Book Reviews: Fall 2024

With an Analysis of Pop Fiction

Anna Faktorovich

Analysis of Pop Fiction

I am currently attempting to write formulaic fiction to sell it to mainstream publishers. A decade ago, I published with McFarland a book called the Formulas of Popular Fiction. At this new juncture in my authorial and editorial career I feel that I need a refresher on just how the abstract rules of popular-audience targeted writing are applied by current writers at the top of this game. I hope to learn and to share with you the elements that I notice that stand out as significant in understanding this field. I have requested a few dozen pop novels, as well as some canonical or antique best-selling classical novels. I am going to attempt to figure out why people buy the new stuff, while the old stuff tends to be taught in schools? What are publishers looking for when they choose the authors and books that are presented among these mostly bestsellers? What are the tactics of the better writers in pop, and what are the failings of some of the worst examples? I will attempt to answer these broad questions as I review each of these novels.

I am placing the publishers’ blurbs about these books in quotes. And I will comment on these summaries by interrupting them whenever a plot movement in these inspires me to ponder. I’m not lightly rephrasing these summaries without quotation marks, as some other reviewers do, because seeing how a publisher wants to sell a book is important in explaining why it might have sold well.

Can Pop Fiction Make Murder Boring? 

Scott Turow, Presumed Guilty: A Novel (New York: Grand Central Publishing: Hachette Book Group, 2025). Hardcover. 508pp. ISBN: 978-1-538706-36-7.

**

“Rusty is a retired judge attempting a third act in life with a loving soon-to-be wife, Bea, with whom he shares both a restful home on an idyllic lake in the rural Midwest and a plaintive hope that this marriage will be his best, and his last. But the peace that’s taken Rusty so long to find evaporates when Bea’s young adult son, Aaron, living under their supervision while on probation for drug possession, disappears…” The disappearance/kidnapping plot device is too commonly used in modern novels and movies. It’s an easy way to give the “hero” something to fight for. But, as in this case, if the disappeared person is someone readers have barely met in the novel, and they are not particularly likeable in what they do know (he’s a drug-user in this case); then, it’s unclear why readers are expected to care about this as a tragedy enough to keep reading.

“If Aaron doesn’t return soon, he will be sent back to jail. Aaron eventually turns up with a vague story about a camping trip with his troubled girlfriend, Mae, that ended in a fight and a long hitchhike home. Days later, when she still hasn’t returned, suspicion falls on Aaron, and when Mae is subsequently discovered dead, Aaron is arrested and set for trial on charges of first-degree murder…” I think this might be echoing the plot of Gabrielle Venora Petito’s murder in 2021 by her boyfriend while they were doing a blogged “vanlife” journey. I used to watch those vanlife shows on YouTube, but it seems that since that murder it has become less popular for beautiful women to advertise that they are traveling (mostly alone, or with boyfriends) across the country with barely a lock between them and those outside their vans. If that is the intended setup, it makes more sense that Aaron has been deliberately made unsympathetic, as in reality he would have been the murderer. Though of course, according to the rules of formulaic fiction, he cannot be the murderer because there must be a surprise ending (the reward) that the reader is working through the novel for.

“Faced with few choices and even fewer hopes, Bea begs Rusty to return to court one last time, to defend her son and to save their last best hope for happiness…” Why couldn’t these guys be even happier with their drug-addicted son in prison, and out of their hair… But maybe that’s just my perspective. Seriously though, this “happiness” is another reward or carrot the reader is expected to hope for as a motive to read into this book to figure out how Rusty will help miraculously set this kid free. In reality, the kid might need an immoral “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit” strategy to win. But in fiction, it must always be that Aaron is truly innocent and Rusty must always find the evidence to prove this. It would be “literary” fiction, and not “popular”, if anything outside this anticipated plot outcome happened. This preference seems to be to propagandize that America’s legal justice system always gets it right, or sets the innocent free, when in fact it often makes mistakes and convicts the innocent. In movies the reason for the propagandistic preference is because police and the military offer free cars, planes, weapons, and the like to filmmakers, but only if they get to edit the scripts to make themselves look perfectly moral, or to twist immoralities into good things. Since most novelists make a lot more money by selling their novels for adaptation as films; they are probably thinking of writing propaganda that would be stamped for approval by these agencies during their initial novel-writing stage.

“For Rusty, the question is not whether to defend Aaron, or whether the boy is in fact innocent—it’s whether the system to which he has devoted his life can ever provide true justice for those who are presumed guilty.” This is a relatively unique perspective in pop, given my previous notes. When the innocent are convicted in the US it is frequently because cops can rely that a jury would easily be convinced in believing they are probably guilty because of biases, such as the bias against drug-users, or racial, ethnic or religious biases.

The first chapter opens by clarifying a point that I was confused about in the blurb: Rusty is both the new father-in-law of Aaron, and the guy who is asked to help defend his innocence. On a first read, I assumed they find some other guy outside this family. It is a common pop trick to have the private investigator be personally invested in the thing they are researching. This obviously presents a moral problem, in reality, as this lawyer is obviously biased, as he is desperate to save his own “happiness” with this big-baby’s mother.

Rusty tells this story from his first-person perspective. As I read the first few pages, I realized a common problem that usually steps me from reading bob fiction: there are so few personal details about these characters that the conversations and events can be about anybody. Readers are assumed to care about these characters based on the generalized heart-strings being pulled about a kid being missing, without the hard work being put in by the writer to explain just who (beyond his addiction) this kid is. Though I spoke a bit too soon. There is one identifying sentence: “He was working for Galore, a party planner in the swanky summer enclave of Como Stop nearby, doing all manner of commercial art, everything from banners to designing invitations. But with the annual retreat of the seasonal residents, he was unexpectedly laid off last week…” This gives a bit of essential context.

The next ebook page also clarifies just who Rusty is, “a mediator and arbitrator… privately paid judge”. Oh, no: this guy is writing a novel about how he served as a judge on his own son-in-law’s trial for murder, and he’s the hero in this story? That can’t be it… Then, this guy explains that he had been imprisoned for his previous wife’s murder before being set free as “innocent”, and he then hid-out without a “wish to explain myself to anyone…” I assume this guy is guilty of that murder, but he has talked his way out of it, and might be the guy responsible for this new murder, but he’s about to talk his son-in-law of being found guilty of this crime… But again, this is pop fiction. So that can’t be where this book is going.

Then, instead of going into these criminal matters, there are a couple of paragraphs of description of a wealthy place with its fancy shops. It seems the narrator has been happy with his wealth, and the luxury it provided in this place. Nothing is mentioned of any joy he derived from his wavered son-in-law. The story then diverges into a disagreement about the morning paper, which seems entirely unrelated to the main plot.

At this point, I decided to search for the terms in the title to figure out if there were some deep things said about them in this book. “My clients were all guilty, which I had expected, but their plights did nothing to lift my spirits…” Searching for later occurrences pointed to repetitive echoes like one a quarter into the book where there is a back-and-forth discussion about “rights” and understanding and a brief new piece of info about Bea’s “laptop or my desktop” being taken as evidence in the investigation. When investigators usually do a warrant search, they just toss the place and take whatever they want, but there are pages here of empty-content discussion about if they have a “right” to take this stuff. Some of it barely mentions legal ideas, but mostly it is hot air. I will stop reading this book here. It is not “readable”. I don’t recommend the purchase of this or other pop titles in this set of reviews, unless I specifically state within a review that it is an enjoyable or interesting read.

Action Does Not Translate from Film to Its Bourne Novel Version 

Brian Freeman, Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Vendetta: A Jason Bourne Novel (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons: Penguin Random House, 2025). Hardcover. 295pp.

**

It is so much fun to watch action films. Especially while I am exercising in the evening, there is nothing that keeps me from realizing I’m tired better than a quick bang-bang action flick. Most of the big-budget films are made based on something that already has a proven sales record. This typically means that it has been a best-selling novel, or graphic novel before. A lot more money can usually be made from the film version, so writers seem to be competing to have their stuff adapted in the way they structure their novel versions. Can action be as exciting in a novel as it is in a film? I mean an action sequence in a film has no words, and it’s fun to watch because of the achievements of the acrobats performing the stunts. But can running and flipping around be stretched into pages and pages of prose? The Bourne series is one of the best-known examples of this phenomenon.

“The hunt for a trove of secret information forces Bourne to decide who lives—and who dies—.” What does this opening pitch mean? Bourne is an assassin, since he tends to kill a lot of people. Though he’s supposed to be acting in self-defense against assassins coming after him. But this intro suggests that he’s plotting who he’s going to assassinate… Why would “secret information” of any kind be a motive or a reason to kill people? I’m confused.

“A hacked database known as the Files has upended the intelligence community. Careers are being destroyed. Dirty deals are showing up on the front page. Assassinations are spreading from Europe to the U.S…” This note confused me, so I searched for “destroyed” through this book. A third into this novel, there is a mention that “Cody controls” a “region” and “could have destroyed me with a phone call.” To clarify, a couple of paragraphs earlier there’s a mention of Putin’s actions in Ukraine being “barbaric”. The character speaking with Bourne explains that he had to escape Russia after complaining that Russia’s war against Ukraine was wrong, as he became frightened kompromat would be used against him, if he remained. This clarifies that this is a story about the FBI, and foreign intelligence agencies using investigations to find compromising materials to blackmail wealthy and powerful people. But why did the disclosure of these “Files” cause assassinations? I mean, it should have caused the arrest of the people who are doing compromising things… If they are sleeping with prostitutes… they’d theoretically be charged with that. If they are accusing Russia of acting corruptly; that’s not kompromat, that’s free speech. I think this author is kind of a bit unclear about what these concepts are, or is confusing them to make the whole thing seem more mysterious.

“The new head of Treadstone sends Jason Bourne on a mission to find out who has the Files and get them back—or destroy them…” I searched the book for “Treadstone”. I guess I have a vague concept of a secret-spy-agency from the films. But I hoped the novel would afford more room to explain who these guys were, and what they were doing and why. The first mention early in the book just mentions somebody “knew” about “Treadstone” looking for them, before adding that also the “Shadow” was “looking for her”… Neither of these entities are identified: why would they care enough to look for anybody? Pop fiction frequently refers to the “State” or the “Agency” with very general menacing terms. Authors are allowed to accuse a “Shadow State” of doing bad stuff because it is assumed such talk can be dismissed as a “conspiracy”. It is innocuous because it does not directly accuse the FBI, CIA, or some other alphabet agency of spying illegally, and using blackmail to corruptly profit their members, instead of serving the needs of the public.

“But Bourne isn’t alone in this race.  The Chinese want the Files.  So do the Russians.  And the only woman who may be able to help him is a treacherous spy known as Johanna——Bourne’s former lover—who sees the Files as the key to her own vendetta against Treadstone…” A vendetta against a government agency? Why? What would a secret agent had to have done for an agency to come after her? And why would this persecuted agent want to kind of help Bourne in helping this agency, while also sabotaging it? I mean, choose one of these… I searched for “vendetta”, but the surrounding text did not explain anything about the origin, cause, or nature of this “vendetta”. Later near the end of the book this “vendetta” is again mentioned in a debate between Johanna and Shadow, wherein Johanna threatens that their “vendetta” would only end “when one of us is dead”… There are no specifics in the surrounding dialogue. So it’s just a general threat that can be repeated in any novel, like a stock-photo.

“Bourne has a rule for friends and enemies alike: Trust no one.  That rule may be the only thing keeping him alive, because the hunt for the Files soon takes Bourne inside a twisted labyrinth of murder and betrayal, where everyone has a hidden agenda. Including Bourne himself.” What? Bourne, the hero, has an “agenda”? In the films, he’s usually just being threatened and he has to run away, or kill some people to stay alive. But he actually has some thought or logic behind what he wants to be doing? In one dialogue a woman insists: “No hidden agenda.” But this is about her not wanting a romantic relationship in her “bed”. Then, in the middle of the novel, Bourne mentions this “agenda” of his own for “this hunt”. But this is followed by no specifics because he is “keeping the truth from her”. Secrecy is regularly used in such novels to explain missing information, or a lack of research and work invested in a novel by its author.

One other thing I had to check is the point I raised at the start of this review. How is action handled in a novel? I searched for “kicked”. At the start of chapter 9, the hero (in third-person) kicks snow while walking. At the start of the next chapter, he “kicked… open” the door “easily”, despite it being “boarded over”. Finally, some pages later: “Someone kicked Bourne heavily in the kidney, causing a jolt of pain. A knife cut through the bonds of his wrists and ankles, and a large redheaded man yanked the tape off his face, then removed the dirty cotton towel that filled his mouth…” This is not a particularly exciting fight. And it is followed by Bourne calculating if he can escape from confinement, rather than by other types of kicks and punches, which would dominate this scene in a film. Then, some torture follows, which tends to stretch for too long in films, but here is really stretched out with please somebody didn’t do anything that repeat without details. About just what was done and by whom. How can any modern reader seriously read one of these novels cover-to-cover? It seems impossible because there is nothing humanly realistic in the descriptions, or surprising about the deadly actions.

Sexual and Political Exploits of Big PM Papa, and Little Daughter

Samrat Upadhyay, Darkmotherland (New York: Soho Press, 2025). Hardcover. 768pp. ISBN: 978-1-64129-472-0.

***

“An epic tale of love and political violence set in earthquake-ravaged Darkmotherland, a dystopian reimagining of Nepal, from the Whiting Award–winning author of Arresting God in Kathmandu…” The Whiting Award is given to emerging writers to empower writers to give themselves time to write professionally. As I looked through the long list of the winners, I could not recognize any of the names. Apparently, these guys are unknown before and after this honor. Upadhyay won in 2001. Winning this award did propel Upadhyay on a uniquely successful career. He had moved from Nepal to the US in 1984 at 21. It’s pretty difficult to learn a new language at 21. This is relevant because he is advertised as being “the first Nepali-born fiction writer writing in English to be published in the West.” If this is such a difficult achievement, why did this guy make it instead of somebody who had become a professor back in Nepal before the move, or somebody who moved when they were under 14, and then completed a PhD here? Statistically, this is an improbable person to be this lucky. The mind tends to solidify in its language-learning capacity by around 14. There is no info on his completion of college etc. either back in Nepal or in the US. And yet, just by winning Whiting, he was hired as a professor that same year, and he is now tenured and teaching at Indiana University (having risen to being the Director of their Creative Writing Program). The award also apparently helped him sell books to mainstream publishers, which could promote them into NYT “notable” lists (which is not the same as “bestseller”, but sounds alike). I am being particularly judgmental in questioning the unlikelihood of this success story largely because the writing style in this novel seems to be better than most pop novels. If it had been written in a Bourne style; I would not be questioning the authenticity of this author’s capabilities. But perhaps the American education system is so bad that foreigners learn much better English abroad than if they had gone through the US school system?

“…A novel of infinite embrace—filled with lovers and widows, dictators and dissidents, paupers, fundamentalists, and a genderqueer power player with her eyes on the throne—in an earthquake-ravaged dystopian reimagining of Nepal.” This is a sober summary of a novel, in contrast with the previous blurbs. It does a good job drawing in readers into the fantastical-historical drama. However, this is an ambitious promise that might not have been realized. The opening chapter describes some kind of a disaster being faced by the Loyal Army Dais. But just what the disaster is? What is the time-period? Who is fighting who? These questions are initially left unexplained, as the readers are expected to anticipate these answers while reading patiently through this chaos. The first mention of “dictatorial politicians” occurs in a reflection of a character on a book about these he had read, instead of a character within this story who is a “dictator”. There is a more direct description of a dictator several pages later, but this time it’s a fantasy of a “Prime Minister” who has been made a lifetime dictator. This is shown from the perspective of a young son who is calling him “PM Papa”. This softens the idea of a dictator into a playful childhood fantasy, instead of delivering the fantastic scenario promised in the blurb. This little son is dreaming of having a dictatorship passed down to him… This is pretty much an anti-revolutionary utopia. There are many later mentions of stuff an “Aafrikan dictator” did. Just what this story is about is barely covered. There are general mentions of philosophizing about a dictator being feared or loved by the people. A clear plot regarding just who is doing what and why is avoided. It’s pretty much impossible to read a novel without a plot…

“At its heart are two intertwining narratives: one of Kranti, a revolutionary’s daughter who marries into a plutocratic dynasty and becomes ensnared in the family’s politics.” Kranti appears on page 7. The city is “in ruins”, but she is in a wealthy, orderly household, where for some reason “Beggars” are listening at the “feet of their leader, Professor Shrestha”. Absurdly, the personal tragedy that is central for Kranti is her “Dada’s death”: reasonably tragic, but not compared to the disaster then described that has befallen the rest of the population: “Half of the country was in utter ruins… Rice and dal, the two staples of… diet, were scarce. Bread had disappeared from the market. The price of eggs had quadrupled. The poorer residents scrounged for nettles and other grass for their greens.” This is well-written prose. However, it’s running along aimlessly without a coherent story structure. For example, the next sentence begins with: “Prostitution was rampant…” A good detail to know. But why not bring in a prostitute into the main story? Why just describe general prostitution? How is it relevant to what’s happening to Kranti, as she lives in luxury?

“And then there is the tale of Darkmotherland’s new dictator and his mistress, Rozy, who undergoes radical body changes and grows into a figure of immense power.” In the opening line of chapter 6, I learned that this “mistress Rozy” is a guy, whose member “PM Papa” enjoyed sucking. If homosexuality is celebrated in this novel; why is the female term “mistress” being applied to somebody who is hyper-masculine? The story finally becomes interesting when there is a mention of Papa buying Rozy “secretly… a large piece of land, sitting pretty on a hill, in a prime location in the City of Glory…” But apparently, this land didn’t have a house yet, which Papa offered to build in a couple of years, seemingly after Rozy had provided these couple of years of sexual service. The conversation then moves to Rozy wanting instead to live in Papa’s mention. This is a missed opportunity as it would have been more interesting to learn just how this corrupt politician was “secretly” using government funds to pay his lover…

“A romp through the vast space of a globalized universe where personal ambitions are inextricably tied to political fortunes, where individual identities are shaped by family pressures and social reins…” This note does explain a lot of this novel. The point is to jump between personal desires, and political events. This leaping is by-design, instead of being merely a flaw of a lack of a clear plot. Those who enjoy reading about “romps” would enjoy reading parts of this story. Maybe if I was on summer-break and had nothing else to do I could read through more of this.

A Cult Because They Wear Hoods 

T. L. Huchu, The Legacy of Arniston House: Edinburgh Nights Book Four (New York: Tor Publishing Group, 2024). Hardcover. 287pp. Principal places and institutions. ISBN: 978-1-250-88309-4.

**

“A dangerous cult craves a dark power…” I looked ahead to figure out what “power” this is referring to. This novel is about magical power, including “ghostalking”, and “casting a spell”. This is explained later in this summary, so it’s not really omitted. I just experienced a moment of puzzlement that I solved before reading onwards. This is the “fourth instalment of the USA Today bestselling Edinburgh Nights series”, which has been published annually between 2021-4. This seems to be the last book in this series. Thus, most readers are likely to be a bit disoriented, if they start reading with this last volume. There is a list of characters in the opening pages that is thus required for newcomers. For example, it explains that the main hero in this volume, Ropa Moyo is a “teenage ghostalker… from… Edinburgh”, a dropout, who is “delivering messages on behalf of the city’s dearly departed. Her activities secured her an internship with the Society of Sceptical Enquires, after which she resigned to find employment with Lord Samarasinghe, England’s Sorcerer Royal.” These details are needed to understand the following lines in the blurb: “Ropa Moyo is a wannabe magician, can speak to the dead, and has officially given up being an intern.” Without the explanation, I was puzzled by just what kind of internship magicians might have.  

“Leaving Scottish magic behind, she now works for the English Sorcerer Royal. But just as she adjusts to working for the English, an old enemy reveals a devastating secret about her Gran, and Ropa’s world falls apart.” This secret is not solved in the characters’ descriptions. Looking forward in the book, the secret might be about Ropa’s father, the academic. The following pages describe with a bit of detail how her parents laughed, that her father was smart, etc. The reason for these reflections is given as the character crying while recalling her “dead folks.” Though most of this is too general: “What did my father’s cologne smell like?” Instead of this empty phrase, some concrete details could have been inserted here. The mystery seems to be that she has no idea who her parents are…?

“Outraged, she rushes home, but finds her grandmother dead—murdered—with no killer in sight.” Oh, no, is this character weeping about her parents for page and pages and then starts weeping about her newly dead grandmother? The setup is that only her grandmother Melsie knows “the truth” (or any info about who she is, who her parents are, and just in general what’s going on), but dies before she can tell her? And then for the rest of the story this character is lost and confused in cluelessness. I did not find the scene where this girl finds her grandmother dead by searching for “Melsie” or “Gran”, but I did find a line half-into this book that notes that “police say Ropa Moyo murdered her grandmother…” Ah, that’s what the next line in the publisher’s summary is about: “What’s more, she’s the prime suspect.” Tor tricked me again. “In her quest to find the true murderer, Ropa becomes caught in the dark tendrils of a cult, hell-bent on resurrecting an ancient power.” Since all magicians would technically be in “cults”, this point also confused me. I looked ahead and found that this “cult” reveals itself late in this book by the simple trick that they are “scientific magicians” who look monk-like in “their hood”. And just because these guys look cultish, Ropa takes out a “dagger” and slashes one of their “front” tyres. This is a strange overreaction to something the character reports not understanding. She’s fantasizing about stealing the batteries to sell “on the black market”, but fails to do anything profitable, and just slashes all the tyres. A supporting character echoes: “Great thinking”, in case readers started to think this was irrational or idiotic.

“…Ropa must use her wits, her magic, and call in all favors to stop the ritual—and clear her name.” The tire-slashing must have been the “wits” part. What ritual? I pondered, and searched for this section. Chapter XX begins with a mention of smoke coming at the “start” of a “mad ritual”. These guys are again hooded, and the presence of a black hood seems to be the only explanation offered as to why these guys are the villains of this story, when Ropa seems to be the aggressor with her tire-slashing etc. Though they apparently have some other colors from the “flag of Scotland” on them. Ah, okay, in the third paragraph in this opening of Chapter XX, there’s an explanation that the ritual probably involves a sacrifice because Sophie is lying on the “great oaken table… bound”. Apparently, Ropa has ridden Sophie of a possessing spirit (for this cult) so they could sacrifice her in this ritual. While this makes some sense and is interesting, the story then digresses into echoing chatter, and generalizations.

It’s amazing how this writer has managed to make magic dull and repetitive. I read a lot of fantasy in my childhood, but mostly the German versions of dark fairytales and Russian dark comedy like The Master and Margarita. I looked up a sample of the latter novel to figure out if it reads differently in English. The story opens with vivid portraits of two men, focuses on their work as literary editors. Then, there is a humanist appeal as these guys attempt to find beer, or something else to drink and find that Soviet scarcity has deprived these pleasures. Though they are served apricot juice: though too warm for the summer day. The author manages to keep readers’ attention with such dramatic concerns until magic appears, when a “transparent man” is seen hovering “without touching the ground”. He goes through natural stages of denial, as the story gradually moves more and more into accepting that magic is real and showcasing amazing magic being done. The words in this Russian novel are denser than in the English translation. But even in the translation, attention is captured with a coherent story that drives the characters forward. But maybe if I read this novel for the first time now, in either language, I would not be as mesmerized by it as I was when I read it in my childhood. The volume of books I’ve read since on similar subjects have demystified fantasy. I read through most of Anne Rice’s novels back in high school and college. Recently, I tried getting into one of them, and it just seemed too empty. There were too many pages where nothing happened. Maybe I’ve gotten used to the speed of fantasy in films, where something is always happening rapidly. But Mikhail Bulgakov’s structure is still better than Rice’s… Though only one of them is a “classical” author, so it’s not a fair comparison. I’ll keep thinking about if younger readers would enjoy these pop novels that I’m reviewing significantly more than I can now. Perhaps wisdom makes it impossible to enjoy childish things? 

Murdering Memory and Sense 

Olivia Waite, Murder by Memory (New York: Tor Publishing Group, 2024). Hardcover. 76pp.

***

“Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in this sci-fi ode to the cozy mystery, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective.” There is a tradition in pop-fiction of defining new works by offering names of past writers or works that these are clones of. Apparently by cloning two previous projects something “new” is born. In this case, the reference is to Becky Chambers, the author of solarpunk Hugo-award-winning novels. A couple of her novels were published with Tor. Characteristically for Tor, Becky tends to write quirky stories about sentient robots. And Miss Jane Marple is a character in Agatha Christie’s fiction, who is an amateur consulting detective. Ah, yes, now I understand the term “sci-fi… cozy mystery”. It took me a bit of research. Olivia Wait, the author of this new novel, is known for her queer romance novels. This might be one of her first ventures into science fiction. She also has the benefit of being NYT Book Review’s columnist in the romance genre. It is a curious leap to go from romance into sci-fi. There is very little romance in this one. No breasts or bulges. The first mention of a “chest” appears in: “wind tossed my wet hair back from my face and thunder rumbled a pass note I felt deep in my chest.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to erase… Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.” The reference to mind-erasure is not metaphorical. A few pages into the book, the first-person narrator is told: “Your memory-book got erased!” Just unlike in other cases, she was still “here”, whereas others whose minds were taken apparently disappear. This is a popular trope in recent novels: the idea of mind-trading and wind-wiping. It seems these are references to amnesia, or brain-transplants. The drama is usually about some of the old consciousness returning, or of a mind managing to survive, as in this case, without being harmed by a wipe. I don’t understand the appeal of this mind-wiping sci-fi proposal. Why is it dramatic that people are being turned into amnesia patients for rich people to take over their bodies? I mean, in reality, these rich people would need to transplant their old brain onto a young body, but an old brain is more prone to strokes etc., so it would probably still die by the age 90-100 for the brain. A young body can’t stop the deterioration from aging of an old brain… I guess it is a scary idea, which is what sci-fi is all about. Find something that scares a lot of people and then use it to keep people in suspense because they are afraid for the characters. This particular character focuses on what she has in her pockets, upon realizing her mind has been switched into another’s body, that of Gloria, a 27-year-old single. Some dark humor is used to help lighten the monotony. The place the spaceship is going to is “Whatever-We’ll-Call-It”, and the departure from a previous body is called being “shelved”. This is probably what works for me in fantasy fiction: they either must be darkly humorous, or extremely dark with twisted narratives of superhuman domination. I think I could get into this novel by focusing on these little jokes that appear in most paragraphs.

“Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers―just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.” Searching for “Library” led to theories that storms might be creating a problem, or “certain kinds of light” affect the Library, and allow for the creation of “a tool in a standard retromat” (tool that helps generate random plans: this seems unrelated to the thing described) to “erase an entire memory-book.” The idea is to erase a book, instead of writing “over” it. This all seems to be rather nonsensical. But at least this author is trying to explain it, unlike other authors who just blame a vague “state” or “cult”.  

“Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake.” I tried searching for “Ruthie” to learn more about this character. All mentions were general. None referred to programming. I searched for “program”, and no variants of this term appear in this book. Though there are only 76 pages in this review version I received, perhaps the programming is done in an unincluded later section. Either way, that’s strange. Why would this blurb mention that he is a “programmer”, if this side of him is never discussed in the interior? A few dozen pages into the book, there is an explanation that Ruthie thinks “the first magnetic storm did it” (the glitch they are researching) “at random”. And Ruthie has been working to manipulate this glitch to take advantage of it… This kind of explains something… But not enough to focus the interest of a wavered reader.

“Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor―and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting―knows more than she’s letting on.” Following this storyline helped me come across the romance component I thought was missing from this novel. While describing Violet’s yarn store, the narrative stalls on “Janet’s love for Evelyn”, and on the narrator knowing how much it hurts to “lose love”. These abstractions on love themes echo without much substance, as its unclear who loves whom and why, or why this is relevant to the story about mind-switching. This love section is not funny, which makes it uniquely bad.

“Whatever it is,” (this matches the sentiment throughout: the author/narrator is not seriously trying to solve anything, but is rather stumbling from one thought to the next, with a “whatever” attitude) “Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work―and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…” There is no “mastermind” that I could find: only confusion. For a writer to claim a “mastermind” character is at work, a novel must reveal a rational, complex plan this mastermind has designed. Simply refusing to say what the “secret” is until the end, and then making this secret something simple is not sufficient to self-puff a character as masterful.

I couldn’t read much more of this novel, even if somebody paid me to edit it… 

The Killing Gods as a Bait to Keep Reading Nonsense 

Alex Pheby, Waterblack (New York: Tor Publishing Group, 2024). Hardcover. 640pp. Map, events. ISBN: 978-1-250-81729-7.

**

“The… conclusion to Alex Pheby’s Cities of the Weft trilogy.” Pheby teaches at the University of Newcastle in Scotland. He has been winning prizes for his fiction since 2016, when he focused on schizophrenia. Then, he turned to fantasy with this series. He has been releasing one book in around two years. The schizophrenic theme seems to be picked up here, as an opening page includes a map with handwritten scratches, and inkblots meant to suggest the narrator’s psychosis. The lines crossing it hint at paranoia, though in this dark-fantasy, there are real fantastical threats, like “left bomb collapse zones”, and “mutations”, as these scribbles indicate. One title written here in bigger letters is “The Angelic Army of Waterblack”, while another is “Battle Map of the Relic Fields”. The map does not seem to be of any particular place on Earth.

“One thousand million infants are dead, and Nathan Treeves is back. He’s become the Master of Waterblack, the City of the Dead.” Readers coming to this book without having read previous books in this series should read the helpful “Events of the Previous Volume, in Summary” section. It clarifies that Nathan has “an unpredictable and uncontrollable power he has inherited from his father.” Though then it adds confusion by mentioning that Nathan created “a limb-baby” and sold it for fake money. It’s puzzling if this means he produced a child and then sold it into slavery… I tried searching for “limb” to figure out what this was referring to, but did not find anything relevant. The most dramatic mention is: “Bill cut at its limb, at its nerves, it filled Bill with pain, a pain unbearable for a body.” This description goes on to mention “stamping with a broken knee” and “cut away… limbs” (164-5). There is a lot of blood and gore, but little magic. It’s unclear if it’s just about a sadist, or if this sadist is also doing something magical.

“And Sharli, once a sacrifice, then an assassin, is now a trained God-Killer.” The latter point is somewhat clarified in a section that seems to be non-rhyming and semi-rhyming, but non-metered verse, which mentions that “In the pages of this book”, the reader will find “unusual things, including… a god killer… gods caged in cubes… gods fighting each other…” This is a preamble seemingly designed to keep away those who are overly religious. The broken lines in this ad are designed to make them seem to be modern-art, or something abstract and deep. But it also serves to scare the reader by confusing them with abstractions. Returning to Sharli, the god-killer, the section that discusses this just describes her violently killing unnamed people. I have nothing against violence. But who is she killing, and why? What’s the point of these murders? There is a note that she loathes the body of a guy she just killed. And then the story moves on, as she sees a guard and is turned over to a supervisor (apparently murder isn’t something to run away over?) (119). I also searched for “god”, hoping to find god-like or god characters. Instead, I found general references to the abstract “crying out to God”. But later in the book there is a section on “The Propaganda of the Immaterial Soul and the Myth of ‘Heaven’”, which discusses “pseudo demigods” in detail, “such as the ‘Mistress of Malarkoi’” (143). This seems to be an abstract digression that is not directly related to the main narrative. 

“She has killed many—but failed in killing Nathan Treeves years ago.” Apparently, she tried to kill him when he was “a baby” in the “slums”, before later becoming the Master of Waterblack, who together with his Mistress was “aiming at the seizing of power from God, whom they had arranged by their occult powers to kill” (204). Ah, here is the promised direct discussion of god-killing. But as the narrator acknowledges this description is “notoriously vague”. Searching for the next references to “God” does not help to clarify this, as they are again vague.

“Soon she, and the Women’s Vanguard, will have another chance, even as The Master, The Mistress and the Atheistic Crusade hurtle toward their final confrontation.” This is apparently to kill God, but the whole story is extremely chaotic, as no concrete battle or narrative structure appear to help lead the reader. This is not a readable book. I can’t recommend for anybody to try and dig into this. Maybe if somebody wants to try hallucinogenic drugs, and is lucid enough to read on them; they would enjoy just kind of tripping on these ideas hopping around. But on a sober head, it’s just impossible to grab onto what this story is about.

A Silly Thrill from the #1 Bestselling Novelist 

James Patterson and Emily Raymond, Raised by Wolves (New York: Grand Central Publishing: Hachette Book Group, 2024). Softcover. 300pp. ISBN: 978-1-538767-01-6.

***

This book’s cover at least has a great design, so if you merely put it on a shelf, it would be a pleasant sight. It’s the image of a wolf’s yellow eyes against the image of a foggy forest, and two people running towards a light. One of my writers recently asked me to add eyes over a black-and-white photograph for a cover design I was doing for him. I tried a lot of different eyes before realizing just how difficult this seemingly simple assignment was. The eyes have to blend in with the background. In this case, the artist blended the color of the wolf’s fur with the forest, and used a similar fur thickness to tree branches in the underlying forest. The artist also added some sprinkles of trees in front of the wolf, where the original photo could not have had any continuing tree-lines. I checked the copyrights page for a credit, but it’s only listed as “by TK”.

Another significant detail on this cover is the double byline. There is a giant credit to the famous “James Patterson” with a small secondary credit to “Emily Raymond”. Patterson does a lot of collaborative writing. Since I’m currently attempting to do some pop collaborative writing myself, it’s a bit tempting to be kinder to Patterson, in case he might want to co-write with me in the future. But then again, if there’s nothing wrong with his current collaborators, why should he work with me? Well, this just indicates I have yet another reason to be biased on this one: for your information. I did a brief review of the authors Patterson has previously collaborated with. One guy apparently spent like three years trying to finish a novel before his agent connected him with Patterson, and they got going in a week. One is a professional ghostwriter: a rare confession from a writer to admit to. The popular belief is that he provides notes to ghostwriters and co-authors that are as long as dozens of pages, and then they build these into novels that he finishes up. This is a factory system, which was used from the dawn of print. The difference is the negative press “ghostwriters” have received recently in parallel with confessing openly to writing as a job for others. Alexander Dumas was outed for running a ghostwriting workshop by Brits, who accused him, while running a workshop of their own. People with money can invest in paying ghostwriters, just as they might invest in building condos. Patterson has only written around 4 novels per year with this workshop: in the 48 years he has released over 200 novels. Writing 4 novels per year is slow for a single ghostwriter… The real achievement is that he has had 114 NYT bestsellers, or half of the books that have had his (and others’) names on them have sold well. What’s the trick? Why are people buying his books over millions of other bylines?

