Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews!

No foolin! Today is the Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop. But it’s also April Fools’ Day. If this were an April Fools’ Day prank, it might be the ‘Ether Bunny’ instead. Although, come to think of it, for parents with children hopped up on entirely too many chocolate bunnies and creme eggs, that Ether Bunny might come as a welcome relief!

But if you are looking for the best chocolate bunnies and/or chocolate eggs. According to this year’s survey at Serious Eats, the best chocolate bunnies, both milk and dark, come from Harbour Sweets, and the best chocolate eggs in the prettiest package, are made by Veruca. Notice that they did not provide a rating for white chocolate bunnies, which warms the cockles of my dark chocolate loving heart. Because IMHO, white chocolate isn’t, as Sandra Boynton delightfully illustrated in her book, Chocolate: The Consuming Passion.

Your tasting mileage, of course, may vary – but doing the survey for yourself could be loads of tasty fun!

What’s your preference in chocolate bunnies? Or chocolate eggs? Or just chocolate in general? Answer through the rafflecopter for you chance at winning the usual Reading Reality hop prize of the winner’s choice of a $10 Amazon Gift Card or $10 in books.

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For more hopping good prizes, be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!

MamatheFox, Mom Does Reviews, and all participating blogs are not held responsible for sponsors who fail to fulfill their prize obligations.

Fourteenth Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week and Giveaway!

This year’s OMG Fourteenth Blogo-Birthday Week Celebration technically began with yesterday’s Sunday Post. The actual, technical blogoversary is this Friday, April 4, with my own birthday the following day, April 5, which is when the final giveaway will be posted.

Reading Reality began on April 4, 2011, under the name “Escape Reality, Read Fiction”, which is also the reason the ratings are “Escape Ratings” and “Reality Ratings”. This blog, and all of the other reading/writing/reviewing activities that have grown up around it over the past fourteen years have turned into both my longest and my absolute favorite job. At least in part because I created it out of things that I wanted to do, and can do the work at whatever time feels right to me.

Meaning that I do a lot of my reading late at night – although not generally as late as I used to. More often 1:00AM and less likely 3:00AM – not that I don’t see that time on the clock when the book is so excellent that I can’t make myself stop reading!

This week, this Blogo-Birthday Celebration, is a Hobbit Birthday. In The Lord of the Rings, at the very beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, we learn that when hobbits celebrate their birthdays, its an occasion for giving presents to others – not receiving presents for oneself. In that spirit, there will be giveaways every day this week, whether gift cards or books or the winner’s choice between the two.

It’s my way of saying thanks to each and every single one of you who read my reviews, comment on my posts, participate in the giveaways – and admire the pictures of the cats. I’m grateful to you all for being a part of my journey!

Therefore, in thanks and appreciation to YOU, on this second day of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week I have a giveaway, just as I did yesterday and will every day the rest of the week. Today’s giveaway is for a $25 (US) Gift Card for Amazon or to a bookstore of your choice if you have a local that sells gift cards over the interwebs. (If you live outside the US and have a local Amazon, the gift card will be the equivalent of $25 US from your country’s Amazon.)

I also have one $25 Barnes and Noble Gift Card to give away as well. This is a physical card that I’ll mail to the lucky recipient. It’s a lucky find from one of my desk drawers, but it’s unused and doesn’t expire so someone will get the benefit of it this year.

As always, from the bottom of my bookish and cat-loving heart, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who has been part of this adventure. There’s more to come!

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The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 3-30-25 + Giveaway!

Today marks the start of Reading Reality’s FOURTEENTH! Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week. Which means that today starts an entire week of giveaways. YAY! I’ll get more into the whole Hobbit Birthday thing of this week’s celebration in tomorrow’s post, which will include one of the big giveaways, but today is just a bit of a kickoff to start the festivities. Please come back every day this week to get in on ALL the prizes!

In the meantime, this week just finished was still a regular week of blogging and reading and reviewing – and it was a good one. First, I get to give one more shoutout to the marvelous historical mystery, The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan. It just so happens that this was the title I highlighted for this week in last Sunday’s Post, and now it’s the Book of the Week because it got this week’s highest rating. It was an absolutely excellent read/listen and I can’t recommend this one highly enough – although I do certainly keep trying!

It’s not a Sunday Post without a cat picture so here’s today’s poster cat. Hecate is dozing in the sun on one of her favorite perches, making the world go away as only a napping kitty can.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Spring, March Madness, Earth Month and Mother’s Day Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

B #BookReview: The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
B #BookReview: Luminous by Silvia Park
Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan
B #BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen
A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
Stacking the Shelves (646)

Coming This Week:

Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week Begins! + Giveaway!
Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop
Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff (#BookReview + Giveaway)
The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (#BookReview + Giveaway)
Blogo-Birthday Celebration + Giveaway!

