Short Book Reviews: A Librarian and Her Spider Plant Assistant

 The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

I’ve been a fan of Sarah Beth Durst for years now, so I was happy to see the attention her latest novel is receiving. Of course, I eagerly grabbed a copy and devoured it. It’s an understatement to say that The Spellshop is wildly inventive, sweet, enchanting, and impossible to put down.

Fleeing the violent revolution in the capital city, librarian Kiela packs a few crates of precious books of spells (which are illegal for non-approved sorcerers to cast, by the way) and escapes with her friendly assistant, a talking spider plant named Caz, who has more common sense than most humans. She lands on the island of her birth, where she thinks to hide in her parents’ abandoned house until—she does not know, she can’t plan that far ahead. Nor can she cope with the sudden appearance of her neighbor and childhood friend, merhorse herder Loran, who shows up on her doorstep with a welcoming gift of cinnamon buns. Soon Kiela and Caz are drawn into the community of humans and magical beings, ever fearful to keep their stash of forbidden hidden. Before long, however, Kiela ends up creating spells (for reasons that seem good at the time) that she calls folk “remedies,” sometimes with hilarious results (like the apple-tree bird or the sentient cactus that Caz falls in love with).

The world building and cast of characters are fresh, original, and charming, but for me the best part of The Spell Shop was the skill and sensitivity with which Durst portrays how those characters change and grow. In particular, she captures Kiela’s voice as the reclusive librarian slowly emerges from her isolation with evolving insight into the motives and emotions of others…and herself. No wonder Book Riot called Durst “a hidden gem of the fantasy world.”

File this tale under: Perennial Comfort Reading. And buy a second copy to lend to special friends.

[science] Dark Oxygen, Quark Matter, and Terraforming Mars

So much exciting astronomical news! Click through for all the juicy details.

Mars Could be Terraformed Using Resources that are Already There 

A team of engineers and geophysicists led by the University of Chicago proposed a new method for terraforming Mars with nanoparticles. This method would take advantage of resources already present on the Martian surface and, according to their feasibility study, would be enough to start the terraforming process.

Neutron Star Mergers Could Be Producing Quark Matter

When neutron stars dance together, the grand smash finale they experience might create the densest known form of matter known in the Universe. It’s called “quark matter, ” a highly weird combo of liberated quarks and gluons. It’s unclear if the stuff existed in their cores before the end of their dance. However, in the wild aftermath a neutron-star merger, the strange conditions could free quarks and gluons from protons and neutrons. That lets them move around freely in the aftermath. So, researchers want to know how freely they move and what conditions might impede their motion (or flow).

What if you Flew Your Warp Drive Spaceship into a Black Hole?

Recently, two researchers looked at what would happen if a ship with warp drive tried to get into a black hole. The result is an interesting thought experiment. It might not lead to starship-sized warp drives but might allow scientists to create smaller versions someday.

Book Review: Beyond the Sea of Endless Grass

The Endless Song (Tales of the Forever Sea: Book Two), by Joshua Phillip Johnson (DAW)

I adored Joshua Phillip Johnson’s The Forever Sea, set in a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless sea of grass, so much that I eagerly snatched up the sequel. And ended up wishing it had been a stand-alone.

This overly long book followed two storylines that are so disconnected for the first three-quarters of the book, I wished it had been divided into two separate volumes or, better yet, that the “continuing” story be cut. By far my favorite part involves a mainland noble family, Borders, that has fallen on hard times, both financially and politically. The power struggles of the ruthless Emperor and the vassal barons are convoluted, rich in cultural world-building, and full of drama. I found the loving, boisterous relationship between youngest Borders child, Flitch, and his siblings delightful and emotionally moving. The action gets even more gripping when, under immediate risk of their barony being destroyed by the Emperor, Flitch’s father reveals a secret hidden deep beneath their castle: the entrance to a realm of immensely powerful and deadly, nonhuman magic. Everything about the “Flitch” narrative grabbed me, from the tense action to the sweet love story between one of Flitch’s siblings, a gifted gender-neutral artist and a charismatic librarian from another barony, to their sister’s impulsive nature and the quiet, detail orientation of another brother. Eventually, the family seeks refuge with a neighbor baron, a youthful-seeming woman of extraordinary strength and madcap humor. She may well give Flitch a run as the most enchanting character in the book.

Meanwhile, Kindred, the heroine from the first volume, follows up setting the grass sea on fire with scuttling her ship, thereby sending her crew—all two of them, one of whom is her lover--to the eerie bottom of the sea. Here, the landscape is filled with fantastical plants and perhaps-animals, not to mention roving bands of humans eking out their livelihood from detritus falling from the surface. Alas, until well past the halfway point, there was so little dramatic tension in these chapters, I kept falling asleep.

At last, most of the way through the book, the two story lines veer toward one another when Kindred’s long-lost grandmother unleashes an army of deep-sea monsters that threaten human life on the surface. Alas, at this point I had lost all interest in the Kindred story, I skimmed over those parts to get back to the dramatic adventures of Flitch and his family. For me, past midway is far too late to introduce a reason to care about these characters and way, way too late for a hint that the two stories will at some nebulous point in the future come together (and they don’t, except in a deus ex machina sort of way). I kept reading on the strength of the first volume, but I don’t see how a reader new to this series would make any sense of it. Which is too bad because The Forever Sea is a really, really cool world. And Flitch's story is magnificent.