Reading Well: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I usually hold off on writing about series until they are complete, but it’s not clear when (if?) Moniquill Blackgoose plans to release a sequel to 2023’s To Shape A Dragon’s Breath. I hope they do, as this is an engaging, thoughtful, and creative work. It is firmly and fully a YA adventure.

Set in an alternate colonial North America, the protagonist is an indigenous member of an island community off the coast of Massachusetts that is subject to colonial rule, but, lacking any desirable natural resources, has to date been largely neglected by the increasingly oppressive powers of the mainland. Neighboring communities have not been so fortunate, and the expansionist hunger of a young nation is in full bloom.

This word alternate is important: this is a land of a different colonial mix, including a greater presence of the Nordic powers, and, of course, here there be dragons. In traditional YA structure, and much to everyone’s surprise, the protagonist is selected by a young dragon and she is then sent to the mainland to an educational institution for proper instruction in dragon care and management, and the story expands from there.

Some of it is familiar: class and culture clashes abound, a small group of outcasts band together, indignities are suffered and resisted, and help comes from a small minority of sympathetic faculty members, all against a backdrop of growing oppression and growing violence from different colonial interests.

The charm of the book is Blackgoose’s ability to pull it off, but its power is their ability to do so within a nuanced and diverse universe. Differences and disabilities are embraced, and supported in ways that feel subtle, realistic, and never overly forced into the spotlight. You may be aware that Blackgoose is saying something about Autistic communication needs, but it is so firmly grounded in the characters that it never, for me, felt preachy or false.

There is far more to Blackgoose’s narrative than the surface reveals, making it a highly recommended YA adventure tale. I do hope sequels, or at least other works by Blackgoose, emerge.

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Reading Well: Trans Girl Suicide Museum by hannah baer

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I am so far from the target audience of Trans Girl Suicide Museum that I hesitate to comment on it.

But, I did read it, and I do have thoughts … so …

Trans Girl Suicide Museum (2019) is hannah baer‘s memoir of their transition. It is obsessed with a few themes: how to exist in transition, ketamine, trans identity itself, ketamine, and, more loosely, the relationship between the self and contemporary, digital, meme-driven art.

baer is an excellent and self-aware writer, has a skillful tragicomic touch, and the narrative is quick, compelling, and, yes, highly ketamine fueled as it moves through New York City in the 2010s. There is a political dimension to baer’s writing that sits alongside a (for me) only partially examined level of class privilege, and these two threads sitting so close to each other was sometimes jarring.

But the real substance of TGSM is about identity and art, and quite specifically, identity and art in the early decades of the 21st century. It is a book that is inescapably tethered to its historical moment and, as such, its interest may already be drifting towards the archival (the sophistication of discourse around trans identity continues to grow and grow–partially because of thinkers like baer, of course–and while ketamine use continues in NYC, the rise of fentanyl has certainly added some caution, if not restraint, to those scenes).

Like I said, though: I’m not the target audience here, and baer’s basic request of CIS-presenting old folks is to just shower money on young trans people they meet–which, honestly, is not the worst advice in those situations. So my thoughts on the book seem both unasked for and unimportant.

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The Witness for the Dead & The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Set after the events of The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison‘s The Witness for the Dead (2021) and The Grief of Stones (2022), are, simply, delightful.

They most closely resemble the rambling murder mysteries associated with Sunday nights on PBS, but with elves. And goblins. And elf/goblin hybrid offspring.

The protagonist of both books is an individual with the ability to commune with the recently deceased. He is generally tasked with easing the grief of individuals in his community, a position made possible through his highly politically tenuous employ via a complicated ecclesiastical structure. But that is more background: closer to the surface are the challenges of unwinding a series of (seemingly) unrelated deaths, a budding romance against the backdrop of grand Elven opera, an undesired-yet-promising apprentice, and the dangerous assignment of quieting particularly ravenous undead spirits that arise when burial rites go awry.

All of this is punctuated by regular cups of tea, with insight into which varietals are superior, and walks across a city that is drawn with such depth and consistency that it immediately comes into full existence for the reader.

