J.P. McLean speeds us down a deftly drawn and dangerous new road in Blood Mark, the first book in her new paranormal thriller series. Baby Jane Doe was abandoned at birth at the Joyce Skytrain Station in Vancouver. Perhaps her mother couldn’t stomach the blood red birthmarks that snake around her body from head to toe; the marks that have caused her shame and humiliation and made her an object of study. But why are they there? Who are her parents? And why did they abandon her to the foster care system? Perhaps Jane’s mother had a premonition that her daughter would be gifted with a supernatural power impossible to contain.
Jane is a lucid dreamer. Her nightmares drop her back in time where she’s able to see and hear disturbing scenes: a woman held prisoner, a man murdered. McLean drops new characters into the narrative as Jane’s dreams become more advanced and the introduction of a merciless, narcissistic, psychologist spins the plot into overdrive.
But time travel is always problematic. When Jane realizes she can physically materialize within a dream as a kind of shadow and interact with objects, the stakes rise yet again. She could issue a warning or save a life. Change history. But should she? To manipulate an outcome could create a paradox; a causal loop that would effect the future and hence the past and on and on it goes.
Enter Ethan, a handsome bar manager who sees beyond Jane’s blood stripes to the beauty beneath. Ethan is the man we all pray is good because with Ethan, Jane’s birthmarks began to disappear from the sole up. But is Ethan her chance at a normal life? Her soul mate? Or are his intentions more sinister?
Someone has been trying to murder Jane since she was born. McLean continues to flesh out Jane’s backstory through her lucid dreams even as the blood marks on her flesh diminish. What was their purpose to begin with? What will happen when they all disappear?
McLean’s writing is clear, gentle, relentless, and original. Triple viewpoints interweave— Jane, her best friend Sadie, and Rick, the twisted psychologist—and drive the plot like Jane drives her Honda Rebel 500. The language is gritty casual as befits a contemporary novel where one woman works as a prostitute (Sadie) and the other, in a greenhouse (Jane) and both seek solace in bars. And, this edgy, intelligent, psychological thriller has tantalizing touches of Inca myth that will capture your soul from beginning to end.
Yet McLean’s high octane concepts drive our intellect. We learn of lucid dreaming, cataplexy, and dabble in Inca myth and ritual. These are ordinary characters faced with extraordinary circumstances and the author keeps us guessing until the very end. McLean is the author of The Gift Legacy—a highly praised six-book series about a woman who learns she can fly. Odd are, Blood Mark will fly too … right off the shelves.
A sexy, captivating read, Prodigal Summer is as important now as when it was first published twenty years ago. I read it then and just reread it again. Kingsolver is an artist, poet, biologist, eco-warrior, and extraordinary storyteller. She wraps her words around these intriguing characters like vines on a frontier trellis.
Over the course of one verdant summer, we dwell in the farms and mountains of southern Appalachia with three intensely independent woman who, like Kingsolver, are all enmeshed in an eco-myth. These timeless women take it upon themselves to change their worlds and the disparate men who enter their lives.
Deanna Wolfe is a forty-something forest ranger living alone atop the mountain in her woodsy cabin until a charismatic sheep farmer turns her life around. As sexy and fulfilling as he is, Eddie Bondo has invaded Deanna’s mountain to shoot coyotes–a bane to his existence but treasures to our forester. Deanna does her best to educate Eddie on the perils of killing off predators at the expense of prey.
Lusa marries into the old Widener family then a freak accident leaves her burdened with a farm and no husband. Using her wits, she devises a way to make a living on the farm without giving in to growing fields of tobacco and being puppeted by her brother-in-laws. At the same time, Lusa worms her way into the hearts of the Widener sisters, their husbands, and children—especially her sexy seventeen-year-old nephew, Rickie. Lusa, whose passion is bugs, teaches us about the insect life in Appalachia.
Nannie Rawley mothered Deanna way back when. Nannie tries desperately to convince her neighbour old Garnett Walker to stop spraying his chestnut trees with chemicals. Nannie farms organically and his poisons are killing everything on both sides of the fenceline. A feud turns into something beautiful and we learn all about why it’s crucial to farm organically. While he’s learning a new way to be in the world, old Garnett teaches Lusa how to raise goats. All of the characters are as interconnected as Nature herself.
Kingsolver offers us a feminist tale starring maid, mother, and crone in this charming book. A tribute to Rachel Carson, writer of Silent Spring, Prodigal Summer is a classic with a timely and meaningful message.
Fantasy sometimes gets a bad rap, but good fantasy ushers us through the hearts and minds of beings we can identify and sympathize with because it’s driven by the human condition. Affected by forces both benevolent and evil, the protagonist often fights to restore justice. Exceptional fantasy is a keystone, offering us insight, adventure, and escape while leaving us better people in its wake. Way of the Argosi is such a book.
To put it in its place, Way of the Argosi is a prequel to de Castell’s Spellslinger series and branded Young Adult Fantasy; though as is the case with most YA, this book will be as well-received as Lord of the Rings by adult readers. And good news, a sequel, Fall of the Argosi, is on its way.
