Pet
Awaeke Emezi
Make Me a World
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, the world was full of monsters: not goblins or demons or storybook beasts, but the kind who walk on two legs. They could be anywhere, and look like anything, and they spread their greed and hate and evil far and wide, until the people finally had enough. It took decades, and many things were done which are no longer spoken of, but at last the revolution succeeded. They dismantled the prisons and abolished the firearms that turned public places into potential massacre zones. They turned to proactive intervention rather than reactive punishment, embracing difference and diversity over bigotry and hatred. And the angels, the heroes of that era, still watch over the better world they created in the town of Lucille, one in which the public can at last breathe a sigh of relief, because the monsters are all gone.
At least, that's what the children are taught in school, and what their parents tell them.
Jam did not mean to bleed on her mother's latest unfinished painting. She just wanted to look at it, to ponder the strange, beastly figure of smoke and feathers and horns that had emerged on the canvas. When she accidentally cuts herself, a few drops of her blood somehow wake the creature, or rather open a portal to some strange other place through which it can step into her world. It tells her she can call it Pet, and declares that it is a hunter of monsters, summoned to this world because it is needed.
Surely it must be mistaken; Mom and Dad and all her teachers tell her that the monsters are gone and never coming back to Lucille. But it is quite insistent, and Jam begins to wonder. Would she even know what a monster looked like if she saw one? And could it be possible that one has been hiding in plain sight right in front of her and she just didn't know how to see?
REVIEW: Any book that opens with a prologue explaining its themes to the reader before they can have a chance to read and discover them for themselves is waving a red flag warning that the coming story is not going to tell me a tale but sell me a message. But I'd already given up on another audiobook for my workday and had a very specific window of time to fill, and this looked intriguing. Thus, I waded in.
The early parts have a lot of promise. It takes place in an unspecified place and time, either near future or alternate timeline, where the promise of progressive revolution has borne fruit. All the "monsters" who have warped society for too long, from the child predators to the overpowered monsters who have seized the reins of power at the highest echelons to strangle justice and turn a profit off poisoning the land and murdering countless people, have been cast down, the militarization of police and packing of prisons has ended, and even religious extremism has been nipped, with religion itself only vaguely discussed in school (though the public libraries are well stocked and well staffed and will offer anything to anyone who wishes to learn). Jam is transgender, her parents are different races, and her best friend/potential boyfriend Redemption's extended family includes a parental throuple. This is a future that's as close to an accepting, peaceful utopia as possible, though of course it's not perfect... and, as the book shows, it threatens to become a victim of its own success. Though Jam's and Redemption's parents, and of course the elder "angels" who fought for this society, remember the time before and the many guises of the monsters they overthrew, children no longer understand just how easy it is for terrible people to hide in plain sight. They don't know the warning signs, and when anyone does dare suggest that perhaps there are still dangers in the world, their elders refuse to acknowledge that monsters could ever return; after all, they sacrificed so much and did "hard things" to end the terrors, and they refuse to admit that this is not a battle that can be decisively won and forgotten about. When Jam accidentally wakes the being "Pet" (which may or may not be an angel), she, too, does not want to believe - especially when it tells her that the monster it is here to hunt is in Redemption's home. Her own parents deny the possibility to vehemently that Jam convinces herself that Pet is mistaken, or even lying. Yet Pet insists, while she grows conflicted, then denies any chance of trouble, only Pet insists....
You may sense a bit of repetition in the previous bits. While the early parts of the tale have a certain literary, surreal element - the peculiar being emerging from the painting with its slightly archaic and poetic speech, the way her parents react to its arrival, even the way neurodivergent and selectively mute Jam interacts with the world as much through energy and vibration as verbal or signed communication - it starts getting a little heavy-handed with its themes, and soon sinks into a holding pattern that keeps things stuck for far too long, where Pet insists that it needs to hunt and Jam needs to help it figure out where the monster is, while Jam refuses to take the threat seriously and doesn't really believe monsters are real anymore, only for Pet to once again repeat itself with some variant of "the hunt is the hunt" and "see the unseen" or some other entirely useless phrase or sentiment that fails to convince Jam to step up to a plate that needs to be stepped up to if the story's going to move forward, yet which she dithers about for far, far too long... and even when she does, the tale bogs down more with too much filler and not enough progress. At some point, it stopped being intriguing and started being tiresomely preachy and repetitious, before (slowly) building up to a (slow) confrontation and (slow) resolution, underlain with a religious subtext that felt a little out of place. By the end, my skull was fairly ringing from the sledgehammer blows driving its message home, plus few things irk me more than a sermon mislabeled as a story.
