Book Review: The Strange, by Nathan Ballingrud

True Grit on Mars.

Saga Press, 2023, 304 pages

1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt's gang who have stolen her mother's voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance.

Since Anabelle's mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father's diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked.

At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud's novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle's quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars.

( An alternate history with Mars as the new frontier. )

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My complete list of book reviews.

It's No Joke! Coming April 1: Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War

Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War has had the strangest and in some ways most difficult creation process of all my books. It took me about three years to finish the first draft, more or less. Much longer than I intended (I actually believed I was almost done at the one and two year marks), but not nearly as long as it took me to finally get Alexandra Quick and the World Away out into the world.

My "semi-final" draft was done a year ago, and I hoped to begin posting in a couple of months.

The beta-reading process was rougher this time. I had four beta-readers, all of whom have been reading my stories for a long time. Half liked AQATWW and half did not. Those who didn't more or less agreed on what they didn't like about it, but had radically different ideas about how it should be "fixed."



I ended up keeping the story mostly unchanged. In fact, I probably made fewer changes as a result of beta-reader feedback than in any previous AQ book.



I definitely did do a lot of rewriting, including incorporating specific feedback and suggestions. I "fixed" a lot of things, large and small. A few plot points were removed, and a few more were added. But I didn't do the "big" things like removing an entire arc or changing a major character's role in the story or rewriting entire chapters to turn out differently. Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War is the story I planned long ago. It's not perfect (none of my books are perfect and I'm never completely satisfied with them) but I like it. If it's flawed and self-indulgent, that is entirely on me. I think some of you will like it too. And I think some of you won't. That's okay.



The final draft is more or less done. I'm still making a few changes and there will be another final round of polishing, and it's never completely done until I actually upload it. But the story is what it is now. 373,094 words and 66 chapters.



I'm going to be once more posting chapters on a biweekly schedule, Mondays and Fridays. I'm starting in April, which means the first chapter will go up on April 1. Yes, seriously. No, it's not going to be a "joke" chapter or a prank. (I actually kind of hate April Fool's Day.)



So yes, that means it will take 33 weeks. If I'm figuring it right, you'll get to read the final chapter right around Election Day in the US. Won't that be awesome? Fun times, fun times...



Thank you for your patience, and I hope you enjoy what I have written.



Oh yes, and I'm totally using AI for chapter illustrations (but you'll still get my occasional janky Poser art).