Reviewing the Mail: Week of January 4, 2025

Over the holidays, I thought I'd want to read some books - some particular books. So I put some things on hold at the library, forgetting that the wheels of librarianship turn more slowly, as do all of our wheels, during the holidays. So they're not all here yet, even a week later, but some of them are, and I'm listing what has arrived so far today.

I also got a couple of books in the mail this week, and I'll list those below as well.

The Wood at Midwinter is a very small book by Susanna Clarke, set in the same world as her very big debut book Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. (It's so short, I think it's actually a novelette, not even a novella.) It's also illustrated by Victoria Sawdon, which means the sixty small pages here aren't even all filled with words. I don't mind short books, of course, but this one seems to test the limits of how short something can be and still be bound between two covers. That's exactly the kind of book a library is best for, though: don't spend your own money on it, get it quickly, get it back quickly so others can have a go as well.

Starter Villain was John Scalzi's new novel last year; it's a humorous SF book set in the present day, I think. I read a bunch of Scalzi when I was at the SFBC and soon afterward, which led me to mildly grump about how he wasn't using his talents in the cause of seriousness once or twice - it was a silly complaint, I admit, but between God Engines and Ghost Brigades, it felt like early Scalzi had at least one Big Serious Book in him itching to get out, and I guess I thought I was being encouraging - but I have gotten better since. I missed a big swath of his space opera from the past decade or so, which I may come back to someday. But his quick breezy standalones are just the kind of thing I like reading these days, when time is tight - I enjoyed Kaiju Preservation Society right around this time last year.

Odin is the first of what I think is a four-book series by George O'Connor, following up his twelve-book Olympians series from the past decade. (Links to my Olympians posts: Zeus, Athena, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Ares/Apollo/Artemis, Hermes, Hephaistos, Dionysos.) Like the previous series, this is officially for young readers, but I found O'Connor's Greek mythology deeply researched (with text features in the back), engrossing as stories, and drawn with a great adventure-comics style. So it might be officially for tweens, but there's a lot for adults to enjoy in his work.

And here's what came in the mail:

The Book of Atrix Wolfe, a Patricia A. McKillip novel in a new 30th Anniversary edition from Tachyon. I haven't read this one - I keep saying I should read more McKillip, but she wrote so many novels, and all of them seem to be both pretty good and standalone, that it's difficult to figure out where to start. Having a book drop right into my lap, though, could be a sign from the world that this is the one; let's see if I can get to it. This edition publishes on February 25th in trade paper and electronic formats, but if you had a burning desire to read the book before that, it is thirty years old, so...you know, you probably could.

Egyptian Motherlode is a fantasy novel - I think - set in the musical world, by David Sandner and Jacob Weisman and published by Fairwood Press in October. The main character is called The Prophet, who has, as the back cover puts it, "the ability to warp reality through his music." The book seems to be a Zelig-esque trip through the 20th century in the company of The Prophet, as he meets everybody the authors loved and gets caught up in various plots, schemes, musical movements, and what-not.