Fledgling is Ms. Butler’s foray into the vampire-novel genre. The main character–also the narrator–is Shori, a young vampire who survived a vicious attack on her family that left her very much injured and suffering from amnesia. The rest of the story details her fight to save her family, and her re-learning of what exactly she lost by not remembering the rest of her life.

I probably should have been tipped off by the quote from Gerald Jonas of the New York Times on the back of the book, saying that, “[Butler] never asks easy questions or settles for easy answers.” Since I was not, and being that I know I’m not the only person who wouldn’t want to be blindsided by this, I should mention that Shori, the main character, is 53 years old in actuality, but looks like she’s ten or eleven. Before we learn that she’s fifty-three, she engages in consensual (on her end, at least; it might be considered ‘dubious’ consent on his end) sexual activity with a 23-year-old man. He doesn’t know she’s actually fifty-three, either.

Now, again: she’s fifty-three, and more importantly, she’s a vampire, who are in this mythos an entirely different species that may have evolved simultaneously with humans on Earth. (They call themselves the Ina.) It’s perhaps ridiculous to apply my moral code to them, but of course, Butler intended this discomfort. It’s intended on multiple levels; Shori makes almost everyone in the story uncomfortable for many, many reasons.

She’s actually an experiment in genetic engineering: the Ina want to be able to go out in the daytime, so they are experimenting with including human DNA along with theirs. Shori has human DNA that makes her shorter than most of the female Ina. She’s also dark-skinned–that is, her human DNA is from a woman of color. Some of the older Ina are not sure she qualifies as a proper Ina. She’s also precisely at the stage in her development where she’s starting to make sexually-mature male Ina uncomfortable because they crave her as a mate (in a sort of Lolita fashion, only actually biologically explainable). She makes humans uncomfortable because she is stronger and faster than they are, and in some cases makes them uncomfortable because they desire her even though she looks like a child. Basically, no one is comfortable around Shori, and why should Ms. Butler let the reader be any less unsettled?

Ms. Butler uses this book to answer the question of what are the Ina, through two major methods: Shori’s amnesia, and Shori herself. The amnesia allows her to be told things she probably should already know, and thereby the reader can learn these things. We learn history, language, and basic societal structure this way. Shori herself provides for more metaphysical questions: is someone who doesn’t look like how we expect, maybe because of some DNA changing or manipulation, still a member of that group? The Ina are largely tall, thin, pale white people. Shori is thin, but short and dark, and it is actually at least partially her looks that cause the conflict.

This is actually the first book I’d ever read by Ms. Butler, which is a shame, and I’ll definitely be looking for more. Her writing style has been described as spare, and that’s certainly true, but that doesn’t mean that she leaves any words out. It was an easy read in terms of language, but a little difficult in terms of questions raised. This is a vampire book, I think, that would definitely be interesting to those who don’t like vampire books commonly, but I’d definitely say it’s for older YAs and adult readers due to the need to handle the sexual content in a mature fashion. 5/5 stars.

Verity Durand is the most famous — and infamous — chef in England. Famous, because her food makes angels weep and grown men slaver; infamous because, well, she had an affair with her last employer, Bertie Somerset. Of course, Mr. Somerset has since died and his younger half-brother, Stuart, has inherited the entire place, including Verity’s services — as a chef, of course. Stuart Somerset is a politician; originally a barrister, he’s now an MP and holds the ear of the Prime Minister; he works twenty-four hour days trying to get bills past. He rarely has time to eat, let alone enjoy his food. Oh, and he’s engaged to a Miss Lizzy Bessler. However, ten years ago, he had one amazing night with a lady he’s never seen since, despite searching. Only a totally crazy situation would throw them back together . . . wouldn’t it?

I keep forgetting that Sherry Thomas is about the best historical-romance writer out there. I continually read good-enough historical romance (see: unfortunate taste for Stephanie Laurens novels) where the men are homogenized to the point where they’re all heavily dominantly Alpha under all circumstances. The women, to match, are exactly feisty enough to be attractive but, of course, completely submissive in bed for absolutely no reason. The plots generally have some sort of random mystery thrown in just to provoke a confession of love at the point where either the hero or the heroine is about to die. This novel reminded me that there’s more than just that.