Sebastien de Castell (this is his real name by the way) introduces us to an extraordinary orphan. Following the dark path of the mythic Hero’s Journey, first conceived by Joseph Campbell, eleven-year-old Ferius Parfax sets out alone after her tribe is massacred by a band of mages. This is a book about power, politics, and genocide and, most importantly, how to not only survive against adversity but change the world for the better. Ferius’s people, the Mahdek are the victims in this vicious war.
Along the way, Ferius meets Durrall Brown, a “meddling frontier philosopher” who is in my humble opinion, one of the greatest characters ever written. Durrall Argos, the man in brown, is a cowboy Buddhist who carries a razor-sharp Tarot deck that can cut you as easily as cure you. Brown instructs Ferius, and us, in the Way of the Argosi. Are you hooked yet?
This is a beautifully produced book with a stunning Tarot card cover that features mirrored images of Ferius Parfax and Durrall Brown. Other intricate full-size black and white images drawn by Sally Taylor separate philosophical sections. And there is a detailed map that reminds me of Ireland, as all maps do. Skip the e-book and buy this book in print. It’s a keeper and one you will return to read again and again if only to learn to be a better human being and savour the feel of slipping inside a velvet cloak by a fire on a rainy day.
Sebastien de Castell’s lyrical prose, brilliant world-building, and exceptional dialogue will keep you turning pages long after your candles have burnt low. “I was tired of living like a wandering ghost, punished by the sight of the hideous, scrawny, sexless creature I glimpsed in grimy pools of street water. I wanted to be clean again” (65). I hear echoes of Tolkien and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Another bonus is that de Castell was a fencing choreographer; something evident in the cracking fight scenes that take us directly into the fighter’s mind. Did I say I love this book?
Here you will enter a society like many in Earth’s history where cultures exterminate cultures only to be wiped out themselves. But within the violence are those who illustrate compassion, courage, and wisdom; those who walk with the Way of Water.
Sebastien de Castell
*published in the Ottawa Review of Books, October 2021
Chi’miigwech to my friend Tamara at Western Sky Books for putting this book in my hands last Sunday and to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for writing this cure. Easy now, white ladies, the cure is a response to one Susanna Moodie, whose Roughing It In the Bush (1852) is a racist, colonial, settler account of her arrival in her New World. I read the aforementioned text in 1997 and wrote in my journal: “Moodie is a classist and racist—not my idea of Canadian classic literature.” (Yes, I have journals that date back to the early 90s.). I downloaded Moodie’s text for free on Kindle (cause why pay for something like that) and tried to read it again just to compare this to that, but I couldn’t get beyond the first chapter of Moodie’s vehement verbosity. She starts out by slamming the Irish immigrants and moves on from there. Nothing but perfect white homes and sun rippling on water suits Mrs. Pastoral Moodie.
While Moodie uses far too many words to describe her dissatisfaction with “the bush,” Simpson sprinkles her text with enough Ojibwe words to make we want to enrol in an Anishinaabemowin language course. (And forgive me if I use these terms in the wrong way. I’m trying, and hate being only a zhaaganaash.) I knew a few Anishinaabe words before I read this text and I know a few more now. I finished the paperback last night and then, this morning, I went through the whole text using the online Ojibwe People’s Dictionary Simpson recommends in her Author’s Notes, while eating pancakes and maple syrup and thinking of home and Niinatig, the Maple Tree. I penciled in the translations where needed. I apologize, Tara. I know you hate my margin notes. But I’m an academic at heart and need to know. Still, I refuse to look stuff up online when I’m settling into dreamland with a good book; hence the need for a breakfast session.
Anishinaabemowin is a beautiful language that interweaves people, land, weather, culture, and feelings in a soft, gentle, musical rhythm. For example, Makwa Giiziis is the Moon When Bears Wake Up — much better than February, don’t you think? Minomiin Giizis is the Moon of Wild Rice — August or September depending where you live. That connection to what’s happening on the land makes me feel soft and warm inside. That’s how I feel as I read this book, actually. There’s quiet gentle healing here and a good dose of sarcastic “haha” humour (which as we know is healing in itself.)
I’m reading the sign and letting the 4:45 a.m. departure time sink in, sipping the lemon water in the shitty plastic cup, when he approaches me with all the confidence the trifecta of obliviousness and delusion and patriarchy can provide.
We talk about things, but not really, because I can’t remember who he is.
He tells me he’s the director general of Indian Affairs and sometimes I have a poker face and sometimes I just have a face.
He is so clean and shiny. I’m in flannel plaid pyjama pants with a not-matching plaid flannel shirt because who gives a fuck. He has a bureaucratic overcoat and adult shoes that require regular neoliberal maintenance. I’m in bare feet. He looks like he’s lived in Ottawa for too long. I look like I’ve lived in Peterborough for too long (179).
