December Site Update and Reading Year in Review

 The four previous reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site. And, as this is the last update (and last day) of 2020, it's time for the Reading Year in Review.

2020 Reading Year in Review

It’s time once again for the Reading Year in Review, where I look back at the books I read in 2020 - a needed escape in a dark and wild and often hopeless time.

January turned out to be my most prolific reading month, with few titles that disappointed. It started with Susan Choi’s beautiful picture book Camp Tiger and ended with the fairy tale of Bob, by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead. In between were numerous interesting reads. Even my least favorite title of the month, Aliette de Bodard’s The Tea Master and the Detective, had some fascinating ideas and images. The rest ranged from the harrowing Come Tumbling Down (Seanan McGuire), The Rage of Dragons (Evan Winter), and The Fifth Season (N. K. Jemisin) to the humor of Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines.

In February, I finally finished the unabridged classic novel Don Quixote, with mixed impressions. High points were A Dragon’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans by Laurence Yep and Soonish, a glimpse of the future that might be (or might not) in emergent technology by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.

March was a mixed bag, with titles that stumbled at the conclusion (The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, by Jackson Ford), were victims of age (Cards of Grief, by Jane Yolen), or never quite came together like they should have (Revenger, by Alastair Reynolds.) The best book of the month was Adam Savage’s exploration of creativity, Every Tool’s a Hammer.

I had better luck in April, as the classic The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle) proved its staying power and George Takei’s graphic novel They Called Us Enemy proved eerily timely in its reflection of past efforts to dehumanize Americans by race and origin. The School for Good and Evil (Soman Chainani) examined the often-dark and -warped roots of fairy tales, while Updraft (Fran Wilde) took me to an original and imaginative world of living bone towers above the clouds. Another classic, however, aged poorly, Anne McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer.

May started with the timely horror story of a pandemic that has remade the world in Mira Grant’s Feed, an intelligent (and prescient) start to a trilogy I still need to pursue. Three Martha Wells titles wrapped up the Murderbot novellas in a fun and action-filled fashion; I have yet to get the first full-length novel, but I’m looking forward to future adventures of the artificial construct whose fondest desire is not to become human but to be left alone to stream entertainment. The House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess took familiar parts and made a solid story with them, in a tale of humans and their dragon companions competing to fill the empty imperial throne. There were a few disappointments, though. Neil Gaiman’s classic graphic novel The Sandman Volume 1 was very much not my cup of cocoa, leaving a dark and bitter taste in my mouth, and Patti Larsen’s thriller Run petered out by the end after a promising and adrenaline-filled start.

June was largely a mediocre month with a couple highlights: a Kickstarter art book (going to wider release in September 2021, last I read), artist C C J Ellis’s An Illustrated Guide to Welsh Monsters and Mythical Beasts, and the first installment of Brian K. Vaughan’s renowned graphic novel series Saga.

In July, I only manged three books. Far and away the best of them was N. K. Jemisin’s surreal modern fantasy The City We Became, followed by the conclusion to the retro-future Adventures of Arabella Ashby in David D. Levine’s Arabella the Traitor of Mars. The third title, Kate O’Neill’s The Tea Dragon Festival, was bright and simple but lightweight even for a picture book.

I got more books read in August, starting with a nonfiction book on an essential topic in Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. Joshua Williamson wrapped up the main arc of his Birthright portal fantasy graphic novel in the ninth volume, War of the Worlds, while Catherynne M. Valente turned her unique way with words to the young Bronte siblings in Glass Town Game. I also ventured into R. A. Salvatore’s The Demon Awakens, hoping to find a new epic fantasy to follow but instead finding another story that can go on without me.

September started with the light humor of Graeme Base’s The Discovery of Dragons and ended with the brilliant, uplifting fairy tale for grown-ups The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, easily one of my favorite books of the year. I finished off Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s young adult sci-fi romance Starbound trilogy with Their Fractured Light, only to find the conclusion subverted by a heavy-handed message. And I took a stab at self-improvement with Jessica Abel’s Growing Gills.

October only saw five new book reviews, beginning with the superb fantasy (with horror overtones) Middlegame by Seanan McGuire and ending with another Catherynne M. Valente title, the hallucinatory yet spectacular Space Opera. I continued with Marie Brennan’s intriguing tales of Lady Trent with the third book, Voyage of the Basilisk, and was not disappointed... unlike my venture into the Peter Pan pastiche of The Wendy by Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown, which never quite seemed to figure itself out.

November was another prolific month for reading. The wordless graphic novel Haunter of Dreams by Claudya Schmidt impressed with its dreamlike visuals. Seanan McGuire turned her skills to younger readers for the first time in Over the Woodward Wall (under pseudonym A. Deborah Baker), in an homage to classic portal fantasies that takes on extra significance for grown-ups who have read Middlegame. The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart made for an intriguing start to a new epic fantasy trilogy, while Grant Snider’s I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf comic collection once again found the beauty, humor, and poetry in reading and writing. N. K. Jemisin’s short tale Emergency Skin turned a beloved sci-fi trope handily on its ear. Unfortunately, the month wrapped on a low note, as G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen turned into more of a “message” book than I care to read.

And in December, I finished off Rick Yancey’s 5th Wave trilogy with The Last Star, which didn’t quite stick the landing but mostly satisfied. I wandered along The Cloud Roads in the start to Martha Wells’s imaginative and popular fantasy series. And I was left dangling on a cliffhanger at the end of the third installment of Catherynne M. Valente’s Fairyland series, The Girl Who Flew Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two. A Jeff Lemire graphic novel, Sentient, rounded out the month.

Thus concludes my reading year, which, even at its lowest, was far superior to the year presented by reality. Here’s hoping for a better 2021, and more memorable adventures on the page and off.

The Cloud Roads (Martha Wells)

The Cloud Roads
The Books of the Raksura series, Volume 1
Martha Wells
Night Shade Books
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: For most of his life, Moon has been a man without a home, not even knowing what he is. All he knows is that he can shift shapes, becoming a winged, scaled, and long-tailed hunter... and that the only other shifters he's ever encountered have been the cruel Fell, who destroy whatever they touch. Moon wanders the Three Worlds, always in search of a place to belong among various groups of groundlings, but it never lasts - until at last he encounters Stone, a shifter of his own kind. The stranger tells him he is a Raksura, and offers to bring him back to the Indigo Cloud colony to be among his own race. But his arrival coincides with a dark time in the colony, and none of them trust this strange outsider who doesn't even know how to be a proper Raksura. Worse, the Fell are about; they've already destroyed one nearby colony, yet Pearl, queen of Indigo Cloud, seems open to treat with them. Like it or not, Moon finds himself drawn into the heart of the brewing conflict, one that will reveal an even bigger threat to all the Three Worlds.

REVIEW: The Cloud Roads is a very strange sort of fantasy. It has its roots firmly planted in old-school realms like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar and Barsoom or Fritz Leiber's sorcerous Nehwon, creating a vast and wild and untamed world populated with all manner of strange peoples and peculiar ecosystems and untold wonders, littered with enigmatic remnants of lost cultures even more astonishing than what remains. It beckons, it dazzles... and, unfortunately, it threatens to numb, creating a place where it's almost impossible to work out the rules or parameters. The Raksura race is a bewildering combination of multiple castes and forms, not counting their "groundling" (roughly humanlike) and shifted forms, something like specialized individuals in an ant colony, and their chief enemy, the Fell, also has numerous forms. On top of that, I was supposed to juggle numerous names, associated relations, alliances, and rivalries, plus numerous groundlings (races and individuals), all while following a main character who, frankly, could be less than pleasant to be around. Moon serves as a proxy for the reader in his ignorance of the Raksuran ways, but he leans into his lone wolf habits to the point of irritation. If he can't bring himself to connect with or care about Indigo Cloud, how can I, the reader following him through his story, hope to do so? A little too much weight is placed on breeding and fertility; the story gets going when one of the mates Moon was handed at the latest groundling village he was staying with gets angry that he can't sire a child with her, kicking off events that force him to join up with Stone, and the fact that he's a consort - the only sort of Raksura who can breed with a queen - becomes a major plot point. Among all this, the plot lurches along through various encounters and obstacles, constantly distracted by shiny objects in the Three Worlds and blunted by Moon's pessimistic (if learned) assumption that he'll never fit in anywhere, though the tale finally builds up a decent head of steam by the climax. Still, even by the end, I had trouble connecting with Moon and the Three Worlds, which is unfortunately why I clipped a half-star from the rating. I kept catching glimpses of a spark in this book, the hook that would grab me and drag me deep into its wonders, but by the end I just couldn't reach it.

