North of Boston (Elisabeth Elo)

North of Boston
Elisabeth Elo
Pamela Dorman Books
Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: As the adult child of a turbulent marriage, Pirio Kasparov has struggled but built a reasonably decent life for herself in Boston. The perfume company founded by her parents is doing well, and will someday pass to her if her stubborn Russian-born father ever relinquishes his control. Her best friend since boarding school days, Thomasina, isn't doing nearly so well, too frequently found at the bottom of a bottle, but Pirio does what she can to help her and her son Noah. Ned, Thomasina's ex and Noah's father, had just left a large commercial outfit for the freelance life aboard a lobster boat, with Pirio riding along to help bait traps and get him started (not that she has a particular interest in fishing, but she's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to try, and for all his faults Ned has been a great father).
Neither one saw the freighter until it was slicing Ned's small vessel in two.
While Ned was lost, Pirio managed to survive for four hours in the near-freezing waters north of Boston before being rescued. The news treats her as a novelty, while the Navy wants to investigate her unusual ability to endure extreme water temperatures. But Pirio can hardly care about those things, not with Noah's father dead - and not with that little itch in the back of her mind that the "accident" was anything but accidental. Disappointed by official investigations that seem content to brush the matter aside and spurred by her cynical and suspicious father, she starts poking around on her own. Little does she suspect what a hornet's nest her inquiries will kick up...

REVIEW: This debut thriller melds elements of commercial fishing, corruption, perfume making, immigrant diaspora, and the lasting scars of troubled childhoods and abusive relationships, set in a solidly realized Boston and starring an interesting, proactive, and somewhat flawed heroine. It also feels like the start of a series that never took off, and thus one that never got a chance to fully explore its characters or situations, making some parts feel oddly extraneous by the end.
Keeping a fairly good pace throughout, Pirio's incredible survival in frigid Atlantic waters gives her some local notoriety in the middle of a deeply personal tragedy; Ned and her school friend Thomasina may have been over as a couple, but the man always did right by his son Noah, also much beloved by Pirio, and the breakup was not exactly a one-sided matter. That notoriety gets her noticed by the Navy (a subplot that sorta sputters out after verifying something Pirio suspected but needed proof of before believing), and also gives her some "street cred" when she starts investigating the matter of who sank Ned's boat. At first, she thinks it's a tragic accident, maybe a "hit and run" as is not uncommon on a sea with many small vessels sharing space and shipping lanes with behemoths, neither of which can exactly brake on a dime. But when strange occurrences follow her first questions, she realizes that there's more to it than mere happenstance; Ned was targeted, and someone wants very much for the matter to be forgotten. Pirio is reasonably clever in her investigations, if sometimes reckless, though that's in keeping with her character. Along the way, she also has to help with Noah as his mother spirals into self-destruction and cope with her own headstrong father's mortality catching up to his outsized will and personality, one more complication in a relationship that has been nothing but complicated. Memories of her mother, a woman with her own problems but who left an indelible mark on Pirio's life (as well as a legacy of the wondrous complexities of scent; she was the one who started formulating the perfumes that would become the backbone of the family's minor empire), make her fractured family relations all the more bittersweet, though her quest to find justice for Ned helps bring some unexpected closure on that front. Along the way are numerous clues and dangerous characters, some close calls and dead ends, culminating in revelations that have far-reaching implications and put Pirio and her friends in far more danger than she ever intended. There are hints and potentials for romance, but for the most part the book is free of entanglements of the heart; she may feel some attractions, but knows her current quest must take precedence. The conclusion leaves some questions and threads loose in a way that feels intentional, as though Elo was leaving the door open for more stories about Pirio and her companions. Overall, it kept me entertained.

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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man (Emmanuel Acho)

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
Emmanuel Acho
Flatiron Books
Nonfiction, History/Memoir/Politics
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Is racism really a problem in modern times? Can Black people to be racist? What about "reverse racism" against whites? Why can't we all just stop seeing color - won't that make the problem go away? Former football player and current sports commentator and podcast host Emmanuel Acho answers questions about race that many white people hesitate to ask.

