Author: JD Byrne

2025 – My Year In Books

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I’m always a little surprised when I go back through Goodreads and Library Thing at the end of the year and see which books I’d read really jump back out at me. This year, those were mostly non-fiction, for whatever reason.

Chief among those was The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, by Stuart A. Reid.

It’s almost cliché these days to know that the CIA had a history of overseas skullduggery in which it overthrew (or at least helped overthrow) legitimate governments that weren’t the most friendly to the United States. The Lumumba Plot lays out the first of those, which kind of set the template for others to come. The CIA worked with existing elements within the Congo to undermine and eventually murder Lumumba, then backed a strongman to take his place for the next several decades. Reid does a good job of placing all this in the context of other emerging nationalist movements in Africa, as well as the refusal of the Belgians to leave the area gracefully. Highly recommended.

Another interesting work of semi-modern history I read last year was  The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, by David Gilmour (no, not that one).

On the one hand, this is a good (if brief) overview of the history of the Italian peninsula from the founding of Rome to modern times. More interestingly, though, it’s about the entire idea of “Italy” as a nation, how it came to be, and how it continues to try and define itself and hold itself together. Gilmour’s thesis is largely that there was never an organic nationalist movement in Italy and, as a result, the modern state has certain ongoing issues that are difficult to deal with. Whether he’s right or not (it makes sense to me, but I’m hardly an expert), it’s a fascinating way to think about a place.

A much more ancient read was Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price.

Just as it says, it’s a broad history of the Vikings, written with the intent of getting at what they were really like in human terms, not just the berserker-fueled raiders popular culture lets them be. Make no mistake – they were violent conquerors who are not what modern minds would call “enlightened” – but they’re much more complex (and interesting) than most people know. Good read for writers who are building worlds, as it emphasizes the depth of any culture.

Moving on to fiction, by far my favorite read from last year was City of Last Chances, by Adrian Tchiakovsky.

I discovered Tchaikovsky years ago via Children of Time, probably my favorite modern sci-fi novel. I had less luck with some of his fantasy books, but I took a chance on this one and I’m glad I did (he’s got so much work out there they can’t all be winners, right?). Set in an occupied city full of weird magical areas (and people), it’s huge cast is drawn into service of a moment of resistance that has finally arrived but, perhaps predictably, fizzles because everybody who wants to “resist” wants to do it for their own reasons. It can be a little hard to follow, as characters disappear for chapters only to pop up later, but it all ties together really well in the end. I’m in for the series!

From the favorite read of the year, let’s shift to the most unusual one, The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins.

Honestly, I’m sill not sure entirely what was going on in this book. There’s ancient rites and alternate dimensions and something like a nuclear apocalypse. In spite of that (or maybe because of it!), the book was really compelling and I was really interested in seeing how it turned out. I don’t think all the strands came together effectively in the end, but I’m definitely down for Hawkins’ next book.

Finally, how about the most structurally unusual novel I read last year? That would, without a doubt, be The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, by Janice Hallett.

I was drawn in by that cover, and then the cult angle, but I didn’t actually flip through the book when I found it in the store (as with all the others, I listened to the audiobook version). If I had, I’d learned that this was the literary version of a found-footage movie (that apparently is Hallett’s thing). Had I know that I probably would have passed, as I’m not a huge fan of that style. Few writers actually stick to it enough to reveal problems with it (at one point, Hallett has one of the characters, who transcribes another’s recordings, wonder why she recorded this conversation – because that’s the only way we learn about it!). It’s to Hallett’s credit that I still really liked the book, particularly for how it played with concepts of belief, faith, and falling down conspiratorial rabbit holes. Don’t let the gimmicky structure fool you – it’s great!

That’s it for my 2025 in media. On to 2026!

2025 – My Year In Movies

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Having covered the small screen from 2025, let’s talk about the big one . . .