You Might Also Enjoy:
A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs) - My Review
Swords and Deviltry (Fritz Leiber) - My Review
Updraft (Fran Wilde) - My Review

Sentient (Jeff Lemire)

Sentient
Jeff Lemire, illustrations by Gabriel Walta
TKO Studios
Fiction, Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The ship U.S.S. Montgomery was en route to a colony world when disaster struck: a rogue separatist murdered every adult on board. Now the shipboard AI, Val, must raise the children and continue on its own... a task beyond its current programming, especially when they encounter a threat to both the survivors and the Montgomery itself.

REVIEW: Though there are strong hints of sequel potential, Sentient works as a largely self-contained story. The children and the computer both have to push themselves to acts they never thought themselves capable of in pursuit of survival, plagued by inner doubts and old rules that no longer apply in the wilds of space. Friction between Lilly, the oldest (and therefore captain-presumptive of the survivors) and Isaac, whose mother was the murderous separatist (and who is therefore blamed by association by the grief-stricken survivors), threatens to tear them apart, a fault line that could be a fatal weakness when an outside danger arrives. Though the stars are mostly children, there's a horror undertone to the tale, not to mention several gory deaths, that makes this more of an adult (or older teen) story. The ending feels a little open-ended, but resolves the immediate issues. I honestly can't tell if Lemire intends to continue this or not; as I mentioned, it's a mostly decent wrap-up if this is a standalone, but there is series potential in the larger themes.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Low Road West (Phillip Kennedy Johnson) - My Review
Descender: The Deluxe Edition Volume 1 (Jeff Lemire) - My Review
Quantum Mechanics (Jeff Weigel) - My Review

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Catherynne M. Valente)

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
The Fairyland series, Book 3
Catherynne M. Valente
Square Fish
Fiction, MG/YA Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: As a girl, September rode to Fairyland aboard the Leopard of Light Breezes, had a grand and terrifying adventure, made friends and enemies, and returned home to Nebraska. A year later, she returned for another adventure, fixing a problem she inadvertently left behind. But it's been a year, and despite what she was promised, September has not seen a twitch of a leopard tale, nor the slightest hint of a strange breeze, or any sign of Fairyland at all, even though she's spent the entire time preparing herself as best she can. Perhaps she's changed too much and grown too old; after all, she's fourteen now, practically a young lady, and every storybook knows that only children get to have fairy adventures. She's even driven a car, the neighbor's run-down old Model A, which is about as grown-up as one can get. But she deeply misses her friends... and wasn't she told that, just as she could never stay forever in Fairyland, she could never truly leave it behind?
While out mending the fence, September has a peculiar encounter, leading her once more to Fairyland... but, just as before, what she finds is nothing at all like she expected. Worse, she's almost immediately designated a professional criminal for her tendency to overthrow crooked queens and marquesses. Along with the Model A Aroostook, which takes on a peculiar personality of its own (after all, in Fairyland, it's been decreed that Tools have Rights), September finds herself swept up in a new adventure, traveling all the way to Fairyland's wondrous Moon - where she faces a most dangerous foe who seems intent on destroying everything.

REVIEW: September's adventures in Fairyland (and Nebraska) continue in this third installment in Valente's delightful series. She's growing up (which is why I put this on the line with younger Young Adult), and though she was always a fairly self-reliant heroine, not so much in need of coddling and protection as many young adventurers in portal fantasies, now she's a more seasoned traveler who willingly accepts more responsibilities. As before, Fairyland reflects the dilemmas and troubles she's facing in her real-world life, facing pressure to choose a future (or have one imposed on her) and leave childhood behind... but does that mean leaving Fairyland behind? After all, the first time she was there, she glimpsed her own child... and her own future (presumed) husband, the marid Saturday. Yet Fairyland seems reluctant to take her back, and must be tricked into allowing her to cross over through a gap in the fence.
Once there, September finds trouble almost immediately, obligated to a quest before she even knows what's going on and saddled with a reputation (not entirely undeserved) for lawbreaking and troublemaking. On the Moon, things get even wilder, stranger, and more dangerous, as she finally reunites with her friends Saturday and the Wyverary A-through-L - both of whom are also growing up, one of them bound by a fresh curse - and discovers the nature of the enemy she faces. As one might expect from Fairyland (and Valente), September's adventures are full of peculiar and unexpected characters and images and ideas, wending through various triumphs and setbacks, moving at a fine pace - right up to the end, which is an unannounced cliffhanger. As a result, several threads and themes feel unresolved, leaving me hanging until I can get the next volume. The book doesn't even leave me at a resting point between adventures, but ends with September in fresh danger. This sense of being left dangling wound up shaving a half-star off the rating; just a bit too hard of a slam on the brakes at the end, a raw cut across the greater series story arc, leaving me feeling that I'd only read part of a book instead of a whole one.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Divide (Elizabeth Kay) - My Review
In an Absent Dream (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review

The Last Star (Rick Yancey)

The Last Star
The 5th Wave trilogy, Book 3
Rick Yancey
Speak
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Against all odds, Cassie Sullivan and her increasingly-small band of companions - her brother Sam, the traumatized young girl Megan, her former crush Ben, the young medic Dumbo, and the Silencer with the alien soul Evan Walker - have survived the winter... but the coming spring will not bring fresh hope, only the end of everything. Come the equinox, the alien mothership will obliterate all remnants of human cities and civilization with bombardment from orbit, using the brainwashed recruits of the Fifth Wave to ensure that future generations will never again cooperate, never again form societies, never again rise from the mud and animal distrust of their fellow humans. But Evan has turned on his own kind, and plans to sacrifice himself to destroy the mothership when the aliens rescue him and the other Silencers before the bombs fall.
While Cassie may trust Evan Walker and his plan, Ben isn't so sure. He has his own ideas on survival, but first he must rendezvous with his squadmates Ringer and Teacup, sent to the nearby Ohio caverns in search of other survivors. Only he doesn't know what really happened this winter, how Ringer's mission went pear-shaped and left her at the mercy of their all-too-ruthless enemy General Vosch - and how, thanks to him, she's no longer quite as human as she used to be. What she has learned about Vosch, the Fifth Wave, and the aliens will change everything... and possibly destroy the last, feeble glimmer of hope the survivors still cling to.

REVIEW: Once again, The Last Star picks up with no recap time, plunging the reader into a harrowing, bloody, and death-filled tale of humanity's last stand against a seemingly unstoppable force. The Others' plan is even worse than simple obliteration; it's the rewriting of the human heart, breaking the instinct of cooperation and trust, turning brother against sister, man against woman, mother against child, and child against everyone. Cassie sees evidence of it already working in her kid brother Sam, now a hardened soldier who has forgotten his ABC's and his mother's face but can build a bomb and pull a trigger like a seasoned killer. In many ways, humanity is already broken beyond repair... and yet, something within them manages to resist, even in the face of seemingly certain doom. Here, Yancey started to lose me, as he skews a bit toward preaching and faith (never explicit, but a notable undercurrent.) There's still a certain poetry, if bleak and dark poetry, to this tale of the end of everything we thought made us human and the discovery of what our species's true weaknesses and strengths are. The action remains relentless and dark, with more deaths and more betrayals and more proof that much of what was lost will never be regained, all culminating in an explosive and devastating finale that feels just a hair too drawn out and over the top. On the other side, Yancey wobbles a bit on the landing, which helped shave a half-star off the rating. All told, The 5th Wave is a decent, if dark, apocalyptic tale.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu) - My Review
Life as We Knew It (Susan Beth Pfeffer) - My Review
The 5th Wave (Rick Yancey) - My Review

November Site Update

November's nine reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books website.

Enjoy!

Alif the Unseen (G. Willow Wilson)

Alif the Unseen
G. Willow Wilson
Grove Press
Fiction, Fantasy
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: In a small desert country off the Persian Gulf, the State rules with an iron hand, backed by the riches of the oil fields and the cybersecurity agent known as the Hand of God. The young man who calls himself Alif is among the few who resist, helping shield dissidents of all stripes around the world from their own governments. Though he may be rebellious online, his real life is anything but bold, spent mostly in a room in his room or among a very small handful of other computer geeks on the edges of the City's law. He never thought he'd have to come out from behind his screen name... until the woman he loved and pledged himself to, wealthy Intisar, announces she's to be married to a man of better prospects and she doesn't want to see him again, online or off. His rash actions in the wake of rejection - inventing a new breed of computer tracking software - bring the eye of the Hand to his doorstep. Now he's on the run, along with the neighbor girl Dina who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (and have the wrong childhood friend in Alif.) In his flight, he discovers the terrible truth behind the Hand's power, tied to the legendary jinni and to an ancient book whose pages could remake the future.

