Reviews and Comments

This is a light entertainment told in 31 chapters, one for each day of October. The author plays with characters from a number of stories and legends setting them and their animal companions in a game that decides whether ruin comes to the Earth every few decades or so. Much of the story is told in dialogue as experienced by the hound Snuff who can speak with his sorcerous master Jack the after midnight only. The talk is about magic artifacts, about closers and openers, leading up to a climax on Halloween night according to how the players have conducted themselves up to this point. In the course of the novel, there are attacks and killings shifting the balance, but also friendships and enmity. The author's style is to suggest things without spelling them out openly, to keep the reader's interest. Deceptions keep the story lively too, along with the black and white line drawings by the late Gahan Wilson in his inimitable style. One of the chapters is an homage to one of the worlds invented by H. P. Lovecraft and there are a few other references to entities of his mythos throughout. On the 31st there is the big showdown with a couple of twists I didn't see coming, and an abrupt ending.

I was glad to have been able to read this during the month of October as a number fans have done year after year, but I think fans of experimental fantasy can enjoy this at any time.

I pre-ordered this book when I heard it was coming out. It's a little bit different from this author's previous three books in that it focuses mainly on the relationship between two male characters, the brothers Peter and Ivan. The two of them are working through the grief caused by recent death of their father, along with their issues concerning dominance along with a little streak of violence. The main secondary relationships are between the two brothers and their romantic partners. Peter had a long-term relationship end unexpectedly after his girlfriend Sylvia suffered injuries in an accident and current girlfriend Naomi who is about 10 years younger than he. Between the confusion with the two girlfriends and his work stresses and his recent grief he's taken to taking pills and drinking to excess. Younger brother Ivan is a high-ranking chess player who meets a woman during a an exhibition game and immediately has a relationship with her even though she's about 14 years older than him. This woman Margaret has a separation from her husband because of mental issues of his own, but the arrangement has not been formalized. This set up a sort of a parallel structure between the two mismatched age relationships of Peter and Naomi on the one hand and Margaret and Ivan on the other. All of these characters are drawn with some degree of sympathy and also with a careful attention to their various shortcomings and faults .In one of these there's much more of a power imbalance than in the other.

Much of the story is told in in the form of dialogue, along with quite a few long unbroken paragraphs of stream of consciousness prose experienced via the point of view of one of the major characters. Within one of these paragraphs there may be inner thoughts, bits of dialogue, random observations, stated intentions for action, or details of description, all mixed together. At times their unfiltered interior monologue is at odds with the character's speech or action. It's hard not to notice the similarities and differences between this author's use of that technique and the ones who first pioneered it in the early 20th century.

The tone is realistic and the bits of narration are relatively matter of fact. There are a number of scenes of a sexual nature for all of the couples, presented in the author's trademark style of dispassionate description. I think these scenes are for a mature reader, but don't require strong trigger warnings. They are important for story reasons, not gratuitous, depicting character, and providing key plot points. There is one scene of physical violence between the brothers, too, but it is relatively restrained. When it happens the reader is left wondering whether it constitutes a final rupture in relations between the two or not but and by the end of the story things are sorted out. To me the motif about love relationships across age boundaries seemed rather mildly transgressive, if anything, but perhaps it is a matter of a slightly different culture from mine. It felt to me as though the way this novel ended featured muted fireworks compared to some of the author's other books. Here there are confrontations and some strong feelings expressed, but in the end everything just gets smoothed out. I think some other readers might prefer to see higher stakes. By the end I was wondering whether some of the novelist's decisions were colored by human interactions compared to a chess game, with sacrifices, risks taken, plans on top of other plans depending on what one's adversary is going to do. The analogy is not perfect in that people will hide what their doing in ways chess doesn't allow, unlike a game like poker.

As an epilogue, the author lays forth the many literary borrowings and illusions that she managed to incorporated into the text. It was as though she did not want to lift these lines without acknowledging them and being called out for it. There are a few other details in the book that felt as though they might play a bigger role in ratcheting up the tension, things that seemed as though they were going to constitute a subplot, but which ultimately led to no big payoff. When one of the characters mused upon feelings regarding self-harm I did not take them too seriously. I will dock the book a star for not being quite as daring as it could have been, but I'm still glad I read it.

I read the first book in the series three years ago and unfortunately forgot most of the backstory of the main antagonists and secondary characters. I think I must have skipped the second book entirely which probably contained some plot points I could have used. There are a lot of characters whose stories did not hit with the right impact with me as a result.

This space opera trilogy about the captain and crew of an interstellar cargo ship tasked with saving all the civilizations in the universe sets the reader on a treadmill early on. It felt like a series of difficulties which eventually all point in the same direction, without confusing branches. There is one excursion along the way in the form of an unforced error, but by that time I was already certain they would find a way out of their jam eventually, with no chance of severe inconvenience. So I never really felt the personal stakes were very high, in contrast to what some other science fiction stories would do.

The strongest part of the book is in the writing of the viewpoint character Eva Innocente whose voice is much stronger than any of the others, whether friend or enemy. She's a fiery but sometimes vulnerable individual with a tendency to shoot off her mouth, always capturing the spotlight even when there might be giant mecha or other colossal spectacles around. She might not be to everyone's taste, but might be just the right thing for a reader who doesn't like to read about any truly dark and depressing situations.