To start, her prose is on a level all its own. I can’t pinpoint the differences, but when I read it, I immediately knew the difference between ‘adequate’ and ‘good,’ or even ‘good’ and ‘exemplary.’ The book starts with a comparison to a Cinderella tale (pointing out that the narrator/author is self-aware) and then goes on to a description of a kitchen, which nonetheless kept me rapt. (For those interested, the opening can be found here.) Her structuring, with time jumps between 1882 and 1892 (1892 being ‘the present’ for the story), was quite well-orchestrated, and I never felt as if she left part of the story hanging unintentionally or improperly. The way she chose to unfold all the details of the story made it feel as if there was a real mystery (without the amateur sleuthing of the more recent Stephanie Laurens tales). While the ‘mystery’ had a lot of importance to the lovers involved, it didn’t have much impact on society or the greater world (even bringing a murderer to justice is an impact on society), and I felt it was the sort of ‘mystery’ plot that amplified the emotion, rather than just providing a convenient excuse for actions.

Her characters are — different. Yes, of course, there’s the requisite members of the nobility (duchesses and whatnot), but Bertie Somerset is merely a fairly well-off country gentleman (no title), and his brother is a barrister, having been born out of wedlock but later legitimized. (That’s not much of a spoiler.) Verity Durant has been a cook for years — an upper servant, sure, but that’s all. While we are talking about the late Victorian era — 1892, after all — I don’t particularly remember too many historical romances about almost ordinary people. (Although that’s a very big ‘almost.’) Also, Stuart is not terribly alpha male. Certainly he stands up for that in which he believes, but he’s, well, a nerd. I thought he was fantastic.

The story is very intensely emotional, but a smidge lighter than Private Arrangements. It isn’t all sweetness and light by any means; there are a lot of thorny patches on the way to the happily-ever-after. (Readers will, I trust, forgive my mixing of fairy tales.) The emotion, though, was another factor that kept my attention steadily in the story. Most romance novels manage to keep my interest, usually by the will-they-obviously-yes-but-when line of the emotion, but in this one, it wasn’t so much that as the sheer quantity and depth of the many different kinds of love shown in the story. Overall, I’d definitely recommend this to fans of historical romance, and those who haven’t read much but are willing to be convinced. Be warned, though: most of what you find won’t be nearly this good. 5/5 stars.

Felix Gomez is in the U.S. military, and while he is in Iraq, he comes back with what he tells people is “Operation Iraqi Freedom Syndrome.” Except it’s nothing of the sort; he got vampirism instead. Fortunately, some of the weaknesses of being a vampire can be mitigated by 21st-century technology, such as Dermablend and high-octane sunscreen. Now Gomez is a P.I., and one of his old friends from college has called him up to find out why something very strange has happened at his DOE base (i.e., somewhere where they do nuclear research) — the women appear to have been infected with something that is causing them to be, ahem, hyper-interested in a certain sort of physical activity. Can Gomez figure it out? And why are vampires in the area dying?

I absolutely admit that I misjudged this story, prior to reading it, because of the title. I thought it would be significantly more misogynist. It wasn’t — I don’t think any women were even killed, and while the nymphomania did, of course, only affect the women (at least at first), that was not because of any inherent flaw in women; it wasn’t particularly explained, but it certainly wasn’t their fault. The female characters of note — Wendy and Carmen — weren’t so bad; while they weren’t that well-developed as characters, that was mostly the limitations of the plot, the first-person narrative, and the main character being, well, a guy’s guy more than anything else.

The new twists on vampirism I generally didn’t mind. The contact lenses (to hide the reflective layer in the back of the eye, like a wolf) constantly being removed and, presumably, thrown out was decently done, although having worn soft contact lenses myself, I know it takes more than a millisecond to get them in or out — even if you’re good at it. Perhaps vampiric reflexes make the suction factor less of a problem. I actually liked the makeup-and-sunscreen idea, although I understand it has its problems. (For example, one’s scalp, or one’s eyes, or the inside of one’s mouth.) Dumping blood over food in order to eat it (and being required to eat non-blood food) took a little more suspension of disbelief. I didn’t consider it beyond belief, certainly (unlike, say, the sparkles), but it was a bit more of a stretch than makeup and sunscreen. The blood thing turned out to be nothing, in terms of suspension of disbelief, as far as the plot was concerned, but I will say no more.