There are moments of intense adventure here, but only moments: these books are enjoyable in the way a slow walk is enjoyable. I like me some long walks, and I highly recommend these novels, to the point where I will sometime in 2025 dive into more of Addison’s output, with fairly high expectations.

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Reading Well: The Last Ranger by Peter Heller

Posted on January 7, 2025 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Painter by Peter Heller was the very first book I wrote about for Reading Well. Later, I wrote up The River, and while it preceded these scribblings, his even earlier novel Dog Star remains one of my favorite novels ever.

So, I’m a Heller fan.

2023’s The Last Ranger hit at an incredibly opportune time personally. Without knowing its content, I happened to read it just before a family trip to Yellowstone, where the novel is set. Heller’s gifts are in his descriptions of the natural world and in his explorations of alternate modes of contemporary masculinity, and both are on full display in The Last Ranger.

The protagonist is indeed a ranger (although certainly not the final one), deeply devoted to the preservation of the beauty of the Park, a constant struggle against both local political forces that resent the area and the never-ending selfish stupidity of the ever-present waves of tourists. He’s also, like many of Heller’s protagonists, middle-aged, a bit damaged, and deeply committed to a sense of ethics guided by a reverence for and understanding of the natural world.

The wolves of Yellowstone–reintroduced in the mid 1990s and currently thriving–feature heavily, and one of the joys of Heller’s writing, which is never didactic, is nevertheless leaving the novel feeling better informed about the geology, ecology, and flora and fauna of the area, including a fantastic set of descriptions of just how important apex predators are to entire ecosystems.

This is a mystery, one with violence towards both people and other mammals at its center. There are some satisfying twists and turns in the plot, and the protagonist’s struggles (both successful and not) to form meaningful relationships are written with a deep humanity, one that, in the end, dictates the final outcome in a way that prevents there being any single, simple resolution.

I like that, and I love the comfort of Heller’s writing. Very strongly recommended.

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Reading Well: The Passenger & Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Daniel (@MKNN)

There are, in my view, few–if any–greater American novelists of the late 20th century than Cormac McCarthy. His final two novels, released simultaneously in 2022, form a fitting capstone on his career. The Passenger and Stella Maris are related, but very different novels.

Look, it’s McCarthy. Read it. It’s not even McCarthy in his brutalist mode, so if the horrors of Blood Meridian were too much for you, it’s fine. Read these two novels.

I’ll just mention a few things.

One of McCarthy’s great gifts is a writerly voice born to authority. In earlier novels, you would learn as much about horses and tack from his characters as you could from instructional materials; here, it is diving, especially related to wreck salvage, and, somewhat marvelously incongruously, theoretical physics. I know nothing about diving, and so merely surrender to McCarthy’s voice, but I know a thimbleful or three about theoretical physics, especially in its narrative (as opposed to mathematical) forms, and his authority there is well-earned. He knows his stuff and, far more importantly, continues to be able to weave that information into the narrative in ways that are natural, unforced, and not didactic.

In so far as these categories even exist, McCarthy is a writer of the masculine, of male characters, of male observation and desire, of complex relationships between men. So while Stella Maris does have a female protagonist, it is a little problematic: she is psychotic, traumatized, and incestously obsessed with her brother, the protagonist of The Passenger. She’s a great character, richly compelling. But also … I mean … come on, Cormac …

Finally, moreso than his earlier work, both of these novels exist in the realm of ideas as much as, if not more than, the world of action. The Passenger has an action-driven plot for much of its length, but even there, there are diversions into music theory, into the aforementioned theoretical physics, into the nature of reality and its relationship with delusion. I think its overall “readability” is incredibly high, but it’s not the pulse-pounding action of, say, Blood Meridian or No Country for Old Men.

Highly, highly recommended, as much in honor of McCarthy’s body of work as for their singular pleasures.

Note: this was written before the recent flurry of revelations about McCarthy’s consensual-yet-age-and-power-divergent relationships. Someday perhaps I’ll write about my specific streetcorner on the relationship between artists and their art and the implications of un/ethical behavior on our understanding of them and their work. But, today is not that day, so I leave it to you to make your own choices regarding Cormac, and others.

