DreamHaven

I chose this book because I don’t think I’ve ever read anything translated from Korean, though I have watched a couple magnificent Korean TV shows. In this case, the translator is Anton Hur. Both the translator and the author are quite good. The story unfolds in crisp, understated prose, with none of the awkwardness I have seen in translations from other languages.

I expected the book to erupt in horrible violence, what with its fiery orange cover, and "blood" in the title. The book is an interweaving of the tales of three unexpected heroes, all of whom come from the conquered country of Arland. Events are clearly leading to conflict with the oppressive Imperial Empire. But the war, it seems, is born more from resignation and determination, rather than hopelessness or anger. It happens in the same introspective, almost-gentle viewpoint with which the protagonists start their journeys.

Loran is a middle-aged swordswoman who, after her husband and daughter are killed by the Empire, has no reason not to give herself to the chained dragon of Arland and declare herself King. She doesn’t actually expect to survive. Cain is a refugee living in the Imperial Capitol. He is an ordinary young man, just getting by, and helping his fellow Arlanders wherever possible. Arienne was born with magic, and has been forcibly removed from her home to attend mandatory magic schooling. What she learns about the fate of people with magic sends her on a daring escape from the Imperial Capitol and into the heart of a rebellion.

This is a story of perseverance in kindness and fairness, despite overwhelming odds. It teaches that perhaps there are some things that must be done, even if they are likely to be met with skepticism or failure. It is oddly hopeful, aided by an ending that turns out fairly well for all three protagonists. I can’t vouch for their ultimate success, however. According to the author’s post-script, Blood of Old Kings is the first book in a trilogy.

Nnedi Okorafor is an accomplished F/SF author who has written several New York Times bestsellers and has won major awards in both America and Africa. Her latest novel is a stand-alone science fiction novel for adults, set mostly in Chicago and Nigeria. Despite its complex themes and ideas, it flows easily, with enough suspense to carry the reader through changing narrators and styles.

The story centers around Zelu, a young Nigerian-American woman who is partially paralyzed after a childhood accident. At the beginning of the novel, her career as a writer is in tatters. Her novel is rejected for the tenth time, and she is fired from her adjunct professor position because of her poor attitude. In shame and depression, she begins writing a science fiction novel about robots. The astonishing success of this novel drives the rest of Okorafor’s book.

Zelu, oddly for a novel’s protagonist, is a fairly unpleasant woman. To be fair, the world around her, including her family, is trying to protect her in ways that she doesn’t want or need to be protected. She also doesn’t want to behave in the ways that either Americans and Africans think a disabled woman ought to behave. The success of her SF novel does not grant her immediate acceptance or happiness, but it does demonstrate her strength and determination. I didn’t have to like her to feel that I understood her and sympathized with her completely.

Distributed between the chapters about Zelu’s career, are two other narratives. One is the successful SF story Zelu writes. Though it is perhaps not actually the best SF novel I’ve ever read, it is insightful and, even though there are battles between opposing factions of robots, surprisingly sweet. There are also chapters relating a journalist’s interviews with Zelu’s friends and family, conducted after "everything that happened." I’ll leave new readers to find out exactly what it is that happens.

The parallel stories are obviously intertwined and meant to enhance each other. Together they certainly tell a tale about the power of storytelling. I suspect that with rereading and further discussion, this book has more to offer than I was able to take in on my quick initial reading. I’m looking forward to others reading the book and telling me what they found.

This seems to be the first novel by Seattle-based author and Tolkien podcaster, Jared Pechaček. He is also an artist; the odd drawings at the start of each chapter—which look like the illuminations on an ancient manuscript—are all different, and done by the author. It’s an incredible first effort, beautifully written, strangely illustrated and bizarrely wonderful.

The West Passage has the melancholy feel of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, with it’s enormous, ancient halls, empty except for long-forgotten rituals and artifacts. It reminds me a bit of Crowley’s Engine Summer, where things that seem to be bits of old advanced technology are put to odd uses by people who have no idea what they really are. The nameless threat of "the Beast" lurking somewhere is also not a particularly new idea. But this Beast is revealed only in patches of remaining knowledge and seems hardly more dire than the dangers of the decay of a civilization from which entire branches of information have been lost. Put together, the story is utterly unique.

