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You know how I sometimes talk about I struggle with having enough description in my books? Mark Paxson, who is himself a fan of minimal description, has even said that sometimes I should add a little more description. He’s right, but unless it’s something really nifty, I generally get bored describing things. I’d rather move the story along.

Well, this book does NOT have this issue. It has some of the most description I’ve ever seen. Fans of description will be in, as they say, hog heaven.

Which, to be clear, is as it should be. It says right on the cover that it’s a cozy mystery, and cozy mysteries are, above all, about vibes. The town of Cape Mystic, Washington is shown in vivid detail as a windy, rainy, Halloween-obsessed community, with more than a few mysterious legends and secrets hidden away under its gray skies.

In short, it’s exactly the sort of place I could fall in love with; and so I didn’t mind reading about it described down to every last richly Autumnal detail. If you love Autumn and/or Halloween, you should enjoy this book.

Now, some of you might remember that a while back, I reviewed a book called Junkyard, which was also a sort of cozy mystery–albeit a sci-fi one. I enjoyed the book, but Chuck Litka read it after seeing my review, and his review was much harsher. (And frankly, extremely entertaining.)

And I can’t honestly say I disagree with what Chuck said in his review. The plot had holes you could fit 660 drums of maple syrup into. All Chuck’s critiques are quite valid; I don’t dispute them in the slightest. And yet, I enjoyed Junkyard. Why? I dunno; I guess just because I liked the setting and felt like all the rest was not meant to be taken seriously.

I think the same could be said of Harvest and Haunt.  It’s true that the mysteries which make up the plot are not the stuff of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. And I’m pretty sure the Cape Mystic law enforcement officials do not follow proper police procedures most of the time. I bet if Chuck reviewed it—not to put him on the spot—he could find plenty more issues.

But, I’m not here for a taut legal thriller or complex detective story. No, a book like this you read because you want to feel like you’re immersed in the setting. Like you’re the one in the dark, rainy October evening; hurrying home along dark streets because the howling wind has knocked out the power, and a storm is rolling in, and loose Halloween decorations are swirling in the eerily charged air…

See? Certain things can bring out the desire to describe, even in me. If you want a strong Autumn atmosphere, this is a fine choice.

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I know we’re not supposed to judge this, but I think this book has a pretty cool cover. I’m a sucker for “The Shadow Knows” trope, and this one does it well. I’m also a sucker for Victorian fashion. Blame it on my love for Gilbert & Sullivan and Sherlock Holmes stories. So when I saw this book reviewed by Katie Roome on Periapsis Press, I knew at first sight that I had to give it a try.

It starts off like a Jane Eyre-type story, about a young woman hired to be a governess at a remote country estate. Elise Cooper journeys to Greenmere House to teach, but quickly ends up becoming a student herself, learning of the House’s ties to ancient mysteries and folklore. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say we plunge deep into the world of Arthurian legend and the mythology of the British isles.

If I have a criticism, it’s that the book is a little too fast-paced. Elise goes from being an innocent young woman to confronting The Big Bad in a relatively short period of time. I wouldn’t have minded more time for the character to develop.

On the flip side, that could also be construed as a positive thing, because the world the author created was so interesting I wouldn’t have minded staying there longer. It’s a haunting, bittersweet, simultaneously creepy and yet also somehow serene place, at least when monsters aren’t actively attacking our heroes. I could say more, but I won’t. Hopefully I’ve intrigued you enough to make you want to give it a try yourself.

This is a great story for anyone who enjoys old-fashioned tales of mystery and romance; meaning romance not in the sense of love, but in the classic sense of a tale of adventure and chivalry. It features a charming protagonist, plenty of fantasy and magical elements, and a unique setting. Fans of C.S. Lewis in particular are encouraged to check it out.

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A number of people I follow have read and reviewed this book already. I’m not sure how I didn’t hear about it before a few weeks ago.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the cover. As it turned out, what I got was part thriller, part magical-realism, and part revenge story.

The book follows Teri Altro, an investigator on an anti-drug task force in Michigan. Members of a drug cartel attempt to assassinate her, but a stopped by a mysterious man with inexplicable powers, who disposes of the would-be assassins.

This prompts Altro and the rest of the task force to try to uncover who the man is and what is motivating him. Gradually, they uncover a history of a soldier named John Walker, who fought in Vietnam, and is now seeking to liberate the Hmong people from oppression by a brutal drug lord.

That’s the high-level plot summary. But there’s more going on here. The strange and mystical powers which Walker possesses, and which he uses to take revenge against the people “without honor” who have used him and so many others, is in many ways about healing from trauma. The theme of the book concerns Walker and Altro recovering from their personal wounds.

