Oh, god, I let this go too long. I’ve been watering trees for a local nonprofit all summer, so I’ve been holed up in a very slow, very wet truck listening to audiobooks for most of the time since we got back to the states. I even managed to read some physical books in the meantime. So, without further ado:

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez.

(Previously reviewed by Edgar here.)

A fascinating book that follows a father and son as they attempt to escape a cult in Argentina during the 80s and 90s. In the world of the story, the cult’s esoteric cosmology is at least referring to something real, and their efforts to explain it draw from indigenous South American legends (specifically that of the syncretic Catholic-Guarani San La Muerte and the Chiloté Imbunche) and western esotericism (goetic demons are discussed and the recurring alchemical formula of solve et coagula is referenced), which comes out as a strange and heady mix. There is the intimation, though, that these are just convenient conceptual handles that people are putting on a real, and potentially deadly phenomenon that doesn’t directly map onto them.

The book has a rather tangled timeline, and dissecting that and setting it in order is part of the pleasure of digesting the plot, as it is with most such books that are well-written, which this book certainly is. It’s a real rabbit hole, and you have to understand that the narrative as described in the first portion is going to be superseded and elaborated on a great deal by what is narrated “after” it. As such, I imagine that it would be a book that rewards repeated reading. Highly recommended.

The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel.

(Referenced in my piece on High Strangeness and the UAP phenomenon.)

Something of a let-down, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t expecting it to map onto the movie — and it didn’t — but I thought there would be a more focused and narrative approach to the story presented. It comes across as more of a collection of vignettes that communicate a specific mood of being on the verge of something, which I’m given to understand is characteristic of the phenomenon being discussed.

It is largely a collection of stories about researching a number of anomalous phenomena in West Virginia in 1966 and 1967. I say “anomalous phenomena” because Keel is skeptical of the concept of extraterrestrial visitors, instead holding to what is commonly called (by those who study such things) the “ultraterrestrial hypothesis: mothman, UFOs, and other such things are entities that live somewhere in the penumbra of our awareness and occasionally emerge into our full awareness for some unknown reason.

Specifically, the theory that he holds is that they are epiphenomena of a kind of psychic field generated by humanity, called into being by the stories that we tell about them, and paying close (and potentially dangerous) attention to those that explore the phenomenon itself.

There is some writing in here that is quite good, I feel — some passages that give a great deal to think about, for example:

Once we begin looking beyond the mere manifestations we will finally glimpse the real truth. Belief has always been the enemy of truth; yet, ironically, if our minds are supple enough, belief can sometimes open the door.
After spending a lifetime in Egyptian tombs, among the crumbling temples of India and the lamaseries of the Himalayas, endless nights in cemeteries, gravel pits, and hilltops everywhere, I have seen much and my childish sense of wonder remains unshaken. But Charles Fort's question always haunts me: "If there is a universal mind must it be sane?"

But, on the other hand, if you’re looking for something well-documented and with additional sources checked and rechecked, then you’re going to be disappointed. There most likely isn’t such a source about this phenomenon, because it resists such inquiry to some extent (and has, also, been exiled from the realm of acceptable knowledge. Whether it was exiled because it’s pure bunk or not is not for me to say.)

Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World by Timothy Morton.

(previously reviewed by Edgar here.)

A fascinating read, though not one I’m sure I got all of, due to my lack of background in Object-Oriented Ontology. Still, the framework of Hyperobjects is a useful one, handy for making sense of some of the massive, non-local issues that we deal with: climate change, nuclear weapons, plastic, and the like. However, I think it is important to remember that a “hyperobject” is not necessarily a negative or evil thing. Civilization is a hyperobject, what we commonly construct as “nature” is a hyperobject (though Morton is skeptical of that framework as well, which is something I sympathize with.)

It’s a useful read, and probably the most essential nonfiction that I tackled during this period.

Conserve and Control by Otter Lieffe.

(Not on Bookshop, link goes to author’s site.)

A novel I bought in physical form from a CNT-run bookstore while in Barcelona, from their small English-language section. I wanted to buy something from there other than a set of Zapatista postcards, but my grasp of Spanish was somewhat too limited to get much out of the lion’s share of the stock.

While Conserve and Control could be read on its own, it’s important to understand that it’s the middle volume of a trilogy, which began with Murmurs and Murmurations and concludes with Dignity. All three are ecologically-focused works of queer science fiction that deal with life in a place simply referred to as “the State” in much of the trilogy, and as “Espera” in Conserve and Control. In the volume I read, it was positioned as a kind of Ecomodernist green liberal state, in which issues of identity and environment were pushed as far left as they could go with capitalism still in place. The story is split between two conservation workers that are hunting funding to continue their project and an underpaid security guard who falls into a BDSM relationship with a wealthy businessman in the conservation industry.

