Book Review – The Three Miracles of Santos Socorro, by Sarah Black

Abraham needs a Christmas miracle or three. His lover Santos wants to play with masks, his brother is searching for a gay bear, and now Abraham's been cursed by that expert tamale maker and grandmother Magdalena Socorro. 
















I won this book with a limerick, and I am damn proud of it, too. The prize was supposed to be an Idaho spud, but those monstrosities are notoriously difficult to send overseas, so Sarah gave me this book instead.

LUCKY ME!!!

It is totally charming.

A sweet bear of a Jewish chocolate maker dates a Hispanic detective without any of the two being exactly clear on how much actual dating is going on. Mix in a hilarious gang of kickass relatives of Santos'—ladies of the tamale persuasion—and it is cooking! Recipes galore! Sweet and hot (the recipes, mate, get your mind out of the gutter!) and plenty of action. Actually, there's a lot more sensual action than I am used to from this author, but I am not complaining.

The Padre fainted, however.

God I love every word that comes out of this author. Every single one.

Favorite line?
Here:

“Well, he’s Muslim, you’re Jewish, I’m Catholic. We could join hands and sing Kumbaya for world peace.”

If you like tamales and other hot south-western stuff, there’s also a great recipe for mole in here. Come get it!


***

I received this book after winning the limerick contest on the Meet the Author Sarah Black-event on Goodreads. A positive review was never part of the deal.


Find this book at: Amazon

Book Review – The Prince and the Program, by Aldous Mercer

Mordred Pendragon, the Bastard Prince, has done a Bad Thing-again. Exiled to Canada for seven years, he has to find a job to pay his bills. For reasons he refuses to reveal, Mordred decides "Software Engineer" has a nice ring to it. And though experience with "killing the Once and Future King, my father" and "that time in feudal Japan" makes for a poor resume, he is hired by a small tech startup in Toronto. In the midst of dealing with a crippling caffeine addiction and learning C++, Mordred thinks he has finally found someone to anchor him to the world of the living: Alan, the company's offsite lead developer. Except that Alan might not be a "living" entity at all-he may, in fact, be the world's first strong AI. Or a demon that mistook a Windows install for the highway to Hell. Or, just maybe, the ghost of Alan Turing, currently inhabiting a laptop.

I didn’t read much of the blurb. I never do. But I saw that Mordred was the MC. And that Alan Turing had a big role. That was quite enough for me. Alan has earned some starshine.

So when the author contacted me and asked me if I wanted to read it, I said yes. At once.

What did I think of this book? Well, five stars, for starters. Duh.

Because it is Monty Python meets Douglas Adams chewing coca leaves smoking pot doing shrooms. Then it goes to a whole different level all together. Heh. I am sure I understood exactly nothing of this book, and I know I loved every second of it. Just terribly, terribly brilliant.

The author never tells you too much. At moments, he tells you too little, but he is never there to write stuff on your nose, you either get it or you don’t. (I need to vehemently stress that I mostly did not, in fact, get it. Not that it mattered in the least. Still brilliant). My intelligence was never questioned. (Except for by me myself, but that is a daily thing happening). The author took for granted that I would just strap in and follow.

And by god, I followed. All over the place. Everywhere, even through the moments where I understood nothing.

Brain-melt. That’s what this book is. My brain is now zombiefood, ready for serving.

Here is Mr. Mercer’s recipe: one part Fantasy, one part Legends, one part hot droids, one part running crazy, one part Save the world. Mix well, let simmer for hours, serve steaming hot. Decorate with artificial intelligence, shining metallic robots, androids and the occasional zombie. Add a side dish of a Final Bonus Quest with a thousand dollar reward, dead or alive. I loved it.

Why I loved it? Well, the language, of course. As usual. Seduce me with your English, please.
Here, let me show you a sentence that is nothing short of brilliant:

Instead of hurling a flamebolt at the bitch—a misbegotten chimera hatched in some wunderkind’s garage—I took a deliberate sip of coffee.

Then the author goes on to show me that this is a different and strange place. He doesn’t tell me, he shows me. Here:

It wasn’t until 28:23 that a large middle-aged man entered the room and gripped my hand in a bone-crushing handshake.

Ha, author, I see what you did there. An action sentence shows me that we are in a place where time is counted differently, but you are not writing it on my nose. Cool.

This book gave me many of the same feels I got when reading Douglas Adams for the first time, wide-eyed and smiling, with the occasional wild guffaws, and a lot of headshaking at all the crazy. Like this sentence:

…The owl returned to life and went to sleep.

I mean, seriously? Who writes that?
Oh, I guess the same man who uses Baron Samedi as one of his characters. I haven’t heard of him since 10cc.

Mr Mercer then continues to break me into little pieces with all the talk between Mori and Alan over IRC. I still remember when I got op status, and read ***Mode change “+o AnnaLund” for #Ferrari by ChanServ every time I entered the channel. Glory days. Much as gen-mai, I would proceed to kicking stupid users off my chan, banning half of them to kingdom come. (I connected from Sweden’s Swipnet, so I was holding on to the shit-end of that specific stick more often than not. If you were there, you remember. Oh, the amounts of hackers that connected through them, it was truly glorious).

And herein lies the strength of this story. Mr Mercer just tells it. You have to relate to it.

For me? This was an IRC-nerdgasm, turned to OIRC-gasm in one, small, brilliant sentence. Oh lord. I am sure I missed a plethora of interesting things, stuff that you will note, because it was part of your heritage. As I said, herein lies the strength.

