Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts is her first adult book since her incredible Winternight trilogy, and so, yes, my expectations were very high despite myself. And so it’s with some gratitude that I tell you that Ghosts is wholly its own kind of book, one that’s far more melancholy and mournful than the Winternight series ever was, even as it once again blends together historical fiction and supernatural elements into something that only enhances both sides of the equation. It’s the story of Laura Iven, an English World War I nurse who returns to the battlefield, scars and all, in an effort to find out what happened to her brother, who may or may not be dead. But even before Laura starts seeing images of her dead mother nudging her along her path (or away from things), there’s an unreality to the nightmarish and apocalyptic horrors of the war, only underlined all the more when Laura and her companions arrive in an unusual haven from the war that shouldn’t really exist. Beyond that – and beyond the alternating chapters from Laura’s brother Freddie’s perspective, which find his own fight for survival depicted in stark and harrowing terms – I don’t want to get too much into the details, as this is a book of subtle pleasures and quiet reveals, with much implied and left to the imagination to fill in, and that makes the story all the richer and better. But suffice to say that this is, as the title implies, a ghost story…but not in any traditional sense of the word, so much as it’s a story about the ghosts of the war, whether they be literal, imagined, or psychological ones – or perhaps all of those at once. It’s also a story about what it’s like to look down the barrel of the end of the world, and to grapple with how we got to this point and to try to find any way to cope with the damage and scars and hurt left behind. The Warm Hands of Ghosts isn’t as epic in scope as the Winternight books, nor is it as horrific as her YA Small Spaces series, but it undeniably is the work of that same author, who tries her best to find a way to dramatize a period in history where everything was changing and nothing would be the same – and finds, somehow, that the supernatural might be the best way of depicting entirely man-made events. It’s a lovely, heartbreaking, painful book, and if its more subtle, quiet, and withdrawn than her other work, none of that makes it any less wonderfully crafted and told. Rating: **** ½
The King of Shadows is the eighth novel in Robert McCammon’s Matthew Corbett series; more significantly, it’s the penultimate novel in the series (book 9 is a collection of short stories that have been written along the way), and that’s something that McCammon has not made a secret. So it’s somewhat odd how much The King of Shadows feels like a weird little narrative detour, one that zigs away from the plot thread that the series has been building to, and instead strands its characters – colonial “problem solver” Corbett, his friend and crime-solving partner Hudson Greathouse, and more than a couple of nemeses who are reluctant friends – on an island where no one seems to leave and memory itself seems to constantly fade. Add into that the fact that McCammon uses the book to fill in the backstories – at some length – of a couple of villains (including one who’s new to this book, and who I’m not sure will continue to appear), and the result is a bit of an odd book that feels like a speed bump in the rapidly accelerating momentum of the series. And yet, you’d think that the book would be less enjoyable than it is; this isn’t The River of Souls all over again, but instead a pretty engaging, enjoyable mystery with some unexpected reveals, mysterious events, crumbling psyches, and a lot of desperate alliances and sacrifices along the way. It’s undeniably a strange book for this point in the series – while I haven’t read the final book yet, of course, it certainly feels like a book that you could excise from the narrative entirely without losing anything critical to the story. But you’d end up losing some quality time with Matthew (who’s having to make peace with some dark parts of himself), a window into one of the series’ more striking villains, some humanization of another dark figure, and just a strange, surreal little episode that defies expectations. It’s not one of my favorite entries in the series, but I still enjoyed it and pretty well ripped through it; it’s well-crafted, once again defies easy categorization and expectations, and just delivers a great little adventure tale, and if it’s a little lumpy in terms of the overall arc, that doesn’t make it less of an enjoyable book on its own terms. Rating: ****
At the end of Black Market Heart, the upcoming fourth entry in Darby Harn’s outstanding Eververse series, there’s a timeline showing that Heart is the first book in the second volume of the series. That’s an unexpected development, to be sure, and not one that I immediately saw as I read; after all, Black Market Heart feels like the next logical point for the series, which is a grounded, complex take on the superhero genre, but one filled with deeply flawed and insecure characters, queer romances, complex politics that remind me of some of Watchmen‘s ideas but taken to the next level, and more. Like the previous volumes, Heart shifts its focus to a new narrator – in this case, Nathan Regan (known as The Interdictor), who is as close to an übermensch as the series has ever had, to say nothing of being one of the most intimidating and “villainous” figures (as much as anyone in this series is a cut-and-dried villain, anyway). And as you’d expect – and as Harn has done in every entry so far – the reality inside of Nathan’s head is far more complex than the arrogant, domineering figure he’s been perceived as before. Much of that comes down to the literal loss of his heart, which has left him disconnected from the world around him in a way that his powers had already started, but what things more complex