REVIEW: If nothing else has become glaringly apparent in the decade since Barack Obama's presidency, it's that American racism is not only alive and well, it's become emboldened enough to step from the shadows and openly feast on whatever progress has been made since at least the 1960's. Acho does not pretend to speak to the experience of all Black Americans, but he does honestly and thoroughly explore a number of topics related to racism, from the personal prejudices and biases that seep into daily life and color decisions to the systemic racism built into the institutions that govern all aspects of our public existence, going all the way back to the nation's founding and persisting to the present day. He even addresses "that" word, its volatile history and if it's ever okay for someone outside the community to use it. It makes for an interesting, candid, and frequently depressing and infuriating look at the many faces, many forms, vexingly persistence and adaptive mutability of a problem that underlies so many of today's challenges, challenges that threaten everyone but that share common roots.

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Democracy in Retrograde (Sami Sage and Emily Amick)

Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives
Sami Sage and Emily Amick
Gallery Books
Nonfiction, Politics
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It's no secret that the state of America's democracy is dire. Voting rights are under attack, the very notion of who is or is not a citizen has been thrown into the shredder, and the party that pushed a literal, televised insurrection has grasped the levers of power. Institutions and guardrails are being destroyed at exponentially increasing rates, and those doing the destruction aren't even trying to hide the anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional roots of their motivations. Is it too late to stop the complete collapse of the country we thought we knew? The authors offer ideas for finding hope and motivation even in the darkest times.

REVIEW: This book was published in July 2024. At that time, I would've agreed that there was, indeed, some chance of at least limiting damage from the bad actors who have successfully infiltrated the system and grasped control of the media narrative to push their messaging and drown out opposition. I'm not at all certain of that anymore, one year later. In any event, the authors explore ways to connect with like-minded individuals and build intentional communities - ideally in-person communities, as so much of the internet has been siloed into echo-chambers and ultimately compromised (many online public spaces being actually in the hands of private individuals pushing their own agendas and influence, rewarding outrage and divisiveness) - in order to work toward change. They discuss the different ways people can contribute: not everyone is a leader, but most everyone can likely find something useful to do, some place where their interests and passions intersect with a need. As usual, though, there are those of us who fall through the cracks; I lack access to in-person communities, for one, and for another I lack anything tangible to contribute. I'm also congenitally invisible, so even in the off chance I found a place to show up I'm not particularly useful except as an inert object. Still, ideas like these are likely the only way to turn anything around or, as I sadly suspect will be more likely, eventually rebuild anything from the rubble that will eventually be left to whoever or whatever manages to survive what's coming.

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Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen (Jim C. Hines)

Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen
Jim C. Hines
Jim C. Hines, publisher
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since her best friend Andre vanished without a trace, twelve-year-old Tamora Carter has struggled to cope. Was he kidnapped? Did he run away? Have the police given up already? At least she has an outlet for her frustrations in roller derby. But one day, after practice, she finds something very strange behind the skating rink: a pair of real, live goblins! They claim they came here from another world, but won't tell her where - though a portal immediately makes Tamora suspect that their appearance may have something to do with Andre's disappearance. Maybe the reason he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth is that he really did vanish, at least off this Earth. With help from some unexpected allies, Tamora sets out to unravel the mystery, locate the portal, and get her best friend back - but the goblins aren't the only threats she'll have to watch out for, and it's going to take more than roller derby trash talk to win against real magic.

