alien romances

Toddler Tycoons or {Put This One on Your TBR List}: Review of Wildwood Dancing Series by Juliet Marillier by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-10-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

Toddler Tycoons or {Put This One on Your TBR List}: Review of Wildwood Dancing Series by Juliet Marillier

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware spoilers!

The entertainment industry these days seems to be populated with toddler tycoons. The attention spans of those making the choices about what the population will be allowed to read, watch, play, or listen to is on par with that of a toddler. At that age, children tend to have trouble focusing on one thing for long, and they're forever abandoning the "old" in favor of something new that will only temporarily hold their interest. To add insult to injury, these "toddlers" are looking for profit above all. If it's not there in sufficient quantities, it doesn't matter how good the material is. Some of the most valuable works of art have been abandoned for little more justification than that it's the belief of some toddler tycoon that it wasn't profitable enough to warrant continuance. Many of us who enjoy these entertainments have become wary about investing ourselves and our money in anything that reaches into series territory for fear that the work will be dumped unceremoniously at any point. In the process, satisfactory resolution to the material may never be obtainable.

It's unfortunate that my first attempt at jumping into author Juliet Marillier's body of work was met with this situation. It was 2023 that I read The Bridei Chronicles, her third series of historical fantasy novels. I'd purchased them as hardcovers. In this set of stories, Bridei is sent to be educated by Broichan, a druid, in the sixth century (depicting King Bridei I of the Picts). Before long, Bridei finds a baby of the Good Folk, whom he names Tuala. The two grow up together. Even as they fall in love, their union calls them to very different destinies. How they reconcile themselves to their fates is developed throughout the series. I reached the end of the third book and realized there were no more stories forthcoming, despite that there were unresolved threads in the series! I was appalled. At that time, Marillier had spoken of the publisher for the work deciding not to continue it and hoping, for the most part, that she'd done an adequate job of tying up loose ends. I wasn't satisfied with the way things ended. I left the series very disappointed, though I admit I was impressed with the writing as a whole. Characters, conflicts, settings, relationships were all fantastically and beautifully rendered.

Concerned about embarking on another series that could be forsaken by the publisher, I instead tried one of Marillier's rare single titles. My review of Heart's Blood was posted on the Alien Romances Blog in early 2024 here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2024/01/karen-s-wiesner-put-this-one-on-your_0103362056.html. I did enjoy it immensely but wasn't willing to invest in another series, which is what the author specializes in.

In mid-2026, the author came up on my library app, and I recalled how much enjoyed her approach. Marillier roots her fantasy elements into historical fact in an intriguing way. I remembered vividly that her writing style was timeless, beautifully lush and elaborate, and I decided to try another of her series. Ebooks for her Wildwood Dancing Series were immediately available (the only ones that were) so I checked them out.

Wildwood Dancing, Book 1, is a fascinating reinvention of the Brothers Grimm's The Twelve Dancing Princesses, though I feel The Frog Prince might have been an inspiration as well, as the author didn't marry herself fully to either fairy tale. In this series, there are only five sisters and the main character "princess" (Jena) isn't spoiled. The frog is her close friend whom she values. In addition to these influences, this particular story also plays with 16th-century Transylvania folk legends about Dracula, which injected an awesome angle into what might have otherwise been a straightforward story. Jena is the point of view character, the second oldest daughter of a wealthy merchant. As one of five daughters, ages five to seventeen, Jena and her sisters enter a portal in the woods surrounding their castle to the Other Kingdom every full moon. There, they dance and mingle with magical creatures. When their father falls ill and has to recover for the winter on the coast, Jena and her oldest sister are left in charge with his merchant partner as well with their father's relative. In their childhood, Jena and her cousins Costi and Cezar were tricked by a magical creature. Costi was lost to them, and Cezar never forgot. Ever after, he's sought revenge. Each visit through the portal brings the sisters back to a deteriorating home situation, as Cezar vies more and more power.

These stories are cited to be young adult stories targeting 12 to 15 year olds. I'm not sure there are many in that age range these days that would choose something this complex, but the tales are certainly age-appropriate. Adults who are interested in the story themes should feel free to indulge, as I'm convinced the pair are suited just as well or possibly more so to and for adult readers.

Cybele's Secret, Book 2 of the Wildwood Dancing Series, features Paula, the fourth sister of five and a scholar. It's been six years since the events in the first story. Within the first couple hundred pages, the author finally decides to get caught up with events from the last installment, and we see a happily ever after for Jena and Iulia, while the eldest sister Tati, who'd chosen to remain in the Other Kingdom with her love Sorrow, is presumed to be happy with her choices. Little sister Stela is now eleven.

In Cybele's Secret, Paula has accompanied her father on a business trip to Istanbul. They're on the hunt for the statue of the goddess Cybele. The setting provides a rich tapestry for the events of this story, with a compelling Robert Langdon urgency to them, as the quest for ancient artifacts and the secrets associated with them become more and more dangerous. There's a connection between this plot thread and events from the first book with dreams Paula has of her sister Tati. It is within those dreams that Paula learns the eldest sister was trapped beyond the portal because of her decision to stay with Sorrow, who can't leave the Other Kingdom. The fairy queen won't allow Tati to leave either without payment in the form of a dangerous quest undertaking to gain favor with the fairies. Within Cybele's Secret, the gentle love story between Paula and her bodyguard was wonderfully drawn. Paula herself was a formidable and worthy heroine, as her sister Jena was before her, displaying wisdom and tenacity beyond her years.

Both books started a little slowly as the author set up locations, characters, backgrounds, and conflicts. For the first couple hundred pages, nothing serious seemed to be happening and there was little suspense other than that of (in Book 1) five young girls being put into positions of power in a time period where women were largely ignored and overlooked as intelligent beings. In Book 2, Paula also faced too many people who underestimated her and tried to cram her into their narrow definitions of what a female her age should be. The situation with the frog in Wildwood Dancing was predictable but including "Night People" (vampires), fairies, and other creatures that inhabit the Other Kingdom added a unique, welcome twist to the plots of both stories.

From the first book, I assumed each sister would get her own story, but it was clear in the early part of Book 2 that the author tried to tell several of the sisters' stories already, in brief summaries instead of full narratives. Perhaps Marillier anticipated that what she was planning as a series could be cut off before she could complete them all. The author spoke of intending to write Stela's story, but, when the publisher asked her to be done with Wildwood Dancing Series, advising she start a new one, Marillier let go of the idea of a larger series and moved on to something different.

Alas, any possibility of a trilogy has been tabled, once again, by the toddler tycoon of the entertainment industry. Sigh. How is it I always end up choosing the truncated series by this author? Surely not all her series can end abruptly with readers longing for more of the world and its characters and feeling disappointment that there will be no continuation? Luckily, Wildwood Dancing is a standalone series with both books telling a full, encapsulated tale within its own installment. While I might want Stela's story, I knew in advance of finishing my reading of Book 2 that it wasn't a possibility.

While I would love to read all of Marillier's series, I continue to be wary about investing time and money only to find that a series was left unresolved because of toddler tycoon syndrome. I imagine the author has also had a lot of disappointments in this regard over the years as she writes for a fickle entity that favors new and profitable over wonderful and worthy. (Not to imply that Marillier doesn't regularly provide all four of those aspects in her wonderful work.) As such, I'll be checking her ebooks or audiobooks out from the library (app) prior to considering making a purchase. This will allow me to ensure I haven't inadvertently purchased expensive books in a series that will never be finished.

Juliet Marillier is an author that any fan of history and fantasy, especially when combined, is sure to love. All of these series are recommended with the reservation that you'll deserve more in the case of some of them--more that some toddler tycoon huckster has deprived you of for poor reasons. However, this is balanced by the fact that you'll want more from this author anyway. Her books are addictive and her writing talent is well-worth your attention.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Reading Sequels and Catching Up

2026-10-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

I've recently read the third volumes in two trilogies. Although years have passed -- in one case, many years -- since I read the respective second books, I've had no trouble following the stories, thanks to the authors' skillful writing. Each catches up readers as much as necessary without resorting to a prefatory "the story so far" synopsis. Tolkien does that in the second and third volumes of LORD OF THE RINGS, but he's Tolkien! Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if the publisher suggested those introductions. LOTR of course, was composed as one continuous novel, divided into three books only for publishing convenience (thus inventing the fantasy trilogy as we know it). Although the synopses are useful for refreshing a reader's memory of the earlier installments, they wouldn't help anyone accidentally picking up a later book first. I know, because I tried to read the middle volume, THE TWO TOWERS, with no knowledge of the first one and soon got bored and lost despite the synopsis. (It didn't help that, as I felt when I eventually read the whole epic in proper order, the first half of THE TWO TOWERS is the least interesting section -- aside from some cool features such as the Ents.)

I don't share the opinion that a reader should always be able to pick up a later book in a series without reading the earlier ones and still understand the plot and characters. If a series (whether trilogy or longer) is one continuous story, the fact that it needs to be read as such isn't a downcheck. Gray areas exist, of course. Mystery series that include the detective's character growth and relationship developments can often be read out of order, although following the chronology of the protagonist's personal life will enrich the reading experience. For instance, J. D. Robb's "In Death" futuristic police procedurals.

The original books of the two trilogies referred to above didn't start out looking like series openers. In each case, the first installment read like a stand-alone. It seems probable that the authors only later decided on sequels to extend and expand the stories. The concluding volumes in question are THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT, by Helene Wecker, following THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI and THE HIDDEN PALACE; and OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE, by Stephen King and the late Peter Straub, concluding the character arc of Jack Sawyer from their earlier collaborations, THE TALISMAN and BLACK HOUSE. In each case, one really needs an acquaintance with the earlier books to enjoy the third and final ones. However, you don't need a detailed memory of events in the middle installments to appreciate the final ones, for the respective authors expertly weave in the necessary backstory information little by little. Characters' memories of important past events rise to the surfaces of the narratives in smooth, plausible ways rather than appearing forced. King also uses the device of a memoir the widowed Jack Sawyer wrote for the benefit of his wife during their marriage, but he rereads selected passages in small doses at plausible moments to jolt his own memory along with the audience's. As for the "Dark Tower" Mid-World setting of the novel, familiarity with the Dark Tower saga isn't absolutely necessary, but readers of OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE who haven't read any of the former books would miss interesting resonances.

Another sort-of sequel I've just read works a bit differently. MAZYWOOD, by Tananarive Due, includes two timelines, the present and the silent film era through Hollywood's golden age, which function as sequel and prequel to a pair of Due's previously published stories, "Incident at Bear Creek Lodge" and "Return to Bear Creek Lodge." To understand and appreciate MAZYWOOD, we needn't have read those two pieces, although knowing about them would enhance the reader's enjoyment. They take place during the childhood of the present-day protagonist, grandson of actress Mazelle Washington, protagonist of the historical timeline. His brief memory-flashbacks to the traumatic events of the two short stories tell us all we need to know. Readers won't feel they're missing a thing.

Opinions? As a reader, how much backstory do you require for appreciation of a sequel if you're unfamiliar with the previous book(s)? Or would you simply not pick it up without reading the prior material first?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.<.p>

Settings as a Starting Point for a Story

2026-10-08T06:00:00.000-04:00

Please welcome a guest post by mystery and romantic suspense author M. S. Spencer:

First off, let me explain that I write murder mysteries in the vein of Agatha Christie. They are not “cozy” mysteries, which usually have heroines who cook, bake, knit, or keep cats and yet find the time to solve sudden deaths occurring in their close-knit Vermont or West Virginia hamlet. True, my stories have happy endings, and my heroes and heroines are amateur sleuths, but with the exception of one who made jellies out of wild Florida fruits (Whirlwind Romance), they don’t cook. Or knit. In fact, in my new book Fair Winds and Foul Play, Zoe pokes gentle fun at the genre. She tells the hero about the local novelist Hilda Gringold. “Her latest cozy relates a riveting tale of English gold hidden from the American revolutionaries and buried somewhere on the Maine coast. Of course, her heroine, Daisy Bluebonnet, deftly solves the mystery and finds the treasure, which she shares with her love interest, Hugo Perlmutter. Despite being now fabulously wealthy, Daisy resumes her doughnut bakery business, whence she solves any and all of the murders that so often occur in a small village.”

