Stuff I've been enjoying - 7/12/2020

Stuff I've been enjoying lately 7/12/2020

Hammers On Bone and A Song For Quiet, both by Cassandra Khaw.

Fair warning about these two: they are quite distinct in voice and character, though the setting remains the same. The central character of Hammers does indeed appear in A Song For Quiet, but not as the focus about which the story rotates.

In fact, when I come around again to A Song...; I'm not sure how I feel about this one.

Let me back up. Hammers On Bone, boil it down and we've got a Lovecraft world with a Chandler protagonist. Or maybe John D. Macdonald, Travis McGee in outlook and a Dashiell Hammett mouth. That kind of detective story.

Which, if you're like me, was more than enough to get started. And Khaw handles Hammers well enough to have me hanging on for the ride all the way through. I very much smiled throughout this one, I very much enjoyed Hammers On Bone.

A Song For Quiet, well. I knew going in that Khaw had given us a different character, story, in the same world. Still threatened by the worlds beyond our kenning, only from a very different point of view. And I'm an occasional musician, so the setup is definitely another one that had me bolting in and ready to hang on.

But I'm still deciding how I feel about A Song For Quiet. It made me think.

About the obvious, of course. The main character is black in a white world and time frame. This is the up front level where Khaw works; it's not, however, the only one.

I'm going to have to re-read this one. I suspect that this is one of those books that I'll scroll past for weeks, months, and then dive into again. A chapter or a few pages or a whole re-read at a time.

And that, I very much like. Maybe I won't ever decide how I feel about A Song For Quiet. And that is a very, very cool space to be.

Thank you, Cassandra Khaw.