Since Patterson is one of the top best-selling novelists (400 million books in print puts him in the top couple dozen selling authors), I also scanned the pufferies that advertise his work in general in one of the front pages. They drew my attention because they point to the formulaic nature of his work as a positive: “building roller coasters”, “knows how to sell thrills”, “boils a scene down to a single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along…” Hm… the latter point is something I’d like to look into before jumping into the summary. Because most descriptions mention “eyes”, this is the term I searched for to check this claim. Here’s one description from Chapter 1: “She pops open a can of Coke and guzzles it down. Then she bats cookie boxes off the shelves…” This seems to be selling “Coke”, as a product, and then an ad for “Oreos” follows. The paragraph concludes with “jaws chomping on tortilla chips, eyes wide and wild-looking.” Why would this be revelatory about any character? Then, in Chapter 2: “Chester takes a step forward and the girl flinches. She looks about sixteen, with gray eyes set deep in a fine-feature face…” The mention of characters being afraid seems to be the main “thrilling” element. But there is really no masterly character-drawing happening here…

“Two strangers. One small town. And a choice that could change everything. The police respond to the arrival of two teens at the grocery store. They don’t speak English.  They don’t speak at all.  They’re brother and sister and, for all anybody can tell, they’ve been raised in the forest.” This is a reference to the discovery I mentioned previously at the start of Chapter 2. In addition to the scared girl, they have found a scared younger boy. Though the “roller coaster” is achieved in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. The officers “peel” into a lot, and immediately question if wolves could have caused the observed damage. A chief takes out his pistol, worried it might be a bear. There’s a disaster at an aisle, with things smashed. Then, there’s growling, and the culprit emerges: the two teenage wolf-raised kids. This is better than some of the other novels I’m covering because it’s a straightforward narrative with events that follow a logical timeline. The author also cares about interesting readers in the narrative, and carrying them forward. The vocabulary is simple, and paragraphs are short, but in this case, these elements succeed in making the story approachable. In contrast, some other titles also use simple language, but the story, or ideas jump between unrelated concepts so much that it might be more difficult for a reader to follow than some canonical postmodern novels like James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Wolf stories seem unusual for Patterson’s typical thrillers. So, I looked up “wolf” to see how he handled this subject. One reference notes: “Holo bares his teeth. In wolf language, this means I see you. Get lost.” This is a pretty funny way of translating a simple motion. Another mention appears at the start of Chapter 7, where the narrator switches to first-person, as one of the wolf-raised kids describes how miserable being in jail feels, followed by the question: “What would a wolf do?” There are later ponderings on wolf-being, like that by deciding to talk the narrator can prove “dominance”. I think I understand why this fiction sells a lot of books: people just want an easy, fun read. A sprinkle of new information about the nature of wolves, without much science, or details about what this experience would have realistically have been like. An owner of a bookstore explained that at the end of a long work day, a casual reader does not want to “work” on a novel, but rather just read something easy that flows along. Since this is the winning formula, it’s puzzling why so many rival pop writers in this set of books go for convolution without reaching canonical-level density of verbal structures…

“Two teens appear out of nowhere, ransacking a small-town grocery and attacking the police officers who come to investigate. Their clothes are torn and filthy, their hands and bare feet callused, they have fangs. They’re sister and brother, alone against the world. Where did they come from? Raised by wolves, they say. Kai and Holo are taken in by the police chief and his wife, and begin adjusting to life in a small town, attending school and going on dates. But humans, they find, are the most vicious animals. And the mystery of their upbringing brings dark and powerful forces to Kokanee Creek, tearing the town apart and threatening the lives of everyone they love. How will the wolves survive? How will Kai and Holo?”

The concluding lines are designed to encourage readers to remain with this novel until the end to find a formulaic “change” in these characters. Such change or an escalation of conflicts is required for a standard pop rollercoaster plot. But this seems not to have been executed particularly well here. In one later section, the first-person narrator is joyfully “jumping up and down” with a guy, having “fun”. There is no apparent threat, as the narrative seems to have digressed into the types of general commonalities that cause readability problems in the other novels in this set. The blurb did promise that they try to live normal lives, including dancing to slow music. The narrator breathes in this partner’s smell, and listens to the heartbeat. Thankfully, this digression ends with some guy knocking the narrator to the ground with an insult against “dogs”, and there is a call for a “fight”. This at least works out, as the author has succeeded in remembering that this novel is about wolves, as opposed to just a typical romance novel. In summary, this is a pretty silly novel. It is an unusual sub-genre for Patterson. I don’t think his novels are usually this silly. But I think pop thrillers are more digestible when they are silly, as opposed to when the author seriously tries to scare readers. A serious fright requires far more complex description, and philosophizing. If you look through a sample from this novel, and it sounds like something you usually enjoy reading, you are probably okay to go forward in this book.

Colombian Gangsters Machete, While Philosophizing 

Sergio de la Pava, Every Arc Bends Its Radian: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024). Hardcover. 213pp.

**

Sergio de la Pava, the author, won the PEN prize for his first short-fiction collection, A Naked Singularity: this prize is only given to first-timers. He has tended to self-publish books, before they were positively reviewed, and then published by bigger presses. It has been 6 years since his previous release. But he’s been busy working as a Manhattan public defender, which explains the legal bend to his novels.

“…An existential detective novel about a private investigator who flees New York City for Colombia after a personal tragedy and finds himself entangled in a young woman’s strange disappearance—which may be connected to one of the world’s most ruthless criminal organizations.” The term “existential” apparently refers to the pondering about “Nothing” in the opening page: a “to be or not to be” questioning. Though a problem that I notice right away is that the narrator refers to his “sister Genevieve” before explaining who he is, or who she is. This is generally a distraction for the reader, who is forced to digress from the subject at hand to imagine a distant character, who is not relevant to the plotline. The next paragraph mentions “Jane”, who is begged for forgiveness, without explaining just who this “Jane” is. On the next page, the mention of “authorized machine guns unsettles”: this at least gets the story rolling in a dramatic direction. There is also a conflict with Colombia refusing to let him in. But there’s no clear explanation about why there is a problem, before he’s off to the hotel.

“Riv—poet, philosopher, private eye—arrives in Cali, Colombia, hoping to find reprieve. Running away from an unspeakable event surrounding his ex Jane…” after the cursory mention in the opening paragraphs, Jane is next mentioned in “7^th Entry”, with the explanation that she had moved in a couple of years earlier, but this relationship was interrupted with the task of purchasing a “lampshade”—the point seems to be to avoid revealing just what the “unspeakable event relating to Jane was, but instead of building anticipation in readers, this avoidance of getting to the point and instead talking about trivialities makes it very difficult to get interested in this story or characters—“…Riv accidentally connects with his cousin Mauro and family friend Carlotta, who asks him to find her daughter Angelica Alfa-Ochoa.” A search for this name led to the explanation that she is a “gringa”. A few concrete details about her family and her follow: unusual in this bunch of novels, where in most cases no biographies are built for characters. The mother also says that she wants to know if her daughter is dead, so she can have “certitude”. The mother gives a photograph, but then the conversation shifts to the police not doing anything (this is relevant because the narrator warns the mother she is going to have to give her money, so he can bribe the officers… seemingly to do the investigating for him, which they otherwise have refused to do just for their salaries), instead of the practical questions of how this guy from a different country can possibly find this girl without knowing who her friends etc. are, or where she went, and other practical matters, which are skipped over. The next chapter does pick up on asking questions about her boyfriend, or friend, and the like. This is a reasonably coherent thriller where some investigating is getting done.

“…No sooner is Riv on the trail when it becomes clear that not only are the cops not looking for Angelica, but they are actively preventing him from finding her. This could be a good thing because the police are clearly in the pocket of one Exeter Mondragon, a name best never uttered in public if one wants to stay alive.” His initial instinct is to advise the mother to drop the case, since “Mondragon!” is involved. “But Riv is not one to leave things incomplete. When his investigation leads him straight into the heart of Mondragon’s criminal empire, he is forced not only to face unimaginable horrors, but also to plunge into the deepest and most perplexing conundrums of the human condition.” To check for just what kind of horrors are in this book, I searched for a few gory terms and found some occurrences of “blood”. In the middle of this book, somebody raises a complaint. In response a guy takes out a machete and walks up to a group of tourists, who start “screaming and crying”, and run off from the threat, as the complainer remains to face the machete-wielding lunatic. He grabs the tourist by the neck and restricts his ability to speak. Then, he wrestles him to the ground, pins his wrist, and: “drives his machete through the palm and into the earth like he’s staking a tent…” The tourist screams, and then the guy “wipes the tourist’s blood off his lips…” Then, the smarty narrator nonchalantly chats with this lunatic, who tells him to “shut up”, instead of just macheting him: obviously that would have ended the novel mid-action, so that couldn’t happen. They philosophize about silence and life, as if they are at a book-club. I don’t think this is a good way to handle brutal murdering gangsters. I’m not sure if there is a “right” way to handle such content. But describing pointless violence, and not explaining how these guys get away with it (Nobody calls the police? Why not? Have they threatened everybody at the scene individually? Have they bribed the police? How exactly?), and other larger themes is kind of just violence-for-violence’s sake. The point might be to explain that a character is prone to pointless violence. But then this should have been clarified. If this guy can philosophize about the meaning of life right after a murder, it seems that he’s too reflective to have killed without a thought-through motive.

The blurb claims that this novel is “lightning fast on the page”: yes, this is true. The story does rush forward. However, it takes too many steps in random directions for a reader to latch onto the story to get through reading this novel in a sitting. Though it is good that the narrator stops to discuss “large philosophical questions while keeping you laughing.” Though some of these thoughts are strangely mixed with all the violence. For example, there are some references to God, as the reason for humanity being on Earth. In one passage, a speaker discusses God’s Ten Commandments and “his chosen people”. Followed by the confession that the speaker has previously “killed God.” But this is a metaphorical claim, as this killer imagines his actions are divinely sanctioned, as the “universe” is meant to flood. The investigator escapes from this cyclical argument by saying: “Okay. Can I see Angelica now?…” This is an absurd juxtaposition between philosophy and the point, especially since there is no clear answer to this direct request.

This might be a fun read for those interested in Colombian gangster stories, as well as philosophy. I couldn’t get into this narrative, and can’t imagine reading this novel further. And I suspect that the title is illogical: a radian is a unit of measurement, so an arc doesn’t bend towards a radian, but rather at a radian… And the cover for this book is just poorly designed, it’s almost painful to look at these curves, and the bright background.

Potteresque Narrative That Pulls Readers into a Consistent Magical World 

Emily Tesh, The Incandescent: A School Story (New York: Tor Publishing Group, 2024). Hardcover. 363pp. ISBN: 978-1-125-0835-01-7.

****

“…Sapphic dark academia fantasy by… bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.” Tesh has been winning awards between 2020-4, with the one Hugo for best-novel coming at the end of this cycle. She teaches classics in England. The publisher stresses that a summarizing line from this novel is: “Look at you, eating magic like you’re one of us.” There is a common trope in fantasy of showing division between insiders and outsiders of aristocracy-imitating cliques. It is a good way to build tension into a story by designating an outsider as the automatic hero, who is being accosted by a group that automatically becomes the villain that needs to be vanquished.

“Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.” This sentence made me question what this is about. These ideas are explained in the first few pages of the novel. Walden is teaching a class called “Upper Sixth”, which involves a “lab practical”, with a “lesson” such as summoning “a medium-sized demon for the first time”. This class is taken by a small group of four 17-year-old magicians. Though this did not explain just what the term “formers” meant and why it was being used together with “sixth”, as in “sixth formers”. What is the “sixth” that is being formed, when they are summoning something that is already formed, like a demon? As I read further into this book, I did not find a simple definition for “sixth”.

“Walden is good at her job—no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation.”  “It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe.” Inside, Tesh elaborates that this school is “six and a half centuries” old. “And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.” Walden is holding a drink in a scene, but more significantly there are questions about who Walden is, and if she is as in-control as she made it sound.

“Chapter 1: Risk Assessment” opened with a few academic jobs amidst a serious explanation about the downsides of leading a magic school when magic tended to cause the death of its practitioners. This book explores the rules of this magical universe as closely as some the Harry Potter series, or the last fantasy series I read in college (a Harvard PhD friend convinced me that it was popular, so I had to find out why he was recommending a children’s book) before no longer being able to just sit down and read pop-fantasy cover-to-cover… Rowling found a way to combine the introduction of curious novelties in her depiction of evolving magical practices, while keeping the language extremely simply, thus allowing for the reading of a thick book in as little as a day. One element that reminded me of Potter is the use by Tesh of details that make magic realistic or like a world that invites the suspension of disbelief. A few pages into the book, Walden describes a list of magical incidents she is reviewing in a “risk assessment”, noting, including: “summoning array misfire” and “magician error (underconfidence)”. Tesh is committing to this world and exploring how it would look from an administrator’s perspective. It is a better story when the narrator ponders about giving a student a D or a C/D aloud, and self-analyzes her grading policy as it works to help students grow. In contrast, many books try too hard to make a story “fun” or “deep” by having characters discuss or think about random topics that are unrelated to the main plotline. In this case, the plot is the administration of a school, and that’s what the author focuses on. This book is dense with information. I did not find wasted paragraphs. Each line delivered some interesting, and thought-through idea. Ghosts are explained as being capable of skinning people. “Teenage magicians attract demons. A beginner is a natural target for a magical predator… all that power none of the common sense…” They can “get eaten by demons.” The philosophizing in different sections is relevant to the narrative. For example, near the end there are reflections of who Walden is, from her physical body, to her “mental construction” of herself, and the demonically possessed self. The author is in control of these ideas, instead of making the mistake of borrowing theories without really understanding their implications.

It’s very tempting to just read this book cover-to-cover; if only there was all the time in the world. Those with enough time, and who are interested in academia, should enjoy taking a break with this novel.

An AI Sales Pitch in a Fear-Mongering, Through Confusion, Fiction 

Jo Callaghan, Leave No Trace: A Novel (New York: Random House Publishing Group: Random House, January 7, 2025). Softcover: $18. 400pp. ISBN: 978-0-593736-85-2.

**

Jo Callaghan is an AI researcher, who managed to sell a bestseller as her first book a few months earlier in 2024, and has already released this second part in what is a semi-series because the topics are related.

A “…thriller that pits algorithms against experience, logic against instinct, and one undetectable killer against two extraordinary detectives.” This blurb suggests that this is a techno-thriller, but this is the opposite of the feel generated by its opening pages. They just describe a person walking in a “stupid” fashion because he’s not paranoid. Somebody is standing in the freezing cold outside looking at a dull house, and dull things happening in it. The whole thing is written as if this dullness is horrific. The chapter stresses this horror-genre feeling by closing on the word “fear”. In the next chapter the problems continue. Basically, the author refuses to reveal what is going on, why it is happening or why the reader is repeatedly told to be scared, without being told “of what?” To check if anything in this book is as-promised, I searched for “algorithm”. It appears a couple dozen pages in, in a long paragraph that explains some things. “…McLeish was still hostile to Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entities, afraid they’d become a Trojan horse for yet more cuts to police numbers…” Kat’s “late husband’s cancer had been misdiagnosed by AI”. The author of this book, Callaghan, had a husband who died of cancer, and such mentions seem to be intended to be autobiographical. The previous points are a rare clear moment. Then, comes the mention I searched for: “Lock’s algorithm-led approach could often be exasperating…” Lock is the investigator’s “AIDE” or “AI partner”. No explanation just what algorithm this is referring to, or how an “algorithm” is not a synonym for “AI” in this context. Later on, there are echoing passages that juxtaposition the character’s “gut feelings” against “Lock’s fact-based algorithms”, as if these are the serious options for curing cancer, as opposed to it being a difference between human research, and algorithm-assisted human research.

“When the body of a man is found crucified at the top of a hill in the British Midlands, AIDE Lock—the world’s first AI detective—and Detective Kat Frank are thrust into the spotlight as they are given their first live case. When a second body is found, the police issue an extraordinary warning to local males aged between thirty and forty years old: • Avoid drinking in pubs. • If you insist on going to a pub, do not leave alone. • And definitely do not leave a pub with a stranger./ With the national media and local men in an uproar, Kat and Lock have to combine their instincts and algorithms to catch the killer before they can strike again.”

There are some structurally interesting interview chapters later in the book, where whole chapters include the Aristotelian interview format, with minimum explanations of how things are being said. Though these interviews are discussing mundane things about drinking coffee, and walking around that seem irrelevant to solving the crimes at-hand. The larger problem is that the nature of the crimes is weird, but seems entirely unrelated to the necessity for specifically an AI detective being put on this case. It is frightening how little sense this whole novel makes. The hysteria and the mania about AI makes as much sense. Why are people investing in AI, when its common uses (like generating an auto-image, or a robot-chat) are probably going to be given away for free? This seems to be a case of an AI researcher investing in publishing a novel just to help her large propaganda effort to sell AI to more investors in this sector…

A Light Thrill About Competing Forgers 

Bradford Morrow, The Forger’s Requiem (New York: Grove Atlantic: Atlantic Monthly Press, January 14, 2025). Hardcover: $27. 288pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-802164-15-5.

***

Bradford Morrow is an academic with a graduate degree, who was editing/founding a literary journal (Conjunctions) and publishing novels and other genres since the 1980s. He is currently teaching at the Bard College. He specializes in shades of literary fiction.

“A… literary thriller that brings readers inside the world of expert forgery, rivalrous fury, and generations of dark family secrets, with Mary Shelley’s voice and life woven throughout.” The latter note is a strange thing to insert into a blurb. Searching for “Shelley” led to this curious line of dialogue when a character takes a double-inscribed antique book: “…when Mary eloped to Paris with Percy Shelley, they somehow managed to lose a box of her earliest manuscripts. Never been found. So why don’t we quote unquote find them?” The forger replies: “You mean forge from scratch her juvenilia?” He refuses, so the inquirer suggests: “…Then give me an important cache of undiscovered Mary Shelley letters to Percy, or her father, or, better yet, her mother, from a later period…” They continue this discussion, noting that Mary never knew her mother, so this scenario is unlikely. The forger is asked for “true fiction” to “become fake fact” through forgery. They explore why some forgers have been more ready to forge Arthur Conan Doyle than Shelley. Then, the discussion diverges into health issues.

I read this Shelley section closely because it is relevant to my 18-19^th century British literature re-attribution series, which I have completed, and will release in a few months. I explore several related subjects, which I will summarize here, since Morrow has raised this point. 1. In my Handwriting Comparison Study (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vd7IMsLl9dPTOqYod0pV8rQjgIpvAhYm/view?usp=sharing), I demonstrate that “Mary Shelley” uses Hand-L in the manuscript of Frankenstein, which belongs to the L-group that was all ghostwritten by Pierce Egan (1772-1849). Egan’s group is humongous and is behind many canonical British bylines. The Handbook includes illustrations of this same Hand-L appearing in “Elizabeth Gaskell’s” undated manuscript for Wives and Daughters, “Olive Schreiner’s” undated From Man to Man, “Charles Burney’s” “Letters to Fanny Burney d’Arblay” from as early as 1788, and in Egan’s own inscription on The Mistress of Royalty in 1814. I also prove the linguistic similarity between these texts with stylometry. In contrast, “Arthur Conan Doyle’s” manuscripts are written in Hand-G, whose underlying ghostwriter is James Muddock (1843-1934). Hand-G also appears in manuscripts assigned erroneously to “Wilkie Collins”, “Thomas Hardy”, and many others. The reference in Morrow’s passage to forging juvenilia manuscripts and assigning them to “Mary Shelley” echoes the obvious forgery of other juvenilia manuscripts, such as the “Bronte” sisters’. An echoing Hand-C appears not only in “Charlotte Bronte” and in her husband “Arthur Bell Nicholls”, but also in “Jane Austen”. Though the juvenilia were forged later than this cluster of manuscripts, and included the direct involvement of a forger. Nicholls is known to have “sold Bronte letters and juvenilia, along with copyrights, to Clement Shorter, acting for the forger T. J. Wise”. I explain how this case is significant to proving the broad use of between 6 and 12 ghostwriters to create all of Britain’s canonical output between the Renaissance and 1934 across this series, for those interested in this topic. These ghostwriters could not fully hide their role (despite leaving their bylines off manuscripts) because in the days when writing-by-hand was normal, their handwriting could be spotted by anybody searching for “forgeries” or ghostwriters. But the publishing market was making too much money by letting these guys monopolize the press to have their “experts” out such handwriting matches across pop bylines to the public, or academia.

“Literary forger Henry Slader, assaulted and presumed dead by his longtime nemesis, Will, awakens in a shallow grave, suffocating in dirt. Concussed and disoriented, Slader exhumes himself and sets out to exact revenge on his rival, orchestrate Will’s downfall, and make a fortune along the way—armed with a devastating secret about Will’s past.” The rift between these enemies remains unexplained across most of the book, with repeat references to the animosity, while the cause for this hatred remains “secret”, or simple left out by a careless author. Such refrain from explain just what the logical cause for tension between the hero and the antagonist are, and use of this lack of knowledge as a secret carrot that might be revealed in the end is an awful literary device that should be abandoned. If the motive is just revealed early on, the rest of the book can be spent on diving deeper into this cause, instead of just repeating a surface fear, without getting any deeper on its significance.

“…Slader quickly draws in Will’s daughter, Nicole, wielding his threats against her father to blackmail her into forging inscriptions by such authors as Poe, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein.” This is part of the discussion where “Shelley” was mentioned. She does attempt these various forgeries. Though little of the technical forging labor is discussed, as Slader merely sniffs the paper to check for the “fresh ink scent” to verify they are of high-quality. And regarding “Poe”, the question is asked absurdly if “Shelley” had an affair with him (ridiculous because they lived on different continents), instead of exploring some of the relevant matters that would come in to forging “Poe”.

“As Nicole’s skill grows, so does her devotion to—and doubts about—her father’s integrity, until she commits the ultimate betrayal for the sake of his freedom. With breathtakingly precise background knowledge and virtuoso execution, Nicole forges a suite of brilliantly convincing and surpassingly valuable letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley—planting within them the seeds of Slader’s doom. Moving between upstate New York, a village in Ireland, London, and ending in a shocking standoff at the site of Mary Shelley’s grave in a coastal town in Southern England… both a… standalone novel and the crescendo ending to the trilogy…” The previous two works in this trilogy are The Forgers (2014), and The Forger’s Daughter (2020).

This is a pretty good novel, but there are too many glitches that detract from what it might have been.

Magicless and Genre-Confused Story   

Ed Crocker, Lightfall: Book One of The Everlands (New York: St. Martin’s Press, January 14, 2025). Hardcover: $30. 384pp. ISBN: 978-1-250287-73-1.

**

“A novel of vampires, werewolves and sorcerers… debut epic fantasy by Ed Crocker…” a UK-based freelance editor, who has worked for the Sunday Times, and sci-fi publications. “For centuries, vampires freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night.” The mystery of what this sentence is trying to say is solved in the opening page (thankfully). It explains that these categories of supernatural beings formed cities of their own, after the Great Intelligence gave them “self-awareness”. Only at Lightfall were the species mixing. The “Grays” are seemingly not immortals, like the others, and their name comes from their “gray cloaks that hide their features”. These Grays stage a war that near-exterminates all other species, forcing them to flee into smaller enclaves. This intro at least orients readers, instead of confusing them, so that’s a good start.

“The survivors fled to the last vampire city of First Light, where the rules are simple. If you’re poor, you drink weak blood. If you’re nobility, you get the good stuff.” This is the trope of setting the poor and rich as enemies in a struggle with a clear “villain”. “And you can never, ever leave.” Setting the no-leaving rule is necessary in many fantasy narratives because it clarifies why somebody might stay at a school, or city where they are in extreme danger of death: the characters must stay for there to be a story, and they have to keep facing more and more dangerous challenges, while refusing to just leave to immediately solve all their problems.

“Palace maid Sam has had enough of these rules, and she’s definitely had enough of cleaning the bedpans of the lords who enforce them. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and she finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords.” It is a pretty ridiculous idea that all the rebels in this society are specifically “maids”. “…Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.” It’s confusing why this vampire city has the other (sorcerer and werewolf) species…

“There’s just one problem. What began as a murder investigation has uncovered a vast conspiracy by the ruling elite, and now Sam must find the truth before she becomes another victim.” This switches the narrative from being a rebellion story, to being a murder-mystery. These genres do not easily overlap, as a rebel would be actively trying to kill their enemies, while a detective would be trying to solve whodunnit on somebody else’s murder… Early mentions of the murder note that because an aristocrat has been killed, his brother is considering reacting by launching a premature war on the Grays in retaliation. This kind of ties the threat of war to this murder-mystery, but not the rebellion. “…If she can avoid getting murdered, she might just live forever.”

The big problem with this novel is the relative emptiness in its descriptions. There is a lot of sighing and wailing, but few reasons given about deeper causes, beyond somebody being killed being sad. If there are descriptions they are of wealth. Most scenes that involve magic are too mundane, like when a bunch of vampires drink different types of animal blood casually. An average empty sentence here is: “Well, it seems that we might have a common cause.” They go back-and-forth in a discussion without moving the narrative forward. This is not an enjoyable read.

A Revolution Described as If It Is a Romance Novel

Youssef Rakha, The Dissenters: A Novel (London: Graywolf Press, February 4, 2025). Softcover: $17. 272pp. ISBN: 978-1-644453-19-3.

**

Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian author who writes in Arabic and English. He received a BA in the UK. This is his first novel that was written originally in English. His first Arabic novel was released back in 2011. He tends to write about Arabic history.

“A transgressive novel… that spans seventy years of Egyptian history. ‘Certain as I’ve never been of anything in the world that you have a right or a duty to know, that you absolutely must know, I sail through the mouth of that river into the sea of her life…’” I cannot imagine why this publisher decided to insert this quote at the beginning of this blurb. It confuses without revealing what this book is about, or intriguing readers. It sounds like a saying that’s supposed to be “deep” but fails to achieve the promised depth.

“…Amna, Nimo, Mouna—these are all names for a single Egyptian woman whose life has mirrored that of her country. After her death in 2015, her son, Nour, ascends to the attic of their house where he glimpses her in a series of ever more immersive visions: Amna as a young woman forced into an arranged marriage in the 1950s, a coquettish student of French known to her confidants as Nimo, a self-made divorcee and a lover, a ‘pious mama’ donning her hijab, and, finally, a feminist activist during the Arab Spring.” The grammar and punctuation of this sentence is confusing. I’m not sure who’s-who. Mouna is never mentioned, while it seems some of the later descriptors are about her. “Charged and renewed by these visions of a woman he has always known as Mouna, Nour begins a series of fevered letters to his sister” In other words this is an epistolary novel, which should have been more prominently mentioned here to avoid surprising readers. The narrator “has been estranged from Mouna and from Egypt for many years—in an attempt to reconcile what both siblings know about this mercurial woman, their country, and the possibility for true revolution after so much has failed. Hallucinatory, erotic… a transcendent portrait of a woman and an era that explodes our ideas of faith, gender roles, freedom, and political agency.”

The opening letter begins very dully by describing finding letters in an attic with general details. The page ends oddly in the middle of a thought. There is a little leaf at the start of the next page that might suggest this is a different perspective than the one in the letter. Another clue that something new has started is the lack of indentation of the first paragraph on the next page. But both use the first-person voice. But the story has changed subjects from this mother’s two pseudonyms: Mouna to Amna. So little info is given about either of them that it’s hard to tell the difference. The blurb kind of explains why each is special, but the novel blurs these lines. The story also leaps between crawling on knees as a punishment and vague descriptions of lashes and furniture. There are constant appearances of general phrases, like “I see her…” and “I see the casuarina-flanked sand of the playground…” that slow the story without explaining anything relevant. There are threats issued against “dissent”, but no clear explanation of what the dissent is about. People are plotting a Revolution, but in such terms that they might as well be discussing the weather. Sexual imagery (“Nimo felt he was mentally undressing her in earnest”) tends to be inserted to “liven” the narrative, but merely flattens what could have been space spent explaining a fervor for the Revolution. This is just a horrid read. 

South African Crime Thriller Tries Boggled by Digressions 

Deon Meyer, Leo: A Benny Griessel Novel (New York: Grove Atlantic: Atlantic Monthly Press, February 18, 2025). Hardcover: $28. 464pp. ISBN: 978-0-802164-23-0.

**

The title-page explains that this work was “Translated from Afrikaans by K. L. Seegers.” Deon Meyer is a South African crime writer. Leo was first-published in Afrikaans in 2023. He has been publishing in Afrikaans, and being translated into English since around 1996. Leo is the ninth part of the Benny Griessel Mysteries series, which first appeared in 2004.

“In a corrupt South Africa, the criminals are as likely to be in government—or even in the police—as on the streets.” Eager to learn how corruption is covered in this story, I searched for this term. I found a note that explained the term “state capture” as “the illicit control of the state for personal gain by corporations, the military, politicians, etc, through the corruption of public officials.” That’s a curious thing to define, instead of offering detailed examples of how this corruption is achieved to put the reader into this place to understand this perspective on open-corruption. Corruption is periodically mentioned later in the book, usually also in general terms. For example, a line uses the accusatory term “corrupt State Security Agency” without the nature of its corruption, though there is an annotation after this term, which instructs readers to “read” another novel for “this story”, instead of explaining what the State Security Agency is, or why it is “corrupt”. The point of avoiding direct accusations or descriptions of how corruption works here seems to be to make it seem conspiratorial, instead of helping readers identify and address it in reality. This is problematic when the blurb begins by promising to show corruption, and then the book just casts vague insults without delivering the meat of misdoing.

“Two decorated detectives must put their careers on the line to find the link between three seemingly-unrelated homicides…” If they are unrelated; wouldn’t be a bad idea to link them to fit an unsupported theory of the case? “Detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido are languishing in Stellenbosch.” This is a town in South Africa, near Cape Town. South Africa has a near-trillion GDP that makes it the 32^nd largest in the world. Its independence from the UK was followed by Apartheid rule, which continued one-party racist rule until around 1993. So, its independence and democratic rule are relatively new situations, which coincided with Meyer becoming a popular author. South African press is more willing to descript corruption as being rampant, when it basically sees a similar number of busted corrupt politicians as in US: though this is a large number.

“Run-of-the-mill police work in the leafy university town is a far cry from their previous life in Cape Town fighting crime and government corruption at the highest level. Then a student is found dead on a mountain trail, and the key suspect, a local businessman, is found murdered in what looks like a professional hit delivering a message—suffocated by fast-action filler foam sprayed down his throat.” It is absolutely ridiculous to imagine that spraying foam down a throat is a “professional” killing manner. Just imagine how difficult it would be to keep the victim still, or to keep the foam from going everywhere and making an unprofessional mess? I searched for this method of death and found a construction worker who in 2020 used it on his children and was jailed: obviously an unprofessional, and emotional approach to killing.

“…On the other side of the country, a beautiful wildlife guide is recruited by a group of special forces soldiers to act as a honeytrap, part of a dangerous multi-million-dollar heist that goes tragically wrong.” Absurdly a thing that concerns the heroes about this is that she should not be wearing “dark glasses” because “it detracted from her appearance, diluting the honey trap.” There are several cliché mentions of “the land of milk and honey.” And there is a mention of a guy stealing honey in his youth. When they first meet this rare female agent, she asks “why me?” and they basically objectify her by insisting that her beauty is only useful because they “need a honey trap”. The strategy of how she is going to entrap this guy besides being beautiful, or what she is going to do once he is “entrapped” are not clearly stated. Most lines are empty and don’t really lead anywhere that the plot should be going.

“…A single link connects the murdered businessman to the special forces, making Benny and Vaughn’s case all the more mysterious.” It’s puzzling why this blurb does not capitalize Special Forces, as is done in the body of this novel. Whenever these forces are mentioned the name alone seems to be left to leave an impression on the reader, without any details about what these forces do, or why it’s relevant. “…Another former soldier is soon killed, as is an agent of the country’s disgraced former president; and then the heist crew reorganizes with an even more audacious theft in mind. Following leads as they fly at them, not sure exactly who to trust and struggling to connect the dots as the motives don’t seem to add up, Benny and Vaughn find their case increasingly points to the corruption polluting the country. They know the clock is ticking—and Benny also has to be at the altar on time for his anxiously-anticipated wedding day.” There are repeat mentions of his forthcoming “honeymoon” pushed into unrelated conversations.

Chapter I opens in a similar style to Patterson’s: short paragraphs that describe actions. The author follows general rules of pop-thrillers: the characters are tense, and frightened of something, a robbery is reported, and some brief sketches are given of the victim, with sexualization of a young “attractive… woman”, and a few details that hint at distress or might be clues are given. However, the narrative is interrupted with irrelevant discussions that break the reader’s attention by the second page, which includes an ad for Instagram in a prolonged discussion of what this ap is. This seems to be an attempt to mimic Patterson’s winning formula, but using the mistake of continuously losing focus that most rivals in this genre seem to hit.

An Attempt to Convict the President of Murder 

Mike Lawson, Untouchable: A Joe DeMarco Thriller (New York: Grove Atlantic: Atlantic Monthly Press, February 25, 2025). Hardcover: $27. 320pp. ISBN: 978-0-802164-45-2.

***

“…Pulse-pounding thriller from Edgar and Barry Award finalist Mike Lawson…” Lawson “is a former senior civilian executive for the US Navy”. The Edgars are named after Edgar Poe. The latest 2024 competition had 1 winner and 42 nominees. I did not see on the website any designation for a “finalist”. This seems to be an inflation of Lawson’s status. Same for the Barry Award, but it has fewer nominees, with only around 5 of them. And the reference to this thriller being “pulse-pounding” might also be a political understatement: it doesn’t promise to raise the pulse, but rather that your heart will continue to beat as you read it.

“…Beloved Washington DC ‘troubleshooter’ Joe DeMarco finds himself assigned an impossible case: help take down the President of the United States.” At least this is an exciting start for a novel. I have not read this plot before: the hero is going to assassinate the President? I must be misunderstanding the premise… I read the chapter 1 to see how this point is handled. As promised, there is a dramatic opening as a group of Secret Service agents burst into the Oval Office, and one breaches protocol to grab the President to encourage him to leave with them for the bunker because there has been a looming threat against his life. They put a gas mask on him and rush out. The story is linear and logical, unlike many in this set of reviews. The threat is then explained as a “white powder” that spilled out of an envelope. This reads like a watchable TV thriller, so those who are interested in this genre should enjoy continuing this read.

“Brandon Cartwright was a rich guy worth a couple billion bucks—inherited, of course—meaning he hadn’t worked a day in his life. But he sure knew how to party, and the people he rubbed shoulders with were all sorts of rich and famous: politicians and movie stars and British royalty and Russian oligarchs. So when Brendan Cartwright is executed in his own home, the cops quickly conclude that he was most likely killed by one or more of the rich, powerful people he partied with. But when John Mahoney, the former Speaker of the House, emerges from a clandestine meeting with the head of the National Archives, he learns there’s evidence suggesting that the President of the United States was somehow involved with Cartwright’s death…” There is a careful explanation of what these Archives are (including their use when “authenticating the votes of the Electoral College” became “controversial” in the Trump non-election) when Mahoney is first-mentioned. This is better than other novels that tend to avoid offering any specifics about what such agencies do. And when Mahoney is next mentioned there is an explanation of his drinking problem, again done with specifics; this problem re-appears as Mahoney re-appears, and is clearly relevant to explaining his character and actions. Though it does get repetitive, as it keeps being brought up with less and less density in the descriptions. In another positive, when Mahoney’s familiarity with another guest is mentioned, there is a full clarification of how they knew each other, in a linear fashion.

