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What I Finished Reading This Week
Good Omens — Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
As of this reread, the miniseries cast and locations have now completely replaced the characters and locations as I've always imagined them, which I'm a bit saddened about. And some of the original scenes from S1 I like so much the novel seems like it should have them. But there are also plenty of places where I like the original novel's content over the reworked scenes in the series, so I was glad to revisit them here. And really, Pratchett is one of my forever authors. It still seems strange that there isn't a new novel from him every year or so, and it's always a delight to visit his back catalogue.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Sangu Mandanna
Wow, this sure is A Book. I really enjoyed most of it. It is relentlessly wholesome (like, relentlessly wholesome) and as deliberately cottagecore cozy as it's possible to get. And you know what? It totally worked for me. It was the sort of book that I wanted to read at this point in time.
This book is wholesome in the way A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Psalm for the Wild-Built tried and failed to be, largely because the characters in Irregular Witches do their best to treat each other well without spending pages preaching about what they're doing and why, and because they work at being better people themselves instead having others cater to their emotional needs ala Monk and Robot's massive, juvenile wish fulfillment fantasy. It was whimsical and fun and I loved the found family vibe and wanted the best for these characters.
And then I got to page 255 of this 315-page book. And boy howdy, did it take a turn.
In order to truly understand just how much of a turn, you have to know what the book is about. Here is how it presents itself on the back cover:
It's cute. I like the wacky found family. The magic is delightful (Mika keeps an entire greenhouse and koi pond in her car), and again, it's fucking wholesome. No one ever acts out of true malice. No conflict ever arises that isn't solved by a heartfelt apology. No one ever holds a grudge, or fails to accept an apology when it's offered. Even the mortal peril is never mortal because badly injured witches just go into hibernation (indicated by a twee leaf that sprouts out of their throats) until they heal.
TL;DR, the premise and the worldbuilding are not important: they exist to explain why Mika is lonely and the kids are lonely, and to get them all in the same place so they can build a found family together. And I was fine with that because the found family vibes are so fun.
Of course, it's also a romance novel, so Mika and Jamie have to have a Big Misunderstanding temporarily drive them apart for a bit, even after they've established their mutual attraction to one another for 100-odd pages. This comes when Jamie reveals he's been keeping a secret from Mika at the end of a chapter. I assumed it would be something like, My parents were witches who knew your parents, or I was the son of one of your childhood nannies. But wooo nelly, it was not that.
As we learn at the start of the next chapter, which opens with Mika marching into the back garden and exhuming a decomposed corpse and lol WUT.
Like, I cannot possibly begin to convey how much of a jarring Toto-we-are-not-in-motherfucking-Kansas-anymore tonal shift it is to go from the previous 254 pages of dialogue like "Rosetta wants to read books and be part of wholesome bookish fandoms" and exposition like [FLAMING former actor] Ian presented everyone with striped rainbow sweaters he'd knitted himself (and lest they worry that any of them might outshine him, he assured them, he had elevated his own outfit somewhat by adding a Santa hat to his head) to exhuming a decomposed corpse in the back garden.
Which, by the way, belonged to Lillian, the girls' absent archaeologist foster mother, whose death, when she suddenly dropped during a visit, the main characters decided to conceal by burying her in the back garden instead of telling the motherfucking authorities. Because per Lillian's will, her witch sister would become girls' guardian in the event of her death.
Predictably, Mika flounces off to a London townhouse she's secretly always owned, even though she's moved every six months of her adult life because her upbringing under the stern and unloving Primrose has left her too traumatized to put down roots. Predictably, Jamie chases her there on Christmas Eve. Predictably, Mika reflects that Jamie et al. having manipulated her into tutoring the girls in the hopes that she'd come to love them and then agree to impersonate their dead foster mother whose death they've illegally concealed after illegally burying her corpse in the back garden was bad, but not as bad as that one time when she was growing up and her nanny pressured her into using her magic to steal money from an ATM (which was really bad), and forgives Jamie et al. Then they have this interaction:
BUT WE'RE NOT DONE YET! NOT BY A LONG SHOT.