 

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Welcome to the very first giveaway of this year’s Blogo-Birthday Celebration! As I write this on Friday, the weather this weekend in the ATL is expected to be a glorious spring day on Saturday and a nasty thunderstorm on Sunday. Which sounds like a perfect spring weekend to me – a day to go out in the sun AND a day to stay in and read. Spring might not even have sprung yet where you are, but it will eventually, so what’s your favorite thing to do on a beautiful spring day? Answer in the rafflecopter for your chance at one of Reading Reality’s usual prizes, the winner’s choice of a $10 Amazon Gift Card or $10 in Books.

And don’t forgot to come back tomorrow for another giveaway!

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Stacking the Shelves (646)

First, biggest and most important thing – even bigger than this stack – is that tomorrow begins Reading Reality’s OMG 14th Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week! The first post on Reading Reality occurred on April 4, 2011, and my own birthday is the following day, April 5, hence Blogo-Birthday. There will be giveaways every single day starting tomorrow, so please be sure to visit every day to see what’s happening.

And now back to our regularly scheduled stack o’ books!

This week does have some pretty covers, doesn’t it? My personal faves this time around are The Glass Garden, Last Twilight in Paris and Where the Rivers Merge. The creepy cover awards definitely go to Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kiss of the Basilisk and Motheater. What I have a LOT of this time around are cute covers, particularly but not limited to Just Our Luck, Maine Characters and Temple of Swoon. The books I’m most curious about are The Case of the Missing Maid and A Trinket for the Taking. I feel a mystery mood coming on!

For Review:
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker
Can’t Get Enough (Skyland #3) by Kennedy Ryan
The Case of the Missing Maid (Harriet Morrow Investigates #1) by Rob Osler
Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 by Lisa Unger
The Country Under Heaven by Frederic S. Durbin
The Dark Maestro by Brendan Slocumb
Death on the Island by Eliza Reid
The Filling Station by Vanessa Miller
Freakslaw by Jane Flett
The Glass Garden by Jessica Levai
The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner
Home and Away by Rochelle Alers
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang
Just Our Luck by Denise Williams
The Kennedy Girl by Julia Bryan Thomas
Kiss of the Basilisk (Split or Swallow #1) by Lindsay Straube
Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff
Loose Lips (Ghostwriter #2) by Kemper Donovan
Maine Characters by Hannah Orenstein
Motheater by Linda H. Codega
North (Hunter Squad #2) by Anna Hackett
Rooms for Vanishing by Stuart Nadler
Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson
Sleep by Honor Jones
Temple of Swoon by Jo Segura
A Trinket for the Taking (Magical Trinket #1) by Victoria Laurie
Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe


If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:


A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler

A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray NaylerWhere the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, political thriller, science fiction, technothriller
Pages: 336
Published by MCD on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.
Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

My Review:

I picked this up because I adored the author’s debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, very much liked his later novella, The Tusks of Extinction, and was hoping for more of the same. Which I sorta/kinda got, but not in ANY of the ways that I was expecting.

I’m every bit as wowed by Axe as I was the other two, but that’s a feeling that I came to in the end even as I muddled a bit through the middle. Which is also very much like both of those previous works. Which is where that ‘sorta/kinda’ qualifier comes in.

There are three distinct locuses (loci?, focal points?) for this story; deep in the Russian Federation, the fringes of the halls of academia in England, and the halls of Parliament in a former Soviet Republic on the fringe of both the European Union and the Federation but currently part of neither.

In a near-future more-or-less dystopian world that may, or may not be on the fringe of multiple states of collapse. Whether that state is the cause of, or caused by, an artificial intelligence takeover of the reins of power is subject to interpretation.

Lots of interpretation, pretty much everywhere.

In the Russian Federation, one man plans – and has so far succeeded – in ruling forever through a process of uploading his consciousness and downloading it into a new host as each of his bodies fail. Or when the apparatus of the state determines that it is a good time for a crisis and a cleansing.

In the West, human governments have come under the control of artificial intelligence created ‘Prime Ministers’, whose mandate is to govern in humanity’s long-term best interests, no matter the short term consequences. The idea was that an AI wouldn’t need to have its wheels or its palms greased, wouldn’t be hungry for power for its own sake, and wouldn’t have a personal agenda or a need to get itself re-elected once it’s been voted into power.

