Last Pleasures

One of my great grandmothers used to say that the last pleasure left to her was a good bowel movement.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the craft of writing, nor with copyright except that anything that I write is copyrighted and I reserve all rights regarding my expression of my great grandmother's view on gerontological delight... in the afternoon or at any other time.

Doctors and Advertising interludes will tout Sennakot or Dulcolax or Miralax or bulking agents, and traditionalists will tell you that tea is an aperient and coffee is a diuretic. 

What would a spacemen drink? Just guessing, here, but probably coffee because going into space and being weightless releases calcium from the bones, and some spacemen have formed relatively massive kidney stones... a few of which are on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Passing a stone is most decidedly not a senile pleasure.

I happened upon (that is, I created) a new recipe. By happy accident, I discovered some stewed rhubarb in my freezer. It being dark pink, I thought it was beetroot.

Rhubarb is good for your bones, your heart, your digestion, and it fights inflammation.

Cranberries ward off UTIs. They are good for your heart, your digestion (they may prevent ulcers), they also prevent oral bacteria (tooth decay, gum disease), also good for your immune system, and for boosting good cholesterol.... and more.  I use dried ones.

Cherries lower inflammation, and are good for relief of gout, arthritis, and they promote heart health, blood sugar management. I use dried ones.

Barley stabilizes blood sugar, contains fiber which aids digestion (and bowel movements), is good for your heart, your gut, your cholesterol, and barley water is said to help prevent or relieve UTIs by acting as a diuretic thus helping the body to flush out infection. (It's not a substitute for medical attention, but might be complimentary.)

Bush's Steakhouse beans. Baked beans promote heart health, gut heath, good bowel movements and also less good bowel noises, beans are full of vitamins and minerals, they lower LDL, might help with prostate health (if cooked in tomatoes), and they may be good for muscles.

Bob's Red Mill wheat bran: wheat bran works to prevent constipation, it reduces bloating, promotes heart health, manages blood sugar, and lowers bad cholesterol.

Those ingredients combine for a delicious, nutritious side dish. They can be cooked in either (or a combination of) chicken stock, Knuden's juice -- either Cranberry or one of their Cherry juices, or the water left over after boiling well-washed beetroot, or the liquor from cooking your rhubarb,

This concoction can be prepared all in one saucepan (non-stick), and reheated numerous times in a pyrex bowl in the oven. Start with the rhubarb and the barley and liquid of choice.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware: May contain unintended spoilers! 

So on T. Kingfisher's website, she has a page that includes links to her short stories and articles, some of which are included in a variety of different anthologies (her own and others) and, from this page, you can read these offerings free. Two stories that I absolutely adored--"Jackalope Wives" and "The Tomato Thief" (oddly, written under her real name Ursula Vernon)--can be read from there at no charge. What a bargain! 

In both of these stories, Grandma Harken is the protagonist--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 (strange things happen in the desert!), and she understands this harsh environment better than most. Her biting humor and compelling way of looking at the world make these tales irresistible. In both stories, there's a little bit of "magic" because, in the desert, there are spirits, not quite deities, but definitely not human either. I wanted more of this world, more of Grandma Harken, after I finished reading these two shorts. You can find my reviews for them by putting "T. Kingfisher" or the story titles into the search engine here on the Alien Romances blog. 

In Snake-Eater, we have Grandma Billy, who is, for all intents and purposes, Grandma Harken, only going by another name. I don't think Kingfisher intended that, but anyone who's read all these stories would probably agree with me. Full disclosure, I found myself deeply disappointed that the author didn’t have Grandma Harken reprise her role in Snake-Eater instead of creating the new, shockingly similar Grandma Billy. All three of these stories felt very connected to me--I read them within a few weeks of each other. I flat-out refuse to believe they weren't set in the same world, though possibly in a nearby region of it and not the exact same one. I would have loved to visit Grandma Harken again. While Grandma Billy was enjoyable, new quirks to Grandma Harken's already quirky personality could easily have fit the bill. The opportunity for connection was there, but it seemed like it was deliberately missed. As a reader, I yearn for links between an author’s stories--the more the better! In the same way, these three stories felt like they could have been connected, like the author was reaching toward an obvious tie, then, at the last minute, she yanked the thread that could have brought it all together harmoniously. A part of me felt set up by the author for disappointment because of this. I was left wishing the world Kingfisher created here could become a wider thing with many more stories to come. As I said, Snake-Eater basically has the same setting as the two Grandma Harken stories, here called Quartz Creek, with the addition of a few other characters, including a Catholic priest who (for once in modern fiction) turns out to be a pretty good guy. 

