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delphi✓ kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POV
Mirror Lake is the third book in the Shady Hollow series by Juneau Black. The series' titular town is occupied by a cast of anthropomorphic woodland animals who keep getting embroiled in crimes. In this one, a picturesque autumn is disrupted when a rat from neighbouring Mirror Lake suddenly declares that her husband has gone missing and has been replaced by an imposter.
...okay, is it weird that I wanted the story about a fox named Vera Vixen solving playing sleuth to be more twee?
I think when I heard "cozy" and "anthropomorphic animals" and saw the book cover, my mind went to things like The Wind in the Willows and Frog and Toad Are Friends, and the addition of a mystery made me think of the Dimension 20 campaign Mice & Murder. Which was to say, I went into this expecting something a lot more stylized, with the animal conceit either adding a lot of whimsy or providing the counterweight to a darker or more satirical story.
Then again, maybe I would have also found The Wind in the Willows disappointingly contemporary if I'd read it in 1908? I definitely think it's true that imaginary Edwardian!me would bounce off the country squire stuff as hard as present!me bounces off the idealized generic upstate New York type village vibe going on here. (And the thing where the only character with a non-WASP name is a panda named Sun Li, which felt like it should have been in the early 20th century book and not the 2020 one.)
All in all, the mystery ended up being what kept me reading this one, since it had an additional twist beyond just a murder whodunnit. It's a short book, but it still dragged a little for me—I think because of the presence of a lot of conversations and very basic/straightforward descriptions that are probably intended to be the thick icing on a cupcake if you're someone who's going to fall in love with the setting. I also didn't really click with the protagonist, but I recognize that I'm coming into this series on the third book and there might have been developments in the first two instalments that would have given me a better sense of her.
But if you are someone this setting appeals to, or if you devour a lot of cozy mysteries and are always up for a new gimmick, or you're someone for whom anthros are an automatic bonus, this might be your thing.
(Also, now I really want fic where Frog and Toad have to solve a mystery. Or where Mole is framed for murder and Rat has to prove his innocence.)
kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POVMirror Lake is the third book in the Shady Hollow series by Juneau Black. The series' titular town is occupied by a cast of anthropomorphic woodland animals who keep getting embroiled in crimes. In this one, a picturesque autumn is disrupted when a rat from neighbouring Mirror Lake suddenly declares that her husband has gone missing and has been replaced by an imposter.
...okay, is it weird that I wanted the story about a fox named Vera Vixen solving playing sleuth to be more twee?
I think when I heard "cozy" and "anthropomorphic animals" and saw the book cover, my mind went to things like The Wind in the Willows and Frog and Toad Are Friends, and the addition of a mystery made me think of the Dimension 20 campaign Mice & Murder. Which was to say, I went into this expecting something a lot more stylized, with the animal conceit either adding a lot of whimsy or providing the counterweight to a darker or more satirical story.
Then again, maybe I would have also found The Wind in the Willows disappointingly contemporary if I'd read it in 1908? I definitely think it's true that imaginary Edwardian!me would bounce off the country squire stuff as hard as present!me bounces off the idealized generic upstate New York type village vibe going on here. (And the thing where the only character with a non-WASP name is a panda named Sun Li, which felt like it should have been in the early 20th century book and not the 2020 one.)
All in all, the mystery ended up being what kept me reading this one, since it had an additional twist beyond just a murder whodunnit. It's a short book, but it still dragged a little for me—I think because of the presence of a lot of conversations and very basic/straightforward descriptions that are probably intended to be the thick icing on a cupcake if you're someone who's going to fall in love with the setting. I also didn't really click with the protagonist, but I recognize that I'm coming into this series on the third book and there might have been developments in the first two instalments that would have given me a better sense of her.
But if you are someone this setting appeals to, or if you devour a lot of cozy mysteries and are always up for a new gimmick, or you're someone for whom anthros are an automatic bonus, this might be your thing.
(Also, now I really want fic where Frog and Toad have to solve a mystery. Or where Mole is framed for murder and Rat has to prove his innocence.)
It was mid-October in Shady Hollow, a glorious time of year that showed the small village to its best advantage. The many trees were gold, red, and yellow, blazing colours wherever a creature looked. It was also the time of the Harvest Festival, an annual event that most residents of Shady Hollow looked forward to all year. It took place at the town park by the river, and there were activities for everyone. There were apple bobbing for the little ones (the apples, of course, were provided by Cold Clay Orchards) and a wide variety of booths with tasty foods of all kinds. Sun Li, the panda who owned the best restaurant in town, the Bamboo Patch, was proudly serving his renowned pumpkin soup. There were also tables laden with local cheeses, ciders, and pies.
Vera Vixen, local reporter by choice and local sleuth by accident, was one of the many Shady Hollow residents who looked forward to the festival. She and Orville Braun, the hard-working deputy of the town’s two-bear-strong police force, had planned to spend the day together at the event.
As Vera and Orville wandered among the display tables, they greeted their friends and neighbours. They nearly ran into Gladys Honeysuckle, Vera’s colleague at the Shady Hollow Herald. Gladys was darting in and out of the crowd, her wings beating so fast they became a blur in the air. All the while, Gladys chatted with folks and gleaned far more gossip and information than anyone else would have dreamed.
