My Cultural Diet

The shadow of 9/11 looms large over Terry Hayes’ debut novel, in which a covert agent — the greatest agent of all time, even, we’re told — is pulled back into service to hunt down a terrorist no one has ever seen. At the same time, he gets pulled into the investigation of a brutally perfect murder in post-9/11 New York, a murder that was committed using the very same techniques he once wrote about. Hayes’ background as a journalist is readily apparent; I Am Pilgrim is filled with detail as our agent, the titular “Pilgrim,” jaunts from New York to Turkey to Saudi Arabia in his pursuit. But Hayes can’t resist piling on the twists and turns, including another murder mystery as well as the various ghosts and demons from Pilgrim’s past and upbringing. As such, the novel becomes unwieldy and even ridiculous at times, and there were moments — such as when Pilgrim describes the sexual prowess of one of his alter egos, or when Hayes belabors the moral ambiguity inherent to espionage — when I was sorely tempted to stop reading altogether. In those moments, the novel felt more akin to juvenile wish fulfillment than a mature and bracing spy thriller. Still, in the end, I was pretty consistently entertained even as it felt like I Am Pilgrim had a fair amount of fat that could’ve been trimmed.

My wife loves lady pirates, heists, and stories in which someone who’s retired is forced to do One Last Job. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi combines all three, and does so in a fantastical world pulled from Middle-Eastern history and legend. That’s nothing new for S. A. Chakraborty, who burst onto the scene several years back with the Daevabad trilogy, which began with 2017’s wonderful City of Brass. Once an infamous pirate and smuggler, Amina al-Sirafi now just wants to live a quiet life with her daughter. But when the mother of a former associate and crew mate tracks her down and makes her an offer that’s simply too good to refuse, Amina heads back out onto the high seas, where she’s soon caught up in a world of myth and sorcery. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the matter of her demonic ex-husband. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is a fun romp that mixes in some observations about race, class, and gender without ever becoming preachy or, more importantly, distracting from the high seas adventure. As I noted with The City of Brass, the Middle-Eastern elements and inspirations were a consistently nice change of pace from most fantasy, which tends to be Western and European in its origins. A sequel, titled The Tapestry of Fate, was just released, which I intend to read… once my wife’s finished with it, of course.

After war and much environmental devastation, humanity has entered a new golden age thanks to environmentally friendly cities that run on solar power and recycle everything. People are now free to live a life of leisure, but their utopia relies on a vast array of genetically engineered animals who handle all of the mundane tasks of city maintenance, from garbage cleanup and water treatment to food preparation. Unbeknownst to their creators, however, these augmented animals have developed a bustling society of their own complete with armies, gangs, guilds, and other social strata. And then there’s Skotch the raccoon, an honest-to-goodness private investigator who’s a bit down on his luck. That is, until he lands the biggest case of his life when his former boss hires him to track down a mouse. Which seems simple enough, but his case soon becomes bigger, and deadlier, than Skotch could have possibly imagined. Before too long, everyone in the city’s gunning for him, and he has no idea why. Green City Wars’ greatest strength is that Adrian Tchaikovsky plays his premise, and his animal-ized takes on noir tropes (e.g., a world-weary detective who’s a raccoon, a stoat femme fatale, rat mob bosses), entirely straight. Sure, there were moments when I was very conscious of my suspended disbelief, but because Tchaikovsky is completely invested in his premise, I was, too. It also helped that cynical ol’ Skotch is a pretty likable protagonist. And because Tchaikovsky plays things straight, he can work in some incisive social commentary, like a case for universal basic income, without sounding preachy.

Although John Green’s essays tackle a wide range of topics — e.g., Halley’s Comet, the Lascaux cave paintings, Diet Dr Pepper, Piggly Wiggly, the Mountain Goats (the band, not the animal) — the specter of the COVID pandemic looms over all of them. Which is not to say that The Anthropocene Reviewed is gloomy or overwrought. Rather, it feels, in part, like an attempt to impress some order upon a world turned topsy-turvy by shutdowns and uncertainty. Although all of Green’s essays are filled with interesting facts — I learned more about the life and times of Piggly Wiggly founder Clarence Saunders than I previously thought possible — some feel like a bit of a stretch, like an obvious attempt at profundity. But the ones that resonated did so strongly. Sometimes, Green’s just drawing attention to the world’s natural beauty or expressing some antipathy about certain ridiculous facets of modern American life. (The word “hate” doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about yard work, so naturally, I enjoyed his essay about America’s fascination with Kentucky bluegrass.) And his essays about Academic Decathlon and the QWERTY keyboard resonated because I, too, was a nerd in high school who found expression and a sense of identity via computer keyboards. Throughout the whole of The Anthropocene Reviewed, however, two major themes emerge: (1) humans have had an unmistakable and incalculable effect on the world, for better or worse, and (2) for all of our intelligence and technological advancements, our lives are still very fragile things, especially when faced with a global pandemic.

