One More Arabian Night, by Andrew Cairns / ** ½

Andrew Cairns’s One More Arabian Night is his follow-up/sequel to his first novel, The Witch’s List, which I also reviewed. And while I normally try to say that you have to review a book based off of its own merits and not compare it to something else, I can’t help but think about that previous novel a lot here, because everything that made Witch’s List both good and bad is here all over again, but maybe more so.

Solid first-person narration that gives you a nice sense of the main character? Check. Credit where it’s due: Cairns’s narration works, giving you a sense of being told a story by someone and giving you a nice sense of who that person really is. Dodging the normal awkward dialogue of many fledgling writers, Cairns’s protagonist – a man adrift after the realizations of the previous book and looking for love – is nicely sketched through his voice.

A bit meandering and unsure of what kind of book it wants to be? Double check. Just as The Witch’s List felt largely like a coming-of-age/growing up tale that randomly would dip its toes into horror, One More Arabian Night similarly drifts between a few love stories and bizarre tales of the supernatural. After all, this is a book that begins with an acid-fueled supernatural revenge killing…which is never revisited or mentioned again, and almost feels irrelevant to the story. And while One More Arabian Night includes these dips into the supernatural a little more often than The Witch’s List, they still feel like they don’t quite belong in the book we get – like we either need MORE of them, or LESS. As it is, the book feels odd, stuck between the story of a man finding love with multiple wives (more on that in a moment) and a strange tale of witches and folklore.

Does all of that, once again, leave you with a book whose goals you’re not sure of even when you’ve finished? A final check indeed.

But the other big issue is our hero’s dealings with women, which have gone from charming to naive and then to kind of gross as the series has gone along. In The Witch’s List, Sandy’s lusting over women from other country’s was a little more understandable, coming from the young man that he was. But over the course of One More Arabian Night, one gets the vibe that the main reason Cairns has Sandy convert to Islam is less about his faith and more out of the excuse to marry multiple women (and lust after plenty more, contemplating adding them all to his harem). That doesn’t even get into the way that every single female character worships him on every level, being unable to exist without him and constantly longing for his presence. There’s not much about Sandy that seems to inspire that devotion, and it all ends up coming out a little skeezy and off-putting.

Could Cairns be working to undermine Sandy and point out that the way he keeps treating women like objects might be causing his own issues? Maybe…but that’s not the vibe One More Arabian Night gives out, from that opening sequence to the polygamy plot thread. What was understandable, if not laudable, when Sandy was young becomes less so as he gets older, and the way the book around him seems to encourage him without realizing the unpleasantness of it all makes for a read that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend. I still think Cairns has some talent, but between the sense that this book doesn’t quite know what it wants to be and the issues with the women characters, One More Arabian Night still isn’t the solid book that I think he’ll give us some day.

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The Armored Saint, by Myke Cole / ****

I’ve commented in reviews before about what I think I’m going to start calling the Fantasy Prologue problem – that is, that realization you have when you finish a solid fantasy book and realize that it’s really all just setup for the next book to come. Sometimes books can manage to make themselves work even with that issue (I’m thinking a lot about Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind here), but I feel like more and more, I’ll read a solid book only to realize that I’ve spent the whole time waiting for a fireworks factory that’s only coming in the next book.

Such is the case with Myke Cole’s The Armored Saint, a Tor novella that sets up an intriguing world, gives us a compelling main character, sets up a lot of dominos, and even throws in a pretty fantastic reveal at the end – only to make you realize that this is the setup for the really story, and only somewhat a story on its own terms. In some ways, that’s the ideal amount of story for a novella-length tale, and The Armored Saint is gripping enough to make up for some of those flaws, but there’s still a sense of disappointment that comes with the end of the book as we realize that this isn’t so much the climax so much as the first act bump.

Nevertheless, The Armored Saint offers a lot of promise and neat ideas, giving us a science-fiction tale clearly inspired by Joan of Arc, but with originality to spare. In Cole’s world, an organization known as The Order rules land, looking for signs of witchcraft and magic, all of which are known to open the door to devils and demons. It’s a land ruled by zealotry, and while the common people believe in the dangers of magic, there’s no shortage of fear – and distrust – of The Order. And into that mix comes young Heloise, who’s watching the way her father is forced to kowtow to lesser men, the way that a mentally disturbed young man is being set up as a witch despite the realities of his case, and most intriguingly, her budding romantic interest in her best friend – another young woman.