So, it’s a page-turning plot about supernatural vengeance for corruption and conspiracies with interesting characters. Is there anything not to like?

Well, I had a couple nit-picks. Mainly, the members of the anti-drug task force just didn’t behave like I would have expected. Their maturity levels were more like those of high school students than professional government agents. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Still, it’s a good story, and the flashback scene sin particular are very vividly written. Anyone who enjoys thrillers, mysteries, or good old-fashioned revenge stories should give it a try.

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Friends, I have a problem. Admittedly, it’s a good problem.

I’ve just read a new book by one of my favorite authors, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. But the problem is now I have to review it. Ordinarily, when writing a review of a book, I start out by telling you something about the plot, the characters, etc.

But this book is the second installment in a series, and so to introduce you to it much at all, I would have to tell you a little about the first book, including what series protagonist Liza Larkin did in it. And this is the tricky bit, partially because to do so would not only risk spoiling the first book in the series, but also because Liza herself is always a bit of a Rorschach test. (Come to think of it, she’s also a bit like the character Rorschach, the anti-social vigilante from Alan Moore’s Watchmen.)

So what I say about Liza’s action in book one will carry over and affect how she’s viewed in book two. It’s a bit like how, at the beginning of Knights of the Old Republic II, you have to explain what happened in KotOR I, which can vary depending on your choices. And my interpretation of the first book may not be everyone’s interpretation. I alluded to this when I reviewed it, and it’s even more true now. All I can really say is the Liza discovers a friend’s aunt is dead. While the death is ruled an accident, Liza is not convinced, and this sends her analytical, logical—and sometimes paranoid—mind to work.

What happens from there, though, is very much a matter of who and what you choose to believe. There are all sorts of dark twists and turns: fentanyl overdoses, an ongoing attempt by an ex-con to blackmail Liza, and multiple visits to a BDSM club. And none of this is even the really strange aspect of the book.

Which, as I said with the first book, is exactly what makes it good. Your view of what happens here may not be the same as mine. The truth is that we, as readers, are being asked to solve a mystery as much as (or more than?) we are following Liza as she solves it. We get clues. But what do we make of them?

If you’re disappointed by the lack of specifics in this review, I hope I can at least convey this much: Malignant Assumptions is a terrific book, even better than the excellent Fatal Rounds. It is fairly typical for a thriller to keep a reader guessing what will happen next. What is more unusual is when it makes the reader second-guess what has already happened. But that’s what these books do, and so create a mental tension that, if nothing else, makes it easy to empathize with Liza’s own peculiarly (over?)active mind.

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As a critic of sorts, it is my business to traffic in opinions. As a result, I sometimes encounter people who disagree with my opinions. To steal a line from P.G. Wodehouse, probably most of them have been eaten by bears, but just in case, I regret to inform you that there are those who will take issue with my admiration for Adam Bertocci’s books. The chief complaint I hear from these people is that his books have “too much irony.”

Paraphrasing The Lion in Winter: “We all have too much irony! It’s 2024 and we’re millennials!”

Srsly, people! These books are by and for millennials. Having a book for millennials with no irony would require a trigger warning, at least.

Another thing I’ve heard people say is that the characters are “too self-absorbed.” Well, this is because they are usually young people on journeys of self-discovery.  I feel that most Bertocci characters are less self-absorbed by the end than they were at the beginning. And even if they’re not, the class of books which are called “literary fiction” frequently feature self-absorbed characters, and people fawn over them and heap accolades upon them and force innocent students to read them. Do I even need to say it?

But okay, let’s say you are one who doesn’t like the black cat’s lines at the end of Samantha, 25, on October 31, and are not charmed by the extremely meta dialogue in The Hundred Other Rileys. Well, perhaps this is the Bertocci book for you.

Ex Marks The Spot follows a typical Bertocci protagonist, high school sophomore Darian, who decides to dress up as a pirate for a Halloween party, which she is looking forward to as a way of forgetting about her ex-boyfriend Shane.

Unfortunately, she ends up being forced to take her little brother out for trick-or-treat night instead. And guess who they happen to bump into?

Like all Bertocci’s stories, the prose is witty and the theme is of a young woman finding her way in the world. All of us dedicated Bertoccioids, (whose numbers are swelling by the day) will find all the delights we expect.

But there is a little something different here, too: it captures the warm nostalgia of Halloween in an unapologetically fond way, and more to the point, Darian has to do a little growing up, and is certainly not self-absorbed. She comes into her own as a big sister, and that makes her all the more likable.

