Friends, this is only my second book talk of the year. I am behind in books, in reading, in writing, in life. This is what happens when the masked secret police occupy your community.

Lev Grossman first hooked me with his Magicians trilogy, among the finest fantasy novels I’ve ever read, and once again astonishes me with The Bright Sword. It is such a rare thing to find a writer who is gifted with both word crafting and storytelling.  

This is an Arthurian adventure fantasy starring a group of misfit heroes. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but it is safe to say there is a wizards’ duel—as Arthurian tradition demands—and it is phenomenal. It is also safe to observe that the queer representation in this book is superb.

I realize I’m handing out superlatives like they’re candy, but The Bright Sword was such a delight—what a high fantasy quest story should be. For those who like to hear their stories, Nicholas Guy Smith’s narration is a joy. He is adept at accents from all over the British Isles and some other places, too.

I read “The Apologists,” by Tade Thompson. Thompson’s novel Rosewater contains one of the scariest, most visceral scenes I have ever read, so I was eager for his new short story.

In the early scenes, we meet a mother and daughter who get bludgeoned to death. Detective Eve Stevens investigates the murders, and for a while I thought I was getting a murder mystery, but then came the bit with the spider, a hiccup of weirdness in an otherwise straightforward police procedural.

The weirdness gradually escalates, and by the time things really get cooking, the story is a whole lot more than just a whodunnit. The plot zigzags like a ball in a pinball machine, leaving you dizzy and wondering where you left your coat.

I enjoy Thompson’s prose, which is economical and at times elegant, and I liked his characters here, especially Eve, trying to do her job in exceptionally difficult circumstances. I was also quite fond of the tiger.

I read Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy, because the older I get, the shorter life seems and the less patience I have for the ordinary when I could have something sublime.

Let my start by saying I laughed at the necrophilia scenes. Perhaps I should finish by saying that too. That one sentence will tell you whether this book is right for you or not.

McCarthy is famous for the violence of his writing. Quite a few critics point to Blood Meridian as the most violent book. Not just the most violent McCarthy book, but the most violent book.

I disagree. Now it has been many years since I read Blood Meridian, but I do not recall that one featuring a serial killer rapist who attempts to make sweet love to a corpse but keeps getting thwarted in Loony-Tunes-esque ways—forbidden desecratory love, but make it slapstick.

Child of God does not resonate for me as much as No Country for Old Men (the finest crime novel I have ever read) or The Road (with the scariest horror scene I have ever read), but even a lesser McCarthy is a magnificent thing. He is a prose stylist nonpareil. At times his sentences are straightforward and terse, the noun did the verb to the object, marching the plot forward in staccato steps. Without warning his sentences turn wavy, different lengths, new cadences. He describes the mundane throwaway details like a monk illuminating the serifs in his scroll.  

I did not read a print version, but when I checked the Wikipedia page, I found the passage that made me stop in my tracks and rewind the audio as I walked the dog the other day:

“He came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank. He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him?”

One final but crucial note: If you enjoy audiobooks, do not miss the Tom Stechschulte narration. He is one of my top five favorite narrators. Child of God is set in eastern Tennessee and he gets the accents right.

When I started as a public librarian, I checked out a few annual “Best of” anthologies to get a sense for different genres: sports writing, science writing, crime fiction, short stories in general. I recently found The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 (Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams, eds.) on sale, so I gave the ensemble-cast audiobook a listen.

Disappointingly, the stories were of varying quality. I expect better in an anthology with the word Best in the title. Or let me be more accurate: the stories were all good, speaking on a plot level, but the prose was not always up to snuff.

The phrase “achingly beautiful” should not appear in your short story, because that phrase is hackneyed. If I’m editing, I’ll let that slide in book-length manuscripts for some authors, because prose craft is not everyone’s forte. I will not let that slide in a short story, because you’ve only got three thousand words, give or take, and each one needs to count.

I absolutely, positively would not let “achingly beautiful” appear twice in the same fucking story. Which it did in one of the stories in the anthology.

My favorite fantasy short story was “John Hollowback and the Witch,” because I am a sucker for good witchy stories. Amal El-Mohtar has been on my TBR for years. I’m going to seek out her longer fiction on the strength of this story. My favorite science fiction short story was “Calypso’s Guest,” by Andrew Sean Greer. I love a familiar story thoughtfully retold.

And there was a short story I expected to dislike. I won’t name the writer, but I had bounced off his novels because his prose disappointed me, but he did a great job with the short story.

K. J. Parker has been one of my top-tier, can’t-miss writers since 2009, back before anyone knew he was the pseudonym of Tom Holt. To no one’s surprise, I enjoyed his newest novella, Making History.

As usual with Parker, the genre is low fantasy. It’s a make believe world with make believe characters, but the setting could pass for preindustrial Earth. The local monarch has conscripted a group of scholars to create a convincing set of archaeological ruins. Our main character, a linguist, is in charge of forging the ancient texts that will be uncovered at the miraculous discovery of the site, scheduled for nine months hence. The king will murder him if he gets it wrong.

