Woods Runner
Gary Paulsen
Wendy Lamb Books
Fiction, MG Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before he could remember, Samuel has been drawn to the woods beyond the family homestead on the frontier of colonial America. His city-born parents barely venture out of sight of their cabin, but the boy thrives among the trees, learning to read trail sign as easily as letters. By the time he turns 13 in the year 1775, he's the main hunter in their small settlement. When rumors reach the farm about unrest in nearby Boston, Samuel doesn't expect it to matter. The homesteaders aren't rebelling against anyone, harmlessly tending their land, too far out of the way to be bothered by wars or politics.
Then Samuel comes home from a hunting trip to find the farms ablaze, most of his neighbors dead, and his parents missing - taken captive by redcoats.
Barely surviving an encounter with the English soldiers and their Indian scouts, Samuel is rescued by a group of Americans on their way to join up with the fledgling rebellion. The young man still wants no part in wars or violence, but the war has stolen away his family, and there's nothing he won't do to free them - even venture far from his beloved woodlands to the teeming throngs of English-held New York City.
REVIEW: Intercutting Samuel's story with historical facts on the American Revolution, Paulsen presents a side of the conflict that often gets brushed aside, the average colonist who never even thought about politics or rebellion until the brewing war trampled their lives and drew first blood. Though his parents are first-generation farmers learning as they go, Samuel has known no life but that of a woods runner, and despite all the books he reads and stories he's told by other homesteaders he could see no finer future for himself than spending his days among the trackless frontier forests, far from city folk and their troubles. The small settlement he's part of thinks that their indifference and insignificance will spare them having to choose a side, but they barely even hear of the Boston Massacre (communication being a slow and spotty thing in the late 1700's) before they wake to find redcoats at their door. Most are slaughtered outright, but Samuel's parents are taken captive... and thus begins Samuel's journey, not just from the woodlands to civilization, but from peace to war. From the outset, despite his misgivings over killing another human being, he is determined to do whatever it takes to get his parents back, even despite the great odds against him. He's never even seen a real town before, much less a proper city - and New York City is firmly in the grip of the British forces, where thousands of colonist prisoners languish in desperate, often deadly conditions, with minimal food and no medical care; more Americans died as prisoners of war than in combat during the Revolution, according to historical records... and even those records often gloss over civilian casualties. Through sheer grit and some luck, Samuel manages to rise to the occasion, though the experience leaves scars, not all of them physical. A relatively short tale, Woods Runner successfully evokes both the feeling of the long-lost primeval frontier wilderness and what it was like to quite literally have an international war turn up on the doorstep, ending a small and quiet dream of pastoral life in a single world-shattering moment.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sons Will Eat Today (Debra Borchert) - My Review
Thieving Forest (Martha Conway) - My Review
The Rifle (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Godkiller (Hannah Kaner)
Godkiller
The Fallen Gods series, Book 1
Hannah Kaner
HarperVoyager
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In a world where gods are birthed by the desires and fears of humans, competition for offerings and worship can lead to bloody massacres and even war - which is why the new king of Middren, young Arren, banished them from his lands. Now, his knights stamp out shrines and mercilessly root out fledgling worshipers, while mercenary "godkillers" hunt down the deities themselves with weapons of briddite that harm immortals as mere metal cannot. It may seem harsh, but it's the only way to prevent another bloody war like the one that nearly destroyed Middren and has claimed more than one of its neighboring lands.
Kissen lost her family and a leg to fanatical worshipers of a fire god when she was but a girl, and has dedicated her life to destroying deities wherever she finds them. But when Inara, a sheltered daughter of a local noblewoman, comes to her for help, Kissen feels torn. The girl has somehow become bound to Skedi, a little god of white lies, though neither recalls how it happened. Killing the god will kill the girl, but letting it live goes against everything Kissen believes in, everything she's dedicated her life to as a godkiller. Then Inara's home is burned to the ground, her family murdered, and Kissen realizes there's something much larger and more dangerous going on than just one god-bound girl.
Elo was once Arren's best friend and most loyal knight, until their final battle against the god of war - the one that cemented Arren's rule, but left Elo devastated. Now a humble baker, he tries to forget his old friend and the past... until Arren himself turns up on his doorstep. In that final battle, the king took a blow to the heart that would have been fatal, save for the intervention of a fire goddess... but the flame she placed in his breast is fading. Arren can't seek a new miracle without revealing his greatest secret, so he begs Elo to undertake one last quest in his name.
There is only one place in Middren where answers might be found: Blenraden, the abandoned citadel where the final blow of Arren's war was struck. Here, the last of the kingdom's wild gods endure, the only deities with the strength to grant the favors needed by Kissen, Inara, and Elo - gods whose very nature makes them dangerous. But the gods may be the least of the dangers they face, in a land teetering on the brink of civil war under Arren's iron fist.
