Women and extra virginity: books read

When I read KC Hunter’s Curse of the Shinigumi last year I said I liked it enough to try one of the Kana Cold series novels (it was a prequel). Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy  KANA COLD: The Deception of Seraphim Asylum as much as I’d hoped. After Kana picks up a couple of new cast members on a mission in Africa, the FBI recruits her to find the villain of her previous book; meanwhile her sidekick AJ discovers his dad has fallen victim to the family curse and tries to break it. Wouldn’t you know the two plotlines turn out to tie together?

There are some elements here I like such as AJ’s father being a thorough villain who disposed of threats to his clients by dosing them with psychedelics, then geting them locked up in Seraphim Asylum. Hunter’s writing, however, plods in the quiet scenes and drags down the action; I can’t say I have any urge to read further.

Barbara Hambly’s MOTHER OF WINTER is one I missed despite being a fan of Hambly and her Darwath series (this was book four). In the aftermath of banishing the Dark from the world, everyone is trying to figure out the new status quo. However winter is coming (ROFL) and it looks to be brutal; worse, a mysterious fungus is wiping out food supplies and mutating anything or anyone who turns to it for sustenance. Can Gil, Rudy and Ingold save the world again?

Hambly has written about what a Lovecraft fan she is and it’s well on display here. The fungus is kin to the mutated horrors of “Color Out of Space” and the whole book is a successful mashup of fantasy and horror. Plus Hambly’s an excellent writer.

As I’ve written before I don’t like much of Tom King’s work. Human Target has been an exception and now I have to add SUPERGIRL: Woman of Tomorrow by King and Bilquis Evely (who provides the cover here). The narrator, Ruthye, seeks revenge on Krem, the thug who killed her father. By lucky chance she meets Supergirl, visiting Ruthye’s world because it has a red sun so she can feel the effects of alcohol. Helping Ruthye out draws her away from the bar scene and before long they’re going planet to planet, battling evil along the way, but with Krem staying one step ahead.

I can’t quite pin down what made this the best Supergirl arc of the 21st century; admittedly the competition isn’t much but this was genuinely good. Where King can’t stop getting darker and darker in his Batman books, here he gets the right mix — things are grim but Supergirl isn’t giving in to it. If he wants to do another volume I hope DC lets him.

EXTRA VIRGINITY: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller show olive oil’s role in European history is much larger than I ever guessed. When people needed oil, it was usually olive oil: holy oil for church anointings, an unguent for Greek athletes, fuel for lamps, the basis for early perfumes and, of course, a major role in food, contending over the centuries with Northern Europe’s enthusiasm for butter. Extra virgin olive oil is the top quality, virgin in the sense it has been adulterated or heavily treated. Unfortunately, as Mueller details, fraud is rife in the industry as various producers or wholesalers substitute cheaper oils for olive or take crap oils and treat them to the point they can pass as quality stuff. This squeezes out some of the genuine quality product because it’s so much cheaper. Equally unfortunate, most regulatory bodies either don’t care — if it’s not going to kill anyone, they’ve got bigger fish to fry — or they’re under the thumb of the big companies invested in keeping the fraud going. Interesting though none of the oil producers and farmers Mueller profiles were terribly memorable.

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