The author injected someone named Selena into Snake-Eater with a black lab dog named Copper. In my opinion, these characters are a regurgitation of Mouse and her coon dog Bongo from Kingfisher's 2019 horror The Twisted Ones. As I said in my review of that novel, Kingfisher is always Kingfisher, and I think all her main characters are essentially her. Whatever is the case, she defaults to a character type that she has reused over and over in her fiction almost from the beginning--whether those heroines are young, old, or somewhere in-between. The names and details have been swapped out, but, almost all across the board, T. Kingfisher is always the heroine in her own tales. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you like her, you'll probably always like her. If you don't, well, then I guess that's the one drawback. Not every author can be skilled in every area, but T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is a fantastic writer, despite that her characters tend to be static cookie-cutter types, and she only rarely disappoints me. 

In Snake-Eater, Selena's lost her mother, whom she wasn't all that close to anyway, and ran away from a relationship that was destroying her. With little more than twenty bucks in her pocket, she flees to the desert town Quartz Creek, where her Aunt Amelia lives and is always inviting her to visit. Only Amelia is gone. Her home, Jackrabbit Hole House, is still there with no one to claim it because those daring enough to inhabit the very small, struggling but close-knit town knew how to contact a next of kin. Long story short, Selena is welcomed to move in and make the house her own by the mayor/postmistress/fire chief/many other hats of the town. 

On her way to the place, Selena meets Grandma Billy, her eccentric, to say the least, neighbor. Strange things happen in the desert, and, even as Selena finds herself settling into a place that feels like home and people that feel like family, odd things begin to happen--like the appearance of fetches--supernatural apparitions which are bad omens. This all culminates in a few roadrunners (something that looks like a dinosaur instead of the cartoon character readers are familiar with) stalking Selene for a reason she can't understand. 

Grandma Billy and Father Aguirre have some theories that her aunt created the fetches herself. According to Grandma Billy, Amelia was prone to taking in drifters. One such stray she'd befriended (and might have be-lover-ed) was Snake-Eater, a not-human, not-deity thing Amelia had become close with. This one, Grandma Billy had never taken a shine to. If he's showing up again suddenly, it can't be good. So what does he want? And, if Selena and her new friends can make him go away, should she and Copper make Quartz Creek and Jackrabbit Hole House their home permanently? 

Snake-Eater was written in very typical Kingfisher style, and I enjoyed every minute of it, despite that it was a bit slow-moving and frequently felt like there was little or nothing actually happening (luckily, I like character studies just as much as I do action and adventure in a story). Again, as I did with the Grandma Harken stories, I want more of this world. I hope in the future that Kingfisher will own up to what could be construed as a rehash of her past characters and settings and make this a full-on series instead of random, repurposed bits that somehow cropped up in this standalone novel.

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/

Traveling Abroad

In connection with their philosophy of IDIC -- Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations -- the Vulcans in the Star Trek universe sometimes proclaim, "I rejoice in our differences." Lovers of exploring strange new worlds and meeting intelligent ETs in fiction, however, don't have to leave Earth to discover real-life alien cultures, if only slightly, subtly alien. Spending last week in Germany to visit our daughter and her partner (who moved there last August), I encountered several unexpected differences from my familiar world in a country with a language and ethnicity closely related to my own. (An extraterrestrial linguist would probably consider English and German dialects of the same language. The parents of one of my grandfathers immigrated to the U.S. from Germany around 1880.)

