Howling Frog Books

 Sublimia Syndrome, by Exurb1a Time for some more far-future science fiction!  Millennia in the future, mankind has spread among the stars and evolved into quite a few different variants.  In fact it's been so long that Earth is long-forgotten, the galactic empire has been through dozens of collapses and regenerations, and there are even groups like the behethan (incredibly wise space whales) that nevertheless originated from humanity at some point.   One section of space, however, is perhaps better left alone; the area the Big Sisters occupied.  They are gone now, perhaps having evolved into energy, or some other mysterious fate, but their abandoned worlds contain artifacts and buildings beyond the understanding of anyone else.  In fact, trying to figure out what the Big Sisters were up to is a good way to develop sublimia, a feeling of incomprehension and discombubulation so total that it becomes dangerous and can easily lead to madness. As with The...

 Early Riser , by Jasper Fforde Here's another donation table title that's been sitting around too long.  (I'm going to go put all of these in the local Little Free Library, since the booksale is on hiatus at the moment.)  I love Fforde's Thursday Next series -- did you see a new and final one is coming out? -- but I wasn't sure what to make of this one and had a vague feeling that it was one of the Nursery Crimes series, which it is not.  It's a stand-alone. On an alternate Earth where ice ages have never ended, humanity has evolved to deal with the bone-chilling winter months by hibernating.  Pretty much everyone bunks down in dormitoria of ancient design, watched over by the few willing (or necessitated) to stay awake through the dangerous winter.  These porters, consuls, and others are supposed to protect the sleepers from the cold, the Villains who wish to plunder, and the legendary (?) Wintervolk who may plan to suck the marrow from your bones.  ...

 Kraken , by China Mieville Billy Harrow, inoffensive curator of molluscs, is leading a tour around the Natural History Museum in London.  His prize showpiece is the preserved giant squid in the Darwin Room -- but it is vanished, tank, preservative, and all.  How could a gigantic specimen, larger than the door itself, simply disappear?  And then Billy is thrown out of his quiet, rational life into the world of London's underground cults, and all the  knackers, criminals, and strange creatures that go with them.  The end of the world is on its way, and nobody knows how to stop it.  ,  The Church of God Kraken is convinced Billy is the prophet to solve their problems.  A terrifying murderous duo is on his track, and so is the police department that works on cultic crimes.  A dead sorcerer is perhaps back in the game? and his rival, a living Tattoo on a poor schlub's back, is determined to get there first.  Everyone wants the kraken bu...

 The Road to Roswell, by Connie Willis This was such a fun read!  Connie Willis is now in her 80s, and this is her last novel to date, published in 2023.  I've had a copy waiting to be read for a while now.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but what I got was Willis reveling in chaos and many of her usual trademark strategies until everything comes together in a precarious but satisfying ending. Francie is headed to the wedding of her college roommate/BFF's wedding in Roswell.  Serena has a penchant for odd guys, and this one is a UFO nut.  Francie considers it her job to figure out if Serena really wants to marry him or not, and back her up either way.  So she arrives in Roswell in the middle of a UFO festival and rolls her eyes at the crowds of people who believe in alien abductions, since those are obviously not real.  So she's quite surprised when an alien does, in fact, abduct her. This alien looks kind of like a tumbleweed and is totally silent...

 The Giant Under the Snow, by John Gordon I heard of this one somewhere and was intrigued, and I had to buy it on Kindle.  I'm not sure it was ever published in the US?  If so, it was decades ago; this story was published in 1968. Jonquil (Jonk), her boyfriend Bill, and his best friend Arf (Arthur) are nice, slightly disaffected teens of the late 60s.  On a school field trip to the countryside, Jonk wanders off and finds herself on a barrow that is surprisingly hand-shaped.  Then she's chased by a terrifying dog and takes shelter at the home of Elizabeth, a somewhat mysterious woman.  Soon the three find a Celtic buckle that turns out to be the deciding factor in a resurgent war between two powers, and between the winter solstice and Christmas, they have to try to help Elizabeth and foil an ancient evil. This is a really interesting and unusual story, much in the vein of Alan Garner or perhaps Susan Cooper (but a little bit older).  It's legitimately s...