REVIEW: After some disappointing reads this month (and other disappointments and stresses in general, including a major appliance failure), I just wanted something simple and straightforward. Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen delivers exactly what it promises, with a gutsy girl who will stop at nothing to bring her best friend home, even if it means facing down goblins and pixies and even a dragon - and worse. If there's not a whole lot more to it than that, well, it never promises more.
From her first appearance in a roller derby match as one of the Grand Ridge Honey Badgers (game name: T-Wrex), Tamora is no shrinking violet of a character, a girl with strength and guts and the grit to get back up when knocked down, even if she sometimes doesn't listen and forgets that there is no "I" in a team. During and after the game, the reader learns about the disappearance of Andre and two other kids from town some weeks back, and how it's gnawing at her, part of what drives her recklessness on skates. The goblins quickly cue her (and the reader) into the fantastic elements of the story, and the overall tone; though they jeer and threaten, their stilted language and silly appearance and behavior promise blunted corners and nothing too horrific, for all that the threats become real as Tamora digs deeper to figure out what's going on and what it has to do with her missing friend. This is, ultimately, like the other side of a portal fantasy, as Andre and two other kids have been whisked away to a fantasy world (hardly a spoiler, when goblins turn up in the first chapter and the portal concept is quickly established after that) and she must work to help bring them home before something terrible happens to them. Joining her is her older brother Mac, a nonverbal autistic boy who mostly speaks using a tablet computer, and the twin sister of one of the other missing kids who seems to have a lingering, if subconscious, psychic connection to the trio. Tamora starts and remains the primary driving force of the adventure, even when she learns that she can't do it all herself and needs a team to succeed. Her father even becomes an ally rather than an obstacle or non-character (as is common in middle-grade fantasies), and actually trusts his daughter. Her half-Korean heritage becomes a strength, particularly when it comes to the quirks of the language translation spells that allow people from the nameless fantasy world to communicate in English. Things move pretty well, with Tamora and her companions facing many dangers, sometimes stumbling but always climbing back up on their feet to keep trying. It all wraps up reasonably well, without too many surprises (at least for grown-ups reading it), leaving some "sequel potential" as the saying goes should Hines ever decide to pursue it. (This was originally a Kickstarter project, so I have no idea if he's intending to write more or not.) It's enjoyable for what it is, offering characters interesting enough to care about and plenty of fun, sometimes perilous adventure.

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The Last Dragon on Mars (Scott Reintgen)

The Last Dragon on Mars
The Dragonships series, Book 1
Scott Reintgen
Aladdin
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Throughout the cosmos, every heavenly body, from the brightest sun to the smallest moonlet, manifests an avatar in the form of a dragon. When Earth's dragon Gaia decided her world needed life, she sacrificed herself, eventually enabling humans to evolve and take her legacy to the moon and other worlds - but nowhere else in the entire solar system had a habitable biosphere. Clearly, in order to terraform a place, the world's dragon avatar must die... but why must it be a self-sacrifice? Would it really matter how they died? Through war and treachery, humans slaughtered the great dragon Ares of Mars, to claim a second planet for themselves. Only with his last breath, Ares cursed his world. Now, there is air, and with it plants and animals, but the soil is barren, the skies lashed with killer storms, and every living thing that sprung from Ares's death is half-mad with hatred for humans, an infection that even spreads to imported pets and livestock. Earth's children may live on the planet, but it will never be theirs.
The night the boy was born on Mars, the great moon dragon Luna flew overhead, giving his mother the perfect inspiration for his name... the last gift she would ever give him. Years later, the orphaned Lunar Jones lives with a dozen other children, scraping the storm-torn wastes beyond the city gates for scrap and relics that will keep them all fed for another day on a world that's slowly dying around them. Fleeing another crew while fighting over a prize, he ends up in a forbidden military zone - and discovers an impossible secret: a dragon. And when young Dread chooses Lunar as his dragoon, the captain mentally bonded to the near-godlike being, the scrapper finds himself plunged into a new world that's far more dangerous than any storm-wracked wasteland, with stakes higher than he can imagine - for, if he and Dread fail the challenges that lie ahead, the last vestiges of Mars will fail with them.