REVIEW: It seemed like a decent idea, and I remember hearing good things about Godkiller when it came out, so when I chanced upon a free-to-me copy I snapped it up. Unfortunately, this is another case where hype exceeded experience.
Things start on a promising, if dark, note, as young Kissen and her family are being hauled away by neighbors who have turned away from the beneficial ocean god of their island home in favor of the promises of wealth and glory made by a fire god... a fire god who demands human sacrifice. Scarred and godmarked by the experience, it makes for a great origin story for our future godkiller. But the rest of the book somehow lacks the spark (no pun intended) of that first chapter. The world of Middren feels weirdly flattened and hard to believe in: this is a kingdom that was nearly razed to its foundations when the old queen fell in with a particularly violent cult, in a world where gods regularly turn cultish and violent and throw mortal lives away in their own petty struggles, all within memory of most people alive (and actively ongoing beyond Middren's borders, so one doesn't even need a history lesson to know this)... yet an apparently large percentage of people keep running back to gods and resent being told that maybe there's a reason to be cautious about where and how one spends one's faith. The core characters become hard to believe in, as well, sometimes behaving irrationally given their history and situations, with little to no chemistry between them. So many of the events that formed them and their relationships are in the rear view mirror that the book keeps looking back over its shoulder, in a way that made me wonder if maybe Kaner should've just written the prequel instead. Kissen goes from being understandably embittered to just plain unlikable and crude for the sake of being crude. Elo's pining for the best friend (clearly more than just a friend to him, though that's brushed aside in manufactured sexual tension with Kissen, because apparently that trope must be shoehorned in every story even if it makes no sense for the characters involved) and the life he walked away from almost trails into comedy territory it gets so repetitive. Speaking of repetition, more than one plot point and event and emotional beat is repeated multiple times, apparently because I, as the reader, was not expected to remember things from just the previous chapter (or previous repetitions), enough that it really started grating on me. All of this kicked me out of the tale enough for me to realize that I've seen many of the key concepts at play here in other stories that I found more immersive, such as Terry Pratchett's Small Gods or Charles Edward Pogue's book and film Dragonheart; even the oft-repeated imagery of King Arren bearing the severed stag head of the war god, symbol of his victory and rule, put me in mind of the Miyazaki animated film Princess Mononoke. The climax had some nice moments, but it lost a fair bit of impact for me as I had long since stopped caring about the world and only had minimal concern about the fates of the characters involved. It all serves to set up a sequel, but I don't expect I'll follow up on that.
Godkiller had some nice ideas and lots of potential, with a few standout moments that worked. It also tended to avoid easy wins; people pay for mistakes and for victories, sometimes for the rest of their lives. There's some decent exploration of the dangers of fanaticism and how even the smallest and most seemingly-benign faiths can metastasize into something deadly and monstrous, twisting people into disposable tools of someone (or something) else's agenda. But my lack of engagement with the world and characters just kept kicking me out, and I kept thinking instead of how I'd seen similar ideas explored more successfully elsewhere.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Black Sun Rising (C. S. Friedman) - My Review
American Gods (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Small Gods (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
The Fallen Gods series, Book 1
Hannah Kaner
HarperVoyager
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In a world where gods are birthed by the desires and fears of humans, competition for offerings and worship can lead to bloody massacres and even war - which is why the new king of Middren, young Arren, banished them from his lands. Now, his knights stamp out shrines and mercilessly root out fledgling worshipers, while mercenary "godkillers" hunt down the deities themselves with weapons of briddite that harm immortals as mere metal cannot. It may seem harsh, but it's the only way to prevent another bloody war like the one that nearly destroyed Middren and has claimed more than one of its neighboring lands.
Kissen lost her family and a leg to fanatical worshipers of a fire god when she was but a girl, and has dedicated her life to destroying deities wherever she finds them. But when Inara, a sheltered daughter of a local noblewoman, comes to her for help, Kissen feels torn. The girl has somehow become bound to Skedi, a little god of white lies, though neither recalls how it happened. Killing the god will kill the girl, but letting it live goes against everything Kissen believes in, everything she's dedicated her life to as a godkiller. Then Inara's home is burned to the ground, her family murdered, and Kissen realizes there's something much larger and more dangerous going on than just one god-bound girl.
Elo was once Arren's best friend and most loyal knight, until their final battle against the god of war - the one that cemented Arren's rule, but left Elo devastated. Now a humble baker, he tries to forget his old friend and the past... until Arren himself turns up on his doorstep. In that final battle, the king took a blow to the heart that would have been fatal, save for the intervention of a fire goddess... but the flame she placed in his breast is fading. Arren can't seek a new miracle without revealing his greatest secret, so he begs Elo to undertake one last quest in his name.
