The Neverending Story

Michael Ende
Completed 5/22/2026, Reviewed 5/27/2026
4 stars

This is a tough book to review.  Many, many people have seen the ubiquitous 1980s film.  What most don’t know is that the film is just the first half of the book.  The second half is very dark.  It is about wanting to be someone else so much, you forget who you really are.  It is also a journey through grief, as the main character slowly forgets about his deceased mother and grieving father.  It’s so much deeper than what the film presented that it took me off guard, save for a warning from my friend John who had read it about five years ago.  I’ll do the best plot summary I can, although there will be some spoilers for the first half of the book.

Bastien is an overweight kid whose mother has passed away.  He is bullied at school.  His father, deep in grief, can barely function.  One day, he steals a fantasy book from a local bookstore and hides in the school attic instead of attending class.  As he reads the book, he finds himself strangely drawn to the story until it starts referring to him.  At first, he thinks he’s misreading it, but then realizes that he is supposed to be the savior of the dying land of Fantastica.  Eventually, he crosses through, saving Fantastica.  He is given an amulet that grants him wishes.  He tries to use it for good, but it often has strange, unexpected results.  On top of that, each time he uses it, he loses a bit of memory.  He begins a journey to find a way out of Fantastica, but begins to love his power more and more while he loses the memories of home, losing his desire to leave Fantastica.  So the big question of the book is not, “Can he save Fantastica from destruction?” but “Can he remember the desire to return home before all memory of home is gone?”

The book is strange.  Written in the late 70’s, it’s still very much an old-school boy’s imagination story.  Despite Atreyou being green in the book, he’s clearly modeled on Native Americans, wearing leather skins and hunting purple buffalo.  This recalls how boys like playing Cowboys and Indians.  The quest is to save the Childlike Empress (saving the princess).  If she dies, the whole land of Fantastica disappears.  Once inside the story, Bastien is thin and lithe, which he is not in the real world.  And then he has the power to wish for anything.  Who wouldn’t want that.  Upon reading the first half, I found I actually liked it better than the film.  It made a bit more sense to me.  

The second half, however, is the dark part.  Bastien begins his journey to leave Fantastica, but loses memories as he uses his wishes.  It reminded me of Wizard of Oz a bit.  Bastien travels to many strange lands, each dark in its own way, as he tries to find his way home.  One of the few points of relief comes in a scene with a warm old woman who feeds him and takes care of him for a while.  He’s clearly missing his mother, but has lost most of his memories of her.  It’s sad, but so gentle and safe after being in so many unsafe situations.   

There were also homages to Tolkien’s universe, as there is a dragon named Smerg (Smaug), and a country called Morgul (as in Minas Morgul).  I did groan when I read the name of Smerg.  In the second half, Atreyou and the air dragon Falkor try to remind Bastien of who he is, but Bastien snaps back, sounding more and more like Frodo falling under the power of the ring, snapping at Sam.  I’m sure there were references to other classic fantasy books, but I’m most familiar with the Tolkien stories.  

There was a part of me that only wanted to give this book three stars.  The second half is so dark, it’s almost a miserable experience to read.  I can see why many people gave this book low ratings.  This book was a book club read, so we discussed it last night.  Many people brough up things that made me think more deeply about the grief journey.  It helped me understand and appreciate it better.  It made me settle on awarding it four stars out of five.  Perhaps reading it again in the future, I might raise my rating, as it is deeper and more complex than what I gleaned initially.  I can see why the author was angry at the film version.  The first half is pure fairy tale.  But fairy tales always come with a catch and a message.  And that’s the significance of the second half.  It balances out the first and helps Bastien grow in the end.

The Everlasting

Alix E. Harrow
Completed 5/18/2026, Reviewed 5/19/2026
4 stars

This 2026 Hugo nominee is an incredible time travel romance that begins with a crawl.  The first 140 pages or so dragged as Owen Mallory goes back in time to confirm the existence of the national hero, Una Everlasting.  Those first pages are rather dull during the character study of Owen, a mediocre historian with a passion for the Una Everlasting narrative, and his encounter with Vivien the new Chancellor.  But when he goes back a second time, and then a third, the book takes off with plot twists, Owen’s passion for not just the legend but Una herself, and the revelation of Vivien’s real reason for sending him back.  Upon finishing, I realized I was completely engrossed in the story and forgave the necessary drudgery of the first quarter of the book.