Some highlights of our trip to Freiburg im Breisgau: The Mundenhof, sort of a zoo but more of a nature preserve. It started as a refuge for animals rescued from abusive or neglectful situations and still fills that role to some extent. The animals roam in large, open outdoor areas. The facility is divided into sections corresponding to the various continents. We managed to see most of them but not all, too exhausted to walk the full circuit. One cool feature was a peacock who wandered freely around the grounds and perched on top of a fence as if deliberately posing for a photo. Our daughter showed us around the Alstadt, the old city center, including a 900-year-old cathedral. Another day we went to the town where the historical Faust died. On Saturday, we took a train excursion to a touristy village in the mountainous Black Forest region. Lots of shops selling cuckoo clocks. After lunch at the lakeside, we took a short cruise on the lake in a small tour boat. Returning to the Alstadt late that afternoon, we found we couldn't get into the restaurant where we'd hoped to have dinner, this being the weekend with a (very loud) music festival going on. Fortunately, we did get to eat at a nice small-plates place. On our last full day, Sunday, my husband and I attended an English-speaking Anglican church, with a small and very welcoming congregation. They had a potluck lunch after the service.

Differences that struck me: As predicted, almost everybody we met spoke some English, many of them fluently. (What do you call a person who speaks only one language? An American.) On the frequent occasions when we got lost, there was usually a nearby kind stranger able to help. Ubiquitous public transportation: Buses, trams on tracks, and of course trains for intercity travel. Our daughter's German housemate said she wouldn't own a car at all if not needed for getting to work. Unlike what I'd read online, though, we couldn't pay cash to board the bus. One has to deal with ticket machines and credit cards everywhere. You're on your own. The bus drivers basically ignored us except once when telling me to sit down rather than block the aisle. Oddly, most often nobody even asks for a ticket on the bus or tram. (On the train, they always do.) Either they trust the public or screening every passenger for payment is more trouble than it's worth. And there's Uber in Europe! Tipping: Suggested percentage amounts are much lower than in the U.S., even in restaurants; apparently German servers get paid a living wage. Environmental awareness: We were told the government actively discourages people from driving personal cars unless absolutely necessary. (That policy didn't prevent rush hour traffic from being as congested as ours, though.) High gas prices and related taxes are considered a feature, not a bug. Glass and plastic bottles have deposits and can be returned for cash, a system that hasn't existed for a long time in the places where we've lived. Dual-flush commodes, unlike in the U.S., seem to be universal. And speaking of plumbing, most restrooms were not only high-tech but super clean. Climate: Because of the high latitude, darkness didn't arrive until after 9:30 at night, which I expected. But I didn't realize the high latitude combined with altitude -- in the mountainous Black Forest region -- meant Freiburg wouldn't necessarily have the summer heat typical of June at home. For the first few days, mornings were actually chilly. Luckily, we brought jackets. On the plus side, there was barely any humidity compared to the east coast of the U.S. Food and drink: I don't remember being offered a salad dressing choice at any restaurant. All salads had a standard yogurt dressing. Choice of "still" or sparkling water was always offered, with sparkling as the default, and it didn't come with ice unless specially requested.

I can hardly remember how my husband and I got around on our own in England back in 2002, aside from the advantage of speaking the local language, with limited electronic magic compared to nowadays. On this trip, if it hadn't been for internet access and our cell phone roaming plan (so we could call our daughter for instructions whenever we got lost again), we would have been so far up the creek we would have lost our paddles in the rapids.

(Note: A few more examples have been added in my comment below.)

Margaret L. Carter

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

You Didn't Write That

There's a new threat for authors, namely, the risk of being falsely accused of using AI to write your book.

The consequences could be disqualification from a contest, loss of a publishing contract, perhaps being deplatformed from Amazon or one of its competitors, loss of the trust of readers and reviewers, and--no doubt--more.