REVIEW: For a book that grabbed me early on, with a near-future (or merely contemporary - the timeline is never precisely nailed down) dystopian Middle East and a refreshingly non-Western perspective, Alif the Unseen took an almost unprecedented nosedive by the end. What went wrong? It stopped being a technological fantasy and started being an overlong parable extolling the virtues of the Quran, thus answering the question of whether a preachy Muslim book could be just as annoying as a preachy Christian book (yes, it truly can be.) Even the jinni are all about religious lessons. It also reduces all females to objects who seem to embrace their object/trophy status and lack of power over their own destinies (one of whom is only ever known by "the convert" and not a name, and another of whom may have voluntarily undergone female circumcision - way to empower, not), while Alif gets to bed whomever he choses with impunity - one of whom isn't even a human woman. I might not have minded had Alif not started and remained such an irritating and obtuse main character, largely so other characters can preach to him and lead him back into the arms of God. The Hand is a decently nefarious bad guy, at least, firmly convinced that all means justify the ends of the ordered world he strives for, where the "delusion of freedom" is stamped out and the strong control every aspect of life for the weak... a vision not that far removed from fundamental religion. By the end, I couldn't bring myself to care about the climax or outcome because it was all so clearly just an allegory for more religious dogma. (And when that dogma resorts to distortions to praise its own wonders, you really lose me... but, then, I'm beyond salvation in any vision of religion.) At least with Narnia I got some nice mind's eye candy in another world; here, it's a dark and dystopian trek to teach one selfish and block-headed man the value of prayer.
While this World Fantasy Award-winning title started with plenty of potential and a different sort of fantasy setting, by the end it was nothing but a pile of half-baked religious messages flung at the protagonist until some of them finally stick.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Armored Saint (Myke Cole) - My Review
Rebel of the Sands (Alwyn Hamilton) - My Review
Endymion Spring (Matthew Skelton) - My Review

The Bone Shard Daughter (Andrea Stewart)

The Bone Shard Daughter
The Drowning Empire series, Book 1
Andrea Stewart
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In a world of migratory islands adrift on the Endless Sea, the Phoenix Empire has stood for centuries, lone bulwark against the return of the powerful and destructive mages known as the Alanga. For the price of a sliver of bone from each child, key to the artificial constructs that defend the land and run its bureaucracies, the emperor keeps the people safe. But lately the emperor has turned increasingly inward, neglecting the people, even as disturbing signs of awakening Alanga magic show and islands start to rumble and sink beneath the waves. Rebellion is in the air, and unless a leader steps forward, all may be lost...
Lin, daughter of the emperor, lost her memory to a fever sickness and has never regained her father's love or trust. She secretly steals and copies the many keys he carries, which unlock countless doors and secrets within the mostly-empty palace - but what she discovers may be more devastating than she could ever have imagined.
Smuggler Jovis just wanted to pay off the shady Ioph Carn criminal network and get back to his pursuit of his lost wife: stolen seven years ago by a mysterious ship with sky-blue sails. He had just found a fresh lead on Deerhead Island when a desperate local pays him to steal a child from the trepanning ceremony: it's not uncommon for children to be killed while having their bone sliver tithe extracted, and it puts them forever at risk of sickening and dying when their shard is used to power an imperial construct, burning their life energy as a fire burns wood. When Deerhead Island shakes apart beneath his feet, Jovis is among the few survivors - along with the boy whose rescue will be the beginning of a new chapter in his life, and a strange catlike animal who awakens unusual abilities in the smuggler.
Phalue never wanted to be a governor's daughter, disgusted by her father's excesses, but neither does she understand the plight of the common farmers the man mercilessly works to death in the caro nut groves. Her girlfriend Ranami, a commoner raised from gutter orphan to bookseller, tries to teach her, but Phalue's head is as thick as her sword is sharp... until they become entangled with the rebel group, the Shardless Few, and their enigmatic leader Gio. He has already overthrown one governor - will Phalue's father be next? And will the future the Shardless Few want be any better than the one the empire offers?
And on a distant island, the lady Sand tumbles from a mango tree and suddenly recalls glimpses of another life: a life beyond the island, beyond the mangoes, in a palace with green-tiled rooftops. Suddenly, she starts to question everything she thought she knew... and begins to plot an escape to recover what was stolen from her.

REVIEW: I was in the mood for another epic fantasy, and this one (mostly) hit the spot. The Drowning Empire is an interesting world, where the islands drift across the ocean through years-long dry and wet seasons and where carved slivers of bone power artificial life forms with a language that has hints of computer coding - with similar potential for disastrous results if an unskilled coder messes up the syntax and order of instructions. It's a decently complex setting... and yet, by the end, I felt it was still a bit vague around the edges, with extraneous pieces that never seemed to find a place. Some are clearly left dangling for future installments, but others just seemed forgotten along the way. Likewise, the characters are generally interesting and rarely foolish, though once in a while there was a flatness and obviousness to their actions (or lack thereof) that struck a slightly-off-key note. Overall, it moves well and has some decent turns and setbacks along the way, though the ending is clearly less of a conclusion than a brief pause in a longer arc. Aside from a few niggling issues here and there, I enjoyed it, and will probably read onward when the next installment appears.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Ship of Magic (Robin Hobb) - My Review
Seafire (Natalie C. Parker) - My Review
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Planet Paradise (Jesse Lonergan)

Planet Paradise
Jesse Lonergan
Image Comics
Fiction, Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Eunice's trip to Planet Paradise, a world of rest and relaxation, turns into a nightmare when the ship crash-lands on a hellhole infested with carnivorous lizard beasts. As the only vacationer to awaken from the trip's stasis pods, it falls to her to help the injured (and drug-addled) captain as they await rescue... assuming the corporation can be bothered.

REVIEW: The premise had plenty of promise, and it starts out on a decent note, presenting a world where space travel is so routine that bureaucracy's jaded, cynical shadow has fallen over everything. Rescue pilots delay their mission so they can see the end of the cheap melodrama they're watching on the shipboard computer, and they're only dispatched after HQ belatedly decides the red light alarm of a trip gone wrong is worth getting up from a chair to answer. Only Eunice seems to have some lingering sense of adventure and optimism, which is the only way anyone ultimately survives... but it's a bit of a bait-and-switch to make it sound like she has many adventures and the captain is constantly dragging her down. The captain spends most of the time drugged up on pain meds (which she doesn't just take when she's injured) and complaining. When they finally do leave, Eunice's visit to Planet Paradise with her also-jaded husband Peter shows how the trip has changed her, or rather revealed who she really is... but the change feels muted, blunted by everyone else's utter lack of interest in anything (save when they're actively trying to convince her, too, to not care or push or do - despite being a far-future interplanetary culture, apparently wives are still supposed to sit around the hotel getting massages while husbands golf and drink beer), and by the end she seems to have acquired a touch of that, herself. It left a disappointing taste in my mouth.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Sea of Stars Volume 1 (Jason Aaron and Dennis Hallum) - My Review
All Systems Red (Martha Wells) - My Review
Mirror World (Tad Williams) - My Review

Over the Woodward Wall (A. Deborah Baker)

Over the Woodward Wall
The Up-and-Under series, Book 1
A. Deborah Baker
Tordotcom
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Zib and Avery lived on the same street in the same town, but in different worlds. Zib was a girl of wild hair and mismatched socks, her weekends spent catching frogs in the woods. Avery was a boy of pleated pants and shiny shoes who preferred reading or studying for school. They'd never even met until the day they were both forced to detour on their way to their separate schools... and both found themselves standing before a wall that they knew they hadn't ever seen in their neighborhood before. On the far side, they find a wild and impossible woodland stretching as far as the eye can see - and a talking owl who tells them that, like it or not, they're now on an Adventure, one that can only end once they find the improbable road and follow it all the way to the Impossible City at the heart of the realm known as the Up-and-Under. As Zib and Avery began their journey together, they must end it together as well... but that's easier said than done, when they have so little in common, and when the Up-and-Under and the improbable road seem to be doing their level best to tear them apart.

REVIEW: "A. Deborah Baker" is a pseudonym for popular author Seanan McGuire; this book, her first aimed at younger readers, is actually a spinoff, referenced as an in-world classic in her dark fantasy Middlegame. (It is not necessary to have read Middlegame first, which is good as that book is most definitely not for young children; though there are story parallels, the two stand well on their own.) Over the Woodward Wall is an homage to classic portal fantasies, where children stumble into fantasy worlds and meet many strange characters in their travels, but it is also its own thing. The Up-and-Under is less friendly than classic Oz-type worlds; to enter is not to simply have a light afternoon's adventure between teatime and dinner, but to face the very real possibility of losing one's home, one's memory, even one's heart. The characters likewise are more akin to older fae tales, not always friendly to outsiders; among them, the truth is a slippery thing, and words have power that the children don't always realize until they've already spoken. Zib and Avery make decent heroes, both young enough to make mistakes and clever enough to (mostly) learn from them. The whole is a fine adventure with nice mind's-eye-candy and turns of phrase, though it does not end with a neat wrap-up; it's the first in a series, after all. It's an enjoyable and imaginative tale, one that can be enjoyed by young and old alike.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum) - My Review
The Divide (Elizabeth Kay) - My Review
Middlegame (Seanan McGuire) - My Review

I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf (Grant Snider)

I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf
Grant Snider
Harry N. Abrams
Nonfiction, Collection/Comics/Creativity
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Cartoonist Grant Snider presents more comics about the wonders of reading, the magic of books, and the struggles and rewards of writing.

