I did not read many published stories this month. Instead, I beta read for friends in between calling contractors for necessary, horrifically expensive home repair. My current nemeses are woodpeckers and cast iron piping.
I’ve also been writing more again, finally. Working back up to the pace of one novel and a few short stories per year.
Short stories:
Mostly Raffles stories, because they show up in my email and I read them during lunch at the office.
“Out of Paradise” by E. W. Hornung
Here’s what I was looking for in an AJ Raffles story written after the character’s canonical death in the Boer War. Bunny, the narrator, who’s Watson to Raffles’s Sherlock, recounts a past exploit of Raffles from his vantage of present grief. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.
“The Chest of Silver” and “The Rest Cure” by E. W. Hornung
In the second story in the very last Raffles collection. Raffles tricks an unwitting Bunny into helping him rob a bank. In the third, Raffles is secretly living in the house of a prison supervisor who’s away abroad, and when he invites Bunny to stay too, to hide in the dark and silently read books, Bunny can’t stand how little attention Raffles is giving him.
“The Crimonologists’ Club” by E. W. Hornung
Raffles gets himself and Bunny invited to dine with amateur criminologists. The fun is that they don’t know of Raffles and Bunny’s career in burglary, but perhaps they will, after Raffles steers the discussion to those cases, with only the thinnest armor of anonymity. Thrill-seeking through unnecessary risk is classic Raffles behavior.
“As Thick as Water” by AuthorRHaven
Nessa is one of three girls taken under the wing of “River,” a fae who grants power in exchange for pledging a family bond. And family does each other favors… This is an atmospheric fantasy novelette with a dash of horror, written by someone in my writing circles.
“Margeaux Poppins: Monster Hunter” by L. D. Lewis
A fabulous short story about a woman who hunts monsters inside of paintings, who might just snag a date if she can impress the conservator she’s been hired to help.
Books:
I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea
Look at that cover. Freaking gorgeous. Laure was a fantastic protagonist. …Aaaaand now I might be out of praise. This was another book I wanted to like more than I did.
Laure is the only black ballerina at the Paris academy. She’s fantastic, top of her class. But unfortunately, the racist board refuses to give her a fair shot. No matter her blood, sweat, and tears, she can’t get the recognition she deserves— Until she makes a Faustian bargain with Acheron, which is like, some kind of psychic evil blood river who grants wishes for a price.
The book opens with a lot of technical details showcasing the world of Parisian ballet. It’s wordy, but I like wordy descriptions with technical details. Jamison gives fantastic insight into a world few people are familiar with. Laure’s ambition pulls the narrative along until her senior, prodigy ballerina Josephine, takes her out to dinner and offers to help her advance her career… By introducing her to a river of blood that swallows her whole.
Laure learns that Josephine’s success in the Paris ballet is largely due to Acheron. Josephine wished for luck, so she gets promotion after promotion, luxury gifts, etc., all while smoking and otherwise not being a model ballerina, despite that perfection is demanded of everyone else. When Laure gets her chance, she asks Acheron for power. The power to force people to heed her.
Thus begins her villain arc. Unfortunately, from that point, the narrative is bogged down by wayyyyy too much introspection, an unfocused murder mystery plot, repetitive scenes, a special sexy monster love interest who textually serves as a distraction, and a final twist that makes sense and is frankly cool, but seeks emotional payoff it didn’t earn through groundwork.
Anyway, if you did enjoy this book, I’m happy for you. Laure’s voice was really strong and the idea for the final twist was cool, so I can see why people might get invested.