ethaisa

This book contains several elements which I like very much: it's epistolatory, it has mysterious ancient sophisticated machinery, and it involves very big size differences. I love miniature things and people, but I also love giants and giant things. This novel is entirely in the form of interviews, and it begins with a young girl walking in the woods who falls into a sinkhole, and lands in the palm of a GIANT HAND. (I can't believe that image isn't on the cover, because it's so striking and is also by far the best part of the book.) The gigantic hand is metal, and it turns out that there are pieces of a complete ancient giant robot scattered all over the world! What happens when the whole giant robot is assembled?

It turns out that what happens is yet another example of a great idea making a bad book, largely - AGAIN - by failing to engage with the premise! WHY IS THIS SO COMMON????

To be fair, this book has many bad elements which do not involve failing to lean into its premise.

The entire book consists of interviews by an unnamed, very mysterious person with near-infinite money and power. He is hiring people to locate the robot parts, assemble them, and pilot it. He also conducts personal interviews with them in which he pries into their love lives in a bizarrely personal manner. It's clearly because the author wanted to have a love story (he shouldn't have, it's terrible) and figured this was the only way to do it and keep the format, but it makes no sense. The interviewers do object to this line of questioning, but not in the way that I kept wanting them to, which would have been along the lines of "Don't you have anything better to do than get wank material from your employees? Drop it, or I'll go to HR."

The girl who fell into the hand grows up to be a physicist who gets hired to... I forget what exactly, but it didn't make much sense even when I was reading it. Anyway, she's on the project. There's also a badass female helicopter pilot, and a male linguist to translate the mysterious giant robot inscriptions. All these people are the biggest geniuses ever but are also total idiots. All the women are incredibly "man writing women."

Most annoyingly, the robot does not seem to be sentient, does not communicate, does not have a personality, and only walks for like 30 seconds once.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

I feel stupider for having read this book.

It's a trilogy but even people who liked the first book say the returns steadily diminish.

I normally don't think it's cool to criticize people's appearances, but in this case, this dude chose to go with this supremely tryhard author photo.

Cozy the Day Away, a flash sale for Cozy Fantasy books, is running again for two days this weekend, Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th October.

This time, there are more than 150 books in the sale, with many new authors (and new titles from authors who were in previous sales.)

The sale includes ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks and bundles.

A strong focus on diversity: LGBTQIA+, neurodiversity, global majority/PoC characters, mental and physical disabilities, all represented.

A wide variety of genres, including romantasy, cozy mysteries, paranormal and urban fantasy and action/adventure.

Many ebooks are 99p/99c (or even free) and there are steep discounts on other formats.

Find out more and access the list of books (only visible this weekend) at https://cozyfantasysale.promisepress.org/

 
Till "midnight." Still no clue to which midnight.

Filter genres and/or booksellers at top of page.

https://earlybirdbooks.com/deals/best-ebook-deals
 

I'm a little past halfway, and golly, it's so great to be back with witch king Kaiisteron and his found family of extremely powerful misfits as they try to figure out whether Something Bad is happening at the edges of the map.

The family vibe is ramping up, in fact. At one point their little street urchin, Sanja, wants reassurance that if she goes off to play with some children in the household of an ally that they are visiting, the grownup members of the group won't leave her there (where she'd be safe) while she's distracted. Kai tells her with affable sarcasm that it would be very bad manners to abandon his children to their hosts.

Posted by Nicola Griffith

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/10/01/65/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=87432

Yesterday, I turned 65. I took a selfie—something I rarely do, so I’m not very good at it—sitting on the sofa. Which is about as energetic as I’ve been for the last 17 days: I’ve been through the worst bout of viral gastroenteritis I’ve ever had, with not one, but two fucking relapses. 17 days. I had no idea it was possible for such a thing to last so long. Anyway, if I’m not grinning, you’ll understand.

Despite feeling weak and unwell, it was a far better day than I’d expected, for several reasons. One I can’t talk about, yet—let’s just say I love my IP and Entertainment lawyer :) Another is that for the first time in 17 days, I woke up feeling…hungry. Which made me practically giddy with delight. So delighted that Charlie felt the need to sit upon me and keep me earthbound.

We were both in the living room staring out of the window at the rain (it’s been raining without cease for days here—welcome to autumn in Seattle), me daydreaming of the things I can’t talk about, and Charlie being cross about everything being so wet, when zam! Out comes the sun, and the sky, which has been a grey lid since Friday, turned wall-to-wall blue.

For the first time in two weeks, I was determined to venture outdoors.

On the deck, a fair amount had changed: a lot of annuals like the prim little petunias had managed to get themselves Raptured from existence, but the happy heathen begonias were glistening with the recent rain and beaming bright. Just looking at them makes me feel glad. And everything smelt like the dawn of the world.

Charlie, of course, escorted me every step of the way—he gets anxious when the wimmins leave the safety of their enclosure, especially when he has no back up from the International Cat of Mystery (currently absent on his Mysterious Business)—so his mission was protection and surveillance as I surveyed my demesne.

The front of the house is looking a bit shaggy. The fuchsias have done well, and a strange viney flower—no idea what it is but it looks like the unnatural offspring of a flowering pea and a nasturtium—and of course the honeysuckle and flowering (ha, I’ll come back to that) vines we planted five or six years ago were luscious and full and twining around everything—finally framing the porch the way I’d got the roses to frame it six years ago, before we had the house painted. But just not, y’know, flowering. Six years we’ve been waiting for those vines to flower. Six years. Without a single blossom. I had honestly started to give up hope.