Post corpse-disposal-methods-pillowtalk coitus, Mika and Jamie return to Nowhere House to find that Edward is there, but that the girls have once more reanimated Lillian's decomposed corpse and used it to chase Edward into the garden shed and taken him hostage. Mika goes to try to talk him into leaving (read: ties him up with a magical tentacle plant), but despite having been menaced with the decomposed corpse of his former employer and tortured with a hentai plant Edward holds firm, insisting that he's legally responsible for the girls' welfare and moreover, that he thinks something has happened to Lillian, that protagonists are hiding this, and that he needs to get to the bottom of it all.
Mika (and therefore the author) clearly think this makes Edward the Biggest Villain of Ever. But you know what? Edward is legally obligated to ensure girls' welfare. He was legally appointed to do this by the girls' legal guardian. Whose death the girls' erstwhile caretakers have been concealing. And whose corpse they exhumed, reanimated, and used to take him hostage.
EDWARD HAS A POINT.
No. More than a point.
EDWARD IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS ENSEMBLE CAST OF CHARACTERS WHO'S ACTING EVEN REMOTELY NOT BATSHIT. #MVP #TEAMEDWARD
But it gets EVEN CRAZIER.
Mika decides that as much as she fears and resents Primrose, Primrose could solve all these problems by destroying Edward's memories. So she reluctantly contacts Primrose, confesses that she's been lying to Primrose to conceal the girls' existence at Nowhere House, and that everyone at Nowhere House is concealing the death of the girls' legal guardian.
And then Primrose agrees to wipe Edward's memories.
BUT ALSO.
BTW.
It turns out: Primrose's is Lillian's twin sister! She looks just like Primrose! And she is now officially the girls' legal guardian! HAHA WHAT ARE THE ODDS.
Guys, this book is BONKERS.
It goes without saying that Primrose agrees to impersonate Lillian so that the girls can stay with thesociopaths adults at Nowhere House; moreover, Primrose has a Change of Heart and realizes that witches should stop hiding in the shadows and be allowed to hang out in each other's company and a few months later there's a big garden party for witches and their friends and family at Nowhere House The End.
As I said at the top, this sure is A Book.
What I'm Currently Reading
The Worst Woman in London — Julia Bennett
I picked this up and finished half of it in about a day. So far it's very well written and follows all the standard beats.
The Women Could Fly — Megan Giddings
Very well written, but a bit more of a downer than I'm in the mood for at the moment. That said, I should have it wrapped up by next week.
Ancillary Justice — Ann Leckie
As wonderful as every other time I've read it. This one is a forever fave.
The Wolf Age — Tore Skeie
This is definitely not an academic history, but it's very enjoyable and the translation is excellent.
Elder Race — Adrian Tchaikovsky
Recommended to me as something that will appeal to fans of Ann Leckie and language learning, so I have high hopes.
What I'm Reading Next
This week I picked up a copy of Jacqueline Memory Paterson's Tree Wisdom.
これで以上です。
Good Omens — Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
As of this reread, the miniseries cast and locations have now completely replaced the characters and locations as I've always imagined them, which I'm a bit saddened about. And some of the original scenes from S1 I like so much the novel seems like it should have them. But there are also plenty of places where I like the original novel's content over the reworked scenes in the series, so I was glad to revisit them here. And really, Pratchett is one of my forever authors. It still seems strange that there isn't a new novel from him every year or so, and it's always a delight to visit his back catalogue.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Sangu Mandanna
Wow, this sure is A Book. I really enjoyed most of it. It is relentlessly wholesome (like, relentlessly wholesome) and as deliberately cottagecore cozy as it's possible to get. And you know what? It totally worked for me. It was the sort of book that I wanted to read at this point in time.
This book is wholesome in the way A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Psalm for the Wild-Built tried and failed to be, largely because the characters in Irregular Witches do their best to treat each other well without spending pages preaching about what they're doing and why, and because they work at being better people themselves instead having others cater to their emotional needs ala Monk and Robot's massive, juvenile wish fulfillment fantasy. It was whimsical and fun and I loved the found family vibe and wanted the best for these characters.
And then I got to page 255 of this 315-page book. And boy howdy, did it take a turn.
