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Book Review: Only Ashes Remain (Market of Monsters #2) by Rebecca Schaeffer


Only Ashes Remain by Rebecca Schaeffer

HMH Books for Young Readers, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1328863553

Available: Hardcover,  Kindle edition, audio CD

 

Only Ashes Remain is the follow-up to Not Even Bones (previously reviewed here). At the beginning of this book, Nita and Kovit have escaped from the Death Market, leaving chaos and over a hundred deaths in their wake. Kovit, a former mob torturer, goes on the run, and Nita turns herself over to INHUP, the international organization charged with policing “unnaturals” and eliminating the dangerous ones. Shortly thereafter, she discovers that the boy she freed from her mother,Fabricio, who betrayed her to the Death Market, is also the son of someone high up in a mob family, and is on the run from them as well. In the first of many incidents in the book, Nita has to make decisions about whether vengeance, and death for those who threaten her, is worth the price. Taking advantage of INHUP’s willingness to take her to her closest relatives, she decides to contact her mother in Toronto, who saves her from a police investigation. Nita is unwilling to go back to the role her mother wants her to play in hunting and killing unnaturals, and leaves her, connecting with Kovit once again. Video of Nita with her ability to heal has been shared on the Internet, and her anonymity has been compromised, leaving her in constant danger from bounty hunters. Nita has some desperate choices to make, and feelings that she must come to terms with, about herself, Kovit, and who she can trust.

Many of the characters here tread questionable moral ground. Where previously Nita was a complicit but passive participant in the murders her mother committed, then a desperate victim of a black market dealer willing to do terrible things to escape and survive, now she has agency. And, as might be expected from a traumatized teenager raised in a home where murder is the norm, her impulsivity causes some serious problems, and her judgment is really, really poor.  Crossing her line of when it’s acceptable to kill becomes easier and easier for her, so much so that even Kovit warns her about what she is becoming– and Kovit never lets go of the knowledge that he is truly a monster. Nita, while she can’t witness Kovit’s enjoyment in torturing others without fear and disgust, also can’t break the connection she has with him. Only Ashes Remain is still gory and graphic in places, but in terms of torture, dissection, and body horror, much more is implied than shown (that doesn’t mean it isn’t shown at all, but it wasn’t quite as hard for me to handle).

Although Kovit’s background is considerably fleshed out, we’re already pretty clear on what kind of relationship he has now with Nita. Nita is a less sympathetic character, probably because she is claiming her agency in some pretty murderous ways and keeps doing exactly the wrong thing after being told not to do it. Still, the plot races along, characters new and old add some interesting flavor, with a few loose ends possibly showing up again in the third book. We’re left wondering what’s reallly going on at INHUP, how Fabricio and his family play into the story, if the mob will catch up with Kovit, what role Nita’s mother plays in all of this, and how Nita and Kovit’s story will end. Despite the fact that Kovit is a monster who feeds off people’s pain and Nita is now responsible for multiple murders, Schaeffer has been a virtuoso in drawing them as characters that the reader still wants to make it.

There’s a lot of moral gray area to navigate in this book, as well as the gore, murder, and torture, so, again, it will take a special kind of reader to appreciate it.  For those readers, though, Only Ashes Remain is a solid sequel to the first book in the series. Highly recommended.

 

 

Posted on October 15, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Grave Digger by Rebecca Bischoff

The Grave Digger  by Rebecca Bischoff

Amberjack Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1948705523

Available: Pre-order, hardcover and Kindle edition

 

It’s 1875 in Circleville, Ohio. Captain Cooper’s mother is ill,  and the doctor has to be paid. Although Cap is not yet thirteen, his father has decided it’s time for him to join him and his partner Lum as a “resurrectionist”, a person who digs up dead bodies in order to sell them to medical schools for dissection. The plan is to dig up the bodies of those who won’t be missed (mostly “colored” people), but the dead don’t appear to be staying dead. Cap’s classmate Jessamyn comes back to life after he touches her, and the next body wakes up while they are actually digging. The secret activities of the grave diggers are out, and they have to cover them up and find other ways to acquire the bodies. Cap is spooked, but his mother’s medical bills still have to be paid, and his father insists this is the only way they can raise the money. Beyond acquiring the bodies, Cap realizes that there is a larger conspiracy at work, involving not just unsavory characters, but also some of the most respected individuals in town. While the newspaper stirs up the town, it is mainly the “colored” people who are affected, and their demands for a cemetery guard are left unanswered. We can all be grateful that this is a middle-grade novel and that, while a book about grave robbing, burying people alive, and human dissection will obviously have some disturbing moments, it doesn’t get gratuitously gruesome.