REVIEW: I'd heard good things about this book, and the concept sounded very fun. Dragons as living avatars of heavenly bodies - able to power "dragonships" that turn the transit time from Earth to Mars into mere hours? A future with tech so advanced that power generators can spontaneously generate complex machinery and matter from microchip blueprints? How cool is all that? Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be rather less cool the more I read, until by the end I was left with a bitter, ashen taste in my mouth that managed to drop the rating below three stars.
Early on, I rather enjoyed the ideas and the world, and was willing to roll with the implausibilities for the sake of a good story - and it did indeed start out good. Lunar's the sort of scrappy underdog character that's a genre staple for a reason, fighting not just for his own survival but the found family back at the "relocation house" (basically an orphanage where Martian children wait for one of the meager apprenticeships or jobs to open up and pluck them out of poverty). He even extends his protective instincts to members of the rival crew that left him for dead, when he finds they also abandoned one of their own to die in the wilderness. When he discovers Dread in a cavern beneath the base, he also discovers one rogue general's off-the-books mission and a collection of young elite soldiers, all hand-picked and trained from early childhood in the hopes that the growing young dragon would choose one of them as his dragoon... but, instead, as implied by the foreshadowing of Luna's presence over his birth, it's Lunar who gets the honor. This does not instantly transform him into a flawless hero, though. He stumbles, he fumbles, he tries to become someone he isn't... and Dread is not some all-powerful and wise god, being young and inexperienced and possibly a touch mentally unstable, with terrifying bursts of rage out of the blue where he even threatens Lunar's life. The boy has to earn his place and his title, as well as the respect of the soldiers who become his crew - and, of course, when the inevitable major crisis hits, he and the rest find themselves subject to a trial by literal fire as the fate of Mars hangs in the balance. Along the way are memorable encounters with numerous dragons, all of which are more akin to Greco-Roman deities than humans: immensely powerful beyond human understanding, but with outsized personalities and flaws, prone to ever-shifting alliances and rivalries and bickering in which fragile mortal lives can easily be extinguished as casually as swatting a gnat. Sure, several parts are strongly reminiscent of other works (dragons bearing full crews in harness reminiscent of Naomi Novik's Temeraire, the elite military school where an unconventional underdog must prove themselves like in Orson Scott Card's classic Ender's Game, etc.), but The Last Dragon on Mars should have been a gripping, wild ride through a fantastic solar system... so what went wrong?
From early on, I had a slight itch in the back of my mind about the idea of Earth's avatar dragon/essentially-goddess Gaia sacrificing herself for life... and not just for life, but seemingly for humans. (Did dinosaurs even exist in this alternate solar system, or is this more of a Creationist take that glosses over any other species than H. sapiens, and by extension the many rich and wondrous biomes that came before us, as either nonexistent or irrelevant because "chosen by the Creator"?) Then Luna, devoted to the will and memory of Gaia (as all moons tend to be devoted to their "masters", their planets), decides to help humans. She chooses to let herself be seen and make contact with the mortals, explaining concepts of mental bonds and what dragons could do when paired with human innovation and technology (the "dragonships" and more), encouraging them to spread through the solar system even knowing that there are no other habitable worlds out there and there won't be any unless one of her kin is also willing to sacrifice themselves as Gaia did.
Why would she do this? Why would this not lead to trouble? This is never questioned, because the right of Gaia's blessed mortals to go wherever they want to, to plant their flag on whatever soil - no matter how hostile - and call it their own, is undisputed.
When Ares (understandably) refuses to give the children of Earth his planet Mars, the humans and Luna conspire to slaughter him in cold blood... which makes him the bad guy. I get that Lunar was born long after the original would-be colonists struck down Ares, but still, the growing sense that humans are somehow owed the planet - and, by extension, anywhere else they choose to go - simply by virtue of being humans... does anyone else smell more than a little "manifest destiny" doctrine, here? Couple that with how Lunar's first-person narration kept throwing in anachronistic references that seemed out of place for his character and his situation - such as comparing one woman's ponytail to swinging like a clock pendulum in a far future world where pendulum clocks would likely be obscure ancient history, or casually dropping a reference about how he and his companions are expected to save an entire planet while being younger than the driving age on Earth (which assumes that teenagers on Earth still undergo the rite of passage of learning to drive a motorized vehicle, that driving ages have not changed in hundreds of years, and that a Martian boy living a hand-to-mouth hardscrabble life with minimal access to education would know or care about a bit of trivia like that) - and later developments that enforce the "divine right of kings" in a rigid social hierarchy of unquestioned masters and obedient servants (with trouble coming when the servants dislike cruel, harmful treatment from their master and try to change the status quo), and I found my suspension of disbelief plummeting through the stratosphere.
By the end, despite some high-adrenaline space battles and world-shifting stakes, I no longer cared what happened to the people or the dragons... which was just as well, as the last twist almost had me groaning as it took the very last vestigial flutter of suspension of disbelief and stomped it flat. After the early promise and wonderful concepts, little was left but ashes and disappointment... though I will admit the dragons could be quite awesome.

