Whiteout

Whiteout

By: Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, Nicola Yoon, Dhonielle Clayton, Nic Stone, and Tiffany D. Jackson

Atlanta is blanketed with snow just before Christmas, but the warmth of young love just might melt the ice in this novel of Black joy, and cozy, sparkling romance—by the same unbeatable team of authors who wrote the New York Times bestseller Blackout!

As the city grinds to a halt, twelve teens band together to help a friend pull off the most epic apology of her life. But will they be able to make it happen, in spite of the storm?

No one is prepared for this whiteout. But then, we can't always prepare for the magical moments that change everything.

I chose this mostly because I'd enjoyed Blackout (or vaguely remember enjoying it) and I figured this would be an easy, enjoyable read. 

No. 

I hated this book. I have no idea how the same authors, using the same concept, could write something so much worse that I had to force myself to finish it, but somehow they managed. The book is a series of interconnecting stories, loosely grouped around the primary couple (Stevie and Sola's) efforts to reconcile after a fight and everyone else helping out in some way. 

Problem #1 is the Stevie and Sola were the worst. And they behaved stupidly too!  After Stevie screws up, Sola insists on Stevie apologizing by midnight, but then refuses to look at any messages or phone calls from her. I assume it was necessary for dramatic reasons, but when you tell someone you're going to break up with them unless they apologize to you, ignoring their calls makes no fucking sense. On the other hand, Stevie is the one who showed up loopy from pain meds to her family's dinner, got kicked out for being so rude, and then hassled everyone she's ever met to do a bunch of favors for her last minute. And she responds to Sola's request that she apologize to her family members by... waiting at a baseball stadium after she has a friend shoot a bunch of drones in the sky? Is there a reason Stevie couldn't be waiting at Sola's house instead? It's not like Stevie's the one running the drones. She just happened to know someone willing to subvert their own work project for Stevie's demands.  And aside from the unlikelihood that all her friends are so incredibly desperate to help this young couple get back together that they literally trek through a blizzard to buy a bunch of junk like legos and stuffed animals and college rally wear, there's the whole "time Stevie used her mom's ID to get into the aquarium at night so she could have semi-public sex with her girlfriend" which is played like an incredibly sweet moment instead of the kinda gross and definitely inappropriate set-up it is. That's her mom's workplace, and I assume they've got cameras there. But young love, right? There's also allusions to Stevie not wanting to be called a girl but in Sola's chapter, she keeps referring to Stevie as "her" so that felt unexplained and confusing as well.

The other issue is that we start off with a bunch of the weaker storylines, so it puts you on the wrong footing right away. The second couple (Kaz and Porsha) we're introduced to are the aforementioned lego seekers, which includes a boy who has been bending over backwards for this girl, and the girl who apparently hasn't noticed this at all until a couple of mall-goers point it out to her. You want us to root for these guys? If they can't even communicate on an issue as commonplace as coming to dinner, how am I supposed to expect they'll ever be a functional couple? Plus this story had the most obnoxious use of slang, bruh. It's going to be dated within 12 months.

Then we've got another couple (ER and Van) who apparently are on a "break" but for reasons that seem hazy and irrelevant since, at the end of their chapter, the ex-/girlfriend says they didn't behave any differently when they were broken up anyway, so it was moot. Um, yay, I guess? The primary conflict in this chapter is because they run into another of the narrator's exes at the airport, which she acts like is the worst thing in the world apparently, but honestly I have very little sympathy for the narrator, since most of the conflict comes up because she picks up the phone to talk to her ex and then starts lying to her girlfriend about it. 

There's some cuter stories later, but my patience was already gone. Maybe I was just in a different mood when I read Blackout, but Whiteout got on all my nerves with how annoying these people were being in their relationships. So much anxiety, so little confidence! I know these are supposed to be teenagers and thus, idiots, but  it was really grating how many of the stories were some version of "this person I'm with isn't very considerate of me, but now that we've confessed our deep-seated love for each other, everything is great!"

