This Planet Has a Moon Problem (original) (raw)

The way things worked out, I ended up finishing several books around the same time, so here’s a series of reviews.

It Waits in the Forest, by Sarah Dass – It’s another Rick Riordan Presents book, although I think its almost-eighteen protagonist, Selina DaSilva, is a little older than most. She lives on the Caribbean island of St. Virgil, and a mysterious attack resulted in her dad dying and her mother going into a coma. Despite not believing in magic, she does psychic readings with her friend in order to earn money, and one of their clients is later suspected of being a serial killer. Her ex-boyfriend has also recently returned to the island, and while she’s started dating her friend’s brother, the exes find themselves investigating the murders together. There are a lot of complicated relationships at work on this small island. The mythological element comes in with a Buck, a tiny magical creature from Caribbean folklore that will grant wealth and power to anyone who captures it in exchange for food and shelter. It also turns out that some people Selina thinks she knew were involved in the murders, and other shady acts as well.

Six Crystal Princesses, by Piers Anthony – Queen Ida’s two children, Ion, who collects elixirs (which don’t affect him), and Hilda, who can sew magical items, decide to save the other women who had been trapped along with their mother in a dragon’s cave. They travel along with their significant others, Vinia, the protagonist of the novel, and Bennie, a cross between human and goat. They also seek to find partners for the imprisoned women, because that’s what happens in Xanth books. As things develop, they also join forces with all sorts of beings to form a matriarchal country called Thanx, and then to save it from an insidious virus that makes women subservient to men. As usual, it’s pretty shallow, but also enjoyably whimsical. There’s even a repeat appearance by an obscure character from the past, the demon professor who taught the Good Magician Humfrey.

Tidal Creatures, by Seanan McGuire – The third book in the Alchemical Journeys series focuses on personifications of the Moon, of which there are many representing the deities of various cultures, including the Greek Artemis, Roman Diana, Chinese Chang’e, the Japanese Tsukuyomi, and the Norse Mani. There’s also Kelpie, who was created by the villainous, god-like alchemists of the world to be a representation of Artemis’ hind. She has hooves and a tail, although most people don’t see them. Roger and Dodger have a somewhat larger part here than in the last book, and it also appears that Smita doesn’t bear any particular grudge toward Erin for killing her in a previous temporal reset. While I like the world created here, where people sometimes come to represent natural forces, it felt like there wasn’t that much plot going on in this one, mostly just something about how one of the lunar personifications wants to sell out to the alchemists. It keeps with the backstory that the Oz books were written as a counterpoint to the alchemist Asphodel Deborah Baker’s Up-and-Under, and mentions that the Emerald City couldn’t serve as a symbol the way the Impossible City could because L. Frank Baum spends too much time there.

The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham – I thought of this because I know it was referenced in several of McGuire’s books, sort of like Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market. Roger and Dodger’s last names are Middleton and Cheswich, the term “cuckoos” refers to supernatural creatures in two of her series (lab-created people in Alchemical Journeys, telepathic extraterrestrial insects with the outer forms of humans in InCryptid), and the Johrlac character Sarah has the last name Zellaby. It’s a horror story about a small English town where everyone was unconscious for a while, then many women ended up pregnant with strange babies with incredible intelligence and the power to control humans. They have hive minds, one each for the boys and girls. When they get old enough, the townspeople try to negotiate with them, but come to an impasse. It kind of reminded me of The War of the Worlds in that more of it was people discussing the invaders in a surprisingly matter-of-fact way, rather than the threatening beings actually showing up and doing anything. As an American, I think there’s something very English about that style of writing. The book has been adapted into movies and television a few times, including the 1995 John Carpenter film Village of the Damned.

Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson – A hacker who goes by Alif, the first letter in the Arabic alphabet, lives in an unidentified Middle Eastern country with a totalitarian government. When he tries to make a program to block all online traces of a woman he was in love with, he attracts the attention of a prince nicknamed The Hand, and goes on the run with his neighbor, later making a few more allies. They go into hiding in a city of jinn, and Alif tries to figure out how to apply a jinn-written book, the counterpart to the human Arabian Nights, to computer programming. It incorporates a lot of different themes in a clever fashion, tying in Arabian mythology and religion with modern technology and elements of revolution in the modern Middle East.

Pirates of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs – The author was clearly trying to create a shared universe for his books, as there are references to Tarzan and Pellucidar right at the beginning. A man named Carson Napier attempts to fly to Mars in a homemade spaceship, but ends up on Venus instead, which of course is also inhabited because otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a story. There was a general idea at the time that Venus, covered as it is in thick clouds, could be a lush world with a lot of ocean, and that’s the idea Burroughs uses here. As Mars is called Barsoom by its inhabitants, the natives of Venus call it Amtor.

Carson meets with the Vepaja, a people who live in trees and have developed an elixir to prevent aging. And this being a Burroughs book, he quickly learns their language and develops a relationship with a princess. There’s a pretty obvious critique of communism in the story with the Thorists, a revolutionary group whose leaders promised equality, but instead turned out to be lazy and selfish. As per the title, Carson later joins a band of pirates. Burroughs’ strength tends to lie in creating strange beings and cultures, and here he comes up with a lot that he doesn’t fully utilize. That said, he did write four other books in the series.