Rosewater Press

  A few years back, I said I’d like to go back and review all the old Faction Paradox material on this blog eventually. It made more sense back then, when the series appeared to be another victim of the pandemic. A return to somewhat consistent annual releases starting with the first Boulevard book has given me less time to think about the past. Then again, I read more than one book a year. And, y’know, it’s not like these reviews are particularly broad or deep. They're easy to write. So I had plans this summer to delve back into the Mad Norwegian Golden Age alongside a review of this book.           Then Obverse Books decided that Summer 2025 was gonna be the most productive point in the company’s entire history. Like, holy crap. The Paradise Towers novel, a reprint of Of the City of the Saved , and an EDA-themed charity anthology? It’s been a big summer for Wilderness-adjacent spinoffs outside of the Obverse corner, too - Jimbo’s Mars book finally ca...

A week after grandpa passed, Lily and I visited his son in Menasha. We took a short, chilly walk down part of the Loop the Lake trail, culminating in a trip back to the heart of Little Detroit. Almost exactly a year since I started writing about that place, as it happens. I’m happy to say the place is a little better than I left it. Right off the Lock, stretching the whole length of Water Street from the trail to Tayco, is a brand-new sidewalk. Fresh soil took the place of what used to be a bunch of crummy asphalt lurching over the river. A part of me wants to decry this as another act of gentrification. It’s difficult to be sated by a fully aesthetic revision to a working-class neighborhood. I worry, of course, that the city is trying to price the trash out of Metrasha. I also, perhaps selfishly, appreciate that we could now walk this part of the city in relative comfort, with a more picturesque shoreline and all that. Making our way down the sidewalk a particular structure caught m...