This was a super-fast and engrossing read. I never could get into Lovecraft's stories, but I liked Victor Lavalle's Big Machine, so I figured I'd enjoy his take on Lovecraft's mythos. Even better: the story is packed with vivid description of Harlem during its Renaissance as well as its eldritch horrors, which are far more convincingly horrible than I recall from the source material. Plus, there is a gut-wrenching, take-no-prisoners callout to present day police violence, and I am here for it.

Do not judge this book by the free sample, if you go that route, because the story begins very comfortable and familiar with an ordinary girl who turns out to be secretly extraordinary. But then there's a battle a mere quarter of the way through, and then another, and then another, and the author does not pull punches on these scenes, which are rendered in cinematic detail and are all the scarier and higher stakes in contrast with scenes of beauty and wonder and the raw vulnerability of the heroine. I did not mean to read this book in three days but I couldn't do otherwise. 

Most of the time when I am praising books, I say "I couldn't put it down!" I did put this book down often, and read it very slowly, especially at the beginning: it is so dense with sensory detail and cultural hints about its fantasy realms that it's like every scene unfolds in slow motion. But this makes sense for the narrator, who travels the island pepper farm of his childhood to a decadent empire across the sea, and immerses himself completely in the experiences of being in the big city. I took little sips of this book for the first quarter of it, and then suddenly things picked up and hurtled toward some very unexpected conflicts. This is a book to buy in print, not on Kindle as I did; it's a book that revels in books, the highs and lows of giving oneself over to storytelling, and it would be comforting to read in a more tactile form.

I really enjoyed this book, although I was surprised by the turn it eventually takes. This post is a little rumination on the role of food in the title character's life. 

I started this book on an airplane, which wasn't a good fit, because it's not the kind of book you can just immerse yourself in, or at least I couldn't. I finished it during jury duty, which was perfect, because it filled in the ticking minutes between panel selection and court prep and voir dire with fantastic creatures and gentle natural history. These are brief vignettes of encounters with animals that have taken a sharp turn on the evolutionary path. The stories are only loosely connected and arranged, so you have to power through on your own curiousity, but this is rewarded--especially in the last half of the book--with some lovely images.