But this isn’t a story about process, although process laid the groundwork for it. It’s a story about people. And that’s where things get interesting even as they fragment across multiple fault lines.

Because, of course, neither system really works – if by work you mean actually function for the good of the greatest number of its citizens. Not that the system in the Federation EVER even gave lip service to that particular idea.

However, the one thing that both systems, the Federation’s quasi-immortal President and the AI PM so-called Rationalization policies do, in their varying ways, is cement a status quo in place. Which is not nearly as good for anyone as the respective powers-that-be would want people to believe.

That’s where our widely scattered group of protagonists – or at least points of view characters come in. An old resistance fighter imprisoned in the Russian taiga, a government functionary in that former Republic, the partner of a cutting edge AI scientist in Britain, and that AI scientist, locked in a prison of her own making back in the Federation, desperate to complete her magnum opus of quantum entanglement.

Each is both observer and observed, acting on their own little piece of a world-spanning puzzle, not even aware of the puppet master pulling all of their strings.

And the puppet master themselves, the spider in the center of the web, whose motivations are not certain, even at the end, whether their goal was to give humanity a chance to try again – or merely to burn it all down.

Escape Rating A-: I have to admit that, at first, I was wondering how this was all going to come together. Then again, I had the same reaction to The Mountain in the Sea so I should have expected it.

The different points of view are worlds apart – which I realized at the end was absolutely the point. Each of the characters represents one of those fabled blind men looking at the elephant in that they can only see a tiny piece of the whole picture.

One of the difficult bits to get over, or past, particular for those of us who live in the West, is that the situation under so-called “Rationalization” isn’t all that much better than the repressive regime in the Russian Federation. No one is actually free, it’s just that the cages in the West are a bit more comfortable and one is considerably less likely to get murdered by the state.

What seems to be driving the story – at least for most of its length – is the story of that genius AI scientist Lilia. She comes back to the Federation to see her father one last time, gets trapped and goes on the run. Much of the drive of the story is wrapped around her, the shadowy figures chasing her, the ones who pretend to be helping her, the ones who are chasing them, the endless cells within cells of resistance and/or state security whose goals are never clear even to themselves.

But she’s a stalking horse – as are all the other human agents on all the possible sides – as the story gets really big and then comes down to one human who has been pulling all the strings – including their own. And that’s the point where it all suddenly made sense as all the systems come crashing down and the metaphor of the title becomes clear.

Even as the ending, in the end, feels like it isn’t. The puppet master has given humanity another chance to get it right. Or at least better. But the closing scenes lead the reader to see that, while things may be better in the short run, over the long haul the humans are gonna human, that the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves, and that we have met the enemy and he is us.

#BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen

#BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan BannenThe Undermining of Twyla and Frank (Hart and Mercy, #2) by Megan Bannen
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, dragons, fantasy romance, Weird West, fantasy
Series: Hart and Mercy #2
Pages: 464
Published by Orbit on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From the author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy comes a heartwarming fantasy with a best friends-to-lovers rom com twist--When Harry Met Sally, but with dragons!—set in the delightful demigod and donut-filled world of Tanria.
The entire town of Eternity was shocked when widowed, middle-aged Twyla Banneker partnered up with her neighbor and best friend, Frank Ellis, to join the Tanrian Marshals. Eight years later, Twyla and Frank are still patrolling the dangerous land of Tanria, the former prison of the Old Gods.
Twyla might look like a small town mom who brings cheesy potatoes to funerals and whips up a batch of cookies for the school bake sale, but her rewarding career in law enforcement has been a welcome change from the domestic grind of mom life, despite the misgivings of her grown children.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) a recent decrease in on-the-job peril has made Twyla and Frank's job a lot safer ... and a lot less exciting. So when they discover the body of one of their fellow marshals covered in liquid glitter--and Frank finds himself the inadvertent foster dad to a baby dragon--they are more than happy to be back on the beat.
Soon, the friends wind up ensnared in a nefarious plot that goes far deeper than any lucrative Tanrian mineshaft. But as the danger closes in and Twyla and Frank's investigation becomes more complicated, so does their easy friendship. And Twyla starts to realize that her true soul mate might just be the person who has lived next door all along...

My Review:

Twyla Banneker and Frank Ellis are the very best of friends – and have been for more than a decade. They are also next-door neighbors in the tiny town of Eternity, and are partners in the Tanrian Marshals. They are, in every possible way except one, each other’s person all the way down to the bone.

Their deep and true friendship is the bedrock upon which their lives are completely invested. They helped raise each other’s kids. They’ve saved each other’s lives. They’ve killed for each other and they’ve nearly died for each other – many times each.