The young people who the story follows are cheerful and plucky, and naively uncaring of the dangers. There is Yarrow (who was Pell until her master died and passed on her name) and Kew (who should have, but somehow didn’t, become Hawthorne when his master, the last Guardian, died). They both grew up in the Grey Tower, where the women of Grey House conduct funerals and the single remaining Guardian trains her apprentice for a threat that seems non-existent.

Yarrow and Kew are teenagers whose masters died untimely, before full knowledge could be imparted to them. The reader has the impression that this is not the first time over the centuries this has happened, and that any knowledge they might have received would still have been incomplete and insufficient. They are sent on separate adventures, largely unaware that they are off on world-saving missions.

They show us a world enclosed by the immense towers of five castles. There are uncounted passages and stairways, chasms filled with garbage and jackals, and chambers the size of cities that house the Ladies who vie for power. There are vast, unused libraries and rooms full of inexplicable, dusty items. There are places where humans (or part humans) still try to fulfill their ancient roles, performing rituals whose meaning has been lost.

But it all starts, and ends, in the West Passage, where the legion of Guardians of the Grey Tower once fought the Beast, but are now reduced to one girl who knows nothing except ancient funeral songs and one apprentice who did not receive his name.

H.G. Parry is a New Zealand writer, known for her A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians and The Magician’s Daughter. Her latest book, The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, is also steeped in historical research and classical ritual magic, in this case magic based on bargains with a very real, very dangerous faerie realm.

Clover Hill is a lower-class but very intelligent young woman who is lucky enough to be accepted into England’s elite, exclusive school of magic, Camford. There, she is surprised to find herself becoming close friends with a small group of affluent, powerful students. They share her fascination with knowledge and magic, and her love of Camford itself. Or at least they seem to.

All the doors to faerie have been closed and sealed following an incident near the end of World War I, when something escaped through an unwise and hastily conjured faerie door. Hundreds of people were killed by the uncontrolled faerie. Clover’s brother is one of the few survivors, the only non-magician to witness the event. He still bears injuries both physical and psychological from the event. He can only be cured by opening a new, now-illegal faerie door to make a new faerie bargain.

Clover is not quite forthcoming with her new friends about her true reason for studying magic. Nor does she tell them exactly why she goes along with their attempts to figure out how to open a faerie door. But they don’t tell her their secrets either, and those secrets are many. And much more deadly, because the faerie from World War I is still waiting behind the membrane which separates the two worlds.

This is a book about friendship, and the difficulties of crossing barriers of class and gender. It is a book about the dangers of knowledge, and the dangers of restricting that knowledge. It is a book about love and betrayal, and the necessity of sometimes giving up both. It’s also a pretty good read.

I picked this book up because it has an interesting cover, of a silhouetted owl with glowing red eyes, and because Aimee Pokwatka’s previous book, Self Portrait with Nothing was recommended somewhere. I read her new novel instead. Also because, how can you resist a book about "murder owls?"

The Parliament is a mystery thriller about twenty-five people trapped in a library on a random Thursday by . . . yes, a swarm of vicious owls. It starts innocently enough as a well-written portrait of small town life from the perspective of a mildly obsessive and withdrawn young woman. Madigan, also called Mad, has returned to the hometown she escaped, to teach a middle-school-level science class at the library. Everything is proceeding as expected—the gossiping librarians, the elderly book club, the mysterious guy-meeting upstairs, and the science class—until the owls kill someone. No one mentions Hitchcock’s "The Birds." They name the horde surrounding the library "the parliament."

A parallel story emerges when Mad decides to read aloud from her favorite book, a little-known fantasy called "The Silent Queen." That story, of a world where women literally give up body parts (involuntarily) to gain magical powers, is perhaps more distressing than the owls. But the trapped people, particularly the kids, seem to be gaining some courage and coping skills from the reading.

It is perhaps important that this particular town had a school shooting, not recently, but when Mad herself was in middle school. Mad has never gotten over that day, when her best friend died right in front of her. It is not something that can be forgotten. But for the kids in her library science class, it’s only a legend. Now those students have a trauma all their own. The book is a lovely exploration of trauma and its aftermath, and how it can be overcome even though it never really goes away.

Olivie Blake seemingly sprang into a writing career overnight with her New York Times bestselling Atlas Series. In fact, she’s written several stand-alone novels as Olivie Blake and several more "young adult rom-coms" as Alexene Farol Follmuth. Somewhere in there she developed gorgeous writing and a deep understanding of philosophy and psychology. Her language is richly poetic and wise, but always accessible. She reminds me of John Crowley mixed, perhaps, with the very best of fan fiction writers.