Most authors write about what they know, but I’m not sure how many authors start with the setting and build a story around it. My nineteen books can be divided by setting: four are set in Maine; six in Florida; six in the DC area; and two on Chincoteague Island (One outlier is set in the Amazon). The setting isn’t just the location, but usually a specific spot in that location that cries out for a story. The Pit & the Passion: Murder at the Ghost Hotel, refers to a partially built Ritz-Carlton that sat on a Florida key for almost 40 years. in Artful Dodging: The Torpedo Factory Murders, my tower office, reached by secret stairs in a cavernous old building, was the perfect place to find two corpses. The Wishing Tree: Love, Lies and Spies on Chincoteague Island, is based on an actual dead tree on the beach that is covered with trinkets and mementos.

My new release, Fair Winds and Foul Play: An Amity Landing Mystery, is set in Maine. It was born from the smoking ruins of a house in the village. I thought, “It could have been a witness protection safehouse, burned down with evidence inside!” Here’s the story: At midnight on a deserted island, Gunnar Nordstrom, assistant secretary of the Interior, falls from the sky, to be ripped to shreds by the blades of a wind turbine. Sebastian Guthrie—the lone witness—is rushed into the witness protection program. Nordstrom was about to approve an offshore wind farm in Maine, a project opposed by all but a handful of people. Sebastian finds an ally in Zoe Thibodeau, and together they sort through a Gordion knot of dead ends, red herrings, murders, and suspects.

In short, I use setting rather than characters or plot to ignite my imagination and build a story. I would be interested to hear what other authors do and think about this approach. I’d also love to hear what readers feel about the importance of a setting in their choice of books. Fair Winds and Foul Play can be ordered in print or ebook from all fine online book stores. Here’s a universal buy link:

Fair Winds and Foul Play

To "Scrape-Warn" or not to "Scrape-Warn"

2026-10-04T12:46:11.036-04:00

I've not heard "Scrape-Warn" used as a verb or as a noun, but I have been following the debate among authors concerning whether or not to add a verbot (German word for veto) to the copyright page of a work, along the lines of:

"No part of this work may be reproduced, stored, or used to train artificial (or Super) intelligence models."

For explicit information, read the Writers' Weekly lawyer's discussion and advice.

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/can-a-no-ai-scraping-allowed-statement-on-your-copyright-page-protect-your-work?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

While it may be ineffective, doing this sort of thing (scrape warning) at least proves that you provided notice and warning, and it might open alternative avenues for lawsuits.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Three Black Lantern Publishing Novels by Caitlin Starling by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-10-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:

Three Black Lantern Publishing Novels by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware spoilers!

In the past, I've reviewed several other offerings from Caitlin Starling on this blog. Do a search of her name to find them, if you're interested. My reviews of this author's work tend to run the gamut in terms of whether I enjoy the material or not. This particular review of three separate books highlights the same situation.

Starling's last big release was The Graceview Patient in late 2025, so I went looking for anything new from her. I discovered she has a brand new horror coming out from St. Martin's Press in October 2026 called Milkteeth about a vampire broodmother, which should be interesting. This upcoming book is touted on the author's website, as well as the publisher's, and it's already available for preorder in multiple formats on distributor websites. In the process of discovering this welcome news, I stumbled upon several "new" books with Starling's name on them that are all published by Black Lantern Publishing instead of the big publisher(s) most of her other publicized books are released by.

I spent far too much time trying to find out more about Black Lantern Publishing (not to be confused with Black Lantern Books, which is a completely different thing) and Starling's association with them. All I could dig up was that Black Lantern Publishing is/was(?) an online art and literary journal which publishes macabre offerings--a perfect fit for Starling. In any case, they're listed as the publisher for three Starling books I came upon that I'd never heard of before and that are only published as ebooks (that I've been able to ascertain anyway) and not reliably available. For instance, one of them isn't for sale at all from Amazon, for a reason I couldn't locate. I guess the background behind these three books will remain a mystery because the author hasn't put any of them on her personal website (as of this writing in June 2026). Maybe they're old books that her current, big publisher has allowed to be published or reissued by a small press as long as she doesn't put or promote them with her other sanctioned work released by them. I don't know. But it's frustrating not to be able to find more about the origin of these particular stories. Anyway, given that, in general, I'm a fan of this author, I bought all three at once.

The first one I read, Beneath Winter Lake, was purchased from Apple Media Services. In this horror novel released December 2025, a climatologist is studying Winter Lake in Hawthorn's Rest when the lake suddenly freezes solid and the settlement that drowned more than a century ago rises to the surface. The dead from the village start taking the current townsfolk that share its ancestry. Apparently, this situation reoccurs every 40 years.

There was nothing particularly wrong with this book--technically it was decently written yet somehow everything about it felt generic to me. Nothing resonated with me, not characters, plot, nor setting. I also didn't find it scary.

The second, The Deadlight Motel, is an "eldritch horror" novel and was also published in December 2025 by Black Lantern Publishing. I got it from Amazon as a Kindle ebook (I don't think print or audio editions are available for it). In this (again, not at all frightening) story, a motel that's treated almost like it's human appears only to those who hide guilty secrets and it feeds on them.

I had the same problem with this story as the first. I call these "eh" books--not badly written but essentially generic. As with Beneath Winter Lake, my emotional involvement in the story never really kicked in.

Both Beneath Winter Lake and The Deadlight Motel did have what could be considered a mutual saving grace (that didn't actually make them easier to read for me, but hey) that is a Caitlin Starling trademark: Both stories were told with a unique twist. However, the problem for me is that every story I read by this author has a unique twist, and I went into reading both of these expecting that right from the beginning so, in truth, I guessed what each twist would be almost exactly from the very first chapters. Readers who haven't read Starling's work before probably wouldn't have guessed the endings right from the start so there's a potential for more enjoyment than I experienced with either of them.

The third, The Uncrowned, was a political fantasy novel and was published in April 2026 by Black Lantern Publishing. I got it from Amazon as a Kindle ebook (again, I couldn't find a print or audio edition anywhere). This story had an intriguing premise: On the day of his coronation, the crown prince refuses the throne because he's discovered that, within the empire, an entire group of people and their way of life have essentially been erased from history. He intends to right that wrong. But he quickly learns that there's much, much more that he doesn't know and the betrayal and deception go deeper than he originally believed--and when the truth resurfaces, the empire will never again be the same.

I was anticipating the worst, based on my previous two experiences. However, I was gratefully rewarded with the promise of intrigue and the seeds of compelling settings, plot, and characters that could have been a little better drawn. For instance, instead of three-dimensional, Prince Aldric Vane and his aunt were both two-dimensional and, weirdly, in exactly the same way. (I think anyone who reads this story will understand what I mean by that, since the two characters are like gender-opposite reflections of each other.) The secondary characters were, at best, one-dimensional.

As for setting and plot, both were oddly two-dimensional in that readers were given the starkest bare bones of the land the tale is set in, and the conflict that prompted the story had no more and no less than what was required to convey the story. At no point were readers allowed to discover what incited the empire's actions in essentially wiping out the Telvari community the way it did. The characters themselves didn't show the slightest curiosity about that either, which struck me as wrong and unrealistic. It seemed as if they accepted the situation, like it was a done deal, yet here they were single-mindedly involved in a legal battle to correct something that couldn't really ever be made right. Readers were never given the reasons behind all this, nor were the characters' motivations adequately portrayed. They had a goal and those actions took the place of their feelings entirely. Again, this gave them a flat quality that could have instead been heart-rending if only they'd been developed to the fullest.

My biggest problem with the story was that the author wrote it so leanly that every aspect became ravenous for fleshing out. Why would Starling do it this way? I can't fathom. Every single path was a thin, straight line with just a little detail pointing behind to the past, scant focus ahead to consequences, and the present story hogging the whole of the focus. As a result, countless opportunities for richness and depth were squandered. As a reader, I would have given anything for more information and to have gotten the entire tale developed three-dimensionally. It might have been a saga that couldn't be put down. It might have spanned ages in a world so vibrant, readers could see, taste, and smell it all as if they were really there. The plots might have carried much more weight and complexity that would have given them the gravitas they deserved. Fully-fleshed out characters could easily have vied for wider attention from the audience, allowing readers to truly root for them and share every tear shed and every bit of joy in comingled triumph. All of these elements hung there, strangled, just waiting for the breath of life to fulfill them. Instead, we got razor-sharp, cardboard quality. I longed for so much more. Yet the author could still expand into sequels in so many different directions--if she and her publisher were willing.

As is, The Uncrowned is compelling, but I'm ultimately saddened by the loss of something that was so close to moving and capturing me wholly. That said, the ending was nevertheless satisfying for me (despite that I wanted loads more) and I enjoyed the unusual take. It was almost like an early John Grisham novel, only in a fantasy world setting. Every aspect of this story was written as if it was a lawyerly account, with all the behind-the-scenes and courtroom drama you could ever want. In other words, it was cold-blooded and logical, with no room for human frailty or fragility. That worked well here, even given the wasted opportunities for growth beyond the immediate scenario. Maybe some readers would have been put off by that, but I found the moral of the story was told perfectly from that unique, distanced perspective. I also think it was brilliant of the author to remove almost completely the "real life" that you and I know from the setting so the account could be less about comparing it to our world events and history and instead about seeing it on its own, with all the texture, ramifications and consequences that the subject material demanded. I would actually love to revisit these characters and the world they're set in, but I suspect that's not an option--directly due to the "mystery" I mentioned in the third paragraph of this review.

You might want to give the first two books reviewed here a pass unless you're new to the author. Honestly, though, all of them were $3, so under $10 for three ebooks is worthwhile. The Uncrowned was a steal at that price, lack of true depth notwithstanding.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Vampire Retro-Review: They Thirst

2026-10-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

When I first read THEY THIRST (1981), by Robert McCammon, I thought, “Oh, this is just a pastiche of ‘SALEM’S LOT on a wider scale, transplanted to California.” In each book, an ancient vampire leaves the Old World to seek new blood in an unsuspecting American community. Where Stephen King’s vampire lord takes over an isolated town in Maine, McCammon’s Prince Conrad Vulkan creates an undead army to overrun Los Angeles. Decades later, I have to acknowledge that the geographically vaster scope of McCammon’s novel creates a different tone from King’s. Just as King vividly portrays the ambiance of small-town Maine, McCammon immerses the reader in his Southern California setting. A cast of multi-ethnic heroes and villains joins in combat. The inner circle of vampire hunters includes a Hispanic priest and a Hungarian American whose family fled the old country after a vampire attack. Vulkan establishes his lair in a castle built by a fabulously rich film celebrity. The story climaxes with an earthquake, a storm, and a tidal wave. King’s master vampire just wants to turn ‘Salem’s Lot into a safe haven for his kind. Vulkan’s ambition seems to have no limit. He has a few intelligent henchmen to support his campaign, as opposed to the solitary nature of King’s Barlow, who, aside from his human assistant, commands a horde of nearly mindless spawn.

One big difference between the two novels is that we learn much more about Vulkan’s background than King reveals about his vampire. Also, McCammon gives us numerous scenes from the viewpoint of Vulkan and some of the other undead. Between this expansion of viewpoints and the sprawling Los Angeles setting, McCammon’s novel does have an epic feel in contrast to King’s intimate, almost claustrophobic story, even though the two books run to similar length (McCammon’s over 500 pages in the paperback original). If you want to read an old-fashioned vampire story of good versus evil in a contemporary milieu on a large scale, THEY THIRST is the book for you.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

2026-09-27T14:21:01.581-04:00

Today, I am throwing metaphorical tomatoes at certain "tech titan" men. For arthritis sufferers, tomatoes are a fruit to be avoided. For some, tomatoes worsen arthritis, as do other deadly-nightshade-family fruits.

The "fruit of the poisonous tree" is a legal rule under U.S. law that says that any "evidence" that is discovered as the result of an illegal search or interrogation may not be used in court. So, if the police break into the home of a person of interest without a search warrant (perhaps the home of someone identified by a blurry-eyed Flock camera) and they find a stolen Rolex, they cannot use the Rolex to suggest a lifestyle of burglary.