Moreover, the better the author, the more likely he or she is to be falsely flagged!

For school children and university students, there is the risk of accusation, punishment, bad grades and shaming if teachers happen to use a bad AI detector that is unreliable. Parents should be aware that false positives happen, and not all AI detection products are equal (or trustworthy).

There's probably no appeal or argument for a college or university applicant whose essay is run through a bad tool.

The Authors Guild ran a test of five of the "top" AI detection tools using ten vintage Authors Guild articles, all of which were written in 2020, before AI technology existed. Three products performed well. One was utterly unreliable.

As they write in Can AI Detectors Be Trusted?:

"AI detection tools are AI models trained to recognize statistical patterns associated with large language model [LLM] output, such as sentence rhythm, vocabulary distribution, and predictability of word choice. But polished, edited prose written by experienced human writers shares many of those same characteristics, because LLMs were trained on polished, edited prose written by experienced human writers. The more refined and controlled a writer's style, the more it may resemble the output these tools are designed to flag."

https://authorsguild.org/news/can-ai-detectors-be-trusted/

The Authors Guild article features a fascinating grid showing how each of the five tools performed on each of the ten articles.

Authors Guild will provide legal help members who have been falsely accused. This might be another of many very good reasons to consider joining.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 
SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/ 

https://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday 

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} The Hazel Wood Series by Melissa Albert by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List}

The Hazel Wood Series by Melissa Albert

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware spoilers! 

I was looking for a Christmas tale, similar to "A Christmas Carol", one afternoon at the end of 2025. The audiobook for The Hazel Wood came up, though I have no idea why. As far as I could tell at any point while listening to it, there was nothing vaguely Christmas-y about it. In fact, this very sinister tale is far from feel-good, inspirational, or even hopeful. Instead, The Hazel Wood is a dark, truly noir fantasy series. Rebecca Soler narrated all of these stories. Her voice absolutely bleeds the bitchy, always-angry teenage girl persona that fits this series perfectly (she did a good job with all the other unique voices as well). 

The Hazel Wood, Book 1, was published in 2019, the first offering by former managing editor at Barnes and Noble Melissa Albert. Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother Ella have always lived their lives on the road, running away from the "bad luck" that's constantly hounding them. Alice knows her grandmother Althea authored a cult-classic book of pitch-black fairytales, and she knows the old woman died at her estate, the Hazel Wood, a place she's never been to. The one time her mom caught her trying to read the elusive book, little Alice had had it yanked away from her. When Ella disappears, the only clue to where she's gone is the message she left Alice: "Stay away from the Hazel Wood." A classmate, Ellery Finch, is a die-hard fan of her grandmother's work. He also seems to have a bit of a crush on Alice. But what does she really know about him? Despite that she isn't sure she can trust him, Alice has no one else to help her track down her mom. Where she and Finch are led is insane, even unbelievable. Who was her grandmother? For that matter, who was her mom and who is she? 

The basic story of a teenager who doesn't fit in seemingly anywhere, then something happens to make him or her realize the world they know is nothing like they've always believed has been done before, and very often (in the 2000s, many such titles and series were released--The Caster Series and The Mortal Instrumentals are two very similar to The Hazel Wood…but there are others). 

  Both The Hazel Wood and The Night Country audiobooks came with the bonus novella set in the same world called "The Boy Who Didn't Come Home" (first published in paperback with 38 pages on January 7, 2020),  narrated by James Fouhey. In this, we're given Finch's side of the story following the events of Book 1, before Book 2 begins. The Night Country is the sequel, published in 2021, where Alice and Finch delve even deeper into her grandmother's dark legacy, and Alice has to confront that maybe there's no such thing as a happily-ever-after, let alone an unmagical life, for her. There was a beautiful, unexpected romance in this story. Additionally, the events moved toward a wrap-up that I found surprisingly perfect. I honestly had no clue how this sequence could tie up in a way that could be considered satisfactory, but the author did manage to pull off quite a compelling resolution. 