But there is a gigantic misunderstandammit at the core of their relationship. Frank has always believed that Twyla’s marriage to her husband Drew – now more than a decade dead – was so wonderful that she’s never looked at another man in all the years since. Frank’s marriage ended in divorce about as long ago and he’s certain that Twyla’s marriage was nothing like the clusterfuck he was part of.

Twyla, on the other hand, because her marriage was nothing like Frank thought it was from the outside, never ever thinks of her now 50-something self as being anything more than useful. And she doesn’t want to go there again, ever. She’s not still mourning Drew – in fact she feels guilty that she didn’t all that much to begin with. She loves her now adult children, but she’s happy to have her own space and her own life. She just can’t believe any man would want her at this point in her life and she’s convinced herself she’s fine with that.

And she and Frank have much too much to lose if they even think about being more to each other than what they already are, and rely on, and pretty much live for even if neither of them can admit it.

Which is where they are when one of their fellow marshals is killed in the not-nearly-as-wild-as-they-used-to-be Tanrian Wilds, smothered in glitter. Yes, glitter. Nothing in Tanria, as far as anyone knows, produces glitter as any sort of byproduct. As far as anyone knows.

At least, not until Frank and Twyla find a creature that’s supposed to be extinct, poachers attempting to poach that same creature, and the disgustingly glittery evidence that there be dragons here, and that these dragons spit, not fire, but something considerably sparklier.

Escape Rating B: I both kind of knew what I was getting into and kind of forgot. I read that first book, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, more than two years ago, and got a bit frustrated by it but in the end mostly liked it. I picked this one up now because the third book, The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, is coming out this summer. I wanted to get caught up.

This series is definitely sitting on one of those genre bending fences – honestly, I think directly on the actual splintering fencepost complete with the point at the top – between cozy fantasy, fantasy romance, and the Weird West.

Not that Tanria is actually the Wild West, even a paranormal/supernatural version of it, but between the dead drudges from the first book, the concept of marshals riding circuits looking for both monsters and poachers, the supernatural storms and the sorta/kinda horses, it has the feel of the Weird West all the same.

The small town vibes of Eternity, where Frank and Twyla live, with their combination of magical and mundane businesses and big city sophisticates far, far away, reads a lot like Tawney in Tomes & Tea (otherwise known as the Can’t Spell Treason without Tea series). Or even the town in Legends & Lattes. But the reference to Tomes & Tea is considerably stronger in this entry in this series because of the dragons. Not so much the glitter, but definitely the dragons.

The romance in this entry in the series, very much like The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, was both the strongest AND the most frustrating – and not just in the sense of the obvious pun. On the plus side, and very much so, the possible/probable friends into lovers romance between Twyla and Frank is a very real source of dramatic tension because it’s such a real and difficult problem. If they get it right, they’ll have something amazing. But they already have something pretty darn wonderful and they’re risking losing it if they reach for more and fail.

That a good chunk of the reason they are such a mess about it is based on a honking huge misunderstandammit of many years’ duration gave me fits. Frank starts out in a hole and can’t seem to stop digging when it comes to how he feels about Twyla and how he assumes she feels in return. I wanted to reach in and knock some heads together rather often.

Very much on my third hand – and I’m sure there’s some creature in Tanria that has at least three – I loved that Frank and Twyla absolutely do have a relationship of equals, both in their friendship and in their working relationship in the marshals. And I particularly enjoyed that this is a romance between people who are mature adults and that it needs to be that way. The romance doesn’t work without the weight of their long friendship to ground it.

The dragons turned out to be the glittery icing on this particular cake. They also turn out to be an important part of both the story and the future of Tanria, but not in ANY of the ways one generally expects in fantasy. And the baby dragons are clearly adorable beyond words and they gave the story a light, glittery heart at the center that was as delightful as it was unexpected.

I came into this one looking for the pun in the title, because I knew there had to be one after the first book, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy. This time around, the pun was considerably less obvious and a bit more directly related to the plot, but it’s definitely there.

The next book in this series is The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam, coming in July. Considering that Marshal Rosie is an immortal demigod, I’m really curious to discover just how she’s going to get ‘undercut’ because it’s going to have to be something sharp and special to even make a dent. We’ll find out this summer!

