. Admittedly, I talked about Jessica Pratt two weeks ago, and I’d had that revelation at least two weeks before I’d made the damn post. Sorry, excuse me while I pull down the massive Wizard of Oz curtain here…not that anybody really cared all that much about the timing here. There’s always a fair amount of lag in terms of the songs I’m writing about. Breaking my silence…
Anyways. Galaxie 500’s Today was drummer David Addison’s pick for his album. One way or another, I probably would’ve found my way to Galaxie 500 given how much I love shoegaze (and. Luna, for that matter), but I’m not complaining that today (figuratively) is the day. Plus, as the leaves around my apartment start to turn orange and the air turns sharp and chilly, it feels like the perfect environment to drift off to “Tugboat.” Even without the nautical title and lyric references, this track meanders like it’s a slow, lumbering boat miles away from the nearest coastline. Dean Wareham—who I didn’t even make the connection to until my dad pointed out that it was him—laments in a crooked rasp about wanting to be the one sailing that ship: “I don’t wanna stay at your party/I don’t wanna talk to your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain.”
It’s 1/3rd love song, 1/3rd wistful plea to escape it all, and 1/3rd classic shoegaze freakout; once the repeated verse and chorus (if you can call them that) disappear into the mist, never to be seen again, Wareham launches into a spidery guitar riff as reverb swallows what remains of the song whole, like some sort of biblical leviathan. And sure, I’ll eat up some classic noisy shoegaze riff action any day of the week, but to me, it feels very thematically significant: after Wareham lays out his lament of wanting to escape, the last third of the song loses its structure, its DNA dissolving; to me, that’s exactly the escape he was looking for, and the tugboat captain has made his maiden voyage.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Celestial Seas – T.A. Chan – “I don’t wanna talk to your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain…”
Just writing down “acoustic Björk cover” feels offensive to me. For the majority of her catalogue, it’s a kind of unholy combination that really shouldn’t exist. How do you reduce the soundscapes of an artist who specializes in creating veritable jungles with sampling, synth textures, and percussion? It just feels like sacrilege to see all that and go “welp, lemme whip out the acoustic guitar…anyways, here’s Wonderwall, amirite?”
Fortunately, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are no stranger to sacrilege. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) To be fair to them, it’s not fully acoustic—it’s a live cut from Hidden in Pieces, performed at the Royal Albert Hall with a full string section. And if there was anybody that understands the pioneering spirit of Björk, it’s one of the many daring women that she inspired to get weird with it: Karen O. Even having been a Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan for over a decade, it seemed like this was territory that even they couldn’t succeed in, and boy, was I wrong. Of course, nothing beats Björk’s original, but there’s something about this understated, almost humbled take on this classic. Only accompanied by said guitar and the melancholy strings section, it takes the lyrics—a private exorcism to keep a relationship afloat—in a softer, strangely ashamed direction. Karen O’s vocals are, as expectedly, nothing short of heavenly, but they lend a sort of whispery, bittersweet pang to an already emotional song, heavy with the weight of sacrifice.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Deep – Rivers Solomon – “I go through all this/Before you wake up/So I can feel happier/To be safe up here with you…”
Robyn Hitchcock recently released Invisible Hitchcock, his collection of rarities, outtakes, and demos that was previously only available on cassette and CD back in the day, on Bandcamp last month. Other than the absolutely glorious cover, with Hitchcock somewhat menacingly showing you his radishes, is finally seeing the light of day for the first time since the ’80s, there’s one key reason why Invisible Hitchcock made me so excited. Why? Four words: “It’s a Mystic Trip.” Fuck yeah, finally!!
WAHOO!! HELL YEAH!!!! Or, in the words of the man himself, YAYSVILLE!! Listen, my poor dad didn’t get his justice after requesting this song at the most recent show and not hearing it, but at least “It’s a Mystic Trip” is more widely available (and in better audio quality than YouTube). About time, too, because this song is just joyous. I genuinely feel something close to ecstatic every time I listen to it, to the point where whichever neighbors saw me having a solo dance party to it definitely contemplated calling a hotline of some kind.
