I apologize for being absent so long. Without getting into too many personal details, the last several months have been extremely rough on a professional, personal, and family level and I have been, as they say “going through it.” I am in the process of getting various projects back on track.
One of those projects is, of course, this website. Those of you who have been subscribed for awhile will notice the major overhaul to the website. I have officially transitioned from “Night Forest Books” to my official author name “Amanda Haimoto Rudd.” This is the name I will be working and publishing under in the future, and I decided it was time to stake my claim on the domain.
At the same time, I decided to gift myself with an author logo. I admit that this is a bit of “putting the cart before the horse” as I am not actually ready to publish any of my several WIPs yet. However, because I knew I wanted to overhaul the aesthetic of the website, I decided I wanted to finalize the style and look of whatever logo I wanted to use in the future – particular the color scheme and font choices.
And I am so happy to be able to unveil my official logo. The image is of a Japanese kirin (in Chinese: qilin), which is sometimes called the “Asian unicorn,” though they’re not really all that similar. The kirin is visually described as being part deer, part dragon. In Japanese lore the kirin is a symbol of nobility and purity, but also of justice and righteous anger. The kirin is gentle but fierce when protecting the vulnerable and fighting for what is right. I knew it was the image I wanted for my brand as a way to honor my Japanese heritage (as well as adopting my grandmother’s Japanese family name), and because the kirin is a good representation of the things I wish to embody in my fiction.
I commissioned the absolutely amazing team at Qamber Designs for the logo, and they did not disappoint. They were a delight to work with at every stage. I had fairly solid ideas of the look I wanted (the kirin, the purple/blue/pink “bi flag” color scheme), and they took those ideas and ran with them. They gave all kinds of great suggestions and many options to choose from as we narrowed down to the final look. The final logo is everything I hoped it would be. If anyone else is in the market for author branding (or book covers, they do those too), I cannot recommend Qamber Designs HIGHLY ENOUGH. They were marvelous.
Having received the logo design, reworking the website to match it was a fun project. There are a few things I still intend to tweak or add on later, but I figured it was close enough to final look that I could safely switch the site back from “coming soon” to “live.” I didn’t want to leave it down too long.
I have updated some information on my freelance editing services. I have also added new information on full writing coach services as well. And I tweaked a couple small things such as my about page and the contact page. I also hope to add a couple more bits and pieces to the “personal writings” tab within the next few weeks. And I will, of course, be getting the book review blogging back up and running soon as well.
If anyone has any questions or concerns, as always, please feel free to reach out! Thanks all, and have a good rest of your week.
Hey folks. I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a couple weeks. I’m afraid it might be a few more. Little hiatus if you will. I’m going through it right now. And things are… messy. Hopefully I’ll be back before end of March *fingers crossed*
[AN: sorry for the delay. I had this post all ready to go, and then I forgot to schedule it! Lol!]
A couple weeks ago, in my post about my recent Victorian historical fiction reading binge, I mentioned that I had read a book called Jackaby by William Ritter. Well, I’ve now finished the series (4 books), and thought I’d share a full series review.
I will try to avoid too many MAJOR spoilers, but as I am talking about the series as a whole there will probably be some.
As mentioned, the author is William Ritter (who has also written some middle-grade fiction that looks really great so I’ll probably check those out at some point!). I don’t believe the series as a whole has a name, but the four books are: Jackaby, Beastly Bones, Ghostly Echoes, and Dire King. There is a fifth standalone book coming out in August, called Rook, that I am very much looking forward to. But don’t go looking for the description of that book or you will run face-first into a couple major spoilers for the ending of book 4 (yes this happened to me).
The books take place in a Victorian-age New England city called New Fiddleham (cleverly avoiding any actual states or real cities/geographies). The main characters are Abigail Rook, an intelligent young woman who has recently run away from her home in England in search of adventure, and R.F. Jackaby, a paranormal investigator who becomes her employer. Each book is written in first-person from Abigail’s POV, in a style similar to John Watson reporting about the cases he worked on with Sherlock Holmes — including some amusing little nods to the trope throughout.
R.F. Jackaby is a Seer. In fact, he is THE Seer, as there is only one alive at any given moment. He has the capacity to see the supernatural elements of the world that are mostly invisible to or ignored by the human public. He uses this ability as an investigator in New Fiddleham, dealing with magical and unexplained issues while constantly butting heads with the police chief and the mayor. He lives in a house once owned by a woman who was murdered ten years ago and simply never left — he and the ghost are rather good friends, thankfully.