Owen was a pathetic man.  He’s estranged from his politically radical father and not very respected by his colleagues at university.  He was a deserter in the military and is a sheepish patriot.  He’s a lecturer and a researcher, not destined for professorial greatness.  Without warning, an ancient book appears in the mail which seems to be the earliest documentation of the Una Everlasting.  Shocked by this windfall, he begins translating it, only to have it disappear after a few days and be replaced by an address.  It turns out he is being summoned by the new Chancellor Vivien for a mission to confirm and complete the mysterious book.  Before he is clear on how to do that, she stabs his hand, his blood seeps on the book, and he is transported a thousand years in the past to the time of Una.  He realizes his mission is to make sure she completes the tasks ascribed to her legend, save the Queen, and die a heroic death.  But as he repeatedly is sent back in time, he and Una realize they can rewriter the tale so Una doesn’t die, but the cost may be Owen’s life.   

Owen does not make a great impression on the reader at the start of the book.  Between that and the seemingly meandering beginning, I did not like him.  When we find out he’s in love with Una, he becomes even more pathetic.  But then the repeated returns to the past changed my opinion of him.  Una, on the other hand, is one of the greatest knights to ever exist.  She lives in legend because her saving of the Queen and the realm, the Dominion, set the stage for the country’s control over the whole land.  But with each iteration of time travel, we find out more and more about the two as individuals, their pasts, and their relationship.  They become vibrant three-dimensional characters despite Owen’s lack of belief in himself.  I loved them even more as they worked to break the cycle of the repeating time travel.  

The magic is very interesting here.  It’s minimal, primarily being the time travel aspect.  Later, there’s a dragon and a magical grail that can restore health.  It takes a while, but the extent of the magic becomes clear towards the end.  Speaking of which, it is so full of twists and turns.  The bad guys show up over and over again to thwart any plans to allow Una to live.  And just when you think that Una and Owen have finally broken out of the time travel loop, they are again thwarted and doomed to start over.

The narration of the book was done very well.  When Owen is the narrator, he speaks in 2nd person referring to Una.  When Una narrates, she speaks in 2nd person referring to Owen.  It seemed clunky at first, but it endeared me to the two as the book went on.  It also reflects the growing relationship between them.  

This book felt like a big departure from Harrow’s previous books, The Once and Future Witches and The Ten Thousand Doors of January.  I loved those books and was disappointed at the beginning of this one.  But once the looping starts and we find out the extent of the time loops, you realize it’s a very powerful, well-constructed novel.  All the ins and outs are well thought out.  If I was trying to write this book, I’m sure I would have had a miserable time keeping track of everything.  But Harrow handles it flawlessly with masterful prose and world building.  I give this book four stars out of five, knocking off a star because I was fully expecting to DNF it in its first quarter.  I’m so glad I kept with it because it ended up blowing my mind.

Penric’s Fox

Lois McMaster Bujold
Completed 5/14/2026, Reviewed 5/19/2026
3 stars

The third chronological book in the Penric and Desdemona series (fifth in publication order).  This story is a murder mystery with foxes.  Like its predecessors, it’s a rather cozy read.  It had a very slow start, but halfway through it picked up, making for a satisfying ending.  Unfortunately, I had the same basic feelings about this one as I did the previous two.  I like the characters but plot is thin.  And like Penric and the Shaman, there wasn’t enough interaction between Pen and his demon Des.  In the first book, Penric’s Demon, I loved their interaction.  In the succeeding books, Des occasionally pops up with interesting tidbits and hints.  Inglis the Shaman and Oswyl the Locator are in this book and provide more interplay as well as a little levity here and there.  

Penric and Inglis are called by Oswyl to help investigate the murder of a young sorceress.  She was devout and well-liked by many.  It turns out she already had a demon inhabiting her.  However, when the death of a sorcerer is expected, there is usually another chosen to become the demon’s new home.  In the case of the murder, the demon either entered the body of the murderer or a nearby animal, whatever was nearby.  For instance, a fox as there are tons of foxes in the woods where the sorceress was found.  There is a danger, however, when a demon bonds with a lesser animal.  The demon may overwhelm the animal and lose some of its “humanity.”  Penric and the others take up the challenge of finding the demon and the murderer.

