A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

REVIEW: Blanky (novella) by Kealan Patrick Burke

2026-10-26T00:27:14.946-05:00

Blanky is a horror novella. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Steve is a teacher who is drowning in grief over the sudden death of his infant daughter, Robin. His wife, Lexi, has gone to stay with her parents, unable to deal with being in the same house where Robin died.

Steve hears a noise from his daughter's empty room and goes to look only to find Blanky, Robin's old blanket. He calls Lexi to tell her about it, and she's able to bring herself to come over to take a look at it. The two of them reconnect and things seem to be going better for a bit, until everything goes very wrong.

The ambiguity of this one was frustrating, since it could have easily been resolved with a little more information from just one or two other characters. At any rate, there are a couple different versions of what happened, and readers are left to decide for themselves what they believe.

I feel like some of the weirdness about Blanky should have been discovered earlier on. Either way, I have questions and no answers.

REVIEW: Aquicorn Cove (graphic novel) by K. O'Neill

2026-10-26T00:05:54.105-05:00

Aquicorn Cove is a fantasy graphic novel. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Lana and her father go to the coastal town of Abalone to help Lana's aunt Mae clean up after a bad storm. Lana's mom died at sea a while back, so now Lana's dad generally avoids coming to her hometown, but Lana has some good memories from this place.

Lana comes across an injured aquicorn and decides to nurse it back to health. Meanwhile, adult aquicorns bring her stuff, including a necklace that reminds Mae of Aure, a water protector being she once befriended.

This had a strong environmentalist thread, which O'Neill balanced with the need for Mae's village to somehow continue bringing in income that could keep the village going. The overall feel was very Ghibli-esque - Lana could easily have been a Ghibli heroine.

As usual, O'Neill's artwork was lovely. This was an enjoyable read.

Extras:

Includes information about coral reefs and coral reef conservation.

REVIEW: Six Wakes (book) by Mur Lafferty

2026-10-25T23:41:57.444-05:00

Six Wakes is a science fiction mystery. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In the future depicted in this book, cloning was invented a long time ago and is now used to help people with the money for it be functionally immortal. You get a "mind map" made and, when you die, your mind map will be put into a new body, and you'll continue on just as you were, minus whatever experiences you had since your last mind map.

This book stars six newly awakened clones on a ship traveling to a new planet, hopefully a new home. The six clones are all criminals who were given the option of being the "awake and aware" crew on the ship, making sure nothing goes wrong with the ship or any of the passengers in stasis, in exchange for full pardons once their work is done. However, something very clearly has gone wrong.

Maria, the ship's cook and janitor, is one of the first to wake up, surrounded by evidence of a bloody struggle. There's also Wolfgang (the intense security chief), Katrina (the captain), Joanna (the crew's doctor), Paul (the ship's engineer, an absolute mess), and Hiro (the pilot). Neither Maria nor any of the others have mind maps that go back further than the start of their voyage, despite evidence that the ship has been traveling for decades. Most of their previous bodies show evidence that they were attacked, but there are a couple details that add to the group's confusion and concern. For one thing, Hiro's previous self seems to have committed suicide - according to the rules of cloning, those who commit suicide aren't supposed to be brought back via cloning and mind-maps. What are they supposed to do now that Hiro's already been brought back? Also, Katrina's previous self is grievously injured but not actually dead. She could be an important witness, but, at the same time, two instances of a person aren't legally allowed to exist at once.

There's no evidence that any of the passengers in stasis were affected by whatever happened, and the only awake and aware humans on board are the six clones who recently woke up. Their ship's AI is damaged, and their route has been changed. It seems likely that one of the six crew members was responsible for everything that happened, but, if so, which one of them killed everyone, and why?

I love me a good sci-fi mystery, and this was definitely one of the good ones. It was twisty, with a limited cast of characters, and it made full use of the fact that it was science fiction - this is not a mystery that could have been transplanted into a contemporary setting.

Every crew member had secrets, and the fact that they all had a criminal background of some sort (their fellow crew members weren't allowed to know the specifics of their crimes, although they could sometimes guess) meant that any one of them could be hiding means and motive to kill the rest. Hiro might have been responsible for changing the ship's route, but he'd died before all of the rest of them. Maria, as the cook, might have been responsible for the deadly changes to the food printer, but it wasn't poison that killed most of them. And was there a hidden reason why Katrina wanted her previous self immediately killed, or was she simply justifiably horrified at the thought of having two instances of herself in the world?

Readers gradually learned everyone's secrets via sections from everyone's POVs and flashbacks to their lives prior to coming on to the ship. Seeing everything come together was a lot of horrifying fun.

REVIEW: Road Trip with a Vampire (book) by Jenna Levine

2026-10-25T22:34:21.587-05:00

Road Trip with a Vampire is paranormal romance, the last book in Levine's vampire series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Grizelda "Zelda" Watson spent hundreds of years as a giant magical trouble-maker, teaming up with vampire pals like Reginald "Reggie" Cleaves (see My Vampire Plus-One) to have fun and cause chaos. However, due to an event that got out of her control, Zelda was scared into going straight, and she's spent recent years pretending to be a regular human, running a yoga studio with two friends who have no idea what she can do and who she used to be. But trying to keep her magic bottled up is easier said than done, and the tiny spells she does to bleed some of it off don't seem to be enough anymore.

