Book Review: A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang

 

A Palace Near the Wind by AI Jing

192 pages, Hardcover

Published April 15, 2025 by Titan Books

 

AI Jing has been an author on my radar for a while. I was there when she won her Stoker award, and had read a few short stories. I know I am more in touch with 1960s SF scene than the current one but something about the online description of the novel made me feel very out of touch.

“A story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion for readers of Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Neon Yang's The Black Tides of Heaven and Kritika H. Rao's The Surviving Sky”

I have never heard of all three books Titan Books felt were marketable enough to compare this book with. Let me be clear, I'm putting that on myself.  That is besides the point. That also made me question if I was the right reader to understand this book. It has a fairy tale feeling to it. Going into it cold, I thought it was a fantasy novella taking place in the ancient past, and eventually it felt like a reveal to me when I realized that this was a far future tale. That is not exactly right because there are pure fantasy characters made up of trees, which gave it a new-weird early China Mieville feeling. I like that I am not entirely sure, I believe that is a feature, not a bug.

“In Gear, Wind Walkers, and Water Shifters work in harmony with the Land Wanderers and the Desert Shredders within factories, ensuring smoother inner workings of the city of Engine.

Harmony. I wondered how true that was.

Engine is a vibrant city that will fulfill its citizens' wildest wishes. Browse the glorious selection of movies, shows, and subscribe to comvid with your family and friends! The online mega shots are great for the latest deals and products!

It has a couple of royal families, arranged marriages, and fascinating kingdoms, which are not exactly the type of stuff I normally read. This is out of my comfort zone for sure. A woman from the tree-people has to marry a human king. She thinks she can slow the human destruction of nature if the families come together. A plan that is not appealing eventually…

“What would happen if we broke the contract? Fled? Hid?”

Her smile was the dreaming stem of a river weed scorched by the sun, unseen by the rain for too many moons. “Death.” She paused. “Not for us, but for Fang, though we’d likely be found out quickly and brought to the prison in engine, like Shanshu, though she was able to escape.”

That is the intrigue at the heart of this story. Considering the short 192 pages, plenty of story happens in this short novel. I was a bigger fan of the world-building than anything else. The message is great, but I suspect it will fly over the heads of many readers. That is not Jing’s fault; she did her job. The metaphors and analogies are delicately laid out. The point is that that different from the highest-grossing science fiction movie of all time but limitless human greed and the impact on nature is a point that cannot be made enough. Apparently.

One major problem. 192, and split into two books. It felt incomplete, this story with such an epic was likely a single 400-page novel. Conventional wisdom right now that 330 or shorter books are more marketable, unlike the old days when publishers wanted doorstops. Not sure if turning this into two novels was the right choice.

Book Review: Death Cell by Ron Goulart

 

Death Cell by Ron Goulart

 153 pages, Paperback

Published, 1971 by Beagle Boxer

 

Now it is strange to me that Ron Goulart was an author I had barely ever heard of a few years back. He is an author I think about a lot now, and not just because he is great, and he is. A Bay Area SF writer who grew up in Berkeley about a decade or so behind Philip K. Dick, it was Ron asking Phil for advice, which led to the Formula letter, that I have made myself an expert in.

For his part, Goulart didn’t follow the formula, but it is clear his world-building methods and humor are very Dickian. If you don’t know Goulart’s work and what sketch or overview he writes, smart bizarro, humorous science fiction, often with radical politics of the era. Mostly last 60s and 70s.

He was a historian so much of the political stuff is top-notch political reflections of our world with a Douglas Adams or Robert Sheckley tongue-in-cheek gonzo to them. 

Death Cell was one of the few books published by the short-lived Beagle-Boxer imprint of Beagle Books (known for romance novels) It was the first of two novels about Jack Summer, a Hunter S. Thompson-like character who is the top reporter at the Galactic news mag, Muckrake. His partner Palma, is described on the back cover as “the horniest photographer in the known universe.”

How does Goulart get the so-called “acid zaniness?” Let's look at this one example. Bozos, by the way are fighting robots…

“The trio of bozos who'd broken into the shack came out, cautiously.

“We got your number,” said the flame thrower. “Maybe next time we fix your wagon good.”

“No more gab, cautioned the bozo in the yellow suit. “Scram now.”

“Not much really, Jack. He was quite elated about your coming here yourself apparently, he had read several of your exposé articles in the prison library back files. He said he admired not only your courage what your prose style.”

Goulart novels are written with a breezy zany quality with lots of funny dialogue scenes like this. It is like taking the weird world-building details and mixing them with the sharp wit of Fletch novels. This story involves Jack Summer, who is a spy using being a reporter as a cover. He gets on the trail of a super weapon in development because even the people making it are star-struck by him.

“Well, I really don't know. I had the impression, from listening to poor Ned, there is something secret going on at the island prison. Something called the death cell project. Surely Ned told you that much before the bozos broke in.”

“We were talking about money, chiefly.”

Alicia said, “But Muckrake certainly has other information, information from other sources on what’s going on. Don’t you?”

After shaking his head, Summer asked, “Was something from the death cell operation used on Taffy tonight? Palma got a whiff of it, too.”