The second novel in James S. A. Corey’s Captive’s War trilogy finds the small human community still enslaved by the all-powerful Carryx Empire. However, some of its biggest threat might come from within. At the start of the trilogy, Dafyd Alkhor was a low-ranking researcher, but now he’s humanity’s chief representative to the Carryx — which means that he has to start making hard, possibly even immoral decisions in order to ensure their ongoing survival. Meanwhile, other humans make discoveries about the Carryx’s unending war and implacable foe that could tip the balance of power. Unfortunately, the humans don’t have any power to begin with. The first Captive’s War novel, 2024’s The Mercy of Gods, wasn’t bad by any means, but it did feel like it spent a lot of its pages simply setting up the story. The Faith of Beasts starts to actually build on some of those threads, especially in its last third or so, as discoveries about the Carryx and their enemy start to be revealed. Unfortunately, I don’t really find Dafyd or any of the other humans all that compelling as characters. I’m more intrigued by the various aliens who make up the Empire, and especially a spy for the other side who is far more — and far stranger — than they seem.

As I read Leah Sottile’s exhaustive account of the birth and growth of the “New Age” movement in America, I occasionally had to put her book down so I could try to wrap my head around it all. Spiritualists claiming to channel ancient masters from the sunken continent of Lemuria. Hucksters and conmen spinning fantastical and ludicrous — and anti-semitic — yarns about America’s ills, and making a fortune while doing so. Acolytes who kept believing even after they were confronted with the most disturbing evidence of their teachers’ flaws and failings. To Sottile’s credit, though, I couldn’t stop reading. Blazing Eye Sees All is actually two books in one. Half of the book chronicles the rise and fall of Love Has Won, a cult started by a woman who, after abandoning her family, called herself Mother God and built a devoted following via social media. The other half chronicles the history of spiritualism and theosophy in America, including figures like the Fox sisters, Madame Blavatsky, and Guy and Edna Ballard, whose outlandish claims laid the foundation for Love Has Won. Sottile occasionally struggles to balance these two narratives. On the whole, however, Blazing Eye Sees All remains compelling, particularly when Sotille explores the appeal that such movements hold for women who often lack a sense of power or agency in their lives, or when she finds striking (and disturbing) parallels between the ultra-nationalist teachings of early 20th century spiritualists and the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of QAnon, January 6 insurrectionists, and other far-right factions. (On a side note, the reason this book caught my eye in the first place was because the title and cover art make it look like something an actual cult might publish. I can only assume that was intentional, and I applaud the decision.)

This was my second time reading Piranesi, in preparation for my church’s summer book club. I’d forgotten many of the details after my first read, though, so this felt like a brand new experience in some significant ways. Susanna Clarke’s second novel can seem affected at times, being an epistolary novel about a man trapped in a nigh-infinite arrangement of halls filled with marble statues and ocean waves. Once you embrace the book’s premise, though, Piranesi becomes a very delightful read, and the House becomes a place that you’d like to believe actually exists. There’s something quite charming about Clarke’s guileless protagonist, who beholds the House with reverence and is content to explore its seemingly limitless rooms and corridors and chronicle its elaborate statuary. Clarke slowly weaves in darker, more troubling facets, but they never fully override or diminish the story, which isn’t exactly light-hearted, but does possess a sense of grave whimsy. That Piranesi also works as a riff on C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and in particular, The Magician’s Nephew, only adds to its charm. Back in 2024, Laika Studios announced their plans to adapt Piranesi into an animated feature film, and I’m very curious to see how they’ll render the House in all of its otherworldly glory.

