Today’s stack: some novels I finished recently! Two of them were released in February, and the other is following up one that I started in December.
Out of the Loop by Katie Siegel
This novel is a time loop story with a perfect title: Amie Teller was stuck in a time loop for (subjectively) about two years, living September 17 over and over again on repeat. But when she finally woke up on September 18, she found out that her neighbor—a mean-spirited woman who seemed to antagonize everyone she encountered—had been murdered the day before. Amie feels that her intimate knowledge of September 17 should give her a leg up on solving the murder … but she soon finds that it’s not quite as easy as she’d expected.
I loved this take on time loops. While we do get flashbacks to Amie’s various experiences of September 17 (always labeled as “Chapter 1” regardless of which iteration it was), much of the book is what the title promises: Amie’s life out of the loop. It takes her a while to get used to the unpredictability of things, but the murder mystery gives her something to focus on (in part because she wonders if that’s what she was supposed to be doing in the loop). Her Scooby gang consists of another neighbor who builds Rube Goldberg machines in his apartment, and her ex-girlfriend who wants to give friendship a try.
This book has it all: time travel, murder mystery, romance. (The only thing it doesn’t have is any clear explanation of what caused the time loop in the first place, which will just remain a mystery!)
After the Fall by Edward Ashton
Edward Ashton is the author of Mickey7 (which inspired the movie Mickey17) as well as The Fourth Consort, which I wrote about here. He seems to be a fan of writing about humans stuck in situations outside of their control because of aliens. In this story, Earth is now controlled by the “grays,” enormous beings who have kept a small population of humans alive, often performing some sort of tasks. John was adopted—”bonded” is the term they use—to Martok when he was nearing adolescence, and has generally been treated well, though Martok’s own fortunes have had a lot of ups and downs, so the two of them have often been homeless for a spell.
Martok has come up with a new get-rich-quick scheme, buying a house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for grays. The problem is that he’s put John up as collateral, so if he defaults on the loan, John is likely to be hunted for sport. On top of that, John inadvertently gives an underworld boss the impression that Martok is a sort of assassin for hire, leading to a series of very dangerous scenarios.
The grays have been on Earth for 120 years, and the history of what happened with their arrival is a little murky. The grays tell it one way, but when John meets some “feral” humans in the wilderness, they have a very different story. It makes for a really fascinating tale: what if humans were the domesticated pets of a more dominant species? How well would we survive?
We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose
I mentioned this novel back in December when I’d started reading it, and promised to follow up once I’d finished. It centers around a mysterious artist whose works challenge your perceptions of art, of interior and exterior. And then people go missing. Some artwork itself goes missing.
The chapters feel like individual vignettes about various characters, most only connected by their ties to Sigismunda’s artwork, and they are deliciously unsettling. There’s a woman who works with audio recordings who feels trapped in a hotel room that has strange acoustic properties. A man has his identity stolen but decides to let it happen, to see what these other versions of him might do. A film crew has a miserable time on a rainy island, trying to make a biopic about a photographer.
I don’t know that the ending, such as it is, really managed to tie things up neatly, but I found the journey utterly mesmerizing. It’s not a horror story, but it does have an undercurrent of … maybe not dread, but at least unease, seen through the lens of the modern art world.
Disclosure: I received review copies of these books. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers.