REVIEW: Much like The Shape of Ideas, this collection offers an interesting, somewhat irreverent look at reading, readers, books of all kinds, and the act of creating words. Also like the previous collection, some of the cartoons reach a point, and some never quite get there. The poetry-themed comics in particular seemed to circle around concepts without quite reaching what they were aiming for, but then I've never been a huge poetry reader. There's also a whiff of repeated concepts now and again, easier to see in a collection than in random comics seen online here and there. Overall, though, it's a fun celebration of all things bookish.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Frequently Asked Questions: An Unshelved Collection (Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes) - My Review
The Shape of Ideas (Grant Snider) - My Review
Book Love (Debbie Tung) - My Review

Steel Crow Saga (Paul Krueger)

Steel Crow Saga
Paul Krueger
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: For decades, Tomoda ruled with a steel fist - literally. With the nation's ability to metalpact, channeling their soul into metals to guide bullets true or heat blades white-hot or even power machinery, they plundered the lands of Sanbu, Shang, and Dahal, stripping their resources and subjugating their people in the name of "modernization." They were seemingly unstoppable, until a coalition of Tomoda's oppressed victims managed to throw off their yoke and decapitate their royal house. Now captive Prince Jimuro, long a prisoner of Sanbu's general leader, is being sent home to defeated Tomoda to fill the long-empty throne of the Steel Lord, a bid for peace in a world still reeling from years of bitter war. But what was supposed to be a simple, if secret, mission becomes a bloodbath. Now, only four people of different nations and conflicted loyalties stand between the world and a terror even darker and more dangerous than the war they barely survived.
Sergeant Tala was an honored member of Sanbu's rebellion, along with her shade: Beaky, the crow soul she pacted with, an ancient tradition that Tomoda tried to stamp out as "slavery" and "barbarism." Being chosen to escort Jimuro back to his throne was a great honor, though it can't help rankle, given that Tomoda destroyed her homeland and her family... but she understands the importance of the mission, even if she has next to no faith in the weakling, arrogant young man's ability to follow through, so she shall do her duty. When her unit is attacked at sea, only she and the prince survive - and secrets she's hidden even from her own general threaten to come to light, endangering herself, the prince, and the mission.
Jimuro always expected to become Steel Lord someday, but he thought he'd do so only after many more years of his stern yet powerful mother's reign... and ascend to the throne of a Tomoda that still reigned superior over the world, dragging nations of ungrateful heathens into the light of modern civilization. Years of captivity among the Sanbu have humbled him, though he still hasn't reconciled himself to their soul-enslaving, meat-eating ways. Nevertheless, he was willing to at least try rebuilding Tomoda into an engine of peace instead of a sword of conquest - but to do so, he not only has to survive, but find his own steel.
Princess Xiulan was twenty-eighth in line for the Shang imperial throne, the family disgrace and outcast, but she's never been one to give up without a fight. In the tradition of her hero, the fictional detective Bai Junjie, she joined Shang's elite investigation force, the Li Quan. With the help of an imprisoned thief, she might finally have a chance to prove herself worthy of the throne (and show up her main rival, second daughter Ruomei) by intercepting a secret Sanbu mission to return the Steel Lord's heir to Tomoda... but things go wrong almost from the start.
As a Jeongsonese, Lee is considered lower than a street rat by every other nation that has ever trampled her ancestral homeland; when the Tomoda took over, it was merely a different flag over their head and a different cut of boot on their neck. So she has no real qualms about a life of theft and petty cons, relieving interlopers of their riches. When one of her associates got her tangled up in black market organ harvesting (and disappeared, leaving her holding the bag), she figured her minimal luck had run out - until a peculiar Li Quan inspector arrives just before her execution, with an unusual offer. Anything that keeps her alive another day is worth snatching at, but this time Lee finds herself entangled in a way she'd never anticipated... and her decisions may tip the balance in a struggle that will determine the fates of nations.

REVIEW: Steel Crow Saga takes a concept much like Pokemon and injects it into a rich, multicultural, and near-modern setting and a story with a certain anime vibe. It starts moving almost on the first page and only rarely slows down, with action and danger and several witty moments thrown in as personalities mix and clash in unexpected ways. The characters, though, start feeling a bit exaggerated and flat as the tale unfolds, and some of the plot twists, particularly toward the end, have a contrived aftertaste. The whole story warps itself ultimately around Tala and her secrets, which involve the fate of her beloved brother and the origins of her crow shade (as strongly implied by the title) as well as other developments that are never adequately explained in this volume. It feels like there is supposed to be a sequel, though I have seen no sign of one, and am not quite sure if I'd read it if I found it, to be honest. Something about the whole conclusion just didn't sit right with what came before to me, in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on; something about how everything was designed to create the most angst and pain in Tala, perhaps, when she came to be among my least favorite characters (for reasons I can't get into without possible spoilers.) Still, I did enjoy the setting, and it had many fun and interesting moments. I also liked the shadepacting concept.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher) - My Review
Jade City (Fonda Lee) - My Review
The Tiger's Daughter (K. Arsenault Rivera) - My Review

Emergency Skin (N. K. Jemisin)

Emergency Skin
The Forward collection
N. K. Jemisin
Amazon Original Stories
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: An explorer from a rigidly-controlled colony world braves light-years of space and returns to the ecologically devastated birthplace of the human species in search of needed biological material. Success will bring the reward of skin and other luxuries deprived of all but the most worthy of the technocrati, descendants of the wise Founders who ensured humanity's survival by fleeing to the stars. But the planet once known as Earth is no wasteland. How is it possible that anything survived? What happened in the intervening centuries? And what does that mean about the space colonies?

REVIEW: This is a quick-reading story that turns old tropes about progress and the space race being the salvation of a dying Earth on their ear. The narrator is an AI implant in the mind of the never-named explorer, trying with increasing desperation to keep its mission on track in the face of dangerous distractions like "nature", "beauty", and "humanity." It's intriguing, thought-provoking, and hopeful in a world where "hope" may be the ultimate endangered species.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Foundation (Isaac Asimov) - My Review
Red Rising (Pierce Brown) - My Review
City (Clifford D. Simak) - My Review

Nobody Likes a Goblin (Ben Hatke)

Nobody Likes a Goblin
Ben Hatke
First Second
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Picture Book
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Goblin lives a quiet cave, where he spends his days tending his pet bats, tidying up the treasure piles, and talking to his best friend, Skeleton. Then the adventurers arrive, swinging swords and flashing spells and terrifying him into hiding under his bed until they leave. They steal everything - even Skeleton! Screwing up his courage, he sets out to rescue his friend... even though he's warned that nobody in the outside world likes a goblin.

REVIEW: We had some down time again at work, so I read this while waiting for things to pick back up. It's a fun little picture book, following brave - if naive - little Goblin through a world that has little use for goblins, but where he finds allies in unexpected places. The illustrations are simple and silly, fitting the story, and it has a good ending.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Knight and the Dragon (Tomie DePaola) - My Review
Goblin Quest (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Sir Toby Jingle's Beastly Journey (Wallace Tripp) - My Review

Haunter of Dreams (Claudya Schmidt)

Haunter of Dreams
The Chronicles of Yria series
Claudya Schmidt
AlectorFencer
Fiction, CH? Fantasy/Graphic Novel
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, in the world of Yria, the child Yor dreamed of bright wonders... until a nightmare beast invaded his peaceful dreams.
Not available in English from Amazon; it can be purchased in hardcover, paperback, or PDF format from the creator's site here. (Note COVID-related shipping restrictions.)

