Review: The Puppeteer by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

 The Puppeteer is the second book in Kathryn Ann Kingsley's Harrow Faire series centering around the truly delightful Cora Glass. She was an every day girl who once dreamed of being a photographer before Ehlers Danlos Syndrome's chronic pain took her dreams from her and landed her in a boring 9 to 5. Now she's caught up in what she likes to call a Man-Eating Murder Circus, more or less compliments of Simon.  Oh, Simon, the Puppeteer. If you have been following Kingsley's work, you aren't going to be surprised by what I'm about to say.

I love that evil madman, and I love him even more every time Cora puts him in his place.
Romantic lead yes, hero, no. Evil, yes. Loveable, yes. Good guy? No. Sexy as all get out? Yes. Desirable? Yes. Sane? No. Do not forget this. Do. Not. Forget. This.

Ooh, our feisty heroine has so much delightful snark and wit coupled with a tenacity that just won't stop. She's smart and always ready to fight. I big puffy heart her, and it has nothing to do with all the ways she can bend, whether it's on stage or in her bedroom. Get your mind out of the gutter, none of that... yet. So far as I'm saying. You have to read it to find out.

And you have to read it.

This series needs to be read not just for the hotness, and there's hotness. Read it for the glorious characterization. Read it for the fact that you're not normal and neither are the characters. Read it for the heart touching way that Cora sits on the grass and carries on a conversation with a mute character. Read it for genuine human connection in an inhuman world. Read it because we are all living in isolated little pocket worlds these days, and that makes it all the more painful to see Cora's world being ripped from hers.

The menacing and eerie carnivorous circus has all the best setting vibes for this self discovery and otherworldly super dark romance. Do yourself a favor and give yourself permission to indulge and enjoy it. Just remember, I warned you. He's a not a good guy.

Ooh, I just can't wait for the next one! There's a series shaped hole on my bookshelf.

Review: The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang

 Do you like your characters quirky, with a side of brilliant? Do you like your stakes dire? Do you like a story where you accidentally learn a little anatomy and history? 

You're going to love The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang. Following the days and nights of Cora Lee, medical marvel and astute business woman, and her twin brother Jacob, resurrectionist, The Impossible Girl is a detailed adventure through graveyards, medical museums, libraries, houses of ill repute, and medical school dissection galleries. I'll let you decide which of those just might be the more unsettling in descriptive detail. Speaking of detail, I appreciate that Kang's details are straight forward. She doesn't wax poetic when describing corpses or what might otherwise be an unsettling environment. She lets the environment or object speak for itself with concrete terms. I like it.

The Impossible Girl, like so many other books worth reading, doesn't allow itself the luxury of only telling its own story. It weaves in the politics of the era: economic politics, gender politics, racial politics, and even scientific politics. It all plays a role in every step of the tale's unfolding, carefully unfolding as a near inevitability. 

After finishing the story, my kids, as has become a sort of tradition this summer, asked me to tell them about a book I'd read recently while we swam. There were a few key things I had to edit out of the story because the 11 year old is 11, but both the 11 year old and the 21 year old were utterly captivated at even the abbreviated messed up out of order version. Let's just say "mom's book talks" aren't exactly the most A to B things. There's a lot of "guuuuuurl, and then creepo from the museum," (because the guy who runs the museum is 100% a creeper) and "so she straight up follows him like a grade A stalker."

You'd probably have to be there. So since you weren't, you'll just have to read the book. 

Serioiusly. Read it. It's good stuff.

Review: The Contortionist by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

 

Remember the time you were driving on your daily commute and you saw it: that one thing that was just entirely not the way you remembered it being, and you were dang sure that you didn't see the changes taking place? That Mandela Effect feeling of "something is very wrong in the universe?"

Well, welcome to Cora's world when one day the long abandoned and decaying Harrow Faire is suddenly no longer abandoned or decaying, but open again and hungry for guests.

Kathryn Ann Kingsley creates a glorious blend of creepy circus and carny freak-show with modern wit and skepticism.  If I had to toss a few stories in a blender to lead you to The Contortionist, I'd start with Something Wicked This Way Comes, add a little The Night Circus, and follow up with some good old fashioned Black Butler. 

I'd just go with an emphatic "do read," but it's more than that. Read it for the way Kingsley writes differently abled characters. Read it for the spider's web of atmosphere. Read it for the way you find yourself wanting the heroine to walk into the maw of the beast. Read it for the villains: the gloriously sexy villains. Read it for the existential questions it begs you to ask yourself, like "what would you give," and perhaps a little more on the nose, "what's your favorite color?"

It's book one. I want to devour the whole series like a glutton. I want to bathe in the atmosphere, and glut myself on surreal nightmarescape. I want to drink this story in and roll it around on my tongue and taste all the sweetness with the faint bitter edges. Beautiful stuff.

Fans of Kingsley's work might be surprised that it isn't particularly graphic. Regardless, it's breathtaking. 

I'm looking forward to having this whole pretty set on my library shelf soon.

Poetry and music: Lift up Heart /¡ARRIBA, CORAZÓN! by Gregorio Marañón

Back in 2015 I had the opportunity to attend a Miriam Pico concert at the San Fillipo Estate near Chicago where I heard one of my favorite songs, "Lift Up, Heart," which she wrote based on a translation of a poem her grandfather carried in his wallet, called ¡ARRIBA, CORAZÓN!

It's beautiful, sweet, and draws me in. So, I thought I should show you the poem and a link to the song. Miriam has a lovely voice, and writes delightful lyrical pieces. 

Enjoy.

