Possessions Book 3: The Better House Trap by Ray Fawkes

We all need to be careful what we wish for.

I read the first two books in Ray Fawkes's Possessions series -- reviewing the second one here, as part of a round-up -- and enjoyed them deeply, as funny supernatural romps whose central character was Gurgazon the Unclean, a pit demon who has taken over the body of a little girl. Fawkes's dialogue for Gurgazon was sprightly and deeply amusing, in the third-person-declamatory mode. (“Gurgazon appreciates your sarcasm and will remember it fondly when Gurgazon eats your head.”) and the setup was almost sitcom-perfect: Gurgazon had been captured by the smoothly omnicompetent butler Thorne to be part of rich old lady Miss Llewellyn-Vane's collection of spirits, which also included a poltergeist, an arctic explorer transformed into a will o' the wisp, a headless French aristocrat, and a haunted jukebox.

Sure, Gurgazon plotted to escape, and threatened to destroy the world and everyone in it, but that's just what a demon does, isn't it? And, as much as we might say that we want to see Gurgazon break free, what we really enjoyed was seeing that cute little girl-demon stymied at every turn, didn't we?

Well, The Better House Trap sees Gurgazon shake things up: the demon gets a message out to an old compatriot to lure Thorne away. And then the demon uses the abilities of the other members of the "collection" to plot a very plausible way out of the Llewellyn-Vane mansion's magical defenses. And so we'll see if Gurgazon is really so "adorable" when destroying the world is really a possibility.

Better House Trap isn't as funny as the first two books; it relies on our memories of them to remind us of how much fun Gurgazon can be, and also to remind us how much Gurgazon talked about death and destruction. It's got more tension, and what feels like higher stakes -- this is still a book appropriate for kids (and my eleven-year-old has been asking to get it for a couple of months now -- he had to wait for me to read it first!), but it's more serious. It's still deeply amusing -- but Fawkes is beginning to turn our love of Gurgazon against us. Book four -- which Fawkes is already working on -- should have a very different tone, and I suspect many of us will find ourselves rooting for someone entirely different when that book rolls around.

Pointless Numbers

Poking through iTunes this afternoon, I found that I've got 4826 songs that I've never [1] listened to, totaling fourteen days and just short of 17 hours. (There's an entire Ring cycle in there, plus a lot of other classical music I was listening to a lot more a decade ago.)

Of course, that still leaves 18,822 songs I have listened to (up to a hundred times, in one case -- iTunes is lovely for someone as obsessed with utterly pointless metrics as I am), so I don't feel too bad.

The good thing about all of that, of course, is that I have no reason at all to get sick of any song or singer any time soon -- I have 847 songs (nearly two and a half days worth) just tagged "depressing."

No, there's no purpose to any of this -- I just like poking at the numbers and decided to share. Hope you're doing something equally as pleasant this fine Saturday.


[1] "Never," here, means "since late 2003, when I had to re-import the entire library after a disk crash." Still, nine years is a long time.

Incoming Books: August 14

Yeah, it's been another bad week for blogging, and I won't bother to give a specious excuse. But I did run over to the library on Tuesday to pick up some books I'd inter-library-loaned, and found two paperbacks (at a quarter each!) from the library sale while I was there.

And, since lists of books seems to be the only content I can consistently post here, I'll present those books, starting with the cheapies I get to keep:

The Leftovers, the 2011 novel by Tom Perrotta, in a fancy bound-galley form. I've read all of Perrotta's previous books -- and reviewed The Abstinence Teacher, in a style that seems overly laudatory to me now -- and enjoyed them, partially because he's a good writer and partially because he's of an age and geographic persuasion to push an awful lot of my buttons.

Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon, his bestselling and hugely popular memoir of moving to France to write about it for an American audience. I avoid bestselling books somewhat reflexively, from working in the business so long, and I am hugely jealous of people who get to do things like this. Buy, hey, it was a quarter, and it's supposed to be really good.

Fodor's Disneyland & Southern California with Kids, 10th Edition is by Michael and Trisa Knight, and there are no points awarded for guessing why I'm reading it. (Though my guys -- who will be 14-and-a-half and just shy of 12 during that trip -- are probably not well described as "kids" these days.)

