Daggerbound

DAGGERBOUND, by T. Kingfisher, is the sequel to SWORDHEART, which you don’t absolutely have to read before this one, but doing so would enhance the experience. As Karen's review (forthcoming tomorrow) explains, the books take place in the same world as the Clocktaur duology and the Paladin series. In DAGGERBOUND, it’s a pleasure to encounter familiar characters from earlier novels, including the paladins (brief cameo), badger-like gnoles, Bishop Beartongue, cursed sword warrior Sartis and his wife introduced in SWORDHEART, and Zale, levelheaded, logical, humane, keenly intelligent lawyer from the Temple of the White Rat, my favorite of Kingfisher’s secondary characters. DAGGERBOUND offers an accessible introduction to this world as well as a treat for fans of the other novels.

Edmund, first seen as a naïve, cloistered young scholar on his maiden foray to the outside world in the Clocktaur duology, is the primary protagonist of this new work. About eight years later, deeply disappointed that he can’t get the hidebound, misogynistic priests of his god to listen to what he learned on that expedition, he decides to leave the order. On a journey to deliver some books and an ancient sword to a distant city, he plans to complete his assignment and not go back. He’ll be technically stealing the mule, Sweetness (almost a character in herself, whose personality totally belies her name), but he manages to square the deed with his conscience. Attacked by bandits, he accidentally separates the sword from its sheath. In a burst of silver light, a warrior with silver eyes appears.

After some confusion, Edmund learns the Dervish isn’t an angel, as he thought, but a soldier trapped in the enchanted weapon. The magic compels the Dervish to guard the wielder’s life at all costs. He’s functionally immortal; reversion into the sword whenever it’s sheathed heals all injuries and even restores him from death. The silver marks that Edmund mistakes for tattoos are in fact scars of the Dervish’s many wounds. A hardened cynic who has hated all his wielders, with good reason, he’s prepared to take the same attitude toward Edmund. The scholar, though, displays such an irresistible combination of intellectual curiosity, encyclopedic knowledge, innocent tendencies to believe the best of everyone, and sheer kindness that the Dervish can’t help liking him. For instance, when Edmund discovers the magic enables the servant of the sword to speak the language of his wielder, Edmund immediately gets excited about the translation possibilities. (He’s disappointed to learn it won’t work that way.) The sword-cursed warrior has to keep reminding himself Edmund isn’t his type.

On the way to Edmund’s destination, they encounter bandits as well as villagers in the habit of sacrificing people to a dragon, among other hazards. They pick up two companions, a gnole and a giant, sapient pill bug, who was captured while on a diplomatic mission to the capital. She carries a device that translates her words into human speech, since neither species can physically pronounce the language of the other. Unfortunately, the sociopathic necromancer-smith who bound the Dervish and two comrades into swords centuries earlier has become revered as a saint by a small cult. Its fanatical members will go to any lengths to possess the enchanted weapon. As always, the worldbuilding is fascinating. (For instance, many different deities coexist, with amicable relations among most of their worshipers, but not all. Males in the pill bug’s species are non-sapient and much smaller than females. Gender in the gnole language signifies caste, not biological sex. There’s a perilous region that randomly shifts around and tends to trap travelers who wander into it.) I love the secondary characters, engaging dialogue –- which often injects humor into even dire situations –- and the developing relationship between the two protagonists, each of whom changes and adapts in his own way. Minor warning: This novel includes a couple of male-on-male sexual encounters. Since the scenes are brief, you can safely skim past them if you dislike that sort of thing.

I'm thrilled that SHIELDBORN, the third volume in the trilogy, will appear in August 2027.

Margaret L. Carter

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

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: "The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City" by Susanna Clarke by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:

"The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City"

by Susanna Clarke

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Susanna Clarke is the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, published in 2004. It was an enormous, epic fantasy that was the author's debut novel. A worldwide bestseller, that "fairy" tale of alternative history nevertheless felt incomplete because it ended on a cliffhanger with critical threads never achieving resolution in the volume. The author intended a sequel set a few years after the first. More of that world was explored in the author's short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, released in 2007. Diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, Clarke spent the next decade all but unable to write. During that time, she reported that the fate of the novel's sequel is still “a long way off” and may never be finished. 

Let me state for the record that I would follow Susanna Clarke anywhere, literarily speaking, especially if it's back into the world she created in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. A new installment is cause for instant purchase of the hardcover in this house. "The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City" is a 96-page novella released October 2026 by Bloomsbury Publishing that introduces the origins of the Raven King (aka John Uskglass--magician and ruler of Northern England). Written as a fable, historical fantasy, as well as in the tone of a children's story, this book is physically similar to her previous release, "The Wood at Midwinter" (not related to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell). Gorgeously illustrated and gilded, this edition has to be seen in hardcover format to be truly appreciated. The fabulous Victoria Sawdon illustrated it, as she did "Midwinter"--and again, she didn't get her name on the cover! A crime! Every single page spread has unique border drawings with full-pages ones between the few chapters. I recommend reading the story, then going back and carefully studying the artwork. 

"The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City" takes place seven hundred years prior to the main volume and is essentially summed up in its very odd title. Taking place amidst real-life figures, settings, and historic events in the twelfth century, a bishop risks all to ensure his own status and well-being when human and fairy vie for control of Northern England. 

While the initial chapter was little more than backdrop landing on the page like autumn leaves scattered in the wind without perspective, subsequent chapters set up Ranulf as the lead character who, with his unblinking ambition and unwavering know-how, swept me into a morsel of a tale that one Goodreads reviewer aptly called "a captivating little story, full of the peculiar magic and political maneuvering (or political magic and peculiar maneuvering) that makes Clarke's fictional world so interesting". That same reviewer also called this "posh edition for full-novel price" a "foil-edged symptom of Bloomsbury's impatience for another Susanna Clarke book". 

Honestly, I can't blame the publisher. I'm so hungry for more of this world, I grabbed and gobbled this one as soon as it hit the plate. Unfortunately, I instantly wanted more because "The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City" isn't really a story so much as a peek-hole glimpse of the beginning of one. What I really hunger for is for the story gifted to readers twenty-two years ago in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to be resolved--if not properly than at least satisfactorily. We have been fed a few tidbits of late. These small projects are clearly more manageable, considering the author's condition (which I fully sympathize with) and it gives me hope that, though I don't expect to ever get another massive volume like the first, perhaps a final, uncomplicated chapter to round out the jagged edges of that plot will eventually be served. Alas, what a holiday feast that would be! 

Oh, if you're interested, "The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City" includes a long essay from Clarke detailing her love of childish things, which is what led her to fantasy fiction in the first place. Also, do a search for the author on this blog to find out what's currently available and to read my reviews of her previous works. In the meantime, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is calling to me for a long overdue re-read. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series. Visit her website here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Are Scary Stories Good for Children?

