cyphomandra

I really keep meaning to review more books. Here's January's. Standouts for this month were The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Safe Passage, and the latest volume of Dinosaur Sanctuary; for re-reads, Biggles Flies East and Strawberries for Dessert.

Dinosaur sanctuary 5, Itaru Kinoshita and Shin-ichi Fujiwara
The warm hands of ghosts, Katherine Arden
She loves to cook and she loves to eat 1, Sakaomi Yozaki
Goaltender interference, Ari Baran
Safe passage, Ida Cook
Winning his wings, Percy F Westerman
Biggles Flies East, W.E. Johns (re-read)
I survived the Nazi invasion of 1944 (graphic novel), Lauren Tarshis and Alvaro Sarraseca
Strawberries for dessert, Anne Sexton (re-read)
Fear, Hope and bread pudding, Anne Sexton (re-read)
The adventurous seven, Bessie Marchant
Migration, Steph Matuku
One perfect couple, Ruth Ware

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden. I thought this WWI ghost story was fabulous and my only note is that it could really have used more lesbians. But it starts with a bang (literally - the Halifax explosion) and it's strong on grief and being haunted and the overlooking of women in war.

Goaltender Interference, Ari Baran. Second chance hockey romance. Baran is super weak on actually having characters fall in love, and this is no exception. Good on character interiority, minimal on plot. I’m going to need a strong reason to pick up another Baran but Home Ice Advantage would be my rec if you're looking.

Safe Passage, Ida Cook. Ida & her sister Louise were two middle-class English sisters just embarking on their working lives as civil service typists and clerks in the 1930s when they become obsessed with opera. They bought the cheapest tickets they could to see opera in London, queuing for hours outside Covent Garden, and then spent two years saving up to see one of their favourite singers in New York. Their dedication brought them into contact with the singers and musicians themselves, who became their friends - and who, as WWII crept closer, asked them to help get as many Jewish refugees as possible out of Germany and Austria. Which they did. They would fly out on Friday night, meet refugees and organise paperwork (there were very restrictive rules on who could come to the UK and what support/sponsors/funding they needed to get there) over the weekend, fly back from a different port on the Sunday (often smuggling jewellery, so the refugees could have funds when they arrived - there’s a great bit where Ida pins this incredibly ostentatious diamond brooch to her faded cardigan, trusting that it will look like paste jewellery to any guards), and be back at work on Monday morning.

In addition to being dangerous, this cost far more than the sisters earned from their admin jobs - but in 1936 Ida published her first romance novel for the new Mills and Boon imprint, as Mary Burchell, and it did extremely well. She ended up publishing 112 romances, and, until WWII actually started and she and Louise had to stop, spent almost all her money saving refugees.

The book does have rather a lot of opera, which I don’t like at all, but I do like Ida’s enthusiasm and her everyday morality approach to what she and her sister do, and it’s also very readable (it's also published as The Bravest Voices.

Strawberries for Dessert, Anne Sexton (re-read). I still love this m/m uptight semi-closeted/openly camp romance a lot and I still find the sequel so annoyingly off-key (why? why include the father of one character as a pov and shove in a het romance plot line) but I read it anyway.

Fear, Hope and Bread Pudding, Anne Sexton (re-read). See above.

The Adventurous Seven, Bessie Marchant. Seven children head out to Australia to meet their absent father and clear him of the wrongdoing that exiled him, but without any other plan for meeting him other than sending an optimistic letter to his last known address. What could possibly go wrong? Marchant wrote a number of enthusiastically international books without ever actually leaving England, and it does show.

Migration, Steph Matuku. Oh, I really wanted to like this more. Far future sf YA with Aotearoa/te reo/tikanga embedded throughout; privileged Farah escapes her domineering mother by enrolling at a military training wānanga which matches intuitives (who can see short distances into the future) with fighters, the stakes ramp up, her talents become unreliable etc. I never quite got behind Farah and I did feel that the story needed more space than it had; there’s a lot going on and the ending should have packed more of a punch. I liked her Flight of the Fantail better.

I survived the Nazi invasion of 1944 (graphic novel), Lauren Tarshis and Alvaro Sarraseca. In Poland, Max and Zena are forced into a ghetto; starving, they escape to the woods and end up in a safe camp with Jewish resistance fighters. Moderately nuanced.

Dinosaur Sanctuary 5, Itaru Kinoshita and Shin-ichi Fujiwara. I continue to love this obsessively detailed dinosaur theme park manga and would recommend it to anyone with even the vaguest interest in dinosaurs (or species conservation).

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, v1, Sakaomi Yozaki. Slowburn lesbian get together via food. The first volume is having to get through all the set up, which weakens it somewhat, but the characters are great from the beginning.

One Perfect Couple, Ruth Ware. Post-doc Lydia's employment woes means she takes her would-be actor boyfriend Nick up on his bid to be on a reality TV show that strands five couples on a tropical island - things, obviously, go wrong. I liked Nick's elimination but everything else about this was all too obvious, and I'm over abusive relationships as a twist reveal (not involving the MC).

The last two were for the WWI in children's books talk:

Winning his wings, Percy F Westerman. One of four boys' adventure books published by the astonishingly prolific Westerman in 1919 (he published 24(!) during the war itself). I read two Westermans for the talk and they both have cardboard honorable lean tanned handsome leads who tend towards clunky banter and unfunny japes while performing heroic deeds with no actual tension, plus a lot of undigested patriotism. What I found most interesting about this one was the description of special RAF tests Derek has to pass to be able to fly - he has to lift a wooden cube with a tuning fork balanced on it up and down three times blindfolded without dropping the fork, walk a narrow plank (blindfolded again) and then hold a brimming wine glass while someone unexpectly fires a pistol next to his ear without spilling a drop. I haven't seen any mention of this elsewhere and I do wonder how real these were (Westerman actually ended up as a Flying Corps instructor of navigation in the last few months of the war, so maybe? Westerman despite all his many flaws does actually do some research - the other one of his I read was about the NZ rifles and had a surprising amount of reasonably accurate NZ stuff, although I am not really convinced that our brave heroes yelled, "I'm from Timaru, but I'm not timorous!" while advancing on enemy lines).

Biggles Flies East, W.E. Johns (re-read). I read this in 2023 along with a bunch of other Biggles and failed to review it; it's fantastic and I love it a lot. Great hook, with an non - uniformed Biggles mistaken for a recently dishonorably discharged pilot at his club, and recruited as a spy, who takes on the job so he can be a double agent; also features the first appearance of Erich von Stalhein, Biggles' nemesis/life partner, who gets to be as equally capable and possibly even more devious than Biggles. Great action, great twists, a deeply enjoyable read. I do have more to say about WE Johns' books and how they portrayed WWI (unlike Westerman, he was writing after) but will post later.