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Skellig (David Almond) - My Review
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer) - My Review
I Was a Teenage Fairy (Francesca Lia Block) - My Review
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Friday, November 21, 2025
An Occasionally Happy Family (Cliff Burke)
An Occasionally Happy Family
Cliff Burke
Clarion
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Theo Ripley used to have a happy family. He and his big sister Lauren used to be close. And he knew, above all, that his mom and dad loved them both very much. But then Mom grew sick and died. It's been a couple years now, and Theo is still mired in pain and grief, his sister doesn't talk to him like she used to, and his father... well, his father clearly tries, but just does not listen.
This summer, Dad surprises the kids with a week at Big Bend National Park. Did he even ask Theo or Lauren if they wanted to spend July in a sweltering desert, part of it in a tent even? Of course not. But what Theo wants or needs never matters anyway, so off the Ripleys go - and, with them, goes the invisible baggage of a grief that Theo has never had a chance to fully process, which may finally burst out at the worst possible time... just when Dad's ulterior motive for the trip becomes apparent when he mentions that he's been speaking to an old friend from college.
REVIEW: As a general rule, far too often grown-ups just don't listen to kids, not really - especially kids who need to be heard the most. Oh, adults say they'll listen, and may be quiet when a child finally talks, but too often they've already decided what the child really means, or what the child really needs (even if they don't know it), and they dismiss anything they hear that contradicts those ideas. Thus, kids like Theo learn not to bother speaking up at all - and parents like his father convince themselves that a child not speaking up means there's nothing to worry about, nothing that can't be dismissed as irrelevant. So when Dad finally starts slowly moving on with his life after the tragic death of a spouse, he has already made up his mind that his children are ready, too - or that they'll get over any misgivings without an issue... a notion that gets blown across the desert in the events that unfold during the Ripley family vacation.
Early on, it's clear that there's still a massive hole in the middle of the Ripley family, one far bigger than the mother they all miss. Dad steadfastly refuses to talk to his children about it anymore, and Lauren seems to have pulled away from both him and her brother, retreating into researching every idea and planning every move - a trait that actually comes in handy, as Mr. Ripley seems utterly immune to planning ahead. He announces his trip to Big Bend National Park by touting it as "free" because a friend of his went back in the 1980's and didn't have to pay a dime to stay there... which is not at all true in the 2020's, and which he wouldn't have known at all until they showed up if Lauren hadn't done her homework. But Dad is determined to go, and determined that his kids will have a good time. Becoming "Nature Dad" has been part of his coping mechanism, one that his children saw as a simple eccentricity until they found out they were expected to actually camp with him in the desert. Theo, meanwhile, is more of an indoor boy than the outdoorsy type, a trait not entirely disconnected from poor experiences as a Cub Scout. He retreats into his hand-drawn graphic novels, though the only people he can share them with are a scant handful of friends - friends who are closer to lunchroom acquaintances, none of them close enough for him to confide in, or to see the pain beneath the panels. Through words and actions (or lack thereof), Theo has learned that his feelings don't really matter to anyone, that he can't discuss them even if they did. Still, he manages to cope, for all that he's still lonelier than he knows how to express (and when he does express his frustrations, naturally his father shrugs them off). This might have worked as they navigate various bumps and challenges and odd encounters, until Dad finally drops the bombshell about the real reason for the vacation: meeting his new girlfriend, one he hadn't even hinted about to them about until they're at Big Bend. Suddenly, the unprocessed feelings of both Lauren and Theo, and the many things the family has decided (without explicitly saying they've decided) not to discuss, are about to come crashing down - and this time, none of them can escape the fallout.
Neither Theo nor Lauren are entirely without fault in how they handle situations, but their father also causes a lot of trouble by pretending he can treat his kids as he did when they were much younger and less scarred by life and grief, sweeping them along wherever he chooses to go like babies strapped in a stroller - and if they kick up a fuss, well, just wait until they tire themselves out, because they can't possibly know their own minds. His own grief has blinded him, and his own healing process did not include checking in with the rest of his family to keep them on the same page, or at least somewhere in the same book; somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows this, but won't admit it, even to himself. Theo's frustrations build believably throughout the story, sometimes directed at his father or his sister or even utter strangers, until it all has nowhere to go but into his graphic novels, and finally out at the people around him. A few of the incidents seem a little random and without follow-through, but the whole comes together well enough for a decently cathartic conclusion where everyone has to learn to see each other, hear each other, and grow a little.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Walk Two Moons (Sharon Creech) - My Review
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart) - My Review
The Girl in the Well is Me (Karen Rivers) - My Review
Cliff Burke
Clarion
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Theo Ripley used to have a happy family. He and his big sister Lauren used to be close. And he knew, above all, that his mom and dad loved them both very much. But then Mom grew sick and died. It's been a couple years now, and Theo is still mired in pain and grief, his sister doesn't talk to him like she used to, and his father... well, his father clearly tries, but just does not listen.
