Two Book Reviews in One Sitting: A Terry Pratchett classic and a solid introduction to the work of Tessa Hastjarjanto

Book Review #1 — Eric by Terry Pratchett

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HarperCollins

Eric, by Terry Pratchett, is an interesting entry into the Discworld series because the title character is more of a catalyst than he is the protagonist of this story. The protagonist is the ever bumbling wizard Rincewind, who is never really sure where he is, why, or what he’s supposed to do about it. Which is admirable in the sense that his adventures are fueled by pure panic, and yet laced with a manner of knowing there’s nothing he can do except run and hope for the best. He’s not the wise Hermit in a deck of Tarot cards, he’s the Fool, always tempting DEATH who wracks his skull because Rincewind is in his periphery, and always okay because of his tenacious and menacing protector, a rabid piece of luggage with legs.

If you’ve never read a book out of the Discworld series, and that summary above leaves you puzzled, well…welcome to Terry Pratchett’s crazy imagination.

Eric is a young teen who has decided to practice a little bit of demonology to get the things he wants: beautiful women, a kingly status and everlasting life. He says a few magic words after cobbling together a devil’s trap, and voila! Rincewind appears scratching his head. Because he’s not a demon, last time he checked. He does have a half assed ability to travel through time, though, and that will have to do. But with every wish comes consequences, and the folly of human nature throughout the ages is the general consequence that Rincewind and Eric have to run from every time.

The Discworld mirrors our own history in that it has an Aztec like society, and a Ulysses type hero, so be prepared to recognize some nods to ancient world history with new names. All in all, this is a light, fast read with maybe a moral about being careful what you wish for. Mostly, though, it’s just fun.

You can find the entire collection of Discworld books here at Terry Pratchett’s website. 

Book Review #2 — A Dress to Kill For by Tessa Hastjarjanto

Cover Image from
Author website

A Dress to Kill For, written by Tessa Hastjarjanto, may be short, but it's an extremely well told little horror story about the lengths the society folk will go through to keep their fingernails clutched around their status. A touch gothic, a touch eldritch or folk horror, this short piece is well paced and well worth the read. Find more of her work here at her personal website. https://tessa.narratess.com/

Reluctant Killer by Lisa R. Perron — A thriller with a touch of heart

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I bought this book at the Los Angeles Festival of Books a few years back, and thought it would be a good quick read to finish my month and to reduce the height of my TBR book tower. It’s a crime thriller, not necessarily my go to genre, but crime thrillers can be thrilling reads once in a while, hence the reason for the genre.

This might be Perron’s first stab at thriller writing. Her repertoire is small, and the story is standard, about a woman who is awakened by her husband in the middle of a home invasion, then learns that her husband is not the man she thought him to be. In fact, his past is shady, and the night ends with her shooting a stranger dead and with him disappearing on the run.

If this is an intriguing setup, this might be the story for you. Told in first person, present tense, we follow Katherine as she investigates who her husband Jacob once was while she manages how she could have been such a fool to fall in love with him. She also has a rough past of her own that she needs to come to terms with: a pastor father convicted of killing his wife—Kate’s mother—in cold blood. Kate never forgave her father for his sins at the beginning of the story and now, because she has to kill a man for her own safety due to her husband’s past, Kate struggles with the fact that she herself is capable of murder.

Perron’s writing style is essentially stripped down. No overly flowery prose, which makes for a good clean read. We feel Kate’s dilemma and sympathize with her. She’s not a superwoman. She deals with the trauma of the inciting event in a real, human way, and I like this about her character. She struggles with her feelings for a man who has always been kind and loving to her, and with the revelation of the heinous things he is proven to be capable of. It puts her in danger and forces her to have to fend for herself.

While the book is generally well written, there are just enough grammatical mistakes to betray an inexperienced editor—or maybe an over-reliance on basic editing software. There are passages where the narrative lapses from third person present tense to third person past tense, and it’s noticeable. I try to overlook these kinds of occasional errors because it happens, but if it happens enough to pull me out of the story, I feel the need to make note. 

Otherwise, though, Reluctant Killer is a good beach read for the general thriller fan.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett -- as relevant today as it was over 25 years ago

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courtesy of

Harper Collins Publishers 

Can you hone currently relevant wisdom from a silly little novel about dragons and impotent guards set in a medieval fantasy world and written nearly thirty years ago? Why yes. Yes you can. Take, for example, this passage from Terry Pratchett's arguably most popular DiscWorld novel Guards! Guards!

Excerpt from Guards! Guards!

 by Terry Pratchett

1989 

I try not to get too political when I write reviews, but this passage struck me as ironic while reading this in 2026 during the Trumpocolypse -- and writing about it on the day of the dude's birthday, no less (and no, I will not be watching the 250th anniversary UFC fight on the White House stage/lawn. I've seen the movie Idiocracy, and I don't need to see it play out in real life, thank you very much). The arts, it seems, is full of prophets.

Guards! Guards! is the 8th book in the long ago popular DiscWorld series. I have been told that you don't need to read the series in order, but I'm an orderly philistine who likes to approach things with some linear semblance (This also applies to Star Wars. A New Hope will always be the first to me). They're right. You probably don't need to read books 1-7 first, but side characters and world building from some of the previous novels might make the read more of a pleasure. It prepares you for the appearance of DEATH and the Librarian, after all. So let's summarize for the potential new generation of readers who (gasp!) might not be at all familiar with Pratchett and his work.

