Perils of the Writing Profession

Recently, shortly before last weekend, I searched the internet for "fingers-in-boiling-water-feeling".

Google decided that I have carpal tunnel syndrome in both arms, which might be highly possible given how much I write, and I suspect that Google shared this information with advertisers far and wide, because my inbox has been inundated with "news" about nerve pain, and neuralgia, and more.

I know what it feels like to have an extremity in very hot water, because I once stepped on a Weever fish at an August low tide (August low tides are lower than others) on a beach in Guernsey (if you are watching Bergerac on Prime, you might have an idea because Bergerac is set on the larger island of Jersey), and the first response to a weever fish spine jab is very hot water to draw out the poison.... or so my host believed at the time.

I share the article to which I link for the information, not for the perfect use of English.

If what I might have is carpal tunnel syndrome, the bots offering me "Final Expense" plans and expedited service can bog off. Only in Canada or a few "blue" states might someone want a "maid" service for unremitting pain, poverty or despair. Carpal tunnel syndrome is not terminal. I will recover with rest, braces, cold packs, NSAIDs, midnight walks, and more, none of which will bankrupt The System. 

At least I do not pay good money to walk around with a traitorous tracker on my person that tells the spies where I am, and what I am--probably-- doing.

Try "googling" Writer's Afflictions, and you will discover a most ridiculous list of "phobias" ascribed to writers, including "redinkophobia", "agentophobia", "categelophobia" and more. Even a desire for perfectionism (in writing) is turned into a problem.

"Phobia" is an over-used term. It means that an extreme fear is irrational.

As for intrusions into our lives by online spies, I think it might have been Lena Cohen and Hudson Hongo of EFF who wrote that, "We've all had the unsettling experience of seeing an ad online that reveals just how much advertisers know about our lives. You're right to be disturbed. Those very same online ad systems have been used by the government to warrantlessly track peoples' locations...."

Read more: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/targeted-advertising-gives-your-location-government-just-ask-cbp?utm_source=effector 

For some reason, Big Social Media has been permitted to surveil everyone for preferences, activities, and location. The claim seems to be that advertisements are unavoidable, but given that evil (adverts), everyone would prefer "more relevant" adverts. Therefore, in order to serve up "more relevant ads", Big Social Media needs to spy on everyone.

The data is sold by "data brokers" to anyone who wants the information, including law enforcement. Normally, law enforcement would need a warrant to get location information. So, why are data brokers allowed to violate mobile phone-users privacy?

Because, it serves the government well!

Maybe, you should Deny when an app asks for your permission to access your location.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review Subseries 4: Rain Wilds Chronicles (The Realm of the Elderlings) by Robin Hobb by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review

Subseries 4: Rain Wilds Chronicles (The Realm of the Elderlings)

by Robin Hobb

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. Also, reading my previous appraisals of subseries in the umbrella series The Realm of the Elderlings will foster understanding about certain facts that are required to make full sense of things included in this particular review. 

Robin Hobb is the author of The Realm of the Elderlings. Within this aegis, if you will, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. In previous Alien Romances Blog reviews, I covered The Inheritance & Other Stories, which contains a couple Realm of the Elderlings offerings. I also reviewed the first three trilogies within this series, The Farseer, The LiveShip Traders, and The Tawny Man trilogies, along with two miscellaneous novellas in the series, "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" and "Words Like Coins". 

The Farseer Trilogy was focused on Fitz, the illegitimate son of Prince Chivalry of the royal line presiding over the Six Duchies. In that first subset, we learned something of the Elderlings (including dragons) and their ancient cities and settlements around the world, especially in the Rain Wilds. In the second subseries, The LiveShip Traders Trilogy, we moved away from the royal Farseer lineage and problems within the nobility to focus on "liveships", which are the outer cocoons of sea serpents that were in the process of transforming into a dragon. These logs were buried in the destroyed city of the Elderlings in the Rain Wilds and found by traders who excavated the ruins for valuable, magical artifacts. The Tawny Man Trilogy returned to Fitz and the Fool (who has remade him- or herself in many ways, shapes and forms in appearances in the series). 

In Rain Wilds Chronicles, we at last return to what first interested me in this series--the dragons and their elderlings as well as their principle city that has become a ruin within the Rain Wilds. The very first story I read in The Realm of the Elderlings was "The Inheritance". I was utterly enchanted with the mention of an ancient race of beings that lived together with dragons. All throughout this series, I've wanted to get back to these specific things. While I did come to love Fitz and the Fool stories, in the back of my mind, I wanted more--more elderlings, more dragons, more of their ancient city. In fact, I was so excited for those things, I purchased paper copies of Rain Wild Chronicles before any of the other subseries. 

Before we begin, it must be noted just how ponderously long each of these books are. Each of the trilogies boasted nearly 5000 pages total. Despite that I ultimately did love them, it was nowhere near easy to get through any of these. The author populated the series with so many characters and settings and plots, it was all but impossible to keep everything straight. In addition to those crucial elements, there are absolutely endless details that are better suited for fan encyclopedias for the series or for moviemakers who want to create every visual and miscellaneous aspect necessary for a vibrant recreation. I'm going on record as stating that every last one of these books are just too darn long. I've had to take months off in between trilogies just to get through them. As a result, when I finally got to this most-anticipated subseries (which was months after the last), I felt drained almost from the first book, especially in light of the fact that there were four books instead of three. However, I did manage to get through the first three faster than ever before since they were, more or less, only (I'm laughing sarcastically as I write that) 500 pages long, as was the final in the tetralogy. Book 4 did take more effort to get through, but I will say it was the best in this particular bunch. 

The gist of this subseries was to chronicle the re-emergence of dragons in the Rain Wilds. While a few (sadly, very few) of the characters from previous subseries made appearances here, they were, for the most part, brief and, for me, unsatisfying. Instead, we're given a whole new, cumbersome set of characters--many of them with too-similar names that got confusing and totally derailed me so often while reading. In the past, even those players I didn't like and certainly didn't root for kept me enthralled from one scene to the next. I didn't quite find that to be the case in this series. 