I disliked Whiteout so much, I am now retroactively reconsidering my opinion of Blackout: maybe it's just as bad and I just didn't notice it when I read it last time. Aside from the varying levels of tolerance I had about the relationships, the logic of the stories was all over the place. There's the whole "why not just wait at Sola's house thing instead of making her dad drive her to the stadium" but also Sola digs an entire grave in her backyard to bury some lego flower set that Stevie made her...in the middle of a blizzard while wearing a dress because it reminded her of good times with Stevie. Sure, why not. And the idea that the gift shop at the aquarium just so happens to still be open at 10:30 pm (!!) so Ava and Mason's story can be slotted in there is ridiculous. {This is the same aquarium where Stevie told her mom she was picking up files from her mom's office for her, but instead planned a sexy picnic sex-surprise for her girlfriend. Do we think Ava and Mason know that's why Stevie is making them get a commemorative jellyfish gift?} And Jimi is busking outside a huge theater in the middle of a blizzard even though ostensibly, she's there to reunite with her bandmates and record a song? Outside? Because when Teo/Lil Kinsey shows up, it sounds like she wasn't even expecting to go inside at any point.

I was going to say something like, the best thing about this, is that I will not have to read it again, but that seems unnecessarily harsh. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely wasn't for me. 

47: A Book Of Interconnected Short Stories

Honeycomb

Honeycomb

By Joanne M. Harris

An entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales. The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. Dark, gripping, and brilliantly imaginative, these magical tales will soon have you in their thrall.

 

 This collection of fairy tales feels, well, "real" is the wrong word, but maybe "lived in"? It feels like these have been sitting around for a few hundred years, maundering through Europe and getting jotted down by Perrault in passing.  Well, for the most part.  Some of them (the barnyard animal voting series) are fairly heavy-handed comparisons to the current American political environment.  

The book contains a multitude of short stories - and here it's important to note that this version at least (and hopefully all of them) is exquisitely illustrated and put together, feeling both whimsical and substantial - generally no more than three pages each.  Periodically, we'll catch up on the latest doings of the Lacewing King, a faerie king who starts off  terribly cruel, but then faces a series of punishments and setbacks (mostly orchestrated by people whom he's pissed off) and tries to find love and redemption. It's interesting, but not really what I wanted from a book of grim fairy tales. I wanted all of the stories to be short, pointed, and harsh.  I mean, the first story ends with some eye-snatching. That is some quality dark content!

The book itself is very nice, the illustrations are top-notch accompaniments, and the paper quality is weighty and feels rich.  I was a quarter of the way through when I bought a copy as a gift for someone, it impressed me that much.  We'll see if they like it though!

47: A Book Featuring a Parallel Reality

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

 When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

by Nghi Vo

The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.

 

 How many times have I said I expected and wanted a book to be better? Add this one to the list. I enjoyed the first one, albeit in a quieter way. For all that's it's very short, it felt like it dragged in the middle, while also not much happens. The framing storyteller mode is charming, but then everything is filtered through Rabbit, so we're getting a story of a story, and it doesn't really come together until the end, but it feels like more of a "Ah, okay" than a "Whoa, really?!" moment.  Anyway, I was interested enough to pick up this one, which I hoped would improve on the series. It did not. 

Vo plays around more with the storyteller trope and the unreliable narrator.  Here, both Chih the cleric and the Tiger take turns telling the story, which changes (drastically, in some cases) with the teller.  And that sounds like a great idea, but in practice, it falls very flat for me, mostly because there didn't seem to be much point.  There's a lack of cohesiveness in the way the intertwining parts of the story pull together. For example, what happens in one installment doesn't seem to affect or tie in much with what happens in the other installments.  Basically Chih goes, "This is how I heard this part" and the Tiger goes, "No, it was like this." and after you finish reading both parts you're not left with any kind of sense that maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle, it's like you just read two different stories about different things.  

Now that I've typed it out, I think that was my biggest problem, that lack of feeling like both stories were self-serving but different reflected versions of the truth.  Think of this like a divorced couple (or any couple really) or a lawsuit - both sides have their own versions of arguments and grievances, which present their own protagonist in the best possible light (or the most logical light, etc).  So it's a really interesting idea to create this dueling POV.  But it just wasn't that successful for me.  I didn't finish it and come out with more than the stories themselves, no greater insight for having heard both halves.  Maybe Vo should have tried that old chestnut and added a third storyteller: "His side, her side, and the truth".  

Vo is part of the new wave of sci/fi/fantasy authors who are including more varied representations of gender/sexuality/etc, which seems like it would be a natural fit for a story about a Tiger and her wife, but again, it just didn't seem to have that much to say about it.  I was intrigued enough from the first one (and of course, the length is a bonus - not much time commitment!) to get this one, and I'm still intrigued, but not so anxious for the next one to arrive. We'll wait and see. 

