Book Review: That Prince Guy and This Glass Heart by Mariah K. Porter

Snow White and Cinderella, not so much in retelling as in reweaving of motifs. Plus a lot of magical adventure fantasy.

Ms. Porter says retelling. I won't argue, but I think reweaving is more descriptive.

(I have my own retelling of Snow White, sitting out there unfinished. These are a different approach.)

That Prince Guy can definitely be considered a retelling, but the focus is not on the motifs from the fairy tale -- the wicked step mother, the magic mirror, the poison apple, etc. -- as on the context in which the elements are connected.

The motifs are there, but with twists: The wicked stepmother is somebody else's stepmother. The magic mirror breaks and is then used by the good guys. The poison apple is foreseen, and guarded against with partial success.

And the Princess is definitely not just passively enduring all the injustices of life. She may go along for the ride, but she takes her turn in the driver's seat.

Nor does she automatically trust her prince when she meets him.

And (drum roll) the kiss does get top billing, but even that has a twist. Or two. Or three. Not limited in effect to the Snow White character, but that's a spoiler, so I didn't tell you about that, okay?

This Glass Heart could be called a meta-retelling. There is no glass slipper for this Cinderella, only a glass heart. Or the idea of a glass heart.

And the Cinderella character is not being bullied by step-family. She feels ignored, slighted, and somewhat misused by her real family, but there is no step-family. That is, the step-family is not hers. And the wicked step-mother turns out not to be so wicked as all that, after all.

She does lose her real mother in the events of the first book, but  she gets her back in this book. And the fairy godmother role is taken in part by her real mother and in part by the stepmother (someone else's, as I say).

And the Cinderella character hardly makes any appearance at the ball at all, and she goes and leaves with her prince before midnight. (But is this a metaphorical prince or a real prince? And it's not a spoiler to tell you he can definitely do magic.)

Midnight plays a prominent part, but there are no magically transformed mice. (Is my memory right?) Magically transformed humans, yes.

If you're looking forward to the pretty wedding scenes, you may be a little disappointed with the endings. I did feel like the endings were a little sudden. But, on reflection, Ms. Porter ties up the necessary threads for each story. And she tells us up front it's a series. And pretty packages are an illusion, anyway. The reader's imagination is quite serviceable for those parts, if necessary.

The writing is a bit quirky, but quite readable, quite enjoyable, as long as you don't expect your fairy tales to conform to staid manuals of style.
 

These are also books I have had a chance to beta-read. I was going to wait until the third part of the series was done to write this review, but it seems Ms. Porter has hit some rough spots, at the time I post this review. Writing is a journey, an adventure of exploring the author's ideas and memories. If the writer herself does not take time to explore, the prose will lack. Rough spots can be good. They give the writer a chance to explore, and to add depth to a story.

But these reviews need to be posted, so more people can find her books and enjoy them.

Both books recommended, looking forward to the next book, when it's ready. (And not before.)

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082XBLGVX?ref_=series_rw_dp_labf

Book Review: When Love Is Lost, by Kameo Monson

(This is another one I got to read at the beta stage, and I recommend it. Ms. Monson asked for opinions on a chapter in the middle, and I was hooked. When she asked for beta readers for the whole book, I volunteered.)

It's women's fiction, a love story, romance, inductive mystery, thriller, tale of stalking, tragedy, tale from an unreliable witness, ...

Potent mix.

Recapping the blurb:

Deb finds herself facing mid-life crisis, bored, questioning her own marriage, and tempted by a forbidden relationship, as two friends face much more difficult crises.

Her old friend Betty deals with old wounds from a love lost long ago, wounds which are reopened in a life-threatening manner.

Her new friend Mariah comes to grip with tragic loss when her husband suffers a disabling injury at the worst possible time, and then faces an even greater loss.

Betty and Mariah have hard choices forced on them, but are able to find a choice for a hopeful future.

Deb helps them both by just being there for them. But who will help Deb when she gives in to temptation?

Her help comes from a source she did not expect, although both she and the reader have a few hints along the way.

Dark in places, this is a heartwarming novel with a twist of an ending that reminds the reader that life can still be good.

The book listing on goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40977365-when-love-is-lost

Can be purchased on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/When-Love-Lost-Kaameo-Monson-ebook/dp/B07FMRG241

Pie vs. Sex

If we want to analyze discrimination relative to sexual orientation, it is tempting to compare it to discrimination relative to kinds of pie.