I had a pretty good 2025 when it came to movies. My wife and I made some effort to get out to the theater to see things on the big screen more than in the past few years, which meant I actually saw some new releases when they were actually new! Of course, the in-theater experience can be a little odd sometimes, so most of what I saw last year was at home.

That included a movie that, while not near my favorite for 2025, has caused me to do a lot of thinking.  That’s the latest from Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite.

Released on Netflix, it’s the story of a sudden, unexpected nuclear missile launch from somewhere (we never learn where) that kicks the United States’ response plans into action. It plays out in real time (three times over) as the missile heads for Chicago and a response is weighed and (maybe) retaliation launched. The time-loop structure drains some of the tension as it goes around, but I like how each time worked further up the chain of command from information gatherers to strategists and decision makers (ultimately, the president). And while the cut-to-black ending didn’t bother me as much as some people, I thought the couple of coda scenes tacked on afterwards were pointless. Regardless, what this movie did was to send me deep down a rabbit hole of fiction of the nuclear apocalypse, of which I’ll have more to say later.

Several of my favorite movies of 2025 actually came out in 2024, but I only got around to watching them after the start of the year.

That’s how I wound up seeing Anora just before it won Best Picture last year. Yeah, it was that good.

The story of a stripper/hooker who gets swept into the world of the son of a rich Russian oligarch, it’s funny, bawdy, and really sweet in equal measure. Mike Madison carried the movie as the titular character (deserved her Oscar, she did). I kind of expected to be underwhelmed by this, and maybe that’s why it hit me all the harder. I wrote some more about Anora here.

I had a better idea of what to expect from A Different Man, but it still hit pretty hard, too.

It has a simple pitch: a miserably aspiring actor with a disfiguring disease undergoes an experimental therapy to cure it, only to wind up cast in a play about a man with that condition – being advised by another man with the same condition who’s getting along quite well in life. This could have gone a very saccharine “after school special” kind of way, but it didn’t, partly due to Sebastian Stan’s amazing performance. It asks questions of identity, of what the world owes us, and how to deal. Highly recommended.

A more difficult watch, definitely, but just as highly recommended is September 5.

The particular September 5 in this case comes in 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich when terrorists attacked the Israeli team. This is not a broad overview of the event – for that see the 1999 documentary One Day in September, which is chilling – but focuses narrowly on how ABC Sports, who were covering the games, reacted to the situation and brought the news of it to the world. It’s very technical and, ultimately, it’s about people confronted with an astounding situation and dealing with it as best they can. Has some resonance today, no?

Home is where I normally watch documentaries – new, old, or otherwise – and 2025 was no exception. A couple were pretty disturbing, while another was uplifting in a way that made its “big screen” adaptation abysmal.

Without a doubt, one of the weirdest and saddest things I saw last year was The Contestant.

A 2023 British documentary about a late 1990s Japanese reality show, it covers the fame (infamy?) of a guy known as Nasubi (meaning “eggplant,” due to the shape of his face – and, yes, that might be where the emoji comes from) who went on a show where he lived in a tiny apartment, by himself, and had to subsist entirely on winnings from magazine sweepstakes competitions. Producers threw in a little bit of food, but he was on his own for the most part. Critically, he thought this would all be edited and broadcast later – only it was shown live (some of it streaming on the nascent internet). The whole thing is a wild indictment of just what you can get people to watch on TV and the impact it might have on the people involved.

Just as sad, but for completely different reasons, was another 2025 Netflix release, The Perfect Neighbor.

It’s the story of a Florida neighborhood fully of playing kids (most of color) and the “perfect neighbor” (a racist white woman) who shot and killed their mother one night. The film is told almost entirely through body camera and dash camera footage from cops, which provides an interesting perspective (although not a completely objective one – don’t be fooled). It mostly plays out as slow motion tragedy (we know from the jump she kills somebody), but it’s really well put together and leaves you feeling like you’ve been on the corner in that neighborhood watching as things slowly simmered and then suddenly exploded.

A much happier outcome is portrayed in Next Goal Wins, a 2014 documentary about the improbable struggles of the American Samoan national soccer team.