This summer, Dad surprises the kids with a week at Big Bend National Park. Did he even ask Theo or Lauren if they wanted to spend July in a sweltering desert, part of it in a tent even? Of course not. But what Theo wants or needs never matters anyway, so off the Ripleys go - and, with them, goes the invisible baggage of a grief that Theo has never had a chance to fully process, which may finally burst out at the worst possible time... just when Dad's ulterior motive for the trip becomes apparent when he mentions that he's been speaking to an old friend from college.
REVIEW: As a general rule, far too often grown-ups just don't listen to kids, not really - especially kids who need to be heard the most. Oh, adults say they'll listen, and may be quiet when a child finally talks, but too often they've already decided what the child really means, or what the child really needs (even if they don't know it), and they dismiss anything they hear that contradicts those ideas. Thus, kids like Theo learn not to bother speaking up at all - and parents like his father convince themselves that a child not speaking up means there's nothing to worry about, nothing that can't be dismissed as irrelevant. So when Dad finally starts slowly moving on with his life after the tragic death of a spouse, he has already made up his mind that his children are ready, too - or that they'll get over any misgivings without an issue... a notion that gets blown across the desert in the events that unfold during the Ripley family vacation.
Early on, it's clear that there's still a massive hole in the middle of the Ripley family, one far bigger than the mother they all miss. Dad steadfastly refuses to talk to his children about it anymore, and Lauren seems to have pulled away from both him and her brother, retreating into researching every idea and planning every move - a trait that actually comes in handy, as Mr. Ripley seems utterly immune to planning ahead. He announces his trip to Big Bend National Park by touting it as "free" because a friend of his went back in the 1980's and didn't have to pay a dime to stay there... which is not at all true in the 2020's, and which he wouldn't have known at all until they showed up if Lauren hadn't done her homework. But Dad is determined to go, and determined that his kids will have a good time. Becoming "Nature Dad" has been part of his coping mechanism, one that his children saw as a simple eccentricity until they found out they were expected to actually camp with him in the desert. Theo, meanwhile, is more of an indoor boy than the outdoorsy type, a trait not entirely disconnected from poor experiences as a Cub Scout. He retreats into his hand-drawn graphic novels, though the only people he can share them with are a scant handful of friends - friends who are closer to lunchroom acquaintances, none of them close enough for him to confide in, or to see the pain beneath the panels. Through words and actions (or lack thereof), Theo has learned that his feelings don't really matter to anyone, that he can't discuss them even if they did. Still, he manages to cope, for all that he's still lonelier than he knows how to express (and when he does express his frustrations, naturally his father shrugs them off). This might have worked as they navigate various bumps and challenges and odd encounters, until Dad finally drops the bombshell about the real reason for the vacation: meeting his new girlfriend, one he hadn't even hinted about to them about until they're at Big Bend. Suddenly, the unprocessed feelings of both Lauren and Theo, and the many things the family has decided (without explicitly saying they've decided) not to discuss, are about to come crashing down - and this time, none of them can escape the fallout.
Neither Theo nor Lauren are entirely without fault in how they handle situations, but their father also causes a lot of trouble by pretending he can treat his kids as he did when they were much younger and less scarred by life and grief, sweeping them along wherever he chooses to go like babies strapped in a stroller - and if they kick up a fuss, well, just wait until they tire themselves out, because they can't possibly know their own minds. His own grief has blinded him, and his own healing process did not include checking in with the rest of his family to keep them on the same page, or at least somewhere in the same book; somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows this, but won't admit it, even to himself. Theo's frustrations build believably throughout the story, sometimes directed at his father or his sister or even utter strangers, until it all has nowhere to go but into his graphic novels, and finally out at the people around him. A few of the incidents seem a little random and without follow-through, but the whole comes together well enough for a decently cathartic conclusion where everyone has to learn to see each other, hear each other, and grow a little.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Walk Two Moons (Sharon Creech) - My Review
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart) - My Review
The Girl in the Well is Me (Karen Rivers) - My Review
The Shabti (Megaera C. Lorenz)
The Shabti
Megaera C. Lorenz
CamCat
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Dashiel Quicke made a killing on the spiritualist circuit, bilking gullible believers out of their money by faking seances and communications with the dead. Now, he has dedicated himself to exposing them as the frauds they are, baring their secrets and swindles to the public. It's a hard way to scrape by in 1934, far less lucrative than his old career, but at least he can try assuaging his conscience, and if he can keep one person from falling for the lies of the spiritualist movement sweeping America, surely that's worth the worn-out shoes and patched clothes. Then Dashiel is approached after a lecture by Hermann Goschalk, and everything changes.