Mr. Acevedo has created a convincing and interesting character in Felix Gomez; I’d be quite interested to read future books in the series. He has just barely scratched the surface of the setup of the vampire world in his reality, and the paranormal world, as well. The government involvement, as well, was intriguing and thought-provoking; I believe he’ll be able to mine that territory for many more plot ideas. The titles will certainly draw some readers in, although probably not the right kind. I’d recommend it to those who preferred the plot over the sex in the Laurell K. Hamilton books, and fans of other urban fantasy authors such as Kelley Armstrong and Jim Butcher. 4/5 stars.

Sophie Katz (also half Eastern-European Jewish and half African American) is at an open house one day when she runs into her ex-husband, a realtor. He tells her of a dream house, a three-bedroom Victorian being sold for well under market value, and she reluctantly agrees to meet him there. Turns out there’s a catch: When they get there, the owner is found dead of a heart attack. The owner’s son still seems likely to sell, provided that Sophie joins the Spectre Society. Also, the house may or may not be haunted. Add that to some odd characters in the Spectre Society itself, her ex-husband’s jealous new girlfriend, and Sophie’s mother, and Sophie finds herself in another uncomfortable situation . . .

No, I actually haven’t read the previous books in the series, but it didn’t really seem to matter. Ms. Davis gives just enough of the backstory to make things make sense, and enough hints of what happened in previous novels (apparently Sophie and her boyfriend Anatoly each thought the other was a murderer) to whet my appetite for reading the other novels. It’s often interesting to read a novel in a series that has a romance involved and a couple at the heart of it, and Sophie and Anatoly’s relationship progressed nicely during the course of the novel. There was, of course, a Misunderstanding, but it felt a good deal more authentic than the fake misunderstandings that could be solved by about thirty seconds of conversation that populate other romantic stories. It also didn’t make up the majority of the plot; it was merely a side dish, and therefore worked much better for me.

It’s obvious to some degree that Ms. Davis used elements of her own biography (heritage, early marriage, mystery-novel-writing career) to make Sophie, and while this tells me exactly what Sophie looks like (there’s an author picture in the back of the book, as well as on her website), it also makes me have to remind myself that it’s not terribly likely that Ms. Davis has been around that many corpses. However, obviously the author has much more experience being half Eastern-European-Jewish and half African-American than not, and she did mention the hazards of being a bit exotic-looking: being asked what one is, as if ‘human’ and ‘American’ (by accent) aren’t enough, and attracting stares when one is with a partner who is fair, blond, and blue-eyed. I wonder if she’s covered this topic in a bit more depth in the previous volumes.

I was actually kind of surprised by the depth in this book. Having read none of the other books in the series, nor anything else by the author (and very little by the imprint), I was expecting something . . . different. Perhaps a story that put Sophie through a little less, in terms of personal hell. Learning what she did, and I obviously won’t go into it, is a hard lesson, and it was difficult to see her go through it, but ultimately quite rewarding. I’m not even sure this book falls on the list for ‘a good beach read,’ being that that would be a little too dismissive of what this novel has going for it, which is excellent characters, an interesting murder, and emotional depth. It’s a good character study in addition to a great story, and I’d recommend it, with or without its predecessors, to fans of light-to-moderate mysteries with emotional depth; or, you know, Nora Roberts fans. 4/5 stars.

Minke (which, I believe, is Dutch for “monk,” and a nickname) is a young man just before the turn of the 20th century, towards the end of his schooling, when, on a random invitation from a friend, he meets the most famous concubine in Indonesia and her family. Nyai Ontsoroh has been running a business empire for years, and she has been teaching her daughter Annelies — who is, of course, half Indonesian, half Dutch — how to run a business herself. Minke himself is entirely Indonesian and the son of a man with some political power, but he attends the Dutch school in a different town. There are all sorts of racial tensions going on, because Minke has fallen in love with Annelies and her with him, and she is considered significantly too good for him, being half Dutch — although she is the daughter of a concubine, which complicates things. How will their love survive?