All of this builds to a head as Heloise begins showing more and more defiance to the Order and questioning established dogma, setting up for a conflict between religious zealots lying about magic to control the populace and a young girl who can rally a population…

…except that just when you’re sure that you know all of the beats of this story, Cole tosses in a couple of true curveballs, including one that single-handedly elevated my opinion of the book massively, adding in a deep shade of gray to the tale and making you realize that there’s a lot more going on here than we might think from the broad sketches.

Still, The Armored Saint definitely feels like a bit of throat-clearing for the story Cole really wants to tell in the rest of the trilogy, leaving you with a setup for what’s to come that only underlines the book’s nature as a first volume of a bigger story. That’s not the end of the world, but it does make The Armored Saint feel a little incomplete on its own terms, and makes the ending feel a little more disappointing. For all of that, though, it’s still a great prologue to that story, and some of the ideas give me the sense that the bigger saga to come could be far more interesting than the archetypal “zealots versus the truth” story it wants you to think it is.

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Kissing the Beehive, by Jonathan Carroll / **

I first read Jonathan Carroll about seven years ago, thanks to the recommendation of Neil Gaiman. I didn’t really know anything about him, and picked up From the Teeth of Angels really on a whim – maybe it was on sale? But whatever the case, I was enthralled by it – a strange, unclassifiable novel about the nature of death and existence itself. I could completely understand what Gaiman loved about him, and I made it my goal to read more Carroll soon.

Man, am I glad I didn’t start with Kissing the Beehive. Because, let me tell you, there’s little about this that would make me want to read more Carroll anytime soon, and only the memory of how much better – how much more original, and better crafted, and better plotted, and more ambitious – From the Teeth of Angels was makes me still willing to try another Carroll novel.

It’s hard to know exactly what it is that makes Kissing the Beehive so bad, but there’s no shortage of potential in the idea here. The novel is about a writer struggling to come up with his next book, only to realize that a childhood incident – in which he stumbled across the discarded dead body of a local girl – could give him the hook he needed. Mix that plunge into his own past with a burgeoning romance with a devout fan and you have some neat ideas, right?

It doesn’t help matters that the narrator is so resolutely uninteresting, and indeed, unlikable. Whether it’s his chummy relationship with his daughter that feels less like a father and more like the “cool stepdad who can totally relate to the teens!”, his snotty attitude towards women, or his inability to tell a story, nothing about our main character draws us into the book. There’s little sense of self-reflection, of how this long simmering mystery affects anyone other than him. And while there’s promise there with the idea of how writers cannibalize the world around them and sometimes can lose focus of how it affects others, there’s no sense of that subtext coming through in the novel. Instead, everyone raves about how great the book is, his careless and selfish use of everyone around him seems fine, and his myopia is all but endorsed by the supporting cast.

But the bigger issue comes with that love interest, for whom the derisive nickname “manic pixie dream girl” isn’t strong enough. Carroll gives her no personality of her own, nothing other than an obsessive vibe that gets worse and worse and turns her into a generic stalker character who’s supposedly likable because she’s so charming and outgoing. She feels nothing like a human being, and instead just becomes A Woman who the main character can use as he wants, all while still talking about how hot she is. And maybe all of this wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t equally as creepy and leering with every major female character – and don’t even get me started on his controlling behavior with his daughter’s new boyfriend.

Some of this could be forgiven if there was more sense that Carroll was interrogating his main character’s issues, or if it felt like he had more going on under the hood – or even if the mystery was compelling. But really, Kissing the Beehive has no sense of narrative urgency, no compelling characters who don’t become one-dimensional archetypes, and not even a sense of what it should be about. The plot, such as it is, feels like a thrown together collection of anecdotes without purpose, the characters don’t work, and the role of women gets gross. And if that’s all not enough, it’s just plain boring, dragging you along more out of a desire to finish the book rather than to ever know what happens. I’ll try another Carroll sometime, but Kissing the Beehive definitely pushes that desire to a pretty distant back burner.

