Under a dark grove of something rather sticky, the dusty dead grass was shriveled and barely comforting in any way for the four of them laying flat on their backs. The glamorous fortress above them.

“Kira’s rather rude,” Eryx said, slowly sitting up, “she literally pushed us out a window.”

“Eryx, stop,” Caspian muttered.

“But–”

“She literally saved us. If we had stayed for a minute longer we’d all be dead in this ditch, not breathing nor alive,” Calum snapped, “She didn’t fall either, and we all know full well why she didn’t.” He glanced over at Cirotri, who just stared in silence still laying down, distraught. “We need to get away from–”

“Oh shit. I didn’t kill that psycho,” Eryx gritted his teeth.

“Who?” Caspian asked.

“I should have killed him the minute I saw him, she’s gonna end up in that cell again, ain’t she?”

“Again? What the hell are you talking about?” Calum shot up before slowly sitting back down.

“Kira. She was in some cell tied up to some table when I got here. That weird ass guy, Kai, had some kind of plan,” Eryx sighed, “but I got her out of there, but she honestly might be worse off now.” 

Cirotri finally sat up, “What the fuck? There’s no way–”

“Ciro…” Calum gave him a pained expression, “you remember now. Don’t try to deny it.”

Cirotri squeezed his eyes closed. Why? Why was this happening to him? He opened up his eyes once more. “Eryx, did you have a plan for after you got Caspian out?”

“Not anything well thought out.”

“Didn’t you have friends or something that were going to attack?” Calum asked.

“Oh shit,” he looked over at his brother, “Cas, how strong have your powers gotten?”

“I’m not sure, the restraints limited me.”

“Shit, if you were limited in that room, any normal person would cower,” Eryx turned to face Cirotri, “Aren’t Starfallen supposed to be super rare?”

“Yeah,” Calum muttered.

“Was anyone, including him, aware he was a Starfallen?”

“No,” Cirotri whispered.

“Not even your mother?”

“Eryx,” Calum warned.

The sun was getting lower and lower, and Cirotri’s look visibly declined by the second. His whole body shivered with the wind. Eryx slid off his outer jacket that had somehow reappeared at some point and draped it around Cirotri’s shoulders. He crouched down in front of him. “Thanks for saving our fall.”

“Huh?” Calum started, confused.

“Who do you think broke our fall?” Eryx asked, “Even if it was subconsciously, he used some kind of power and we landed without ending up dead in this ditch.”

“I–” Calum started but the stone in his hand started crackling.

“H…hello?” a grated voice sounded from the device.

“Are you Ryxx?” Calum asked.

“Yes, wh..re…are…y..u?” she asked, the words barely coming through.

Calum whispered into the stone, quiet enough so no one could hear but the ear on the other end of the device.

“Affir..ative. Head…y..ur…way.”

“We need to leave. And quick,” Eryx urged, “because the others…are either attacking now or will do so any minute. We can’t afford to get caught in the crossfire.”

“It’s almost been two hours, Mal,” Lilith sighed as she lay in the bed of the truck.

The roads anywhere on the outskirts of Altherin were gravely and not straight in any form. They had somehow ended up in the only tiny canopy of remaining trees.

“You thought I was serious?” Mallory asked, hoping into the truck beside her.

“You typically are,” Lilith muttered.

Mallory glanced through the small window, peering into the truck where Vivienne and Zenith slept. “Yeah… I am, but it’ll be different tonight.”

Lilith looked at him, “you’re not going alone.”

“I don’t see how else,” Mallory looked up through a small fracture in the leaves, “someone has to stay with Vivi and Zenith…and someone has to make sure Eryx isn’t dead. And we both know, sending you to get Eryx is a death sentence. Either because you’ll kill him. Or because you’ll be killed by the queen. And we both know perfectly well why.”

“How long have you known?” Lilith asked. Unlike an abnormality like Eryx, not just any one could find out her identity.

“Since we met. The stars take quite a liking, you know,” he gazed at one of the few stars that could be seen, even with the city’s lights not too far off. “My mother was a Starfallen. But we all know how that went down.”