is his dive into the world of magic powers, which leads Nathan into a very different side of the world than just your “everyday” superheroes. More than any of Harn’s books so far, Black Market Heart feels like a tragedy in slow motion; while so many of Harn’s stories have been about flawed people making mistakes but trying to make things right, reading Black Market Heart means watching a man walk down an increasingly horrible path one step at a time, all while being utterly convinced about the righteousness of his actions. That the result is less infuriating and more painful speaks to Harn’s ability to find the humanity of his characters, even when they’re self-declared gods who think that their powers mean that the rules no longer apply to them – which makes the ability to play on their ego all the easier. There’s so much more to the story here, from the way that Harn starts playing with comic books in a fascinating way (that once again recalls the way Watchmen had to think about what comics would be in a world with real superheroes) to the return of some very malevolent foes, but most notably is the plunge into a surreal world of magic (one that reminded me a lot of the way Harn’s (and my) beloved X-Men used the Shadow King and the astral plane) that gives me a sense of what this second volume may be pushing us towards. That’s a long-winded way of trying to convey my enthusiasm for this book, which is such a perfect Venn diagram of my interests – excellent writing, complex characters, flawed people, superhero tropes but deeply explored and deconstructed, questions without easy answers, a wide-ranging imagination – that all I can do is beg more and more people to read them so I can talk about them with others. If I have a complaint, it’s that this is undeniably the first entry of a volume…and that I’m left waiting to see what’s to come next. Rating: **** ½
With the one-two punch of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel became the kind of author whose name on a book was enough to guarantee my interest. And if The Glass Hotel, which Mandel wrote between those two books, isn’t quite on the same level as either, that’s okay, both because those two books are in a league of their own and because that doesn’t make The Glass Hotel any less engrossing and rich to devour. There’s a slew of pieces here – the overdose death of a young musician; the collapse of a massive Ponzi scheme; an oddly aggressive and unsettling act of graffiti that appears without reason – but the connections between all of those are best discovered over the course of reading the novel, which unfolds in a marvelously circular fashion, doubling back on itself, revealing truths in its back half that it alluded to in the first half, returning to earlier events with fresh eyes, and more. What becomes clear in so many ways is that The Glass Hotel is a book about what you do when everything has gone wrong – when, as the book puts it, “the worst has already happened.” Do you rebuild? Do you retreat into a world of fantasy? Do you start anew and hide from your old life? And how do you deal with the damage you may have dealt to those around you? Mandel doesn’t offer easy answers to these questions, but neither is this a grim, depressing read of guilt and penance; like her other books, there’s a deceptive lightness to it all, one that brings the characters to vivid and real life and lets you drift through their lives in a way that feels effortless but has to be a supremely controlled piece of craft. The result isn’t quite as transcendent as her other two books, but it’s continued to grow on me as I’ve thought about it (and even as I’ve written this review), only growing in my estimation as I’ve started to think about the thematic links between all of its ideas, about its complex and seemingly easy structure, about its compelling and haunting characters, and about its deep empathy for people no matter what their crimes. It’s a wonderful book, and one that just serves as yet another testament to Mandel’s astonishing, rich talent. Rating: **** ½
I’ve heard about Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books for some time now, but really knew nothing about them at all, apart from their status as beloved cult classics (well, in America, anyway; I get the vibe that the love is far more widespread and mainstream in England). And so I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to get from Titus Groan, the first entry in the series – and I’m not sure that I ever would have guessed that it’s a story set in a largely empty Gothic castle, where a male heir has been born to a lord who seems increasingly withdrawn from the world, and to a family (many of whom feel spiritually like they could easily be illustrated by Edward Gorey, even though Peake’s own illustrations are wonderful) who has almost no connection at all with the populace living outside their walls. Nor would I have expected how subtly and carefully the plot unfolds, taking its time laying out all of its pieces – an angry reaction between two of the castle’s staff; the spontaneous escape of a young man with higher goals for himself; the long-simmering tensions between family members; the years and years of formalized ritual and regulation – in an immersive way that makes it all the more effective when Peake decides to carefully let everything fly. Titus Groan is incredibly immersive and oddly haunting; it’s a quiet book, one that’s often more interested in building the mood of its lush (if decaying) world and its lost inhabitants than it is in telling a story, and yet one that’s also got more of a story on its mind than is immediately obvious. It’s a surprisingly dense read for all of its nominal narrative simplicity, and much of that boils down to Peake’s rich, literary style that eases you into this place. I need a short break before I move on to book two, but it’s not going to be a long one – I’m compelled by the strange world of Gormenghast, and if it’s not quite what I expected – something more painterly, more thoughtful, more precise, less action-y than I assumed – that didn’t take away from its cumulative impact by the end. Rating: **** ½
