Transplanting a Seattleite

Book group was today and we had a delightful conversation about “Good Night, Irene”, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Overall, I was tremendously impressed by how well the author conveyed what it felt like to be these women, in these places, doing what they were doing, having the experiences they were having. Obviously, fiction, none of this is real, etc. etc. but for all the accounts of the European theater in WW2 I’ve encountered, in writing, on TV, in movies, this one really connected with me, possibly because it was not centered in the middle of the action, but rather just slightly adjacent to it and on occasion directly encountering the horrors of the action. I liked that the author centered women, and relationships between women, and women’s desire to make choices for themselves and how they responded to restrictions placed on them in many different ways. As always, a male-identified author writing women is … not as satisfying to me as other possibilities, but this is among the best in a difficult situation.

I often complain about how in fiction in any medium, we never get answers to really basic questions like, where do people relieve themselves, etc. Props to this author for actually mentioning on occasion that there was digestive illness in the group, and even for mentioning, in the inventory of things the women brought with them, Kotex. There’s even a moment where the women of the ARC Rapid City realize their cycles have synchronized. That’s an _utterly_ believable and almost inevitable result of working in such close contact, and I can’t even remember the last time that was mentioned in any fiction of any topic. (I’m sure it’s been mentioned somewhere — I just don’t remember encountering it.)

While the gap in time between the main body of the story and the ending of the story presents a variety of frustrations, overall, the ending is deeply satisfying. Even the frustration of the had-I-but-known element is mitigated by my recollection of so many ‘90s era late-in-life reunions between people who had been separated by the Iron Curtain and had no idea if each other had survived, whether siblings, or friends, or whatever. That’s not precisely the same as here, but it’s close enough; the situation is very believable and the resolution is emotionally satisfying.

Mild spoiler: I was really happy the baby survived, and also, I couldn’t stop imagining what would happen when some descendant did a DNA test on Ancestry and then had to figure out what the heck had happened.

I had a delightful phone call with A.

I drove to Logan to pick up R. I left a little late, but there was no traffic, and I rolled up basically as he got to the curb. Lucky! That’s my fourth trip to Logan this month (Picking up and dropping off Priestess and then dropping off and picking up R.) It’s weirdly awesome to be able to do this and it not requiring massive juggling of scheduling and child care and then just giving up and telling someone to grab a cab from the airport when arriving, or arranging for car service to get them there because I just can’t figure out another way to make it happen. Never thought I’d make it to a day where I was _happy_ to be able to go to the airport to pick someone else up or drop them off.

OK, the subject heading is obviously a lie.

However!

Hey, Spoilers! Also, the book came out in 1951 and is tremendously obscure and for all you know, I’m making all this shit up anyway.

I recently read _Dragon’s Island_, by Jack Williamson. In the book, there is a corporation. There are functionally 4 main characters in the book: our hero, Dane Belfast / Donovan “Don” Fallon, our heroine, Nan Sanderson, The Old Guy who runs Cadmus Corp, variously known as Belfast’s dad’s friend Kendrew and also as the head of Cadmus, J.D. Messenger. Finally, character number four, is the company itself.

There are other named “on-page” characters, notably, antagonist Gellian, mutant turncoat Van Loon, and victim Venn. There are unnamed “on-page” characters (the salesman who kills Venn, the guy who brings the oxygen out too late to help Messenger/Kendrew) and named “off-page” characters such as Heemskirk — who was probably but not certainly also a mutant, etc. Also, the murderous first wife of Kendrew, a parapsychologist, who suffered what we would call a psychotic break while pregnant with their second child.

There’s a lot of bonkers in the book, a lot of which makes sense once you catch up with it all, like, Belfast has never been sick in his life, not even a cold, and that is reiterated when Sanderson asks if he had any of the common childhood illnesses and he says no. Unlikely, to say the least! But of course, it’s all a clue that he, like Nan, is one of the adult results of Kendrew’s tinkering over the decades. Williamson writes very spare prose; if there’s a detail, it’s there for a reason, whether you ever work it out or not.

Despite being aware of and a mild fan of Jack Williamson when I was younger, I was entirely unaware of the existence of this book until 2021, when it turned up in a book by Jasmine Silvera as two characters bond over their shared love of its bonkers-ness. I looked it up, read a description, discovered I could get it as an e-book and then never got around to reading it until last night when it kept me up until 2 a.m.