REVIEW: In the interest of full disclosure, I downloaded this during a free promotional window.
I've long watched and admired this artist's work, full of bright colors and life and beautiful imagery; it's work like this that makes me wish I had the talent, drive, and overall wherewithall to pursue art myself. This graphic novel has, appropriately, a dreamlike quality to its largely wordless tale, as young Yor delights in a dream of green forests and great dragons... until a dark figure known as the Crow Eater arrives and morphs it into a nightmare. The struggle that follows, and the vivid impressions left on his young mind, will inspire him for the rest of his life, and inspire generations on his world long after. Here, though, is where things stumbled slightly for me, as the creator ends the tale with a lengthy explanation about the significance of Yor's experience in the history of the larger world of Yria, wandering outside the fourth wall into the artist's inspiration for the tale. It was interesting, but it felt like a wordy weight dropped on the tail of the story, which could've flown free on its own. (It's also a bit hard to track frame sequence in PDF form, scrolling downward instead of turning pages.) That aside, it's a gorgeous work of art, every page bursting with the sometimes-marvelous, sometimes-terrifying, but always amazing wonder of dreams.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Journey (Aaron Becker) - My Review
I Kill Giants (Joe Kelly) - My Review
The Cinder-Eyed Cats (Eric Rohmann) - My Review

October Site Update

I finally got the October site update posted, archiving and cross-linking the month's reviews.

Enjoy!

Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente)

Space Opera
Catherynne M. Valente
Saga Press
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Despite what that human Fermi once speculated on an insignificant watery world, life is surprisingly abundant across the universe - but where there's life, there's going to be war. A galaxy-spanning, world-burning, species-snuffing-out war, to be precise, waged while that watery world remained blissfully unaware and conducted its own quaint species slaughtering. Eventually, the survivors metaphorically dusted themselves off, came to their many senses, and decided there had to be a better way to decide which species were sentient enough to spare and which were acceptable losses in the universal economy. What they came up with was the Metagalactic Grand Prix, an annual musical exposition which determined resource allotment, trade deals, and single sales - and, to any newly discovered civilization, whether they would be allowed to live or would be reduced to their constituent molecules for the safety of the neighborhood.
Danesh was king of the pop charts as Decibel Jones, lead singer of the Absolute Zeros, for a blink of an eye. Now he's in a death spiral of drugs and alcohol and self-loathing as his solo "career" collapses in a heap of flaming reviews and empty venues. He never recovered from the death of bandmate and lover Mira Wonderful Star, and his music has shown it. But when aliens finally make contact with Earth, obligating the species to send a representative to the Grand Prix and prove their worth, he finds himself selected as humanity's ambassador to the stars, along with his straight-laced ex-bandmate (and also ex-lover) Oort St. Ultraviolet. Unless Decibel Jones can pull off the comeback of the millennium, the odds of humanity's survival are about absolute zero...

REVIEW: I'm trying to think of how to describe what I just read, and am struggling... in a good way, for once. Space Opera exists at a peculiar intersection of Douglas Adams, global and interstellar politics, philosophical musings on the nature of sentience and life, utter surrealism, and the power of rock and roll.
Far from being generally humanoid with improbable head growths, the aliens here can be anything from self-aware plants to parasitic viruses to time- and alternate-reality-traveling red pandas to self-aware artificial entities; interludes explore the history and peculiarities and interactions of various species, much of which ultimately comes into play, if as a subplot, in the main story. That story can be a little thin on action - Decibel and Oort are more or less drug along and forced to run the metaphoric gauntlet, and even then have to be prodded more than once to get them to move - but has surprising layers beneath the overt humor and absurdities. Unlike Douglas Adams's genial white middle-class nobody Arthur Dent, Decibel and Oort and the late Mira embrace modern England's diversity in color and origin and sexuality, explosions of neon and holographic glitter in the face of drab tweed... a diversity that many rail against as unseemly and "nontraditional", which is not so much a digression as a theme that runs through the story: how xenophobia leads nowhere but ultimate destruction. The characters are, naturally, rather flawed; rock and roll, and music in general, doesn't grow from an unfurrowed field. They struggle and often fail against those flaws, leaning into them for comfort and familiarity, even as they recognize the harm they're doing to themselves, their loved ones, and the potential fate of an entire planet. On a sentence level, every word and turn of phrase, while sometimes requiring a little extra focus to navigate from the start to the end, counts.
I almost trimmed a half-star for that thinness mentioned earlier, but this isn't really just the story of Decibel Jones and the Zeros. It's the story of humanity, of history, of a galaxy of aliens who somehow found a way to not kill each other by recognizing the truly universal power of a power chord, and hope that maybe, somehow, impossible as it seems, comebacks can happen for even the most monstrous of primate-descended species. The whole book becomes a wild hallucination of a tale, a mesmerizing flurry of sights and sounds and ideas that can dazzle and dizzy and even overwhelm, yet it has a good beat and you can dance to it.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams) - My Review
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Grant Naylor) - My Review
The True Meaning of Smekday (Adam Rex) - My Review

Lumberjanes Volume 8 (Noelle Stevenson et al.)

Lumberjanes Vol. 8: Stone Cold
The Lumberjanes series, Issues 33 - 36
Noelle Stevenson, Brooke Allen, Grace Ellis, Kat Leyh, and Shannon Watters, illustrations by Maarta Laiho and Carey Pietsch
BOOM! Box
Fiction, MG? Adventure/Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The Lumberjanes of Roanoke cabin were looking forward to a nice, normal, and magic- and monster-free breakfast with their friends of Zodiac cabin. (It will also be a good chance to see how new Lumberjane Barney is settling into camp.) But instead of hugs and laughs, all they get is cold stares; everyone has been turned to solid stone! Just then, they see an old frenemy wandering around camp: the perpetual teen goddess Diana, who was supposed to have been exiled back to Olympus. Is she responsible for this? If not, can she find out who - or what - is? And will they ever get to share waffle sticks with Zodiac?

REVIEW: Like the previous installments, this is a fun little adventure of monsters, mayhem, and friendship to the max. There's some minor character progression along the way as the girls deal with imperfect families. Mostly, though, it's just an amusing diversion, a nice and needed dose of whimsy.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Lightning Thief (Rick Riordan) - My Review
Lumberjanes Vol. 1 (Noelle Stevenson et al.) - My Review
Princeless: Save Yourself (Jeremy Whitley) - My Review

Voyage of the Basilisk (Marie Brennan)

Voyage of the Basilisk: A Memoir by Lady Trent
A Natural History of Dragons series, Book 3
Marie Brennan
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Lady Isabella Camherst has been the subject of rumor and scandal for years, ever since she dared declare herself a scientist (so unladylike, especially in proper Scirland) and dedicated her life to the pursuit of knowledge about dragons around the world. Her latest venture is certainly something only a madwoman would consider: setting forth on a sea voyage aboard the Basilisk around the globe to observe as many species of dragons and their relations as possible, from the arctic sea serpents to the tropical fire-lizards. With her, once more, is her companion and fellow scientist Tom and - for the first time - her young son Jake and his governess. As usual for Isabella, though, what started with clear and sound intentions quickly goes askew, thwarted by nature and politics and the wild, inscrutable ways of dragonkind, in a voyage that will become renowned the world over.

REVIEW: With distinct echoes of Darwin's voyage aboard the Beagle, Isabella's journey draws the reader further into her Victorian-flavored world undergoing its own age of discovery and enlightenment. As in previous volumes, she proves to be a dauntless, if not infallible, woman, often stumbling (or outright charging) into thorny predicaments. Around her grows a cast of friends and allies and the occasional enemy, though more enemies due to politics than personal matters. The subplot of preserved dragonbone - a potential breakthrough building material whose secret was discovered in the first book, but which could lead to the wholesale slaughter and extinction of dragons unless a synthetic substitute can be devised - continues, as the ramifications of previous failures and industrial spies lead to international fallout that complicates her voyage. On a personal level, Isabella still stumbles with social niceties and personal connections, as she attempts to bond with a son who (thus far) shows no interest in science or her personal passion for dragons. The adventurous story has few, if any, lulls, moving decently from the first page to the last as it traverses half the globe and introduces yet more dragons and their mysteries, while further exploring the legacy of the lost civilization known as Draconeans whose ruins can be found worldwide. I look forward to future volumes, book budget pending.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Natural History of Dragons (Marie Brennan) - My Review
His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik) - My Review
The Waking Fire (Anthony Ryan) - My Review

The Wendy (Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown)

The Wendy
The Tales of the Wendy series, Book 1
Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown
Trash Dogs Media LLC
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Like many of the foundlings who appeared overnight in 1700's London, Wendy Darling had no idea who her parents were or where she'd come from, but she does know where she wants to go: to sea, as captain of her own ship, living a life of bold adventure. Even though everyone tells her girls are good for nothing but marrying and mothering, she clings to her dream, learning navigation and fencing and other useful skills from a friend. At 17, Wendy takes her first step out into the world from the almshouse where she was raised when she joins the Home Office... but their mission is something she had never suspected. It turns out that England is under attack, and has been for years. Fiendish winged men known as the everlost raid and murder and steal away children, presumably to drink their blood. (All this is kept carefully under wraps, of course, lest the public panic.) Only women and dogs are sensitive to the smell of magic that precedes their arrival - and it's a toss-up which one is considered the more human to the men of the Home Office in general and their ruthless Captain, a man named Hook, in particular. Thus Wendy finds herself shipped off to Dover, but even though she proves herself worthy to the men in her platoon, she's still treated as a delicate and excitable object... until the day of their first everlost encounter. That's when she meets him, their leader, a mercurial young man whom she finds oddly enchanting and who, in turn, seems strangely enchanted with her: the one they call Peter Pan.

