This is a new/old story.  Written in 2017, the story failed to find a publishing home, being touted as ‘weird.’ Thankfully, Tor Books likes weird and Klune, and accepted it and here we are.

Nate is a young man adrift. Ostracized from his family for being queer, fired from his job as a journalist in Washington, D.C. for being queer; all he has left is a bequest from his dead parents. A beat-up truck from his father and a cabin deep in the woods of Oregon from his mother; neither of which he really wants but it’s really all that he has.  The memories generated by the truck and the cabin are bittersweet; he had a loved childhood but a violent break when he was twenty. And, then, to make matters even more confused; his father murdered his mother and then took his own life.  Nate has more questions than he’ll ever find answers for.  But the cabin represents a chance to reorder his life and find purpose.  He finds much, much more than that.

When Nate encounters an odd couple of squatters in his cabin, his whole life changed; he just didn’t know it right away.  The man was easy enough to catalog; his USMC tattoos and generally broad shoulders, and hunky brooding was familiar enough to Nate.  But the little blonde ten-year-old girl was quite another thing.  Before he could even start to deal with her weirdness; the man collapsed in front of him.  Apparently he’d been shot.  This was altogether too much for Nate; he fainted, too.  But then it got even weirder; both he and the gunshot man woke inside his cabin; with his shoes off, with a blanket.  Now, how…he wondered…had a gutshot man, who fainted, carried him into the cabin.  But that wasn’t going to be the last puzzle Nate would have to solve when dealing with Artemis Darth Vader, the little blonde enigma.

This story has men-in-black, conspiracy theorists, cultists and the mystery that is Artemis.  It also has the mystery of Nate’s heart. 

Boy, I sure do wish I could keep on with a synopsis and tell you so much more. But then you wouldn’t have the thrill of discovery; so I won’t.  I think I can say that since Klune wrote this story; his skills have improved – witness “In the Life of Puppets.”  It has some clichés, true; and a tendency to use tried and true characters.  But this is Klune telling the story!  And, as always, his stories are filled with love and found family.  This one is no different, in that regard.  There is plenty of unhappiness, mortal danger, evil intent, and self-serving assholes to keep the reader guessing how it will all play out.  And I enjoyed just about every minute.  I said it before and I’ll keep saying it until he proves me wrong: Klune should be a National Treasure.   ~~ Catherine Book

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