The month's reviews are now archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
The observant may notice that Amazon Affiliate links have pretty much all disappeared from the site, and are disappearing from the blog posts. I have been having Issues with the Amazon Affiliates program, and am no longer an active member. It will take me a while to get to all the blog posts (I used a CSS trick to hide the links on site, as no way could I have deleted 1,700-odd links that fast), but since Amazon has been less than clear on their changing rules for affiliate link postings, I don't anticipate reactivating. (Which kind of sucks, because I thought the covers looked nice with the reviews; I certainly wasn't doing it because this site gets a ton of click-through traffic...)
Anyway, if you're curious, that's what's going on. Enjoy!
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Blackout (Mira Grant)
Blackout
The Newsflesh series, Book 3
Mira Grant
Orbit
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The blogger journalists of After the End Times have sacrificed everything, including lives, in their relentless pursuit of truths across a zombie-riddled post-Rising America. What they have found is a conspiracy reaching to the highest echelons of the Center for Disease Control, who embody the concept of absolute power having corrupted absolutely in their zealous efforts to control the plague. Shaun Mason barely clings to his sanity, not sure if his ongoing hallucinations of his deceased adopted sister Georgia are helping him or hurting him, dedicating himself to bringing the people responsible for her death to justice before ending his own misery... but there are still more dark secrets and surprises in store, as he and his core crew of journalists are about to discover. This story will be the biggest in their career, the one that might quite literally change the world - if any of them survive long enough to tell it.
Meanwhile, in a top secret lab, a young woman awakens in a white room: a girl with the face and the memories of Georgia Mason, grown with illicit techniques in a CDC facility. She may be the key to Shaun's survival and his mission's success, or the final blow to his already-fractured sanity who destroys everything he and the real Georgia worked for.
REVIEW: The third book of the original Newsflesh trilogy (which has since expanded by at least one companion volume and collected short stories) continues the fast pacing and high stakes and grim emotional and physical toll (not to mention the body count) of the previous installments, set in a world with eerie prescient echoes of our current pandemic situation (only COVID has thus far failed to raise the dead, and the CDC is more trustworthy than not). Shaun's mind continues to fracture, producing full-body tactile hallucinations of the late Georgia, the only person he ever trusted or truly loved; even as he recognizes his own deterioration, he digs in all the harder to honor her memory, even if - especially if - it costs his own life. The friends and colleagues around him do what they can to help, but can only watch as he entrenches himself further in his death mission and self-recognized delusions. Meanwhile, the cloned Georgia has retained more of her original memories and personality than her makers might have anticipated, too loyal to the truth and to Shaun to be the showpiece or tool they intend her to be. Still, she knows that she is not the person she remembers herself to be, for all that she can't seem to be anyone or anything else. The conspiracy of power they've pitted themselves against continues wantonly tossing lives away by the thousands, even hundreds of thousands; after the disastrous spread of the virus-transmitting engineered mosquitos turns the whole of Florida into a zombie wasteland, they aren't about to stop now, not when they're so close to obtaining the future they've deemed fit for the world. It's a harrowing race, with twists and turns and betrayals aplenty, leading to an appropriately powerful climax. As I'm not generally a fan of zombies, I was all the more amazed to find myself enjoying it so much.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Hollow Kingdom (Kira Jane Buxton) - My Review
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
The Murders of Molly Southbourne (Tade Thompson) - My Review
Thursday, October 21, 2021
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The Doors of Eden
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Pan
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When English college students Lee and Mal set off into the moors in search of a mysterious monster, it was supposed to be the usual cryptid hunt: poking about in obscure places and backwater villages, gathering odd stories from eccentric locals, maybe snapping a grainy photo or two that might resemble something unnatural or may just be swamp gas or an odd shadow. Neither ever expected to actually find anything. But this trip, something goes terribly, impossibly wrong. Lee comes back alone, shaken to her core by what she witnessed, and Mal... Mal simply disappears, as if into thin air.
Years later, Lee gets a strange phone call from her missing friend, just as a pair of MI-5 agents are called upon to investigate unusual occurrences surrounded one of the world's top theoretical mathematicians, peculiarly inhuman agents start turning up all across England, and a shady tycoon makes an unprecedented bid for power just as the world stands on the brink of literal oblivion... and not just our world. The strange events are linked to a series of other worlds, other Earths, with other ascendant life forms - and all of them are in grave danger.
