DreamHaven

Matt Dinniman burst upon the traditional publishing scene last year when Penguin Random House bought his “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series. Dinniman was already a successful author, having self-published the first books in the series, along with another dozen or so popular novels. Very popular, it seems. The most recent book hit number two on the New York Times bestseller list.

Carl is a twenty-seven-year-old, ex-US Coast Guard dude who has just broken up with his girlfriend. He tells his story in first person, and never gives his last name. He becomes “Dungeon Crawler Carl” on page sixteen. His ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning show cat, Princess Donut, has inexplicably jumped out a window into a tree at 2AM on a frigid Seattle night. So Carl is outside trying to rescue her when all the human-built structures in the world collapse, along with their contents, living or inert. This leaves Carl and Donut as the sole Seattle survivors of the end of the world. Since Carl is wearing only boxer shorts, too-small Crocs, and an old leather jacket, they head for the nearest light and warmth, which happens to be the entrance to a massive-multiplayer-RPG-style dungeon.

Unsurprisingly, aliens are involved in the conversion of all of Earth’s resources into a giant dungeon. It is an alien reality TV show projected to the entire universe, sort of like Hunger Games for adults, but without the need (mostly) for the participants to kill other players. This shouldn’t be funny, but it is. Dungeon Crawler Carl is probably the funniest end-of-the-world scenario since Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy removed Earth to put in an inter-galactic highway. I predict that boxers with leather jackets and pink Crocs will join bathrobes and towels as the best easy cosplay for men.

Carl is a decent, practical guy who spends only a little time agonizing over the fate of the world. He survives by the seat of his non-existent pants, mostly by cleverly using explosives found in the dungeon. He tries to keep the other “crawlers” he encounters alive as well. This includes Donut the cat, who has hilarious abilities (and opinions) of her own, and a bunch of wheelchair-bound nursing home residents for whom “leveling up” doesn’t seem to be an option. It also includes non-player-characters (NPCs) who, turns out, have tragic backstories of their own.

If you want a good, long summer read, you won’t run out of books for a while. Dinniman began the series in 2019, and has already written eight of the anticipated ten books in the series. The first book finishes only Level 2 in a dungeon that, Carl is told, extends to Level 18, but no one has ever made it past Level 13. Dungeon crawl stories tend to get repetitive, so hopefully, other side-plots will develop. There are already hints of a universe-wide political system badly in need of an upgrade. But even without that, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a fun read, full of surprises, and oddly comfortable despite the enormously high body count.

This is an extremely interesting book, though I must say that I’m not sure I entirely understood it. At the very least, my old-fashioned brain kept mis-gendering the characters. Notes From A Regicide is the story of Etoine Keming, transcribed from his written prison journal by his adoptive son, Griffon. This is interwoven with the story of how Griffon came to be adopted by Etoine and his lover Zaffre. And why, after their deaths, Griffon decided to tell the story from Etoine’s journal.

Etoine was an artist in the now-lost city of Stephensport, and he was unwittingly involved in the revolution which destroyed it. He did, in fact, commit regicide, though that was not why he was imprisoned. His fellow artist and eventual lover, Zaffre, was probably much more actively involved, but her story is unreliable. She supposedly “burned down half of Stephensport,” but her memories are described from a fuzzy distance, as though this might have been more or less accidental.

Etoine and Zaffre are old when they find their son (or maybe Griffon finds them). They have finally arrived at themselves as both artists and revolutionaries. All three are living in a future New York City, where artists and refugees abound, and most of the streets are canals. Griffon is still finding himself, as a trans man whose biological parents were abusive and, ultimately, unworthy of him. Zaffre and Etoine are also trans, but secure enough in their bodies that the way they live can be a sort of guide. However they are both broken in other ways, and seem to still be in mourning for their lost city.

I thought at first that Isaac Fellman meant for revolution to be a metaphor for transitioning. Both involve uncertain change. The Stevensport revolution was passionate and messy, barging with minimal guidance toward an unknown future. But, though it was ultimately successful, it was not clear that everyone, including the revolutionaries, was satisfied with the outcome of the revolution.

The story is told in evocative, beautifully poetic prose, but it is filled with a sense of loss. The city burned, its magical foundation dismantled. The king is dead. Perhaps too many things of value were unintentionally destroyed in the process, or the new way of life is not as much of an improvement as hoped. Fellman does not really answer these questions, telling instead a story of wrenching love and loss and change.

When Mary Darling’s three children disappear through an open window into the night, leaving no footprints behind in the snow, she has a pretty good idea what happened to them. She had her own childhood adventures, you see. And while she doesn’t know exactly where the imaginary place called Neverland is, nor exactly how to find the ageless boy who calls himself Peter Pan, she does know where she ended up, when she was a girl.