Gregg Hurwitz churns out Orphan X novels at a yearly pace, and I keep reading them, even though they all follow the same basic pattern. Evan Smoak, a former government operative trained since childhood to be a peerless assassin, now uses his deadly skills to help the powerless. That usually results in a not-insignificant body count. Antihero throws in a slight twist, however. The latest recipient of his aid — a devout young woman who was kidnapped, raped, and brutalized by a gang of young men who post their exploits online — makes Evan promise to not kill her attackers, but instead, leave them to God’s judgment. So what’s a former black ops assassin supposed to do? Antihero plunges into the world of online porn while commenting on what social media and terminal online-ness is doing to people, and especially disaffected young men. (In a stroke of serendipity, Antihero paired nicely with Adam Kinzinger’s recent diatribe against streamers like Clavicular.) Because of the sexual violence involved, Antihero was more difficult to read than other Orphan X novels, but it possesses a certain righteous anger that makes it more urgent than its predecessors. But Antihero was difficult to read at times for other reasons. When he’s describing Evan in full operational mode, Hurwitz’s prose is the very definition of a page turner. But when he tries to write Gen Z characters, with their slang and leetspeak, Antihero gets pretty cringe.

Lyssa Cadogan has devoted her life to hunting down fairies and their horrible creatures, all in the hopes of one day slaying the Beast that killed her brother when they were children. The Beast remains elusive, however, much to Lyssa’s frustration. But when she’s hired by Alderic, a foppish noble who claims he can lead her to the Beast, Lyssa might finally get her revenge. That is, if dark secrets from both her and Alderic’s past don’t undermine her efforts. Serra Swift’s debut novel is billed as a cross between The Witcher and Howl’s Moving Castle, which is certainly an interesting notion. (It’s also a deconstruction of a famous fairy tale, but I’ll let you guess which one.) Kill the Beast leans far more heavily towards the former, though, thanks mainly to a grim protagonist whose all-consuming desire for revenge blinds her to everything else and leaves her near-petulant at times — which can make it difficult to care or see her as the bad-ass monster hunter she’s meant to be. That said, Swift’s world-building is quite intriguing; the novel’s quasi-steampunk setting feels much like our world but with just enough difference to keep things interesting.

“Charlotte Sometimes” is one of my all-time favorite Cure songs, an otherworldly pop tune as only Robert Smith and Co. could write. I’ve known for a long time that it was inspired by Penelope Farmer’s novel of the same name, just one of the many examples of Smith’s literary influences. (See also Albert Camus, Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, and Mervyn Peake.) However, I’d never actually read the book until my wife bought me a copy for my birthday. When Charlotte Makepeace arrives at her new boarding school, the last thing she expected was to suddenly wake up 40 years in the past with a different identity. As she leaps back and forth between past and present, and learns more about Clare, the girl with whom she trades places, Charlotte can feel her own identity slip and fade away. Read through a modern lens, Charlotte Sometimes might seem rather slight; there are no grand revelations and Farmer is completely uninterested in the actual time travel mechanics. But I loved Farmer’s prose, which could get quite surreal and abstract in keeping with Charlotte’s own increasingly fractured perspective. I can see why Robert Smith was so drawn to the book, and like any true Cure fan, I enjoyed identifying all of the lines that he lifted for his song’s lyrics.

When I was in high school and filled with Cold War anxiety, I became a fan of technothrillers like Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October and Payne Harrison’s Storming Intrepid. So when I saw a copy of Dale Brown’s Day of the Cheetah sitting in a bookstore’s “Free” box, I figured it might be a nice little nostalgia trip. As a former Air Force officer, Brown’s verisimilitude is unassailable; the very first thing you see upon opening Day of the Cheetah is an extensive glossary of military terms and vehicles, and Brown lays on the jargon nice and thick right up until the last page. The plot — a deep cover KGB agent steals a top secret Air Force fighter jet that’s enhanced with artificial intelligence and the Air Force must scramble to prevent him from delivering it to the Soviet Union — borders on sci-fi at times, and even promises to get really weird in places when Brown explores the effects of AI on his character’s psyche. However, Day of the Cheetah remains pretty fly-by-numbers, and definitely brought back some Cold War-era nostalgia, which is all I was really looking for. Unfortunately, the novel also feels like it’s about a hundred pages too long and its ending — climactic dogfight included — is surprisingly anticlimactic. Furthermore, the novel’s epilogue seems intended to lay the foundation for future novels, but at the same time, feels like Brown ran out of ideas and wanted to wrap everything up as quickly and cleanly as possible.