Penric still stands out for me as the bookish, accidental sorcerer.  His demeanor is sweet; I really like him.  However, I still find the book to be awfully straight-forward.  There isn’t much tension to make the book gripping.  And there aren’t enough humorous moments to make it really cozy.  Instead, it feels a little flat.  I keep wanting to be blown away by something, but instead, feel like I get melodrama.  

I don’t have much else to say about the book.  It’s a pleasant read, prettily written in a world already developed by quite a few previous books.  It’s a meh, but on the positive side.  If I wasn’t reading this series with my friend John, I don’t know if I’d stick with it.  In the context of the book club, however, I look forward to finding out how deep the stories get and if I can become more emotionally involved.  I give this book three stars out of five.

Shroud

Adrian Tchaikovsky
Completed 5/6/2026, Reviewed 5/6/2026
4 stars

This is another excellent book by Tchaikovsky.  Like Children of Time, it’s dense, perhaps denser.  The first few days, I could only read about twenty pages at a time before it felt too heavy.  It’s another tale of an encounter with aliens, this time on the moon of a gas giant in a distant solar system.  The moon is named Shroud because it has a densely clouded, toxic atmosphere, much like our Venus.  The pressure of its atmosphere is many times that of Earth and the gravity is twice Earth’s.  One would think it wouldn’t sustain life.  But when two people from a mining exploration ship are stranded on there, they must survive not only the 2g and high atmospheric pressure, but the creatures they discover living there.  This book was nominated for a 2026 Hugo for Best Novel.  

Juna is the assistant to the project director on board the ship.  Her task is basically to be the calm intermediary between the disparate personalities on the ship.  While the others write her off as little more than a secretary, she does most of the hard work the director takes credit for.  Also on board is Mai, a brilliant and confrontative engineer who doesn’t play well with others, like most of the rest of the crew.  When an accident occurs ripping open the project’s part of the ship, the two end up on a pod together and plummet to the moon’s surface.  They can’t communicate with their ship because of the dense atmosphere and the high amount of electromagnetic interference.  They can’t see much more than ten to fifteen feet because of the thick and obscuring atmosphere.  To survive, they realize they need to go halfway around the moon to get to the anchor that reaches up to the ship.  Monsters of various types are in their way.  The dominant monster is a strange slug-like thing encased in what appears to be a constructed exoskeleton.  Nicknamed the Shrouded, they continually try to take apart the pod, the only thing separating Juna and Mai from a certain crushing and toxic death.  The two must find a way to reach the anchor through these monsters if they are to survive.

This book is similar to “Children” in that after about a hundred pages, when Juna and Mai are stranded on Shroud, the chapters alternate between them and the monstrous aliens.  It’s a bit derivative, but the circumstances are very different.  In this case, the aliens’ main source of input and output is echolocation and electromagnetic waves.  None of the creatures, including the Shrouded, have eyes, since the atmosphere is obscured by clouds.  So communication between the humans and the Shrouded is non-existent, as neither understands how the other exists, let alone communicates.  

The human perspective chapters are narrated by Juna.  She’s quite the brilliant person for being relatively non-technical.  At first, she and Mai butt heads, but as time crawls, they learn to communicate with each other and figure out how to survive.  It took me quite a while to get inside Juna’s head due to the denseness of the prose.  I think I finally broke through once she and Mai were on better terms.  I actually related more to the Shrouded.  I think that was because of my general distaste for the humans in the beginning.  They were belligerent towards each other and quite xenophobic towards the Shrouded.  

The themes running in this book were xenophobia (naturally) and corporate greed.  Humans are in stasis on the spaceship until they’re needed, much like tools in a shed, and are treated as little more than that.  It also explores the problems with a very style of communication much different than humans and even the spiders from “Children.”  

