The Literary Handyman: More Tips from the Handyman (Ackley-McPhail)

The Literary Handyman: More Tips from the Handyman by Danielle Ackley-McPhail (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Why would a published author need more tips on writing? Honestly, I don't remember if I got this one free in a Kickstarter campaign, or if I bought it extra. But the advice is worth the price.

Disclaimer: Danielle Ackley-McPhail is the editor of my book In A Flash 2020 and is the publisher of eSpec Books, which published my book.

Amsuing anecdote: This past weekend, I was at Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ (across the river from Philadelphia). I did show her that I was reading her book. It had been in my kindle app for a while. While I was there, I mentioned a story of mine that a mutual acquaitance had read as the assistant editor of a magazine. She sent me an email saying she liked it and was passing it to the editor for review. In the end, unfortunately, the editor didn't agree, and I didn't make the cut. But I when I discovered that she (the one who liked it) was at a con, I introduced myself and thanked her for the kind words. She actually seemed to remember the story from a comment she'd made. (That had been six months earlier, at least.) Anyway, Danielle told me to send her the story. They (that is, eSpec) is planning their next anthology, whatever it may be. When I got home from the weekend trip, I did just that.

The next day, I'm reading about shooting yourself in the foot by not doing everything you can to help yourself and your manuscript, and to not give the editor an excuse to reject your manuscript without reading it. (They get a lot, and sometimes they're overwhelmed.) One of her pet peeves were when authors leave out the personal information on the top of the first page. Sometimes authors she's friends with and has worked with before are guilty of this, too, not just newbies.

When I got home from work, I updated the file to include that information, and resent it. I later realized that I don't know if I included page numbers or not. I usually don't. I think I turned them off when one editor mentioned it in their guideines, and I don't think I ever put them back on again. It's something that was obvious when I was typing manuscripts, as opposed to using a word processor.

Anyway, rookie mistakes like this are good reasons to reason "how to" books occasionally, just to make sure you're still doing what you should be doing.

Ackley-McPhail includes numerous examples of what she's talking about, both from her own works and new entries created for this text.

A great guide. I reccomend both editions.

She also has one for book publishing, but I'm not "there" yet. And I would really only be interested in electronic publishing, not print copies, first because print would take even more of an investment, and I would more likely be aiming for the Kindle Unlimited audience if I went that way.

Steampunk!

Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (2011)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I wish I'd written this one up sooner, but I hadn't written earlier books yet. Also, I hadn't thought at the time that I might want to write something about the individual stories.

There was a call for story proposals for an upcoming steampunk anthology which will be published for an upcoming Steampunk convention. It will be handled by eSpec Book, which has published stories that I've written. I would've liked to have proposed a story. However, to be honest, I don't know much about Steampunk. I know the gears and the clockwork stuff and the flying ships and the steam and goggles and stuff, but not what actually makes a Steampunk story.

So I went looking for an anthology. Actually, I looked for novels first, but I kept finding romances with steampunk settings. When I discovered the anthology, I realized that I could get a bunch of different takes on what makes a steampunk story. Basically, a lot of things. For one thing, anything done by Jules Verne is fair game. Also, "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (H. G. Wells) isn't off-limits either.

Stories can be Victorian up through World War I. I don't remember any set in the Wild West, but there are analogues (read elsewhere) between Edwardian/Victorian England and the upper crust of the American West. This is good to know for writing, because I might want to set it in the American West. On the other hand, Long Island, NY was underdeveloped at the time and yet so close to NYC. But I digress.

