Find Myself a City to Live In (original) (raw)

More books, and more spoilers. Proceed with caution.

The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker – The sequel to The Golem and the Jinni brings back its titular characters, their experiences in early twentieth-century New York, and their relationship with each other. The two of them separate, and Chava gets a job teaching cooking classes at an orphanage, while Ahmad isolates himself to work on a project. There’s also another golem and another jinni (or, more specifically, a female jinniyeh), the former of whom, Yossele, was built by an orphan girl’s rabbi father. The latter, Dima, is interested in Ahmad, and meets a Park Avenue heiress in the Middle East who leads her to him. Several actual events, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the beginning of World War I, are touched upon in the story. It’s very detailed, both in terms of the characters and the world they inhabit.

The City & the City, by China Mieville – I’ve read a few of Mieville’s books before, but they were all ones set in a fantasy world. This one takes place in eastern Europe, in the overlapping fictional cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma. It’s set up as a police procedural, with Inspector Tyador Borlu investigating the murder of an American archaeology student. That’s the more normal part of the story. The weird concept here is that Beszel and Ul Qoma are basically the same place, but the inhabitants are forced to pretend they aren’t, with one particular building being the only legal way to cross from one to the other. They have different cultures and languages. A sort of secret police called Breach, with jurisdiction in both cities, enforces this arrangement, with serious consequences for anyone who interacts with the wrong city. And there’s a conspiracy theory among archaeologists that there’s actually a THIRD city that has control over both of the other two. As you might guess, it’s confusing to follow, but still pretty engaging. I understand there’s a television series based on the book, which might be interesting to see, as the premise made it incredibly difficult to picture the setting in my mind.

Masquerade in Oz, by Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry – This is a reread of something I first read what must have been almost thirty years ago, back when Books of Wonder released original Oz books. I thought it appropriate both because I’ve been rereading some Oz books, and because it’s related to Halloween. It’s not even remotely a horror story, but it involves a Halloween party, and there is a skeleton who can reassemble himself. It turns out that Betsy Bobbin’s birthday is on Halloween, and she suggests a costume party where everyone dresses up as someone else. Scraps, who refuses to dress up, takes a firework from the Wizard of Oz without asking, hoping it will impress the guests. It turns out to make everybody think they’re the people as whom they’re dressed. I remember something similar happening in a Darkwing Duck episode, and on a Simpsons Halloween bit, although that latter was well after this book came out. The action is limited to the palace, with Scraps exploring the place to try to find a cure, ending up in previously unseen rooms. She runs into some strange characters and a lot of puns, like literal dust bunnies, bats in the belfry, and a skeleton in the closet with a cat in a bag.

Some other oddities include a laundry staff with mechanical parts and a laughing hyena who lives in the Wizard’s tower. I did think it was a little disturbing that bookworms were actively devouring the palace library, even if the books are restored every night. It probably would have made more sense if they’d been limited to the ones that had been weeded. Anyway, it’s pretty fun.
By the way, if Betsy’s birthday is on Halloween, then since The Hungry Tiger of Oz also starts on that day, then Reddy took back the throne of Rash on Guy Fawkes Day.

Androne, by Dwain Worrell – I believe this was a giveaway from Amazon Prime. It’s a pretty weird story, about a military pilot of an android in a post-apocalyptic world in a war with an unknown enemy. He eventually learns that they’re at war with the future, which is an interesting concept, but I had trouble following the plot.