A bedraggled cat escapes from a sinister corporation's lab and is too exhausted to get beyond a garbage can nearby. Science-loving Mellie and her horror film-loving friend, Danny, find him while they're shooting a scene for Danny's next film. Mellie decides to sneak the cat home and names him Bert. The corporation, Yummco Foods, owns the entire town and Bert has a penchant for decapitating the animals he eats. What kinds of awful experiments are Yummco performing on animals, and which adults haven't been compromised by Yummco's penchant for making large donations around town?

Mellie narrates the story. A few chapters feature Bert's viewpoint or a look at the evil corporation's doings. By the end of this first volume in The ZomBert Chronicles, Mellie and Bert have formed a friendship. She remains clueless about Yummco Foods' laboratory. Rise of ZomBert is an enjoyable start to a middle grade series that blends mystery and light horror. Bert is a charming cat.

LOL the Yummco owner's orange, swirly combover and his robotic, lifestyle obsessed daughter.

Darleen lives with her overprotective widower father and works as a starlet in her family's movie studio. It's the silent era, when melodrama serials like The Perils of Pauline were popular. Darleen chafes at the restrictions and longs for an adventure. She gets more than she bargained for when an orchestrated publicity stunt kidnapping goes awry and she actually is kidnapped—along with bona fide heiress Victorine Berryman, the book's poor little rich girl. The two girls enter one offscreen stunt reel after another to escape the clutches of the greedy villains who've lurched into the picture.

This book has all the ingredients of a successful middle grade adventure: plucky heroine, outsized action, authentic dialogue, a newfound friendship. The parts don't quite gel, somehow, but I can't put my finger on what's off. The use of serial film tropes to drive the plot feels a little forced, as if the author has tried too hard to mimic their favorites. Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen is an interesting concept with a slightly wobbly execution, but it's an enjoyable romp nonetheless.

Come visit Eerie-on-Sea, where a mermonkey will dispense a book recommendation and you can eat at Mr. Seagoll's oceanside diner, shop at Mrs. Flotsam's Emporium, or stay in Lady Kraken's hotel. When summer is over and winter rolls in, fog and chill winds drive away tourists. The locals warm themselves in this low season with tales of sea monsters. What happens if some of the legends turn out to be true?

2019's Malamander cleverly blended these elements and introduced us to preteens Herbie Lemon (the hotel's shy Lost and Found director) and the clever and irrepressible Violet Parma. The kids faced down local villain Sebastian Eels and saved an ancient leviathan, the Malamander, from destruction. I loved Malamander for its clever seaside resort town geography, its vaguely creepy overtones, and its deep love of the sea and all its wonders. The Malamander is scary, grotesque, and dangerous. It's still worth saving, and that's a message that sometimes gets overlooked in ecofiction.

Gargantis picks up the action during the next low season. A violent storm rages and Eerie-on-Sea is in danger of crumbling into the sea. Locals say "Gargantis" is just slang for a raging storm, but there's Saint Dismal's tale and Vi and Herbie know for a fact the Malamander is real. Maybe the Gargantis is too, and maybe Gargantis is looking for something the mysterious hotel guest Deep Hood stole from it. Meanwhile, a beautiful glass bottle is found washed up on the shore by Mrs. Flotsam. As the show more local adults snipe over it, Vi and Herbie follow the clues to its provenance. Along the way, Herbie acquires a sprightling and a clockwork hermit crab—and he finally tackles the book the mermonkey recommended years ago. Will Herbie and Vi be able to figure out the connections between past, present, and hooded villain in time to prevent a natural disaster of human making?

Gargantis isn't as soaked in brine as Malamander. It's a more straightforward adventure story. The town was a character itself in the first novel, and I missed that. The leviathan isn't as strongly drawn either, but the concept of a misunderstood monster as local legend still propels the plot. Thomas Taylor's series is unique and atmospheric, and I hope it continues for several more volumes. show less

In 2017, more than fifty international artists sent postcards for the Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava 2017. The postcards use illustrations of migrating birds and accompanying text to offer a hopeful look at human migrations. Migrations: Open Hearts, Open Borders collects these offerings in a small (5.5 x 7.5) picture book. The ages listing is 8-12, but it's hard to picture middle schoolers enjoying this collection. The book is small and hard for littler hands to wield. Most of the illustrations and accompanying text feel very adult. It's a lovely gift book, and one suspects it will find a home with mostly an adult readership.