REVIEW: The Doors of Eden explores the possibilities of alternate worlds and evolutionary tracks, with unexpected successes and failures up and down the timeline, in a fairly active plot with hints of a spy thriller around the edges. The other Earths produce sapient life forms as bizarre and unknowable as any extraterrestrial, but all drawn from our planet's fossil record and the possibilities it entails, from essentially immortal giant trilobites meandering through space to overpopulated rodents in continent-spanning cities to nominally extinct amphibious beings who built a planet-sized supercomputer based on ice to accommodate an artificial afterlife on their perpetually frozen world, though the main players in this tale are generally of the human persuasion. Sometimes the characters could be irritating and a little slow on the uptake - Lee in particular often feels like a useless tagalong, and MI-5 agent Julian leans a little too hard into the stiff-upper-lip British agent persona who willfully refuses to broaden his thinking beyond his sworn duty to England when the entire multiverse hangs in the balance - and toward the end it feels like it's trying a little too hard and dragging things out a hair too long (not to mention hammering home its point about the diversity of life and minds being a boon rather than a threat a bit too repetitively, for all that it's very relevant in a world that seems to be turning backwards and inwards to its detriment), but there are also some great moments of sheer wonder and a real connection to the other sapients, who even in their alienness evoke a certain empathy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dark Matter (Blake Crouch) - My Review
InterWorld (Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves) - My Review
City (Clifford D. Simak) - My Review
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Pan
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When English college students Lee and Mal set off into the moors in search of a mysterious monster, it was supposed to be the usual cryptid hunt: poking about in obscure places and backwater villages, gathering odd stories from eccentric locals, maybe snapping a grainy photo or two that might resemble something unnatural or may just be swamp gas or an odd shadow. Neither ever expected to actually find anything. But this trip, something goes terribly, impossibly wrong. Lee comes back alone, shaken to her core by what she witnessed, and Mal... Mal simply disappears, as if into thin air.
Years later, Lee gets a strange phone call from her missing friend, just as a pair of MI-5 agents are called upon to investigate unusual occurrences surrounded one of the world's top theoretical mathematicians, peculiarly inhuman agents start turning up all across England, and a shady tycoon makes an unprecedented bid for power just as the world stands on the brink of literal oblivion... and not just our world. The strange events are linked to a series of other worlds, other Earths, with other ascendant life forms - and all of them are in grave danger.
REVIEW: The Doors of Eden explores the possibilities of alternate worlds and evolutionary tracks, with unexpected successes and failures up and down the timeline, in a fairly active plot with hints of a spy thriller around the edges. The other Earths produce sapient life forms as bizarre and unknowable as any extraterrestrial, but all drawn from our planet's fossil record and the possibilities it entails, from essentially immortal giant trilobites meandering through space to overpopulated rodents in continent-spanning cities to nominally extinct amphibious beings who built a planet-sized supercomputer based on ice to accommodate an artificial afterlife on their perpetually frozen world, though the main players in this tale are generally of the human persuasion. Sometimes the characters could be irritating and a little slow on the uptake - Lee in particular often feels like a useless tagalong, and MI-5 agent Julian leans a little too hard into the stiff-upper-lip British agent persona who willfully refuses to broaden his thinking beyond his sworn duty to England when the entire multiverse hangs in the balance - and toward the end it feels like it's trying a little too hard and dragging things out a hair too long (not to mention hammering home its point about the diversity of life and minds being a boon rather than a threat a bit too repetitively, for all that it's very relevant in a world that seems to be turning backwards and inwards to its detriment), but there are also some great moments of sheer wonder and a real connection to the other sapients, who even in their alienness evoke a certain empathy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dark Matter (Blake Crouch) - My Review
InterWorld (Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves) - My Review
City (Clifford D. Simak) - My Review
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Catalyst Gate (Megan E. O'Keefe)
Catalyst Gate
The Protectorate series, Book 3
Megan E. O'Keefe
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since waking alone on the empty ship of her enemies, Commander Sanda Greeve has had her world turned upside-down and inside-out. The interstellar government to which she swore her life turns out to have been founded on a lie, its technology stolen from an ancient alien race and weaponized to prevent that race from returning to snatch its toys back. The artificial intelligence of the enemy ship, Bero, achieved sentience and turned on its makers. And the man who helped her escape and whom she fell in love with turned out to be part of a secretive ring of spies with unusual tech of their own, to the point where it's arguable whether Tomas is even human. Meanwhile, her brother Biran has undergone his own journey and rude awakenings, rising to the role of Speaker of the elite Protectorate only to discover the rot and lies within. Now Rainier, the legacy artificial intelligence originally tasked with guarding the alien tech, has gone insane, ready to culminate a generations-long plan to exterminate the upstart primates for the travesty they made of her creator's gifts. Sanda and Biran scramble to save their species from threats within and without, but their enemy has studied humanity for centuries and infiltrated every nook and cranny of civilization. Even as they race toward the final confrontation, they may already have lost.