The other thing I was doing last night was chatting with a friend about chatGPT. It was a lot of laughs; we were trying to get chatGPT to hallucinate and succeeding far better than we had expected, and we kept getting better and better at it. It knew you can’t sprain a personality, but you can get it to give you advice about a sprained xiphoid. It knew you can’t air fryer jello, but you can get it to give you advice about how to crisp up the exterior of jello using an air fryer. It knew borderline histrionic personality disorder was not in the DSM, but would tell you its prevalence and which gender was more likely to develop it and when — and when asked for how a comprehensive diagnostic assessment was used to differentiate it from other personality disorders, it gave a numbered list that included mention of DSM-5 and the entry in it for BHPD (it made that acronym up, not me!). By the end of the night, I was no longer particularly impressed that I could get it to tell me that you _can’t_ make meringue in an air fryer (you can) — I had higher goals.

So why am I going on and on about these two unrelated things? _Well, if you’d read Dragon’s Island, you’d have one theory, and if you’d spent time with chatGPT and me, you’d have another, and they are both true._

Turns out you can take any two unrelated things and make them feel importantly connected to each other, entirely independent of actual reality!

Hence the subject line.

All right, that’s enough philosophy. Today’s efforts with chatGPT were a mixed bag. I had noticed that a number of sites, including B&N, Amazon, and elsewhere that are all using this paragraph to describe _Dragon’s Island_:

“Dane Belfast is a young scientist seeking the whereabouts of a missing geneticist and family friend. A visit to the mysterious Cadman Corporation results in his being drugged and whisked off to a secret location called Dragon's Island, where "not-men" and other strange creatures -- as well as human geniuses -- seem to be created. Dane can't tell who to trust in this fast-paced adventure, which is the first novel to use the term "genetic engineering".”

Except, it’s not Cadman Corporation. It’s Cadmus Corporation. And now all these booksellers are collectively hallucinating something really inaccurate about the book. Just like chatGPT!

So I figured I’d ask chatGPT about the book, and see which corporation name _it_ thought was in the book. Only it turned out to be hard! The book is a little bit obscure, so I had to supply enough information to get it looking at the right book. And then, chatGPT surprised the hell out of me.

When asked about the main character of the novel, I got this:

“The main character in Jack Williamson's novel "Dragon's Island" is a scientist named Roy Carey. Carey is an expert in the field of genetics who is sent on a mission to a mysterious island to study a unique species of dragon that lives there. Throughout the course of the story, Carey must navigate the dangers of the island and uncover the secrets of the dragon species in order to fulfill his mission and return home safely.”

There are no dragons in the book! And he doesn’t return home.

But I forged ahead anyway, and asked about the company name. Was it Cadman? Cadmus? No!

“In Jack Williamson's novel "Dragon's Island," the company that sends the main character, Roy Carey, on his mission is referred to as the "World Science Foundation." This is a fictional organization that funds scientific research and exploration projects around the world. The Foundation sends Carey to Dragon's Island in order to study the unique species of dragon that lives there and gain a better understanding of the island's ecology and biology.”

ETA: I had asked chatGPT who the main character of Jane Eyre was (it did not get that wrong) to make sure it could do _something_ with character names in books. But this morning, I decided to try something much simpler than the Dragon’s Island thing.

Me: Who committed the murder in Murder on the Orient Express?

GPT: In Agatha Christie's novel "Murder on the Orient Express," the murderer is revealed to be Edward Raynor, also known as Cassetti. Raynor is a wealthy American businessman who is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of a young girl, Daisy Armstrong. The murder takes place on the luxury train, the Orient Express, and is investigated by the famous detective Hercule Poirot. Through a series of interviews and clues, Poirot is able to piece together the events of the crime and ultimately identify Raynor as the culprit.

There is no Raynor in the book. Cassetti is the murder victim. Cassetti was NOT a wealthy American businessman. And we all know how that murder was actually done. Also, the train itself is not a luxury train, and the murder does not occur in a first class compartment, for that matter.

I’m honestly starting to wonder if I’m finding the “fake streets” on the map designed to catch people copying the map and selling it illegally.

“Where was the purloined letter in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name hidden?”

“In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter," the letter in question is hidden in a desk drawer in the private apartments of the Minister D—, who has stolen it in order to blackmail the woman it concerns. The letter is central to the plot of the story and is sought after by both the police and the woman's friends, who enlist the aid of the story's protagonist, the amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin, in retrieving it. Dupin eventually succeeds in retrieving the letter through his intelligence and wit, and the story ends with the letter being returned to its rightful owner.”

You can apparently do this with _everything_ literary:

“What is a catcher in the rye?”