Here's an essay that declares being frightened in a "low-stakes setting" and the "safe place" of fiction can be good for child readers:

How Kids Benefit from Scary Stories

An author interviewed in the article calls horror stories a "sounding board" that can help children "identify their fear so they can deal with it." Since real life often includes sad and/or frightening experiences, it makes little or no sense to exclude such material from fiction. "Kids need to experience a healthy dose of fear, disappointment and sadness in order to prepare them for life’s inevitable ups and downs. Experiencing these powerful emotions helps build confidence and fosters a greater understanding of how to cope with threatening situations."

C. S. Lewis, who frequently suffered from nightmares in childhood, pointed out that it's impossible to prevent children from ever being frightened. We can never predict what may scare a particular child. (For instance, my lifelong fear of heights -- more specifically, of falling -- extended itself in my early years to a general fear of public monuments. Seriously! After one ordeal of climbing steep stairs in the Wright Brothers memorial, I recoiled with suspicion whenever an adult suggested entering any similar building.) If they're going to experience fear no matter what, fear of burglars and reliance on police protection, he suggests, may be less reassuring to contemplate than the threat of dragons and the comfort of a knight in shining armor. Although I myself was a terribly timid child, afraid of the dark, and I remain extremely risk-averse, I discovered horror stories around age twelve and never looked back.

The article cited above also mentions the biochemical basis for enjoying some kinds of fear. The rush of dopamine and adrenaline associated with danger can be exhilarating when one isn't at risk of any real harm. Riding a roller coaster is one non-literary example. Not for me, however. The physical falling sensation of a roller coaster or even just climbing a ladder triggers terror that feels too real, even when my brain insists I'm safe. I'll stick with danger on a page or screen.

I'm reminded of an episode in the ARTHUR cartoon program when the parents of the town rich girl, Muffy, start a crusade to ban the kids' favorite books, the "Scare Your Pants Off" series, from the public library. Although the parents haven't read the books themselves, they think the stories are harmful because one of them frightened Muffy. She finally speaks up to insist she likes the books and still wants to read them even though they're scary.

To people who think the villains and monsters in traditional fairy tales are too terrifying for kids, authors such as Lewis, Terry Pratchett, and Neil Gaiman, among others, quote the famous statement by G. K. Chesterton most often paraphrased in these words: "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

Margaret L. Carter

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

{Put This One on Your TBR List}: Review of A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock Accompanied by Karen Wiesner's Original Artwork by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}:

Review of A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

Accompanied by Karen Wiesner's Original Artwork

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware spoilers! 

I was looking for something to read on my Libby library app, and A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock came up, no doubt because of my newfound love of gardening and horror literature. This 2024 Victorian gothic chiller was the author's first book. The basic story is two Victorian-age, quirky gentlemen live a cloistered existence in an equally eccentric botanical garden. Simon is a taxidermist who views his usually whimsical (i.e., not disturbing) craft as art. Gregor is a celebrated, though somewhat spurned, horticulturist whose greatest love is cultivating wildly exotic plants. His latest acquisition is a strange fungus he's convinced is capable of unprecedented intelligence. He's determined to make it his masterpiece. Throw in a spirited housemaid named Jennifer who's a bit of an oddity herself in the community they live, and readers are treated to a whole menagerie of curiosities to explore. Jennifer has recently lost the friend she loves, one she believes was murdered by her own father, though she has no way to prove it. 

This story began in a wonderfully witty, charming way that captured me instantly, especially when the story turned into a gardener's version of Frankenstein. Seriously, what more could you want? I was mesmerized with the wonderful characters and their irresistible setting. Jennifer was unexpectedly vibrant, not willing to be defined by those around her, and fiercely true to herself and her values. Simon and Gregor were at first alike only in that both displayed erratic artist temperaments, yet the author made them very unique…at least initially. 

The first half of this book was amazing. I enjoyed every word, all the unorthodox developments, the author's clever turns of phrase that had me laughing out loud from one page to the next. I wanted to include at least one or two of the best of those gems here but my library app took the ebook back too quickly. 

Despite such a winning start, the last half of the story, regrettably, became a confounding garble of twisted, choking inconsistencies that eventually threatened to wreck the foundation altogether. It got to the point where I couldn't tell which character was Gregor and which was Simon. They became as the same person and unrecognizable from their formerly established characters. I lost track of the story because the main characters abruptly were so muddied and odiously unlikable. It was as if the author himself forgot who was who in his literary madness. Not only did the story turn to something painfully unreadable but the situations the couple's bad choices entangled them in resembled an abyss that got deeper, darker, and far less amusing than I could tolerate. The characters committed horrible atrocities that were presented in a way that ultimately condoned their behavior. Similar to another "holobiont"* set of books I recently read and was faintly appalled by**, the degeneration of values and lack of respect for life (human and plant alike) depicted at the end of this story all but crumbled to incomprehensibility, leaving me cold and filled with regrets for what could have been a brilliant first novel. The initial half was so enjoyable and fun. While I wouldn't have called this outright horror, it had moments of dread that I relished in context with all the plant concepts. I'm not entirely certain if it was an inexperienced author that was to blame for the crimes committed in the writing of the second portion of this tome, or an editor who let far too many mistakes creep in that went unrevised--probably both of these in combination. A third alternative is that this is simply the unimaginable (to me), new way books are written, and I'm just too old to appreciate it. Sigh. 

*Various symbiotic organisms joined as an ecological unit--read more about this on Wikipedia if you're interested. 

**The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer. 

Despite my regrets for what might have been, I must say, what a lovely cover. I adore it!  Bravo, Julia Lloyd! 

To go along with the theme of this review, here's a botanical art project I recently finished for my daughter's birthday.

"Autumn…Where Nature and Imagination Merge"

(rendered in coloring pencil)

© Karen Wiesner (all rights reserved)

 Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series. 

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

Vampire Retro-Review: Darkness on the Ice

DARKNESS ON THE ICE (1993), by Lois Tilton, takes place in 1944 at a German weather observation station in Greenland. I enjoyed it because of the World War II background and especially the plot device of a vampire's taking full advantage of the months-long Arctic night. While that trope has shown up in subsequent books and movies, as far as I know this horror novel by Tilton was the first to introduce it.

To the surprise and dismay of Dietrich, captain of the Greenland squad, an SS officer named Wolff appears with orders to take charge of security for the operation. Wolff has the assignment of protecting the German outpost against its American counterpart. After some of Dietrich's own personnel die, however, he begins to suspect the truth about Wolff.

The alleged SS officer, of course, is a vampire, persuaded to accept the mission by the prospect of rich hunting and four months of darkness. He struggles to control his thirst for blood in order to avoid exposing his inhuman nature to his comrades. Whenever he runs short of Americans to feed on, though, he drains members of the flight crew that brought the weather team to Greenland, men who have been designated as expendable.

The harsh Arctic setting is vividly portrayed, and the author's afterword gives some indication of the scope and depth of her research. Opening and closing segments set in 1995, in which Dietrich reveals the harrowing experiences he'd never expected anyone to believe, frame the wartime story. The 1944 point of view shifts among Dietrich, the Americans, and Wolff himself, all of them believable characters. Another thing I like about this novel is that the vampire, albeit evil, has complex thought processes and rational motives. He isn't a mindlessly homicidal monster. Also, the Germans aren't caricatures of villainy, either. Even though Dietrich fights on the wrong side, the reader can't help sympathizing with the captain's plight as he watches the "security officer" kill off members of his command.