REVIEW: I knew, going into this, that it was a reshuffling/retelling of J. M. Barrie's classic children's story. I did not know just how tonally confused it would end up being, with canon and original characters randomly recast and sprinkled about in a story that never quite seems to get a bead on what it's aiming for.
It starts off quickly with a nice, breezy voice, establishing Wendy as a girl determined to take charge of her own destiny in defiance of everything 18th century England expects of young women... then it makes her so silly and internally inconsistent I was rolling my eyes at her more often than I was rooting for her. Or maybe my eyes rolled themselves; Wendy's facial features and body parts seem exceptionally prone to acting on their own, evidently without consulting her, in a literary trick that wore out its welcome long before the book ended. The authors also hammered home the "secret kiss in the corner of her mouth" line that Barrie used so sparingly, and with direct ties to the story arc and climax. Here, there's far less plot relevance to the term, and at least half the mentions of her face mention the "secret kiss" as a visible thing... maybe because every male (save Captain Hook) is irresistibly smitten. Yes, for all that the story tries to establish "the Wendy" as her own girl, forging her own destiny and earning the respect of her male peers, she is pretty much reduced to object status, a prize to be claimed and heart to be won, an animal to be coddled and patted on the head and not to be really taken seriously as a person. Nobody can think of her as a comrade and friend, evidently... not even Peter.
And here we get to one of the other major trouble spots: Peter Pan himself. The book tries to establish him as a possible romantic subject, but it runs into several stumbling blocks. First off, the canonical Peter Pan was inherently incapable of grown-up love; it was one of the defining features of his character. Secondly, the authors come at it with the same often-silly children's book voice that the rest of the story uses, making their attraction feel less like genuine chemistry or mystique and more like little children playing dress-up who blush and giggle and secretly cringe at the thought of cooties when forced to play-act gooey love stuff. Third... I have no idea, even by the end of the book, just what Peter and the everlost are in this world. They act like the lost boys, the perpetual kids playing pirate games and having adventures - but apparently they also raid England, kidnap children, and casually slaughter countless Home Office soldiers, all with the same tally-ho grins of their playacting, as though they don't get the concept of death at all. They also are described as having inhuman teeth and the ability to materialize hawk wings to fly with... though pixie dust still may be involved... sometimes... maybe...? The authors completely dance around the everlost, what they're doing, or why they're doing it - which makes no sense, given that they are Hook's sole obsession with the Home Office and Wendy is (sometimes) portrayed as a determined researcher who stops at nothing to get to the bottom of whatever subject she sets her mind to. (She's also aided by the only two nonwhite men in the entire book, who exist entirely to train the white English girl in service of her goals, which has some iffy racial connotations if you look at it for more than a second.) This is a massive hole in the middle of the story, made especially blatant when the whole plot centers on the everlost and Wendy's conflict when torn between her duty to England and Hook and her feelings when confronted with Peter in the flesh. The end is a jumble of whiplash loyalty shifts on the part of Wendy, concluding on a note that isn't particularly conclusive, though not a cliffhanger; it just sort of ends, unresolved, halfway through yet another tonal pivot, as though I'll automatically pick up the second volume to find out what's going on and who will claim the Wendy as the ultimate prize.
There were some nice moments and decent ideas swirling around in the depths of The Wendy. Unfortunately, my suspension of disbelief kept crashing into the ground.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Peter Pan (James M. Barrie) - My Review
Peter and the Starcatchers (Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson) - My Review
The Librarian: Little Boy Lost (Eric Hobbs) - My Review

Middlegame (Seanan McGuire)

Middlegame
Seanan McGuire
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Roger was a young boy when he first heard the girl's voice in his head, helping him solve his math homework. When Dodger needed help with spelling, he returned the favor. It seems impossible, or at least highly improbable, but the two share something akin to telepathy, though they live a continent apart and have never met. But there is more than mere coincidence at work. Though they don't know it, the two are the work of an alchemist who seeks control over the universe, part of an experiment that stretches back more than a century and has already spilled an ocean of blood. If they ever grow into the powers they were created to manifest, they may well doom themselves and the world... unless they can take control of their own fates. But how can they hope to do that when they don't even know who, or what, they truly are?

REVIEW: This is an unusual book. Weaving in ancient alchemy, language, mathematics, strained sibling relationships, the pain and isolation of genius children, and even the power of children's literature (a beloved in-world book, Over the Woodward Wall, turns out to have been written by an alchemist with unsavory ulterior motives), McGuire crafts a compelling, often-harrowing story that spans over two decades - and more, if one takes into account the time travel element. It takes a while to get the feel of the story, and the characters, while always interesting, aren't always likable. Events range from simple moments of human interaction and quiet beauty to gruesomely detailed pain and terror; there's a trigger warning-worthy plot point involving one character's attempted suicide and the aftermath. Once things pick up, they move at a fair clip and ratchet up to a very intense finale. I wavered a bit on whether to clip a half-star for a slightly drawn-out ending, but ultimately came down on the side of a full fifth star. The many disparate elements are just so expertly slotted together.
On a closing note, McGuire has actually written and published Over the Woodward Wall as a standalone title under "A. Deborah Baker." The excerpts included here have me itching to get my hands on it.

You Might Also Enjoy:
All the Birds in the Sky (Charlie Jane Anders) - My Review
Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) - My Review

September Site Update

 I've archived the previous six reviews at the main Brightdreamer Books site.

I also did some light maintenance, including moving another defunct review (a title that appears to have vanished from Amazon) to the Graveyard.

Enjoy!

The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune)

The House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: 40-year-old Linus Baker is everything a good caseworker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth should be: observant, objective, adherent to the 900-plus-page Rules and Regulations volume that outlines what is and is not his concern, and utterly without a personal life, unless his cat Calliope counts. He tells himself he doesn't mind the loneliness, that he hasn't time for a boyfriend anyway - but he also tells himself he's happy in his tiny drab home, sitting at his tiny drab desk, living in a city so dreary the sun hasn't made an appearance in his memory. But at least he helps the magical children in his caseload where he can.
When Linus finds himself summoned to Extremely Upper Management, he's sure he's been sacked, though for what he cannot imagine: nobody writes a more thorough report. Instead, he is sent to inspect an orphanage run by one Arthur Parnassus, a classified place where only the strangest and most dangerous of magical children are sent, from the tentacled sea creature Chauncey to the boy Lucy, the literal Antichrist. For one month, Linus is to live in a guest house on Arthur's island and give his assessment of conditions and of the master himself. He's sure this job will be the death and damnation of him... but what he finds in the house on the cerulean sea is not at all what he expected, and what he learns will shake him and his understanding of the world to the core.

REVIEW: I've read nothing but praise for this book, so I had very high hopes going into it. Those hopes were met more or less across the board in this fairy tale for grown-ups set in an alternate-modern world where magical creatures are segregated and shunned. Linus is the typical bureaucrat, if one who actually cares about his job; he shows great concern for the welfare of the magical children, for all that he still believes in the mission of DICOMY and doesn't think to question why none of the kids in these "orphanages" are ever adopted or what happens to them when they grow up. Indeed, he points out how much better things are now than they used to be, when magical beings were openly hunted down, to near-extinction in some cases. On a personal level, he's sad and lonely and utterly miserable, but he rationalizes away his every nonconformist impulse. Once outside of the city, though, surrounded by the blue of the sea and colors he'd forgotten existed, Linus can't hide from reality or himself so easily, though of course he isn't transformed overnight. A colorful cast of characters comes to life around him, from the emotionally dented children to the mistrustful villagers to Arthur himself, who has a secret that could destroy the orphanage if it comes to light. Linus constantly struggles to regain his old, boxed-in worldview, but the walls keep collapsing as fast as he tries to rebuild them. The whimsical tone is bright and colorful, if with some dark edges and truths swimming in the depths, and the tale has a hopeful tone that change is possible. The ending feels slightly drawn out, but is a near-perfect conclusion. The House in the Cerulean Sea is an optimistic fairy tale, the perfect antidote for a genre that has skewed a little dark in recent years.