REVIEW: The final installment of the (probable) trilogy maintains the high-octane pace of the series, shot through with firefights, betrayals, twists, and turns, with some spots of humor and character interplay along the way. Sanda and Biran and their companions must confront the sins of their species and Prime's founders, who built their entire spacefaring society on lies and bloodshed and greed and fear; even as they work to stop Rainier, they see just why the artificial intelligence has grown so enraged with the crimes of the species. Former Grotta thief Jules Valentine, meanwhile, continues on the dark path that led her to infect a large population with the corrupted "ascension" agent that helped her transcend her human limits (but which has devastating results on over ninety percent of its victims), finding it increasingly hard to justify her extreme means even in the name of saving the only person in the universe she has ever cared about. Things start at a high level of tension and only ratchet up from there, at times reaching near overwhelming levels, before a climactic conclusion that alters the trajectory of Prime and humanity's future, with the door cracked open just enough for sequel potential. It narrowly lost itself a half-star due to that sense of being a little overwhelmed and overloaded at times, plus some of the side characters and storylines felt a bit lost in the shuffle by the end, but the whole still makes for excellent, action-filled space opera that never forgets the flawed individuality of the characters involved.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Leviathan Wakes (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
The Stars Now Unclaimed (Drew Williams) - My Review
The Protectorate series, Book 3
Megan E. O'Keefe
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since waking alone on the empty ship of her enemies, Commander Sanda Greeve has had her world turned upside-down and inside-out. The interstellar government to which she swore her life turns out to have been founded on a lie, its technology stolen from an ancient alien race and weaponized to prevent that race from returning to snatch its toys back. The artificial intelligence of the enemy ship, Bero, achieved sentience and turned on its makers. And the man who helped her escape and whom she fell in love with turned out to be part of a secretive ring of spies with unusual tech of their own, to the point where it's arguable whether Tomas is even human. Meanwhile, her brother Biran has undergone his own journey and rude awakenings, rising to the role of Speaker of the elite Protectorate only to discover the rot and lies within. Now Rainier, the legacy artificial intelligence originally tasked with guarding the alien tech, has gone insane, ready to culminate a generations-long plan to exterminate the upstart primates for the travesty they made of her creator's gifts. Sanda and Biran scramble to save their species from threats within and without, but their enemy has studied humanity for centuries and infiltrated every nook and cranny of civilization. Even as they race toward the final confrontation, they may already have lost.
REVIEW: The final installment of the (probable) trilogy maintains the high-octane pace of the series, shot through with firefights, betrayals, twists, and turns, with some spots of humor and character interplay along the way. Sanda and Biran and their companions must confront the sins of their species and Prime's founders, who built their entire spacefaring society on lies and bloodshed and greed and fear; even as they work to stop Rainier, they see just why the artificial intelligence has grown so enraged with the crimes of the species. Former Grotta thief Jules Valentine, meanwhile, continues on the dark path that led her to infect a large population with the corrupted "ascension" agent that helped her transcend her human limits (but which has devastating results on over ninety percent of its victims), finding it increasingly hard to justify her extreme means even in the name of saving the only person in the universe she has ever cared about. Things start at a high level of tension and only ratchet up from there, at times reaching near overwhelming levels, before a climactic conclusion that alters the trajectory of Prime and humanity's future, with the door cracked open just enough for sequel potential. It narrowly lost itself a half-star due to that sense of being a little overwhelmed and overloaded at times, plus some of the side characters and storylines felt a bit lost in the shuffle by the end, but the whole still makes for excellent, action-filled space opera that never forgets the flawed individuality of the characters involved.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Leviathan Wakes (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
The Stars Now Unclaimed (Drew Williams) - My Review
Thursday, October 14, 2021
Root Magic (Eden Royce)
Root Magic
Eden Royce
Walden Pond Press
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The summer of 1963 ends for twins Jezebel and Jay Turner when their beloved Gran passes away, shortly before their eleventh birthday. Gran was the undisputed matriarch of the family and one of the most respected women on their South Carolina island, a powerful practitioner of the old root magic. Now, Jez's uncle Doc wants the twins to learn root ways, to carry the tradition into the future, though their mother is reluctant. Life is tough enough for Negros in the south without practicing strange beliefs, and not only the Whites and the local deputy but other Negros have taken to targeting the "witch doctors" who follow the old ways, for all that many people still buy the potions and incenses and tinctures Doc brews up in his cabin. But Doc argues that this only means they need to cling all the harder to their culture, before it's washed away by the tides of time. Besides, the more dangers the Turners face, the more protection they need. As Jez and Jay learn more about root magic, Jez discovers that it's much deeper - and more dangerous - than she ever understood, and even a little girl can quickly find herself in way over her head...