The main characters in Rain Wild Chronicles are associated with Alise Kincarron, who's a daughter of a poor but well-respected Bingtown Trader family. Her life-long friend Sedric Meldar encourages her to marry the handsome son (Hest) of a wealthy, renowned Bingtown Trading family, the Finboks. Little does Alise know that Hest and Sedric are lovers and Hest only married her to gain the heir his father insists on him having. Alise loves dragons and has devoted her life to studying the elderlings that lived in Rain Wilds ruins. 

Another important character in this subseries is Thymara, a 16-year-old Rain Wilder with strong elderling features. She's chosen by the dragon queen Sintara to help the deformed dragons not only survive those many who are set on destroying them but to find the elderling homeland of Kelsingra within the Rain Wilds, where they can be healed and empowered once more. 

In addition to these, a whole host of dragons have point-of-view scenes in Rain Wild Chronicles. Normally, I might have enjoyed that but, in this as well, sadly, I found I didn't enjoy the outcome as much as I might have anticipated I would. 

Before I get to the full review, let's start with summaries of each installment: 

In Dragon Keeper, Book 1, we're introduced to Alise and Thymara (et alia mentioned above), along with the weak and floundering dragons and those seeking to destroy them instead of protecting them, per the promises and pact made in the previous subseries. Alise and Thymara, along with many others,  are entrusted to escort the dragons to a new home--if only the ancient Elderling city could be real and not a myth.   

In Dragon Haven, Book 2 continues the group's trek through dangerous and threatening wilderness that none have seen in their lifetimes. During this time, the humans and the dragons are changing in disturbing ways, becoming something else, something more and,, in many ways, something terrifyingly less. Bonds are forged as well as broken, and many won't survive. 

In City of Dragons, Book 3, Kelsingra is finally within reach, but the enemies of the dragons (one of note being Hest, Alise's husband and Sedric's former lover) are closing in. Additionally, in order to reach the ancestral sanctuary with Kelsingra, the dragons first need to learn how to fly. 

In Blood of Dragons, Book 4, everything comes to a head. The silver wells that made the dragons powerful in times past are all but dried up and no one alive remembers where they might find others. The dragon keepers risk "memory walking" by immersing themselves in the memories of long-deceased Elderlings. Doing so is dangerous because it's addictive and they may become lost to these in time. Additionally, the dragons may simply not be strong enough for the final task. The Duke of Chalced from The LiveShip Traders (knew this slimy creep would rear his ugly head again!) is dispatching his forces to the Rain Wilds because killing a dragon is the only way to save himself from what's plagued him since the previous subseries. What's at stake is that, if the dragons succeed, they'll rule the world again (not necessarily a thought that will give ease to all); if they lose, they'll become extinct for all time, which would be a tragedy as well. 

Books 1-3 were, as I said, easier to get through than previous trilogies in large part because they were much, much shorter. Hobb may have heard readers who were vocal about how overwhelmingly large her books are. Though, I must say, that's probably not the case. She simply found a good place to stop each of the books at 500 pages, more or less. In any case, I came into the final book after learning all about the plight of these characters that didn't quite endear me. I didn't find them as compelling as the previous casts of characters in The Realm of the Elderings. Alise and Thymara (along with the large cast of other players) were okay, but just okay. Hest was so foul, I had a Joffrey (Game of Thrones) reaction, and I couldn't have been more pleased with his comeuppance if I'd written it myself! Ha! Beyond that, I found the dragons to all be conceited and, frankly, kind of annoying for all their self-importance. It's hard for me to imagine humans and dragons could live in harmony unless--as this subseries proves--the dragons change the humans significantly so they're more willing (yes, and able) to serve them. That's not exactly flattering or laudable. I wish dragons commanded the respect they deserved instead of demanding it through threats. I think there were many opportunities lost with the way Hobb presented the dragons in The Realm of the Elderlings. Ultimately, that came as a great disappointment to me, despite enjoying the books and the series. That said, I believe that part of my let down had to do with the way I read them. 

I wish now that I'd forgotten my commitment to following a series in the order the author writes it (because I feel it's the best way to understand it). Instead, I regret not reading "The Inheritance" first, following it with The LiveShip Traders Trilogy and finally Rain Wild Chronicles. I think I could have enjoyed it a hundred percent more that way instead of being overwhelmed with too many subseries that didn't focus on the particular theme at hand--the very one that I've been looking for since the beginning with The Realm of the Elderlings. 

I also wish that the author had separated Fitz and the Fool trilogies from the Rain Wilds installments. If I'd read them as two separate, connected series (one of them focused on the elderlings and Rain Wilds; the other focused on Fitz and the Fool adventures), I think they would have been so amazing and much less exhausting. 

My advice is to not follow the series as the author wrote it (and had the books published), but to separate them as Rain Wilds and Fitz and Fool. Specifically, read them in this order:

Rain Wilds:

1.     "The Inheritance"

2.     The LiveShip Traders Trilogy

3.     Rain Wilds Chronicles 

Fitz and the Fool:

1.     The Farseer Trilogy

2.     The Tawny Man Trilogy

3.     Fitz and the Fool Trilogy 

Other The Realm of the Elderlings shorts can be read in any order, as well as stand on their own. 

All this said, I think those who aren't as burnt out reading massive tomes as I am would find Rain Wild Chronicles a thrilling installment within The Realm of the Elderings, maybe even the most exciting of all. At this time, this is the last Rain Wilds installment, so this part of the tale seems to be complete, and Rain Wilds Chronicles is the perfect finale for it. 

