Book Report: King of Ashes

18. S. A. Cosby, King of Ashes (2025) (8/30/25)

This is the fourth book of Cosby's that I've read, and although it delivered in the dark-underbelly-of-criminal-activity realm—i.e., it's a decent thriller—I was really disappointed in the writing. The metaphors were laughable—so much so that I started keeping a running list. I know, most readers probably won't care about this, but every time one popped up I was thrown completely out of the story. Didn't Cosby have an editor? (Never mind a proofreader: the book is also riddled with sloppy errors.) Here is the list—which I started compiling only halfway through the book, so there are more examples:

The dusk-to-dawn security lights were just coming alive one by one like fireflies.
He plucked up his glass like it was a brittle rose.
Roman stared at the crowd over the roof of the car, breathing in the cool night like a locomotive.
Roman’s eyelids shot up like a pair of roller shades. . . . A gentle silence fell over them like a plush blanket.
In the distance he heard a train cutting through the dark like a scimitar.
Recognition bloomed in Roman’s mind like a moonflower unfurling its petals. Slowly at first, then as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
That was the far horizon he had to focus on, even as bodies fell all around him like falling stars.
The window rolled down and a telephoto lens emerged like a viper from a hole in the ground.
He laughed. It was a bitter sound like the rattle of bones in a graveyard.
Wiz’s body dropped like a bag of wet laundry. . . . He fell face down, half in the freezer, half out, moaning like a wounded deer. . . . Eddie cut off his giggle like he’d shut off a water faucet. 
He was sealing the second bag and putting it in the urn when an epiphany hit him like a cinder block to the face.
Rain, quiet as a secret promise, began to fall. [Okay. This one isn't execrable.]
The scotch began to warm his body slowly, like the pilot light in an oven igniting a burner.
“She ran upstairs like a scalded dog” [says one character who throughout the book is either drunk or high on serious drugs, or both, and who certainly doesn't think in similes . . .]
Traffic zipped by him as he grabbed on to the steering wheel like it was a life preserver.
He had dived into a life of casual connections or professional companionship because the idea that he was worthy of love was a notion that was slipping through his fingers as the years flew by like sand sifting through a sieve. Bit by bit, grain of sand by grain of sand, it had waned from his soul.
As his hand gripped the weathered brass handle, his heart jumped up into his throat like a startled rabbit.
He didn’t feel angry, but resentment like hot steam from a kettle rose through his body from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head.
Neveah sat at the foot of her father’s hospital bed in a chair that was about as comfortable as she was at a formal dinner for the Jefferson Run Chamber of Commerce.
A discordance that ripped through the atmosphere like a bag of nails in a washing machine.
Her long hair draped down over her shoulders like a tidal wave of black water.
The full moon shown down [through the skylight] like a beacon from a distant ship. 
Roman fired up the Challenger and peeled out of the parking lot, roaring through the night like a rider on a steed that had never known defeat.
The last streetlight blinked out like a lantern being extinguished as shots rang out through the night.
They had met at Trout’s, then driven out here to the Skids in a caravan that sliced through the night like a dagger.
In between them were a couple of piles of trash and debris like small yurts.
Chauncey’s smile faded away like a ghost in the morning light.
Chauncey collapsed like a bag of laundry tossed on the floor.
Dishes broke and shattered and spilled across the floor like confetti.

Every single one of those similes could have been dispensed with—they added absolutely nothing. On the contrary: they're plain bad.

As for the plot and the main protagonist—as in Cosby's other books, we find the hero pulled into unspeakable acts all in the name of "family," and so far I've appreciated that conflictedness. Though this time part of me also wanted him to just say, "Screw it, brother, sister, dad, I'm getting you out of here"—and not descend into the depths of criminality at all. And the way the story ends? Really? I'd say it's completely unbelievable, but then, in sum, the entire story is.

And if Cosby hit us over the head one more time with an "ashes" metaphor (the protagonist is the son of a crematorium operator), well, I don't know what . . . Maybe I would have had to burn the book? It actually ends with the oft-repeated phrase (in case we didn't get it the first time), "Everything burns."

I've enjoyed Cosby before, but this will be the last one I read. My other reports can be found here, here and here, if you're interested. In one of them I call the writing "great," so I don't know if Cosby has just gotten lazy, if the editing has gotten lazy, or if I was simply overlooking all the laziness in the past, caught up in the story instead. But this time? This time I'm simply disappointed and, yes, burnt out.