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Grimpow: The Invisible Road (Rafael Abalos)

Grimpow: The Invisible Road
The Grimpow series, Book 1
Rafael Ábalos
Delacorte Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: It was winter in the mountains when the boy Grimpow stumbled across the stranger's body, frozen in the snow. When he and his companion and friend, the thief Durlib, investigate, they find silver coins, jewel-handled daggers, a message with a golden seal, and a small, strange stone that glows when Grimpow picks it up... a stone that lets him read the odd symbols on the man's message, though the boy is illiterate and the message is in code. Even more mysteriously, the stranger's body melts like frost on a spring morning after the discovery, as though bespelled.
He does not yet know it, but by taking the stone and the seal, Grimpow has begun a long and dangerous path, one that winds through long-lost histories of the Holy Land, the halls of the outlawed heretical Templar Knights, the centuries-long quests of alchemists, even the cruel and corrupted machinations of the King of France and the Pope. For that nondescript little pebble is the true Philosopher's Stone, an artifact that can lead a chosen mind along the Invisible Road to the Secret of the Wise and the very keys to creation itself - a stone for which many have died. At stake is nothing more or less than the future of humanity, whether people will rise above the age of superstition and brutal ignorance that grips whole nations, or whether all hope of enlightenment will be snuffed out like a candle.

REVIEW: Early on, it looked like Grimpow had promise, an old-school historical fiction yarn with fantasy elements incorporating alchemy and its pursuit of ultimate knowledge and the Philosopher's Stone (as much a symbol of pure wisdom and understanding as a physical object), weaving in real-world events and figures from early 14th century Europe and the corruption underlying the church and its persecution of the Knights Templar. There was a certain straightforward sense of adventure, or at least the promise of adventure, as the illiterate boy finds himself drawn on a path of learning and enlightenment. But it often drags its heels in details and repetition, not to mention numerous points where it felt like the author was lecturing the audience about the history of France, corruption in Catholicism, the origins and brutal ending of the Templars, and medieval secret societies and symbolism as embodied in alchemy and related pursuits and mystery cults. The story and characters often meander and dither without actively progressing the plot (when they aren't repeating themselves as though the reader hadn't been there with them the whole time and remembers full well such details as who Grimpow used to be before finding the stone, or what fate befell Durlib, or his time in the remote monastery studying with the monks who took him in, and so forth). Every so often, the tale manages to be exciting and even interesting, but by the end it had become far too tedious, the plot too orchestrated by Fate and Destiny. The conclusion was a non-event, though this may be explained by the fact that the book was intended to have a sequel, one which I only learned of when searching online and which was apparently never translated into English... a moot point, as I have no interest in pursuing Grimpow's adventures - or lack thereof - further.

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Kindling (Traci Chee)

Kindling
Traci Chee
Clarion
Fiction, YA Action/Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: When nation fought nation on the Kindar peninsula, kindlers were the ultimate weapon: boys and girls with special gifts focused by balar crystals, unleashing powers to protect or destroy... but at a steep cost. For to use their magic, kindlers burned up their futures, days or months or years, few surviving past their teens. Thus, they were found and trained young, sacrificed as heroes in the name of glory - until the arrival of gunpowder and hand cannons rendered them obsolete almost overnight, followed by the end of the war with Amerand's victory. The long tradition of kindler warriors was outlawed as "barbaric", and those left alive were cast aside to wander in a world that no longer wanted or needed them.
In a small backwater near the mountains, a desperate young woman seeks help. Her village of Camas has been plagued by a pack of bandits who raid the mountain passes and keep her people on the very knife-edge of starvation with their raids and demands for tribute, to the point where they may not survive the coming winter on the scraps left behind. All ignore her pleas... all except for a handful of kindlers, all of whom have fallen on their own hard times, carrying their own scars. Can they remember and honor their old war codes to defend the helpless, or is the old age of heroes and magic truly gone from the land?