This book requires a lot of concentration.  It’s not that technical, just, again, very dense in its prose.  The world building is phenomenal, as Tchaikovsky always is.  It’s because of the denseness as well as the similarity to “Children” that I give it less than 5 stars.  It gets four out of five.  I’m not sure how I’ll vote in the Hugos yet.  I have four more books to read.  Then I’ll see how this compares to the others.

400,000 Hits!!

Well, another six months have gone by and I've had another 100K hits on my blog.  Total: 400,000!! 

Big thanks to all who have visited and read my reviews.

I'm starting on the Hugos Nominees packet, so I'll be immersed in those books for the next three months.  I'll be voting in every category in which I can read or watch all the nominees.  So look for those reviews in upcoming posts.  The WorldCon this year is in Anaheim in August.  While there, I'll be getting to San Diego to visit an old roommate I haven't seen in 30, no wait, almost 40 years.  We're hoping to visit Joshua Tree National Park at that time.  Woohoo National Parks!!

I hope everyone who reads my blog finds a review or two that inspire them to read the books.  And remember, Reading is FUNdamental 😁

Role Model

Rachel Reid
Completed 4/48/2026, Reviewed 5/6/2026
4 stars

I am so loving these Heated Rivalry books.  Each one features a new couple with cameos from the characters of the other books.  The stories are all quick reads and soooooo romantic.  But they also deal with external and internal homophobia.  This one particularly focuses on the internalized homophobia of the main character Troy.  His coming out process is amazing to watch.  It’s slow and very frustrating at times, but that’s what makes the book so good.  Yes, it’s also spicy.  But I can see why fans are clamoring for a seventh book.  This one is the fifth in the series.  And it’s actually called the Game Changer series. 

Troy Barrett is the main character.  After an intense confrontation with his former best friend Dallas Kent, who has been accused of sexual crimes by women, Troy is traded to Ottawa, the worst team in the league.  Incidentally, it’s also where Ilya Rozanov plays.  However, most everyone in the league is against Troy because of the “bro-code” dismissing the women and supporting Dallas the perpetrator.  Except for his new team.  Unlike other teams, they have a camaraderie he’s never felt before.  Their coach also has a less abusive style, unlike most hockey coaches in the league.  He hates it all, though, and just wants to get through the season and try to get onto another team.  His plans all fall apart when he meets the team’s social media guy.  Harris Drover is very out and the team loves him.  Troy doesn’t get it, but he finds this slightly paunchy bear irresistible.  And Harris, who has kept his sexual relationships out of the locker room gets tons of mixed signals from Troy.  But Harris decides to make Troy his project and get him better integrated into the team.  And then…

I loved Harris.  He’s not a super-hot guy.  He’s a rather normal looking guy, which is a great change.  The problem with most M/M romance and romantasy books is that all the guys are stunners.  Not this time.  And not only does he manage the team’s online presence but is basically their cheerleader and best bud.  It’s a great relationship.  So it only makes sense that he makes a project out of Troy.  

Troy on the other hand, is a mess.  He feels isolated because many in the league hate him for what he did to Dallas.  Plus, he feels deeply guilty for all the gay slurs he used to cover up his own identity.  He doesn’t want to be a bro anymore but doesn’t know how not to be one.  Enter Harris.  And as time goes on, the signals between them get more and more mixed.  They become friends, but will there be benefits?

Ilya has some nice scenes with Troy.  Ilya is not publicly out at this point, but he does see the chemistry between Troy and Harris.  As the team captain, he takes it upon himself to give Troy advise and push him a little.  He also helps him feel a part of the team, as the captain should, giving Troy support and encouragement.  They are great scenes, showing a gentler side of Ilya that is rarely seen by the public.  

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, zipping through it in about two and a half days.  Once again, these books are not great literature, but they are so fun and so romantic, they simply suck me in.  I give this book four stars out of five.  It may be a while before I get to the sixth book as I now have all the Hugo nominees to get through before late July.  But I will get to it and report back, hopefully before season two of Heated Rivalry hits streaming.