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Reading Well: Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The bombing of MOVE in Philadelphia is something I remember in a very inarticulate way. It happened in 1985, and formed part of the backdrop of my reading things like Bobby Seale‘s Seize the Time and Samuel Yette‘s The Choice in High School in DC. I remember the general tone of the media coverage was … suspicious, a sense that these nutty radicals must have been doing SOMETHING to warrant this kind of violent, deadly response.

In the intervening decades that we’ve become more public in our questioning of the motives of the brutal force of urban power structures. But of course that discourse has always existed, and the treatment of MOVE is certainly foreshadowed in the work of Seales and Yette, and hundreds, if not thousands, of other individuals.

John Edgar Wideman, whose Hoop Dreams I read and enjoyed, published Philadelphia Fire in 1990, essentially rapidly after the bombing. The book is … a lot of things. It mixes reflections on MOVE; on the bombing; on the travails of aging; on (as often in Wideman’s work) basketball, especially the pickup variety; and on a somewhat aborted attempt to produce Shakespeare in the park with kids from round the way.

Wideman is haunted by the child survivors of the bombing, by what they experienced and what happened to them. They are elusive, ghostly, and ubiquitous. The connecting thread through the book is grief, the grief of the violence against his community, the grief of his own passing youth, the grief of a lost relationship.

Widcman’s style isn’t for everyone: there is a lyricism, a playfulness with language, a freedom in form that may, for some, drift into being overwrought. But I enjoy it, and the overall structure of Philadelphia Fire, which wanders freely between memoir, fiction, and a blurry combination of the two, worked for me.

To the degree the subject matter appeals, recommended highly.

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Reading Well: Before She Sleeps by Bina Shah

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Daniel (@MKNN)

There are two things of note for me about Bina Shah‘s 2019 novel Before She Sleeps.

First, it is a Pakistani post-apocalyptic novel. Not many of those out there, and additional voices and perspectives in that space are always welcome.

Second, it has a (not unrelated) somewhat unique perspective on gender. Before She Sleeps focuses on women whose value come from the (usually) non-sexual comfort they can provide the powerful men who tightly control their world. It’s an interesting twist, in that the power of these women comes from the human contact they provide, from the safety and emotional calm they can create through their presence.

Before She Sleeps suffers, for me, from the contemporary need for romantic feelings to be irresistible in these stories, and for “love” to be far more important than any other consideration, to the point of overriding basic plot incentives. The degree to which that bothers you–which may just be the degree that you enjoy “traditional romance narratives”–will dictate a lot of your enjoyment of this novel.

For me, the originality of the concept and the skill with which Shah drives the narrative forward overrode what felt like an inevitability in the ultimate plot resolutions.

So, recommended with some reservations.

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Reading Well: Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

Posted on November 7, 2024 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I am a devotee of Marlon James, and a completist with regards to his work, so keep that in mind.

Moon Witch, Spider King (2022) is a … I’m not even sure how to classify it. Let’s go with a retelling of the events of Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of a different character.

I liked Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Liked it a lot. I loved Moon Witch, Spider King. I think the main character’s narrative arc is more compelling, and that James’ comfort with the mythically rich, Africa-inspired, magically imbued world he has built is deeper. It also may be that, having read the first volume, the major events are far less confusing, and the stories here serve to enrich the experience of the first narrative in hindsight.

But I also think this novel stands on its own.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf had some magnificent set pieces and some truly horrifying moments; Moon Witch, Spider King is more of a connected narrative, powerful for the arc of the protagonist’s journey from unnamed orphan to something akin to a goddess.

Strongly recommended.

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Reading Well: Everybody’s Autobiography by Gertrude Stein

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Well.

I mean, who am I to comment on Gertrude Stein, right? The wildly inventive mother of modernism, the wellspring of so much of modern American poetry (and painting, and dance, and sculpture, and …). Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography was published in 1937, following and chronicling her life after the spectacular success of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

There are several modes throughout the book: moments of Stein’s fractured language spilling meaning across the page in prose highly evocative of her poetry; moments of pure autobiography, shedding illumination on her life in the (somewhat unanticipated, somewhat puzzling to her) spotlight; meditations of the meaning of fame and popularity; and then, most problematic of all, expressions both implicit and explicit of her political and social ideals.