The lefty political takes are nicely mixed into hilarious world-building. Robot henchmen, Cat-man butlers. And weapons dealers like “The Explosion King.”

“They're all retired munitions makers,” said the small black driver. “It's a joke to them to call themselves death merchants, retired. Do you see any humor in that? They go into the town hospital once a week for rejuvenation therapy.”

The old cat man tilted his tin hat until the brim was nearly touching his left eye he clapped his furry grey hands together. “Jelly, Jelly, Jelly.”

I point to the Jelly, Jelly part to show Goulart never takes anything too seriously. You’ll laugh on many of the pages. Some of the political stuff suffers being out-of-date sensitivity-wise. Lots discussion of boobs, as male SF writers in the era tended to do.  Also…

“The Butler was a green cat man. When he noticed Summer's colored invitation, he expelled a sad breath. “I was hoping you'd be one of the navajos.”

“Which Navajos is this?”

“They are supposed to be among our featured minority groups at today's fundraising affair, Sir,” explained Nancy J. Folkstone's aging Butler. “Teleporting in all the way from Barnum period to the best of my knowledge, Sir, Barnum is the only planet in our system to possess Indians in any quantity.”

I thought at first the Cat-man’s interest in Native Americans was nice, but the way he talked about them still being oppressed was uncomfortable.

I was, however, amused by this little jab at Harlan Ellison, which was randomly thrown into a scene set at a dinner party, saying he wouldn’t exist with Grimmelshausen the 17th-century German author.

“Now did I bring my newly acquired rare mint copy of the Harlan Ellison horn book out here to stand around with it while you mouth off about Grimmelshausen again?

“There would be no Ellison without the pioneering of Grimmelshausen.”

Death Cell is hilarious proto-Bizarro. I greatly enjoyed it, maybe not as much as my first Goulart novel, Flux. I do intend to keep reading him.

Book Review: A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guinard

 

A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guinard

264 pages, Paperback

Published February 2025 by Cemetery Dance Publications

 The art of the short story is one that I have a ton of respect for. I love any kind of short story, no matter the genre, but the short horror tale has a special place in my heart. A story meant to creep the reader out or unsettle the person reading is one of my favorite magic tricks. 

Eric Guinard is in a unique position to become one of the best practitioners of these dark arts because of his constant work and study in the genre. As an editor, he not only works with the greats in the fantastic Dark Fiction Primer series, but he also reads slush pile for anthologies he is editing.  That combination of working with the best, and let's be frank, the stories I am sure he has to reject, is important.

Reading and poring over some of the best work or the best authors will teach you many important lessons about the craft of writing horror. That said, reading the stories that don’t work, or are almost there, will teach you even more.  All that editing, reading, and learning mixed with a writer's imagination is part of what makes Eric a great author of the dark, weird, and unsettling story. 

One of the things that also separates Eric from other authors is his keen sense of setting both with place and time in history. It is what makes his work different and special. Stories set in pre-depression Chinatown, in the Beat era, and 1950s LA are well researched. Guinard puts us in these places deep in the past.

My favorite stories were A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds, A story about gay Hispanic teen in 1950s LA,  If I Drive Before I Wake, a short piece about self-driving cars, and the Chinatown ghost story Ascending Lights of Yu Lin. The BEST story in the collection was Ommetaphobia, a tale about a blind character gaining sight.

Let's highlight some moments that show off Guinard’s skill. Catch some creepy vibes here…

 “I follow, and the door frame creaks when I grab it for support, because my legs go to soup at what I see. I almost turned away, though it's no more crazy than talking to a skull made of sugar or of dead Papa carrying it around.

Jet black and electric blue that's the night sky, shimmering and buzzing like lights of an all-night diner, while agate-dusted shades zoom by, darting through alleys of a crowded universe. My eyes fight to adjust, to make sense, because the Crescent moon is this sideways Grin of teeth, clamping a cigar that blows puffs of firecracker flares, which drip shadows onto the hands I shoot up and reflex. The stars pulse too, like you've never seen.”

 Ommetaphobia is the story where I thought Guinard just took his skill to another level. Every word feels like a working gear. The idea of seeing eyes for the first time and being afraid of them. Really cool idea with better execution.

“The eyes were a lunacy by which all the rest of life was now measured, and the longer he examined them the greater in number they seemed to appear. He was terrified of what he saw, with the terror, at least had dulled to a distant sensation detached like knowing a large frothing dog rages on the other side of a leaning, rickety fence; as long as the fence holds, you're safe but Dean wondered what would happen when the fence pulling back those eyes might finally give way.”

Last, I would point to the Chinatown story…The Ascending lights of Yu Lan: “Spirits are released this night, and lanterns guide them to us from the afterworld for communion, then guide them back. Without the lanterns, without loved ones lighting the way, ghosts will get lost. Those lost ghosts are the pretas, the ghosts unloved, unmourned. Lost to existence, wandering forever in the dark.”

That last one is a good example how how Guinard makes use of setting. I loved this collection. I read it off and on in the middle of a reading slump. These stories dragged me out of the slump. For lovers of short horror stories, you can’t go wrong.