Most of the illustrations are striking, and the collection does have some important things to say. I worry that the brevity makes the issue seem a bit too abstract or easily solved. Gabriela Germain Fonck's contribution is "One can always go and one can always return." But that isn't true, not really, especially with refugees from wars and climate crises. Of course, one can return through memories, and new homes are homes, but it reduces a complex, ongoing international crisis to the idea of choice. Too few people who move have a real choice.

Look, as a commie internationalist who supports literal open borders and is in favor of cosmopolitan democracy, I want people to be able to live wherever they'd like to live without facing either bureaucratic red tape or xenophobic jerks. I also want people to be able to stay wherever they'd like to stay, show more not have to flee from rising seas or civil wars or autocrats. We are a long way from building that kind of world, and many of the people who migrate today do so because they have no other choice. I'm not certain this collection emphasizes that enough. Too many of these postcards place the onus on migrants and refugees to keep up hope and stay positive, as if those qualities somehow will lead to acceptance in their new homes. It feels a little like the kind of book white moderates read so they can feel like they've done something tangible afterwards. show less

The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars is a delightful gift book. Steven Rea explores the way "[b]ooks and movies have been intersecting in significant ways since the silent era" (6). The b&w photographs of classic Hollywood stars and their book cameos run the gamut from in-home photo shoots to production stills. A "Featured Titles" page ensures that the books receive full credit for their supporting roles in this production—although I do wish the prop books hadn't been ignored.

One of my favorite photos is Alfred Eisenstaedt's shot of Marilyn Monroe reading in her home. Rea chooses a similarly lovely photo of Monroe lounging at home with a book and gives her a lengthier essay than any other star. He pushes back a bit against the dismal stereotyping that plagues her legacy.

Things I've learned from this charming book: That was some library Rita Hayworth had; Ann Sheridan was beyond gorgeous; I need to watch Chapter Two very soon. But my favorite photo in this collection is the production still of Ginger Rogers in Shall We Dance. She sits, luminous, in her nightgown, staring up and out from Cathedrals and Museums of France with the merest wry smile on her face.

Ben and his mom struggle to make ends meet, but they're happy. Ben's father was lost at sea. Ben remembers visiting the mysterious Gee Museum with his dad and meeting a talking hippo. When an invitation, postscripted "Come now or come never," is delivered to Ben by bees, he decides to investigate. At the Gee, he discovers that some of the taxidermic animals are alive. Ben and his new animal friends learn that some greedy developers have designs on the Gee. Along the way, Ben recruits his mom, the museum's owner, and a semi-friendly witch to his team. Oh, and some feral magic takes over the museum!

I like The Hippo at the End of the Hall, especially its background mix of seafaring and safari adventures and the talking animals. I want more of Ben's friendship with his animal cohort and more details about the museum. The book feels overlong for its plot. It takes several extra chapters to wrap up the 'foiling the bad guys' part of the story.

Middle grade readers will enjoy Helen Cooper's mix of an independent kid, adults who believe in him, feral magic, talking animals, and silly villains. The novel's an enjoyable romp through a museum you'd like to visit.

Open Water is a well-designed book with clever water- and wave-inspired flourishes. Mikael Rosén makes swimming science and history cool and accessible. The book is packed with training advice for swimmers of any experience level.

Open Water explains the physics of swimming in wonky detail: "positioned in a liquid that they try to grip in order to move their bodies forward ... a swimmer tries to minimize the resistance of [their] body in the water" (21). I wish the section on male vs female bodies had been written in a less binary way.

The "Animal Kingdom" chapter is a delight. Open Water: The History and Technique of Swimming has a little bit of all things swimming: record swims, science, and training techniques.

What is the difference between a human and the AI a human designs? Are humans merely machines themselves? Is empathy only encoded, a mimetic reproduction of what we assume someone else feels and needs?

Will Eaves' Murmur is a palimpsest, the story of an Alan Turing-like scientist, Alec Pryor, who's forced into hormonal castration by his government for the crime of being gay. This castration is a removal of Pryor's self, a debugging of a fundamental program that wasn't corrupted in the first place. Pryor compares his castration to the isolation an immigrant feels in an unwelcoming country. The physical effects of the hormone are a devolution.

