Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

Moreno Garcia does an amazing job setting the right mood in this newer gothic tale. Set in Mexico in  the 1950's, you forget that the world is more modern than what Noemi Taboada experiences. Having grown up in Mexico City to an affluent family, Noemi's life is more about finding a worthy suitor and getting married than education or developing skills to join the workforce. 

Despite this, Noemi is a confident, charming, smart woman who would like to study at the University. While she enjoys fancy parties and delightful banter, much like a Disney princess, she wants moooooooore...Her father reluctantly agrees if she will first travel to a rural town to check on her recently married cousin, Catalina. 

What follows is a tale set in an isolated home on a treacherous hill complete with a foggy cemetery. Although it's the 1950s, the home doesn't have electricity and is intentionally kept dark and quiet. There don't seem to be telephones as everyone corresponds by letter. And dinner is in silence at the behest of the family patriarch, the mysterious Howard. There's also a lot of snake references, botany, nightmares, old mining lore, and a family secret.

Speaking of family, we have the wistful and delicate Catalina, who only speaks in riddles (because why can anyone speak plainly to explain a situation), and who has brought Noemi due to the strange letters she sent. There are also servants who act like NPCs, Catalina's seductive and questionably evil husband Virgil, the strict buttoned up Aunt Florence and her meh son Francis. Throw in a few doctors and a mysterious healer who trades town gossip for cigarettes and you have your complete cast of characters.

At the end of the day, this is a strange story and I'm not sure what I think about the punchline. It's somehow not based on a novel idea, but definitely different in execution. If you've read Children of Ruin or The Girl with All the Gifts, you'll definitely see some parallels, and these are all really different genres. I'm also reminded of Riley Sager's books, which have similarly interesting, if not a little fantastical, stories. 

This book took me awhile to finish. I'd start and then get distracted and start again and finally got the audiobook and powered through it. I don't know if I'm just better at listening to audio books or if was a great narration, but I enjoyed my final attempt much more than the first two. But not getting hooked right away makes me ambivalent when it comes to seeking out Moreno Garcia's other books. While I won't go out of my way to reach for another one, I'd be open to a recommendation.

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky has a knack for making humans supporting actors in his space-faring opera about intelligent animal life. After reading Children of Time, which I enjoyed, I wasn't sure how he would do a second book about a different species in a fresh way. But this second book is just as good as the first.

Told in a similar way to Children of Time, Children of Ruin switches between the past and present. The past being a time when human civilization has basically self-destructed and sent ships into the universe to terraform planets for future civilization. The present being thousands of years after this - as well as several thousands of years after Children of Time. It's amazing how space time really stretches things out and how quickly you get used to the vast stretches between years.

What we get from this second book that wasn't as fleshed out in the first is more about the terraforming project and how it works on a practical level. What we don't get is a lot of detail about our alien friends and how they develop their civilization. But that is forgiven when you learn their own civilization is basically destroyed, hence the ruin. What's intriguing, and what really steals the show is why this ruin occurred. Tchaikovsky has created an existential enemy that is both exciting and terrifying. I loved any scene that involved them. 

Children of Ruin explores themes of AI, immortality, the self, and invasion - both on a planetary as well as individual level. And while I felt he ended things a little too easily, I'll forgive him that because overall it was another great story in the Children of Time series. I can only hope his super villains will come back in subsequent novels, because they really were horribly fun.