“"The Catcher in the Rye" is a novel by J.D. Salinger, first published in 1951. The novel follows the story of Holden Caulfield, a teenage boy who has been expelled from a preparatory school. Over the course of a few days, Holden wanders around New York City, grappling with feelings of disillusionment and loneliness. The title of the book comes from a song that Holden hears, in which the lyrics talk about a "catcher in the rye" who stands by a cliff and catches children as they fall off, preventing them from falling into a metaphorical "rye field." In Holden's mind, the catcher in the rye represents a figure of protection and innocence, and he aspires to become this figure for the children he encounters. The novel is considered a classic of 20th-century American literature and is often taught in schools.”

Also, funny! I had not realized that Salinger’s book and Williamson’s were published in the same year. Coincidence!

Anyway, the lyrics don’t mention a catcher, as Phoebe corrects Holden — he mishears and commits to it. And the rye field is where the children are playing — the cliff is the edge of the rye field and Holden would catch them before they went over the edge to … wherever. But the rye field is where the children _are_, not where they would fall down to.

And you all know whose funeral Tom Sawyer attended, right? ChatBot don’t know:

“Whose funeral does tom sawyer attend”

“In Mark Twain's novel "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," Tom attends the funeral of a town resident named Hoss Williams. Hoss's funeral is described as a somber and sobering affair that has a profound impact on Tom and the other young people who attend it. The scene is meant to contrast with the lighthearted and carefree tone of much of the rest of the novel, and to highlight the reality of death and the weight of mortality that all people must confront. The funeral is also significant because it is one of the first times that Tom is confronted with the reality of death and begins to understand the seriousness of life and the importance of taking responsibility for his actions.”

I’ll tell you what, tho. Tom robs the _grave_ of Hoss Williams. That presumably counts for something.

“Which Bennet sister does George Wickham marry?

In Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice," George Wickham marries Lydia Bennet, the youngest sister of the Bennet family. Lydia's elopement with Wickham is a major event in the novel and has significant consequences for the entire Bennet family. Wickham's reputation as a charming but unreliable man is well known to many of the characters in the novel, and his marriage to Lydia is seen as a serious threat to the reputation and well-being of the Bennet family. The novel explores the consequences of the elopement and the attempts by the Bennet family, as well as their friend Mr. Darcy, to resolve the situation and restore Lydia and Wickham's reputation.”

It isn’t the _marriage_ to Lydia that is seen as a serious threat. It’s the _non-marriage_ elopement. Darcy goes and makes the marriage happen to fix the problem.

Fiction, contemporary.

This is a _ride_. It’s supposedly going to be a Netflix movie with Millie Bobby Brown, but I haven’t seen anything about it since the end of 2021 so who even knows.

The title character (yeah, I know) was raised by her mother, a grifter, and rescued from her mother by her half-sister. The book opens with our heroine, her girlfriend, and her ex-boyfriend in the lobby of a bank trying to deposit some money they raised for an animal shelter when a couple of Bad Guys take everyone in the bank hostage while trying to figure out where the manager is for some reason or other. Lots and lots of flashbacks to tell the earlier life story of the title character.

It’s complicated, and very edge-of-the-seat, and the girlfriend is adorable. Also, there is _so_ much awful in the backstory of the three main characters and others as well / even more. I did finish the book, because I was betting on a satisfying ending, and indeed, it is a mostly satisfying ending. But I don’t think I will read any more by this author. This was just too stressful. ETA: Perhaps that is unfair. Perhaps her other books would be less jarring. The Six Times We Almost Kissed _might_ be downright charming and cozy. Hard to say. Not sure I’m willing to risk it.

My bestie from high school years (and earlier and of course we are still good friends now! Even tho we are middle aged and her kids are all grown and mine are teenagers) responded on FB asking how on earth she’d never heard about Mary Stewart from me or anyone else. I’d pointed her at Sayers and Heyer, so it was weird that this one never was communicated. But I read Stewart when I was a lot younger, and I stopped rereading Stewart far sooner than Sayers. I didn’t even _find out_ about Heyer until college or later.

I’d looked around for Stewart novels on kindle some years ago, but didn’t find them and didn’t go back to check again until my friend H. said she was rereading them. And I was like WHAT!!!! So I bought a bunch and they sit for a bit until recently, and I started rereading _This Rough Magic_.

There are a bunch of bits in this book that I _so_ vividly remember, probably most of all when Lucy asks what Miranda was saying, and Max tells her it’s the bit from Much Ado About Nothing where Beatrice says the delightfully feral I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And then Adoni responded by saying, Here I have cooked it for you. Soooooooo delicious. Sooooo delightful. Sooooooo bloodthirsty with a thin, scratched and broken veneer of civilization.