There is only one place in Middren where answers might be found: Blenraden, the abandoned citadel where the final blow of Arren's war was struck. Here, the last of the kingdom's wild gods endure, the only deities with the strength to grant the favors needed by Kissen, Inara, and Elo - gods whose very nature makes them dangerous. But the gods may be the least of the dangers they face, in a land teetering on the brink of civil war under Arren's iron fist.
REVIEW: It seemed like a decent idea, and I remember hearing good things about Godkiller when it came out, so when I chanced upon a free-to-me copy I snapped it up. Unfortunately, this is another case where hype exceeded experience.
Things start on a promising, if dark, note, as young Kissen and her family are being hauled away by neighbors who have turned away from the beneficial ocean god of their island home in favor of the promises of wealth and glory made by a fire god... a fire god who demands human sacrifice. Scarred and godmarked by the experience, it makes for a great origin story for our future godkiller. But the rest of the book somehow lacks the spark (no pun intended) of that first chapter. The world of Middren feels weirdly flattened and hard to believe in: this is a kingdom that was nearly razed to its foundations when the old queen fell in with a particularly violent cult, in a world where gods regularly turn cultish and violent and throw mortal lives away in their own petty struggles, all within memory of most people alive (and actively ongoing beyond Middren's borders, so one doesn't even need a history lesson to know this)... yet an apparently large percentage of people keep running back to gods and resent being told that maybe there's a reason to be cautious about where and how one spends one's faith. The core characters become hard to believe in, as well, sometimes behaving irrationally given their history and situations, with little to no chemistry between them. So many of the events that formed them and their relationships are in the rear view mirror that the book keeps looking back over its shoulder, in a way that made me wonder if maybe Kaner should've just written the prequel instead. Kissen goes from being understandably embittered to just plain unlikable and crude for the sake of being crude. Elo's pining for the best friend (clearly more than just a friend to him, though that's brushed aside in manufactured sexual tension with Kissen, because apparently that trope must be shoehorned in every story even if it makes no sense for the characters involved) and the life he walked away from almost trails into comedy territory it gets so repetitive. Speaking of repetition, more than one plot point and event and emotional beat is repeated multiple times, apparently because I, as the reader, was not expected to remember things from just the previous chapter (or previous repetitions), enough that it really started grating on me. All of this kicked me out of the tale enough for me to realize that I've seen many of the key concepts at play here in other stories that I found more immersive, such as Terry Pratchett's Small Gods or Charles Edward Pogue's book and film Dragonheart; even the oft-repeated imagery of King Arren bearing the severed stag head of the war god, symbol of his victory and rule, put me in mind of the Miyazaki animated film Princess Mononoke. The climax had some nice moments, but it lost a fair bit of impact for me as I had long since stopped caring about the world and only had minimal concern about the fates of the characters involved. It all serves to set up a sequel, but I don't expect I'll follow up on that.
Godkiller had some nice ideas and lots of potential, with a few standout moments that worked. It also tended to avoid easy wins; people pay for mistakes and for victories, sometimes for the rest of their lives. There's some decent exploration of the dangers of fanaticism and how even the smallest and most seemingly-benign faiths can metastasize into something deadly and monstrous, twisting people into disposable tools of someone (or something) else's agenda. But my lack of engagement with the world and characters just kept kicking me out, and I kept thinking instead of how I'd seen similar ideas explored more successfully elsewhere.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Black Sun Rising (C. S. Friedman) - My Review
American Gods (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Small Gods (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Friday, June 14, 2024
Age of War (Michael J. Sullivan)
Age of War
The Legends of the First Empire series, Book 3
Michael J. Sullivan
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The impossible has happened: the many human tribes have united under a single keening to face the threat of Fane Lothian and the Fhrey race... none other than Persephone of Dhal Rhen. The next step will require them to place more trust than ever in the exiled Galantian warriors and their leader Nyphron - a man who has made little effort to mask his own ambitions to replace Lothian on the Forest Throne. Nyphron was once the commander of the garrison at Alon Rhyst, the Fhrey city at the Grandford gorge between human and elven lands. He is confident that his name still holds enough weight to convince the residents and soldiers to allow him to return despite him being an exile, even if they're unlikely to go so far as to actively take up arms and support the humans. At Alon Rhyst, they'll control a chokepoint between the realms, and they'll be taking the coming war to the Fane instead of waiting for Fhrey armies to sweep across Rhuneland toward them. With that advantage, and with their new weapons - secrets of iron stolen from the dwarfs, bows and arrows and the world's first archers, and Suri, the first human known to have mastered the magical Art once exclusively wielded by the Fhrey clan of Miralyith - the humans just might stand a slim chance of surviving Fane Lothian's wrath. But, though the Fhrey are no gods (as humans long believed), they are still formidable foes, and even the greatest of sacrifices may not be enough to endure the might of the elven empire.