Pryor turns his focus inward, to questions of what makes someone human. Through it all, the thread of his government's betrayal of him—their view that he is a criminal who needs to be rehabilitated—pulls him toward questions of empathy. Specifically, how can you program it in individuals who think their unquestioning enforcement of unjust rules and orders fulfills the social contract? Should not the social contract be more concerned with true justice and fairness, not the veneers of civility and law and order?

I'm interested in Eaves' second line of inquiry: What is empathy and who decides how it is administered? It is the necessary, missing piece of the puzzle. It matters less how we arrive at empathy. What matters is finding a way to act with empathy, most especially when it seems as if the cost is too great and the reward too show more little.

Murmur is deeply radical—in the best, truest definition of the word. "Before there was speech, there was listening, and the dead rise with the love of it" (182). show less

It's the near future, and climate change and corporate greed have engendered a full-on dystopia. A triumvirate of corporations controls the world's resources. Almost everyone else is a have-not. GABs (Genetically Altered Brains) are animals that originally were experimented on by human scientists. They've since outpaced expectations. They can talk to humans, read and write, and use telekinesis and telepathy. They generally are smarter and nicer than humans, so people are frightened of them. The corporate honchos, eager to conjure a distraction from their rapaciousness, mount a disinfo campaign against the GABs, smear them as terrorists, and order exterminations.

In Kingston, New York, a GAB cat named Fluffy lives a sheltered life of books, classic films, and philosophical discussions with her human dad. Fluffy can't stop thinking about the murders of GABs. She sets off on an adventure that leads her to a group of ardent animal rights activists and then to an X-Mansion for GABs. There, her dad and a few other decent humans find her and enlist her aid in saving the world from an asteroid.

The real story is the friends Fluffy and her dad each make on the way. They find camaraderie even in bad times. They use their high-spiritedness, intelligence, and loyalty to collaborate with like-minded folk. Fluffy's Revolution is a short novel and the right length for its action-oriented plot. The setting is a dystopia. The plot mostly (and blessedly) is a breezy adventure story. Fluffy show more and her dad each careen from one peril to the next, meeting both the best and worst of humanity along the way to their reunion. The novel also gives its readers some sardonic commentary, including an enjoyable comeuppance for the evil corporations' best and brightest.

I love lengthy, intense science fiction, but there's a place in the genre for novels like this one. Its main goal is to entertain—and quickly. Fluffy & co. make it easy to invest in their journeys. You can ponder the larger themes as little or as much as you'd like. I enjoyed spending time with Fluffy and her motley crew and would like to read more of their adventures. show less

The list of inequities and inequalities fostered under late capitalism and increased by additional racism and sexism grows longer day by day. No one person can solve it all, and no one solution will have all the answers.

But the Reverend Dr. Barber is one of the inspiring social justice activists of our time, and he has a better grasp on how to be a good leftist than most of the self-proclaimed leftists out there. There's a reason Hillary Clinton gave him a prime time speaking slot at the 2016 Democratic National Convention! If you're looking for a little inspiration to get you through until January 20, 2021, start here.

Fear, John Shivik notes, drives both those who wish for predators to be extirpated and those who wish for predators to be venerated. The truth is that predators "kill things and are certainly capable of killing people, but that is nothing to be ashamed of or defensive about" (29).

In The Predator Paradox, Shivik outlines pragmatic solutions to the encroachment by predators on what's viewed as human territory. I wish the book had been about one hundred pages longer and a bit more forceful on a couple of tough topics. That would have made The Predator Paradox a good one-volume resource. It still is a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn about more humane, more effective ways to manage interactions between carnivores and humans—interactions that are certain to increase during late capitalism.

There's a cottage industry for books about female trailblazers. Although, now that white dudes have started to infiltrate it (Fly Girls), it probably has run its course. Hidden Figures was one of the first, and it's one of the best. Shetterly's emphasis on the intersections of racism and sexism especially resonates because we still have many of the same deep inequalities embedded in our society.

Enigma is a hippie, outer space spiritual fantasy and locked room mystery with elements of romance. It struggles to be the sum of its disparate parts. It's not science fiction, not really, despite the space ship setting and alien characters.

"What am I without the search? What are we without the sacred rituals?" (Loc. 36) Enigma attempts to answer this question but fails to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

The Rosetta Man is a science fiction novel of first contact and geopolitics. It doesn't quite work. The novel wants to be satirical commentary on border control, militarism, and environmentalism. McCague doesn't quite pull off these political aspects. The Rosetta Man often feels like a plodding Cold War-era retread, instead of the zippy story of first contact hijinks one suspects the author conceived.