There is even a sentence of redemption for the sadly mauled figure of Morgana, a line where Mordred says “Our mother was a child, caught up and betrayed by men that should have known better.” Oh, author, I do love you for that short phrase.

See? I have now talked and talked about this book, without telling you what it is about. I am very proud of this fact. Read it, and you tell me. What is it about?

I think it is about reparation for Alan Turing and I think it is brilliant. At the same time, I feel it is also a kind of reparation for Mordred himself, who was handed a shitty deal already at birth.

Yes, this is not your normal romance. Who cares? This is a real story. It took me by the hand and ran like the wind. By pure coincidence (there is no such thing) I was in Toronto while reading most of it.

***
I was given a free copy of this book by the author, after he had read one of my reviews. He thought I’d like it. He was right. A review wasn’t promised in return.

***
Addendum to this review:

None of my girlfriends cared for the Arthurian legends. None of them read Tolkien. None of them understood my fascination with science fiction; they were all reading Green Gables or something.

You see, science fiction is my old love, my almost-forgotten love. I grew up with the ABC of Asimov/Bradbury/Clarke, and I was the only girl I knew then who loved them.

This love has been trampled and abused and almost killed during the last decades, as I haven’t found anything to stir my mind for ages.

Then suddenly, this year, 2013, three (3!) different authors suddenly swing by and make everything better. Aldous Mercer is one of them. Lisa Henry is another. And Julio-Alexi Genao is the third. Each one of them with a different angle, one more about science and computers, the second writing a more deep space sci-fi, and the third with a dystopian darkness of a love story.

All three spoke to me. All three handled subjects that I love. Crazy and fun. Distress and fear. Loneliness and love.

So, from the old timers to these three new authors, I’d like to instate the HeGeMe of Henry/Genao/Mercer.

Because M/M tops it now.

Heh.


Find this book at: Dreamspinner Press

Book Review - The General and the Horse-Lord, by Sarah Black

General John Mitchel and his favorite pilot, Gabriel Sanchez, served together as comrades and brothers-in-arms for more than twenty-five years. They followed the warrior’s path: honor first, and service, and the safety of the tribe. Their own needs for love and companionship were secondary to the mission. Retirement from the army, however, proves challenging in ways neither expected. When old warriors retire, their armor starts falling away, and the noise of the world crowds in. That changing world sets up longings in both men for the life they might have had. After years of loving on the down-low, the idea of living together in the light seems like pure sweet oxygen to men who have been underwater a little too long. But what will it cost them to turn their dreams into truth?

No spoilers, I talk about what I found in this book, not what is actually in it.

Coolest title this year, together with what must be truly the ugliest cover.
Well, fabulous things have been known to come also in unexpected packages, and this book was recommended to me by Con Riley, and that’s usually enough for me.

And boy, does this book ever deliver, it is a scathing and fantastic swing at the Don’t ask, don’t tell.

It is a vision of the freeing of souls, the opening of minds, the possibility to move firmly into what and who you are, free to be you. To not miss out on a huge part of what is life, which is love.

This book does all that, and at the same time it is humorous, screaming-out-loud funny in places, especially where the young, crazy artistic boys meet with the two closeted-for-decades soldiers—there is a clash and a bang and so, so, so much love. Both between the generations and between the peer groups.

Then it takes a nose-dive into the mandatory angst, and I was okay with that, too.

I’m in an excerpt-kind-of-mood today, so here are some of my favorite moments:

”All you want to do when you’re fourteen is snatch up a broadsword and hack something to pieces, then find a big rock and fuck it to death.”

“John, did you see those boys at the bar the other night? They weren’t just out and proud, they were out and proud in flashing neon, you know?”

“It seems to me I’ve been missing something critical. I see that in you too. Missing the right to love. The right to make a life together.”

“’Would we have to play the gay-card?’
Gabriel sighed. ‘John, we’re gay. You know that, right?’”

“I’ll find some smoke granades. Smoke is always good to make a confusing situation a little more confusing.”

“If you ask one more lost boy to move into the house, I’m going to start building a barracks in the back yard.”

It has made me cry, and smile, and scream out loud with laughter, as anyone who has been following my updates know. It was well-written, with only three or four spelling errors. (But honestly? “Hanger” is not the word you’re looking for when talking about where to park your Apache, okay? Try “hangar”).

This story was so vividly painted that I still have an image of the house, the streets, the places they went, right here in my head. The characters were so real, so consistent with who they were that they just convinced me of the whole story. I know what the house looks like. The garage and the back yard. Ho-Ho’s food joint is a real place in my head.

Kim, oh Kim! He must be the most darling young man on the planet. I love him so much.

Honor. Pride. Love. Duty. Family. Romance. Friendship. Hate. Pain. Support. Comfort. Justice. And, of course, cheating. Yourself, your partner, your life, your very soul.

Now, the only note of pain, for me, in this book, was the character Martha, who was painted out to be the villain. Well, excuse me if I go outside and barf, but she had fucking reason to be pissed off. A lot of wrong had been done to her. A lot.

That said, this book gets all the stars from me. It wasn’t the heartbreak extraordinaire that I was led to believe, going in, but it was hard. It was hard work, trials and tribulations.

It was good, and safe, and home, and happy, and sad, and terrifying, and beautiful, and more. So much more.

What I will take with me now, when moving on, is Kim.
Kim and his love for his friends, his uncle, and for pink nail polish.


***

I was NOT asked to read this book by anyone, and I paid for it with my own money.

Find this book at Dreamspinner Press