“…Mahoney needs someone who can investigate from the shadows—enter Joe DeMarco, Mahoney’s fixer.” Chapter 6 introduces this guy by showing him shoveling concrete to build a fence, before describing his house and other characteristics, and family history. It is rare in this set of reviews to find a novel with such simple clarity of narrative structure. “DeMarco is no stranger to hunting down some of the very worst people Washington D.C. has to offer. In fact, he’s made a career of it. But as evidence continues to point towards the President, DeMarco is faced with an impossible situation: investigating a man who is quite literally untouchable.” Ah, that explains my earlier confusion: the hero is not going to spend this novel plotting on how to assassinate the President, he is merely trying to prove that the President is a murderer… It’s presented when Mahoney explains “that the National Archives had gotten a copy of a speech and on the back of the speech were notes in the president’s handwriting indicating that he may have conspired with Eric Doyle to have Brandon Carwright killed” (37-8). This is helpfully direct. Then, an explanation is given that Doyle retired from the military and started “milking the system” by getting “contracts” with the Pentagon. Doyle and his guys “were arrested twice for killing civilians in Afghanistan and both times they got off because the U.S. government helped them get off and because Doyle bribed the right Afghans. Doyle’s firm also hires itself out to scumbag dictators who don’t trust their own people to protect them.” And Doyle is “the president’s best buddy.” This plot and manner of storytelling drags readers into this story. Enough is explained about the agencies and practices involved for the reader to understand the sides in this conflict, and specific corrupt practices, without boring them with too much information. It seems Lawson is determined to win one of those awards with this one, as it seems to be a particularly hard-earned work of fiction.

The Title Erroneously Suggests: It’s the Antique-Hunter Who’s Been Murdered… 

C.L. Miller, The Antique Hunter’s Death on the Red Sea: A Novel (New York: Atria Books, February 18, 2025). Hardcover: $28.99. 304pp. ISBN: 978-1-668032-03-9.

**

C.L. Miller started working in publishing as an editorial assistant before starting novel-writing in 2022 with the first part of this Usa Today bestselling series, which began with The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder. “Freya Lockwood and Aunt Carole are on the hunt once again to return priceless stolen antiques and catch a dangerous criminal abord a cruise ship. When a painting vanishes from a maritime museum and a dead body is found nearby, the newly established Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole, are called to investigate. Following a lead that takes them aboard a glamorous antiques cruise sailing toward the Red Sea in Jordan, they quickly discover that the ships art gallery is filled with stolen antiquities.” The first sentences of this summary are restating the same general plotline. What is confusing is why amateur sleuths are called to a murder. Though they must have been just asked to investigate the stolen items. “Each antique is also listed in Freya’s late mentor’s journals that detail unsolved cases. In chasing a murderer with a stolen painting, they may have found something more sinister than they could’ve imagined… Their hunt soon turns deadly when they learn the enigmatic and dangerous art trafficker named The Collector could be on board. But on a ship full of antiques enthusiasts—plus some unexpected familiar faces—will Freya and Carole be able to discover the Collector’s identity and stop his murderous plans before the ship docks? Or will the killer strike again?”

The Prologue does a poor job of introducing this book. There is a brief moment when a specific Shakespeare folio is mentioned, but then the discussion gets very general and vague: “…you wouldn’t have done the wise thing…” What thing? Why is it wise? This can be a conversation about anything and between anybody. This is followed by a clearer article in Dedham Vale News that summarizes the crime being investigated and the person whose possessions have been stolen. Though instead of stating the worth of this specific stolen item, or the collection it belongs to, a general estimate is given for the worth of the global “black-market trade in art”. Chapter 1 also has a reasonably interesting start, as the narrator (one of the antique-hunters) describes finding a flea-bite on an item in her shop and pricing it down to account for this defect. Yet, something is just wrong with this writing style. It’s so stretched out with so little meaning delivered in very long sentences: “I really am fine on my own here if you want to travel like you used to…” a character says. Where is this going? What is the point of this line? Is it just trying to put readers to sleep? For example, here’s a sentence that should be exciting because it mentions murder: “It was as if Arthur had destroyed all that information before his murder or else someone had removed it after his death…” This is referring to the previous sentence that the narrator couldn’t find “any mention of people” this guy had “worked with”. How could anybody destroy mentions of themselves by other people? This makes no sense. The author seems to be hiding such absurdities by making the surrounding text unreadably boring, so nobody gets to the bits that make no sense. It’s thus impossible for me to keep reading this.

Xenophobia Amidst Confused Space Meandering 

Edward Ashton, The Fourth Consort: A Novel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, February 25, 2025). Hardcover: $29. 288pp. ISBN: 978-1-250286-33-8.

**

“A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (the inspiration for the major motion picture Mickey 17).” I thought I might have missed a famous film release. But no, Mickey 17 will be released next year, on April 18. Mickey7 (2022) was followed by a sequel in 2023. The original novel describes a space colonist who tries to survive in a beachhead alien colony, before being asked to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Clones of Mickey are introduced when he dies. This cloning of bodies to account for death in space (possibly natural given special distances) echoes my Cadatas’ Exploration of the Milky Way novel, which describes a realistic journey across the Galaxy; I wrote its first draft 5 years ago, but only published it for the first time earlier this year. Aside for writing these three novels, Ashton teaches quantum physics to graduate students in New York.

“Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood. That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.” This idea is introduced a couple dozen pages into this book, when the girl warns the guy that a bigger problem they have than possibly starving in space is that “Unity is coming for us…” Then there are digressive points about who “gives a s**t” about whom: “he gave a s**t about delivering the minarchs into Unity’s tender hands.” It is absolutely confusing why anybody would want to “vaporize” these guys. The summary makes it sound clearer, but reading through the text kind of only confuses what’s happening in this book.

“…Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity.” The first mention of Assembly notes that they are different from Unity because they make “every effort to learn all that can be learned about potential client species…” The opening section was specifically about learning about species, and that’s when Unity was in charge of the mission, so this makes no sense… The next mention is when the AI translator whispers that trying to replace him “with Assembly technology” is inadvisable. Then, there’s talk of winning a planet “for the Assembly”, so apparently there’s an interplanetary territorial conflict between these two organizations, with both trying to steal territory, rather than serve anybody’s good. This would at least be an interesting premise, but this is not exactly what this blurb is saying. “…More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions. When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three.” They try to kill the stickman to survive seemingly, though they decide on this before there is any clear threat. They are just afraid that if left alone with “minarchs, he’ll have them hunting us for sport in under a week…” This shows a general fear of the alien, or foreign, even when there is no real threat that would indicate the need for an aggressive offensive. “To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive. Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle…” I could not find who the third wheel in this triangle is, as I searched for “three” and other relevant terms. There’s a bit about Scarface killing his “lover”… It “asks an important question: how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?” Ah… maybe the writer of this story has had too many drinks, and that’s why it’s so incoherent…

Chapter 1 opens pretty well with a conflict between parties, as the narrator attempts to serve as a sort of ambassador on behalf of Unity, and meets a curious alien with giant proportions. The description of this alien body is well executed, with just enough details for the reader to picture it. On the other hand, this opening goes on to describe a negotiation before explaining what “Unity” is, or what the point of this discussion is. They are miscommunicating, and discussing mis-translations, without really getting to the point of what either side is trying to achieve. The next section includes a brief and helpful description of a “docking bay” and of the “ship”. After further chatter about translation quality, they chat about the “psychology” of the species they just encountered, but the main point on this is that they are believed to be “apex predators.” That’s not really “psychology”, but rather biology… I think. A further elaboration is that “they’d be bitchy as hell.” The characters slouch as they casually chatter about this stuff without doing much of anything. It is pretty difficult to read this type of prose without being tempted to take a nap. The further one gets in this novel the more confusing and nonsensical it becomes. Characters are challenging each other. They are referring to love and lovers without a coherent love-plotline. There are some lucid moments that are interesting and offer hope in the story getting good, but there are too many problems for those who are brave enough to march forward.

Medici Might Not Return in This Novel… 

Steve Berry, The Medici Return (New York: Grand Central Publishing, February 11, 2025). Hardcover: $30. 416pp. ISBN: 978-1-538770-56-6.

**

Steve Berry is a “former attorney”… I’m not sure if this means he was disbarred or he stopped lawyering to write… He founded International Thriller Writers. His first historical thriller was published in 2003. He has sold over 25 million books. He has written dozens of novels, and regularly writes introductions to others’ novels.

“…The latest installment in his… Cotton Malone series—now in development as a streaming series.” This series is about a bookseller and spy for the fictitious covert US intelligence agency Magellan Billet. There are 18 parts, and several half-parts to this series. The announcement of Amazon creating a streaming series based on this novel series was made a month ago, in November, so it will be a while before it is released.

The cover of this new novel reflects the money this series has made its publishers. The title is made in gilded thick-paint texture. There is a tablet map combined with a re-colored photo of Italy. It’s just a nicely polished artistic composition.

In this novel, Cotton goes “to Italy to solve a five hundred year-old mystery.” It is a growingly absurd trope that these investigators keep going abroad to solve antique mysteries. I mean, at least if a private-investigator stays in their own neighborhood, they know the players better than some impersonal agencies. But going to a foreign country, where you can’t be fluent in the language can’t be a realistic thing that has ever happened. “Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th century Pledge of Christ—a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries—now worth in the trillions of dollars.  But collecting that debt centers around what happened to the famed Medici of Florence—a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.” The issue of just how the Medici might return is addressed when Eric Casaburi confesses that he has “Medici roots”, as proven with “DNA evidence”. This guy is hoping to cash in on this heritage claim by using the quote in the myth of the worth of the relic to argue that the “ten million florins” was “loaned” to the Catholic church, and so the church now owns a descendant of the Medici “2.3 billion euros.” The investigator is concerned a success might bankrupt Catholicism. Well, it is a curious idea. Though too much is left vague for the reader to be serious interested in just how this can be probable.

The “Prologue” starts this story on the right foot as it clarifies who the Medici were, offering the details that are relevant to the central story. When knowledge of such histories is assumed in a historical novel, it tends to proceed without any actual history, defeating the genre’s presets. And it ends with a rival offering “the best collateral on this earth”, “what few in history have ever possessed”, in exchange for “ten million gold florins”: “The Pledge of Christ.” This plotline sounds familiar. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) described a search for evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child. Though it might have been another novel where Jusus’ mother’s cloth or the like was the goal of the hunt. Though searching for a mythical object is as old as Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica’s description of the search for the Golden Fleece. At least this is an ambitious and theologically complex idea… Though in this novel’s case, it’s puzzling what this “pledge” is: perhaps its referring to a relic of the cross that Christ was hung on? While there are some interesting sections, once the setup is revealed, the story fractures into abstractions. Chapter 5 starts with a description of a guy who tortured animals as a child. There is no immediately given connection between this guy and the search for the artifact etc. that this book is supposed to be about. By the middle of the book, there are just vague back-and-forth chats, such as: “Sadly, it is true…” “…But it is a lie…” There are many ways to have handled this story to make it interesting, but the author seems to have tried a bit, but then given in to abstractions.

Contradictions in the Setup Drive Absolute Confusion 

Seth Ring, Advent (New York: Blackstone Publishing, March 4, 2025). Hardcover: $28.99. 432pp. ISBN: 979-8-874692-57-5.

**

Seth Ring started life traveling between the US and Ghana. It is unclear what else he did for work before starting to write novels. He is known for LitRPG, or Literary Role Playing Games, or a combination of role-playing gaming and the science-fiction or fantasy genre; these worlds are game-like. His series include Titan and Battle Mage Farmer. “Advent is the first in an epic new series of alien contact, fast-paced military action, and thrilling adventure…”

All his life, Mark Fields has dreamed of joining the Defense Force to fight the vicious, alien Exlian, just like the rest of his renowned family.” Several pages in, there is a note that this Force is “the most prestigious of the three branches of the military”. But this note does not explain why the character wants to join this agency, or I guess it’s simply the army… A bit later, there’s an explanation that he had failed to get in, not because of his scores, but rather because of his “finances”, on his first try a couple of years earlier. Why would he need to pay the army to get in? This is not explained.

“So far, he’s… a dishwasher, trapped in a dead-end job with no powers, no money, and even fewer friends. Then an encounter with a dying woman changes everything—granting him the abilities he needs to join the training camps—and his life finally feels like it’s turning around, faster than a movie martial-arts montage (just ignore the weird cat).” This note that what he needs is “abilities” contradicts the idea that his “finances” were the reason he failed to get in earlier. A search for “abilities” leads to one explanation dozens of pages into this book: “Most Empowered had one skill per rank of their power as soon as they awakened, and every time they would add or develop another skill…” As this paragraph goes on, it just confuses whatever clarify this sentence achieved. It concludes that he should have had “four skills… Trait Selection, Material Transformation, Characteristic Absorption, and Non-displacement”, but “instead, he didn’t have any skills at all…” What? He has gained a new skill? But he is skill-less? And he had four, but needs one new one? This is just pure nonsense.

“…But the Exlian are voracious and myriad, and there’s more to Mark’s new powers than just leveling up. With the pressure mounting, it doesn’t take him long to realize the Exlian aren’t the only sinister threat lurking within the city…” There is a requirement in formulaic fiction that a bigger monster, devil or villain must emerge leading up to the climax, as the danger the hero faces must reach a high-point before the resolution. This must be why there is another “threat lurking”. “…You must fight the monsters … or become one yourself.” This is a different spin on the older monster-conquering formula. But it is not entirely novel in modern pop fiction for the hero to be an anti-hero.

This novel has a great illustration for its cover. It uses a rainbow of colors in creating a suitable for a video-game superhero imagery, with wolves looking up ahead. I hope to learn how to do these types of covers in the future. It’s something to aspire to.

Chapter “One” opens very dully with a ride on a train. The character looks at a strange city, but barely explains why it’s special. Are we in the future? In space? The first pages don’t really answer these basic questions. Things can be happening anywhere. It starts badly, and it keeps going badly.

A Conspiracy in Two Many Countries to Be Realistic 

SJ Rozan, and John Shen Yen Nee, The Railway Conspiracy (New York: Soho Press: Soho Crime, April 1, 2025). Hardcover: $29.95. 304pp. ISBN: 978-1-641296-60-1.

**

SJ Rozan is an architect who has been writing detective thrillers in New York City; she has been winning awards since the 90s. John Shen Yen Nee is a media executive in Los Angeles: past president of WildStorm Productions, and senior vice president of DC Comics, publisher of Marvel Comics, CEO of Cryptozoic Entertainment, and founder of CCG Labs. This novel is the follow-up to a collaboration between these two on the historical adventure-mystery The Murder of Mr. Ma.

“Judge Dee and Lao She must use all their powers of deduction—and kung fu skills—to take down a sinister conspiracy between Imperial Russia, Japan, and China in a rollicking new mystery set in 1920s London…” There are too many countries here for this to be a coherent “conspiracy”, as instead it must be an irrational “conspiratorial”-thinking kind of a story. The first “kung fu” mention appears in “Chapter Thirty-Three”, and there is mostly a threat of a fight, without details of how the fight is fought before the story digresses. There are other mentions when Voronoff and others claim to “know kung fu”. In the latter case at least there is a “series of punches, left, right, left, Dee slid back, slapping away each blow until the final one when he jammed Voronoff with a high and low double tiger claw trapping bridge hand…” Okay this goes on to be a decently-described fight.

“London, 1924. Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to the city to foil a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary.” Just because these characters are from different places hardly means that their countries are involved in the “conspiracy”? “Aided by Lao She—the Watson to his Holmes—along with several other colorful characters, Dee stops the illicit sale of an extremely valuable ‘dragon-taming’ mace.” When this item is described in its luxurious glory, there are questions if it is supposed to perform “magic”, or if it is even “real gold”. Apparently, the magic is that when this item is stolen “something terrible ‘appening to whosoever stole it” (23). They keep chatting about this item, without clearly explaining what its significance is, or its relevance to the larger “conspiracy” they are trying to uncover. “The mace’s owner is a Chinese businesswoman who thanks Dee for its retrieval by throwing a lavish dinner party. In attendance is British banking official A. G. Stephen, who argues with the group about the tenuous state of Chinese nationalism—and is poisoned two days later.” This poisoning could have been a dramatic scene, but instead of showing it, characters discuss that he was “Poisoned!” A bit of info is given about “a mixture of certain medicinal herbs”. Then, they blame the “butler” for disliking Chinese people. They seem to shift the fault onto the poisoning victim, as they agree that people who mistreat Chinese people deserve to be murdered… “Dee knows this cannot be a coincidence, and suspects Stephen won’t be the only victim. Sure enough, a young Chinese communist of Lao’s acquaintance is killed not long after—and a note with a strange symbol is found by his body. What could connect these murders? Could it be related to rumors of a conspiracy regarding the Chinese Eastern Railway? It is once again all on the unlikely crime-solving duo of Dee and Lao to solve the case before anyone else ends up tied to the rails.”

The story opens with a cryptic “Prologue” that is set in “1966”, but only mentions the year “1924” in its body. There is a mention of a “fight”, but no fight takes place here. It seems the authors are trying to repel all potential readers. Then, “Chapter One”, set in London, 1924, begins with a long paragraph where the trick of omitting letters is used to suggest a character has a heavy accent. Nothing clear is said in this paragraph: no explanation for what this guy wants, or what he’s trying to communicate. In the next paragraph Judge Dee at least explains they are there “to intercept” some kind of “men”. Apparently the other speaker did not ask in advance what guys they are after, or what they’d be trying to do as they lie in wait… This is pretty absurd. Generally, this is not a readable novel.

A Tale in Two Voices: Literary and Pop 

Will Thomas, Season of Death (New York: St. Martin’s Press: Minotaur Books, April 22, 2025). Hardcover: $28. 352pp. ISBN: 978-1-250343-60-4.

***

Will Thomas is a novelist specializing in Victorian mysteries about a Scottish detective in the 1880s. This Barker & Llewelyn series is his only series, of which this novel is the latest installment. The series was started back in 2004, with nearly a novel released per-year. Thomas is a librarian in the Tulsa City-County Library System.

“In late Victorian England, private enquiry agents… Cyrus Barker, along with his partner Thomas Llewelyn… find themselves in the middle of the deadly chaos when powerful forces align to take over London’s criminal underworld.” They have “a long, accomplished history—he’s worked with all aspects of society, from the highest (including the Crown and the government) to the lowest (various forces in London’s underworld).” Early in the book, there is a claim that they solved the “Jack the Ripper” murders, but “the powers-that-be had swept” it away. “I heard the decision went as high as Queen Victoria…” This one case covers the lowest and highest levels. “He’s been the target of murder attempts, character assassination, bombings and attacks upon his closest associates but never has he and his agency partner Thomas Llewelyn faced such destruction and potential disaster. The sudden collapse of a railway tunnel in the East End of London kills dozens and shuts down services all over the city.” This is described at the start of Chapter 10: “a sinkhole” was the cause of an “abandoned railway tunnel” collapse “in the wee hours”. Some of these people “fell from the houses above”, but some were “below”. The latter is strange: why would there have been anybody in an “abandoned” tunnel? This is explained in the following paragraphs, as apparently a “Mr. Soft” had invested in not only the cheap houses above, but also a “subterranean kingdom below”, which was living in that tunnel, where the “Dawn Gang” might have also hatched. “Meanwhile, a mysterious beggar calling herself ‘Dutch’ guides Barker and Llewelyn to an attempt by a powerful aristocrat to take over London’s criminal underworld.” This “Dutch” is not described up-close, and no explanation is given for her significance across the first few mentions. She “fades” away, or disappears. The trope of using a mysterious character, who is constantly missed, or searched for is not effective: it assumes readers will be interested in learning more about them, when readers might have been more interested if there were no sections describing what’s unknown without using this space to learn more of what is known… “…With a missing heiress and a riot at a women’s shelter acting as distractions designed to stop the duo from getting to the truth, Barker must relentlessly fight to reach the trust while Llewelyn wonders how a simple beggar woman can be the catalyst for such destruction.” I assume the “beggar woman” or “Dutch” will turn out to be a wealthy aristocrat (probably the “missing heiress”, who is only called by this moneyed-title, with rare mentions that she is “Miss May Evans” and an “American”, and then the claim that she is “an infamous demimondaine named Maud Kemple”, who was implicated in the “divorce proceedings over at least two aristocrats”) as a “surprise” plot-twist, but if this is always the trick writers use to show hidden power lies not in poor people’s good qualities, but rather in them being secretly rich and thus obviously powerful… It stops being a trick, and becomes a crutch.

“Chapter 1” opens with a first-person description of London and its oddities in November 1895. It is a well-executed description that invites readers to listen to this narrator: Llewelyn, the assistant investigator. The style of summarizing the social “woes” of London’s population, and the players involved echoes canonical British 19^th century texts (in a good way). For example, the use of the term “Dawn Gang” is immediately explained to refer to a group that strikes “in the early hours of the morning, when most constables had sore feet and just wanted to go home for a sausage and a bun…” However, by the last third in this book, the narrative is diluted, with pages of relatively empty dialogue. There are discussions of women’s role regarding garden parties and shelters, and the “demon… Chinaman”. Though most chapters, like Chapter 23, begin with some specific verbal drawings, like of the doorkeepers at the Palace of Westminster. They see these as they are waiting for an audience with Mr. Havelock. A rather empty conversation follows, but at least it’s related to the larger plot: they debate why they were kicked out of the mansion of Lady Danvers. They theorize it might have to do with illegal workers and anarchists. Usually, most ideas, theories, and characters are consistent across this book. Strings are tied together into the larger plot: this is a unique characteristic in this set of reviews. Too many other titles jump between ideas and abstractions without continuity. Here, if the Dawn Gang is mentioned as a relevant player, it is brought in again in later stages as the truth about the causes of problems for characters is revealed. There seem to be two writerly styles in this novel. One is highbrow, literary, and inserts thorough research, and narrative continuity. Another sprinkles in relatively empty chatter or dialogue in between that waters down the overall density of this novel. This might have been a great novel, if the writer thought a bit more about eliminating unnecessary bits, and doing a bit more research on how all the different ideas fit together.

Confusion Between the Creator of Winter, and a Representation of Winter 

Megan Barnard, The Winter Goddess: A Novel (New York: Viking Penguin: Penguin Books, March 11, 2025). Softcover: $18. 304pp. ISBN: 978-0-143137-68-9.

*

Megan Barnard is a professional author, who lives in Maryland. This is her second novel with Viking. The two are similarly in the fantasy magic genre, but are not tied together as a series. The first, Jezebel, was released in 2023. Neither has won any awards or the like before, which is unusual for this list of highly-promoted pop novels. The quality artistry in the design of the cover indicates Penguin invested some money into pitching this one to buyers.

“A goddess is cursed to endlessly live and die as a mortal until she understands the value of human life, in this inventive, moving reimagining of Irish mythology. Cailleach, goddess of winter, was not born to be a blight on humanity, but she became one.” Cailleach is a character that appears in Celtic mythology as a one-eyed hag who created winter and storms. Given this antique character, it is puzzling why Barnard made her beautiful, and turned her vengeful, instead of creative. I tend to borrow from mythology whenever I write fantasy, but I usually have to stay within the original rules of a mythological character’s elements. Why refer to a character as Thor, if there is going to be no thunder in a story? “She would say with scorn that it was their own fault: mortals were selfish, thoughtless, and destructive, bringing harm to each other and the earth without cause or qualms. One day, Cailleach goes too far. Thousands die, lost to her brutal winter. In punishment, her mother Danu, queen of the gods, strips the goddess of her powers and sends Cailleach to earth, to live and die as the mortals she so despises, until she understands what it is to be one of them. Though determined to live in solitude, Cailleach finds that she cannot help but reach for the people she once held in such disdain. She loves and mourns in equal measure, and in opening herself to humanity, hears tales not meant for immortal ears—including a long-buried secret that will redefine what it means to be a god… Story of a goddess punished—and a goddess reborn, as she discovers the importance of a life ephemeral… and what it means to truly be alive.” The answer in such stories is usually that the meaning of life is sex, which tends to be framed as “love”, sexual and friendly. This is a very low bar for meaning: animals love their family. Though obviously this is a common trope because of this universality: if everybody (or almost everybody) wants to love somebody; then, setting love as the goal for the rollercoaster plot is likely to satisfy most readers. In contrast, if wisdom turned out to be life’s meaning, this would lose some who are against the rigors of educational attainment.

The first chapter opens in the first-person of Cailleach. There is a pretty description of snow, but it is dampened for me by the realization that the author is confusing her mythology. Cailleach created winter, as opposed to merely being a representation of winter. This opening scene shows her observing already existing snow and wind, and then turning her body to match their characteristics. And this is followed by Danu declaring that she is now the “goddess of winter”. There are some Celts who still worship Celtic gods as a religion. For them, this would probably be a bit offensive. Like describing Jesus as the god of crosses… Maybe the problem is that this author has taken a formula of the punished-daughter who loses royal power for wickedness and has overlayed it by just adding the names of these gods without any research? This is not a good start for a novel I would want to read. But it would be fine enough for the author to edit a mythology, if it was executed with vivid details. Instead, most of this novel is filled with vague phrases such as, “I held that feeling winter close”. What? She has turned into winter? Then, she is that thing, and can’t hold herself close? Then, without a rational cause, a rift is presented between this mother and daughter to generate some sort of tension between the only two characters in this world. This is very artificial, and forced, and is unreadable.

Then, in the middle of this novel, Cailleach describes herself struggling with helping a drowning child by instinct, despite not wanting to interact with humans. Some human called Aine is screaming at her over this. This generates a conflict where Aine is threatening to leave because Cailleach is unfeeling, when this is her primary characteristic (so she should have known this before this point, when the saving of a child proves the opposite). I just can’t keep reading this. I’ve done some research into Wicca, and Celtic theology, and this butchery of magical history and theory is kind of… offensive… I’m not personally offended by this butchery, but the emptiness of the content in combination with the former is just unreadable.

An Empty Formula without Any New Details 

Dani Francis, Silver Elite (New York: Random House Worlds: Del Rey, May 6, 2025). Hardcover: $32.99. 528pp. ISBN: 978-0-593875-46-9.

*

This seems to be Dani Francis’ first book; I could not find any other bio details for her. Random House has done a good job on this cover’s design, though it is a bit general: a bird with wavy lines… The latter probably represent psychic communication lines? “The… hardcover will feature silver foil page edges, a premium dust jacket with foil…” There is also a map inside that clarifies the geography of this imagined world, with regions like the Red Post, Fairfield, Sanctum Point, and the Base Camp.

“In the first book of a… dystopian romance series, psychic gifts are a death sentence and there are rules to survival: Trust no one. Lie to everyone.” Why would anybody be able to “lie” in a world where lead characters are psychic and can tell when they are being lied to? “…And whatever you do, don’t fall for your greatest enemy.” The narrator ends up in “enemy territory”, and to make it out of there she sleeps with one of her captors? This is a very annoying pop trope. Women are regularly portrayed sleeping their way out of deadly situations. It’s rarely men who sleep their way out of equivalent situations, as men usually fight their own way out. No sane woman would seriously be aroused while in captivity. The opposite seems to be portrayed as propaganda to convince women that they should enjoy being dominated. In this case this captor is General’s son Cross Redden: “tall, tattooed”. Before speaking to this guy, she says, “I let my pulse race for him. I was attracted to him.” Such “romance” phrasing echoes across these books without any thought regarding if such pulse-racing has any relevance to what attracts people. A random tall tattooed guy would hardly be attracting in itself. Guys might have an immediate attraction to women based on their dimensions, but women are not wired for this. The dominance of men in publishing tends to create such unrealistic portrayals of women that fit their fantasies about this “other”, instead of attempting to speak with women to understand them.

“Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks. Lie to Everyone. But training for Silver Block can be deadly, especially when you’re harboring dangerous secrets and living in close quarters with everyone who wants you dead. And Whatever You Do, Don’t Fall for Your Greatest Enemy. As the stakes grow ever higher, Wren must prove herself to Silver Block. But that’s easier said than done when your commanding officer is the ruthless and infuriatingly irresistible Cross Redden, who doesn’t miss anything when it comes to her. And as war rages between Mods like her and those who aim to destroy them, Wren must decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect herself… and how much of the Continent is worth saving.”

“Chapter 1” opens with an attempt to horrify readers with a “suffocating darkness”, with a vague description of “the Blacklands” as full of “nightmares”, without any info other than that this place is full of “trees”. There is no reason for trees to be frightening. But the fantasy genre requires the author to introduce a death-threat to the main character in the opening lines to explain that readers should care about them because they are frightened. This brief horror-paragraph allows the author to then just do choppy dialogue with empty phrases, like the self-confessed “awkward conversations”: “Where are you going?” “Oh. Um. Nowhere. I was just getting dressed because I’m cold…” This was apparently a “lie”. Why would she like about where she is going, if she later confesses she was going to the village for a drink? Drinking can’t be illegal, if there’s a whole bunch od people doing it in the described pubs. The point is that she has to be “lying” to meet the promise in the blurb that she is lying to survive. This writer could have put in a bit more labor to figure out the big things that she’d have to lie about, but instead she just used this cheap reason. This is just a deeply terrible book. Yayks…

Funny Sexuality-Bending Parody of Grimm Tales 

Ry Herman, This Princess Kills Monsters: The Misadventures of a Fairy-Tale Stepsister: A Novel (New York: Random House Publishing Group: Dial Press Trade Paperback, June 17, 2025). Softcover: $18. 416pp. ISBN: 978-0-593733-08-0.

***

Another pretty cover with a delicate design. I am tempted to attempt this type of drawing. I think I would have to do simple brush strokes over a cloned photo that combines elements like a castle, a dragon, a river… It’s very tempting to try this in Corel Painter, which I think would be suitable. The “book design” is “by Alexis Flynn”. His Instagram page says that he is a Royal College of Art PhD researcher. His paint-on-paper drawings are abstract.

As if in response to my earlier remarks about bending Celtic theology, this book opens with a quote from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s “The Twelve Huntsmen” (1812), perhaps to show that the author has read this original story. Then, the “Prologue: The Tale of the Twelve Hunters, as It Has Been Inaccurately Recorded” directly indicates in this title that the interior of this book will not adhere to the dimensions for these characters that were set in the original. The rest of this prologue is written in a simple language, but it does delivery a pretty funny satirical parody of the initial tale by describing realistic emotions that would be going through the mind of a girl who is abandoned by a finance for another woman, and to get revenge gets together 11 girls that look like her, and has the 12 of them dress as men and pretend to be huntsmen. This is an example of simple language actually conveying a coherent, funny story (closer to Patterson), as opposed to other light-density novels that are not only light, but also stumble around in boring formulaic phrases.

“A princess with a mostly useless magical talent takes on horrible monsters, a dozen identical masked heroes, and a talking lion in a quest to save a kingdom—and herself—in this affectionate satire of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale The Twelve Huntsmen.” What? The princess fights the “heroes”? Doesn’t this mean that they are the villains from her perspective? Ah, after reading the prologue, I understood that the other huntsmen are her “twins” or lookalikes, and thus heroes like herself. But then, why would she need to take them on, when they are a gift who would in theory do as she commands, especially since they did agree to dress up as huntsmen for her… Ah, the rest of the summary clarifies that the heroine of this novel is the new fiancé, and not the old one who the prince/king abandoned to marry Princess Melilot. So, from her perspective, the huntsmen are the villains trying to kill her for the old fiancé to be able to marry her guy…? It really shouldn’t be this much work to figure out what the summary of a book is trying to say.

“Someone wants to murder Princess Melilot. This is sadly normal. Melilot is sick of being ordered to go on dangerous quests by her domineering stepmother. Especially since she always winds up needing to be rescued by her more magically talented stepsisters. And now, she’s been commanded to marry a king she’s never met. When hideous spider-wolves attack her on the journey to meet her husband-to-be, she is once again rescued—but this time, by twelve eerily similar-looking masked huntsmen. Soon, she has to contend with near-constant attempts on her life, a talking lion that sets bewildering gender tests, and a king who can’t recognize his true love when she puts on a pair of trousers. And all the while, she has to fight her growing attraction to not only one of the huntsmen, but also her fiancé’s extremely attractive sister.” In my research in Renaissance literature I found that dramatists tended to be homosexual, so plots where characters cross-dress should be taken as cross-dressing done by sexually-fluid characters, or those who want to attract these. Male homosexuality was punishable by death, but only men could work as actors, so it was necessary for them to cross-dress in nearly every play. And thus cross-dressing became a legal method of advertising a sexual preference. Thus, this turn from cross-dressing to lesbian love in this novel is suitable. “…If Melilot can’t unravel the mysteries and rescue herself from peril, kingdoms will fall. Worse, she could end up married to someone she doesn’t love.”

There are some good jokes throughout. I laughed at a paragraph about the princess (in first-person) starting “the tedious process of gathering a thousand teeth. After a few days spent dickering with dentists, I didn’t have anywhere near enough, so I started going door to door.” More details on this attempt follow. It’s great when fantasies seriously consider what the magical elements being described would be like if tried in reality. Though as I searched further into this book, most passages turned out to be hollow: repeating reflections about the points raised in the blurb. The beginning of chapters and sections appear to have been deliberately cleaned up with especially vivid details, like the pumpkin “turned carriage” that “lurched violently” in “Chapter Four: Going Places Is Bad, and You Shouldn’t Do It”. Though a few pages into this chapter, a random paragraph displays a wolf with “too many black, lidless eyes” and “eight legs”, with many other odd features, which is a fantastical sight to imagine. The dialogue explains this is a “spider wolf”. I think a teenager would enjoy reading this book. It’s full of silly incidents and ideas that draw a reader in.

Dimensions and Societies Generate Horror Through Nonsense 

Darkly Lem, Transmentation/Transcience: Or, an Accession to the People’s Council for Nine Thousand Worlds (New York: Blackstone Publishing, March 18, 2025). Hardcover: $27.99. 400pp. ISBN: 979-8-212185-99-8.

*

Yet another great cover. This one also uses a mutation of photos by bending them, but also adds glows with the strings that representative of magical connectiveness. Images are stretched and bent and otherwise manipulated in a curious way. The design succeeds in pulling the eye between the different places displayed: desert, forest, and city. This design is by Kathryn Galloway English. Her Facebook page shows her drawing with a pen on a large pad.