I did find a review which broke down the list of stories. I rememeber from the authors' bios that all of them have multiple credits to their name. The ones I remember, I will comment on. Unfortunately, the book has already gone back to the library, so I can't go back and peek at it. Also, I read the stories in the book over a period of a couple of months while I was reading other things, so some of the details of the earlier stories may be fuzzy.

n particular:

"Some Fortunate Future Day" by Cassandra Clare set the stage for the book. It took place during the war (WWI). A girl, Rose, is home alone in her mansion, cared for by automatons built by her father, who also built friends for her (life-sized dolls). An injured soldier comes to the house that she (and the robots) care for. She fantasizes that the soldier will take her away and that they will live happily ever after. The soldier sees her as a child, however. The girl then uses a time travel device of her father's (not out of the realm of possibility given the setup), to go back a few days so that she can try to win the soldier all over again. When she goes back, the device remains where it was, so it can be used again. (I don't recall if that means that there will be two instances of the girl now.) I enjoyed the story. If this were the benchmark for the series, then it was set high, say 4 out of 5.

"The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" by Libba Bray. I think it took a while before I realized that this was set on another planet and not in the old West. There are Pinkerton detectives, so I assumed it was some alternate history with gadgets. Not an issue, but it threw me a little. The girl is good with gadgets, and you know she will not recognized by many for her talents because she's female. She overcomes a bad situation. Good story.

"Clockwork Fagin" by Cory Doctorow is, I imagine, a steampunk "Oliver Twist". I say, I imagine, but I've never read it or seen a film (or musical), just adaptations into other mediums and genres. There's a horrible orphange filled with kids with injuries from jobs that kids shouldn't be performing, but did back then. The new kid kills the creepy man who runs the place, but which clockwork technology, they manage to fool people into thinking he's alive until they can come up with another plan. The problem they face is, if discovered, no one knows who would take over the orphange (could be worse) or if the kids would wind up worse off. A pretty good story and made use of clockwork stuff in a belieavable way. The stuff exists, and they adapt it.

"Seven Days Beset by Demons" by Shawn Cheng was a seven-panel comic which was a little difficult to read in kindle. Each day is a deadly sin. It didn't do much for me as it was a concept story/art piece.

"Hand in Glove" by Ysabeau S. Wilce. Okay, this one I think I remember. It was weird. There's a detective and a constable solving murders. The constable wants to use fingerprints but the detective doesn't like the modern methods. The fingerprints indicate that a dead man was a murderer. The investigation leads to a Frankenstein-like setup. If I recall correctly, the mad scientist is an uplifted chimp (the term "uplifted" is not used -- in fact, I don't recall if they address it at all). The doctor is re-animating bodies, but the problem is that most bodies have something wrong with them usually related to the cause of or the aftermath of their death. So parts get taking from multiple bodies. (If I'm remembering correctly, a hand is animated and walks alone, and it might've been the murderer's hand. Again, it was a while ago.)

"The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor" by Delia Sherman was a little odd from where it started and then where it went, but that isn't a bad thing. Unexpected, which isn't bad. Victorian setting and the name is definitely Welsh. (I googled how to pronounce it.) A young maid helps her young master with the help of the ghost of one of her ancestors. She works as a housekeeper because there's no future for a blacksmith's daughter -- certainly not as an engineer.

I don't mind stories that bring this to mind, so long as the entire anthology isn't filled with them -- unless, of course, that's the theme of the anthology, as opposed to "steampunk" -- so long as this is woven into the plot and not a soapbox placed on top of the plot's throat.

This was one of the more enjoyable stories. The can never be certain when you have a ghost story because you expect the ghost to be real, but then if it is, you expect that it has some rules or at least reasons for its actions or lack of actions.

"Gethsemane" by Elizabeth Knox. I really don't remember much about this at all, which is odd because I know it's religious allegory and I usually remember those. (Particularly if really good or really bad. Maybe it was neither?) It takes place (Google search) on a fictional island in the South Pacific, part of the Shackle Islands (which aren't real, either). I think there was magic and mysticism and making people blind and dependent on you and stuff I wouldn't associate with stemapunk. But there was something steampunk-y about it, I'm sure.

"The Summer People" by Kelly Link. I don't remember much about this one either. I could be confusing this one with the previous one. Maybe the summer people have all that power. I don't remember.