REVIEW: Root Magic is a tribute to the Gullah culture of the South Carolina islands, set in a time of national upheaval. As South Carolina is forced to comply with national school desegregation laws, tensions run higher than ever; while the twins, on a small island, don't have to deal with White folks (or angry White parents), they do have to deal with the children of wealthier Negro families who long ago learned to look down on their own roots as something to be ashamed of... or something to fear. Jez feels perpetually torn between growing pride in her ancestry and how she's treated by others, and even well-meaning outsiders don't seem to understand. It doesn't help when her first-ever spell, a charm meant to attract a friend, seems to go awry from the first day of school. Her relationship with her twin brother is also in a state of transition and tension; she got moved ahead a grade last year, so they're no longer in the same class, and he keeps picking up friends and goofing off while she struggles to socialize and throws herself into her studies, both academic and magical. They seem to be growing apart, even as Doc insists that they need to stick together. Along the way, the setting and culture are described in great detail, coming to life around the characters, a landscape of salt marshes and dirt roads and small farms and sprawling oaks where magic and haint spirits lurk in the shadows and the reeds.
A few things held the story back in the ratings. First of all, Jez isn't the brightest of main characters. (Then again, neither is her brother, but Jay is supposed to be an energetic and emotionally immature boy, while she's supposed to be smarter and more grounded.) After being told to keep close to Jay so they can guard each other while learning root magic, she keeps wandering off to do things on her own. After being told that pushing their new powers without supervision isn't a great idea, Doc having filled them in on haints and ghosts and other dangers to an untrained root magician, Jez starts experimenting with astral projection without bothering to tell anyone. She keeps forgetting the protections Doc provides her and her brother with, and thus keeps stumbling into danger, some of it so obvious she shouldn't have needed to be told about it. After a while, it got tiresome, especially as the dangers and the lessons become repetitious - almost word-for-word repetitious in a few instances. Side characters can feel flat and underdeveloped, and some subplots and themes peter out by the end as if forgotten. The audiobook narrator also drops her voice to somewhere below a whisper, barely more than a breath, several times; I literally could not hear what she was saying. (Admittedly, many people aren't listening in a warehouse at work, but anyone listening in their car on a road or anywhere else with mild to moderate background noise will also have trouble.) Other narrators have proven that it's possible to evoke a breathy whisper while remaining audible to the audience. And some of those setting descriptions, which admittedly add color, start overwhelming the plot. The whole thing begins to feel slow and stagnant, taking several meandering paragraphs where a few sentences might suffice.
Overall, Root Magic's not a bad story, offering a glimpse into an often-misrepresented culture that's well worth exploring. I just grew a bit irritated with the molasses pacing and somewhat thickheaded main character.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Akata Witch (Nnedi Okorafor) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel Jose Older) - My Review
Eden Royce
Walden Pond Press
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The summer of 1963 ends for twins Jezebel and Jay Turner when their beloved Gran passes away, shortly before their eleventh birthday. Gran was the undisputed matriarch of the family and one of the most respected women on their South Carolina island, a powerful practitioner of the old root magic. Now, Jez's uncle Doc wants the twins to learn root ways, to carry the tradition into the future, though their mother is reluctant. Life is tough enough for Negros in the south without practicing strange beliefs, and not only the Whites and the local deputy but other Negros have taken to targeting the "witch doctors" who follow the old ways, for all that many people still buy the potions and incenses and tinctures Doc brews up in his cabin. But Doc argues that this only means they need to cling all the harder to their culture, before it's washed away by the tides of time. Besides, the more dangers the Turners face, the more protection they need. As Jez and Jay learn more about root magic, Jez discovers that it's much deeper - and more dangerous - than she ever understood, and even a little girl can quickly find herself in way over her head...