AI is fruit of a similar kind. Some immoral pirates, well aware of the wrongness of their actions, scraped millions of stolen, copyrighted books--that the pirates know are stolen--from Libgen or Pirate Mirror Library.

Now, to be fair, back in the Oughts when I was actively fighting piracy, there were authors who looked on book piracy as a marketing technique, even some who went on social media and begged to have their books pirated.

I wonder if those authors are now claiming $3,000 a book in the Anthropic suit?

Others looked at it as five fingered discounts and a cost of doing business.

From copyright infringement of news, to music, to books, AI companies have come under fire for using the product to train their AI large language models. The infringement might amount to intellectual property theft of "unprecedented proportions."

Allegedly, the would-be titans of OpenAI knew what they were doing, and noted in writing that their products would pose an "existential threat" to publishers. And authors, one would assume.

If one can ask Chat to write a courtroom drama novel in the style of John Grisham involving a blackmailed judge, and subverted jury selection... with other choice cues, what does that do to John Grisham's fan base and legacy?

Authors Guild is working hard on this. If ever there was a time for authors to subscribe (if they can afford it) this might be that time.

Finally, a question, if immoral, short-cut-taking, author-career-killing pirates develop and train a product, why would anyone be surprised if the product is immoral, short-cut-taking, sand-box-escaping, and cavalier about human beings' rights?

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™

http://www.spacesnark.com/

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of The Halcyon Fairy Book by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-09-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of The Halcyon Fairy Book by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner

** THIS POST CONTAINS MY 300TH REVIEW FOR THE ALIEN ROMANCES BLOG! **

Beware many, many spoilers!

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. The author did The Halcyon Fairy Book's artwork herself. On the copyright page, it says "Ursula Vernon's annotated fairy tales were originally posted to her blog between February 2012 and July 2013 with the exception of 'King of Love' which is original to this anthology. They have been lightly edited from their initial postings." Two of the stories she put on her blog couldn't be included in the book because they aren't yet in the public domain. From there, the author proceeds to tell us in the introduction about a certain writer who goes by two names that frequently can't sleep and so finds herself reading (and critiquing) fairy tales in the wee hours of the morn. I love how Kingfisher slightly twists the word "annotated", which normally means to add notes and comments to explain or criticize the text they're included with, to highlight the insane and strange behavior of characters in each story with her sarcastically witty and hilarious insights. Make no mistake, these fairy tales aren't the star of this particular show. No, Kingfisher's annotations are what make this anthology worth reading.

It might interest you to learn that the first book of fairy tales to appear in English was "The Blue Fairy Book" by Andrew Lang in 1889 (gathered from such diverse sources as the Brothers Grimm, Arabian Nights, Norwegian folklore, and French tales). Fairy tales were (maybe rightly so, as you're about to discover, if you haven't already) considered harmful for young readers until that time. In 1894, "The Yellow Fairy Book" followed up on the first. Lang's retellings secured the value of fairy tales as treasured children's stories and sparked a dramatic shift in public perception. And now we come full circle: True to the last few decades of popular desire to twist everything wholesome into something disturbed, the varnish has been stripped off these old humdingers and we can once again enjoy(?) them as they were intended.

Below are my reviews for all the stories in the first half of The Halcyon Fairy Book. Kingfisher also includes the entire anthology of Toad Words and Other Stories within the second half of this collection. Do a search by author or title on this blog to find my previously completed review of that.

"The Blue Light": This retelling of the soldier and the tinderbox fairy tale has many different renderings, which Kingfisher imparts within her variation. In true Mystery Science Theater 3000 tradition, she injects amusing comments all throughout the text and leaves none of the other versions of this story anywhere to hide. I loved it.

"The Master-maid": A prince is held captive by a giant who asks of him one impossible task each day. The Master-maid (whatever that is) is also a captive of the giant. Each day she tells the prince how to complete his task in her no-fail wisdom. They dream of marrying each other one day when they're free. When they do manage to escape together, the prince pouts and wants to go home to visit his rich, powerful daddy. The Master-maid warns him not to do this because it won't be long before he forgets all about her. And he does (though, in his defense, a troll is scheming to get him to forget). The Master-maid turns into an outright witch at that point, so incensed by losing her man that she decides to take her fury out on every other (rich) man that crosses her path. Her treachery turns against her eventually, but by then the prince has remembered her, and the two can get on with their happily ever after as planned. This story was long, tedious, and eye-rolling. I thought it would never end. I didn't really care after a certain point whether it ended happily. Kingfisher's razor-sharp wit was the saving point and winning element to this otherwise far-fetched, shocking, and unbelievable tale.

"The Crystal Casket": This story is based on an Italian version of Snow White that doesn't have dwarfs but eagles and, in my opinion, is barely worth reading. If the tale was going for "drastically different than what everyone knows and loves", okay, maybe it's a winner. But as a good, strong story, this never really made it out of the gate. Good thing I was reading for the annotations.

"The Wonderful Sheep": A mind-bogglingly strange rendition of, again, Snow White, only it's the king who wants his daughter's heart and life (but most of all her tongue). The youngest princess and a bunch of her servants and pets monkey and dog fight about who's going to get the dubious honor or sacrificing their three items in question for her. Suddenly, one after the other, the servants and pets are committing suicide right in front of her. (To prove what a stupid story this is, Princess Miranda does not have the reaction most people would have after this occurrence--which would be equivalent to being sent to a looney bin as soon as it was equinely possible to get her there.) Instead, she discovers that none of them has the right kind of tongue for the job of convincing her father that it's hers. In the end, she writes down the whole tragic testimony on the bark headstone of the grave she digs, you know, in case her murderous dad comes look for her and wonders what happened. Senselessly, she heads off into the forest, where she meets the king of sheep--

Yeah, and on that insane note, it occurs to me that the author's comments are really the only logical responses to be had within these pages. This terrible story with a rotten king who fluctuates between spoiling his youngest daughter shamelessly and then wanting to chop her head off the next (along with a thoroughly unworthy, superficial princess) isn't worth your time. Kingfisher's commentary and finishing the story on a definitely-not-happy end note were the best parts of it.

"The Wonderful Birch": In this Russian version of Cinderella, a witch schemes to turn the wife of a desirable man into a sheep. She succeeds, but the daughter of the previously happy couple is determined to put things right--and this involves some magic that has her turned out so handsomely the prince himself can't resist her. The witch has a daughter of her own, a poor being that practically lives under the prince's table like little more than a dog, during an extended banquet. Repeatedly during this fest, the witch's daughter is injured. She's kicked so hard, bones break and she gets one of her eyes poked out by what one presumes must be a stiletto heel worn by a monstrous guest. (These partygoers seated at the VIP table must have some idea that the dogs have converged under them to eat the scraps, yet you can't help but wonder how heartless they must be. Who would kick a dog so hard, they break a bone, or poke out an eye in the process of punishing what they believe are canines just trying to get some sustenance below them?) Every time I think these insane fairy tales can't get worse or be more nonsensical, they can and they do. This one wasn't easy to read--and not just because so often cannibalism factors into these disturbing old fairy tales--though Kingfisher's annotations provided at least some comic relief from the full-on, escalating horror.

"The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens": Someone's stealing the golden apples from the king's singular apple tree (a thing so unique, apparently it pollinates itself!). He sends his three sons, one at a time, to discover who the thief is. Only his youngest has any success in uncovering the truth. Not surprisingly, magic is afoot…and peahens. A bunch of them aren't what they seem and at least one of them can turn into a human girl so beautiful, the youngest prince (who is clearly not important enough to name) falls hopelessly in love with her, and her with him. This beauty claims more than once that the prince will never see her again if he doesn't do something that's required, but it's clear she and/or the laws of magic are very flexible about that because he's given numerous chances to get it right. In the meantime, a lot of people get murdered by him without so much as a trial. Brutal times, eh? This is one fairy tale I enjoyed a lot as a child, though, thanks to the retelling author's hilarious insights, I'm seeing so many freaky things I hadn't noticed before during my past readings.

Unfortunately, this story didn't end where it should have. Instead, it took a turn for the why?. With a dragon riding a horse, the prince gaining brotherhood with a fish, a fox and a wolf, the tale descends into absolute ludicrousness. No part of the extension added anything useful or interesting to the previous wackiness. Kingfisher included a lot of spot-on commentary concerning the end of this piece.

"The Deer Prince": A widower and a widow, with a daughter each, get married. The husband's daughter is pretty, the wife's ugly. The wife gets jealous, the husband is never home to notice his adorable kid being abused, and, as must always be the case in fairy tales, something outlandish happens that doesn't fit the situation at all. One night, there's a knock on the door and the wife orders her hideous daughter to answer it. There's a deer standing there. The daughter tries to beat it with a broom so it runs away. The next night, there's again a knock, and now the cute daughter answers it. Instead of driving the deer off, she talks to it. This stag wants her to hop on his back and come away with him, where they can "enjoy" (wink wink, nudge nudge) the forest together. Isn't there a cautionary saying about following a stranger who promises candy inside his love van? Nevertheless, she hops on and the stag bounds off to his magic-addled castle. He warns her not to go into three of the doors within the place before he disappears. Of course he knows as well as the reader does that she'll be snooping before a few days have passed. And she does. He clearly makes such a big deal about the doors, we realize in retrospect, because he's hoping she'll be a Nosy Nancy. It's the only way to break the enchantment that's been placed on the castle and over himself.

Alas, happily-ever-after might have ensued if any of these old fairy-tale authors knew when to quit. Instead, the stupid once-a-stag prince asks his bride if she wants her stepmother and sister to visit them. (Not sure what happened to her not-so-dear-old-dad.) While it's very true that the story was disappointingly resolved without any conflict at all with Door #3 leading to wedded bliss, what came after the prince's total lack of forethought was even worse--though, thankfully, Kingfisher's enjoyable commentary explained merrily why she's not a fan of traditional fairy-tale endings.

"Two Cinderellas": So named because Kingfisher decided to give us two, short, Cinderella-esque tales filled to bursting with reasons for her to take issue with events.

The first one is uproariously titled "Little Saddleslut"! The original author didn't bother pulling any punches. He got right into the action with this one: A mom is spinning flax with her three daughters and the two older tots decide to play a homicidal game. Whoever's spindle falls gets murdered and eaten by the others. Again with the cannibalism? Someone please tell me why all these "bedtime tales" always end up with someone getting eaten? The youngest daughter prudently begs off on partaking and uses magic to get revenge for her beloved mother. In the process, she loses a shoe, the king's son finds it, and wants to marry only the one who fits in it. He does, they have a kid, and Little Saddleslut stupidly leaves her bloodthirsty sisters alone with the princess. Little Saddlemoron might have been a better name for her! But, in the end, everything turns out fine…if you consider the evil sisters being hacked to pieces fine. Yeah, maybe it's a fitting ending for these bad daughters, and I guess I should just be grateful they weren't put in a stew and eaten by the whole kingdom.

Next up is "Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl" (the first, unpronounceable word actually means "little rag girl"). Wife dies, husband remarries a shrew (who has her own daughter) to tend his orphan daughter. Shrew hates her new husband's kid and proves to be a witch who curses the little girl* to take a loaf of bread, eat of it, share it with everyone she meets, but somehow has to bring it home whole every night. Couldn't Conk just buy or bake a new loaf to bring home? I guess somehow the witch would know the difference. A cow (also, apparently, a witch with magic powers) tries to help Conk by letting her siphon butter and honey from its horns. Cool! Only now the little ragamuffin gets fat, and the stepmother gets wise to Conk's sidestepping. Time to raise the stakes of impossible cruelty. Conk finds herself in the presence of an ogress who values quick thinkers. Again, the little girl goes home with a prize that night, and her stepmother is fit to burst at being thwarted. She figures maybe her own daughter could use some bovine and ogress time, too, but it doesn't go well for this girl and the stepwitch ends up trying to the kill the cow, who, as you might expect, isn't at all what it seems and instead does Conk another good turn at her end. From there, this turns into the Cinderella story with one twist. The stepwitch wants her own daughter to marry the king (not the prince), but her scheming runs afoul when Conk emerges from the place her bad mommy hid her in the throne room and announces the slipper belongs to her. She can prove it, too. I have to spoil this one for sheer stupidity: Yeah, Rag Girl becomes queen, happily-blah-blah-after, but the worst that happens isn't her stepmom being hacked to pieces or boiled into soup for the wedding feast. No, she just leaves with a "dry throat" of chagrin. Wow. I really couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

*If these old-world fairy tale writers are to be believed, all widowed men should be scared out of their braies about being preyed upon by witches (with daughters) looking to hook up with previously married men (who also have daughters) in order to abuse that man's only child. What the heck, man?