Lilith looked up at the same star as though she could feel its power.

“Though, I suppose many think it was all over thirty years ago. But that war didn’t truly end until about fifteen years ago,” Mallory scoffed, “the queen didn’t stop till even her own husband was dead.”

“If your mother was…”

“I’m not,” Mallory stated, “I’m not sure how it’s possible, but I’m not. I’m one of the few who was born as a Marked. That might have overruled any Starfallen heritage. Somehow.”

“But if you have kids someday, they could inherit it,” Lilith said.

“You know just as much as I do that I won’t have any kids. Fuck, I’m no straighter than this gravel road.”

Lilith laughed, “Dam right you aren’t.”

Mallory stood up and hopped out of the truck. He looked directly into her eyes, “Take care of them, I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I’ll protect them with my life. Don’t let me find you dead in a ditch.”

And thus, Mallory made his way to the ‘impenetrable fortress’ like the speed of light.

●●●◐○ Donuts and Dinosaurs {Scattered Worlds 02} - David Collins (2026 nov)
So this series isn't one that follows a set of characters, but one where different groups of characters face the same situation: being on one of the tens of thousands of chunks of planetary surface that were grabbed in a Lenovian experiment gone wrong, and dropped on a new world together in a Mandelbrot mishmash.

In this tale we get the mid-twenties, cis-het, white, USAn man that Collins seems to begin all his stories with getting scooped up. Also a similar woman, then over time they find a half-dozen more humans. The aliens this time are Proccas (six-legged goat-centaurs), who are Bronze-age fishers; Lanas (elf-bats), who are centuries more advanced than humans; and Gurranas (dwarf Neanderthals), who are a Stone Age people.

We get the usual struggles against dinosaurs, giant wolves, weird sea monsters, and what not, all transposed from various worlds onto this Scattered World — which may or may not be the same planet as the last volume. The usual Collins: fast light adventure, formulaic but fun.

●●●○○ Dogs, Cats, and Naked People. Oh My! - Linda Weber (2021 ss)
Community Service Day is a mandated annual event in this story. Usually Dr. David — senior veterinarian in a practice he shares with Dr. Janet — goes to the residential nudist community of Rolling Oaks to look at the pets of the people who live there, but this year he committed to going to the new Senior Center and checking pets there, so he offers the nudist job to his business partner, who after a couple of days' thought accepts.

On the first day, Janet makes her rounds topless, but wearing a sarong skirt. Walking between cottages, no one makes any untoward remarks. Janet meets a number of clients and their pets, finding only one that merits a more in-depth check at the office later in the week. Andrew the architect (who has a rescue greyhound) tells her about how naturism is a “philosophy of wholesome, non-sexual, family-friendly nudity” and invites her to dinner later.

The next weekend Janet has a dinner with some female friends, and reveals that she'll likely go to Rolling Oaks again to enjoy herself when she's not working.

●●○○○ I'm an Angel, Not an Astrophysicist! - Brian Terence (2025 ss)
Himself had agreed to answer a prayer — by some people with swords fighting some other people with swords — to stop the sun in the sky. The orders had filtered down to two angels, who were left to figure out how to do that without killing everyone on the sword folk's planet.

It took a fair bit of work, which we never really see. The piece is just discussions between catty angels, with no actual plans made or deeds done.

●●◐○○ Deaf, Dumb and Blind - C.M. Eddy, H.P. Lovecraft (1925 ss)
Dr. Morehouse had been visiting the people at the nearest house when Dobbs ran in, panicked. He was the manservant to author Richard Blake, who had rented the old Simeon Tanner place, thinking the dark past of the place exciting, even if the only way the wheelchair-bound writer — deaf, mute, and blind as he was, after what he'd experienced in the Great War — was second-hand, literally, via the touch code he'd worked out with Dobbs.

There had always been rumors about old Simeon, and when a noxious cloud had emanated from the house, the nearby farmers had broken into the house with axes, then into his locked study with the same. They found Simeon dead, with a horrible expression on his face, and his study filled with occult books. They burned the body and the books.

