American Elsewhere - Robert Jackson Bennett

I've been reading this for a little over two years, since life got in the way. And it's beautifully written and bloody. And sometimes it dragged for me, and sometimes parts of it felt a little flabby around the middle. But a lot of the time it was eerie and bloody and thoughtful. A lot of the time it poked holes in things, and made you feel even when what it wanted you to feel was off-kilter, differently experienced.

And the last 20% is absolutely searing and very well done; it blends saying interesting things with doing that with interesting people, in, well, interesting ways. There's something there, behind the eyes of the story, and maybe it's hope.


American Elsewhere is set in the town of Wink, a small, normal place at the bottom of a mesa, with a shuttered government facility at the top. But in the town of Wink, normal is never quite what it seems, and in fact is typically frequently far, far less. Wink is a town of compromises, of quiet arrangements and, possibly, faustian bargains. 

The normality of Wink is a veneer, a glaze that sits across the surface of the American suburban experience. That sense that something is off kilter, skittering just outside the corner of your eyes, that looking around a little too quickly is unwise. That there are not only untold stories, but stories best left untold - that's Wink. An eerie, ominous place that also fits into the space for perfection. It embodies the suburban dream, but in the way that shows the hollowness, the artifice. It works as a critique of the American Dream, but it also works on its own terms, as a slow roll of tense horror. An environment that papers over the cracks of life with promises and little, quiet words. And somewhere, in the edges of things, it's all starting to crack, to fall away.

And into that world falls Mona Bright. Law enforcement experience. Physically competent, sharp as a tack, and a mind swirliong around the worst edges of itself. Mona is coming into town to inherit a house, to try and answer a few questions about herself. Mona is in a liminal space, between worlds, between roles, holding close old tragedies and quiet moments. I think one of the small joys of Mona is being swept uo in her internal story, in the morass of feelings that make her who she is, in those moments between clarity, despair and joy. She's a hero, and also a person, a person doing their best under circumstances that don't entirely make sense any longer. 

And the rest of Wink. Oh my.  They're all simple people, quiet people. People who do simple things. Work on their cars. Throw parties. Meet their neighbours. But some of those people are living lives of extremely quiet desparation. And some of them are, possibly, living very different lives indeed. There's a...tension, at the heart of Wink. A lie, with people living it by choice, one way or another. Security, a price for sielnce, a price for living life as a dream, or in a dream. These are people, or people shaped, anyway.  They're eeerie and disqueiting these people, much like Wink itself, something rippling beneath the still surface waters.

I'm glad I finally finished this one; it's horrifying and strange in equal measure, and though I can't touch on the story for fear of spoilers, I'll say that you can feel its echoes in the days after you're done reading. This is silent, chilling horror, and a good read, too.

The Quarrygate Gambit - Marshall Ryan Maresca

I'm back, hand-selling the Maradaine Saga again. This sprawling epic is like the MCU of fantasy. Multiple different characters, all in the same setting, crossing paths, causing problems, solving problems, and occasionally uniting to take down the greater evils. There's a subseries for everyone - tales of vigilante justice, murder mysteries, heists. This is a story focused on the latter, via the Rynax brothers, Asti and Verci. Well, and this time, in The Quarrygate Gambit, with more than a little help from the women in their lives.

Because oh boy, have Asti and Verci got themselves into trouble. They've been packed off to Quarrygate, a prison that makes it a coin flip whether you'll ever see the outside again. And to add insult to injury, it wasn't even their own actions that got them there. Now they need to try and break out of maximum security, and find out whoi put them there and why - and then express some robust opinions on that topic. In parallel, Verci's wife, Raych, is putting together an unlikely band to figure out what happened to Verci, and perform a heist to pay for the help they need to pull him out of Quarrygate - if his own escape doesn't happen first. 

That sounds like a lot, and you know what, it is. This is a book which isn't afraid to hit the ground at pace. The characters are moving fast enough that they don't often have time to catch their breath. The audience, likewise, is pulled along in their wake, "just one more page" turning into the wee hours of the morning. I want to take a moment to shout out the really tight story, which flips between viewpoints fluidly, and doesn't waste time on ten words where one will do. It pulls you in with some wonderfully crafted hooks, then won't let go; everything is connected, and details feed back into the larger story in a way that rewards close attention. 

And the world, oh the world remains as meticulously planned and lavishly described as ever. Quarrygate is a hell, level on level on level of hard doors and harder men. Criminals of all stripes recidivists, alchemists, rogue mages, con-men, the occasional political. They're here, in between walls designed ot stop them causing any more trouble. The guards, with hard stares and brutally efficient security measures, are as much people as their charges. But the prison, the prison has a soul all its own, one built on years of screams in the dark, pleas of innocence and guilt, an institution grown uncaring in its lack of grace. It feels, not to put too fine a point on it, like a prison, like a place where you definitely don't want to end up. And in its institutional craftings, in its injustices unthinking, in its lights out times and checkpoints and deeper, quieter, deadlier sub-levels there's an echo of our own lives, too. In the way the institution eats people and disgorges them when it pleases, yes, that too. We can see an echo in ourselves. It's a wonderful bit of world-building. 

It's shared by the wonderfully lavish art gallery and shopping areas that Raych and her team visit for their heist. Where Quarrygate is bare stone, these are ornate draperies and statuettes. Brutal guards are replaced with obsequious but hard-eyed security. Cell doors with drop-bars and alarms , prisoners with patrons. There's a fascinating duality here, that suggests these are two sides to the same coin, the sharper shards of prison life peeking through the velvet ropes. The cost bourne to let artists and artistes live uncomplicated lives. But anyway. These rich towers and their inhabitants are just as much institutions as Quarrygate, but with a shinier coat of paint; and the glitz and the glam dazzles evcn as it doesn't distract from the riches within. 

We've talked about the Rynax brothers at length before, and what I've said there holds true again. They're smart, hard men, trying to put things behind them, put damage and risk behind them and live normal lives. But trouble just keeps on finding them. Watching them fight their pasts and their demons to win through remains a joy; but the unexpected star of the book is Raych, who takes the centre stage this time, not just a Rynax supporting spouse, but the mastermind behind a heist, put together with clockwork precision and a cool skill and ruthlessness her husband might envy. Raych fights out of love, and with that, all things are possible. Seeing her take steps to do what she feels must be done, finding things inside herself that she hasn't needed before, resources and talents dug up anew, it's a genuinely joyful experience. These are people, not players on a stage, their flawed humanity brought to bear to mirror our own.

Which is to say, it's a bloody good book. Greta characterisation. Great world-building. And prison breaks and heists and sword fights and espionage and double crosses and triple crosses and skulduggery and magic and, you know, general chaos. All that good stuff. Any Maradaine fan owes it to themselves to read this one, and if you're not a Maradaine fan, you should be.