REVIEW: The third volume of this epic series marks a pivotal point in the history of the world. It was the beginning of the end of an era when Raithe became the first human to strike down a Fhrey lord, revealing the elves to be mere mortals after all. Now, as Persephone, the survivors of Dhal Rhen, and the rest of humanity marches toward open warfare with their former masters, so much has changed, yet they still have a long way to go to begin to stand a chance against the ancient civilization of the Fhrey, even notwithstanding the threat of their magic; one half-wild girl outlier, no matter how innately talented, cannot stand alone against an entire clan of mages who have trained for centuries. As greater changes move through human society - iron tools, arrows, the wheel, and other innovations, often the work of the prodigal young woman Roan - the characters find their own roles and futures changing in ways they never imagined. Raithe has gone from being the lone survivor of a clan with an unsavory reputation to a hero... and from the man who once wanted nothing more than to turn his back on his fellow humans, to run away and live out his days far away from elves and wars and responsibilities, to a man willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his race - and for Persephone, whom he still loves, even if her new rank and responsibilities (and some missteps on his part) move her further and further away from his reach. Persephone, meanwhile, is still getting used to the burden of leadership; it was one thing to be wife of a chieftain, and later the chiefain herself of her small clan, but quite another to be keening of all the humans... a keening in a time of unprecedented change and a coming war that may well see the Rhunelands swept clean of her kind. She finds herself increasingly torn between love and duty, feeling every loss yet forced to move forward if those losses are to have any meaning. The rest of the core cast also find their roles and lives shifting. None of them are the simple villagers they were at the start of the first book, and not everyone is guaranteed a happy ending.
On the Fhrey side, the spoiled Prince Manwyndule of the Fhrey has, predictably, not learned as much as he should have after the events of the previous book, already editing his memories to a version he prefers to live with. Like his father, he still sees humans as little more than flies to be swatted away, not taking the threat before them seriously; he's more indignant than alarmed that things still haven't been resolved, though he's sure war will be an interesting, even fun little excursion (and perhaps a chance to finally impress his father, whose disappointment in his presumptive heir is palpable in every moment they're together).
As before, the plot moves along at a decent enough pace, though there are a few times when people seem to dither and drag out moments that call for more alacrity. There are also a few surprises I didn't see coming - in a good way, not in an eye-rolling are-you-kidding-me way. The ending sets things up for an exciting next installment, which is apparently a pivot to a second trilogy. Which is a good thing, as the book would've lost a half-mark if it had left things where they are. (According to a foreword, Sullivan almost did that; I suppose, if I'd read the original Riyria books first as I was probably supposed to, I would be able to infer the events in the gap between the ending of Age of War and the beginning of the original series. But he looked at his work and realized it wasn't finished, and so wrote on. Thus, I will read on.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan) - My Review
The Legends of the First Empire series, Book 3
Michael J. Sullivan
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The impossible has happened: the many human tribes have united under a single keening to face the threat of Fane Lothian and the Fhrey race... none other than Persephone of Dhal Rhen. The next step will require them to place more trust than ever in the exiled Galantian warriors and their leader Nyphron - a man who has made little effort to mask his own ambitions to replace Lothian on the Forest Throne. Nyphron was once the commander of the garrison at Alon Rhyst, the Fhrey city at the Grandford gorge between human and elven lands. He is confident that his name still holds enough weight to convince the residents and soldiers to allow him to return despite him being an exile, even if they're unlikely to go so far as to actively take up arms and support the humans. At Alon Rhyst, they'll control a chokepoint between the realms, and they'll be taking the coming war to the Fane instead of waiting for Fhrey armies to sweep across Rhuneland toward them. With that advantage, and with their new weapons - secrets of iron stolen from the dwarfs, bows and arrows and the world's first archers, and Suri, the first human known to have mastered the magical Art once exclusively wielded by the Fhrey clan of Miralyith - the humans just might stand a slim chance of surviving Fane Lothian's wrath. But, though the Fhrey are no gods (as humans long believed), they are still formidable foes, and even the greatest of sacrifices may not be enough to endure the might of the elven empire.