REVIEW: Root Magic is a tribute to the Gullah culture of the South Carolina islands, set in a time of national upheaval. As South Carolina is forced to comply with national school desegregation laws, tensions run higher than ever; while the twins, on a small island, don't have to deal with White folks (or angry White parents), they do have to deal with the children of wealthier Negro families who long ago learned to look down on their own roots as something to be ashamed of... or something to fear. Jez feels perpetually torn between growing pride in her ancestry and how she's treated by others, and even well-meaning outsiders don't seem to understand. It doesn't help when her first-ever spell, a charm meant to attract a friend, seems to go awry from the first day of school. Her relationship with her twin brother is also in a state of transition and tension; she got moved ahead a grade last year, so they're no longer in the same class, and he keeps picking up friends and goofing off while she struggles to socialize and throws herself into her studies, both academic and magical. They seem to be growing apart, even as Doc insists that they need to stick together. Along the way, the setting and culture are described in great detail, coming to life around the characters, a landscape of salt marshes and dirt roads and small farms and sprawling oaks where magic and haint spirits lurk in the shadows and the reeds.
A few things held the story back in the ratings. First of all, Jez isn't the brightest of main characters. (Then again, neither is her brother, but Jay is supposed to be an energetic and emotionally immature boy, while she's supposed to be smarter and more grounded.) After being told to keep close to Jay so they can guard each other while learning root magic, she keeps wandering off to do things on her own. After being told that pushing their new powers without supervision isn't a great idea, Doc having filled them in on haints and ghosts and other dangers to an untrained root magician, Jez starts experimenting with astral projection without bothering to tell anyone. She keeps forgetting the protections Doc provides her and her brother with, and thus keeps stumbling into danger, some of it so obvious she shouldn't have needed to be told about it. After a while, it got tiresome, especially as the dangers and the lessons become repetitious - almost word-for-word repetitious in a few instances. Side characters can feel flat and underdeveloped, and some subplots and themes peter out by the end as if forgotten. The audiobook narrator also drops her voice to somewhere below a whisper, barely more than a breath, several times; I literally could not hear what she was saying. (Admittedly, many people aren't listening in a warehouse at work, but anyone listening in their car on a road or anywhere else with mild to moderate background noise will also have trouble.) Other narrators have proven that it's possible to evoke a breathy whisper while remaining audible to the audience. And some of those setting descriptions, which admittedly add color, start overwhelming the plot. The whole thing begins to feel slow and stagnant, taking several meandering paragraphs where a few sentences might suffice.
Overall, Root Magic's not a bad story, offering a glimpse into an often-misrepresented culture that's well worth exploring. I just grew a bit irritated with the molasses pacing and somewhat thickheaded main character.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Akata Witch (Nnedi Okorafor) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel Jose Older) - My Review
Saturday, October 9, 2021
Fox and Phoenix (Beth Bernobich)
Fox and Phoenix
The Long City series, Book 1
Beth Bernobich
Viking Books for Young Readers
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A year ago, the former street boy Kai Zou lived an adventure worthy of a fairy tale, helping the princess of Long City achieve her heart's desire and becoming her lifelong friend. After a series of adventures and the solving of three impossible riddles, she was able to leave home to study at the prestigious university in the Phoenix Empire, while he and his street rat friends were handsomely rewarded... but that was a year ago, and life after a fairy tale isn't at all what Kai had expected or hoped. His friends have grown into their own lives, their gang nothing but a memory, while he struggles with his studies in his mother's magic shop alongside Yun, the girl he once thought might become more than a friend but who seems to be drifting away from him. Yes, he has his reward money still and the honorary title of Prince of the Streets of Long City, but what does it even mean when he feels left behind by everyone and everything?
When word spreads of the king falling deathly ill, a wary sense of foreboding falls over the city and Kai. Why has the princess not returned from the university? What sickness could evade the best healers in the kingdom? Does it have anything to do with the web of courtly plots and intrigues that grow thick as smoke around the palace? Then Kai's mother disappears, and the king of the city's ghost dragons charges the boy with traveling to the Phoenix Empire himself to fetch back the princess. If he fails, not only will he have failed Long City, but the whole of the Seventy Kingdoms may succumb to a dark and terrible fate...