Abigail Rook is a smart, headstrong young woman who wanted to be an archeologist. Throughout the series she proves herself to be brave and capable and quite often the voice of reason when situations become dire. Her bravery is established pretty early on in her employment with Jackaby when she discovers that his last assistant was turned into a duck, and doesn’t immediately go running and screaming out of the house. Never mind the ghost!
In the first book, Jackaby, the world-building is established and Abigail and Jackaby solve a series of murders, as one does. They also befriend one of the cops, on whom Abigail develops a crush.
In the second book, Beastly Bones, Abigail is given an opportunity to stretch her archeology muscles a bit on a case out in the valley away from the city. The cop Abigail has a crush on, Charlie Barker, has been transferred out to the valley as well, allowing their flirtation to continue with growing adorable-ness (and Jackaby’s hilarious pleas that Abigail not rely on him for emotional or relationship advice). This book gets rather bloody in places, and the mystery of who is doing what to whom was fairly intricate.
[SPOILER BELOW]
There’s a freaking dragon involved! Sort of! It’s complicated!
[SPOILER ENDED]
The second book begins to hint at a larger conspiracy or plot hiding beneath the recent cases that Jackaby and Abigail have worked on. This is fleshed out more in the third book, Ghostly Echoes.
In Ghostly Echoes, Jackaby and Abigail are “hired” by their ghost friend, Jenny, to find out who murdered her. Unfortunately, what should be a relatively straightforward task for them becomes more and more complicated as the clues to Jenny’s murder ten years ago leads them all into the heart of a much larger, deadly plot. This book features a very-polite (but still deadly) vampire, a mad scientist, and a trip on the River Styx into death. And that’s not nearly a lot of it!
Where the first two books were fun jaunts into the murder mystery genre with some paranormal shenanigans thrown in, the third book leaps headfirst into Celtic folklore and epic fantasy. The fourth book, Dire King, then proceeds to shatter the quiet facade of the Victorian city and break into all-out magical war.
The fourth book was so tense and so action-packed I felt like I barely breathed through the entire thing! Despite a couple spoilers I had accidentally run into (while looking at the new book coming out in August), I did not actually know where the book was going for most of it. It goes heavy on the drama, in the best ways possible. I especially appreciated the way Abigail becomes the voice not only of reason but of mercy and goodness and “humanity at its best” throughout the fourth book. And the ending was so SO satisfying. (And there! I managed not to spoil any of the real major bits!)
One of the many things I liked about these books was the relationships. For one, I fully expected it to become a romance between Abigail and Jackaby, just because that tends to be the way these things go (not a complaint! I would have been fine with that as well!). But Ritter defied my expectations by pairing Abigail with the sweet cop, Charlie. (Was there a bit of copaganda, yeah, sure… but it’s such a standard character type in historical fiction and we all know it’s a fantasy anyway, so it didn’t really bother me.)
Another thing I really loved about these books was the absolutely impressive amount of research into folklore and mythology that Ritter had to have done to write these. There are dozens and dozens of references to so many creatures from folklore and mythology it almost boggles the mind! And not just the standard Western ones, though Celtic mythology gets the main focus in the last two books, but also Asian and African as well.
A third of the many things I loved about these books was how truly FUNNY they were. The plots are dark, there’s murder, there’s an attempt to conquer the world in the last book, but despite this (or even because of it) there is a wonderful humor that threads its way through the entire series. Jackaby is deadpan and drily sarcastic (one of my favorite character types), and the interactions between Jackaby and Abigail are one of the major highlights of the whole series.
The whole series was a delight from start to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed all four books, but especially the last one. I cannot wait to read the new one, Rook, coming out in August. What’s even better is that the whole series is getting a reprint in August. I read the books by borrowing the ebooks from the library. And there are ebook and print versions available on Amazon. I think they were self-published, or perhaps indie-published by a small press. But either way, they are getting a new printing with brand new cover art at the same time as the release of the fifth book.
Ironically enough, it was the new cover art that first got me to read these. I follow the artist doing the new covers, Corey Brickley, online. I love his work (seriously go check him out!). He posted the cover reveal for Jackaby with his new artwork and a brief description of the book and I knew it would be right up my alley (I mean! Compare the cover at the top of the post, with the rest of the covers in the post!). But I probably would not have ever run across them if Corey Brickley had not been commissioned to do new covers! It’s so funny how the world works sometimes…
Anyway, I highly recommend these books. As mentioned, they are available to purchase right now in ebook or paperback. Or you can do like I did, and borrow them from the library so that you can buy the NEW covers in August without ending up with two whole sets.