Then she meets hot amnesiac vampire Peter, who Reggie sent her way in the hopes that she'd be able to help him figure out what happened to him. Zelda doesn't want to add a vampire to her new "normal" life, but, for a vampire, Peter seems very nice. Unfortunately, whoever he was working with in the past that he can't remember seems to very much not be nice. Reluctantly, Zelda decides that a road trip is in order: she and Peter will get his memories back, deal with whoever's been threatening him and those near him, and, in the meantime, Zelda will figure out just how much magic she needs to use on a regular basis to keep her powers in check.

This wasn't bad, but I'd say it was probably the weakest of Levine's vampire books, and it included what I felt were a lot of missed opportunities. A big one was Zelda herself. This was a woman with impressive powers, who was so old that, for once, it wasn't the vampire of the pair who could be accused of cradle-robbing, and who had no solid memories of where she came from and what her people were like. It felt like there was a whole big story there about Zelda's origins, and I thought we might at least get a glimpse of some of it as she learned that being more comfortable in her own skin did not necessarily equate to the deaths of all the fragile mortals around her. Unfortunately, Levine opted to do absolutely nothing with the mysteries surrounding Zelda's past.

I enjoyed Zelda and Peter's interactions, and the progression of their romance was nice enough, but then Peter got his memories back and certain revelations came to light, and Zelda's sudden feelings of betrayal and doubt really didn't make much sense. It was like the author needed to drag things out a little longer, and this was the best way she could think to do it. It was frustrating.

All in all, this was an okay read but could have been so much better.

REVIEW: Night of the Mannequins (novella) by Stephen Graham Jones

2026-10-25T21:45:12.850-05:00

Night of the Mannequins is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In his rambling, all-over-the place way, teenager Sawyer explains how a prank involving a mannequin he and his friends found a while back resulted in a bunch of deaths - but, Sawyer, insists, fewer deaths than there might have been if he hadn't recognized what was going on with Manny the mannequin and stepped in to try to protect everyone.

So, I can't really say much about this one without ruining it, but reading this was the literary version of watching a train wreck. I mean that in the best possible way, for a horror story.

Sawyer...man, that kid. I don't even know where to start. Literally everything he did had a tendency to spiral out of control, whether he recognized it or not.

I admit, I got a little bit lost near the end, because it wasn't always easy to tell what was real and what wasn't. Still, even if I wasn't entirely sure exactly what happened at the end, this was quite a ride.

REVIEW: The Wolf Suit (graphic novel) by Sid Sharp

2026-10-25T21:26:31.080-05:00

The Wolf Suit is a humorous graphic novel. It could probably be considered a children's picture book as well. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Bellwether the sheep likes hanging out by himself, drinking tea, eating flowers, and making quilts. But one day he hears a wolf howling in the woods, and suddenly he's unable to go outside without fear. He solves this by using his crafting skills to make himself a wolf suit, but then he inadvertently ends up meeting some wolves and getting invited to hang out with them.

This was hilarious. I got a kick out of Bellwether's growing horror at accidentally screwing up his own plans, and at his steadily deteriorating wolf suit. The situation just kept getting worse while poor Bellwether desperately tried to play it cool.

The art wasn't really to my taste, but it did get Bellwether's awkwardness across well.

REVIEW: Killer Underwear Invasion!: How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories (nonfiction book) by Elise Gravel

2026-10-25T21:12:16.955-05:00

Killer Underwear Invasion! is a children's nonfiction book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Using lots of silly examples, this book aims to teach younger readers how to recognize misinformation, think about the motivations behind those spreading it, and evaluate their sources. Gravel talks about five reasons people make up "news," why people believe it (emotions, confirmation bias), and some of the first steps to spotting misinformation.

So, the "how to evaluate sources" bit is actually only a small portion of this book, and it makes it sound simpler than it can be, when you consider that some people call people "experts" when they're really not. Still, this is a difficult topic, and I can't imagine that it was easy to try to write about it in a way that was accessible and useful to younger readers.

The various "fake news" examples were amusing, and watching them spiral out of control was certainly more fun than a lot of real-life examples would have been.

REVIEW: Charlotte's Web (book) by E.B. White, illustrations by Garth Williams

2026-10-25T20:40:18.781-05:00

Charlotte's Web is a children's book. I bought my copy new.

This review is, I guess, spoilery? It's hard to say.

Review:

Eight-year-old Fern is horrified when she learns that her father plans to cull a piglet who's the runt of his litter. Her father reluctantly lets her bottle feed the pig, which she names Wilbur, and he thrives, but eventually he grows big enough that Fern's father insists he has to be sold. Luckily, Fern's Uncle Homer is willing to buy him, so Fern can continue to visit him daily. Wilbur's new home is much more boring than living with Fern was, and he struggles to find a friend until he meets Charlotte, a spider.