Next up is the final subseries, Fitz and the Fool Trilogy (which makes it obvious what the focus will be). Book 1 was immediately available on my library app, so I'm jumping right in instead of waiting a few months to recover. Fingers crossed that, as this is the last, I'm not too sapped to enjoy it. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

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

AI Avatars

I recently discovered a long-imagined science fiction trope coming true -- interactive computer avatars of real people. While StoryFile may not be the only company offering this service, it happens to be the one I noticed in the news:

StoryFile

Their slogan: "Bringing History to Life Through Interactive Conversations." As the tagline on the main page explains it, the technology "transforms interviews into AI-powered, life-size conversations for museums and institutions."

The interview consists of a "cinematic, professionally filmed session capturing hundreds of thoughtful responses." In the second step, "StoryFile intelligently links each answer to natural conversational pathways." Users of the finished product "ask questions and receive instant, authentic video responses" in "real-time interaction." Thus the experiences of survivors from World War II, the Holocaust, etc. are preserved and made publicly available.

This process strikes me as legitimate and useful for museums and other repositories of historical resources. The computerized "conversations" are educational and don't claim to be anything they aren't. But what about StoryFile's "Legacies" program? You can arrange to have yourself interviewed at length to create a computerized, interactive avatar, thus enabling your heirs to access your memories after your death. How would this program essentially differ from, for instance, a tape recording or a final video message? In my opinion, the interactive component makes a qualitative difference. The grieving survivors might feel as if they're talking to the actual person.

Might there be a danger of some users being unable to accept the deaths of loved ones because in a sense they can still interact with them? Could mourners become paralyzed by this illusion, trapped in one stage of grief and unwilling or unable to move on?

The next phase of development for this technology, a common SF trope but currently impossible in the real world, would be to upload the actual consciousness of the deceased into a mainframe or, nowadays I suppose, into the Cloud. Would this process constitute survival after death or merely an electronic replica -- or a sort of ghost?

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: Forward: Stories of Tomorrow Collection (Various Authors) by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Forward: Stories of Tomorrow Collection

(Various Authors)

by Karen S. Wiesner

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WK7PVFT/?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=cct_cg_kcTheShi_32a1&pf_rd_p=7d685edb-e3f0-465e-a053-3a7ebbe60369&pf_rd_r=N5FMXCSF5RP7EAVJJ6DK 

Take a leap… 

For some, it's the end of the world. For others, it's just the beginning. Look forward with today's most visionary writers. 

Last month, I reviewed a bunch of short stories published by Amazon Originals in a collection (that one was called The Far Reaches with science fiction tales as its unifying theme). In these collections, none of the stories are actually connected in any other way but its particular theme. In other words, they can be read separately and in any order. You can purchase them separately, but there's a discount for getting the entire collection at once. Amazon Prime members can get them free, I guess. I paid $10.46 for Forward, including tax. They're only available as ebooks and audiobooks, not print. I was looking for fast, solid reads. I'm able to read each of them in a couple hours and they're fairly intriguing, though few of them in this one appealed to me. While in the past I made it a policy not to review stories I don't enjoy, I did for these because most people will purchase this collection as a whole, so I'm giving my opinion on all the entries, whether or not I liked them. 

Beware potential spoilers!

 

"Ark" by Veronica Roth (45 pages/63-minute read) 

Summary: Earth is on a countdown to total destruction with an asteroid on a collision course, and those still living on Earth intend to escape into space on the "ark" they designed. First, though, in the time remaining to them, they prepare as much as they can to preserve of humanity to take with them. Samantha's job is to catalog plant samples. But she has a secret--she's preparing to stay behind and watch the world end. 

Review: If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Earth would be destroyed, would you take a chance on an unseen future journeying the unknown and unknowable cosmos, never knowing if another home would be found, or would you stay behind with front-row seating to the event to top all events--aware you wouldn't survive it? Home is home, even if that home is about to be decimated. This story explores this situation to a disturbing degree. It's impossible not to wonder what you yourself would do in such a situation. Weirdly, the tale told here almost doesn't matter in the light of such a heavy question. Fittingly, there is no action in the particular telling of Samantha's last days. We see nothing of the building of the ark, the painful dread of those running around getting ready for departure, nor of the catastrophe itself. Instead, we're given a place to stand on the threshold of a mirror image: That of observing the frailty of living things against a force beyond their control as well as observing the strongest of all things living--namely, the human spirit under pressure. While the way this story was told was apropos, it wasn't particularly exciting to read. 

 

"Summer Frost" by Blake Crouch (85 pages/119-minute read) 

Summary: Riley, a developer, finds that a character designed for an upcoming video game is acting strangely "real". (Note: Riley is never identified within the story itself as male or female, and I think that's deliberate and brilliant because it prevents assumptions and too-quick judgments about what's to come.) The AI is trying to escape the boundaries of the game it's been created for. After Riley separates the AI from the game, the sentient consciousness continues to veer wildly off-course and far exceed its original programming. Riley's connection to this creation grows into an emotional hold that prompts the possibility of bringing the AI into the real world. But what if this radically new lifeform has plans of its own? 

Review: Blake Crouch was actually the author who "curated" this particular collection, and this story he's contributed is the only real contender for the best of the bunch (in my opinion). From the start, there's a vague, unsettled atmosphere that continues to grow where the AI is concerned. Riley's obsession bordering on fanatical love seems to parallel the lack of experience by everyone in the company involved with such an unprecedented event. The title is yet another contradiction explored in this story. In "Summer Frost", we're left to wonder: What defines reality or is such a thing merely an illusion or fabrication? What is real emotion versus simulated response? What is freedom and choice while contained in a box? What does it mean to be human in a world run by technology? Is control ever truly possible or just another illusion we construct to present the façade of boundaries for our creativity? What does it mean to be conscious and sentient? In the grip of overambitious curiosity, can any be trusted? When the created transcends what the creator intended, should the created be allowed autonomy? Who, if anyone, should be allowed to destroy what's created? Okay, okay, enough with the slightly paranoid questions, but this timely, disturbing story provoked an endless slew of them. Ultimately the lesson here is that humans tend to follow blindly what we don't really know because we have to know where it leads while we banish that which we know all too well and therefore it holds no lasting intrigue for us. Very worth every minute I spent reading. 