Apologies! No blog post today. I’m behind on a freelance assignment and I continue to be a bit under the weather, which doesn’t help. (I’m actually hitting a point of extended under-the-weather-ness that I am becoming concerned about something chronic. Though a recent covid test was negative, so at least it wasn’t that.)
However, I finished reading the Jackaby books by William Ritter this week and will hopefully have a full review up for you all in a few days!
Today, I want to talk a bit about Strange World, Disney’s newest full-length animated feature film.
Strange World released last November, and it did not do well in theatres. Very few people went to see it, which is a shame. Admittedly, I didn’t see it in theatres either. I waited until it was on Disney+ because of the continuing pandemic issues (which are particularly bad here in Texas where the idiots live). But from what I’ve heard the biggest problem was the lack of proper marketing/publicity. No one knew the movie existed! Or when it was out in theatres! There were almost no commercials for it on tv, only a handful of ads on places like Youtube (where most people still skip ads), no merchandise tie-ins with McDonalds or toys released ahead of the movie (which is standard practice! Sometimes the toys start popping up a full 6 months or year before the movie comes out!). NOTHING.
It is believed by many (including me) that this was probably an intentional decision by some of the higher-ups at Disney. ‘Cause here’s the thing: Strange World features the first interracial married couple/family in a full-length Disney animated film. It features a gay main character, whose gayness is not remarked on by a single other person in the movie as anything but completely normal (though I will say that after the fact, I saw several articles claiming that this was Disney’s ‘first gay romance’ and it is no such thing. That is really overstating the matter. The character IS gay. It’s not subtext. He very clearly states that he has a crush on a boy. But that element is background detail to the actual plot. There’s no ‘romance’ involved). It also features a plot that is a very blunt, hard-hitting, unapologetic allegory for our current environmental crisis and our over-reliance on fossil fuels.
Certain parts of Disney audiences (such as me) have been demanding, for years, better representation and diversity in Disney films, which Disney higher-ups have been pushing back against in various ways — mostly due to a fear of losing more conservative audiences in the US, and the entirety of the very lucrative and very conservative Chinese markets. It’s all about the money.
So, Disney finally gives us what we’ve been asking for, a very diverse and progressive story in which they clearly told the animators: “have fun! Go nuts!” and the animators totally brought it. And then they don’t ADVERTISE THE MOVIE AT ALL. And, unsurprisingly, the movie TANKS at the box office because no one knows it exists. But now Disney can point to the abysmal sales and wave their hands and say: “see! You said you wanted this, but then no one came to watch it and it failed, which means no one really wanted it at all and we can go back to what we were doing! We tried! Really! It’s not our fault the market isn’t there for this kind of thing! Back to the old standbys!”
The Disney higher-ups wanted it to fail, so that they would have an excuse to not do it again. I firmly believe that. And it’s a shame because the actual creators: the writers, the animators, the voice actors, etc. absolutely WANT to do this kind of thing, and want it to work and do well. And frankly, they KILLED it with this movie. It’s fucking GREAT. AND NO ONE SAW IT.
Let me expound on the actual movie now, for a bit.
Strange World, Disney’s 61st animated feature film, was written by Qui Nguyen, directed by Don Hall, and stars Jake Gyllenhall, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, and Lucy Liu. The first thing that appealed to me when I finally DID see any trailers or commercials about this movie was the great 30s or 40s style pulp scifi feel of it. It’s even a hollow-earth story! And the movie as a whole really holds up to that early vibe.
The movie opens in Avolonia, a country completely isolated by surrounding impenetrable mountains, with an economy and culture that has grown stagnant. The great explorer Jaeger Clade (voiced by Quaid) has made it his mission to cross the wall of mountains to discover what exists beyond their lands, and bring new hope for the future to Avolonia. To that end, he drags his teenage son, Searcher (Gyllenhall), with him (very clearly against his will). But when Searcher discovers a strange plant in the mountains that releases electrical charges, he and the rest of their exploring crew realize that the plant is the key to their future prosperity and decide not to continue the journey. Infuriated, Jaeger continues on alone while Searcher returns home with the plant they call Pando.
Flash forward 25 years, and Searcher is a Pando farmer, who is regarded as a hero for bringing this plant back to Avolonia and thus ushering in a new era of modern technology including enormous airships and all the things one might expect with electrical power. His wife, Meridian (Union), and his son Ethan (Young-White) work the farm with him. However, Ethan longs for adventure, unknowingly very similar to Jaeger, the grandfather he has never met, and who is presumed dead somewhere in the mountains. Ethan also has a massive crush on his friend Diazo – a fact that is treated with the same kind of “isn’t he so cute” attitude as if the crush were a girl rather than a boy.
