WILDWOOD MAGIC – Willa Reece

“Here be witches and wayward girls grown into lonely women spooked by the wind.”

I recently finished Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour, and for me, it just fell short. Imagine my surprise when I opened Willa Reece’s Wildwood Magic (Redhook 2023 – thanks to the publisher for the finished copy!) and found myself faced with an apple orchard, a cult where reading is not allowed, a dangerous and abusive man, and The Scarlet Letter.  It’s as if Hoffman and Reece were given the same writing prompt, and in my opinion, Reece did the better job.

Rachel is raised by the strict Sisters after her mother died, and her entire world is controlled and dictated by religion.  As a teenager, she breaks free for one night – walking away from the revival tent and finding herself in an apple orchard.  She’s cared for and fed, and in the morning the sheriff comes to take her back.  Years later, she’s married to the preacher.  A man with a terrifying bloodlust – unlike Dimmesdale, he strikes his wife, not himself, relishing in the blood left on his gold wedding ring and on the cover of his Bible.  When she finds out she’s pregnant, she fakes her death and runs away – back to the orchard that had nourished her heart, soul and body so many years before.

In order to keep her baby safe, a baby she names “Pearl,” she knows she cannot keep her.  The child is placed with a loving woman within the community that will embrace Rachel, if only she lets it.  But she’s afraid, and she hides away until she can’t hide any longer; the revival has come to Morgan Gap, hellbent on weeding out the “wayward women” and the witches, and at its head is Rachel’s husband.  She has to stop being afraid and trust herself and others to save her daughter and the town.

The Hawthorne touches are perfect. The animal familiars are a pure delight.  (A snake, an owl, a weasel, bees, a bobcat, a goat… I want a familiar.)  Rachel’s talents being stitching and stirring, traditionally very domestic and motherly tasks, do not go unnoticed.  The love story with the tinker – *chef’s kiss. The flashbacks to Siobhan, who brought the apple seeds with her from Ireland, and in particular, the dreams of her and the beekeeper, are sticky and bittersweet.

Wildwood Magic is the best kind of magic.

Read this book.

THE TEACHER OF CHEOPS – Albert Salvadó

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.

Country: Andorra
Title: The Teacher of Cheops
Author: Albert Salvadó
Language: Catalan
Translator: Marc Brian Duckett
Publisher: Indie Published (2012)

The tiny country of Andorra has thus far proved the most difficult to find a selection of fictional works translated into English.  Nearly every other reader also seeking to read a book from every country has settled on The Teacher of Cheops because it’s all that is available – and it’s not even set in Andorra.

Salvadó was a very prolific Andorran author who wrote across many genres, but his favorite was historical fiction.  The Teacher of Cheops was originally published in Catalan in the mid to late 1990s and translated to English in 2012 and self-published. I believe it is his only work to date that has been translated into English.  It is set in Egypt during the Fourth Dynasty and details the construction of the pyramids while focusing on Sedum, a man born a slave who eventually becomes the teacher of the man who will become the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty. 

The novel is chock full of political drama and the consequences of crossing of the Pharaoh are pretty brutal – the nipples of women are literally chopped off such that they cannot nurse their children. People seem to be losing body parts on the regular and some are burned alive.  And folks love their poison.  “Tell Cersi. I want her to know it was me,” indeed.

I did not care for the depiction of women, especially of young women, in this novel.  The novel opens with the rape of a 13-year-old slave, but it is presented as a welcomed event – almost a pity fuck – because she is “so disfigured” no one would ever want to have sex with her.  Another young woman is forced to marry the Pharaoh and, unable to sexually perform, he rapes her with his fingers until she bleeds. Another young woman, I believe she is 15, is presented as a voluptuous temptress who seduces the Pharaoh.  Another young slave is presented as nothing more than a sexual being for anyone and everyone to take part in – and she lives for the services she provides and is well known for what she can do with her tongue.  I get that young women in nearly all cultures were expected to carry children as soon as they started their menstrual cycles; however, it’s not so much their age as how they’re described – which was a choice.  Perhaps things were last in translation – especially with the sex scenes.