But the choice of kinds of pie is itself problematic. For some, the question of same-gender sexuality is a question of blueberry pie vs. banana pi. For others, it is a question of blueberry pie vs. horsefeather pie, and the question of whether horsefeather pie is homosexual sexual intercourse or heterosexual sexual intercourse is quite dependent on the person expressing the preference.

The reasons such a state of affairs should exist are worth examining, but, from the public discourse on record, it is clear that such a state of affairs exists. Therefore, we should refrain from such analogies, as not having a great potential to lead to mutual understanding.

(Can we file this one under semi-intentional irony?)

(Horsefeather pie. Horsefeathers pie. Which grammar rules take priority?)

A Confession

On the train home after a long day of directing traffic around a worksite, and the lady across from me is giving me a wary eye, and the people sitting next to me moved.

I don't know that I blame them. I just exploded in a fit of random finger-beating on this Android on-screen keyboard that insists on misreading my typing, and then I whacked myself side-of-the-head to calm myself down.

Maybe it's time to admit it to the world. I'm on the spectrum.

I generally don't vent my frustrations this way, at least not since I've been an adult and have started learning how to give an appropriate voice to my doubts and frustrations. But when I'm really worn out and struggling with mis-designed software, something like Tourettes happens in my brain. It feels like mental violence, and mental violence breeds physical violence, and I have limits. I've buried the rule against hurting others really deep in my psyche, so the physical violence gets turned inward before I notice it. Since I don't want to hurt people, the violence gets directed towards towards myself and towards objects I own.

Once I notice it, I can take a mental time-out, but when I'm really tired, I don't notice until it gets expressed externally.

I know everybody has a little of this, but mine gets expressed in noticeable ways sometimes. Like this time on the train. I don't know if it would be all that noticed in the States, but it kind of sticks out in Japan.

And I realize now, that the reason I had to quit the kaigo (essentially, nurse's aid) job in the elder care facility is related to this.

When I'm faced with expectations and requirements that I can't justify, it takes me time to process things enough to move ahead without bumping into things and people.

Some people can just cut corners and "get it done" without hurting people. I can't. I have to think about which corners can be safely cut and where I can safely move and such, or I move suddenly where people aren't expecting me to move. And I leave things undone that people don't expect. And people and things get hurt.

And I have to figure this all out across three languages -- Japanese, English, and the internal language of the mind. Most people have overlaid the internal language of the mind with their "mother tongue". I haven't. And now I have essentially two mother tongues to switch between. There are advantages, but it slows me down when I have to communicate complicated things.

When I slow down, people call me lazy. That stresses me out in different ways. When people harp on my supposed laziness, my desire to get the job done right is strong enough to cause me serious stress.

When the stress gets bad enough, it can cause me to lose track of what I'm doing within twenty seconds. On the kaigo job, I ended up doing things that, had circumstances been different, could have seriously hurt several of the residents.

I like all the residents. I don't want to cause any of them to be hurt.

I know. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has stress. Patience and a willingness to learn what others are doing overcome such things.

But it wasn't working. Over the three and a half months I was working on that job, it was just getting worse, week-to-week. My speed was up, but the accidents were getting worse.

I was discussing it with the boss, and he didn't think it was that big a deal on the one hand, but he wanted me to commit to getting my work up to speed on a time frame that was not going to happen. My giving "service overtime" to complete my assignments, and the potential it caused for communication delays, was causing problems with my co-workers. He wouldn't take try for an answer. Wouldn't believe that I already know about pushing beyond my limits.

(For the sake of all that is rational, I'm sixty years old. I've seen this before. I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I've seen the magic. It isn't instantaneous. The fact that you want it to happen is not somehow magically stronger magic than the magic I've used just to get me to this point. Give me some credit for knowing myself.)

So, things were getting worse instead of better, when it was clear that I could no longer trust myself to remember what I was doing long enough to safely get it done, and when patience just saw things get worse, I added that into how long it would take me to get to the point where I could pay rent and food for my family, I knew I had to quit. Before somebody got hurt and I got sent to jail.

By the way, until I find something better, I'm now working as a 警備員 (keibi-in), something of a cross between a security guard and a crossing guard. Mostly, I direct traffic near construction and work sites.

You know, stand there waving flags or a traffic baton, keeping accidents from happening, etc.

Slow down.

Go.

Stop.

Turn.

Danger.

Very simple communication.

I'd driven several hundred thousand miles over my life, about a third of that in Japan, before we had to give up the car. This is stuff I understand and know how to communicate.

(This gaijin face gets a few double-takes on-location. Can be fun, can be a problem sometimes.)

By the way, the name of the company I work for is スカイネット。

No, not that Skynet. Not at all.