"The Story of Log": A man and a woman want a child of their own so badly, they fashion one out of a log and dress it and rock it and…is anyone else thinking, "My very own log! Just what I always wanted. I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him and name him George"? Well, they called him Log. A few years later, the thing comes to life and goes on a killing spree with just his log arms-- No, no, no. Don't worry! Log is a kind and gentle log person who goes on to save the country from a vile sun, moon, and dawn thief. He's apparently not a log for brains, but he is a shapeshifter--he's able to change himself from a human into firewood on a whim. You wouldn't think that would be terribly useful in your day to day, but it actually is here. According to Kingfisher, you'll be forgiven for singing a rousing rendition of "The Log Song" by Ren & Stimpy while you're reading this whackadoodle of a story.

"Tatterhood": Let me sum up the moral of this story: A queen who thinks being a good mother is either spoiling someone rotten or bossing him or her around isn't fit to be anything but the imperious queen she is. Let's leave it at that. If only the sadist storytelling had taken that good advice. But no, he had to go and write the whole, sorry tale that culminates in "an ugly hussy" named Tatterhood toting "a severed head under one arm, riding her war goat, beating the crap out of people with a wooden spoon" (as only Kingfisher could describe it).

"The Seven Doves": Based on an Italian fairy tale of "bros turned into birds" and their poor sister who intends to save them from their (maybe well-deserved) fate, this one starts with seven boys born in seven years to one mother. This hockey team decides they can't bear another male child entering their household. They threaten their poor, fertile mother and leave home until such a time as she can produce a female sibling for them. (Yeah, you read that right.) Somehow these lugheads think she has a choice. I think it's clear this story isn't going anywhere good. Would you believe me if I told you cannibalism may be involved? Of course you would. It only makes sense at this point.

"The King of Love": A man with three daughters (it's always three; why is it always three?) takes the youngest with him to pick wild herbs. She pulls up what seems to be a fine radish but is actually a door that reveals a green bird bathing in a pan of milk. Said bird dries himself and becomes a gorgeous specimen of human hunk. Wait a minute, what? The punishment for the crime of picking a radish-door is apparently that this daughter has to become the wife of this hunk. The dad is paid off but encouraged to drop in anytime. The other two sisters decide to figure out what in all that's holy is going on here with the radish-door, milky-bird-shapeshifting hunk their dad told them about. The sisters persuade their youngest sibling to do what the hunk has asked her to promise not to do--find out who he is. Ready to guess his name? (Hint: It's in the title!) Insert groan, or some other strange noise here. As Kingfisher says, "Some people call him Maurice." The hunk promptly disappears but not for long as the youngest keeps conjuring him back and eventually saves him from an ogress's curse. Somehow, this one has a happy ending--unless by some misfortune you've read the wrong version of it and the poor girl is forced to wear a pair of iron shoes until they wear out. Only then can she find her husband. Hey, don't say you weren't warned of what can happen when you try to read these fairy-tale doozies.

~*~

I'm not sure what prompted the title of The Halcyon Fairy Book. What was the author going for? The word "halcyon" as an adjective means "denoting a time period that was idyllically happy and peaceful". None of these stories are happy let alone peaceful. I can only conclude Kingfisher was being sarcastically true to form, if the title has anything to do with that. Alternately, the noun version of the word refers to a tropical Asian or African kingfisher or a mythical bird said to breed (and charm the wind and waves into a state of calm) in a floating nest at sea during the winter solstice. Here's an image of a halcyon:

Given the cover art and her pen name, maybe the bird itself--real or myth--was what the author was going for. Only a few of the stories actually included enchanted (or otherwise) birds. On that uncertain note, I'll say, ahh whatever.

To conclude this review that I had a rollicking good time producing, if you like your fairy-tales roasted comedic style, you'll love every last one of T. Kingfisher's retellings of particularly bone-headed fairy tales that were so badly told that they had almost no right to be published in the first place.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Book-to-Film Problems

2026-09-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

This post includes a bit of a spoiler about the Season Two premiere of OUTLANDER: BLOOD OF MY BLOOD.

"The book is always better than the movie." Well, not always. While I tend to agree in general, there are exceptions. Two prominent examples are THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and ROSEMARY'S BABY, both satisfyingly faithful to their sources. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is almost perfect but departs from the novel in a subtle shift of emphasis. It foregrounds Dr. Lecter more than Clarice Starling, mainly in the final scene. Although the movie is excellent, in my opinion, it's not quite the same as the novel. The wonderful Stephen King film SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION includes some justified minor deviations from the novella, such as merging the two wardens into one character, and an important one that disappointed me, the plot change that makes Andy more complicit in the warden's crimes than the original does. No adaptation of DRACULA, alas, has ever achieved the goal of complete fidelity, although the BBC miniseries with Louis Jourdan comes very close.

PRINCE CASPIAN is the most disappointing of the three big-screen Narnia films, not only because it unwisely rearranges the order of some events and inserts a completely unnecessary attack on Miraz's castle (which has no impact on the overall plot), but worst of all, it unpardonably distorts the portrayal of Peter's character.

The notoriously bad adaptation of WATCHERS, one of my favorite of Dean Koontz's books, repulsed me so thoroughly I gave up on it early in the film. The adult male protagonist of the novel encounters a friendly dog lost in the woods. The animal, genetically engineered to have almost human intelligence, has escaped from a secret lab. The newly bonded human-canine pair comes to the rescue of a shy young woman with whom a romance develops. Meanwhile, the government tries to track down and recapture the dog while another escaped beast, malevolent rather than kind and heroic, also pursues the dog. The movie changes this absorbing plot into a banal "boy and his dog" story. When one FBI agent, who's a sympathetic, reasonable authority figure in the novel, appeared as a total jerk in the film, I turned it off in disgust.

And I won't even get into the travesty of the movie version of Robert Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS, except to mention that it follows the general outline of the book's plot while twisting it to convey the exact opposite of Heinlein's message.

The launch of the second season of OUTLANDER: BLOOD OF MY BLOOD brought this topic to mind for me. The storyline the writers have set up has an inherent problem that seems insoluble. As you may know, this prequel series deals with the parents of Jamie and Claire when the respective heroine and hero of the main series are a small child and a not yet born infant, respectively. There's no original source to follow; Gabaldon hasn't yet written her planned previous-generation book about the star-crossed lovers who will become the parents of Jamie. The problem lies with Claire's parents. The Outlander TV series, like Gabaldon's books, firmly states that this couple died in a car crash in Claire's early childhood. At this point, they've traveled through the standing stones to Scotland in 1715. Either they will get back to the twentieth century (Claire's father did so in the season premiere, but of course we don't know whether he'll stay there) or they'll settle down in the eighteenth century. They can't return to their own time and take up their former life, because that outcome would completely change Claire's timeline as it was already narrated in the main series. If they remain in the past, though, in the twentieth century we'd be left with a crashed car and no corpses. So how could Claire's uncle (who raises her) know for sure her parents are dead? The only explanation I can imagine is that, rather than upset her with a confusing story about her parents vanishing from the face of the earth, he allows her to grow up believing they died. In short, the creators of the TV program have written themselves into what strikes me as an inescapable trap.

Moral: If you want to adapt a novel or a book series into film, stick as close as practical to the source material! If you don't really like the original in the first place, why try to make a movie of it? (Granted, the latter doesn't apply to the Outlander prequel since, as mentioned, a print source doesn't exist yet.)

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} From Below by Darcy Coates by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-09-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

From Below by Darcy Coates

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware spoilers!

From Below is an aquatic horror novel by Australian author Darcy Coates, published in 2022. I'm fond of all fictional tales, regardless of how far-fetched, concerning the Loch Ness monster and kraken and other supernatural deep-ocean creatures, submarines, diving, underwater caves, and spelunking in general. What's not to love? I've ravenously consumed stories similar to this and consistently wanted to find more like it. I didn't actually realize that there was a full-on, named genre around the theme of "aquatic horror" until I read this one, though, and I eagerly went searching for more like it.

From Below has got a plot that's been done often before, in which a ship has mysteriously sunk and disappeared, almost always taking countless human lives with it. Decades later, someone gets the idea of finding it and trying to puzzle out what happened. From Below is no different. In this particular take on the same-old, same-old, it's the SS Arcadia that disappeared sixty years before. It was touted as an unsinkable ship (seriously, shipbuilders really need to stop calling their creations unsinkable). The wreckage is discovered by submarines more than three-hundred miles from its intended route. A documentary filmmaker, Cove Waimarie, puts together a team of divers. A historian provides insight into the sunken ship. The goal is to film what's found and maybe, in the process, uncover the mystery behind the ship's unexplained disappearance. In addition to Cove as leader, the diving team members include those who'll operate the camera, a diving expert, and a biologist. Naturally, everyone involved has dirty little secrets they'd rather not have anyone else unearth, but good luck with that. Merging with each subsequent deep-dive, descent to the wreckage of the ship, the story of the original 1928 crew is woven. The tension is heightened in the intermingling as the unearthly horrors are unveiled and come out to play in their murderous manner in the claustrophobic environment. The time clock of limited air during dives and what will happen if divers surface too quickly really added to the escalating (sorry for the pun) suspense.

So I've read a handful of Darcy Coates books now. By all rights, I should adore them. She consistently doles out supernatural tales that lean toward a horror edge, which is my favorite type of fiction. She's also an undisputedly competent author. I have no complaints about her writing skills. All that said, I've just never read anything by her that screams "unique take" on a frequently done story. Instead, all the offerings I've read by her are everything you'd expect from a book of that type, but not in a way (that I feel) is particularly compelling. In all honestly, I'm not sure if From Below is actually any better than other aquatic horror stories either. I just know I enjoyed it a lot, perhaps in large part because I'm a fanatic fan of deep-diving, underwater horror in my fiction. See my previous reviews for Caitlin Starling's The Luminous Dead and "Caver, Continue" and Michael Crichton's Sphere, all of which feature some of the most unique aquatic horror fiction telling I've encountered thus far.

The subject matter in From Below is what convinced me to try it. It came up as an audiobook on one of my library apps, so I borrowed it and listened to it compulsively for a week or so. Interestingly, the narrator of the audiobook was Abby Craden, who's a versatile voice artist in a variety of mediums. The strange/cool part was that at the time I was just randomly replaying one of my favorite videogames, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning Fatesworn Edition. Abby Craden is the voice of Alyn Shir in that game. I didn't know this at first, but, while listening to the audiobook of From Below, I kept feeling like I knew that voice somehow. That's when I checked it out and discovered the connection. Craden does a fantastic job reading From Below. I even turned the speed down from 1.75 (which is what I almost always listen to audiobooks at because otherwise it's too long and drawn out; I usually have no trouble understanding fast-talking and following the story this way) to 1.50 to better savor it.

However, the one problem I had with the audiobook version of this story is that I was overwhelmed with too many characters to keep track of and I wanted to get them sorted out to better enjoy the complexity. For that reason, I decided to purchase a mass-market paperback copy of the book (which was dirt-cheap) so I could "re-read" it and catch all the things I missed out on with the audiobook reading.