Hermann is an Egyptologist at a local university, and has been experiencing some unusual problems with his collection of artifacts: objects moving when nobody's around, strange sounds in the dark, and more. He begs Dashiel for help in figuring out what's really going on, because the logical (if eccentric) professor is almost on the verge of believing in ghosts. Dashiel agrees to take a look, certain that it's either a case of overactive imagination or one of the many common, if convincing, tricks of his former colleagues. Instead, the former con man finds himself up against something he can't explain away with hidden wires or sleight of hand - just as an all-too-human specter from his old life catches up to him, threatening both Dashiel and the professor he has come to care for as more than a mere client.
REVIEW: I went into this book relatively blind, knowing nothing more than the blurb and the fact that the audiobook runtime filled an empty slot in my listening rotation for the week. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an intriguing, noir-tinged tale set in the Great Depression, exploring the elaborate deceptions of the spiritualists of the time, a smattering of ancient Egyptian archaeology, the closeted-in-public life of early 20th century queer Americans, and (hardly a spoiler) what happens when a real spirit enters the mix.
Dashiel is a man wounded in many ways, from a limp due to a bullet wound (not from war, but an old colleague turned enemy) to the indelible stain on his soul from the many lives he ruined and fortunes he squandered peddling false hope to desperate believers as a "spiritualist". His efforts to expose the mediums and gurus for the frauds they are through a series of talks across the country hardly makes a dent in the number of practitioners and believers, though it has made some very bitter enemies out of former associates. Hermann starts out as a simple object lesson, a "mark" he uses in his lecture to make a point about how spiritualists seem to know impossible things about clients. He is surprised, therefore, when the mild-mannered professor approaches him after the lecture and asks for help debunking the idea of haunted artifacts in his own collection. Even this early, Dashiel senses potential entanglements that he'd rather avoid, even though he eventually agrees to investigate... but his initial mundane "diagnosis" proves woefully inaccurate. Meanwhile, sparks fly between the former con artist and the rattled Egyptologist, a Jewish man who never outright speaks his orientation (neither does Dashiel) but never denies the growing attraction and feelings. Dashiel, for his part, tries to resist, convinced he's a bad luck penny who will curse anyone whose pocket he lingers in, yet unable to help himself from trying to fix Hermann's problem - even when it's clear that the problem is far beyond his area of purported expertise. When Dashiel's past catches up to him in the form of a former abusive lover, he's certain he's doomed Hermann, whose only crime is daring to care about him, but be damned if he'll see the man suffer for his sins, not without a fight... nor is Hermann, despite his outwardly innocent and harmless appearance, about to give up so easily, even when Dashiel doubts his own self-worth.
The tale moves fairly well, weaving in various characters and escalating both the haunting and the romance, as well as the growing sense of inevitable dread as the various threads of Dashiel's past and present come together, a forced reckoning with his own past and the motivations that first drove him into the spiritualism movement/con and out of it. The final leg of the story feels stretched, first when Dashiel is being toyed with by his ex and later when exploring the grand spectacle of early 20th century spirituality, a level of theater and sophistication that can cause many otherwise intelligent and rational people to fall under the sway of a charlatan; Dashiel himself does not truly condemn his former victims as simpletons, knowing from behind the scenes how ruthlessly a con can pursue a mark, how effectively they employ psychology and suggestion to exploit the same flaws in the human mind that have always and will always be vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. I found the wrap-up satisfying, and couldn't help wondering of Lorenz plans a sequel or series; it feels like there's sufficient meat on the bones established here for one more meal at least.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Diviners (Libba Bray) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Even Though I Knew the End (C. L. Polk) - My Review
Megaera C. Lorenz
CamCat
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Dashiel Quicke made a killing on the spiritualist circuit, bilking gullible believers out of their money by faking seances and communications with the dead. Now, he has dedicated himself to exposing them as the frauds they are, baring their secrets and swindles to the public. It's a hard way to scrape by in 1934, far less lucrative than his old career, but at least he can try assuaging his conscience, and if he can keep one person from falling for the lies of the spiritualist movement sweeping America, surely that's worth the worn-out shoes and patched clothes. Then Dashiel is approached after a lecture by Hermann Goschalk, and everything changes.