45. Moss Landing

My friend Barb and I met today for a walk around the nearby (halfway between us) harbor town of Moss Landing, home of MBARI—the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute—and of whale-watching enterprises. Here are a few photos.

The Moss Landing Power Plant (no longer active)

MBARI's newest research vessel, the David Packard,
named for the institute's visionary founder (and the
Packard of Hewlett-Packard fame)

MBARI's older research vessel the Rachel Carson.
We also saw the Western Flyer in the harbor, a 
reconstruction of the boat John Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts
traveled on in the Gulf of Mexico. It recently returned
from a 100-day voyage back in those parts. 

The dredging vessel, the Sea Horse—though it wasn't
actively doing any dredging that we saw.
A sizable barge did pull up alongside, as well as a
large tugboat. So it's definitely about to get going. 

Overhead at lunchtime.

This is Katie. I profiled her on Flickr,
on my 100 Strangers project. You can
read more about her—and the project
surrounding these enthusiastically-legged
seastars—there. It was super fun talking
with her.

A 156 million year old ammonite, one of several
beautifully preserved fossils in the courtyard
outside the Sunflower Star Laboratory and
Woodward Marine Market Restaurant. 

44. Three poems by Chris Abani

A friend of mine recently got her MFA in creative writing (way to go, Jenny!), and one of her mentors was Chris Abani. I enjoyed hearing about his teaching style, which sounded a little like You've found an interesting theme to explore, now run with it. Among other, I'm sure, helpful tips. Abani was in the teaching faculty at Antioch University, where I got my MFA almost twenty years ago. I didn't encounter him because I was nonfiction, he was fiction. But his presence was felt. Anyway, hearing his name again prompted me to seek out his work. Here are three of his poems.

The Calculus of Faith

In the end I realize
every human body is a scripture.
The first miracle was a mango,
full and weighty with ripeness.
The second miracle was a sheet of onionskin
paper torn from a King James Bible
filled with oregano and thyme and smoked.
The third miracle was the smooth
turquoise of my mother's fountain pen.
The scrape of it, the insistent pull of its nib
and words, glorious and alive.
My fear is a hole I crawl into,
a hollowed-out log, a curve in a stump.
If you listen, if you listen—
in the book I am reading it is raining.

Durban, South Africa—Some Notations of Value

Metal giraffes march up the bluff
toward the lighthouse. In the moonlight,
whales, or their ghosts, litter the sand.

There is a museum by the park that houses
apartheid; contained in stiff wax dummies.

The tour bus stops on the road’s edge.
On the right a black town, the left Indian.
Pointing he says: This is the racial divide.

Stopping at the bar, the drink menu offers—
Red’s Divas only five rand each.

Each night the pounding sea reminds me
that, here, women are older than God.

These people carry their dead with them,
plastering them onto every met face.

Yet love hums like tuning forks
and the fading spreading sound
is the growth of something more.

Their absence is loud and I long
for the confetti flutter of butterflies.

Abattoirs litter the landscape with the sinister
air of murder, signs proclaiming: Zumba Butchery,
as though this is where the Zumba’s blood-
lust got the better of them.

The air conditioner in my room hums
a dirge to a sea too busy spreading rumors.

Death skips between street children
playing hopscotch in the traffic.

The woman singing in Zulu, in a Jamaican bar,
is calling down fire, calling down fire.
There is no contradiction.

White Egret

The whole earth is filled with the love of God. —Kwame Dawes

A stream in a forest and a boy fishing,
heart aflame, head hush, tasting the world—
lick and pant. The Holy Scripture
is animal not book.
I should know, I have smoked
the soul of God, psalm burning
between fingers on an African afternoon.
And how is it that death can open up
an alleluia from the core of a man?
How easily the profound fritters away in words.
And the simple wisdom of my brother:
What you taste with abandon
even God cannot take from you.
All my life, men with blackened insides
have fought to keep
the flutter of a white egret in my chest
from bursting into flight, into glory.

Chris Abani was born in Nigeria and became a vocal opponent of the government there. He was imprisoned several times, ending up on death row—but managed to escape to England. He now lives in the U.S. He once stated of literature, "The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about. I was a writer before I was in prison."