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Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz / ****

It’s not hard to be swept up in Anthony Horowitz’s dazzling Magpie Murders, even just once you realize the hook of the novel: it’s a classic mystery novel in the vein of Agatha Christie…within another book about the author of that mystery…and that book he wrote might just be about his own life and the mystery around it, even as it’s simultaneously its own very satisfying mystery novel. In other words, it’s a mystery book within a mystery book, and both halves of the book play off of each other wonderfully, giving you two great tales for the price of one.

On the one level, there’s famed writer Alan Conway’s manuscript for the latest novel in his famous crime series starring German sleuth Atticus Pünd. Conway’s been writing Pünd novels for a while, paying tribute to the works of Agatha Christie and her like, giving you classic British mysteries with all of the parlor scenes, small-town politics and schemes, brilliant deductions, and loyal friends the genre’s known for. And as the novel thrusts you into that manuscript – entitled, naturally enough, Magpie Murders, it’s not hard to imagine these books being a success. Pünd’s story is a great one, with suspects aplenty, secret motives, hidden identities, and all sorts of wonderful catnip for mystery lovers.

But just when you’re getting the feeling of Conway’s work, Horowitz moves outside of the manuscript and back to the real world, where some new information about Mr. Conway has come out, and his publishers are left scrambling to figure out any number of things about Magpie Murders – not least of which is whether or not it’s got within it an answer to a crime in the “real” world.

So, yes, on a purely structural and craft level, Magpie Murders is an absolute treat. The layers of metafiction are gloriously and playfully interwoven even before you realize Horowitz’s own connection to British mystery shows, but even betters, all of the layers are satisfying on their own merits, not just as puzzle pieces in the larger book. Indeed, it’s hard to know which half of Magpie Murders is better – the classical mystery within it or the equally baffling one that surrounds it. But whichever one it is, it’s the kind of book that just draws you in so quickly, reminding you that there’s a reason a good mystery book is so appealing. When it’s done well – and Magpie Murders is undeniably done well – you just have to see where it’s all going and get your answers, and Horowitz is perfect with his teases and unraveling of threads.

For all of that, you may feel a little let down by the ultimate end of Magpie Murders; in the end, it’s a mystery novel, and while its structure and its ideas make it seem more ambitious, it’s almost a little disappointing when it turns out to be exactly what you think it is: a really great mystery story. And as with so many great mysteries, often, the final revelation is disappointing compared to the ride to get there. Maybe that’s the case here (well, it is, at least with one of the two cases), but man, none of that kept me from staying up late and waking up early to read just “one chapter more” as I ripped through its pages. It may be a little bit of empty literary calories, but for a great read, look no further.

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In the Valley of the Sun, by Andy Davidson / *** ½

It feels like you see a lot of books compared to Cormac McCarthy these days, which is an odd comparison, given how relatively inaccessible McCarthy’s books can be. And let’s be fair; generally, when you see that comparison, that means you have a book that is a) a Western, b) violent, and c) has some dark characters…and that’s about it. There’s little sense of McCarthy’s stark, bleak worldview, or that unusual, bare prose that makes his books so memorable, which means that “in the vein of Cormac McCarthy” is one of the more meaningless blurb quotes out there.

And yet, Andy Davidson’s In the Valley of the Sun actually earns some of those comparisons, bringing along with those three points that worldview and some truly gorgeous prose that immerses you in a stark landscape that’s truly inhospitable to life. That it does all of that while also giving you a book about vampires…and a serial killer…well, that’s not nothing. It’s a shame, then, that In the Valley of the Sun couldn’t hook me more, giving me a lot of positive moments, but ultimately leaving me with the worst possible reaction for a book: boredome.

There’s so much promise in the story itself, as Davidson finds a novel variation on the brilliant film Near Dark, grounding his vampire tale in an isolated hotel in the middle of the West. Just as Near Dark gave us vampires whose bloodlust was barely connected with their affliction, In the Valley of the Sun follows a disturbed young man traveling the West killing women in a horrifying echo of his abusive childhood…only to find himself transformed into a vampire and expected to feed.