I believe neither in the need to rehabilitate historical figures against their will nor in their needing to be exemplary across all dimensions of life. As such, I have no problem with Stein being both a radical figure and hopelessly naïve politically, both an advocate for lesbian and women’s rights and a racist with highly suspicious views on class and status.

To the degree that stance is tolerable for you, Everybody’s Autobiography is fascinating as a window into the urban elite in Europe and America in the years leading up to WW II, and is equally interesting in its pure language. Stein’s skill as an inventive writer willing to push the boundaries of language are on full display, as is her archness and sublime ability to pass both backhanded compliments and outright insults.

I’m glad to have read it; although I am unsure I could heartily recommend it for everyone.

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Reading Well: Children of Time, Children of Ruin, & Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Adrian Tchaikovsky‘s hefty trilogy, totaling well over 1,500 pages, begins with Children of Time (2015), continues in Children of Ruin (2019), and concludes in Children of Memory (2023).

It’s brilliant.

And it ain’t for everyone.

There is a tradition in science fiction of work that is carried by the sheer overwhelming ingenuity of a core idea or set of concepts more than traditional writerly components. If you are looking for compelling and memorable characters, if you are looking for skillfully plotted arcs that leave you gasping at each twist and turn, if you are looking for a thickly rendered world that fully immerses you in deep cultural settings … these aren’t the books for you.

But it is a masterful, imaginative, and–for me–absolutely fascinating execution of a spiral of ideas around a core thread: how would evolution manifest with different species?

Children of Time starts with one of those what-could-possibly-go-wrong plans: the Earth is becoming uninhabitable, and one solution being pursued by your typical global congregation of corporations and scientists is to drop a virus that replicates human evolution at hyperspeed on a planet that already has some proto-mammalian life. Let that run for a while, then the original humans can show up in their hastily constructed deep space transport vessels, and bingo, we haz new Earth. Like I said, what could possibly go wrong?

It’s not wrong, exactly, but it’s not as planned: the virus, instead of making it to the proto-apes, finds its way into the arachnids. So what develops on this planet is highly evolved, critical thinking, socially aware, fully civilized … spiders. And what Tchaikovsky does spectacularly is work through what that might look like, how an arachnid race might evolve, what the implications might be of eight incredibly sensitive legs and countless eyes and a very flexible sense of verticality and a hypersensitivity to smell and vibration and and and …

And all of that just works. It’s imaginative, detailed, fascinating, and based on just enough biology to be convincing as a potential path of possibilities. Most critically, the arachnids develop into themselves, they don’t become spider-humans, they become evolved spiders, adapted to their unique environments and physiology.

The plot does just enough to keep the reader moving to the next revelation about the spiders, and wanting more, even after its somewhat too-pat conclusion.

Which takes us to the second book.

Set well after the opening novel, Children of Ruin focuses on the same process, but with octopi (a very different plot thread, focusing on terraforming a planet for human habitation, but it’s all a vehicle for the accelerated evolution). Again, throughout the novel, the plot machinations are a bit rough around the edges, and the characters tend to be less distinguishable than perhaps a reader would like. But the cephalods! The imaginative power behind the invention of their emotional lives, their curiosity, the way their brain and limbs interact, their ability to problem solve … it’s stunning.

You’ll never see an octopus in an aquarium reaching outwards with an arm again without thinking of Tchaikovsky’s conception of what could be going on beneath their color-changing skin.

Children of Memory is set even further in the future, and is a little different in that the plot is more clearly and compellingly articulated, revolving around the politics of an emerging world. And, the evolutionary biology is less detailed, although the conception of highly evolved paired corvids is brilliant, wrestling with the core question of whether solving a puzzle represents intelligence or the fruits of highly focused repetition and whether the difference between those two carries any real value.

There is an interesting question for writers buried in there as well: as Tchaikovsky improves on the traditional dimensions of what makes a “good author,” does he lose the space to display his truly unique imaginative gifts?

I think at this point it should be pretty clear if the trilogy will appeal to you. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the creativity continues to live in my mind.

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