Hermann is an Egyptologist at a local university, and has been experiencing some unusual problems with his collection of artifacts: objects moving when nobody's around, strange sounds in the dark, and more. He begs Dashiel for help in figuring out what's really going on, because the logical (if eccentric) professor is almost on the verge of believing in ghosts. Dashiel agrees to take a look, certain that it's either a case of overactive imagination or one of the many common, if convincing, tricks of his former colleagues. Instead, the former con man finds himself up against something he can't explain away with hidden wires or sleight of hand - just as an all-too-human specter from his old life catches up to him, threatening both Dashiel and the professor he has come to care for as more than a mere client.
REVIEW: I went into this book relatively blind, knowing nothing more than the blurb and the fact that the audiobook runtime filled an empty slot in my listening rotation for the week. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an intriguing, noir-tinged tale set in the Great Depression, exploring the elaborate deceptions of the spiritualists of the time, a smattering of ancient Egyptian archaeology, the closeted-in-public life of early 20th century queer Americans, and (hardly a spoiler) what happens when a real spirit enters the mix.
Dashiel is a man wounded in many ways, from a limp due to a bullet wound (not from war, but an old colleague turned enemy) to the indelible stain on his soul from the many lives he ruined and fortunes he squandered peddling false hope to desperate believers as a "spiritualist". His efforts to expose the mediums and gurus for the frauds they are through a series of talks across the country hardly makes a dent in the number of practitioners and believers, though it has made some very bitter enemies out of former associates. Hermann starts out as a simple object lesson, a "mark" he uses in his lecture to make a point about how spiritualists seem to know impossible things about clients. He is surprised, therefore, when the mild-mannered professor approaches him after the lecture and asks for help debunking the idea of haunted artifacts in his own collection. Even this early, Dashiel senses potential entanglements that he'd rather avoid, even though he eventually agrees to investigate... but his initial mundane "diagnosis" proves woefully inaccurate. Meanwhile, sparks fly between the former con artist and the rattled Egyptologist, a Jewish man who never outright speaks his orientation (neither does Dashiel) but never denies the growing attraction and feelings. Dashiel, for his part, tries to resist, convinced he's a bad luck penny who will curse anyone whose pocket he lingers in, yet unable to help himself from trying to fix Hermann's problem - even when it's clear that the problem is far beyond his area of purported expertise. When Dashiel's past catches up to him in the form of a former abusive lover, he's certain he's doomed Hermann, whose only crime is daring to care about him, but be damned if he'll see the man suffer for his sins, not without a fight... nor is Hermann, despite his outwardly innocent and harmless appearance, about to give up so easily, even when Dashiel doubts his own self-worth.
The tale moves fairly well, weaving in various characters and escalating both the haunting and the romance, as well as the growing sense of inevitable dread as the various threads of Dashiel's past and present come together, a forced reckoning with his own past and the motivations that first drove him into the spiritualism movement/con and out of it. The final leg of the story feels stretched, first when Dashiel is being toyed with by his ex and later when exploring the grand spectacle of early 20th century spirituality, a level of theater and sophistication that can cause many otherwise intelligent and rational people to fall under the sway of a charlatan; Dashiel himself does not truly condemn his former victims as simpletons, knowing from behind the scenes how ruthlessly a con can pursue a mark, how effectively they employ psychology and suggestion to exploit the same flaws in the human mind that have always and will always be vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. I found the wrap-up satisfying, and couldn't help wondering of Lorenz plans a sequel or series; it feels like there's sufficient meat on the bones established here for one more meal at least.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Diviners (Libba Bray) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Even Though I Knew the End (C. L. Polk) - My Review
Thursday, November 20, 2025
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N. K. Jemisin)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Inheritance trilogy, Book 1
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Yeine Darr never expected to set foot in the wondrous capital city of Sky at the heart of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, despite her mother having been a daughter of the current Arameri monarch Dekarta. The price of marrying her father, a man of the jungle woodlands of distant Darr, was to forsake her royal heritage. Only now, after her mother was poisoned (no doubt by agents of Dekarta), a summons has come from Sky, one that Yeine dare not refuse. After all, the Arameri lineage traces their near-absolute power to an ancestor who, many centuries ago, bound the very gods themselves to servitude; to defy a summons would be to risk not only her own life but her nation and everyone she loves.