This was a reread that I was prepared to have reduce me to tears, but to my surprise it wasn't nearly as much of a "crying book" as I recalled. There was lots of warning about Charlotte's eventual fate, if you knew to pay attention to it. It was sad to know she was alone at the end, but Charlotte herself was never shown to be afraid or regretful. She'd accomplished what she'd wanted to accomplish.

I couldn't help but laugh at the number of people who conveniently accepted that it was Wilbur who was special because that's what the words in Charlotte's webs said, even though the actual miracle everyone kept witnessing was a spider who could write. It might've even been frustrating, if Charlotte had wanted recognition for her work, but for her, the most important thing was that her friend Wilbur was safe.

I had forgotten that Fern could hear and understand what the animals were saying (to the point that her parents, particularly her mother, were worried about her). While I understand that it was part of showing that she was growing up, it made me a little sad to read about her going to the barn less and less to spend time with Henry.

All in all, this was an enjoyable reread. I liked the way White accepted all the animals as they were and didn't try to sanitize their natural behaviors to make them "nicer." Wilbur genuinely enjoyed laying around in mud and manure, and Wilbur's initial impression of Charlotte was that she was bloodthirsty, due to her diet of live flies, but that was just part of how she lived.

Extras:

Black-and-white illustrations throughout. Also, my copy of this book included a nice foreword by Kate DiCamillo.

REVIEW: Born Different (book) by V. Nator

2026-10-25T00:09:42.186-05:00

Born Different is a monster evolution LitRPG fantasy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Click hatches from an egg at the same time as their many other siblings, but while most of those siblings rush out and immediately get eaten by other larger monsters in the Rockford Hamlet Dungeon that is their home, Click is more cautious. They learn from others' experiences and gradually figure out how to catch their own food...only to find themselves at the mercy of a bully of a larger sibling, who forces them to hunt and then steals all their food. After evolving enough to scare off their bully and move on, Click continues to learn how the world works and tries to make the best choices it can whenever the System prompts it.

Meanwhile, the humans living outside Rockford Hamlet Dungeon aren't wild about the signs that the dungeon is awakening. Adventurers have been called in to clean the place out enough to force it back into dormancy. They represent the biggest threat Click has ever encountered, and Click will do whatever they can to protect their home and their people.

The cover for this one snagged my attention and made me think of Okina Baba's So I'm a Spider, So What? I was happy to see that this wasn't just a rehash of that series - Click was a monster right from the start, rather than a human reborn as a monster, and Click's evolutionary path went in a completely different direction from the one taken by the main character in Okina Baba's story.

Overall, this book was just...okay. Click, unlike their siblings, was born with a much higher Intellect level. Unfortunately, you could really see the author struggle with how to write from the POV of a nonhuman character trying to learn about the world without referencing behaviors, concepts, body parts, etc. that only a human would be familiar with.

It was relatively interesting, seeing where Click's evolutionary path would go and how they'd go about solving various problems. I think readers were supposed to sympathize with Click as a very smart little spider bullied by one of its brawnier siblings, but I wasn't entirely sure I actually liked this character whose evolutionary choices seemed designed for mind control. Still, Click was a monster, and I didn't really need to like them in order to want to see where their story would take them.

There's no indication on my copy of this book that this is part of a series, but this is definitely only the very beginning of a larger story - just as Click was starting to get new ideas, inspired by seeing human technology and weapons in action, the book ended. It looks like this was originally published on Royal Road, so I checked there, and there are a few additional chapters and indications that the author hopes to publish another volume after this one, but the last update was almost 2 years ago. Even though this was only a so-so read for me, I wouldn't mind continuing it for at least another volume or two, so I guess we'll see whether those additional volumes ever happen.

REVIEW: My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin, Vol. 1 (book) by Wu Shui Bu Du, illustrated by Oniku and Chikage, translated by Liting Xiao

2026-10-24T23:04:27.865-05:00

My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin is fantasy danmei (Chinese m/m) fiction. I bought my copy of this volume new.

This review includes spoilers.

Review:

Wang Xiaomie is an ordinary gay nerd who's basically lived alone since he was very young. One day, he wakes up in a coffin, greeted by a handsome man named Wen Fengjin who keeps calling him "Mian Deng." Wen Fengjin insists that Wang Xiaomie is the reincarnation of his beloved Mian Deng, brought back into Mian Deng's preserved corpse after a thousand years of waiting.

Wen Fengjin tells Xiaomie all about how Mian Deng was his shixiong (older martial brother), and about how the two of them ended up coming across an elixir of immortality that attracted countless assassins. In the end, Mian Deng and Wen Fengjin were badly injured. They decided that one of them should eat the elixir and, after much argument, Mian Deng was chosen, only for him to trick Wen Fengjin and give it to him instead. This transformed Wen Fengjin into a corpse-like monster with no heartbeat, alone in the world without his Mian Deng, until the present day, when Wen Fengjin's efforts to bring him back finally worked. However, the process isn't entirely complete - Wang Xiaomie is essentially tied to the divine tree that brought Mian Deng's body back to life, and can't leave the area for long without becoming a true corpse again.