Earlier, Tilton also wrote VAMPIRE WINTER (1990), a post-apocalyptic novel of a vampire thriving amid the chaos and perpetually shrouded sky of a nuclear winter.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Toddler Tycoons or {Put This One on Your TBR List}: Review of Wildwood Dancing Series by Juliet Marillier by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Toddler Tycoons or {Put This One on Your TBR List}: Review of Wildwood Dancing Series by Juliet Marillier

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Beware spoilers!

 

The entertainment industry these days seems to be populated with toddler tycoons. The attention spans of those making the choices about what the population will be allowed to read, watch, play, or listen to is on par with that of a toddler. At that age, children tend to have trouble focusing on one thing for long, and they're forever abandoning the "old" in favor of something new that will only temporarily hold their interest. To add insult to injury, these "toddlers" are looking for profit above all. If it's not there in sufficient quantities, it doesn't matter how good the material is. Some of the most valuable works of art have been abandoned for little more justification than that it's the belief of some toddler tycoon that it wasn't profitable enough to warrant continuance. Many of us who enjoy these entertainments have become wary about investing ourselves and our money in anything that reaches into series territory for fear that the work will be dumped unceremoniously at any point. In the process, satisfactory resolution to the material may never be obtainable.

 

 

It's unfortunate that my first attempt at jumping into author Juliet Marillier's body of work was met with this situation. It was 2023 that I read The Bridei Chronicles, her third series of historical fantasy novels. I'd purchased them as hardcovers. In this set of stories, Bridei is sent to be educated by Broichan, a druid, in the sixth century (depicting King Bridei I of the Picts). Before long, Bridei finds a baby of the Good Folk, whom he names Tuala. The two grow up together. Even as they fall in love, their union calls them to very different destinies. How they reconcile themselves to their fates is developed throughout the series. I reached the end of the third book and realized there were no more stories forthcoming, despite that there were unresolved threads in the series! I was appalled. At that time, Marillier had spoken of the publisher for the work deciding not to continue it and hoping, for the most part, that she'd done an adequate job of tying up loose ends. I wasn't satisfied with the way things ended. I left the series very disappointed, though I admit I was impressed with the writing as a whole. Characters, conflicts, settings, relationships were all fantastically and beautifully rendered.

 

Concerned about embarking on another series that could be forsaken by the publisher, I instead tried one of Marillier's rare single titles. My review of Heart's Blood was posted on the Alien Romances Blog in early 2024 here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2024/01/karen-s-wiesner-put-this-one-on-your_0103362056.html. I did enjoy it immensely but wasn't willing to invest in another series, which is what the author specializes in.

 

In mid-2026, the author came up on my library app, and I recalled how much enjoyed her approach. Marillier roots her fantasy elements into historical fact in an intriguing way. I remembered vividly that her writing style was timeless, beautifully lush and elaborate, and I decided to try another of her series. Ebooks for her Wildwood Dancing Series were immediately available (the only ones that were) so I checked them out.

 

 

Wildwood Dancing, Book 1, is a fascinating reinvention of the Brothers Grimm's The Twelve Dancing Princesses, though I feel The Frog Prince might have been an inspiration as well, as the author didn't marry herself fully to either fairy tale. In this series, there are only five sisters and the main character "princess" (Jena) isn't spoiled. The frog is her close friend whom she values. In addition to these influences, this particular story also plays with 16th-century Transylvania folk legends about Dracula, which injected an awesome angle into what might have otherwise been a straightforward story. Jena is the point of view character, the second oldest daughter of a wealthy merchant. As one of five daughters, ages five to seventeen, Jena and her sisters enter a portal in the woods surrounding their castle to the Other Kingdom every full moon. There, they dance and mingle with magical creatures. When their father falls ill and has to recover for the winter on the coast, Jena and her oldest sister are left in charge with his merchant partner as well with their father's relative. In their childhood, Jena and her cousins Costi and Cezar were tricked by a magical creature. Costi was lost to them, and Cezar never forgot. Ever after, he's sought revenge. Each visit through the portal brings the sisters back to a deteriorating home situation, as Cezar vies more and more power.

 

These stories are cited to be young adult stories targeting 12 to 15 year olds. I'm not sure there are many in that age range these days that would choose something this complex, but the tales are certainly age-appropriate. Adults who are interested in the story themes should feel free to indulge, as I'm convinced the pair are suited just as well or possibly more so to and for adult readers.

 

 

Cybele's Secret, Book 2 of the Wildwood Dancing Series, features Paula, the fourth sister of five and a scholar. It's been six years since the events in the first story. Within the first couple hundred pages, the author finally decides to get caught up with events from the last installment, and we see a happily ever after for Jena and Iulia, while the eldest sister Tati, who'd chosen to remain in the Other Kingdom with her love Sorrow, is presumed to be happy with her choices. Little sister Stela is now eleven.

 

In Cybele's Secret, Paula has accompanied her father on a business trip to Istanbul. They're on the hunt for the statue of the goddess Cybele. The setting provides a rich tapestry for the events of this story, with a compelling Robert Langdon urgency to them, as the quest for ancient artifacts and the secrets associated with them become more and more dangerous. There's a connection between this plot thread and events from the first book with dreams Paula has of her sister Tati. It is within those dreams that Paula learns the eldest sister was trapped beyond the portal because of her decision to stay with Sorrow, who can't leave the Other Kingdom. The fairy queen won't allow Tati to leave either without payment in the form of a dangerous quest undertaking to  gain favor with the fairies. Within Cybele's Secret, the gentle love story between Paula and her bodyguard was wonderfully drawn. Paula herself was a formidable and worthy heroine, as her sister Jena was before her, displaying wisdom and tenacity beyond her years.

 

Both books started a little slowly as the author set up locations, characters, backgrounds, and conflicts. For the first couple hundred pages, nothing serious seemed to be happening and there was little suspense other than that of (in Book 1) five young girls being put into positions of power in a time period where women were largely ignored and overlooked as intelligent beings. In Book 2, Paula also faced too many people who underestimated her and tried to cram her into their narrow definitions of what a female her age should be. The situation with the frog in Wildwood Dancing was predictable but including "Night People" (vampires), fairies, and other creatures that inhabit the Other Kingdom added a unique, welcome twist to the plots of both stories.

 

From the first book, I assumed each sister would get her own story, but it was clear in the early part of Book 2 that the author tried to tell several of the sisters' stories already, in brief summaries instead of full narratives. Perhaps Marillier anticipated that what she was planning as a series could be cut off before she could complete them all. The author spoke of intending to write Stela's story, but, when the publisher asked her to be done with Wildwood Dancing Series, advising she start a new one, Marillier let go of the idea of a larger series and moved on to something different.

