Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

 

Well, this was a bit of a disappointment. Not *horrible*, but a bit bland. and with stakes that in the end seemed abruptly lower--in the sense the POV character's life wasn't really in danger--than they really were. Also, the author solved the problem of mobile phones by setting the novel in like 1994, which I would have been happier about if it had been explicit, if I hadn't had to piece it together from clues and hints scattered throughout.

The City We Became and The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin

Read these over the weekend. They're a duology, because Ms. Jemisin ... lost the will to complete it as a planned trilogy but wasn't going to leave it unfinished. Really, *The City We Became* could have served well as a standalone novel--I thought it ended just fine--but the escalation in *The World We Make* made sense. There are some things in both books that pay off in surprising ways, and Ms. Jemisin writes smooth and engaging and funny as hell.

All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby

 

I ... don't think I have words for how good this novel is. I've describe reading Cosby in conversation as being like French-kissing an electric light socket (don't French-kiss an electric light socket, that'd *hurt*) and this novel is as electrifying as his others. There's less vengeance in this than in *My Darkest Prayer* or *Razorblade Tears* but at least as much pain; guilt and grief twine in the background like vines. Bigotry and abuse of power flash at all angles. Read Cosby--unlike French-kissing an electric light socket, it won't kill you.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

 

So, this book is doing weird things in the meta--one of the conceits is that the first-person POV character, the "I" of the novel, has written "how to write a mystery novel" books, so the narrator goes to great lengths to demonstrate that he's "playing fair." That ... strangely, doesn't interfere with this working as a reasonable modern take on a Fair Play Mystery, at least to my not-deeply-involved-in-the-genre taste, without at all coming across (to me) as anything like a satire. The voice is reasonably engaging, and the characters are ... fun to find in a book, though I honestly wouldn't want to spend more real-world time with them than necessary.

How to Find Your Way in the Dark by Derek B. Miller

 

This is an interesting and very amusing book. Not goofy-funny like Christopher Moore or Terry Pratchett, but still soaked in humor. One of the blurbs uses the word "Jew-noir," and it's very noir and very Jewish. It's also, I think, something of a bildungsroman, though that's not a position I'm willing to die in a ditch over. While there's pain and vengeance in the novel, it's much more lighthearted than, for instance, S.A. Cosby; that's fine, there's room for them both.

Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

 

Spent the afternoon and evening reading this. While the title story is distinctly weird--the word I'd go for is "surreal," though that might not have been in the vocabulary yet when Kafka was writing--most of the stories here seem better described as "neurotic." The big takeaway for me is that fiction from 100-ish years ago is going to be *alien*, whatever the intent, and that's almost certainly amplified by works being in translation (though I've had bad experiences with works in translation, this wasn't one). There are some fragmentary-seeming things that don't really resolve, which these days I might be inclined to call "prose poems," and those tend to work less well than the stories, probably because what makes them work in German simply doesn't convey to English.

Machine: A White Space Novel by Elizabeth Bear

 

Wrapped the last couple-hundred pages of this after gaming tonight. It started a little slowly, a little dryly, but it got moving the last third or so--and some of the wit and humor I remembered from *Ancestral Night* appeared. It's been a couple-three years since I read that novel, and I don't remember much of it, but this novel stands more than well enough on its own.