Everything changes when Callisto – once a member of Jaeger and Searcher’s exploring crew and now the President of Avolonia – arrives on a massive airship, and announces that Pando is dying. In order to save their way of life, Callisto asks Searcher (the expert on Pando) to travel with her to an enormous hole they have found in the mountains that appears to lead to a hollow-earth-type place and what they believe to be the SOURCE of Pando. Unsurprisingly, Ethan stows away, and Meridian follows, and when the airship descends into the hole to find a wondrous, bonkers world that exists beneath the mountains, the adventure really gets going.
From there, a lot happens. They are attacked by various creatures. They, of course, find Jaeger who has been trapped in the hollow earth for the last 25 years. Ethan becomes more and more enamored of adventuring, making Searcher feel as if he is being abandoned again, just like his father left him all those years ago. And throughout it all, there is a message of learning to coexist with the nature and creatures around you, rather than simply steamrolling over everything and believing you know what is best for the world. The conflict comes to a head when the travelers realize that Pando might be hurting everything, and will ultimately lead to their doom even if it is expedient in the interim, and must make a decision about how they will face the future not only for themselves but for all of their people.
It is not a subtle message. And frankly, GOOD ON THEM. Sometimes the themes need to be heavy-handed if you hope to get anyone to even notice, let alone pay attention. Especially these days. And it’s a message that works, and is worth hitting you over the head with.
On top of that, it’s also just a really fun movie! There’s a lot of humor and running gags throughout the movie. The family conflict between Jaeger, Searcher, and Ethan is touching, and relatable, and comes to a satisfying conclusion. The action sequences are enjoyable. And visually, it’s a joy to behold. Like I said, the studio clearly told the set and creature design animators to just got to town, go wild and they did not hold back! They went as bonkers as they could manage, and obviously had a blast doing it, and the visuals are just STUNNING. Colorful, and strange, and imaginative, and funny, and just so much fun.
So, all of this is just to say, essentially: if you missed out on this movie in theatres, like most of us did, and if you maybe didn’t even know it existed, I highly recommend you go check it out now! It’s on Disney+ right now. Make a family night of it – pop some popcorn, turn the lights down, grab the kids (if you have them, lol), or settle in by yourself with a glass of wine (like I did), and enjoy! I promise you won’t regret it!
Hi folks! Quick post here in advance of my regular Friday post, because I have thoughts about the future of this blog (and my blog/website in general) that I would really appreciate some opinions/feedback on.
ALL THE OPINIONS!
I have played around with a lot of variations on my name and my (imagined) business names over the years, including: Amanda Rudd, Amanda Marie Rudd, Night Forest Books, Amanda Haimoto, Amanda Haimoto Rudd, etc etc etc… This has extended to different emails, different IG accounts, a few different blogs, as well as the usual suspects like FB and Twitter, not to mention publication names.
As an academic, I published under my legal name, Amanda M. Rudd (on that note: I did not realize I have a Goodreads author profile, due to a publication in the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction! I just discovered this!). However, I recently decided that if/when I publish fiction I want to use the name Amanda Haimoto Rudd (Haimoto being my Japanese grandmother’s family name).
I debated for ages on whether I want to keep all my different hats separated: accounts for my academic work, book review blogging, freelance editing, fiction writing, etc. At first, I thought the answer was YES. But now I’m leaning toward compiling everything together and cutting down on the various names I use online to JUST Amanda Haimoto Rudd.
To that end: I would merge my OLD blog (“Amanda Rudd’s Blog”) with this current one (“Night Forest Books”) under a new domain = amandahaimotorudd.com (as of this writing that domain is still available… *cross fingers*). I would also get rid of my @night.forest.books IG account, and link my @amanda.marie.rudd IG with the new blog to reduce the variations.
I do not know for certain if exporting the data from this blog to the original “Amanda Rudd” blog would automatically bring my followers with it or not.
I guess the questions are: 1) does this plan make the remotest sense? 2) would my current followers (email or WP Reader) care about me switching things to a new domain, provided that does not change your subscription status? 3) If it DOES mean losing your subscription status, would you be willing to re-follow? 4) Am I just WAY over-thinking all of this?
Sometimes I get in these moods, where I read one particular kind of book and just CANNOT STOP reading that particular kind of book. I go through cycles where I absolutely devour certain genres or sub-genres. Back in 2020 I went through a huge space opera phase. In mid-2021 there was a big period of murder mysteries. My romance reading in general tends to happen in big chunks.
