empererpenguin

This is a difficult book to review as almost all of the plot is technically spoilery, but you can also figure out a lot of it from about page three. I'll synopsize the first two chapters here. We follow two storylines, both set in an alternate England where Hitler was assassinated in 1943 and England made peace with Germany.

In one storyline, a young girl named Nancy lives an isolated life with her parents. In the other, which gets much more page time, three identical young boys are raised by three "mothers," in a home in extremely weird circumstances. They rarely see the outside world, they're often sick and take medicine, their dreams are meticulously recorded by the "mothers," and all their schooling comes from a set of weird encyclopedias that supposedly contain all the knowledge in the world, which are also the only books they have access to. There used to be 40 boys, but when they recover from their mysterious illness, they get to go to Margate, a wonderful vacationland, forever.

I'm sure you can figure out the general outline of what's going on with the boys, at least, just from this. What's up with the girl doesn't become clear for a while.


( Spoilers through about the 40% mark )



( Spoilers for the entire book )



This book was critically acclaimed - it was a Kirkus best book of 2025 - but I thought it had major flaws, which unfortunately I can only describe by spoiling the entire book. It's not at all an original idea, and I do think we're supposed to be ahead of the characters, but maybe not that much ahead. It also contained a trope which I hate very much and its thesis contradicted itself, but how, again, is under the end cut. It's a very serious book about very serious real life stuff, but that part really didn't work for me because of spoilers.


Lots of people loved it though. It would probably make an interesting paired reading with a certain very acclaimed spoilery book (( Read more... )), which I have not read as I have been spoiled for the entire story and it doesn't really sound like something I'd enjoy no matter how great it is. But I suspect that it's the better version of this book.



Content Notes (spoilery): ( Read more... )

I picked up this 1969 novel at a library book sale based on its premise. I had never heard of the author. One of the great pleasures of reading, at least for me, is trying random old books I've never heard of. In addition to the possibility that they might be good, they're also an interesting window into other times. (Often, alas, extremely racist and sexist times.)

Sixteen people, eight women and eight men, who were on a flight to London, wake up in plastic boxes on a short strip of road with a hotel, a grocery store, and two cars without engines. Everything else is a forest. Naturally, most of the women scream, faint, and cry, while most of the men randomly fight each other (!), or run around yelling. Our hero does this:

Russell Grahame, feeling oddly detached from the whole absurd carnival, ran his left hand mechanically and repeatedly through his hair in the characteristic manner that had earned him the sobriquet Brainstroker among his few friends in the House of Commons.

He then goes to the hotel, finds the bar, and has a drink. Everyone else eventually follows him, and he fixes them all drinks. They are a semi-random set of passengers, including two husband and wife couples, plus three young female domestic science students, one Indian, and one West Indian girl improbably named Selene Bergere. I have no idea why that name is improbable, but it's remarked on frequently as unlikely and eventually turns out to not be her real name (but everyone goes on calling her Selene, as she prefers it.) They can all understand each other despite speaking different languages.

Russell takes charge and appoints himself group leader. They find food (and cigarettes) at the market, select hotel rooms, and then the husband-and-wife physics teachers point out that 1) the constellations are not Earth's, 2) gravity is only 2/3rds Earth's and they can all jump six feet in the air! Astonishing that none of the others noticed before. I personally would have immediately run outside and fulfilled my lifelong dream of being able to do weightless leaping. Sadly none of them do this and the low gravity is never mentioned again.

They theorize that possibly they've been kidnapped by aliens, maybe for a zoo or experiment, and the gender balance means they're supposed to breed. Russell approvingly notes that many of the single people pair up immediately, and three of them threesome-up. This is like six hours after they arrived!

On the second night, one of the three female domestic science students kills herself because she feels unable to cope. The next day, a party goes exploring (Russell reluctantly allows women to take part as the Russian woman journalist reminds him that women are different from men but have their own strength) and one of the men falls in a spiked pit and dies. Good going, Russell! Three days and you've already lost one-eighth of your party!

All the supplies they take are replenished, and one of the men spies on the market and sees metal spiders adding more cartons of cigarettes. He freaks out and tries to kill himself.

I feel like a random selection of sixteen people ought to be slightly less suicidal, even under pressure. In fact probably especially under a sort of pressure in which everyone has quite nice food and shelter, and they seem perfectly safe as long as they don't explore the forest.

One of the guys tries to capture a spider robot, but gets tangled up in the wire he used as a trap and dragged to death. Again, this group is really not the best at survival.

We randomly get some diary entries from a gay guy who's sad that no one else is gay. He confesses to Russell that he's gay and Russell, in definitely his best moment, just says, "Wow, that must be really hard for you to not have any sexual partners here." Those are the only diary entries we get, and none of this ever comes up again.