It’s got humor, it’s got romance, it’s got magic, it’s got spookiness, and–like Linus’s pumpkin patch–it’s got sincerity. Perhaps it can be the book that will make even the most ardent Bertocci non-enjoyer say cast aside their saber, fight no more, and say, “let there be commerce between us.“

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I heard about this book via Audrey Driscoll’s review, and she recommended it to anyone interested in information management. Well, I’m interested in information management! So, naturally I had to read it.

The book includes a brief history of libraries across the world, before zeroing in on the United States’ Library of Congress, and how it evolved from essentially Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection to housing an unparalleled assortment of books, documents, and so on. It wasn’t always an easy road, as shown by the struggles at cataloging and the efforts made by people like Melville Dewey (a man so obsessed with efficient labeling that he for a time spelled his name “Melvil Dui”) to create a system for managing all of it.

Yes, indeed; this book is paean to library science that should make any archivist proudly proclaim, like Evie Carnahan in The Mummy, “I am a librarian!”

The most interesting fact of all that I learned from this book comes from a little note towards the back, referencing the Mundaneum. The Mundaneum was, in effect, a non-electronic internet, created by Belgian lawyers in the 1900s. It was, essentially, a database. In the 1930s, there were even early plans to make it accessible remotely.

The name “Mundaneum” is just so perfect, don’t you think? We ought to start calling the internet “Mundaneum 2.0” as far as I’m concerned. It captures the spirit much better.

Now, as I said, I am interested in information management. What may surprise you is that I am interested in information management in much the same way that Robert Muldoon was interested in velociraptor management. Information, you see, is a dangerous thing.

Of course, unlike velociraptors, information is critical to human life. We need information, and a way to store and retrieve it.

The science of cataloging and accessing information now takes up vastly more of our lives than it used to in historic times. The reason we don’t notice this is that it has evolved more or less concurrently with advances in electronic systems designed to expedite this process. “Anything can be quantified nowadays.”

All of which is to say that there is something about the entire process of information management that feels slightly inhuman to me.

“Big Data,” cloud computing, advanced analytics, and of course our new friend Artificial Intelligence are all refinements on methods of organizing and cataloging information. As this books shows, from the ancient Sumerians on, information management is a practice that has been steadily progressing over time.

But when I say “progressing”… is it progressing the way a garden gradually grows and becomes filled with nourishing food and beautiful flowers? Or is it progressing the way a malignant tumor does? Marc Andreessen said software is eating the world; perhaps it’s more accurate to say information is eating the world.

Is this good or bad? Like Zhou Enlai didn’t, but should have, said of the impact of the French Revolution, it may be too early to say. On the other hand, it might be too late. Or maybe both at once…?

You see what kind of weird and dangerous tricks you can play with information? You came here probably expecting a simple review of a book about libraries. “That seems like a dry enough topic; he can’t make too much of a mountain out of this molehill,” you may have thought. Sorry! Perhaps the wisest course would be to go outside and touch the damn grass already.

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First things first: no, the author isn’t the Guardians of the Galaxy director. This is James E. Gunn, born nearly a half-century earlier. This book is what they used to call a philosophical novel, before such things fell out of favor. It’s sci-fi, but the sci-fi is really an excuse to examine complex issues concerning the human condition.

The first section deals with a company called Hedonics, Inc., a business which promises to make people happy, or give them their money back. A hardboiled businessman thinks he sees through this obvious scam. But after awhile, he starts to find that maybe it isn’t just a scam after all.

In part two, Hedonics has basically taken over the world, to the point where there are professional “hedonists,” who are essentially doctors assigned to make sure that their charges are in a state of happiness. This section follows one such hedonist, whose name we learn very late in the section, is Morgan. Morgan gradually uncovers… let’s say… issues within the structure of the government-sponsored philosophy of absolute happiness.

The third section deals with a Venus-born man returning to Earth to warn of what appears to be an impending alien attack. What he finds on returning to Earth is that it has been nearly entirely taken over by machines, whose prime directive is ensuring that humans are happy at all times. And being machines, they followed this logic to its inevitable conclusion.

This all probably sounds pretty straightforward as a plot. And in some ways it is, but the real meat of this book isn’t the plot, except maybe in the first section. The Joy Makers isn’t plot-driven or character-driven. It’s question-driven, and the question is, “What does it mean to be happy?”

It seems simple on the face of it. I’m sitting here in my comfy office chair, in my air-conditioned house, sipping a nice flavored water. I am happy.

Ah, but am I really? Am I maximizing my joy? Do I have absolutely no anxieties or possible wants? Could I, somehow, increase my Benthamite utility?

Of course, I could be happier! My desires could be satisfied more completely, my wants and fears removed. But then… what would it mean to do that? What would the complete absence of anything remotely displeasurable even look like?