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ RozanThe Railway Conspiracy (Dee & Lao, #2) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #2
Pages: 304
Length: 8 hours and 25 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Judge Dee and Lao She must use all their powers of deduction—and kung fu skills—to take down a sinister conspiracy between Imperial Russia, Japan, and China in a rollicking new mystery set in 1920s London.
The follow-up to The Murder of Mr. Ma, this historical adventure-mystery is perfect for fans of Laurie R. King and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films.
London, 1924. Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to the city to foil a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary. Aided by Lao She—the Watson to his Holmes—along with several other colorful characters, Dee stops the illicit sale of an extremely valuable “dragon-taming” mace.
The mace’s owner is a Chinese businesswoman who thanks Dee for its retrieval by throwing a lavish dinner party. In attendance is British banking official A. G. Stephen, who argues with the group about the tenuous state of Chinese nationalism—and is poisoned two days later. Dee knows this cannot be a coincidence, and suspects Stephen won’t be the only victim. Sure enough, a young Chinese communist of Lao’s acquaintance is killed not long after—and a note with a strange symbol is found by his body.
What could connect these murders? Could it be related to rumors of a conspiracy regarding the Chinese Eastern Railway? It is once again all on the unlikely crime-solving duo of Dee and Lao to solve the case before anyone else ends up tied to the rails.

My Review:

I was completely enthralled by the first book in the Dee & Lao series, The Murder of Mr. Ma, and have been hoping for a second since the minute I turned the very last page of that first. So I was more than pleased to see this second book appear – even if finishing it has returned me to my earlier state, now hoping for a third book to be published.

Because this second adventure was every bit as marvelous as the first – and in some ways better as we already know these characters but now have the opportunity to plumb their hidden – and sometimes not so hidden – depths.

This second of Dee and Lao’s adventures is set in 1924 London. Both characters are based on real historical figures. Lao’s background and current profession were historically as the series portrays him. From 1924 until 1929, he was a lecturer at the University of London on the subjects of Chinese language and literature. Whether his students were as frustrating, and whether Lao himself was as utterly bored out of his mind as he is portrayed in the story, is not certain, but they certainly leave the fictional Lao ripe to be carried along in Dee’s adventures.

Spring Heeled Jack as depicted in the English penny dreadful Spring-Heeled Jack #2, Aldine Publishing, 1904.

Dee Ren Jie is as much myth as he is historical, but the historical Dee was a magistrate in late 7th century China. How much the historical Dee resembles this fictional interpretation is unknown, but I think it’s safe to say that the original Dee never masqueraded as the English folk hero/demon Spring-heeled Jack – as Lao’s friend Dee often does.

The story combines these bits of history with a compelling, confounding mystery, as all the best historical mysteries do.

Dee has returned to London after a year’s absence as an agent of the then-current Nationalist government in China. But that government is shaky at best. There are movements within China, including but not limited to the Communist Party, to bring the Nationalist government down. And there are forces outside China, great and would-be great powers far from limited to Britain, Russia, Japan and the United States, observing and even influencing events hoping that to destabilize the Nationalist regime so that they can pick up the pieces.

Which is where Dee and Lao and their associates, the redoubtable Sergeant Hoong and young English pickpocket Jimmy Fingers come into this tale, which begins with the return of a precious stolen artifact, middles in a great deal of romantic misdirection practiced successfully upon the supposedly impervious Dee, and concludes with an explosive confrontation on the London Necropolis Railway. (The Necropolis Railway is another bit of history that seems like it must be fiction, but it did really exist!)

When the dust settles, and there’s LOTS of it to settle, the immediate crisis – at least the London branch of it – is over. Dee is left realizing that he’s been a fool. And that while this crisis has been ameliorated it has absolutely not been averted – but that the fight will take him to other shores in other guises. In addition to making a fool out of him, the conspiracy has also made him their scapegoat, and London has become much too hot for him – at least as long as he continues to present himself as, well, himself.

So poor Lao is stuck returning to the boredom of his academic existence, while the country he left behind and plans to return to, is in jeopardy from all sides – including the one that he himself espouses.

It all sounds ripe for another book, doesn’t it? I certainly hope so!

Escape Rating A: I loved this even more than I did the first book, The Murder of Mr. Ma, which means that I need to give another shoutout to First Clue Reviews for their featured review of that first book.

One of the reasons I liked this better leads around and back to the other reason I got into this series. Many of the reviews of Dee & Lao liken them to Sherlock Holmes, especially the more active Guy Ritchie movie interpretations. While I think that is debatable, one way in which Dee & Lao are certainly like Holmes and Watson (and also Barker & Llewelyn) is that Lao serves as Dee’s chronicler as Watson does Holmes, with the same amount of reluctance to participate in the process on the parts of both Dee and Holmes.