Human Kinetics specializes in technical exercise books written by experts and for laypeople. Their volumes offer overviews of recent exercise and nutrition science, photographs and explanations of exercises, and workout plans that increase in difficulty.

The HIIT Advantage: High-Intensity Workouts for Women continues the pattern, focusing on core, upper-, and lower-body strength HIIT training. The book also includes pre- and post-workout stretches, a chapter on the Tabata and Little methods of aerobic HIIT training, and online access to exercise videos.

The HIIT Advantage covers fitness levels from beginner to moderately advanced. While it's billed as for women, it can be used by anyone. Chapters place emphasis on building stamina correctly and using safe techniques and correct form.

You Have Never Been Here is a collection of fantastical stories set in contemporary America's small towns and rural areas and featuring people isolated from their communities by internal grief or external prejudices.

The publisher's summary states that Rickert "writes hard, political stories that yet encompass the gentle wisdom of the ages" but it's all very Victorian in its sentiments and sensibilities. Several of the stories focus on mothers as monsters, too in love with their children to make reasonable choices. There's a thread of other retrograde politics running through as well, including anti-choice commentary and a nostalgia for simpler times.

Readers who like tea room-style ghost stories and monstrous matriarchs might like these. Personally, I'm tired of the world's miseries being encapsulated by stories of genteel terror. Somebody ought to write a creepy ghost story with a wizened ship breaker as the protagonist.

The Entropy of Bones is a martial arts urban fantasy with a numinous thread running through it. Ayize Jama-Everett also is concerned with the intersectionality of race, gender, and class. He examines these constructs through the tale of Chabi, a young biracial woman searching for a mentor and trying to secure her place in a society in which she's an afterthought. Jama-Everett's lens often veers into paternalism, particularly in its insistence that a young woman needs a father figure in her life. Still, the fight scenes are an interesting blend of fast-paced action and philosophical musings.

Will Staehle's silhouette artwork is described by Quirk Books as sarcastic and by Staehle as macabre. The comics really are best described as cute and punny.

The concept works best viewed as a gag. Hugs and Misses is a well-made, stocking stuffer-sized gift book. The postcards are pretty and the gags are just silly enough to work.

This Crumbling Pageant is a bodice ripper that's marketed as historical fantasy. Patricia Burroughs throws convoluted worldbuilding and magic into her story, but it remains a rote romance, minus the stock HEA.

Persephone possesses magic powers that she must learn to control. So naturally, she is blackmailed into marriage with an older man who emotionally and verbally abuses her. Of course, this leads to sex and then pregnancy. The rest of the plot revolves around minor Greek gods who live in a parallel Regency England and find themselves embroiled in a battle for the throne of their world. This throne is to be held by an Arthurian king. Perhaps Burroughs explains why the two mythologies intersect, and why they are in Regency England, but I missed it if she does.

Pulp fiction, with its non-stop adventure, absurd narrative coincidences, and clipped, hard-boiled dialogue, can be grand fun. Unfortunately, The Iron Duke is a snoozer, but Hubbard is a decent writer. A non-Ruritanian setting might prove more interesting.

Still, one feels that the whole enterprise is just trumped up Church of Scientology recruitment. The Iron Duke is recommended for pulp fiction diehards or Hubbard completists. Take the supplemental materials with a grain of salt.

The stories in this debut collection are bleak and gritty, but I'm not sure they have authenticity or depth. Markos' stories feel like they belong in glossy men's magazines. Pacific Sun will feel like a well-done debut if you're the right audience; for me, it was a skim.

Other reviewers have noted the stilted prose, banal plot, and one-note characters. The story idea has potential, and the Polynesian setting is interesting, but the finished product is dull.

Boxing in New Mexico, 1868-1940, is well-researched, amply illustrated, and informative. The author clearly is passionate about the subject. The back cover's blurb leads one to believe that the narrative focuses on the sociocultural history of boxing in New Mexico. The book focuses more on the minutiae of the fights themselves.

Baseball As a Road to God addresses some aspects of the ineffability of faith by drawing comparisons between religion and baseball's colorful history and inscrutable rules. Explored are aspects of faith as variegated as sacred spaces, blessings and curses, and saints vs. sinners.

