Taking full advantage of my snow bird parent's southern abode, I celebrated March Break beneath the inadequate shade of cacti. As far as my eyes could gleam, the world was about to impale me. Days were quietly spent with morning discussions of snakes that would bleed into pool afternoons, to zenith with star gazing. The kid has an intense relationship with deadly snakes, what can one do but encourage.
Amongst the busy green spaces of downtown Toronto, my home is the Yang to this desert Yin. Vitalized by orange blossom infused air, and cloudless skies that stretched beyond the mountain peaks, I read. Of the months of 2016, my reading ventures have been nothing but spectacular; there is something to be said in planning. My usual book forays are a mindless romp through blog recommendations jostled up with random choices. Wholly uninterested in the Hugo/Nebula's, I inaccurately presumed that all awards were overrun with similar nomination sentiments. Upon discovering The Kitschies which in turn directed me to the Mothership, The BSFAs I finally feel more at home with the award scene. Does this mean I have become a more hardened, balls to the walls SF reader? Not so much, I like what I like, with or without the internet fever of acceptance. The Kitschies/BSFAs shortlists act as refreshing guides, offering specimens that I would never have known to read. I am simply not deep enough into the SF publishing world to know what I am supposed to know. This girl is not the geek you think she is.
What matters is knowing what I know, which happens to be a good book. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine is that book. A retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club imbues the old German fairy-tale with hooch. It takes quite a book to enchant a frozen Canadian freshly transplanted from a grey-dipped landscape to blooming cacti soaked in blessed heat. Wanting nothing from life but to breathe, motherhood broke through this zen-like state bringing me firmly to pool-side present. As I life-guarded the snake charmer in my life, I quickly was in need of a book.
Maybe it was the glare of the water or possibly the mid-afternoon cocktails, but The Girls at the Kingfisher Club enthralled me. New York in the 1920s was a city of passions. With the horrors of WWI fresh, and Prohibition locking the United States into a morality play, twelve sisters danced into the early hours. Jo, the eldest, wished to escape her father's house, but with the death of their mother she donned the matriarch hat, offering a beacon of safety. As General, Jo's nightly call of taxis to leave at midnight became their call to arms. With the dark allure of the speakeasy, and an endless parade of young men, the sequestered sisters had reasons to live.
Valentine brought forth the rush of those dangerous times, soaking the pages with flapper fever. Her poetic tale provides a keyhole into the allure of hidden dance halls, illegal jag juice, and the wanted disregard for societal constraints. It is the timeless story of freedom, draped in beads, bobs and champagne, all throbbing to the beat of the Charleston. My copy bears the waterlogged marks of pool-side splashes and sunshine joy. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is the redemptive story you have been waiting to read.
With a winter that seems less a dream and more a harbinger of the Apocalypse, I found myself at the hill sledding for only the third snowy week this entire season. Watching kids, mine especially aim for the snow jump, hoping to soar but more importantly crash spectacularly, I pondered on my love of vampires.
Vampires, witches, demons, mummies, beyond the popular zombie grossness there isn't a mythical horrific creature that hasn't caught my fancy. Stephen Sommers 1999 film, The Mummy has an alarming allure over me.The world could be over-run by aliens, every station proclaiming the coming of a new age but I would be that one person glued to the station broadcasting the hokey shenanigans of Brendan Fraser as he battles Imotep all the while winning the hand of his lady love. As the son launches himself into the stratosphere, my gaze blurs as I begin to wonder if my creature love is less about their freaky nature and more about the love affair? Could it be that this sci-fi girl desires a dose of romance?
How else to explain my 53rd viewing of this rom-com-horror flick or this past week's aggressive attempt to ignore my family in hopes of reading Deborah Harkness's, A Discovery of Witches uninterrupted? Apparently this sci-fi geek prefers her dalliance with the love affair draped in moonlight, soaked in blood and cast in a witch's curse. The first of the All Souls Trilogy, A Discovery of Witches has been described as Bewitched meets Harlequin and I am not one to disagree. We enter a world in which witches, vampires and daemons co-exist all the while remaining hidden in plain sight from us droll humans. A witch by the name of Diana, a Yale alchemical professor and Oxford scholar discovers a magical manuscript while researching for an upcoming conference. Dismissing the magical pull, Diana returns the ancient tome to the Bodleian Library, subsequently entangling herself in a world and a heritage that she has denounced since the death of her parents at the age of seven.