In order to truly understand just how much of a turn, you have to know what the book is about. Here is how it presents itself on the back cover:
A WARM AND UPLIFTING NOVEL ABOUT AN ISOLATED WITCH WHOSE OPPORTUNITY TO EMBRACE A QUIRKY NEW FAMILY—AND A NEW LOVE—CHANGES THE COURSE OF HER LIFE.Know also that all witches in this world are mysteriously orphaned at birth, that the titular secret society is headed by Mika's foster mother, the stern and unloving Primrose who alone among Britain's witches possesses the power to magically alter people's memories; that the retired actor is a FLAMING gay man who is married to one of the aforementioned caretakers (a Japanese man) and whose primary role in the book is to shove Mika and Jamie at one another; and most importantly, that Lillian—the absent archaeologist who is herself a witch—is the three witches' legal guardian who adopted said designer orphans from Africa, India, and South America. Lillian, who is always away on digs, has delegated her parental authority to one Edward Foxhaven—a solicitor who will be checking up on the three children the day after Christmas. The caretakers fear that if the kids are unable to control their magic when Edward arrives, they'll be removed from Nowhere House—hence their desire to hire a witch who can help the girls learn to manage their powers.
As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules, with one exception: an online account where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.
But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the three children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat. ...
It's cute. I like the wacky found family. The magic is delightful (Mika keeps an entire greenhouse and koi pond in her car), and again, it's fucking wholesome. No one ever acts out of true malice. No conflict ever arises that isn't solved by a heartfelt apology. No one ever holds a grudge, or fails to accept an apology when it's offered. Even the mortal peril is never mortal because badly injured witches just go into hibernation (indicated by a twee leaf that sprouts out of their throats) until they heal.
TL;DR, the premise and the worldbuilding are not important: they exist to explain why Mika is lonely and the kids are lonely, and to get them all in the same place so they can build a found family together. And I was fine with that because the found family vibes are so fun.
Of course, it's also a romance novel, so Mika and Jamie have to have a Big Misunderstanding temporarily drive them apart for a bit, even after they've established their mutual attraction to one another for 100-odd pages. This comes when Jamie reveals he's been keeping a secret from Mika at the end of a chapter. I assumed it would be something like, My parents were witches who knew your parents, or I was the son of one of your childhood nannies. But wooo nelly, it was not that.
As we learn at the start of the next chapter, which opens with Mika marching into the back garden and exhuming a decomposed corpse and lol WUT.
Like, I cannot possibly begin to convey how much of a jarring Toto-we-are-not-in-motherfucking-Kansas-anymore tonal shift it is to go from the previous 254 pages of dialogue like "Rosetta wants to read books and be part of wholesome bookish fandoms" and exposition like [FLAMING former actor] Ian presented everyone with striped rainbow sweaters he'd knitted himself (and lest they worry that any of them might outshine him, he assured them, he had elevated his own outfit somewhat by adding a Santa hat to his head) to exhuming a decomposed corpse in the back garden.
Which, by the way, belonged to Lillian, the girls' absent archaeologist foster mother, whose death, when she suddenly dropped during a visit, the main characters decided to conceal by burying her in the back garden instead of telling the motherfucking authorities. Because per Lillian's will, her witch sister would become girls' guardian in the event of her death.
"The part I don't get," Mika said, and her voice cracked as all that bottled anguish threatened to explode, "is me."It's at this point, dear readers, that I started to think that maybe, just maybe, LILLIAN HAD MADE A WISE CHOICE.
"We were out of ideas," Jamie confessed. "Then Ian saw your videos. We'd already been talking about how restricted the girls' lives were and how little they knew about their own power, so the part about needing a tutor was true. But the timing of Ian's message to you was because of Edward. We hoped you'd be able to help us. Ian thought that if we could just get you here, then maybe, once we'd gotten to know you and knew we could trust you, we'd tell you the truth. And maybe you'd be able to disguise yourself as Lillian to get Edward to back off."
Predictably, Mika flounces off to a London townhouse she's secretly always owned, even though she's moved every six months of her adult life because her upbringing under the stern and unloving Primrose has left her too traumatized to put down roots. Predictably, Jamie chases her there on Christmas Eve. Predictably, Mika reflects that Jamie et al. having manipulated her into tutoring the girls in the hopes that she'd come to love them and then agree to impersonate their dead foster mother whose death they've illegally concealed after illegally burying her corpse in the back garden was bad, but not as bad as that one time when she was growing up and her nanny pressured her into using her magic to steal money from an ATM (which was really bad), and forgives Jamie et al. Then they have this interaction:
"I'll take anything you can give me," Jamie replied. He took a step closer. "But just so you know, you can have all of me. If you want it."Then they go upstairs and get it on for the first time because apparently nothing gets these two DTF more than mulled wine, cheesecake, and imagining how three preadolescent girls would dispose of their foster mother's corpse and I just cannot what even is this book anymore.