Like The Atlas Six, the story in Masters of Death is a complex interplay between multiple, layered characters. Most of them are playing a centuries-long game of loss and desire. It requires cleverness, planning, and a certain desperation. As the cover says and the characters often repeat—frequently enough that it becomes a sort of joke—"There is a game that Immortals play. There is only one rule. Don’t lose."

Mortals should not play this game. They care too much. And they have too much to lose.

Viola Marek isn’t really a mortal any more, not since she was bitten by a Filipino vampire. Neither is Thomas Edward Parker IV, because he’s dead. He is haunting the Parker family mansion in which he was murdered, and actively preventing Viola, the vampire real estate agent, from selling it. Things really get interesting when Viola hires the medium Fox D’Mora to get rid of the ghost. Fox is a mortal, but he’s got connections, so he’s almost 200 years old. He is not, after all, a medium. But he is the Godson of Death.

This is a magnificent book, where immortal deities and demons from all religions co-exist, and every sort of love is possible, though some types are more permissible than others. There are archangels (Gabriel and Raphael are hilarious), minor guardian angels and soul reapers, Greek Gods, Norse half-gods, and the Demon King of Vice. And, of course, Death himself. They are bored. They play the game to pass the time to eternity and, if they are lucky, in order to feel something; anything. Even grief and loss is better than nothing. Mortals should not play with them. But they do. Sometimes, particularly if one is acquainted with Death’s Godson, it is required.

I almost never read horror. I don’t like threatening bleak landscapes, lurking ghosts and witches, or (especially) intricately-described gruesome murders. Looking Glass Sound actually has all of those things. But the ocean is dangerous in the way oceans actually are—riptides and caves that fill at high tide. The witchcraft is oddly naive, though it does sort of work. And the gruesome murders took place years ago. You can dwell on those things, if you wish, but you don’t have to.

The book is about the three teenagers who, at the end of an idyllic summer, inadvertently uncover a series of decades-old murders and, possibly, reveal the murderer. Years later, one of the kids goes off to college, intending to become a writer in order to cope with the trauma of that wonderful, terrible summer. He is obsessed with it. He needs to write it about it. It’s his story, isn’t it? But he is not the only person who wants to tell the story.

At that point, a book that has been a compelling and beautifully written mystery begins to turn into a musing about the ownership of a story and the motives of the writers who produce that story. Layers of narrative about the same events begin to overlap, and increasingly often, contradict each other. The story changes its title; and the location changes from Whistler Bay to Looking Glass Sound. And the characters change their names and gender and destinies, depending on who has control of the narrative.

Through all this, no one speculates about how or why the murderer did what he did. As though the actual murders don’t really matter, the book does not explore the motives of serial killers. It also doesn’t question the reality of the ghosts or the magic that appear. Instead it explores whether or not the characters in a book are real. Because if the characters are real, the writing of a murder mystery may in itself be an act of murder. Is it possible that the writer is as evil as their invented serial killer?

If this is what modern horror is like, I’ll have to read more of it.

Unfortunately, the reading that Catherine Lundoff was to do on October 23rd has been cancelled. Hopefully we will be able to reschedule with her in the near future.

This is a first novel by Kell Woods, an Australian librarian turned writer. I chose it because the title reminded me of Jack’s (as in the Beanstalk) song from ‘Into the Woods,’ which is called ‘After the Sky.’ The song is about Jack’s emotional journey following his fairy tale adventure with the giants. After the Forest is, likewise, about the consequences on Gretel’s life, after she escapes the witch in the gingerbread house with her brother Hansel.

In After the Forest, Greta lives on the edge of Arnsburg Forest with her brother Hans, in her now-deceased father and step-mother’s cottage. She gets by selling amazingly delicious gingerbread in the nearby town of Lindenfeld. Hans spends his days mostly drinking. It seems likely that being captured as a child by an old woman who plans to eat you leads to long-term emotional issues, but this is not Hans’ story. The now-grown eight-year-old girl who everyone knows shoved the witch into an oven is not unburdened either.

Greta has more than her memories of abandonment and cruelty to deal with. Along with the trauma, she carries the burden of suspicion from the good people of Lindenfeld. This is a place that, only five years ago, sentenced a witch to burning, and many people think that Greta is one also. She killed that old woman, didn’t she? Shoved her into her own oven? They would not be completely wrong. Greta’s gingerbread recipe is from a book that she took from the old witch’s house.