The Ghanaian poet Kwame Dawes was faculty at a week-long writing workshop I attended. I still, somewhere, have a video of him dancing with joy at an evening gathering. A couple of inspirations.

Book Report: Iron Lake

17. William Kent Krueger, Iron Lake (1998) (8/24/25)

A friend in a book group I once belonged to mentioned reading a couple of Krueger's titles lately and liking his style, so of course I had to look him up, having never heard of him. And then, learning he's a mystery writer, known, it seems, especially for his series featuring the former sheriff of a small northern Minnesota town, Cork O'Connor, I had to start with the first in the series (there are 20 in all, plus a prequel—so far). And it was good. It's moody and atmospheric. Several people die, one boy goes missing. There's an interesting interplay of Native American (Ojibwe/Anishinaabe) and Anglo culture. (O'Connor himself is part Irish, part Anishinaabe.) It's the dead of winter, so snow and frozen lakes figure in, along with saunas and Christmas trees. A corrupt judge, an ambitious politician (they happen to be related), an Indian casino, Cork's troubled marriage, and a trove of photographic negatives all enter into the story. 

Judging from the star ratings of the entire series on Goodreads, the books get better and better. I might try another one. I liked Cork in all his tenacity. And then there are Krueger's non-Cork books This Tender Land and Ordinary Grace, which also sound good.  

43. Tuolumne backpack

This last weekend my friend Lynn (whom I walked across England with last year) and I took a few days to backpack 30 miles down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, from Tuolumne Meadows to White Wolf. We spent three nights. The days got increasingly warm as we descended, and a few uphills caught us by surprise—so it was not exactly an easy trip. But it was gloriously beautiful, and it took me out of my comfort zone in a very good way. 

I posted photos on FB, which I'll link to here. Two sets: one from the hike itself, and another from White Wolf, where we had to cool our heels for four long hours while we waited for the YARTS bus to take us back to Tuolumne and our car. (We traversed those last seven miles faster than I could have imagined—in less than five hours—especially given that we had to climb 2,500 feet.)

Here's the hike proper (just a selection of the 150+ photos I took).

Here's White Wolf. 

It was a wonderful long weekend. Here are a random bonus shots:

Lynn at the sunken picnic table we settled in at
at White Wolf

Lynn wishing the store was open so we
could get ice cream!

Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and sunset

Sulfur buckwheat

Pine cone

Water-sculpted granite

Pine spikes (a saprophyte)

42. Travel

I've written here before about the travel I've done. I'm not such a big traveler as some, but I've certainly been more places than most people. All the continents. Almost 50 countries. I've lived in Australia, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands.

Now, I am about to embark on another trip: to Kuala Lumpur—a place that was never on my radar, but a cryptography society is giving David an award there next month, for a paper he wrote that has stood the "test of time" (he presented the paper 20 years ago, in Edinburgh), and he will go collect it, by gum. Followed up by a couple of weeks in Western Australia—where I was some thirty years ago with my mother, on a beautiful wildflower tour. 

This time, it will be three of us: me, David, and David's sister, Patty. Patty, in fact, was the instigator. She was all in for an adventure. I wasn't so sure—until she was.

Since deciding that, yes, this trip is on, I've been doing research. I found an excellent itinerary for wildflower spots north of Perth, and then I started exploring to the south. I have managed to book hotels on a punctuated course all along the way: north to Kalbarri, on down to York, and then a long drive to Bremer Bay, and eventually up to Margaret River before returning to Perth and home. Two weeks.

In there toward the end, we'll meet up with a friend we made almost twenty years ago while hiking, biking, rafting, and kayaking across Costa Rica, an Aussie who lives in Albany, one of our stopping points. That'll be fun. (Thank you FB for keeping us in touch.)

It's interesting to witness the anxiety I'm feeling, though. I have been in charge of booking hotels (all except KL). Mostly, it's been fine—and good grief, how did we do it without the internet? (Oh, right: all those travel agents, now jobless. Which makes me wonder how they did it, without the internet. Good grief, what a chore!) There were a few hiccups, but now I've got all but Perth booked—and yes, I should get to that this week. Also a car. 

I've been feeling a mix of excitement and dread. So strange. I love to travel. Don't I?