  These two books hinge on really knowing the 12 anti-fairytales that are included in Althea Proserpine's collection of Hinterland tales. Sure, Finch or Ella or other characters often retell portions from the collected work of Alice's grandmother's stories for her, but it's just not the same. Not having read all of these stories in advance was a huge hindrance to me in fully understanding Books 1 and 2. Apparently, I wasn't the only reader who felt that way. In 2023, we finally got them in Tales from the Hinterland, which includes all of Althea Proserpine's disturbing stories. Since all three are now available to us (thankfully I discovered the series long after all the offerings were released), I strongly urge reading this collection first before starting Book 1. Trust me, it'll all make much more sense that way. I also want to comment that it's difficult to write a story when you've locked yourself in with something else you wrote previously. Albert had to do it 12 times! Kudos!

If you're looking for the polar opposite of a fairytale, something unusual, unexpected, and unsettling, this series is definitely for you. Be advised that this isn't a Christmas story outside of the cold, wintery, chilling aspects, though there are plenty of Krampus-style demons running amok here if you find yourself in the mood to be menaced. 

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/

Snake-Eater

In anticipation of Karen's upcoming review of SNAKE-EATER, by T. Kingfisher, I'm posting mine now (in advance, because I have limited internet access this week and plan a different topic for next week).

In Kingfisher's afterword to SNAKE-EATER, she summarizes the “platonic ideal” of her horror fiction as “a woman and her dog alone in a house full of creepy family secrets,” which perfectly describes her first horror novel, THE TWISTED ONES. While her others don’t necessarily include dogs, the protagonists do tend to be women returning home in emotionally fraught circumstances, for a certain value of home. In the case of SNAKE-EATER, Selena flees with her black Lab, Copper, from her overbearing long-time lover, Walter -- who dominates and criticizes her only "for her own good," of course -- to her aunt’s home in the tiny town of Quartz Creek, an arid western milieu totally different from anything Selena has known. For decades her only contact with her aunt has come through occasional postcards. Still, a vague invitation to visit sometime makes Quartz Creek Selena’s only possible refuge. The shock of learning her aunt died the year before devastates her, but she can’t consider returning to Walter. He would indulgently take her back, and her abortive escape would become one more time “Selena Had Done Something Foolish and Walter Saved Her.” Selena plans to stay in her aunt’s vacant home, “Jackrabbit Hole House,” for one night, then for a few days, then maybe for a few weeks, while she decides how to move forward.

Meanwhile, she meets engagingly quirky local characters -- another typical feature of Kingfisher novels -- including Jenny, mayor as well as postmistress, fire chief, and police chief; Grandma Billy, who keeps a flock of chickens and a guard peacock; and Catholic priest Father Aguirre, who’s surprisingly respectful toward the local desert gods/spirits (the distinction is fuzzy). Selena, as more than one person points out to her, apologizes too much. She’s paralyzingly afraid of doing the wrong thing and certain her new neighbors, who gift her with fresh produce and (in Grandma Billy’s case) a daily bounty of eggs, will perceive her as a “moocher.” She’s even reluctant to “impose” on the weekly community potluck dinner. At first I thought her need to memorize “scripts” for every social interaction depicts her as mildly autistic, but it soon becomes clear that she simply lacks any shred of self-esteem. Over a lifetime, her confidence has been systematically beaten down by a domineering mother and a gaslighting fiancé. Reluctantly getting used to life in Quartz Creek, she soon realizes she wants to stay. Granted, though, the local people’s matter-of-fact belief in supernatural entities strikes her as peculiar, and she suspects Grandma Billy of being downright crazy. Moreover, as we learn later in the story, Father Aguirre has his own secret.

