12/30/2025 Guest Review from Craig Brownlie:
- Candace Nola
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
Joining us to help wrap up 2025, we have author friend Craig Brownlie with another one of his wonderful review write-ups. This one includes Millionaires Day by Kit Power, The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin, The Sundowner's Dance by Todd Keisling, Stolen Skies by Tim Powers, and Subject A by M Ennenbach.
Enjoy!
It’s Been A Year, Part 1
Reviews and thoughts on writing with Craig Brownlie
That sounds a little pompous, but it’s been a minute since I’ve done any reviews because 2025 has been a worse year than even 2024, which is saying something on a personal level. But I have kept reading and writing! Somehow?!?
Millionaires Day by Kit Power
The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
From Graham-Greene-land to Stephen-King-Maine, an authorial geographic flex builds a universe from the specificity of place. Greene inhabits a universe defined as much by the mood as the behaviors of its inhabitants, while King gifts his mythologies with the reality of locations that anyone can visit. Even while King’s books are called horror and Greene’s are placed with thrillers, I would much prefer a King-inspired tour of Maine, which would generate the frisson of a Halloween haunted house. I fear the visit to Greene-land as something closer to rendition.
And here we are with two wonderful horror novels, heavily steeped in their sense of place. Jemisin inhabits the Big Apple, New York City, while Power brings Milton Keynes to life. All right, let’s get the joke out of the way. J.G. Ballard, the lost stand-up comic, penned, “I always suspected that eternity would look like Milton Keynes.” If you will, the reader of this pair of books can travel once again between mythology and rendition. And I loved both books.
Both bring us distinct characters following their own paths through unimaginable events, which alter the known world. Both bring cosmic horror to shatter communities. In these books, Jemisin and Power start from cities already on the brink of falling apart, though firmly on the side of inertia.
In brief, The City We Became is my new favorite cosmic horror book. It is Lovecraft via China Miéville, a reimagining of a disheartening but inspirational figure through the lens of the modern master of literary geographic iconography (if I may be allowed to coin a new subject in search of a Ph.D. candidate).
As cities form and grow, they become personified in one of their residents. This person must protect and cultivate the city so that it can become formidable enough to withstand the vicissitudes of natural and human-made disasters. Cities and their personifications are at their most vulnerable when they are on the cusp of permanence (measured on a scale somewhere between geologic and generational time). Jemisin gives us five borough-based avatars instead of only one and introduces an interdimensional threat into New York City’s bid for urbane life.
Millionaires Day is a powerful read, which drags your heart out of your chest as you question the choices the characters make on what should be the best day of their lives. The hours turn into a mist-filled dystopian evacuation, leaving the reader along with the characters to question how it could all go so wrong.
Everyone in the urban planner’s wet dream of Milton Keynes wakes one day to find themselves lying on a case containing a million pounds. Some people respond by wanting to collect as many cases as quickly as possible. Everyone in town that morning did not stir from dreamland in Milton Keynes. Some work the night shift or commute into MK. Many of those so deprived notice an unusual uptick in the local economy and wish to share in the waking dream.
I love a good travel book. (Drop everything right now and go read anything by Norman Lewis.) I am one of those people who watches Joanne Lumley or Monty Don traipse around in places that I will never likely visit. But I also don’t need to get swept up in endless pages of hill and dale. So, I appreciate the time that I have spent in New York City, Milton Keynes, Bangor, Los Angeles, and so many others much farther afield with writers as guides and companions.
Power and Jemisin accomplish the miracle of mining the space between Greene and King. While King somehow posed the threat of danger if you wander into the wrong place, Greene always left open the possibility of evil intruding into your hometown and life. The events described by Power are universal, with their grounding right under our beds. Jemisin mines the city, which has become omnipresent in our psyches. The threats both authors present may be beyond our ken, but they are faced by beautifully drawn characters in landscapes that feel fully inhabited.
The Sundowner’s Dance by Todd Keisling
Damn fine storytelling. I loved this tale of cosmic horror in a retirement community. This was the closest I got this year to reading a horror novel, which made me relax and feel confident that the driver at the wheel knew the ins and outs of writing a book. Let’s be clear, I had shivers and worries while reading. And the sense of place, just perfection.
Stolen Skies by Tim Powers
Powers is part of that small circle of 80s-era superb genre writers who I can’t get enough of. Like Carroll, Waldrop, Gibson, etc., he mixes tropes like they don’t matter. Let’s remember that fact later on when Craig goes apeshit again. We have ghosts in this third book in a series that I took too long to read. I just enjoyed the ride because I had lost track of what had gone before. You have to be a mighty fine writer for me to do that.
Subject A by Mike Ennenbach
Alice’s Wonderland as… well, that would be telling. You need to know only a little about Alice to jump on board this dark ride. I hear tell of sequels, so grab this now, especially if you’re like me and always want to see what those imaginers are hiding by turning out the lights. Ennenbach is definitely an imaginer.
What’s driving Craig apeshit: Adverbs!
Nowadays, all authors utilize editors, right? I’m here to tell you that a good editor will not allow you to modify every adjective and verb. Reconsider “The speeding red car raced rapidly down the mostly empty street.” Writing is a constant struggle between trying to convey information and overwhelming the reader. All writers (independently published, self-published, and, yes, big budget published) are nodding along with me and rolling their eyes. We all beat our editors into submission after a while, so try to head those hard-working souls off at the pass and offer them an ounce of courage. Sometimes delivering the story straight without any mixer is going to go down easier in one gulp.
Check your location for errant cosmic events and then dive into all these wonderful reads:
Bio: Craig recently edited the anthology Five Raging Hearts: Splatterpunk for the Soul. Look for Craig's recent work in Hotel of Haunts, Demons and Death Drops, Wands: Year of the Tarot, and Unspeakable Horrors 3. He has three books out in his Little Books of Pain series: Hammer, Nail, Foot; Thick As A Brick; and A Book of Practical Monsters. These are in addition to the re-release of his middle-grade novel Comic Book Summer. He also has a surprise zombie novel dropping early in 2026.