The book is larded with anecdotes. This Mets fan loved to see the story of the infamous scuffed ball of the '69 World Series told in the chapter, "Third Inning: Doubt." Orioles fans will know what I mean.

It's a little too compact in the theology it serves. The authors don't examine the seedier aspects of faith or fandom. There's little exploration of the fervor that strikes at the heart of both religion and baseball. An examination of the thin line between belief and zealotry might have made this book feel less pat.

A promising prologue—written in the crescendo of an itinerant preacher's tent revival sermon—unmasks the false sense of community fundamentalism creates. Unfortunately, the rest of the semi-autobiographical novel focuses on the now-adult main character's misanthrophic inner musings. The nature of faith is explored, but the story somehow lacks depth. Josiah is a typical MFA protagonist: privileged but oppressed (by whom? one wonders), self-absorbed, bitter. Thinly-veiled anti-choice commentary and the author's attitude that women are manipulative seductresses also make sympathizing with the protagonist difficult.

Look, demagoguery isn't heroic, and unplanned pregnancies as symbols of hope are irresponsible, especially in dystopian fiction.

Secession leader Maid Marian's refusal to listen to advice that she doesn't like is in keeping with her egotistical, impatient, argumentative personality, and this is presented as mavericking. Why don't you like mavericking? Her choices prove very costly to the fledgling nation.

There's a kernel of truth here: Marginalized communities are further marginalized in a crisis. There are seeds of an interesting book, especially in the earlier part of the narrative, in which Maid Marian robs the rich of their illegally-purchased extra water rations. Once the focus shifts from doing this to seceding, the willfully naive libertarianism moves in and the charm wears off.

Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft contains a selection of stories that allude to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Some are creepy tableaux with nights dark and stormy and places dilapidated and haunted. Others explore the creeping existential dread found in the prosaic.

Two standouts are Michael Grey's "1884" and Gethin A. Lynes' "The Highland Air." Both are set in the Victorian era and leavened with small details that add to the stories' atmospherics. A casual implication by Lynes that the influence of Cthulhu is, in part, responsible for the Kelly Gang's rampaging neatly illustrates the timelessness of Cthulhu's power and the vastness of its reach.
Several other stories, while interesting, are too brief or too nebulous to immerse oneself in their creepiness. This vagueness serves to stymie the horror, not enhance it.

My antipathy to this story and its anti-feminist slant was caused in part by starting the book immediately after finishing Laura Vapnyar's similar Memoirs of a Muse, a poorly written novel about a whiny, neurotic young woman who settles for a rotten man because she wants to. The main character in Moonlight in Odessa reminded me too much of this trope.

This probably is unfair, and, if other reviews are a good gauge, untrue. Perhaps a reread would make me feel differently, but the book didn't really provide an incentive to ponder its themes too closely.

The author's love affair with birds begins with a dove she is unable to save, and it grows to include rescue birds of numerous species. Then, in a decision that is both energizing and heartbreaking, Raffin becomes a breeding conservationist that focuses on ex-situ conservation of endangered species. These conservation breeding efforts are centered around six endangered species endemic to New Guinea or the Philippines, such as the Mindanao bleeding-heart. Their natural habitats are being decimated by palm oil plantations.

The Birds of Pandemonium is not a pull-no-punches conservation plea. Raffin, who is friends with private breeders and relies on their expertise and support, is unable or unwilling to critique the greed that motivates much of the for-profit breeding industry. She touches at numerous points on the unwillingness of breeders to share their information. One suspects their secrecy is motivated by dollar signs not "snobbery [or] stubbornness" (198).

The birds who reside at Michele Raffin's Pandemonium Aviaries are colorful characters. Raffin's life with her bird friends is zany and her cheeky prose style in The Birds of Pandemonium: Life Among the Exotic and Endangered reflects this.

A few of the stories in War Stories degenerate into gung ho, John Ringo jingoism. Fortunately, most authors haven't stooped to this hyperbole. Some offer thoughtful critiques of the interstices between the military-industrial complex and colonialism. Others provide examinations of the interior toll war takes on its participants.

These and other questions are explored in a collection that mostly is successful in representing various facets of war. A little more variety—especially in the tech represented—would strengthen the anthology, as would a more honest acknowledgment of the stories’ obvious and necessary subjectivity.