To the shock of everyone, especially herself, the ailing lord Dekarta declares her an heiress, putting her in contention for his soon-to-be-vacant crown alongside two cousins she's never met and plunging her into the monstrous world of Arameri courtiers with no idea whom she can trust or how to survive. Unexpectedly, the captive gods of Sky reach out to Yeine, offering an alliance and a chance to avenge her mother's murder. But does Yeine dare trust them?
REVIEW: I've enjoyed what I've read of Jemisin's works so far, and the premise of this fantasy trilogy sounded intriguing, promising a richly multicultural world where humans enslave the very entities that created them. Perhaps it was my own high expectations that undercut me, because, while I enjoyed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms well enough, I kept expecting something a little more out of it than it ultimately delivered.
While the premise is familiar enough from other fantasy tales, the setting Jemisin presents has some nice trappings and twists. The main gimmick, such as it is, is the enslaved deities and the human scriveners who have learned to harness the power of the divine written language to work near-miraculous magicks. Power tending to corrupt, the sprawling Arameri clan has by now been quite nearly corrupted absolutely; the city of Sky, literally stretching upward towards the heavens and casting the surrounding city into shadow, fairly seethes with hedonism, cruelty, and backstabbing as a way of life. Since none without Arameri blood are safe in Sky after nightfall (for reasons related to the captive deities), even the lowest of servants are relatives of the highest power brokers in the realm, so even family ties are not enough to spare a body from ill treatment. Simply getting on a rival noble's bad side is enough to condemn distant lands and hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians to enslavement or death in conflicts that mean little more than the shifting of game tokens on a board to the people of Sky. Everyone has an agenda, even the gods in their chains, though Yeine is no different in her way when she arrives; though she knew she couldn't resist a royal summons if she tried, she is determined to see whoever ordered the death of her mother pay in kind before she herself is killed (as seems inevitable) in the scramble for a throne she does not even want. But even she, an outsider to Sky, knows better than to blindly accept the word of a god at face value. She makes some missteps and mistakes as she struggles to sort friend from foe (or rather, casual foe from actively-trying-to-kill-her foe, as actual friends are not really a thing in the toxic atmosphere of Sky). She also tries to understand her late mother and why the woman ran away to live in the wilds of Darr, finding a truth far more complicated than she was prepared to face... not unlike the real reason she was brought all the way back to the capital after a lifetime in the hinterlands and obscurity, a reason that puts a hard deadline on her own agenda (and lifespan).
As Yeine struggles to stay afloat in the perpetual storm of Sky life, she also finds herself pulled into the lives and complex relationships of the gods, most particularly the dangerously mercurial (and alluring) Nahadoth, god of night and chaos, and Sieh, trickster deity with a childish aspect. Nahadoth is most often bound (literally, leashed) by Scimina, sadistic heiress and rival to replace Dekarta, but from the start Yeine finds herself drawn to him despite the dangers; even the gods cannot always control their powers among mortals. Sieh brings out a maternal, protective side in Yeine... part of a trend that started subtle but grew more prominent and irritating as the tale wound on. For all her determination to be her own master and pursue vengeance above all else, and despite being raised in a matrilinear nation where women command and fight while men are protectors of hearth and home, Yeine too often ends up being the motherly nurturer charged with soothing tears and healing broken people, particularly males, and things that said broken people destroyed. To really get into this would be to court spoilers, but it nearly dropped the story another half-star in the ratings by the end. There was also some confusion and "name soup" in the many servants, rivals, gods, relatives, and other terms I was meant to keep straight, not all of which ended up pulling enough weight by the end. The forbidden passion between Nahadoth and Yeine also had some dark undercurrents (likely intentional, but leaned into a little hard for my tastes). The ending was ultimately reasonably satisfying, but I can't say I'm that invested in the world to continue with the rest of the series, possibly in part because the people of Sky were too unpleasant for me to want to linger in their realm.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) - My Review
Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone) - My Review
Shadowmarch (Tad Williams) - My Review
The Inheritance trilogy, Book 1
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Yeine Darr never expected to set foot in the wondrous capital city of Sky at the heart of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, despite her mother having been a daughter of the current Arameri monarch Dekarta. The price of marrying her father, a man of the jungle woodlands of distant Darr, was to forsake her royal heritage. Only now, after her mother was poisoned (no doubt by agents of Dekarta), a summons has come from Sky, one that Yeine dare not refuse. After all, the Arameri lineage traces their near-absolute power to an ancestor who, many centuries ago, bound the very gods themselves to servitude; to defy a summons would be to risk not only her own life but her nation and everyone she loves.