Starting around the beginning of December, and going through Christmas and New Years, and the first couple weeks of January, I’ve been voraciously consuming historical romance novels set in the Victorian time period. Within that there have been a few variations: a few straight romances, a few mystery types, a few fantasy types. But all of them have been Victorian historical fiction.
In order, I have now read: Soulless by Gail Carriger The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Manda Collins An Heiress’s Guide to Deception and Desire by Manda Collins The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk (a re-read by still in the same Victorian-set genre) Changeless by Gail Carriger (started by didn’t finish) Jackaby by William Ritter Beastly Bones by William Ritter
Soulless and Changeless are the first two books of Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series (paranormal romance/steampunk set in Victorian England). I read Carriger’s YA The Finishing School series last year. I didn’t realize until after the fact that the Parasol Protectorate series was an adult series, and written first, and the Finishing School series is a prequel. But I enjoyed the YA books enough to try out the adult series. I wouldn’t say I loved the Finishing School books, but I enjoyed them. They were silly and frothy and adventurous and fun. I found Soulless for cheap at the used bookstore and enjoyed it enough, and then I grabbed the sequel, Changeless, at the library. I won’t say it’s a DNF. I think I might come back to it eventually, probably. But some of the characters that I knew from the Finishing School series appear in ways I really didn’t like (again, I realize the Parasol books came first, so it’s my own fault, but however it happened, I am far more attached to the version of the characters from the prequel series and I was pretty upset about some things in Changeless, which I won’t specify as they are spoilery). Changeless, also frankly was not scratching the particular ITCH I had when I jumped into these Victorian books. So I returned it to the library early.
The Belles of London series encompasses the books The Siren of Sussex and The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews (and a third one is coming out in 2024). These were straight Victorian romance – no magic or murder mysteries in these, just lots of Victorian-period melodrama, which I loved. I loved them so much that The Siren of Sussex made it onto my favorite books of the year list! They are swoony and fun and filled with smart, interesting, complex women and honorable men trying to do the right thing under difficult circumstances, and all the kinds of societal roadblocks and miscommunication issues one might expect from the genre. They are not out to defy the genre expectations, but rather play them up to great effect. I am really looking forward to the third one.
In what appears to be very much a pattern in these kinds of novels, the two books by Manda Collins, A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem, and An Heiress’s Guide to Deception and Desire are also linked books, with at least one more book to be released in the series this year in March. These are historical romance/mystery hybrids (one of my favorite combos!), with each book featuring a woman MC solving a crime while also following in love with the charming man helping them investigate. They are both really great mysteries (I had the first one figured out about ⅔ of the way through but the second one kept me guessing until right near the end). And the romances are both sweet and swoony. The first one is a rivals-to-lovers pairing (a police detective and a woman who’s doing her own investigating and keeps messing with his career). The second book is a second-chance romance with a pair of lovers who broke off their engagement years ago, mixed with a marriage of convenience (it’s complicated!). I really loved both and I cannot wait for the third one!
Finally, I have an already completed series of four books by William Ritter that are Victorian-age historical paranormal mysteries. They are not romance, strictly-speaking, though there is a romantic subplot threaded through all the books. They are about a woman from England who comes to America and finds employment with a paranormal investigator. The books are written in first person with the woman, Abigail, narrating her adventures with the investigator, Jackaby, in a way similar to Watson’s narration of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have finished the first two books, and already have the third one checked out from the library and ready to go. These books are BLAST. Fun mystery writing, lots of period-appropriate set dressing and some really fun paranormal monsters including the usuals such as werewolves, vampires, ghosts, as well as some things you would not expect. I can’t wait to see where these go next!
So that’s what my reading has looked like the last month or so (about a month and a half now, actually, I guess). I think I’m going to finish the William Ritter series now, and then I’m thinking I might jump into something different. I’m thinking about getting back into big epic fantasy tomes. I used to read them almost exclusively in high school. Big giant 800-page types. But I fell out of the habit in college and then grad school killed my reading altogether (as I’ve talked about on this blog before), and since I’ve gotten back into the swing of things I haven’t really returned to my roots yet. I think it’s about time. But we’ll see…
Hi folks, sorry I missed my Friday post deadline. I’m feeling a bit under the weather and didn’t have the time/energy to finish either of the two semi-drafted posts I had. I’ll hopefully be able to pull myself together to get one of them ready on Monday.