Dating somewhere back to the early ’80s, post-Soft Boys and at the beginning of his burgeoning solo career, Hitchcock described the songs on Invisible Hitchcock as offcuts from a period from “when New Romantics were at their zenith, I felt more comfortable clutching radishes outside a garden shed than trying to hang out in the Club for Heroes or the Batcave. I couldn’t get my quiff together, nor did I really want the digital patina sprinkled over my songs that seemed obligatory for 1980s pop music.” Keeping that timeframe in mind, “It’s a Mystic Trip” feels like the point where Hitchcock’s creative floodgates burst straight open. After The Soft Boys, who retained a punk sound while lyrically bucking up against tradition, this song goes headfirst, no holds barred, into straight-up psychedelia. His riffs seem to dance against the beat, which has the rhythm of the world’s most confident strut down a brick street. Compared to this, the Soft Boys’s lyrics sound like he’s holding back—he’s spouting the absolute quirkiest nonsense with the self-assured confidence of a time traveler peddling prophecies from the far, far future. Occasionally he veers into the exasperation of a checked-out British mother from the ’50’s at the objectively bonkers scenes unfolding in front of him: “Janice, don’t squat in the nettles/Last week, three people came in to be dignified/And they all got stung.” And to give you an idea of the average trajectory of “It’s a Mystic Trip,” here’s what comes immediately afterwards: “Lucy put her bean in her nostril/And Mr. Watkins said, ‘well, where there’s a barrel, there’s a bung!'” Naturally. It’s so British. But though it’s absurd through and through, there’s a relentless happiness to it. To me, even if it’s adjacent to the lyrics, “It’s a Mystic Trip” represents the moment where Hitchcock felt truly confident in breaking free of the mold, and setting carefree impulse in his songwriting free. I’d never call Hitchcock cringe (even affectionately, as somebody who’s embraced the cringe long ago) but it really does ring true to “to be cringe is to be free”: your best work comes along when you throw convention straight out the window.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Railsea – China Miéville – I sometimes struggle pairing books with Robyn Hitchcock songs, and this one was no different. To me, Railsea has that same spirit of being relentlessly, batshit weird and reveling in throwing expectations to the winds. Shoutout to weird British dudes, I guess.
I’ve done it. I’ve scaled the mountain. Minus a few EPs, I’ve listened to Cate Le Bon’s entire discography. I effectively went backwards, since Me Oh My was her debut album. The St. Vincent comparisons are inevitable, but Me Oh My is very much her Marry Me, not just temporally but sonically. It has the kind of relentless, freewheeling energy of somebody letting it all out and trying everything, and it serves as a time capsule of a weirdo’s first solo foray into the music world. There’s a slightly more cohesive sound than Marry Me, but it has that same late 2000’s indie precociousness to it. It veers into being to twee at times, and honestly, her keyboard choices weren’t doing her any favors for a good half of the album. I hate to slander my queen here, but that fake organ noise makes her sound like the weird Christian lady from Edward Scissorhands in some places. But as a whole, it’s a portrait of a budding weirdo who would eventually hold the torch for many more weirdos to follow. The seeds are all sprouting here, and the blooms that are coming up look alien.
What I didn’t add about finishing Cate Le Bon’s discography is that my brother beat me to the punch. The student has become the master, etc. But he was the one who shared “Hollow Trees House Hounds,” and it kind of ruined Me Oh My for me because it’s the best track on the album by a long shot. It’s just a kooky delight. Out of the whole album, which is mostly acoustic, it’s one of the few rockier tracks, and it really does rock—the chunky guitar chords and the drums make it an instant boot-stomper. The riffs in between skitter and scramble, and all the while, Le Bon is spinning a surreal tale. From the start, she was already getting weird with the lyrics—I mean, look at the title—but the imagery of overgrown moss and vines and a forest to conquer is nothing but her. But I think the outro is an amazing foreshadowing of her career; the repetition of “No room for me/I’m serpentine” is the perfect distillation of her consistent refusal to be boxed in and her penchant for daring, unconventional musical choices. Plus, the shrillness of it reminds me of St. Vincent’s “Now Now”—the “You don’t mean that/Say you’re sorry” bit in particular.