The story takes place in the cesspool of a big city called Ankh-Morpork, where crime runs legally rampant due to various shady guilds who control everything due to shady government deals, and where the understaffed policing department, The Watch led by Captain Vimes, serves its community best by turning a blind eye and staying out of harm's way. There is no "king" here; there is a government appointed Patrician named Vetinari, who is hardly a saint as far as government leaders go. But it's better than a king, right?

Well, some citizens of Ankh-Morpork disagree. A cult-like cabal sets out to change things by summoning a dragon with a restricted access book stolen from the city's magical library. If they summon the dragon, they can rely on some fool with a magic sword to come slay it and, by default, that brave young knight with heretofore unknown royal lineage, is crowned king. That's the plan. And, for some reason, it works.

Until it doesn't. Until the summoned dragon gets his own ideas and decides that it could just as well be king too. This is literally a play with fire and get burned scenario. Captain Vimes and his mismatched crew of watchmen (including too old to be working Nobby, out-of-shape Colon, and by-the-book dwarf Carrot--who is way too tall to be a dwarf and named Carrot because of his top heavy build, not his hair color) embark on a quest to save the city from its own lack of courage. They engage the help of Lady Ramkin, a socialite with a keen interest and knowledge of the lesser swamp dragons whom she cares for and raises like pets.

It sounds a bit like a circus, much like our current state of affairs on this day in America with this current administration (do not --at-- me with your opinions. This book is nearing 30 years old!). But the outrageous fantasy element makes it fun and absurd and, by default, maybe easier to manage. What it tells me is that, from the perspective of Terry Pratchett, we've been through this before. And it's more than likely that we'll make it through to the end. Even if the odds are a million to one. Coincidentally, a quote from both Star Wars and Guards! Guards!
 

If you haven't read it yet, why not? Get on it! Find it here, or at your library, or wherever books are sold. 

RedShirts by John Scalzi —

 

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Courtesy of 
Tor Books

I’m still not sure if the title is one word or two, and I just looked it up… I’m sticking with one, though, and I apologize to Mr. Scalzi if I’ve offended. But I don’t get the impression that the author John Scalzi is easily offended, and there’s a slightly off topic reason for that. He’s a screenwriter.

Let me explain. Screenwriters, even the established ones, quickly come to terms with being dismissed or disrespected by the industry that they are essential to. Still, they continue to write. Hence, the thick skin. But why was I suspicious that a screenwriter was at the wheel?

This is my first read from Scalzi, and I have screenwriter roots too, and while reading this lighthearted tale about the crew of a ship with eerily recognizable similarities to a scifi series of the past, who stumble upon an equally eerie correlation to said series, my initial thoughts while reading it were, this feels like a novel written by a screenwriter. So I stopped reading long enough to do some digging—to do some flipping through pages to see that parts of the book were indeed written in some semblance of script format (for novels)—and I shouted, Aha! Screenwriter! 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I prefer it sometimes, myself. But what it relies on is pared down descriptions and more dialogue than narrative to carry the story. So maybe, for those readers not familiar with the dos and don’ts of the business, be prepared to struggle with who is who and what they look like. You’ll have a general idea, and it gets easier halfway through, but initially, keeping track of the characters might be a small challenge. (There is one character who is introduced as a yeti, and yes, I got immediate Chewie vibes, but alas, he turned out to just be a hairy man.)

There’s also not a lot of character depth to the crew of the Intrepid, but there’s a reason for that that unfolds at the end of the book, where Scalzi pulls a unique hat trick with three codas. Here, he makes us feel for three specific characters who are barely part of the main narrative until the bitter end. And he makes us feel for them hard.

All in all, it’s a clever premise. And yes, if you’re a fan of any of the Star Trek series offshoots (especially Lower Decks), or any scifi series of the last few decades, of which the show in this narrative is not, you might enjoy this one. At minimum, I think it’s a good introduction to the world of John Scalzi.

Click on the cover image above or HERE for a link to buy at BookShop.org. 

Sing Our Bones Eternal -- A Darkly Poetic Mermaid Folktale

 

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author

Sing Our Bones eternal is a richly drawn fantasy where seafaring Bluebeards hunt mermaids to sacrifice to their god, a magical tree named Kilda who will grant favor for those sacrifices. Senga is the primary character, the daughter of one such hunter, and a hunter herself, although she’s going through a major identity crisis, believing that bewitching may have occurred to transform her from mermaid to human.

Abilene, a mermaid captured by Senga's family for the purpose of sacrifice, spends time with Senga while in captivity, and she is more than willing to convince Senga of the awful truth.

The author has a highly picturesque style of writing. The world these characters inhabit is drawn in splashy poetic—and often horrific detail. There’s no doubt that a lot of heart went into the telling of this story. It's a darkly detailed romantic fantasy that doesn’t shy away from themes of abuse, loss, sacrifice and sexual awakening, dressed in a folkloric world of mermaids and satyrs and werewolves.

But it can sometimes be hard to follow because of the rich style of writing. The story unfolds from multiple points of view that had me pausing to ratchet back, trying to remember who was who and what their connections were to the other characters in the story, and because of it, I often felt a bit disconnected from those characters. But for the right audience—that being dark romantic fantasy—this story is sure to entertain.

This is not the kind of story I normally choose, so take that into consideration when I rate this a four. It’s ultimately not my kind of story, but it’s well written on multiple levels, and I recognize that quality. I want to thank the author for providing this ARC.

Tap the cover image for a Goodreads link.