Well, yes—once I'm there. The lead-up, though—not so fun. Did I find the best information? Did I make the right decisions? And air travel anymore—it is something to be endured.

Oh heck. It really doesn't matter. We will make of the experience what we do. And the three of us? We will have a good time. I can guarantee that. And it'll be great to see Albany Keith again. Something to look forward to, for sure. It'll be great! 

Book Report: So Far Gone

16. Jess Walter, So Far Gone (2025) (8/11/25)

I have read a few of Jess Walter's ten books—Beautiful Ruins, The Financial Lives of Poets, Over Tumbled Graves—and enjoyed them. This one was no exception.

It's the story of Rhys Kinnick, in his early sixties, who seven years ago, after punching his Christian nationalist son-in-law, Shane, at a family Thanksgiving get-together, moved to an isolated, run-down piece of property that was in the family, and went off-grid. Now, a woman shows up on his porch with two children, 8 and 13, whom it takes a moment for him to recognize: his grandchildren, Asher and Leah. That morning their mother, Rhys's daughter, Bethany, pointed Leah to a note tucked in a snowboot, then took off. The note directed their neighbor to bring the kids to Rhys. 

But Shane is still around, and he's none too happy about this—either his wife's taking off or the fact that she sent the kids to her father. Events ensue, which involve a militarized religious compound in Idaho known as the Rampart, a psychedelic music festival in British Columbia—as well as some philosophy and current events and lots of driving. The chapters are all titled some variation on "What Happened to . . .": first Kinnick himself; then Lucy, an old flame of his from the newspaper they both once worked at; Chuck, an ex-cop; Bethany, then Leah, then Asher each get a brief chapter; and Brian, a Native American friend of Rhys's (they manage to patch up an old rift). It's a clever way of weaving various stories and memories together as Kinnick sets about rescuing his family. 

At the center of the story, perhaps, is love, and how to stay present and true to the people you care about. In the end, Rhys (literally) limps back into his daughter's, and grandchildren's, lives—back into the world. 

I flagged a couple of passages, which don't give a sense of Walter's strong way with character, with dialogue, with quirky details. But they point to a philosophical underpinning that I appreciated.

How to explain self-exile? Part of it had been the fight with Shane. And Bethany's reaction. It symbolized the dark, sour turn the whole country had taken. As a journalist, as an American, as a rationalist, Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then, in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency, Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he'd thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family.
     But, if he was being honest, it wasn't those people, his fellow Americans, many of whom had probably always been as distracted or as scared or as cynical as they revealed themselves to be by electing a ridiculous racist con man. No, they weren't really the problem. Most of them probably just wanted lower taxes, or liked bad television, or, like Shane, had fallen into the fake-Christian faux-conservative Nationalist cesspool; or maybe they were just burned-out and believed that corruption had rotted everything, that one party was as bad as the next; or maybe they really did long for some nonexistent past.
     Whatever their motivation, for Kinnick, it was all just part of a long sad cultural slide that he'd had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand (celebrity entertainment bleeding into government, cable TV eroding newspapers, information collapsing into a huge Internet-size black hole of bad ideas, bald-faced lies, and bullshit, until the literal worst person in American got elected president). There was inside of Kinnick an emptiness that felt like depression. [. . .]
     No, it was he who had failed, he who couldn't adjust, he who couldn't deal with this banal, brutal idiocracy, he who couldn't admit that this was the world now. And so . . . he'd stepped aside. Moved to the last sliver of land once owned by his wannabe sheep-rancher grandfather. But once he began withdrawing, erasing himself, he couldn't stop. Until now, when Kinnick saw that he'd been living entirely in his own head for a year now, and had inexplicably reached a place where he didn't even recognize his own grandchildren.

There's also a good disquisition on the evils of smartphones, but I'll just end with a "cold epiphany" Kinnick has in the final pages of the book (which his newly acquired phone reminds him of):

All cruelty springs from weakness. Seneca said that, along with: Ignorance is the cause of fear. Kinnick had always believed these adages to be true, but now [. . .] Rhys wondered if Seneca might have been a little silly to believe in the causal roots of evil. He wondered if cruelty and its bride, fear, didn't just exist spontaneously, forces as elemental and eternal as gravity.

But as a contrast to these forces, he also rediscovers love and devotion and begins to seek forgiveness and connection, even amidst the pain and struggle of living.