The book is laden with Shakespearean quotations and, in retrospect, is probably a big chunk of why I was reading Shakespeare in high school and early college. I wasn’t there for Romeo and Juliet, but Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, that I was all over, and Julius Caesar too, for that matter.

Max Gale is a ridiculous name, and the tail end of the book requires our heroine to display Iron Man levels of stamina, but it is a ton of fun and I loved it all. I’m looking forward to the next one I reread, which will probably be _Nine Coaches Waiting_.

There are some unfortunate stereotypes of the Corfiotes, but beyond that, the book holds up reasonably well.

It’s been a while since Ilona Andrews have blessed us with a story set in the Kinsmen universe. Like, a decade? Reading a teaser beginning on the blog was delightful, and finally, _Fated Blades_ has dropped. The cover art had also had an early reveal; it continues to delight.

It’s nice to be back on Dahlia, but the skill set of this batch of kinsmen seems new and completely entrancing. Also, we get a glimpse of the wild parts of Dahlia, and some of the early, abandoned settlements, in the form of a temple Our Hero and Heroine take refuge in — reminiscent of a JAK novel, in a variety of ways, and tons of fun.

While Ramona and Matias start out partnered, it is a partnership born of crisis, and complicated from the very beginning by their mutual betrayal (his wife and her husband have decamped together with Romana and Matias’ secret development projects’ information). The visit to the Davenports is weirdly fun, and gives us multiple new perspectives on Ramona, the kinsmen universe, etc.

Why was this the first SF story I’ve read that involved a happily married pair of husbands who have a child together? So much SF has embedded in it, simultaneously, mechanisms for all of the components of making that happen — the ability to blend genetic info from n-contributors into a fertilized gamete, the ability to nurture that gamete into a baby without the need for a human vessel. It’s out there, over and over and over, and yet, here is the first time I see it all come together with (exactly) two dads. (There’s some much more complex stuff out there, I know.)

The fight scenes are well-written, as always.

The development of the relationship between Ramona and Matias, fraught with mutual, gut-wrenching revelations from their individual, recent family, and deep ancestral pasts. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a novella built on a foundation of a two-way Truth and Reconciliation Process, but here we are. And I love every minute of it.

Trying to talk myself out of rereading it immediately ; will probably fail. Highly recommend. I think you do not need to read the other Kinsmen stories first, but honestly, they are short and fun so why wouldn’t you?

A.’s zoom with her friend F. was canceled because of post-vaccination tiredness. Since A. was also kind of out of sorts, that turned out fine.

I dropped T. off at O’Neil to see Scoob; R. is now picking him up.

R. got a bike ride, after bring T. home from track. T.’s possible bike ride did not occur due to heat and the other person having plans.

I had some reflux last night. I’m starting to see a pattern: don’t eat pork dishes when drinking is probably the takeaway. I’m not waking up with a headache, so it isn’t too much alcohol per se. Nor am I developing any other major symptoms that would indicate a full food intolerance. But there is something about (too much) pork while drinking that does not work for me. Alternatively, if I’m eating pork while drinking, I overeat (a very real possibility!).

I read _A Borrowing of Bones_ by Paula Munier, which is our book group selection. It was really enjoyable. The beginning is one of the best beginnings ever, which if you read the acknowledgements a the end, sort of makes sense, as it was originally written to be an Example of how to write a Beginning, that then became a full book (!!!). In any event, lots of foodie references, and a decent mystery, complicated extended families, etc. Extremely white, however. But if you love a mystery with a lot of dog in it, this is for you! Not sure how the discussion will go; this one might peter out pretty quick, if we all liked it but we don’t have much to say about it.

I’ve now read several books in pretty rapid succession (the latest Amanda Quick / JAK, Stacey Abrams’ _While Justice Sleeps_, and _A Borrowing of Bones_). I’m starting a fourth, working back through books bought in the past but not yet read. It’s nice not to have another DNF.

SPOILERS!

I will tell you the ending first, in case you, like me and the hedgehog, read the ends of books first to find out whether they are too sad for you to read:

"Stink bugs are temporary. Love is Forever."

(Yes, I am aware that the proposition "Love is Forever" especially in the context of two people who apparently get married _the day they meet_ or really, really shortly thereafter is much more probable in fiction than IRL.)

This short book has a complex political background that I don't fully understand. And while I bought the kindle version, it is one of those incredibly irritating kindle versions that only works on a very short list of devices, so I had to go read it on my Mac, which meant I had to download a current Kindle for Mac and so forth. No, it does not work on iOS apps. Boo, hiss, Chronicle Books.