Having been blown out by Australia 31-0 in 2001 World Cup Qualifying (a result that caused Australia to switch regions in search of more competitive games), the powers that be hired Thomas Rongen – among whose prior stops included a stretch coaching DC United (1999 Supporter’s Shield and MLS Cup winners!) – to turn things around. Which meant, maybe, winning a game during the next cycle. That happens and its as heart swelling as any game could be, but only because by that time you’re fully invested in the amateurs that make up the team (including a transgender player, highlighting Somoa’s history of more diverse views on gender identity) and Rongen himself (fighting through grief at his daughter’s death). It’s just a great story well told.

Which is more than could be said of the 2023 narrative film of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender as Rongen. I watched it by mistake (they have the same title, I rented it first) and it’s just awful, turning Rongen into a needless villain and smoothing down a lot of interesting angles. Do yourself a favor, stay away from the Hollywood version on this one.

Of course, at home is the only place I could have seen a couple of stone cold classics last year.

I didn’t even know Akira Kurosawa made a movie called High & Low until I found out last year that Spike Lee was doing a remake.

It’s the story of a wealthy businessman (who’s having issues, of course) whose son is kidnapped and he agrees to pay a ransom. Only it’s not his kid, it’s his chauffer’s taken by mistake. Will he do the right thing? That’s the first half of the movie, with the back half a tight police procedural tracking down the kidnapper. It’s wild to see Japanese cops work so selflessly, professionally, and with coordination, versus the usual rule-bending cowboys favored in American movies.

I wrote a bit about High & Low and how Lee’s joint, Highest2Lowest compare here. It’s not the masterpiece the original his, but it’s pretty good with some excellent set pieces.

The other old movie I finally got around to seeing last year was The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s satire of Hitler and fascism.

Can’t imagine why that felt sadly relevant in 2025 (or 2026).

All that said, I wanted to highlight a couple of great movies I’m very glad I got to see on the big screen.

The first was Sinners, the long-simmering passion project from Ryan Coogler.

This was my favorite new movie I saw in 2025. I was a little suspicious (at one point someone said it was a musical, which, no thanks?) when I first read about it and the effusive praise it got upon release just upped my natural anti-hype reflex. It lived up to it, big time. The world building was completely immersive. The scene where the song in the juke joint turns into a rhapsody across time and culture was amazing. And Michael B. Jordan brought more reality to the one-guy-playing-two-dudes thing than most.

The other great new movie I saw in theaters was Weapons.

It starts with a fabulous premise – what if, one night, all the kids in a particular elementary school class just disappear (technically they run away, but still). The movie does a good job of showing how unsettled the town gets, where blame gets put initially, and the like. The fractured timeline works pretty effectively, so much so that when it lock in for the home stretch it’s kind of disappointing (shockingly hilarious violence excepted). Still, a pretty awesome telling, for the most part. 

But, at the end of the year, it was back to the small screen to see what appears to be the current Best Picture front-runner, One Battle After Another.

This was another one that where my hype reflex kicked in, but it met the challenge, for the most part. I love Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood so I didn’t find that it reached those heights, but it’s very good. Love the way Di Caprio’s character fails his way through the movie (although he does wind up in the right place when needed), but the supporting cast is just as good (including Chase Infinity, who plays his daughter). Johnny Greenwood’s score is, of course, great. All in all if this kind of “not his best work” Paul Thomas Anderson can make that’s really saying something.

So much for sights and sounds – next week we wind things up with words.

2025 – My Year In Sound

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Back with the second installment of my review of 2025 in media. This time, it’s all about sounds, in various forms . . .

Music

Unlike TV, my year in new music in 2025 was pretty limited. That’s probably not the fault of the music world in general (I’ve got several titles scoured from other “Best of” lists waiting for listens) so much as it was me not being into a lot of artists that produced new material last year.

That said, at least there was one gem that came my way, Steven Wilson’s sprawling The Overview.

