Three short reviews this time, of some things I’ve been reading.

Laurus, Eugene Vodolazkin, trans. Lisa C. Hayden

Oneworld 2015, originally published in Russian in 2012.

I came across this book several years ago in a Barnes & Noble and thought it looked interesting, but maybe not interesting enough to pay full price for. A few years later I found it secondhand and bought it. I ended up enjoying it immensely, even though the pace is rather slow. The writing style is interesting, wandering between archaic and modern slang and dipping between the medieval setting of the main narrative and events that would happen in the future, but still our own past. (If anything, I could have used a bit more of the strange modern impositions on the historic; there’s one part early on describing the things revealed by the melting snow in a medieval village, one of which is old plastic bottles, which I just loved). The story follows Arseny, who ends up with various names and identities over the course of the story, a young village doctor living alone. Without getting into specifics, he makes some very selfish decisions and people close to him suffer the consequences. He spends the rest of the novel in a grand atonement for this sin, and the ending of the book wraps up in a parallel situation that feels narratively earned.

Literary historical novels are increasingly becoming one of my favorite sub-genres. I especially liked how medieval the characters felt in terms of how their world shaped their lives and thoughts, but also how in spite of the differences in relation to modern society their experiences still felt familiar.

The Red Sacrament, Sara Hinkley

Titan Books, 2026.

Ok, I LOVED this book. Do you need some kind of French Vampire fix after binge-watching Interview with the Vampire?¹ Is there an Anne Rice-shaped hole in your life? Do you find that the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living? You should read this book. The language is stunning. The vampires are fancy little freaks trying to run a theater. THERE’S A WITCH AND SHE’S GREAT (and horrible). There’s opera. There’s the looming specter of the future of imperialist capitalism but unfortunately I largely enjoyed reading descriptions of the invention of the mall. Anyways, this is a book that actually has themes and political messaging that’s also beautiful and horrible and fun to read. I have complicated feelings about the ending, because I can’t decide if it does a thing that a lot of books do that I hate,² or if it successfully sidesteps it. I think I liked it though. As usual, the more I like the a book the harder it is for me to talk about it. Just go read this one.

Bloodstone, Karl Edward Wagner

Warner Books, 1975.

This one was a bit of a bust for me, but it’s an old book so I don’t mind being honest. I had high hopes, since it follows the Sword & Sorcery character Kane, who I had understood was supposed to be kind of a weird-goth-horror addition to the genre. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed. I have a pretty high tolerance for old books and the kind of nonsense that crops up in them, but sometimes I read a book and go, oh this really feels like the 70s (derogatory).³ There were parts of this book that I liked. Things do really get going near the end, and there are some wild battle scenes, but the beginning reaaaally dragged. Kane, a kind of immortal swordsman (I mean I think he’s just Cain. Like Cain and Abel), is sort of the protagonist but the narrative keeps switching to focus on much more boring guys, until it switches to Teres, who is more interesting but also suffers from being a woman written by a man in the 70s who is trying really hard to write a Cool Girl Who Fights. Maybe she’s bisexual though. It’s unclear. Under other conditions I don’t know if I would have read all the way through, but my day job had a lot of boring downtime. Which does feel like the ideal circumstances to read a book like this.

Things I liked:

• His weird bat girlfriend at the beginning. She seemed cool. Unfortunately for some reason I started envisioning her as Mizora from Baldur’s Gate 3, who, while attractive, is incredibly annoying.

• Descriptions of trees. They used to describe so many trees in old fantasy novels. Bring this back.

• The battles, except for when they started to drag

• The jungle stuff. Once they got to the jungle I was like Ok! Now we’re cooking with gas! But then they left the jungle

• The frog people. Leave! Them! Alone!

Things I should have liked:

• The Ancient Aliens nonsense. I love it when there’s some old advanced science/space travel underpinning the foundations of a fantasy world, but somehow this stuff just felt dragged out

Things I did not like:

• These dudes are all so boring and they have terrible names

• If not one but TWO girlfriends tell you not to play with an obviously evil ring you should listen to them. Oh Liz but then there would be no plot WRITE A BETTER PLOT

Anyways. In conclusion, lol, I might try hunting down some of the Kane short stories because the good stuff felt bogged down by the extraneous stuff, and I wonder if that might not be an issue in a shorter format. Get in, fight some frogs, discover some aliens, realize you should have listened to your girlfriends, get out. Also I hope Teres marries that other guy with the dumb name, unites their kingdoms, and invents feminism.

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