As every scholarly professor does (obviously), Diana spends her entire existence in the library and it is here that she is spied casting a simple spell. Unfortunately, the spy is Matthew Clairmont, millionaire, genius, geneticist, and 1500 years old vampire; with the dash of the undead hotness to the equation I went from mildly interested to completely besotted. A Discovery of Witches is not going to open your mind to literary possibilities nor awaken your poetic soul. This is a typical damsel-in-distress romance, complete with castles, danger, and lust. Although the helpless, "I don't want to be a witch" scenario was aggravating at best, the novel's historical references are on point. Deborah Harkness, a professor of history uses her expertise to flesh out the narrative, expanding a typical vampire/witch novel into a rich diorama. Like the late Egyptologist, Elizabeth Peters with her beloved Amelia Peabody mystery series, A Discovery of Witches offers a medium for the writing scholar to play.
Sometimes this girl just wants to read about vampires and witches in love, who knew?
Happy loves day has been an extended affair in this house; with the son showering his dear Momma with kisses for over a week, my Valentine's bucket overflows. Of all the moments of brightness that Kindergarten has brought, the bucket analogy our son's teacher wisely taught has been the most fulfilling. The children's book How Full is Your Bucket simplifies the conceptual idea of well-being, action and kindness through the metaphor of a bucket to symbolize a child's emotive self. I have been informed many a day that I have emptied the child's bucket for such indiscretions as asking him to put his shoes away, or interrupting an attempt to jump down the stairs from the very top. Cuteness aside, the bucket has unlocked a window into my son's soul, providing a means for him and I to express emotional health.
Although my heart bucket burst the moment my son arrived into this world, my reading bucket is a vast aquifer, slowly filling, drop by reading drop. Either by luck or research, my end of year pile has been a perpetual reading adventure resultant with me eager to declare each book the best yet. Thus is my predicament of today, freak the freak over N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season or stay cool, reserving my glee for the next possibility.
Ever age must come to an end, and so the novel opens with the destruction of the Earth, the fifth season. Cultures reliant upon lore as their only deliverance and a land that is less a provider and more a wielder of death, communities persevere in the knowledge that the end of days will most definitely arrive. The Earth is angry, Stillness the largest continent is a graveyard of past civilizations buried deep within the folds of strata. Amidst the carnage there are the orogene, humans able to tap into the powers of the Earth, drawing strength from it's core, either bearers of hope or of fear. And so we follow the lives of three: Essun, the grieving mother, Syenite, a four-ring adept and the child Damaya, taken from her family to be trained in the ways of the orogene. Each narrative masterfully crafted to weave into each other, highlighting the horrors that truly mark this world.
Upon completion of only the first two pages of The Fifth Season I realized that this was not just an interesting story but an explosive tale that would overwhelm me to the very last moment. N. K. Jemisin is a master story-teller, convincing this geek that fantasy has as much to offer as my beloved speculative fiction. This is a story with three narrators, three plots, existing and finally cumulating into one. We open to the horrific scene of Essun, a mother discovering that her husband has brutally killed their young son and has vanished with their daughter. And while the grief bleeds from the pages, the novel was not an overwhelming display of violence. Rather, Jemisin's ability to fracture the exposition draws the reader in, forcing us to piece the puzzles of this world together, making for one incredibly entertaining read.
This girl cannot say enough good things about this book.
Taking full advantage of my snow bird parent's southern abode, I celebrated March Break beneath the inadequate shade of cacti. As far as my eyes could gleam, the world was about to impale me. Days were quietly spent with morning discussions of snakes that would bleed into pool afternoons, to zenith with star gazing. The kid has an intense relationship with deadly snakes, what can one do but encourage. 