You Might Also Enjoy:
My Diary from the Edge of the World (Jodi Lynn Anderson) - My Review
The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Kelly Barnhill) - My Review
Claws (Mike and Rachel Grinti) - My Review

Die Volume 1 (Kieron Gillen)

Die Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker
The Die series, Issues 1 - 5
Kieron Gillen, illustrations by Stephanie Hans
Image Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: They were just six British teenagers playing a game to celebrate a birthday. Six kids using roleplaying to escape the misery and monotony of their lives. Six... who vanished, only to return two years later as five, scarred and scared and unable to talk about where they went or what they did - or what happened to their friend Solomon.
Now 40, Ash/Dominic has a marriage and a job and is still incapable of uttering a word about what happened, when a mysterious package arrives. It contains the 12-sided die of Solomon, the gamemaster who was left behind when they escaped the fantasy world they'd been sucked into. The party must now reconvene to decide what to do... but before they can make a decision, the die chooses for them.
Now they're back in a world they thought they'd left behind for good. Once again, they are the Dictator whose words remake reality, the Godbinder atheist who bargains and binds gods to her will, the cyberpunk Neo whose artificial parts and powerful skills are fueled by an addiction, the Grief Knight who turns pain into strength, and the Fool whose devil-may-care attitude lets him rush in where others dare not tread. Their enemy, as last time, is the Grandmaster... but the old Grandmaster is dead, and a new one has risen, one even more dangerous: their former friend, their lost companion, Solomon.

REVIEW: The "adults revisit childhood fantasy" subgenre is booming lately, as a generation raised on Dungeons and Dragons and the first video games tips over the hill and starts looking backward with a mixture of nostalgia and new, often darker perspective. (Though, of course, this isn't a new theme to explore; Stephen King's horror classic It has definite shades of these ideas, as do earlier tales.) Die is a fairly solid entry, a bleak fantasy for grown-ups whose youth wasn't all fun and games.
Unlike some stories, where what seemed a light and whimsical world is revealed, on reflection or return, to be twisted and dystopian, the world of Die was dark even when the party was young, reflecting the dark inner worlds of the players. It's only gotten worse in the intervening years under Solomon's rule, though the world itself is implied to be no simple creation of one British teenager. It's far older than that, stitching in pieces of classic fantasies from Narnia to Middle-Earth to Glass Town and more. Each player was indelibly marked by their first venture into Die, marks that shaped and often warped their fates, and on return are not the same people they used to be, viewing the world with a mixture of jaded criticism and fatality. Even as Ash the Dictator tries to convince herself it's all fantasy, all ultimately a role-playing game populated with non-player characters and contrived puzzles and obstacles and enemies, she can't make herself believe the pain she sees isn't real, that deaths don't matter.
Sometimes, Die can be a little jumbled and confusing, especially as it's establishing itself. The pitch-black story mood can also be wearing; I'm getting a little tired of fantasies without the teeniest glimmer of light or hope (though there is a nice sense-of-wonder moment... one that turns to ash as it's literally killed and burned a few pages later, but it's nice while it lasts.) But it has an interesting concept and fairly solid cast, plus some nice (and needed) nonbinary representation. I just don't know if I want to venture further into an adventure that's only going to get darker and darker.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Swordquest: Realworld (Chad Bowers and Chris Sims) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Caverns of Socrates (Dennis L. McKiernan) - My Review

Their Fractured Light (Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner)

Their Fractured Light
The Starbound trilogy, Book 3
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: A year ago, the infamous Avon Broadcast broke the news that galactic megacorporation LaRoux Industries was conducting monstrous, inhumane experiments through the enslavement of hyperspace alien entities known as the "whispers", not just on the backwater planet Avon but everywhere. With them, Roderick LaRoux can turn any human into a mindless slave, making average people into cold-blooded mass murderers. Yet nobody listens - well, almost nobody...
Sophia grew up on Avon, one of the oppressed colonist natives who witness firsthand the horrors of LaRoux's meddling: in the blink of an eye, it turned her loving father into a mindless suicide bomber. Thus began a single-minded pursuit, through a series of petty cons and stolen identities, all to make the man responsible, tycoon Roderick LaRoux, pay. She might have succeeded by now had she not somehow picked up a shadow, the notorious hacker known as the Knave of Hearts, who seems to have made it a personal project to chase her out of every haven she finds.
Gideon has his own bone to pick with the LaRoux family: his brother, Simon, was a childhood playmate of Roderick's pampered daughter Lilac - only to be sent off on a suicide mission when he developed feelings for her. He developed his online persona, the Knave of Hearts, to uncover the truth behind LaRoux Industries and expose Roderick and Lilac for the heartless monsters they are. When the Avon Broadcast went out, he listened - and now, he's hunting down a rogue commander who enabled Roderick's atrocities on that world.
When Sofia and Gideon meet at a LaRoux gala, they find themselves thrown together when their covers are about to be blown... and witness a horror beyond either of their reckoning. For Roderick LaRoux is on the verge of literal galactic conquest - and only one con girl and one hacker stand in his way.

REVIEW: I didn't expect to enjoy the first book in the series, but it won me over. Likewise, the second book, while composed of some rather familiar parts (and set in a future that still felt a little too contemporary in many ways), was decent. So I came to this volume with high hopes - hopes, unfortunately, that were dashed by the end.
At first, Their Fractured Light starts off on the right note. Taking up about a year after the end of the previous volume, it doesn't spend too much time rehashing as it plunges into the story. Being a romance, of course, there are sparks from the start, and the only real question is when, not if, they recognize their mutual attraction. (Being a young adult romance, there's also an extra dollop of angst surrounding their feelings, exacerbated by both being so enmeshed in their own lies that true feelings hardly stand a chance of taking root.) There's action, there's tension, there's back-and-forth banter, there's betrayal, while over it all looms the specter of Roderick LaRoux as the untouchable supervillain. So far, so good. But then the story brings back the couples from the previous books, and Gideon and Sofia's tale gets overwhelmed. Tarver and Lilac in particular come to dominate the story, especially when Lilac's previous encounters with the whispers makes her central to the unfolding plot - a plot which may have gone beyond even Roderick's ability to control. And here is where the book really starts nose-diving, as it becomes a jumble of too many characters and too much action, in which the ostensible stars are just two more game pieces on the board. The angst ramps up to 11, and the plot goes from interesting to contrived. (I can't get into specifics without spoilers, but I'll just say that the retroactive revelation that some "choices" weren't conscious choices at all... it really robbed the story and the characters.) Then the final stretch decides to turn the entire arc into a Lesson about faith.
Yes, faith.
The whole Starbound trilogy, the galaxy-spanning struggle of six young adults against the machinations of one monstrous man, the astonishing revelation that humanity is not alone... all of it was just a framework for a lesson about faith. I honestly just stared at the pages when I realized this, completely kicked out of the story as my jaw dropped. And then it ends, in a way that feels especially contrived and (skirting spoilers) pulled its punch when it came to one of the key elements driving the entire plot. It also somehow avoided directly confronting how so much of this misery was created by one man's determination that he owned his little girl, like a doll to be played with and kept on the shelf.
Ultimately, what had been an unexpectedly intersting melding of young adult romance, science fiction, and action utterly disintegrates by the final chapters, drowned in a treacle-soaked Lesson.

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Growing Gills (Jessica Abel)

Growing Gills: How to Find Your Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life
Jessica Abel
Independently published
Nonfiction, Creativity/Self-Help

DESCRIPTION: Many people have creative goals: becoming a published author, showing paintings in an art gallery, producing a screenplay, even just making a little extra time for that woodworking hobby. But real life always gets in the way; unless you live in a hut in the desert with a donkey, there's always someone demanding your time, or a job that sucks all your energy, or other complications. Maybe you'll get to it next month, or two years from now, or after the kids get out of high school, or when your wife retires... yet it doesn't happen, and it's making you miserable. Creativity is a vital part of living, but too many people push it aside for other concerns that always seem more pressing. Like every working creator, Jessica Abel knows all too well how easy it is to fall into the traps set by life, and by ourselves. In this book, she explains why we so often give up on our creative goals and what we can do about it - all without having to buy a donkey.

REVIEW: This self-help book blends elements of Julia Cameron's creative advice books with concepts of scheduling and time management to create a realistic, practical, and ultimately flexible method for reclaiming one's time and one's life. She speaks as one who has "been there, done that" on being artistically stuck and confused. Key elements involve paying attention to what one is actually doing with one's time (to see where creativity could fit into one's schedule; most of us have filler habits, like mindless social media scrolling, that could be greatly condensed or even eliminated to free up space) and focusing on one goal at a time - clear goals, with definable finish lines, not nebulous notes to "write more" or "do something arty." The book includes access to a free digital workbook to download and print out; I'll confess I did not finish that, in part because my printer is being obnoxious about working with my new computer (and also admittedly in part because of a bad procrastination habit.) Overall, though, Abel's approach and advice are sound and easily customizable to most living situations.