Hello all and happy new year! I thought I would kick-off the first week of the year with a brief list of some of my own personally Most-Anticipated Books for the start of 2023. I keep a pretty extensive list throughout the year, but because my time and my budget is very finite, I usually only end up reading a very small fraction of all the new releases that catch my attention. I won’t share the whole current list here, but I will share a few of the books that are releasing January and February of this year that I am excited about, and which you folks might find interesting as well.
(A few notes: I have these listed in release date order, and I include title, author, release date, genre, and publisher. Most of them are fantasy/SF because that’s mostly what I read, but there are some other things mixed in. I would also like to point out that anything from HarperCollins, while I am excited about them, I will probably not actually buy and/or review until the strike is resolved.)
JANUARY RELEASES:
The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai: releases Jan 10 (HarperCollins), this is an Egyptian-inspired fantasy, with a sapphic romantic subplot, and I am so excited for this one. It doesn’t hurt that the cover is absolutely gorgeous.
Phaedra by Laura Shepperson: releases Jan 10 (Penguin Random House), this one is a feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra, the sister of the Minotaur. This one is, by all accounts, unflinching and incisive. And I love me a good feminist retelling.
The Written World and the Unwritten World by Italo Calvino: releases Jan 17 (HarperCollins), this is a nonfiction collection of essays by the brilliant amazing incomparable Italo Calvino that will discuss his thoughts on literature and writing. Italo Calvino, author of such masterpieces as Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979), is one of my favorites and I am elated to have this previously-untranslated collection coming out!
Keeper’s Six by Kate Elliott: releases Jan 17 (Macmillan), this short fantasy novel features a bad-ass world-hopping mother who gets her old adventuring group back together to rescue her adult son who has been kidnapped by an old enemy. Kate Elliott has been a big name in SFF for years, but I only really got to know her work with Unconquerable Sun in 2020. However, I have since then become a devotee, and will buy anything she cares to release.
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson: releases Jan 17 (HarperCollins), this one is a new murdery mystery about a man who writes mystery-writing how-to books and is an expert in golden age mystery novels, who must put all his knowledge to the test when he goes to a ski resort for a family reunion and everyone starts dying around him. This one just sounds like a ton of fun, and I love the prospect of a modern mystery that incorporates send-ups to the golden age (if you loved the movies Knives Out and Glass Onion you will probably like this book).
The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz: releases Jan 31 (Macmillan), Annalee Newitz is a phenomenal sf writer, who imagines some really fascinating near-future and far-future versions of the world. This new book from her will look at terraforming, eco-systems, and our hopes for the future. I’m really looking forward to this one.
FEBRUARY RELEASES:
Victory City by Salman Rushdie: releases Feb 7 (Penguin Random House), so, I mean, it’s SALMAN RUSHDIE, do you even need to know more than that? As with all his works, Victory City is historical fantasy/magical realism. It will, no doubt, be about India, and history, and the world, and the future, and everything in between. It’s about a woman who creates her own personal empire with the force of her imagination.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi: releases Feb 14 (HarperCollins), this is the adult fantasy debut from a loved and respected YA writer. This book is a gothic romantic fantasy/fairy tale about a marriage falling apart among the secrets of the past.
Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth: releases Feb 21 (Macmillan), Veronica Roth has been on my TBR list for ages, and I still have not gotten around to picking up any of her work. But this book might finally change that because it sounds amazing. It’s a dystopic science fiction retelling of the Greek tragedy Antigone. If that doesn’t grab your attention, I don’t know what to do with you.
The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry: releases Feb 21 (Hachette), I first heard about this book about a year ago when an author I follow on Twitter was talking about reading an early ARC, and it just sounds precisely to my taste. It’s a historical fantasy romance about an orphan from a secret magical island off the coast of Ireland, who must come to London to protect her home and her guardian. I am so stoked for this one!
Enchantment: Awakening to Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May: releases 28 Feb (Penguin Random House), this nonfiction book from the author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, is pretty much exactly what the title says it is. It discusses the anxiety, fatigue, and trauma of our times, and looks to the beauty and wonder of the natural world for its restorative power.
The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill: releases Feb 28 (Macmillan), this novella, from the author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, is a dark horror/fantasy re-imagining of the old Japanese folktale “The Crane Wife.” I did mention I love myth/fairytale retellings, right? And it’s a Japanese folktale! Call me sold!
Liar City by Allie Therin: releases Feb 28 (Carina Press), I wrote before on this blog about Allie Therin’s previous work, The Magic in Manhattan trilogy — a 1920s-set historical fantasy romance that I am ABSOLUTELY ENAMORED with. This is something of a different take than her previous work, taking place in contemporary Seattle, with an empath who works a police consultant and is pulled into a case with the FBI. At this point I will buy anything Allie Therin sells me. Hell, I’d probably follow her to Mount Doom if she asked me.