I’ll be honest, I had always disregarded The Scarlet Pimpernel based on its title alone. But then I heard my wife — who, for the record, has excellent taste in books — recommend it to a friend who was looking for something enjoyable to read, and decided to finally give it a shot. Baroness Orczy’s prose is just about as florid as it gets, especially when describing Lady Blakeney’s intense emotional states, and her equally florid descriptions of the French Revolution’s cruelties make plainly evident her own pro-aristocracy sentiments. Modern readers steeped in superhero stories, which are all but unavoidable these days, will probably see every twist and reveal coming from a mile away. Indeed, Stan Lee himself claimed that The Scarlet Pimpernel, with its costumes and secret identities, was the very first superhero story. All that said, I was never not entertained by the novel’s proceedings, and it does possess a certain dashing quality that I’m sure blew readers’ minds back in 1905.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival is one of my all-time favorite movies, so checking out the debut novel from its screenwriter was a no-brainer. While investigating a pipeline explosion, Homeland Security agent Grant Lukather gets caught up in something far more mysterious when he meets a therapist who claims to be able to tap into people’s past lives. Soon enough, Lukather, the therapist, and her patient are on the trail of an impossible serial killer. Simultaneous contains some interesting ideas, and not surprisingly given Heisserer’s Arrival script, the reincarnation stuff is pretty high-concept. Unfortunately, the novel never really gelled for me, and the twists, though interesting in the moment, only further muddled things. Naturally, sparks inevitably fly between the agent and the therapist, but the characters are so bland in their respective traumas that it doesn’t really matter. Note: Sony Pictures has already acquired the movie rights to Simultaneous, so we’ll see what Hollywood does with the story.

I do enjoy a good story in which some bizarre otherworldly event irrevocably changes life here on Earth, usually in the form of humanity being overcome by, and learning to fight back against, terrifying phenomena from beyond. On paper, that’s precisely what Black Tide promises, as two strangers awaken from a one-night stand to a bizarre and horrifying new reality. Their situation grows only more dire when they become trapped in a car on a beach, surrounded by alien creatures on one side and the slowly encroaching waves on the other. I discovered Black Tide via one of those Facebook reels of someone listing their favorite horror novels, and based on their description, I went in expecting a harrowing journey. Unfortunately, Black Tide falls less in the “otherworldly horror” genre, and more in the “annoying characters doing stupid things and getting mad at each other for it” genre. I don’t think I experienced a single moment of suspense, never mind horror, on any of the story’s 242 pages. I did, however, become increasingly bored by the characters’ frequent bickering, as well as the author’s attempts to make their neuroses, dysfunctions, and personal traumas more dramatic than they warranted.

The Black Company is the most elite mercenary group in all the land, but they’ve fallen on hard times as of late. When a new opportunity presents itself, they leap at the opportunity — only to discover that their new employer might just be an ancient evil that’s beginning to reawaken. Glen Cook’s debut novel helped to establish the “grimdark” genre with its tale of mercenaries willing to do whatever it takes to survive and ancient sorcerers who barely seem human. (Tolkien, this most certainly is not.) The Black Company was inspired by Cook’s own experiences as a soldier, and as such, is less focused on traditional world building and more concerned with the mercenaries — colorful characters, every single one of them — and their own struggles to stay alive, no matter what. Some might find Cook’s terse, even perfunctory storytelling appealing and even refreshing compared to high fantasy, but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.

Given that one of its protagonists is a beautiful ballet dancer-turned-Russian spy trained in “sexpionage,” Red Sparrow does occasionally slip into lurid and graphic detail. Some readers might find that titillating but more intriguing are the novel’s descriptions of mundane spy work, which possess a verisimilitude thanks to the author’s own history in the CIA as a recruiter of foreign agents. Although I was never not entertained by Red Sparrow, I found it devoid of any nail-biting tension, which one would expect from an acclaimed spy novel. I suspect that’s because, with a few notable exceptions, all of the Russian agents are corrupt, self-serving, back-stabbing bastards. Meanwhile, American agents might be crass and uncouth, but every single one of them is smart, competent, and loyal. Matthews’ contempt for Russia’s government and spy agencies is both undeniable and understandable, but it also means that you know how every single conflict, twist, and conspiracy is going to pan out. Finally, I found it amusing that one of the novel’s villains is a shrewish (and sex-obsessed) Democratic senator who betrays her country and starts selling secrets to the Russians. That might’ve been plausible in 2013, but it feels less so in 2025 when our Republican president publicly kowtows to Putin and various right-wing figures have a history of parroting Kremlin talking points.