Either way, it’s worth a read – I guess.  If you know of a book written by someone from Andorra and set in Andorra, please let me know.

THE INVISIBLE HOUR – Alice Hoffman

“Trick your enemy, do what you must, believe in enchantments, save yourself.”

Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour (Atria Books 2023) is a slim, magical novel that smells like apples and fall.  It’s also my first Hoffman work.  (I know – that’s surprising considering my love of magical realism and of the movie Practical Magic.)  The writing is beautiful; it seems quite the love letter to librarians and the power of books and reading.  There truly is something magical in those first parts.  The last part, however, involves time travel and gets a little too Outlander for my liking – it’s not necessarily that it’s poorly done, it’s just that I don’t like it.

Mia grows up in a cult where books are forbidden.  Her mother had been an avid reader prior to casting her lot with the cult leader, and Ivy believes it must be genetic.  She protects Mia as much as she can, but the community also believes that children belong to the community and not to the parents.  Mia’s secret stash of books is discovered and burned, and she flees.  Her favorite book is The Scarlet Letter, and she’s stolen an old copy from the library that has an inscription to “Mia” in it – she believes it is magic, but the truth of the magic of the book isn’t revealed until much later.

Here’s my confession – I didn’t like The Scarlet Letter, and this entire novel revolves around Mia and her love of the novel and of Hawthorne himself.  Scratch that part off, and the heart is a story of mothers and daughters, which, to be fair, is also the heartbeat in The Scarlet Letter.

There’s a lot to love about this novel, the gorgeous cover being just one element; however, that last part just didn’t hit on much for me.  Maybe if the novel were longer and more meat was put on those bones, I might feel differently.  I don’t know because again, I don’t really like time travel as a plot.

FAIRY TALE – Stephen King

I’ve been reading Stephen King since the mid-nineties – devouring his works when I was in middle and high school.  (My senior picture is of me reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.) My favorites are Bag of Bones and Desperation, but I also have a special love for The Tommyknockers (which may or may not also be a nickname for my bewbs)  And while I haven’t read his entire catalog and I don’t read every release, King is still a comforting and familiar writer – a creepy hug of a book always awaits.  Fairy Tale (Scribner 2022), with that classic King storytelling, readily jumped to the top of my favorites. A story about a boy trying to extend the life of his dog?  I’m there.  Tell me how.  But also, the moment I realized Radar, the GSD, would be a main character, I promised myself I would never read another King novel if he killed that dog.  I couldn’t put the novel down – mostly because I wanted to ensure the dog lived, but also because I had to know what happened.  It’s been a long time since a book kept me up past my bedtime on a “school” night – maybe that’s why I love this so much – it reminded me of how I consumed those books in the 1990s.

Quick and dirty summary because I could talk about this book all day – with a dead mom and an alcoholic dad, a young boy makes a deal with God and a debt is owed. When he is a teenager, he believes that the universe has called to collect that debt when he stumbles over the grumpy old town recluse in need of help. Charlies makes a decision to not only get him medical attention, but to care for his dog while he is hospitalized.  And Charlie falls head of heels in love with Radar, and he also grows to care for her owner, Mr. Bowditch, quite a bit.  The feeling is mutual, and Mr. Bowditch reveals his wealth and his secrets to the young boy – secrets that involve a magical fairytale land with a sundial that if you spin on it, reverses aging. Charlie only needs to get there and place Radar on the dial, and he will be granted many more years with the dog he loves.