Hello all and welcome to the last Friday of the year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday week last week, and that you are excited for the new year and all the possibilities that might bring. The last year, or two years really, have been pretty rough, and I am really hoping that 2023 will be a bit kinder to us all. But I am… skeptical, let’s say. Still, I am trying to approach the new year with a feeling of cautious optimism. We shall see how it goes.
Before I jump into my fave reads list, I have several things in the works I want to mention. I have officially started my work as a freelance editor. And I am preparing to launch an etsy shop to sell the fluid paintings I’ve been making off-and-on for the last couple months. The first handful were all gifts to various family and friends, but I have a bunch now that are piling up in my office, so I’m hoping to sell them for just a bit – enough to clear out the space in my office and buy supplies so I can make some more. I’ll have the shop linked here probably in the first week of January for the curious.
I am also considering changing the name of the blog… though, I am still on the fence about that. As I mentioned in my About page ages ago, I chose the name “Night Forest Books” as the name of my hypothetical future bookstore. I’ve had the name in mind since AT LEAST 2016. It’s a reference to my favorite book, The Neverending Story, and the location called “Perilin, the Night Forest.” When I first chose the name I did a lot of research to make sure no other bookstore or related business had claimed the name already. I bought the .com domain for future use, and I claimed the IG name (@night.forest.books) and this blog title. However, I was nowhere near ready to actually register a business or LLC name as I knew it would be probably years before I was financially ready to start the bookstore.
Well, apparently in mid-2020 a brand new micro-press started in CANADA, and they named themselves Night Forest Press. Obviously, even if they did research on the name, they did not consider my teeny-tiny blog a problem, whether it had essentially the same name or not, and since I didn’t have an actual business registered under that name it was legally up for grabs. I could probably still get away with naming a bookstore Night Forest Books if I really wanted to (maybe, I’m not certain), but googling “Night Forest Books” right now just brings up the press website. And I had vague ambitions of maybe someday starting a press associated with the hypothetical bookstore, which would no longer be a viable option under the current name. So, I will need to find a new name for the hypothetical bookstore…
Of course, the blog name is still fine right now. However, as I said, googling for “Night Forest Books” right now does not remotely lead to my blog, which is really disheartening. Besides which, my initial thought was that the blog would be a good way to establish some recognition among readership in advance of opening the bookstore, and if the bookstore has an entirely different name from the blog that kind of defeats the purpose…
So… yeah… I’m on the fence about changing the blog name, or just letting it be and worrying about the bookstore name later. Maybe I’ll just go back to using my actual name for the blog for the time being. That might at least make it obvious in search engines again… maybe. *shrug* If anyone has any thoughts, please feel free to share.
OKAY! And now the thing I’m supposed to actually be writing about today. My Favorite Reads of 2022 List!
I had a really difficult time narrowing the list down this year. (Well, ok, every year). What I have ended up with is a list of 10 books. My top 5 favorite new release fiction books, released in the calendar year of 2022, plus my top 5 favorite nonfiction books, none of which were new releases for 2022 but which were all new reads for me.
My Top 5 Fiction New Releases:
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher: This book by the masterful T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) is a beautiful dark fairy tale with prose that makes me weep with awe and jealousy. I wrote a full review for Nettle & Bone way back at the beginning of the year, where I predicted that it might end up being my favorite book of the year when it was all said and done, though I conceded that Nona the Ninth might easily change my mind when it was released. But lo and behold! I stand by my initial statement! I absolutely adored this book and it remains my favorite book of the year.
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske: you can find the full review of this one and the first book in the trilogy just a few weeks back. This one is a historical romance fantasy set in Edwardian England, featuring a murder mystery, lots of magic, and some very steamy sex. I loved it (and the first one, A Marvellous Light), and I’ve already re-read it once since finishing it.
Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: I know I still owe you all an actual review of this one, oops… For those still in the dark (how?) this book (and series) is a mind-bending, genre-busting, space opera mixed with necromantic magic, and one of the most complex examinations of love in all its forms (including toxic and self-destructive) that I have ever read. I’ll admit that I fully expected this one to overtake Nettle & Bone as my favorite, but though I loved it immensely, it ended up slipping down to third place. Nona the Ninth, the third of the Locked Tomb series, was excellent, and mind-boggling, but of the three it is my least favorite. Nona was a delight of a character, but the first book is still by far the most FUN. So far I love them in order, lol (Gideon, then Harrow, then Nona).