Which means that this story is told in Lao’s first person voice. This is his interpretation – with the occasional use of a bit of literary license – of the events. In that regard, the narrator Daniel York Loh does a terrific job of interpreting Lao’s voice, to the point that when I ended up reading the last part of the book because I needed to find out who the true leader of the conspiracy is and how all the issues and conundrums got resolved – I was still hearing Loh’s voice in my head speaking as Lao.

I couldn’t put this one down because of how effectively it combined the pure whodunnit of the theft and murder conspiracy in London with the depth of historical setting and situation that lay behind it and the increasing knowledge of and bond between the characters, this most unlikely band of ‘scoobies’ that includes a government official, a merchant, a scholar, a pickpocket and has increased by the addition of a knife thrower and a dog. Dee pretends they are a circus act and he’s not far wrong in some aspects, but if it is it’s a circus that manifests a well of competence and an ability to improvise on the spot and roll with the punches.

And not just the punches they are administering themselves.

This reader, at least, is already anticipating Dee and Lao’s next adventure. It’s sure to be another fantastic read. After all, thanks to the conspiracy it’s going to have to start with Dee coming back from the dead!

#BookReview: Luminous by Silvia Park

#BookReview: Luminous by Silvia ParkLuminous by Silvia Park
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, literary fiction, robots, science fiction
Pages: 400
Published by Simon & Schuster on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.

My Review:

They are all the children of the famous, failed neuroroboticist, Cho Yosep; Jun, Morgan, and Yoyo. But the childhood they shared was long ago, long enough that Jun and Morgan have had the chance to become adults, and to become estranged from their father and each other. While Yoyo, their android older brother, has been bought and sold and become and been changed, over and over again. None of them emerged from their childhoods, or even their sometimes barely-functioning adulthoods, unscarred.

In the reunified Korea of this future, the scars of the wars that brought reunification to pass are still evident everywhere – on the people, on the land and in the rising discontent on both sides of what was once the border between two sovereign nations whose unity seems in danger of fracturing again – sooner or later.

This is also a future where robots have become ubiquitous, filling roles that were once reserved for humans as servants, caregivers, children, friends, lovers. They are always helpful, forever loyal, and permanently second-class. Or worse. Or less. Or both.

Morgan makes robots. She’s a top designer for the pre-eminent robot design and manufacturing empire in the world. On the one hand, she believes that she’s carrying on the work her father abandoned. On another, she’s indulging her own fantasies through her work, and feeling guilty about both the indulgence and the deception.

And very much on her third, and possibly robotic, hand, she’s still both mourning and searching for the robot brother her father brought into their family – and mysteriously took away.

Jun protects robots, or at least he tries his best to in a world that sees them as useful until they’re not – and then they’re scrap. Jun is a detective in the underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated Seoul Police Department’s Robot Crimes Unit. He’s never gotten over the loss of his robot brother Yoyo, just as he’ll never be able to pay off the cybernetic body modifications that allowed him to survive the catastrophic injuries he received during the last war – and to live the truth he felt in his soul.

The frame of the story is one of Jun’s cases, an investigation into the disappearance of an elderly woman’s robot caregiver, the person Kim Sunduk has relied on for years to maintain her independence and her connection to the world. Connections that have been broken along with the woman’s heart.

Among these elements, the search for a missing caregiver that leads to an underworld of robot rage cages, a woman’s desire for love and approval, a man’s need to find the truths that were hidden in his childhood, lead, by a roundabout way, to the truth about Yoyo, truths about the war that no one wants to know, and truths about love that no one is willing to see.

Escape Rating B: Luminous is very much literary science fiction, which means the family is dysfunctional, none of the characters are happy, the story is steeped in tragedy and more is angsted about than done. Literary SF is not my favorite part of the genre, and I had some hesitation going into this one. In the end, it worked better than I expected because the police investigation provides a better framework than is usual in literary fiction upon which to hang an actual plot.

There are several ways of looking at this story – more than merely the three perspectives through which it is told. From one point of view, it seems as if Jun’s police investigation is the story, and it kind of is. But the story that is told isn’t merely about one robot’s disappearance. The story is about humans, and about their relationships with the robots that are now an integral part of society. From that starting point, it manages to dive into the relationships that robots have with each other – relationships that humans are entirely unaware of and do not even expect to exist. The detective story is Jun’s perspective, the robotic relationships are Yoyo’s, and are hidden every bit as much as Yoyo himself has been.

While Morgan’s strained human relationships and her clandestine creation of her own robot companion raise questions about whether the advent of robots has furthered the fracturing of human-to-human relationships.