“From bestselling authors Darkly Lem…” I thought the s in “authors” was a typo, but no, “Darkly Lem” is a pseudonym for five authors: Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm. Their website lists one previous book they published together: an anthology of stories. The unifying element is that they mostly live in Durham, or Raleigh North Carolina. Eure and Turnbull are literary award-winning editors of Many Worlds. And Wehm has also been nominated for top awards, and has published some sci-fi popular novels. It is strange that these five authors decided to work together. I can’t imagine splitting novel-writing between five different people…

“…The first book” in a promised series with “a… multiverse of adventure and intrigue… Over thousands of years and thousands of worlds, universe-spanning societies of interdimensional travelers have arisen.” The term “interdimensional” never appears in the body of this novel… “Dimensions” does thankfully appear, in lines such as, “Sensing in three dimensions… Everything is all tangled…” No clarification is given why somebody cannot distinguish these three dimensions from each other, if they can travel between them… Later a more mundane mention describes “a three-dimensional tree of the data Duncan… pulled out…” In the second half of the novel, a character objects: “I can’t understand all that six-dimensional, multispacial nonsense.” This seems like a confession that the author doesn’t understand dimensional travel, and pretty much never addresses what this means, how it’s done and the like across this narrative. The surrounding lines are generic stuff that can be in any text, such as, “I don’t think I can.” When these authors attempt to be deep, they say things like: “he knew more about the true nature of reality than almost all of the trillion people of this universe, had even been to a half dozen worlds beyond the veil, but for all that extra-dimenational knowledge…” his life was worse than “the average Avancorpo junior executives”. This is all incredibly dull and unreadable.

“Some seek to make the multiverse a better place, some seek power and glory, others knowledge, while still others simply want to write their own tale across the cosmos. When a routine training mission goes very wrong, two competing societies are thrust into an unwanted confrontation. As intelligence officer Malculm Kilkeneade receives the blame within Burel Hird, Roamers of Tala Beinir and Shara find themselves inadvertently swept up in an assassination plot.” There has to be an “assassination plot” in this plotline because otherwise these guys are talking about cross-dimensional travel without coherently going anywhere. If there is an assassination; this at least lets the writers point to this as a climatic incident: formulaic box checked for the presence of death-fearing tension. “Meanwhile, factions within Burel Hird are vying for greater control over their society in a war of cutthroat machinations—at a heavy price. Elsewhere, two members of rival societies lay their own plans for insurrection—with ramifications that will ripple across the Many Worlds…” What? Earlier in this blurb there was a reference to “two… societies”, now these are the same two, or a different two?

The opening sections seem to deliberately confuse readers with vague references to cryptic societies, and the “Authors’” relationship to them. This is followed by a long character list, with too-brief descriptions of who they are. I’ve seen enough… Not recommended.

How Many Ways Are There to Describing Wading?

Eiren Caffall, All the Water in the World: A Novel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, January 7, 2025). Hardcover: $29.00. 304pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-250353-52-8.

**

Eiren Caffall is a musician based in Chicago, who has published on the environment in mainstream media. This seems to be her first novel. “A literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future. All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water.” This seems to be an attempt at adding a magical element to an environmental dystopia. It doesn’t really succeed, as every human “feels” water, unless they lost that sensation… “In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson.” The horrors of global flooding are handled too melodramatically in this book. The story jumps around in time, and into abstract repetitions of “murky water” and flooded buildings. Pretty much every page is about the characters “wading” through water, while they complain, “Why are we going so fast?” This annoying quality seems designed to repel those who care about the environment to convert them into not caring by nonstop whining without concrete linear narrative to explain what’s happening rationally.

“They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they’ve saved. Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war… both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival… This wild journey offers the hope that what matters most—love and work, community and knowledge—will survive.”

This story seems to begin with a long quote from somebody else, but on second look I guess it’s just framed this way by placing the “From the Water Logbook” byline at right-aligned. This paragraph describes a “hypercane” with up to “200 mph” winds that is theoretically possible. Then the opening chapter, “1: What We See” begins with feeling water and “weather”. A person is called “Amen”, which is confusing because the doom-and-gloom context suggests “Amen” would be a religious exclamation… Looking closer at the blurb, I realized that “Amen” is not a person (suggested by lines such as, “But the storm that took Amen…”), but rather is a simplification of the A-M-N-H abbreviation for the American Museum of Natural History. It was clearly not “taken” because the characters live on its roof across this novel… I just can’t keep reading this novel… I’ve recently written a lot about wading through water, but I’d like to think my characters do other stuff aside for wading and talking… Yayks.

Academic Fiction

In this next section, I am going to attempt to compare how recent pop novels handle fiction against how canonical authors handled this genre. These will be shorter reviews because these texts are already familiar to readers. I will just search through these works for clues why they are superior, and what modern writers should be learning from these, whose lack makes their attempts of relatively inferior quality. I am interested in solving these questions for myself, as I attempt to write fiction that is both enjoyable, and intellectually engaging.

What’s Great About Gatsby? 

James L. W. West III, Sarah Churchwell, eds., The Cambridge Centennial Edition of The Great Gatsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, January 30, 2025). Hardcover: $24.95. 508pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-009414-59-3.

****

The cover of this title has been newly digitally drawn with thick paint. I don’t know if this is intentional, but my pre-print version only has “The” without the rest of the title. Gatsby is popular enough that perhaps just a mansion with a pool is indeed enough to explain that this is what this book is… There are several illustrations at the back of the book, including a page out of this book’s handwritten manuscript, a photo of Scott and Zelda, a photo of James Rennie as Gatsby on stage, and the like. This Cambridge edition comes with their usual front-matter: a chronology, introduction, history, list of editions, and other information useful to researchers of fiction.

“The Great Gatsby is often called the great American novel.” Why, indeed? “Emblematic of an entire era, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of illicit desire, grand illusions, and lost dreams is rendered in a lyrical prose that revives a vanished world of glittering parties and vibrant jazz, where money and deceit walk hand in hand.” Are these grand claims factually true? What is “lyrical prose”: poetic and rhythmic elements, or writing with a beat that makes it memorable, including alliteration, and line breaks. I turned to a random page, 29, to check this. I did find alliteration in the first sentence: “I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare.” However, the conversation that follows is as empty as in some pop novels, with dull questions like, “How’s business?” Then, a descriptive paragraph appears, and it paints fine details of a woman’s dress, and her manner. The woman is questioned on her morality, as her husband is supposed to “object”, but she argues he is too “dumb” to do so. Then they talk about getting a police dog… None of this is relevant to explaining deceit or how wealth works in America… This must serve as a model for modern pop writers, who mimic this empty chattering style as an example of greatness. But the point of storytelling is to relate an interconnected plot that delivers a story that continually grabs the imagination. Including segments about random stuff that’s not central makes it difficult for a student to keep track of what happened in a section assigned as reading homework. This unmemorable quality is anti-poetic, as poetic elements are designed to help readers memorize verse. Though the descriptions, and curious references in conversations are pretty insightful, so this novel cannot be dismissed without those who puff this work being able to raise examples that are technically “great”.

“…Rich in humor, sharply observant of status and class, the book tells the story of Jay Gatsby’s efforts to keep his faith—in money, in love, in all the promises of America—amid the chaos and conflict of life on Long Island’s Gold Coast during the Roaring Twenties…”

Stream-of-Consciousness Philosophizing Correctly Executed 

Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting (London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, November 12, 2024). Hardcover: $18. 176pp. ISBN: 978-0-241677-10-0.

*****

This is a lesser-known work of Woolf’s. I ran a brief test on “Woolf’s” Orlando when I reviewed it earlier, and it matched James Muddock’s linguistic signature (group-G), which also includes “Dickens’” Tale of Two Cities, Conan Doyle’s White Company and other British classics. Woolf might have killed herself because she used up some residual Muddock texts she kept in her closet between his death in 1934 and 1941, when Woolf died. It is safe to assume Muddock probably also ghostwrote Street, whose essay and book version were first-published between 1927-30, or before Muddock’s death, and after most others in that Ghostwriting Workshop were dead.

“‘The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful’. In such conditions, Virginia Woolf takes to London’s streets in search of a pencil. The account of her journey—the people, the places, the pleasure—soon becomes one of the great paeans to city life. This collection also includes other wonderful essays, such as ‘How Should One Read a Book?’ and ‘The Sun and the Fish’.”

“Woolf’s” A Room of One’s Own is one of my favorite essays. The ideas in it drove many of my life-decisions, including my current semi-retirement in a tiny house of my own. So, I am curious to take a look at these essays that I haven’t read before. “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” opens with a typical for Muddock philosophizing. The problem is the lack of a pencil, so “Woolf” sets out in search for one. This simple act is turned into an adventure, and a moment for deeper reflection. What follows is seemingly a bunch of unrelated memories. A shopkeeper unwillingly selling something, an innkeeper fighting with his wife, and then a trip to Italy, and the sound of a kettle going off. Unlike other writers, here these ideas are connected, as the bowl that was being sold reappears. And all these thoughts are about the philosophical topic raised of why the speaker wants to take on the tedious task of walking about these shouting people in London’s streets, as opposed to remaining home in peace and warmth. This is indeed poetic language. For example, nothing is simple: “high among the bare trees are hung oblong frames of reddish yellow light—windows”. The speaker makes windows strange by describing their shape and color before naming what they are. This is how a painter, or a lifelong observer, used to describing things precisely sees a window, or as its shape and texture, instead of merely as a simple term in the vocabulary. This is a fragment from a very long sentence, but these ideas belong together in a string, and so this is the correct punctuation (134-5). As the story concludes, it is apparent that this is an example of how a professional writer finds a topic to write about when no grand ideas are apparent. It is possible to write a novel about the adventure of searching for a pencil through a city. There is an obstacle to overcome. When it is found, there is resolution. And in between something can be deduced or learned about life.

Another story, “Oxford Street Tide”, is an example of when this stream-of-thought manner of writing gets too wound-up in details to be easily understood, even by academics. It takes a couple of readings to understand a line like: “At one corner seedy magicians are making slips of coloured paper expand in magic tumblers into bristling forests of splendidly tinted flora—a subaqueous flower garden.” When I re-read it, I pictured origami makers. But when trying to briskly read this line, it blurred into strange and confusing concepts. Pages go by without a paragraph break. I tend to write long paragraphs too… probably because I’ve spent most of my life studying 19^th century British literature.

“On Being Ill” in discussing verse, points to the fact that it uses what is indeed poetic language. For example, there is a meter to, “a sound, a colour, here a stress, there a pause…” The first two phrases are around 2 syllables, the next two have 3 syllables with an exact metric structure: unstress, stress/ stress, unstress, stress”. Then, there is a questioning about “Shakespeare’s” greatness: “his overweening power and our overweening arrogance…” The next paragraph hints that the author is not that fond of “Shakespeare”, as one has had “enough of” him. Then, the author reflects that “even illness does not warrant these transitions” or the turn rapidly between “Shakespeare” and Augustus Hare. Even a mistake is here corrected by reflecting on the rule, instead of hoping readers won’t notice it.

I would be perfectly happy to read this book cover-to-cover. It is just delightful. But the job is to get on with these reviews.

Drunken Stream-of-Consciousness with Insights 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights (New York: Penguin Group: Penguin Classics, February 23, 2023). Softcover: £9.99. 240pp. ISBN: 978-0-241619-78-0.

****

I have read a few of Dostoevsky’s novels, but his puffed by this blurb short stories are unfamiliar. “‘White Nights’ tells of love and loss on the streets of St. Petersburg, ‘A Nasty Business’ presents the hilarious tale of a general dropping in on the wedding of a subordinate, while ‘The Meek One’ is an existentialist tale of marriage and tragedy.” Though these are novella-sized stories, as they stretch for nearly a hundred pages.

Some of the poetic nature of “White Nights” has been lost in the translation. Russian has more syllables, and there might have been more alliteration in the original. And this translation seems to have preferred fewer syllables in words to make it more readable. In this English version, it does not read particularly well. For example, the whining could have appeared in any of the pop novels: “It suddenly seemed that I, so alone, was being abandoned by everyone—that everyone was deserting me…” The one literary surprise is that the narrator confesses that after “living in Petersburgh” for “eight years” he has “hardly been able to make a single acquaintance.” What might have been a dull complain turns into an observation that should echo with a deeper pattern in human experience in big, crowded cities. This narrator, like “Woolf”, also sets out to observe the city, and study and draw portraits of its characters. In a curious twist, Dostoevsky finds it more interesting to talk with inanimate houses: “‘…in May they’re going to add a floor to me…’ Or: ‘I almost burned down and I was so scared’” (155). The main difference from pop here is that the narrator is vividly cognizant of what is happening beyond the dull, obvious exterior. A pop writer might just say, houses stood along the street. A canonical book must question what these houses are thinking.

This collection opens, without intros (as typical for this Penguin series), with “A Nasty Business”. The narrative starts by describing “three” generals, who are “sitting around a little table, each in a fine, soft armchair, quietly and comfortably sipping champagne as they talked.” Dostoevsky has the luxury (perhaps because of his literary rank) of gradually stopping to discuss the period, and the furniture. The reader is pushed as the narrator slowly ponders on one character who: “was a bachelor because he was an egoist; he was far from stupid but couldn’t bear displaying his intelligence; he particularly disliked slovenliness and enthusiasm…” Pop fiction tends to avoid most dives into a character’s psyche, or seems to confuse generalities with these types of specific observations about a person. However, across these prolonged reflections, the narrator fails to explain why these guys are meeting or why this is significant to the larger plot. When they finally begin speaking, they address the “matter of humaneness… the peasantry, the courts, agriculture, tax-farming…” Then when a “syllogism” is used, it is called as such: “I am humane, consequently, they love me.” Just as the conversation seems to be headed to revolutionary matters, it drunkenly diverts into echoes, and then they realize they have to end the gathering because of the late hour. And all that work done explaining who these generals are is wasted as the lead character departs, and is followed to the street where he has a very light dialogue. If pop novels are to be ridiculed for such stumbling lack of focus, or connection between ideas, the same critique should be addressed to Dostoevsky here (1-11).

Opening this collection at a random page takes us back in an echo to the scene of the drinking generals: “he… sensed that he had enemies among the guests. ‘That’s probably because I was drunk before…’” (52). These repeating paranoias, and drinking is hardly a sign of great writing. There are deep moments of insight, followed by similarly empty passages as what appears in pop. Thus, pop writers who stumble into these mistakes should not feel too bad: they have good canonical company.

An Extreme of Postmodern Digression 

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (New York: Penguin Group: Penguin Classics, January 26, 2023). Softcover: £20.00. 784pp. ISBN: 978-0-241552-66-7.

****

I recently found myself citing Tristram (1759) as an example of digressive writing done properly, so I was glad to see this novel in the list of available books. In my stylometric study of Tristram, I found that it matched the linguistics of group-F, which was ghostwritten by William Dodd (1729-1777). Dodd was the only ghostwriter (from the centuries I reviewed) who was executed. Dodd was a professional forger, and he died trying to forge a transfer of funds from an aristocrat to himself, while working for this aristocrat. Dodd’s other texts included “Henry Fielding’s” Tom Jones (1749) and David Hume’s philosophy. The move towards absurd convolution was unusual for his canon, but matched his taboo-breaking character.

“‘L-d! said my mother, what is all this story about?—A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick—And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard.’” This quote is judged to be representative of why this novel is great by Penguin’s editors. Indeed, it summarizes that most fiction is insignificant, and pointless, and a lie… “The text and notes of this volume are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, with a critical introduction by Melvyn New and Christopher Ricks’s introductory essay from the first Penguin Classics edition.” While other books in this series can be published without introductions, Tristram is not one of those. It must be explained, or readers will miss why it is unique in the history of literature. Additionally, since Tristram is available in the public domain, while some pieces by “Woolf” and others in this series is not yet public, a new edition has to include some editorial content, or readers would do better to find the free version on Gutenberg.

“Laurence Sterne’s great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first ‘postmodern’ novel.” The term “postmodern” refers to a digressive, and unreliable narrator, disruptions of linear time, and reflections about the art of writing, instead of merely reporting a story from start-to-finish. Tristram meets most of these by constantly interrupting the narrative with digressions and failing to get far from the time of the narrator’s birth without jumping to other times. In fact, “Chap. I.” begins with the time when the narrator’s parents “begot” him. He philosophizes that most “of a man’s sense or his nonsense… depends upon… the different tracks and trains you put them into…” I skip over some words in this passage because it is interrupted with digressions that make this larger point more difficult to grasp. Tristram was a significant literary steps because it was a declaration of rebellion by authors, who now insisted they did not have to execute realistic compositions that made falsehoods appear to be real and consistent. They could instead just digress and chatter about whatever came to mind. Of course, to pull this style off, only interesting things have to come into the writer’s mind. If a writer keeps repeating the same thing in their head, they really should censor themselves. Repeating the same thing is self-plagiarism: it is dull. A good digressive writer manages to find something interesting to relate in whatever the see or happen to think about.

“Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate ‘hero’ Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick.” A very lengthy “indenture” marriage agreement is presented where Walter the merchant takes responsibility of his family, with his property at-risk. Dr. Slop is “the man-midwife” who delivered the narrator. His father ponders regarding this that “the Doctor must be paid the same for inaction as action.” Corporal Trim is described as “an excellent valet, groom, cook, sempster, surgeon and engineer, superadded that of an excellent upholsterer too”, as he served as the carpenter of his “uncle Toby’s house”. This list seems strangely long, but it is probably referring to the many pseudonyms of a generalist ghostwriter.

“A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations.” The last point is pretty funny. Indeed, the difficulty a reader has getting through this novel should instruct writers on the limits of digression: if you go too far in this direction, you turn adorable quirkiness into unreadable nonsense. I am glad to have taken this tour into this novel. Good to be refreshed about the extremely of digression to know the lesser degrees of it that appear in pop. Many sections of this book are unreadable, while many others are funny and easy to read. In contrast, the full postmodern Joyce’s Ulysses is entirely unreadable, and is designed to be so.

Many Answers for: What to Live for?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Penguin Group: Penguin Classics, January 4, 2024). Softcover: £24.00. 1056pp. ISBN: 978-0-241655-56-6.

****

“A deep, complex examination of the crucial philosophical questions of human existence, from one of the world’s most renowned novelists. ‘The mystery of human existence lies not in staying alive, but in finding something to live for.’” Earlier in this review set I mentioned that the point-of-existence in most pop novels tends to be love. Well, this is an example of that rival, unpopular perspective, but it is shrouded as a goal that is a space that can be filled with “love” by those who prefer this, while with “knowledge” or another ingredient by others. I searched for “live for” to find just what answers are given. Alyosha says: “I want to live for immortality…” Then, the narrator explains: “had he decided that God and immortality did not exist he would have immediately become an atheist and a socialist” (40). Though later sections mention that merely staying alive is in itself the point (89). Then, the idea is raised: “Mankind will find within it the strength to live for virtue, even if it doesn’t believe in the immortality of the soul! It will find it in love of liberty, equality and fraternity…’” (110). Indeed, theological motives of living to get to Heaven are the more typical reasons given in pop literature, as opposed to mere mortal love. Though as this moralist argument repeats, it turns into a sermon, and doesn’t really offer anything new for the reader to chew on. A random page in this book tends to include empty phrases that modern writers are copying after deluding them in more of this sort, such as: “And there was much more, which I cannot remember and cannot enter here.” But this passage does go on to explain that a guy told the narrator to “live for me!” And then reports that this guy died shortly thereafter, explaining why the narrator is circling around this idea, of what he should live for (375-6). There are echoes of people feeling alone, or being with others. With a few concrete details about where somebody went and what they did. It is difficult reading, as general statements tend to be intermixed with realistic horrors like: “he found taking his socks off a positive torture: they were not very clean, and neither was his linen, and now everyone could see this. Above all, he did not like his feet, for all his life he had considered the big toes on both of them to be deformed, especially a certain coarse, flat, inward-turned toenail on the right foot…” (620-1). The embarrassment this guy feels is something readers can sympathize with, and it is delivered with enough vivid detail to bring readers into this world, and to really make them feel this character’s pain.

“The murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, driven to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family’s rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother, Smerdyakov. Dostoyevsky’s dark masterwork evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur, and everyone’s faith in humanity is tested.”

Any modern writer who discusses the “psychology” of characters should read this novel to gather inspiration or research for ways to approach presenting what people are feeling, and thinking.

Life Is… Above Love, or Sexism? 

Anton Chekhov, About Love (New York: Penguin Group: Penguin Classics, February 23, 2023). Softcover: £9.99. 208pp. ISBN: 978-0-241619-76-6.

***

Most world literature classes tend to include some of Anton Chekhov’s short stories, agreeing with this publisher’s believe they are the “greatest ever”. “They offer unforgettable character, crystalline expression, and deep, powerful mystery.” I will explore these claims in this review. “Collected here are five of his very best tales, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’, ‘The House with the Mezzanine’, and the trilogy of stories, ‘The Man in the Case’, ‘Gooseberries’ and ‘About Love’.” I did read all these stories in my Russian literature classes. It is unlikely that they would be assigned so often if they were not outstanding.

“The Lady with the Little Dog” stands out as uniquely memorable, perhaps because it’s a simple painting of a beautiful woman with an adorable dog who is seduced into an affair, after flaunting these gifts at a boardwalk. From this, it is apparent that this is an “unforgettable character”. The seducer’s wife is described as his age, but seeming to be twice older (since she is a woman). “She was a tall, black-browed woman, plain-spoken, pretentious, respectable and—as she was fond of claiming—’a thinking woman’.” The seducer dislikes her because of this thinking quality, and deceives her by cheating as a sort of vengeance. The idea that women should not be “thinking” still echoes in modern pop, and perhaps this story had a significant impact on this seemingly endless trend. Though guys had been describing the beauty in brainless women since the first male-authored books. Regardless for the immorality of what is being said, Chekhov succeeds in briefly painting these characters, as he might in directions to a play. Readers might know the type of person being described without needing further details.

What about “crystalline” or clear expression? Yes, the previous description was clear, concise and delivered in a digestible manner. But is Chekhov always clear? I turned to a random page in “The Black Monk”. “Here I am writing articles and exhibiting at shows and winning medals… They say Pesotsky has ‘apples as big as your head’ and that he made his fortune with his orchard. Pesotsky is monarch of all he surveys…” He then turns from this self-puffery to questioning what will happen to his “garden when I die?” (86-7). Chekhov seems to be coming through to ask for immortality as an author beyond his own death. Though he then says: “The whole secret is love, and by that I mean the keen eye and head of the master looking after his own place…” Then, he contemplates that his daughter might marry and “have children and then she’ll have no time to think about the garden…” He worries that the guy she marries might “rent the garden out to some market-woman” who will ruin it “within a year!” An insult against all “business women” being “like the plague!” follows (88). I don’t think in retrospect these are particularly good stories… I mean they are clear. But they clearly express sexism without giving these women enough dimensions to defend who they are, and why they have value. I’m going to leave Chekhov now: it’s pretty depressing thinking about misogyny. 

The Split-Personality Fiction That Modern Psychologists Adopted as Fact 

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (New York: Penguin Group: Penguin Classics, September 7, 2023). Softcover: £16.99. 224pp. ISBN: 978-0-241552-68-1.

***

In my stylometric study, I tested two of “Stevenson’s” novels and they matched two different groups: C (Kidnapped) and G (Treasure Island). Dr. Jekyll (1886) is closer to the latter, so it was probably ghostwritten by James Muddock, who I mentioned a few times in this set of reviews. Because these 1880s stories are in the public domain, Penguin has rightly included some introductory materials to distinguish this edition. There is a chronology, an introduction, and guidance for further reading.

“Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal tale of personality and evil, now in a… new clothbound edition.” There are several lines in this novel that echo this idea: “All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” I don’t think this a point-of-pride for this novel. These are melodramatic echoes that generalize a character as “pure evil”. Melodrama became Muddock’s regular escape when he was writing in a lighter or quicker style; in the body of this novel, there are many exclamations, such as: “A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing…” But unlike in bad melodramas, this paragraph goes on to discuss a specific confrontation with a rival… returning again to melodramatic theologizing about praying to God (132). Writers who try to learn from this example might err by just borrowing exclamations of “fear”, without the context that explains why these characters are afraid. Returning to the earlier point, Hyde is in the same body as Jekyll, but the two of them are being separated partly to be able to exclaim with panic that a specific person is evil-incarnate. As in this other line: “Evil, I fear, founded—evil was sure to come… I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer… is still lurking in his victim’s room. Well, let our name be vengeance…” (43). By classifying a person or entity as “evil”, the others are given permission to violently hunt them down and murder them, without losing their “hero” status, and in fact a “hero” has to kill someone “evil” to reaffirm themselves as the Alpha-Hero. Such evil-casting appears in almost every modern pop novel, and perhaps they would be better served by avoiding this simplification.

“Published as a ‘shilling shocker’, Robert Louis Stevenson’s dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality.” It is not good if a fiction has birthed a psychological concept that is now widely regarded as the truth. Muddock was probably referring to “the split personality” of a ghostwriter who must take on different tints to write as the masculine “Stevenson” versus the feminine “Virginia Woolf”. He explored this masculine-feminine duality in Orlando. A writer must take on a different personality to write believably from the perspective of contrasting characters, and a ghostwriter even has to change the broader style of the whole novel to fit a different authorial biography. It is, then, absurd, for psychologists to pick up on this sane ability to see the world from murderous and charitable perspectives alike in a writer, and to apply this as a personality-illness in ordinary people. It is not a defect when a person switches between being angry and sad, or murderous and loving. That’s the human condition. If anybody is any one of these extremes, they are the abnormality. In the body of the novel, “Stevenson” writes: “For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers” (141). This passage confirms that the author is speaking through this narrator by equating a fictional “plot” with the magical split within the character of Hyde.

“…The story of respectable Dr Jekyll’s strange association with ‘damnable young man’ Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde’s true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity’s basest capacity for evil.” The notes clarify things, like explaining that a character investigating this mystery considers two theories: “that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll; and that Hyde is Jekyll’s illegitimate son”, early in the search (163). Such notes should help readers who might otherwise be lost by vague references in the text. There is much about this novel that could be improved by cutting out repetitive sections. This is why most people today are familiar with imitative portrayals of Hyde and Jekyll, and few are still reading this novel itself, unless it is required-reading.

Werewolf Craze Starter: The Male Ego as the Wolf that Demands Attention 

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (New York: Penguin Books: Penguin Classics, March 4, 2025). Hardcover: $18. 256pp. ISBN: 978-0-143137-82-5.

***

“Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s iconic countercultural novel”, Steppenwolf (1927), “about the search for authenticity in an inauthentic world, in a new translation.” Hesse was a German-Swiss author, who spent three years as a bookshop apprentice before quitting, then started a clock mechanic apprenticeship. This didn’t work out, and he returned to working in a bookshop and then became an author within a year, back in 1896, decades before this mature novel was published. This Penguin edition includes a translator’s note, and afterward. This is relatively brief for a Penguin scholarly edition. There is what initially seems like a strange section called “Harry Haller’s Notebooks”. A bit into this novel, in the first-person “Editor’s Preface” the narrator refers to receiving “a haulier” from a “stranger” called Haller, and then reading seemingly info that is reported in what follows. This explains that this novel is mostly the contents of these “Notebooks” that are attributed to somebody other than the author in the byline, or Hesse. This is a standard approach for early 20^th century and 19^th century books, as editors frequently introduced novels as true stories about mysterious narrators who are distanced from the personality of the author.

“At first glance, Harry Haller seems like a respectable, educated man. In reality, he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society, and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters—accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe, and the bewitching Hermione—the misanthropic Haller undergoes a spiritual, even psychedelic, journey, and ultimately discovers a higher truth and the possibility of happiness. This blistering portrait of a man who feels himself to be half human and half wolf was the bible of the 1960s counterculture, capturing the mood of a disaffected generation. It continues to resonate as a haunting story of estrangement, redemption, and the search for one’s place in the world.”

Werewolf stories are indeed very popular today, though they have lost some of these deeper implications. The novel does not start promisingly. The narrator confesses he is “gently killing time in the only way I know how to, unworldly and withdrawn as my life is…” He describes reading, before diving into feeling “exceptional pain… exceptional worries” and “despair”. This is all very melodramatic. A few paragraphs in, there is a mention of the point of this story: “the bored, dozing half-and-half god and the slightly greying half-and-half human being singing the muted psalm—will look just as alike as twins…” This explains that the werewolf is a symbol for the god within people, as opposed to the animalistic, simple wolf. Amidst the long paragraphs there are curious phrases: “I long to do daringly stupid things: tear the wigs from the heads of a few revered idols, stand the fares of some rebellious schoolboys… seduce a little girl, or twist the neck of the odd representative of the bourgeois powers that be…” This explains why this book was counter-cultural. Then, he trots down roads. But instead of diving into just what this guy does as a wolf, he reflects on abstract ideas: “Nothing that was over and done with was a matter for regret.” This hardly pulls readers in, or allows them to focus on this narrative. The character describes himself as “mad”, and thus only deluding himself with being the “Steppenwolf… a beast that has strayed into an alien and incomprehensible world and is no longer able to find its home, the air it is used to breathing or the food it likes to eat…” There is a brief realistic line between many melodramatic abstractions: “I wolfed down a fair portion of the liver cut from the body of a slaughtered calf.” But this is not really wolfish. The narrator gets so tired of himself by the end that he “spat at the Harry in the mirror, I kicked out at him, shattering him to pieces.” I hope I am never assigned this book in any literature class, or assign it to others. It’s just an impossible read. It’s stream-of-consciousness of a guy who is entirely self-obsessed, and his wolfishness is used to convince the reader to be interested in this self as well… But it didn’t really succeed in pulling me in.

Women Are Boring Because We Locked Them in a Courtyard… 

Khadija Mastur, The Women’s Courtyard (New York: Penguin Books: Penguin Classics, July 15, 2025). Softcover: $18. 320pp. ISBN: 978-0-143138-06-8.

**

“A feminist classic of Partition literature”: referring to the violence and trauma connected to the partition of India from Pakistan. “…A newly revised translation by Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell.” Rockwell is an American translator (with a PhD in this field) who has specialized in translating Indian classics into English. She won the Booker for translating in 2021 Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand. Khadija Mastur (1927-82) is a Pakistani Urdu-language storyteller. Women’s Courtyard was first-published in 1962 as Aangan; it was the first of her two novels.

“Set in the turbulent decade of the 1940s, The Women’s Courtyard provides an inverted perspective on the Partition. Mastur’s novel is conspicuously empty of the political pondering and large national questions that played out, typically, in the arenas of men. Instead, it gives expression to the preoccupations of the women in the courtyard, fighting different battles with loud voices.” Oh, no… Whenever, women are silenced from addressing politics, this can’t be a humanitarian text. Women being happily isolated to a “courtyard” sounds like a Stepford Wives nightmare, rather than a “feminist” ideal… “Chapter 1” opens by hinting that this work is anti-feminist, or meant to bore readers: “She’s sleeping soundly…” Mentions of sleep in the opening paragraphs tends to make readers drowsy. “The novel follows a Muslim girl, Aliya, and her family, about and around the climax of the Independence struggle. While the national struggle rages on the street, Aliya and the other women in the courtyard are tethered hopelessly to their own problems of life and death… An experience in suffocation.” But this experiment is practiced on the reader, who is suffocated by the mundanity of the lives of these women, who are thus made repelling, and uninteresting. Such bored views of women are likely to convince men to avoid talking to women, assuming they would have nothing interesting to say. “Within the strict religious and social framework of a rigid Muslim family, there is a purdah between Aliya and the rest of the world. While the men in Aliya’s family wage politics, get beaten up, and go to jail in the unseen outside, their families back home are forced to wait in deteriorating conditions, trying desperately to hold up the social structure that confines them.” I searched for “beaten” to figure out if these incidents are dramatically portrayed. A couple dozen pages in: “the barber’s wife came to call, wondering what terrible deed Safdar’s father and grandfather had committed to be beaten with shoes in front of everyone…” Instead of explaining what this beating was about, the author mentions that it made “Salma Aunty” act as if she was “dead”, as “she stopped dressing properly and never touched a comb to her hair”. Women are only allowed to express their uniqueness through their outward appearance, so seizing grooming makes her as-if-dead. This is a depressing perspective. I would have been happy to read about the politics of the Partition. But it seems the Brits have censored books that honestly describe this event, in favor of this type of light coverage that focuses on Indian women being boring gossips. This is not what “feminism” should look like, and people should stop using such works to exemplify what this term means. This might be why guys tend to denigrate “feminists”, without having a clear understanding of this movement.

Academic Non-Fiction

In this section, I am going to review some academic titles. This is usually my specialty in PLJ reviews. Though I received most of these titles from NetGalley, whereas I usually receive printed copies from the publishers. I tend to choose only titles I am already interested in, and those with denser academic value. In this case, I requested a wide array of titles, many of which lean towards trade popular writing, instead of being the type of academic rhetoric that I usually review highly. So, these review marks might be relatively low, given my high standards for non-fiction, which I expect to be thoroughly researched.

The Wrong Way of Presenting Murders at a Brazilian Diamond Mine 

Alex Cuadros, When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon (New York: Grand Central Publishing, December 3, 2024). Hardcover: $32. 352pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-538701-50-8.

**

The story “of the Cinta Larga, a tribe that had no contact with the West until the 1960s and came to run an illegal diamond mine in the Amazon. Growing up in a remote corner of the world’s largest rainforest, Pio, Maria, and Oita learned to hunt wild pigs and tapirs, and gathered Brazil nuts and açaí berries from centuries-old trees. The first highway pierced through in 1960. Ranchers, loggers, and prospectors invaded, and the kids lost their families to terrible new weapons and diseases. Pushed by the government to assimilate, they struggled to figure out their new, capitalist reality, discovering its wonders—cars, refrigerators, TV sets, phones—as well as a way to acquire them: by selling the natural riches of their own forest home. They had to partner with the white men who’d hunted them, but their wealth grew legendary, the envy of the nation—until decades of suppressed trauma erupted into a massacre, bloody retribution that made headlines across the globe.” Up until this point, I had no idea if this is a work of fiction or non-fiction. It seems to be fiction because the story focuses on three young characters, and describes events from their autobiographic perspective. “Based on six years of immersive reporting and research,” it “tells a unique kind of adventure story, one that begins with a river journey by Theodore Roosevelt and ends with smugglers from New York City’s Diamond District. It’s a story of survival against all odds; of the temptations of wealth and the dream of prosperity; of an ecosystem threatened by our hunger for resources; of genocide and revenge. It’s a tragedy as old as the first European encounters with Indigenous people, playing out in the present day…”

The “Prologue” opens on November 9, 2023 in Brazil, where the limping Nacoco Pio is accused of being among the “members” of his “tribe” who “took the lives of several prospectors” back in 2004 by a Judge. The story loses me as the author describes what Pio is thinking: it’s never a good sign that research has been done when the author says he can read a character’s mind, instead of reporting what this person said to them in an interview. After a long digression that distracts readers from the subject at hand, Pio is said to have “tried to stop the massacre”, and so he pleads innocent.