I can’t not mention the music video, which is somewhere between Radiohead’s “There There” and Björk’s “Human Behaviour”—and “Bachelorette,” for that matter—it reeks of the Michel Gondry/Chris Hopewell influence, but with way more beheadings. Which is to say that neither of the examples I just listed had any beheadings at all. Kaiju Cate Le Bon can’t catch a break. But like Me Oh My, it’s totally offbeat and kooky, and very meticulously animated with magazine cutouts and whatnot. Once again, very late 2000’s-early 2010’s, but I miss that era of music videos.
To quote one of the top YouTube comments on this video, “Phoebe set me up, Lucy knocked me down.” None of us were ready to get emotionally sniped by this. Lucy, diva, I know that No Burden turned 10 recently, but LET US BREATHE FOR A MINUTE before unleashing something like this! Christ. Either way, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, because “No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye” is an excellent track. Originally a rarity recorded during the sessions for No Burden, it’s a revived time capsule from 2016, shaking with the same angst that colored the album. Amidst an onslaught of reverb that feels strong enough to drag somebody into the riptide, Dacus recounts being dragged along by a lover’s careless antics: “You used to scare me/Bottle on the dashboard/Reckless abandon, abandoning me/I swore to myself I would not follow your lead/So why did I get in the car every evening?” The churning chug of the production, grainy and building to an implosion we never hear, accentuates Dacus’s mounting feelings of being trapped in a corner, knowing that it’s nearly too late to save herself. But save herself she does—she lets the song peter out, as though leading a limping, wounded animal to safety, letting it fade into soft but firm promises: “Put me to rest, to rest/Say ‘no thank you, I love you, goodbye.'”
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Nothing Burns as Bright as You – Ashley Woodfolk – “You used to scare me/Bottle on the dashboard/Reckless abandon, abandoning me/I swore to myself I would not follow your lead/So why did I get in the car every evening?”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Friday, bibliophiles, and more importantly, Happy Halloween! 🎃👻🍬🐈⬛
Whew, it’s been an eventful two months, but most of it’s been good. I’m not in a position to complain. I mean…the leaves!!
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
This is usually the time of the year that I start posting more sporadically, but somehow, I’ve actually managed to squeeze in some time to blog and manage my time a little better. I have been trying to curb my social media time for the past year or so…maybe that’s contributed to it? I hope it has. Either way, even when things have gotten busy, it’s been so nice to have this space to come back to, in good times and bad. I’m grateful that the majority of those times have been good. I don’t want to dwell for too long on the really awful part of this two-month stretch, but all I can say is that I love my Evergreen community so dearly. Seeing everything happen in the aftermath of the tragic school shooting on September 10th has really made me realize what it means to be a community, even from afar. I realized just how many people reached out to me, and that I have so many people in my corner, willing to offer support. And even when I’m out of town, I have nothing but love for everyone who has stepped up to offer support to the EHS and Evergreen communities at large. This community and aid is the kind of thing that the government wants to convince you doesn’t exist—even in the face of tragedy, people will always look out for each other. I’m so grateful that both surviving victims are now out of the hospital, and I’m so grateful for our little mountain town.
That aside, I’ve really felt like I’ve been getting used to this apartment thing. I’m so lucky to be in such a lovely town, and such a lovely part of town—I’ve got so many fun restaurants and general locations right near by. It’s encouraged me to really come out of my shell and get out of the house much more. I’ve learned my lesson about self-isolation—this time last year, I was getting into that business big time, unfortunately—so I’ve really been making an effort to get out of my head and be out in the world, even if I’m taking my daily bread quest down to the bakery. Nothing kicks negative thought patterns in the butt like walking back home while nibbling on a free bread sample like a mouse. All this is to say that I’m proud of myself. I’m getting out there, I’m making my own, cozy space, I’m deepening my relationships with my friends, and heck, I’m really having fun.