REVIEW: The third volume of this epic series marks a pivotal point in the history of the world. It was the beginning of the end of an era when Raithe became the first human to strike down a Fhrey lord, revealing the elves to be mere mortals after all. Now, as Persephone, the survivors of Dhal Rhen, and the rest of humanity marches toward open warfare with their former masters, so much has changed, yet they still have a long way to go to begin to stand a chance against the ancient civilization of the Fhrey, even notwithstanding the threat of their magic; one half-wild girl outlier, no matter how innately talented, cannot stand alone against an entire clan of mages who have trained for centuries. As greater changes move through human society - iron tools, arrows, the wheel, and other innovations, often the work of the prodigal young woman Roan - the characters find their own roles and futures changing in ways they never imagined. Raithe has gone from being the lone survivor of a clan with an unsavory reputation to a hero... and from the man who once wanted nothing more than to turn his back on his fellow humans, to run away and live out his days far away from elves and wars and responsibilities, to a man willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his race - and for Persephone, whom he still loves, even if her new rank and responsibilities (and some missteps on his part) move her further and further away from his reach. Persephone, meanwhile, is still getting used to the burden of leadership; it was one thing to be wife of a chieftain, and later the chiefain herself of her small clan, but quite another to be keening of all the humans... a keening in a time of unprecedented change and a coming war that may well see the Rhunelands swept clean of her kind. She finds herself increasingly torn between love and duty, feeling every loss yet forced to move forward if those losses are to have any meaning. The rest of the core cast also find their roles and lives shifting. None of them are the simple villagers they were at the start of the first book, and not everyone is guaranteed a happy ending.
On the Fhrey side, the spoiled Prince Manwyndule of the Fhrey has, predictably, not learned as much as he should have after the events of the previous book, already editing his memories to a version he prefers to live with. Like his father, he still sees humans as little more than flies to be swatted away, not taking the threat before them seriously; he's more indignant than alarmed that things still haven't been resolved, though he's sure war will be an interesting, even fun little excursion (and perhaps a chance to finally impress his father, whose disappointment in his presumptive heir is palpable in every moment they're together).
As before, the plot moves along at a decent enough pace, though there are a few times when people seem to dither and drag out moments that call for more alacrity. There are also a few surprises I didn't see coming - in a good way, not in an eye-rolling are-you-kidding-me way. The ending sets things up for an exciting next installment, which is apparently a pivot to a second trilogy. Which is a good thing, as the book would've lost a half-mark if it had left things where they are. (According to a foreword, Sullivan almost did that; I suppose, if I'd read the original Riyria books first as I was probably supposed to, I would be able to infer the events in the gap between the ending of Age of War and the beginning of the original series. But he looked at his work and realized it wasn't finished, and so wrote on. Thus, I will read on.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan) - My Review
Friday, June 7, 2024
Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger! (M. T. Anderson)
Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger!
A Pals in Peril Tale, Book 4
M. T. Anderson
Beach Lane Books
Fiction, MG Action/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When last we left our plucky pals - ordinary girl Lily Gefelty, Katie Mulligan (young heroine of haunted Horror Hollow), and Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut - they were in the Vbngoom monastery in the high mountains of exotic Delaware, having just thwarted an evil criminal network's plans to loot the place and turn it into a cheap tourist trap. Now they face the peril of escaping Delaware's many dangers and countless spies in order to get back home to their drab home town of Pelt. But the autocrat in charge - His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autocrat of Dagsboro, who has long coveted the hidden monastery and its many secrets, secrets that could give him and his vast spy networks unlimited powers and ensure his cruel reign lasts forever - isn't about to let the foreign meddlers and their monk friends slip free without an extended stay in one of the state's many well-appointed interrogation rooms. Fortunately, the Vbngoom head monk has contacts inside the Delaware resistance, who promise aid in the form of Agent Q. Unfortunately, nobody knows what Q looks like... or whether one agent, no matter how good or no matter how many cool spy gadgets they may have, will be enough to help them escape.
REVIEW: The fourth installment of the hilarious series turns its attention to spy novels, as the imperiled pals deal with Delaware's devious spy network with the not-always-helpful-help of "Agent Q", a boy no older than themselves but with the arrogance of someone ten times his size. More wondrous (and not so wondrous) sides of the exotic realm of Delaware unfold, with everything from airship cities to sapient lobsters to state-sanctioned game shows unmasking traitors to the autocrat, though it does still sometimes feel like its repeating itself and could've used a fresh setting. Katie's crush on the young monk Drgnan (it was explained in the previous volume that there is a severe shortage of vowels in the autocrat's mismanaged state) gets some follow-through... along with the first hints of unease by Lily, who doesn't want to be jealous of her best friend finding some happiness but can't seem to stop that squirmy feeling in her belly when she sees them holding hands. Jasper Dash, meanwhile, is a bit unsettled to see some of himself reflected in the egocentric Q, another young hero of a book series who relies on all sorts of sciencey gadgetry and insists in saving the day. The story has a few more breather moments for incremental character growth, but is still fairly relentless in its action and its humor, more than once hiding just a little sliver of something sharper beneath the silly surface. I expect I'll polish off the fifth and final volume in the future.