While it could certainly be true that I just love this genre so much that I'd like any story in it, I thought Coates provided a well-rounded take on a frequently done plot. All the characters were fully-fleshed out, and the entities that overtook the SS Arcadia were convincing. The melding of past and present filled the book with nail-biting tension. Are there other and better variations on this theme? Sure, probably. But this one ticked all the boxes for me. I'm certain you'll see more reviews by me in this genre in the future. In the meantime, I recommend From Below as a good one in a sea of cleverly reimagined aquatic horror tales.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Good and Bad of AI

2026-09-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

In Cory Doctorow's current LOCUS column, he distinguishes being "anti-AI" from being anti the bad things some entities do with it, and he considers the "politics" of AI:

Technopolitics

I don't think I've ever come across a succinct definition of AI. "Artificial intelligence" could include anything from spellcheck and autocorrect up to chatbots that can pass the Turing test and everything in between. Asking whether that's good or bad feels similar to asking whether electricity or nuclear power is totally good or bad. When most people discuss the potential harm of AI, they seem to be referring to technology on the high end of the scale. Sometimes the term seems used mainly for scare effect: "It's taking over, and we're doomed!" Doctorow summarizes its status thus:

"AI isn’t exceptional, it’s normal. It’s not exceptionally dangerous. It’s not exceptionally evil. It’s also not exceptionally useful or exceptionally good. AI represents a significant advance to computer science -- a moderate variation to existing machine learning techniques that generated a much larger improvement in those techniques."

He lists many "useful things" AI can do. On the negative side, though, it "exists in the white-hot center of the most dangerous investment bubble in the history of markets." Therefore, financial realities lead the masters of the AI universe to commit manifold "unforgiveable sins," which Doctorow lists at some length. He declares, "To make this AI, the people involved had to inflict all these harms upon us."

Can the good and bad be separated?

Is the "fruit of the poisonous tree. . . forever poisonous"?

Can a model's operation be separated from the manner of its creation?

Which uses of data training are ethical and which are immoral?

Doctorow maintains, "There’s hardly any technology -- any built infrastructure -- that is free from sin."

Also, that the current "technopolitics" of AI "are neither inevitable nor immutable."

Author David Gerrold, creator of "The Trouble with Tribbles," frequently writes on his Facebook page about the uses and abuses of artificial intelligence (though you may have to scroll down a while to find those posts). For instance, earlier this week he discusses the potential bursting of the AI investment bubble:

David Gerrold Facebook

Aside from spellcheck, my only frequent use of AI consists of reading the summaries Google now displays at the top of every search result page. They're useful for quick answers to simple questions. For anything more complex, especially if accuracy is vital, I go to the actual website links further down. I've often wished for a magical device that would take my detailed outlines and write the first drafts of books in my own style. While I like outlining and don't mind editing or proofreading, first-draft writing is a slow, laborious process for me. Well, I understand there's now an app for that, but since publishers don't accept AI-assisted submissions, I'm never likely to try it.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Silent Tongues and The Church Beneath the Roots by Felix Blackwell by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-09-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Silent Tongues and The Church Beneath the Roots

by Felix Blackwell

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware spoilers!

I'm always on the lookout for interesting audiobooks to listen to when I'm doing other things. I stumbled upon Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell in my library app. It was released in 2017. A newly engaged couple, Felix and Faye, head up the remote, windswept cliffs of Pale Peak to her parents' cabin and, naturally, in a horror novel, instead of romance, they encounter a menacing, supernatural being and creepy voices. Before long, a winter storm inadvertently cooperates with bad medicine and refuses to allow them to leave. It quickly becomes clear to Felix that the creature stalking them is familiar to Faye, a sleepwalker who begins whispering back to the shadows. The dark entity is trying to communicate with her. She claims she doesn't remember it, but her subconscious mind has blocked out the truth in more ways than one. "The Hollow One" is searching desperately for Faye's answer to the question, What makes five?

This 320-page self-published novel was originally, as the author tells it, a contest-winning story on Reddit's NoSleep community of horror lovers. How the subject matter dealt with Native American culture, folklore, and the corresponding mythology was the most interesting part to me, though I found it a bit odd that the author named the book's main character after himself, almost as if he was making it an autobiography. Incidentally, the author is not of Native American descent, if anyone's wondering.

The main characters in Stolen Tongues were drawn well enough. The most compelling of them was a guy with the last name of Lopez (more about him later) from the nearby Cold Valley Indian Reservation. Apparently the book has been optioned for a movie, which I believe would make the most of the material. The audiobook version I listened to was, unfortunately for me, narrated by J.S. Arquin, author (A.C. Arquin), voice actor, and audiobook narrator among wearing other hats. I admit, I had trouble with his halting way of speaking, though I think other listeners wouldn't have minded it. He reminded me of Mordin Solus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordin_Solus from the Mass Effect franchise. This character within the videogames is a favorite of mine, known for his fast-talking, halting manner and irresistibly unique dialogue. Frequently, the main character in the game has the option of cutting Mordin off because, once he gets going, he becomes almost unlistenable. While this was so creative and fun in that world, to have to listen to it over the course of 300+ pages got to be a bit much for me.

That said, Stolen Tongues did hold my interest just enough to get through it. My favorite line was, "I suppose that if you speak long enough into the void, someone is bound to start listening." I will note, however, that the posing of the question "What makes five?" fairly early in the story was the kiss of death for me, as a writer. I guessed the entire plot just based on three little words, so everything that came afterward lacked suspense and true impact.

When I went searching for more in this world, I found that the author had written a prequel that included Lopez (or his dad)* from Stolen Tongues and set long before the events of the previous story. The Church Beneath the Roots, released in 2024, is nearly 350 pages and is touted as "Silent Tongues, Book 2", though it's more accurately dubbed Part .5.

*Note that I'm going to 'fess up here and tell you that I don't generally listen carefully while reading audiobooks unless they're really, really good (and if they're really, really good, I tend to run out and buy the version of the book that has actual words in it even before I finish the audiobook of it). Audiobooks are background noise to me. They fill space during a time I'm doing something else more important. If I continue listening all the way to the end, I consider it a win despite that I miss a lot. I'm okay with missing things if it's not a book that grabs hold of me and demands rapt attention. That said, this is becoming a growing annoyance of mine concerning audiobooks--there are too many shortcomings. In particular, the inability to look at the words, to flip back and find sections easily to review and verify I'm absorbing details and plot angles correctly.

Between these two books, the author provided presumably authentic Native American names for his tribal members. Shortsightedly, though, he chose to name two of his characters with designations too similar. Onwé (verified spelling) is pronounced "On-way" and Twé (no idea how to spell it) is pronounced "Tee-way". I believe the author explained something about either of those names in Silent Tongues--though it went by too fast, and I'll never find that section of the audiobook now to verify it. Anyway, in The Church Beneath the Roots, I believe Onwé was the father of Twé, who was a character in Silent Tongues. Or vice versa. I've lost all track of this and, because it's an audiobook, the only option to correct the problem would be to 1) try to track down a book version of it with words in it, 2) to listen to both audiobooks all over again (and that ain't happenin'!) , or 3) just be confused.

Conclusion: So I chose to be confused and never find out the truth of which was the son and which was the dad. I should probably consider not using audiobooks for my reading because this is becoming a serious problem for me. In any case, for the remainder of this review, I'll use both names because I don't really know anymore whether it was Onwé and Twé in either book. I accept the blame for this situation because I wasn't listening as closely as I should have been, but a chunk of the problem is actually the medium.

Seeing his people abandon the Old Way by flocking to the local church, Onwé (or Twé) finds himself struggling, especially when a plane crash brings an unexpected stranger to the rez with horror stories to tell. Decades ago, Onwé's (or Twé's) childhood friend vanished. An ancient creature lurks in the night, terrorizing the tribe. Nearby caves bring terrifying whispers. Onwé (or Twé) finds himself lured there with the promise of having everyone he's lost returned to him. The origin of "The Hollow One" is explored in this horror tale.

As I did its predecessor, I listened to the audiobook, this one narrated ably by Gary Tiedemann. What I enjoyed most was how the author pulled together the tragic reality of history with different indigenous tribes, forced to dwell together in a mishmash on a reservation, where freedom of religion is allowed only if the lawmakers get to choose the faith, into a tale of horrifying folklore. It's not easy to reconcile the unfairness of life on a day to day basis but, add an ancient evil into the mix, and you've really got something provoking and entertaining.

If you're looking for diverting tales of supernatural myth, this pair of surprisingly well-written, self-published books should satisfy, but I highly recommend reading the ebook or paperback versions instead of audiobooks to avoid any confusion caused by the characters' names.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Economy of Sesame Street

2026-09-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

It has occurred to me that in all the decades I've been watching SESAME STREET, I've never seen anybody pay for anything at Hooper's Store. In fact, nobody on the show seems to use money at all. (I recall only one exception, to be mentioned below.) When kids and monsters order food, treats, or other items, Chris and Alan, like their predecessors over the years, appear to just give them stuff. My head-canon rationalizes the situation that customers or their parents run tabs, since it's a locally owned business where the storekeepers know everybody.

As for Grover's experiences of serving restaurant meals to the grumpy little blue man, we have to assume a bill is presented after the meal, a transaction that happens out of the audience's view. The one clear exception to the apparently cashless economy I've noticed occurs in an episode when some Muppet characters go shopping with Chris at the supermarket. There we do witness him, as the adult, checking out groceries and paying for them.

Money and its constraints come up at least once in the Neighborhood of Make Believe segment of MR. ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD. The residents of Make Believe want to build a swimming pool, for which they've saved up barely enough money. Then a water pipe breaks, requiring an expensive repair, and they have to decide how to use their limited funds.

The newish PBS series CARL THE COLLECTOR addresses the problem of budgeting in an episode when the twin rabbit girls decide to start a hamster-sitting business. They go crazy at the pet shop, buying all sorts of fun, frivolous products, then realize they have no money for necessities such as hamster food and basic equipment. They have to return the stuff they bought for a refund and start over, shopping for things hamsters really need. I recommend CARL THE COLLECTOR, by the way, for its presentation of neurodivergent characters and its portrayal of kids learning how to solve relationship problems.

Not surprisingly, the long-running series ARTHUR -- whose main characters were supposed to be in third grade until the end of the final season but acted more like ten- or eleven-year-olds -- included several episodes in which the kids had to decide how to save, budget, and spend money.

Should SESAME STREET incorporate occasional lessons about money, since that's a topic growing children need to understand sooner rather than later in today's society? Or, given the abbreviated half-hour format, does the series already have its plate full enough with numbers, letters, technology, the Foodie Truck (my favorite feature), solving problems both physical and social, navigating relationships, handling emotions, and appreciating differences?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

A Most Unusual Premise, Indeed

2026-09-05T21:15:06.909-04:00

I found something seemingly flattering in my spam folder a few days ago, but obviously too good to be true. I thought that I should share.

One hears about this sort of email, and any chatbot can be most helpful. The biggest red flag that AI suggests is that editors do not use Yahoo email addresses.

editor.cschulz@yahoo.com

Hello Rowena,
I hope you’re having a great week.
My name is Claire Schulz, Executive Editor at BenBella Books. I recently came across Knight’s Fork, and I was particularly intrigued by the unusual conflict at its center: a Saurian Knight bound by a vow of chastity, caught between his father’s legacy and a determined Queen Consort who asks him to father her child without knowing his true identity.
The combination of forbidden obligation, concealed lineage, political tension, and personal conviction gives the story a distinctive speculative-fiction premise that caught my attention.
I’d be interested in learning more about your current and forthcoming work, as well as whether you’re currently represented by a literary agent. If so, I’d be happy to continue through your representative.
Subject to reviewing additional material, I believe there may be an opportunity worth exploring within BenBella’s fiction publishing program.
If you’d be open to a brief conversation, I’d be delighted to share more about what prompted my interest.
Warm regards,
Claire Schulz
Executive Editor
BenBella Books.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Faith of Beasts (The Captive's War, Book 2) by James S. A. Corey by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-09-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Faith of Beasts (The Captive's War, Book 2)

by James S. A. Corey

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware spoilers!

The authors James S. A. Corey--made up of writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck--of The Expanse (you can read my in-depth review by typing the series name in the search box) have started a new trilogy called The Captive's War. The first installment was The Mercy of Gods published in August 2024 along with "Livesuit", the first novella for the series, released October 2024. Read that particular review here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2025/01/put-this-one-on-your-tbr-list-book.html.