Fall is always my favorite month, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. I dressed up as an alien, and even though I had the urge to rub all my makeup off the second I got home, I had a blast walking around campus looking all green and spacey. Nothing beats cinnamon tea, crunchy leaves underfoot, blue jays in the red trees by the bus stop, spooky (not scary, mind you) movies, loud makeup (as if I don’t already do that 24/7), and caramel, pumpkin, and cinnamon flavors. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed fall. I visited Vail and got healed from my midterms just from seeing all of the leaves. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk while walking home with a friend of mine just to admire a massive leaf right in our path. There are always moments of ordinary joy right in front of our faces, if we just take long enough to look.
I’ve learned by now that there’s only so much news I can pay attention to before I go insane, but I’d like to take this opportunity, especially as we reach the holidays, to offer some resources for some of what’s going on in the States and the Caribbean. In the wake of both Hurricane Melissa and the impending SNAP cuts (oh! and they’re using the money to fund ICE and Trump’s ballroom instead! oh, okay! okay…😀), I figured I would share some resources to donate to those in need. Especially as the holidays grow closer, it’s always a good time to give back to the communities who need it most, especially when the government is blatantly neglecting its duty to do just that. If you’re financially able, I’d encourage you to pitch in where you can:
Oh, and because I couldn’t deny you all the pleasure of the leaf…
Like…? Look at this beaut!!
SEPTEMBER READING WRAP-UP
I read 14 books in September! My reading is starting to slow down because school is getting busy, but I managed to squeeze in some solid books, including for Latine Heritage Month and Bisexual Visibility Week.
I read 17 books in October! It’s been one of my best reading months in terms of quantity, but it’d probably be on the shorter side if not for all of the books I’ve had to read for my classes (especially for a very cool class I’m taking on Russian sci-fi!). For the most part, though, it’s been a solid bunch! (This bit will end up in the future November wrap-up, but I’m also finally getting around to reading Dracula…on Halloween, of course!)
It’s safe to say that I’ve grown up with Marie Lu in my formative years. Sure, her quality has wavered on occasion, but she’s been such a consistently talented writer and a consistent presence in my life since I was about 13 or 14. When I heard she was writing her first adult book, I was over the moon—and I’m glad to say that I devoured Red City just like I devoured her other books as a pre-teen.
In Angel City, Alchemy is the backbone of the wealthy. Those who are knowledgeable in the art of alchemical transformation can perform acts once thought impossible, both through the study of magic and the consumption of sand, a drug that makes the user more perfect—at a deadly price. For Sam and Ari, childhood friends caught on the opposite sides of the criminal syndicates of Angel City, this price is one that will bring them everything that they ever wished for. But will the rift deepening between them ever be breached—and what is the price of the enmity they’ve sown between each other in their quests for power?
TW/CW: substance abuse (fantasy), torture, violence, sexual content, loss of loved ones, child abuse
Marie Lu slipping in a reference to Nannerl Mozart whenever it’s humanly possible:
I’ve been on the Marie Lu train beginning with Warcross all the way back when I was 13 or 14, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Has she had her lower points? Sure, but it’s overshadowed by her consistency overall. Even her weaker books have still been loads of fun. It feels like a wonderful, full circle moment to be reading her adult debut now, here in my twenties and nearly finished with college. Thankfully, it did not disappoint.
First off, I think Lu’s really onto something with this alchemy-based magic system…I’m fully invested in this world! A lot of what I know about alchemy (chiefly from my amazing dad, who’s taught whole classes about this—shoutout to him!) is all about transformation—not just with the kind of alchemy that was done in ancient times with physical objects and elements, but of self-transformation, whether to reach a lofty goal of immortality or of general spiritual betterment or being closer to the divine. In Red City, the premise hinges around this quality of alchemy being perverted; you can physically perform transformation-based magic of several types, but the alchemical transformation is aided by a drug called sand. Of course, in the hands of criminal syndicates around the world, it becomes a tool to become more “perfect.” Leave it to the mafia to ruin alchemy. (New elevator pitch for Red City just dropped?)