What follows from that point – and what a single mother and her angry young son have to do with it all – is the business of the book, and in the broad strokes, there’s so much intriguing material here. I love the killer’s struggle to find his own moral lines, and the way the book finds parallels between all of the “parental” figures of the book, be they vampire initiators or surrogate fathers or single mothers. Davidson’s evocation of this desolate landscape is beautiful, with atmosphere to spare, and his slow fleshing-out of the characters as the book goes along is great.

All of which sounds good…but it also fails to convey just how dull it all feels. Davidson has talent, and the story has good ideas, and the prose is great…but none of it makes In the Valley of the Sun move any faster, or makes the plot any less glacial, or makes the book’s climax any less unsatisfying on a variety of levels. In the Valley of the Sun is the kind of book that reminds you that you can have talent, and you can have ideas, but that doesn’t automatically make for a great book. There are great moments here, and some beautiful passages, but in the end, when you feel a sense of relief that you finally finished a book….well, that’s rarely a good sign, is it?

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Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood / *****

As of this writing, it’s been a couple of weeks since I saw Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, during which time I’ve thought about it a lot, trying to figure out how to connect the lackadaisical “hang out movie” of the first 2/3 with the spasm of ultra-violence that marks the climax. But also during that time, I’ve watched all sorts of cultural conversations creep up around the film – whether it disrespects Bruce Lee, how Tarantino views women, and, yes, that ending. (Emily VanDerWerff does an excellent job summarizing – and thinking about – these controversies in a spoilery essay you should read.)

But in the end, while I’m aware of all of that cultural to-do, all I can do when I review something is speak to my own reaction and feelings about it. And to me, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a cinephile’s delight. It eschews easy categorization and summary, luxuriating in a bygone era of classic film and serving as a paean to a different era, one that couldn’t help but recall Hunter S. Thompson’s famous “high water mark” passage, where, for a moment, the 60s felt special and like things really could be different…before so many other things happened – the Manson killings among them. But in Tarantino’s film, that horrifying crime hasn’t happened; for our characters, it’s all about finding a place in Hollywood and riding that wave as long as possible.

And I can’t express to you how simultaneously beautiful, fun, and melancholy that aspect of the film. Few contemporary directors are as adept at establishing a mood and tone quickly as Tarantino, and that’s evident in spades here, as he listens to two friends commentate over a television episode, or watches Sharon Tate watch herself on a big screen, or simply sits in the passenger seats as characters wander the city. Indeed, one of the most beautiful moments of the film is entirely wordless, as we see the characters as the sun sets over Hollywood and Jose Feliciano’s elegiac cover of “California Dreaming” fills the soundtrack – a culmination of pieces that’s perfect in its tone of “what could have been.”

Because, as its title makes clear (and the film itself underlines when that title finally appears on the screen), this film is a fairy tale, one in which Tarantino transports us back to a different era and lets us linger in the parties, and the boundless possibilities, and the regret that comes with realizing that the world is changing around you. It’s all but impossible not to remember that Tarantino has so often said that this will be his penultimate film as you watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’s in an industry where he no longer belongs. And while he can do amazing things when he tries, the fact is, this isn’t the showbiz world he was made for – and it’s not hard to feel Tarantino’s autobiographical nudges there.

But even without that beautiful capturing of the time period, there’s so much else to recommend about Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Sweeping camera shots that follow cars only to glide effortlessly over a drive-in theater movie screen. The easy banter between Leonardo DiCaprio and his stunt double/right hand man/best friend Brad Pitt. The effortlessly joyful presence of Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate, recapturing the human being from the death that so overshadows her. An amazing conversation about a pulp Western novel. Games with films within films that capture both the craft of acting and the absurdity of it all. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood has all of this and more, anchored by a trio of phenomenal performances – Robbie, Pitt, and DiCaprio – all of which represent actors at the top of their game and then some. (DiCaprio, in particular, is amazing here, with at least three picks for scenes that could make an all-time career highlight reel.)