The second part of the novel follows Charlie’s journey within this very dark fairy tale of a once brilliant land. A disease is taking over the inhabitants, save for the ones with royal blood, there are massive cockroaches, crickets, and monarchs, there are vicious wolves that prowl, zombie-esqu electrical soldiers that terrorize at night, a malicious giant (with some of the loudest farts you’ve ever heard), and a king who thrives on destruction of all that is beautiful. Charlie’s quest is no longer just about saving Radar – he’ll need to save himself, and he has the opportunity to do what Mr. Bowditch didn’t; cowards bring presents, and Charlie came empty handed.

This is the best Stephen King book I’ve read in a long time.  But the question is, will I read another?  I guess you’ll have to read it to find out if Radar lives.

Read this book.

Told you. (I selected The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon because it was what I was actually reading when senior portraits were taken. And yes, I’m reading here. I managed to sneak in a good 5 minutes of reading time by posing with a book. ha)

SHIELD MAIDEN – Sharon Emmerichs

It’s been years since I’ve read Beowulf.  I remember when Seamus Heaney’s translation came out and the hoopla over him being a poet and not a scholar.  His version is known for being both poetically beautifully and historically accurate, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Bang-up job.  I’m no stranger to the lore, though I am a but rusty on it.

When Redhook sent me an early copy of Sharon Emmerichs’s Shield Maiden (Publication date: 10/03/2023), I nerded out just a bit; how awesome is it that an anonymous poem written sometime between 700 – 1000 AD is still having new life breathed into?  But Emmerichs changes things up just a bit; in her story of the slave who stole the cup that triggered the awakening of the dragon that ultimately resulted in the death of Beowulf; she gives us Fryda, Beowulf’s crippled niece who longs to be Shield Maiden, is in love with a slave, and who has just hint of fiery magic from days long gone by inside.  This is her story, despite claims it is Theow’s.

The novel has the hallmarks of YA fantasy, and I recognize I’m not its intended audience; however, I’m not sure it knows who it wants its intended audience to be.  It reads like YA, and I think it should squarely be YA, but then you have a sex scene between Bryce, a secondary character (albeit a very important one to both Fryda and Theow) and his partner.  Bryce is a second father to Fryda and well in his fifties, if not older.  It is a touching and sweet scene between two characters who care a lot for each other, but it does nothing to move the plot and is extremely out of place.  Also out of place are the random POVs from Bryce and Wiglaf (Fryda’s brother).

Some of my other issues are that character decisions seem not based on character development but on how the plot needs to be driven, and that Fryda is bold and brave and attentive to reading a room, but when it suites the plot, she’s entirely blind and naïve to the true intentions/hearts of others.  It is beyond frustrating to watch her interactions with Wiglaf.  I also struggled with not being annoyed by the pacing, and I wanted far more Hild, Olaf, and Bjorn.

In short, I know I was not this book’s intended audience.  And while I may have been dissatisfied with some of the story-telling elements, I did enjoy the meat of the story (even if I had to carve a bit to get there).  To be fair, I think I’m at the point in my life where it’s the dragon’s story I want.

THE BOOK OF CHAMELEONS – José Eduardo Agualusa

In my ever-constant desire to devour the world, I’ve decided to commit myself to reading a work from every country.  I anticipate the journey to take several years as I intend to only read a couple from the list (which I’m slowly curating!) each month.  I’m starting with the As.

Country: Angola
Title: The Book of Chameleons
Author: José Eduardo Agualusa
Language: Portuguese
Translator: Daniel Han
Publisher: Arcadia Books (2006)

The Book of Chameleons is narrated by a gecko who lives in a house belonging to Félix Ventura, a bookish albino who creates new identities for people. A man who allows others to blend in with their surroundings.  (Geckos are the only lizards with a voice, and our narrator is a tiger gecko known for its laugh.  And he laughs. A lot.) Félix names his lizard roommate Eulalio, and, at the end, Félix has taken over Eulalio’s story.

The novel is set after the Angolan Civil War, but it’s that history that brings many to Félix’s door seeking a new identity. Félix doesn’t take their stories – he just provides them with new ones. Through the gecko, we get to see an interplay of truth and fiction and how memory can be manipulated.