And then today, my birthday, lo! One single cluster of trumpet blossom right at the tip of a long, snaking vine right at the left edge of the house—so far left that it’s off screen on the right of the above. But here it is, close up.

Can you imagine next summer, when that mass of green framing the front of the house turns into a cascade of flame orange and salmon pink? I can, and I’m eager to see it.

By this point, though, Charlie was beside himself with stress. Frazzled with being on point. Trying to herd me back into the house.

So I obediently—I was tired by this point (hey, you try 17 days of gastroenteritis and see how lively you feel)—followed him back up the ramp to admire the pots on the kitchen deck, and then eventually go back inside.

So a day that had promised only wet, cold weather and miserable health turned out full of small, unexpected pleasures. Besides, we still have all the caviar, champagne, and truffles we’d bought to celebrate both our Big Birthdays (before that plan got destroyed by the Vile Virus) just waiting for our enjoyment. I’m looking forward to an autumn of colour, warmth, and indulgence. I wish the same for you.

Meanwhile, anyone read any good books lately? I’m tired of watching TV and for a few days more I won’t be up to doing much… Give me a recommendation!

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/10/01/65/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=87432

Just in terms of the premise, this is The Secret History meets Shadow Divers: a poor girl scuba diver falls in with a group of rich kid scuba divers, and they end up bound together by a shared deadly secret. There's other works it also reminded of, again just in terms of the premise, which are more spoilery: ( Read more... )

In the present timeline, Phoebe aka "Phibs," a poor aspiring underwater photographer, discovers a hidden underwater cave while on a diving trip with her four rich best friends, Gabriel (hot boy she likes), Will (Gabriel's fraternal twin, a joker), Lani (lost three fingers in past timeline, now afraid to dive), and Isabel (Lani's girlfriend). That is all the characterization Phibs's friends get, though Phibs herself gets a little bit more, or at least more backstory: she's the sole caretaker of her grandmother with dementia, and the women in her family have a possibly uncanny knack for finding things.

In the past timeline, Phibs finds five gold coins via the family knack, and something happens that led to Lani losing fingers and someone dying. In the present, Phibs finds a beautiful underwater cave with an air pocket. She and Gabriel rest and kiss in the air pocket... and then learn that there's a legend saying bad things happen to people who breathe the air in the cave. It seems to be true, as deeply creepy things begin happening to their bodies...

The plot and premise are great, and the diving and body horror/transformation scenes are really well-done. Reiss is a professional scuba diver, and you can tell. But the pacing feels a bit abrupt and choppy, which is not helped by the dual timelines cutting between the past and present, so that events that actually are set up still sometimes feel like they come out of the blue. I had a hard time figuring out the geography of anywhere that wasn't underwater, which is not a common complaint I have about books - for instance, I wasn't sure for most of the book whether the island base in the present storyline was a tiny island with only one house on it, or a large one with a town. And of course there's the mostly-nonexistent characterization, which is really the biggest problem with the book. If this had actual characters rather than "hot boy" and "Lani's girlfriend," it would have been so good.

I didn't mind that nothing is explained about what's actually up with the cave and Phibs's family knack, but in case you would mind: nothing is explained. I did enjoy reading the book but more attention to character and taking things slower could have made it excellent rather than just an enjoyable read with some standout elements.

Three timelines intertwine, connected by witches and women. A grad student in Massachusetts in the 1990s, whose grandmother had a run-in with a witch in the early 1900s in Mexico, researches the mysterious disappearance of a promising woman horror writer in the 1930s.

It's a very nicely constructed, gripping, enjoyable novel of good and evil magic, and women's persistence in the face of what seem to be impossible odds.

Content notes: Cat death.




What it says on the tin: a very gothic-y gothic, set in Mexico. Noemi is a bit of a shallow, selfish debutante in 1950s Mexico. But when she realizes that her cousin who married a wealthy older man may be in trouble in their lavish home in rural Mexico, Noemi sets out to rescue her. She promptly encounters every gothic trope ever, plus a really fun twist on the haunted house/ghost story.

It turns out that being a mean girl debutante used to getting her own way is exactly what's needed to survive this story. I had no end of fun with Noemi bluntly calling out the rule about no talking at dinner, demanding to know exactly what medical treatment her cousin was getting, and generally running roughshod over the creepy atmosphere. A very enjoyable book that I read in a single sitting.

Hotties Haunting the Narrative: a festive femslash ficathon

Come join our spooky sapphic ficathon featuring ghosts! Open now for prompts and fills, closing November 1st.

I've reached the point in Hades II where I'm very bad at everything even with Godmode at max (this game is actually not accesible at all, though it Tried, it's both harder than the first Hades, and less forgiving, and the Godmode is like...ehhhh. On the one hand I get that like, it's very cool for people to get very hard achievements when a game is very challenging, and on the other hand, for those of us who have pretty big motor dysfunction etc. who want the game to be accessible, the game is like phenomenally hard even with their 'accessibility' options, and that's frustrating.

I don't want to have to use mods, mostly because they can be finicky and sometimes break saves etc., but I honestly can't see some ways forward through the game without them. Massive props to the people who can play without Godmode in a game that is so much harder. I consider myself lucky that I can beat the vanilla game, but everything else (Chaos challenges, etc.) is like...welp. We'll see. Some are fine, some are not. ( spoilers, and rather more ranting than I expected )

Okay, I'm done.