They would not be wrong about witches, either. They do exist, winding through centuries of warfare and injustice. Their tales are intricately woven with the lives of Greta and Hans, and of the townsfolk of Lindenfeld. No one is entirely innocent, or entirely guilty, and many carry trauma from their own stories. The result is a beautifully-written, completely unique interweaving of old fairy tales.

We’ve been wanting to order this book since it won the World Fantasy Award last year. The author is a fairly young and very exuberant woman, who began writing the novel when she was in college in 2009. We finally tracked down the publisher at the WorldCon in Glasgow, and now have trade paperback copies in stock.

Miscellaneous Immiscible Stones (called Lanie) is a young necromancer, born into the powerful Stones family, which has long served the Blood Royals of Liriat as assassins. Necromancy is a rare and valuable skill, partly because the talent comes with a literal "allergy" to violence. Just hearing about some of her family’s exploits is potentially fatal to Lanie. Despite this, she remains kind and cheerful and without resentment. She is genuinely in love with dead things, and with Doédenna, Saint Death, the god who oversees death magic.

With the help of a dead woman called only Goodie Graves, Lanie has managed to survive nearly to adulthood. She spends her days in Stones Manor, happily gardening and learning to raise small things from the dead. She is almost ready for mice! She is secretly in love with her childhood friend, a non-binary priest of Sappacor. She is being tutored, somewhat unreliably, by a prior family necromancer, Irradiant Radithor Stones (also called Grandpa Rad), who won a war for Liriat generations ago. He is trapped disembodied inside the lock of a coffin containing his many enemies, and makes no secret of the fact that he intends to take over Lanie’s body some day. But all of their plans are put into disarray when both of Lanie’s parents meet expectedly violent ends, and Lanie’s appropriately-named sister, Amanita Muscaria, comes home to deal with their enormous debts.

Cooney has invented an exceptionally detailed, unique world. There are numerous types of magic, all tied to one of twelve wonderfully quirky gods and worshipped slightly differently in different counties. Many interesting people are vying for both Stones Manor and the throne of Liriat. Liriat itself has a long history of oddly amusing violence. (Also oddly hilarious are the famous assassinations and much deserved deaths of various Stones family members, often related in footnotes.) Every page seems to bring a new and delightful twist of customs or religion or tradition. Lanie’s necromancy is full of unexpected beauty.

Through all the plots and raising of the dead and cruelty (always distant because of Lanie’s allergies), Lanie remains a wonderfully sympathetic character, an uncomplaining perky goth necromancer, in love with both the living and the dead, and everything in-between. But, with her warped upbringing, will she ever understand what her beloved Saint Death really wants from her?

Somewhere around twenty-five thousand years ago, or perhaps about thirty years ago, on a nameless island paradise, a nameless woman had a child with a man who called himself Victory. Victory had the power to reshape the world, so the island became a peninsula that had always been there. Eventually the man became a religious leader called the Perfect and Kind. The woman became a possibly insane person called Mother-of-Glory who remembers a past that no longer exists. She named their son Fetter, because he was to be the chains that limited his father.

Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to make sense. Understanding is not important here.

The Saint of Bright Doors is Fetter’s story. Fetter has no shadow, since his mother cut it from him at birth. He can see the "invisible powers" which his mother calls "demons." And he floats, so he must pay attention in order to keep himself literally grounded. His mother trained him in assassination, with the goal of eventually killing his father.

He has come to an ancient city called Luriat, which (according to his mother) came into existence shortly after Fetter’s birth. It is a complicated place, full of competing religions and governments. The people who think they know what’s going on, can do so only because they ignore things that don’t make sense. There are pograms and plagues and mysterious disappearances which go unquestioned and unchecked. There are visionaries and saints and the Unchosen, who trained to be visionaries and saints but didn’t quite make the grade. And throughout the city there are brightly painted doors which don’t open and seem to lead to nowhere.

This is a brilliantly written book, meant perhaps to teach the reader what it is like to live in a place of contradictions and displacement. Its dreamy unreality evokes a world where no one is entirely sure what they’re allowed to do, yet following the rules is of utmost importance. The book is more an experience than a story, yet the plot is deftly built, a solid narrative assembled, one brick at at time, from nonsense. It is well worth experiencing.