REVIEW: Another audiobook to kill time at work, this one intrigued me with its mix of magic and high technology; not only does everyone have spirit animal companions, but magic flux is used to power all sorts of gizmos and gadgets, everything from silk viewing screens broadcasting news and entertainment to computers and mobile phones and even enhanced mechanical eyes in the city's royal guards, creating a world reminiscent of our own but with many fantastic twists. Within this world, Kai finds himself adrift, caught between the adventures of his youth and the expectations and confusion of adulthood. He keeps longing for the comfort of yesterday, when he knew who his friends were and where he belonged and didn't have a care in the world, even as he knows that he can't go back, for all that he can't seem to figure out how to move forward. Being shoved into another adventure forces him to do some growing up, especially when he picks up unexpected companions in the form of an undead griffin from his mother's magic shop and Yun, whom he attempted to leave behind but who tracks him down on the road... just in time for more trouble to catch up with them, letting them know that there's a lot more at stake here than just finding a wayward princess. The plot moves fairly well with a nice character mix, Kai experiencing breakthroughs and setbacks both in the main quest and his own growth as he learns to see the world and his companions for what and who they actually are rather than the ideas of them he'd formed in childhood. There's fun and danger and some fledgling romance, building to a nice (if mildly abrupt) climax that leaves the door open for future installments. The whole makes an enjoyable tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Steel Crow Saga (Paul Krueger) - My Review
The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) - My Review
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) - My Review
The Long City series, Book 1
Beth Bernobich
Viking Books for Young Readers
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A year ago, the former street boy Kai Zou lived an adventure worthy of a fairy tale, helping the princess of Long City achieve her heart's desire and becoming her lifelong friend. After a series of adventures and the solving of three impossible riddles, she was able to leave home to study at the prestigious university in the Phoenix Empire, while he and his street rat friends were handsomely rewarded... but that was a year ago, and life after a fairy tale isn't at all what Kai had expected or hoped. His friends have grown into their own lives, their gang nothing but a memory, while he struggles with his studies in his mother's magic shop alongside Yun, the girl he once thought might become more than a friend but who seems to be drifting away from him. Yes, he has his reward money still and the honorary title of Prince of the Streets of Long City, but what does it even mean when he feels left behind by everyone and everything?
When word spreads of the king falling deathly ill, a wary sense of foreboding falls over the city and Kai. Why has the princess not returned from the university? What sickness could evade the best healers in the kingdom? Does it have anything to do with the web of courtly plots and intrigues that grow thick as smoke around the palace? Then Kai's mother disappears, and the king of the city's ghost dragons charges the boy with traveling to the Phoenix Empire himself to fetch back the princess. If he fails, not only will he have failed Long City, but the whole of the Seventy Kingdoms may succumb to a dark and terrible fate...
REVIEW: Another audiobook to kill time at work, this one intrigued me with its mix of magic and high technology; not only does everyone have spirit animal companions, but magic flux is used to power all sorts of gizmos and gadgets, everything from silk viewing screens broadcasting news and entertainment to computers and mobile phones and even enhanced mechanical eyes in the city's royal guards, creating a world reminiscent of our own but with many fantastic twists. Within this world, Kai finds himself adrift, caught between the adventures of his youth and the expectations and confusion of adulthood. He keeps longing for the comfort of yesterday, when he knew who his friends were and where he belonged and didn't have a care in the world, even as he knows that he can't go back, for all that he can't seem to figure out how to move forward. Being shoved into another adventure forces him to do some growing up, especially when he picks up unexpected companions in the form of an undead griffin from his mother's magic shop and Yun, whom he attempted to leave behind but who tracks him down on the road... just in time for more trouble to catch up with them, letting them know that there's a lot more at stake here than just finding a wayward princess. The plot moves fairly well with a nice character mix, Kai experiencing breakthroughs and setbacks both in the main quest and his own growth as he learns to see the world and his companions for what and who they actually are rather than the ideas of them he'd formed in childhood. There's fun and danger and some fledgling romance, building to a nice (if mildly abrupt) climax that leaves the door open for future installments. The whole makes an enjoyable tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Steel Crow Saga (Paul Krueger) - My Review
The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) - My Review
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) - My Review
Thursday, October 7, 2021
Brimstone Bound (Helen Harper)
Brimstone Bound
The Firebrand series, Book 1
Helen Harper
HarperFire
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In just two weeks, Emma will finally achieve her dream and become a London detective... but first, she must endure one final trainee rotation into a random department before her final exams. She's hoping for cyber crimes, as that's where she intends to build her career, but instead finds herself assigned to the least desirable, most useless department in the city: the Supernatural Squad. One would think that working among the city's werewolves, vampires, and assorted other "supes" would be exciting, but in truth the few officers on the Supe Squad are little more than window dressing, to reassure the normal public; the wolves and vamps deal with their own, and if any crime actually involves humans in their district, the chief of detectives takes over anyway. Emma despairs, and her boyfriend Jeremy - who never approved of her putting herself in harm's way as a cop in the first place - nearly has heart failure, but she's come this far, and isn't about to let one crummy assignment sink her dreams. Besides, it's just two weeks, then she can walk away from the Supe Squad and never look back. What could possibly go wrong?