Selena begins to accept the truth only when she witnesses such things as a timid squash spirit in the vegetable garden -- unless she’s losing her mind. But she has to acknowledge the reality of the spirit realm when she learns of her aunt’s relationship with Snake-Eater, the roadrunner god. As both the narrative and the author’s afterword emphasize, real-world roadrunners don’t resemble the cartoon bird. They’re more like two-foot-tall dinosaurs, which Selena discovers when she balks at filling her aunt’s former role and Snake-Eater won’t take “no” for an answer. Similarly to the heroine of THE TWISTED ONES, Selena (with the help of Grandma Billy and Father Aguirre) follows her dog through a portal into another realm, where she has to face the gods of the desert. Ultimately, she triumphs over Snake-Eater not through combat, physical or magical, but through open-mindedness, friendship, her bond with Copper, and her kindness to creatures such as the squash god in the garden and scorpions in the house. The denouement includes a delightful confrontation that sends the insufferable Walter packing.

I do have one reservation about the novel, in agreement with a review I read: Its setting around or soon after 2050 seems irrelevant and unnecessary. Aside from passing allusions to near-future technology, little of which reaches Quartz Creek, we learn the approximate year only from the age of Father Aguirre’s truck. Why does the author include this pointless distraction? Her afterword doesn’t say.

Margaret L. Carter

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

FUBAR

"Believe all women" was always a bad slogan, even if taken in context. There are women who make a living from lying, such as actresses, comediennes, novelists... lawyers!

There is now a very kind name --AI Hallucinations-- for when real life lawyers use AI for their research and trust AI so much that they skip verification. Apparently, there are now hundreds of cases where lawyers in court cited legal precedents that never existed in real life.

One lawyer in New York submitted a brief containing six AI fabricated cases; two attorneys in the Sixth Circuit wrote up over twenty-four "hallucinated" case citations; in California, an attorney was fined $10,000 for using twenty-one fake cases (generated by AI) in support of an appeal.

As a result of severe rebukes and hefty fines, the legal community is now wary of using Chat without verification, and someone has set up a website listing all known AI Hallucinations.

Presumably, the tech wizards who trained their AI or ChatGPT on large libraries of fiction (or pirate sites) should not have included entire genres, such as legal thrillers. 

The week before last, I learned that my State put "a new computer system" in place that is generating notices in error relating to tax returns. In my case, I was sent a refund check that --if I had encashed it-- might have paid for three cups of overpriced coffee, and subsequently I received a notice claiming that I had underpaid my State taxes by $10,000. Same State, same return, same tax year.

Both notices cannot be true. In my opinion, neither is accurate.

I was told, don't take the $28 refund (but keep it safe). Prove with a jpg of the cancelled check that you paid your taxes. 

The watchword for use of AI should be, "Trust But Verify". One cannot "Believe all AI".

One assumes that AI can be highly beneficial in improving weather forecasting, although perhaps not so much regarding "climate", and in making medical research and diagnoses more efficient, and in myriad ways including warfare, traffic control, space exploration, and crime solving.

AI might be a tad worrisome when it comes to the privacy invasions and possibilites for error in age gating, in surveillance and facial recognition (false positives), and in deep fakes, and in encryption and decryption.

Dr. Matthew Guariglia is the Senior Policy for EFF (the Electronic Freedom Foundation). Last week he testified to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection.

I wonder if there is an acronym for that. EFF's biggest concerns are that AI-powered mass surveillance violated constitutional rights and protections in a big way, and that government secrecy prevents the public and lawmakers from knowing when AI makes mistakes.

As we see, AI does make mistakes.

EFF on privacy https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy

EFF on AI https://www.eff.org/issues/ai

Meanwhile, Apple automatically saves user IDs and passwords not only to the primary device but also to linked devices. One might not notice, but maybe it is not a good idea to have banking logins saved and shared, because if it goes to various synched devices, it probably gets stored on a server farm.

They may not be as safe as you think.

Not if Q-Day is as nightmarish as some think it will be.

Paloalto Networks explains: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-q-day

In a nutshell, Q-Day is the day when a quantum computer becomes capable of breaking the encryption standards that underpin modern digital life. All passwords, banking, cloud storage, Bitcoins, everything.

