by Zilla N.

When the climate apocalypse awakens monsters and magic, a group of misfit Canadian activists try to prevent catastrophe by working inside the system. Can the master’s tools dismantle the master’s house before the second wave of supernatural devastation?

If you’ve lived in this world for any length of time, you can probably guess the answer, even without Ian’s precognition. But you still reach for hope. You debate trash television with good friends, you raise an aloe vera plant or a child, you fall in love. You march or write or teach or–you try, in your own way, to navigate your way through the labyrinth to a happy ending.

Cascade is a very hard book for me to review because I’ve been on a journey with this novel. When I met Rachel A Rosen, Cascade was unfinished. I read along as she wrote it, laughing at the jokes, wincing at the truths, decimating the semi colons. And more than that. In many ways, the character arcs of the novel mirror journeys I’ve been on in my own life. It’s a hard thing to read the climate science and know I’m living in the end days. It’s hard to look at a world where so much has already been lost and know the devastation is only beginning. Cascade holds a mirror to our world, and I see myself reflected back.

Rachel A Rosen is a very good writer, and Cascade is a very good book. I don’t know what else to say, but I’m excited to talk about it with you when you finish reading it.

Order a paperback copy on Amazon, or a digital copy on the BumblePuppy Press or your favourite digital retailer.

by Zilla N.

We received an Advance Reader Copy of Beneath the Starlit Sea by Nicole Bea, and we could not have been happier.

I ONCE WAS a little girl with an affinity for fire. Now, many moons later, I am a king’s sorceress from Strandkant with a weakness for staying alive.

As a sorceress living among humans, Illyse’s life is marked by loneliness. She has her three foxes, and she has the energy the land gives her for fire, but she is kept apart from others by prejudice and by the King’s law. Magical and non-magical people are forbidden to be in love.

The King takes her solace from her, throttles her magical connection to the earth with an iron bracelet. Two of her foxes die in the task he sets for her, working alongside his trusted advisor, Garit, to solve magical murders. But Illyse is not left alone. She has her fox, Thierry. And she finds a companion in Garit, who is willing to defy his King for love.

Nicole has a gift for language, for turns of phrase that perfectly capture a mood or a moment. She captures perfect details–a fox playing with a stick, the sweetness of a candy, the heat of a fire. It’s a fairy tale, a fantastical story of love in a world that holds a mirror to our own.

Nicole will capture your heart when you read this, as she always does in her stories. 

Get your copy here.

by Sabitha F.

In a first for Night Beats News, let’s have a look at a work that tells a story in pictures rather than words.

Social Distortion, a limited edition photography ‘zine by Stephanie Saroiberry, is an evocative, melancholic work about life under lockdown. Through a series of Polaroids—a medium that I absolutely adore and which is criminally underused in the age of Instagram—Stephanie explores Ohio at the beginning of the pandemic during April and May 2020. Her dreamlike shots of worn billboards and empty playgrounds paint a picture of a world emptied and abandoned, their faded pastels in stark contrast with the bleak landscape.

This ‘zine brims with nostalgia. I’m reminded of my childhood in empty, inhuman spaces designed for cars with people as an afterthought, and this wistfulness is enhanced by the use of Polaroids. The high production values emphasise the subtle details in these faded, distressed photos. Even the title harkens to the music of the 80s and 90s. When you’re isolated and lonely, the past is what you have left, and this ‘zine does an incredible job of summoning that sense of loss and memory.

There are only 50 copies in existence, so get yours while they last.

by Zilla N.

Vita Nostra is by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated from the original Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey.

You need to read it.

Immediately.

Stop reading this newsletter, go to your library website, and reserve a copy. Download an app and buy it on your phone. Don’t hesitate. I’m not asking the impossible.

This book is stunning. It defies explanation in its celestial beauty, its cosmic horror, its deep, dark reality. Vita Nostra is the object, and other books are shadows on the cave wall.

I’m not doing a very good job explaining it. How can you explain a new state of being, an alteration of the mind which leaves you forever changed, a word reverberating?

Let me try again. It’s a book about a magical boarding school, but not like that. It’s a book about the corruption of academia, twisted by power without empathy. It’s a book about the joy and isolation of knowledge. It’s a book about the creation of words. It’s a book that knows that it is a book, and that revels in this knowledge, and you will revel too. It’s a book that will haunt your dreams, and you’ll be grateful, because that means another moment exploring its world.

Read Vita Nostra. You don’t have time to wait.

by Zilla N.

N.B. We were given an Advance Reader Copy of Soulmate, Stage Right to review, and we could not have been more delighted.

Things that make me happy, a partial list:

• Cats
• Convoluted television plotlines that the novel’s Protagonists can’t stop watching
• HEA
• There are two cats
• Hot people
• People who are doing Their Best
• Did I mention one of the cats is a kitten?
• And orange
• He was named Pumpkin by the Love Interest’s daughter, Pressie
• And the Protagonist has to use her Expert Cat Detecting Skills to find Pumpkin for Pressie when he hides behind the dryer

Bixby’s contemporary romance Soulmate, Stage Right is the kind of story that makes me happy. That’s what this story is for. There’s drama, to move the plot, but it keeps running into two Protagonists who are deeply caring people, who just need to find someone who can give back the wealth of affection they have to offer. They’re going to end up together because they make each other happier, fuller people by being together, and they make a little girl and two cats happier that way too.

The plot is a delight, of course. D is a former soap opera star discovering that television and theater call for different skills, and Abby is a high school drama teacher and stage actress who is extremely committed to her craft. And to D’s abs. The plot of the soap opera is as confusing and contrived as any Night Beats fan could hope for. (Though I know Bixby – we got this as an ARC – and when I asked, Bixby assured me that she’s worked out the plot twists of All or Nothing for seasons to come. And she promised me more soap opera goodness in sequels!) There are well-meaning meddling mothers aplenty, not to mention the twin sisters and friends. But there’s no moment where I doubted they belong together.

At its heart, this is a romance about family. It’s about people looking out for the ones they love (though it’s not always appreciated at the time!) It’s about the family you choose, stage friends who are with you for life. Most of all, it’s about the family you make. Two adults, a kid and two cats (one of them an orange kitten named Pumpkin). No wonder this book makes me happy.