After a couple of albums exploring more electro-pop territory (not a bad thing, for the most part!), Wilson returned to his widescreen “conceptual rock” roots with this one. Over two side-long hunks of music, Wilson grapples with the “overview effect,” a condition that sometimes hits astronauts when they see the Earth from space and are hit with the insignificance of it all. If that sounds depressing it’s not, particularly if like me you’re not really a spiritual person. There’s some comfort in being galactically insignificant.

This album really came alive for me when I saw him play it live (having dragged my wife along – love you!). Although there was a certain reliance on some backing tracks to get the whole thing out that bug me a little, the playing was all great and the various stylistic sections – from drifty electronics to prog rock workouts and a “day in the life” section with lyrics from Andy Partridge – really flow together. It’s not my favorite album of his, but the more I listen to it the closer it gets.

As for “new to me” stuff for 2025, as it happens the albums that stuck with me most all came out within five years of each other. Let’s work through them chronologically.

The first was Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull, from 1977.

My Tull collection was pretty much limited to Aqualung and Thick As a Brick, but on the way back from that Steven Wilson concert, in a Half-Price Books, I found a collection of five Tull albums in their own slipcases for about $10 and had to jump on it. Songs from the Wood was the first of those album and my favorite. It reorients Tull toward more of a folky sound, but there’s still some rock and proggy flourishes here and there. That it starts with some great acapella harmonies is a nice hook.

Next up, from 1979, is Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.

Supertramp is frequently referenced as a prog band, but I don’t see it. They’re definitely making arty pop/rock music that was influenced by the fact that bears the influence of prog’s early 70s popularity, but it doesn’t go further than that, for me. Maybe that’s why I like this album better than Crime of the Century, as this one is just full of tightly constructed gems and don’t seem to be trying too hard to be something else. There’s some good snark in the lyrics, too!

Of course, compared to Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, from 1982, Supertramp sounds like a prepacked boy band.

Amazingly, this album, drawn from an eight-hour (!) performance art piece produced a hit (#2 in the UK!), “O, Superman,” which gives you a pretty good indication of what the whole thing is like:

It’s odd, minimalist, electronic in a primitive way. It’s also pretty compelling and an interesting document of the era. Honestly, if the plane’s going down I’d rather have Laurie’s “From the Air” monologue in my ears than the usual platitudes!

Podcasts

My regular collection of podcasts continued to expand in 2025 (for good or for ill), but I wanted to highlighted a few that jumped out at me last year.

The first two serve related purposes of keeping me up to date on my two soccer teams in the UK, Leeds United in England and Hearts of Midlothian in Scotland. The Square Ball covers Leeds, with Hearts Standard covering (you guessed it) Hearts.

I rely on both primarily for post-match commentary. For Leeds it’s much easier these days to watch every game since they’re back in the Premier League, but I enjoy the level of analysis and sarcasm that the guys on The Square Ball bring. The Hearts Standard episodes are more critical, as Hearts are only rarely on TV in the United States (but are becoming more so now they’re top of the table!). Both shows also do episodes about transfer rumors and such that help flesh things out.

My other new favorite listen is, no surprise, another podcast about music, Prog & Progeny.

In this case the “prog” is Marillion keyboard player Mark Kelly and the “progeny” is his daughter, and documentarian in training, Tallulah. Kelly wrote a book about his career a few years ago and that’s been the structure for the podcast, working forward through his life as a musician. So far the reading of things from his book has been broken up by interviews with various folks from his past, including an engineer and (most recently) a roadie, so it’s getting some different perspectives on the band.

That’s it for sounds – a return to visuals next week with my year in movies.

2025 – My Year In TV

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It’s January once again, which means it’s time for me to take a quick look back at my favorite things from the year before. A reminder that these posts include both truly new stuff and stuff that was “new to me” from last year. And, as always, I’m talking about personal favorites and don’t argue that any of these are the “best” of their kind. Still, I’d recommend everybody check them out.