All this, at the same time that credit card companies, banks, insurance companies, periodicals etc put pressure on clients and customers to agree to "go digital" and avoid the waste and insecurity of paper statements and tax forms in the mail.

One might want to preserve some hard copies, just in case Q-Day is upon us.

Hence, FUBAR.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Review for Alex Hunter Series by Greig Beck by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review for Alex Hunter Series by Greig Beck

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

In 2011, I was looking for supernatural horror books to read that took place in Antarctica (a trio of categories that were and are favorites of mine). Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck came up during my search. In this series, a superhuman takes on supermonsters in life-threatening settings. I absolutely devoured it and the next and the next. I followed it for the next several years as more and more books featuring Captain Alex Hunter aka The Arcadian were released. The first two books were published by St. Martin's Press in very affordable mass market paperbacks. After that, another company took over the series and eventually republished all the books in trade paperback and electronic formats. After Book 5, I found the books far too expensive (in part because they were all so large) to continue purchasing. I bought the prequel, Book #5.5 and #6 as ebooks, but even those were surprisingly expensive (that can happen when publishers don't seem to understand that intangible ebooks which don't take up physical space should be priced lower). I haven't been able to find any of Greig Beck's books on my library apps in any format, other than the first two which were originally published by a mainstream (aka, not small press) publisher. As Beck is an Australia author, I'm sure that's part of why I haven't been able to locate them through libraries. 

Below is a list of the publication order (along with reading order) for what's currently available in the series:

.5 Arcadian Genesis, a prequel (2012)

#1 Beneath the Dark Ice (2009)

#2 Dark Rising (2010)

#3 This Green Hell (2011)

#4 Black Mountain (2012)

#5 Gorgon (2014)

#5.5 Hammer of God (2015)

#6 Kraken Rising (2015)

#7 The Void (2018)

#8 From Hell (2019)

#9 The Dark Side (2021)

#10 The Well of Hell (2022)

#11 The Silurian Bridge (2024)

As I said, the gist of the Alex Hunter Series is that a soldier sustains an injury that should have killed him, yet it, impossibly, made him a super-soldier, unstoppable, a danger to monsters, loved ones, and himself instead. This is a little bit unrealistic, but not outside the realm of believability. Because of his all but inhuman abilities, he and his team are always the ones called in for highest-possible-risk, one-way missions that no one else could survive. They do, time and time again. While the exact situations, settings, and hellish monsters are vastly different, they're all thoroughly researched and unquestionably plausible. This author writes as though he knows about all these things firsthand. Every book in this series that I've read has this basic scenario, yet they're all so unique and flawlessly compelling. 

While Greig Beck is still an author I follow, I've gotten behind with this series. Additionally, because I continue to follow him, I discovered several years after I could no longer afford his books that he started a spinoff series with a character from the first (and 10th) Alex Hunter book: Matt Kerns, the linguist, archaeologist and wary explorer. There are four books available in the Matt Kerns Adventures, the first having been published in 2013 so maybe (but I'm not sure) this new series might take place during Alex Hunter #4 and #5. I also swear that Cate Granger first appeared in one of the Alex Hunter books, and now she has her own series (Cate Granger, currently three novels available, the first published in 2018). I'll have to reread the Alex Hunter books again to find out for sure so don't quote me. It's so frustrating when authors don't include connections between their series titles on their own website, if nowhere else. This kind of thing sells books! 

The ebooks have now come down in price considerably, so I do plan to someday purchase the ones I haven't read yet, and I'd also like to read the spinoffs. Pretty much every one of Beck's offerings sounds fantastic, right up my alley, and I've found him to be a very reliable author, so I go into every purchase certain I'll like what I get. You can find out more about them on his website https://greigbeck.com/. If you're looking for nail-biting horror with a supernatural twist, you'll find Alex Hunter Books all but impossible to pass up, let alone put down once you've started them. 

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 Hazel Wood

Noticing Karen has scheduled a review of Melissa Albert's THE HAZEL WOOD for next week, I decided to post my review of it now (adapted from one first published in my May 2018 newsletter). Not having read hers yet, of course, I look forward to her reaction to the book.