On that subject, I really like that use of alchemy as a way to critique our societal concept of perfection. Self-transformation can be an incredibly powerful thing, when you’re putting in the work to become a better, kinder, smarter, etc. person. But when the urge to become perfect consumes you to the point of becoming a shell of your former self, it eats you up from the inside. Sam and Ari both fall prey to this, and it destroys them both. Lu always has a knack for using her fantasy and sci-fi worlds to critique parts of society, whether it was the examination of otherness and marginalization in The Young Elites or the sidelining of women’s stories in The Kingdom of Back. Using the negative potentials of transformational, alchemy-based magic to critique our society’s tendency to glamorize a destructive kind of false perfection.
So of course, by virtue of this story being about wealthy people doing horrible things to stay perfect and powerful, of course it’s set in Los Angeles. (Cue “Los Ageless” by St. Vincent. There ya go, past Madeline.) Well, not really Los Angeles. This is an alternate world that Red City is set in, and the scene is set in Angel City. But Lu took such great pains to make the worldbuilding as airtight as possible, which I thoroughly enjoyed! I expected nothing less from her, honestly, given her track record. Peppered with everything from fictional textbooks to congressional testimonies to FDA announcements, Lu left no stone unturned when it came to finding out how alchemy magic would affect the world. Even with the real-world basis to go off of, it seemed effortless for her to integrate alchemy and have the world still feel so real. I was immersed from page one, and there wasn’t a hole to be found throughout.
Making the jump from YA to Adult is harder than a lot of authors make it seem, but Marie Lu did it with ease with Red City! I feel like a lot of authors make the switch not considering how different the characters’ voices and choices will be, even with an age difference of only 5-10 years from the teenagers were once writing. I’ve read quite a few adult books from normally YA authors where the protagonists still read like teenagers. Lu made it look easy. It’s much more mature for sure, but never strays into edgelord torturefest territory either just to seem more “adult”; the violence, complexity, and sexual content are dialed up, but in a way that felt realistic for the characters, their circumstances, and the stakes. (And for the record, the way she wrote sex scenes was effortless and never got cringy, thank goodness! If I remember correctly, The Midnight Star got pretty steamy in some places, so I’m not surprised, but it’s worth commending.)
As always, Marie Lu’s characters are the star of the show in Red City. Man, she can craft such compelling characters! She just keeps winning!! Sam and Ari were both unlikable in some capacity, but they felt like tragic heroes to me. They were both doomed from the start (and I’m assuming they’ll get even more doomed as the series goes on…yippee!), but Lu wove them both like tapestries, and their stories hooked me from the start. My only nitpick is that Sam seemed to get disproportionately more development than Ari, but I’m assuming that’s what the mysterious book 2 is setting up. What we have now is excellent—Sam and Ari were both such compelling, tragic protagonists, and the way that their quests for power, recognition, and perfection tore them apart was nothing short of breathtaking. MARIE LU HAS DONE IT AGAIN!
All in all, a dark and dazzling addition to Marie Lu’s expansive fantasy canon that you won’t want to miss. 4.25 stars!
Red City is the first novel in the New Alchemists series, though no information has been released about its sequels or how long the series will be. Lu is also the author of many series for young adults, including the Legend series (Legend, Prodigy, Champion, and Rebel), the Warcross duology (Warcross and Wildcard), the Young Elites trilogy (The Young Elites, The Rose Society, and The Midnight Star), the Skyhunter duology (Skyhunter and Steelstriker), the Stars & Smoke duology (Stars & Smoke and Icon & Inferno), the standalone novel The Kingdom of Back, and the DC Comics tie-in Batman: Nightwalker.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I love a song that just envelops me. “Anemone” is one of those tracks were there’s nothing in the lyrics remotely related to anemones (or even the sea), but it just happens to be the right title, just from the feel of it. The production and instrumentation sound like the lazy swirl of a temperate ocean around you, like footage of Planet Earth with a shot panning over gentle waves making anemones’ tentacles wave in the wind like branches on a tree. “You should be picking me up/Instead you’re dragging me down,” in that frame of mind, feels like being pulled under by a rogue wave and surrendering to the current.