It's a lot to take in, and no matter how much Wang Xiaomie insists that he has no memories of life as Mian Deng, Wen Fengjin seems convinced that that's who he is. Wen Fengjin seems to be more than a little bit unstable, but he's also hot and willing to see to Xiaomie's every need as much as possible, so Xiaomie tries to accept the situation. The main drawbacks are the lack of internet and modern technology within the vast mausoleum Wen Fengjin constructed for Mian Deng and himself.

This book was a bit like if you took MXTX's Scum Villain's Self-Saving System and paired Shen Qingqiu up with the original violently murderous Luo Binghe. I honestly had no idea what to expect - for a while there, I thought the author might pair Wang Xiaomie off with someone else, probably the one grave robber, Zhen Bei. This seemed especially likely when it was revealed that Wen Fengjin was secretly doing things to Wang Xiaomie to make him less likely to go against Wen Fengjin's wishes.

But no, it turned out that the author was actually serious about pairing up Wen Fengjin and Wang Xiaomie. Meanwhile, readers learned that, in addition to drugging Xiaomie, Wen Fengjin was also lying to him about their past and the state of their relationship, had engaged in necrophilia with Mian Deng's dead body, and had (maybe - the writing was vague enough that it was hard to tell) raped Mian Deng when he was still alive. You would think that, when Xiaomie himself found all of this out, he'd have noped out of there, but instead he just...accepted and forgave it all?

Wen Fengjin had some monstrous minions that were written about and generally treated as though they were creepy-cute pets, which worked only as long as you didn't think about it too hard and remember that they used to be Wen Fengjin's human followers. Taken moment to moment, there were some funny, nice interactions between Wen Fengjin and Wang Xiaomie, and there were several revelations throughout the story that surprised me and kept my attention. I was definitely never bored while reading this. But I was never personally able to get past everything Wen Fengjin had done (and was still doing) to Mian Deng/Wang Xiaomie.

Extras:

A couple full-color illustrations, black-and-white illustrations throughout, a character guide, and a glossary.

REVIEW: Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (book) by Shigeru Kayama, translated by Jeffrey Angles

2026-10-24T22:09:35.810-05:00

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again is a collection of novelizations of the first two Godzilla movies, written by the person who outlined the original stories of those movies. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The two stories in this are pretty basic, not very subtle, and a bit melodramatic. They were okay. I found the first one to be better than the second one. I hadn't seen either of the first two movies prior to reading this, although I've since watched the 1954 Godzilla.

What really made this collection shine, for me, was translator Jeffrey Angles' afterword, which put the stories in context and explained how Kayama originally intended Godzilla to be a warning about the dangers of nuclear war. I can only imagine how frustrating and difficult it was to watch that message essentially morph into "kaiju battles are cool." (But they are cool. I'm so sorry.)

REVIEW: Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (nonfiction audiobook) written and narrated by Karen Hao

2026-10-24T21:39:31.306-05:00

Empire of AI is nonfiction. I listened to it via OverDrive.

Review:

Hao looks at OpenAI, Anthropic, Sam Altman, and other people involved in AI development and research. She examines the promises, realities, and impacts of generative AI.

Not a lot of detail there, I know, but I listened to this in audiobook form, finished it a while back, and didn't really take notes. Although I had a print copy of this available to me, it seemed too dauntingly thick every time I thought about starting it. Audio was probably the best way for me to go, and, even then, I almost DNFed this several times because the picture Hao painted was so depressing.

I'm so tired of tech bros. In this book, it really struck me how focused so many of the movers and shakers in the world of AI, like Sam Altman, were on the world- and humanity-ending possibilities of AI, so convinced that only their vision could save us all, and so blind to the real-life, "happening right now" harms of AI. In some cases, maybe it wasn't necessarily that they were blind to those harms, but that they didn't think they truly mattered unless more of the world was being harmed than not. Either way, it made my skin crawl.

Hao believably explained why the AI future Sam Altman and others believe is inevitable actually isn't, but is being made to seem inevitable by a few charismatic and persuasive people. This book was very long, often depressing, and I had trouble keeping track of all the names. It did at least give me a different way of thinking about and framing current news about AI (and helped explain why the people who keep screaming about how AI will lead to humanity's doom seem to be the very same people doing their best to build AI up as much as possible).

REVIEW: A Small Change: Finding Joy in Everyday Things (manhwa) by Rae-hyeon Kim, translated by Seowan (Angela) Lee

2026-10-24T20:44:32.632-05:00

A Small Change is a slice-of-life manhwa that includes some "how to" bits. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I don't think the main character's name is ever mentioned on-page (either that, or I missed it), but she's a twenty-something young woman living on her own. She's kept her hair short for most of her life, and it's currently a little longer than she'd like, especially considering how hot it is outside. She initially makes herself an appointment to get it cut, but she likes the feeling of cool air on the back of her neck when she ties her hair back, so she puts off getting it cut a little longer.

Throughout the rest of the volume, she visits her parents, spends time with her friends, tries to support a friend going through a rough time, etc. She regularly tries doing her hair a little differently, adjusting as it grows longer.

The main character's interactions with her friends and her thoughts about where her life was going were all okay. The book's title implies that there are lots of everyday things that she notes and finds joy in, but, really, the focus here is on hair. Each different hairstyle she either does for herself, has others do for her, or does for a friend gets a step-by-step "how to" section. Most of them were easy to follow, with the exception of maybe the French fishtail braid and "how to tie hair without a hair tie."