So, yes, for so much of its running time, I was already in love with Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, if only for the chance to find a film that’s mature, thoughtful, cinematic, ambiguous, original, and unpredictable – all things in short supply in cineplexes these days. But just when you think that’s all the movie has to offer – as if that’s not enough – you start realizing that Tarantino isn’t going to keep his film separate from history so much as slowly interweave his characters with the looming dread lurking out on the Spahn Ranch.

Here’s where I begin to struggle with my review, because it’s difficult to talk about the film without discussing and spoiling the ending. It’s undeniably a wild tonal shift, one that steers into Tarantino’s knack for blurring genre lines and handling wildly divergent tones. And yet, it’s also an ending that’s undeniably of a piece with his recent films, as well as the overall tone of the movie, although in a way that’s not immediately apparent until the final moments, when the film itself tips its hand about exactly how to read its ending – painful, bittersweet, and a little heartbreaking.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood isn’t Tarantino’s tightest film, nor his best. It’s shaggy, aimless at times, and that ending can’t help but feel challenging for a variety of reasons. But for all of that, it’s a film that earns every second of its lengthy running time, and one that I absolutely lost myself in, wanting to spend even more time in its world. It’s joyous, moving, big-hearted, complicated, ambiguous, thoughtful, unpredictable, wild, imaginative, and just magnificently crafted by everyone involved. It’s the kind of movie that reminds you why you love going to movies, and movies like that are in short supply these days.

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Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman / **** ½

In the broadest terms, Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake is a crime novel, one in which a well-to-do white woman who’s recently left her husband begins working for a newspaper and investigating the mysterious death of an African-American woman whom no one seems to care about that much. That, at least, is the broadest structure of the book, and on that level, Lady in the Lake is satisfying enough – it’s got an intriguing mystery at its core, the reveals of that mystery are nicely paced out, and the ultimate solution is genuinely unexpected (even if it leaves at least one question as big as the ones we’ve gotten answered already).

But really, to focus only on the crime aspects of Lady in the Lake is to miss out on so much of what makes the book special, as Lippman uses that basic framework to do something much more ambitious – to explore her main character in all of her flaws and foibles, making her more than just a generic crime investigator, and something richer – a white woman unaware of her own privilege? a woman making her own way in a decade that had little use for women still? a spokesperson for all of those overlooked by the mainstream, from women to minorities? Or maybe all of these things? Lippman doesn’t give pat answers to any of it, instead giving us Maddy Schwartz in all of her contradictions, her passions, her flaws, and letting us make our own choices about how we feel about her.

Lippman underlines this ambiguity in a number of ways, but perhaps none are more compelling and striking than the structure of the novel. It would already be fascinating enough to structure the novel with only the two primary perspectives – Maddy herself but also Cleo Sherwood, the murdered African-American woman who inserts herself into the narrative to scold Maddy Schwartz for digging into her past without caring about her as a person. Already, that offers an unusual and gripping dichotomy, with Maddy claiming to speak for the victim but letting the victim quite literally speak for themselves and questioning her advocates motives.

That alone would be a great choice. But Lippman takes it a step further, following almost every chapter of Maddy’s life with a secondary one narrated from the perspective of a secondary character within that chapter. Once it’s a fellow patron at a movie theater. Once it’s a police officer who interviewed her. Another time it’s a fellow reporter at the newspaper. None ever repeat, and many are entirely inessential to the narrative. But in giving each of them a voice, Lippman allows her narrative to let us see Maddy not only as she sees herself, but as other people saw her, making her all the more complex and plausible.

Of course, the other effect of all of these narrators is that Lippman’s portrait of Baltimore in the 1960s becomes all the more fleshed-out and diverse, allowing Lippman to do more than just tell this singular story of a white divorcee finding her way in a man’s world. Instead, it becomes a novel as much about its time and place as it is the crime at its core, while also being a novel about two very different women trying their best to discover life on their own terms, while also being a crime novel. Is Lady in the Lake a mystery? Undeniably. But it’s also a book that’s about so much more, and gives you so much more depth and complexity, that to pigeonhole it as “only” a crime novel is to overlook just how ambitious and effective it is.

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