Anton Newcombe’s voice feels like a backup instrument and not the lead vocal, somehow just as ethereal and misty as the faintly distorted rhythm guitar. That’s probably because the lead guitar, also played by Newcombe, is so distinct that it feels more like the voice of the song. From the beginning, it makes intricate loops and twists, like an animation of yarn curling in on itself—or the tendrils of an anemone slowly reaching out to you. It starts off almost uneasy, as if trying not to intrude on the melody, but once it expands, it takes the song from dewy cobwebs to a fully-defined spiderweb of dreamlike sound.
The other day, a good friend of mine (and one of the only people I know who’s just as obsessed with David Bowie as me, which is really saying something) and I were volleying back and forth about David Bowie covers. I wish I were as open-minded like them, but I think I was just burned by the aftermath of Bowie’s death when every single radio station decided that it was the right time to play nothing but the shittiest Bowie covers known to man. You can’t blame me for being a little suspicious at first. If you have that seismic of an impact on music, you’re bound to spawn a ton of bad covers. Plenty of good ones too, though! (For your perusal, and also the ones I sent said friend: Warpaint’s cover of “Ashes to Ashes,”TV on the Radio’s cover of “Heroes,”Lisa Hannigan’s cover of “Oh! You Pretty Things,” and Karen O and Willie Nelson’s cover of “Under Pressure.”)
But when they said that Eurhythmics had done a cover of “Fame” back in the early ’80s, I knew it was going to be good. (So thank you, said friend!) After all, Annie Lennox did take up the mantle of resident British, orange-haired, androgynous pop star from Bowie after Ziggy Stardust had been put to bed. I knew she was going to be cooking something. Bold, daring covers are few and far between, but if anyone can do it, it’s Eurhythmics. Lennox and Stewart transmuted Bowie’s plastic soul into a wholly different sound. It’s slicker than chrome, and so, so ’80s in the best way. Sped up and dominated by synths that sound like liquid mercury, Lennox’s vocal take on “Fame” turns the meditation into a song that feels like it belongs in a movie montage, walking through a crowded ballroom full of shallow, Hollywood types. Her mocking laugh echoes through the repetition of “Fame” in the chorus, hammering down Bowie’s original message of fame and the mercurial music industry wringing creative talents dry.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Monstrous Misses Mai – Van Hoang – “Fame (fame)/What you like is in the limo/Fame (fame) what you get is no tomorrow/Fame (fame) what you need, you have to borrow…”
Dammit…I almost slipped into my usual “I need to set aside 3 hours to listen to 69 Love Songs in its entirety” intro for yet another song from 69 Love Songs. 3 hours? In this economy? With my Instagram-rotted goldfish attention span? Kidding, kidding…only partly. I need to shut up and just listen to the album.
In the meantime, I seem to have gathered a stash of assorted songs from 69 Love Songs like a squirrel gathering acorns for the winter and hiding them in the most random places. Yet I do not have the uncanny acorn memory of a squirrel, so I’m fully surprised every time the Magnetic Fields Instagram account soundtracks one of their posts from the 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary Tour with one of these songs. “The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” was a recent favorite from the start. I fully mean this as a compliment, but there’s something about the production that makes the song sound like it’s been played on toy instruments. You can’t tell me that those clacks in the background aren’t plastic. Given the absolute laundry list of instruments listed under Stephin Merrit’s name on the Wikipedia page for 69 Love Songs, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for him to have thrown some in for fun. Another fun fact: Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket (yes, that Lemony Snicket) played several instruments on the album and arranged “Asleep and Dreaming.” I feel like it’d take an archaeologist to deconstruct the sheer amount of lore that this album has.