I grew up on Anishinaabe territory (along the north shore of Lake Ontario) later lived near Lake Scugog, and then went to Trent University near the aforementioned city of Peterborough, where I learned from traditional teachers and Elders. If I were ever to move back to Ontario that is where I would settle. I don’t know how authentic this map is, but it will give you some idea of the land of which I speak. And, of course, the Anishinaabe people and their neighbours were here long before maps were drawn. Since forever.
At any rate, this is a book review and all I can say is, “read this book.” Now that I’ve penciled in the meaning of all the words I guessed at (and got most right from the context by the way) I’m going to read it again because it just makes me feel good — not numb, not guilty, not sad, just good. I’m not sure if it was Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s intention to make white ladies feel good, but it worked for this one. Perhaps this is the cure of which she speaks.
An intense psychological coming-of-age story, Secret Sky kept me flipping pages far into the night. Emelynn Taylor, a troubled and naive twenty-two-year-old woman, returns to the seaside cottage where she grew up. As idyllic as it sounds, something’s not quite right. Without warning, Em’s body begins to lose gravity and she finds herself floating into the sky, then crashing back down. She’s been given a gift but no instructions on how to use it. Though she’s made it through university, her floating bouts impact her ability to work, even with her pockets full of rocks. So, with the keys to the cottage and six-months living expenses courtesy of her mother, she returns to the romantic scene of her childhood. But that doesn’t seem to solve the problem.
Secret Sky is the first book in The Gift Legacy series and Emelynn’s gift is one of flight. Who has not envied the birds and dreamed of flying? As a child, I tried to jump off my father’s armchair into flight; after all, I was named after Wendy from Peter Pan. Flying dreams followed, where I ran off the edge of a hill and was suddenly airborne, arms moving in a gentle breast stroke. If you’ve ever experienced these fantasies, you’ll love Jo-Anne’s descriptions of flying. McLean is a masterful writer and includes a complete flying glossary where she introduces you to her secret world.
After a disastrous crash, Emelynn is discovered, healed, and brought up to speed on her gift by Dr. Avery Coulter, a kind doctor, who is part of a secret underground society of flyers. The handsome, sexy, rich, and charming Jackson takes her “under his wing” on his yacht and teaches her to use her gift. Part romance, part sexy thriller, this series introduces a brilliantly original world where our desires are possible.
The story is set in Coastal British Columbia in an idyllic setting that makes me a little envious of young Emelynn who lives in a postcard cottage with waterfront and is able to fly.
This is the tenth cozy mystery featuring Cait Morgan, a fifty-ish, marmite-munching, tea-drinking, Welsh-Canadian sleuth who works as a criminal psychologist at a B.C. university on a mountain I’m sure I attended. I recognize those inlet views. In fact, Ace’s dashes of local colour really pulled me into this book.
After travelling the world for nine books solving light, cozy international murders (yes, no slash and gore is possible) Cait and her ex-RCMP/Intelligence officer husband, Bud, become embroiled in a possible murder right next door to their home on Red Water Mountain. Their ninety-year-old neighbour, Gordy Krantz, is discovered dead. He’s recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and suicide seems plausible until the coroner’s report comes back and they discover that old Gordy had been dosed with hemlock.
In between bouts of cooking, cuddling her Labrador retriever, and watching Scandi-noir (who doesn’t love Scandi-noir?), Cait investigates with the guile of Agatha Christie by pretending she’s collecting information for the eulogy Gordy directed her to write in his will. An eccentric cast of locals, one of whom is a garden centre mogul, rounds out the suspect list.
Early on, Cait and her faithful husband Bud (I still don’t know who’s more faithful, Bud or the dog?) acquire a disgusting mattress full of Gordy’s journals and using her eidetic memory, Cait is able to sort and file his life story from 1954 to 1993 all in her mind. After conducting her polite investigations, Cait laments: “This isn’t a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, as Churchill spoke of Russia; this is a maze of bricks walls, all ten feet high, with no apparent way out.” But get out she does. Cait Morgan is an impressive woman, as is Cathy Ace.
Ace has been shortlisted for the Bony Blithe Award the last three out of four years and won in 2015 for Best Canadian Light Mystery. Her writing is stellar. Details, references, allusions, expertly crafted phrasing, and serious subjects punctuated by wit and humour. Her references to local settings intrigue me. I deduced that the elusive Red Water Mountain must be on the north side of Lougheed Highway just west of Mission and craned my neck when I drove through the other day hoping I would see it and know. Before immigrating to Canada, Ace was a marketing specialist, speaker, and trainer. I’ve seen her present and she’s as lively and entertaining as her books. The Cait Morgan Mysteries have been optioned by the UK company Free@LastTV who produced MC Beaton’s Agatha Raisin books for TV.
Living in a rural community everyone knows their neighbours. Or do they? Is the eccentric single man you move in beside really the man he says he is? Or could he be a killer? A thief? An imposter? Is the woman offering you tea trying to get to know you or investigating you? How many bodies are buried outside your door?
The Corpse with the Iron Will is published by Four Tails Publishing.
