Microreview [book]: In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle

A modern day fairy tale...

In Calabria is a romantic novella set in modern day Italy. It tells the story of Claudio Bianchi, a middle aged man who lives alone on his farm in pastoral Calabria, purposefully isolated from much of the modern world. The majority of his human interaction comes from the mail carrier, who braves Bianchi’s dirt road every day, and the mail carrier’s younger sister Giovanna who is learning the ropes. Bianchi finds friendship primarily with his animals, many of whom are as grizzled and curmudgeonly as he, until one day a magnificent unicorn appears on his property and changes his life forever.

Bianchi suffered a great loss many years ago and has since secluded himself on his farm, with no company except his dog, cats, goats, and cows. But it becomes clear to him that this unicorn did not choose his land at random, and that heavy with a colt she will need him as much as it turns out he needs her. Eventually, reality and the times come crashing down Bianchi’s door, but he handles it poised and stoically, waiting for it all to pass. Bianchi’s life becomes even more complicated, though, when an unlikely friendship develops into something more, spilling over all the emotions the unicorn has brought to his surface.

If this story sounds like a fairy tale, that because it is in a way. It is truly a romantic tale of love and loss and how hope never really abandons us. The animals as characters are phenomenal, especially given how Beagle builds their personalities solely through their actions and Bianchi’s reactions to them (no talking animals here). I feel obligated to comment on the stark age difference between two of the characters who become romantically involved, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me because both parties acknowledge it and choose to proceed anyway. Because really, age ain’t nothing but a number… it is situations where actresses are told they’re too old to play the love interest of someone in their own age bracket when there is a problem, for example.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for characterization of the animals, +1 for the use of Italian colloquialisms that squeezed my heartstrings

Penalties: -1 very picky here, but I found the novella a bit slow a times

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 "well worth your time and attention"


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POSTED BY: Tia    nerds of a feather contributor since 2014

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Cover Art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Beagle, Peter S. Summerlong [Tachyon, 2016]
Publisher's Blurb

Beloved author Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) returns with this long-anticipated new novel, a beautifully bittersweet tale of passion, enchantment, and fate.

 It was a typically miserable Puget Sound winter before the arrival of Lioness Lazos. An enigmatic young waitress with strange abilities, when the lovely Lioness comes to Gardner Island even the weather takes notice.

As an impossibly beautiful spring leads into a perfect summer, Lioness is drawn to a complicated family. She is taken in by two disenchanted lovers—dynamic Joanna Delvecchio and scholarly Abe Aronson—visited by Joanna’s previously unlucky-in-love daughter, Lily. With Lioness in their lives, they are suddenly compelled to explore their deepest dreams and desires.

 Lioness grows more captivating as the days grow longer. Her new family thrives, even as they may be growing apart. But lingering in Lioness’s past is a dark secret—and even summer days must pass.

Why We Want It: Well, it's a new Peter S. Beagle novel, so I'm not sure what all you're looking for here by asking us this question.

Cover Art by Matt Stawicki

Czerneda, Julie. The Gate to Futures Past [Del Rey, 2016]
Publisher's Blurb

Second novel in the hard sci-fi Reunification series, The Gate to Futures Past continues the Clan Chronicles, perfect for space opera readers looking for unique aliens and interstellar civilizations.

Betrayed and attacked, the Clan fled the Trade Pact for Cersi, believing that world their long-lost home. With them went a lone alien, the Human named Jason Morgan, Chosen of their leader, Sira di Sarc. Tragically, their arrival upset the Balance between Cersi’s three sentient species. And so the Clan, with their newfound kin, must flee again.

Their starship, powered by the M’hir, follows a course set long ago, for Clan abilities came from an experiment their ancestors—the Hoveny—conducted on themselves. But it’s a perilous journey. The Clan must endure more than cramped conditions and inner turmoil.

Their dead are Calling.

Sira must keep her people from answering, for if they do, they die. Morgan searches the ship for answers, afraid the Hoveny’s tech is beyond his grasp. Their only hope? To reach their destination.

Little do Sira and Morgan realize their destination holds the gravest threat of all…. 