I’ve only scratched the surface of Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem’s work – I’ve read Solaris and the short story collection The Cyberiad – and so it’s hard for me to say how Return from the Stars fits into his work, other than to say that it’s much closer to the slow complexity of Solaris than the comedic tone of The Cyberiad. It’s the story of space explorer Hal Bregg, who returns to Earth only to find that relativity means that hundreds of years have passed – and he has no idea what to make of this modern world, nor how to handle the way that it has created a utopia by reducing risk, aggression, and fear. The result feels a bit like a mix of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War with the “stable” utopia of Huxley’s Brave New World, and even though the book is all but plotless – it is, essentially, the tale of Bregg’s wanderings in this new world, and his efforts to figure out what his place is here – it’s oddly compelling, not least because Lem’s astonishing imagination truly plunges us into an utterly alien world that nonetheless feels internally consistent and developed, even though we’re just as lost as Bregg is throughout. Rather, it’s that very act of being lost that makes the book so resonant – indeed, even though Lem is a Polish author, it’s hard to not think that Haldeman would have found much here that appealed to him as a returning Vietnam vet who felt out of step in his own country (which he would use in constructing The Forever War). Nonetheless, Return from the Stars does feel bogged down along the way; you keep waiting for the book to find a second gear, but it never quite does – instead, it does one thing throughout, even as it does it very well. Much as Huxley did with Brave New World, it’s a lush setting and a great story of ideas, but it never quite finds a plot to anchor it all together; that being said, its portrait of isolation and a feeling of futility in the face of a changing world still works even fifty years later, and still speaks to an American reader far removed from the book’s origins. Rating: ****
I enjoyed Mur Lafferty’s Station Eternity, which felt like Lafferty took Jessica Fletcher (of Murder, She Wrote, natch) and put her on a space station filled with surreal life – oh, and also tried to think about what a life that was constantly interrupted with murder would be like. Warts and all, I thought Eternity was a fun read, enough that I was eager to check out Chaos Terminal, Lafferty’s followup, which follows Mallory (our sleuth) as a fresh collection of humans comes to the station, and what happens next…well, what happens any time that Mallory ends up with a group of people? Once again, I think Lafferty can’t quite corral all of her threads here; the space station politics are again a little weird and distracting from the book, but they’re entertaining enough – and anchored enough in characters we like – that it doesn’t really hold the book back. And if the murder this time felt a bit more obvious to me (at least, some of the reveals felt a little obvious to me, only because of the way things tend to work with Mallory is around), once again, that mattered less than the interactions between the characters, the way that Lafferty never forgets the realities of dealing with all of these murders and crimes, and how much she refuses to let everyone’s secrets be just plot devices and instead dives into their ramifications. Chaos Terminal is a little shaggy, and there are a few sections where characters get a little speechy (I’m thinking especially of one interrogation that turns into a bit of a therapy session), but I never quit having fun with the characters, from its rock-turned-mech ADHD queen Tina to snobby ambassador Adrian to the living station itself, and the result is exactly what I wanted it to be: a diverting, enjoyable, fun – and funny – read that delivered as a mystery and as a weird, imaginative piece of sci-fi. Rating: ****
Gormenghast is the second entry in Mervyn Peake’s eponymous trilogy, and while I enjoyed Titus Groan‘s gothic, desolate world, I can’t help but feel that this is the volume that made people love this world and wish that Peake had more than one (apparently abbreviated) novel left in him. Altogether weirder, funnier, a little shaggier, and maybe a little warmer (in some ways), Gormenghast jumps forward a few years, following Titus as he starts to push against the confines of his role as the castle’s heir, Steerpike as he continues to scheme and find his way into more power and influence, Fuschia as she begins to bond with her brother – oh, and Irma, as she starts to make herself a society of potential husbands out of a wonderfully daffy batch of elderly scholars who end up taking up a lot of space in the book with their off-the-wall banter, infighting, and obsessions. Once again, Peake’s writing is beautifully lush and ornate, and the way he brings the world of Gormenghast to life is beautiful, plunging you into a castle full of forgotten depths, ruled by arcane and ancient ritual, and haunted by the people who are all but lost inside of its halls. Gormenghast is probably a little too long at points, and the final stretch feels like a cavalcade of horrors where at least one feels cruelly arbitrary. But it works by finding a lusher emotional core than its predecessor in Titus’s raging against the confines of his life, and by the end of the tale, it’s clear how almost every thread that Peake has been weaving contributes to that plotline. (I say “almost” because I’m not quite sure that Irma and the professors are ever “necessary,” even as they’re a delight to read.) There’s only one book left in the “official” trilogy, and it looks to be about half the length of its predecessors due to Peake’s declining health, but I’m very curious where the end of Gormenghast takes us, as it feels like the series might be about to move beyond the stuffy, musty walls of that all-but-haunted castle, and I’m fascinated to see where Peake could lead us. Rating: **** ½