 The Fifth Science, by Exurb1a  This one kid at work has been telling me about the books he's reading, which is fun.  He said he really likes this author (who seems to live in Bulgaria and is also a YouTuber sometimes), and the ebook was cheap, so I thought I'd give it a go.... Here we have a set of 12 short stories, set from the beginning of the Aerth Empire (that is, humans) until after the fall of said empire.  They don't have continuing characters or planets, anything like that, but are vignettes from various points in time and place, often thousands of years apart.  From these stories we get glimpses of the Empire, the development of truly intelligent machines and the splitting of humans into myriads of different societies, and the eventual development of the fifth science: the ability to make ordinary matter intelligent.  Humans inject stars with intelligence, and what will happen then?  Since human history, on the whole, tends to be on the brut...

Android Avenger/The Altar of Asconel (Ace Double)  I thought I would kick things off right and read an Ace Double from my recent haul.  I chose Android Avenger because I had a copy before, but it had mildew damage and had to be tossed.  I was bitter.  But I got another chance! Android Avenger is not that great.  It's the stinker of the two.  In 2017, the world is carefully regulated to avoid neurosis -- defined as anything the authorities deem even slightly abnormal.  Neurotics get executed, so everyone is very careful indeed to look calm and content, and to avoid those scans as much as possible.  Our narrator, Norman, thinks he's just an ordinary guy, until the day he suddenly loses control of himself and starts running inhumanly fast and murdering people he's never seen before.  He discovers that he's a tool of the man who plans to take over society -- an easy task now that everything is controlled by central computers.  Can Norman a...

 The Wheel of Ice, by Stephen Baxter    This was a fun one that has been sitting on my TBR shelf for a long time; I got it from the donation table, of course.  It's a Second Doctor story (the one who looks like Moe), to my surprise, and features companions Zoe (future math genius from a space colony) and Jamie (18th century Scotsman). The Tardis senses a hole in time and lands on an early Saturn mining colony, to the crew's surprise.  What is wrong here?  The kludged-together colony, called the Wheel of Ice, is precarious, and is solely focused on mining a rare mineral from the moon Mnemosyne.  The children born here have to work as miners, too, and they're being accused of sabotage, though they insist that elusive little blue critters they call Blue Dolls must be the ones doing it.  Has the Wheel got gremlins? It's a great story, and pretty complex, with roots reaching back to 19th century London, not to mention a relic of a civilization lost bil...

 Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh On a small asteroid, a tiny remnant of humanity cling to their ideology.  Earth was destroyed in the Majo War, and most of the human survivors live on one world of the massive, peaceful, and multispecies Majoda civilization that is managed by the Wisdom, a millenia-old transdimensional artificial intelligence.  But on Gaea Station, these survivors live an extremely Spartan existence dedicated to revenge. Valkyr has spent her life training as a soldier, just like her twin brother Mags, just like every Gaean child.  Now her group is up for assignment; each girl will be given a lifetime job in a section of Gaea to keep it running.  Kyr and her brother, as warbreeds, are excellent soldiers and both expect to be assigned as such, but Mags doesn't want it and Kyr discovers that she's expected to spend her life bearing children in Nursery, what with her valuable genetics and all.  The capture of a majo serves as the catalyst th...

Hello to 2025!  Guess what, I've been reading up a storm!  It's been lovely!  Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Runnell I heard this middle-grade story, from the UK, described as comparable to Diana Wynne Jones, so I tracked down a copy to see.  While, naturally, it cannot compare in my mind, I do have to say that this is an excellent, primo-grade fantasy story, with as imaginative and intense an ending as anyone could hope for.  Highly recommended! Christopher, whom all critters love, is reluctantly headed to Scotland to stay with his grandfather for a while, as his dad has to travel for work.  But he finds that his grandfather is another animal-attractor, and it's because they're hereditary guardians of a portal... Mal loves to fly in her flying coat, which was given to her (along with her name) at birth by a seer.  Flying makes her easy to spot, and a murderer is after her.... The two meet as Mal escapes through the portal, begs for Christopher's h...

 Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson A friend of mine recently started a book club, and for our second book we decided to read something fun -- this one.  It's a long time since I read any Brandon Sanderson, and he's developed this whole Cosmere thing that I don't really understand (I'm planning to learn), but this book is a sort of one-off for fun set on an obscure planet of the Cosmere.  It's narrated by a visitor, whose real name is not mentioned and who is apparently not a character from another book.  And as this was something of a personal project and more of a YA story, Sanderson lets quite a bit of his native silliness out in this novel. Tress lives on a bitty little island in the Emerald Sea -- a salt-mining outpost that people aren't allowed to leave, that's how unpleasant it is.  She's a nice girl with tangly hair (thus the nickname) who works hard and is good friends with the gardener up at the castle, though she knows he's rea...

Glow-in-the-dark ink!!  Moonbound, by Robin Sloane  Two hundred or so years from now, human civilization -- called the Anth -- will be at an apex, with incredible technologies and problem-solving.  And they've discovered how to time-travel; at least, how to send information through time, and they build constructs called dragons to send through time.  When the dragons return, they have gone mad, and they envelop the Earth in dust.  The ensuing war destroys nearly everything. 11,000 years later, a boy lives in a village owned by the wizard Malory.  Ariel was born to live a story, but he goes off-script...and now anything can happen. I loved Moonbound, and read it in two long sessions.  This is amazing storytelling, and fantastic SF too.  I liked Sloane's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore , but this is a whole new level for Sloane.  (Plus I got a limited, hand-printed zine, which made me happy.)  This is an excellent novel, hig...

This Book is Full of Spiders (Seriously Dude, Don't Touch It), by David Wong/Jason Pargin  I found the title irresistible, though I'm not sure this is really quite my style of novel.  It's #2 in John Dies at the End -- there are 4 in total -- and I've liked them fine, but I'm not sure I like them enough to read more.  (Which is pretty common for me these days; there have been lots of series where I read and liked the first one, but never felt the need to keep going.) Story: David and John, who live in Weirdsville USA, can see critters from other dimensions because they took the 'soy sauce' drug.  A horrifying spider-esque parasite invades David's house, tries to eat him, and then breeds, turning quite a few of the town's residents into hosts -- and the whole place into a zombie apocalypse scenario.  Amid military lockdown, panic, flailing, and way too many guns in the hands of guys who have no idea how to use them well, it's up to David, Amy, an...

 Treacle Walker, by Alan Garner This very short novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022, which I find an unusual choice.  I like Garner; it's neat that he was up for the Booker; but did anybody understand this one?  OK, here we go: Young Joe Coppock lives alone in an old house with a massive chimney, and he's supposed to wear a patch to strengthen his lazy eye.  When the rag-and-bone man comes by, Joe trades his old pajamas and a lamb bone he found for an old china pot and a donkey stone* marked with (from the description) the Uffington Horse.  Joe is stunned to find that these things give him the glamorie -- suddenly he can see things in other layers of reality, though only with one eye.  He and Treacle Walker, the rag-and-bone man, develop a strange friendship. I'm not at all sure that Joe is actually alive.  He lives alone, reading his favorite comics (such as Stonehenge Kit, the Ancient Brit, Garner's own favorite from childhood) and pla...

I took a look at my reading for this year, and there was a definite trend.  I tended to do two things: I either read difficult and depressing books about politics, or I hid in comfort reads.  If there was a Nancy Drew on the donation table, I took it home.  I read a simply incredible number of fluffy mysteries, which meant that there wasn't as much to blog about, even if I'd been keeping up my former writing rate, which I certainly was not.  Of course I read other things too, but ambition, international reads, or classics were pretty thin on the ground.  I don't feel bad about it or anything; I just noticed it when I looked at my Goodreads list.  (My goal for the year was 170 books, and I passed 200, but a hefty percentage of that list involved titles like Three Investigators and so on.) This month I've been in the mood for a lot of Christmas reading.  Not much new, just a bunch of old and easy favorites. I'm a bit late to get very detailed, so here's ...