Just as a warning and a reminder, there are spoilers after the cut, and some rather frank discussion of unsavory topics.

Obviously the main strength of the book is the fact that it’s a dissection of another culture in another time. There are essentially three castes in Indonesia at the time — the Dutch, the mixed-race (almost always half Dutch, half Indonesian, called Indos), and the pure Indonesians, called natives. The Dutch almost universally feel that the natives are of a significantly lower order — generally stupid and untrainable, despite significant evidence otherwise. The Indos, being half Dutch, are significantly better — not, of course, quite good enough, but better. There are other foreigners in the land — one of the significant secondary characters is French, and there are many Asians — but the Dutch rule the roost, and their laws supersede all other laws. It is, of course, completely barbaric, being that the Indonesians had not only their own social structure but many thousands of years of history. Apparently all they didn’t have was gunpowder, and that was enough to justify their subjugation in the minds of the oppressors.

While I enjoyed the dissection of colonization and castes, I hated — HATED — the ‘love’ story. Minke is about eighteen when the book starts and maybe 19 or 20 when he and Annelies get married, and at that point, she’s still considered underage. (I don’t know how old that would make her, but I was under the impression that she was somewhere between fourteen and sixteen when the book starts.) Minke falls in love with her primarily because she is so beautiful, and secondarily because she’s so child-like and delicate, which he loves. I hate that with a passion. I am completely aware that we’re talking about a different culture AND a different time, but the main reason that Annelies is so childlike (her age aside), with (essentially) a broken psyche, is that her brother raped her about six months before the story began. This is apparently a common reaction to sexual abuse — a kind of reversion — and — ugh. It does not make Annelies proper sexual-partner material, let alone spouse material.

Of course, Minke discovers the rape with a lot of horror and victim-blaming (autre temps, autre mores, I keep reminding myself, but the first words out of his mouth after she says that her brother raped her are “You lie!”) after they have sex, which is so amazing that he has no ability to control himself and describes both of them as “raped” by their animal natures. (This is another old romance-novel trope that drives me crazy — a man’s ability to detect the presence of a hymen while having passionate, out-of-control sex. Secondarily, if this was Annelies’s first time having sex other than the rape, even if she loved and trusted Minke with her entire life and soul, she would still most likely be flinching with pain the whole time — even if it’s just psychic pain. People don’t recover from rape overnight.) Overall, I didn’t find Annelies a strong enough character to have ANYONE fall in love with her, let alone consider as a proper life-mate. She seemed more like a little-sister sort of figure that Minke should have felt the need to protect, not marry.

Obviously I’m having a lot of trouble separating my twenty-first-century morals and feminism from my enjoyment of the book. I cannot think of any other non-Western literature that I’ve read from the middle of the 20th century, well, period (I think I’ll rectify that later), so I don’t know if I’m just being overly sensitive, but in general, I tend to avoid books that fetishize victim-like and overly childish behavior in women who are sexual objects. It should also be pointed out that the other factors as to why Minke fell in love with Annelies are the fact that she’s Indo but would rather be a Native and treats Minke like an equal; and her mother is an extraordinary woman. I suppose they do spend some time together talking, but Annelies never demonstrates any great capacity for depth of conversation or knowledge. I would even postulate that she falls in love with Minke because she wants a protector — one who is Native, like her mother — against the lighter-skinned inhabitants of their world. Therefore, although they may be ‘in love’ and all, I find the love story partially unconvincing but mostly repulsive. Other readers may be less sensitive and disagree; some people do consider Romeo and Juliet a love story, after all.

It is absolutely, entirely possible to be non-Western and from prior to 2000 and to write novels that involve strong female characters — ones who do not capitulate completely when the going gets tough, and ones who are not sexually appealing due to mental illness. I’m certain of this, despite a lack of examples coming readily to hand. I absolutely will do my best to find these novels in the near future.