(Edit - Apparently, there is actually a sixth installment, but my library's Libby service doesn't have it... dang it...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Whales on Stilts (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Mac Barnett) - My Review
The Name of This Book is Secret (Pseudonymous Bosch) - My Review
A Pals in Peril Tale, Book 4
M. T. Anderson
Beach Lane Books
Fiction, MG Action/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When last we left our plucky pals - ordinary girl Lily Gefelty, Katie Mulligan (young heroine of haunted Horror Hollow), and Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut - they were in the Vbngoom monastery in the high mountains of exotic Delaware, having just thwarted an evil criminal network's plans to loot the place and turn it into a cheap tourist trap. Now they face the peril of escaping Delaware's many dangers and countless spies in order to get back home to their drab home town of Pelt. But the autocrat in charge - His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autocrat of Dagsboro, who has long coveted the hidden monastery and its many secrets, secrets that could give him and his vast spy networks unlimited powers and ensure his cruel reign lasts forever - isn't about to let the foreign meddlers and their monk friends slip free without an extended stay in one of the state's many well-appointed interrogation rooms. Fortunately, the Vbngoom head monk has contacts inside the Delaware resistance, who promise aid in the form of Agent Q. Unfortunately, nobody knows what Q looks like... or whether one agent, no matter how good or no matter how many cool spy gadgets they may have, will be enough to help them escape.
REVIEW: The fourth installment of the hilarious series turns its attention to spy novels, as the imperiled pals deal with Delaware's devious spy network with the not-always-helpful-help of "Agent Q", a boy no older than themselves but with the arrogance of someone ten times his size. More wondrous (and not so wondrous) sides of the exotic realm of Delaware unfold, with everything from airship cities to sapient lobsters to state-sanctioned game shows unmasking traitors to the autocrat, though it does still sometimes feel like its repeating itself and could've used a fresh setting. Katie's crush on the young monk Drgnan (it was explained in the previous volume that there is a severe shortage of vowels in the autocrat's mismanaged state) gets some follow-through... along with the first hints of unease by Lily, who doesn't want to be jealous of her best friend finding some happiness but can't seem to stop that squirmy feeling in her belly when she sees them holding hands. Jasper Dash, meanwhile, is a bit unsettled to see some of himself reflected in the egocentric Q, another young hero of a book series who relies on all sorts of sciencey gadgetry and insists in saving the day. The story has a few more breather moments for incremental character growth, but is still fairly relentless in its action and its humor, more than once hiding just a little sliver of something sharper beneath the silly surface. I expect I'll polish off the fifth and final volume in the future.
(Edit - Apparently, there is actually a sixth installment, but my library's Libby service doesn't have it... dang it...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Whales on Stilts (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Mac Barnett) - My Review
The Name of This Book is Secret (Pseudonymous Bosch) - My Review
Thursday, June 6, 2024
Heavenbreaker (Sara Wolf)
Heavenbreaker
The Heavenbreaker series, Book 1
Sara Wolf
Red Tower Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The day Synali murdered her father was the day she meant to die. All her life, she lived in squalor with her mother in the Low Wards of the space station humanity has called home for over four centuries while Lord Hauteclare and his legitimate offspring lived in idle luxury on the upper decks... until the man, bidding for a spot closer to the Nova-King, decided to eliminate any potential blemishes on his publicly spotless reputation via an assassin. Killing Lord Hauteclare nearly destroyed Synali, and now that the deed is done she only wants to do one last thing: humiliate the man's House so publicly the Nova-King will have no choice but to dissolve it and send its members away in disgrace forevermore. To that end, she means to steal his steed and ride in the coming tourney. Steeds - massive mecha suits patterned off the machines that once saved humanity from the aliens who destroyed Old Earth and scattered the surviving stations across the galaxy - are the playthings of the noble Houses, their zero-gravity jousting matches among the few sports approved by the church, and the source of much of a House's fortune and prestige. If a lowborn bastard daughter was found piloting a steed, even if she was found dead in the saddle... well, Hauteclare would never survive the scandal.
She didn't expect to survive, albeit barely.