“Oh, Vera!” the hummingbird called. “There you are, and with Deputy Braun as well. My, my, my. You two are getting cozy, aren’t you?”
Suppressing a sigh, Vera said, “It’s not news that Orville and I have gone on a few dates.”
“No,” Gladys agreed with some deflation in her tone. “It’s not news. Unless you want to make some sort of . . . announcement?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” Orville replied. His expression was mild, even a little stupid. When she’d first met Orville, Vera had thought he wasn’t the brightest. She’d quickly come to learn that, while he had a very different approach to the world, Orville was much, much smarter than he looked. It was one of his best tools as an officer of the law. (His other tools were sheer size, four massive paws, and a jaw that could snap a pine sapling in half.)
Vera and Orville moved through the festival grounds and stopped at a table where two chipmunks were sitting. Geoffrey and Benjamin Eastwood ran the town’s bed-and-breakfast, which was located on a lovely cul-de-sac just off Main Street. Ben was offering cookies to passersby, and Vera smiled when he called her name.
“Miss Vixen, you’re a connoisseur of treats,” he said. “Try my maple cookies. I only bake them in fall and winter.”
He gave one each to Vera and Orville. Crunchy granules of maple sugar studded the cookie’s top, like a particularly delicious autumn frost. Vera nibbled the leaf-shaped treat with relish.
“Real good,” Orville said, licking the last of the sugar off his paw.
“Then have a second,” Geoffrey insisted, reaching past his husband to offer another cookie. “We’ve got seven dozen, after all!”
“That won’t be enough,” Vera predicted. The cookies would pair excellently with a cup of strong coffee, maybe one with a stick of cinnamon in it and a dollop of whipped cream . . .
Dreamily, Vera told the Eastwoods goodbye and walked off with Orville, delighted by the fine day, the blue sky, and the general bounty surrounding them.
Moments later, they waved to Howard Chitters, the director of the sawmill, Shady Hollow’s largest business. He was accompanied by what looked to be an invading horde of mice but was in fact just his immediate family.
Vera chatted with Mrs. Chitters and her young daughter Moira for a few minutes, exchanging pleasantries and guessing who would win the bread-baking competition this year. When Vera said goodbye to her friend, she turned her attention back to Orville. “Shall we go find the Nevermore table?” she asked. Shopping for books was perhaps the greatest treasure hunt there was.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-21 08:18 am (UTC)It is many decades since I read this book as a child but I have never forgotten it. It isn't like Watership Down, but it makes you think. (I stopped reading Watership Down after about one chapter but I enjoyed Mrs Frisby)
Wikipedia summary:
The novel centers around a colony of escaped (genetically modified) lab rats—the rats of NIMH—who live in a technologically sophisticated and literate society mimicking that of humans. They come to the aid of Mrs. Frisby, a widowed field mouse who seeks to protect her children and home from destruction by a farmer's plow.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-21 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-21 09:09 pm (UTC)I must have been pretty tough aged 12 because I also read Jane Eyre and some of that is very sad e.g. when the schoolgirls catch an illness and die.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-21 01:46 pm (UTC)This reminds me of a post I read long ago about how the zebra in MLP:FIM is coded African, but all the other ponies are coded white, and that's an inconsistency given that horses actually originate in central Asia. I never watched that show so I can't comment on the details there but I think this is a problem that arises with a lot of American-produced anthro media. There is a sense that "foreign" animals should be coded accordingly, but animals we're familiar with here are WASP Americans regardless of the species' actual origins. But you know, if you're coding pandas as Chinese and zebras as African, why aren't you coding native New World species as Native American? Why doesn't your vague America analogue fantasy world reflect the diversity of actual America? I think writers would perhaps rightly be concerned that might not come off well, but I'm not sure the current status quo is any better.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-21 05:07 pm (UTC)There's always going to be potential pitfalls with blending humans and animals as long as we live in a world where we dehumanize other people, but as you point out there's also just stopping to be a little more thoughtful about human and animal origins and how we conceive of "native" and "foreign" (or construct it, given the frequency of European settler-coding Indigenous North American animals, and in things like this book having one of those characters suggest a smudging as a sign of her woo-woo eccentricity). There are tons of recognizably Chinese animals that don't have to be the national animal, and there are tons of animals like deer, mice, owls, sparrows, rabbits and hares, sheep, goats, etc. that could be from almost anywhere.
The additional context of this aiming to be an idyllic setting also just makes it feel like more of A Choice when the only character marked as foreign is a Chinese person who was formerly a doctor in China but now runs a Chinese restaurant.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-27 11:26 am (UTC)BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
And yeah, this is all especially hard to swallow given it's very North American (cider, Main Street, pumpkins etc) while drawing on such an English book. Which I have no problem with, to be clear, it's just a bit jarring to read that extract as a Brit - village fete in Wind in the Willows-type land yet so very North American - and it makes the weirdness of Sun Li and the 'European settler-coding Indigenous North American animals' really stand out! Like the sense of generic American-ness being white and European-descended is so strong.
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