¡ARRIBA, CORAZÓN!

Arriba, corazón, la vida es corta 

y hay que aprender a erguirse ante el destino. 

Sólo avanzar importa, 

arrojando el dolor por el camino.

Otras horas felices 

matarán a estas horas doloridas. 

Las que hoy son heridas 

se tornarán mañana cicatrices.

Espera siempre, corazón, espera 

que ninguna inquietud es infinita. 

Y hay una misteriosa primavera 

donde el dolor humano se marchita.

Con tu espuela de plata 

no des paz al corcel de la ilusión. 

"Si la pena no muere se la mata", 

¡arriba, corazón!

Gregorio Marañón

Review: Kiss of the Damned by Elena Lawson

 Elena Lawson's first book in the Fallen Cities: Elisium series, Kiss of the Damned took me a little by surprise. It takes place in a world in which demons and angels have become a part of commonplace everyday life in much the same way that supernatural creatures have integrated into the world in the Anita Blake series, only in Lawson's world, if you're diabolical, you basically get quarantined into one of the Fallen Cities. Only the divine are allowed to interact with the human population, because, you know, racism. I mean, no. I said what I meant. 

The story centers around a wickedly abused girl, Paige, who knows nothing about her real origins, but in truth doesn't belong among the humans she thought she was one of, and is quickly and brutally introduced to life as in St. Louis, now one of the isolated cities of demonic creatures. Lets just say it's a less than pleasant transition for her.

I think what I like about the story is that while it is a story about awakening powers and adapting to a new world about which the main character is just as unaware as the reader, it doesn't feel quite as explainsy as a lot of similar set ups do.

I am, however, not sure how much I want to continue the story. I like the set of powers I see her developing and the arc it seems like the book is traveling down, but I am not entirely sure I have the emotional energy for the kind of emotional pain Paige is looking at at the end of book one. Let's just say that the cliffhanger it ends on is kind of brutal and sometimes I ask myself "do you really want to do this to yourself?"

The worldbuilding has been interesting so far. The slavery within the fallen city and segregation of races based on origin makes for some interesting social commentary. If books that deal with divine and diabolical entities and the notion that just because hell is home doesn't mean you're entirely evil is your thing, this might be a good book for you.

 

Review: Burning Hope by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Kathryn Ann Kingsley's second book in the The Cardinal Winds Series, Burning Hope, just dropped in paperback and I had the chance to read a review ARC.  You guys. 

You. Guys.

It's got a little bit of everything. Magic. Complicated ruinous and abusive back stories. Origin story mysteries. Social justice issues. Political intrigue. Steamy goodness. Greek pantheon. A zoo. Love. Everything. 

When I first started, I wasn't sure I was going to really be able to get into it the way I got into the first in the series, Steel Rose, because the male lead Burning Hope, Nero, was an absolute unmitigated nightmare of a jerk in Steel Rose, right up until the very last heart stealing page of the book where he goes and makes you grow a tiny little soft spot for him.That said, it's tiny, and so I expected Burning Hope to be a big uphill climb for me. 

Surprisingly, it wasn't. He's a violent, hedonistic madman perfectly described at one point in Burning Hope as "He was playful. Like a murdering puppy. But still a puppy, all the same." Suddenly, his overbearing ways became oddly endearing and awkwardly charming. And the female lead in this? Hope? 10/10 do adore. She's smart, outspoken, and remarkably honest. I also appreciate a differently-abled character who isn't helpless. That's one thing that this series keeps coming back to, bodies that might not be perfect, people whose pasts have left them permanently psychologically damaged, and they're the focus of heart pounding lusty love stories mired in politics that are somehow still socially relevant to the here and now, despite being set in an alternate kind of science fantasy world of dirigibles and ray guns. The magic end of the story is pretty cool too. There are a very few people who can wield any type of it at all, the Cardinals of the four winds, and Nero, the South Wind, has powers of some pretty intense inhibition stripping hypnotism and fire. 

I admit, I want to go back and read a few scenes again, when I'm not being interrupted left and right like this lady. 

Because frankly, the super descriptive NSFW scenes were hot, and not just because Nero has control of elemental fire, and they deserve to not be read a few lines at a time. Of course, I didn't want to put the book down, so reading with interruptions it was.

Burning Hope is available now in paperback and will be available in September for Kindle. Excellent read. It can stand alone, so you don't have to read Steel Rose first if you want to dive straight in to the story, but you'll be missing out on one heck of a great story if you do. I just can't wait for the next two in the series, and am secretly pulling for some side stories (Otto and Kema need their HEAs too.)

Review: Natural Voices: Celebrating Nature With Opened Eyes

A lovely collection of poetry and prose focused on nature,

Natural Voices: Celebrating Nature With Opened Eyes was published as a multi-faceted project. First, it created a concrete collection of the writings of many of the frequent participants in the Natural Land Institute of Northern Illinois annual poetry events. Second, it served as a fund raising opportunity for the Natural Land Institute. Third, and for a lot of the people who have had the chance to enjoy the book, it gathered some lovely and interesting works together to create a worthwhile collection.

It is a great project with pieces by Carolyn Bailey, Dorothy Bock, Mary Caskey, Ed Collins, Sandra Fenton, Carol Fox, Don Miller, Wilda Morris, Chelsea Peterson, Christopher D. Sims, Christine Swanberg, Lani Richardson, Dr. Karen Blake Ruffner, and Kaitlyn Tibbetts. 

If you happen across it or are in the mood to read some lovely nature poems inspired by the northern Illinois region, I recommend it. It is currently available on the Natural Land Institute's website.