Things take a turn toward the interesting when a tall man with an accent the gecko can’t quite place shows up seeking a new identity. He completely consumes this new identity, but the past won’t allow him to forget who he was, what was taken from him, and who took it. Toss in a beautiful woman who chases rainbows, and Félix’s and the gecko’s lives will never be the same.

This one was a lot of fun.  Read this book.

THE LAST ANIMAL – Ramona Ausubel

Jane said, “If we go, we can visit the iceman. Which is as close as we can get to visiting your dad.”

Vera was helpless against this. She looked at her hands, small and pale. She did not know what they would reach for in her life, what they would make or take apart. Now, at thirteen, the only thing she wanted to touch was the only thing she couldn’t.”

“What happened it not, according to science, yet possible. I’ve got my invisibility lady cloak and a story that couldn’t be true.”

Ramona Ausubel’s The Last Animal (Riverhead Books 2023) is one of the best books I’ve read of the year and no one seems to be talking about it. This novel of a single mother and her daughters is what I was hoping to get with The Wilderwomen (my biggest disappointment of 2022). It’s Lessons in Chemistry meets Once There Were Wolves meets Jurassic Park, mixed with a good dose of grief, teenage smart assery, and magic.  I loved it.

Vera and Eve didn’t want to spend their summer in the Artic with their mom, but they didn’t exactly have a choice. Recently widowed and struggling for recognition in a male-dominated field, Jane brought her daughters with her to the Artic on a scientific expedition to find out more about the mammoth; she’s struggling with the loss of her husband, being a single mom of teenagers, and clawing for a foothold in the scientific world. The teenagers find a perfectly preserved baby mammoth in the permafrost, rendering the expedition a success but somehow the men still manage to regulate Jane to the background.  The inequities continue when the trio return to the States.  As fate would have it, the three meet an intoxicating and mystifying rich woman with an exotic animal farm in Italy.  What begins as a comment made in jest results in Jane stealing mammoth embryos from the lab and flying to Italy where the stolen mammoth embryos are implanted in the woman’s “pet” elephant.

It’s a story of science and magic and wonder.  It’s also about feminism and conservationism. But it’s also a story of unfathomable grief of losing a father, of the untethered existence of the suddenly widowed, of a broken family who doesn’t know how to fill the hole – not until the liquid eyed woolly mammoth baby is born against all odds.

Read this book.

THE FRACTURED DARK – Megan E. O’Keefe

After raving about the first book in Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Devoured Worlds series, I couldn’t wait to dive back into space with my favorite out of this world duo, Naira and Tarquin.  The second book in the series, The Fractured Dark, releases TOMORROW (9/26/2023), and I am so grateful Orbit sent me an early copy.  Y’all.  It’s so good.  And what makes it so good is how O’Keefe tells a story.  It’s sharp, witty, edge of your seat entertainment with some sizzle and spice and morally grey characters who are so exquisitely layered, you’ll fall in love with all of them.

The Fractured Dark focuses a bit more on the science than The Blighted Stars. Tarquin and Naira embark on a mission to save the world and hopefully only die a couple of times in the process. The reader learns a bit more about the dangers of canus and how far it will go to consume its host and protect itself.  We also learn quite a bit more about how the prints work, how the neuro maps can be manipulated, and how much control those with money and power actually have over the skies.

There are vulnerable moments of Naira bringing candy to the orphans, Tarquin finding Pliny, Acaelus’s love lost in a loop trying to protect his family, but there is far more blood and battling – especially with Naira’s blood thirsty and abusive ex tracking her down.  (Don’t fret – he’s not doing it for love, and they will rip each other to shreds.)

While the pacing in the second installment was a bit off, the personal relationships, banter, and just wicked smart writing held me captive.  I’m not sure when the third installment will be published, but I’m sure there will be more romance, more rebellion, and more rage – especially with our Cracked Queen; it’s an addictive series.