Normally I wouldn’t attempt a book described on the cover as "The Godfather meets Game of Thrones," but Paolo Bacigalupi has written several wonderful novels in which terrible things happen. His novel, The Windup Girl, is one of my favorite SF novels. Set in a post-climate-change world, it is realistically brutal. But Bacigalupi’s characters are always portrayed with nuanced sensitivity. This adds layers of understanding both to the actions of the characters and the moral stakes behind whatever devastation might occur.

Navola is written as the first person narrative of young Davico di Regulai, the reluctant heir to the powerful, unforgiving Banca Regulai. The bank, and the di Regulai family, are based in Navola, a fictional city in an intricately-realized fictional world clearly inspired by Renaissance Italy. The book is more historical fiction than fantasy, but this is not historical Italy, and there is a dragon’s eye on Davico’s father’s desk.

Davico is more in tune with the landscape of Navola, and the wilds of surrounding Romiglia, than he is with the intricate plots his father creates to promote the family’s vast wealth. He spends pages and pages on lush descriptions of Navola—its gardens and towers and sunlight. He sees the beauty in the games of deception and subtle betrayal that his family plays, even though he thinks he is not very good at them. In his narrative, Davico sees only the ways in which he himself is inadequate, and never seems to notice the ways in which his world is lacking. Which is its own sort of criticism of the immorality of wealth and power.

Not very much happens for a lot of the book, yet it is strangely riveting. The tiny seeds leading to disaster do eventually bloom into the bloodshed promised on the book’s cover. In Davico’s hands, the violence is oddly dispassionate, as though he is able to ignore the corruption and danger that surrounds him, even when it is pointed at himself. Navola is devastating and fascinating. Its fantasy elements could be merely a dream inspired by a dead dragon, but there are rumors of a sequel in the works.

Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy A. Bastian

This graphic novel stars a one-eyed young woman who has adventures while searching for her lost father, a not uncommon kid plot. The cover copy says that the story will "captivate adults and children alike." It does indeed have a young protagonist and contains nothing objectionable for kids. But it is a complicated story, with lots of big words and deep meaning hidden in intricate drawings. Also, the author did his own lettering, in a lovely cursive script that only an advanced reader will be able to parse easily. It probably needs at least adult supervision.

The book is filled with interesting and unexpected characters. There is adventure. There are many varieties of pirates. There is a girl swashbuckling hero. The backgrounds, studied carefully, reveal all sorts of extra seafaring weirdness. The overall effect is a sort of nautical Alice in Wonderland, mixed with the zany pirate craziness of One Piece. It is incredibly inventive, seriously silly, a bit scary, and tons of fun.

Octopus by Richard Fairgray

This one is definitely not for kids. Though there is very little graphic sex, there is mention of multiple sexual relationships, past and present, woven through every page of the story. The book is a memoir of the author’s relationships with older men, looking back on the "messy and uncomfortable memories" of decades. It is a series of stories of encounters with aging men who once might have been the author’s lovers, but who always meant more than that to him.

Richard Fairgray promises to "make your bookshelf gayer, but not necessarily nicer." Octopus is not the kind of gay memoir where awakening leads eventually to self-acceptance. It is gritty and raw, and full of angst and a fair amount of self loathing. It has the brutally honest sexuality of Robert Crumb and the introspective storytelling in graphic form of Will Eisner. But, well, lots gayer.

The stories look back with regret on relationships of caring that were lost partly because they were overlaid with relationships of need. And yet there is a haunting beauty to the stories. There is a sense of time wasted on unimportant things. It is a memoir written by a gay man who has learned that sex is a need that sometimes can be fulfilled by a friend, but that, ultimately, the friendship is much more important.

We’re just back from Heroes Con, a huge comic convention in North Carolina, where hundreds of comic and graphic novel writers and artists display their talents. These three caught our attention as appropriate for kids, and also well-written and fun.

Spider-Man: Animals Assemble by Mike Maihack
This is the first book in a graphic novel series called A Mighty Marvel Team-Up, featuring a childlike Spiderman and cameos by many other Marvel superheroes. The third book will be out soon. It is for readers of "all ages." It has a wonderfully silly, kid-friendly plot that puts cooperation and neighborliness above fighting. All of the superheroes in the story are exuberantly friendly and helpful. And cute. There is an adorable pigeon companion. Remember: "With great power comes . . . an ability to do AWESOME flips."