Chapter “1: A New Kind of Yearning” begins absurdly by arguing: “Pio could never forget the first time he saw a white person.” Would this really be that significant, if he saw a lot of them afterwards? And why does he call himself “wild” before this meeting, as if adopting concepts of barbarism imposed by colonialism? The next paragraph also begins absurdly: “Of course, the forest also provided sustenance…” The previous paragraph said it was a good place to hide, but it doesn’t need to be stated that there’s food in the forest…

There are many ways this book could have been written that would have made this narrative interesting and sympathetic, but the way it is written is not that way. There are curious fragments about getting a “bee hive”, but the details of being stung while getting it are omitted, as the author rushes forward to describe other foods. I turned to a random page, later on, and found this: “One of Pio’s most profound regrets, later in life, was that he didn’t give school more of a chance…” There’s a mention of him learning “to read” “more or less”, before a sentence leaps to add that he “even got along with the white kids”. What does reading have to do with tolerating white children, who were also trying to learn to read? This is an unreadable book: conclusion.

The Scarlet Letter Authors Planted on a Woman Possibly Driven to Suicide by Such Accusations, or Murdered to Suppress Her Truth 

Kate Winkler Dawson, The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne (New York: Penguin Group: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, January 7, 2025). Hardcover: $30. 336pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-593713-61-7.

**

“…Journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for” two firsts… “Catharine Read Arnold Williams” (1787-1872) “threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River” (1833). This was one of Williams first books; though her career only lasted for a few years, between around 1828-45. “The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter” (1850).  

“On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide… or something much darker?… But the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.” Sinners “travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—including ‘forensic knot analysis’ and criminal profiling (which was invented fifty-five years later with Jack the Ripper)—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given.”

This book does not start well, as the “Prologue: The Advocates” begins with a detailed, digressive description of the co-author (who is not mentioned on the title-page), while they are standing over a place where Cornell died. The description meanders onto their journey of investigation, instead of getting on with the investigating. Then there is a vague critique of Fall River’s moralist leanings, instead of dealing with facts: a good point, but this intro is making the same mistake. Then, there’s a critique of Hawthorne basing his novel on “people’s response to the crime”, instead of on the tragedy of the murdered woman.

Then, “Chapter One: The Durfee Farm” opens as if it is a novel, instead of non-fiction. Cathine is said to have “stepped on the wooden front porch” and the rest on July 1, 1833. These details could not have appeared in the letters and the like from this period, so this is a fictional portrayal of events, instead of one that uses facts to arrive at the truth. One of the only quotes in the couple of pages that follow is from Fall River, so it is likely that the surrounding text is a summary with fictionalized narration from this earlier study, instead of the promised solution to the mystery.

To check for new promised evidence, I searched for the key terms from the blurb. Around half-way into the book “knot” analysis is mentioned for the first time. Back in December 1832, the “committee of investigation” had examined for the first time “the knot used to tie the noose that strangled Sarah. It was curious, a clove hitch knot, one not commonly used by laborers”. But by the end of this paragraph, the author confesses that both in the initial inquiry and in modern testing, the “importance of the knot was also very misleading.” This indicates that this “knot” evidence is not new, and does not help to solve the case… One problem was that William Durfee was both a suspect (because he regularly used this unique knot) and involved in the investigation. And this guy argued that Cornell could not have tied this knot tightly enough herself. This echoes several times across the following pages. Throughout the theory this book keeps repeating is that she was just “depressed” and killed herself with a fancy knot (as a woman her capacity to tie a complex knot was questioned). Nowhere in this book is any “new” forensic insights offered into this knot. All evidence comes from the initial trial, and probably mostly from the book that was written about it back then.

This is a terrible true-crime book. It does not contribute anything new to helping to solve this crime, which is of primary interest to feminists today. The claim that Cornell killed herself, and was not at all a heroine, or a victim of a sexist society just takes the air out of this feminist myth, after Hawthorne already trampled over it by suggesting a public reputation-lynching was the thing that drove the narrative. It is a modern concern that a reputation-lynching can lead to suicide (given online bullying), but Cornell faced this lynching after her death…

Interesting History of Humans Recording and Understanding Sun Spots 

Pierre Sokolsky, The Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star (New York: Columbia University Press, October 8, 2024). Hardcover: $32. 320pp. Index, illustrations. ISBN: 978-0-231202-48-0.

****

“On the surface of the Sun, spots appear and fade in a predictable cycle, like a great clock in the sky. In medieval Russia, China, and Korea, monks and court astronomers recorded the appearance of these dark shapes, interpreting them as omens of things to come. In Western Europe, by contrast, where a cosmology originating with Aristotle prevailed, the Sun was regarded as part of the unchanging celestial realm, and it took observations through telescopes by Galileo and others to establish the reality of solar imperfections. In the nineteenth century, amateur astronomers discovered that sunspots ebb and flow about every eleven years—spurring speculation about their influence on the weather and even the stock market… A history of knowledge of the Sun through the lens of sunspots and the solar cycle… From the earliest recorded observations of sunspots in Chinese annals to satellites orbiting the Sun today, and from worship of the Sun as a deity in ancient times to present-day scientific understandings of stars and their magnetic fields…”

The division of this book’s chapters is confusing in a way that seems to skew towards Europe. For example, the Russian and Chinese are mentioned with a focus on omens, as if their perhaps earlier findings were mere superstitions. And instead of just crediting Islam and Mesopotamia with founding this field, they are only mentioned as the “Roots of Western Cosmology”. As usual a puffed European byline is the only one mentioned in a chapter of his own: Galileo.

The “Preface” announces this book was conceived as an introductory science textbook for non-scientists. It also addresses my previously noted concern: “The first five chapters… follow a historical order…” So, it seems Russia and China did start progress in this field, which tends to be credited to much later western European scientists? And there is a mention that the “Muslim empire” had a “highly original” scientific study of the astronomy. The “Introduction” does a good job of describing what a Russian monk in a heatwave and a Chinese court astrologer must have experienced when they recorded early spottings of sun-spots.

“1: Sunspots as Omens: Russian and Chinese Observations” jumps in to what seems to be the first recorded finding of sunspots in Russia in 1364 in the Nikonian Chronicle: “There was a portent in the sky. The Sun was the color of blood; and black spots were on the Sun and haze remained half the summer. Then there was a great heat and it was so hot that the forests and marshes burned, and the rivers dried out…” (9). This and the entries in the following decades that describe a correlation between spots and droughts are rightly described as “omens” because the observers did not know what the scientific mechanism was for how these spots led to an increase in the temperature. Meanwhile, in China, in 1370, the Ming dynasty was founded with a Chinese emperor at its top. The Chinese court astronomers had records of the sun from 2000 BCE. When the Mings take office, their astronomers recorded sunspots on 4 occasions across 1370: “Within the Sun, there was a black spot” (13). In my recent research, I found that nations tend to compete with each other for primacy of such findings by forging documents to make them look like the earlier discoverer, just a few years ahead of a predecessor. I would test the paper, and ink for their age in both of these records to determine if either of them is a forgery, given this strange match in the dates. The only logical explanation might be if Russia was trading with China, and somebody had brought the sun-dot discovery from one place to the other. The author seems to notice this too, as he writes: “from 1400 to 1600… we find a total absence of such appearances in the Chinese court manuscripts.” This strongly hints that the 1360s-70s records were forged in the 1600s, as otherwise there would have been similar records across these 200 years. But the author attempts to come up with a solution other than forgery for this discrepancy: “the Sun’s energy output varies with time.” Sunspots appear around every 11 years. So, if there were spots in 1364, the next set should have appeared in around 1375, and not in 1370… and certainly not over 200 years later… But then he adds the point that there were also sunspots seen in Korea as early as in 1220, with a gap until 1350, and “observations around 1370”. I don’t know why he’s not quoting these passages, as apparently Korea’s spottings were before Russia and China… This is confusing, but perhaps historians are confused about this, and simply more research into these subjects is unlikely because of the political minefield testing for forgeries among such documents would set.

Then, more detailed facts are given about the history of Chinese astronomy. And the chapters on modern science of spots give a thorough introduction to this topic that is worthy of a college textbook. This book drew me in, as it explained this field in an interesting way, while also including enough facts for students to learn from the known or believed facts.

Self-Puffery by a Broadway Actor about a British… Americana Show 

Todd Almond, Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Broadway’s Rebirth (New York: Bloomsbury Academic: Methuen Drama, January 23, 2025). Hardcover: $35. 288pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-350407-38-1.

**

“The incredible journey of a musical from potential disaster to success, and the Broadway industry that managed to stay alive during the pandemic shutdown of 2020-22. Despite historic, seemingly insurmountable setbacks of four openings, Bob Dylan and Conor McPherson’s musical Girl from the North Country became a critical Broadway hit…” The title comes from Dylan’s 1963 song. The musical version includes Dylan’s songs, and was written by McPherson. This musical actually saw its premiere back in 2017, and ran off-Broadway and in other theaters up through 2020, when this Broadway staging took place. McPherson is an Irish playwright and screenwriter, who has been active and winning awards since 1999.

“The musical weaves two dozen songs from the legendary catalogue of Bob Dylan into a story of Duluth during the Great Depression, to create a future American classic.” This is an absurd self-puffery: Almond is claiming the play that he is covering will be canonized before he gives any information about it aside for that it includes a canonized musician’s songs… “…A book about pressing on in the face of extreme adversity.” “Extreme”? Covid was pretty bad, but it was not “extreme”. A pop playwright like McPherson could have just sat it out at home, instead of pushing to do this production to expose actors to danger… The reasons for pushing should probably be explained, instead of just making the re-staging of a pre-Covid play sound like a “great” achievement on its own. “Todd Almond’s behind-the-scenes oral history weaves his personal first-hand account of starring in the show with exclusive interviews and reflections from fellow cast members and the creative team.” I was questioning why this book is so self-puffing: this explains it. The lead actor in this show is self-puffing his own performance… “Together they follow the show from its beginnings at New York’s Public Theater where it emerged as an underdog-of-a-show…” Ah… so there is a mention of its pre-Covid run, but this fails to specify that this was back in 2018, and it does not mention the initial successful runs in London in 2017. It was the opposite of an “underdog”: it was the top-dog. “…Through a fraught jump to Broadway against a backdrop of the emerging Covid-19 pandemic and the longest shutdown in Broadway history, which resulted in the theatre industry’s subsequent fight for survival. Told through personal stories, anecdotes from the cast, production shots, behind-the-scenes photos, and insights from the creators, this book is both an inside look at a perilous moment of one of America’s proudest institutions, Broadway, and a true story of American…” eh… it was first-staged in London… “grit and determination lived by the company of this quirky musical-that-could.”

This book does not have a good start in “Prologue: Flowers”. The narrator describes needing “to throw away every living thin in this room”, including the flowers… He is upset that this is the “Happy Opening!” he has to deal with because of Covid… though Covid isn’t mentioned. Then, “1: Heaven” begins in 2018 when the author first encountered this play. It meanders into his one manual labor of installing (unsafely perhaps) windows, and generally what playing guitar is. There are few concrete facts, or quotes, as he is just thinking about random ideas. He went to the show. The following text echoes ideas like: “Broadway doesn’t shut down. It can’t. It is a major artery for the life-blood of the city. But for eighteen months it did shut down… Broadway lay unconscious, near-death.” Melodrama continues from there with few specifics. The back of the book does include color plates with images from different performances mentioned in this book. One interesting image among these is: “Marc Kudisch and Jeannette Bayardelle, in her Covid cab…” She is in a square plastic bubble that is covering her top or head and torso, but leaves a gap below where air can get in. There is also a shot of “Daily pre-show testing”. That must have been a pain. But such details are buried in a lot of hot air in this book. I do not recommend for folks to try reading this book. It’s a lot of puffery, and performance-worship, and a lot of actor-whining, and too few details about much of anything.

There Is No Laboratory… and No Coherent Research 

Tao Leigh Goffe, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis (London: Doubleday Books, January 21, 2025). Hardcover: $35. 384pp. Index, photos. ISBN: 978-0-385549-91-2.

**

An “investigation of the Caribbean as both an idyll in the American imagination and a dark laboratory of Western experimentation, revealing secrets to racial and environmental progress that impact how we live today. In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean and its people would come to pay the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuse… The forces that have shaped these islands: the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the islands’ bounty—including guano, which, at the time, was more valuable than gold—for the benefit of European powers and at the expense of the islands’ sacred ecologies. Braiding together family history, cultural reportage, and social studies, Goffe radically transforms how we conceive of Blackness, the natural world, colonialism, and the climate crisis; and, in doing so, she deftly dismantles the many layers of entrenched imperialist thinking that shroud our established understanding of the human and environmental conditions to reveal the cause and effect of a global catastrophe…”

The blurb is confusing for many reasons. For example, the first time the question “What Is the Dark Laboratory?” is addressed is at the end of the second chapter. The title should have been explained within the blurb. The first paragraph in this section offers abstract concepts that don’t really explain anything, instead offering postmodern nonsense. Then, she explains that the idea developed during her PhD studies, which had no lab-work, and yet she describes her research as being done “in the lab”. “At Dark Lab, we encourage models of research for reckoning with stolen land and life…” This is far into this book, not in an introduction. She should be saying something concrete and researched. There is no “Dark Lab”: it’s a fictional place she is using symbolically. Instead of these generalities, she could be actually describing how land and life were stolen. And this book merely applies postmodern nonsense-philosophy to “conceive Blackness”, instead making any serious “radically” transforming discoveries in this direction. For example: “Blackness is best described, to paraphrase Tony Morrison in Sula, as inventing ‘choice out of choicelessness’” (96). A “paraphrase” is a summary, which should not be put in quotation marks, so the author does not understand this term before applying it. And this general note is followed by the claim that “Black people” were “living… multiple… lines of apocalypse…” (96-7). Why this over-dramatization, instead of just describing what they were experiencing, and then commenting (if one most) on how awful it was. Then, she imagines a future when the “Mediterranean Sea will become the Mediterranean Mountain Range” and Europeans might migrate to Africa as climate refugees. I address these types of fantasy in a novel I recently wrote, but what does any of this have to do with realities in the past?

Later in the book, the problem of “invasive” species is addressed by questioning the term “native”. Instead of presenting any scientific solutions that might be better than post ones this paragraph concludes with: “It stands to reason that a colonial solution would be proposed by those who introduced a colonial problem by playing God” (227). Who played God? What does it have to do with invasive species?

This book is a bunch of nonsense. These types of books seem to be deliberately written in a nonsensical fashion to suppress the necessary arguments about the environment and racism that should be at the forefront. These can only change minds if they are handled with rational clarity, and not with this sort of digressive nonsense-making.

How France (and Others) Installed “Kings” to Milk Colonies After Colonialism 

Marlene L. Daut, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (New York: Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, January 7, 2025). Ebook: $14.99. 704pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-593316-17-7.

****

“The essential biography of the controversial rebel, traitor, and only king of Haiti. Henry Christophe is one of the most richly complex figures in the history of the Americas, and was, in his time, popular and famous the world over… Award-winning Yale scholar unravels the still controversial enigma that he was. Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide… Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon’s forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king.”

Based on my recent research into Napoleon, it is very likely that when Henry sided with Napoleon he accessed a spy network that was taking control of many countries around the world by placing dictators, who they were callings “kings” or by other tyrannical titles: they were serving as puppets, who were channeling funds from these nations to investors, or corrupt politicians in Europe. His own agency was not likely to succeed in having himself installed as a self-proclaimed “king”. The Europeans would then use such “kings” (that they had set in place) to argue that they were tyrannically running their countries, which thus needed to be “rescued” by the same Europeans who had orchestrated their rise. Similar strategies are still being used by world-powers, including recent installations of tyrants across the parts of the world most afflicted with warfare and famine.

“But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe—after nine years of his rule as King Henry I—shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.” A more likely scenario is that the people who put him in power, shot him when he attempted to take money or power into his own hands, instead of just doing their bidding. “Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated?” Because it was not a true revolution, but rather designed to indirectly continue European control, while giving the appearance of liberalization. “How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti’s first ruler, Dessalines?” Right. This was one of the things he knew (who profited from this assassination, or who hired him) that he could have disclosed, which necessitated his assassination to keep quiet. “What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?” Well, there were probably some actual revolutionaries who did the fighting, and they probably were in the south, while the north could be sneakily seized by this “king”. “…A… story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.”

One large piece of evidence that supports my interpretation is mentioned in the preface. France took advantage of Haiti by charging “90 million francs” and Haiti eventually paid “112 million francs”, equivalent to as much as “$115 billion” in today-money across a century of repayments, which could have otherwise been used to support Haiti’s economy from failing, as it has continued to do in a cycle since. France manipulated Henry to stage events to end up taxing Haiti across a century after they stopped colonizing this country. The “king” terminology was part of the magic trick that shifted the blame onto this imagined tyrant and away from the thieves who got away with billions. And the “Introduction: On Doing Justice to Chirstophe’s Story” does point out that, as Wendell Phillips said in 1860: “All the materials for his biography are from the lips of his enemies.” The spin on these events has been driven by the profiteering colonizers, and there is a need to revive the history based on facts that were recorded by Haitians. The author notes that Phillips did write “feisty letters and deliver passionate speeches”, which should be adequate evidence for what he was really like. Though it is likely (based on my research) that these were ghostwritten for him to deliberately make him seem “feisty” in these documents and not only in otherwise bylined propaganda that reprimanded him.

As I glimpsed ahead, it seems most of this book is thoroughly researched, or based on the existing evidence in those first-person or contemporary accounts. For example, in an entry, Bretigne is recorded as writing: “Everything here is mountainous, everything monstrous, for these gentlemen. I tremble, when I see that, working according to he principle they seem to have adopted, I tremble, I say that you will be poorly assisted…” Dramatic lines.

This seems to be a rarely reliable source on this subject. Those who are invested in the economic progress of Haiti today should definitely read this book closely. Though they should question what they find here, as a Yale professor’s perspective might not be unbiased.

A Biography About Exploring Slave Shipwrecks That Is Enclosed in Impassable Fluff   

Tara Roberts, Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging (New York: National Geographic, January 28, 2025). Hardcover: $30. 400pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-426223-75-4.

**

“Memoir by a National Geographic explorer recounts one woman’s epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean—and find her place in the world. When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time…” Tara is a podcaster, who was the first Black female explorer to be featured on the cover of Nat Geo, and she was the Rolex national Explorer of the Year in 2022; she is an Explorer-in-Residence at National. “She tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix.  The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents… She decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity…”

Again, this book is off to a bad start: the “Prologue” describes the Women’s March… with slow non-specific phrases. The author notes that at this time she was “moonlighting as a tour guide at a local museum for $10 an hour to pay my bills.” This is a bit relevant, but then she digresses into politics, and friends… Notes about grocery shopping follow. Then, the story gets to the “discovery” in a museum display of a Portuguese slave ship. Her “heart” is affected, and she starts on a new path. She digresses into her love of “fantasy books”. Many pages later: “Something calls me to Sri Lanka.” She has general ideas about it being “a friendly and welcoming place”. Paragraphs pass with nothing related, such as: “Relax, I think. One step at a time” (29). The blurb made a lot of promises. But this book mostly delivers questions, like, “Who are Africans in the Americas? Beyond a people who were enslaved in chains and sadness and sorrow” (42). When she mentions “Jack” Roberts, an enslaved person, she describes her emotional turmoil before she imagines his “rough skin, hairy knuckles” (46), instead of reporting the facts… The first quarter of this book passes before there is a mention of researching shipwrecks, and beginning a journey out there (94).

This is not a good book. It is too linguistically light, and structurally unfocused to handle the sensitive topic it undertakes. This seems to be an attempt of applying pop-fiction short sentences and paragraphs, and digressions to biography, and history. This combination always flops.

How Brits Manipulated Enslavement Narratives for Their Enrichment 

Lindsay O’Neill, The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey into and out of Slavery (Pitsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press, February 13, 2025). Hardcover: $39.95. 224pp. Index, illustrations. ISBN: 978-1-512827-20-0.

****

“Account of two eighteenth-century princes from East Africa, their travels, and their encounters with the British Empire and slavery. In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for England. Instead, their perfidious captain sold them into slavery in Jamaica. After two years of pleading their case, the princes—known in the historical record as Prince James and Prince John—convinced a lawyer to purchase them, free them, and travel with them to London. The lawyer perished when a hurricane wrecked their ship, but the princes survived and arrived in England in 1720. Even though the East India Company had initially thought that the princes might assist in their aspirations to develop a trade for gold in East Africa and for enslaved labor in Madagascar, its interest waned. The princes would need to look elsewhere to return home. It was at this point that members of the Royal African Company and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge took up their cause, in the hope that profit and perhaps Christian souls would follow. John would make it home, but tragically, James would end his own life just before the ship sailed for Africa…” This is a very dramatic blurb. One of the reasons British history includes many such neatly narrated stories is because British ghostwriters tended to fabricate such accounts to serve unique profiteering purposes. In my forthcoming re-attribution series, I explain how travelogues such as “William Dampier’s” New Voyage Round the World (1703) were ghostwritten (in the case of “Dampier” by Peter Shaw (1694-1763), who probably also fabricated this two-princes story) for lawyers representing investors in shipping voyages, wherein “exploration” was used as an excuse to hide the slave-trade, or piracy (perhaps relabeled as privateering) or other corruptions and manipulations. It is likely there was no “lawyer” or a second brother, and other claims in this narrative should be questioned. The Brits even forged documents related to such voyages that they popularized in books about such adventures. So, taking on researching this specific story is a tough undertaking indeed. This is why it is troubling that this blurb does not mention the sources that first described these events.

So, I turned to the “Notes” section at the end of the book to figure this out. The 3^rd note for this preface confirms some of my suspicions: “I am engaging a small piece of ‘critical fabulation’ through the use of ‘restrained imagination.’ The archive that tells the princes’ story often excludes details about them, treating them as objects.” The problem is that by turning facts such as that at 10pm Prince James “hanged himself in his garters” into a full narrative with vivid details serves the same function as “Dampier’s” dramatic propagandistic narrative: it gives life to what might have been a false, or fictitious minor point. After the details are added, it is like planting a false-memory of this history being a vivid truth in the readers’ minds. One source mentioned is the Royal African Company minutes, which were manipulated by ghostwriters with a profiteering agenda. The one early book mentioned is “Thomas Bray’s” Missionalia: Or, A Collection of Missionary Pieces Relating to the Conversaion of the Heathens; Both the African Negroes and American Indians (1727). This was obviously another one of Shaw’s projects. Europeans “won” the colonizing and enslaving war with propaganda such as this, instead of by fighting military battles that its tiny naval forces could not have possibly won. It is important to re-examine the fictions the Brits told about themselves, but it is also important to avoid trusting their sources while trying to re-evaluate their claims. Though the confession that some of the text is what the author imagined and not what the sources said is a good sign that signals most of this book is probably based on the sources, even if they are embellished.

“…Blurs the boundaries between the Atlantic and Indian ocean worlds; reveals the intertwined networks, powerful individuals, and unstable knowledge that guided British attempts at imperial expansion; and illuminates the power of African polities, which decided who lived and who died on their coasts. Lindsay O’Neill is Associate Professor (Teaching) of History at the University of Southern California…”

This book opens with a useful map of the described journey. Most of the book is handled with a fitting degree of details that summarize relevant court cases, quote passages from documents, and explain the history behind the narrative. This is a good book to read through for researchers in this field, and for graduate students who are studying related topics.

A Study of Studiers… Instead of the Fraudsters 

Charles Piller, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s (New York: Atria Books: Atria/One Signal Publishers, February 4, 2025). Hardcover: $28.99. 288pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-668031-24-7.

***

“…Dive into how Alzheimer’s disease treatment has been set back by corrupt researchers, negligent regulators, and the profit motives of Big Pharma. Nearly seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, a tragedy that is already projected to grow into a $1 trillion crisis by 2050. While families suffer and promises of pharmaceutical breakthroughs keep coming up short… we’ve quite likely been walking the wrong path to finding a cure all along—led astray by a cabal of self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and corporate greed. Piller begins with a whistleblower—Vanderbilt professor Matthew Schrag—whose work exposed a massive scandal. Schrag found that a University of Minnesota lab led by a precocious young scientist and a Nobel Prize–rumored director delivered apparently falsified data at the heart of the leading hypothesis about the disease… Exposes a vast network of deceit and its players, all the way up to the FDA… Hundreds of important Alzheimer’s research papers are based on false data…”

Glorifying Matthew Schrag as the hero in this story presumes that he did not have something to win by outing rivals. The problem this book takes on is the complete corruption of medical research across diseases. But the blurb makes this sound as the only case of its kind. Schrag’s outing of these problems have not even succeeding in ending the erroneous branch of research uncovered. I assume most of this book is a puffery of Schrag’s team, instead of really presenting the evidence on how this type of fraud continues to dominate all branches of medical research. By explaining this we could begin to take steps to counteract it.

The “Prologue” opens by explaining that the author began this project by writing a story about this case for Science in 2022. He acknowledges that publicists for drug-makers usually hire “cheerleading journalists” to present product-puffing text they ghostwrite for them, instead of doing any original research into claims. But for this case to have gone unreported for the previous decades, the author had to be one of these cheerleaders puffing what was asked to be puffed… Some facts are given, such as that in 2023 Alzheimer’s patients cost $350 billion in the US.

“Chapter 1: A Vanishing Mind” jumps into the problem by describing a sufferer of Alzheimer trying to maneuver the system. There is a summary of the stages of FDA drug-trials, as this patient decides to join a trial, hoping it would work. The prose is pretty dense with information about the science, together with personal anecdotes. There are some random digressions into where the author grew up, or who the chosen “hero” researchers wanted to be when they grow up. As I anticipated the focus on the heroes, and the victims skews this narrative to describing these people, instead of just describing specific corrupt acts that are components in the catastrophic fraud problem. There might be a brief mention that a researcher found “one study” where “very young and very old mice showed nearly the same test results—a finding that other experts also found doubtful…” But instead of fully explaining this, the author digresses into an email where not much is said, before a trip is described to discuss this subject with the “hero” who forwarded this observation. A lot of voice is given to non-responses where researchers refuse to answer allegations. And when a dossier is mentioned the thousands of citations in it is stressed, instead of its findings. When something curious is raised like that Masliah “supported approval for 238 active patents—by far the most for any scientist examined…” This point is soon dropped without examining what these patents were, in favor, instead, of discussing how “weird” somebody is, or other personality issues.

A good deal of effort has been invested in this book. Somebody who reads it cover-to-cover should understand this subject better. But they would have to plow through a lot of irrelevant information to get to the nuggets about how this case was cracked. So this is not a good book to use in classes, and researchers probably should get the ebook to search for terms that interest them, as opposed to working through all the stuff around these.

A Fictionalized Biography of the First Black-and-White Pop Author

Tess Chakkalakal, A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt (New York: St. Martin’s Press, February 4, 2025). Hardcover: $32. 352pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-250287-63-2.

***

“A biography of Charles Chesnutt” (1858-1932) “one of the first American authors to write for both Black and white readers… Born in Cleveland to parents who were considered ‘mixed race.’ He spent his early life in North Carolina after the Civil War. Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction. His life in the South of those years, the issue of race, and how he himself identified as Black informed much of his later writing. He went on to become the first Black writer whose stories appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and whose books were published by Houghton Mifflin. Through his literary work, as a writer, critic, and speaker, Chesnutt transformed the publishing world by crossing racial barriers that divided black writers from white and seamlessly including both Black and white characters in his writing….” A writer who broke “into the all-white literary establishment” to “win admirers as diverse as William Dean Howells, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, and Lorraine Hansberry.”

The “Prologue: A Friendship Across the Color Line” starts suspiciously with a narration that seems to be coming from Chesnutt’s thoughts, and thus is a fiction… It claims that he was glad there was no “For Colored” cars, but does not use a quote the source of these imaginings or put this passage into quotation marks. It’s possible he had very different ideas during this trip, so putting these words into his head is not a sound research strategy. The first quotes here are basically the names of the first three stories he submitted to The Atlantic: “The Wife of His Youth”, “The March of Progress” and “Lonesome Ben”. To figure out the sources, I turned to the “Notes” section. These sources are listed as: Charles W. Chesnutt Papers in the Houghton, Mifflin and company archive, and books such as Chesnutt’s Colophon (1931), and articles in the Atlantic Monthly and Southern Worman, and essays such as Chesnutt’s “The Free Colored People”. So, this is a fictionalized expanding of snippets of detail offered in these works and manuscripts. What is true, and was is an added fiction is not explained. So, students should not use quotes from this book in graduate-level research papers, as claims might not be supported in the evidence.

“10: Takes Up Literature” begins with a long quote from Chesnutt’s letter to Walter Hines Page in 1899, before describing the reception of “The Wife” article’s publication to puffing reviews. This is relatively factual. This might be an interesting read for those who are interested in this subject, but don’t need to find evidence for research they plan on publishing.

A Dramatic and Researched History of Meth 

Teun Voeten, The Devil’s Drug: The Global Emergence of Crystal Meth (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, February 18, 2025). Hardcover: $34. 304pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-538198-61-2.

*****

“…Detailed and disturbing picture of a drug that is on a rapid international rise. Methamphetamine, commonly referred to as crystal meth, is one of the most addictive drugs in the world. Heavy users can destroy themselves in just a few months. Originally given by the Nazis to their troops to fight the blitzkrieg, it has now conquered the whole world and is used at sex parties in Amsterdam and Antwerp, by former hippies in Prague, by the underclass in the slums of Harare, Cape Town, and Peshawar, by truck drivers in Thailand, and by workers in the sweatshops in Bangladesh. Researcher Teun Voeten traveled the globe for two years to investigate all sides of this diabolic drug, exploring the bizarre history and pharmacological effects. He talked to homeless addicts in Tijuana and Los Angeles, cartels in Mexico, international drug experts in Bangkok and Kabul, and more. Voeten also interviewed numerous authorities, judges, and social workers who are trying to stop the meth epidemic… As a war photographer he covered conflicts such as former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Colombia, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israël, and Syria…”

The chapters are logically divided by region, covering Tijuana, Nichoacan, Netherlands, Sinaloa and the other places. And later chapters cover general topics related to this epidemic.

The “Introduction” addresses the obvious question of why this researcher chose to focus on meth. He explains that this interested started during his travels, and research into New York’s tunnel people in 1994-5: they were using crack as outcasts, while Wall Street guys were using cocaine as insiders. He notes that his hometown is Antwerp, where in 2018, “a hand grenade exploded 40 meters from my kitchen window” (viii). This stimulated him to write: Drugs: Antwerp in the Grip of the Dutch Syndicates. Then, in 2019, he saw the headline “Breaking Bad in Brabant” and this really got him going in the meth direction.

“Chapter 1: The Bizarre History of Meth” begins with the curious fact that meth, like other pop drugs, comes from a natural “plant, Ephedra sinica, a shrub native to the mountainous and rocky areas of China…” etc. (1). Then a history is given for who first isolated the “active ingredient” in 1885. Then, the ingredients were put together and crystalized by a Japanese researcher in the same lab in 1919. Obviously, the Americans soon capitalized on this discovery by selling it as a legal drug in 1931: “to treat congestion and asthma”. Previous books have covered how Germany was a top-producer of heroin, and cocaine before WWII. So it was normal when Nazis took over and took up drug-selling to promote the “one… tolerated” ideology of the “National Socialist” party (2-3). 

Turning to a random page, it continues to be dense with interesting facts: “Europe remains a small player, with approximately 1.3 tons meth confiscated yearly between 2014 to 2018.” This fact is followed by a citation note that explains the source of this claim (30).

I did not find any slow pages. “In 2012, the Town hall of Wallre was set on fire, allegedly by drug criminals whose operations had been hampered by the authorities…” (63). Anybody who likes thrillers and history, is sure to enjoy reading this book cover-to-cover. I cannot lower this book’s score down from 5 stars, which I usually give, because I did not find a single mistake in what I had time to review.

Grand Claims of “Creationist” New York Mythology Delivered Shabbily 

Russell Shorto, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, March 4, 2025). Hardcover: $29.99. 352pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-393881-16-5.

**

“In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he began parleying with Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch leader on Manhattan… Reveals the founding of New York to be an invention: the result not of an English military takeover but of clever negotiations that led to a fusion of the multiethnic capitalistic society the Dutch had pioneered to the power of the rising English empire.” This confirms my earlier note about the British winning wars with propaganda and capitalist deal-making, instead of with warfare. “But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery…” Russell Shorto is a rare non-fiction bestselling author, and “the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New-York Historical Society.”

This book has a pretty cover-design. There are also maps (with lines and clarifying notes) and illustrations that explain events. There is a great photo of the Mahattan skyline today, as seen from the Ramapo Mountains in New Jersey: very dramatic, so that it almost seems to be a semi-drawn photo. Though a historic drawing from 1664 is too blurry, or low-resolution: it seems like a mistake that could have been fixed by graphics. The font and the scratches on the titles is not appealing because I have stigmatism, so these jumping letters are especially difficult for me to read rapidly.

The preface is digressive as it describes what people at a meeting are wearing. The topics jump around to an “abuse” that “involves industrial pollution from the 1960s”. Then, there is a mention of the myth that Native people “famously ‘sold’ the island of Manhattan to the Dutch… for twenty-four dollars’ worth of knives and kettles”… It’s unclear if evidence will be presented to counter this deal, as stress is put on the fact that at least one native descendent still lives in that region.

The first chapter continues this digressive path, escribing New York’s harbor as “the birth mother of America”, before naming random names and pondering about ancestors. I just don’t want to read any more of this book. Something is terribly unsound here, and I just don’t have the energy to keep digging to describe more of what’s wrong with it. It’s just badly researched, and put together.

How Russian Warmongers Have Profited from Killing 

John Lechner, Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, March 4, 2025). Hardcover: $29.99. 288pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-639733-36-1.

****

“…Inside story of how the Wagner Group made private military companies inextricable from Russia’s anti-Western foreign strategy. In 2014, a well-trained, mysterious band of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine, part of Russia’s first attempt to claim the country as its own. Upon ceasefire, the ‘Wagner Group’ faded back into shadow, only to reemerge in the Middle East, where they’d go toe-to-toe with the U.S., and in Africa, where they’d earn praise for ‘tough measures’ against insurgencies yet spark outrage for looting, torture, and civilian deaths.” This story hits at the deeper problem of how during the Cold War, Russia and the US collaborated to start wars across the globe to profit from their military-industrial-complex. They have made this collaboration seem like a rivalry, so that they can blame each other as they offer to “help” different countries with fighting on one side, and then the other in this duality propagandizes them as the enemy and offers to “help” whoever is baited as the antagonist. The winners are the weapon-makers, military advisors (who make careers from this fiction-building creation of enemies where there was peace before), and various bribed-by-weapon-makers politicians.

