Lilith Saintcrow The Salt-Black Tree

Nat Drozdova covered more than a few miles in Spring’s Arcana, the first half of The Dead God’s Heart duology.  This might have been the title of a much longer single novel in a different business and / or artistic climate, so know going in that you must read Spring’s Arcana before The Salt-Black Tree.  That said, The Salt-Black Tree offers a satisfying, exciting finish to Nat’s story while building out the world-within-our-world in a manner that is rich, inventive, and really fun to read.

One of Saintcrow’s most admirable accomplishments in these books is her ability to employ world-building details as tension-building plot points.   Rest assured that bits which seemed compelling but odd early in the narrative are fleshed-out quite enjoyably in the long-run.  Saintcrow has an excellent handle on just how to deploy ambiguity, when to clear matters up and just how clear to make the edges of her imagined worldlet.  It’s a pretty long story, and the immersion in the first book is complete – there are no real “Well, Nat…” moments.  We learn as Nat learns, though readers may jump ahead of her as the journey unfolds. 

In The Salt-Black Tree, Dmitri grows more enjoyable for readers even as we see less of him when Nat begins to grow into her inheritance.  For Nat, Saintcrow has crafted a wonderfully wild and imaginative bildungsroman, using the world-building and elements of the fantastic to externalize the upshot of an abusive upbringing in the presence of a powerful, domineering parent-figure.  As this plays out amid the Russian mythology re-grown in fertile American soil, you can sense that the writer of having as much fun as the reader.  The big canvas suits the story, allowing Saintcrow to offer the details we love to experience as readers while literally keeping the pedal to the metal in supernaturally enhanced American roadsters.  The upshot is simple; by the time the story is satisfyingly finished, you’ll look back on the reading journey that got you there as if it were a vacation you’d love to experience again. 

It’s just not possible that Lilith Saintcrow and I had too much fun recording this interview, especially given that we actually managed to mention the book a few times.  But it was fun, and Saintcrow has a lot of craft-of-writing insights to generously share with readers.  Here’s the link so you can save the file and listen while you drive your blue Mustang, or just take the laptop/etc on the front porch, settle up and listen below while the sun sets.

TC Boyle Talk to Me

Language is arguably man’s greatest achievement.  Without it, nothing else happens.  With it – well, nothing’s perfect.  TC Boyle has wielded language well in his career as a novelist, and Talk to Me, a novel about the power and problems with human language, manages to offer big fun and big thinks, often in the same sentence.  This time around, Boyle takes us to the late 1970’s, when science and culture both seized on the idea trying to bring up chimpanzees in an American suburban house.  We meet Guy Schermerhorn, a career-focused tenured professor who is raising Sam in a rural Southern Californian ranch house with some grad students to help.  It’s going well.  Sam is learning ASL, and after Guy’s girlfriend/partner leaves him, a new student, Aimee Villard, joins the group.  She falls for Sam, but sleeps with Guy. 

Boyle’s in top form here, with a great cast of characters to tell his slowly bending story.  Guy would like be a really nice guy, but he’s ambitious.  He’s so focused on himself and his career that he’s unable to connect to other humans, let alone Sam.  Aimee is beautiful and clueless, willing to try to save every lost soul she can find, especially Sam.  And Sam – much if the novel is told from his perspective – is a wild animal, torn from his dead mother’s arms, caged by Guy’s mentor, Donald Moncrief (one of Boyle’s best, foulest creations), and handed off to the relative comfort of Guy’s great experiment. 

Boyle has a blast following his cast into the personal hells they make for themselves and those around them.  Guy’s a wimp, Amy’s a heroine so selfless she has no cue of her own worth or power, Moncrief is the sort of jerk we love to hate, and Sam is not a human in any sense.  It’s a fire waiting to happen and watching the slow burn build onto a conflagration is a joy, filled with gnarly psychology, and a 1970’s documentary sensibility that finds virtue in raw human absurdity.  Boyle seals the deal with real emotion and a sophisticated vision of rough science and pure sacrifice.  So who’s an animal now?

TC Boyle is a tool-using mammal with an excellent command of that most dire tool, language.  We managed to tap dance around the plot of Talk to Me while holding close to the themes of the novel.   You can download our conversation at this link or listen below.  

Jennifer Ackerman What an Owl Knows

“Masterful storytelling” and “compulsively page-turning” are accolades usually associated with fiction.  Rest assured that these are perfect descriptions of Jennifer Ackerman’s latest work of non-fiction science journalism, What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.  Ackerman’s accomplishment is every bit as stunning as the science she uncovers.  Filled with great characters who explore a wonderfully detailed world we’ve never before seen, What an Owl Knows is truly riveting reading.  As with the best books, the reader will disappear into Ackerman’s book from the get-go and emerge at the end a changed human.  Ackerman is clearly having a great time writing the book, and the reader will feel the same joy reading it.