They soon find that there are three other groups. One is a kind of feudal warrior people from a world that isn't earth where they ride and live off deer-horse creatures. Another is Stone Age people, who dug the spiked pits to hunt for food. The third are fairies. The language spell allows them all to communicate, except no one can speak to the fairies as they just appear for an instant then vanish. The non-fairy groups confirm that they were also vanished from where they come from.

Russell and his now-girlfriend Anna the Russian journalist theorize that the fairies are the ones who kidnapped them. They and a Stone Age guy set out to find the fairies...

( And then chickens save the day! )

So, was this a good book? Not really. Did anyone edit it? Doubtful. Did it have some interesting ideas and a good twist? Yes. Did I enjoy the hour and a half I spent reading it? Also yes. Would I ever re-read it? No. Do I recommend it? Only if you happen to also find it at a library book sale.

I am now 2 for 2 in reviewing every full length book I read in 2026! (I have not yet gotten to one manga, Night of the Living Cat # 1, and six single-issue comics, three each of Roots of Madness and They're All Terrible.) I think doing so will be good for my mental health and possibly also yours, considering what I and you could be doing on the internet instead of reading books and writing or reading book reviews.

Can I continue this streak??? Are you enjoying it?

My New Year's resolution is to attempt to review every full-length published book that I read this year. We'll see how it goes. For my first full-length read of 2026, which is obviously highly symbolic, I have of course carefully selected a beautifully written novel with deep themes and social importance.

Just kidding! I randomly picked up a trashy beach read novel from the 80s, purchased at a thrift shop, while in the bathroom, got surprisingly engrossed in it, and took it out of the bathroom to read on the sofa. Which, to be fair, is probably symbolic of both the year to come and my reading habits in general.



Above an exclusive men's store on Rodeo Drive there is a private club called Butterfly, where women are free to act out their secret erotic fantasies.

I have a thing for "fancy sex club/brothel with highly-paid sex workers who like their jobs and fulfill your erotic fantasies." So I bought this book (50 cents, at a thrift shop) and actually read it even though it's in a genre I almost never read, which is the fat beach read about rich people's sex lives written in the 1980s.

Butterfly follows three women who patronize the club, Butterfly. It's named for the beautiful little butterfly charm bracelets women wear to the store to identify themselves to the staff as patrons of the club, so they can be whisked upstairs to have their sexual fantasies satisfied (just by men, alas), whether that means recreating a cowboy bar complete with sawdust on the floor to a bedroom where a sexy burglar breaks in to a dinner date where you argue about books, yes really. The women are all accomplished and successful, but have something missing or wrong in their lives: the surgeon can't have an orgasm, the pool designer deals with on the job sexism, and the lawyer is married to an emotionally abusive asshole. Their time at Butterfly leads, whether directly or indirectly, to positive changes in their lives.

( Spoilers are almost certainly not what you're expecting. )

This novel, while dealing seriously with some serious topics, is also basically a fun beach read. I read it in winter with a space heater and hot cider, which also works. I'm not sure it converted me to the general genre of 80s beach reads, but I sincerely enjoyed it.

Content notes: Child sexual abuse, child sexual slavery (not at the Butterfly sex club, everyone's a consenting adult there), forced abortion, emotional abuse.

2025: A horrible year! Except for reading.

I see that I got increasingly too busy to actually write reviews, and also that the better a book is, the harder and more time-consuming it is to review. I will try to review at least some of these this year, and also to be more diligent about reviewing books soon after I actually read them.

The Tainted Cup & A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Very, very enjoyable fantasy mysteries set in a very, very odd world whose technology and science is biology-based magic and kaiju attack every monsoon. The detectives are a very likable odd couple thinker/doer in the tradition of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin or Hercule Poirot/Hastings, except that the eccentric thinker is a cantankerous old woman.

The Daughter's War, by Christopher Buehlman. This is a prequel to Blacktongue Thief; I liked that but I loved this. A dark fantasy novel in the form of a war memoir by a woman who enlisted into the experimental WAR CORVID battalion after so many men got killed in the battle against the goblins that they started drafting women. War is hell and the tone is much more somber than the first book as Galva isn't a wisecracker, but her own distinct voice and the WAR CORVIDS carry you through. You can read the books in either order; either way, the ending of each will hit harder emotionally if you've read the other first.

Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell. I like to sell this in my bookshop as a mystery parcel labeled, in green Sharpie, "A green book. A mossy, woodsy, leafy book. A hopeful post-apocalyptic novel of the forest."