When Emma wakes up in the morgue, wrapped in a body bag and wreathed in flames, on her second day with the Supernatural Squad, she finds out just how wrong things can go. Someone lured her to a graveyard and slit her throat... and they didn't just try to kill her, they succeeded. Even she doesn't know how she survived, waking without a scratch, but now she has to find her own killer before they strike again - a task complicated by supernatural politics, turf scuffles, and one meddlesome, disturbingly handsome vampire who insists on helping her out.
REVIEW: Brimstone Bound has all the standard urban fantasy/detective trappings I've come to expect from the genre (at least, the parts of it I've sampled), down to the frequently-used London setting, but the parts, while familiar, work together fairly well. Emma makes for a credible lead, a little out of her depth but (usually) not too stupid to believe as a greenhorn cop; her unfamiliarity with the supernaturals gives other characters a reason to walk her (and thus the reader) through the "rules" of this particular urban fantasy scenario, where werewolves and vampires are dangerous but generally little more monstrous than human beings. The crime takes several twists and turns through potential culprits and motives, but Emma's a determined investigator and manages to work her way to the end (hardly a spoiler; it is a mystery, after all). As for Emma's little quirk of not staying dead... this is part of what cost it the full fourth star in the rating. How long must characters be clueless about something when it's given away on the danged cover? (I don't consider it a spoiler to say that, no, the mystery of Emma's true nature is never solved in this volume... but, come on, Emma, look at your own cover design! How long are you intending to drag readers along, here?) Setting that, and a couple other instances of her and others being slightly slow on the uptake, aside, this is a fairly decent little outing in a supernatural-tinged modern London, with action and danger and a little humor and just a whiff of potential romance (without it dominating the characters or the plot). I don't know that I'll follow the rest of the series, though, unless I need something to listen to at work again and nothing else is available on Overdrive. Urban fantasy just isn't my preferred subgenre, though I can appreciate it for what it is.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Midnight Riot (Ben Aaronovitch) - My Review
Three Mages and a Margarita (Annette Marie) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Firebrand series, Book 1
Helen Harper
HarperFire
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In just two weeks, Emma will finally achieve her dream and become a London detective... but first, she must endure one final trainee rotation into a random department before her final exams. She's hoping for cyber crimes, as that's where she intends to build her career, but instead finds herself assigned to the least desirable, most useless department in the city: the Supernatural Squad. One would think that working among the city's werewolves, vampires, and assorted other "supes" would be exciting, but in truth the few officers on the Supe Squad are little more than window dressing, to reassure the normal public; the wolves and vamps deal with their own, and if any crime actually involves humans in their district, the chief of detectives takes over anyway. Emma despairs, and her boyfriend Jeremy - who never approved of her putting herself in harm's way as a cop in the first place - nearly has heart failure, but she's come this far, and isn't about to let one crummy assignment sink her dreams. Besides, it's just two weeks, then she can walk away from the Supe Squad and never look back. What could possibly go wrong?
When Emma wakes up in the morgue, wrapped in a body bag and wreathed in flames, on her second day with the Supernatural Squad, she finds out just how wrong things can go. Someone lured her to a graveyard and slit her throat... and they didn't just try to kill her, they succeeded. Even she doesn't know how she survived, waking without a scratch, but now she has to find her own killer before they strike again - a task complicated by supernatural politics, turf scuffles, and one meddlesome, disturbingly handsome vampire who insists on helping her out.