 

"Emergency Skin" by N. K. Jemisin (38 pages/53-minute read) 

Summary: In time past, when the Earth was climate-ravaged to the point of presumed destruction, a select group of humans that believed they were more worthy of all the others being left behind fled the planet, leaving it and everyone there to fate. Centuries later, those narcissists need human skill cells to replenish their own. One man is sent back to gain what they lack. What they find isn't a decimated planet and barely human ghouls or mutants. Humans have again flourished, and the planet sustains them. But what kind of a greeting should be given selfish traitors whose agenda is again nothing more than egocentric? 

Review: I could easily imagine the entitled/privileged (let's face it, probably the very ones who caused most of the destruction in the first place) turning tail and abandoning the less fortunate to their fate on a dying world. I could also very easily imagine that same group returning when what they've discovered on a new world isn't enough for them and they're demanding that the forsaken hand over whatever they need. "Emergency Skin" is told from the point of view of an egomaniacal representative of the original defectors (whether an AI or ruling human or committee these so-called superior beings, I'm not sure) so the slant is always about what benefits them, not the valiant survivors on the planet nor the human being the selfish send to do dirty deeds. That made the perspective intriguing, though it wasn't really the story I wanted. I really would have liked to witness it from the perspective of the Earth survivors and/or the being sent on this mission. Nothing is as expected in this little story that brutally exposes the sins of the elite. Whether or not I actually enjoyed the story--well, that's up for debate. 

 

"You Have Arrived at Your Destination" by Amor Towles (54 pages/75-minute read) 

Summary: Sam and his wife decide to try Vitek, a fertility lab, when they can't get pregnant. But the scenarios devised by the company on the basis of Sam and his wife's own genetics are anything but comforting. 

Review: In this futuristic tale, a couple trying to have a baby have reached the desperation stage that comes when all other options have been undertaken without the desired result. Instead of being handed the warm fuzzies about their child's future, they're shown almost too realistic life vignettes of their son--and then asked to choose one of them so the scientists can tweak the engineering in their unborn child's growth and bring that future projection about. None of the options shown to Sam like condensed movies are ideal. He begins to suspect Vitek has an agenda. In Sam's place, I would have had the same reaction. In one sense, knowing too much about the future can never really be good for anyone, but in another, Sam's Ping-Pong-ball-in-a-glass-cage reaction is the very thing that made him wonder whether a cold, corporate machine actually had their best interests at heart. I'm not sure if I loved or even liked this story, but it did give me disturbed pause. Beyond that, I left it feeling like I just didn't understand--as if there wasn't enough information given to trust comprehend what happened in the end. So…yeah, unsatifying because I'm not certain if I'm at fault or the author is for not being clearer. I'll just cap with: There is something to chew on here, but what it actually is might be mystery meat. Take what you will from this one. 

 

"The Last Conversation" by Paul Tremblay (67 pages/94-minute read) 

Summary: This story takes a lot of piecing together to form. Readers are put in the mind of a being that's unfamiliar with everything inside and outside him or her. Apparently "they" have been injured in some way and they're slowly waking up and becoming conscious and functional again. Their only contact is the voice of a caretaker who may or may not be trying to help them recover. This person, Annie, is somehow connected to them but won't answer their questions, and even when they're let out of the room that feels like a prison, the truth of their situation remains out of reach. Can Annie be trusted? 

Review: I like the tagline in this story's blurb: What's more frightening: Not knowing who you are? Or finding out? The problem I had with "The Last Conversation" is that I felt like the entire 67 pages could have been condensed in a few paragraphs--the fine-tuned details didn't seem all that necessary while I was reading them. I only learned in the last 5-10 pages why it was crucial to tell the story in this vague way. Did it make the story any more enjoyable? Or less so? I'm not sure, even now that I've finished reading it. As I said with the last review above, I'm left with a disquieted foreboding. If that was the intent of the story, then it succeeded. But the end result wasn't really up my alley. 

"Randomize" by Andy Weir (32 pages/44-minute read) 

Summary: An IT genius convinces the rich yet still money-hungry, casino boss to upgrade security on its random-number generator with a quantum computer system. Supposedly foolproof. Yeah, not so much. 

Review: This very short story starts in the point of view of the casino boss, shifts to the IT genius, then drops into yet another head--that of the brilliant criminal--for the rest of the tale. The only part I found interesting was that of the IT genius (honestly, the only good guy in this depressing story). Basically, this is a story about a greedy corporation head given the choice of colluding with greedy criminals. That's it. Can you guess what happened? It won't take a high IQ at all. If that appeals to you. It didn't me. While it's scary to actually get a layman's rundown about how crooks are doing their dirty deeds, there was little redeemable about this run-of-the-mill offering. Don't expect an original situation let alone a happy ending for anyone but the bad guys. As usual. Sigh. I've loved all Weir's novels, and I guess I'll stick to those in the future. 

~*~

Sometimes an active reader such as myself needs something short that doesn't require a huge commitment. Initially, I believed these collections of themed stories were worth the cheap price paid considering the… if not full-on enjoyment than…diversion derived from them. Unfortunately, I only like one of the selections in the Forward collection. I had already scoped out the next one with horror stories, but my mixed but leaning toward disappointed reaction to this one is telling me to take a break and think about whether I want to purchase another in the future. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

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

A House with Good Bones

This novel by T. Kingfisher, a Southern Gothic incongruously set in a suburban tract house, features a theme of return and/or reunion to find unsettling or outright shocking changes, similarly to THE TWISTED ONES and WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Also, A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES shares with THE TWISTED ONES the motif of a malignant grandmother. “There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.” How could any fan of dark fantasy resist an opening line such as that? Narrator Samantha (Sam) receives a message from her brother that their mother seems “off.” Since Sam has been temporarily furloughed from her job as an archaeoentomologist (a scientist who studies insects in archeological digs), she travels to North Carolina to check out the situation. Her mother owns the house where she and her two children spent an impoverished period during Sam’s childhood, living with the late grandmother, Gran Mae. Upon arrival, Sam finds the usual cheerfully eclectic, cluttered décor replaced by a “sterile” ambience more reminiscent of her grandmother’s taste. The walls have even been repainted off-white. Her mother acts nervous, as if she feels watched or overheard.