Read this book.

THE FRAUD – Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth was barely in paperback when it showed up on a syllabus for one of my classes at UNC in 2002. Smith’s debut had a lasting impact, and, for over twenty years, I have read her novels as they were released. Unpopular opinion, but The Autograph Man (2002) is my favorite.   Smith’s writing is always full of sharp wit and cutting observations. While NW and especially Swingtime were misses for me, her talent is evident throughout her entire catalogue. The Fraud (Penguin Press 2023), her first foray into historical fiction, puts that talent on full display.  This novel seems to be a love letter and an accusation to the writers that came before and that canon that stands today, and I loved every bit of it. Can we get more Dickens slander, please?

Set in 1873, the novel primarily follows Eliza Touchet, a housekeeper of sorts who runs in literary circles with her cousin (by marriage) William Ainsworth.  She is a sexually explorative widow whose great love was Ainsworth’s first wife.  While the three were never together together, Touchet hints that was her desire.  She enjoys a roughness in sex with Ainsworth and a softness with his wife.  With Ainsworth, she falls in with literary circles, making contacts and relationships, and trying to keep Ainsworth’s fragile masculinity intact.  With Franny, his first wife, she becomes interested and involved in abolitionism.   After Franny dies, Eliza becomes inactive in those interests – until 1873, when London is rocked by a scandal that has captivated Ainsworth’s new wife, Sarah. The Tichborne Trial consumes both Sarah and Eliza, but for different reasons. The Tichborne Trial is actually real – the most bizarre parts of this novel are actually real. (A lower-class butcher from Australia claimed to be the rightful heir of a sizeable estate in England. Is he Sir Roger Tichborne, as he claims.  Or is he Arthur Orton, the butcher?)  The star witness is a former slave from the Hope Plantation in Jamica. Andrew Bogle and his story is what Eliza becomes fixated on.  His section of the novel is fantastic.

The Fraud needs to be read slowly and savored; Smith has packed so much into its pages and a lot of the fun and cheek is easily missed if you’re not paying attention.  If you don’t like Victorian novels, you’re unlikely to like The Fraud.  If you love “the empire writes back” works, you will love The Fraud.

Read this book.

THE BLIGHTED STARS – Megan E. O’Keefe

I didn’t have crying over a spaceship on my 2023 reader’s bingo card, but Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Blighted Stars (Orbit 2023) was a pleasant surprise.  This space opera is nonstop action, pulling the reader along before you can even catch your breath or gather your thoughts.  And it’ll make you cry over a spaceship.

Tarquin Mercator is the privileged heir of an empire. He’s a geologist, more at home with his books than being involved in his father’s dealings.  When his father is accused of being the reason the worlds are being destroyed, he testifies in his defense.  His testimony puts a former Exemplar turn revolutionary “on ice” – Naira is a prisoner under complete Mercator control, being kept in a sleeping state until she is “reprinted.”  And reprinted she is, as Tarquin’s Exemplar Lockhart on an expedition to prove the Mercators are not destroying the world.  She intends to destroy the expedition ship before it lands at the Sixth Cradle.  But nothing is quite as it seems.  When the Amaranth is attacked by her sister ship, Naira ends up stranded on the dying planet with Tarquin and some other survivors, and she’s still disguised as his protector.   The secrets they uncover can save the worlds or destroy everything.

I found myself thinking of Firefly quite often while reading, likely because of the personal relationships, banter, and wit.  I really enjoyed this story, and I’m glad it’s not the end of Naira and Tarquin. (As a brief note, Tarquin was born in a female body and later reprinted into his preferred body. He also heads a trans initiative. If you blink when reading, you might miss it.)

The Blighted Stars is the first of The Devoured Worlds series.  The second of the series, The Fractured Dark will be released on 9/26/2023.  A huge thanks to the publisher for sending me both books of the series.

Read this book.