REVIEW: Brimstone Bound has all the standard urban fantasy/detective trappings I've come to expect from the genre (at least, the parts of it I've sampled), down to the frequently-used London setting, but the parts, while familiar, work together fairly well. Emma makes for a credible lead, a little out of her depth but (usually) not too stupid to believe as a greenhorn cop; her unfamiliarity with the supernaturals gives other characters a reason to walk her (and thus the reader) through the "rules" of this particular urban fantasy scenario, where werewolves and vampires are dangerous but generally little more monstrous than human beings. The crime takes several twists and turns through potential culprits and motives, but Emma's a determined investigator and manages to work her way to the end (hardly a spoiler; it is a mystery, after all). As for Emma's little quirk of not staying dead... this is part of what cost it the full fourth star in the rating. How long must characters be clueless about something when it's given away on the danged cover? (I don't consider it a spoiler to say that, no, the mystery of Emma's true nature is never solved in this volume... but, come on, Emma, look at your own cover design! How long are you intending to drag readers along, here?) Setting that, and a couple other instances of her and others being slightly slow on the uptake, aside, this is a fairly decent little outing in a supernatural-tinged modern London, with action and danger and a little humor and just a whiff of potential romance (without it dominating the characters or the plot). I don't know that I'll follow the rest of the series, though, unless I need something to listen to at work again and nothing else is available on Overdrive. Urban fantasy just isn't my preferred subgenre, though I can appreciate it for what it is.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Midnight Riot (Ben Aaronovitch) - My Review
Three Mages and a Margarita (Annette Marie) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Friday, October 1, 2021
The Hollow Places (T. Kingfisher)
The Hollow Places
T. Kingfisher
Saga Press
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Kara used to think her life was on track, but one divorce later she finds herself back in the small town of Hog Chapel, living in a spare room of her eccentric Uncle Earl's tourist trap museum. She grew up among the taxidermy beasts, strange artifacts of questionable authenticity, and other odds and end that clutter the two-story place, plus it's rent-free and she gets all the coffee she wants from the shop next door, so she can't really complain; all she has to do is help her aging uncle run the museum, and maybe do something about cataloging the out-of-control inventory, until she gets her feet back under her.
Then she finds the hole in the wall, beyond which lies an impossible concrete corridor... and a doorway into a world of mist and willows and a broad, island-specked river, with innumerable other doorways and corridors and mysteries.
With Simon, the barista from the coffee shop, Kara decides to explore a little - only to discover that the seemingly empty world of the willows isn't so empty, or as benign, as it first appeared. Malevolent entities stalk the land, slipping in and out of reality and doing unspeakable things to whatever they catch, and even thoughts aren't safe from them. Worse, the hole that let Kara into the willow world may also let the monsters into Hog Chapel.
REVIEW: The Hollow Places is a nicely creepy tale of other worlds and unseen horrors, featuring a reasonably competent heroine and sidekick and terrifyingly inscrutable monsters literally operating on an unknowable plane of existence. The southern town of Hog Chapel and the little museum of wonders make a nicely quaint throwback setting for the horrific events that unfold, as Kara and Simon poke at something that should best be left alone. The willow world has a surreal and menacing quality from the start, even before they encounter anyone or anything undeniably amiss. Kara quickly realizes she's in way over her head, but cannot seem to walk away, not knowing the dangers lurking just beyond a hole in reality itself. The story takes a little time setting itself up, and there are one or two instances of Kara dropping the mental ball to prolong the plot, but overall it delivers the tale it promises.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
Coraline (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
The Takers (R. W. Ridley) - My Review
T. Kingfisher
Saga Press
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Kara used to think her life was on track, but one divorce later she finds herself back in the small town of Hog Chapel, living in a spare room of her eccentric Uncle Earl's tourist trap museum. She grew up among the taxidermy beasts, strange artifacts of questionable authenticity, and other odds and end that clutter the two-story place, plus it's rent-free and she gets all the coffee she wants from the shop next door, so she can't really complain; all she has to do is help her aging uncle run the museum, and maybe do something about cataloging the out-of-control inventory, until she gets her feet back under her.
Then she finds the hole in the wall, beyond which lies an impossible concrete corridor... and a doorway into a world of mist and willows and a broad, island-specked river, with innumerable other doorways and corridors and mysteries.
With Simon, the barista from the coffee shop, Kara decides to explore a little - only to discover that the seemingly empty world of the willows isn't so empty, or as benign, as it first appeared. Malevolent entities stalk the land, slipping in and out of reality and doing unspeakable things to whatever they catch, and even thoughts aren't safe from them. Worse, the hole that let Kara into the willow world may also let the monsters into Hog Chapel.
REVIEW: The Hollow Places is a nicely creepy tale of other worlds and unseen horrors, featuring a reasonably competent heroine and sidekick and terrifyingly inscrutable monsters literally operating on an unknowable plane of existence. The southern town of Hog Chapel and the little museum of wonders make a nicely quaint throwback setting for the horrific events that unfold, as Kara and Simon poke at something that should best be left alone. The willow world has a surreal and menacing quality from the start, even before they encounter anyone or anything undeniably amiss. Kara quickly realizes she's in way over her head, but cannot seem to walk away, not knowing the dangers lurking just beyond a hole in reality itself. The story takes a little time setting itself up, and there are one or two instances of Kara dropping the mental ball to prolong the plot, but overall it delivers the tale it promises.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
Coraline (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
The Takers (R. W. Ridley) - My Review
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