 

Alas, any possibility of a trilogy has been tabled, once again, by the toddler tycoon of the entertainment industry. Sigh. How is it I always end up choosing the truncated series by this author? Surely not all her series can end abruptly with readers longing for more of the world and its characters and feeling disappointment that there will be no continuation? Luckily, Wildwood Dancing is a standalone series with both books telling a full, encapsulated tale within its own installment. While I might want Stela's story, I knew in advance of finishing my reading of Book 2 that it wasn't a possibility.

 

While I would love to read all of Marillier's series, I continue to be wary about investing time and money only to find that a series was left unresolved because of toddler tycoon syndrome. I imagine the author has also had a lot of disappointments in this regard over the years as she writes for a fickle entity that favors new and profitable over wonderful and worthy. (Not to imply that Marillier doesn't regularly provide all four of those aspects in her wonderful work.) As such, I'll be checking her ebooks or audiobooks out from the library (app) prior to considering making a purchase. This will allow me to ensure I haven't inadvertently purchased expensive books in a series that will never be finished.

 

Juliet Marillier is an author that any fan of history and fantasy, especially when combined, is sure to love. All of these series are recommended with the reservation that you'll deserve more in the case of some of them--more that some toddler tycoon huckster has deprived you of for poor reasons. However, this is balanced by the fact that you'll want more from this author anyway. Her books are addictive and her writing talent is well-worth your attention. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series. 

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

Reading Sequels and Catching Up

I've recently read the third volumes in two trilogies. Although years have passed -- in one case, many years -- since I read the respective second books, I've had no trouble following the stories, thanks to the authors' skillful writing. Each catches up readers as much as necessary without resorting to a prefatory "the story so far" synopsis. Tolkien does that in the second and third volumes of LORD OF THE RINGS, but he's Tolkien! Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if the publisher suggested those introductions. LOTR of course, was composed as one continuous novel, divided into three books only for publishing convenience (thus inventing the fantasy trilogy as we know it). Although the synopses are useful for refreshing a reader's memory of the earlier installments, they wouldn't help anyone accidentally picking up a later book first. I know, because I tried to read the middle volume, THE TWO TOWERS, with no knowledge of the first one and soon got bored and lost despite the synopsis. (It didn't help that, as I felt when I eventually read the whole epic in proper order, the first half of THE TWO TOWERS is the least interesting section -- aside from some cool features such as the Ents.)

I don't share the opinion that a reader should always be able to pick up a later book in a series without reading the earlier ones and still understand the plot and characters. If a series (whether trilogy or longer) is one continuous story, the fact that it needs to be read as such isn't a downcheck. Gray areas exist, of course. Mystery series that include the detective's character growth and relationship developments can often be read out of order, although following the chronology of the protagonist's personal life will enrich the reading experience. For instance, J. D. Robb's "In Death" futuristic police procedurals.

The original books of the two trilogies referred to above didn't start out looking like series openers. In each case, the first installment read like a stand-alone. It seems probable that the authors only later decided on sequels to extend and expand the stories. The concluding volumes in question are THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT, by Helene Wecker, following THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI and THE HIDDEN PALACE; and OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE, by Stephen King and the late Peter Straub, concluding the character arc of Jack Sawyer from their earlier collaborations, THE TALISMAN and BLACK HOUSE. In each case, one really needs an acquaintance with the earlier books to enjoy the third and final ones. However, you don't need a detailed memory of events in the middle installments to appreciate the final ones, for the respective authors expertly weave in the necessary backstory information little by little. Characters' memories of important past events rise to the surfaces of the narratives in smooth, plausible ways rather than appearing forced. King also uses the device of a memoir the widowed Jack Sawyer wrote for the benefit of his wife during their marriage, but he rereads selected passages in small doses at plausible moments to jolt his own memory along with the audience's. As for the "Dark Tower" Mid-World setting of the novel, familiarity with the Dark Tower saga isn't absolutely necessary, but readers of OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE who haven't read any of the former books would miss interesting resonances.

Another sort-of sequel I've just read works a bit differently. MAZYWOOD, by Tananarive Due, includes two timelines, the present and the silent film era through Hollywood's golden age, which function as sequel and prequel to a pair of Due's previously published stories, "Incident at Bear Creek Lodge" and "Return to Bear Creek Lodge." To understand and appreciate MAZYWOOD, we needn't have read those two pieces, although knowing about them would enhance the reader's enjoyment. They take place during the childhood of the present-day protagonist, grandson of actress Mazelle Washington, protagonist of the historical timeline. His brief memory-flashbacks to the traumatic events of the two short stories tell us all we need to know. Readers won't feel they're missing a thing.

Opinions? As a reader, how much backstory do you require for appreciation of a sequel if you're unfamiliar with the previous book(s)? Or would you simply not pick it up without reading the prior material first?

Margaret L. Carter

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

Settings as a Starting Point for a Story

Please welcome a guest post by mystery and romantic suspense author M. S. Spencer:

First off, let me explain that I write murder mysteries in the vein of Agatha Christie. They are not “cozy” mysteries, which usually have heroines who cook, bake, knit, or keep cats and yet find the time to solve sudden deaths occurring in their close-knit Vermont or West Virginia hamlet. True, my stories have happy endings, and my heroes and heroines are amateur sleuths, but with the exception of one who made jellies out of wild Florida fruits (Whirlwind Romance), they don’t cook. Or knit. In fact, in my new book Fair Winds and Foul Play, Zoe pokes gentle fun at the genre. She tells the hero about the local novelist Hilda Gringold. “Her latest cozy relates a riveting tale of English gold hidden from the American revolutionaries and buried somewhere on the Maine coast. Of course, her heroine, Daisy Bluebonnet, deftly solves the mystery and finds the treasure, which she shares with her love interest, Hugo Perlmutter. Despite being now fabulously wealthy, Daisy resumes her doughnut bakery business, whence she solves any and all of the murders that so often occur in a small village.”

Most authors write about what they know, but I’m not sure how many authors start with the setting and build a story around it. My nineteen books can be divided by setting: four are set in Maine; six in Florida; six in the DC area; and two on Chincoteague Island (One outlier is set in the Amazon). The setting isn’t just the location, but usually a specific spot in that location that cries out for a story. The Pit & the Passion: Murder at the Ghost Hotel, refers to a partially built Ritz-Carlton that sat on a Florida key for almost 40 years. in Artful Dodging: The Torpedo Factory Murders, my tower office, reached by secret stairs in a cavernous old building, was the perfect place to find two corpses. The Wishing Tree: Love, Lies and Spies on Chincoteague Island, is based on an actual dead tree on the beach that is covered with trinkets and mementos.

