Victoria Janssen's Blog

Earls Trip by Jenny Holiday is a light historical romance with a mournful beginning. (By “light” I mean light on the historical details and with modern-sounding dialogue, which can be a feature or a bug, depending on your tastes.) Archie is the Earl of Harcourt. His mother no longer remembers who he is, and though he feels guilty about leaving her with her competent, kind companion, he truly needs the break of his annual vacation with his two best friends, one an earl and the other an heir to an...

Fiction:
I re-read Lois McMaster Bujold’s initial three books set in the “world of the Five Gods,” The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt. I’d loved them when they first came out, but it’s been well over a decade since I revisited them. Reading one after the other, instead of as they came out, meant I could see themes and ideas developing much more easily, and was also able to think about them in conjunction with the newer Penric and Desdemona stories, which are set in the...

Content warning: this book has past harm to a dog (but it did not die).

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson would today be considered Middle Grade, I think. It’s set in 1908 Austria. Infant Annika is found abandoned in a church and taken in by a Viennese cook and a housemaid, as well as the three sibling professors for whom they work. Annika is a sunny, happy child who learns everything about taking care of a house and cooking, as well as random lectures on geology and art history and music from t...

My reading in the first half of the month was re-reading of large quantities of work by Cecilia Tan and P. Djèlí Clark, in preparation for Readercon panels. I didn’t make substantial notes on either panel, so I don’t have much to report here.

Fiction:
The Chicken Salad War by copperbadge is latest in the Shivadh series of romance novels; it doesn’t appear to be available in ebook yet. Simon LeFevre is chef to the royal family of Askazer-Shivadlakia and has been very lucky in romance if not in a...

Fiction:
Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld by Catherine Lloyd turned out to be second in a historical mystery series set in 1830s England. The author managed the excellent trick of giving me enough hints of book one’s events to both let me follow the character arcs and make me want to go back and read book one. Miss Morton, Lady Caroline who has taken work as a companion/secretary, accompanies her delightful wealthy industrialist employer, Mrs. Frogerton, to a seance; when the spirit...

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo is fantasy set in 1930s Hollywood. The nameless first person narrator, whose Chinese immigrant father owns a laundry, first sees silent films by selling an inch of her hair; later, she plays the roles of assorted children in talkie movies that are filming nearby. To join a studio as an actor, ruled by an inhumanly powerful otherworldly being, she has to make sacrifices, blackmailing a contact and bargaining away some of her life in the hope of becoming a star, which in thi...

I’ll be at Readercon 34 this weekend. If you’ll be there, please feel free to stop and say hello! My schedule is below.

The Works of P. Djèlí­ Clark
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT
Andrea Hairston [moderator]; Leon Perniciaro; Rob Cameron; Tom Doyle; Victoria Janssen
Our Guest of Honor P. Djèlí Clark rounded out his first decade as a published author with a Nebula and a Locus for his fantasy police procedural novel, The Master of Djinn, and both those awards plus a British Fantasy A...

John Constantine, Hellblazer Vol. 18: The Gift by Mike Carey (Author), Denise Mina (Author), Leonardo Manco (Illustrator, Artist), Giuseppe Camuncoli (Artist), Lorenzo Ruggiero (Artist), Frazer Irving (Artist) is a road trip to hell (rather than from hell, heh). The story ended Carey’s run as writer on the series.

John Constantine’s mistake (in previous issues) leads to his sister’s death, which he hopes will be temporary if he can retrieve her soul from hell. For the dangerous journey, he needs...

Fiction:
The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope is historical fantasy set in the 1920s Black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C.. Clara Johnson is able to speak with spirits called Enigmas, which can help humans with problems via a “Charm” but also demand a “Trick” in return. When local people begin to turn up with vacant stares and lost motivation, it’s clear something unnatural is happening. Clara has been isolating herself after the traumatic event that resulted in her Charm and Trick, but she...

I’d actually already started reading The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson shortly after it came out, then was distracted and moved on to something else (I no longer remember what or why).

I think Penelope and Odysseus qualify for the theme! This time, I picked it up when I had a little more mental space and was able to really dig in and enjoy the introductory section about the poem itself; I especially appreciated Wilson’s historical review of the various theories about when and how the poem...