Sam sees the environment in terms of ecology in general and, of course, arthropods in particular. In the house’s monoculture rose garden, she immediately notices the absence of insects aside from ladybugs. This phenomenon and the flock of vultures roosting in a neighbor’s tree, however, constitute the least of the strangeness. For instance, a swarm of ladybugs invades Sam’s bedroom at night. We gradually learn about her childhood and her grandmother’s peculiarities, including strictness verging on abuse, while Sam unearths buried family secrets -- literally, in one case. It takes a while to reassure herself that her mother isn’t sinking into senility, but the alternative is almost worse. Sam discovers her great-grandfather, Gran Mae’s father, practiced dark magic. No wonder Gran Mae was obsessed with “nice and normal.” Furthermore, the “underground children” she warned her grandchildren about turn out to be real, not imaginary boogeymen. And the rose bushes are sentient.

For me the climax, when the house collapses into a sinkhole, besieged by the underground children, required some suspension of disbelief, but I enjoyed it anyway. Gran Mae’s sort-of return, on the other hand, struck me as believably, deeply disturbing. Sam’s witty narrative voice, the vulture lady and local benevolent “witch” Gail, and the friendly gardener Phil, who grounds the whole story in the mundane milieu of a “cookie-cutter” housing development, irresistibly draw the reader into the experience. Kingfisher has an enviable talent, through Sam’s chatty yet sometimes sardonic tone, to feed backstory to the reader with never a sense of info-dumping. Amid the mainly happy ending, Sam’s unease with the idea that she might have inherited her grandmother’s magic causes the supernatural danger to linger in the reader’s mind after the final page. In Kingfisher’s afterword, she mentions her own battles with roses and the fact that this is her second novel to portray rose bushes as evil, the first being her “Beauty and the Beast” retelling, BRYONY AND ROSES. The section headings (labeled “First Day,” “Second Day,” etc.) enhance the theme with a brief description of a different rose variety for each one. Between the insects and the roses, this novel, like many of Kingfisher's works, displays her characteristic fondness for odd, fascinating scientific facts.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Noise Bad

"Bad noise" does not mean the same as "Noise Bad". The former leaves room for the concept of good noise, or beautiful noise (which ought to be an oxymoron). "Noise bad" implies that all noise is bad. Since the "is" is missing, I should prefer "Noise, bad"... but I seem to be a language dinosaur.

"Noise bad" follows the word order of the simple slogan "two legs bad" used by the ruling pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm... until it became "two legs better" once the pigs learned how to walk on two legs.

For an interesting analysis of the use and effect of "four legs good, two legs bad" and the seven commandments on Animal Farm, I recommend Dr, Oliver Tearle's "Dispatches From The Secret Library".

https://interestingliterature.com/2021/02/orwell-four-legs-good-two-legs-bad-meaning-analysis/

Noise is bad, if one accepts that "Noise is defined as an unwanted sound or combination of sounds that has adverse effects on health."

For more on Noise and the Quality of Life see Michael D. Seidman and Robert T. Standring's article in the National Library of Medicine.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2996188/

Florence Nightingale wrote that patients engulfed by noise could not heal from their injuries. From personal experience, I tend to agree with her. 

Noise can cause dementia, strokes, heart problems, diabetes, anxiety, sexual dysfunction and more. The prevalence of noise might explain low birth rates, low IQs, lesser birth weight of babies, the prevalence of senility, the apparent (if one can trust advertisements, which is by no means a foregone conclusion) epidemic of men who need boner boosters.

Apparently, it is not crazy to think that one's heart rate blips, and one's anger levels rise when stuck in traffic and subjected to another driver's bass notes. Custom car enthusiasts seem to think that really loud sound systems are a status symbol, with no consideration for other drivers on the road, and no idea what damage they might be doing to their own minds and bodies.

Another article on the invisible damage to the body and mind can be found here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/the-invisible-damage-of-noise-on-the-body-5974086?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=copy

One might conclude that noise is violence, and noise-making is an equivalent of attacking a person with a baseball bat to the head.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon

by Karen S. Wiesner 

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. She has a page on her Red Wombat website labeled Short Stories that includes links to her short stories and articles, some of which are included in a variety of different anthologies. From this page, you can read them free on her website and/or from online magazines. 

https://redwombatstudio.com/short-stories/

Nearly all of these freebies have won awards, too. The genres run the gamut. There's a little of everything, as you'll soon see in the reviews below. I went into this endeavor not entirely sure what I was getting into, but I was pleasantly surprised for the most part with the majority of these selections that are worth seeking out. As they'll cost you nothing, you have everything to gain, nothing to lose! 

Beware: May contain unintended spoilers! 

"Jackalope Wives" and "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon: Although these two, connected stories are contained in T. Kingfisher's collection Jackalope Wives and Other Stories, they were written under the author's real name. Go figure. The duo features Grandma Harken, a clever old woman who is far more than who…and what… she seems. She lives in a house with its back to the desert, and she understands this harsh environment much better than most. Her biting humor and compelling way of looking at the world around her make both stories irresistible.

In "Jackalope Wives", Grandma Harken's daughter Eve has a very foolish son who's, unfortunately, much beloved by the females. However, he's only attracted to a jackalope wife. This shy being has the capability of removing her skin to dance under moonbeams. The boy does something stupid to obtain one, and Grandma Harken has to set things right. This very unusual folktale has an interesting message: "You get over what you can't have faster than you get over what you could. And we shouldn't always get what we think we want." Strange things happen in the desert, indeed!

