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Book Review: Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas

Aiden Thomas‘ Cemetery Boys has been on my radar for a while. I finally got around to borrowing an audio version of it from the libarary

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie up some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

I have been intending to read Cemetery Boys for a while now. I’ve only put it off because I’m always afraid of books that have gotten too much hype and because I have to be in a particular mood to tolerate young adult literature with character on the younger end of the scale. (I’m 43-years-old, after all.)

I’m happy to say Cemetery Boys lived up to the hype and was very good. Sure, I personally thought some of the school bits and much of the general teenage angst was tedious (not the trans self-consciousness, that was different) . But that’s just a symptom of being old. I loved how immersed the reader is in the Brujx and Latinx cultures. I appreciated that, though Yadriel’s family struggled with his trans-ness, it was obviously not out of cruelty or a lack of love. And who wouldn’t adore Yadriel and Julian’s fierce dedication to one another by the end?

I did struggle a little with Yadriel’s father’s sudden acceptance. If felt a little too pat, but more importantly, I felt like he accepted the external confirmation that Yadriel was a Brujo, while I saw no evidence that he would have accepted him as a man on his own otherwise. I also guessed the end at the halfway mark. So, the mystery isn’t super hard to figure out.

All in all, however, I’m glad to have finally given this one a go.

Book Review: A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark – by Harry Connolly

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Lately, I’ve really been loving Paranormal Women’s Fiction, which is Urban Fantasy with heroines in their 40s. So, when I came across Harry Connolly‘s A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, with a heroine in her 60s, I just had to jump on board. So, I ran out and purchased a copy.

A MYSTERIOUS KILLING

After years of waging a secret war against the supernatural, Marley Jacobs put away her wooden stakes and silver bullets, then turned her back on violence. She declared Seattle, her city, a safe zone for everyone, living and undead. There would be no more preternatural murder under her watch.

But waging peace can make as many enemies as waging war, and when Marley’s nephew turns up dead in circumstances suspiciously like a vampire feeding, she must look into it. Is there a new arrival in town? Is someone trying to destroy her fragile truce? Or was her nephew murdered because he was, quite frankly, a complete tool?

As Marley investigates her nephew’s death, she discovers he had been secretly dabbling in the supernatural himself. What, exactly, had he been up to, and who had he been doing it with? More importantly, does it threaten the peace she has worked so hard to create? (Spoiler: yeah, it absolutely does.)

Well, this was a real winner to me. I quite enjoyed my time with Marley Jacobs. In fact, I want to be Marley when I grow up! I loved that she’s smart and capable, with a wealth of knowledge and experience under her belt. I also like that having a 20-year-old ex-soldier as her sidekick really subverts the idea of a hero. (You’d expect it be to him, after all). And the banter between the two, as well as Albert’s simple humor was great. I appreciated Connolly’s obvious attempt to highlight the invisibility of older women in society, but even I have to admit it sometimes came across with the subtlety of bull horn.

But there were a few things that didn’t work for me. As outside the mold as Marley was in some ways her character really stuck to some cliches. The worst for me was her constant use of the endearment dear. “It’s all right, dear.” “Very well, dear.” “Would you like a cup of coffee, dear.” I understand it was part of her aggressively cheerful demeanor, but it’s a huge pet peeve of mine and I’m gonna have a little rant about it.

I don’t know a single elderly woman who actually uses the endearment dear in any manner but ironically. Depending on where you draw your line on ‘elder,’ these women lived through free love, Woodstock, world wars and economic depressions. They have seen some shit and come through it. They have internal cores of steel. And this insistence in fiction that they must all be cute little old ladies who coo and call everyone dear constantly drives me nuts.

I realize that this might be regional and there might be old women out there who say it. But that it’s no where near as ubiquitous as authors seem to think it is is a hill I’ll die on. So, mega pet peeve for me. It’s just SO cliched at this point. Plus, my Kindle says dear appeared 251 times in the book and I don’t remember many (if any) that weren’t Marley using it as an endearment. So, Connolly is particularity bad about something that especially irritates me.