Why We Want It: The blurb says it all "perfect for space opera readers looking for unique aliens and interstellar civilizations." I'm sold. Now I just need to go back and read all of Czerneda's novels!

Cover Art by Victor Mosquera

Evenson, Brian. The Warren [Tor.com Publishing, 2016]
Publisher's Blurb

X doesn’t have a name. He thought he had one—or many—but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X.

He’s also not as human as he believes himself to be.

But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species. 

Why We Want It: Evenson creeped us out years ago with his novel Last Days, and The Warren looks to be pretty twisted and awesome at the same time.

Priest, Cherie. The Family Plot [Tor, 2016]
Publisher's Blurb

Chuck Dutton built Music City Salvage with patience and expertise, stripping historic properties and reselling their bones. Inventory is running low, so he's thrilled when Augusta Withrow appears in his office offering salvage rights to her entire property. This could be a gold mine, so he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project.

The crew finds a handful of surprises right away. Firstly, the place is in unexpectedly good shape. And then there's the cemetery, about thirty fallen and overgrown graves dating to the early 1900s, Augusta insists that the cemetery is just a fake, a Halloween prank, so the city gives the go-ahead, the bulldozer revs up, and it turns up human remains. Augusta says she doesn't know whose body it is or how many others might be present and refuses to answer any more questions. Then she stops answering the phone.

But Dahlia's concerns about the corpse and Augusta's disappearance are overshadowed when she begins to realize that she and her crew are not alone, and they're not welcome at the Withrow estate. They have no idea how much danger they're in, but they're starting to get an idea. On the crew's third night in the house, a storm shuts down the only road to the property. The power goes out. Cell signals are iffy. There's nowhere to go and no one Dahlia can call for help, even if anyone would believe that she and her crew are being stalked by a murderous phantom. Something at the Withrow mansion is angry and lost, and this is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever. And it seems to be seeking permanent company.

The Family Plot is a haunted house story for the ages-atmospheric, scary, and strange, with a modern gothic sensibility to keep it fresh and interesting-from Cherie Priest, a modern master of supernatural fiction. 

Why We Want It: We've been fans of Cherie Priest's fiction for years now, starting with her debut novel Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a southern gothic ghost story. While we've been hoping for another Eden Moore novel, we'll happily take this creepy new haunted house story.

Cover Art by Amazing 15 Design

Priest, Christopher. The Gradual [Titan, 2016]
Publisher's Blurb

Alesandro grows up in Glaud, a fascist state constantly at war with a faceless opponent. His brother is sent off to war; his family is destroyed by grief. Occasionally he catches glimpses of islands in the far distance from the shore, and they feed into the music he composes—music for which he is feted. His search from his brother brings him into contact with the military leadership and suddenly he is a fugitive on the run—he seeks refuge on the islands and his endless travels take him through places and time, bringing him answers where he could not have foreseen them.

A rich and involving tale of the creative mind, the rigours of living under war and the nature of time itself. 

Why We Want It: Based on Priest's stature in the British SF field, The Gradual may well be a serious contender for the Clarke Award. We should really get in early on this one.

Cover Art by Christine Mitzuk

Rusch, Kristine Kathryn, ed. Women of Futures Past [Baen, 2016]
Publisher's Blurb

ANTHOLOGY OF GREAT SF STORIES BY RENOWNED WOMEN SF AUTHORS! A collection of wonderful SF carefully selected by ground‑breaking editor and author, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Stories by Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, Lois McMaster Bujold, CJ Cherryh and more.

Meet the Women of Futures Past: from Grand Master Andre Norton and the beloved Anne McCaffrey to some of the most popular SF writers today, such as Lois McMaster Bujold and CJ Cherryh. The most influential writers of multiple generations are found in these pages, delivering lost classics and foundational touchstones that shaped the field.

You'll find Northwest Smith, C.L. Moore’s famous smuggler who predates (and maybe inspired) Han Solo by four decades. Read Leigh Brackett’s fiction and see why George Lucas chose her to write The Empire Strikes Back. Adventure tales, post‑apocalyptic visions, space opera, aliens‑among‑us, time travel—these women have delivered all this and more, some of the best science fiction ever written!