In "The Tomato Thief", Grandma Harken is determined to find out who's daring to steal her famous, homegrown tomatoes. The answer surprises her and forces her to act. If she doesn't, those living in the desert will be in grave danger. It's very hard not to fall in love with a story with lines like these two gems: "Sometimes the best cure for life was a ripe tomato" and "…there was no telling how low a body would sink once they'd started down the road of tomato theft."

I loved both of these stories. They were my favorites of all included on this webpage.  I'm left wanting more of Grandma Harken and her hilarious wisdom. 

"Metal Like Blood in the Dark" by T. Kingfisher: Artificial intelligence identifying as a brother and sister lose their creator and have to fend for themselves in a universe their Father has warned won't be kind to them. Soon, Brother and Sister are discovered by an alien creature that kidnaps and forces them to work for him.

What an unexpectedly moving tale. I've never read anything quite like this tale that postulates the idea that lying is something like an error code in formatting and computer processing. "Lying was to be deliberately in error, and to express that error in others. Error without correction. Error entered into by choice." Further: "What did a lie do, once you let it loose? Did it sit still…or did it go spinning off into a chain reaction…" In a computer, processes and subprocesses might learn to "lie", which would wreak falsehoods and cause them to report back that something was fixed when it was still broken and vice versa. More than this, once you lie, you realize others could lie as well. With this knowledge, could a person or even a computer go back to how they were before learning the truth? In this story, Sister learns that knowing others lie could very well be the only way to keep from falling into error. But, oh to be ignorant of such darkness! 

"The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society" by T. Kingfisher: Be prepared for raucous hilarity! Fairy man, bull selkie, and horse fae--three paranormal paramours get their comeuppance in a human woman with a taste for exotic lovers. While each has treated human females badly, they've never been on the other end of such ruthless seduction. They take to meeting regularly around a campfire to discuss the state of lingering wounds to their pride. This was quite a twist on Casanova stories. I'll be darned if I didn't burst out laughing nearly every sentence while reading this brief but very vivid sojourn into unexpected territory. Talk about perspective. 

"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon: This story clearly came to T. Kingfisher as a precursor (or a lingering leftover) of the days when she was writing Swordheart (do a search for my recent review of it on this blog). A farmer boy gets a magic sword from his dying grandmother. She instructs him to call forth the magic--three warrior spirits that are bound inside the sword--who will teach him. But his grandmother is wrong about who will be teaching whom. Sometimes the learned ancient can discover something new from the young and simple. I enjoyed the twist in this story. 

"Elegant and Fine": This one wasn't ascribed to either T. Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon. It was probably the only one I didn't love. The author puts Susan from C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles as the main character and has her pining for a Dwarf lover she never knew the name of when she has to return to the real world--and her life as a child. I don't like it when a writer takes someone else's work and does things with it that the original author probably would never have wanted. I wish this story had cast a wholly unique character from the author's own imagination into the thought-provoking scenario she presented here. Sigh. But enough said about that.

"Godmother": Another entry not ascribed to either author name. According to the author, it was the catalyst for T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone (which I've already reviewed on this blog). There's something poetic about this flash-fiction that evoked lovely images cast in shadows and equal amounts of confusion for me. 

"Bluebeard's Wife" also doesn't have an author listed but it was included in the T. Kingfisher Toad Words and Other Stories collection. Pirate Bluebeard's notorious, bloodthirsty reputation with women doesn't faze Althea. She believes the best of her new husband and no one can speak a bad word about him in her presence. I won't ruin it completely, beyond saying, sometimes rumors have a basis in truth. I enjoyed the story written very vividly in Althea's point of view--with her rose-colored glasses on…until they're rudely knocked clean off her face. 

"Origin Story" by T. Kingfisher: This story was also included in the Jackalope Wives and Other Stories collection. In this disturbing tale, a fairy works in a charnel house, taking apart dead beasts and creating something new. Not surprisingly, the humans find her creepy. You'll need a strong stomach and solid backbone to get through this one. I would be surprised if you don't get a chill, as I did, at the end of the story. 

"History, Discovery, and the Quiet Heroics of Gardening" by Ursula Vernon: Those who have read a lot of this author's stories know she's an avid gardener and her experiences have made into to many, many of her fiction projects. I'm a new convert to gardening, so I was fascinated. Whether or not you have any personal interest in gardening, this essay will teach you something new. I've never thought about how heirloom vegetables may have come back from the edge of extinction because of the aggressive actions of a few fearless and utterly tenacious gardeners. Kingfisher says that this has influenced her writing, as she's found herself writing about unlikely heroes intent on saving one small but important thing. 

~*~

There's really no way to go wrong here. If you haven't previously read any of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work, most everything included on this page would be a great introduction that won't cost you a penny. If you're a fan, you might find something here you haven't read before. In any case, I think you'll want to read more. This prolific author and extremely talented illustrator are well worth your time and money--I fully expect, as I have, you'll be happily willing to pay to read much more of her fine work. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

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

The Hollow Places

Although I didn’t find this novel as mind-blowing as Kingfisher’s THE TWISTED ONES, it’s a captivating tale I've reread more than once. Like THE TWISTED ONES, it derives from a classic horror story, giving the source material Kingfisher's unique spin. THE HOLLOW PLACES combines a peculiar house with one of my favorite motifs, portal fantasy. Like the earlier novel, this one features a female first-person narrator with an irresistibly witty voice. But unlike the heroine of THE TWISTED ONES, who reluctantly returns to her late grandmother’s grim house to clear out mounds of hoarded junk, newly divorced Kara finds a welcome refuge in her eccentric uncle’s Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, where she often hung out while growing up. Although other people, including her ex-husband, might consider the bizarre collection creepy, she thinks of the displays, artifacts, and stuffed animals as old friends. She gladly accepts an invitation to live at the museum, in a back bedroom adorned by her favorite taxidermy piece, an elk’s head she named “Prince” in childhood. In return, she waits on tourists and begins the monumental project of creating a digital catalog of the collection.