The newest novel is The Faith of Beasts, Book 2, published in April 2026. In this science fiction space opera, the Carryx are a hival empire that's been conquering worlds for centuries. Borg-like (actually, on second thought, it reminds me more of the Reapers in the Mass Effect franchise; find out more about that race of evil aliens at this link: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/search?q=Mass+effect), they destroy or enslave, ever in search of those they can use to continue their totalitarian dominion in the universe. Once the alien enemies conquer slaves, they force them to learn how to survive the best they can in a hostile environment. At the end of the last book, an attempt to break free is made and fails utterly. Their captors again subjugate those that survive, requiring they prove their worth or be destroyed.

My review of this newest installment is little different than my review of the first. That initial offering felt long and tedious to me, with a lot of characters I didn't find particularly interesting. Not much has changed here. At the end of Part 3 within The Faith of Beasts, I thought something exciting was about to happen, hinted at in the closing sentence there. Alas, no, not really. The story passed into Part 4, and I was still searching for a compelling reason to continue for more of a reason than that it was the only audiobook I was interested in on my library app. When I was more than halfway through listening to this book, I read the back cover blurb and thought, Huh, is that what it's about? As I said, Book 2 didn't seem all that much different than the second half of Book 1.

I do find it interesting the parallels that can be extracted from this scenario in terms of real-life war and occupation--the instinct for survival, the considerations for rebellion, the adjustments that need to be made to relearn life and day-to-day functioning when you're compelled into a situation and amongst beings you don't understand. The protagonist, Dafyd, is a futuristic Daniel figure (as described by the authors) who's carried off by the enemy, along with a bunch of other humans, and put in charge of making them all somehow useful to their captors. Beyond that, though, true enjoyment wavered for the majority of my listening to the audiobook.

While a part of me wonders if finishing out this trilogy is worthwhile, I'm two books in at this point. Might as well finish it out. Also, I loved the authors' previous series, The Expanse, so much, I'm willing to endure whatever comes my way to reach the end of this comparably much shorter (and very inferior, IMHO) series.

At the time of this writing, there isn't much being reported about when the third book will be released. Risingshadow.net (a dedicated platform for speculative fiction) mentions 2026 as the year for a next publication in this series, which may actually be for the second novella. As The Expanse did in that particular universe, this trilogy of novels is also supported by standalone novellas that expand on the various aspects of the Carryx Empire, existing technology employed within the galaxy, and a broader view of the interstellar conflict that surrounds the characters. "Livesuit" was released just after Book 1, and, following the release of Book 2, Amazon began touting an upcoming second novella on the way, as yet untitled. Additionally, nothing new has been announced concerning the television series in development based on this trilogy by Expanding Universe, a multi-platform content company headed by the authors themselves (among others).

A few weeks after I listened to the audiobook of The Faith of Beasts, my place in line for the ebook version came up on my library app and I checked it out. I wondered if reading the book might give me a significantly different experience than I had with the audiobook. It's true that I find I miss so much with audiobooks. By reading the text yourself, if you have a question, you can just turn back a few pages and seek out an answer. With an audiobook, it would require listening to whole sections again to locate what you missed, which can quickly turn into a hassle. Unfortunately, after a half dozen chapters in the ebook, I found I wasn't enjoying it any more than I had listening to the story being read to me, so I abandoned the endeavor. I don't know if I just don't care for this particular series by these talented authors, or I'm just not in the mood for it at this point in time. Either could be the case.

Well, my conclusion is that, if you're a fan of the authors and particularly liked Book 1 in this series and/or the first standalone novella for it, there's no reason not to pick up this installment. I'm still hoping maybe, once more offerings are available, the series will eventually culminate into something exciting.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Vampire Retro-Review: The Ruby Tear

2026-09-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

THE RUBY TEAR (1997), by “Rebecca Brand,” was actually written under a pen name by Suzy McKee Charnas, author of THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, one of the best vampire novels of the late twentieth century. Readers familiar with it as well as her other works under her own name, most prominently the post-apocalyptic, feminist Motherlines series, will find THE RUBY TEAR surprisingly different. Here she creates a unique variation on the vampire romance subgenre, already well established by then. THE RUBY TEAR stars a much more traditional vampire than Weyland, the top-of-the-food-chain, naturally evolved predator in her more famous novel.

A cursed jewel and a family feud rooted in medieval Eastern Europe complicate an unusual vampire-human love triangle. In a flashback, Baron Ivo von Cragga, on the verge of death in battle, prays for the restoration of the Ruby Tear, his family’s chief treasure, as well as punishment for the enemy who stole it. Transformed into a vampire by the vengeful goddess of his war-torn homeland, Ivo devotes his centuries-long existence to the quest for the Tear, now possessed by Nicolas Griffin, journalist and playwright. Jess, an actress, Nic's former lover, baffled by his avoidance of her since the near-lethal accident in which they were both injured, agrees to star in a play written by him in which she will wear the ill-fated jewel. The relic draws Ivo to her so that she becomes the vampire's target as he pursues his revenge against Nic, last surviving descendant of his enemy.

Aside from his origin (cursed rather than bitten), Ivo has most of the traits of the familiar supernatural vampire. Ivo is generally a “good guy vampire,” although prepared to behave ruthlessly in devotion to his quest. The few love scenes between him and Jess are sensual yet spiced with a tinge of self-aware irony. Charnas's familiarity with New York and the world of the theater lends realistic detail to the story. She injects notes of humor amid the suspense and manages to make both the lonely, magnetic vampire and his human rival complex, sympathetic characters. The climax of their conflict and the resolution of Jess's attraction to both men are surprising as well as satisfying. It’s unusual to read a romance in which we can’t tell from the beginning which hero the heroine will choose. The denouement includes an unexpected twist that underscores the futility of devoting a lifetime (mortal or immortal) to ancient enmities.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales by Orrin Grey by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-08-28T07:00:00.000-04:00

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales by Orrin Grey

by Karen S. Wiesner

Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales by Orrin Grey was published in 2018. This collection of 14 very weird stories is unlike almost anything I've ever read before. By the way, Guignol is a French hand puppet. In fiction, the word has come to be associated with a sensational, gruesome tale.

It would be difficult to describe this anthology of stories individually because they're so short and strange, so, although I liked more than a few of them (very odd for me when it comes to a short story collection!), I can't really go in-depth about any one of them without giving away too much.

In the general sense, these tales are all what I would consider very small vignettes. What you'll get is a slice of a life: Nothing came before that isn't told rather than shown, and, in some cases, there's little by way of follow-up or indication where it might go from there. It is nothing more, nothing less than what you see in the here and now--that's all you get. For that reason, there is very little depth to them. You'll never get to know the characters, settings, or situations any more than what's included in these few words. It's like you get a glimpse of something and then you're thrust out; you walk away because there's nothing else you can do. Whether a memory of what you've witnessed lingers on after that point is moot. I suspect the author would enjoy at least part of that description of his work very much. Honestly, none of this is an insult. It's more of a heads up of what to expect and an invitation, no RSVP necessary. You really do have to experience this set of stories yourself to get the full impact.

Contained within Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales were more than a few stories that harkened back to H. P. Lovecraft (complete with the tell-you-the-outcome-before-the-event format). I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure offering "A Circle That Ever Returnth In". "Haruspicate or Scry" was another standout. In that particular account, there's a hilarious reference to college students picking apart a story by a professor, praising his imagery and drawing parallels, to which the teacher responds (like he's impatiently embarrassed by the attention), "I was just writing about a damn pear." I've said similar things myself dozens of times while debating allegory in fiction with those who seem to enjoy reading into everything--just never with Orrin's simple but evocative hilarity.

If you like horror, fantasy, and the strange in your stories, this anthology is definitely one to gobble up in a single sitting. The author has several other fiction collections to choose from as well, so you don't have to stop at just one.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Wolf Worm

2026-08-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

Nobody will be surprised that I agree with Karen in loving T. Kingfisher's WOLF WORM.

As she describes, it's Gothic historical fiction with body horror. A “wolf worm” is the larva of a parasitic insect. Botflies, screwflies –- squeamish readers beware. The protagonist, Sonia Wilson, resembles many of Kingfisher’s heroines in being cast adrift from familiar surroundings, but rather than going home like the others (for a certain value of “home”) she’s beginning a new job in a strange place. Since the death of her father, a distinguished botanist whose work she illustrated, she has taught at a girls’ school. Now she has been accepted as an illustrator for a reclusive entomologist, a chance to use her artistic gifts for more than teaching. In North Carolina in 1899, a young woman involved in science can’t expect any more prominent role.

This novel embodies the classic Gothic tropes of an orphan heroine confronted with a large, half-deserted house, its forbidding master, mysterious deaths, and grim secrets. No JANE EYRE romance plot here, though. The housekeeper, one of only three servants who remain, immediately cautions Sonia that her employer won’t marry her. Not only does she have no interest in snagging a husband, she quickly finds out no sensible woman would choose Dr. Halder for that role. He’s a misanthrope with scorn for his professional peers and little or no tolerance for anything less than perfection in the work of an assistant.

Arriving with more knowledge of plants than insects, Sonia nevertheless manages to produce satisfactory illustrations most of the time. The studio of the previous illustrator, whom Halder refuses to discuss, provides her with textbooks plus helpfully labeled illustrations that fill gaps in her professional background. Meanwhile, she has been warned about “the Devil” in the woods and has heard stories of “blood thieves” allegedly identified as a man and woman who’d been executed vigilante style followed by a stake through the heart. Surely, Sonia thinks, the mangled bodies had actually been victims of wild animals or, possibly, the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. Or had they? What really happened to Halder’s missing wife and her lover? What about the padlocked outbuilding she happens to see him visiting by night?

Naturally, I was thrilled at the revelation of actual vampirism, although of an unusual type and scientifically explained. It's my favorite type of vampire, a member of a naturally evolved, humanoid but not quite human species. And I figured out, long before Sonia did, who the previous artist was. Like Kingfisher’s other female horror protagonists, she forms bonds of friendship amid the ominous surroundings, in this case with a local Native American woman and the mixed-race couple who maintain the house and grounds. Sonia eventually discovers who and what constitute the true evil and defeats it with the support of her new friends. The insect lore in WOLF WORM highlights Kingfisher’s perennial interest in the curiosities of the natural world, as displayed by characters’ in-depth knowledge of fungi, poisons, plants, vultures, roadrunners, etc. in previous books. Also, Sonia’s analysis of her environment in terms of the technical challenges of watercolor painting adds dimension to her character. As in the conclusion of THE TWISTED ONES, at the end of WOLF WORM Sonia hasn’t moved on from the horrors she’s seen but realistically struggles with memories and nightmares that will linger past the end of the story.

As for the novel's feminist dimension, the ending delivers a delightful "take that" to the legacy of the arrogant Dr. Halder.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher Paired With Karen Wiesner's Botanical Artwork by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-08-21T07:00:00.006-04:00

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

Paired With Karen Wiesner's Botanical Artwork

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware: May contain unintended spoilers!

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. Her novel Wolf Worm, published in March 2026, is exactly the kind of gothic fiction I love--you know, without the needy, pretty--according to her own assessment--damsel in distress who gets sucked into a life-threatening situation that seems supernatural on the surface (but, like every episode of Scooby Doo, isn't). Oh, and she makes everything worse with her stupidly romantic nature and need to be rescued by a big, strong man.

A little background about this tangent I'm going off on: A few months ago, I was looking for a new audiobook to get interested in and stumbled across the 1966-1972 Dark Shadows book series, credited to Marilyn Ross (one pseudonym of W. E. D. Ross, an actor, playwright, and author of more than three-hundred novels!). The thirty-three books in this series were gothic romances (that dealt with an actual vampire and other monsters), but not what I consider particularly good ones. In any case, the first volume, Dark Shadows, was flat-out painful to listen to. This obviously male author didn't understand the first thing about women, and it showed. I can't tell you how many times we were given a physical description of the female lead somewhere along these slightly exaggerated lines: "Victoria brushed aside her thick, luscious locks of perfectly-coiffed hair surrounding her hauntingly beautiful, heart-shaped face." Give me a break. Every man in the vicinity was attracted to this goddess, but she had eyes only for the psycho-villain-or-dashing-hero? widower of the piece. Nothing could convince her to save herself. Alas, this was just the tip of the iceberg on the type the gothic fiction I despise.