To the shock of everyone, especially herself, the ailing lord Dekarta declares her an heiress, putting her in contention for his soon-to-be-vacant crown alongside two cousins she's never met and plunging her into the monstrous world of Arameri courtiers with no idea whom she can trust or how to survive. Unexpectedly, the captive gods of Sky reach out to Yeine, offering an alliance and a chance to avenge her mother's murder. But does Yeine dare trust them?
REVIEW: I've enjoyed what I've read of Jemisin's works so far, and the premise of this fantasy trilogy sounded intriguing, promising a richly multicultural world where humans enslave the very entities that created them. Perhaps it was my own high expectations that undercut me, because, while I enjoyed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms well enough, I kept expecting something a little more out of it than it ultimately delivered.
While the premise is familiar enough from other fantasy tales, the setting Jemisin presents has some nice trappings and twists. The main gimmick, such as it is, is the enslaved deities and the human scriveners who have learned to harness the power of the divine written language to work near-miraculous magicks. Power tending to corrupt, the sprawling Arameri clan has by now been quite nearly corrupted absolutely; the city of Sky, literally stretching upward towards the heavens and casting the surrounding city into shadow, fairly seethes with hedonism, cruelty, and backstabbing as a way of life. Since none without Arameri blood are safe in Sky after nightfall (for reasons related to the captive deities), even the lowest of servants are relatives of the highest power brokers in the realm, so even family ties are not enough to spare a body from ill treatment. Simply getting on a rival noble's bad side is enough to condemn distant lands and hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians to enslavement or death in conflicts that mean little more than the shifting of game tokens on a board to the people of Sky. Everyone has an agenda, even the gods in their chains, though Yeine is no different in her way when she arrives; though she knew she couldn't resist a royal summons if she tried, she is determined to see whoever ordered the death of her mother pay in kind before she herself is killed (as seems inevitable) in the scramble for a throne she does not even want. But even she, an outsider to Sky, knows better than to blindly accept the word of a god at face value. She makes some missteps and mistakes as she struggles to sort friend from foe (or rather, casual foe from actively-trying-to-kill-her foe, as actual friends are not really a thing in the toxic atmosphere of Sky). She also tries to understand her late mother and why the woman ran away to live in the wilds of Darr, finding a truth far more complicated than she was prepared to face... not unlike the real reason she was brought all the way back to the capital after a lifetime in the hinterlands and obscurity, a reason that puts a hard deadline on her own agenda (and lifespan).
As Yeine struggles to stay afloat in the perpetual storm of Sky life, she also finds herself pulled into the lives and complex relationships of the gods, most particularly the dangerously mercurial (and alluring) Nahadoth, god of night and chaos, and Sieh, trickster deity with a childish aspect. Nahadoth is most often bound (literally, leashed) by Scimina, sadistic heiress and rival to replace Dekarta, but from the start Yeine finds herself drawn to him despite the dangers; even the gods cannot always control their powers among mortals. Sieh brings out a maternal, protective side in Yeine... part of a trend that started subtle but grew more prominent and irritating as the tale wound on. For all her determination to be her own master and pursue vengeance above all else, and despite being raised in a matrilinear nation where women command and fight while men are protectors of hearth and home, Yeine too often ends up being the motherly nurturer charged with soothing tears and healing broken people, particularly males, and things that said broken people destroyed. To really get into this would be to court spoilers, but it nearly dropped the story another half-star in the ratings by the end. There was also some confusion and "name soup" in the many servants, rivals, gods, relatives, and other terms I was meant to keep straight, not all of which ended up pulling enough weight by the end. The forbidden passion between Nahadoth and Yeine also had some dark undercurrents (likely intentional, but leaned into a little hard for my tastes). The ending was ultimately reasonably satisfying, but I can't say I'm that invested in the world to continue with the rest of the series, possibly in part because the people of Sky were too unpleasant for me to want to linger in their realm.
