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Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Inkyard Press, 2021

ISBN-13: ‎978-1335402509

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy;   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

Wow. Polydoros set out to write a work of historical fantasy about Jews and Judaism not set during the Holocaust, and was inspired by an article about H.H. Holmes to set his story among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

 

Alter, the main character, was ill as a baby and named to avoid the notice of the Angel of Death, but people around him frequently die. Alter is also gay, but in denial and ashamed. He is in love with his roommate Yakov, who leaves to meet someone and is found drowned the next day, the most recent of several Jewish boys who are dead or missing.

 

Alter, a member of the burial society, is helping immerse Yakov in the mikveh when he thinks he sees Yakov move, and jumps in the mikveh to pull the body out. Instead, he is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk (a dybbuk is a malicious spirit, usually the dislocated soul of a dead person with unfinished business). Alter’s only choices to save his own soul are either0 to exorcise the dybbuk or to find Yakov’s killer and exact revenge. Luckily, he has the help of Raizel, a unionist working for an anarchist newspaper (the local matchmaker keeps trying to hook them up), and Frankie, an ambitious Russian Jewish teenage criminal and boxer who heads a gang of thieves.

 

This is such a layered, detailed story, both in the integration of the various aspects of Jewish culture and the Eastern European immigrant experience, and the vividness of the Chicago and World’s Fair setting. In addition, it really reveals the viciousness of antisemitism in this country and how it also traveled from overseas. I think people don’t really think about how insidious and common it was. It’s truly a Jewish horror story, and there aren’t too many of those around. I’m so impressed with the research and writing on some very difficult-to-address topics.

 

The City Beautiful won the 2022 Sydney Taylor Award and was a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the 2021 National Jewish Book Award, and the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Toung Adult Novels. The attention is well-deserved.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on August 29, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: In the Lair of Legends by David Buzan

In The Lair of Legends by David Buzan

Black Rose Writing, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-68513-250-7 (Paperback), 978-1-68513-331-3 (Hardcover)

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

In The Lair of Legends by David Buzan is a well-written, exciting tale that combines action, myth and history.

 

Jolon Winterhawk is a Nez Perce warrior who was one of thousands of Native Americans who fought for the Union and Confederacy in the Civil War. Ten years later Lieutenant Winterhawk has one last assignment for the Union before returning to his wife and daughter. He is accompanying a large shipment of confiscated gold ore to an Army post in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. The train carrying the ore is ambushed by a vengeful, renegade Mexican general. The raid sets off a chain of clashes between Winterhawk, the general, corrupt Union officers, lumberjacks and the Native people’s legendary Nu’numic (Ancient Ones, Sasquatch, Bigfoot).

 

The plot is fast-paced. Almost very chapter brings new, deadly clashes. The author describes the fights in stop-action detail and with abundant gore. However, the author presents the action with interesting and important pieces of history. The role of Native Americans in the Civil War, their plight after the War and the role of railroads in the West put the story in perspective. The author has done a lot of additional research. His detailed descriptions of weapons, ballooning and logging add verisimilitude to his novel.

 

Young adult and adult readers should enjoy the novel’s action and learning about history at the same time.

 

Highly recommended for young adults and adults

 

Contains: gore, mild profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

Posted on August 2, 2023 by , 1 comment

Book Review: Hell’s Gulf by Nick Carlson

 

Hell’s Gulf by Nick Carlson

Temple Dark Publications, 2022

ISBN: 9781739749200

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com 

 

If you’re going to vacation on the Florida Coast at a place called Hell’s Gulf, you probably should expect weirdness, and that’s exactly what the reader gets.  Latrine lizards that bite people’s bottoms, deranged murder dolphins, intelligent sand crabs… the gang’s all here.  Throw in a couple demons/gods from Caribbean and Irish folklore, plus a pool that functions as a sort of portal, and you have the ultimate inspirational place for young aspiring writer Rowan Vane.  As he soon finds, inspiration can be deadly.

 

The story hums along as Rowan’s family settles on the Gulf for a week-long vacation, because it is all they can afford.  Naturally, the locals are eclectic, and distrustful of outsiders, hiding the secrets of the town’s sordid past, secrets that continue to plague them in the present day. 

 

This isn’t a new plotline by any stretch, but it still works, as Carlson has written in an entertaining fashion. The combination of strange creatures and  colorful locals is enough of an infusion into a familiar plot to keep the reader’s interest, even if the story can be predictable at times. 

 

The part of the book that really shines the brightest is the supporting cast.  Rowan, as a protagonist,  isn’t particularly inspiring or interesting, but the other characters lend more than enough support to make up for him.  The Clermont family, consisting of an old Caribbean hoodoo woman and her two obnoxious twentysomething sons, are the best part of the book and are the most believable: they truly convey the feeling of a small, backwards, swampy town.  Other locals, such as Large Marge, also lend a hand. This is one of those books where the true stars are the setting and the people that dwell there: the stage itself is the true star of the play.    

 

Bottom line: this is a fun read, nothinlg breathtaking, but still enjoyable.  It will be interesting to see if the author revisits Hell’s Gulf and writes a story focusing strictly on the town and its denizens.  Based on this book, they would have plenty to support a story all of their own.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on August 1, 2023 by , Reply
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