"I do want it. I want it more than anything."
He smiled crookedly, but he didn't touch her. Instead, they had their tea, and Mika showed him the potion still simmering in her cauldron and explained her hope that it would confuse Edward into believing whatever lie they told him, and for a little while, they both let themselves hope that this would work, that after tomorrow they'd never have to worry about a spiteful solicitor or a pile of bones hidden in the garden.
And for the first time in days, Mika laughed—really, properly laughed—when Jamie told her what the girls had said when they'd told them the truth about Lillian. "I think we expected them to be suitably solemn and respectful about it, but in hindsight, that was an absurd expectation." He paused. "Altamira said we should have buried Lillian in the woods."
"No, I don't think so," Mika said wisely. "Foxes dig things up in the woods, you know. It's a terrible place to hide a corpse."
Jamie gave her a wry look. "Yes, that's exactly what Terracotta said, too."
They opened a bottle of mulled wine, demolished a lemon cheesecake for dinner, and played a drinking game that involved taking a swig out of the wine bottle whenever someone next door shouted, "Jesus fucking Christ, Granddad!"
BUT WE'RE NOT DONE YET! NOT BY A LONG SHOT.
Post corpse-disposal-methods-pillowtalk coitus, Mika and Jamie return to Nowhere House to find that Edward is there, but that the girls have once more reanimated Lillian's decomposed corpse and used it to chase Edward into the garden shed and taken him hostage. Mika goes to try to talk him into leaving (read: ties him up with a magical tentacle plant), but despite having been menaced with the decomposed corpse of his former employer and tortured with a hentai plant Edward holds firm, insisting that he's legally responsible for the girls' welfare and moreover, that he thinks something has happened to Lillian, that protagonists are hiding this, and that he needs to get to the bottom of it all.
Mika (and therefore the author) clearly think this makes Edward the Biggest Villain of Ever. But you know what? Edward is legally obligated to ensure girls' welfare. He was legally appointed to do this by the girls' legal guardian. Whose death the girls' erstwhile caretakers have been concealing. And whose corpse they exhumed, reanimated, and used to take him hostage.
EDWARD HAS A POINT.
No. More than a point.
EDWARD IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS ENSEMBLE CAST OF CHARACTERS WHO'S ACTING EVEN REMOTELY NOT BATSHIT. #MVP #TEAMEDWARD
But it gets EVEN CRAZIER.
Mika decides that as much as she fears and resents Primrose, Primrose could solve all these problems by destroying Edward's memories. So she reluctantly contacts Primrose, confesses that she's been lying to Primrose to conceal the girls' existence at Nowhere House, and that everyone at Nowhere House is concealing the death of the girls' legal guardian.
And then Primrose agrees to wipe Edward's memories.
BUT ALSO.
BTW.
It turns out: Primrose's is Lillian's twin sister! She looks just like Primrose! And she is now officially the girls' legal guardian! HAHA WHAT ARE THE ODDS.
Guys, this book is BONKERS.
It goes without saying that Primrose agrees to impersonate Lillian so that the girls can stay with the
As I said at the top, this sure is A Book.
What I'm Currently Reading
The Worst Woman in London — Julia Bennett
I picked this up and finished half of it in about a day. So far it's very well written and follows all the standard beats.
The Women Could Fly — Megan Giddings
Very well written, but a bit more of a downer than I'm in the mood for at the moment. That said, I should have it wrapped up by next week.
Ancillary Justice — Ann Leckie
As wonderful as every other time I've read it. This one is a forever fave.
The Wolf Age — Tore Skeie
This is definitely not an academic history, but it's very enjoyable and the translation is excellent.
Elder Race — Adrian Tchaikovsky
Recommended to me as something that will appeal to fans of Ann Leckie and language learning, so I have high hopes.
What I'm Reading Next
This week I picked up a copy of Jacqueline Memory Paterson's Tree Wisdom.
これで以上です。
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