With that said, let’s kick things off with the small(er) screen . . .

2025 was a hell of a year for television. Either that or I just did a better job of keeping on top of new series that it really seemed like a hell of a year. In fact, going back over my notes, just about everything that caught my attention in 2025 was actually new.

The Pitt, for example, was just as good as everybody said it was.

We came to it late – in fact, for months all I really knew about it was the legal wrangling over its status as an unauthorized ER sequel. I’m not the hugest fan of medical dramas, but it was hard to ignore all the buzz. We binged it over a weekend once all the eps were dropped and, needless to say, that was a pretty intense couple of days. The series is really good, though, as provided some moments of light and dark humor so it doesn’t feel like crushing dread all the time.

By the time we got to it The Pitt wasn’t a surprise, but Adolescence sure was.

I was sold on the format before I read any real reviews – the story of a teenaged girl’s murder and the hand of similarly-aged boy, told in four single-shot episodes – that I was in. That it touched on crime and the mechanics of the (British) criminal justice system was even better. Each episode was great, with the third episode – a suspect and interrogator (in this situation, a forensic psychologist) bottle episode that reminded me of the classic episode of Homicide – a true standout.

I’ve written previously about how the formats of The Pitt and Adolescence impacted their stories here.

Less formally inventive, but visually dazzling, was Common Side Effects.

Created by (among others) one of the minds behind the equally excellent Scavenger’s Reign, it’s the story of a schlub who discovers a mushroom in South American that has amazing healing properties – but also causes those to take to start seriously tripping balls. The show takes full advantage of the limitless possibilities of animation to demonstrate these freakouts and show a story of corporate corruption and deep paranoia. Can I say, as a public defender, how much I loved the lead pair of cops?

My pleasant surprise for 2025 was Chief of War, the Hawaiian historical drama from (yes) Jason Mamoa.

It was, honestly, a little bit of “what if Shogun, but Hawaii?,” but it looked amazing and it was very cool to have another story like this that centered the indigenous people and culture. It doesn’t quite live up to Shogun in terms of the script or acting, but it’s a solid historical adventure with some big bloody set pieces, not to mention lots of Mamoa running around without a shirt on (if you’re into that kind of thing – my wife is!).

Last of the new stuff that I really enjoyed was Pluribus.

This was another one I was down for the moment I heard that it was from Vince Gilligan, he crafted it for the criminally un-Emmied Rhea Seehorn, and he was returning to sci fi (he wrote for The X-Files, remember). I will admit that I admire Pluribus more than I loved it. Seehorn’s character is hard to take at times (hitting a little too close to home sometimes, too) and, having binged it, I can grasp why people think it’s slow. Still, I think folks who are looking to solve mysteries on the show are doing it wrong – it’s about Carol and her changes (or maybe lack of changes), of which I’ll write more later.

As for “older” stuff (for a certain definition of “older”), the one that really jumped out, from the unusual locale of being a Peacock original, was Hysteria!

From 2024, but set in the suburban 1980s, it’s the tale of a shitty heavy metal power trio trying to get off the ground just around the time of the Satanic Panic. They, naturally, rebrand themselves as Satanic and start to draw a following. I thought the show was really funny and well done (the music was spot on), but ultimately the show didn’t quite know whether it was about the panic or actually something demonic happening. Would have gladly watched more, but it was cancelled after one season.

Other than that, the notable departure for the year was Andor, which wrapped up its second and final season.

Was it a great series in its own right? Yes. Was it the best bit of Star Wars to come down the pike for a long long time? Also yes. Did it suffer from a need to tie into Rogue One and the rest of the established cannon? Unfortunately. Not enough to ruin it or drag it down too much, but it was particularly noticeable as the series came in for landing. Still, the build up was excellent. More like this, please.

That’s it for the small screen – next week, let’s talk tunes.

Programming Update

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So, I said I’d be back in the start of December, and, well, I sort of am? But only to say that this is it for the year.