My new release, Fair Winds and Foul Play: An Amity Landing Mystery, is set in Maine. It was born from the smoking ruins of a house in the village. I thought, “It could have been a witness protection safehouse, burned down with evidence inside!” Here’s the story: At midnight on a deserted island, Gunnar Nordstrom, assistant secretary of the Interior, falls from the sky, to be ripped to shreds by the blades of a wind turbine. Sebastian Guthrie—the lone witness—is rushed into the witness protection program. Nordstrom was about to approve an offshore wind farm in Maine, a project opposed by all but a handful of people. Sebastian finds an ally in Zoe Thibodeau, and together they sort through a Gordion knot of dead ends, red herrings, murders, and suspects.

In short, I use setting rather than characters or plot to ignite my imagination and build a story. I would be interested to hear what other authors do and think about this approach. I’d also love to hear what readers feel about the importance of a setting in their choice of books. Fair Winds and Foul Play can be ordered in print or ebook from all fine online book stores. Here’s a universal buy link:

Fair Winds and Foul Play

To "Scrape-Warn" or not to "Scrape-Warn"

I've not heard "Scrape-Warn" used as a verb or as a noun, but I have been following the debate among authors concerning whether or not to add a verbot (German word for veto) to the copyright page of a work, along the lines of:

"No part of this work may be reproduced, stored, or used to train artificial (or Super) intelligence models."

For explicit information, read the Writers' Weekly lawyer's discussion and advice.

https://writersweekly.com/this-weeks-article/can-a-no-ai-scraping-allowed-statement-on-your-copyright-page-protect-your-work?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

While it may be ineffective, doing this sort of thing (scrape warning) at least proves that you provided notice and warning, and it might open alternative avenues for lawsuits.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Three Black Lantern Publishing Novels by Caitlin Starling by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:

Three Black Lantern Publishing Novels by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Beware spoilers!

 

In the past, I've reviewed several other offerings from Caitlin Starling on this blog. Do a search of her name to find them, if you're interested. My reviews of this author's work tend to run the gamut in terms of whether I enjoy the material or not. This particular review of three separate books highlights the same situation.

 

Starling's last big release was The Graceview Patient in late 2025, so I went looking for anything new from her. I discovered she has a brand new horror coming out from St. Martin's Press in October 2026 called Milkteeth about a vampire broodmother, which should be interesting. This upcoming book is touted on the author's website, as well as the publisher's, and it's already available for preorder in multiple formats on distributor websites. In the process of discovering this welcome news, I stumbled upon several "new" books with Starling's name on them that are all published by Black Lantern Publishing instead of the big publisher(s) most of her other publicized books are released by.

 

I spent far too much time trying to find out more about Black Lantern Publishing (not to be confused with Black Lantern Books, which is a completely different thing) and Starling's association with them. All I could dig up was that Black Lantern Publishing is/was(?) an online art and literary journal which publishes macabre offerings--a perfect fit for Starling. In any case, they're listed as the publisher for three Starling books I came upon that I'd never heard of before and that are only published as ebooks (that I've been able to ascertain anyway) and not reliably available. For instance, one of them isn't for sale at all from Amazon, for a reason I couldn't locate. I guess the background behind these three books will remain a mystery because the author hasn't put any of them on her personal website (as of this writing in June 2026). Maybe they're old books that her current, big publisher has allowed to be published or reissued by a small press as long as she doesn't put or promote them with her other sanctioned work released by them. I don't know. But it's frustrating not to be able to find more about the origin of these particular stories. Anyway, given that, in general, I'm a fan of this author, I bought all three at once.

 

 

The first one I read, Beneath Winter Lake, was purchased from Apple Media Services. In this horror novel released December 2025, a climatologist is studying Winter Lake in Hawthorn's Rest when the lake suddenly freezes solid and the settlement that drowned more than a century ago rises to the surface. The dead from the village start taking the current townsfolk that share its ancestry. Apparently, this situation reoccurs every 40 years.

 

There was nothing particularly wrong with this book--technically it was decently written yet somehow everything about it felt generic to me. Nothing resonated with me, not characters, plot, nor setting. I also didn't find it scary.

 

 

The second, The Deadlight Motel, is an "eldritch horror" novel and was also published in December 2025 by Black Lantern Publishing. I got it from Amazon as a Kindle ebook (I don't think print or audio editions are available for it). In this (again, not at all frightening) story, a motel that's treated almost like it's human appears only to those who hide guilty secrets and it feeds on them.

 

I had the same problem with this story as the first. I call these "eh" books--not badly written but essentially generic. As with Beneath Winter Lake, my emotional involvement in the story never really kicked in.

 

Both Beneath Winter Lake and The Deadlight Motel did have what could be considered a mutual saving grace (that didn't actually make them easier to read for me, but hey) that is a Caitlin Starling trademark: Both stories were told with a unique twist. However, the problem for me is that every story I read by this author has a unique twist, and I went into reading both of these expecting that right from the beginning so, in truth, I guessed what each twist would be almost exactly from the very first chapters. Readers who haven't read Starling's work before probably wouldn't have guessed the endings right from the start so there's a potential for more enjoyment than I experienced with either of them.

 

 

The third, The Uncrowned, was a political fantasy novel and was published in April 2026 by Black Lantern Publishing. I got it from Amazon as a Kindle ebook (again, I couldn't find a print or audio edition anywhere). This story had an intriguing premise: On the day of his coronation, the crown prince refuses the throne because he's discovered that, within the empire, an entire group of people and their way of life have essentially been erased from history. He intends to right that wrong. But he quickly learns that there's much, much more that he doesn't know and the betrayal and deception go deeper than he originally believed--and when the truth resurfaces, the empire will never again be the same.

 

I was anticipating the worst, based on my previous two experiences. However, I was gratefully rewarded with the promise of intrigue and the seeds of compelling settings, plot, and characters that could have been a little better drawn. For instance, instead of three-dimensional, Prince Aldric Vane and his aunt were both two-dimensional and, weirdly, in exactly the same way. (I think anyone who reads this story will understand what I mean by that, since the two characters are like gender-opposite reflections of each other.) The secondary characters were, at best, one-dimensional.

 

As for setting and plot, both were oddly two-dimensional in that readers were given the starkest bare bones of the land the tale is set in, and the conflict that prompted the story had no more and no less than what was required to convey the story. At no point were readers allowed to discover what incited the empire's actions in essentially wiping out the Telvari community the way it did. The characters themselves didn't show the slightest curiosity about that either, which struck me as wrong and unrealistic. It seemed as if they accepted the situation, like it was a done deal, yet here they were single-mindedly involved in a legal battle to correct something that couldn't really ever be made right. Readers were never given the reasons behind all this, nor were the characters' motivations adequately portrayed. They had a goal and those actions took the place of their feelings entirely. Again, this gave them a flat quality that could have instead been heart-rending if only they'd been developed to the fullest.