"Peace in Our Time" by Garth Nix. I don't remember hating it, so there's that. An end of the world story, I think. (This is why I need to make notes sooner.)

"Nowhere Fast" by Christopher Rowe. In the future a lot of stuff is outlawed by the government, and some people like it that way because that stuff was bad (like oil and cars and stuff). Not much to say about it.

"Finishing School: A Colonial Adventure" by Kathleen Jennings is a comic about a girl who built a flying machine. I don't remember much about it becasue (again) comics in kindle are difficult to read.

"Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks. Two young misfits fall in love.

"Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black. I believe that this is the story with the young woman who rejects all suitors because she's in love with her personal automaton. That machine is connected to the house. When there relationship is severed, the house reacts badly to the point where the house, which is supposed to serve and please everyone, only cares for the one mistress. In the end, she weds the automaton. This story couldn't have been written 100 years ago. Actually, it could have been written by Verne or Wells but it would've ended differently. This ending would never have sold. The house would've burned down instead with the maid inside the house, or being dragged out over the shoulder of her father or one of her many suitors. The automaton might have even pushed her into whichever man's waiting arms. Actually, I could write that -- except that I'm rubbish with romance stories, not to mention Regency settings.

"The Oracle Engine" by M.T. Anderson. Steampunk in Ancient Rome. The Romans were brilliant engineers and this kicked that up a notch. It's a story of revenge of a young boy against the rich and powerful Crassus, who allowed the boy's home to burn and his father to die because the father could not afford Crassus's price to douse the flames and save the house. The boy grows up to be an engineer and approaches Crassus about building an Oracle Engine that could, given all the needed information, foresee victory or defeat in the future. And he's willing to build it for the fame that his engine will bring. Crassus heads to the Middle East on a campaign that traditional omens predict doom. He lets the enemy move about freely while awaiting the Oracle's programming to be completed. He has it tested, and then kills the young man who built it so he could make no more. He tells them that he knows who he is. Before Crassus finally launches his campaign, he has the engine checked for sabotage and finds a coin, with no memory of giving that coin to the young boy who would grow to make the engine. The coin would have altered the results. Instead Crassus hears prophecies that he believes means victory but are actually the kinds of things said by the gods and oracles to the players in tragedies before they fall. And his company falls. Revenge is had. (SPOILER, sorry)

So I can see why it took me a while to finish becuase there was a dry spell in the middle with a handful of stories that didn't do much for me, and which I barely remembered. It did finish strong, however, with the Crassus tale. Ancient Rome i not what I think of when I think "steampunk", but as I mentioned before, given Roman engineering, it actually makes a lot of sense to place a story there. Probbably moreso than in any other place at any other time in history, outside of the traditional origins.

So now I have a slightly better understanding of steampunk, except that the story I had in mind doesn't fit with any of these. I'm happy to see zeppelins, but I wanted to see flying ships, actual ships that flew. And maybe I'll still write that.

My Best Friend's Exorcism (Hendrix)

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (2016)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection. it was also a it of an odyssey in finding a copy of the book. The novel has been made into a movie, so copies are hard to come by. I was told by two libraries that the estimated wait time would to 10-12 weeks for a copy .

As a result, I started to use the Internet Archive, which had a copy, but I was only able to borrow it for one hour at a time, until a 14-day copy became available. Adding to the insanity, the Internet Archive is, naturally on the Internet. I couldn't download anything to read on the subway. As a result, before getting on the train, I needed to buffer the next dozen pages or so to read until I got somewhere I could buffer more. And I couldn't launch any other apps that might've cleared memory.

And it was a quick read, so I flew through chapters faster than I expected to.

So the story ... It takes place in the 90s and a lot of 80s reference are sprinkled throughout the text, some of them carefully placed with a sledgehammer. I lived through the 80s, and it wasn't all that 80s-ish that much all the time. Basically, it's product placement with 80s refs instead of actual ads. The chapter titles are 80s songs, which usually fit the chapters thematically, so it's occasionally a stretch. The funny thing about this is that the book reads like one of those 80s "TV Movies of the Week" that the networks would use to fill out their schedules. The fact that it's a current movie is a little more boggling.

