REVIEW: My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin, Vol. 2 (book) by Wu Shui Bu Du, illustrated by Oniku and Chikage, translated by Liting Xiao

My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin is fantasy danmei (Chinese m/m) fiction. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Wang Xiaomie and Wen Fengjin have moved out of the mausoleum and begun living in modern China, mostly because Xiaomie misses the internet and eating whatever his heart desires. Their domestic bliss is interrupted by the arrival of Bai Yu, a young man Wen Fengjin finds bloody and injured on the street and takes home because that's what Xiaomie told him that good people should do.

Bai Yu turns out to have been the same person who'd previously been stalking Wang Xiaomie and Wen Fengjin. He's an orphan, the last surviving member of a line of Artisans, people who hunt nonhuman monsters and create tools to kill them. After Wang Xiaomie was nice to him, he decided that the pair he was stalking maybe weren't so bad after all, but unlucky Bai Yu seems to have attracted his own trouble. Xiaomie likes the naive young man and, surprisingly, Wen Fengjin seems relatively okay with having him stick around for a bit while they look into whatever trouble he's gotten himself into.

REVIEW: The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn (graphic novel, vol. 1) by Tri Vuong

The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn is a graphic novel that collects short paranormal/Lovecraftian stories. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Oscar Zahn is a paranormal investigator, a member of the Society of Cryptocartography and Necrological Exploration. He was once human and is now a floating skull. He struggles constantly against the Ecotopus, a ravenous being with whom is he forced to coexist and which sometimes takes him over. The stories in this volume feature some of his adventures.

In "Lost and Found," Oscar confronts a being that's haunted a house for some time. In the various parts of "The Last Soldier of the Somme," Oscar works with the ghost of Private Charlie Harper, 4th Division, Canadian Corps. In the various parts of "Stardust and Soliloquies," Oscar, an old sailor named Edmund, and a trio of Hydronauts attempt to confront and deal with the ghosts that have haunted Edmund for years. The volume wraps up with "Doppelgänger," a story focused mostly on Agnes, a friend/assistant (?) of Oscar's. 

REVIEW: The Ophelia Network (novella) by Mur Lafferty

The Ophelia Network is dystopian fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this novella's present, Bailey, a children's TV show host, is being held by government agents who are convinced that he was involved in an effort to use his show to transmit secret codes to a resistance group. Meanwhile, flashbacks to the past show how Celeste was let go from her job as a journalist, only to be hired on as an intern at the same children's show Bailey worked at, given instructions to somehow work various codes into episode scripts as naturally as possible.

The dystopian society of this novella is a near-future United States in which the Department of Freedom and Truth has declared that the news must only report "true facts, not anti-government sedition or un-American lies" (9). Ophelia, an un-hackable government-controlled AI, is just about everywhere and hears everything. People opposed to the government, or who can't prove they're American enough, are being jailed, disappeared, and/or deported. 

REVIEW: Rest Stop (novella) by Nat Cassidy

Rest Stop is horror. I bought my copy new.

This review includes mild spoilers. 

Review:

Abe is doing a drive he doesn't want to do, to see his grandmother one last time as she's dying in a hospital. All of Abe's memories of his grandmother are pretty negative. His entire life, she seems to have delighted in telling him what a failure he is, and how weak and overly American he is. Granted, she's an old Jewish Polish lady who's likely seen some horrible things in her life, but still.

Even so, he's going to see her. It gets him away from his own life for a bit, which currently isn't going all that great. It's now nearly two in the morning, and Abe decides to stop at a rest stop for a bit, grab some snacks, and use the restroom.

Despite the fact that there are two cars and a van out front, the rest stop is completely empty. It creeps Abe out more than a bit, so he decides to use the restroom and just grab some snacks and leave cash on the counter if there's still no one around by then. Except when he tries to leave the restroom, he realizes he can't. He's locked inside. Things get worse, a lot worse, from there.