“…As Russia gained a foothold of influence abroad, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as ‘Putin’s Chef,’ went from caterer to commander to single greatest threat Putin has faced in his over-twenty-year rule. Dually armed with military and strategic prowess, the Wagner Group created a new market in a vast geopolitical landscape increasingly receptive to the promises of private actors… John Lechner…” was “on the ground to witness Wagner partner with fragile nation states, score access to natural resources, oust peacekeeping missions, and cash in on conflicts reframed as Kremlin interests. After rebelling, Prigozhin faced an epic demise—but Wagner lives on, its political, business, and military ventures a pillar of Russian operations the world over.” This note mixes up the concept of state-sponsored versus private warfare. Then again, this is consistent with how America’s CIA has funded private weapons research, and then used it in public warfare. This blurry line between private and public is how warmongers profit from starting new wars: they must have state politicians go to war publicly, while this state can pay private businesses to fight or manufacture weapons for them in the private market. This means that the profiteers are at-fault, and not the specific state-players who they blame. A politician who accepts massive bribes for approving war contracts and the like is at fault. But not the Russian people, who have no democratic say. “Featuring exclusive interviews with over thirty Wagner Group members… true tale of the renegade militia that proved global instability is nothing if not an opportunity.”

The opening “Author’s Note” announces that some names “have been anonymized” to protect those who are quoted. Then, the “Introduction” focuses on a Ukrainian soldier who joined to find a job that helped Ukraine avoid losing ground, as when his own village was occupied. A year later, he had a “metal brace screwed to his leg.” After an injury, he finds himself among Wagner officers, who beat him up, trying to get positions out of “an ordinary soldier”. Then, they tattooed “I love PMC Wagner” on his chest. These Wagner guys differ in opinions of what they are fight for “each other”, “Kievan Rus” or other myths. Then, he waited for a prisoner exchange at a hospital. A claim is made that Wagner signals a unique return to private-warfare that was not around for the last 200 years. This is not the case. Corporations have been instigating and profiting from wars across these 200 years: they have just gotten better at covering their involvement in starting wars to avoid being charged with war-crimes. Wagner is just an example of a direct outing of this usually hidden marriage. According to this version of events, a turn happened in part when in 2014 Prigozhin privately invaded Crimea for Moscow.

This book is illustrated with maps of the conflict in Ukraine. It tends to jump too rapidly between ideas and times across history. The first chapter mentions that Bush might have recognized Prigozhin because he was the one who served him a “four courses” meal in 2002. Maybe it is necessary to jump around between Clinton, and Bush, and NATO to explain these complex conflicts. The prose throughout is kind of like Dostoevsky’s: there are sketches of characters, and events, with social and philosophical explanations. There are especially many portraits of Wagner mercenaries, since interviews with them is largely what this book covers. For example, Vitaly first served for the French Foreign Legion in Africa in 2017, then joined Wagner in 2018. Vitaly argues that Wagner was doing good when in 2021 they to defend a region because their help allowed for the building of “infrastructure” and for “development”. But what is a certain fact is that these “mercenaries” “held CAR’s customs agency” in exchange for $35 million annually in “subsidies on fuel and food” (124). Then, Wagner rolls into a gold mine and begins “building a ‘state of the art’ processing plant…” (125). Rivals could not get that plant-building contract because they could not out-shoot this mercenary group. This begins to explain the corrupt strategies of such agencies.

There is probably a lot revealed across this book that explains. How people corruptly make money from killing people in wars they help to fuel. I found many curious insights from this light review. Those who write about mercenaries as a journalist, or research this topic in academia would profit from reading this book cover-to-cover to learn from its details.

The Two-Sided Propagandist Who Profiteered from the Cold War 

David T. Byrne, James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Cornell University Press: Northern Illinois University Press, March 15, 2025). Hardcover: $33.95. 252pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-501780-04-2.

****

“…Beginning his intellectual career as a disciple of Leon Trotsky, Burnham” (1905-87) “preached socialist revolution to the American working classes during the Great Depression. He split with Trotsky over the nature of the USSR in 1940. Attempting to explain the world that was emerging in the early days of WWII, Burnham penned one of the most successful political works of the early 1940s titled The Managerial Revolution. This dystopian treatise predicted collectivization and the rule by bland managers and bureaucrats. Burnham’s next book, The Machiavellians, argued that political elites only seek to obtain and maintain power, and democracy is best achieved by resisting them. After World War II, Burnham became one of America’s foremost anticommunists. His The Struggle for the World and The Coming Defeat of Communism remain two of the most important books of the early Cold War era.” The fact that Burnham started as a communist and became an anti-communist at the start of the Cold War proves my earlier theory that the same players profited from stirring a cold conflict between the USSR and USA, while actually causing a hot conflict by propagandizing for and against “socialism” in foreign countries, from which both sides extracted resources in exchange for “helping” them defend against the “evil other”. This is not a rare case of somebody crossing between sides, but it was rare for somebody to do so openly: usually players would have hidden their conflicting interests.

“Rejecting Kennan’s policy of containment, Burnham demanded an aggressive foreign policy against the Soviet Union.” Keeping the Cold War alive profited him directly, as he made money from publishing: “Along with William F. Buckley, Burnham helped found National Review magazine in 1955 where he expressed his political views for over two decades… The political theorist’s influence ranged from George Orwell to Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. Burnham’s ideas about the elite and power remain part of American political discourse and, perhaps now, have more relevance than ever before.”

The first thing I had to look up was how this guy influenced Trump, given Trump’s general allergy to reading. The argument made is that Burnham’s theories have been picked up by others, and these eventually led to Trumpism. There is a mention that Burnham helped run “a rogue CIA operation with mobster Frank Costello to kidnap American communists and pump them full of sodium pentothal”, according to Alan Wald, the leftist in 2017. Then, finally, after many unspecific mentions of Trump, there is a direct link: “Trump has embraced some of the ideas that Burnham inherited from Trotsky: bureaucrats hold the power, even though they are not real representatives of the people. Instead, they pursue their own interests. They are the enemies of democracy” (189). This is explained as being why Trump has argued against UN, WHO, etc. But in reality, Trump and his folks have been these bureaucrats who are serving themselves, instead of anybody else.

The other point that interested me is his work as the editor for 23 years for this conservative National Review. Instead of merely editing, he used this post to publish regular propagandistic articles: “He called for the United States to invest heavily in its military because the Soviets could not win an arms race” (5). So, he was fueling the Cold War by insisting that the US government had to pay its military contractors more and more and more. This was sold as an intellectual, smart idea that was being published in an academic journal, when as a founder Burnham might have been receiving enormous sums from these military contractors to stress the need to buy more and more from them, just as TV shows include Coke product placements.

Another curious note I found while browsing is the idea that Burnham “insisted that ‘McCarthyism’ was an invention of ‘communist tacticians’ and that ‘Eastern seaboard’ intellectuals had taken the communist bait and ran with it, promoting the idea that McCarthyism, not communism, was America’s biggest threat.” Publishing this honest idea ended his relationship with the liberal Partisan Review and started a lifelong of attacks against liberals for Burnham (129). This same quote also proves that Burnham was aware that he was playing both sides by stirring conflicts between these imagined boundaries between “communism” and “capitalism”, when on both sides there were profiteers who were taking advantage of this conflict itself to make a profit.

It should be interesting to do a more thorough read of this book. It has a lot of things in it that must be objectionable to all possible sides, which is a sign of good writing. 

McCarthyism Handled Like a Pop Thriller 

Clay Risen, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America (New York: Scribner, March 18, 2025). Hardcover: $31. 480pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-982141-80-6.

**

“…The story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—based in part on newly declassified sources—by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter. The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria… How politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies. Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown… Takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result.”

The “Preface” describes how the author “grew up in the 1980s” at near “the end of the Cold War”. I don’t think it ended that early. Whenever, anybody meets me out here in Quanah, TX in 2024, they only ask where I’m from, waiting for me to say “Russia” before refusing to say anything else, as if I’ve confessed to being an enemy-commie. I felt so ostracized across high school and college in Massachusetts that I rebelled by making my Honors College graduation speech in Russian. A few dozen people followed my example by making their remarks in their own languages because they obviously experienced similar xenophobia or fear of otherness. Americans seem to live to ostracize people, and to find any fault to harass, or intimidate, or to fire-without-cause, or to not hire “others”. Anybody who taps into this thirst to hate “others” tends to be given a pulpit to spew hatred. McCarthyism is just one of these hatred-propagandas that still resonates in the nonsensical tirades among Republicans against “socialists”, while they are themselves making many by-definition “socialist” arguments to win voters, while sneaking in anti-populist policies that repay their bribing donors… It’s getting a bit late, as I near the end of another day, so I’ve digressed here…

The “Prologue” describes the features of a woman before stating that she is testifying before the Un-American Activities committee in 1946. An FBI report “described her as ‘believed Jewish’”: in other words, they failed to do enough research to figure her ethnicity out. The narrative does not address this, as it digresses into random info about where she worked, and what she did. A transcript dialogue from this hearing follows: at least these are evidence-based quotes, unlike some other non-fictions that just make up conversations that never took place. The dialogue allows this woman to not submit her evidence, and then she is held “in contempt of Congress”. This threatened her imprisonment, and it passed this Committee: “7 to zero”. Then, the author explains that this example became “numbingly common” in the following decade, as random “school teachers movie stars, longshoremen, and diplomats” were brought in for this “degradation ceremony. If they refused—to hand over documents, to name names, to admit membership in the Communist Party—they went to jail.” While this is a good way of summarizing this case, the lack of concrete details about what these people did that made them targets, and what evidence were used against them makes this a very paranoid narrative that fails to accuse the villains of specific misdoing. This seems to be designed to scare modern readers of potential similar mass-imprisonments by Trump without any rational explanations, as opposed to merely frightening readers of America’s past misdeeds.

“1: A Blue Envelope” echoes this problem as it starts with a visit, and a portrait of how people looked, and what they did: these seem irrelevant because they are given before the author clarifies what these characters are going be accused of or accuse others of. The story is framed like a pop fiction narrative: “Savile Row suits. Homburg hats. Cream-white shirts….” What does this have to do with the prosecution of innocent people? This is an incredibly annoying book to read for anybody who has been exposed to such mistreatment, and who are looking to understand it with a detached, researched perspective (which is missing in this book). I do not recommend folks to try to read this. It’s a tough hill to climb.

The Little-Known Influence India Had on International Intellectualism 

William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, April 29, 2025). Hardcover: $32.99. 432pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-639734-14-6.

*****

“Tracing South Asia’s under-recognized role in producing the world as we know it. For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific… India’s oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world—and our world today as we know it.”

The book opens with a unique illustration of this Golden Road: the path it traces is across the Indian Ocean and into the South China and Arabian seas, as opposed to merely by land to cities across the ancient world. This is very deliberate. The “Silk Road” was not a real “road” (this concept was fabricated in the 20^th century), but rather it was mostly an oversea passage. And India began trading across the world long before China spread out in the Mongol 13^th century. And “silk” was not common for export, as spices were more valuable (19). And unlike China, (I learned) India was never united, but had “more than seventy” distinct kingdoms (21). I knew there were regional rulers that allowed Brittain to “conquer” India by bribing them individually. But this refers too earlier centuries. There are several other great illustrations of maps throughout.

The topic addressed is one I have been pondering about: just how much lying Europe had to do to explain the originality of some of their “discoveries”, if most of these stemmed in India? The Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious texts stem from similar theological texts that were first-published in India. The Middle East is the place between India (and China etc.) and Europe. British colonialism did not merely rob countless trillions in “taxes” and cheapened trade from India, but also changed the history of the world to put itself at the top, and to designate India as forever-developing. So, such texts as this are necessary to regain a truer perspective.

“Sanskrit had been a… tongue for at least a millennium before the Common Era”, and then “between the first century BCE and the first century CE, Sanskrit was reinvented as a literary and political language”. The relationship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin has not been fully examined, despite clear echoes between their vocabulary: the latter two might be bastardizations or derivatives of Sanskrit. Indian people were great explorers, who “discovered” much of the world long before Europeans built their first ships. “There is growing archaeological evidence that Indian merchants even brought with them skilled artisans to refine” their products “on site and to work the gold they bought in Sumatra, Borneo, and Malay peninsula and Thailand. At the early temple site of Krabi in Thailand, archaeologists recently found a goldsmith’s touchstone etched with the earliest Tamil inscription in South-east Asia…” (7). Such findings hint that the true history of innovation around the world would give a lot more credit to Indian scholars, artisans, and navigators. This book mostly focuses on India’s impact on foreign religions, including Chinese Buddhism, Hinduism, and other Indic religions (as I said Judeo-Christianity should be categorized as Indic as well). Though other chapters address topics such as the Khmers hydraulic engineers. And a chapter addresses Aryabhata (476-550 CE), one of many Indian astronomers who made early calculations. Hundreds of years later, in 1205, Leonardo of Pisa/Fibonacci traveled as a merchant to Bejaia and learned Arabic, before publishing the “Book of Calculation” that popularized the “Arabic numerals”. Though he misnamed these because they were “not Arabic in origin”, but rather “Indian” (12-13).

It is tempting to read this book closely throughout because these are things I and every other intellectual should know, but they have not been appearing in history classes. The information has been out there, but propaganda has silenced or spun these facts. India’s economy should significantly benefit by popularizing histories like this one to explain to the world what it has the potential to offer, if it was less underestimated.

The Great Feminist Manifesto Has Not Yet Been Written 

Roxane Gay, Ed., The Portable Feminist Reader (New York: Penguin Books: Penguin Classics, February 18, 2025). Hardcover: $25. 672pp. ISBN: 978-0-143110-39-2.

***

“A… look at a feminist canon as expansive rather than definitive. For Roxane Gay, a feminist canon is subjective and always evolving. A feminist canon represents a long history of feminist scholarship, embraces skepticism, and invites robust discussion and debate. Selected writings by ancient, historic, and more recent feminist voices include Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Anna Julia Cooper, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg, Eileen Myles, Mona Eltahawy, bell hooks, Sara Ahmed, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, The Guerrilla Girls, and many more. With an introduction, headnotes, and an inspired list of multimedia recommendations, Roxane Gay presents multicultural perspectives, ecofeminism, feminism and disability, feminist labor, gender perspectives, and Black feminism… Readers explore the state of American feminism, its successes and failures, and what feminism looks like in practice, as a complex, contradictory, personal and political, and ever-growing legacy of feminist thought.”

The “Introduction” opens with a review of the problems women are exposed to in current times, such as the stalking pursuit of Grace Van Owen by litigator Michael Kuzak in L.A. Law: “This is all supposed to be romantic, but… Kuzak seems more like a stalker…” (x). Good point, but then the author digresses into self-questioning without any concrete specifics. I mentioned feminism earlier in this set of reviews in judging the Pakistan Partition novel to not be legitimately feminist. In reviewing this book, I hope to figure out just what type of “feminism” I personally agree with. Gay admits that it is “healthy” to question the dimensions and contents of the “feminist canon”.

The first section “Part I: Laying a Foundation” is made up of anonymous, and multi-bylined pieces that seem rambling and too recent to be of significance. I tend to favor older theories, as these help me understand origins. So, I turned to “Part II: Early Feminist Texts”. It is troubling that there are no first-publication dates on pretty much any of these pieces. The place and date of a first-release is significant to understanding a perspective. The first piece here is by Henricus Agrippa, described as being written in the “1500s”, when it was first-published in 1529. No city of publication is offered, but it was published somewhere in the Holy Roman Empire in Latin. It is a very bad introduction that forces readers to do their own research to figure out what the pieces in an anthology are about. Agrippa puffs women as creators, who were made to be “superior to man” (51). Barbara Leigh Bodichon’s “Most Important Laws Concerning Women” is puffed as a rare piece because its author was untrained in the law, and yet made a significant contribution to this field. My research into canonical British ghostwriting found only a single female ghostwriter, Elizabeth Montagu, who died in 1800. So, this essay must have been ghostwritten by a male ghostwriter, and assigned to a female byline because of its feminist subject. The editor does specify that this article was published as a book in 1854; it “was crucial to the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act”. It was indeed improbable that without a right to property, or education, any woman could have written this dense legal treatise. And a woman is not likely to have said: “These are the only special laws concerning single women: the law speaks of men only…” She would not have been able to research special cases, such as: “The consent of the father or guardians is necessary to the marriage of an infant…” (60). And there were no female ghostwriters in the Renaissance, when “Mary Astell’s” A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) was published. This essay is likely to have been ghostwritten by Walter Lynn (1677-1763), when he was only 17, because it echoes other titles in Lynn’s G-group, such as “Jonathan Swift’s” “Modest Proposal” (1729). Given this context, I question the “seriousness” of this proposal, as it was probably similarly a satire. As apparent from the tone: “You shall not be deprived of your grandeur, but only exchange the vain pomps and pageantry of the world, empty titles and forms of state, for the true and solid greatness of being able to despise them…” (56). I did not do enough research on Americans to judge if Lillie Blake’s essay was ghostwritten. It would have helped if the editor provided a publication year for this essay, as the timing is significant. It is possible that this “tract” was undated, and thus could have been written after her death in 1913, which would push it out of historical significance granted to this section. I did not test “Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s” “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892), but, again, there were only male ghostwriters in Britain in 1892, so this was created by a man. I remember reading this essay back in grad school, it had a significant depressing influence. Knowing that it was probably a man’s perspective on women lightens my perspective on it. The female narrator reports that this wall-paper is making her “sick”, but physicians and her husband do not believe this is physical, but rather a “nervous depression” or “a slight hysterical tendency”. She reports that they advised her to avoid work, but she wrote in spite “of them”, which exhausted her “a good deal” (76). She stages histrionics, until in the end she pulls “off most of the paper” and shouts about it (92). Why is this worst-possible portrayal of women in a feminist anthology? Perhaps the first text in this collection actually written by a woman is Anna Julia Cooper’s “The Higher Education of Women” (1890-1). “In 1925, she became the fourth African American woman to ever receive a PhD when she graduated from the Sorbonne in France” (93). Professional writers have historically needed higher degrees, unless they had some other access to publishing, such as serving apprenticeships to printers or booksellers. The before-mentioned Elizabeth Montagu, back in the 18^th century, appears to have put on trousers and pretended to be a boy to attend Cambridge, as her letters hint. Cooper writes: “Her tongue may parrot over the cold conceits that some man has taught her, but her heart is aglow with sympathy and loving kindness…” (97). The next article is Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote” (spoken in 1920).

“Part IV: Feminist Labors” includes an essay I remember reading in grad school: Helene Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” (first-translated: 1976). This is a pretty violent and sexual essay, in retrospect: “our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, our wind knocked out of us…” (206), “Her appearance would necessarily bring on, if not revolution… at least harrowing explosions” (207), and “To write… will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal…” (208). Is this really feminism at its finest? Is the liberation of women about being gagged, and ungagged, or being a sexual being first and one that only writes to express her sexuality…

Pat Mainardi’s “The Politics of Housework” seriously explores how men and women decide who will do the housework, as if this is a monumental achievement of “women’s liberation” (211-2).  

One thing is clear to me from glancing through this book: the great feminist philosophy has not yet been written, and needs to be. I might give it a try as my next project…

There are some glitches with this book, but it is good that it has been put together. Others who are trying to figure out where we now stand in this feminism genre would benefit from browsing through these pages.

Paranoia of Russian Spies Prevents Stopping Legitimate Threats 

Shaun Walker, The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West (New York: Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor: Knopf, April 15, 2025). Hardcover: $32. 448pp. ISBN: 978-0-593319-68-0.

***

“The definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West. More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as ‘illegals.’ During the Second World War, illegals were dispatched behind enemy lines to assassinate high-ranking Nazis. Later, in the Cold War, they were sent to assimilate and lie low as sleepers in the West. The greatest among them performed remarkable feats, while many others failed in their missions or cracked under the strain of living a double life. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, as well as archival research in more than a dozen countries… A… spy drama…”

The “Introduction” begins fittingly with the description of a family going out to dinner in DC and suddenly being busted by shouts, “FBI!” The lesson seems to be: the FBI is paranoid, and has arrested a good random family going about non-criminal tasks of life… But no: the blurb insists this is an example some of the worst criminality in human history… On the next page, there is somewhat of an explanation, a woman who seemed to be the “friendly… Ann Foley” is neither of these things because “She was dead. The real Ann Foley… died seven weeks” after her birth in 1962. As most books of this sort, this one will attempt to prove that the mere use of identity-fraud and passing as a non-Russian is proof of espionage. Such books almost never give any concrete examples of just what these spies achieve after all that education that goes into training them in linguistics etc. A page later there is a broad definition: “The fundamental role of intelligence agencies is to obtain information about other countries not available through open channels.” There is very little of this that can now be found only through migration. There’s plenty of info confessed on social media, and hackers have posted entire private databases of corporations online.

I checked the “Contents” to see if the interior has any meat. Alright, this helps me to understand what these illegals previously did: the assassination of Leon Trotsky (in South America), some assassinations and sabotage in Nazi Germany, and an attempted assassination of Tito. These are kind of standard military intelligence operations with clear enemies being taken out to serve a political agenda, or to start opposition. Obviously, if there are any assassins operating in or outside of Russia, they should be stopped. But then there is the case in chapter “11: The Illegals Go Public: The Abel Trial and the CIA’s First Illegals”. Abel was charged with illegal immigration, being a spy, and “conspiracy to transmit military and atomic secrets”. By this point in 1957 the relatively innocent Rosenbergs were already executed. While these cases from the early USSR are formidable, recently Russia seems to be play-acting at espionage without achieving any great military or political victories through espionage. Russia is still assassinating some of its greatest minds, in prison, or outside. But there are no cases listed in the titles of later chapters that might clearly point to just what all the Russian-spy-hunting by the CIA or FBI is uncovering. The game recently seems to be to file espionage charges against mostly innocent people to use them as bargaining chips in spy-exchanges (on both sides: US and Russia). The 2016 election meddling seems to be a case where Russia took the fault for Republicans’ election-manipulation to put an unqualified and generally repulsive man into the presidency. Russia seems to have helped because they found a rarely completely corruptible guy to support, but Trump did not exactly repay them during his term, as the US has been sponsoring Ukraine’s war against Russia since Trump’s term (Crimea was invaded before he took office). In Russia, the media seems to be more active in outing such media-manipulations, including disclosing the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a troll factory in St. Petersburg: “hundreds of paid workers… cranking out comments on social media that buttressed Kremlin messaging”. There are similar bot/troll-farms that spew support for corrupt American politicians (Democrat and Republican). There are just few American newspapers that mention these enough for them to seem as nefarious as they are. Modern politics, and especially modern espionage drives the world away from “intelligence” and towards universal idiocy. Whatever is the worst possible outcome for average humans is apparently good for those few guys who want to be tyrants or oligarchs. People of the world should see villains in those few who pay for such manipulations to favor their capitalist interests, instead of demonizing whole countries. Troll/bot-farms is a major problem that has been a problem for decades, as these tend to create false beliefs about politics that allow for the corruption of the democratic process. No dent has been made in stopping these across the world, as instead their mere identification has been used to point fingers against regimes, and not against responsible funders.

Roots of Fraudster Over-Borrowing Capitalism 

Donald H. Chew, The Making of Modern Corporate Finance: A History of the Ideas and How They Help Build the Wealth of Nations (New York: Columbia University Press: Columbia Business School Publishing, February 18, 2025). Hardcover: $35. 320pp. ISBN: 978-0-231211-10-9.

**

“Why did the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s—the improbable combination of high unemployment and runaway inflation—prove so painful and protracted? What explains the U.S. stock market’s remarkable forty-year run of 12 percent average annual returns since then? Why is Japan still mired in a decades-long recession—and the Chinese economy in a tailspin? And what accounts for the resilience of U.S. stock and labor markets in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the face of the Fed’s record interest rate hikes? Donald H. Chew, Jr., argues that answers to these questions lie in the principles and methods of ‘modern corporate finance.’ Ideas formulated and tested by finance scholars—notably, an efficient stock market in which prices reflect the long-run values of public companies and a ‘market for corporate control’ that exerts continuous pressure on management—informed and spurred the investor-driven capitalism that has created the world’s most productive and valuable companies… Profiles key figures in the development of modern corporate finance while emphasizing their counterintuitive lessons for shareholders, companies, and countries. Corporate efficiency and value creation, he contends, are the fundamental source of the social wealth essential to addressing challenges such as poverty and climate change…”

Instead of giving credit to US “finance”, the reason the US stocks have been going up steadily—even in times when they shouldn’t—is because they are corruptly run and doing things they shouldn’t be doing. The stocks of most US companies have been in a bubble since the 80s. They have climbed much higher than they are logically worth. America has been socially sponsoring some of these companies at the cost of accruing a possibly unrepayable national debt. Finance is a sum-negative for an economy because it means a business has to pay an enormous percentage for borrowing money that does not go to paying its own workers. American companies are propped up by purchasing hidden ads on TV shows and the like that puff them without disclosing these are ads. Hollywood sells America’s products to the world by having the largest budgets among production capitals. If raising interests has not slowed the US economy, this probably indicates that its speed is being misreported, or is being inaccurately calculated.

The subtitle of the “Prologue” helps explain the puffing attitude this book instead takes to American corporate finance: “The Magic of Finance Capitalism”. Before US finance was corrupted by folks like Enron and Madoff, it was honestly reflecting America’s lack of intellectual ambition, as the S&P 500 was losing “half its value” in some years. So, what changed was the victory of corporate fraudsters. Some have been caught. The rest are still artificially spiking economic stats. Instead this book claims that “conglomerates”, such as GM, have been a positive because they have been monopolizing broad parts of the market.

I’m not reading any more of this. Columbia had some kind of a glitch with this ebook: it has tiny letters in a poorly formatted pdf. So, it is technically, as well as verbally unreadable.

Grotesquely Fictionalized Serial Murders 

Lise Olsen, The Scientist and the Serial Killer: The Search for Houston’s Lost Boys (New York: Random House Publishing Group: Random House, April 1, 2025). Hardcover: $32. 464pp. ISBN: 978-0-593595-68-8.

**

“The true story of how one dedicated forensic scientist restored the long-lost identities of the teenaged victims of the ‘Candy Man,’ one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s—the home of NASA… But a string of more than two dozen missing teenage boys hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they had gone, the Houston police department dismissed them as runaways, fleeing the Vietnam draft or conservative parents, likely looking to get high and join the counterculture. It was only after their killer, Dean Corll, was murdered by an accomplice that many of those boys’ bodies were discovered in mass graves. Corll, known as the ‘Candy Man,’ was a local sweet-shop owner who had enlisted two teens to lure their friends to parties, where they would be tortured and killed. All of Corll’s victims’ bodies were badly decomposed; some were only skeletal. Known collectively as the Lost Boys, many were never identified and some remained undiscovered. Decades later, when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick discovered a box of remains marked ‘1973 Murders’ in the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office, she recalled the horrifying crime from her own childhood, and knew she had to act. It would take prison interviews with Corll’s accomplices, advanced scientific techniques, and years of tireless effort to identify these young men…”

The book begins with a good illustration with pins for the locations of the killings or bodies.

“Chapter 1: The Death of a Killer” takes on a pop-thriller novel linguistic density: not a good thing given the subject. It describes how Elmer Henley awoke, and random stuff he said like: “Hey, what are you doing?” What is the source of this description? The author seems to be imagining this fiction. Sources are not cited. After digressive notes, we suddenly learn that two people have been “hog-tied and handcuffed” on the “shag carpet”. Who would want to read this? The story is told from the perspective of serial-killers. And its describing “the nightmare” or making horrors out of events, seemingly for entertainment. I was hoping to be informed by this book, to learn the facts of this case. This is not a book I want to read. Even a novel version could have been better done by focusing on researching facts, and characters. The Contents page explains that the “new” forensic evidence the blurb focuses on is only covered in the last “Part VI: The Last Unsolved Mysteries”. There some facts are found, such as a summary of the case: “Ames, the alleged ringleader, was charged in federal court for distributing those pornographic images… and went to federal prison…” There have to be some grounding that explain such basic background before jumping into fictionalized portrayals of what the murderers did during the worst of their crimes. The point is to understand and stop such misconduct, and only detached information can do this.

An “Environmental” Manufacturer Puffs Itself 

Vincent Stanley, The Future of the Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 50 Years (New York: Patagonia, September 5, 2023). Softcover: $22. 208pp. ISBN: 978-1-952338-11-3.

***

“…Advice on how and why to rethink your business structure in a time when traditional capitalism is no longer working for people or the planet. Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s Director of Philosophy, with Yvon Chouinard, founder and former owner of Patagonia, draws on 50 years’ experience at Patagonia to challenge all business owners and leaders to rethink their businesses in a time of cultural and climate chaos.” Patagonia (1973-) is a private corporation that sells outdoor recreation clothing, equipment and food. On a brief search, I found that Patagonia makes their clothing in China and Vietnam. There is no obvious evidence on this brief search to suggest Patagonia deserves any special recognition for being uniquely “ethical”, as this book seems to claim. “Patagonia over and over throughout the years has been recognized as much for its ground-breaking environmental, social practices as for the quality of its clothes.” They were award in 2019 the UN Champion of the Earth award: for “nearly 70 percent of Patagonia’s products” being “made from recycled materials, including plastic bottles”. And perhaps the real reason it won is that it has been paying out 1% of sales “to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment”, adding up to $100 million that went to grassroot organizations to train activists. What’s needed is research and development funding for finding alternatives to plastic, and other carbon-heavy materials, as opposed to merely paying a bunch of people to march in protest to nothing being done… But doing something is better than nothing… I just have to deflate the puffery in this blurb. “And then, in an unprecedented action, in 2022, the Chouinard family gave their company away, converting ownership to a simple structure of trusts and non-profits, so that all the profits from the company can be used to protect our home planet and work to reverse climate chaos.” Patagonia is worth $3 billion, with $100 million in annual profits. If this donation had gone to the right scientists, and product-developers; this gift alone could have solved the climate crisis… But I sense that it probably fell into the wrong hands if these guys are publishing self-pufferies, without any proof of impact in the first couple of years. “Stanley with Chouinard recounts how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately challenge other companies, as big as Wal-Mart and as small as the corner bakery, to do the same… The current impact of manufacturing, commerce, and traditional capitalism on the planet’s natural systems… It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can undertake, as well as advice on what to do, in what order… Its advice…: reduce your environmental footprint (and its skyrocketing cost), make legitimate products that last, reclaim deep knowledge of your business and its supply chain to make the most of opportunities in the years to come… It also describes the threats of traditional capitalism and why the owners of Patagonia chose to hack the system to ensure that the company will still exist and have impact in 100 years. An explanation of Patagonia’s revolutionary new business organization…”

“1: What Crisis?” generally summarizes environmental catastrophes in-progress. “2: Meaningful Work” then digressively philosophizes about “meaning”. It babbles on with phrases such as: “meaningful work is to do something for a living that you love and are good at doing” (25). This does not need to be stated. Then, a paragraph summarizes Tolstoy’s theories of work in Anna Karenina… The conclusion is that the characters in this work enjoy hard-labor, unlike authors (of this book?)… Tolstoy was an author… He is not exactly an expert on hard-labor… His family owned “peasants”. Then, there is a note that they just closed their factory for 2 years for Covid: workers who needed the paycheck could not have thought this was very worker-forward… Many pages later there is a note that “87 percent of our clothes are produced in Fair Trade factories”, meaning the “premium… is distributed among all workers”, but oddly this has added up to only $4 million (64). Then, they puff their “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign that lectured to consumers not to buy what they didn’t need, instead of making any significant changes to full use recyclable materials that were recycled at the end of their lives as well. They note they “developed… with our supply partners… 100 percent recycled polyester”, but it is unclear if they use this sci-fi material in their products. Then, more dramatically they note that they have kept “more than 884 metric tons of plastic waste out of the world’s oceans” (70).

I don’t know about this one. Maybe this company is going something good. But this puffery self-promotion book has too much fluff, so that readers kind of must skip over most of the first 70 pages to get to the point here. While Patagonia might be doing good things. The guys who wrote this are not good authors. I’d hand this to a more pessimistic editor to cut out the fluff, and add more specifics about their environmental discoveries for the next edition.

How to Rapidly Un-Develop Land into a Park 

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, Michelle Bachelet, Yvon Chouinard, et al, Patagonia National Park: Chile (New York: Patagonia, May 21, 2024). Hardcover: $50. 276pp. ISBN: 978-1-952338-06-9.

****

“Andean condors soaring over snow-capped mountains. Waving grasslands where herds of guanacos roam. Mountain lions haunting the shadows… Natural beauty and abundant wildlife. Centered on southern Chile’s Chacabuco Valley, it showcases the fascinating natural and cultural history of this amazing windswept region at the end of the world. The park exists today due to a committed team of conservationists who forged an innovative public–private partnership catalyzed by private philanthropy…” Photos are by Linde Waidhofer. “For more than a decade Waidhofer witnessed this national park’s founders—Kristine McDivitt Tompkins,” one of the authors, “the late Douglas Tompkins, and the Tompkins Conservation team—as they shepherded the land’s transition from former sheep ranch to world-class national park. With” contributed pieces “from former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, Yvon Chouinard, and others,” it “invites readers to experience a place that is protected foremost as the home to its wild residents, and that offers human visitors a chance to reconnect with the land’s natural rhythms. Beyond this, the park’s creation is a globally notable example of ‘rewilding,’” which began in 2004 or 2014 (I think there are a couple of different years mentioned), “of helping nature heal, and ultimately of holding onto wild, radical hope for a future when all of life’s diversity, including people, has freedom to flourish and continue to evolve.”

I looked through the images across this entire book as a first step. I have a 27” computer with a high resolution, so I am probably seeing this book at a larger size at full-screen than it would be in the printed copy. The images are a bit blurry, or lack focus for my taste. I saved a background screen with a shot of Russian winter recently, and it’s a lot crisper than these shots. On the other hand, it’s great to look at so many images of nature in a foreign place. A deer with hairy antlers stopped my attention, though I’m not sure if it’s a deer or a related species, or if this is a boy or a girl. There is no explanation below this figure to clarify just what this is an image of. I’m not even sure of the page: no page numbers. There is a great shot of flying flamingos on the next page: they are in focus, while the mountain behind them is blurred. But I guess that’s how focus works on a camera. Another shot captures red-winged birds from above (with a drone camera): their long shadows fall on the water (I think: it’s more gray than blue) below. The images of owls that follow are extremely crisp and beautiful.

Then, the “Prologue” by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet drew my attention. He explains that when he was president in 2014, he argued against the HidroAysen project (countering hopes of some businessowners), “which would have flooded thousands of acres of Patagonia… Fourteen billion dollars of investments in renewable energy turned us into leaders… By 2030, more than 85 percent of all energy power will be renewable…” Then, he approved building parks in Patagonia in 2017. My suspicion that this book presents strange deer proved true: “huemuls” is a “Patagonian deer that is depicted on our national shield. There are only about 1,500 left in the world.” This whole intro is very succinct, factual, and philosophically sound as it explains the problems he and others set out to fix with this project. Then, the “Foreword” introduces this project from the perspective of somebody who worked on starting this park directly: Chouinard. I also didn’t catch from the blurb that McDivitt is the former CEO of Patagonia, which was mentioned in a previous review. There are not enough words in this book for them to get dull, so most of them are to-the-point and describe what the natural beauty depicted means beyond its surface. This is a pretty book with a positive social message: so a good investment for nature-lovers.