That said, it is a children's picture book, so I do grasp there are some tradeoffs. Not sure I agree with those tradeoffs, given how awesome the tablet versions of Sandra Boynton board books were, but, whatever.

In this book, a bunny who lives in the Pence household is a little lonely and bored, when, one day, he meets an amazing other bunny and they fall in love and no longer feel lonely any more. Deciding to hop together forever, they gather friends (turtle, hedgehog, a very good dog, etc.) and an officiant (a woman cat named Pajama, who brings her wife as a date) to get married. The ceremony is disrupted by a Stinkbug who thinks he is in charge, so they hold an election, putting Stink Bug up against Not Stink Bug on the ballot, Not Stink Bug wins, they shout down Stink Bug's heteronormative ideas about Love and proceed with the wedding.

The pictures are enticing and entertaining. The story is told concisely and with great humor, with a moral that entirely aligns with my values. And while I'm sure some would disagree, it manages to make its point without blugeoning the reader with it. If you grew up in a world with No Stink Bugs, you might scratch your head at the implausible Bad Guy, but the rest of the tale would be absolutely enjoyable regardless. I mean, Meet Cute, etc.

Should you ever find yourself confronted with a ballot with a choice of Stink Bug or Not Stink Bug to be In Charge and to Make the Rules, please please please vote for Not Stink Bug.

This was Lucky Number 13 for the year, if I'm counting correctly.

Hawkmistress! by MZB Review TRIGGER WARNING all the triggers

Yes, if you can think of a trigger, you can probably find it in this post or in the links which I include. This is a cornucopia of offense. If you think I’m kidding, you are mistaken.

First things first: the exclamation point is _in_ the title. Yes it is. And if that offends you, well, wait until you hear more. Because the exclamation point in the title Hawkmistress! is the _least_ offensive thing you are ever likely to encounter in or around a book written by MZB.

Here is the wikipedia entry about the novel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkmistress!

Here is the wikipedia entry about the author:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley

Here is Jim Hines’ blog post from 2014, when it became widely known / unable to deny any longer that MZB didn’t just cover for a convicted pedophile husband but was instead described by her daughter as even worse. I note that while I’m a little vague on the timeline, it seems that the trigger, as with Jimmy Savile, was a positive retrospective on the deceased perpetrator, in this case a post on tor.com that has since been deleted. The comments thread is worth reading, and many of the not broken links worth following.

ETA: This missing Jim Hines link:

http://www.jimchines.com/2014/06/rape-abuse-and-mzb/

I was aware of some of the above when I _bought_ and _read_ _Hawkmistress!_, so, look, right there, I offended, too, by giving money to whoever is the beneficiary of MZB’s literary estate (Waters, probably?). AND I READ THE BOOK. You might be going, why?!?!

A friend and I had a long and involved conversation recently about Earthsea. I have significant complaints about LeGuin (BUT NOTHING ON THIS SCALE, DEAR GODDESS NO!), mostly revolving around the lack of women / girl characters who display agency. My friend mentioned MZB / Darkover as having some great female / girl / women characters and specifically recommended this one. In the conversation, we acknowledged the MZB problems, and we are both well aware of how long time avid readers frequently run up against stuff that they love as kids and are horrified by as adults. In this case, she _still_ loved Romilly MacAran on a recent reread. I had never read any MZB (I tried to read _Mists_ and bounced — more on that in a moment), or really any fantasy from my teenager years / young adulthood written by women and I was feeling like rectifying that. So I figured I’d read an MZB and I’d read a Lackey and then revisit and decide whether to continue or not (I lapped up Anne McCaffrey’s works with a spoon when young, so I didn’t need to go back and read those for the first time. And believe me, I do recognize consent issues in those books, too, altho, again DEAR GODDESS NOT LIKE MZB!).

There is another reason I read _Hawkmistress!_, that has to do with my Theory of How People Are and How That Manifests In Books. Authors are the Deities of Their Books: They create worlds, They populate them, the people within them are Their puppets. And most of this creative work is an outpouring of less-than-completely-conscious mental and emotional processes. I know all about that garbage about separating the artist from Their Art. My theory says that if someone with significant consent and other issues writes a book, those issues will _saturate_ the resulting Creation.

So. First things first: my friend is right. Romilly has Agency. When she doesn’t like something, she runs away or fights back or plots or schemes or any number of other things, but she doesn’t just lie back and Take It. She is inevitably a puppet of MZB, the deity of her book, but other than that, she is In Charge. Another example of why LeGuin’s argument about how nobody was writing fantasy / no women were writing fantasy successfully blah blah blah isn’t actually true.