When she awakens, a stranger makes her an offer: he will train her to ride a steed for real, to enter in the coming championship tourneys. For every match she wins, he will eliminate one of the nobles who helped bring the assassin to her mother's doorstep. Each death will bring House Hauteclare closer and closer to permanent dissolution. At the end, he even promises Synali what she most wants, a clean death so she can join her mother in the afterlife. With literally nothing left to lose, Synali readily agrees. But there's a lot more to piloting a steed than anyone outside the Houses understands, and a lot more to her new sponsor/partner than she knows. Worse, now that she's irrevocably committed to her own death, she unexpectedly and painfully finally finds reasons to want to live - such as her future rival in the tourney, a noble who represents everything she hates about his class, but whom she can't get out of her mind.
REVIEW: It sounded like a decent space adventure with a little romantic sizzle, and it started out with great promise, as Synali - a young woman who has clawed her way up from nothing, breaking her mind and spirit and body to get to this moment of perfect vengeance - is standing over the body of her uncle and preparing for what she expects to be her last moments in this life. This, I thought, is the sort of main character I want to follow through a book.
I wish I knew where she went, because she disappeared long before the halfway point, replaced with someone else who had her name and her backstory but was too wrapped up in pain and angst and forbidden lust and all-around stubborn refusal to notice what was right in front of her face to live up to the promise from those first pages.
The world she inhabits starts out on shaky ground - the exiled remnants of humanity have found themselves in orbit around a gas giant, and are slowly trying (and failing) to terraform it (though I'm not sure how that would work on a gas giant, unless humanity meant to live suspended in the atmosphere), while reverting to a weird mishmash of dystopian high-tech and pseudo-historical lifestyles... including what are basically literally castles on a space station - and only gets less plausible as I lost interest in the main character and started poking at the edges and tugging threads. The author also seems prone to repeating passages and emotional beats and descriptors ad nauseam (if I ever read about eyes the color of redwood and platinum hair again, someone will experience pain), and the tourney matches are all far too long, especially when it's a foregone conclusion that Synali will suffer greatly and unimaginably in the first one or two passes before miraculously pulling a victory out of the steed Heavenbreaker's thrusters (if I ever read another "dramatic" countdown again... more pain will happen). The plot starts to resemble a patchwork quilt of random ideas and notions snatched from other franchises that don't always fit together: a cup of Metropolis, a dash of Dune, a generous pour of The Hunger Games... even Watership Down gets lifted and slapped into a future so far removed from Earth that it's unclear if rabbits even survive on the station, let alone novels about them (though the culture and vocabulary and symbolism are chock full of references that seem very anachronistic in a setting where Earth is far more myth than concrete cultural memory). There's also a heavy Christian church presence for little reason except perhaps to explain why a highly advanced civilization like this one presumes to be has completely abandoned anything like birth control, even among the nobles to whom bastard children are still considered the ultimate stain. Then again, attitudes toward gender and sex, despite some nods to women as steed riders and scientists, seem very much rooted in the past (or maybe that's the reason for the church presence, to explain why women are still considered the sinners entirely to blame for men's apparently uncontrollable urges and even violence toward them). Even the one woman rider most firm in her belief in old knightly ideas of honor, above and beyond personal emotions and entanglements, inexplicably degenerates into a cliche fit of petty jealousy once she's in an engagement that even she admits is all about household obligation and not at all about emotion... at least, not until she realizes that her intended spouse has feelings for the wrong woman.
Anyway, amid all this mismatched mishmash of too-familiar snap-together parts and a setting that seems far more about aesthetics and mood than anything like plausibility or even internal consistency (much like the characters themselves), everything winds up being drawn out way too long as everyone wallows in extreme emotions and manufactured angst and turmoil (and yet another long countdown and arena match between giant mechs and attempts at witty banter by color commentators), building up to a climax... and no resolution. Yes, after all that, after slogging it through to the end hoping against hope for an ending that pulls it all together and delivers some sort of payoff, the story ends on a cliffhanger. But a cliffhanger only works if I care whether anyone actually is rescued before they lose their grip and plummet to their doom. By then, I could not have cared less. Despite the early promise and some potential in the story here and there, I just got sick of everyone and everything long before then.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Race the Sands (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
Hard Reboot (Django Wexler) - My Review
The Heavenbreaker series, Book 1
Sara Wolf
Red Tower Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The day Synali murdered her father was the day she meant to die. All her life, she lived in squalor with her mother in the Low Wards of the space station humanity has called home for over four centuries while Lord Hauteclare and his legitimate offspring lived in idle luxury on the upper decks... until the man, bidding for a spot closer to the Nova-King, decided to eliminate any potential blemishes on his publicly spotless reputation via an assassin. Killing Lord Hauteclare nearly destroyed Synali, and now that the deed is done she only wants to do one last thing: humiliate the man's House so publicly the Nova-King will have no choice but to dissolve it and send its members away in disgrace forevermore. To that end, she means to steal his steed and ride in the coming tourney. Steeds - massive mecha suits patterned off the machines that once saved humanity from the aliens who destroyed Old Earth and scattered the surviving stations across the galaxy - are the playthings of the noble Houses, their zero-gravity jousting matches among the few sports approved by the church, and the source of much of a House's fortune and prestige. If a lowborn bastard daughter was found piloting a steed, even if she was found dead in the saddle... well, Hauteclare would never survive the scandal.