The Proper Way to Bake Bread 

Melissa Weller, Very Good Bread (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). Hardcover. 337pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-593-32040-2.

*****

“From the… James Beard Award nominee, here is a master class on making perfect breads at home—from sourdough loaves and baguettes to bagels, pitas, tortillas, and pizzas. For Melissa Weller, bread is the foundation for every meal, an elemental ritual that leads to mouthwatering results. Bread is also inspirational—the taste of a brioche, and Weller’s obsession with perfecting it, made her fall in love with baking many years ago. Now, after years of working as the head baker at some of the country’s most celebrated restaurants, Weller shares her best recipes for consistently making the highest-quality breads. Weller knows that baking is about precision and science, and here she gives you the tools to take your breadmaking skills to the next level. With detailed and accessible step-by-step instructions on techniques, equipment, ingredients, and flavors, Weller gives you everything you need to achieve beautiful and impossibly delicious results. Here are steps on… how to weigh and measure ingredients, and how to make yeast and sourdough starters. Weller also shares her best tips on mixing, explains the finer points of fermentation, and lays out the basics of shaping and folding each type of loaf. Here too are extended recipes for what to do with the bread you bake, like Everything Bagel Tuna Crunch Sandwiches, Tacos with Pulled Pork and Salsa Ranchera, and Pizza Margherita. With more than seventy recipes, this is the essential book for making bread so excellent that it earns a place at the center of the table. Included are sections and recipes such as: •Bagels (Sourdough, Everything, Salt and Pepper, Pumpernickel Raisin, plus spreads to go with them) & Bialys •Flatbreads •Sourdough Loaves •Petits Pains •Sandwich Buns and Rolls •Baguettes and Ciabatta •Pizza and Focaccia.”

The first time I baked bread was hallah at a synagogue school in Brooklyn back in around 1994. All of us girls learned how to bake it once as a project. I have been baking bread at home across most of the past 6 years, before it became popular during the pandemic. My experiments in bread-making were not always great, but I could make a purer type of bread (reminiscent of dark bread from Russia) than what was available at the store. I have looked at recipes and some books in the past, but I have had to adjust recipes to fit special requirements, like wanting a lot of nuts, or oats. I requested this book hoping for some new information to help me fix my bread-making problems. I have started buying some whole-wheat loafs, and baking less of it. So, I either have to improve, or decide to give it up.

Like myself, the author had to reflect about herself in relation to bread in the “Introduction”. She writes that when she first toured France she found that “everything tasted better”. But then she got back to reality, and started working “as a chemical engineer” in Pennsylvania. Then, she enrolled in the French Culinary Institute in New York City (ix-x).

Then, she jumps into the meat of baking. Her proposed schedule is way too intense, as she suggests baking a bread takes two days, with five stretches and folds, and various other steps. I use instant yeast to avoid the complexities of “starter” that stretch this schedule (xii-xiii). She writes that, when she bakes at home, she also uses instant. She explains that to make home-made-starter takes 6 days (xxxi). Apparently this Mother Starter has to be fed twice a day, more stringently than the most demanding house-plants (xxxii). I also have struggled adjusting recipes because I try to eat vegan, or without eggs, and with vegan butter, which might be impossible for some of the fancier bread recipes. I have also experimented with different flours. She mentions buckwheat flour: gluten-free, brownish-gray. I especially like rye flour: “heartier than wheat”. She defines its different categories, apparently it’s not just a single type of rye. She explains that my wheat flour might have been tough to handle because there is a “finely milled whole wheat” flour (Central Milling) she uses that has a less “coarse” texture.

I learned of a possible mistake I’ve been making. She writes that “if you mix flour and water together and then let them rest before adding the salt and yeast, the gluten forms better.” I have been resting the dough after all ingredients are mixed, and questioning what the “rest” was for. I’m sure typical recipes do not say to pause before adding salt and yeast… Apparently some pause for up to 24 hours… (25). She also recommends wetting the hands to prevent dough from sticking to them… I can’t imagine that’s true… at least not with the type of dense dough I concoct… (6). She discusses “resting” separately from the previously-mentioned “autolyze” pause, saying that an inexperienced baker probably wouldn’t generate enough “tension in the preshape” to “need to rest much at all before shaping”. So I guess resting is pointless? When baking, she recommends using “a roaster lid” to “trap the steam and help the bread expand”: this helps to mimic professional results at home (8).

I just decided that I am not going to find suggestions for how to edit my very specific recipes here. I’m sure if I just try putting a lid over my tray up until just before the end of the cook time this would probably just introduce some absurd mistake, like making the bread semi-raw. There are some curious recipes like for the M’smen laminated flatbread that has a pretty vegan recipe, though it asks for sugar, and I don’t even have any sugar at home to avoid adding it to stuff (94). There might come a time when I’ll have the patience to learn such recipes, but this is not that time. This ebook will probably expire by the time I’m ready to look closer. Tortillas are ultra-vegan: just flour, salt and water (101). Pitas are pretty similar… My local grocery stores tend to have weird pitas… But I just bought some good ones for the first time in a while a few weeks ago, so I think I’d be better-off just buying pita (108). I also stopped at the Einkorn Pan Bread: “Danish rye bread… densely loaded with seeds and grains.” The seed and the rest addition seemed perfect for my preference for nuts, grains and the like. But its ingredients list is epic, and it includes sourdough starter, sprouted berries, barley malt syrup and other ingredients I’m just never going to find (147). Looks very tasty though. On the other hand, baguettes have few ingredients, and look great, but they are not with whole flour and don’t include nuts. I try to always add nuts to increase the good-calorie count to make a loaf enough as breakfast with only some added fruits (244).

This book has made me very hungry. I’d like to invite this chef to come by and bake pretty much everything in this book so I can freeze it and have it as my month’s meals. Those who enjoy baking at home should have a different inspiration: cooking this stuff themselves. Would be awesome if I could spend like a couple of hours daily baking… But maybe even these great instructions are insufficient for me to execute these recipes. I recommend this book for home and professional chefs alike.

Great Resource for Fantasy Writers: To Avoid the Mistake of Theology-Rewriting, or to Learn About New Creatures

Scott G. Bruce, Ed., The Penguin Book of Demons (New York: Penguin Books, 2024). Softcover. 368pp. Index, notes. ISBN: 978-0-143137-86-3.

*****

“Three thousand years of encounters with malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmares. For millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate—otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation, and moral decline. The… supernatural creatures—and the humans who have hunted and been haunted by them—across cultures and continents: the daemons of ancient Greece and Rome; the giant, biblical half humans known as Nephilim who stalked the earth before the Great Flood; corrupted angels, condemned to eternity in Hell; the jinn of Islamic Arabia; the female, child-eating Gelloudes of Byzantium; the seductive incubi and succubi of northern Europe; the animal spirits of early modern China; and the cannibalistic Wendigo of Native American folklore. From demonic possession to black magic, these accounts give life to a spellbinding, skin-crawling history of the paranormal.”

I recently wrote a couple of pilots with bible-plans for television shows. One of these featured a jinn. My research into this creature surprised me, so I turned to this section first. “the unpredictable jinn of the Arabian Peninsula probably predated the advent of Islam in the seventh century”, before they were picked up in “renowned story cycles crafted by Muslim authors”, also featuring King Solomon (xvii). An entire section is dedicated to them: “Spirits of Fire and Air: The Riddle of the Jinn”. The summary explains: “They could make themselves invisible, transform their shape and size, and fly rapidly from place to place.” In a chapter on “Quranic Demonology”, there is an intro that jinn were not malevolent in the original stories, as they were not exiled “from Heaven; rather, they were a race of creatures who inhabited the earth before the creation of Adam and eve.” The Qur’an describes jinn briefly, as if readers were already familiar with them. A few passages are presented from the Qur’an where jinn are mentioned: “To Solomon… We gave… jinn who served him by leave of his Lord” (127). Then, “The Case of the Animals versus man Before the King of the Jinn” in Epistle 22, a history of jinn was added. It claims that jinn lived before Adam, and then Angels were “sent by God” to vanquish them “and adopted one of their captives, a young jinn named Lucifer, as their own…” Later, jinn lived on earth and were controlled by King Solomon, who “imprisoned” those among them who rebelled (130). This is a more malevolent version of jinn, as opposed to showing them as a divine superior species. This is a great dramatic story, and one I’m surprised I haven’t read before, even when I tried to do some research earlier into jinn. Any fantasy writer who plans on using a demon in their work would be advised to search this book for relevant stories to avoid misrepresenting what to many is a religious entity, as opposed to merely a light work of fancy.

This book is the perfect way to handle demons. The original stories are combined with specific and thoroughly researched introductions. I could wish for nothing better in a book like this. I just wish it wasn’t expiring before I’ll probably start my next fantasy project.

A Ukrainian Mobster’s Confession 

Sergey Maidukov, Deadly Bonds: Five Years Inside the Ukrainian Mafia (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). Hardcover. 262pp. Bibliography. ISBN: 978-1-5381-8703-6.

***

“He thought the nightmare was over, but nearly twenty years later, ‘the most terrible Mafioso in Ukraine’ was back. This book is not just a memoir but a confession. In 1994, author Sergey Maidukov accepted an ‘exciting business offer’ from Samvel Martirosyan, later renowned as one of the most brutal and indomitable leaders of the Ukrainian Mafia. Maidukov quickly discovered that his job as ‘president’ of a newly created business was actually a front for Mafia activities. Despite regular attempts to extricate himself, he was told that it was too late in no uncertain terms. Thus ensued five adrenaline-fueled years in a long-term apprenticeship with the Mafia underground… A deep look at the Mafia family that dominated the twentieth century post-Soviet state and how it brewed conditions of economic, political, and moral catastrophe.”

“Chapter 1: The Setup” begins with too long of a digression about drinking tea, and relaxing. On the second page, he gets to the point, he sees a photo of a guy he knows, but he is called in the paper “the Most Terrible Mafia King in Ukraine”. Then, another long digression: he is staring at the photo and pondering about his “mood” (5). He abstractly contemplates leaving, before explaining what exactly he was doing while he was “in”. He reads a newspaper article that summarizes the case: “hard racketeering, kidnapping, arms trafficking, threats, physical violence and contract killings” (6). Previous attempts to convict him failed because “corrupt connections in law enforcement agencies” got him to “avoid punishment”. “Finally, in 1998, Samvel went to jail for 14 years, but was released ahead of schedule and went back to his old ways.” He was re-arrested in 2019. The point that surprises the confessor is that he had “known” Samvel, but they “had neither taken nor sold drugs” (7). The writing style takes on a Dostoevsky quality as the narrator describes characters in this world. Then, he becomes digressive again as he ponders emptily how this arrest will affect him. Then, he mentions something that wasn’t apparent from the blurb: he has been working for this mobster for 25 years. And he’s been writing “popular novels” that described this guy? What? All businessmen in Donetsk were paying “dues” to Samvel. Then, the narrator introduces his own extensive article that summarizes Samvel in a way that newspapers had not previously dared to do it. It includes details such as that his early release cost him $180,000, and there were many other releases over the decades. And during court proceedings, “unidentified individuals opened fire on the court, using a machine gun” (10-2).

In the second chapter, he goes back in time to report that life in the USSR was idyllic: intellectually-minded, with a pre-determined career path, and room for ambitions such as book-writing. He joined the army after college: a brutal experience. Then, he became an economist for the state. Then, the USSR began falling apart, and caused extreme inflation. Bribery was necessary to convince a director of a factory to let him “set up our ad hoc business to extract copper wire from old electric motors with a single piece of equipment: a blowtorch.” Then, one of them stole all the copper (19). Then, he gets in an illegal wood scheme. After many other corrupt actions, he ends up meeting Samvel. His brother needs money to get Samvel out of prison (64). While the first couple dozen pages are clear, and crisp, the narrative becomes much less detailed later, when Samvel is mentioned more and more. It seems obvious that the narrator is omitting some truths from his true story. Were there drugs? Was he helping with some of the murderers? The lack of specificity, and the focus on empty chatter hints something ominous is missing. I have to leave this story here. This guy is working pretty hard to make himself sympathetic, and its commendable that he’s confessing about anything. But making money from a confession after a life in the mob echoes Mob Wives, as opposed to anything heroic.

Is It Moral to Support the Murder of Settlers? 

Douglas R. Egerton, A Man on Fire: The World’s of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 7, 2025). Hardcover: $35. 352pp. Index, notes, map. ISBN: 978-0-197554-05-0.

****

“Few Americans covered as much ground as Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Born in 1823 to a family descended from Boston’s Puritan founders, he attended Harvard, like all the men in his family, and prepared for the settled life of a minister. Instead, he rejected both privilege and convention, and embraced radical causes, attaching himself to nearly every major reform movement of the day, from women’s rights to abolitionism. More than merely a fellow traveler, Higginson became a proponent of direct action. Wounded during an altercation with the police over an enslaved man who—in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act—was fighting extradition to the South, Higginson wore the scar with pride. He became a member of Boston’s Secret Six, supporting John Brown’s raid and going to Bleeding Kansas with his rifle, prepared to put his life on the line. During the Civil War Higginson went to South Carolina and led one of the first Black regiments, the 1st Carolina Volunteers, into battle. Man of action though he was, ‘Colonel’ Higginson was also a writer and journalist, friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and one of the founding editors of the Atlantic Magazine. Emily Dickinson sought out his advice and their correspondence attests both to Dickinson’s genius and Higginson’s attempt to help it reach a larger audience. Until his death in 1911, Higginson played a role, often a leading and vocal part, in nearly every progressive movement of the 19th century, earning a place in studies of abolitionism, feminism, education, temperance, Victorian fiction, as well as films, novels, and books featuring Dickinson and Harriet Tubman (whom he met in South Carolina during the Civil War)…”

The chapters in this book are named after quotes from this writer, and are organized chronologically. The “Introduction” explains that the title comes from a quote about him in a paper. The “Colonel” title was apparently a fiction that was either added by the press, or by him himself before the pressed picked it up. There are some dark tones, as he helped (after-the-fact) in 1856 “John Brown and his followers” who “murdered five proslavery settlers” in Kansas. Just because these guys might or might not have been for slavery hardly excused murdering them without a trial… “Higgins would go on to raise funds for Brown’s later ventures…” These actions are labeled as “radical” in a good way by the author… This support was partly what brought him to mind to lead the Black men of the First South Carolina Volunteers into the Civil War in 1862 (6). But a few paragraphs later there is a story of Higgins helping an officer who was trying to arrest him evade an angry mob, describing this as indicative that he prescribed violence “focused on” the “enemy combatants and never on civilians” (7). It seems this incident was spun. Higgins used a mob to help himself evade arrest… He might have just advised them not to kill the arresting officer, to avoid that new charge.

This is a puffery of an author. My initial research into some of the authors he was associated with, Thoreau and Emerson, shared a single linguistic signature. So, I suspect this guy also did not ghostwrite his own texts. And the claims that he was moving all across the country at a supernatural speed hint that these descriptions were fictional pufferies that mostly involved bylines that a given ghostwriter was working for, and could manipulate what he claimed about their social calendars. This is a very well written book, but I just can’t get into it because of my current glum perspective on canonical literature.   

Another Unapplicable Corpus Linguistics Intro 

Chris Fitzgerald and Ivor Timmis, Corpus Linguistics for Oral History (London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2024). Softcover. 132pp. Index, appendixes. ISBN: 978-1-032-37872-5.

***

“…Takes a step-by-step approach to presenting how corpus linguistics tools and techniques can be applied to oral history archives. Bridging the gap between the two areas, this book: •Establishes a framework to pursue this type of research and guides the reader through tasks that will ensure practical application. •Shows how oral narratives can facilitate historical linguistics, including historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics. •Illustrates how the techniques of corpus linguistics can help social historians to analyse oral narratives in new and fruitful ways. •Takes readers through each step of the process, from initial close readings of data to constructing a corpus that adheres to parameters of representativeness, through to the application of various corpus linguistics techniques. •Includes an appendix of resources and examples of extracts from a global range of historical texts throughout, introducing the reader to a range of freely accessible, digitized archives. This book is key reading for students and researchers working in History and Corpus Linguistics. History students will find a new perspective on approaching primary historical sources, while linguistics students will find insights into an avenue of data worthy of multiple levels of linguistic analysis.”

I might have requested this book years or months ago when I was still working on my 18-19^th century stylometric re-attribution study. It is now finished, so this title is less relevant. I turned to the section on “Applying Corpus Tools to Oral Histories” to check if there is anything new here that I did not already know (48). It briefly says “Corpus linguists will already be familiar with these tools”. An ominous note, though a promise to address this topic later follows. The first tool described are “Frequency and Keyword Lists”, or a list of the “most frequently occurring items in a corpus.” They provide an example of a list from a general “Corpus of Oral Histories”. There is a sound explanation that this list indicates heavy usage of first-person in these histories, and other patterns. Then, “clusters” are defined as sequences of words, and a list of these is given. This is a linguistically-dense explanation of very simple ideas about the most frequent words and phrases. One of the volumes in my forthcoming series is an introduction to stylometric attribution testing. After reading this, I wonder if I should add more complexity to my own explanations. But the point seems to be to instruct the method with only essential information, instead of adding complexity by adding: “This gives the researcher a deeper insight into how the word is used in context, which is of particular relevance to certain items and investigations” (54). There are some cases where this explanation might be helpful, but synonyms of these phrases appear too many times across this section. When it comes to describing methods beyond these basics, the explanation becomes too vague for readers to apply in practice. Sinclair’s procedure is called “clear and comprehensive”, but it begins by instructing users to search for a random “term… in context by looking at what occurs to its left and right” (59). There has not been an explanation regarding where this tool is available, or how to use it, but this section jumps in to asking users to let it solve the problem for them (the algorism I guess). This strategy of giving incomprehensible directions when it comes to actual quantitative methods or referring readers to a black box is the standard way in which computational linguists have barred entry into this field, which has allowed them to claim their black-box confirms most existing bylines as accurate attributions, when the data of canonical literature indicates an extreme degree of multi-bylined ghostwriting. So, I do not recommend this book for those who really want to solve the truth behind attribution mysteries. I recommend the first volume in my own forthcoming series (however unfitting such self-puffery might be: it is the truth).

A Vivid and Precise Guide to Southeast Turkey 

Nicholas Mackey, An Irishman in Northern Mesopotamia: A Journey of Discovery in Southeast Turkiye: A Personal Perspective (London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, October 2024). Hardcover: £25. 248pp. Index, color photos and maps. ISBN: 978-1-916846-28-9.

****

“…Odyssey through south-east Türkiye… a region embraced by the legendary Euphrates and Tigris rivers―the Cradle of Civilization. Here he explores the ancient wonders of Antakya, Dara, Harran, Mardin, Gaziantep, and Diyarbakir, peeling back the layers of empires, cultures and peoples that have shaped millennia. Göbeklitepe and Karahan Tepe, near the contemporary city of Sanliurfa/Urfa, stand as iconic archaeological landmarks with the promise to revolutionize our understanding of the past. Artefacts from these locations, dating back nearly 12,000 years, challenge established notions of the origins of civilization. His daily journal, Some Shit to Remember, serves as the genesis…: a seamless blend of travelogue, memoir, history, archaeology, poetry, prose, and memorable imagery—evocative of Nicholas coming of age in Ireland with an unquenchable desire to travel, ‘to seek and find’ (Whitman)…”

British people “discovering” antique civilizations is not exactly politically correct… A better term would be to say they were “visiting” places that had remained “discovered” to locals. The “Foreword” stresses that the author has indeed “discovered” Turkey “20 years ago”. Then, he digresses into his Irish origin, though given the title, this is a necessary segway (8). It is also pretty ridiculous that the author mentions his “Shit” journal, and includes scans of handwritten pages from it… (11). This is a bit like including your own autograph.

There is a great color map of Turkey within Europe, and on its own double-page, with lines for where the author traveled. There are great color photos throughout of antique architecture, drawings, ruins, fields, contemporary sites, and other oddities that probably would not appear in a common guidebook. Pictures of modern people, and food really put the reader into these places. These are redeeming elements.

Inside the book, there is also a good deal of helpful information for travelers, as well as for researchers into each visited place. For example, the section on Adana begins with a quote from The, 1671, Book of Travels that mentions Adana by its former name, Coa. Then, a geographic, historic (it is associated with Alexander the Great) and demographic summary follows. Though the section ends with the writer’s report that he’s overwhelmed by this information, instead of clarifying points that are raised too briskly. Then, the story moves on to “The road sign to Tarsus…” (37-8). Then, a section about Russians building plants that employed 20,000 people, and these places are now sending out “clouds of smoke”, to the “concern” of “ecologists” (40). In transitions between sections, explanations are given for how they drove between these places, and adventures encountered in travel. If somebody is planning a trip to Turkey, they would probably have the patience to read this entire book to make notes on what they want to see, or avoid. There are many absurdities, and mistakes people tend to make while traveling, which typical guidebooks fail to warn about. This book is likely to fully prepare readers to take a very long trip, or even to live in Turkey. The cover also has gold letters, and is appealing: the sort of book that looks good on a shelf. Overall, a book recommended to those who need it.

Possible Ghostwriting Implications in a Classic Mutiny-Slavery-Piracy History 

James H. Sweet, Mutiny on the Black Prince: Slavery, Piracy, and the Limits of Liberty in the Revolutionary Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024). Hardcover. 248pp. Index, notes. ISBN: 978-0-19-769272-1.

*****

“The… story of a mutiny aboard an eighteenth-century British ship and how its owners effectively rallied the power of the British Crown to protect their investment and expand their wealth and political power across multiple generations. In 1768, the British slave ship Black Prince, departed the port of Bristol, bound for West Africa. It never arrived. Before reaching Old Calabar, the crew mutinied, murdering the captain and his officers. The mutineers renamed the ship Liberty, elected new officers, and set out for Brazil. By the time the ship arrived there, the crew had disintegrated into a violent mob and fired into the port city. After the Black Prince wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola, the rebels fled to outposts around the Atlantic world. An eight-year manhunt ensued. This book follows the crew’s turn to piracy and the merchant-owners’ response to the uprising. At the very moment that the American Revolution unfolded in North America, the Black Prince’s owners conducted a ‘shadow’ revolution, mobilizing the power of the British Crown to seek justice and restitution on their behalf. These private merchants used state surveillance, policing, extradition, capital punishment, international diplomacy, and even warfare in order to protect their wealth.” This is precisely how greedy capitalists tend to start wars to continue indenturing, enslaving, and stealing others’ raw materials. “During an era of professed liberty and freedom, the privatization of state power was already emerging, replacing monarchies with corporate oligarchies, presaging a new kind of political power in the Atlantic world. The eighteenth-century Bristol slave merchants and subsequent generations of their families accrued great fortunes from the trade and invested it in early British banks, railroads, insurance companies, industrial manufacturing, and even the Anglican Church.” Though banks were also investing in these merchants, and were thus at fault for seeking returns on their investments, even if nature was against it. “Narrates the dramatic story of the events onboard and the merchant owners’ efforts to capture the rebels from around the Atlantic world, as well as the way that British slavery shaped the industrializing Atlantic economy and the evolution of the modern corporate state.”

There is a great simple map of the cross-world trips described. And there are some photos of relevant buildings, drawings of people involved, scans of contemporary articles about these events, and the like. There are a lot of notes, bibliographies and other matter that supports this book being well-researched.

Peter Shaw died in 1763. He had been ghostwriting (according to the stylometry and handwriting analysis of my forthcoming re-attribution series) propaganda travelogues that served to cloaked piracy, slave-transport and other schemes of investors, merchants, and ship operators. In around 1762, a collaborating ghostwriter, John Trusler, took over this genre first by finishing or rewriting some of Shaw’s earlier unpublished variedly-bylined accounts of British “exploration” (cloaking profiteering, theft, legal maneuvers to cheat folks of money). Shaw had been actively involved in supervising some of these early voyages by serving as a naval surgeon under the John Atkins and other bylines. Trusler was not at all experienced with the navy, and is not likely to have done much traveling himself, rather borrowing from Shaw’s diaries. Without Shaw, or another overseer onboard, the profiteering pirates might have decided to take control in this Black Prince drama in 1768, which Trusler could only dramatize in the press, as he tried to legally go after these pirates, without being onboard to have directly turned the affair in investors’ favor. There is a mention in The London Chronicle that “Atkins” sailed the Black Prince for Liverpool on November 13, 1762 (shortly before Atkins death). And John Trusler mentioned “Edward the black prince, born June 15, 1330” in The Tablet of Memory, or Historian’s Guide (1782). These notes hint at some relationship between these ghostwriters and this major naval scandal. Another shift in 1760 was that Joseph Banks joined the ghostwriting Workshop, and he led some of the big monetary corrupt transports of capital as he also used the “discovery” narrative to profit from slavery and other ills. He was as the forefront of the relationship that formed between banking, “sciences” and anti-humanitarian ventures. As this book says: “Slave traders like Fowler utilized their accumulated capital to establish some of England’s first private, regional banks.” The families who formed the slave “turnpike” “were also partners in Bristol’s earliest banks” (134). Ghostwriters, like Banks, used multiple pseudonyms to serve as “partners” at various institutions without clearly disclosing such links, which can easily be scrutinized. The system was more directly corrupted with most sides being puppeteer by the same interests. “Even merchants who never traded directly in slaves often depended on slaving for their livelihoods… For example, Thomas Goldney III, a founder and senior partner in Bristol’s second bank… was the heir to an iron manufacturing empire that served as a primary supplier of manillas and rods for the salve trade” (136). Britain began the process of making this enormously profitable slave trade illegal by the end of the 18^th century, while those who wanted to continue profiting from it found loopholes, such as continuing the trade in the US and other foreign nations for another century, later selling “iron” for chains to enslave, and weapons to fight the Civil War. Since most of the slaves were headed for these other nations, pretending to be humanitarians by abolishing slavery in the UK did not hurt profits in this business.

What is known about the mutiny on the Black Prince was filtered through propagandists, who were profiting from helping the investors suppress such mutinies, but also from selling dramatic narratives of little rebellions, and the success Brits had with seemingly suppressing such uprisings. The description of this particular crew as mostly “thin”, smallpox-ravaged, “bandy legged” and “one eyed”, with scars might be a deliberate exaggeration to make them appear animalistic, or barbaric, as the description might have come from one of Atkins’ much earlier passages, which Trusler simply plagiarized, assuming the crew there had similar piratic characteristics. This crew asked for higher wages “in early May”, as they were “dreading the voyage into Old Calabar’s war zone”. Curiously, the name of this ship’s Captain Willian Hawkins (1722-1801) helps me to solve the mystery I have been pondering: Hawkins was one of the ghostwriters, who had been active in the Workshop since 1739. Hawkins was a lawyer, who started his career by ghostwriting for George II, and remained involved in politics. He was probably asked to oversee this voyage for an investor, and ended up facing a rebellion. As they were approaching the war-zone, a sailor called Thomas Austin began hitting the ship’s first officer over the head, and was restrained. Then, “three knife-wielding sailors cornered Hawkins, who desperately fought his way out of the cabin… but not before suffering multiple stab wounds”. The story claims that Hawkins and other officers were then put in a “ship’s longboat” with a compass and provisions and were “never… heard of” since. Obviously, Hawkins survived and lived until 1801. So, authors of this tragedy are failing to associate this Captain Hawkins, with the legal-theological scholar Hawkins. Hawkins might have needed to disembark in Old Calabar to join the war secretly, so this might not have been a forced eviction. Alternatively, Hawkins remained onboard, as the “mutineers” as they turned pirates and profited from piracy, without implicating Hawkins directly in these crimes (since he could claim he was forced to leave before the piracy began). Back during Shaw’s years as the mutinying ghostwriter, he described a similar diversion in 1719 when Captain Roberts “captured the principal ship in the convoy” of a Portuguese fleet, which carried “40,000 gold coins”: an extremely profitable bit of robbery and fraud. The problem was that this crew might have actually rebelled, instead of following the plot of merely pretending to do so to become pirates (without implicating investors in piracy), as a result this ship “washed ashore” in Brazil. The problems funders now had was that this was a waste of a ship, without the profit of pirating boxes of gold from a rival monarchy. Meanwhile, after dealing with the Brits’ thievery for decades, the Portuguese started an investigation as soon as they saw this ship approaching their shores, and then other disasters followed (79-81).

I used to love reading pirate stories as a kid, so it is tempting to just read most of this book for fun. It is thoroughly researched (though the author does not understand the implications I mention here). This is a good book to purchase for libraries of all types to give access to the public and researchers to these contents.

Examining Vikings from Their Remains, and Fictions About Them 

Eleanor Barraclough, Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, January 7, 2025). Hardcover: $32.99. 360pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-324089-23-0.

****

“History of the Viking Age, told through runes and ruins, games and combs, trash and treasure. In the time-stopping soils, waters, and ice of the North, a lost world is preserved. Remnants of wooden gaming boards scored into grids and counters made from colored glass, amber, and bone. Elegant antler combs that speak of a Viking love of grooming and hair care. Doodles by imaginative children and bored teenagers. Scraps of wood carved with runes that reveal hidden loves, furious curses, and drunken spouses summoned home from the pub. Drawing on such traces, Eleanor Barraclough illuminates life in the medieval Nordic world—not just for the rampaging warriors we remember as Vikings, but people with recognizable concerns in a globally networked world. ‘Embers of the hands’ is a poetic kenning from the Viking Age that referred to gold.”

The book opens with a sharp map of areas from Newfoundland to Greenland to Iceland to Britain to explain the range of territory covered. I had some problems looking through this ebook review copy: this might have been because it is a larger file. The titles of the chapters are rather vague, “Love”, “Bodies”, “Play”: but I guess these describe the themes covered by the artifacts better than more detailed headings would have. The “Prologue: Kindling” asks the important question of where the “Viking Age” begins, according to historians, noting that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that in 793 there were “fiery dragons and lightning in the skies over Northumberland”, before Scandinavians began their raids (1-2). Instead, the author takes us back a millennium earlier to the Vimose bog, on a Danish island. A brief summary of artifacts found here follows: “pottery shards and bones… Ancient tools of metal and wood: hammers and tongs, knives and twist-drills, files and fire steels, even anvils. Gaming pieces and scraps of clothing…” This paints a great picture to explain what sort of book this is: one that weighs the evidence that has been dug up without interpreting it solely within the Viking mythology (3). The author also confesses that many things remain unknown about the uncovered artifacts, such as that the “HARJA” letters inscribed on a Viking comb can mean anything from “comb” to “warrior” or could have been the name of the wearer (7). It is important for such accounts to unknowledge such unknowns because otherwise they are likely to use their intuition to guess at the meaning, instead of finding evidence to support what the true meaning was most likely to be.

Though there is a bit too much pondering and not enough getting to the point, as the “Introduction” continues with a glossy puffery of this age. There is a mention of god Odin’s poem, in between ponderings about “glowing remnants”. Forensic archeology is best done by weighing the scientific evidence, and analyzing items’ dates, and regions, and functions in relation to each other, instead of in connection with texts that were probably first-written hundreds or thousands of years later.

Another problem is that some sources are not cited when dates are finally introduced. “In 865  a large fleet landed in England, with the aim not of hit-and-run raids, but of conquest” (22). This seems like a generally known fact, but the source of this claim is propaganda that was written centuries later to serve political interests of later rulers. What archeological evidence is there to support this date? I searched for “carbon” to find if there are any mentions of scientific dating and found a mention near the end of this book. This section describes what was excavated from Herjolfsnes in Norse Greenland, which is now showcased at the National Museum of Denmark and at the Greenland National Museum. These exhibits show “Gowns, stockings, hoods and caps… No other archaeological site has revealed such a treasure trove of medieval European clothing…” One of these artifacts is the skeleton of a buried woman in a set of clothing: catalogue number D10581. “Radiocarbon dating suggests this happened sometime between 1380 and 1530, in the very last decades of the Norse settlement in Greenland” (299). They could have been the last decades, or the first and last decades. It would take carbon-dating the other artifacts to figure this out, instead of relying on probably biased histories written long after claimed events. The only other mention of this scientific method is in its definition on pages 42-3. This explanation includes one other application of carbon dating. The L’Anse aux Meadows Viking Age site was unearthed in the 1960s, proving Norse explorers “reached the edge of North America, just as the Icelandic sagas reported. Chopped logs here were tested and there was a ring that matched “a solar event that took place in the year 993”, which allowed for the precise dating of that chopped log to having been cut down in 1021, “giving them the only secure year when we know that the Norse categorically had to be present on the edge of North America”. This book would have benefited from giving all known carbon-dated date estimates for all artifacts mentioned throughout, as only mentioning these few examples is insufficient in a book entirely reliant on examining artifacts to check historic claims.

Overall, there were only a few cases of digressive writing I found. Otherwise, this is a thoroughly researched book that presents a new step towards questioning what the evidence about Vikings is truly saying, as opposed to what propaganda has taught it should be saying.

How Climate-Science Is Drowned Out by Opportunists 

Mark Easter, The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos (New York: Patagonia, September 17, 2024). Hardcover: $30. 400pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-952338-20-5.

**

“…Dinner companion for food lovers who also care about the planet. Ecologist Mark Easter offers a detailed picture of the impact the foods you love have on the earth. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party, including seafood, salad, bread, chicken, steak, potatoes, and fruit pie with ice cream, each chapter examines the food through the lens of the climate crisis. Not a cookbook, but instead, gathered like guests around the table, you will find the stories of these foods: the soil that grew the lettuce, the farmers and ranchers and orchardists who steward the land, the dairy and farm workers and grocers who labor to bring it to the table. Each chapter reveals the causes and effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the social and environmental impact of out-of-season and far-from-home demand. What can you do to eat more sustainably? Food lovers everywhere will be happy to know that the answer is not necessarily a plant-based diet. For each food group, Easter offers not recipes but low-carbon, in-season alternatives that make your favorite foods not only more sustainable but also more delicious. The first step, however, is an understanding of how food is grown, produced, harvested, and shipped. In stories both personal and entertaining, the author offers a full understanding of what’s for dinner.”

The cover of this book is a bit painful to look at. It’s a posterization of food that includes a very bright blue globe ball in the middle. I don’t know why: but it’s just off. The colors are too bright. The title is too tiny. The globe is too swirly. Much could have been improved.