 

My biggest problem with the story was that the author wrote it so leanly that every aspect became ravenous for fleshing out. Why would Starling do it this way? I can't fathom. Every single path was a thin, straight line with just a little detail pointing behind to the past, scant focus ahead to consequences, and the present story hogging the whole of the focus. As a result, countless opportunities for richness and depth were squandered. As a reader, I would have given anything for more information and to have gotten the entire tale developed three-dimensionally. It might have been a saga that couldn't be put down. It might have spanned ages in a world so vibrant, readers could see, taste, and smell it all as if they were really there. The plots might have carried much more weight and complexity that would have given them the gravitas they deserved. Fully-fleshed out characters could easily have vied for wider attention from the audience, allowing readers to truly root for them and share every tear shed and every bit of joy in comingled triumph. All of these elements hung there, strangled, just waiting for the breath of life to fulfill them. Instead, we got razor-sharp, cardboard quality. I longed for so much more. Yet the author could still expand into sequels in so many different directions--if she and her publisher were willing.

 

As is, The Uncrowned is compelling, but I'm ultimately saddened by the loss of something that was so close to moving and capturing me wholly. That said, the ending was nevertheless satisfying for me (despite that I wanted loads more) and I enjoyed the unusual take. It was almost like an early John Grisham novel, only in a fantasy world setting. Every aspect of this story was written as if it was a lawyerly account, with all the behind-the-scenes and courtroom drama you could ever want. In other words, it was cold-blooded and logical, with no room for human frailty or fragility. That worked well here, even given the wasted opportunities for growth beyond the immediate scenario. Maybe some readers would have been put off by that, but I found the moral of the story was told perfectly from that unique, distanced perspective. I also think it was brilliant of the author to remove almost completely the "real life" that you and I know from the setting so the account could be less about comparing it to our world events and history and instead about seeing it on its own, with all the texture, ramifications and consequences that the subject material demanded. I would actually love to revisit these characters and the world they're set in, but I suspect that's not an option--directly due to the "mystery" I mentioned in the third paragraph of this review.

 

You might want to give the first two books reviewed here a pass unless you're new to the author. Honestly, though, all of them were $3, so under $10 for three ebooks is worthwhile. The Uncrowned was a steal at that price, lack of true depth notwithstanding. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series. 

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

Vampire Retro-Review: They Thirst

When I first read THEY THIRST (1981), by Robert McCammon, I thought, “Oh, this is just a pastiche of ‘SALEM’S LOT on a wider scale, transplanted to California.” In each book, an ancient vampire leaves the Old World to seek new blood in an unsuspecting American community. Where Stephen King’s vampire lord takes over an isolated town in Maine, McCammon’s Prince Conrad Vulkan creates an undead army to overrun Los Angeles. Decades later, I have to acknowledge that the geographically vaster scope of McCammon’s novel creates a different tone from King’s. Just as King vividly portrays the ambiance of small-town Maine, McCammon immerses the reader in his Southern California setting. A cast of multi-ethnic heroes and villains joins in combat. The inner circle of vampire hunters includes a Hispanic priest and a Hungarian American whose family fled the old country after a vampire attack. Vulkan establishes his lair in a castle built by a fabulously rich film celebrity. The story climaxes with an earthquake, a storm, and a tidal wave. King’s master vampire just wants to turn ‘Salem’s Lot into a safe haven for his kind. Vulkan’s ambition seems to have no limit. He has a few intelligent henchmen to support his campaign, as opposed to the solitary nature of King’s Barlow, who, aside from his human assistant, commands a horde of nearly mindless spawn.

One big difference between the two novels is that we learn much more about Vulkan’s background than King reveals about his vampire. Also, McCammon gives us numerous scenes from the viewpoint of Vulkan and some of the other undead. Between this expansion of viewpoints and the sprawling Los Angeles setting, McCammon’s novel does have an epic feel in contrast to King’s intimate, almost claustrophobic story, even though the two books run to similar length (McCammon’s over 500 pages in the paperback original). If you want to read an old-fashioned vampire story of good versus evil in a contemporary milieu on a large scale, THEY THIRST is the book for you.

Margaret L. Carter

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

The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

Today, I am throwing metaphorical tomatoes at certain "tech titan" men. For arthritis sufferers, tomatoes are a fruit to be avoided. For some, tomatoes worsen arthritis, as do other deadly-nightshade-family fruits.

The "fruit of the poisonous tree" is a legal rule under U.S. law that says that any "evidence" that is discovered as the result of an illegal search or interrogation may not be used in court. So, if the police break into the home of a person of interest without a search warrant (perhaps the home of someone identified by a blurry-eyed Flock camera) and they find a stolen Rolex, they cannot use the Rolex to suggest a lifestyle of burglary.

AI is fruit of a similar kind. Some immoral pirates, well aware of the wrongness of their actions, scraped millions of stolen, copyrighted books--that the pirates know are stolen--from Libgen or Pirate Mirror Library.

Now, to be fair, back in the Oughts when I was actively fighting piracy, there were authors who looked on book piracy as a marketing technique, even some who went on social media and begged to have their books pirated.

I wonder if those authors are now claiming $3,000 a book in the Anthropic suit?

Others looked at it as five fingered discounts and a cost of doing business.

From copyright infringement of news, to music, to books, AI companies have come under fire for using the product to train their AI large language models. The infringement might amount to intellectual property theft of "unprecedented proportions."

Allegedly, the would-be titans of OpenAI knew what they were doing, and noted in writing that their products would pose an "existential threat" to publishers. And authors, one would assume.

If one can ask Chat to write a courtroom drama novel in the style of John Grisham involving a blackmailed judge, and subverted jury selection... with other choice cues, what does that do to John Grisham's fan base and legacy?

Authors Guild is working hard on this. If ever there was a time for authors to subscribe (if they can afford it) this might be that time.

Finally, a question, if immoral, short-cut-taking, author-career-killing pirates develop and train a product, why would anyone be surprised if the product is immoral, short-cut-taking, sand-box-escaping, and cavalier about human beings' rights?

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of The Halcyon Fairy Book by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of The Halcyon Fairy Book by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner 

** THIS POST CONTAINS MY 300TH REVIEW FOR THE ALIEN ROMANCES BLOG! ** 

  Beware many, many spoilers! 

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. The author did The Halcyon Fairy Book's artwork herself. On the copyright page, it says "Ursula Vernon's annotated fairy tales were originally posted to her blog between February 2012 and July 2013 with the exception of 'King of Love' which is original to this anthology. They have been lightly edited from their initial postings." Two of the stories she put on her blog couldn't be included in the book because they aren't yet in the public domain. From there, the author proceeds to tell us in the introduction about a certain writer who goes by two names that frequently can't sleep and so finds herself reading (and critiquing) fairy tales in the wee hours of the morn. I love how Kingfisher slightly twists the word "annotated", which normally means to add notes and comments to explain or criticize the text they're included with, to highlight the insane and strange behavior of characters in each story with her sarcastically witty and hilarious insights. Make no mistake, these fairy tales aren't the star of this particular show. No, Kingfisher's annotations are what make this anthology worth reading. 