 Includes stories by Leigh Brackett, Lois McMaster Bujold, Pat Cadigan, CJ Cherryh, Zenna Henderson, Nancy Kress, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, C.L. Moore, Andre Norton, James Tiptree, Jr., and Connie Willis. 

Why We Want It: A collection of stories from legendary writers of science fiction who have written some of the best science fiction has to offer and have shaped the direction of science fiction itself? AND they're all women? Yeah, I'm sold. This is something I want to read.



POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004. Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015, editor since 2016. Minnesotan.

Microreview [book]: Summerlong, by Peter S. Beagle

 A remarkably moving, indeed captivating retelling of the Persephone myth—set near Seattle.  Or, “move over, Stephenie Meyer: there’s a new paranormal group in town!”

Beagle, Peter S. Summerlong. Tachyon, (Sept) 2016.

Buy it here starting next month.

By almost any measure, this book sounds boring. It stars Abe, a scholar retiree—the sort of person for whom ‘puttering’ is the verb of choice, in other words—and his longtime girlfriend, flight attendant Joanna “Del” Delvecchio (along with her desperate-to-love-somebody daughter Lily), and is set near Seattle in the present day. For the first 20% or so, there’s basically nothing out of the ordinary at all; it’s just two older people quietly ‘puttering’ their way through life. If you are thinking “ugh, reading about a 66-year old man and his attempts at banter? Pass”, then join the club, because so different, so unlikely were Abe and Del as heroes that I almost put the book down after the first few dozen pages; it just seemed like the story, while certainly well written and effective at building empathy in the reader for Abe and Del’s various incredibly minor predicaments, didn’t seem to be ‘going anywhere.’

           

Boy, am I glad I kept reading! Lioness (I feel no compunction in revealing that she is in fact Persephone, as this is patently obvious almost immediately after her first appearance) bursts onto the scene, and their ordinary lives, like the rising sun burning through a cloudy Seattle morning. Everyone loves her—how could one fail to love the personification of spring? As it turns out, even Hades loves her, and he soon comes calling, a bit like the husband from Sleeping with the Enemy (but way less awful, luckily!).

They should dig this guy up to play Hades if this book ever hits the silver screen!

Still, a story that is technically quite skillfully written doesn’t necessarily have much emotional valence, and just setting the Hades-Persephone myth in modern Seattle probably wouldn't by itself contribute much to the tale’s emotional impact…so now, after finishing the book, I’m still at a loss to explain why the story affected me so powerfully.

No fewer than five times, I found myself actually weeping (not sniffling or a little misty-eyed, mind you), and reached for the Kleenex. To clarify (without spoiling the story), nothing earth-shattering or particularly melodramatic happens; the Olympian additions to the cast notwithstanding, the main drama remains squarely focused on the relationship between Abe and Del, and Del and Lily too, and the effect the gods’ presence has on each. What in this sounds likely to require Kleenex? I just can’t explain it any other way than to say that Beagle lived up to his reputation as one of the doyens of fantasy literature, endowing this quiet, even uneventful tale with such lyrical beauty that I have tears in my eyes just recalling it now, as I write this.

Beagle’s prose is undeniably brilliant, but in an unassuming, unpretentious way. His dialogue is good, but almost archaic (or simply outdated) at times, perhaps as a result of hanging the story around two such unusually aged protagonists. So it’s not as though I was blinking back tears at the poignancy of any specific description or line of dialogue. I am left grasping at straws, and must resort to saying, simply, Beagle’s “storytelling ability” allowed him to convert what to rights should be a boring tale into an emotionally riveting one. In any case, bravo, Mr. Beagle: you’ve won over a new fan!

 
The Math:

Objective assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for bringing that certain ineffable “je ne sais quoi” (yes, I actually said that)

Penalties: -1 for altogether too much ‘puttering’ around in the first few dozen pages, before Lioness makes her transformative appearance

Nerd coefficient: 8/10 “Well worth your time and attention”

[At NOAF, an 8/10 is something to be very proud of; see details of our scoring system here.]

Reviewed by Zhaoyun, regular contributor at Nerds of a Feather since 2013 and connoisseur of magic realism, indeed any fantasy or science fiction tale that can move readers to tears.