This was a challenging book to consume in audiobook form. It demands the listener to understand concepts in political philosophy and political sociology, to construct an awareness of 18th century European history, and put aside preconceptions of the intent of the author, all in an aural format. some words such as "sovereign" and "magistrate" turn out to have a meaning different from what I thought at first. Also, some of the writings here come down to us in a fragmentary form so things are not as orderly as one would like. The author is building on and replying to earlier political science and economics works by Montesquieu, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and others on specific points so some of the intent is probably lost when those other works aren't at hand. Despite all the difficulties, it was an engaging piece of scholarship.

As suggested by the title there are a number of pieces included here along with Of the Social Contract - Principles of the Right of War, Letters Written from the Mountains, Constitutional Proposal for Corsica, and Considerations on the Government of Poland. I actually thought the last two sets of essays were the most interesting because the author has to deal with specifics of how one implements a new system of government and not just talking about idealized concepts. Neither of the plans ended up going into effect because of circumstances, not because of inherent weaknesses.

To the extent that the author is remembered these days it is as a progenitor of the revolutions happening around 1800, but these texts show that the connection is not so straightforward. It is not the case that Rousseau favors liberty over monarchy or oligarchy. At times the recommendation is explicitly the opposite, sometimes for pragmatic reasons that became clearer during the revolutions decades later. There's an excitement when some far out idea puts in an appearance. One of these was the advice to deny voting rights to men who weren't married with children. It reminded me of when this idea popped up again during the 2024 US presidential campaign.

It's been a long time since I've picked up a horror book so I grabbed this one when I saw it at the library. I knew about this author from back when he used to make appearances on podcasts before his writing career really took off. I would say that the title gives the summary of the book only if one applies a couple of adjustments. It isn't really much of a 'guide' except perhaps by example. The book club ladies' scheme nearly fails at several points, however. But more importantly, there's only one character that might be classified as a vampire, not multiple 'vampires.' The first 60% of the book was a fairly easy non-strenuous read where you're introduced to the major characters and it drills into the societal values of Charleston. Then it takes a hard turn where the viewpoint character, Patricia Campbell, gets into trouble, landing in the hospital. Then there's a jump in time, another call to action, and things come to a climax. That's when it hits its stride going deep into dark places along with a fair amount of gore and graphic content culminating in the main big action sequence. It's definitely concentrates all the disturbing content in one place here.

I did like the gentle satire of the first part of the book, then repelled by the graphic violence and macabre nature of the second part of the book which the author intends. The trouble is I had a hard time sympathizing with Patricia enough to feel she earned the ending. She was the one that set off the inciting event, but she didn't actually play a part in the 'slaying.' I also did not like the bad guy protagonist he didn't really convince me at any point along the way that he was anything other than bad news and I would have liked to see a little more smoke and mirrors put up to disguise his evil nature. I think the author may have gone just a little bit too far making the male characters as awful as possible. Couldn't there have been at least one who wasn't absolutely worthless? I think I would have enjoyed seeing the one character of a marginalized identity, Mrs. Greene, as the viewpoint character in this story instead. I can tell that this is not the story that the author wanted to write, though.

That said, I would say that this is a competently written book by an author who knows his way around the horror genre with a bunch of other novels to his credit. I guess I would say that I'm really not the right audience for this book. Horror fans would mainly be much more receptive to the dark turn that this book takes towards the end. As a native of South Carolina, the author knows the setting in depth and it does show. Although I turned out not to be superfan in this case I do have one other of the author's novels on my to be read list and might just dip into that around Halloween time this year if I get a chance.

I am pretty sure I read this long ago but this time I remembered virtually nothing about it. I picked this up as a second-hand paperback heavily highlighted by its previous owner(s), probably for a school assignment. All I really recalled was how the story was told from the point of view of a secondary character, Nick Carraway, who knows as little about the title character initially as we do and has to work out his attitude to all the principals as he meets them. What I was mainly interested in was the reputation it has had since its publication in 1925. The writing shows its age but I did notice the care the author took with each of the characters to establish a clear voice, and with the settings to help the reader imagine what it felt like to experience along with the characters. There are a few flourishes of colloquial, non-academic speech I noticed and some passages of emotional description to enhance the mood, whether during a boozy party, a tense situation rising toward violence, or the deep melancholy at the end. Carraway is taken with his enigmatic friend Gatsby and we the readers have to work out how far to go in along the same direction, or to instead reject that point of view as we are presented with that character's flaws. All the characters are messed up in various ways and the social environment can also come in for criticism. This book was closer to a novella, with just the Carraway/Baker subplot against the main story with the two love triangles. I wasn't drawn in as much with this as with the novels I enjoy the most but appreciate the chance to renew my acquaintance with this 99-year old standard.

I have let this book sit on my shelf for years since it came out, but now that the author's social media activity has ticked up it seems like this moment of peril is the right point to read it through. It is part memoir and part biography written without the cooperation of its subject, but viewed at close quarters. I decided the author is able to put forth an honest portrayal of Donald Trump despite her personal stakes in calling out his actions that deprived her of a large inheritance. I think there is enough detail here to back up the claims when combined with other stories of the rise of businessman Trump and other objective of his character. Behind it all is the author's grandfather who built the real estate empire in Brooklyn and who was responsible for Trump's strange psychology by encouraging his lying, applauding the flamboyance, and demonstrating that a total lack of morals is no impediment to a capitalist. The first three quarters of the book takes the story to the 1990s, and then came a rapid shift to the presidential era and its chaos. There is no attempt to analyze the subject at a deep level since his behavior is well accounted for by just a few basic childhood experiences forming the basis of his broken personality. I would not call it a must read, but I think it will be a reference of lasting value historically.