My favorite of the bunch was probably "how to tie your hair Mom's way." It was honestly kind of sweet and made me smile - the change in how it was done versus the other ones was a pleasant surprise. I also liked the main character's last conversation with her friend who was going through a tough time, even though the framing and advice would only work for someone with a good support system already in place.

REVIEW: The Slasher's Apprentice (graphic novel) co-creators Justin Richards & Val Halvorson, written by Justin Richards, art by Val Halvorson

2026-10-24T20:14:27.978-05:00

The Slasher's Apprentice is a horror graphic novel. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Riley is the sole survivor when a serial killer murders her whole family. Years later, she hosts a true crime podcast focused on serial killers. With the help of her obsessive knowledge, some hidden cameras, and a GPS tracker, she finds her favorite serial killer, the Hopton Valley Killer (HVK) and blackmails him into taking her on as his apprentice. Riley is determined to see to it that HVK gets the level of notoriety she feels his work deserves.

I liked the artwork, and there were some weirdly wholesome moments between Riley and HVK as she tried to figure out how to communicate and work with him. I got a kick out of HVK's first few times using the doodle board Riley got him.

That said, more often than not, Riley's interactions with HVK annoyed me, and it was tough to believe that HVK would just sit there and put up with her nonstop critiques. My suspension of disbelief went completely out the window when Riley admitted to making videos of HVK's murders public in order to get him more attention, and he didn't immediately kill her. This, after all, was the exact same thing she'd threatened to do when she first met him, as a way to blackmail him into letting her stay with him.

All in all, this didn't really work for me.

REVIEW: Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of (nonfiction book) by Stuart Ashen

2026-10-21T01:07:36.286-05:00

Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This covers 19 terrible games originally released between 1980 and 1995, in alphabetical order, with occasional interruptions for interviews in which Ashen asked folks to talk about the game that most disappointed them. Ste Pickford, a game designer, got a longer section that went over some of the games he worked on, as well as what the industry was like at the time.

I really appreciated that each of the games included screenshots and detailed descriptions of what gameplay was like. I have played (and rage-quit) some games that included game-breaking bugs, and I've played games that have deeply disappointed me. Thankfully, I don't think I've ever played games quite as bad as most of the ones in this book. SQIJ! in particular would have had me wondering if it was meant to be some kind of weird modern art piece.

While I enjoyed reading about the games, I found the author's humor to be a bit bland.

I was surprised to see that the book had an index, until I actually looked at it and realized that it was just an extension of Ashen's jokes, and a kind of lazy one at that. I'm pretty sure that "Occasional fart noises" was mentioned on more than just page 109, for example.

REVIEW: Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms (nonfiction book) by Hannah Fry

2026-10-21T00:38:19.231-05:00

Hello World is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This looks at all the different areas of our lives in which algorithms are used and talks about the benefits and drawbacks of that. This was originally published in 2018, several years before ChatGPT was released, and I couldn't help but wonder what the author might say today.

Even being almost a decade behind the times, this book was a nice reminder of the many areas of our lives in which algorithms play a part - there were several real-world examples mentioned that were completely new to me. Fry tried to keep a very balanced look at everything, emphasizing that blindly trusting algorithms wasn't a good idea, but also underscoring the benefits of using algorithms vs. not.

It's a nice, accessible read overall. That said, after reading Karen Hao's Empire of AI, Fry's book feels a bit too optimistic.

REVIEW: Incidents Around the House (book) by Josh Malerman

2026-10-20T23:54:43.379-05:00

Incidents Around the House is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

At least in the print version, narration/action in this book is left-justified, dialogue is indented, and there are spaces between. The author has a note at the beginning about this being intentional, part of signaling that everything is being related from the POV of a child.

The child is eight-year-old Bela. She doesn't seem to have any friends outside her home, but she does have her Mommy, Daddo, Grandma Ruth...and Other Mommy, who lives in her closet. Or at least who used to live in her closet. Other Mommy has been coming out a lot more recently, to the point that Bela is worried her Mommy and Daddo will see her. There's also the issue of the question Other Mommy has taken to asking Bela: "Can I go into your heart?" Bela isn't quite sure what Other Mommy means by that. She's said no every time, but, considering that Other Mommy has been her friend for so long, maybe she should say yes?

It didn't take me too long to get used to how the text was set up. Adjusting to Bela constantly calling her dad "Daddo" was harder. I'm guessing it was meant to signal how close she felt to him, but it felt a bit weird, probably because I've never known any kids who call their dads that.

Overall, I thought this book was nicely creepy. At the start, there was a feeling that Other Mommy could maybe be an imaginary friend, or maybe started out that way before morphing into something else. There were times when it was hard to tell whether Bela was actually talking to her mother, or whether it was Other Mommy pretending to be her mother, hoping to get her to say yes to her question.

It was apparent early on that there were issues with Bela's parents' marriage - as much as adults like to think kids don't notice stuff, they do, and Bela's desire to keep Other Mommy hidden felt rooted in her desire to keep her family from changing. Then again, there were times when Bela mentioned Other Mommy's eyes moving lower down on her face, and she could easily have been wanting to avoid freaking her parents out.