04 - A Book with a Tiger on the Cover or "Tiger" in the Title

Ten Second Reviews

Men to Avoid in Art and in Life

By Nicole Tersigni

This was like the froth on a cup of coffee: fun to contemplate, but when it came to drinking the stuff, basically intangible.  I like the idea, but maybe it's better enjoyed on a scrolling read, rather than in book form.  There's some attempt to match topic and art, but not always successful.  Like I said, briefly enjoyed, and briefly remembered.  

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery

Edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering

Well, first of all, it's very hard to compete with the gold standard of witch stories, which is, obviously, Nine Witch Tales, by, ahem, "Abby Kedabra", published in 1968. But there's always room for second place! 

Okay, I know this is dumb, but I liked the length of the stories.  And I know, I know, that sounds like I'm damning with faint praise, but honestly, if I'm reading short stories, one of things that bugs me is when I get like, five twenty-page stories, and then like, one seventy-page story. That is no longer a story, sir, that is a novella.  Also, as much as I like shakin' things up (to wit: very little) I much prefer orderliness.  Anyway, to the actual review!

Some good ones, some not so good ones. Of the ones that stuck with me, I have to call out Sarah Langan's The Night Nurse, which is definitely NOT something I should have been reading as a pregnant person and Tananarive Due's Last Stop on Route Nine was chilling and spooky, and took me down a Dozier School for Boys hole, which is where I thought the story was going (it wasn't but it was still satisfyingly spooky).  Angela's Slatter's Widows' Walk, Hillary Monahan's Bless Your Heart, Ania Ahlborn's The Debt, Chesya Burke's Haint Me Too (which felt inspired by Beloved, at least in the beginning style), and Theodora Goss', How to Become a Witch-Queen,were all above average, enjoyable witchery stories.  

I felt a bit let down by Helen Marshall's The Nekrolog, and Kristin Dearborn's The Dancer, both of which were really great, but wrapped up without a satisfying resolution. Both felt like they were excerpts from a much larger universe, but even thought the world was interesting and well-done, I wanted something more complete in my stories.

I also feel like calling out Rachel Caine's Home: A Morganville Vampires Story, and Amber Benson (yes, of Buffy fame)'s This Skin, which were my least favorites, by far. Home was part of a larger universe thing, and I don't know if the people were more sympathetic if you read the books, but in the story, this witch comes to town, looking for a drop of blood from the vampires who murdered her and her husband in order to resurrect her husband and her murderers basically are huge assholes to her, basically being all "she's a terrible person, blah blah blah" even though they're the ones who killed her and frankly should be expecting revenge. And then she doesn't even do anything that bad to them, she just leaves once she gets the blood.  This Skin was a let down, again with a protagonist who didn't draw you in, one of those ones who thinks they're soooooooo much smarter than everyone else, and when things don't work out, it's hard to tell if it's because we're meant to believe that the narrator did get away with murder because they're just that smart, or because the narrator is an idiot and has just puffed themselves up into buying their own hype. 

Ten Second Reviews

The Devil in Music

By Kate Ross

Alas, we've come to the end of our series, and I am actually very disappointed that there won't be any more - this was a pleasant delight of a set.  As before, coincidences and lucky chances abound without alluding to them, and it's a very chunky book, but you just don't seem to mind any of that.  I may at some point get the whole set to sit down and enjoy.  I really couldn't say that these are the best books in the world, but I just really had a good time with them, and in the end, isn't that what matters?  Anyway, Julian Kestrel solves another (couple) murders, this time whilst on Lake Como, which did nothing to make me satisfied with my own little plot of land.  Truly the rich are to be envied.

My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Edited by Stephanie Perkins

This was more of a hit or miss for me (which most anthologies are, despite my glowing review of How Long Til Black Future Month? and the, uh, next anthology, below).  It's definitely a YA & love/romance-y one, particularly at the start, which I guess I... wasn't expecting?  Now that I think about it, I think I just picked this one up in the library and didn't really look at reviews or anything, so... surprise! Here's my one sentence reviews:

• Midnights, by Rainbow Rowell: boring, nineteen year olds like each other after several years of being friends.  
• The Lady and the Fox, by Kelly Link: girl falls in love with weird guy she only sees at Christmas if it's snowing.  He's from like, three hundred years ago, so who knows how that culture shock is going to go but let's pretend they have a future together.
• Angels in the Snow, by Matt de la Pena: hispanic guy falls for white girl while he's housesitting at some rich person's place - not bad, but after the previous two, needed something stronger than this.
• Polaris is Where You'll Find Me, by Jenny Han: Um, what the heck did I just read? Young human girl raised up by Santa falls for an elf, but also has a thing where she tells lies about meeting a Scandinavian boy and also really wants to leave the North Pole. This feels like it ends on a cliffhanger, but it's crazy enough that I was starting to get into it.
• It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown: Ah, here we run into our series second theme: depressed people.  It kinda came up with Angels in the Snow, and in this one, a young christmas tree salesman is picked up by, and rearranges the furniture for, a young lady whose father left her and her mother because they were his bigamist family.  Fun at the outset but a little too saccharine to finish.
• Your Temporary Santa, by David Levithan: another one about a depressed family, although I wasn't quite clear on what fatherly disaster had befallen this one - another abandonment I guess.  This was fine, less romance because the couple was already together, so it was just someone doing something nice, which is more of what I was looking for in this set.
• Krampuslauf, by Holly Black: trailer park girl invites a demon back to a party, and he turns a cheating boyfriend into a donkey.  Good times! Two thumbs up.
• What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? by Gayle Forman: lonely city girl gets picked up by black guy on her small town midwest college campus.  I think I gave this one more of a pass because the stories before were a bit better/different.  If this had been placed third or fourth in the book, whoa.
• Beer Buckets and Baby Jesus, by Myra McEntire: Juvenile delinquent and good girl fall for each other during mixed up Christmas Pageant process.  At least this was a little bit funnier than the other boy-meets-girl stories, but also more of the same.
• Welcome to Christmas, CA, by Kiersten White: young teen hates everyone in her small town, until she meets the new diner cook who knows what food everyone needs. I definitely thought that the cook was going to turn out to be like, an elf, or an angel, or some other supernatural being, but he was just another juvenile delinquent, but this one was my favorite by far, especially when she learns that her mother and de facto step-father have actually been scrimping and saving for her and her college fund (so obvious, but it's CHRISTMAS).  Sniff.
•  Star of Bethlehem, by Ally Carter: Young singing sensation switches places with Icelandic girl and flies to Oklahoma where she feels okay about singing Christmas Carols again. This one felt way too long, and I can't help but HATE the very end, where the local judge is telling people that apparently it would be pretty easy to undo the guardianship her manager has over her.  In favor of these people she met a week ago, I guess.  Mmmmhmmm, yeah. 
• The Girl Who Woke the Dreamer, by Laini Taylor: The Strange the Dreamer series has been on my list forever (I think I was waiting to see if more books in the series were coming out???) and this gave me the push to get it. I didn't want to read too closely in case there were spoilers for the book series, but the beginning is really interesting and well written, and it inspired me to check more books by her out, so what else do you want?

Nine Witch Tales

By Abby Kedabra

Man, I LOVED this book when I was growing up, some twenty-five years ago, so I bought an old copy online, and it does NOT disappoint, this book is wild. I really mostly remembered the first story, where the twelve horned witches come in to do some sewing and then send this woman on errands like, "fill up a bucket using this sieve".  But all of them are fun, and short enough you don't get tired of them: haha, the one about Kowashi's mother, who developed an appetite for eating fish, bones and all, and he whacks her on the head and realizes she's a witch demon cat, and then! Casually, at the very end it goes: "Not long after this, Kowashi discovered that the wicked cat had killed his real mother and buried her in the garden." And then it just ends. FIN.  MAJESTIC.  I LOVE IT. And the curious woman who uses the magical ointment and is dragged all over and then wakes up in a barn and gets fired because her employer thinks she's drunk, lol. There's comeuppances and escapes, and each story is a delightfully spooky and scary-but-not-too-scary tale.

 

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

By N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her short fiction, which includes several never-before-seen stories, Jemisin equally challenges and delights with narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

Anyway, this book and a random comment elsewhere made me realize how much I was enjoying these short stories, and the last time I felt like this, which was when reading Connie Willis.  Short stories are tough, man!  I just put a book in the giveaway pile because I read like, four of the ten stories are didn't really get into any of them.  Obviously not all of the ones in a collection are going to be knock-outs for me, but here's some of the ones I liked best:

•  Red Dirt Witch, which combines the fae and Civil Rights Era Alabama,

• L'Alchemista, whose main character is a down-on-her-luck chef in Italy, who is given some magical ingredients,

• Cloud Dragon Skies, about the consequences of interference with nature again after we already fucked it up and then agreed to live with it,

• The Storyteller's Replacement, which uses the framed story to tell a story about a king who eats a dragon heart in order to get a massive hard-on, but karma revisits him in the form of his daughters (somewhat similar to a story by Kate Elliot, whose book of short stories I wasn't into nearly as much)

• The Brides of Heaven, about the interrogation of a woman who, in her desperation to re-seed a male population which has died off, has allowed something...wrong...into their homes

• Walking Awake, which is about a woman who works  at a body replacement facility slowly realizing that she's doing something awful and fighting back,

• Sinners, Saints, Dragon, and Haints, in the City Beneath Still Waters, which is about post-Katrina New Orleans, except with dragons (and sinners and saints and haints and the battle for the City's soul).