I was certainly caught up in Luminous as I was reading it, but now that I’ve turned the final page I have some mixed feelings about parts. One is my own problem, in that I wish I knew a lot more about Korean history up until now because I believe the conditions of this near-future would have had more impact if I had. At the same time, parts of the situation felt familiar because the human condition in general is simply what it is. War is hell, war is always hell, what gives the war scenes in this story their resonance is that we are seeing things through their perspectives, particularly Jun’s and Yoyo’s.

It feels like the heart of the story is wrapped around the relationships between humans and robots, but because we get there through the police investigation, a lot of what we see is that humans treat robots the way that humans treat any population they see as ‘less than’ whatever group is dominant. It’s also not a surprise that the robots who get destroyed by violence are mostly female-bodied. That’s it’s female-bodied robots who become caregivers and servants, and that male-bodied Yoyo is turned into a weapon.

And that that easy dichotomy is the simplest thing about relationships between humans and robots, and that everything under that iceberg tip is considerably more complex.

After turning the final page, I ended up looking back at some other recent books about human/robotic relations in order to get a better handle on why some bits seemed rather familiar, and the one I believe Luminous most reminds me of is Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner because it also tells a story about human attempts to program robots to do their dirty work for them, and how the robots themselves evolve in considerably more complex – and humane – directions than was originally intended. There are elements of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton and  C. Robert Cargill’s Day Zero here also, and if that’s the part of Luminous that grabbed your attention, all are worth a read.

One final (final) note, Luminous is the author’s debut novel, and she kept me engaged in this story, in a part of the genre I don’t normally tackle, from beginning to end. I’m definitely looking forward to whatever she comes up with next!

#BookReview: The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai

#BookReview: The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal KawaiThe Cat Who Saved the Library (The Cat Who..., #2) by Sōsuke Natsukawa, Louise Heal Kawai
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: books and reading, coming of age, fantasy, libraries, magical realism
Series: The Cat Who... #2
Pages: 224
Published by HarperVia on April 8, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The long-awaited sequel to the #1 international bestseller The Cat Who Saved Books—a delightful and heartwarming celebration of books, libraries, cats, and the people who love them.
A chronic asthma condition prevents thirteen-year-old Nanami from playing sports or spending time with her friends after school. But nothing can stop her from one of her favorite activities. Nanami loves to read and happily spends much of her free time in the school library, cocooned among the stacks.
Then one day, Nanami notices that, despite the library being as deserted as ever, some of her favorite books, including literary classics like Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar and Anne of Green Gables are disappearing from the shelves. When she alerts the library staff, they dismiss her concerns. But just as Nanami is about to return to her reading, she spots a suspicious man in a gray suit. Eager to discover what he’s up to, she follows him. The chase is cut short when Nanami suffers an asthma attack. By the time she catches her breath, the man has disappeared and all that is left behind is a mysterious light filtering through the library’s familiar passageways.
That’s when Tiger, the talking tabby cat who saves books, comes to the rescue.
Are Nanami and Tiger prepared to face the dangerous challenges that lie ahead? Why are faceless gray soldiers burning books in a stone castle? And what happened to Rintaro, the socially withdrawn hero who helped Tiger save books in a second-hand bookshop?
At a time of increased book bannings worldwide, Sosuke Natsukawa urges us not to underestimate the power of great literature—and to be prepared to defend our freedom to choose.

My Review:

I picked this up for the obvious. It’s clearly a story about a cat, and books, and at least one library, and I’m there for all of those things. That it’s also the follow-up to The Cat Who Saved Books, which I enjoyed very much for all the above reasons – although that’s about a bookstore rather than a library – certainly helped push this book to the top of my virtually towering TBR pile.

Nanami Kosaki is a bit younger than Rintaro Natsuki was when he began his adventure in that first book. Howsomever, she is also very much a child, or a young woman, on the cusp of the next stage of her own maturity, and she is also holding herself back from taking the next leap forward. Rintaro also faced barriers to that next leap, but in Nanami’s case those hurdles are created not just out of fear, but also out of love. And out of the desire that is so often fostered in females, the desire not to upset the people who are only creating those boundaries and barriers because they love us, believe they know what’s best for us, but want us to be safe above all, even if safety is not what we’re built for.

Nanami has chronic asthma that results in severe attacks that leave her completely debilitated if she is not very, very careful. Nanami, a junior high school student, has internalized that need for care at every step to the point where her world has been reduced to the smallest circle possible; the home she shares with her workaholic father, her school, the local library, and the one and only friend who doesn’t treat her as ‘less than’ in every conversation and at every turn.