In subtle contrast, the basic formula of a really good gothic romance is a strong, smart woman (who's probably passably attractive but the reader isn't beat over the head with descriptions of her world-stopping, leave-no-male-unaffected beauty) who finds herself in unfortunate circumstances. She's forced to go to an isolated property where something sinister is going on and usually has been for decades. While she might ultimately fall in love with the main suspect, the romance is secondary to the creepy setting and mysterious events that have usually been unsolved and that she has to investigate and resolve before dire harm comes to her. This is a worthy heroine who saves not only herself but the others around her as well as the day.

That's exactly what T. Kingfisher has brilliantly given us in Wolf Worm, set in 1899. Sonia Wilson is a thirtysomething botanical illustrator. Kingfisher is herself an extremely talented artist, and, given my own love of rendering plants in art form, I just soaked up everything creative she offered in this tale. The easy knowledge of the author made her main character so authentic and compelling. Sonia's father was a renowned scientist, something she aspires to, but, after he died, she was left to make her own living in whatever way she could, as most orphaned "spinsters" were forced to in that time period. Eventually, she's offered the job of illustrating Dr. Halder's insect collection on his reclusive manor property in the woods of North Carolina. Other characters are the lovable housekeeper, Rose, and her significant other, Jackson, who also works on the estate. The preacher also inserts himself into Sonia's life after her arrival. A local healer called "Ma" something also helps Sonia when oddball things begin to happen.

Woodland animals are acting very strangely, doing impossible things that normal animals just can't do, the household chicken coop is being robbed every night, and Dr. Halder is sneaking around in the forest after dark. There are local whispers of "blood thieves" compounded by the unsolved mystery of Halder's wife's fate. She'd cheated on him, and Halder supposedly dispatched the homewrecker--justifiably, according to some members of the local population, who "don't brook with no infidelity". The real horror in this story is Dr. Halder's life's work--parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh. I'm not a person who likes even thinking about things like this. My whole body revolts and feels like it's been invaded by horrible things that I can't even see. Long, hot, rubbed-raw showers ensue and endless hours are wasted on feeling like I'm going insane with the itching dread. (Let's face it, it's scientific fact that we do have things crawling all over us that we'd prefer not to consider let alone believe are there.) Ugh! Don't think about it. Do not start thinking about it. Whatever you do, donotthinkaboutthisplease!

Yeah, so Kingfisher forces us to not only think about it but to watch the horror happening in Wolf Worm in slow motion.

I have to admit, more than once, I had to go back to the audiobook I was listening to of Wolf Worm and make sure it was, in fact, T. Kingfisher, not Caitlin Starling, who'd written this. Everything about this book reminded me of Starling's work, especially The Death of Jane Lawrence (highly recommended--do a search for my review of it on this blog). Starling loves body horror fiction with strong heroines that are also slightly vulnerable, a lot broken, and far too willing to go where no sane woman might. I loved the atmosphere, the creepiness, the compelling secondary characters that really rounded out this story and made it something I couldn't stop listening to in the course of just a couple days.

I will also add that I really would have preferred to read the book version of Wolf Worm (hard copy, though ebook would have been okay, too), but, as I'd asked to be notified of the release of any version of this book on my library app, I was glad to practically be the first in line when it became available. I liked the way the narrator made the voices fit the locale the story is set in. I do want to read a copy of the book at some point, though, because I've definitely noticed that I miss a lot with an audiobook versus reading the book myself. I'd also like to own the hard cover of Wolf Worm. It's absolutely worthy to join my collection of other T. Kingfisher print editions.

In summary, run, don't walk, to get a copy of this book as soon as possible. If this is your kind of gothic fiction, you won't regret it.

And, just because, here's a couple of my own fledgling botanical illustrations, both with and without color, which I'm certain are nowhere near as wonderful as anything Sonia and/or Kingfisher would produce. Looking at them again puts me in mind of the coming spring and summer growing season and the plants I'm hoping to photograph, sketch, and/or color this year.

Rosebud in Vase Sketch @ Karen Wiesner

Leaf & Twig Texture in Colored Pencil @ Karen Wiesner

Scarlet Poppies and Summer Berries in Colored Pencil @ Karen Wiesner

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Secrets of Naked Mole Rats

2026-08-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

The September 2026 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC includes an article on research into the slowing or prevention of aging, including possible techniques such as reprogramming the DNA of cells or growing organs for transplant from a patient's cloned tissues. Another approach, not mentioned in that article, involves studying naked mole rats to discover the secret of their unnaturally long lives. They can survive over ten times longer than typical rodents such as mice. If we could duplicate that feat, we'd live for 1000 years. Their chance of dying doesn't increase with age, and they enjoy phenomenal resistance to cancer. They don't suffer the diseases of age common to older humans. Here's an article about some of their biological anomalies:

Naked Mole Rats Don't Die of Old Age

Thus, the secret to near-immortality is to become a naked mole rat -- not really a viable strategy.

Why have they evolved to live so much longer than other rodents? One possible explanation I've come across is their underground environment. They live almost entirely in their burrows and have very few predators. Genes for longevity would be wasted on mice likely to get eaten after a year or two, so they live fast and reproduce prolifically while they have the chance. Naked mole rats don't have that constraint.

Wikipedia goes into detail about their weird physiological traits and unusual lifestyle:

Naked Mole-Rat

Aside from one other species of mole rat, they're the only eusocial mammals. That is, their society has a structure similar to those of bees, ants, and termites, with a single reproductive queen in each mole rat colony, mating with one to three breeding males and served by a horde of nonreproductive workers.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the six-inch-tall, blue-skinned Nac Mac Feegle have a similar social structure. Each Feegle mound includes only one female, the kelda (queen), who's married to the chief of the clan. All the other males in the group are her sons or brothers-in-law. She bears potentially hundreds of sons and only one daughter, who eventually departs to become kelda of a different clan.

Incidentally, T. Kingfisher has announced she's working on a science-fiction novel called THE NAKED STARS, about a spaceship crewed by a hive of sapient naked mole rats. I can hardly wait to read that!

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Horrific

2026-08-16T16:16:12.449-04:00

In War Of The Worlds (H.G. Wells 1898), the invading Martians are defeated by the common cold. Various iterations of a virus defeat aliens from other worlds, from influenza to computer viruses (as in Independence Day).

Fair enough, but what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

What if, instead of blasting humans with the sci-fi equivalent of training sun through a magnifying glass on ants, those small, agile, zigzagging orbs were acting like crop dusters and subtly sharing with us some of their alien nastiness?

In nature as we know it, there are parasites that cause fish to flip upside down, flashing their white bellies to avian predators. Thus, the parasites enter birds, which is what they need for the next stage of their metamorphosis. For instance, the Eye Fluke.

The modern movie equivalent of the eye fluke is the young person, usually female, who is addicted to a "smart phone", and although being warned not to use it, they do so. Same with credit cards. But, I digress.

If I were an alien, would I deploy cyclospora? I think not. It might take two weeks to work, is not reliable, and although it might be amusing to watch ones enemies suffer from explosive diarrhea.... it is not efficient. Moreover, one might end up hoisted with ones own petard... (which means blown up with ones own bomb.)

In Day Of The Triffids, a cosmic fireworks display rendered every human blind who was not blind drunk or sleeping through the light show. I do not remember if the mobile, carnivorous plants (Triffids) had something to do with the light show, or if they simply took advantage.

We do have a "Flesh eating" bacteria crisis in the southern States. Also known as Vibrio Vulnificus, this is a bacteria that thrives in warm brackish water (mix of fresh and seawater) and also in inadequately (or raw) shellfish. Usually, the human sufferer has a wound which might be a slight as a recent body piercing --even a new tattoo!!!-- or a graze or cut from stepping on something sharp while paddling in flood waters.

Sorry, I have no conclusion.

All the best,

RowenaCherry

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Silo Series by Hugh Howey by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-08-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Silo Series by Hugh Howey

by Karen S. Wiesner

Beware potential spoilers!

Silo is a series of dystopian novellas and short stories that are commonly packaged as three separate, interconnected novels. In 2011, Howey self-published a short story called "Wool" as a Kindle title. Later, four sequel novellas with the same name were released; these were at one point considered Books 1-5 and named "Holston", "Proper Gauge", "Casting Off", "The Unraveling", and "The Stranded". They became a single book later. As of March 2013, Simon & Schuster purchased the print rights (apparently Howey turned down extremely lucrative offers from various publishing houses in order to retain his right to continue online distribution of this series). The second set of shorts were Books 6-8 titled "Legacy", "Order", and "Pact". All the parts of these stories became packaged as two novels in the Silo Series: Wool, Book 1 and Shift, Book 2. A third novel followed, Dust, (published in 2013) which was intended to conclude the series.

In Wool, we're introduced to the concept of silos--subterranean cities each with 144 floors that are meant to be self-sustained by those living in them. This populace was never meant to become aware of the existence of other silos. In this way, humanity was meant to keep a host safe from the uninhabitable world above-ground. But are any of these true? Occasionally, someone starts to wonder and maybe even investigate the truth of a series of anomalies, invariably leading to an uprising, or, even worse, a person utters the taboo words of wanting to venture outside to see for themselves what's out there. The punishment for such behavior is banishment. In other words, they're exiled to death. Alas, they're first expected to clean the silo's external sensors. Ha! I may have said, "You've got a prayer" or "Make me" to such a ludicrous order.

There are a host of intriguing characters introduced in the first novel, but the most important of them is Juliette Nichols, a mechanic from Silo #18 who becomes the mayor. She's not one to ignore obvious treachery. Before long, she's hot on the trail of a conspiracy that goes back for unimagined decades, maybe even centuries. When Juliette realizes nothing is as it seems inside this place and that they're only one of many such environmental constructs, she's driven outside by conspirators to clean. She's not expected to survive. But she does and she manages to make it to a nearby silo--#17--where she meets a survivor of an uprising.

Shift, Book 2, is a prequel, where we learn where this conspiracy began, leading to the building of these silos, and the horrors done to the world to save a worthy (rich and powerful) minority.

The final book, Dust, combines the characters from the first two books.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of the bulk of humanity living underground for a variety of reasons ranging from escaping a hostile environment on the surface to unseen-by-most pocket worlds, and anything you can think of in-between. This certainly isn't a new idea. Philip K. Dick's 1964 sci-fi The Penultimate Truth (along with other works by him) explored the concept, and countless other authors from Verne to Burroughs to the more modern Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, and R. A. Salvatore have come up with creative twists on the theme.

I was looking for audiobooks to check out on my library app and came across this one, which I, at first, thought was a book I'd read in the past--one I still can't remember the name of which has an almost eerily similar premise of everyone living in some kind of silo structure and the leaders are all corrupt. They're told what's outdoor is toxic for them, but this is a lie. I wish I could remember more about that book. Anyway…

In Wool, I was introduced to a lot of characters at once, but Juliette certainly filled the role of heroine admirably. She was a selfless, capable, noble character worth. I admit I probably wouldn't have finished Book 1 and continued this series if I hadn't been listening to the audio version of it. Shift was a bit harder to get into. It was very difficult for me to want to read about wishy-washy, selfish characters who continue on with horrifying actions even when they know it's the worst thing they can possibly do. While those that did this assumed they'd be saved and be able to live with their own consciences, so long as they were allowed to live, they eventually repented. I have nothing good to say about anyone who would follow a madman just because he's been foolishly and shortsightedly been put in charge. Wanting to succeed in the field of politics is inexcusable as any kind of justification. Yet that's what we got from the self-absorbed characters in Shift. Even when they turned around and started fighting the Powers That Be, it was hard for me to look at the train wreck of gore left behind by the selfish and entitled. All that considered, I didn't particularly feel any compassion for the characters in this novel. Nevertheless, I persevered to the end anyway in hopes of coming full circle with Juliette, and I did in Dust, where those from Books 1 and 2 come together and begin fighting to save what's left of humanity. But first they have to put down the ones that see humanity as nothing more than lesser pawns in their sick popularity contest.

