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The Library at Mount Char Reviews

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Here are the highlights of the reviews / blurbs:
“A wholly original, engrossing, disturbing, and beautiful book. You’ve never read anything quite like this, and you won’t soon forget it.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Hawkins makes nary a misstep in this award-worthy effort of imagination. His language is entirely apposite; his characters are fascinating; his sometimes apocalyptic but always sly tone right on the money. And his novel is compulsively readable. Don’t start it if you have something else to do because you won’t be able to put it down.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“A bizarre yet utterly compelling debut…might remind readers of Robert Jackson Bennett’s or Neil Gaiman’s horror/fantasies.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A first-rate novel… a sprawling, epic contemporary fantasy about cruelty and the end of the world, compulsively readable, with the deep, resonant magic of a world where reality is up for grabs. Unputdownable.”
— Cory Doctorow / boingboing.net

“If you read only one book this summer, make it this one. Sheer perfection.”
— Mybookishways.com

“An early contender for my favorite book of the year. … Set it up people, let the hype flow. This is a book to look out for.”
–Fantasy Review (5/5 stars)
The LA Times included it in their May 28 feature “Get Ready To Be Obsessed With These 29 Page-Turners.” Mt. Char came in right next to Austin Grossman’s new one. (I love Austin Grossman.)

“Funny, horrifying and original…the kind of story that keeps yanking you off in ridiculous new directions every time you think you know what’s coming next.”
—David Wong, New York Times bestselling author of John Dies at the End
“The most genuinely original fantasy I’ve ever read. Hawkins plays with really, really big ideas and does it with superb invention, deeply affecting characters, and a smashing climax I did not see coming.”
—Nancy Kress, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Beggars in Spain
“This book is batshit crazy. From the very first pages, the story grabs you by the guts and doesn’t let go. It mashes together fantasy and thriller, love stories and dark comedy, into a wild trip at once unpredictable and unforgettable. You’ll never look at a librarian in quite the same way.”
—Keith Donohue, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child
“A pyrotechnic debut…The most terrifyingly psychopathic depiction of a family of gods and their abusive father since Genesis.”
—Charles Stross, Hugo and Locus Award-winning author of Accelerando and The Apocalypse Codex

“Don’t pick up this book unless you want to read something you’ve absolutely never read before. The Library at Mount Char is funny, bizarre, moving, frightening, and surreal.  The most original work I’ve read in ages.”
—Walter Jon Williams, New York Times bestselling author of Destiny’s Way and This is Not a Game

Picadillo

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Today is book launch day, and I’m seeing the fruits of my publicists’ labors for the first time–reviews, articles, guest posts, all kinds of stuff.  It’s fun, and I will by-God link to every single post, but I also thought it might be nice to take a moment and talk about something that isn’t book related.

I like to cook. It’s one of my main hobbies. People have to eat, right? Also, there’s only so much you can say about summer movies. So I’m going to blog about food occasionally.

Here’s a simple, inexpensive recipe that’s ridiculously tasty and not too bad for your arteries. It’s called Picadillo. I never heard of it until a couple years ago, but apparently it’s a Latin American staple. It turns out to be dead simple to make at home.

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • ½ green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1/3 cup green olives, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon capers
  • 2 tablespoons raisins
  • 1 8 oz. can diced tomatoes
  • 2 envelopes Goya sazon seasoning (I found it at the local supermarket with the taco stuff, YMMV)
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 tsp white sugar
  • Salt and black pepper to taste.

Preparation

Heat the oil in a largish skillet. Sautee the garlic, onion and green pepper until translucent, about five minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until browned. Stir in the olives, capers, raisins, diced tomatoes, Sazon. Cook for ~10 minutes, then stir in sugar and salt.

The whole thing takes maybe 20 minutes to put together, plus another ten or so for cooking time. Also, it seems to be one of those recipes where it gets better after it sits overnight.

Serve over rice. I like mine with a little Cholula sauce.

Variations and Notes

Picadillo is apparently one of those recipes where everybody’s grandmother has a slight variation. I saw a couple versions that used potatoes—I haven’t tried that, but it sounds good. You can adjust the raisins up or down—personally, I think ¼ cup is too much, but that’s a pretty common amount. Peas and carrots often make an appearance.

If you can’t find commercial Sazon packets at your supermarket, you can approximate it with equal parts coriander, cumin, paprika, garlic powder and salt.