Such are the questions The Joy Makers grapples with over and over; each section exploring different aspects of what it is to be happy, each chapter with a quote from some famous philosopher on the concept of happiness.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the modern world provides a great deal of luxury and convenience. We enjoy amenities undreamt for nearly all of recorded history. Is it possible to imagine a future in which people remain forever in a gauzy, comfortable state of pleasurable suspended animation while robots mine the planet for resources? Gunn was imagining it in the 1960s, and it sure looks even more plausible now.

And would this really be happiness? Or merely a flawed simulacrum thereof?  And how would we know?

The Joy Makers addresses all these questions. While a few aspects here and there serve to date it, the core theme of the book is strikingly relevant to the present day; probably much more so than when it was written.

Of course, the issue with many philosophical novels is that the actual plot may get short shrift, and that kind of happens here. For example, both section two and three feature this pattern of events:

  1. Male protagonist meets attractive female
  2. After some confusion, male and female realize they are allies
  3. Male and female seek shelter together, fall asleep
  4. When male wakes up, female is gone.
  5. Male thinks female has probably abandoned him, doesn’t wait for her return
  6. This creates problems for both down the line.

Maybe this was some sort of artistic choice, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like the same story beats were just being recycled. And maybe it annoyed me more than it should, but I hate when characters in a story don’t wait for someone they supposedly like to explain their motivations. (Actually, I hate when people do that in real life, too.)

So, sure, there are a few times when the story gets bogged down a little. But it’s so interesting I could mostly look past it. The themes in this book are so relevant that I could forgive any flaws. Everyone should read it, simply for the questions it raises.

RJ Llewellyn recommended this book to me years ago, and I picked up a copy at the time, but didn’t get around to reading it until this past month. I wish I hadn’t waited so long. This book raises ideas that stick with you long after you finish reading.

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I found out about this book from Lydia Schoch’s review, and anything Lydia likes is something I’ll give a try. And I’m glad I did. This is a shorty story–5,501 words to be exact–but it’s effective, and it uses all those words to good effect.

The only problem with a story so short is that it’s hard to go into much detail about spoiling the story, so I’ll deliberately keep the plot synopsis vague. It’s about a fishing trip that goes wrong. More generally, it’s in the grand tradition of the ghost story, where people get warned not to do something, do it anyway, and suffer the consequences.

This is the kind of tale you tell around a campfire on a dark night, maybe changing the details here and there to make it better suited to your present location. You don’t need thousands of pages to tell a good scary story; you just need to evoke the feeling of being in a fog and then, when then tension is at its highest, spring something out of it.

The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod is an effective horror short story.

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I know, I know; most of you aren’t here for non-fiction. I actually was planning to have a fiction review for you this week. I was! But then… things got busy, and my internet was down for much of that time, which caused me to fall behind on other work, and, and… well, you get the picture. “Excuses, excuses,” you say. “Next he’ll claim a dog ate his book review.”

But I ought to give you something as a reward for your loyally showing up here. So here is a review I wrote, but didn’t really plan to publish, of yet another Napoleonic history book.

As the title implies, this book is actually history of two separate events, 129 years apart, both of which occurred in the same place: Borodino, a place in Russia on the outskirts of Moscow. In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Armeé finally confronted the Russian Army after a long and frustrating game of cat and mouse across western Russia. In 1941, the German army met a strong Soviet defense, fanatically determined to keep the invaders from the gates of Moscow.

The author interweaves accounts of both battles, to build an almost eerily symmetrical story of how each developed.  Of course, the combatants in 1941 were aware of the historical significance of the 1812 battle, and noted the ominous feelings the word “Borodino” evoked. (Ironically, many of the monuments to the earlier conflict had already been destroyed by the Soviet government, who saw them as symbols of the Tsarist era.)

The 1812 battle, while technically a French victory, has got to be one of the worst moments for Napoleon as a strategist and as a tactician. The book is unsparing in its assessment of the Emperor’s many errors. While Waterloo will always be The Battle that ended Napoleon’s career, it’s pretty clear to me that his single worst miscalculations as a general came at Borodino. (Indeed, it’s tempting to wonder if the doomed last charge of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo was partially in reaction to his failure to deploy the Guard at Borodino.)

As for 1941; it’s hard to even get into things like tactics. Two technologically advanced, fanatically indoctrinated, tired, hungry, and desperate armies were hurled together into an unbelievably brutal slugfest in snow and ice. Nowhere is the relentless march of technology made more apparent than in the contrasting of what “artillery” meant in the Napoleonic era versus in World War II.