Parker’s writing is always dark, in the sense that his characters make poor choices and people die, sometimes lots of them, but it’s always funny too. His writing is sharp and clever. “She looked at me as though I’d been spelt wrong.” What a terrific line.

Ian Bedford did a fine job with the audio narration, for those who want to go the audiobook route.

Though The Gospel of Loki is only my second time reading Joanne M. Harris, I feel comfortable extrapolating: She never disappoints.

I love her care with the language and her inventive storytelling. Here we get Norse mythology from the perspective of Loki, everyone’s favorite lying trickster liar. It is true that he is a philandering sociopath with dubious paternal instincts and a penchant for sowing discord, but he’s funny and charming and he can shift back and forth between his fire aspect and his human form.

If you’re familiar with Norse myths, you will recognize these stories, but Harris delivers them in a fresh way, so you won’t be bored. I enjoyed the audiobook narration Allan Corduner, who reads Loki with the charm and suaveness he deserves.

A friend encouraged/bullied me into reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, written by Natasha Pulley and audiobook narrated by Thomas Judd. I didn't know going into it that it was steampunk, a genre I usually avoid on stylistic grounds. Specifically, contemporary writers often overdo the Victorian dialogue, going well beyond atmospheric and into pastiche.

But Natasha Pulley does not make this mistake, and I found myself pulled into the world of Thaniel, a young clerk who one day comes home to discover someone has broken in to gift him with a valuable pocket watch.

There's a whole lot going on here, including live musicals, Japanese and English international relations, lady scientists, synesthesia, precognition, a queer love story, and trains. Read this if you like multi-layered plots, plot twists, and quirky main characters.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is like any other English boarding school novel, only the students are preparing to spend their adult lives in two specific careers, first as carers, then as donors.

That much is revealed in the opening parts of the story, so I’m not spoiling anything. We know from the start that something unusual is going on at Hailsham, but our narrator, Kathy H., doles out the details slowly in this slow-burn science fiction novel.

Here Nobel Prize-winner Ishiguro visits some of his favorite themes: what makes us human; how we construct memory and how memory shapes us; how we justify our crimes against others. “I wasn't sobbing or out of control,” Kathy H. thinks on the last page, but I was.

This is my fourth Ishiguro novel. I rank him among my top ten living writers. Scratch that: I just jotted a list of my top fifteen living writers, and Ishiguro belongs in the top five. I feel myself becoming a better person in real time as I read his books, feel my humanity growing.

The audiobook is capably narrated by Rosalyn Landor, if that is your preferred medium.

Squeaking in under the deadline for Women’s History Month is my re-read of the first book in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, The Wreath (1920), translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.

Set in 14th century Norway, the book follows Kristin through her childhood and adolescence. Kristin is the eldest surviving child of well-to-do farmers, both pious Christians. She’s an obedient young woman, careful to mind her parents, her friend the priest, and eventually the nuns she meets when she spends a year living in a convent. If she is not overjoyed when her father arranges her betrothal to a young man named Simon, neither is she upset…not until she meets Erlend Nikulausson, a man whose reputation is already in tatters for having fathered two children with his married mistress. From the moment Kristin meets Erlend, all thoughts of Simon fly out of her head.

I loved this book in college when I read it for a class on women and religion. I still love it for the way Undset puts women’s lives front and center. Her treatment of sexuality, desire, the medieval Catholic church, and family makes for outstanding historical fiction, and eventually led to her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But I have no patience for Erlend, who reminds me of Anatole Kuragin, who vies with Napoleon for being the biggest asshole in War and Peace. When I was younger, I admired Kristin for her impetuous affair. I wanted her to follow her heart. I’m still a fan of true love, but in my middle age, I am out of patience for men who behave badly. I’m not mad at Kristin but I am officially over Erlend, who was old enough and experienced enough to know better. Men who think with their dicks, nor caring who they hurt? This is not romantic.

The books are outstanding works of literature, and I recommend them highly, but I’m not going to reread books two and three. I done with you, Erlend. It’s over.

I like the first two Discworld books just fine, but with the third book, Pratchett starts to get his footing.

Equal Rites introduces one of the great Discworld recurring characters, Granny Weatherwax, who has just attended the birth of the eighth son of an eighth son, a perfect candidate to inherit a wizard’s staff. The ceremony is done and completed before the child’s father and the bequeathing wizard realize their gaffe. The son is actually a daughter.

Everyone knows girls can’t be wizards. But little Eskarina has a wizard’s staff, and there’s no taking it back.

It is not a coincidence that I’m revisiting Discworld during these troubled times. The books are a balm for the soul, funny and smart. And most importantly, they have an emotional core that makes you feel better. That makes you better as a person.