The beginning of the book dives in the world of owls with poetic prose in a sort of wide-screen ambient scene-setting reminiscent of film.  Soon enough, Ackerman begins to weave in her cast of characters, the slightly wacky, brilliant men and women who study the different facets of the owl.  Each sub-story flows out of the setting and the story that precedes it.  Ackerman expertly interleaves each of her experts’ stories and achievements, creating an orchestral vision of the import and interest of this singular set of species.

Rest assured that humor and geniality fuel the stories.  Ackerman’s ability to serve up the amazing facts unearthed by down-to-earth men and women makes for compelling and fun reading.  She manages to be there and make the readers feel as they are too without ever overpowering her subjects.  These scientists, many who have turned what was once a hobby into an area of singular and often surprising discovery, all come off as everyday folks who find a passion and a talent that is transformed into owl science.  There’s a musician who becomes an expert in owl vocalizations, and a heart surgeon who uncovers owl nests.  Ackerman manages to adroitly tell a number of very human stories, each of which is a part of her bigger story about owl science.

Ackerman clearly enjoys nature and has the ability make her feelings contagious. Ultimately, What an Owl Knows is a book about joy, and the ability to find the joy of humanity in its scientific exploration of the natural world.  Ackerman is all about evoking the sense of wonder, and she knows how much fun it is to experience wonder. This is What an Owl Knows and what readers experience in these pages; smart fun, and lots of it.

Unsurprisingly, Jennifer Ackerman is every bit as fun to talk to as she is to read, and even when you spend 53ish minutes speaking to her, or 300ish pages reading her, you want more.  In our conversation at this link, and below, we skim the surface and leave most of the book to be discovered, like skipping a rock across a lake.  Flathead Lake, home of the Flathead Lake Monster. Fun!

Cassandra Khaw Nothing But Blackened Teeth The Salt Grows Heavy

We all have expectations of any entertainment aimed in our general direction.  But the real joy of being entertained only happens when our expectations are evaded.  That’s increasingly hard in a world where we’ve been turning up the volume to 11 for nearly 40 years.  Cassandra Khaw’s recent novellas, Nothing But Blackened Teeth and The Salt Grows Heavy don’t so much evade expectations as they annihilate them, and do so in manners different from one another. Both works display amazing control of the novella format, embracing the depth and compactness.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth takes a familiar premise – a group of people spending the night in a haunted house – and cranks up the emotional content, slyly but swiftly – so that when the (deeply researched) spirits slide into said house, they feel born of both an ancient heritage and the very modern manners (and lack thereof) of those trying to emotionally gouge one another.  The intensity of raw emotions is as expertly written as are the descriptions and variety of the Yokai brought forth by all this turmoil.  Suffice it to say that you’ll find yourself unintentionally gripping the book.  Khaw makes the most of the novella length.  We really get a deep and intense feel for the cast, while the action is brisk but not hurried.  The hangover is also effective.  Khaw sort of shoots the reader out into the void, accompanied by a hot mess of emotions and sinister spirits. 

The Salt Grows Heavy is something completely different.  It harkens back to the most grotesque and weirdest work of H. P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith, sort of.  We meet a mermaid and a Plague Doctor, unlike any you’ve ever come close to imagining, journeying through a world like no other.  In this sense, the work is a high-fantasy.  But it’s deeply informed by surreal visions of evisceration and anatomy, described as if they were exotic flora and fauna.  Our journeying pair wander into a land of children and self-appointed saints, more deadly and splatter-happy than they are.  Madness ensues.  And language, such beautiful, bizarre language that will have even the best-read reaching for the dictionary.  The brilliant bit is that while reading you’ll sense, correctly, what words you’ve never seen actually mean. The Salt Grows Heavy is not world-building so much as it is world-gut-ripping. But gut-ripping only for the finest of purposes!  The novella is followed by a much more straightforward short story that in retrospect is sort-of a prologue, a head-clearing chaser.  The upshot is a big-ol’ wow! reading experience.

Whatever you expect when you open either of these books, set those feelings and ideas aside, so they won’t be crushed by the killdozer/V2-rockets within. Nothing But Blackened Teeth and The Salt Grows Heavy are new things under the sun.  They will likely spin different for each reader.  But at their heart, they have a heart.  Red. Bloody.  Pumping.

Cassandra Khaw is razor sharp, which you can learn by listening to our conversation at this link or below. And beneath. And inside.