 Here's some more November reading!  I'm thinking about going back to single-book posts, but on the other hand I'm having trouble finding time to write even these quickie riffles through several books at a time.  What do you think?     The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All -- But There is a Solution , by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott:   I've been looking forward to this book for a long time!  The title is a riff on Lukianoff's last book, co-written with Jonathan Haidt, and the two titles work together.  This time, Lukianoff is teamed up with a Gen Z writer, Rikki Schlott, to bring in a younger perspective.  The thesis here: that cancel culture (which yes, exists) is a manifestation of false ideas discussed in the earlier book, and which serve to make us less mentally healthy and less able to function as a society.  The ideas: Fragility: that people are fragile and need comfort; they...

 I'm working on that pile!  Here are three of my pile books, plus two quick reads I stuck in around the edges. Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter , by Katharine Coldiron -- This book was just a delight to me, but then it was written by somebody who likes many of the same terrible movies I do but is much more knowledgeable than I am.  The first third of the book is dedicated to a monograph of Plan 9 From Outer Space and what makes it so interesting as a terrible movie.  Wonderful!  She talks about a failed TV show called Cop Rock in which somebody mashed a serious procedural cop show with a musical -- "I promise this is true."  Coldiron gets into literature and compares Irene Iddesleigh with Sean Penn's novels.  She explains why a low-budget 70s horror film called Death Bed is actually pretty good.  I loved it. If you like bad movies, this is a great book for you.  Others possibly not so much.     How Democracies Die , by Steven L...

Well, the world is on fire and I'm deeply upset about it, but this is not a blog about world events and politics, so let's escape for a bit with some books for the younger crowd....    Temple Alley Summer, by Sachiko Kashiwaba : This is a charming middle-grade novel translated from the Japanese.  Kazu lives in a big old house in an old neighborhood, and one night he sees a girl in a white kimono walk through.  The next day she is in his class -- and she has always been there.  Everyone but Kazu has known her for years.  And then he learns that his street used to be called Kimyo Temple Street, which implies that people can be brought back to life.  This is going to be a summer of adventure for Kazu and Akari, as they become friends and figure out what's going on. This is an unusual story, and I enjoyed it a lot.  It won the Batchelder award for translated literature.   The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera : Petra Peña lives in New Mexico...

 These are some bonus books I read in August.  They don't fulfill a single thing on my lists; they are not from other countries, or on my TBR piles, or anything; I just felt like reading them, which is the best reason of all.   The Way Home, by Peter S. Beagle: A short story and a novella set in the world of The Last Unicorn .  I only just got around to reading that, so I thought these would be good to read too.  They are both about Sooz, a little village girl.  In "Two Hearts," a griffin comes to terrorize the village, and eats not only sheep, but children.  Any knights who challenge it are killed, and Sooz sets off to see the king to convince him to come himself.  On the way, she meets Schmendrick and Molly Grue, and sees the king...who is Lir, now grown old and feeble.  Or is he?  Perhaps he's the only one who can challenge the griffin....and Molly tells Sooz to whistle a certain tune on her 17th birthday. In "The Way Home," Sooz kee...

 Did I do it?  Did I hit my goal of 20 books by September 1st?  I did, and also I've been very busy and unable to finish this post.  So here we go... Summerbook #17: The Way to the Sea , by Caroline Crampton:   Crampton does a podcast I listen to ( Shedunnit ), so when she wrote this book I wanted to find a copy, but it was only published in the UK.  It's all about the Thames estuary - the bit between London and the sea -- which is where Crampton grew up, on a boat half the time.  She actually starts at the source of the Thames, but covers from there to Tower Bridge in the first chapter.  After that she gets down to business and covers history, the state of the river, ecology, and throws in bits of her own memory.  People have tended to ignore the estuary or use it as a place to dump things they don't want to look at, from actual garbage to sewage treatment and power stations.  These days the shipping is there too; an absolutely massive...