When Abby was 10, she had a birthday party, but only Gretchen came because Margaret announces her party on the same day and its at a horse-riding ranch. None of their classmates make it back, but Gretchen didn't go because Abby asked first. References to E.T. abound.

Fast-forward a bunch of years and they are in high school. Abby's father is out of work, so they live in the poor part of town in a scary-looking house, but Abby has a scholarship to her private school. She's still friends with Gretchen, along with Margaret and another girl Glee. They're popular.

While at Margaret's lake house, the girls try LSD. Gretchen goes skinny dipping in the dark and disappears. The others look for her in the woods, and Abby finds a creepy cabin and runs off. They find Gretchen the next day.

Over time, it's obvious that the experience changed her, but Abby starts to believe that Gretchen is possessed by a demon thanks to a cult in the building. And, in fact, she was. At first, she creepy, but suddenly she seems fine and normal, and Abby is the one on the outs. Demon Gretchen is set on destroying the girls' futures and almost succeeds.

The fancy prep school has many assemblies, and one of them is a family of exorcists. One of the sons recognizes the demon within Gretchen. At some point after, Abby contacts him about saving Gretchen. This should be the strongest part of the book, given the title, but it becomes the goofiest. Christian doesn't bring his father because he doesn't believe his father is strong enough to do this any more. But Christian has performed an exorcism and he has lots of notes (which turn out to be useful to Abby). His attempts to force the demon out would result in serious harm to and the possible death of the host, and he has to be forced to back it down a little. Before it's over, he abandons the girls, leaving Abby to save Gretchen before the police arrive.

This is where it get really over-the-top Movie of the Week. When viewed in that light, it makes up for the less than stellar exorcism scene. However, it doesn't end there, as the movie might have. It tells us what happens for the rest of their lives and how the two friends drift apart. (The other two girls will never be the same again.) None of that is necessary except to comment how difficult it is to stay from forever, particularly if someone moves away and put physical as well as emotional distance between them.

So this wasn't scary, and it wasn't funny. It was pretty much straight-forward about the girls and fitting in, especially with Abby suddenly being poor.

The book wasn't terrible, which doesn't sound like much, but I had a sense of dread going into it because I didn't know what kind of graphic demonic possession would be in the forefront. That part wasn't so bad. Parts of it were clever, but I won't spoil those.

I've been told my several members of the book club that the movie is awful an I should skip it.

Note: I didn't use the "Teen" tag, because even though the characters are teens, I wouldn't recommend this book for teens. They wouldn't appreciate all the 80s references anyway. At least when I watch Happy Days, the 50s were only 20 years earlier.

John Dies at the End (Paragin)

The Dream Peddler by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) (2007)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection. I had never heard of it before, despite the 20-year later commentary added to this version. Honestly, I couldn't tell you which author name was on the cover. It was Jason Pargin on the Good Reads page. Apparently, it was a movie, too.

The fact that this started as a web serial in 2001 was interesting, and also explained the choppy nature of it (even if he did go back and edit it). Back in 2001, something like this was possible. It would be like the folks who pioneered self-publishing for a living on Amazon or who do serials now on their new service. It's something that I would've loved to have done had I had the time and the discipline to keep writing. Granted, I probably would've been lost in the shuffle and never advertised for readers.

Anyway, David Wong is being interviewed about some of the crazy stuff that he's seen, along with his friend John. Most of it defies the laws of physics as well as time and causality. It mostly has to do with this inky black gunk that gets into them and allows them to see things that other people don't notice. There's another dimension that's going to burst into this one and kill everyone. And they have to stop it.