Once Bela's parents realized that something was haunting either their house or their child, the rest was an exhausting quest, on their part, to try to free themselves and keep Bela safe. I admit to having an "oh hell, what am I about to read?" reaction to the first ambiguous mentions of their final plan. Thankfully, the plan didn't involve doing anything to Bela directly, but rather finally telling her the full truth about everything.

I don't know that the ending was exactly a surprise, but at the same time I'd hoped for something...better? There was some ambiguity to the ending that was a little annoying, but, considering how things turned out, maybe that was for the best.

REVIEW: Fan/Girl x Call/Boy (manga, vol. 1) by Kotora Aoshima, translated by minami

2026-10-20T23:13:16.366-05:00

Fan/Girl x Call/Boy is, I believe, a romance series, although it looks to be slow burn. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Sakurako is a painfully shy, introverted shut-in who has hired Fuji, a call boy, in an effort to better understand the feelings of her favorite character in the adult game she plays. Although she covers up all of her merchandise, an accident results in Fuji finding out that she's a fan of the game. Happily for the both of them, it turns out that Fuji loves the same game, although he's a fan of a different character than Sakurako. Fuji instantly transforms from a smooth professional into an enthusiastic fanboy, geeking out over her merchandise, and the two of them spend the evening playing Smash Bros. It's the start of a lovely friendship, although it takes a bit for Sakurako to realize that Fuji genuinely sees her as a new friend and not a client and/or someone he feels sorry for.

Right, so I preordered volume 2 pretty much immediately after finishing this volume. This was so sweet and nice.

Sakurako reminded me a bit of Komi from Komi Can't Communicate - both are awkward, cute, have enormous amounts of social anxiety, and you just kind of want to hug them and tell them to take a deep breath. From Sakurako's perspective, Fuji is a dazzling extrovert who makes being around people look effortless. His smoothness and charm is part of the mask he wears for work - the reality is more complicated, and I look forward to learning more about him in future volumes. Something about his character design looked really familiar to me - maybe some combination of Frieren's Himmel and some other character?

I'm very curious about Sakurako as well. The one glimpse we've had of her mother, it looked like she'd viewed Sakurako's interests as an annoyance and embarrassment for a long time. At the same time, Sakurako doesn't seem to have a job, she doesn't seem to be hurting for cash, and there's a mention of her having bought all her merchandise with saved up allowance money, so it looks like her parents are supporting her financially. Whatever the details of her backstory turn out to be, her family is clearly less warm and loving than Fuji's.

Ugh, I wish I could read the next volume already. I'm definitely looking forward to when it releases in February.

Extras:

A bonus comic and a page of translation notes. The notes didn't explain what "malding" meant, so I had to look it up myself. To no one's surprise, I am behind on my slang. But seriously, do people actually use that out in the wild?

REVIEW: There Is No Antimemetics Division (book) by qntm

2026-10-19T01:04:12.539-05:00

There Is No Antimemetics Division is a blend of horror and science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The Antimemetics Division is responsible for the research, containment, and, in rare cases, destruction of antimemes, ideas, objects, and beings that somehow have the ability to prevent themselves from being perceived or remembered, and which can often directly attack memories. Employees in the Antimemetics Division have to regularly take special drugs just to be able to remember their own work and what they do.

Initially, this book looked like it might be composed of a series of short stories that all have the Antimemetics Division in common. The first chapter, which I realized I'd previously seen in the form of a short live action film, gives readers a taste of what antimemes are capable of and how the employees in the Antimemetics Division function. Then we leave those characters behind and move on to someone who's apparently a new recruit in the Antimemetics Division, desperately trying to survive an encounter with an antimeme that will eat their memories into nothingness over the course of 15 minutes to two hours.

Eventually, though, a broader story takes shape. The Antimemetics Division is fighting a war, but it's a war they're unaware of. The more they learn, the more they're forced to forget, and the more ground they lose. At the same time, it's somehow a war they think they can win.

This was a fascinating puzzle of a read, even if it was occasionally a little hard to follow, and even if I occasionally had trouble believing that everything could come together just the way it did. I mean, yes, you can be very good at what you do and come up with backup plans for your backup plans, but eventually it comes down to a lot of luck.

The author lost me a bit at the very end. I couldn't fully wrap my brain around whatever it was that was supposed to keep the whole cycle from happening all over again. Still, it was an interesting enough read overall.

REVIEW: Laika: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory: Two Decades of Groundbreaking Animation from Coraline to Wildwood (nonfiction book) by Ozzy Inguanzo

2026-10-19T00:14:13.499-05:00

Laika: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This looks at Laika, a stop-motion animation studio based in Portland, Oregon, and several of the people who work there. There are chapters on development and design, pre-production and construction, puppet fabrication and rapid protoype, animation and production, post-production and visual effects, and archives and exhibitions.