There is a television series (4 seasons total, available now) made of Silo, currently streaming on Apple TV+. I'd like to watch it someday. There's also a comic book adaptation of the series. The author may also be working on a spinoff to tell the story of Silo 40. The first of the trilogy was supposed to be released in 2025. If you're interested, you may be able to find out more on his website.

I highly recommend securing audiobooks of this series that offers a compelling vision of a horrifying future for mankind that, at times, seemed more prophetic than fictional.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Vampire Retro-Review: Dracutwig

2026-08-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Is anybody here aside from me old enough to remember Twiggy, the ultra-thin supermodel of the late 1960s? DRACUTWIG (1969), by Mallory T. Knight, shows unmistakable signs of being partly inspired by her fame. This over-the-top parody of the Dracula mythos as incarnate in the Hammer horror films begins with a brief encounter between Count Dracula and the village “slut,” Charmaine. When she becomes pregnant, her family descends on the castle with a priest and the conventional implements of undead-slaying to force a marriage. After Charmaine dies in childbirth, her parents take the newborn girl away. At the baby’s christening, however, her reaction causes the villagers to jump to the conclusion that she has inherited the vampire taint. Her grandparents leave her on the doorstep of the castle.

The Count names her Dracutwig because, “She is a fresh green twig on an otherwise long-dead family tree.” She grows up like a normal girl, or as normal as feasible while living in a vampire’s castle with her days and nights reversed, the undead for babysitters, and a wolf for a pet. When she becomes an alluring teenager, though, one of the Count’s minions shows too much interest in her body and blood. For her safety, Dracula sends her to England. Delighted with the London scene, she quickly finds a boyfriend and becomes a fashion model. But soon afterward Dracutwig’s vampire genes begin to express themselves, and laughably ghastly consequences ensue. Then the Count travels to England to rescue his little girl. . . .

“Mallory T. Knight” is a pseudonym for Bernhardt J. Hurwood, author of TERROR BY NIGHT and several other nonfiction books about the undead, werewolves, and similar creatures. (In fact, the paperback of TERROR BY NIGHT was the first such book I ever read or owned.) DRACUTWIG concludes with a long afterword about vampire lore and legends, delivered in a humorous tone. The essay ends with speculation about how vampires might fit openly into human society. It strikes me as a little tacky that “Knight” repeatedly cites himself, in his Hurwood persona, as an authority, but in a book intended as lighthearted satire that’s not a major offense. Although the London section of the story (which comprises most of the page count) is unavoidably dated, this novel is still a fun read if you like a parodic send-up of vampire clichés. Unfortunately, although Amazon lists the paperback, they don't show any copies available at present.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Hobson's Choice

2026-08-09T14:17:30.825-04:00

Q: When is a choice not a "choice"?

A: When there are no alternatives, no options, no choices available except for "Do, or do not do." In other words, you have Hobson's choice. Hobson's way... or the highway on foot.

The eponymous Hobson was a British businessman who operated out of an inn where St. Catherine's College, Cambridge now stands. He delivered mail between London and Cambridge along the Old North Road and kept livery of about forty horses. When there was a lull in the mail, he would rent horses to gentlemen and scholars at the university.

Men who rent horses are --or were in the seventeenth century-- usually in a hurry, and not overly considerate of other people's cattle. The horses which were faster (or looked like they might be a good one that could run) would have been most in demand if those wishing to rent a horse had a choice, but acceding to such demands would have meant that the best horses were overworked if not beaten and spurred.

So, Hobson ruled that every would-be renter took the horse closest to the stable door, which was the most rested horse. It was a hard and fast rule. All customers were treated equally, and so were all Hobson's horses.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review The Book of Swords Edited by Gardner Dozois by Karen S. Wiesner

2026-08-07T07:00:00.018-04:00

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review

The Book of Swords Edited by Gardner Dozois

by Karen S. Wiesner

Be aware of unintended spoilers!

The Book of Swords was published in October 2017. Edited by Gardner Dozois, this particular collection includes stories that fall into the fantasy subgenre of "sword and sorcery". Below is a chronological listing of the stories that are featured in it:

1) "The Best Man Wins" by K.J. Parker

2) "Her Father's Sword" by Robin Hobb

3) "The Hidden Girl" by Ken Liu

4) "The Sword of Destiny" by Matthew Hughes

5) "'I Am a Handsome Man,' said the Crow" by Kate Elliott

6) "The Triumph of Virtue" by Walter Jon Williams

7) "The Mocking Tower" by Daniel Abraham

8) "Hrunting" by C. J. Cherryh

9) "A Long, Cold Trail" by Garth Nix

10) "When I was a Highway Man" by Ellen Kushner

11) "The Smoke of Gold is Glory" by Scott Lynch

12) "The Colgrid Conundrum" by Rich Larson

13) "The King's Evil" by Elizabeth Bear

14) "Waterfalling" by Lavie Tidhar

15) "The Sword Tyraste" by Cecelia Holland

16) "The Sons of the Dragon" by George R.R. Martin

Before I get into this anthology, I'll quickly summarize how I handle these types of mixed-bag story caches in my reviews: I don't usually review all the books include--only the ones that I actually enjoyed enough to cover here, though I do make exceptions about reviewing stories I don't like. I'll explain any anomalies within the individual reviews. The logic for why I haven't included a particular story isn't usually because it wasn't well-written. Most of these anthologies include some of the biggest names in the industry. For whatever reason, I don't always connect with certain selections or they simply don't resonate with me. I freely admit sometimes I'm just not in the mood for what one author has to offer. Rather than bad-mouth what's probably a perfectly good story, I find it easier to not include it in my line-up of reviews. Readers will have to look elsewhere for a summary or review for any story that's missing. Also, at the end of my reviews, I like to include the order I believe the stories I'm reviewing should have been placed within the collection, as I believe the placement of stories within an anthology is absolutely crucial to its overall success. There has to be a good balance and interspersion of strong stories at the front, back, and middle in order to "couch" weaker ones. Too many bad stories in a row may cause readers to abandon the collection altogether. Search "anthology" or "collection" on this blog to read my previous reviews of mixed-bag story caches like this one.

"The Best Man Wins" by K.J. Parker: This story is told from the point of view of the blacksmith who has a young man come to him asking him to make the best sword in the world, for which he'll pay handsomely--literally, every last bit of money he owns, he's willing to part with for this task to be completed. After the blacksmith makes it, the kid asks him to teach him how to use it, as he knows nothing of sword-fighting. The blacksmith is much more than he seems on the surface. I was sucked into this tale from the first sentence. The blacksmith was compelling, and his view of life and his personal history were doled out in the process of him grumbling while he worked. As he says, he doesn't enjoy the doing (which is grueling), only the "having-done", obsessive aspects of smithing. If I had to summarize this story in a few short sentences, I'd say this: "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." (The Princess Bride) For all intents and purposes, this sentence that’s actually featured in the story: "I'm going to use it [i.e., the best sword in the world that you create for me] to kill the man who murdered my father…" told the whole story. It was uttered on page 13 of the 27-page story. From that point on, I knew what was going to happen. And that is exactly what did happen. However, that didn't make the tale any less enjoyable. In fact, it was my favorite of the whole lot. I was utterly fascinated by the blacksmithing aspects of the tale, and the POV of the blacksmith was the perfect choice for delivering the story.

"Her Father's Sword", A Realms of the Elderlings Story by Robin Hobb: This short story takes place during the early years of the Red Ship Wars and forging, with Fitz visiting the setting within the story as a secondary character (in all the novels he's in, his perspective is first person); set "somewhere in the middle" of Farseer and recommended to be read either before or after Book 2. Sadly, I was disappointed by this story, though initially excited as I've read every other Realm of the Elderlings offering currently available (and reviewed them on this blog). This last one set in a familiar world for me wasn't one I've read previously. In this tale, a village has been destroyed, their people kidnapped and "forged" (mentally destroyed and become something like ravenousness zombies) by the pirates on the Red Ships. When their demands go unmet, the Forged are returned. These lifeless though walking beings take whatever they need. Fitz comes to warn the survivors not to trust their own people when they come back to the village, as they're not what they once were and will harm and kill them without conscience. Young Taura, like everyone else in her small, ravished town, doesn't want to believe this could have happened. Her father is too strong to not have resisted, she believes. My problem with this tale was that I can't stand stories where the resolution is left unclear. What is the purpose of telling something that has a wishy-washy ending? I have no desire to finish writing someone else's story on my own, for one thing. For another, leaving your own story unfinished is a cop-out, cheating, and just plain shoddy writing. Very frustrating, especially considering the biggest reason I purchased the (albeit used) hardcover of this book was for this story specifically. However, in its favor, I'll add that seeing the story of the Forged from this opposite perspective than has ever been presented before in the series does elevate it considerably. In the past, we saw these poor, unfortunate victims of the pirates as little more than zombies that had to be put down in order all those "unforged" to survive. The Forged retain nothing of who or what they were before, and family members must beware of forgetting that truth in favor of compassion and abiding love. Here, a young daughter can't let go of the stalwart father, nor the life she once had--even though (no question about it) she'll soon regret it.

"The Sword of Destiny" by Matthew Hughes: I don't want to spoil this rollicking bit of good fun by telling you too much. The basic premise is that a wizard hires Baldemar to steal a magical sword for him, the operation is bungled, and this reluctant henchman finds himself fleeing--only he ends up running into one trouble after the other in his attempt to escape the first. The world created here in this 29-page story is so big and well-drawn, I think you'll find, as I did, that you'll want many more stories to follow this one. A bit of research on my part revealed that, after writing "The Sword of Destiny" for The Book of Swords, Hughes went on to expand into a novel and ten shorter works focused on Baldemar's origins and his time spent as a wizard's henchman. The setting Baldemar comes from is called Dying Earth (credited to author Jack Vance). Hughes has standalone works and those associated with Baldemar and another popular character of Hughes', Raffalon, who also has his own set of stories. In the future, I look forward to reading much more about this amazing character and the world he comes from, though it might be a chore to find copies of the books, as they don't seem to be in wide circulation anymore.

"The Mocking Tower" by Daniel Abraham: In this creatively told tale, a man learns that war is not an arrow but both a circle and a sundial while revenge is a double-edged sword that never makes a clean cut on either party. Those who follow after will also feel its influence. I'm a general fan of Abraham's, as he's half of the S. A. Corey pen name that wrote The Expanse series (my favorite sci-fi space opera), though I haven't reliably loved his solo work. This is an exception. Very elegantly done.

"Hrunting" by C. J. Cherryh: I love the Beowulf legend, and I own many translations of it. So as soon as I heard that this story continued where Beowulf left off, revealing the aftermath of those who survived, I wanted to read it. I enjoyed the conjecture in this tale a lot. However, it was told in an awkward, choppy and stilted way that made it very hard at times to understand what was being conveyed. Despite that, I recommend it to all fans of this enduring, Old English poem.

"The Sons of the Dragon", A Song of Ice and Fire World by George R.R. Martin: This is another excerpt from Martin's "fake history" of House Targaryen, the dynasty that ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros in the backstory of his A Song of Ice and Fire series. As such, it's not a story, per se, but it's absolutely not the dry old history textbook you'd read in school either. This selection was also published in Fire & Blood. The lives of Aegon I's sons--Aenys I and Maegor I--are detailed here, ending with Maegor's death and the ascension of Aenys's son Jaehaerys I Targaryen to the throne. All these histories are the basis for the HBO House of the Dragon TV series, and, honestly, if you want to have an easier time of keeping track of the gazillion characters, you might want to watch that. At least then you can put faces to the endless strings of names. Note that the novella included in this anthology is abridged.

In terms of the order I believe this stories should have been presented in, I would have spaced my favorites out much more, so "The Best Man Wins" would stay at #1 and "The Sons of the Dragon" at #16; but "Her Father's Sword" would have been #3 instead; "The Sword of Destiny"#6, "The Sword of Destiny" #9, "The Mocking Tower #11; and "Hrunting" #14, with the rest of the books interspersed between them.

There's a lot for fans of fantasy and of the excellent writers to love with the 16 stories included in The Book of Swords. You may even find a new author to follow, as I have, to further broaden your fantasy reading horizons.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series.

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/