It's strange, really out there, hard to follow (except, oddly, for the parts where people are erased and no one remembers them, including someone who would've been a main character in the beginning of the book, but he was erased in Las Vegas, but someone remembers shouting their name).

Spoiler: John never dies at the end. On the other hand, a lot of other people do. And many of them are replaced with shadows from the other dimension, except that they don't know that they are. The replacements appear to be exactly who the person looking at them expects them to be -- but if that person had never seen them before, their head fills in their own details. These may not match what others see, so that's one way to detect them.

This isn't a book I would've picked up. And if I had, I probably would've nave stayed with it if it weren't for the book club meeting ... which I missed because Family Movie Night ran long, and I don't skip out on Family Movie Night. That's me.

The next book was creepy, but I blew through it pretty quickly.

The Dream Peddler

The Dream Peddler by Martine Fournier Watson (2019)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection, and it put me in a bit of a quandry. There was no ebook available at either library. I eventually was able to get a print edition. I kept putting off reading it for odd reasons. Starting new books is always a little on the difficult side for me, but lately print is worse. I can't adjust the font size any more. (Actually, i've made my ereader font smaller because I thought it was too large!) Adding to this, I read on the subway in the morning, but I usually have a coffee in one hand, so holding a book can be difficult. Coming home the trains are crowded, so standing and trying to read a paperback is even more ridiculous. And reading a paperback by lamplight in bed only gets me so far (maybe a page or two) unless I'm really drawn in.

And then comes the dumbest excuse of all: my kindle app has a daily reading counter. Yes, I wanted to keep my streak going, to a year, to 400 days, to whatever number I can get it to. I don't know what I'll do if I finally miss a day. Take a break, maybe. But that meant reading other things, even if only for a half hour, every day.

In the end, I got the book on tape, unabridged and nine hours long. It wasn't the sort of thing I could just sit and listen to. That actually started putting me to sleep. So I'd listen while walking, when I didn't have my radio. And I'd listen when I was standing in the train. For a while, I would read later to catch up, but that didn't last long, and she was reading the entire text.

In the end, I didn't finish before the book club meeting, but I wound up out the house that night.

It's a small town before everyone had cars. A lot of walking and wagons. A young boy, Benjamin Dawson, goes missing. And a stranger, Robert Owens comes to town. He finds a room at Vi's boardinghouse where he sets up his supplies. He's a dream peddler. He sells dreams, or rather potions that will make you have dreams.

The first to buy one -- Owens gives it away for free -- is a tenn, Toby Jenkins, who wants to have a dream about girls. He passes the word along to other boys. No one believes that selling dreams is possible and that he must be a charlatan, but people come to see him. Mr. Dawson wants a dream that might tell him where to look for Toby -- Owens doesn't think it'll work but maybe his subconscious will tell him something.

After the boy's body is found beneath the ice in the river (no foul play expected), Owens avoids his mother, Evie. She finally corners him, not to ask for a dream of her son, but not to dream at all.

A teen girl, Christina Blackwell, wants to dream of her future husband, which again isn't exactly possible. He ends up dreaming of somone other than who she'd hoped. That get her and her friend Cora Jenkins to try to shape the future so that the right boy is looking at her. It turns out that he's a bit of jerk (a big jerk by the end) and the other boy isn't all that bad, so that dream may come to pass after all.

The peddler only stays in one place for a while and then moves on. It's a great business, but there's a problem. People have to tell their secrets to him when explaining their dream. After a while, Owens says, they can start to resent you knowing so much.

It plays out a little differently here with people using dreams for the wrong purposes, with results not what they're expecting. On top of that, Cora Jenkins develops a crush on Owens, who isn't interested, and even if he was, he knew that he could settle down and go on the road. And constant traveling would be no life for Cora (or anyone else). You almost hope that something would develop between Owens and Vi (but, again, I'm listening, so I may have missed details about Vi's age). Evie obviously develops feelings even though she's happily married.