I also thought the middle sagged. The books starts out really strong, then turns into a series of go here, do this, go here, run there, do that, then go here again, etc. Then it picks up again at the end. Though I kind of feel like the ending undermines a lot of what Connolly was very obviously trying to do with the narrative. He set out a whole story about a 65-year-old kickass woman and then handed it all to the young man at the end. One could maybe argue the last few sentences redeem it, but I think it’s a little too vague to be given credit.

Lastly, the editing starts to deteriorate the farther in to the book you get. It’s never horrendous, but you notice.

Over all, however, I enjoyed the heck out of this.

Other Reviews

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On My Shelves: A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark

Review: A Key an Egg an Unfortunate Remark by Harry Connolly

Book Review: A Flight in the Heavens, by Gabrielle Gagne-Cyr

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I accepted a review copy of A Flight in the Heavens (The Theurgy of the Gods, #1) from the author, Gabrielle Gagne-Cyr. (Though I noticed it was free on Amazon at the time of posting.) It was also promoed on Sadie’s Spotlight.

“I see you my little moppets.”

The king is dead, long live his murderer. After fifteen years of passive torment, Farrah and her implacable group of renegades endeavour to alter their fates by attempting to assassinate the man who stole everything from them, Daemon Daromas. Alas, he who wields the theurgy of the gods has no rivals in the lands of Iscar but those foolish enough to challenge their wrath.

When confronted by this ancient and destructive force, the renegades have no choice but to flee the capital and embark on the airship of Iscar’s most notorious sky corsair Captain Feras Sadahl, daughter of the late pirate sovereign. Their meeting with the corsair, however, might not have been as welcome as they would have hoped.

As Farrah and her allies set out on a journey to find the means to challenge their oppressor, they soon discover that the price of power is steep and the road to get one’s hands on it, perilous.

It took me forever and a day to finish this book. Granted, it’s a long book. But I’m a really fast, obsessive reader and generally prefer to read one book at a time. But if I’m not particularly grabbed by one, I sometimes let myself take a break and read something else between chapters. How many books I splice in while reading one can be taken as a signifier of how much I’m enjoying a book (or not). In the case of A Flight in the Heavens I read something like 16! Well, I listened to most of them (but that’s mostly because it’s the format that was available to me). There are a myriad of reason, none of which are that the book is horrible.

But before I get into the criticisms, let me drop some positives. A Flight in the Heavens is epic in scope. Both because it’s 509 pages long and because at the end of 509 pages, the over-arching plot has barely started (though it comes to a natural stopping point). It’s a big world, with some interesting characters. I truly liked Faras and Farrah and wanted them to accomplish their goal. And every once in a while Gagne-Cyr would give us some fabulously vivid imagery, like, “Essan and Thorick had been going at each other’s throats in a peculiar duel resembling the portrait of a lethal insect attempting to sting a bear.” But none of that was enough to keep me interested.

The problem is that the book is about 200 pages longer than it needs to be. It too wordy. (See the insect and bear line above. I love the analogy, but the sentence if wordier than it needs to be.) It’s too repetitive (we’re told the same information multiple times), too dependent on exposition, and too FULL of awkward word usages. For me, this last was the biggest challenge. I almost always knew what Gagne-Cyr meant, but the language is jarringly inaccurate.

Here are a few of the last ones I remember, “…trying not to make eye contact with the soaring utensil…” How do you make eye contact with a spoon that has no eyes? Or, “he snarled in a delighted tone of voice…” I mean, I suppose it’s possible, but a snarl usually accompanies anger or hatred. “…shattered the skin of his midsection.” The verb shatter infers something brittle or crystalline breaking, skin is supple. I can’t imagine it shattering. Again, I know what all of these sentences meant and they might not even be technically wrong, but every single one pulled me from the narrative. And there was one on most pages, which meant I never could just sink into the story and coast along. I was always restarting and loosing gumption.

Though I think an additional editor could have helped tighten the narrative and help Gagne-Cyr with the awkward word choices, I have to admit the book seems really clean in terms of mechanical edits. I don’t really remember any typo or missing word sort of errors. So, in the end, I think this is just going to be a matter of taste. Either you like Gagne-Cyr’s creative use of language or it distracts you from the reading (as it did me). Only one way to find out, really, give it a try.

Other Reviews:

w.a. stanley

c.e. clayton

The Lesbian Review

See Sadie Read

Sci-fi, fantasy, UF/PNR & LGBT+