Racism in Circleville’s general population doesn’t rear its head in overtly violent ways, but in white people’s daily choices and conversations, like the Coopers’ housekeeper’s resentment of and unwillingness to interact with Jardine, an African-American woman who is a friend and hear of Cap’s mother, comments about “those people”, and the choice to zero in on body-snatching the African-Americans in the cemetery.  It intersects with sexism as well, with Jessamyn’s mother feeling that the only choice she has to support her child is sex work (it’s referred to indirectly), and Jardine’s daughter Delphia, after telling Cap of her ambition to be a doctor, bracing herself for the expected comment “but you’re a colored girl!” and laughing when he says “but you’re a girl!” instead (either way, in 1875, ten years after the Civil War ended, she’d be unlikely to get into medical school, but the book treats it like it’s a real possibility– props to Bischoff for that).  It is noticeable (and relevant to the present day) that there are so few consequences for anyone who participated in the grave-robbing scheme and lived to tell about it.  That’s probably realistic, and in a middle-grade novel you want things to turn out for the protagonist, but I think this ending requires a conversation. There is a myth in the Midwest that because the Underground Railroad had a strong presence that there must not have been other race-baced issues (I can’t tell you about Ohio specifically, but it’s definitely the case in Indiana), and this book exposes that.

There are a lot of schools that can’t officially celebrate Halloween (my district doesn’t allow it) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to celebrate the season. The Grave Digger is a great historical fiction choice with a macabre touch to promote to the right elementary and middle-schoolers at this time of year.  Highly recommended.

Posted on October 4, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Graywolf Press, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1555977887

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Carmen Maria Machado centers women, and especially their bodies, in this genre-bending collection of stories. Her story “The Husband Stitch”, which appears in this book, has been generating buzz (and admiration) for years. Now that I’ve read it, I can say that it deserves the attention. Framed around the urban legend “The Green Velvet Ribbon”, anyone who knows that story will predict the ending, but, narrated by the woman in the story, there is so much more inside. “Inventory” starts out as a list of one woman’s sexual experiences, but against a background story of a spreading pandemic, it starts to take on a feeling of dread and inevitability.  “Mothers” is a hallucinatory story with an unreliable narrator that involves a fragmented relationship between two women that may also involve a baby. “Especially Heinous” recounts surreal, fictional summaries of episodes from 12 seasons of Law and Order: SVU. This particular story, even with supernatural elements, doppelgangers, and interpersonal drama, was far too long. I feel like in “Mothers” and “Especially Heinous”, Machado was experimenting with style, and maybe this worked for some readers, but not for me. “Difficult at Parties”  about the effects of trauma and rape on the body, mind and intimate relationships, is very different from the other stories, which have a slightly surreal or fantastic feel to them. Other stories include “The Resident”, “Eight Bites”(this gets into eating disorders), and “Real Women Have Bodies”.

One thing I really loved about this book was the way Machado writes about sex. Her characters aren’t passive. They enjoy sex, sometimes paired with love and sometimes casual, both with men and women. It’s so refreshing to find this! She does a skillful and fluid job of describing sex and passion. Her writing is unapologetically feminist and queer, but her way with words is lyrical and it all flows into the story. I kind of want her to write about the early days of Mary Shelley’s love affair with Percy Shelley after reading this!

Her Body and Other Stories is an uneven collection: it has a few outstanding stories, a couple of reasonably good ones, and some I don’t feel the need to revisit. Machado does a good job at creating a sense of the uneasiness and dread that come from, and are felt by, women’s bodies, and it’s a collection well worth visiting. I’m adding “The Husband Stitch” to my list of “favorite short stories”, and this is the perfect time of year to read it. Recommended.

 

Contains: sex, violence, descriptions of pornography, references to rape, domestic violence, eating disorders

Posted on September 6, 2019 by , Reply
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