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf. Derf has been an alt-weekly cartoonist for some time -- from back when that was a reasonable career for an adult, since there were plenty of alt-weeklies and they all carried a bunch of cartoonists -- and this is an expansion/reworking of autobiographical material that he originally published more than a decade ago. And, yes, Derf did go to high school with, and was in the same circles with, Jeffrey Dahmer. (I reviewed Derf's last book, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, in a round-up during my Eisner deathmarch a few years back.)

Freeway is a big fat graphic novel by Mark Kalesniko, whom I don't know. But it's semi-autobiographical, was published by Fantagraphics (who ain't no dummies), and looks interesting.

David Malki!'s Dapper Caps & Pedal-Copters is the third collection of his Victorian clip-art webcomic Wondermark, which I've been reading and enjoying since I discovered the first collection during that same Eisner push I mentioned a couple of paragraphs back.

And last is Dante's Divine Comedy, as adapted into comics by Seymour Chwast. I reviewed Chwast's second classic-work-into-comics item, The Canterbury Tales, a couple of months ago, and I clearly liked it well enough to go back for another dose.

It's Writing, Captain, But Not As We Know It

The annual running of the bad prose has come again, with the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest announced today. (Yes, that page is apparently official, even though it looks like something that crawled out of 1996, and not before dying, either.)

In honor of the "dark and stormy night" feller, the judges of the Bulwer-Lytton contest every year choose the most lousy opening sentence they can from among a myriad entrants. This year's winner was:

As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.

And it was extruded by one Cathy Bryant of Manchester, England.

Since there are always more bad sentences, there are also category winners. Those of genre interest are:

• Fantasy: "The brazen walls of the ancient city of Khoresand, situated where the mighty desert of Sind meets the endless Hyrkanean steppe, are guarded by day by the four valiant knights Sir Malin the Mighty, Sir Welkin the Wake, Sir Darien the Doughty, and Sir Yrien the Yare, all clad in armor of beaten gold, and at night the walls are guarded by Sir Arden the Ardent, Sir Fier the Fearless, Sir Cyril the Courageous, and Sir Damien the Dauntless, all clad in armor of burnished argent, but nothing much ever happens." from David Lippmann of Austin, TX 
• Science Fiction: "As I gardened, gazing towards the autumnal sky, I longed to run my finger through the trail of mucus left by a single speckled slug – innocuously thrusting past my rhododendrons – and in feeling that warm slime, be swept back to planet Alderon, back into the tentacles of the alien who loved me." from Mary E. Patrick of Lake City, SC 

(via Publishers Weekly)

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 8/11

There's a lot to get through this week, and less time than usual -- it's The Wife's birthday this weekend, so various festivities are ongoing -- so let me dive right into the disclaimers:

1. These books were all sent to me by their various publishers
2. I haven't read them yet
3. But you might want to know about them anyway
4. So here's what I can tell you, which is guaranteed to be mostly true

The fifth book in the "Fleet of Worlds" series, set in Larry Niven's Ringworld/Known Space universe, is Fate of Worlds, written by Niven and Edward M. Lerner (as were the first four books in the series, beginning with Fleet of Worlds itself). It's a hardcover coming August 21st from Tor, and, in it, I presume that worlds will live, worlds will die, and Known Space will never be the same.

Also from Tor as a hardcover on 8/21 is The Unincorporated Future by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin. It's the third book in the series that began with the Prometheus Award-winning The Unincorporated Man, and finishes up the Heinleinian space opera trilogy with what appears to be the traditional war between the freedom-loving Belters and the evil, decadent corporatist/socialist forces of the Inner System.

Coming from Tor slightly later -- as a hardcover in December -- is John C. Wright's new novel The Hermetic Millennia, which is a sequel to his previous book Count to a Trillion. This is also big-idea, wide-screen SF, spanning (as the title promises) millennia. Our hero is the uniquely named Menelaus Illation Montrose, who "has gone into cryo-suspension following the discovery that, in 8,000 years, a powerful alien intelligence will reach Earth to assess humanity's value as slaves." Personally, my first act on learning that company is coming would probably not be to go to sleep, but that's why I'm not named Menelaus Illation Montrose and famed as "Texas gunslinger, idealist, and posthuman genius."

Last week I had some titles from Yen Press publishing in August, and foolishly implied that it was their entire output. (Insert hollow laugh.) This week, Yen sent me many more books, from August and the recent past, in an amazing breadth of manga styles, and so I have again arranged them for you in ascending order of volume number:

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, Vol. 1 is the first volume of a spin-off series from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, featuring the characters created by Noizi Ito for the main series but with a different creative team: writer Nagaru Tanigawa and artist Puyo. If you know Haruhi, you probably recognize Yuki Nagato -- the obligatory quiet, mousy girl in glasses -- but if not, probably not. Either way, this is a series focused on her.