I was absolutely delighted to have Sarah Langan back with her novel Good Neighbors, which I described as “a little bit The Crucible, a little bit Shirley Jackson, a little David Lynch, but ultimately all Langan.” It was her first book in a decade, and I hoped it promised a return to regular publishing for her. And now, two years later, she has another book to devour, A Better World, which marries the surreal social satire of Good Neighbors with her earlier horror work into a wild, bizarre, unsettling ride. A Better World unfolds in the near future, when the planet has truly begun to fall apart on almost every level, and the upper classes have largely started to retreat into “company towns” run by tech firms and manufacturers. But these aren’t the factory shanties you’re thinking of; these are planned communities, full of “company culture,” insular rules and rituals, expectations of providing for the company and the community they represent – and all driven by the thought that the world is doomed and that they’re entitled to wait out the crisis within their protected world. Into this world come the Farmer-Bowens, a family of four invited thanks to the father’s genius with numbers. But the town definitely isn’t thrilled about outsiders, and the company culture goes from “cutesy” to “unsettling” more quickly than you would like, and there are definite signs around the edges that Plymouth Valley is hiding some dark secrets. Langan doesn’t hide where she’s going; by the time you get to part three, which is entitled “It’s Exactly What You Fear,” it’s clear that Langan isn’t worried about defying expectations so much as she is in building this vicious satire of elites who isolate themselves from the world, companies that can buy off the consequences of their actions, communities that avert their eyes from the things they don’t want to see, and on a more intimate level, how a desire to provide for your family and your children can lead you to make hard choices with no good answers. I’ll say that because of all of that, A Better World ends up a little shaggier than Good Neighbors; there are a few characters around the edges of the story who feel like some of their arc has been elided, and some of the personal arcs can be a little bumpy at times (this definitely feels like a book that existed in a much longer form before the published version, and there’s some scar tissue left here and there). But ultimately, those minor flaws don’t detract from the book as a whole, which is compulsively readable (I have been up late the last two nights, unable to stop), delivers the goods not just as vicious satire but also as pure horror (this is definitely Langan reminding you where she came from), and pulls it all together with an ending that makes clear a lot of what she was going for and shows that, at the book’s core, this is a book about what we should do, not a book about what we shouldn’t do. It’s not quite the absolute knockout that Good Neighbors was, but it’s one hell of a read on pretty much every level, and it’ll give you a propulsive story that gives you genre goodness, social commentary, a pitch-black sense of humor, and some real nightmares along the way. Rating: **** ½
One last thing that I’ve been reading this month is the Hellboy comics, which I’ll probably review en masse next month once I finish the series. But let me just say: I know they’ve become a meme, but seeing these panels – which really may be the greatest three panels in comic book history – in context only underlines for me that Hellboy is a pure and utter delight that’s not really like much else, and it’s this exact mix of humor, weirdness, and gorgeous art that makes me love it.
Ah, Murderbot. What a treat it is to come back to you. After marathoning the novella-length entries in the 
It’s all but impossible to talk about Joseph Carter’s debut novel Another Man’s Freedom Fighter without invoking the name of Tom Clancy, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Like Clancy did, Carter dives into modern geopolitical tensions, contemporary issues, technological advances (particularly where it comes to espionage and warfare), and uses all of it to craft a tense, action-driven thriller where a growing conflict between Russia and Poland risks, at best, tearing apart NATO, and at worst, triggering World War III. And while the Polish forces attempt to keep their country free of Russian influence, and politicians try to hold back the conflict, a security consultant named Mark Sanders finds himself caught up in the middle of it all, with the chance to tear down a corrupt Russian regime – but only at a deep risk to himself and the ones he loves.
The 21st century has given us some truly great action films. Gareth Evans’ 
You’ll see more than a few references to Firefly‘s River Tam if you read reviews of Killing Gravity, and it’s not hard to see why. Both definitely play into that archetype of “kick-ass women who’ve become killing machines,” to say nothing of some amnesiac elements and some solid antihero work to the main character. Corey J. White’s heroine, Mars Xi, isn’t quite as memory-deprived as River, but there’s still a lot of implications of mysterious organizations, genetic engineering and tampering, and more. Oh, and psychic powers that allow her to tear people to shreds or crush spaceships into tiny balls.
I ended up thoroughly 
But luckily, 2018 also gave us Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which may just be the best comic book movie ever made (maybe beating out Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 for me, which is high praise). With a gratifyingly original story, a true sense of humor and of fun, and style to spare, it’s a treat, not only as a comic book movie, but just as a movie in general.
Umney's Alley 