That having been said, I wasn’t terribly fond of any of the characters in the book, either. The Nyai (Annelies’s mother) was okay, but I didn’t see what was so compelling about her. Even attempting to ignore my 21st-century notion that those sold into slavery are not different from those who are not, I still cannot find any character traits — other than perhaps directness, generosity, and some mild infamy — that would cause Minke’s near-obsession with the woman. Obviously, that aspect of the narrative didn’t work for me. Minke himself was moderately interesting; a quiet rebel, what he mostly appeared to want was to be left alone to produce his political writings and to live with Annelies. I can respect that, and I found that everything he did was clearly in line with my expectations of his character. Nearly everyone else in the book was unlikeable for one reason or another — being obviously racist, a past history of rape, the need to force Minke into roles he didn’t want, etc.

I am completely willing to own up to the fact that my lack of enjoyment of the book is entirely the fault of my privilege and culture, and not Mr. Toer’s writing. It is, of course, a fascinating view into another world and another time, one of which I knew next to nothing. Some books, I understand, should not be pleasant to read, and since I am definitely in a very high position of privilege compared to all the characters in the book (other than a few Dutch men), I probably should read the rest of the books. I definitely respect Mr. Toer’s dedication to his cause and his willingness to sacrifice so much for that in which he believed. I absolutely understand that his works are very important and that under no circumstances should they (or any other work of literature, for that matter) be censored — in fact, one of my core beliefs is that no work should be censored. However, when it comes down to it, I did not find Mr. Toer’s story enjoyable to read, and although I would recommend it as an important work, I would not suggest that anyone reads it merely for the pleasure of the story. This is a book to read to force one to think about the effects of colonization and consider how those effects might still be affecting countries today. So, 5/5 stars for importance, but 2/5 stars for my personal enjoyment.

Elena Rostova — now Helen Roston — was a Russian orphan, but she joined the military and eventually was selected as the best candidate for a top-secret experiment, in making a supersoldier-spy. One of her primary qualifications was that she has psychic abilities. The supersoldier part included intense physical and mental training, and the spy part included virtual reality and clairvoyant training — which they call bilocation. Her mentor in this is a man she doesn’t meet; in the virtual-reality world where they see each other, she has designed his avatar. They are very attracted to each other, but will she ever find out his real-world identity? And will the experiment that is her life succeed?

This book is the first half of a duology, the second volume being Virtually Hers, and while it ends in a place that does bring a decent amount of closure, it’s obvious that it’s only half the story — even without the cliffhanger ending. This duology is also not the first in the overarching series, as there’s an impression of a lot of backstory — a romance between two secondary characters, for example, and little explanation as to what the different super-secret agencies do. However, I didn’t find it overwhelming — I found myself able to get into the story without needing to know exactly what the acronyms stood for, and the various personal relationships between Elena and other characters weren’t confusing at all. It did make me want to read the other books, though.

I have to admit, I had a bit of a problem with the alpha-ness of the hero. Obviously the heroine could match him, having been the perfect choice for the supersoldier-spy over a bunch of men, but he wanted to control too many aspects of her life. Helen already had everything in her physical reality controlled by the constraints of the experiment, but the hero (he is nameless for a large portion of the book) wanted to control her mind as well. It didn’t seem necessary, most of the time; it actually seemed like he wanted to control her for his own, personal, mostly sexual reasons. He admitted that he was very turned on by strong women, but he didn’t seem to want her to be a strong woman while they were together. There were a few scenes when he administered a drug to her that left her aware and able to speak but not in control of her body from the neck down, and that drug creeped the living hell out of me. However, those who are interested in the clash of two very strong wills and those with a taste for very, very alpha males will probably find that this book fits the bill.

Those reading for the science-fictional aspect will discover that a lot of her science is firmly based in reality; in addition, she has a number of skeptics among the minor characters. They point out that what the characters are discussing is, well, fantastic, and on the verge of unbelievable. On the other side, we have the nameless, faceless bad guys who are also using the same technology, but in ways that are significantly less ethical than the carefully-monitored experiments of the good guys. I thought that Ms. Low did a remarkable job of embedding so many points of view regarding the technology in her story; she also had different narrators who each had strong, unmistakeable voices. I liked Helen quite a bit, as well as those characters who were thrown in for humor breaks, and overall she did an admirable job of keeping the book read-in-one-sitting exciting. Romantic suspense fans who enjoy super-alpha males will be demanding more, and fortunately, Ms. Low has already provided. 4/5 stars.