REVIEW: Kindling crosses the brutal reality of child soldiers with the familiar storyline exemplified by classics such as The Magnificent Seven, where a small band of antiheroes is gathered for one last shot at redemption (a shot where not everyone is guaranteed survival, let alone success), all told in a second-person present tense perspective (that's actually a first-person plural, from a sort of collective ghostly or spiritual host that focuses on each would-be hero in turn). Does it work? In general, yes, though at some point it started wallowing in its own trauma, gore, and helpless misery (not helped by rotating audiobook narrators who sometimes lean a little hard into the emotion and gulping, traumatic hesitations) to the point where it ultimately lost a half-star in the rating.
After a brief overview of the setup and setting, the tale opens with the classic trope of a stranger drifting into town and a young woman in distress (even though the latter's pleas are initially dismissed by the former, who doesn't want to get caught up in other people's problems when her own shoulders are nearly broken under the weight of her own troubles as it is). Not until a second stranger turns up - this one a former war hero of formidable skill - that the first character gets pulled into the plot/problem, drawn as much by the magnetism and authority embodied in the legendary "Twin Valley Reaper" as stubborn loyalty to the old kindler Codes of war that nobody, not even fellow kindlers, seems to remember, let alone honor; the leader of the mountain raider band is herself a former kindler, choosing to use her training to harass and kill innocent civilians rather than defend them. Of the seven would-be heroes, six of them cope with post-traumatic stress in various unhealthy ways, while the seventh is a cadet who was mere weeks from graduating and following her dream of becoming a true kindler on the battlefield when peace was declared and wrecked her future; this lattermost character was rather over-the-top in her childish innocence and eagerness to join her elders (in experience if not quite years; all of the characters are under 20, though war aged them all decades and kindlers were never expected to live to see their twentieth birthday anyway), actively envying their clearly broken lives and restless nights full of nightmares and completely ignorant why they'd resist finishing her training and letting her join them in slaughter even after she finally bloodies her blade and realizes (or seems to, for about half a minute) that death leaves a mark on the soul. (Why are they holding out on the big "secret" that binds them all like kin, she whines to them more than once, even as she sees them struggling...) All of them are looking to redeem themselves or prove something, to the ghosts of their past if nobody else, by joining the cause to defend Camas... and all fail themselves and their fellows more than once before finally coming together to show the village, the raiders, and the world that tried to erase them just what kindlers could do when united in common cause against evil.
You may notice a lack of names in this review; this was an audiobook I listened to, so I didn't catch spellings, and I'm having one heck of a time finding any but a couple names written down anywhere. They are distinct characters, and are generally interesting if not always likeable, save when they're repetitiously wallowing in their own miseries and clinging stubbornly to ideas and attitudes that not only aren't working but which might get other people killed. I was ready to smack each of them upside the head at least once, particularly when some terrible thing was happening or mere moments away from happening and they were lost in bad memories or doom-and-gloom observations instead of, y'know, actually doing something - even the wrong thing, just something - about the terrible thing. I get that this was part of the point, exemplified by how the power of kindling is quite literally about children being burned on the pyre of war for the sake of nations and leaders who not only consider their lives disposable, but who ignore and erase them as soon as it becomes politically convenient. Even given that, though, Kindling feels like it hammers those ideas, and the traumas of its characters, past the point of effectiveness, the end of the nail coming out the far side and catching up the story from telling itself.

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Alice Payne Arrives (Kate Heartfield)

Alice Payne Arrives
The Alice Payne series, Book 1
Kate Heartfield
Tordotcom
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: In 1788, Englishwoman Alice Payne leads a secret life. By day, she's the respectable spinster daughter of a moneyed colonel, crippled in mind and body by the conflicts in the American colonies. By night, however, she is the Holy Ghost, masked highwayman and terror of the nearby roadways, mystique further enhanced by a clockwork automaton assistant... and if the fact that the Holy Ghost only ever strikes monstrous, wealthy leches hasn't been noticed by the constabulary, well, that is their problem, not hers. Besides, it's not like she's a robber only for thrills or vengeance; between the upkeep on the estate and her father's drinking and gambling problems, her ill-gotten gains are the only boundary between the Payne family and utter ruin. But one evening, what should be an ordinary robbery goes strangely awry when the carriage inexplicably disappears on the roadway. When Alice investigates, she discovers a strange clockwork device - and when she and her special friend Jane start poking around, they make a most marvelous discovery...
In 1889, Major Prudence Zuniga races to prevent the Austrian archduke's son from committing a suicide pact - again. For ten years, she's relived the same disastrous string of events over and over again, and all she's managed to do is change the name of the young woman he takes to the grave with him. It's part of an ongoing time war between two factions, the Farmers and the Guides, who each exploit time travel to reshape history as they each believe it "should" have gone... and both are doing little but mess everything up until the far future is nothing but utter, unlivable chaos. Her own life keeps getting rewritten, as does every soldier's, changes she only knows of due to a diary she keeps sequestered away in a secret spot of uncorrupted time. And she is tired of it. Unbeknownst to her superiors, she has a plan to sabotage the entire time travel network - a plan that involves making contact with a tinkerer in 1788 England...
Or, at least it did, until Prudence opens her portal in 2070 Toronto and the Holy Ghost rides out of history.