And yet that toylike quality makes the rusty charm of this song, from the thin mandolin strums and the hollow, clinking percussion. It’s uncharacteristically devoid of the usual lovelorn frustrations that Merritt usually displays—it’s nothing but breathless, dizzy joy. “The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” is a snapshot in motion of rapidly twirling lovers careening across a dim dancefloor, relishing in the warm glow of the lights. It’s the faint smell of the night air as you squeeze someone’s clammy hand, a leap of faith into someone else’s arms. The beat seems to all but gallop like a trained pony with a collar adorned with jingle bells, brushed to perfection but nothing but happy about it.
Aided by David Arnold, who composed the film’s score, and Jah Wobble (of Public Image Ltd) contributing the (gloriously slick) bass, “Play Dead” reminds me, at best, of what I like so much about trip-hop. It’s so seductive and slick, and even with the lyrics aching with numbness, it’s so brimming with life. Sure, that’s in no small part due to the cinematic orchestral swells that punctuate the background, but Björk’s voice makes it from a song into a true performance on every listen—even the most melancholy lyrics from her are blood vessels full of life. Nothing could ever suck the energy out of her performances, much less this one.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Red City – Marie Lu – “I belong to here where/No one cares, and no one loves/No light, no air to live in/A place called hate/The city of fear…”
I found out about this book earlier this year while looking for more sci-fi with queer and/or disabled rep (as I always am). This book seemed to have nearly the perfect premise—I just can’t get over how genius it is to have an autistic protagonist who’s had to study human behavior her whole life study alien behavior as well in order to initiate First Contact. I ended up buying it for Bookshop.org’s recent Anti-Prime Sale, and I ate it up in a handful of days. Though not without its flaws, Failure to Communicate delivers almost completely on its remarkable premise, full of political intrigue, aliens, and heart.
Xandri Corelel has spent her life studying everyone around her, be they people or aliens. She’s been forced to, after centuries of eugenics has made her one of the few autistic humans left in the universe. She uses these skills as a Xeno-Liaison, negotiating with all sorts of aliens on behalf of the Starsystems Alliance. But when presented with a potentially hostile species possessing one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, Xandri faces the most difficult negotiation of her career—one that may chance the face of interspecies relations forever.
TW/CW: ableism, xenophobia (fictional), violence, blood,genocide themes, slavery, animal death
“Autistic person spends entire life trying to understand human behavior, doesn’t fully understand it, then spends her entire career understanding alien behavior instead” has to win the gold medal for the best sci-fi premise I’ve heard in years. (Also, felt.) And though not all of it delivered on said premise, Failure to Communicate is a hidden gem for sure.
Now, I’m reviewing a space opera book which features a whole host of alien species, which means it’s time for my obligatory creature design rant. The aliens in Failure to Communicate are…a complicated case, for sure. The majority of them are basically larger, intelligent versions of real-world animals (with some brief exceptions), but Sønderby is self-aware of the fact; for instance, the Psittacans (a name that Xandri gave the species and didn’t develop on its own, thankfully) basically look like giant parrots, but Xandri explains that in-universe, all of their parrot-like features aren’t anything like what we would call, say, feathers, but evolved in such a way that they looked exactly like Earth parrots independently of Earth. This same explanation is given to pretty much all of the other species in the book, which isa bit too convenient to apply to 90% of the aliens in the novel. As for the Anmerilli, though I’m not disparaging the cover artist in any way, I feel like the cover didn’t do justice to their more alien features—and man, was I relieved that these aliens weren’t just humans with extra steps. Well…if you boiled it down, they kind of were, but there were enough traits that they at least got to the level of a decently compelling Star Wars humanoid. (Also, Sønderby’s descriptions of the Zechak also made me picture them as genocidal Piglins, which was…uh, interesting, for sure.)
