Note: I received this review copy from the publisher. This in no way influenced my review. A man named Oda Sotatsu signs a confession for a crime he did not commit: the disappearances of eight elderly men and women from a town in Japan. On the door of each disappeared person was found a single playing card, with no fingerprints. After signing his confession, Sotatsu says nothing either to defend or to further condemn himself. Jesse Ball, journalist, goes to Japan to try and discover the true story of Oda Sotatsu and the Narito Disappearances. Silence Once Begun is the…
10 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
Not to be confused with Megan Whalen Turner’s book of the same title, although each depicts a clever theft by a protagonist unhappy in his circumstances. The beginning: There’s some weirdness about timelines, so I may have this wrong, but okay, there is a pickpocket who has returned to Tokyo although it is unsafe for him to do so. He formerly worked with another gifted thief named Ishikawa, and he now works alone. Reasons unclear, though there are hints that Ishikawa came to a Bad End. Oh, gosh, I hope there’s a crime syndicate! The end (spoilers in this section…
4 CommentsAs mentioned in this space a few weeks ago, I was more excited by the first couple of chapters of Pandemonium than I have been by the first few chapters of any book I’ve read in a while. Naturally, I was excited to check out more of Gregory’s work. Like Pandemonium, The Devil’s Alphabet drew me in with its premise, but didn’t quite succeed in bringing the plot home. Okay. Here’s the premise. Bear with me for a bit. When Paxton was a kid, his town was hit with what’s now known as Transcription Divergence Syndrome, which killed some of…
11 CommentsIs it okay to admit that I’m really, really psyched for the future of Veronica Mars? Am I jinxing anything by saying that? A Netflix series would be ideal, I think we can all agree: TV show format plus unlimited cussing; but I’m down for whatever. I really, really liked the Veronica Mars movie. Note: All spoilers. Spoilers everywhere. The wonderful Linda Holmes, with whom I nearly always agree (particularly about gender stuff), wrote a piece complaining about the trope of the Bad Caterpillar and how boring it is to have made the love of the Bad Caterpillar the main stakes…
28 CommentsLess assured than Lalwani’s first book, Gifted, but still, an intriguing meditation on identity and the ethics of documentary film The beginning: A young British woman of Indian descent has been chosen by the BBC to film a documentary about a small village in India. The village houses about 48 families, and in each family, one member is a murderer. Ashwer is a prison without locks, a place for well-behaved convicts to live with their families and enjoy some degree of autonomy. In its years of operation, no prisoner has ever reoffended, and only one has ever attempted to escape.…
9 CommentsAm I just reading a lot of good speculative fiction lately, or is speculative fiction being extra awesome recently? The beginning: Pandemonium has a killer premise in a lot of ways. First, the basic premise baldly stated — a world exactly like ours except that starting in the 1940s/1950s, random acts of demonic possession started happening — is awesome. Second, the particulars of the premise — there are only about 100 known demons, who possess people for brief periods of time (a few minutes to a few days, usually), act out fairly consistent scenes, and then jump to another victim…
5 CommentsThe Tournament of Books is on, and the Jennys are here to talk about it! We also review Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni and play a literary Winter Olympics game. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 18 Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much). Here are the contents of the podcast if you wish to skip around: Starting at 1:03…
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