The “Foreword” opens with a puffery of the author’s award-winning restaurant. He slowly describes his inner struggles with opening a “regenerative agriculture” restaurant, without giving many specifics. He does not really explain what specifically caused him to close his Parennial restaurant in 2019. Instead of investing money into trying again, they have been profiting “since 2020” by helping “sixty-five farms… implement projects that have sequestered as much carbon as not burning about four million gallons of gas…” (13). This is the first mention of sequestering, which was not explained before. So, this intro would puzzle people trying to figure out why they should listen to this author’s experience. On page 33, it is added that trees naturally sequester carbon as they turn carbon dioxide into their bodies, and later when these trees rot, they become “soil carbon”. “Applying livestock manure and compost to fields and pastures helps sequester carbon in soil organic matter.” In other words, by just telling farmers to put manure into the ground to feed their crops (as they would do anyway) is earning these guys a lot of money, whereas selling this good-doing to restaurant-goers was unprofitable. Eleborating on this point, he argues that while sipping “a beer” he had the thought that the Had Glen Canyon dam was blocking “the riverside ecosystem’s ability to sequester carbon.” This meant he could profit from closing this dam as a “carbon mitigation” project (104). This is absolutely pointless, idiotic, and a profiteering trick that is making this guy money without taking steps to actually solve the climate-crisis. Soberer minds are needed.

There are some useful graphics and explanations throughout, like a graph of the “Carbon Footprint of Meat” that classifies categories by waste, retail & packaging, transport, processing, enteric methane, feed, and deforestation (262). But this idea (don’t eat meat) is countered by the manure-application scheme that this guy is profiting from. Stopping at a random page, I found the big question: “What can be done about these emissions?” The answer: the bad news: “it is currently unclear whether anything can be done to reduce the enteric methane that dairy animals belch from their stomachs” (310). The solution that he seems to hope for is for scientists to reduce cow-belching… Eh… The methane is produced in proportion to the food these cows eat to get big and create meat. A scientist might recommend making smaller cows… which would belch less per cow… But that’s not a serious approach. The way to stop cow-belching is to stop raising cows for human food.  

I have to leave this book at this point… The reason humanity cannot solve the climate-crisis is because books like this keep clouding peoples’, academics’ and politicians’ minds regarding just what would seriously solve it, as opposed to merely profiting somebody who can manipulate doing the same thing we have been doing, but with green-washing. Instead of putting money into whatever this guy is doing, people who care about the environment should be investing into scientists whose only agenda is the solution, and not profiteering from the highest bidder’s desire to keep things as they are until this planet is cooked.

A Study of the Jailing of Anti-Tyrannical Dissidents 

Mark L. Clifford, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic (New York: Simon & Schuster: Free Press, December 3, 2024). EBook: $28.99. 304pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-668027-69-1.

****

“The astonishing story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai who became one of Hong Kong’s leading activists for democracy and is today China’s most famous political prisoner. Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled; no work was beneath him, and he often slept on a table in a clothing factory where he did odd jobs. At twenty-one, he was running a factory. By his mid-twenties, he owned one and was supplying sweaters and shirts to some of the biggest brands in the United States, from Polo to The Limited. His ideas about retail led him to create Giordano in 1981, and with it ‘fast fashion.’ A restless entrepreneur, as Giordano prepared to go public, he was thinking about a dining concept that would disrupt Hong Kong’s fast-food industry. But then came the Tiananmen Square democracy protest and the massacre of 1989. His reaction to the violence was to enter the media business to push China toward more freedoms. He started a magazine, Next, to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong. Then, just two years before the city was to return to Chinese control, he founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Its mix of bold graphics, gossip, local news, and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was an immediate hit. For more than two decades, Lai used Apple and Next as part of a personal push for democracy—in weekly columns, at rallies and marches, and, memorably, sitting in front of a tent during the 2014 Occupy Central movement. Lai took his activism abroad, traveling frequently to Washington, where he was well known in Congress and in political circles. China reacted with fury in 2019 when he met with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A draconian new security law came into effect in Hong Kong in mid-2020, effectively making free speech a crime and censorship a fact. Lai was its most important target. Apple Daily was raided on August 10, 2020. He was arrested and held without bail before being convicted of trumped-up charges ranging from lighting a candle (‘incitement to riot’) to violating a clause in his company’s lease (‘fraud’). At the end of 2023, a lengthy trial began alleging ‘collusion with foreign forces’ and printing seditious materials. China’s most famous political prisoner has been in jail for more than 1,100 days and could spend the rest of his life there…”

The “Foreword” opens by Natan Sharansky (he only wrote his section: this is not made clear until the byline at the end) asking Lai in a Zoom interview, why he was not trying to escape. The obvious answer is: this is counter-revolutionary. If he had escaped, this book would not be written about him. As Westerners tend to value tragic prolonged imprisonments and assassinations over those who succeed in making changes, or flee to avoid struggle at the last moment. Tragedies are more dramatic than easy migrations… The author adds that in 1977 he had his “own experience with” a “refusal to understand”, when he “was arrested ‘for anti-Soviet activity and high treason.’” Sharansky was released after six years of American diplomats applying pressure on his behalf. The problem of political prisoners being held for succeeding in getting through with messaging that ridicules totalitarian regimes is one that needs to be studied in academic books to help figure out how we can help them, but also to figure out how the media should handle these cases to ease their suffering. Prisoner exchanges and concessions generate a motive to take more political-prisoners to use in bargains. Perhaps, a new approach to stop these arrests is figuring out how to stop corruption in politics, as if tyrants could not profit from illegally seizing power, there would be no reason for them to imprison those who describe their corruptions.

The book opens with a “Chronology” that helpfully orients readers on the timeline of Lai’s life. Lai was born a year before the “communists” took “power in China” in 1949. It includes details that are not mentioned in the blurb, such as that his “mother” was “sent to forced labor site”, which is why he had to work as a child-laborer. Another curious detail is that “five hundred” police officers were used to raid his Apple Daily on June 17, 2021: this is an incredibly giant number for a raid of a paper… And charges against him are as absurd as “illegally subletting part of” his “company’s office”, for which he received five years in 2022.

The “Prologue: The Troublemaker” starts with some dramatic details about a historical harbor, strip-searches, and traffic before a hearing. Most paragraphs include important information, such as that Lai was wearing “hearing aids” in court because he “had eye surgery not long before the trial”. And there is an important note that his “fortune” was “estimated” to be worth “$1.2 billion before the government came after him”, and he had “spent well over $100 million of his own money to fund Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.” These are extraordinary numbers that explain just how profitable arresting him and seizing his money has been for corrupt agencies that probably pocketed most of what they seized in the chaos.

“Chapter One: ‘Food Is Freedom’” continues to report facts in combination with the dramatic biographical narrative. For example, his “government documents state” that he “was born… thirteen months before what he believes is his actual birth date…” It would have been even more interesting if an explanation followed regarding why he believes this date is incorrect by over a year. In my research into ghostwriters, such discrepancies tend to hint at identity-changes or switches from one byline to another.

Glancing over the rest of the book, it is informative, and succinctly written throughout. Those who care about democracy across the world are likely to enjoy reading this biography to learn what the struggle for democracy is like in reality.

Interpretations of Letters Ghostwritten for Byron 

Andrew Stauffer, Byron: A Life in Ten Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, January, 2024). EBook. Index. ISBN: 978-1-009200-13-4.

****

“Lord Byron was the most celebrated of all the Romantic poets. Troubled, handsome, sexually fluid, disabled, and transgressive, he wrote his way to international fame—and scandal—before finding a kind of redemption in the Greek Revolution. He also left behind the vast trove of thrilling letters (to friends, relatives, lovers, and more) that form the core of this remarkable biography. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Byron’s death, and adopting a fresh approach, it explores his life and work through some of his best, most resonant correspondence. Each chapter opens with Byron’s own voice—as if we have opened a letter from the poet himself—” This is a terrible idea. Stauffer is adding fiction on top of the fictions ghostwriters previously invented and applied to “Byron’s” persona. At least, modern scholars should stick with past fictions, as adding their own falsities only deludes the truth further. “…Followed by a vivid account of the emotions and experiences that missive touches…”

My forthcoming 18-19^th century British re-attribution series includes several mentions of Byron (1788-1824). I stylometrically tested 5 texts from this byline and they matched and they matched four different collaborating ghostwriters. My Handwriting Comparison Study includes the manuscript of “Byron’s” Don Juan (1818-20) in the Hand-D group, which belongs to one of the poets in the Workshop: Samuel Rogers (1763-1855). Rogers’ handwriting in his note to William Allingham from 1847 precisely matches the handwriting in the D-Hand Don Juan sample. “Byron’s” Don Juan and Childe Harold both matched Rogers as their ghostwriter stylometrically. In contrast, “Byron’s” published Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notice of His Life (1830) matched ghostwriters A (Francis Burnand: autobiography specialist) as the primary, and H (Thomas Clarkson: propaganda specialist) as the secondary. Stauffer’s book includes facsimiles of “Letter 7: Byron to Countess Teresa Guiccioli” from December 7, 1819, in Venice (434), “Letter 3: Byron to Lady Melbourne, October 8, 1813, Aston Hall, Rotherham, Yorkshire” (419), and “Letter 6: Letter from Lord Byron to John Murray, 1812” (430); these letters are written in the same shaky (and thus easily-identifiable) Hand-D as Don Juan; this indicates that Rogers ghostwrote a few of the short letters that have survived in manuscript to avoid handwriting mismatches, while the other two ghostwriters wrote most of the published letters, without keeping handwritten copies. The published letters were claimed to have been burned by one of the less productive poetic ghostwriters, Thomas Moore (ghostwriter-F), who was credited as this 1830 edition’s editor; Moore made some money by blackmailing wealthy members of Byron’s family into paying him to burn these letters instead of publishing these implicating missives immediately after Byron’s death. Then, Moore went ahead and published them anyway a few years later, probably because later blackmail attempts fail.

Thus, this study of “Byron’s” letters means a study of how these ghostwriters used fictional claims in autobiographically-assigned first-person letters to accuse the deceased of moral crimes they might or might not have committed to pressure relatives to pay them not to publish, or from publicizing the scandal and profiting from book-sales. Byron was not an author, so most of the biographic info in the summary is incorrect. He also might have died while fighting in the Greek Revolution, instead of dying of an unrelated fever while he happened to be in that area, as his biographers (and ghostwriters) have claimed.

I searched this book for some of the names I mentioned in this review to check what was said about them in relation to Byron. Direct connections to the ghostwriters emerged. “Byron” “wrote to Samuel Rogers of Venice, ‘here have I pitched my staff—& here I propose to reside for the remainder of my life’” with “‘no desire to visit’ England again”, to explain Byron’s sale (probably in 1817) of the Newstead Abbey for £94,500 (187). This was such an enormous sum that the Workshop might have manipulated the circumstances and date of Byron’s death just to sell this property and pocket this money, instead of allowing it to pass to Byron’s heir. There is also a mention of both Rogers and Moore (Moore is likely to have ghostwritten some untested verse assigned to “Byron”): in January 1818, Byron sent some verse notes together with a “new canto of Childe Harold”, which included the line: “For, in rhyme or in love/ (Which both come from above)/ I’ll stand with our ‘Tommy’ or ‘Sammy’ (‘Moore’ and ‘Rogers’)…” (189). “Byron” addressed some letters to Moore, as when in 1817 “Byron” describes a “black-eyed Venetian girl”, he is managing to watch while “reading Boccacio” (186). Moore visited Byron at least once in October 1817 in Venice; Moore had not seen him for the previous five years; the mention of Moore’s visits at this time might have been inserted by the ghostwriters to strengthen Moore’s byline in publishing Byron’s letters because he was Byron’s “friend”; specifically, Byron is claimed to have “handed” to Moore a “white leather bag containing his memoirs, ‘my Life in M.S. in 78 folio sheets brought down to 1816’… to be published after the poet’s death”, during this visit because: “The two men would never meet again” (221-3). And after catching gonorrhea from an Italian gentlewoman, whom he did not pay (as in his other STD outbreaks), “Byron” writes to Rogers that Venice “‘is a very good place for women… & the romance of the place is a mighty adjunct” (190). In 1822, Samuel Rogers visited Byron, writing as himself: “‘The farm-keeper’s daughter was very pretty, and had her arms covered with bracelets, the gifts of Byron, who did not fail to let me know that she was one of his many loves’” (254).

This is a quality study that focuses on annotating and explaining the history behind these important letters. The author has misunderstood the implications in these same letters: I hope I have corrected some of this confusion in this clarifying review.   

Propaganda Puffing Churchill

Allen Packwood, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Winston Churchill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, January 2023). EBook. Index. ISBN: 978-1-108879-25-5.

**

“Viewed by some as the saviour of his nation, and by others as a racist imperialist, who was Winston Churchill really, and how has he become such a controversial figure? Combining the best of established scholarship with important new perspectives, this Companion places Churchill’s life and legacy in a broader context. It highlights different aspects of his life and personality, examining his core beliefs, working practices, key relationships and the political issues and campaigns that he helped shape, and which in turn shaped him. Controversial subjects, such as area bombing, Ireland, India and Empire are addressed in full, to try and explain how Churchill has become such a deeply divisive figure…”

The chapters of this book are written by different writers. I try to avoid reviewing multi-bylined books because they tend to be repetitive, or otherwise problematic. The editor tends to fail to organize the project to be a cohesive whole.

This book includes many illustrations and photographs of Churchill.

The “Foreword” here is by Lord Boateng, Chair of the Sir Churchill Archive Trust. He explains that he grew up in Ghana when he became aware of Churchill. His father apparently inherited “a collection of Churchill’s works”. This note should have been followed by clarification of how this family came to own this collection. But Boateng instead digresses into a general puffery of Churchill. Neither Ghana, nor his father is ever mentioned again. The Trust is later mentioned in another section as being the “home of this editor”, which helped with creating supporting online materials (399). I looked the Trust up online to figure this out. These seem to be references to the online Churchill Archive (first-released in 2012), which includes 800,000 pages of documents from between 1874-1965. I could not find any link to Ghana, so this is a strange way to start this book.

Then, the “Introduction” puffs Churchill in the appearances he has been granted in popular culture. This is pretty irrelevant to just figuring out as the subtitle says, “Who Was Winston Churchill?” The shadow image in pop-culture does not say anything about him: this is why most readers would open this book. The following pages echo a general confusion that mentions pufferies and very harsh things people have said about Churchill without beginning to explore just what that guy actually did, or confusing facts with fictions, without immediate fact-checking (13-5). The next chapter is more absurdly called “2: The Inheritance of Winston Churchill”: this again studies pufferies of Churchill, instead of the man. Even chapter “6: Churchill, the ‘Irish Question’ and the Irish” begins by counting apparently a false myth he has been “accused” of, before giving any relevant facts regarding what this myth is. Many pages later, there is a mention that Churchill “was a Unionist”. But this clear anti-Irish note is immediately countered by looking back and saying that Churchills “had connections with Ireland”: clearly meant to imply that he viewed unionization as a positive for Ireland, versus self-serving his unstated interests (114). Later in life Churchill “did not support Irish self-government”. He said: “‘I remain of the opinion that the creation of a separate Parliament for Ireland would be dangerous and impracticable’” (115). This note is again contradicted with the note that his “tone” towards Ireland later softened, but now without any quotes to support this turn-around. The reversals seem designed to soften Churchill’s current image, or to puff him, instead of being based in any facts in Churchill’s biography.

This is not a good book. I do not recommend reading it. It is very frustrating: probably for everybody except for those seeking out pro-Churchill propaganda.

Puffery of the British Prime Ministers 

Anthony Seldon, The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, April 2021). EBook. Index. ISBN: 978-1-009019-90-3.

***

“Marking the third centenary of the office of Prime Minister, this book tells its extraordinary story, explaining how and why it has endured longer than any other democratic political office in world history.” My research has indicated that British politicians have had their texts ghostwritten by a few people who maintained power for many decades, and had very undemocratic continuing control on what these politicians were allowed to publicly “say”. This complete monopolization of speech by this Workshop makes most of the history of the Prime Minister into a tyrannical story of puppetry, rather than a grand story of democratic victory… “Sir Anthony Seldon, historian of Number 10 Downing Street, explores the lives and careers, loves and scandals, successes and failures, of all our great Prime Ministers. From Robert Walpole and William Pitt the Younger, to Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, Seldon discusses which of our Prime Ministers have been most effective and why. He reveals the changing relationship between the Monarchy and the office of the Prime Minister in intimate detail, describing how the increasing power of the Prime Minister in becoming leader of Britain coincided with the steadily falling influence of the Monarchy.” The Monarchy’s legal powers have not changed much recently. “This book” describes “the humanity and frailty, work and achievement, of these 55… individuals, who averted revolution and civil war, leading the country through times of peace, crisis and war.”

The organization of this book is very confusing. It jumps around between centuries non-chronologically. The same periods are covered over and over, before the story jumps back to a century earlier.

The “Preface” announces the author has been working on related subjects for 40 years, since publishing Churchill’s Indian Summer (1981). This preface then asks a lot of questions it doesn’t answer.

Still more absurdly, “Chapter 1: The 300^th Anniversary Bookend Prime Minister: Walpole and Johnson” begins with a play-dialogue from “Tete-a-tete Over Dinner”. For many pages people are chatting with names about “Pussycats” and people being “In my pocket” (4).

When the history finally starts being offered it comes in blocks of facts that are too crowded. There is some information about what led to a Prime Minister being appointed, but only general pufferies to explain why Robert Walpole was chosen (15). And when explaining just what the Cabinet does that this Prime Minister chairs, the notes are very totalitarian, as it decides “military action, policy of constitutional significance, or of major national economic and public health concern”, and some unspecified “debates” about these take place in small meetings, like “Walpole’s ‘Inner Cabinet’” (16). More is said about Covid in relation to the Cabinet, than about its actual functions and rules. Then, a section on “Managing the Monarchy” explains that “during the Brexit crisis” in 2019, Johnson “felt the need to explicitly remind him that the monarch still possessed the royal prerogative powers, which the prime minister only exercised in their name. Johnson shrugged, Cummings fumed” (17). The following lines claim that asking the Queen was merely a formality, but the fuming hints that what the monarch wanted to happen in this case had to be what would happen: this negates the argument that the monarchy has lost power in Britain.

I don’t want to review more of this book. If I ever need to research British Prime Ministers, I’ll search it through for information. But a researcher really needs to know what they are looking for to find something here. It is not the sort of book that’s readable cover-to-cover.

The Mythology of the English Language 

Peter Trudgill, The Long Journey of English: A Geographical History of the Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, May 2023). EBook. Index. ISBN: 978-1-108954-62-4.

****

“English is one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world, with native-speaking communities at the furthest ends of the earth. However, just three thousand years ago, the language-which-became-English was not spoken anywhere in Britain. Trudgill, one of the foremost authorities on the English language, takes us on a remarkable journey through the history of English to show how it grew to become the global phenomenon that we know today. Over ten short, easily digestible chapters, he traces its development and global spread, starting with the earliest genesis of English five thousand years ago, exploring its expansion in the British Isles, and finishing with an overview of how the language looks today, including its use in an increasingly digital world. Particular attention is paid to the native-speaker varieties of English from all around the world, and the relationship between colonial varieties of English and indigenous languages.”

My research in the BRRAM series indicated that English was mostly made up as a distinct language from Old German in the Renaissance, as many of the Medieval Old and Middle English manuscripts were forged during later periods. And Old English refers to the same language as Old German, so looking back to Old German means reviewing the history of German… as opposed to English. It would be more accurate to say, this is a history of English’s antique predecessors, as opposed to of its own development.

The contents explain that this book begins with pre-English origins, follows it to the “Celtic Island”, then claims it crossed the North Sea between 400-600, then went into the British Highlands among German migrants and Celts in 600-800, then went into Ireland in 800-1200, then to the Americas in 1600-1800, and beyond. I contest pretty much most of the earlier sections between 400-1500: if carbon-dating was applied, I believe there would not be this gradual transition between Old English and Modern English.

Chapter “1: Where It All Started: The Language Which Became English” claims it can go back 3,000 years to “between 2000 and 1000 BC” (an absurdly wide gap for this to be true, as history, when it is based on facts is always century-specific) to Scandinavia, where “Proto-Germanic” was used. This is a general term that refers to the originator of many Germanic languages, including Dutch, Yiddish, Swedish and the like. It is indeed true that there had to be a unifying language from which these related languages sprung, so now the narrative stands on sound ground (2). There are speculations about what was before this language: Proto-Indo-European, and Pre-Proto-Indo-European, which was probably developed in “Central Asia, perhaps in about 7000 BC”. It’s possible this origin was much closer to modern times, but European historians have not wanted to give credit to Asia for creating their language (5). There is more certainty about Anglo-Saxon (Saxon is used as a synonym for Germanic) runes from the 5^th century AD (45). Catholic versions of British history claim that Christians conquered Britain around 630, so these runes tend to be dated to before this time. My own findings indicate that Catholicism came to Britain in the 900s, and mythology that dates it to earlier centuries was designed to establish ancient ownership, in place of a recent conquest. I explain specifics across my BRRAM series. The chapter about these pre-800 times is thus vague, as general centuries are given for events, unless specific years were mentioned in British mythology, which has not been substantiated (mostly) with archeological evidence. There is concrete data on what happened after and during the Renaissance because the printing-press allowed for the firm publication of such data by people as they were living through linguistic changes.

This is a well-written book that acknowledges what is not firmly known. There is plenty of linguistic information in a single book that is usually scattered across distinct texts about the different stages of “English”.

Dramatic Clash Between an Italian Family and Tyrants 

R.J.B. Bosworth, Politics, Murder and Love in an Italian Family: The Amendolas in the Age of Totalitarianisms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, January 13, 2023). EBook. Index. ISBN: 978-1-009280-16-7.

***

“What did it mean to live with fascism, communism, and totalitarianism in modern Italy? And what should we learn from the experiences of a martyred liberal democrat father and his communist son? Through the prism of a single, exceptional family, the Amendolas, R.J.B. Bosworth reveals the heart of twentieth-century Italian politics. Giovanni and Giorgio Amendola, father and son, were both highly capable and dedicated Anti-Fascists. Each failed to make it to the top of the Italian political pyramid but nevertheless played a major part in Italy’s history. Both also had rich but contrasting private lives. Each married a foreign and accomplished woman: Giovanni, a woman from a distinguished German-Russian intellectual family; Giorgio, a Parisian working class girl, who, to him, embodied Revolution.”

The book opens with an adorable portrait of the two characters in 1911: the baby is adorably round, and so is the father’s face.

I usually avoid all fictional and non-fiction histories about Nazis… This is probably because my grandmother told tales of being a secret-agent on the border, who ran away by-train as the Nazis invaded. And my grandfather was blind in one eye without a clear cause. And they received post-Holocaust benefits, which indicated they were probably in concentration camps, though they never said this directly. When I was teaching at UTRGV recently, a few students questioned if the Holocaust was real, and generally gave a neo-Nazi vibe, so I had to mention this background. I think my Jewishness has contributed to my ostracization from most Americans. But this was a rare case of direct anti-Semitism coming into the classroom to explain why students were misbehaving in my classes. So, I try to avoid watching things about Nazis because this triggers these memories, and I would rather closet these concerns and address less disturbingly-personal issues.

So, it helps that the “Preface” starts with a joke. The author explains that he chose the topic of this book because during Covid the Bodleian library at Oxford was closed, “but trade with Italian second-hand bookshops is open” (ix). Then, he reflects that the idea was born earlier in 1976, when he spent time doing research in Italy during a tense political moment.

In the “Introduction”, he outlines the structure of coming chapters: “Chapter 1 is to highlight through ‘thick description’ three drastically violent episodes in the Amendolas’ story. Two were pitiless Fascist bashings of Giovanni, the first in Rome on Santo Stefano (Boxing Day), 1923; the second in Tuscany on the night of 20-21 July 1925. Giovanni died in Cannes on 7 April 1926, very much as a result of the violence inflicted on him” (1). Then, the “Dramatis Personae” of this narrative are listed: it is helpful to know the birth/death years and a summary for these names before diving in (3).

Chapter “1: Political Violence and the Amendolas, Father and Son” starts awkwardly, as if it is fiction, from the perspective of Giovanni Amendola in 1923. But it is not fictionalized, as there is a note at the end of a paragraph that summarizes this family’s relations, for example. The “Notes” section explains that this information is taken from Eva Kühn Amendola’s Vita con Giovanni Amendola (Florence: Parenti, 1960). Other sources include Italian books, as well as a Yale University Press history, and an online archive. There are enough sources here for this story to have been double-checked from a few perspectives.

In a later chapter, there is an explanation attributed in the “Notes” to Cerchia’s Giorgio Amendola: gli anni della Repubblica. “In March 1963, during a conference at the Istituto Gramsci in Rome examining Italian capitalism, Giorgio went quite a way towards denying any lingering vulgar Marxist and catastrophist reading of the national economy, half suggesting that the communists could become part of a ‘democratic alternative’ that, from time to time, would take office without seeking revolution.” Apparently, Giorgio was saying these things as he was “searching for some way to enter government”, but failing to do so (177).

I searched for “murder” to figure out just who is killed here. The note I found was that on March 16, 1978, “members of the Brigate Rosse (BR, Red Brigades), boasting that they embodied the ‘living traditions’ of the ‘armed Resistance’, kidnapped DC secretary Aldo Moro from the streets of Rome; they held him in a ‘people’s prison’ until they murdered him on 9 May” (183). So, there are some murders happening in the history of these times, and in organizations somewhat associated with the main characters, as opposed to one of them being a mass-murderer… which I briefly assumed from the title. And murderer was the end of one of these guys. In “Rome, on the night of 24–25 July,” 1943 “the Fascist grand council voted that Mussolini pass military governance back to King Victor Emmanuel. Scorza, Giovanni’s murderer, was one of seven to remain committed to the dictator and so opposed the motion” (26). So, Giovanni was murdered by an insider among the Nazis, alongside with other victims of this period.

As far as I have read into this book, I still do not understand why the history of Italy is being compressed with the biographies of these two specific guys. They are for democracy, but not really. They tried to be in government, but didn’t succeed. I don’t understand who is the market for this book. Hard to imagine who would want to read it… But if it sounds interesting to you, it seems to have been well-written, and includes a lot of dramatic political events from Italian history.

An Annotated Edition of a Classic: Vicar of Wakefield 

Oliver Goldsmith; Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross, eds., The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale: Supposed to be Written by Himself (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, May, 2024). EBook. Index. ISBN: 978-1-108782-65-4.

***

“This newly edited critical edition of an enduringly popular tale, one of the most widely reprinted and illustrated works of fiction in English, offers readers an authoritative text along with extensive and helpful annotation. Following the lives of the vicar and his family, and the various calamities which befall them, The Vicar of Wakefield was one of the most popular and beloved works of eighteenth-century fiction. A lively introduction details the reception of Goldsmith’s tale, from comments by Frances Burney and Goethe, through Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving and Henry James, to critics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume also includes appendices comprising a wealth of contextual information, enhancing the work for contemporary readers.”

In my stylometric corpus, I tested “Goldsmith’s” A Survey of Experimental Philosophy (1776), which matched Peter Shaw’s C-group. The C-group includes some novels, so it is probably Shaw also ghostwrote this novel. Shaw died back in 1763, so both the Survey and Vicar would have been posthumous to him. Though alternatively, “Frances Burney’s” Cecilia (1782) matched Elizabeth Montagu’s (1718-1800) D-group linguistic signature. So, the inclusion of puffery of Vicar from the “Burney” byline suggests Montagu might have been Vicar’s ghostwriter. My ebook is missing this “Introduction”, where “Burney’s” quote would have possibly solved this mystery.

My copy only includes the body of the novel itself, with annotations throughout. The notes address topics such as “Goldsmith’s attitude to opulence and refinement”, which changed between texts. Another note quotes from “Goldsmith’s” December 27, 1757 letter that echoes the phrase “blue bed to the brown”. And the paragraph in Luke is given for a quote from the Bible (4). Yet another summarizes a reference to a story told by “Count Abensberg” in Book 5 of Annales Bojorum (1554). These are all helpful and detailed annotations.

I cannot do a full review of this book because of the missing original content, such as the “Introduction”. From what is included in the notes, this is a polished scholarly edition that should be well-suited for students and researchers of this novel.

The Alcoholic Oxford Master Who Drank with Students Past and Present 

David Vaiani, Jeremy Cato: A Portrait of the Quintessential Oxford Don (Lewes: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2024). EBook. 240pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-916846-41-8.

***

“Born in 1939, this… was the quintessential Oxford don. In a remarkable life he seemed to know everyone and his network was extraordinary: he was friends with Bryan Ferry, became Harold Macmillan’s drinking companion, taught Princess Margaret her family’s history, had a part to play in General Pinochet’s extradition trial and was even rumoured to be a spy. But he was no mere caricature. Over four decades, he shaped the minds and characters of generations of men and women who went on to prominent roles at Westminster, in the City, in the Church, and in the world of academia. In 2018, his memorial service was attended by over 500 people and his death marked the end of an era in British social, political and academic life.”

I tend to avoid reviewing biographies of the recently-deceased, as I tend to be more interested in earlier narratives that have already been explained as to their significance, or autobiographies from the living who reveal themselves. But it is interesting to consider something new.

Sir Alan Duncan’s “Foreword” is an article that was published while this guy was still alive in The Spectator, in June 2006. It puffs that Cato was usually amidst “memorable” party events, where aristocrats cut things with swords. He retired from Oxford in 2006. He had served as the senior officer of the Oxford Union for 30 years. Apparently, students went drinking “claret” in “Jeremy’s rooms late into the evening…” And these parties with underaged boys apparently included famous people, who had been his past students (7). Apparently, he hopped regularly between taverns to giggle with the kids. Duncan defends this alcoholic approach by arguing that this is what “University life” is about (drinking) as opposed being “Library slaves” (8). Wow… I don’t like this guy… But not a nice thing to say about the recently-dead: which is why I avoid this category…

The jokes continue into the “Preface” that warns that Cato will probably be sleeping across most of a forthcoming man’s interview to try and be accepted into Oxford. By the end of this paragraph, the author surprises readers by declaring that the interviewee was himself.

The “Introduction” clarifies a point I started wondering about earlier on: “the term ‘don’… still commonly used for Roman Catholic priests… derived from the Latin term dominus,  meaning ‘master’ or ‘owner’.” Then an extended explanation is given from Noel Annan’s The Dons: “Essentially he was a teacher and a fellow of an Oxford or Cambridge college; a teacher who stood in peculiar relation to his pupils in that they came to his rooms individually each week and were taught by him personally” (12). This explains why students are drinking in this dude’s room at night… Catto (a new spelling suddenly introduced here) was apparently given the “don” post on-merit because he had completed a fellowship, and served as a lecturer for 5 years at Durham University beforehand (13).

Then, the opening chapter jumps into Catto’s biography, with heavily cited and factual details regarding his activities. Though there is too much royalty-worship throughout, including the mentions of his “network” extending “to royalty”, for whom he was “an official ‘walker’” when they visited Oxford. One of these, as the blurb mentioned was Princess Margaret, who is said to have taken “a particular shine to him” because he “could… recite… all the kings and queens…” They gossiped and smoked cigarettes together. Then, anecdotes follow of him taking her out to dinner and the theater, and lecturing her on the number of letters in the “runic alphabet”: 24. Apparently, she “retorted”: “Not enough!” (183). The “Notes” section credits for this anecdote: A.N. Wilson’s Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). If Wilson was not dining with them, he is clearly imagining such details, and so they are hardly reliable. But then again, from my research, most biographies and autobiographies are ghostwritten advertisements to promote the “fame” of the subject.

If you are considering going to Oxford, or if you are researching this school for a study or the like; you probably would enjoy this book. And generally, if you are searching for what’s really valued in “University life”: this is close to the truth about its frivolities.

Photographic Painting: An Artist Who Knows How to Sell Herself

Susan Ryder, Looking Through: The Life and Work of Susan Ryder (Lewes: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2024). EBook: $28.99. 304pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-668027-69-1.

***

“Born in 1944, Susan Ryder began painting professionally at an early age. She was much encouraged by her father, Robert Ryder VC, who was an enthusiastic amateur painter. In 1960 Susan was accepted to the Byam Shaw School of Art. In 1982 she was elected a member of the New English Arts Club and in 1992 was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.”

I am pretty jealous of anybody who spends their whole career being warmly accepted as an artist, so I am probably biased against Susan, when my bias would logically be in her favor given our matching interests.

The painting of “Mark and Cameil Moorman” (9) suggests that it was done by projecting a photograph onto the canvas and then using rough brushstrokes to duplicate the colors and shapes in the image. I’d like to try this technique. I usually just digitally alter images from photos into painting-style with Corel. Using paper to manually draw would probably produce these great results that combine photographic accuracy with impressionist emotion. There are no mentions of projection in this book. I did find a mention of photography as a technique in the discussion about “General Sir John Swinton with His Daughter Tilde”. The notes explain that in 2015, she “had previously been commissioned to paint a double portrait of General Sir John and Lady Swinton. Knowing that Sir John would be lonely, Ryder suggested to Tilda that she should paint father and daughter together… Ryder made several sketches, and—unusually—decided to take a number of photographs as well, in case they came in handy. And indeed they did: halfway through the second sitting Sir John fell over and bashed his head so badly he was rushed to hospital. Ryder was able to complete the portrait—which she later gifted to the Swintons—using the photographs she had taken.” Ryder then began taking photos regularly. Though I would assume she used this photo-based approach across her career. A painting from life, without a photo projected, tends to not look exactly like the person in photos because of natural mistakes made when trying to approximately record what the eye is seeing. A still more blatantly photographic image is “The Magor Family”, which uses vivid life-like colors, and is accompanied by a rough pencil sketch with the types of skewed dimensions the naked eye might have recorded (73).

There is a lot of name-dropping in this book, as in: “Back in 1981, however, when she was painting Princess Diana, she was terrified of flicking oil paint on to her wedding dress” (76). There is an entire chapter called “Portrait of a Princess”. Ryder received a call from Millar who was asked by Prince Charles to recommend a painter, and Millar suggested her to paint Diana in her “wedding dress”, which was created by a major designer, and was scheduled to “go on a tour of the country”, “so the portrait needed to be completed in double-quick time” (31). There is a description of how this process went. The final portrait is almost life-sized. It is less photographic than some other paintings in this book, as Diana does not look as she typically does, aside for the dress being recognizable from all the press it got. Diana does look adorable, and softer, or less posed than usual. She is kind of slouching, as she sits awkwardly in this giant dress. Curious drawing: unlike typical “royal” portraits (34). There is also “HM Queen Elizabeth II” (52-3): it also seems less photographic, but mostly on the face, which smooth out Elizabeth’s wrinkles, without de-graying her hair. There is a quote from Ryder in the Evening News where she was asked about this age-topic, or to compare Antony William’s portrait of Elizabeth to her own: “But his portrait wasn’t how I saw the Queen. He has a young man’s view of a seventy-year-old while I have a fifty-three-year-old’s view.’” I don’t know why I mentioned her wrinkles: I usually wouldn’t, but this portrait seems to be leading viewers to observe this element as essential to the presented story.

This book is not very helpful for artists because it includes very vague descriptions of the artistic process. What this is a useful tool for is for young artists who need to learn how to sell and market their art. This is what Ryder clearly excels at.