The author mostly does a very good job of weaving the two campaigns together, highlighting both the changes as well as the broader point that, well, as Ron Perlman would say, “War. War never changes.” There were a few points when I would be reading an account and honestly I wasn’t sure which battle they were in for a few sentences. (And the names are no help; there are men with Polish names fighting for the French, French names fighting for the Germans, and German names fighting for the Russians.)

Is it a good history? I think so. But what makes a good history? After all, even if you knew literally nothing about either battle, just by reading this far you have got a reasonable summary: Napoleon invaded Russia, and he lost. Then later Hitler invaded Russia, and he lost too. Bam, there’s your history! When we have the quiz, you should be able to ace it. Now, we can safely say that we have covered both campaigns when it comes time for our standardized tests.

But perhaps, if you are an inquisitive sort, (a rare thing these days!) you suspect there is more to this story. Maybe there is; but first, a trademark Ruined Chapel-style non-sequitur!

Hey, didja guys hear about the Galactic Starcruiser? It was some sort of Star Wars-themed mystery dinner-theater LARPing experience. But it lost a bunch of money and had to be shut down. Some vlogger on YouTube did a four hour show about how disappointing it was. (Apparently, it was insufficiently immersive.)

I was recently reading David Foster Wallace’s hilarious essay, Shipping Out, about his experience on a cruise ship, and how, eventually, no matter much luxury it provided, it was never really enough:

In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the insatiable-infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction. And sure enough, after a few days of delight and then adjustment…, the Pamper-swaddled part of me that WANTS is now back, and with a vengeance. By Wednesday, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that the A.C. vent in my cabin hisses (loudly).

That was in the ’90s. Wallace didn’t even have a smartphone!

Compared to any other point in recorded history, we in the modern West live lives of unparalleled luxury. Kings and queens of yesteryear had not 1/100th of the amenities available to modern people today. And are we happy? No, we are not! We are righteously dissatisfied that the quality of our entertainment is not as good as we imagine it could be. I’m as guilty as the next guy. I write a whole website dedicated to critiquing entertainment.

Which brings us back to Borodino and the book in question. The sheer, unrelenting, all-encompassing amount of horror and suffering described by the accounts of those who went through these battles are difficult to even comprehend. The modern middle-class American, which I am, struggles and fails to appreciate the sheer misery of men marching first in dry heat, and later sub-freezing cold, only to fight and die horribly hundreds of miles from their home. Civilian farmers, old men, women, children driven from their homes by the violence of these same starving soldiers and totalitarian regimes, people ruthlessly gunned down merely for expressing fear in the face of hopeless situation, or refusing to work as slave labor for an occupying enemy force.

It is Hell. It is the stuff of nightmares. I literally cannot, on a visceral level, understand how anyone survived these experiences. What would a soldier, shot with grapeshot and bleeding to death while buried in snow, even say if he could see the modern world, if he could see me? It’s the sort of question that haunted me while reading this book.

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Anymore, when I review authors like Bertocci, I am reminded of the cut song from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe about De Belville. I’m sure you all have it memorized already, but just in case, here’s an abridged version of the first verse:

De Belville was regarded as the Crichton of his age:
His tragedies were reckoned much too thoughtful for the stage;
His poems held a noble rank, although it’s very true
That, being very proper, they were read by very few.
[…]
And everybody said
“How can he be repaid—
This very great—this very good—this very gifted man?”
But nobody could hit upon a practicable plan!

Of course, being a W.S. Gilbert production, the story ultimately ends with a happy accident, by which De Belville gets a seat in the House of Lords.

Well, I would of course be all in favor of granting Mr. Bertocci a prominent seat in government. But until that day comes, I guess I’ll just keep trying to reward him as best I know how: namely, by writing rambling reviews of his books.

His latest short story is about a young woman named Kayla, a theater major starring in an ’80s pop-rock themed adaptation of Cinderella. The show isn’t going well, but the one saving grace is that it spares Kayla having to think about her future.

You know, normally I hate literary fiction about angst. Yet, that’s exactly what Bertocci writes, and damme, I enjoy it. I think mostly it’s because he doesn’t lose his sense of humor, even while writing about themes like the anxiety and uncertainty that all young people starting out in life face. He handles these motifs seriously, but always with wit.

In the comments on last week’s post, Anonymole pointed me to an article in The Guardian about a recent study on AI. The punchline: “Ideas generated by ChatGPT can help writers who lack inherent flair but may mean there are fewer unique ideas.”

Well, I can confidently say that Bertocci does not lack for flair, and he has plenty of unique ideas. That’s why I love his fiction. In a world increasingly awash in regurgitated AI media, his Bildungsromane stand out for their witty prose and relatable characters.