This is, as the title says, a collection of new fiction and memoir by Black women (published since 1990; capitalization is the editor’s). It includes, as Ms. Danquah says in the introduction, younger authors: generally under 40 at the time of publication. The table of contents is fairly long and complicated, since many of the works are excerpts from longer pieces, so I will provide a link to the Google Books version of it: here. I had not heard of any of the authors prior to reading this volume, partly because the women included are all younger than the Alice Walker-Toni Morrison-Maya Angelou-Gloria Naylor bunch. Many of them were born after Dr. King was assassinated, and all of them have received acclaim as writers from many different sources.

Easily my favorite story in the book was Itabari Njeri’s memoir excerpt, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” from Every Good-bye Ain’t Gone. It’s about her relationship with a man who was willing to say anything to get into a woman’s bed, and while she certainly succumbed to his charms more than once or twice, eventually she found out that not only was he cheating on her, but he’d gotten two women pregnant in the same very short period of time (she was one of them). Her revenge — half of which was publishing this story — is sweet and well-deserved. If the author hadn’t indicated that it was memoir in her intro, and if the main character hadn’t had the author’s name, I would have assumed it was fiction, because it’s such a well-done tale.

A lot of the other memoirs are the same: I wouldn’t have known they were memoirs if the main character hadn’t shared the name of the author. It demonstrated for me the fluidity of the form; I’d barely read any memoir prior to this, and I think I had the idea that it was a drier form, more like a biography than fiction. Except for the first entry, which is an excerpt that reads more like a personal essay (on how the author could come to fall in love with a murderer), the fiction is nearly indistinguishable from the memoir. I say that, it should be noted, as a compliment: I love fiction in all its forms because it tells a story, and so do the memoirs of these women.

One thing that the editor elucidated in the introduction but that also stuck out to me in all of the stories was how disenfranchised these women writers felt, as in school they never read any books or stories written by someone who looked like them. I am about ten years younger than most of these women, and I went to a standard decent city public high school where about twenty percent of the students weren’t white, in the late 1990s, and I still can only think of two volumes that I read in four years of English class that weren’t written by a white man. (Black Boy, by Richard Wright, and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I do understand that the latter brings up racial issues, but the author is white and a white man is still the hero.)

It’s rather sad that things haven’t changed all that much in such a short period of time. I do know that I noticed the lack of class-read books written by women, and I did a report on Sylvia Plath to counterbalance this, but it’s still unfortunate that we didn’t read any of the aforementioned authors: Maya Angelou, who read a poem at the presidential inauguration when I was in elementary school; or Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, both of whom have won Pulitzers (the latter also won the Nobel Prize in Literature). To top it off, any of the stories in this volume would have fit incredibly well in the short-story fiction/nonfiction collection we called our English textbooks, and these are second-generation authors.

All that having been said, though, I am painfully aware that me noticing that we didn’t read enough books by women pales in comparison (no pun intended) to a young woman of color realizing that we read no books written by women of color. Overall, though, both experiences indicate a need for greater diversity in the books chosen for classroom use on a high school level. It’s almost amazing that so many young women of color had enough inspiration to become authors, in the face of overwhelming whiteness and maleness. The fact that these women, in general, decided to write realistic fiction or memoirs is quite telling: more than anything, it seems that they are compelled to tell their stories, the stories that are left out of American literature almost entirely. This collection comes highly recommended, but it is not a light set of stories. While some are more enjoyable to read, and even have happy endings, even those remind the reader of so many points that one might miss with a standard education. It will definitely cause re-evaluation of one’s own experience, but I wouldn’t have skipped any of these for the world. 5/5 stars.