Now, when Blake was typing up his next book, something emerged from the always-locked study. Something which Blake was somehow aware of, and began typing about, in the manuscript that Dr. Morehouse took away before anyone could read it…

●●●●○ Carla Takes Her Clothes Off - A D Rowen (2019 nva)
After the divorce, Brian got his girlfriend pregnant, and Carla got the house, in the backyard of which she was now sunbathing. Topless, as she used to do on the beaches of Spain. Then she realized that the fence and hedge made the backyard private, so why have any tan lines?

This led to Carla going nude all the time at home, and soon enough opening the door to the mail carrier or a food delivery person without bothering to put on her housecoat. (“Exhibiting herself for men made her feel sexy.”) That led to her gardening in the front yard and washing her car nude, with none of her neighbors objecting.

Then Carla invited her friend Mandy to visit, and found that, while initially surprised, Mandy had no problems with Carla's nudity. Soon Carla began driving to her office naked, stopping in a lay-by near work to dress, then again undressing there when returning from her office job in town to her village home.

Soon Mandy, Carla, and two more friends went to Carla's local pub, where they discussed Carla's nudity. Carla explained that she didn't think of herself as a nudist, since she wasn't really interested in being around other nude people.

After some conversation, Jen noted that “Before you said you just liked being naked, now you said you like people seeing you naked. That’s different.” This led to the ladies challenging Carla to strip, her doing so, the largely male clientele having zero problem having a pretty 28-year-old woman nude in the pub, and the tavern owner reluctantly (and his wife later encouragingly) allowing Carla to be nude on the premises.

And so it goes, with Carla being nude more and more places, and her village having no problems with it. She even learns, from a man she gets involved with, that she's not the first.

Back in the 1930s, a family name Belgrave lived in town, when eighteen-year-old Hermione decided she didn't want to wear clothes. Despite it being a time when doing such a thing could get a woman put in an asylum, her family supported her, as did the town. A year later, Hermione's two-years-younger sister joined her in nudity. Hermione was nude for six years before marrying and moving away, but Olivia was nude for fifteen years before she moved away. An appendix shows entries from Olivia's journal.

In any case, Carla became close with handyman-and-amateur-historian Steven, and she remained nude around the village henceforth, at least in warmer weather. The fact that the villagers accepted her nudity so readily did lessen Carla's exhibitionist thrill some, but she coped.

●●●○○ The Scented Poppies {Dr. Taverner 05} - Dion Fortune (1922 ss)
A man comes to occultist and psychologist Dr. Taverner to see if he can do something about the man's cousin, who has just become heir to a childless rich uncle's estate. The problem is that three other cousins were previously the sole heir, and each in turn committed suicide. Gregory Polson would like to see the sequential suicides stopped, both because he likes the current heir, and because there are only three other cousins left, of which he's one.

Gregory suspects Irving, the cousin their uncle is likely to make heir last. Irving gives people small gifts, and Gregory brings in the floral wall hanging that Irving just gave to Tim, the current heir. Taverner discovers within one of the poppies some odd seeds, the scent of which “stirs up the pineal gland,” along with a moonstone, upon which has been impressed a psychic urge to throw oneself from a height.

Apparently some member of the occult community is selling working curses. Taverner and Rhodes must deal with both Irving and the seller to bring the case to a successful conclusion.

●●○○○ The Jameson Satellite - Neil R. Jones (1931 ss)
Inspired by Egyptian mummies, Professor Jameson sought to have his body preserved forever, building himself a small spaceship as a coffin, and leaving instructions for his nephew to launch him into orbit. With his radium repulsion ray fending off meteors, Professor Jameson remained in orbit for a long, long time. Forty million years, during which time the Moon drew much closer to Earth, and the tidally-locked Earth drew much closer to the cool, red Sun.³

After this span, Zoromes from the planet Zor arrive (and eventually say to Jameson “You died and were shot out into space long before any life occurred on Zor,” in another wild miscalculation of time by the author).

They were originally a fully biological race, but in their quest for immortality, ended up making themselves mostly robotic. They have cubical metal bodies with four legs and six manipulatory tentacles, and contain the biological brains of the original inhabitants of Zor. They place Professor Jameson's brain in one of their bodies and revive him.

