welcome to camp telophase

Things in Jars: A Novel by Jess Kidd (Amazon affiliate link)
I read a library copy of this book in fits and starts over the last week while traveling and conference-attending and whatnot. And this is a few jumbled thoughts, rather than a review.

In this “miraculous and thrilling” (Diane Setterfield, #1 New York Times bestselling author) mystery for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Book of Speculation, Victorian London comes to life as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child.

Bridie Devine—flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery.

Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems.

Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a stunning, “richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history” (Booklist, starred review) that explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.

On the surface this sounds like one of a slew of recent historical fantasy/paranormal genre novels, but it's actually firmly stuck over in the magical realism side of capital-L Literature, as the subtitle "A Novel" wants you to know. I'd forgotten that when I started—it had sat on my phone for a couple of weeks and the library email reminding me it was due in a few days alerted me of its existence—so the sudden realization that it was in omniscient POV instead of tight third was a bit of whiplash. But once I realized that, the lyricism of the prose drew me on through the story, while at the same time keeping a distance between me and the characters.

Overall I liked it, but I didn't love it. I wanted to, and had it been a genre novel with the tropes and narrative you'd expect to find in one, I'd have finished it then turned to Amazon to hunt down news of the sequel, and perhaps pre-order it. As it was I got to the end, pleasantly surprised that the ending wasn't the 100% downer that I'd been expecting (because in Literature happy endings are oft considered childish), closed the book and thought "I wish this had been a tropier, cheesier story."

( cut for spoilers in a spoilery discussion )

myrialux and I have been eating way too much fast food, mostly because we want to get out of the house at lunchtime, so we drive through various places and sit in the car while eating and listening to audiobooks.*

We're planning to try to refocus lunch onto things we can make and easily take with us and eat in the car while we park somewhere nearby and listen to audiobooks in the car.** Which means...bento! Made to be transported and eaten at room temperature.

All of this (the stuff above, the footnotes below) is all to explain why I purchased this book (affiliate link), although you probably didn't care. It's Bento Power, and I would say it's Japanese- and Asian-inspired rather than pure Japanese--good, given that I don't want to eat Japanese food every day for lunch.

It's more on the order of trendy health food and is mostly vegan with a few vegetarian elements (and a lot of gluten-free stuff if you're avoiding gluten). But the author doesn't appear to be afraid of flavor the way so many health food enthusiasts seem to be.

So far I've only made one recipe from the book, and that was for lunch today, topped with leftovers from a meal earlier this week. It's pretty simple: throw rice in the rice cooker with a handful of another grain (quinoa, because that's what we had) and a piece of kombu or shiitake mushroom to oomph up the umami. (We had both. I used both.)

I know I said she wasn't afraid of flavor and that's a bit on the bland side, but it served as a base for a couple of Chinese dishes we had that were loaded with garlic and ginger and a bit of chile, so it was Just Fine.

Anyway, the primary reason I'm mentioning it here is that the ebook is, at the moment, $1.99 and it's absolutely worth $1.99. The sample is unfortunately so loaded down with personal memoir and pantry stuff that it stops before it gets to actual recipes. Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Alibris if you want to get a used paper copy, though the one-star review on Amazon mentions that the text in the hardback is really small.

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* Currently Harrow the Ninth. I pre-ordered the ebook and smashed through it the day it dropped, and am now enjoying a more leisurely re-read with the audiobook. It's a book that you really have to read twice, because a lot of clues to the revelations in the last 25% or so are fed throughout the first part, but you won't get a lot of them, and a lot of secondary meanings, until the second read-through.

I love books like this, but then again Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sunis in my top 10 favorite books for a reason.

** Walk to a park? This is Texas. It's hotter'n'hell outside and the cityscape is built around cars. Which means that we do have a park within walking distance...it has no tables, one bench on the end close to us that's a reasonable walking distance, and no shade over that bench. Plus, we couldn't listen to the audiobook there. :)

I don't remember which of you mentioned the early 20th century novel _Living Alone_, but I ended up highlighting a bunch of passages in it, and I almost never do that in books. It was short and charming, although unfortunately marred by two instances of (typical for the time) racism.

However, that is not why I'm posting this. I'm posting this because Amazon obviously keeps an eye on what I'm reading on the Kindle, although its algorithm seems to be going by the title and not the content, and now Amazon is recommending books to me that would make Toby very worried if he didn't find it as hilarious as I do.

Examples:

Freedom from Loneliness
Living Alone and Loving It
Surviving & Thriving Solo
Going Solo
Single
Live Alone and Like It
The Single Woman's Sassy Survival Guide
Finding Forever Love

WHAT DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE NOT TELLING ME, AMAZON?!

From the excerpt:

1. The bad guy in the excerpt is named Shadye. Shadye. He's also a monologuer. But Shadye.

2. The main character is ripped from our world into a fantasy world because they think she is a Child of Destiny. Her mother's name is Destiny. I would find a case of mistaken identity amusing and worth reading on for the meta-commentary, but as far as I can tell from other clues in the excerpt, we're meant to take the Child of Destiny stuff seriously instead of getting meta.

3. Her rescuer says "Take my hand if you want to live...Come with me or die!" I've seen too many things in the Terminator franchise to accept that it's anything but a reworded reference to "Come with me if you want to live", and it throws me out.

4. The rescuer's name is Void. Void. He's also a monologuer.

edit to add this point, because I forgot 4.5 It needs a good editor. Witness this selection:

Somehow, she knew that the dragon was old. The magic field surrounding the creature bombarded her with impressions and sensations, piling them into her mind. It was old enough to have seen eons pass while it drifted through the skies, heedless of the scurrying humans on the world below.

Allow me to edit that for you. Ahem.

Somehow, she knew that the dragon was old. The magic field surrounding the creature bombarded her with impressions and sensations, piling them into her mind. It was old enough to have seen eons pass while it drifted through the skies, heedless of the scurrying humans on the world below.

5. But really, you lost me at Shadye.

Gilded (The Gilded Series, Book One) by Christina Farley.

Remember how I posted a week or so back about how I discovered this book was part of an Amazon program where if you have both the Kindle and Prime you can get one pre-release book a month? This was that book. I finished it last night, and my review of it is: YES. Lee Jae Hwa is a Korean-American teenage girl who has been moved (unwillingly) back to Korea by her father, who's accepted a job there. She discovers that Haemosu, a demi-god, steals the soul of the first-born girl in each generation in her family, and she's up next.

Defy by Sarah B. Larsen.

Alexa has spent the last few years in the Prince's Guard, disguised as a boy. A sorcerer kills her brother and abducts her, Rylan, a fellow guard, and Prince Damien, and a bunch of somewhat tedious stuff happens, during which Alexa fails to grieve her brother as much as I think she ought and instead spends the time on a forced march mooning over Rylan and Damien, and then eventually kills an evil sorcerer. Um, yeah. Not sure how it's got 4 stars on Amazon.

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Both these books feature women who are excellent fighters: Jae Hwa is an archer and a martial artist, while Alexa wins her place on the Prince's Guard through combat, but when push comes to shove, Jae Hwa is attracted to her co-star but focuses on the important stuff (i.e., saving everyone), while Alexa spends the time worrying about what's going on (while two young men vie for this recently-bereaved young woman THIS IS NOT THE TIME, PEOPLE) and winning the day in the end solely because everyone pushed her into her actions.

I think you can tell which one I recommend you read. :)