It might interest you to learn that the first book of fairy tales to appear in English was "The Blue Fairy Book" by Andrew Lang in 1889 (gathered from such diverse sources as the Brothers Grimm, Arabian Nights, Norwegian folklore, and French tales). Fairy tales were (maybe rightly so, as you're about to discover, if you haven't already) considered harmful for young readers until that time. In 1894, "The Yellow Fairy Book" followed up on the first. Lang's retellings secured the value of fairy tales as treasured children's stories and sparked a dramatic shift in public perception. And now we come full circle: True to the last few decades of popular desire to twist everything wholesome into something disturbed, the varnish has been stripped off these old humdingers and we can once again enjoy(?) them as they were intended. 

Below are my reviews for all the stories in the first half of The Halcyon Fairy Book. Kingfisher also includes the entire anthology of Toad Words and Other Stories within the second half of this collection. Do a search by author or title on this blog to find my previously completed review of that. 

"The Blue Light": This retelling of the soldier and the tinderbox fairy tale has many different renderings, which Kingfisher imparts within her variation. In true Mystery Science Theater 3000 tradition, she injects amusing comments all throughout the text and leaves none of the other versions of this story anywhere to hide. I loved it. 

"The Master-maid": A prince is held captive by a giant who asks of him one impossible task each day. The Master-maid (whatever that is) is also a captive of the giant. Each day she tells the prince how to complete his task in her no-fail wisdom. They dream of marrying each other one day when they're free. When they do manage to escape together, the prince pouts and wants to go home to visit his rich, powerful daddy. The Master-maid warns him not to do this because it won't be long before he forgets all about her. And he does (though, in his defense, a troll is scheming to get him to forget). The Master-maid turns into an outright witch at that point, so incensed by losing her man that she decides to take her fury out on every other (rich) man that crosses her path. Her treachery turns against her eventually, but by then the prince has remembered her, and the two can get on with their happily ever after as planned. This story was long, tedious, and eye-rolling. I thought it would never end. I didn't really care after a certain point whether it ended happily. Kingfisher's razor-sharp wit was the saving point and winning element to this otherwise far-fetched, shocking, and unbelievable tale. 

"The Crystal Casket": This story is based on an Italian version of Snow White that doesn't have dwarfs but eagles and, in my opinion, is barely worth reading. If the tale was going for "drastically different than what everyone knows and loves", okay, maybe it's a winner. But as a good, strong story, this never really made it out of the gate. Good thing I was reading for the annotations. 

"The Wonderful Sheep": A mind-bogglingly strange rendition of, again, Snow White, only it's the king who wants his daughter's heart and life (but most of all her tongue). The youngest princess and a bunch of her servants and pets monkey and dog fight about who's going to get the dubious honor or sacrificing their three items in question for her. Suddenly, one after the other, the servants and pets are committing suicide right in front of her. (To prove what a stupid story this is, Princess Miranda does not have the reaction most people would have after this occurrence--which would be equivalent to being sent to a looney bin as soon as it was equinely possible to get her there.) Instead, she discovers that none of them has the right kind of tongue for the job of convincing her father that it's hers. In the end, she writes down the whole tragic testimony on the bark headstone of the grave she digs, you know, in case her murderous dad comes look for her and wonders what happened. Senselessly, she heads off into the forest, where she meets the king of sheep--

        Yeah, and on that insane note, it occurs to me that the author's comments are really the only logical responses to be had within these pages. This terrible story with a rotten king who fluctuates between spoiling his youngest daughter shamelessly and then wanting to chop her head off the next (along with a thoroughly unworthy, superficial princess) isn't worth your time. Kingfisher's commentary and finishing the story on a definitely-not-happy end note were the best parts of it. 

"The Wonderful Birch": In this Russian version of Cinderella, a witch schemes to turn the wife of a desirable man into a sheep. She succeeds, but the daughter of the previously happy couple is determined to put things right--and this involves some magic that has her turned out so handsomely the prince himself can't resist her. The witch has a daughter of her own, a poor being that practically lives under the prince's table like little more than a dog, during an extended banquet. Repeatedly during this fest, the witch's daughter is injured. She's kicked so hard, bones break and she gets one of her eyes poked out by what one presumes must be a stiletto heel worn by a monstrous guest. (These partygoers seated at the VIP table must have some idea that the dogs have converged under them to eat the scraps, yet you can't help but wonder how heartless they must be. Who would kick a dog so hard, they break a bone, or poke out an eye in the process of punishing what they believe are canines just trying to get some sustenance below them?) Every time I think these insane fairy tales can't get worse or be more nonsensical, they can and they do. This one wasn't easy to read--and not just because so often cannibalism factors into these disturbing old fairy tales--though Kingfisher's annotations provided at least some comic relief from the full-on, escalating horror. 

"The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens": Someone's stealing the golden apples from the king's singular apple tree (a thing so unique, apparently it pollinates itself!). He sends his three sons, one at a time, to discover who the thief is. Only his youngest has any success in uncovering the truth. Not surprisingly, magic is afoot…and peahens. A bunch of them aren't what they seem and at least one of them can turn into a human girl so beautiful, the youngest prince (who is clearly not important enough to name) falls hopelessly in love with her, and her with him. This beauty claims more than once that the prince will never see her again if he doesn't do something that's required, but it's clear she and/or the laws of magic are very flexible about that because he's given numerous chances to get it right. In the meantime, a lot of people get murdered by him without so much as a trial. Brutal times, eh? This is one fairy tale I enjoyed a lot as a child, though, thanks to the retelling author's hilarious insights, I'm seeing so many freaky things I hadn't noticed before during my past readings.

          Unfortunately, this story didn't end where it should have. Instead, it took a turn for the why?. With a dragon riding a horse, the prince gaining brotherhood with a fish, a fox and a wolf, the tale descends into absolute ludicrousness. No part of the extension added anything useful or interesting to the previous wackiness. Kingfisher included a lot of spot-on commentary concerning the end of this piece. 

"The Deer Prince": A widower and a widow, with a daughter each, get married. The husband's daughter is pretty, the wife's ugly. The wife gets jealous, the husband is never home to notice his adorable kid being abused, and, as must always be the case in fairy tales, something outlandish happens that doesn't fit the situation at all. One night, there's a knock on the door and the wife orders her hideous daughter to answer it. There's a deer standing there. The daughter tries to beat it with a broom so it runs away. The next night, there's again a knock, and now the cute daughter answers it. Instead of driving the deer off, she talks to it. This stag wants her to hop on his back and come away with him, where they can "enjoy" (wink wink, nudge nudge) the forest together. Isn't there a cautionary saying about following a stranger who promises candy inside his love van? Nevertheless, she hops on and the stag bounds off to his magic-addled castle. He warns her not to go into three of the doors within the place before he disappears. Of course he knows as well as the reader does that she'll be snooping before a few days have passed. And she does. He clearly makes such a big deal about the doors, we realize in retrospect, because he's hoping she'll be a Nosy Nancy. It's the only way to break the enchantment that's been placed on the castle and over himself.

     Alas, happily-ever-after might have ensued if any of these old fairy-tale authors knew when to quit. Instead, the stupid once-a-stag prince asks his bride if she wants her stepmother and sister to visit them. (Not sure what happened to her not-so-dear-old-dad.) While it's very true that the story was disappointingly resolved without any conflict at all with Door #3 leading to wedded bliss, what came after the prince's total lack of forethought was even worse--though, thankfully, Kingfisher's enjoyable commentary explained merrily why she's not a fan of traditional fairy-tale endings. 