The photographs, of which there were many, were fabulous. I knew Laika was responsible for the movie Coraline and the upcoming movie Wildwood, but I hadn't realized they were also responsible for several other stop-motion movies (which have now been added to my "to be watched" list, along with Wildwood). I mostly started reading this because my current student worker is studying animation and is particularly into stop-motion animation. I didn't actually know anything about Laika going in, but it did occur to me, while reading this, that stop-motion animation overlaps nicely with my love of the work that goes into making miniatures.

I particularly enjoyed the various employee spotlight sections, as well as all of the little "making of" details about Laika's various movies sprinkled throughout the book. All in all, this was an engaging read in addition to being fabulous just to look through.

REVIEW: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (nonfiction book) essays and photographs by Corinne May Botz

2026-10-18T23:46:33.184-05:00

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Frances Glessner Lee created the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death to act as teaching tools for police detectives. Each one depicts, in miniature, a crime scene based on a real-life crime scene or combination of crime scenes, along with some pertinent details such as the identity of the victim, when the crime was reported and who reported it, and initial statements from the first person or people questioned.

This starts with an introduction by Richard B. Woodward and then moves on to a couple essays by Corinne May Botz. Eighteen of the Nutshell Studies (there were originally twenty) then each get their own section, with several color photographs (close-ups, as though taken by a six-inch tall person walking through each of the scenes), the basic information provided to detectives using them for training purposes, and a diagram highlighting various areas of the scene. Some of the Nutshell Studies include crime scene investigator analyses. The book wraps up with more detailed information and solutions for five of the Nutshell Studies - the others aren't included because the Nutshell Studies are still used for training purposes to this day.

I was ridiculously excited just to have this book in my hands. This is probably the closest I'll ever come to seeing the Nutshell Studies in person. While I enjoyed Bruce Goldfarb's 18 Tiny Deaths overall, it didn't have nearly enough information about the Nutshell Studies, so this helped fill that gap.

Somewhat, anyway. The photographs were both wonderful and extremely frustrating. They were great for showing the level of detail that Frances Glessner Lee put into the scenes, but there were several instances where intriguing things mentioned in the diagram descriptions were impossible to match up to the photographs, either because the photographs weren't focused on those areas or were just plain taken from the wrong angle.

The detailed solutions for five of the Nutshell Studies at the end seemed to indicate that each included lots of additional information besides the miniature scene and basic information included in the book - the solutions mentioned the results of autopsies, information provided by further questioning, etc. I didn't recall any of that being mentioned anywhere else in the book, which made me wish that Botz had included more detailed information about how the Nutshell Studies were used. I think Goldfarb's book might have covered some of that, but it's been a while.

Woodward's introduction struck me as being dismissive of Lee's work, although thankfully Botz's essays were generally better, albeit with more speculation about Lee's motivations and psychology than I might have liked.

REVIEW: The Beauty's Blade: Mei Ren Jian (book) by Feng Ren Zuo Shu, translated by Yu, illustrations by Gravity Dusty

2026-10-12T01:26:13.589-05:00

The Beauty's Blade is a Chinese baihe (f/f) fantasy book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Fu Wanqing is both a great beauty and a formidable fighter. Although she is considered the heir of the House of Valor, she causes nothing but trouble for her father and behaves as if nothing in the world has anything to do with her. There is only one person she considers her true rival: Yu Shengyan, the cold and indifferent high priestess of the demonic Jadewater Guild, which opposes the House of Valor and other members of the Lightpath Alliance.

Seemingly, all Fu Wanqing wants is to challenge Yu Shengyan to a duel, but for some reason Yu Shengyan refuses to even draw her blade, despite the fact that Fu Wanqing crippled her shijie. Fu Wanqing does at least extract a promise from Yu Shengyan to stay by her side for three months, giving her more opportunities to get her to agree to a duel, in exchange for a rare medicine that will allow Yu Shengyan's shijie to walk again.

It's a risky agreement for the both of them, with the Jadewater Guild and the House of Valor so at odds, but neither of them cares. As they spend more time with each other, their rivalry begins to morph into something more, but Fu Wanqing still has her own secret goals to accomplish.

Oof, this was messy. It's more of a revenge story with some occasional steamy flirtatious moments between Fu Wanqing and Yu Shengyan than it is a romance, although it takes ages for the revenge aspects, including the motivations behind them, to start to come together. Until that point, this mostly reads like a story about the men in the Lightpath Alliance fretting over a missing statue/map while Fu Wanqing giggles and drapes herself across Yu Shengyan's lap.

If you've read MXTX's Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, it's difficult not to compare Fu Wanqing and Yu Shengyan to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Unfortunately, Fu Wanqing doesn't have Wei Wuxian's charm, and Yu Shengyan doesn't get anywhere near Lan Wangji's level of development. I was especially disappointed about Yu Shengyan - it felt like the author had barely scratched the surface of her character by the end of the book. We got a few details about how she was raised, and endless mentions of how icy and emotionless she was, and that was about it. I couldn't even tell you for sure what it was about Fu Wanqing that eventually won her over.

Fu Wanqing was a frustrating character. She came across as a chaotic villain who got away with causing trouble, sowing discord, and literally just flat-out killing people who annoyed her because she was pretty. Like, one guy literally forgot for a bit that he hated her and wanted to kill her because she was so gorgeous.