Last Call at the Nightingale by Katherine Schellman: here’s another one I read and reviewed pretty early in the year! It’s a historical murder mystery novel set in the 1920s, which is of course a good portion of what I love about it. And it features a disaster bi protagonist that I relate to rather strongly, lol! I read the whole thing in one sitting, just absolutely DEVOURED it. I fervently await the sequel!
The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews: I have not written a full review for this one yet, but I might try to put one together for it and its sequel later. This one is straight romance novel material, historical (Victorian setting), and absolutely lovely! I read it about a month ago and I am currently in a big Victorian-set historical romance brainrot mode. I also read the sequel to this one, The Belle of Belgrave Square. There will be a third one apparently sometime next year, so maybe I’ll do a double review for books 1 and 2 in time for the 3rd release. This book just really made me happy, with a headstrong intelligent female lead and a Indian-immigrant working-class love interest, and lots of witty banter.
My Top 5 Nonfiction Books:
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh: this is the last book that came out before Thich Nhat Hanh’s death in 2021. If you are unfamiliar with him, he was a very famous well-respected Buddhist monk who wrote many books on Buddhist, meditation, and finding peace in your own life. He gave lectures, met with world leaders, ran retreats, and generally just made the world a better place by his existence. He was/is one of the greatest heroes in my life, and I was absolutely DISTRAUGHT when he died last year. (And, shit, I am genuinely getting choked up just typing this.) This book is kind of exactly what the title suggests: a way of approaching the crises of our planet (ecological, political, systemic, personal) from a Buddhist perspective but also from a largely non-denominational place of deeply human spirituality and compassion. It made me cry at least three or four times, and the minute I finished it I threatened to buy a copy for every person I know to make them read it (if I’d had the funds, I really probably would have).
Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens: I have a soft-spot for self-improvement books, but more specifically I really love self-improvement books about living an authentic and creative life. For instance, I also liked Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (though I do find Gilbert a little too woo-woo and mystical hand-wavy at times). This book by Beth Pickens is about living life as an artist — and she defines “artist” very broadly — and offers real concrete advice on how to live that life to the best of your ability and with the most fulfillment you can manage, whether you are a full-time professional artist or someone trying to eke out a practice around a day job and family and other responsibilities. I found it incredibly insightful, down-to-earth, actionable, and really inspiring.
The Dragon Behind the Glass by Emily Voigt: I really love nonfiction books about history or science, and this one is kind of both. I picked it up on a whim and found it absolutely fascinating. It’s about the exotic fish trade, of all things! Specifically about a rare exotic fish called an arawona, which is allegedly the most expensive kind of collector/live fish in the world (most expensive fish of any kind in the world are, I think, some of the giant tuna caught/killed in Asia and sold by auction to high-end restaurants for sometimes millions of dollars). This book, and the exotic fish trade, includes: trips into the deepest barely-explored jungles of Asia and South America, run-ins with the black market and the mob, and devolves into fraud, betrayal, and even murder. It’s absolutely shocking and enormously fascinating!
1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar by Eric Burns: I think I’ve mentioned before I am a bit obsessed with the 1920s Jazz Age era? So I assume no one is surprised that I picked up this book. It is pretty much exactly what it says it is: its a history book that focused on JUST the single year of 1920, and makes an argument that the events of that single year was the catalyst and predictor for everything that came after it. One of the major events the book focuses on is the 1920 Wall Street bombing, which remained the most destructive incident of domestic terrorism until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. (I found that section SO interesting that the Wall Street bombing eventually became the instigating event for the plot in my 1920s historical fiction work-in-progress). The whole book was really enlightening and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in American history.
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier: the subtitle for this book is “The triumphant, turbulent stories behind how video games are made.” It’s a really well-researched account written by a games journalist about the game industry, using an enormous amount of first-persons accounts and interviews. Each chapter focuses on the story of a different game, including (but not limited to) Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Stardew Valley. I’m not even a big gamer (just a dabbler), so I’m not 100% sure why I decided to pick this one to begin with, but I’m so glad I did! It was so cool to learn about how these games are developed and the kind of crazy sheningans that happen behind the scenes. (The dude who made Stardew Valley continues to blow my mind.) It’s also really fun now to watch the comedy tv show Mythic Quest on Apple+ and constantly go “that’s not how that works! That’s not how any of that works!” Lol…
So, that’s my list, for whatever it’s worth. I’d love to hear what books you read and loved this year! Please feel free to share in the comments!
Amanda Haimoto Rudd 