"Two Cinderellas": So named because Kingfisher decided to give us two, short, Cinderella-esque tales filled to bursting with reasons for her to take issue with events.

The first one is uproariously titled "Little Saddleslut"! The original author didn't bother pulling any punches. He got right into the action with this one: A mom is spinning flax with her three daughters and the two older tots decide to play a homicidal game. Whoever's spindle falls gets murdered and eaten by the others. Again with the cannibalism? Someone please tell me why all these "bedtime tales" always end up with someone getting eaten? The youngest daughter prudently begs off on partaking and uses magic to get revenge for her beloved mother. In the process, she loses a shoe, the king's son finds it, and wants to marry only the one who fits in it. He does, they have a kid, and Little Saddleslut stupidly leaves her bloodthirsty sisters alone with the princess. Little Saddlemoron might have been a better name for her! But, in the end, everything turns out fine…if you consider the evil sisters being hacked to pieces fine. Yeah, maybe it's a fitting ending for these bad daughters, and I guess I should just be grateful they weren't put in a stew and eaten by the whole kingdom.

       Next up is "Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl" (the first, unpronounceable word actually means "little rag girl"). Wife dies, husband remarries a shrew (who has her own daughter) to tend his orphan daughter. Shrew hates her new husband's kid and proves to be a witch who curses the little girl* to take a loaf of bread, eat of it, share it with everyone she meets, but somehow has to bring it home whole every night. Couldn't Conk just buy or bake a new loaf to bring home? I guess somehow the witch would know the difference. A cow (also, apparently, a witch with magic powers) tries to help Conk by letting her siphon butter and honey from its horns. Cool! Only now the little ragamuffin gets fat, and the stepmother gets wise to Conk's sidestepping. Time to raise the stakes of impossible cruelty. Conk finds herself in the presence of an ogress who values quick thinkers. Again, the little girl goes home with a prize that night, and her stepmother is fit to burst at being thwarted. She figures maybe her own daughter could use some bovine and ogress time, too, but it doesn't go well for this girl and the stepwitch ends up trying to the kill the cow, who, as you might expect, isn't at all what it seems and instead does Conk another good turn at her end. From there, this turns into the Cinderella story with one twist. The stepwitch wants her own daughter to marry the king (not the prince), but her scheming runs afoul when Conk emerges from the place her bad mommy hid her in the throne room and announces the slipper belongs to her. She can prove it, too. I have to spoil this one for sheer stupidity: Yeah, Rag Girl becomes queen, happily-blah-blah-after, but the worst that happens isn't her stepmom being hacked to pieces or boiled into soup for the wedding feast. No, she just leaves with a "dry throat" of chagrin. Wow. I really couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.              

*If these old-world fairy tale writers are to be believed, all widowed men should be scared out of their braies about being preyed upon by witches (with daughters) looking to hook up with previously married men (who also have daughters) in order to abuse that man's only child. What the heck, man? 

"The Story of Log": A man and a woman want a child of their own so badly, they fashion one out of a log and dress it and rock it and…is anyone else thinking, "My very own log! Just what I always wanted. I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him and name him George"? Well, they called him Log. A few years later, the thing comes to life and goes on a killing spree with just his log arms-- No, no, no. Don't worry! Log is a kind and gentle log person who goes on to save the country from a vile sun, moon, and dawn thief. He's apparently not a log for brains, but he is a shapeshifter--he's able to change himself from a human into firewood on a whim. You wouldn't think that would be terribly useful in your day to day, but it actually is here. According to Kingfisher, you'll be forgiven for singing a rousing rendition of "The Log Song" by Ren & Stimpy while you're reading this whackadoodle of a story. 

"Tatterhood": Let me sum up the moral of this story: A queen who thinks being a good mother is either spoiling someone rotten or bossing him or her around isn't fit to be anything but the imperious queen she is. Let's leave it at that. If only the sadist storytelling had taken that good advice. But no, he had to go and write the whole, sorry tale that culminates in "an ugly hussy" named Tatterhood toting "a severed head under one arm, riding her war goat, beating the crap out of people with a wooden spoon" (as only Kingfisher could describe it). 

"The Seven Doves": Based on an Italian fairy tale of "bros turned into birds" and their poor sister who intends to save them from their (maybe well-deserved) fate, this one starts with seven boys born in seven years to one mother. This hockey team decides they can't bear another male child entering their household. They threaten their poor, fertile mother and leave home until such a time as she can produce a female sibling for them. (Yeah, you read that right.) Somehow these lugheads think she has a choice. I think it's clear this story isn't going anywhere good. Would you believe me if I told you cannibalism may be involved? Of course you would. It only makes sense at this point. 

"The King of Love": A man with three daughters (it's always three; why is it always three?) takes the youngest with him to pick wild herbs. She pulls up what seems to be a fine radish but is actually a door that reveals a green bird bathing in a pan of milk. Said bird dries himself and becomes a gorgeous specimen of human hunk. Wait a minute, what? The punishment for the crime of picking a radish-door is apparently that this daughter has to become the wife of this hunk. The dad is paid off but encouraged to drop in anytime. The other two sisters decide to figure out what in all that's holy is going on here with the radish-door, milky-bird-shapeshifting hunk their dad told them about. The sisters persuade their youngest sibling to do what the hunk has asked her to promise not to do--find out who he is. Ready to guess his name? (Hint: It's in the title!) Insert groan, or some other strange noise here. As Kingfisher says, "Some people call him Maurice." The hunk promptly disappears but not for long as the youngest keeps conjuring him back and eventually saves him from an ogress's curse. Somehow, this one has a happy ending--unless by some misfortune you've read the wrong version of it and the poor girl is forced to wear a pair of iron shoes until they wear out. Only then can she find her husband. Hey, don't say you weren't warned of what can happen when you try to read these fairy-tale doozies. 

~*~ 

I'm not sure what prompted the title of The Halcyon Fairy Book. What was the author going for? The word "halcyon" as an adjective means "denoting a time period that was idyllically happy and peaceful". None of these stories are happy let alone peaceful. I can only conclude Kingfisher was being sarcastically true to form, if the title has anything to do with that. Alternately, the noun version of the word refers to a tropical Asian or African kingfisher or a mythical bird said to breed (and charm the wind and waves into a state of calm) in a floating nest at sea during the winter solstice. Here's an image of a halcyon: 

 

Given the cover art and her pen name, maybe the bird itself--real or myth--was what the author was going for. Only a few of the stories actually included enchanted (or otherwise) birds. On that uncertain note, I'll say, ahh whatever. 

To conclude this review that I had a rollicking good time producing, if you like your fairy-tales roasted comedic style, you'll love every last one of T. Kingfisher's retellings of particularly bone-headed fairy tales that were so badly told that they had almost no right to be published in the first place. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series. 

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