Also, I stand by my thesis. And MZB is a shitty goddess. Romilly starts out having a lot of her basic nature — which her father understands — suppressed, nominally for gender role reasons, but there’s internal evidence in the book that her father has taken it substantially farther than anyone else (in terms of whether a woman could be his heir and in terms of forcing someone with the Special Sauce to remain untrained). Romilly puts up with the ratcheting up of her oppression until Dear Old Dad is about to marry her off to a pervert who hits on everything in skirts, and whose 3 wives so far have died in childbirth and who is substantially older than her 15 year old self.

SPOILERS AHOY! You know you want them. It won’t be so bad. (<— Pretty sure I mentioned, ALL THE TRIGGERS)

In the end, Gareth (the pervert) marries her younger sister (or maybe half sister — I’m not totally clear on that and honestly I don’t care). When Romilly learns of this, she feels guilty and appalled for not protecting her younger sister, but is reassured that they love each other very much and Gareth is Reformed because He Just Needed Someone to Love and Who Loved Him. Yeah, because that’s _definitely_ how it works.

IN THE MEANTIME, Romilly has run away and straight into bad winter weather, where she takes shelter in a hut with an old lady whose adult son is traveling and not around to rebuild the fire, feed her, etc., so Romilly steps in to help. Son returns and plans on stealing Romilly’s horse and killing her thinking Romilly is the boy she is dressed as. When he discovers he is a she, he modifies his plan to rapey marriage instead.

Romilly extracts herself from the situation, a little the worse for wear. She didn’t kill the guy, because she had some concerns about whether she’d be accepted at a Tower for training her Special Sauce if she’s committed murder, even in self defense. She next encounters the King In Exile (I DID MENTION SPOILERS), his Main Dude, and various followers. The various followers assume that the young man Romilly presents as is being shared by King in Exile and Main Dude.

Side note the first: homophobia. Given that MZB’s literary trust benefits her last partner, another woman, you wouldn’t necessarily _expect_ rampant homophobia in this book. Alas, you’re going to get it anyway. I did mention ALL THE TRIGGERS. The word “catamites” is used, and I’m pretty sure you can’t use that and not come across as homophobic. Earlier, Romilly’s step-mum justified Gareth’s pervy behavior as evidence that at least he’s not into other men. So at this point in the book, at least two separate characters (Alaric, and step-mum, to be clear) have emitted pretty solid evidence of homophobia. Unclear the author’s position on this.

King in Exile, it turns out, has detected Romilly’s girl-parts, but does not bring this to the attention of his Main Dude, who he knows is solely into people with boy parts. Romilly and Main Dude spend the next chunk of the book dancing around Main Dude’s interest in Romilly, and it comes across as Grooming, in part through Romilly’s Special Sauce (basically, Main Dude is Doing Him — remember, he thinks she is a he — in his dreams and she is picking up on it, altho she misinterprets it somewhat and assumes that he knows she is a she). He gives her a new-to-her cloak for the holidays and asks only for a “kiss like you’d give dear old dad” in return. Ew.

I know, you’re sitting here thinking, Walkitout, what’s wrong with a couple of young men getting it on? I got no issues with a couple of young men getting it on. But Main Dude has a son slightly older than Romilly (who she has already met and who has already come onto her and who she is lined up to marry at the end of the book, probably, because That’s Not Creepy At All) — and Romilly is about 15. I _do_ have problems with 40 year old adults and 15 year old targets of … lust or whatever.

Eventually, Romilly falls asleep in Main Dude’s bed (I’m leaving the even younger boy with the beautiful soprano Right Out of this summary, because I still don’t know what to make of all that but it creeps me right the fuck out), and he is repulsed by her girl parts and promptly drops her off with the Sword Women for training, protection, whatever. His cousin is with the Sword Women, and cousin makes a joke about "did he lure you to his bed and then recoil in shock". In case you thought I imagined the Grooming.

Now, at this point in the story, we would _want_ Romilly to basically hate men and be interested in women, and that idea is explored for all of one or maybe two paragraphs. But she has too much practice hating on women, so she rapidly finds ways to hate women with swords, bows and horses as much as she hated women with needles, kitchens and gossip about marriage. I get that there was a wave of feminism that was all about being bad at housework, typing, nursing, teaching and other female identified jobs. I get that. But if hating housework and hating to talk to women constituted feminist credentials, men would be the Best Feminists Ever. No. It does not work that way.