The problem is that she is now a more or less respectable British mother, and women of her status don’t travel half a world away unaccompanied, for any reason. But Mary is willing and eager to do anything for Wendy, Michael and John. When Mary’s Uncle, Dr. John Watson, and his colleague Sherlock Holmes prove to be of very little help, she disguises herself and escapes to a ship headed in the right direction. Watson and Holmes are not far behind. Holmes’ amazing deductive abilities are hilariously not terribly useful.

What follows is a wonderful musing on the toughness required for motherhood, and the lack of innocence inherent in childhood. There are some snide comments about British Imperialism and the rigidity of rational science. But there’s plenty of adventure too. All the Peter Pan things are there—a bunch of displaced Native Americans enacting Peter’s idea of Indians, some decidedly dangerous mermaids, pirates who may actually be normal seamen, a one-handed Captain, and flying with fairy dust.

And sword fights, of course. Who knew that Mary Darling, who spends most of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan presumably sitting tearfully in front of the window, is actually trained in martial arts? And that her granddaughter, Jane, who canonically also went off with Peter Pan, would one day write the true story of Mary Darling and the other children who once were lost.

I chose this book because I don’t think I’ve ever read anything translated from Korean, though I have watched a couple magnificent Korean TV shows. In this case, the translator is Anton Hur. Both the translator and the author are quite good. The story unfolds in crisp, understated prose, with none of the awkwardness I have seen in translations from other languages.

I expected the book to erupt in horrible violence, what with its fiery orange cover, and “blood” in the title. The book is an interweaving of the tales of three unexpected heroes, all of whom come from the conquered country of Arland. Events are clearly leading to conflict with the oppressive Imperial Empire. But the war, it seems, is born more from resignation and determination, rather than hopelessness or anger. It happens in the same introspective, almost-gentle viewpoint with which the protagonists start their journeys.

Loran is a middle-aged swordswoman who, after her husband and daughter are killed by the Empire, has no reason not to give herself to the chained dragon of Arland and declare herself King. She doesn’t actually expect to survive. Cain is a refugee living in the Imperial Capitol. He is an ordinary young man, just getting by, and helping his fellow Arlanders wherever possible. Arienne was born with magic, and has been forcibly removed from her home to attend mandatory magic schooling. What she learns about the fate of people with magic sends her on a daring escape from the Imperial Capitol and into the heart of a rebellion.

This is a story of perseverance in kindness and fairness, despite overwhelming odds. It teaches that perhaps there are some things that must be done, even if they are likely to be met with skepticism or failure. It is oddly hopeful, aided by an ending that turns out fairly well for all three protagonists. I can’t vouch for their ultimate success, however. According to the author’s post-script, Blood of Old Kings is the first book in a trilogy.

This seems to be the first novel by Seattle-based author and Tolkien podcaster, Jared Pechaček. He is also an artist; the odd drawings at the start of each chapter—which look like the illuminations on an ancient manuscript—are all different, and done by the author. It’s an incredible first effort, beautifully written, strangely illustrated and bizarrely wonderful.

The West Passage has the melancholy feel of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, with it’s enormous, ancient halls, empty except for long-forgotten rituals and artifacts. It reminds me a bit of Crowley’s Engine Summer, where things that seem to be bits of old advanced technology are put to odd uses by people who have no idea what they really are. The nameless threat of “the Beast” lurking somewhere is also not a particularly new idea. But this Beast is revealed only in patches of remaining knowledge and seems hardly more dire than the dangers of the decay of a civilization from which entire branches of information have been lost. Put together, the story is utterly unique.

The young people who the story follows are cheerful and plucky, and naively uncaring of the dangers. There is Yarrow (who was Pell until her master died and passed on her name) and Kew (who should have, but somehow didn’t, become Hawthorne when his master, the last Guardian, died). They both grew up in the Grey Tower, where the women of Grey House conduct funerals and the single remaining Guardian trains her apprentice for a threat that seems non-existent.

Yarrow and Kew are teenagers whose masters died untimely, before full knowledge could be imparted to them. The reader has the impression that this is not the first time over the centuries this has happened, and that any knowledge they might have received would still have been incomplete and insufficient. They are sent on separate adventures, largely unaware that they are off on world-saving missions.

They show us a world enclosed by the immense towers of five castles. There are uncounted passages and stairways, chasms filled with garbage and jackals, and chambers the size of cities that house the Ladies who vie for power. There are vast, unused libraries and rooms full of inexplicable, dusty items. There are places where humans (or part humans) still try to fulfill their ancient roles, performing rituals whose meaning has been lost.

But it all starts, and ends, in the West Passage, where the legion of Guardians of the Grey Tower once fought the Beast, but are now reduced to one girl who knows nothing except ancient funeral songs and one apprentice who did not receive his name.