In the end, he's chased away because of the preacher and because of the scuttlebutt involving Cora (who, SPOILER!, miscarries).

I did plan on reading the last chapter or two of the book, but that didn't happen despite having the book in my bag for a couple of weeks. I passed it on to the next library reader. I hope the book wasn't worse for wear in my bag.

It was a good story. I do wish I'd read it instead of listened (or both) just because it's sometimes confusing which character is speaking. And if I ever wanted a good definition of "speculative fiction", this is it. Everything is normal, except for this one speculative element, "What if a person could sell dreams?"

I should check out what else Watson has written... that's available as an ebook.

Abaddon's Gate (Corey)

Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey (2013)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

As previously noted: I watched the first season of The Expanse when it first aired on Syfy. I have to admit, I was somewhat lost and couldn't follow a lot of lost was going on. I couldn't even understand some of what was being said. Had I thought about it, I might've deleted the timer I had set for the series. However, I forgot to, so it taped the second season, which I watched and enjoyed more. I can now confirm that the third season aired on Syfy before it moved to Amazon, as I remember these episodes.

Comparing the book to the show: the first season of the show did not cover the entire first book. However, it did include characters from the second book, in particular, every character on Earth. The first half of the second season, which I recently rewatched, introduces a couple of Book Two characters in the first episode, setting them up for later, or repurposing them. The person whom I would call the "main" new character of Book Two, Prax, doesn't appear until halfway through the season when Ganymede is attacked (or about to be). Somehow they managed to finish book three by the end of season three. However, since most of it took place while everyone was trapped in one location, it sped things up. They also combined or repurposed existing characters so new ones didn't have to be introduced.

The book opens with the gate already out there in deep space and everyone keeping an eye on it, where it had been for about a year. In the show, it launches from Venus in the middle of season three.

A slingshotter, someone in a ship that slingshots around plantary bodies without crashing or crushing themselves, decides to make a name for himself by slingshotting through the ring. He dies in the attempt because the ring stops his ship, slowing it down to its own speed limit. The gate, now activated, draws even more interest.

Meanwhile, the daughter of Jules Mao decides to seek revenge against James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. She's had her body augmented so she can kill easily, but needs to rest afterward. With a new identity, she boards a ship heading toward the gate working as a maintenance crew member. (She mostly supervises others' work but she took a crash course in it.)

The Roci crew, meanwhile, has a problem where the ship is locked down because the Martian government is suing to get it back. A documenatry crew shows up to hire the ship to go to the gate and promises that it can use its news connections to get the lockdown order lifted. This happens and Holden and crew are heading where Mao wants them. Added to this, a member of the crew is a saboteur who will allow Mao computer access so that she can fire the Roci's weapons at another ship, making Holden a villain. The ship's communications are also compromised with a spoofed Holden delivering an ultimatum and claiming ownership of the ring.

Miller starts making appearances. He only shows up when Holden is alone and only briefly. This is explained that the protomolecule is talking to him from Venus and it has to trip a lot of switches in Holden's brain for this to happen. It's more difficult if more are present. Miller warns him about doors and corners and rushing in blind.

When everything goes bad, and there's no safe harbor, Holden orders Alex to take the ship into the ring, but slow it down. Ships moving below the speed limit can proceed. Faster ships are halted and drift to the center.

Other ships follow, including the OPA's ship Behemoth, which is the Nauvoo repurposed. It turns out that the Nauvoo was never intended to accelerate forever to create gravity. Rather it has a drum in the center that could spin to provide gravity. However, within the solar system, that isn't necessary, so the ship is used top-down, and what should have been the ground is now a really thick wall. The fact that it can spin will become important will everything goes wrong again later on.

Holden comes to believe that Julie Mao is somehow manipulating him through the protomolecule, not knowing that it's her living sister. He ends up going to the station in the center of the spherical space within the ringspace. The Miller construct tries to help him fix whatever's wrong. Miller also wants answers to what happened to the race that created the protomolecule two billion years ago, and why are all the other exits closed?