The now-mechanical Jameson, together with his robotic companions, briefly explore the twilight zone of one-face Earth, have a minor adventure, and then set forth to further explore "the Universe" (NRJ knew not of galaxies?), in this first of many Professor Jameson stories.

●●●◐○ GirlWorld - Lisa Morton (2010 ss)
The apocalypse had gone well for Stace and Brittnay. The former had been a truckstop waitress who'd had to deal with men trying to grope her, the latter a dental assistant who'd had her fill of shrieking brats.

They'd met six months ago in the produce section, and had been together since. The zombie epidemic that had hit three months ago had spared them from their jobs, and when everyone living went to relocation centers, they'd skipped that depressing chaos.

Now they traveled, killing zombies — Stace had a dozen wooden bats, since they shattered eventually, while Brittnay favored a homemade spear — and staying in expensive houses, sometimes having sex all day. Except Stace has bad dreams every night.

So Britt conceives of The Mission, to lay her own old ghosts to rest. They headed to her old house, and they find her father, who beat her mother until she fled, with Britt running away at sixteen. And the couple wreaks sweet revenge on his zombified self.

●○○○○ Meriweather & Bryce, P.I.s - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (2026 nov)
Two Victorian private investigators — and Uranian lovers, despite the laws of Church and State — become involved in a series of kidnappings, all involving men in their early fifties, but of different social stations: laborers, a newspaper editor, an alderman, a wealthy factory owner. The niece of the moneyed man hires the detectives to find him.

Investigating, Jack Meriweather and Lucien Bryce learn that Franklin Royale, notorious criminal mastermind, is involved, but they learn no more. The two of them are also men of a certain age, Jack Meriweather reminds his partner Lucien Bryce. They stroll up and down the street where the kidnappings occur, and are promptly hooded and shoved into a carriage. They learn from the men with whom they're imprisoned that they're now sexual slaves, since “there is a growing fetish” for that sort of thing.²

Bryce and Meriweather then get picked as assassins by Prince Thomas to appear at an official Palace reception — as high-class Uranian prostitutes, mind you — to kill Sultan Adi un-Vactun, who made a disparaging remark about Queen Victoria. And as part of their plan to escape their minders, Lucian and Jack play up their homosexuality and kiss the prince in front of his mother.

Okay, the stupidity of this novel's plot has surprised me multiple times. The ineptitude of the detective heroes, ditto. Why this is so is beyond me, given that I've read other detective novels by this author — three gay leads across four books, one set in Victorian times — and they were much better.

In any case, the detectives here eventually end the sex slavery scheme, get the other men released, and don't end up imprisoned themselves. They even get the Queen to look the other way regarding the detectives' Uranian natures, and the acts the other men were forced to perform under duress, as long as everyone is discreet form now on. And Franklin Royale is arrested, which I didn't expect, he being the James Moriarty of the book.

━━━━━━━━━━
Week Thirty-Five's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
259+6 ss | 13+0 nvt | 14+1 nva | 78+2 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #BokBooks
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[1] The narrator says the area involved is a roughly 42×51 mile oval. This seems small enough that this book's group would have contacted the people from the first book in the eight years that pass before the final chapter. They don't, which suggests its a different planet (and which makes the experiment even more ludicrous). But the map in the book suggests that we've only experienced a small area of a vast Scatter.

[2] Ri-ii-ight. That a criminal enterprise could identify scores of homosexual clients, who hide their orientations lest they be imprisoned, seems unlikely. Then you need to have clients who want to have sex with unwilling men, pay for the privilege, and trust the panderer with their secrets. Only the fact that Franklin Royale plans to later blackmail these men makes any sense. Oh, and being an equal-opportunity panderer, Royale also maintained a harem of women for wealthy ladies with same-sex tastes.

[3] Yeah, the timeline for all this is wrong, tens of millions of years instead of almost a billion years left for Earth, and more for Sol. Jones seems to be working off Lord Kelvin's idea that the Sun had the heat of its formation, and cooled from there. That nuclear fusion occurs in stars was discovered in the 1920s.