Originally published as The Killer under his original name (Tom Hinshelwood), Tom Wood’s The Hunter is the first in a series of novels that follows exploits of an enigmatic and deadly assassin known only as Victor. In his debut, Victor completes a seemingly “routine” assassination, only to be double-crossed by his unknown employer, setting up a globe-spanning game of cat and mouse as Victor tries to figure out who betrayed him, why, and how he can be kill them before they kill him. Y’know, pretty basic stuff. Even with its various twists and turns, and an interesting angle on post-Cold War espionage, The Hunter is never more than a pretty straightforward airport novel. Though nothing mind-blowing, it can still be entertaining enough if that’s all you’re looking for.

Jack Vance is one of those classic sci-fi authors whom I’ve often seen bandied about as “one of the greatest ever,” and his fans include genre luminaries George R. R. Martin and Michael Moorcock. Thus, I thought it was high time to finally check him out for myself. As its title suggests, this collection of short stories belongs to the “Dying Earth” genre, which takes place on Earth near the end of its days, where the Sun is dimming, countless civilizations have come and gone, and magic and technology are indistinguishable from each other. Vance’s prose is quite fantastical, and a welcome change of pace. Oftentimes, though, he seems less interested in driving the story forward than dazzling the reader with increasingly florid descriptions of bizarre sights and sounds and arcane-sounding terminology. Much like Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” tetralogy — another famous “Dying Earth” title — it’s alternately fascinating and frustrating. Nerdy side note: Dungeons & Dragons’ traditional magic system, in which spells are so complex that wizards can only prepare a certain number at any point in time, was inspired by Vance’s writings, as were certain spells like “Prismatic Spray.”

Although he’s the son of a high-ranking Lord of Hell, Laszlo really just wants to enjoy Earth’s finer things, like milkshakes, cigarettes, and outsmarting con artists. Unfortunately, he’s tasked with managing the centuries-old curse on the Drakeford family, and he’s doing a very poor job of it. In order to save his career — and his existence — he must team up with the latest Drakeford scion to be afflicted by the curse’s hideous effects. But can Maggie Drakeford trust the demon’s promises to help her family? And can Laszlo trust his fellow demons when he learns a secret about the curse that challenges Hell’s balance of power? It’s definitely an intriguing premise for a novel that promises a lot of (theologically dubious) fun. Unfortunately, The Witchstone fell flat for me. There’s nothing bad about it per se, but neither is there anything terribly gripping about it. The whole time I was reading it, I kept waiting for something to kick in that would pick up the pace or make the proceedings more interesting and involving. That said, Neff’s depiction of Hell — or at least, Laszlo’s corner of it — as a paperwork and metrics-obsessed corporate bureaucracy replete with sycophants and consultants is The Witchstone’s strongest feature, and the source of most of its humor. (I imagine The Screwtape Letters’ C.S. Lewis having a good chuckle at this part of the novel. I certainly did.)

Our popular conception of a spy is that of a dashing and debonair individual who gallivants around the globe, stopping nefarious villains with clever gadgets and equally clever wit. But that image is hopelessly romanticized, explains Elyse Graham in Book and Dagger, which chronicles the WW2-era rise of modern espionage. Rather than recruit what we’d consider “spy” material, the Allies turned instead to scholars, librarians, historians, and economists — none of whom were soldiers but all of whom had the necessary skills and academic training to outthink Hitler and the Third Reich. Along with other unlikely folks (e.g., Hollywood studio execs and production crews) as well as refugees fleeing the Nazi regime, the Allies’ academics created a highly effective intelligence operation that proved essential to winning the war. Graham’s enthusiasm for her subject matter is readily apparent, and her heavily researched book is filled with fascinating details, and even proves legitimately gripping at times. (Her chapter on the D-Day invasion, and all of the behind-the-scenes planning and subterfuge that made it successful, is an absolute page-turner.) The book’s focus does wander at times; Graham casts a wide net and occasionally heads down what feels like elaborate rabbit trails. Even so, Book and Dagger is a fascinating look at a side of history most of us probably know nothing about, and given the current administration’s ongoing assault on academics and the humanities, it serves as a warning, as well.