More Than Human

Theodore Sturgeon

Completed 4/26/2026, Reviewed 4/27/2026

4 stars

I first read this book in college.  I picked it up at a supermarket in their paperback section.  I thought it was brilliant.  After rereading nearly fifty years later, I still find it brilliant, but it wasn’t as earth-shattering.  Perhaps it’s because it was a reread, or perhaps I’ve been exposed to so much science fiction since then.  I love the basic theme of the next step in human evolution being communal and psychic.  However, I found some of the delivery tough to follow.  And of course, this being from the early fifties, it has some cringy stereotypical male/female behaviors.  Overall, though, I thought the inclusion of girls and boys, white and black persons, and the sentiment against inequality was great.  At a time when sci fi was read mostly by white boys and men, Sturgeon made a concerted effort to reach beyond that demographic.  This book came out in 1953, and it won a 2004 retro Hugo.

The story begins with a “half-wit,” basically, a person living on the street with no speaking ability and limited intellectual development.  He begins to get visions and messages from someone else, which he doesn’t understand.  Eventually, he meets this person and makes a connection.  That goes awry, forcing him to flee.  He finds a farm with a couple who have lost a child.  They take him in, treat him like the son they lost, teach him to speak, and to become their farmhand.  He accidentally takes the name of Lone.  When the couple becomes pregnant, he leaves and eventually finds a girl named Janie with telekinesis and mute twin girls named Bonnie and Beanie who teleport.  His own psychic abilities mesh with theirs.  Later, he goes back to the farm and finds the couple did have a baby boy, but it is mentally disabled.  The woman has left “to go east,” and the man is failing at keeping things together.  Lone takes the baby back to the cave where the little group lives and they discover the baby is like an adding machine, that is, a high-powered AI computer.  Together they form an entity that interacts psychically.  It is a new level of human development: Homo Gestalt.

The book is in three chapters, each like a related short story.  In the second chapter, they meet a boy named Gerry who can use all the gifts of the others to accomplish what he wants, namely, power and control.  His own gift is the ability to control other people’s psyche through power of suggestion, absorb everything they know, and wipe their memories to hide the evidence.  In the third chapter, they meet a man who can also psychically connect, but unlike the others, has a sense of morality and social ethics.

I remember being in awe of the coming together of a group of psionics to create a singular entity.  I still find it fascinating and generally found the book very intriguing until the third chapter.  Titled “Morality,” the first part of the third chapter is very hard to understand what’s going on.  The main character of this chapter is roaming around with a huge chunk of missing memory trying to find a “dimwit” and some children, but he can’t quite put his finger on who or why.  This section was incredibly complicated in trying to describe what he’s going through mentally.  And physically, he’s a mess.  It takes Janie to help him remember everything.  But then, like many early sci-fi stories, Janie goes through a huge exposition to explain all the events up to that point.  The saving grace is that the reader is so frustrated with the chaos of the main character’s thoughts or lack thereof, it comes as a welcome relief when Janie explains it all.  

The character development is pretty good.  The lumbering Lone is perhaps the easiest to like.  He’s sort of a gentle giant who is basically the head of this new psychic body.  Janie is brash, the twins are mischievous, and Baby is like a wild supercomputer.  Gerry is dangerous and we learn about him in flashbacks during a psychiatric appointment.  Hip Barrows, the main character of the third chapter is the most “normal.”

There are some memorable positive moments, such as when the group goes to live with Miss Alice, whom Lone knew from his past.  She tries to force the twin black girls to eat with her maid while the others eat with her.  Janie and Gerry threaten Alice until they are allowed to eat together.  On the other hand, like in several classic sci-fi stories, there’s a scene where Hip shakes Janie, as is also depicted in a lot of old books and films.  This is so cringy and it happens several times.  I felt this went against character for Janie who was such a brash and precocious young child.  I think it would have been more in character to have her throw off his arms and be more aggressive.  

I really like the prose, something I’ve said of the previous books of his I read about 10 to 12 years ago.  Godbody, Venus Plus X, and E Pluribus Unicorn are all very well written.  I give this book four stars out of five, mainly because the first part of chapter 3 felt almost unreadable because of Sturgeon’s portrayal of missing memory.  I’d like to read more of his short stories; an award for excellence in short fiction was named after Sturgeon.  I remember when he came to our Fantasy Lit class in 1981.  He read a story about a pleasuring toilet seat.  It was very bawdy, reminding me he was also a dirty old man.  But he was also a great writer and visionary, as this book demonstrates.