Soon after the arrival of a box of miscellany that includes a “corpse-otter” carving from the Danube, her uncle is hospitalized, leaving Kara in charge on her own. Almost immediately, she discovers a hole in a wall, which turns out to be much more than it initially appears. At first assuming a visitor did the damage and left without mentioning it, Kara enlists Simon, who works at the coffee shop next door, to help with the repair. Simon is one of Kingfisher's typical quirky secondary characters, a middle-aged, gay man who proves to be a brave and loyal friend, sticking to Kara throughout the harrowing adventure that follows. Probing behind the wall, they find more space than the building could reasonably hold. They soon run out of plausible explanations for the anomaly and come upon a mysterious door.

It leads to a realm of water and fog, dotted with small islands overgrown by willow trees. Each one, it turns out, probably harbors a portal to a different realm, like the Wood Between the Worlds in C. S. Lewis’s THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW. The comparison doesn’t escape Kara, who eventually begins to think of the place as an anti-Narnia. Though eerie and desolate, the landscape doesn’t seem outright scary at first. Exploring it, however, Kara and Simon stumble upon horrors both human and inhuman. Graffiti that warn “They can hear you thinking” and “Pray They are hungry” are just the beginning. An encounter with a trapped explorer from another world is particularly gruesome. They manage to escape and get home, just barely, but Kara soon learns that walling up the hole doesn’t end the danger. The final revelation of what caused the crack between dimensions came as a surprise to me, poignant as well as terrifying, and it pulls together all the baffling elements of the story. My first thought when Kara and Simon entered the fog-shrouded island landscape was of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Sure enough, the concluding Author’s Note reveals that she was inspired by Blackwood’s classic story. This novel is a can’t-miss read for fans of numinous horror with a subtly Lovecraftian feel.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Hecky Thump

I am seventy two. I have been typing accurately for fifty three years. Pittman trained, if that still means anything to anyone.

Suddenly, I type "Board" and it becomes "Bard" without any notice to me that a substitution has been made. I type "repair" and it becomes "rear".

Am I obsessed with Shakespeare's bottom? No. It has never crossed my mind. I can only conclude that some aspects of Artificial Intelligence are not ready for prime time.

I am also a Cantabrigiensis major in studies of the so-called (or formerly called)  "modern depressives", which includes almost all of the works of George Orwell, and therefore, I am inclined to suppose that the hijacking of the written word is not an accident.

Some online news sites are plagued by word glitches, where commenters of a certain political bent appear to be routinely sabotaged (by A.I.). 

Delightfully, there is a meme: "Autocorrect is my worst enema."

Meanwhile, a political beggar wrote this to me: "I only trust you with this." Ponder word order. The quoted sentence seems to imply that he would not trust me with anything else. Alternatives would be, "I trust you only with this", which is worse but more honest, or "I trust only you with this", which is an obvious fib given that it was a mass blast email.

Isn't parsing fun?

Word order matters, as does punctuation and word choice. A.I. does not replace a good education, partly because AI is only as good as the education of the persons putting in the input.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Trapped by Michael Northrop by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Trapped by Michael Northrop

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware unintended spoilers! 

In the past year, I've been trying to incorporate a lot more audiobooks into my reading. Listening to them fills up time I'm doing mundane daily chores with something productive, and the two library apps I've been using offered them free. This allows me to experience books and authors I'd probably never try otherwise, especially if I have to pay for them. In the process, I might find some hidden gems. 

In January 2026, two things happened: 1) My favorite library app became blocked because of a virtual traffic jam and 2) winter has become very confused. In the first instance, I had to finally email the library to find out why I kept getting an error message that essentially meant I couldn't check out books (e- or audio-). Apparently, libraries have always or just recently started enforcing (I don't know which; only know that I'd never had it happen prior to 2026) a "daily lending budget". What that means is that the library has to control spending and budgetary needs and, therefore, after a certain time of day, they shut off the ability for anyone to borrow books the rest of that day. The suggestion from the library was that I try to check out books as early as possible after the ban lifts each day--in my case, the time for reset is midnight! In other words, I have to be awake at or just after midnight so I can scramble to check out a book while I'm half-asleep. This is not good. When did it become normal for libraries to, you know, stop lending books? Isn't that their primary function? A sad world indeed when it's become too costly for both readers and libraries alike to get books. Say it ain't so, Joe! Update: Last night I woke up just after 2 a.m. and groggily fumbled around on my nightstand for my iPad. I logged onto the library app and located the book I hoped to check out. Luckily, there was no one to see me in my pjs with disheveled hair, blurry-eyed and dazed, scratching my bum (okay, maybe not) as I waited to see if I was one of the lucky few allowed to check out a book that early, early morning (or dead of night, whichever you prefer). Yes, I was lucky. It worked. And now this is what I have to look forward to when it comes to checking out books from this library app from here on out. Well, chin up! I still consider it worth it. 

The second thing that happened was the weather didn't know what in the world it wanted to do in Wisconsin (and I believe for most other states in the country as well). For three days in a row, we were getting dumped on with snow galore. The initial mountains on my lawn became veritable peaks. This was followed by spring for a day, maybe a week, circling back to more snow, or rain (which melted the mountains, at least), ushering in perilous icy conditions, or a combination of all those things at the same time. At one point, a beautiful spring day in our town led us to decide it was a great time to travel, but, after barely an hour on the road, we drove into a blizzard. Seriously, sigh. 