Like so many people whose movements are restricted in one way or another, Nanami spends a great deal of time in the world of books – hence her daily visits to her local library. She has learned the wisdom of the saying that “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”

But her thorough knowledge of every nook and cranny of that library tells Nanami that something is wrong. Books are missing. Not the usual ebb and flow of check-in and check-out of a public library but rather that vast swaths of books are disappearing all at once and not coming back.

A situation that absolutely cannot be borne. Which is where Tiger the Tabby steps through the back wall of the library, allowing her to follow the mysterious book thief back to his own world. A place where books aren’t merely burned, but where they are torn from time and space and memory so they lose their power to move the world through the hearts and minds of the people who read them.

Escape Rating B: The US cover of this second book doesn’t do Tiger the Tabby any more justice than the US cover of the first book did. Tiger’s considerably more dignified picture in the UK cover at right also does a much better job of giving Tiger his due.

But this story isn’t about Tiger any more than the first one was. Tiger is an important character, but his function in both stories is to open the way and guide the protagonist – not to lead the charge.

The stakes feel higher in this second book on multiple levels. On one level, it’s about Nanami and her future, just as the first book was about Rin and his. He was on the precipice of choosing between out and in, between rejecting the world and facing it. Nanami’s decision is harder because she’s not so much choosing between safety and adventure as she is choosing between letting her illness and the people who love her take care of her, or figuring out how to face the world as it is and her condition as it is on her own terms. To expand her real horizons to the limit that they can be – a limit that may not be infinite but is considerably larger than feels ‘safe’ to the people who love her and worry about her. She’ll have to stand her own ground against people who truly do mean well, to defend her corner against a world that will push hard to keep her in that corner, even when her asthma exhausts her to the point of passing out.

That the fight that Tiger the Tabby guides her to is, to her, much bigger than the mere fight for life, gives her a springboard of accomplishment from which to wage that fight, but she has to get there first.

Which is where the heart of the story, and the depth of Nanami’s heart, comes in.

Because, while this is about the books, it’s not just about the books. And it’s certainly not about the books as containers – even though it feels that way at first. This is a story about the power of what’s in books to move people – which moves the world.

Which leads even deeper, to a story about power, and how power is applied, and those who feel they have the right to keep their hands on the levers of power. Leading to a story that feels like it’s speaking to this moment, even though this book was published over a year ago in the original Japanese, and was intended to point at the vast (and continuing and increasing) amount of book banning that was – and still is – happening around the world.

In the end, this is a story that focuses hard on the very current debate about whether empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is a strength or a weakness. The forces arrayed against Nanami believe that empathy is a weakness. That reading the ‘wrong’ books fosters empathy and should therefore be eliminated by any means necessary.

Nanami believes the opposite, that empathy is a strength, although she would certainly agree that reading is a powerful force for fostering empathy. And it’s the power of Nanami’s heart, her empathy for others and their empathy for her, that means that she never goes into this battle alone, and that she emerges with new strength, a whole heart, and a whole lot of books, when her battle is won.

But it’s clear at the end that the war is not over. As it is not in the real world. Nanami seems to have found her road to her OWN future at the end of this story, and we get a glimpse of Rintaro’s life as it is now to see that he also reached out and grabbed his own happiness and fulfillment, but Tiger the Tabby is still out there, just waiting to guide a new hero to the next front of this neverending conflict.

 

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 3-23-25

I started out this week thinking that the reading would go according to plan. (It happens. It doesn’t happen as often as I would like, but it does happen.) Howsomever, I neglected to take into account that Galen would be away on a work trip for a couple of nights, which shouldn’t be that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, because that is also a thing that happens.  But it’s been a while.

The house feels empty with one of its humans away. The cats are all a bit disgruntled, to the point where they all stare at me as if to ask what I did wrong to mess up THEIR routine. Things just aren’t quite right in their world – or mine. I do read – well, I always read, but when I’m by myself I tend to look for comfort reads and have a really difficult time getting myself stuck into something new, which set the end of this week’s readings into a bit of a tailspin.

And also led to this picture of Tuna, snuggling against my legs, trying to sleep away the upset amongst the tallest, cushiest pile of binkies he can find!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Spring, March Madness, Earth Month and Mother’s Day Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop is Steph

Blog Recap:

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow
A- #BookReview: The Library Game by Gigi Pandian
B #BookReview: When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
Spring 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
A+ #BookReview: Twice as Dead by Harry Turtledove
Stacking the Shelves (645)

Coming This Week:

The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sōsuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai (#BookReview)
Luminous by Silvia Park (#BlogTour #BookReview)
Space Brooms! by A.G. Rodriguez
The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen
The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan (#AudioBookReview)