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The Artist's Way Starter Kit (Julia Cameron) - My Review
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Pulp (Ed Brubaker)

Pulp
Ed Brubaker, illustrations by Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips
Image Comics
Fiction, Action/Graphic Novel/Historical Fiction/Western
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In 1930's New York City, aging Max Winters scrapes a living by churning out pulp western adventures - adventures loosely inspired by his own youth as a wild and wanted man. But time moves on, and even that meager source of income dries up, just as his heart starts to give out. On the verge of a desperate act, he runs into another relic from the past, a retired Pinkerton agent with an audacious plan. Does Max still have a little gunslinger left in him, or are those days well and truly dead?

REVIEW: This is a dark little story, a noir-tinged look at a man taking one last desperate grab at balancing the scales and leaving a worthwhile legacy in a world where the bad guys all too often win. Setting the tale in 1930's New York City, as too many Americans think of Hitler's rise as just a problem "over there" while Nazis proudly march in city streets and spread regime propaganda, has eerie resonance today. There's really only one way a story like this can end, but Max at least makes the most of it. A decent, if sad, graphic novel.

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The Discovery of Dragons (Graeme Base)

The Discovery of Dragons: New Research Revealed
Graeme Base (a.k.a Rowland W. Greasebeam, B.Sc.)
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor/Picture Book
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In this eleventh-anniversary edition (because only sad, money-grubbing fools push a tenth-anniversary edition), noted and dubious Professor Greasebeam presents the written accounts of four (yes, four) pioneers of serpentology, whose often-accidental discoveries contributed so much to the field. From the Viking sailor Bjorn of Bromme to failed conquistador Francisco de Nuevo, from remote Asia to the Canadian woods, travel the world and witness the wonders of dragons.

REVIEW: I was doing some shelf-tidying and realized I had never gotten around to reviewing this book, so I'm rectifying that oversight now. From the first page, Base establishes a firmly tongue-in-cheek overtone, a tone reinforced not only by the whimsical main illustrations, but by running illustrated journals at the bottom of each page, following the (mis)adventures of the entirely fictitious explorers. One might be tempted to see this as a knockoff of the wildly popular Dragonology books (by "Dr. Ernest Drake", or rather Dugald A. Steer), but those were actually released in 2006, ten years after the original edition of The Discovery of Dragons; this version, with an added section on New World dragons, was released in 2007. In truth, they're a bit apples-and-oranges. The Dragonology books draw on real-world mythology and have an overall more serious, if still child-friendly, tone, while Base has no such pretensions; even his fictitious persona Greasebeam is basically admitting the whole thing is a joke, with very little resemblance to actual dragon lore in the dubious written accounts. There are some unfortunate stereotypes repeated, if intentionally exaggerated for humorous effect, but overall it's clearly meant to be taken lightly. It makes a fun counterpoint to the mythical field guide genre that has become so popular and which can sometimes take itself a bit too seriously.

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Dr. Ernest Drake's Dragonology ("Dr. Ernest Drake") - My Review
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How to Raise and Keep a Dragon ("John Topsell") - My Review

August Site Update

The previous five reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.

Enjoy!

Birthright Volume 9: War of the Worlds (Joshua Williamson)

Birthright Volume 9: War of the Worlds
The Birthright series, Book 9
Joshua Williamson, illustrations by Andrei Bressan and Adriano Lucas
Image Comics
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Graphic Novel
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Mickey Rhodes has come a very long way from the little boy abducted into the magical world of Terranos to fulfill a prophecy that turned out to be a lie. Now, he and his family - both the human family he left behind and his new wife and child from Terranos - are all that stand between two worlds and the total domination of King Lore. With Lore's monster army pouring through the portal to Earth, endgame has come: the final confrontation between Mickey and Lore, a test the boy-turned-warrior already failed once. But while he is facing the literal demons of his past, someone needs to seal the portal and separate the two worlds lest both collapse... a task that falls to Mickey's brother and his parents.

REVIEW: While it brings the war to a cataclysmic conclusion, this volume nearly lost a half-star for being stretched, repeating itself to draw out page count. Mickey finally finds out if he has it in him to be a hero after all the lies and betrayals and his own corruption, while the Rhodes family finds strength in unity even when they must go their own ways to save the world. It's the ultimate finale, though, on top of that stretching, that cost it the full fourth star, as it deliberately introduces a last-minute complication for the sake of probable sequels. Why? Something about it just felt tacked on. (I also still feel like the women got short-shafted in the overall story, particularly Mickey's mother.) Still, despite that - and despite the overall sense that this could've been a volume (or maybe two) shorter - Birthright remains a decent inversion of the portal world trope and a decent story overall.

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The Demon Awakens (R. A. Salvatore)

The Demon Awakens
The DemonWars Saga, Book 1
R. A. Salvatore
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: In the wild northern frontier of the land of Corona, young Elbryan and his best friend Jilseponie (better known as Pony, who lately has seemed to him something more than just a friend) couldn't wait to grow up... until the goblins came. Their town burned to the ground, their families and friends cut down, the two are separated by the whims of fate - or perhaps the hand of destiny. While Pony loses her memory and wanders far away to a distant city, Elbryan is taken by elves to their secret sanctuary, there to be trained as a ranger like his uncle before him. Meanwhile, far away, pious young Avelyn fulfills his life's dream of entering the elite monastery St. Mere-Abelle... but his visions of godly devotion clash with the rot he finds within, a rot that echoes the impiety spreading across the land. For the goblin raid in the north was just one sign of a greater danger to Corona: the waking of a dactyl, a demon from the darkest pits of Hell, who would turn the land's corruption into a weapon to end the reign of humanity and bring eternal darkness.

REVIEW: This seemed like a decent old-school epic fantasy... at first. Yes, the main enemy is a literal demon from Hell, cackling and gloating from his obsidian throne, and the heroes are inhumanly virtuous in the face of sin and corruption, but there's something to be said for an old-fashioned throwdown between Good and Evil. The retro charm, however, soon wears very thin, as it becomes glaringly clear that The Demon Awakens is not so much an epic fantasy as a morality play that makes Narnia look downright subtle.
Elbryan, Pony, and Avelyn are simply too holy in their perfection and virtue, looking down with smiling paternal condescension on the poor sinning fools they're compelled to defend (and fools they're often shown to be, ignoring warnings and blundering into danger and laughing at calls to reject wickedness), who more or less brought the evil on themselves for being corruptible (a.k.a human.) Pony in particular, for all that Salvatore insists she's a warrior and equal to Elbryan (as he gives lip service to how women in this world are accepted as hunters and warriors), is invariably described by her beauty and desirability first and foremost, to the point where, even at the climax, Elbryan finds her distractingly breathtaking in the middle of pitched battle. (This, despite innumerable mentions about how he acknowledges her to be beyond protecting.) True to her nickname, she's a wild animal only Elbryan's perfection and divine virtue can tame - to the point where he literally rides a wild stallion to meet her the night they consummate their long-simmering love. (Talk about choking the reader with symbolism...) Elbryan is an impossibly perfect warrior who never makes a misstep or has an impure thought or otherwise is relatable in any way, so physically beautiful that at one point his companions stand mesmerized as he performs a sword dance in the nude... not sexually attracted, but just awed by his pure manly perfection. Avelyn, played as a bit of a comic relief, becomes a third wheel, prone to throwing around his catchphrase far, far too often, a hearty "Ho, ho, what!" that soon had me envisioning a deranged Santa Claus instead of a warrior monk on a holy mission. The other races of the land are invariably evil, save a lone centaur and the waning angelic elves; given that the humans of Corona are all white, this takes on some iffy racial connotations if one squints. And, of course, even the elven diety is revealed to clearly be just another aspect of the human (thinly-veiled Christian) God, driving home the idea that there really is only one religion and everyone is practicing it even if they think they're not, silly elves.
Once the divine hand of destiny becomes clear behind everything, the plot devolves into tedium, drawing out the inevitable final confrontation with innumerable blow-by-blow battles where the heroes cannot lose and which mainly serve to reinforce their superiority. (And I do mean blow-by-blow: every step, every sword sweep, every slight angling of a stave is meticulously recorded.) As an atheist-leaning agnostic, the reliance on religion and stark black-and-white morality lessons lacked a certain appeal for me. Add to that the omniscient viewpoint prone to grandiose embellishments, and what started as a fun adventure turned into a slog, wending through some of the epic fantasy subgenre's most overplayed and tiring tropes. In any event, I will not be reading onward.

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