I did get the short story finished up for the new Henlo Press anthology. It’s called “OOPS Is In Effect” and is, as they say in Hollywood, very loosely inspired by real events. It’s a fun one and I’ll let y’all know when and where you can read it.

As for books, I decided that rather than start another project I would double back up on The Fall. I’ve gotten some very useful feedback on it which has made me rethink an important part of it. Essentially, I’m retooling the first several chapters to setup the conflict better and deepen the main character’s connection to the titular event.

As a result, I’ve decided to keep my nose to that grindstone for the rest of the year. So, Happy Holidays and all that jazz and I’ll see you in January (seriously!) with my annual favorites of the year posts.

Blog Hiatus

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It’s that time of the year again. Even though National Novel Writing Month is officially dead, I still think of November as a month to lay other things aside and focus on writing, so that’s what I’m going to do. Things will be silent for a while around here as I, hopefully, make some progress on a couple of projects.


First will be a short story for the third volume of Old Bones, the journal of the Henlo Press. The inspiration is worms. I think I’ve got a fun angle on it.

Then I’m planning to dive into my next novel (The Fall is still percolating through the editing process, don’t worry!). At this point it will probably be the sequel to The Triplets of Tennerton, as the prep work for it is largely done. That said, who knows if something else might catch my fancy in the next couple of weeks before November starts?

Tune back in around the start of December to find out!

“Which One Is Your Favorite?”

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Last weekend, at the Writer’s Block event hosted by Henlo Press, I had a discussion with a potential customer that threw me for a loop. Surveying my books, she asked, “which one is your favorite?” It’s a harder question than you’d think and one I’d never put any real thought into.

The cliched answer for an artist is to say that their newest project (either the just-released one they’re promoting or the one that’s about to come out) is their favorite, which I suppose makes some sense. The latest work is the one into which you’ve most recently poured your heart and soul. It’s very front of mind. And, of course, it’s new and shiny and you want people to buy it?

But, in my experience at least, the latest project is often your least favorite, at least in some ways. It’s also the one you’ve just sweated over and bled for, the one you’ve wrestled into a final form that is “done” but you think could probably be better if you just spent another week/month/year/decade working on it. Once I’m done with a book I’m sort of “and good riddance!”, at least for a little while.

A year on from the release of The Triplets of Tennerton that feeling has pretty much gone away. I’m quite proud of it and think of it as my “best” work, given that it’s the culmination of everything I’ve learned and practiced over the past 15 years or so of writing fiction. But is that the same thing as being my “favorite”? It’s a hard question.

Without doubt, Moore Hollow would be an easy choice for favorite, since it was my first novel (I love The Last Ereph for being its gawky, awkwardness and it being the real first book, but it’s not in consideration for “favorite”). It was, after all, the proof that I could do this and got me out there talking to people about stories I was telling, which is awesome! That said, Moore Hollow (and Triplets) are both more or less set in the “real” world.

It wasn’t until The Water Road (and its sequels) that I dove head first into the kind of ground-up world building that’s been a part of so many stories I’ve loved over the years. If Moore Hollow was proof I could write a novel, The Water Road was proof I could create a world and bring readers into a place that only existed in my mind. I was able to tell a full, compelling story of a world that doesn’t exist, filled with “people” who aren’t even human, and that doesn’t include typical fantasy magic. How could that not be my favorite?

But then again, the Gods of the Empire and its sequels showed I could do it all again! I can’t speak for other creators, but I kind of always feel, in the back of my head, that when I finish one book that I might never finish another. So being able to put The Water Road trilogy to bed and turning to a completely different world and build it up from scratch made me feel pretty good. It was a different experience doing it with what I’d learned from The Water Road in my head. So that trilogy is maybe tighter and more put together than the first?

All this goes to show that I can’t actually name a favorite book and, in fact, it’s not a great question to ask a creative person. Would you ask me to choose a favorite between these two?

Of course you wouldn’t!