Summer Reading List 2016: Zhaoyun

Zhaoyun’s Totally Reasonable Summer Reading List, 2016 Edition

Summer is here, and that means fond memories of long-ago encounters with great (okay, probably not that great, but they seemed so at the time) books pilfered (or, you know, just loaned, mostly) from the library in the twilight before racing (more of a tortoise than a hare, to be honest) back home on my bike: the perfect end to perfect summer days! And aside from the library part, which is now out of biking range (i.e., I’m too lazy to go to libraries or bookstores or, in fact, anywhere, nowadays) I still feel there are few pleasures greater than a well-crafted, intriguing fantasy or science fiction novel to be sipped or gulped down in “those summer nights”, as John Travolta would warble. Will I get through all of these? No idea (some idea, actually: probably not), but I relish the challenge! (And that’s another thing I love: relish! Mustard/ketchup...ugh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!)

        

1. Pines, by Blake Crouch    

Yeah, the Matt Dillon one, but with words and pages and stuff, not Netflixery. Actually, I’ve already finished this book, and found it interesting if a bit uneven (or to put it in a more flattering light, it had a surprising structure); overall, I liked it enough to be annoyed by the subtle yet enormous changes from book to screen. I also liked it enough to add…

2. Wayward, by Blake Crouch

           

The just bearable hopelessness of the first book was intriguing enough to pique my curiosity: how will things develop in the horrid little town? How will the Burkes adjust to their idyllic prison? Is there any real future for the entire enterprise? I want to see how Crouch tunnels his way out of the dark-as-can-be pit of despair he left Wayward Pines in at the end of book one. Come to think of it, maybe he should change his name to “Bleak”…

3. The Obelisk Gate, by N.K. Jemisin

Because how could I not read it? I loved the first book in this new series (and, indeed, everything by Jemisin), and have high hopes for the second. I won’t be reviewing it at NOAF, because I’m not alone in my admiration for Jemisin, but that won’t stop me from reading it—in fact, nothing could possibly stop me!

4. Summerlong, by Peter Beagle

I’m trying to become shallower, more impulsive, and capable of baseless snap-judgments, so I base most book decisions these days on—you guessed it—the covers! Summerlong’s is delightful, and has raised my expectations quite high. But aren’t I just setting myself up for disappointment, you say? Maybe…but it’s the world’s fault for making such a pretty cover J

5. Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Intriguing title, and plus it’s based upon Japanese folk tales and legends, of which I am something of a connoisseur (or at least I aspire to be). On the potential minus-side is the fact that this is a collection of short stories (and unlike idiots like Edgar Allen Poe, I utterly reject the idea that a story should be short enough to enjoy in a single sitting—quite the opposite, in fact), but some of them are apparently about kaiju, and everybody loves kaiju! This is the perfect segue into…

6. The Kaiju series, by Jeremy Robinson

They say you shouldn’t read books by people you know (actually, I have no idea if ‘they’ say that, but I just felt instinctually like it was a bad idea), so for a long time I resisted the urge to read anything by this guy, who I knew as an older acquaintance/family friend long ago, in the halcyon days of my childhood. Then I tried reading something by him, and didn’t really like it, but it was the first book he’d written, and it didn’t seem really fair to judge him by his earliest effort (though that didn’t/doesn’t stop me from roundly condemning Patricia Cornwell and the cringe-worthy Postmortem—maybe the Kay Skarpetta series got better after that, but I certainly hope it didn’t manage to get any worse!). So I thought I’d give Jeremy another try, and somewhat randomly selected this Kaiju series. I’m a bit of the way into the series now, and am not at all disappointed—he’s really upped his game, as even if the story is somewhat familiar/well-trodden ground, the quality of the writing is top-notch, especially the “as ___ as ______” descriptive one-liners! Best of all (though not for the unfortunate characters caught by the monster thereabouts), much of the action takes place near, and a few scenes almost within sight of, my childhood home!

This list brought to you by Zhaoyun, ruthless devourer of fantasy and sci-fi novels and films since primordial times, and reviewer for Nerds of a Feather since 2013.