The titles of the stories that I reviewed are as follows, with a short description:

“Autumn’s Country” (Asian-set story about arranged marriages and the possible results)
“The Dancer’s Gift” (Dark secondary-world fantasy about destructive empathy)
“Through the Obsidian Gates” (Sort of an Orpheus-in-the-Underworld story, but with Mayans)
“Obsidian Shards” (Aztec death priest fights crime!)
“The Lost Xuyan Bride” (Alternate-history Dashiell-Hammett type mystery)
“The Dragon’s Tears” (Asian-set death, riddles, and [obviously] dragons story)
“Beneath the Mask” (Aztec death priest fights more crime!)
“Sea Child” (Secondary-world fantasy with high cliffs and dangerous waters)
“The Naming at the Pool” (Different secondary-world fantasy, with different riddles and changes of identity)
“Weepers and Ragers” (Future-set science fiction with melting brains and murder)
“For a Daughter” (Literary flash fiction about China’s one-child policy)
“Citadel of Cobras” (Hermits, forests, and magic)
“The Triad’s Gift” (Novella-length story about riddles, losing one’s kingdom, and nagas)

The first story I read was “Autumn’s Country,” and while it was interesting, I wasn’t that enthralled. I read on, though, and discovered her Aztec stories. The main character of these tales is Acatl, a death priest, who somehow gets roped into investigating crimes. I love what are essentially gumshoe tales set in fantasy lands (some of Terry Pratchett’s qualify, as well as Tamara Siler Jones’s Dubric Byerly novels), and this was, in addition to being a mystery, a great fantasy land. I don’t think that Central and South America have been mined nearly enough for fantasy. Not only does Ms. de Bodard make great use of it as a historical kind of world in this story, but she uses the trappings of the empire to make a more current fantasy story.

That story (“The Lost Xuyan Bride”) is set in an alternate reality where China, Europe, and the Aztec empire (called Mexica) share North America. the Europeans (“Americans”) have the eastern chunk, the Chinese (the Xuyans) have west of the Rockies, and the Mexicans have the south. There’s a great deal of xenophobia, especially the Americans; the main character had the misfortune to fall in love with a Xuyan woman, and he was nearly put in jail for it. This story is also a detective tale; it starts out with the traditional beautiful woman coming into the office to ask for help, and the private investigator almost refusing the case. It’s a little longer than some of her other stories, and probably the best of them so far. Her website indicates that she will be publishing many more stories in this world, and I look forward to it.

The other stories have various settings which, while all quite detailed and impressive, are perhaps not quite as appealing to me as her alternate reality. I do admire her breadth of settings, and if she were to choose to write a novel, I very much hope it would be set in the alternate reality. However, if she continues writing short stories, I would not be in the least disappointed. Her character types are rich, as well — while most of her main characters seem to be male, they aren’t one-dimensional in the least, and most aren’t even the least bit similar to each other. Even the detectives don’t resemble one another at all. In short, I’d recommend searching out her works, and I very much hope that she wins the Campbell, so a publisher will take a chance and put out a collection of her short works. 4.5/5 stars for the group.

This is a sequel, and although I never read the first book, I’m cutting the plot discussion anyway. The Living Blood centers around two children, Fana and Jared, and their parents and families. Fana’s mother is Jessica Jacobs-Wolde, who is apparently infamous in Miami for having been married to David Wolde, the serial killer. He killed several people, but most notably their older daughter, Kira. Fana was conceived but not yet born at the time, and she is showing some strange abilities. Jared is the son of Dr. Lucas Shepherd, a microbiologist who has been studying alternative medicine for a number of years. Jared is dying of leukemia, and his father will do anything to find a cure. After Kira’s death, Jessica and her sister Alice moved to Africa, to start a clinic for children in the middle of a non-developed area. They apparently have some sort of miracle cure out there, and Lucas will do anything to get it.

Apparently this is a sequel to My Soul to Keep, but I didn’t know that prior to about a minute ago as the book didn’t indicate it in any way. I didn’t even have the feeling that there was an incredible amount of backstory, but apparently there was. Readers who read The Living Blood first will unfortunately have the entire plot of My Soul to Keep spoiled for them. I still wouldn’t mind reading it, as it might be interesting to watch the story unfold even though I know the ending. Also, of course, I very much enjoyed Ms. Due’s writing and characters, and it would be quite interesting to re-enter the world, if a bit backwards.