It was a rewarding read that raised a lot of questions, though I do feel that the plot wandered a bit. Still, right on the surface, Lieffe does a good job of examining a false utopia and portraying a sort of shifted English language in the way that the characters speak (the “th” sound has largely been dropped in favor of a simple “t”, which was less of a roadblock than I initially thought it would be.)

On the whole, I enjoyed it, though I do wish I had started the series at the beginning.

Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1) by Mervyn Peake.

A classic of weird fantasy, the Gormenghast series is positioned as the work that informed the creation of the British wing of the New Weird movement, typified by China Miéville. The series — originally planned to reach five books, but left unfinished at Peake’s death — was not about the titular castle, but about the life of the titular character of this first book, the Seventy-Seventh Earl of Groan, who rules the monolithic Gormenghast castle.

In this first book, Titus is an infant, it begins with his birth and finishes before he is able to speak, meaning that he’s something of a non-entity in the plot, though he is the focus of most of the characters, especially his father, Lord Sepulchrave Groan, but not his mother Gertrude, who is more interested in her cats and birds. Instead, the book largely concerns the machinations of the social climber Steerpike, who begins the book as a kitchen boy under the monstrous head cook, Abiatha Swelter, escapes and wanders the castle before Titus’s elder sister, Fuschia, discovers him passed out in the attic of her wing of the castle. Steerpike convinces Fuschia and her nurse, Nannie Slagg, to take him to the chambers of Doctor Alfred Prunesquallor, where Steerpike convinces the doctor and his sister, Irma to take him on as a servant and an apprentice to the doctor.

The story goes on from there, but that brief slice of summary covers the first quarter or so of the book, and gives a certain intimation of the sort of plotline, and the sort of characters. The names are an utter delight, strange and dripping with a fantastic mouth-feel that makes you repeat them if you summarize the book.

In many ways, it brings to mind the Addams Family, liberated from the context of prosaic America that makes them into a comedy — given a staff of servants and turned inward on themselves, it becomes a labyrinthine tragedy. This is not to say that it is merely a book of intrigue and downfall — it is that, but a key sequence later on involves a knife fight in the dark between two characters with a sleepwalker between the two of them that they must under no circumstances cause to awaken. It is an incredibly tense sequence, and some of the best combat writing I’ve seen in a long time.

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse.

I was looking for another read, and I thought this one would help me extend my “ludo-analysis series”, and while there were certain things that might be lifted and used with modification, Carse is primarily a religious scholar and the book feels like a sort of esoteric self-help book. If you’re into that sort of thing, especially if you’re a fan of aphorisms or “probes” (to use McLuhan’s construction of such things) then it might be more interesting.

Not as rewarding as I hoped, but only a small investment of time. It was quite short.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca.

(Reviewed by Edgar here.)

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

An epistolary novel focusing on the relationship between two women in the early days of the internet, kicked off by the sale of an apple peeler. The relationship quickly becomes overly close and unhealthy, going beyond simple BDSM into rather darker and more disturbing territory.

It evokes many of the paranoias about the early internet, which may not necessarily be legible to younger readers: in the early period of internet use, it was considered dangerous to give out one’s real name, and to form personal connections with people who you didn’t know in person — this is something that has largely fallen by the wayside (I mean, I married someone I met on the internet. Clearly I didn’t take this advice to heart in the same way.) However, if you were to transport this book back to the late 1990s, a reader might be shocked and appalled by the ending, but the horrible events leading up to that ending would have been perfectly legible to them.

It is a very quick read, but a hard sit. If you’re looking for something to put you off your lunch, this is one to go with.

A Black and Endless Sky by Matthew Lyons.

I previously reviewed Lyons’s The Night Will Find Us back at the end of last year. I was originally looking for this book, but it was unavailable at the time.

This story involves two siblings — Jonah and Nell Talbot — as they drive from San Francisco to Albuquerque. The younger of the two, Jonah, is recently divorced; the elder, Nell, never got her life on track. The two of them have a certain amount of friction, and are both haunted to one degree or another.

The plot really kicks off when the two of them get in a bar fight with a group of bikers in a run down bar in the back highways of inland California. This would have been bad enough, even without Nell glassing one of them who turns out to be an epileptic. The biker dies on the spot — meaning that Nell has accidentally committed a murder, and made it a matter of principle for the dead biker’s brother.

The two of them manage to get away, but after Jonah falls asleep in the passenger seat, he wakes up to find Nell gone and the car driven off road into the desert, right to the edge of some kind of abandoned excavation project: he enters, and finds a great open pit, leading down to a subterranean labyrinth of black glass, and evidence that Nell went in of her own volition.

This was a solid read — Lyons has workmanlike prose most of the time, but can wax lyrical when the mood strikes him, and has a solid command of adult sibling dynamics.