REVIEW: I had a specific window of time to fill at work, and this audiobook looked like it would do the job. A little steampunk, a dash of swashbuckling, a sprinkling of time travel hijinks... it sounded entertaining enough. Unfortunately, it never quite comes together before it hits the cliffhanger ending.
Things kick off with some promise, with Alice in her "Holy Ghost" role anticipating the thrill of another ambush on a scoundrel nobleman who deserves to have his purse lightened - but, even early on, there's something just a touch off-kilter. The style and writing, the actions and reactions of the characters themselves, often feel more like they belong in a young adult novel, as though they're in their teens or (at most) early twenties. But Alice is in her thirties, and other characters we meet are pushing forty or more. I kept having to remind myself of their ages, because my mind kept trying to roll them back. Anyway, the tale establishes a few separate times and the overall concept. Alice and Jane, ignorant of time travel (at first), are just trying to keep Alice's father and estate above water, even as Jane (her household companion and, more recently, lover) provides cover, having crafted the automaton that's become the Holy Ghost's signature... an automaton who really doesn't have much of a plot purpose, except to show that Jane is a proto-gearhead and introduce a little steampunk flair in a story otherwise lacking in steampunk anything. When Alice encounters the impossible device after the inexplicable carriage disappearance, she and Jane are quick to figure out that it's not fairy magic or deviltry but some manner of science - and, given the desperate state of the Payne household, Alice hardly hesitates to try using it for her own advantage.
Meanwhile, Major Prudence suffers one defeat too many in her efforts to change the would-be archduke's fate; when she's pulled from the operation, perpetually thwarted by manipulations from Guide enemies (which she, as a Farmer loyalist, derisively calls Misguideds, though to be honest the lines between the two are rather blurry and hardly seem to matter from the standpoint of a timeline irretrievably polluted by meddling across the board), she becomes more determined than ever to pull the proverbial trigger in her secret project to bring down time travel. But one of her first efforts (that we see) is bungled quite spectacularly, only salvaged when a bystander leaps into the fray. Alice Payne rather bowls over Prudence insofar as adapting on the fly and taking charge, which is probably why the series is named after her, but Prudence still tries to cheat and manipulate her into becoming another tool in her plan. Somewhere along the way I started feeling like the author was trying to cheat and manipulate me as a reader, too... and when the whole thing ended on a cliffhanger, I was more certain of that than ever.
The story moves relatively fast (most of the time, at least), and has some nice parts and ideas. The time travel problems and politics, though, get a little convoluted and don't quite mesh well with the swashbuckling, vaguely steampunk parts. I just plain didn't like Prudence, though I ultimately wasn't especially attached to anyone, and don't feel compelled to find out what happens next.

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Resurrection (Derek Landy)

Resurrection
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 10
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Five years ago, the impossibly powerful sorceress Darquesse devastated the magical city of Roarhaven before ascending to near-godhood and leaving this dimension behind... and Valkyrie Cain, who was once part of Darquesse, was left a shell of her former self. She still has magic, but of a wild and erratic sort never before seen by Sanctuary scholars, a magic she herself barely understands and controls. Not that she really wants to control magic anymore. She spent five years hiding out in rural America until assassins tracked her down, drawing her back to Ireland and the company of her one-time partner, Skulduggery Pleasant. A shadow organization known as the Anti-Sanctuary has been working for centuries to trigger war with the mortals; now, they're seemingly on the verge of success, potentially resurrecting a powerful new leader from the days of the war against Mevolent. The world needs saving again, and when the world needs saving Skulduggery and Valkyrie are expected to step up to the task - but can the traumatized young woman remember how to be a hero in time to stop disaster?