It turned out that there was actually a reason why she behaved the way she did, beyond just "she's a spoiled rotten little monster," but it took way too long for those reasons to be revealed. Some sort of glimpses at how character relationships had developed and degraded would have been nice. Instead, the author kept introducing dozens of guys whose brains were mostly located in their pants. Fu Wanqing and Yu Shengyan's spicy flirtatious moments were well-written, but everything else was pretty weak.

There was a somewhat intriguing secondary romance, but it never got the page-time necessary to become truly good.

All in all, this was disappointing.

Extras:

A couple full-color illustrations, black-and-white illustrations throughout, and a character guide and glossary. The character guide was nowhere near detailed enough to be helpful.

REVIEW: Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead (nonfiction picture book) words by Brooke Hartman, pictures by María Garcia

2026-10-12T00:10:39.986-05:00

Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead is a children's nonfiction picture book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This covers a lot more animals than I expected, giving each one two pages, the first of which provides some basic information and the animal's "cuteness factor," and the second of which explains what they can do that makes them so fearsome and/or deadly. The animals covered include: Tarsier, Slow Loris, Grasshopper Mouse, Hedgehog, Northern Pygmy Owl, Bumblebee Bat, Sea Otter, Platypus, Ladybug, Jumping Spider, Bottlenose Dolphin, Sea Bunny, Poison Dart Frog, Flying Gecko, Black-footed Cat, Fennec Fox, and Honey Badger.

If you interpret the "you" in the title to mean "you, the reader" the way I did, the title of this book is pretty deceiving. Many (most?) of the animals mentioned would have difficulty killing a human, whether they were a child or an adult. A bumblebee bat (Kitti's hog-nosed bat) is deadly towards flies (gobbling up as many as 4000 insects in less than an hour is impressive), and you wouldn't want to be an aphid around a ladybug, but the average reader would be just fine.

The stylized cute vs. fierce illustrations were okay, but I was really glad that the last couple pages included photographs of each of the animals.

REVIEW: Daughter of a Thousand Faces (graphic novel, vol. 1) by Velinxi

2026-09-28T02:59:31.546-05:00

Daughter of a Thousand Faces is a fantasy series. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Shen Yuhua is the disgrace of her clan. Her mother was executed for treason, she didn't inherit any of her immortal father's powers, and she's been rejected by twenty suitors. Her twenty-first suitor is it - there won't be any more chances after this one...and unfortunately this meeting goes badly as well. In a moment of despair, she falls into the Abyssal Well, the same place her mother was sent to die. Supposedly, anyone who makes it out of there will become stronger than they were before, but no one has ever made it out.

Until Yuhua, that is. But she has a secret she doesn't dare reveal to anyone: she only made it out with the help of Chu Tian, the Demon with a Thousand Faces. The two of them are now bound to each other by a blood pact that makes Yuhua Chu Tian's disciple.

Velinxi's art is gorgeous. Chu Tian's design reminded me a bit of Velinxi's designs for LBH and his father in the US editions of MXTX's Scum Villain's Self Saving System, so I occasionally felt like I was reading some kind of SVSSS AU starring LBH's dad. Not necessarily a bad thing.

There are lots of intriguing bits and pieces here. There's Swallowtail, Yuhua's devoted servant who's hiding things about himself from her and also interfering in her life more than she realizes. There's Chu Tian, obviously - everyone says he's evil, and he definitely isn't trustworthy, but for most of the volume he feels more mischievous than villainous...which could simply be a ruse to get Yuhua to let her guard down. Then there was Yuhua's father - even Chu Tian seemed more trustworthy to me.

I'm very much looking forward to the next volume.

Extras:

An author's note and several pages devoted to the evolution of this series, which was originally planned to be an RPG Maker game.

REVIEW: Flip the Script (book) by Lyla Lee

2026-09-28T02:15:12.829-05:00

Flip the Script is YA f/f romance. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hana is a lifelong K-drama fan who's just achieved her dream of being cast as the lead in a new K-drama. It feels like all her hard work and the stress of her family moving to Seoul is finally paying off. Even better, she's dating her costar, Bryan Yoon, a K-pop heartthrob who's shifting his career into acting.

Except that the show isn't doing as well as hoped, and Hana's relationship with Bryan is actually just a marketing stunt designed to increase ratings. Hana isn't the slightest bit interested in Bryan and, at least initially, the disinterest is mutual.

In yet another attempt to help the struggling show, a second lead actress is brought in - none other than Minjee Park, Hana's acting rival and former best friend. Even as their characters face off in a messy love triangle with Bryan, Hana and Minjee reconnect and renew their friendship in real life...and Hana comes to the realization that she has a crush on Minjee.

I assumed that this would be a bit of a messy read, with lots of drama as Hana falls for Minjee while Minjee thinks she's dating Bryan, and Bryan develops feelings of his own for Hana. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as messy as I expected. Several potential misunderstandings were dealt with much more quickly than I thought they would be.

I enjoyed spending time with the characters and got weirdly invested in their TV show. I agreed with Hana, Minjee, and Bryan that the show would have absolutely bombed with its original ending. Would things actually have turned out as well in the real world as they did in this book? No idea, but it's nice to think that the answer could be "yes."