Speaking of spin-offs, I also have here Soul Eater NOT!, Vol. 1, which is by Atsushi Ohkubo, the creator of the original Soul Eater series. As the original focuses on the training of young witch-hunting shingami and Death Meister Weapons Academy, Not! showcases the training of their sentient, transforming weapons. Because why not?

Is This a Zombie?, Vol. 2 asks an uncommon question, and is answered by the creative team of Cascci (comic), Shinichi Kimura (original -- ?!), and Kobuichi * Muririn (character design -- not sure if the bullet between the names is a separator for two people or some fancy pseudonym).  Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is about a young man transformed into a "magikewl girl" and forced to live in a dormitory for the same (because Japan, that's why!), although he also may be a magically reanimated corpse. Oh, and it's shrinkwrapped, so there are at least a lot of panty shots, and probably more than that.

Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda and Akiyo Satorigi's Durarara!! is back for a Vol. 3 -- and you can see my review of the first one, if you want. This volume seems to focus on Celty, the Irish dullahan (headless rider spirit), who equally searches for her missing head and carries out assignments for the local criminals.

Highschool of the Dead -- the series that boldly mixes titillation and decapitation -- reaches a Vol. 7, as usual by Daisuke Sato and Shouji Sato. (See my review of Vol. 5 for more details.) In this one, our heroes reach a police station, but it's not as welcoming as they might have hoped.

I know Yana Toboso's Black Butler series -- now hitting its ten volume -- is well-known and -loved, but I haven't read it. It's set in Victorian England -- and the very specific kind of Victorian England as imagined by 21st century Japanese -- where a uniquely impressive butler, as he must, takes care of all of the unlikely and violent activities his lord and that lord's imposing pile of a house are caught up in.

Jun Mochizuki brings us Pandora Hearts, Vol. 10 -- I reviewed the first volume of this very loose retelling of Alice in Wonderland, back when the world was young and we were gay -- which has the typically opaque back-cover copy of a story this deep into its convolutions. There's a "forbidden portal," which was opened a century ago -- in Sablier, which we're told as if it would explain things -- by one boy to protect his brother, but which led to nastier things. Now, the series heroes are trying to fix those nastier things, though this volume appears to be mostly wandering around a ruined city, trying to determine the difference between illusions and reality.

SangEun Lee's Korean manwha series comes to an end with 13th Boy, Vol. 12 -- I guess it would be too much to ask for a 13th volume of 13th Boy -- and you can see my review of the first volume for more details on this teen-romance-focused story.

I mentioned the spin-off above, but there's also a new volume of the main series: Gaku Tsugano, Nagaru Tanigawa, and Noizi Ito return with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Vol. 13, which tells the pulse-pounding tale of the Literature Club having to actually create a newsletter to keep their clubroom from being given to some other random club. (Manga can sometimes hew too closely to the real lives of its audience, you know.)

And last from Yen is a light novel -- not a manga at all, though it does have some illustrations -- from Mizuki Nomura, Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation. It's another series set in a small Literature Club in a highschool -- this one only has two members, the (young, diffident boy) narrator and the book-eating mythological girl who is his president. It looks like our hero is in love this time -- with someone other than the club president -- and has no idea at all how to deal.

And, to finish up, I also have the three mass-market paperbacks coming from our friends at DAW in September:

Seanan McGuire's Ashes of Honor, the sixth in the urban fantasy series about October Daye (whose name I've decided to stop making fun of), a changeling PI. The back cover is deep in series-stuff, with names that will be familiar to fans of the series and not to the rest of us, so I wouldn't start here: the first book is Rosemary and Rue, so see if that one suits you.

Blood Spirits is the second book -- possibly the middle book in a trilogy) of Sherwood Smith's Dobrenica series, which is a fantasy Ruritanian (literally: with a magical little European kingdom and everything) romance.


And last from DAW is C.S. Friedman's Legacy of Kings, the finale of her Magister trilogy. This looks like big-scale epic fantasy, with Souleaters, the First Age of Kings, a magical barrier called Wrath of the Gods, and a heroine named Siderea Aminestas. The first book is Feast of Souls, interested parties should check in there.