Before they can get answers, Martians capture Holden. In the process, one fires off a weapon that the ring decides is bad. The speed limit is suddenly reduced dramatically. This causes a lot of death and injuries on all the ships. Worse, without a fix, none of the ships would survive the months-long voyage out to regular space.

There's a fight for control of the Behemoth to prevent in some setting in motion the destruction of the solar system by the ring, and everything works out. And Miller has plans for Holden.

The story is left wide open for the next book without it being any kind of cliffhanger.

This is the part of the show that I remember the most -- probably because that's when I was finally getting into it and understanding the characters. It seems funny that after spending so much time on each of the first two books that they managed to finish this one in so few episodes without leaving too much out. They hit all the major points that they had to. It's possible that they knew that they weren't being renewed so they needed to finish it, ending with Miller's promise that there's more out there. When the producers found out that Amazon was picking up the series, I couldn't say.

I enjoyed this book. I ordered the next, but barely started it before it was due back because of other book club readings. But I'll get back to it.

I do wish I'd written this sooner because Show "Expanse" is intermingling with book "Expanse", particularly with the minor bits.

Puzzled (Nichols)

Puzzled by P.J. Nichols (2018)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a freebie in a Book Bub mailing list that I read with an eye on if it might interest my nephew. I think not, but he was his own tastes.

It's a middle-grade book, filled with puzzles and Nichols will at times stop and ask the reader if they've worked out the solution before he reveals it.

The conceit of the book is that Peter has a talent for solving puzzles. He's approached by an older man (I read this two months ago, I don't remember the particulars, which kind of defeats the purpose of this blog) who has him solve a few riddles. The man has an ulterior motive.

It turns out that there's an alien living among us and that alien can control the weather and create tornados that wreak distruction. But the alien would rather solve puzzles. And the older fellow has been creating puzzles for the alien for many years now. He wants Peter to take over. But first he must pass a challenge and he'll need a team to help him because some challenges will be brainy but others will require brawn.

Peter gets the girls he's interested in, and another frend. He also wants his older brother, but he lies to him about the competition because he figures that his brother would never believe him about a tornado-creating alien who likes puzzles. The older brother discovers the lie and quits the team right before the day of the challenge. Oh noes!

The other three go through the puzzles, figuring them all out, only to have a squeaker of a finish where the older brother runs in to save the day (someone managing to avoid all the other puzzles and make it to the finish line).

It was an okay book. I wasn't it's target audience. Your mileage may vary.

My Hero Academia Volume 31

My Hero Academia Volume 31, by Kōhei Horikoshi (2017-2019)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is the most recent issue available, and it merits a separate entry even if it was only 40 minutes of reading.

I'll have a separate entry for the spinoff My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, which I'm also up to date on.

This book came as a little bit of a surprise. I put a hold on it at the library a while back and suddenly there it was.

The series has gotten a bit dark, with its emphasis on the League of Villains and the Paranormal Liberation Front. but now we discover Dabi's true secret, and the revenge that he's been waiting for. No spoiler, but it's dark, and it concerns the new Number 1 Hero.

Despite being on the cover, Izuku Midoriya (Deku) has little to do since he's in the hospital from his battle with All for One's vassal Shiguraki.

So if I had a problem with this series, it's this: it's supposed to be about a high school. While I'm happy Japan's active heroes appear and get showcased, and even happier that a squad of high schoolers do NOT run off and save the world every issue, the focus has shifted. The bigger issues in the world have taken center stage. But we seeing it from the front lines, not through the lens of the teens in training.

And, again, without a spoiler, after 30+ issues that just about got us through a single year, the reveal on the last page with Mioriya was a head scratcher. There's a sudden jump in the timeline (a few months) and a rash decision for someone training to be the world's greatest hero. And it's practically an off-the-cuff aside.

Oh, yeah, I'll have the next issue on hold at the library.