The better question, if you’re ever in the same position as my potential reader this weekend, is “which would you recommend?” That turns the focus from what I think to what you, the reader, is looking for. You like semi-mysteries with a dash of the paranormal and a smart-ass protaganist? I’ve got that. Epic fantasy, with deep political and social world building, but not worried about the absence of magic or human beings? That, too. Something steampunky? Lemme show you these.

Because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I think or feel about my own work. It’s about how best I can match you up with a new book you’re going to love.

On Historical Fiction

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Years ago – I mean years ago  – I remembered Roger Ebert describing Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor in this withering way:

“Pearl Harbor” is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.

At the time I thought that was just a good burn on a bad, schlocky, blockbuster (surely less entertaining than the commentary track for whichever Kevin Smith film it was where they bust on co-star Ben Affleck relentlessly for it), but the more I think about it, Ebert’s observation identifies a key difficulty when it comes to historical fiction – are you telling a story about a historical event or about people in a historical time who might be impacted by it?

That dilemma hit me recently as I read a pair of books built around a period of local history known as the West Virginia Mine Wars. They take very different approaches to the material which left one much more successful than the other, at least for me.

The first was Rednecks, by Taylor Brown.

“Rednecks,” for those not familiar, was the term used to describe striking miners who would tie a red bandana around their necks (it was derogatory at first, then adopted by the miners). The book Rednecks acts almost as a kind of sequel to the great John Sayles’ film Matewan, starting with the “Matewan Massacre” that was the culmination of the film. It then tells of the events that led to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed conflict in the United States since the Civil War (so far, at least).

The second book was Storming Heaven, by Denise Giardina.

While it ends in roughly the same place as Rednecks, Storming Heaven covers the whole of the Mine Wars period, starting with the railroads coming into the West Virginia/Kentucky border area in the 1890s and buying up property using sketchy methods.

Beyond that, the two books differ in whose story is being told. The main characters in Rednecks are a local doctor (of Lebanese extraction, apparently inspired by one of the author’s ancestors) and a miner, both fictional, but lots of the smaller roles are filled by real people – Mother Jones, Sid Hatfield, and such. We get chapters from their points-of-view and some big speeches that are probably historically accurate. The downside is that they tend to drain the momentum of the main characters’ stories and can come off like one of those “you are there!” books for young readers.

By contrast, in Storming Heaven all the characters are fictional. They do occasionally interact with real people and some are fictional takes on real people – Sid Hatfield, for instance, gets a doppelganger who is also assassinated on the courthouse steps. In fact, the book takes place in a couple of fictional counties (one in West Virginia, on in Kentucky), but manages to interact with the “real world” enough to retain a sense of realism.

The result is that Rednecks feels like a book that was written to bring knowledge of a particular historical event to the public via fiction. That’s a noble pursuit and it’s certainly a mode of fiction that does a lot of work across literature, film, and TV. What it doesn’t really feel like is a story of people, characters, who feel alive and real in their own. I was far more engaged with Rednecks when it focused on the fictional doc and miner than when it leaned on actual historical figures.

Storming Heaven, by contrast feels like a fully fleshed out work of fiction that happens to be set during a particular historical period. I didn’t care about the characters because of the events they were living through, I cared about them as individuals. In the process, I think you get a better feel for what the historical period was like. No doubt, Rednecks is a lot more granular in terms of how Blair Mountain went down, but Storming Heaven hits harder emotionally, even with less historical detail.

I did an interview recently where I said that the most important element in good writing is building interesting characters. If you don’t care about the people to whom the events of the story are happening nothing else really matters. I think details of events are better left to non-fiction, to the work of historians and journalists. Historical fiction works best when it’s trying to capture the feeling of what it meant to live during the time period involved.

Or you can do what I do and plunder history for ideas and turn them into fantasy or sci-fi stories. Then there’s no worry about getting history “right” because the history is whatever you think it should be!

The Fault In Those Stars

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I finished up Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife.