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. The heroine is a middle-aged, single mom pirate dragged out of retirement for one last adventure, the setting is a fantasy Middle East, and it's just as fun as the description sounds.

The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister. When the patriarch dies, the oldest son summons a wife from the bog to bear his children. Only the family is now in modern Appalachia rather than ancient Scotland, they're living in miserable conditions, and the last bog wife vanished under mysterious circumstances. Is there even a bog wife, or is this just a very small cult? (Or is there a bog wife and it's a very small cult?) A haunting, ambiguous, atmospheric novel.

The Everlasting, by Alix Harrow. This is probably my favorite book of the year. It's a time travel novel that's also an alternate version of the King Arthur story where most of the main characters are women, and it's also about living under and resisting fascism, and it's also a really fantastic love story with such hot sex scenes that it made me remember that sex scenes are hottest when they're based in character. (If you like loyalty/fealty kink, you will love this book.) It's got a lot going on but it all works together; the prose is sometimes very beautiful; it's got enough interesting gender themes that I'd nominate it for the Otherwise (Tiptree) award if I was a nominator. An excellent, excellent book.

King Sorrow, by Joe Hill. I've had mixed experiences reading Joe Hill but this book was fantastic. It's a big blockbuster dark fantasy novel that reads a bit like Stephen King in his prime, and I'm not saying that just because of Hill's parentage. Five college kids (and a non-college friend) summon an ancient, evil dragon to get rid of some truly terrible blackmailers. King Sorrow obliges, but they then need to give him another name every year. It's an enormous brick of a book and I'd probably only cut a couple chapters if I was the editor; it's long because there's a lot going on. Each section is written in the style of a different genre, so it starts off as a gritty crime thriller, then moves to Tolkien-esque fantasy, then Firestarter-esque psychic thriller, etc. This is just a blast to read.

Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones. Another outstanding horror novel by Jones. This one is mostly historical, borrowing from Interview with the Vampire for part of its frame story, in which a Blackfeet vampire named Good Stab tells his life story to a white priest. It's got a great voice, it's very inventive, it has outstanding set pieces, and it's extremely heartbreaking and enraging due to engaging with colonialist genocide, massacres, and the slaughter of the buffalo.

Hemlock & Silver , by T. Kingfisher. A very enjoyable fantasy with interesting horror and science fiction elements.

What Moves the Dead, What Feasts at Night, What Stalks the Deep, by T. Kingfisher. A set of novellas, the first two horror and the third mostly not, with a main character I really liked who's nonbinary in a very unique, culturally bound way. I particularly liked that this is lived and discussed in a way that does not feel like 2023 Tumblr. They're also just quick, fun, engrossing reads.

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. An excellent historical fantasy with elements of horror, based on Montana's unique homesteading law which did not specify the race or gender of homesteaders, allowing black women to homestead. So Adelaide flees California for Montana, dragging with her an enormous locked steamer trunk, too heavy for anyone but her to lift, which she never, ever opens...

We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough. What can I say? I really enjoy a good twist, and this has a doozy. Also, a great ending.

Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism, by Srđa Popović. How to fight fascism with targeted mockery and other forms of nonviolent actions designed to put your opposition in an unwinnable situation. This costs five bucks, you can read it in less than two hours, and it was written by the leader of one of the student movements that helped overthrow Slobodan Milošević. This is not a naive book and it is very much worth reading.

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Commonweal # 4. Don't start here. I liked this a lot, hope to write about it in pieces when I re-read it, and was surprised and pleased to discover that it is largely about the ethics of magical neurosurgery and other forms of magical mental/neurological care/alteration.

Troubled Waters, by Sharon Shinn. A lovely, character-driven, small-scale fantasy. I wish this book had been the model for cozy fantasy, because it actually is one, only it has stakes and stuff happens. Also, one of the most original magic systems I've come across in a while.

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. An outstanding first-contact novel with REALLY alien aliens.

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. I guess the premise is spoilery? ( Read more... ) That's not a criticism, I loved the book. Funny, moving, exciting, and a perfect last line. This is probably duking it out with The Everlasting for my favorite of the year.

I also very much enjoyed American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, Dinotopia by James Gurney, Open Throat by Henry Hoke, When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb, Elatsoe by Darcy Little Badger, The Bewitching & Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Sisters of the Vast Black, by Lina Rather, Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, by Kaz Rowe, Into the Raging Sea, by Rachel Slade, The Haar by David Sodergren, The Journey by Joyce Carol Thomas, Strange Pictures/Strange Houses by Uketsu, Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig, and An Immense World, by Ed Yong.

I'm probably forgetting some books. Sorry, forgotten books!

Did you read any of these? What did you think?