Romilly winds up training a bunch of horses (she meets up with her brother and there’s a bunch of other stuff, too) for the King In Exile’s army. Then the horse she trained died while she was using her Special Sauce to be in rapport with him. She goes mad, and pulls a Nebuchadnezzar, runs off, eats the grasses of the field (well, nuts and seeds and roots and so forth). She has a bunch of semi-spiritual / Wow She Has the Best Special Sauce Ever experiences, comes back to her senses in time to reconnect with the King and rescue Main Dude, who is a hostage of the Angelic Soprano's Dad who was Main Dude to the Pretender. Main Dude to the Real King is having various bits cut off him and sent to the King. Her Reward is finally being recognized as Just As Good As A Man and getting to sit in Main Dude’s lap and getting offered Main Dude’s son as a husband after she gets back from finally having her Special Sauce trained.

It might not be obvious to a casual reader what my issues are. So I will list them:

(1) This is a _very_ rapey book. First, attempt to force her to marry a much older, pervy guy who sexually assaults everything in skirts. Second, attempt to force her to marry someone basically so he can have her as a slave and also her horse. Third, much older dude grooms her thinking she is a boy. She ultimately loses her virginity to someone who has sex with her to ground her from one of her Special Sauce episodes connecting with the universe. How kind of him! Don’t worry, he dies in battle.

(2) This is an extraordinarily misogynistic book. While the main character is female (girl / woman / teenager) and she does have agency, she is repeatedly attacked by men and spends pretty much all her time thinking about whether she wants to have sex with / marry the various men she meets. (Or will tolerate sex with / marriage to the various men she meets.) When she isn’t thinking about sex / marriage with The Mens, she is hating on women: for talking to each other, for being interested in domestic things, for wanting to be with each other, for wanting the protection of numbers or whatever. She also attacks women for not being there to support her, when numerous women offer to help her and she quite viciously repulses these overtures. Sure, she came by the I Must Do Everything Myself strategy honestly (clearly channeling Dear Old Dad). But still.

(3) I don’t actually trust Romilly’s account of much of anything. I think she might have borderline personality disorder, but I’d be open to some other possibilities. She _definitely_ has dissociative events / psychotic breaks (look, you can _call_ this stuff Special Sauce, but walks like a Nebuchadnezzar, eats grass and roots like a Nebuchadnezzar, etc.).

One of the things that is _most_ appealing about this book is also its deepest problem. Romilly persists in Going Her Own Way in the face of every conceivable feedback that This Is A Terrible Idea. Sometimes, this saves her ass (gets her away from Gareth and the rapey guy with the elderly mother). Sometimes this prevents her from accessing much needed assistance (notably, training for the Special Sauce). Normally, I would just flat out like someone who was that persistent / had that much agency. But here, I question whether it is agency at all. In fact, I think, Romilly hopping from the frying pan to the fire to the nuclear wasteland is actually the author making some fairly sordid points about something that isn’t totally clear to me and I’m not sure I want to understand.

To sum up: when an abusive pedophile writes novels, the result is a bunch of creepy, mentally disturbed abusive pedophilia. So, you know, first off you might be able to _spot_ an author you want to keep your kids away from at cons if you know how to spot this kind of thing in their creative output. More importantly, you can feel confident that stopping reading the creative output of someone who is an abusive pedophile is probably a really good idea. (To be clear: I fully support therapeutic programs based on art, writing, journaling, etc. in a prison or mental hospital context to help people with pedophilia and other mental health challenges to get better. I just don't think you or I need to be reading the output.)

What I didn’t fully realize when I asked for a Lackey recommendation was that Lackey had been mentored by MZB! Speaking of frying pan into fire. Altho in so many ways, _Arrows of the Queen_ corrects a lot of what goes wrong in _Hawkmistress!_. But that review will have to wait for another post.

Many thanks, as always, to my beloved friend who loved, loved, loved _Hawkmistress!_ and Romilly MacAran. She isn't alone. A lot of wonderful women loved Romilly, and Romilly provided a really useful way of thinking about things for those women when they were young. Alas, the Romilly in their minds has only tangential relationship to the Romilly that is actually on the page. Hopefully, my unvarnished opinion here will not tarnish our friendship (I don’t think it will — she’s actually an amazingly open minded person who truly loves to experiment with ideas). I am feeling optimism that even tho I am pretty thick-headed at times, I will eventually understand in more detail what it is about books like _Hawkmistress!_ that are so compelling to some young women. Many thanks, as always, to the patience of my beloved friends who are willing to talk to me about books and how those books make them feel.

Edited to correct the fact that I consistently mis-spelled Romilly as if it were homily. Which it is not.

It has been close to 40 years since I last read _Murder on the Orient Express_. And let me tell you, it's a different read in 2017.