But what almost made up with that for me was the in-depth explanations of their respective cultures. In the end, Failure to Communicate wasn’t necessarily a book about biology—it was a book about politics, anthropology, culture, and communication. That, at least, was incredibly fleshed out and much more thoroughly thought-out—as it should’ve been. Dissecting some of the alien cultures was one of the best parts of the novel. These cultures and the conflicts between them formed the backbone of the novel. Though until the end, Failure to Communicate is somewhat light on action, Xandri’s experiences with navigating the intricacies of dozens of alien cultures was nothing short of compelling—Sønderby has the mind of an anthropologist, and there was truly no stone left unturned. I loved that she didn’t shy away from depicting the discomfort that comes with interacting with other cultures for the first time and having one’s own values brush up against theirs—it’s bound to happen with First Contact, and it’s bound to happen in a lot of novel, multicultural interactions. There were some places where I felt there needed to be more nuance (ex. the whole situation with the Zechak; yes, they’re genocidal, but it verged too close to “this entire species consists of genocidal, cold-blooded killers,” which Xandri tries to self-correct, but isn’t emphasized enough. I’d find that hard to believe), but overall, I loved Sønderby’s cultural explorations.
Sønderby’s commitment to not shying away from discomfort was one of the best parts of the novel, and that was made manifest in her main character, Xandri. There was a ton about her that I loved—her keen eye for cultural quirks, her inner monologues about the idiosyncrasies of the neurodivergent world, and her unflappable sense of justice. However, she was far from a perfect character—even being in a world populated with aliens, she harbored her own unconscious biases and prejudices, which she frequently had to come to terms with throughout her mission. She lashed out, she made rash decisions—she was imperfect. And though she was easy to root for, she had plenty of flaws, a balance that is difficult for any author to strike.
Failure to Communicate isn’t an action-heavy book, which I’m all for—waiter! More cozy sci-fi, please! However, I hesitate to call this novel “cozy,” especially considering the moment when shit hits the fan during the last third of it. Everything that happens then swiftly merits the “cozy” title being unceremoniously ripped off. Nonetheless, Sønderby takes some cues from cozy sci-fi’s best; I loved how she let the plot meander in the more interpersonal conflicts as opposed to the big and showy ones, and let the often messy character dynamics take the lead. The ending was also messy and bittersweet, but not in a way that lacks resolution—it is a resolution, just a very complicated one with quite a lot of uncomfortable implications for Xandri. Another example of Sønderby not shying away from making things complex. I do like that it ended on a very hopeful note, as much of a wreck as some things ended up being.
Being neurodivergent, the subject of disability was part of what drew me into Failure to Communicate. I’ve mentioned on here that I have SPD, which shares some similarities with autism, and I related to Xandri’s lifelong mission to study and understand the neurotypical people around her in order to try and piece together how their world worked. She deals with a hefty dose of ableism (both from well-intentioned and malicious people) throughout the book, which was quite rough, but I loved that she never compromised her pride in being autistic. Sønderby takes the trope of futuristic societies erasing disability as a sign of progress to task, which amplifies Xandri’s struggles as an autistic woman into the struggles of possibly being the only autistic person in the entire galaxy. Which…yeah. The ableism is inevitable at that point. The only disability aspect that I’m not so sure about was having the twist that Marco was also disabled (specifically, he has bipolar disorder); I do appreciate that Sønderby uses it as an opportunity to show that almost identical conditions can produce a hero as well as a villain and that the pressures of ableism drove him to betray the team, but I really don’t think the latter had enough nuance to it. Not that disabled characters can’t be evil, obviously, but it felt too much like making a mentally ill character automatically a villain simply because they’re mentally ill. I’m willing to give Sønderby the benefit of the doubt because she handled all of the other disability-related topics so wonderfully, but it still didn’t sit completely right with me.
Also, I just have to mention that this book is so, so queer. BLESS. First off, I loved that Xandri was bisexual, but I appreciated that she was polyamorous too—there’s hardly any depictions of polyamory out there that don’t make their characters the butt of a joke or a fetish, so this was a breath of fresh air, for sure.
All in all, a wholly unique space opera about communication, culture, and collision. 4 stars!
Failure to Communicate is the first novel in the Xandri Corelel series, followed by Tone of Voice and preceded by Testing Pandora, a prequel novella. Kaia Sønderby is also the author of the YA fantasy novel Damsel to the Rescue.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