Cleopatra in Space by Mike Maihack
This series began in 2014 and is now up to six books. It was selected as a "YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers." Cleopatra is a fifteen-year-old who is bored by her private schooling, and feels trapped by her life as the next Queen of Egypt. Her intelligence and skills are revealed by the inventiveness of the trouble she gets into. On one of her extra-curricular adventures, she is wafted to the far future, where she is expected, possibly, to save the galaxy someday. But first . . . she has to attend school. Fortunately, preliminary galaxy-saving adventures are sometimes available, and accompanied by a grumpy but adorable talking cat.

Cosmic Cadets: Contact by Ben Crane and Mimi Alves
This is a middle-grade, independent graphic novel, full of friendship and understanding, along with space adventure and a surprisingly tense plot. The kids of a very diverse intergalactic exploration crew go on their own planet-side adventure and discover friendly aliens. Each of the kids’ individual strengths contribute to a successful first contact. Meanwhile, the adults prepare for a war against the new alien species, in order to rescue their kids. Will the kids be able to clear up the misunderstanding in time? The story is very well written, with a cast of characters, both kids and adults, who break out of stereotypes and are relatable and unique. The authors are working on their next adventure.

Peter S. Beagle is a Grand Master—his 2018 world fantasy award proves it—with numerous other awards and achievements. He has not written very much, overall, but he is best known for The Last Unicorn, which he wrote in 1968 and has never been out of print. I remain fondest of his even earlier book about love after death, A Fine and Private Place. This newest book has decades of praise for Beagle’s long writing career on its cover, from multiple other Grand Masters.

I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons is a comfortable read, written with Beagle’s spare, elegant prose, which says only what needs to be said, no more or less. Its young protagonists are quirky and adorable, all convinced of their proper place in a medieval society. They are mostly wrong. But they don’t really need to overturn societal expectations or reinvent tradition. They merely need to learn who they truly want to be.

Robert is a young man who loves dragons which, since his job is to exterminate them like the rats they are, is not a particularly worthwhile trait. Beautiful Princess Cerise expects to someday marry a prince, but she’s not in any hurry about it and is meanwhile secretly teaching herself to read. Crown Prince Reginald looks like a prince, but is not very good at being one, and doesn’t like it very much. They all find adventure, whether they want to or not, and grow along the way.

No new ground is broken in the novel, not really. The only idea I haven’t seen before is the premise that dragons come in all sizes and most are merely nuisances, living in the walls of castles like rats. But there are solid characters working out realistic relationships against a rigid social structure, all the while dealing with dragons that turn out to be far more dangerous than anyone suspected.

Based on the amount of publicity I’ve seen, including an advance reading copy sent to DreamHaven (thank-you, Simon and Schuster!), this book is poised to become a bestseller. There are supposedly already multiple translations and a TV series in the works. As you might suspect, this does not happen for new science fiction authors. Indeed, though the book has time travel at its core, it isn’t really SF. But it’s not really a mainstream book either.

The Ministry of Time is an interesting book, fast-paced and well-written. Though the science makes no sense, its version of time travel is no more objectionable than in any standard SF book. There is romance, but the book isn’t just about that either. The joy is in the exploration of social mores over time, as five people from the "present" (a near future dystopian London, where climate change is verging on disaster) and five people "rescued" from the past, interact. It is a treatise on being an expat; on not-belonging in one’s time and place.

The main plot revolves around the relationship between our nameless first-person narrator, whose mother escaped from Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and Commander Graham Gore, rescued from Fitzgerald’s doomed 1845 Arctic Expedition. It seems likely that Kaliene Bradley did a lot of research about the expedition, and was already half in love with Commander Gore before she wrote the book. Their interactions are delightfully full of intelligence, warmth, and humor. And, of course, growing sexual attraction.

There are also Lieutenant Cardingham (1645) who is an unrepentant chauvinist, Margaret (1665) who plays the part of the suddenly-liberated lesbian, nearly-invisible Anne (1793) and Arthur Reginald-Smythe (1916) whose name fits him perfectly. Together they try to understand modern life and the modern woman. When they fail, which is often, it is usually because modern life is truly and inexplicably odd. Their observations are wise and hilarious: Margaret wants a “tabard ‘broidered" with the words Feminist Killjoy, and Arthur reinvents the theremin. But it is Graham’s keen insight and mild sarcasm that propel the reader happily forward, even as the true nature of the time travel program is revealed and tensions begin to rise.