Not that the others aren't good - at a minimum, they all do that good sci-fi thing where they tell a story about our world using another world, i.e., The Ones Who Stay and Fight (which is a direct response to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursala K. LeGuin, which I had to look up because I'd never read it) is a reminder that we've simply accepted how fucked up things are, but even in a world that demands cruel things, we don't have to let ourselves be cruel, or simply walk away and wash our hands of those necessary evils.

Or the Narcomancer, which I enjoyed, and which was more straight-on fantasy, but which felt also like the shorter version of a bigger world (which she says in the introduction it was).  Henosis, which is about legacy, combined with a touch of Shirley Jackson. Or The Effluent Engine, which is a steampunk New Orleans spy-action story, set around the time of the Haiti Revolution. I'm telling you, if you like sci-fi or fantasy at all, you gotta read this. Or The Evaluators, about a predator that takes on the shape of those it hunts (which, I'll be honest, only made a little bit of sense to me, but it felt cool).  There's definitely something for everyone. Also a lot of like, pregnancy horror, so I would say not to read it if you're expecting.  Pregnancy is enough horror all on it's own. 


So this was a bit of a last minute add-on because The Woman in the Window got pushed to 2020, and in the spirit of the competition, I decided I would definitely read a book being made into a movie that was actually released in 2019, but when all was said and done, I didn't really want to read The Goldfinch, since I'd already tried A Secret History and hated it, so I decided I would make Where'd You Go, Bernadette? my selection for 01, and move How Long 'Til Black Future Month? into 16.  Long story short, I am very glad I got prodded into Black Future Month, and very sad I read The Woman in the Window which turned about to be for nothing, nothing!


16: A Book With A Question In The Title

Connie Willis, "All My Darling Daughters"

Connie Willis, "All My Darling Daughters"

I was reminded of this short story today, and since it left such an indelible scar on me, I figured maybe I should talk it out as some sort of PTSD therapy effort. I have read the story twice, once when I checked Fire Watch out of the library in undergrad, and then again years later when I found it in The Winds of Marble Arch, just to see if I remembered it accurately. The second go-round was actually less traumatic, mostly because I knew what was coming. The slow dawning of horrified realization from my first reading was, thankfully, a unique experience.

I didn't think it was an easy story to get into - it's set in a boarding school type place, in the future, and Willis does the old Clockwork Orange slang thing, although not to such an extent (or else the story would be completely incomprehensible). There is some explanation for the situation, although since it's told from one girl's point of view, the reader is not given a tutorial on the inner workings of this society. That factor helps set the tone for sure, and the only real problem from doing it this way was that when things finally click for the reader (at least in my case), you're not sure for awhile if you're interpreting words and actions correctly in this fictionalized world, or if you're mistaken about what these things mean (and if you are like me, you're thinking, "please, let me be mistaken."). This somewhat lessened the impact of the reveal for me, thank goodness.

I don't want to spoil this story, so this discussion will have to remain disappointing vague, for anyone who has both a morbid sense of curiosity to know what happens and a desire to protect their own fragile psychosis by not reading it themselves. The story does make you think about power and desire, and the way in which people can look at someone and see only an object, something that is less than the sum of their parts. I'm glad Willis wrote it, and I'm glad I read it, even though I feel like I lost some of my innocence. I have no doubt that there are people who see the world and behave the way that the villains of the story do, and it's heartbreaking to think of the people they destroy by so doing.



Also, it helps to know I have company. Here are some other reviews of the story:

In describing an aspect of the story, tvTropes says: "[It is] the least horrifying thing, out of the many horrifying things about ["All My Darling Daughters"].

"Features an Excellent Vocabulary of Expletives Worthy of College Students of the Future"
"Manages to Both Titillate and Terrify"
"Creepy"
"One of the Most Disturbing Things I've Ever Read"
"Not to My Liking"
-All from GoodReads

"Frack This Creepy Father Pet Stuff"
-Blue Tyson

"So Incredibly Horrible to Read" and "I'm Not Sure I've Ever Been So Shaken by Anything Else I've Ever Read"
-Marchenland

And then, most poetically and succinctly:

"Ouch"
-Susan Stepney