Pleasant Surprises

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The Equalizer

I like action movies well enough that I keep buying tickets, but I try not to get my hopes up. This one, based on a TV series that I never watched, didn’t strike me as a good bet.
I was so very, very wrong. The Equalizer was awesome, one of the best action movies I saw last year. It had a slow burn Clint Eastwood vibe that led up to some eminently satisfactory ass kicking. They also did that zooming trick where right before the shit gets real the human wrecking ball kind of flicks his eyes around the room planning how he’s going to use ordinary household objects to kill everyone.  I love that trick

Definitely worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. Now that I think about it, the one with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg from the year before (Two Guns) was pretty good as well—not quite up to the Equalizer, but a solid B+.  Go Denzel.
 
Penny Dreadful

In the same way that I keep buying tickets to lousy shoot-em-ups in hopes of the occasional gem, I also at least glance at most of the new horror and/or fantasy series. For the most part, I don’t make it very far. I don’t have a lot of TV time, and my patience for “it’s good at least once a month” scenarios is limited.
I gave Penny Dreadful a shot and ended up binge watching the whole thing over the course of a weekend. I didn’t absolutely love every single episode, but I did truly love about four out of the six. The writing was really top-notch, the effects were awesome, and all of the leads turned in great performances.
Eva Green does seductive-yet-dangerously-unbalanced better than anyone. Josh Hartnett was fantastic, and Timothy Dalton appears to be one of those people who simply doesn’t age. As far as I know, the second season isn’t available if you’re not a Showtime subscriber, but I’m looking forward to it.
 

Mad Max

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No, not that one.
I liked Fury Road enough to see it in theaters twice, which I almost never do. It was superb. It also reminded me that I haven’t seen the original in quite a while. If you had HBO in the mid-80s, you could hardly avoid memorizing every line of The Road Warrior / Mad Max 2 but, at least in the states, the original Mad Max didn’t get much play. I’d seen it, of course, but my memory is mostly of the spectacularly bad dubbing and the grainy transfer, all rendered in not-so-glorious VHS on a TV that was new when Reagan was President.
After I saw Fury Road I dug around in my pile of video and found a box set that included all three of the original films on Blu-Ray. For the original Mad Max, the difference in quality was really striking. They cleaned up the print, and took out the craptastic dubbing, and reworked the audio mix. It made a huge difference.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was like watching a new movie, but it’s in the same ballpark. If you’re a fan of the original movie and you’ve got a spare $10 lying around, there are worse things you could spend it on.
Also, the hype surrounding Fury Road generated a lot of trivia lists about the original movies. Some of them were pretty interesting. My favorite (spoiler alert) is that apparently the Humongous (the body builder dude in the hockey mask from Road Warrior) was originally conceived as Jim Goose (Max’s partner) from the original movie. They ultimately ditched the idea, but that’s why Humongous has all the burn scars on his head.

The Twelve Catalogs, Cataloged

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A couple of the advance readers have mentioned that they’d like to know what the complete list of catalogs is. To be honest, I had a little trouble keeping track of it myself. The big five (Carolyn, David, Margaret, Jennifer, Michael) are pretty clear, but the rest of the librarians don’t get a lot of page time. The problem was compounded by the fact that I wrote a dozen or so scenes involving catalogs that never made it into the book. In some cases the catalogs were owned by librarians from the final list, other times not. So, like, Al, the librarian of flying might have ended up on the cutting room floor. It was a mess.
Also, I tend to misremember names. Eventually I ended up keeping a spreadsheet just for myself.
By the time we got through editing and copyediting I *think* all the conflicts were resolved. Big thanks to my editor, Julian, and the copy editor(s?) whose name(s) I never learned.
Anyway, here’s the list. If you think you caught me in a mistake, it may not be your imagination.
Jennifer     Medicine, healing, reanimation/resurrection (white catalog)
David         Killing / war / martial arts (red catalog)
Carolyn     Speaks all languages (green catalog)
Michael     Ambassador to animals.
Margaret     Death, and the exploration thereof. She’s the librarian of getting killed a lot. (I often feel quite bad for Margaret.)
Peter         Math, engineering, and cooking. (violet catalog)
Alicia        Time travel and, by extension, seeing the actual future
Rachel        Her ghost children see the possible futures (as distinct from the actual future)
Jacob        Left blank for possible sequels
Richard    Armorer
Emily        Finder of secrets and lost things
Lisa Garza     Persuasion / mind control