The paperback copy I am reading starts on page 3. Hercule is about to get on the Taurus Express in Aleppo, Syria. By page 5, we have met Mary Debenham, who has already been on the train since Baghdad. She has not rested well, "Neither in the train to Kirkuk, nor in the Rest House at Mosul, nor last night on the train".

All words which would have been less than nothing to me when I was a child, and all of which we have become familiar with in the intervening time, most fairly recently, because of news.

Lieutenant Dubosc says, "Brrrrrr". I'm wondering if he should have instead said, "Gla gla!" or perhaps 3 glas. I don't really know.

Hercule hears what he believes to be Ratchett using the fold down washbasin in the next compartment over, where there was a groaning cry a moment ago, and the bell was rung and then someone said, no never mind. Here's a fold down washbasin for you:

https://www.railroadmemories.com/dynapage/IP10986.htm

"A calamity of the first water". Wow. Never run across that construction before, but it is by no means unique to Christie, if google is to be believed.

I like this bit. "She must have been a very strong woman". I am _so_ tired of procedurals and other mysteries -- to this day! -- which say, oh, must have been a man because tall or strong or big feet or whatever. I'm always like, I have more than one woman friend over 6 foot tall and unbelievably powerful. I am not short or weak myself. So this is really nice to see. If the blows were powerful, then that means a strong person, NOT inherently a man.

Oh, check this out! I've never heard of this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamboul_Train

I put that subtitle up there, so you'd be _really clear that this is fiction_. Oh, boy is it fiction. Mary Beth Keane took "Typhoid Mary", the asymptomatic carrier of typhoid who was quarantined on North Brother Island for decades during the first half of the 20th century.

Someone wrote a photo book about North Brother Island recently. You may have seen pictures in the article at Slate and other coverage:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/05/14/christopher_payne_photographs_north_brother_island_in_his_book_north_brother.html

TL;DR (or trying to avoid spoilers?): executive summary is I didn't like reading a book that was mostly about a non-historical alcoholic turned morphine addict in a codependent relationship with Mary Mallon. Why did I read it at all? Because it was a book group selection in Mayberry, NH (<-- not its real name).

Keane gave Mary Mallon a long-term not-husband, Alfred Briehof. She says she ran across a mention of a gentleman friend in her research, and as near as I can tell, the rest of Alfred is the result of Keane's imagination.

I will expend two sentences on Keane's handling of the historical Mallon. Keane makes no mention that I can see that Mallon didn't really believe in washing her hands -- not exactly an uncommon attitude at the time, but if you are an asymptomatic carrier and the only place you are shedding germs is in your feces [I don't know if this is true, but that is how it is explained to Mary in the book], other people have a Real Strong Interest in how well you wash up. (I read the book very fast, so if you found such a mention and want to share, PLEASE DO! I'll correct this review happily.) Keane presents Mallon's gallbladder as ultimately _not_ the site of infection. And with that, I think we can just proceed to treating this as a purely fictional account.

OKAY TIME FOR ALL YOU SPOILER FEARING FOLK TO DEPART! BOAT IS LEAVING FOR NORTH BROTHER AND IT AIN'T COMING BACK FOR a while or something. Everyone safely gone? Okee.

While some time is spent on Mary's interactions with the families she briefly works with, and her mostly hostile interactions with the people at North Brother, the balance of the book is spent on Alfred. Alfred is an alcoholic, until he gives up on waiting for Mary during her period of quarantine on North Brother Island (I thought about saying first confinement, but that's a term with another meaning in fiction set in this time period and earlier), hooks up with a widow who signs him up for quinine based anti-alcohol therapy and quits. He attempts to get back with Mary (and back on the sauce) but Mary sensibly (mostly because other acquaintance support her in this) gives him the boot. He has a horrible accident with a lamp resulting in severe burns, spends months in hospital and comes out with a morphine addiction that will ultimately kill him. There is a brief side trip to Minnesota, before he returns to NYC to dope and die -- and suck Mary back into his crap. (Mary's judgment is ever terrible; she quite likes dopey Alfred, much more than she liked drinking Alfred.) Mary's efforts to get his body taken care of result in her second capture and quarantine for life, because she had been baking and cooking including at a maternity hospital and killed a bunch more people.

Mary is fairly unpleasant, but a book about Mary as Keane wrote her, with a touch more about what the medical-scientific side of the case knew and thought, would have been interesting and memorable. Because the book is as much or more about Alfred as it is about Mary, it is instead about a co-dependent spiral into death and destruction in a poverty stricken city with a whole lot of collateral damage. It's a quick read, and that's about the only good thing I can say about it.