I picked this book up because it has an interesting cover, of a silhouetted owl with glowing red eyes, and because Aimee Pokwatka’s previous book, Self Portrait with Nothing was recommended somewhere. I read her new novel instead. Also because, how can you resist a book about “murder owls?”

The Parliament is a mystery thriller about twenty-five people trapped in a library on a random Thursday by . . . yes, a swarm of vicious owls. It starts innocently enough as a well-written portrait of small town life from the perspective of a mildly obsessive and withdrawn young woman. Madigan, also called Mad, has returned to the hometown she escaped, to teach a middle-school-level science class at the library. Everything is proceeding as expected—the gossiping librarians, the elderly book club, the mysterious guy-meeting upstairs, and the science class—until the owls kill someone. No one mentions Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” They name the horde surrounding the library “the parliament.”

A parallel story emerges when Mad decides to read aloud from her favorite book, a little-known fantasy called “The Silent Queen.” That story, of a world where women literally give up body parts (involuntarily) to gain magical powers, is perhaps more distressing than the owls. But the trapped people, particularly the kids, seem to be gaining some courage and coping skills from the reading.

It is perhaps important that this particular town had a school shooting, not recently, but when Mad herself was in middle school. Mad has never gotten over that day, when her best friend died right in front of her. It is not something that can be forgotten. But for the kids in her library science class, it’s only a legend. Now those students have a trauma all their own. The book is a lovely exploration of trauma and its aftermath, and how it can be overcome even though it never really goes away.

I almost never read horror. I don’t like threatening bleak landscapes, lurking ghosts and witches, or (especially) intricately-described gruesome murders. Looking Glass Sound actually has all of those things. But the ocean is dangerous in the way oceans actually are—riptides and caves that fill at high tide. The witchcraft is oddly naive, though it does sort of work. And the gruesome murders took place years ago. You can dwell on those things, if you wish, but you don’t have to.

The book is about the three teenagers who, at the end of an idyllic summer, inadvertently uncover a series of decades-old murders and, possibly, reveal the murderer. Years later, one of the kids goes off to college, intending to become a writer in order to cope with the trauma of that wonderful, terrible summer. He is obsessed with it. He needs to write it about it. It’s his story, isn’t it? But he is not the only person who wants to tell the story.

At that point, a book that has been a compelling and beautifully written mystery begins to turn into a musing about the ownership of a story and the motives of the writers who produce that story. Layers of narrative about the same events begin to overlap, and increasingly often, contradict each other. The story changes its title; and the location changes from Whistler Bay to Looking Glass Sound. And the characters change their names and gender and destinies, depending on who has control of the narrative.

Through all this, no one speculates about how or why the murderer did what he did. As though the actual murders don’t really matter, the book does not explore the motives of serial killers. It also doesn’t question the reality of the ghosts or the magic that appear. Instead it explores whether or not the characters in a book are real. Because if the characters are real, the writing of a murder mystery may in itself be an act of murder. Is it possible that the writer is as evil as their invented serial killer?

If this is what modern horror is like, I’ll have to read more of it.

This is a first novel by Kell Woods, an Australian librarian turned writer. I chose it because the title reminded me of Jack’s (as in the Beanstalk) song from ‘Into the Woods,’ which is called ‘After the Sky.’ The song is about Jack’s emotional journey following his fairy tale adventure with the giants. After the Forest is, likewise, about the consequences on Gretel’s life, after she escapes the witch in the gingerbread house with her brother Hansel.

In After the Forest, Greta lives on the edge of Arnsburg Forest with her brother Hans, in her now-deceased father and step-mother’s cottage. She gets by selling amazingly delicious gingerbread in the nearby town of Lindenfeld. Hans spends his days mostly drinking. It seems likely that being captured as a child by an old woman who plans to eat you leads to long-term emotional issues, but this is not Hans’ story. The now-grown eight-year-old girl who everyone knows shoved the witch into an oven is not unburdened either.

Greta has more than her memories of abandonment and cruelty to deal with. Along with the trauma, she carries the burden of suspicion from the good people of Lindenfeld. This is a place that, only five years ago, sentenced a witch to burning, and many people think that Greta is one also. She killed that old woman, didn’t she? Shoved her into her own oven? They would not be completely wrong. Greta’s gingerbread recipe is from a book that she took from the old witch’s house.

They would not be wrong about witches, either. They do exist, winding through centuries of warfare and injustice. Their tales are intricately woven with the lives of Greta and Hans, and of the townsfolk of Lindenfeld. No one is entirely innocent, or entirely guilty, and many carry trauma from their own stories. The result is a beautifully-written, completely unique interweaving of old fairy tales.