REVIEW: Apparently, the series originally ended after the previous installment, but Landy realized he had more stories to tell. However, even though Valkyrie has aged out of the Young Adult protagonist category, this book still pitches itself as being in that category, justified by the introduction of a "next generation" would-be hero: fourteen-year-old Omen Darkly, the overlooked brother of a prophesied "Chosen One", attending Roarhaven's first boarding school for young sorcerers, Corrival, in a not-so-subtle jab at a certain famous wizard-based series. This gives Resurrection a slight split personality, as on the one hand it wants to continue growing up and growing darker with Valkyrie as she struggles with PTSD and her wild magic, while on the other it's trying to be a light reset/reboot with younger characters who can't help but be bowled over by Skulduggery's sheer force of personality and the weight of series history. The two more or less work together, but at times can't help conflicting, and this (plus a matter of one subplot and bad timing) help explain the slight drop in the rating.
In the beginning, Valkyrie has returned to Ireland and her late uncle's estate, along with the dog Xena, but is still far from recovered, and far from eager to jump back in the world-saving game. She has trouble even visiting her family after six months in the country, still guilty over what she had to do to her kid sister Alice in order to secure the scepter of the ancients and still traumatized by the danger she put them all in. She also can't exactly stroll down the streets of Roarhaven without being the object of stares and hatred, as many still blame her for Darquesse's rampage (though there are a few who still worship the ascended sorceress - almost one subplot too many, here, as very little ultimately comes of that in this volume). Roarhaven itself is not the town it used to be, as China Sorrows has used her new power and influence to amass even more power and influence, even granting legitimacy to a "reformed" Church of the Faceless Ones and diminishing the role of the council and others who might stand in her way. Skulduggery, now an independent Arbiter working with Sanctuaries worldwide, could very much use his partner and friend Valkyrie Cain again as he seeks a missing undercover agent who tried to infiltrate the Anti-Sanctuary, but the Valkyrie he needs is not the one he has, and she may never be that person again... though that doesn't mean she's entirely helpless, even as she grapples with her traumas and growing list of enemies.
Necessity makes them reach out for more allies beyond China's reach, which leads them to Corrival and Omen. The boy used to try to live up to the example set by his brother Auger (a Harry Potter-like savior, if one who grew up in the magical community knowing full well that he was intended to be the hero, whose extracurricular exploits are glimpsed and hinted at but not explored in depth), but eventually gave up trying when even his own parents dismiss him as the "also-ran". Being contacted by no less a celebrity than Skulduggery Pleasant gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, he can be someone, maybe he can have his own adventures and be his own person, giving him the courage to step up and try even when the skeleton detective himself tells him he can go back to his safe and unseen existence. He is not a second Valkyrie, being his own character, though he's so much tied into the clearly-riffing-on-Harry-Potter Augur that he sometimes feels slightly out of step with the greater series universe.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Sanctuary mages progress their dark plot, which involves the literal resurrection of a former powerful mage - helped by a sorcerer with the power to turn anyone they touch into a temporary psychopath under his control, which leads to some serious complications and dark moments when he gets his hands on Skulduggery Pleasant (another development that forces Valkyrie to stand up and resume her reluctant heroine mantle, as her friend and partner becomes an enemy). As is typical for the series, the action just keeps coming, interspersed with some sharp dialog and humor and some dark twists. I just couldn't help wondering throughout what the series would've become had it been allowed to shake off the last ties to its young adult category.
One of the subplots, as mentioned, also helped contribute to the drop in the rating. It involves a mortal American president who was clearly inspired by the one currently occupying the nation's highest office (whose first regime coincided with its writing and release), using clandestine sorcerous connections to gain power and turn the nation into his own personal evil empire. The fact that the same occupant has returned, with more power than ever, destroying institutions and ideals that used to actually mean something to the very people gleefully and gloatingly kicking them down... As I mentioned before, timing made it very hard for me to even listen to a fictitious version of said occupant, facing the very real and not-fictional long-term damage and terror unleashed... I want to continue the series at some point, but now, today of all days, as a major portion of that cruelty is codified into law and literal actual not-in-an-Onion-satire-article merchandising is being sold glorifying a concentration camp on American soil... I just can't. (And if this is too topical and political for a book review, well, I'm livin' this nightmare and it's my blog, and I don't experience literature in a vacuum so my reality can't help bleeding into my reading.)

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