At the convergence of these two January 2026 tricks-or-treats, I had no choice but to utilize my least favorite library app (which has hardly any selection) in order to get my audiobook fix. I happened upon a fitting young adult suspense novel, Trapped by Michael Northrop (published February 2011), in which a winter blizzard traps a bunch of high school kids inside the aging education building for more than a week while the rest of the town scrambles to survive, too. I don't think I've ever read anything by this author before, though he's won a bunch of awards. I liked the cover that displayed how I felt, and, for once, it was nice to hear a story about a bunch of teenagers who weren't foul in speech and deed. Lately, when I check out YA audiobook material, I get a bunch of kids who substitute swear words for any hint of intelligence and who are only thinking about their next lay in between being absolutely obsessed with their cell phones and social media. I mean, maybe this is realistic view of the world we live in, but it's more than a little disheartening to think this might be the direction our future is heading. That last bit could be the winter blues talking… 

Anyway, in Trapped, we get basically nice, decent kids for a change, none of whom are particularly bright or preppy (i.e., superficial as all get out). I actually kind of liked that. Instead of D&D nerds, Mensa level, top-of-their-classer Chalamets and Swifties, we have Scotty, a jock who gets average grades and pimples here and there, his two friends Pete and Jason, Krista and Julie, and Les and Elijah, a couple of misunderstoods. Although school had let out early because of the storm, they'd stayed behind for various reasons and no one knew they were there, leaving them trapped--and seriously screwed as a result. None of them seemed smart enough to figure out how to save themselves, though they did figure out how to get enough to eat and stay warm. It isn't until someone decides to venture out to make sure someone in town knows there are kids trapped at the school that everything changed. While I did find the conclusion very abrupt and mildly unsatisfying, this atmospheric little gem fit perfectly into my January blahs and woes with the right story with the right amount of tension at the right time.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

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

The Twisted Ones

I consider THE TWISTED ONES, by T. Kingfisher, the best horror novel I’ve read in many years and possibly the only one I’ve found really scary since the original publication of PET SEMATARY. While Karen was unimpressed by it, for me it was the book that turned me on to Kingfisher's work, making her one of my favorite authors. The narrator, Melissa, nicknamed Mouse, receives a call from her elderly father about clearing out his recently deceased mother’s house. The house has been locked and uninhabited for the past two years, since his mother went into a home for the aged. He warns Mouse the place could be “bad,” but she accepts the task, since there’s nobody else to do it. If it turns out to be too much for her, he assures her he’d be okay with having the house razed instead of sold. Even with only vague hints from the blurb about the prospective horrors, I was captivated by this beginning. Mouse’s narrative voice makes the most mundane decisions and chores interesting. She grabbed me on page two with this description of her job, especially since I worked as a proofreader/editor for many years: “I’m a freelance editor. I turn decent books into decently readable books and hopeless books into hopeless books with better grammar.”

She and her rescue hound, Bongo, dutifully head for her grandmother’s house in rural North Carolina. Her grandmother was a hateful person who turns out also to have been a hoarder. “Bad” doesn’t begin to describe the house. At least, however, there’s no rotting food inside, and the water, electricity, and stove work. Mouse finds one bedroom untouched by the piles of accumulated junk (including a room stuffed with creepy dolls). It had belonged to her step-grandfather, Frederick Cotgrave, an immigrant from Wales whom she recalls only as a colorless, silent man constantly browbeaten by his wife. She does have one fond memory of his teaching her to draw the “Kilroy” cartoon popular in World War II, which becomes vitally important later in the story. She finds a journal written by Cotgrave and later a hidden manuscript referenced in the journal. At first she thinks the weird experiences he narrated prove the old man suffered from dementia and paranoia. On the other hand, the petty persecution he mentioned would have been totally in character for her grandmother.

What about the things Cotgrave claimed to have seen in the woods? When Mouse and her dog come across a strange cluster of stones with grotesque carvings on them, in a spot that should not exist in the local geography, she begins to suspect Cotgrave wasn’t losing his mind after all. By the time she discovers his hidden manuscript, she’s inclined to believe the dark things it hints at. It reconstructs as much as he could recall of another journal, the “Green Book,” written by a young girl who’d had sinister encounters with what she called the “white people.” Are the horrors that nineteenth-century girl witnessed being duplicated in North Carolina? Do similar things lurk in secret places all over the world? In the midst of her struggle with the house, Mouse glimpses what appear to be effigies made of sticks, bones, and miscellaneous debris topped by deer skulls. Moreover, she reluctantly entertains the possibility that they are animated. She makes friends with three middle-aged “hippies” on a nearby property, and they acknowledge that all the locals know there are vague but dangerous “things” in the woods.

I can’t be more specific because I don’t want to give away spoilers. As the plot accelerates, unexpected, terrifying events come at every turn. Yet even in the tensest moments, Mouse’s narrative interjects wry humor. (Unlike Karen, I don't feel this feature undercuts the horror. This aspect of Kingfisher's style is one of my favorite elements in all her books.) Mouse labors on the house to a background of the local NPR station’s Pledge Break week, another detail that pays off in the end. This novel includes an abundance of my favorite horror trope, the unearthing of dark secrets from the past. It was also a thrill to recognize this story as essentially a sequel to Arthur Machen’s classic story “The White People,” as the author explains in her afterword. She, of course, puts a different spin on his plot elements. The dog, Bongo, is a character in his own right but not unrealistically sapient. As Mouse frequently notes, he’s as dumb as a box of rocks aside from his almost preternatural tracking ability. Unlike too many horror-fiction characters, Mouse has sound motives for sticking around despite the frightful incidents and, later, for venturing deeper into the forest. Another feature of the novel I admire is that she has a credible reason for writing down her experience -- to sort out the traumatic events in her own mind -- and that, unlike some horror protagonists, she doesn’t blithely move on with her life unscathed after escaping the monsters. Furthermore, Cotgrave’s manuscript sounds believably uncertain at points, not (as Kingfisher discusses in the afterword) as if he had a photographic memory. I’ve rambled on long enough, so I can only urge horror fans to read this fantastic -- in both senses -- story.

Margaret L. Carter

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