I have to say, while I thought The Night Will Find Us was good enough, I am a major fan of the recent trend — typified by this book and the work of the next author I’m reviewing — of actual adults being made the protagonist of this kind of horror or adventure novel, instead of the normal focus on teenagers. The use of an older protagonist brings with it another set of concerns that are excellent when properly realized. Usually, this boils down to some variation of the feeling that the protagonist, as an adult, should not be getting involved in the kind of bullshit that is normally reserved for adolescent characters in fiction. However, as Lyons demonstrates quite ably, there are a number of plot hooks that can be deployed for older characters that are simply not available in the same way for younger ones.

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher.

(Previously reviewed by Edgar here.)

A pretty typical, though wonderfully executed Woman-in-House novel. It follows out of work academic Sam Montgomery as she returns to her mother’s (formerly her grandmother’s) house in North Carolina, where she encounters a small cast of eccentric characters, including a wildlife rehabilitator who is taking care of a one-winged vulture and a handyman who comes by to look in on his paranoid elderly relative.

To be fair — young woman moves in with an older relative in North Carolina and deals with a supernatural menace with the help of a small cast of eccentrics that happen to be nearby? This summary can apply to three of Kingfisher’s novels. One might expect it to get kind of samey, but just as I’ll watch whatever David Lynch puts out about weird things happening on American backroads or in the Hollywood Hills, so will I read whatever Kingfisher puts out in the horror mode. I’ll let you know when I get tired of it. The real pleasure is how she connects it to the broader world of strange things happening — previously she wrote fix-ups of early weird fiction tales, here she’s writing about Thelema and Jack Parsons. Subjects which, admittedly, don’t really connect to North Carolina at all.

All that being said, I would say that I do somewhat wish this one was longer. I might recommend it to people willing to try horror stories but not willing to commit to a whole novel; for those who are willing to commit, I might go ahead and recommend her earlier works, specifically The Hollow Places.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

In a future where interstellar travel is achieved by uploading and downloading consciousness across interstellar distances, it is cognitive ability that allows for force to be exercised. The lead character of this and subsequent books, Takeshi Kovacs, is an “envoy” — a heavily trained and adaptable individual who is somewhere between a super soldier and a super spy (super guerilla?) who turned to crime after being discharged and has been entrapped by an ancient and powerful multi-trillionaire “Methuselah” named Laurens Bancroft in a job: to find out who killed Bancroft and made it look like a suicide.

I actually thought the Netflix show of the same name was quite good for what it was. It wasn’t breaking new ground, but it was good enough to have on in the background and watch for a bit. However, I must advise people that have found my reviews enlightening and agreeable in the past to consider skipping this book.

There are two reasons: first, a great deal of time is spent on two primary topics — guns and the female form. This is not, in itself, objectionable to me, but the integration of the firearms and breasts into the narrative fell flat because it really feels like Morgan’s vocabulary on these topics is more limited than his fascination with them. There are sex scenes. I do not think that the sex scenes land. I am not constitutionally against sex scenes, personally, but a sex scene that isn’t working for you can sour you on a whole book.

Second, and what I would consider to be a greater travesty, is that Morgan commits one of the cardinal sins of not just science fiction but all genre fiction: he does not commit to the bit. The central premise, that the human mind can be uploaded and downloaded and copied and transferred into bodies ranging from the fully robotic to designer flesh, is there to justify certain elements of the plot but clearly annoyed the author to the point where he imposed strict limits that were not clearly justified or interrogated: it’s punishable by true death to have multiple copies of the same mind; the Catholics are the only religion that has a problem with copying the mind (I get the feeling that religions with an actual doctrine of reincarnation might have some words on this one), and cross-sex sleeving is treated as akin to being half dead — or maybe the biological equivalent of being homeless. I can’t help but feel that, if it were possible to just swap out one body for another like one might swap one car for another (that is, with a fair amount of cost and paperwork), gender essentialism would be reduced to roughly the same level of validity as the theory of Humours after a few centuries — which the story grants, fairly easily.

Roger Zelazny made something of the same move in Lord of Light, but (a) he was a better writer, and (b) was writing forty years earlier and I feel that there is evidence he grew throughout his life. Morgan, on the other hand, last I checked, had lined up behind J.K. Rowling — so I’m going to guess that the gender things are not simply lazy worldbuilding.

Addendum: somehow, strangely, the Netflix series avoids the majority of these problems.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Okay, so I read two books that were later adapted to Netflix series. So sue me. I’m not promoting them, I’m reading the books and figuring out what was seen in them.

Technically, The Last Wish is #0 in the series, it’s a collection of vignettes that fall before the beginning of the first proper novel in the series. The best way to think about them, I believe, is this: take a Brother’s Grimm story of your choosing, and then have Clint Eastwood from A Fistful of Dollars crash into it at about the 30% mark and resolve it in a fashion roughly befitting that character transposed into a fairly traditional fantasy setting.

While not the best writing I’ve ever encountered, after finishing Altered Carbon it felt like a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, and might track down future books in the series, though it’s not a pressing, immediate thing for me.

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Cameron's Book Round-Up: July and Early August 2023