In an interview around the time of the novel's publication, Albert reveals that it was inspired not only by the concept of a multiverse and motifs from classic fairy tales but also noir detective fiction:

Her Own Spin on the Traditional Fairy Tale

THE HAZEL WOOD is a mind-blowing entry in my favorite fantasy subgenre, portal fantasy. Seventeen-year-old Alice’s grandmother, Althea Proserpine, whom she has never met, wrote one collection of fairy tales that became a cult classic, then withdrew from the world to her estate, the Hazel Wood (named after a line in a poem by Yeats). Ella, Alice’s mother, never talks about Althea or the father of whom Alice knows nothing. Ella and Alice have kept constantly on the move, fleeing the bad luck that seems to plague them and everyone around them. Althea's book, TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND, is almost impossible to find; Alice got a brief glimpse of a copy before her mother took it from her. At the age of six, Alice was temporarily abducted by a stranger who claimed to come from the her grandmother. The article linked above refers to "the imperfect mother-daughter dynamic between Alice and Ella" the author has created. Albert herself asserts "families free of dysfunction don’t exist." After receiving word of Althea’s death, Ella marries a prosperous man with a teenage daughter. When the novel begins, Alice is attending an exclusive school. She doesn't get along with her stepsister and stepfather, but she has a part-time job and even a couple of sort-of friends (or at least friendly acquaintances).

With the surname Proserpine, alluding to the mythical goddess unwillingly swept away into the realm of Hades, Alice is clearly not destined for an ordinary, mundane existence. Albert acknowledges that Alice isn't meant to be instantly likable. The article describes her as "an intense and often angry young woman." In general, I avoid spending entire full-length books with unlikable protagonists. In Alice's case, however, even though she's prickly, abrasive, and prone to occasional outbursts of rage, I nevertheless sympathized with her plight and her quest.

After Alice begins to glimpse strange people who might have a connection to Althea and the fictional Hinterland, Ella and her husband and stepdaughter vanish. When father and daughter reappear within a few days, refusing to discuss what happened to them, he throws Alice out of the house. She resolves to track down her missing mother. To do that, she feels she must find her grandmother’s home, the Hazel Wood, but the only clues to its location are in an old magazine article about Althea. Alice has to turn for help to her classmate Ellery Finch, an obsessive fan of TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND, which he actually read multiple times before having his copy stolen. On their road trip, Alice and Ellery become friends or perhaps something more, while randomly encountering people who seem to step out of the pages of Althea’s fairy tales. Ellery tells Alice a bit about the stories, their tone and contents a blend of numinous and creepy. After discovering Ellery’s ulterior motive for coming with her, in shocking scene of betrayal and loss, Alice does find Hazel Wood. From there, as we'd expect, she makes her way into the Hinterland. She also learns the truth about her own past.

The magical place she discovers beyond the portal isn't a country of heroism and ultimate joy like (for instance) Narnia. The Hinterland is overshadowed by the alien, perilous aspects of the faerie world as portrayed in authentic folklore. The treatment of the familiar trope that time passes differently between that world and ours, here shown as not only disorienting but downright horrifying, particularly impressed me.

In addition to a sequel, NIGHT COUNTRY (which begins with Alice trying to lead a safe, nonmagical life in New York -- in vain, naturally), Melissa Albert later meta-fictionally published TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND itself. The stories are enthralling but dark and bloody, typically from female viewpoints, very seldom with anything like a happy ending. Examples: Sisters locked up by their stepmother must create a door of blood to escape. The moon's granddaughter seeks her mother (one of the few sort-of happy conclusions). Maidens become betrothed to monsters or mysterious entities (not gentle beast-princes under curses). Would-be mothers resort to desperate measures to have children, with horrible results. Young women attempt to make bargains with Death. They're all narrated in a hypnotically enchanting prose style.

Margaret L. Carter

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