Jessica is an interesting character; she deals with her de facto immortality fairly well, but her daughter Fana unsettles her a bit. (And by ‘a bit,’ I mean ‘a lot.’) Fana was born laughing, which is strange enough as it is but a common element from folk tales. She’s three and a half years old for the majority of the book, and she has all sorts of strange abilities — she makes it rain; she can hear thoughts; she even puts someone into a coma with just the power of her mind. Frankly, any one of those things would make a normal mother incredibly freaked-out. The fact that Fana has a lot more power than even David or any of his fellow immortals clearly would make anyone nervous, and I thought that Jessica’s feelings were well-done and entirely natural.

Parts of this book deal with race in interesting ways. The majority of the characters are African-American. Yes, the bad guys are white in general but the worst of ‘em all isn’t. Some of the good guys are white, as well. Lucas’s wife was white, and he is light-skinned, so his son looks white. When he goes to Africa, he’s treated with a measure of suspicion by the locals, even after he explains that American society makes very little differentiation between light-skinned African-Americans (or Caribbean-Americans) and darker-skinned ones. Another character thinks something very uncharitable about a person who is half African, half Irish. Overall, though, the conflict isn’t really over race — it’s over the immortal blood.

That doesn’t mean that the racial element of the Africans and African-Americans having what the white people want should be ignored. I’m sure that Ms. Due intended to provoke thought surrounding this issue and how it’s topsy-turvy of, oh, say, the AIDS epidemic in Africa (the rich white countries being so benevolent as to provide life-saving medication to the poor savages in Africa, and I’m being extraordinarily sarcastic here). Overall, it was both an entertaining book and a book that made me consider certain elements in the world differently, and I’m looking forward to finding more books by Ms. Due. 4.5/5 stars.

Katie Takeshima’s sister, Lynn, is her world. Lynn is four years older, and she protects her sister as much as she possibly can. When the family’s Asian grocery store goes under in the mid-1950s, the family moves to Georgia where Mr. Takeshima can get a job in a chicken processing plant. The world is very different down there; it’s a small town and there are only 31 Japanese people out of 4000 residents. Many people won’t talk to them, but Katie’s fine. She has a best friend already — Lynn. Even though the family struggles with finances and working so many hours a day in awful conditions, and even though the two grow up and Lynn makes other friends, the sisters remain close — until Lynn gets sick.

Having read Ms. Kadohata’s bio, it’s obvious that she took many elements of this particular story from her own life. She lived in the South while her father was a chicken-sexer (identifying the boy-chicks from the girl-chicks) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as did our protagonist. Katie and her parents were all born in the U.S., as were Ms. Kadohata’s family. I’m sure that the racism that Katie experienced was based on what the author experienced — both racism and classism, actually. Not only was Katie’s family looked down upon for being not-white, but they were considered lesser for having a working-class job as well, and for Mrs. Takeshima having to work full-time. I’m actually surprised that Katie seemed as unconcerned as she did, but I suppose her age — she was in her early teens when the book ended — had something to do with that.

One point the book made, and I have to assume it was intended, was why unions had been necessary in the first place. Chicken sexers worked on shifts sort of like firefighters — they were expected to be at the factory ’round the clock just in case a batch of chicks hatched. Of course, they didn’t have the relatively nice settings of firehouses, what with beds and things to do in one’s leisure time, and they didn’t have the relatively nice hours of firefighters (who work something like 24 hours on, 48 hours off). The other workers were not allowed to have unscheduled breaks, so they were given pads in case they had to use the bathroom at an inconvenient time. Whatever one can say about the unions today, it’s obvious that the chicken-processing plant workers needed something to guarantee that they would be treated in a humane fashion.

This is not a happy book in so many ways. Overall, it felt very melancholy, and there was a lot of accepting of bad things that happened. Towards the beginning, the family stays at a hotel and is forced to stay in a back room and pay $2 more because they’re not white. Mr. Takeshima pays without any particular complaint (except to say that he’s neither black nor Mexican). In so many ways, the Takeshimas stole happiness when they could, rather than accepting it as their due. I think this is definitely an important book to read, especially for those who want to understand the roots of the attitudes of current Americans, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily an easy or pleasant book to read. 5/5 stars.