While doing my usual post-reading due diligence I pulled up the book’s Goodreads page to read some reviews and the follow conversation occurred:

MY WIFE: Are you going to read that?

ME: I just finished it.

MY WIFE: What did you think?

ME: *makes that pretty good/not great tilting hand gesture* Not bad. Three stars.

MY WIFE: Why do you say that?

ME: Are you going to read it, too?

MY WIFE: Probably not, if you only think it’s worth three stars.

I proceeded to explain to my wife my thoughts on the book (long story short – I liked the basic idea, but thought it was going somewhere more interesting and the ending felt rushed). At bottom, I’m glad I read it, but didn’t find it particularly compelling.

This got me thinking about the whole star-based rating system that is so prevalent these days. What’s a “good” star rating? What’s a “bad” one? Is there a better way of doing things?

It’s natural to want to rate something you’ve read, heard, or watched. At bottom the ultimate decision is one reflected by the old Siskel & Ebert system – thumbs up or down? Is this a movie you’d recommend to others or is it not? That’s all you really need to know, but such a system can give odd false positives. All you need to do is check out Rotten Tomatoes, where a “fresh” score can be the product of lots of good, but not great, reviews just as easily as hordes of fawning ones.

As an example, we got a chance to see Fantastic Four: First Steps in the theater (one with recliners for seating – not bad!). It currently has an 87% “certified fresh” rating, which makes it sound like a world beater. By contrast, reading the actual reviews (like this one from the AV Club) shows some nuance – the movie is generally good, but flawed in ways that might make some not care for it.

Given that, it’s not surprising that people will wind up trying to come up with something more “objective” (it’s not – this is art we’re talking about) and granular, something that you can use to compare works to each other.

For that, the star system has the potential to work out pretty well. Particularly if you’re using the 5-star system you see at places like Librarything, Letterboxd, and Rate Your Music. Particularly when you can give half stars (I’m looking at you, Goodreads) it helps make some really fine distinction between works. The problem is not everybody thinks the stars all mean the same thing.

Everybody can agree that a 5-star review is a rave and a 1-star a pan (some systems even allow for the dreaded 0.5 star, which I’ve done twice at Rate Your Music). But just about anything else is a free-fire zone, it seems to me. Look at just about any work with reviews and you’ll see it. Here are some snippets from 3-star Goodreads reviews of some recent books I’ve read:

But, also:

For what it’s worth, when I first started cataloging things at Rate Your Music I tried to come up with a rhyme and reason for ratings and this is what I came up with (it’s a Stickie note on my PC desktop):

As you can see, I think anything at 3 stars or over is “good.” In some ways, I respect reviews more that are a little bit skeptical, aware of flaws in something. It pains me to say this as an author, but pretty much every artistic endeavor in the history of humankind has flaws in it. Any great pillar of literature or any piece of music that makes you weak in the knees is probably flawed in some way – hell, the flaws may be part of its charm! So when I see 1-star reviews with short “this sucks!” or 5-star reviews with equally short “this is the best!” I tend to ignore them.

Don’t get me wrong – as a writer I love getting 5-star reviews! But as a reader or viewer or listener I find the less-than-loving reviews to be more interesting and, in a way, to tell me more about the work than ones that are just full  of praise.

So, I suppose my takeaway here is to encourage people not to be scared away from checking out a particular work because it gets a less-than-five-star review. There’s a lot of real estate between “rules!” and “sucks!” and you may find a new favorite in there. It’s not the stars that matter, it’s the reasons for giving them that counts.

ADDENDUM: It occurred to me, as I was posting this, that this might come across as a long way of saying “my wife was wrong” in deciding not to read The Bog Wife based on my thoughts on it. One of the things about listening to reviews – or, more specifically, reviewers – is that you can learn how well your tastes and preferences match them. If you know a critic likes the same stuff you do and they love something, it’s probably worth checking out. On the other hand, if your significant other whose tastes you know is lukewarm about it so you are too? It’s all good.