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Saturday, November 15, 2025
The Lost Ryu (Emi Watanabe Cohen)
The Lost Ryū
Emi Watanabe Cohen
Levine Querido
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Kohei Fujiwara should not remember the big ryū - the large flying dragons of Japan, who disappeared after the end of World War II - but somehow he does: a clear vision of the creatures marching down the street while a great Western dragon circles overhead. It's a memory that stands out clearly, because it's about the only time he has seen the face of his grandfather Ojiisan without anger clouding his features. The man he knows now is old, bitter, and often drunk, flying into rages and barely speaking two words to the boy, though his daughter, Kohei's mother, keeps trying to insist everything is fine. Maybe it's because old Ojiisan has no little ryū of his own. Most everyone has a tiny dragon companion, like Kohei's own little pink Yuharu, but Ojiisan's ryū is long gone. When his grandfather falls ill and looks to be dying, Kohei is determined to find the lost ryū and bring it home, in the hopes it will heal the bitter old man's heart. Enlisting the aid of his new neighbors, the American-born girl Isolde and her Yiddish-speaking little western dragon Cheshire, Kohei and Yuharu embark on a secret quest... but what they find changes everything Kohei thought he knew about his parents, his grandparents, and his vivid, impossible memory of the last big ryū of Japan.
REVIEW: At first, this looks like a fairly straightforward alternate-historical fiction tale, one set in postwar Japan in a world where little talking dragons are common family companions. Once, the tiny ryū had larger cousins, ones big enough and powerful enough to fly; the household versions may speak and be very intelligent, but they can barely even hover, even in the midst of a rainstorm - water being the source of ryu magic. When the big ryū disappeared in the wake of the "atom dragon" attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems that the greater part of Kohei's grandfather's spirit left as well. Now, the old man barely talks except to complain and yell, and it only got worse after Kohei's father drowned while away from home during a typhoon. Kohei understands the value of family and family lore, and he feels keenly the holes in his heart where he should have stories of his parents and grandparents and ancestors beyond, the anger radiating off Ojiisan and the sometimes perfunctory attention from his stressed and grieving mother. He becomes convinced that finding one of the big ryū like the ones he remembers is the key to unlocking the family secrets and his grandfather's withheld affection, but nobody will tell him where they went after the war and why they never returned. Upon learning that the new renters in the family's building are from America, with a western dragon companion, Kohei's hopes rise; his one memory of an American dragon was the great western flier from his memory, and maybe even seeing a big American dragon will be close enough to a flying ryū for his grandfather... only for hope to come crashing down almost immediately. Young Isolde speaks some Japanese, but not much, and her dragon Cheshire is smaller even than little Yuharu, mostly speaking Yiddish (when the shy creature speaks at all). Worse, Isolde carries her own burdens. The two don't get off on the best foot, but they soon become friends through adversity, realizing that the other is their best and/or only hope of getting where they need to be in life. When Ojiisan's health takes a sudden turn, the quest becomes more urgent... and, as the children seek a new ryū for the old man (their next best hope if they can't figure out how to find the missing big ryū), the story takes an interesting turn.
Throughout the tale, language and the words used (or not used) are a theme, particularly the often subtle variants on Japanese phrases and written kanji (there is an afterword that goes into this in more detail). Kohei's mother's favorite phrase tries to tell him everything is fine, a dismissal of adversity, as if broken hearts and broken feelings can be swept away like the shattered glass left by Grandfather's tantrums... a lie Kohei comes to hate. One of the last things his late father told him before disappearing was to never give up and keep trying... though for what the boy doesn't understand at the time. A silver lighter that belongs to his father carries a kanji inscription whose exact meaning has several interpretations, and may not mean what he thinks it means as he struggles to fill in the missing pieces of the family puzzle on his own. And Cheshire's first language, Yiddish, ties into greater themes that become more central to the story, wartime traumas and losses experienced by the parents of a generation that may not have personally suffered the privations and faced the battles of a world war, but are living with the scars and consequences nonetheless, anxieties and lost stories that warp their own young lives. In seeking the big ryū, Kohei is inadvertently kicking over a stone and uncovering all manner of dark, scuttling shadows and truths about his family, his country, and the world at large, making clear much of what confused him. In this, he and Isolde are closer than he ever imagined. Ultimately, the parents who thought they could shelter children from the harsh truths of the past end up doing more harm than good with their silence.
The story sometimes wanders a bit, and there are some elements that emerge out of the blue or are set up to have greater importance than they ultimately do. I also thought there needed to be a little more follow-through and ramifications of an Earth with dragons and hints of magic skewing history just a touch to the side, though I'm likely overthinking the concept. Part of me wonders if Cohen intends a sequel to deal with some blatant loose threads, even if the main plot wraps up here. Overall, though, for an impulse read, I was pleasantly surprised by this unexpected tale.
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