She didn't expect to survive, albeit barely.
When she awakens, a stranger makes her an offer: he will train her to ride a steed for real, to enter in the coming championship tourneys. For every match she wins, he will eliminate one of the nobles who helped bring the assassin to her mother's doorstep. Each death will bring House Hauteclare closer and closer to permanent dissolution. At the end, he even promises Synali what she most wants, a clean death so she can join her mother in the afterlife. With literally nothing left to lose, Synali readily agrees. But there's a lot more to piloting a steed than anyone outside the Houses understands, and a lot more to her new sponsor/partner than she knows. Worse, now that she's irrevocably committed to her own death, she unexpectedly and painfully finally finds reasons to want to live - such as her future rival in the tourney, a noble who represents everything she hates about his class, but whom she can't get out of her mind.
REVIEW: It sounded like a decent space adventure with a little romantic sizzle, and it started out with great promise, as Synali - a young woman who has clawed her way up from nothing, breaking her mind and spirit and body to get to this moment of perfect vengeance - is standing over the body of her uncle and preparing for what she expects to be her last moments in this life. This, I thought, is the sort of main character I want to follow through a book.
I wish I knew where she went, because she disappeared long before the halfway point, replaced with someone else who had her name and her backstory but was too wrapped up in pain and angst and forbidden lust and all-around stubborn refusal to notice what was right in front of her face to live up to the promise from those first pages.
The world she inhabits starts out on shaky ground - the exiled remnants of humanity have found themselves in orbit around a gas giant, and are slowly trying (and failing) to terraform it (though I'm not sure how that would work on a gas giant, unless humanity meant to live suspended in the atmosphere), while reverting to a weird mishmash of dystopian high-tech and pseudo-historical lifestyles... including what are basically literally castles on a space station - and only gets less plausible as I lost interest in the main character and started poking at the edges and tugging threads. The author also seems prone to repeating passages and emotional beats and descriptors ad nauseam (if I ever read about eyes the color of redwood and platinum hair again, someone will experience pain), and the tourney matches are all far too long, especially when it's a foregone conclusion that Synali will suffer greatly and unimaginably in the first one or two passes before miraculously pulling a victory out of the steed Heavenbreaker's thrusters (if I ever read another "dramatic" countdown again... more pain will happen). The plot starts to resemble a patchwork quilt of random ideas and notions snatched from other franchises that don't always fit together: a cup of Metropolis, a dash of Dune, a generous pour of The Hunger Games... even Watership Down gets lifted and slapped into a future so far removed from Earth that it's unclear if rabbits even survive on the station, let alone novels about them (though the culture and vocabulary and symbolism are chock full of references that seem very anachronistic in a setting where Earth is far more myth than concrete cultural memory). There's also a heavy Christian church presence for little reason except perhaps to explain why a highly advanced civilization like this one presumes to be has completely abandoned anything like birth control, even among the nobles to whom bastard children are still considered the ultimate stain. Then again, attitudes toward gender and sex, despite some nods to women as steed riders and scientists, seem very much rooted in the past (or maybe that's the reason for the church presence, to explain why women are still considered the sinners entirely to blame for men's apparently uncontrollable urges and even violence toward them). Even the one woman rider most firm in her belief in old knightly ideas of honor, above and beyond personal emotions and entanglements, inexplicably degenerates into a cliche fit of petty jealousy once she's in an engagement that even she admits is all about household obligation and not at all about emotion... at least, not until she realizes that her intended spouse has feelings for the wrong woman.
Anyway, amid all this mismatched mishmash of too-familiar snap-together parts and a setting that seems far more about aesthetics and mood than anything like plausibility or even internal consistency (much like the characters themselves), everything winds up being drawn out way too long as everyone wallows in extreme emotions and manufactured angst and turmoil (and yet another long countdown and arena match between giant mechs and attempts at witty banter by color commentators), building up to a climax... and no resolution. Yes, after all that, after slogging it through to the end hoping against hope for an ending that pulls it all together and delivers some sort of payoff, the story ends on a cliffhanger. But a cliffhanger only works if I care whether anyone actually is rescued before they lose their grip and plummet to their doom. By then, I could not have cared less. Despite the early promise and some potential in the story here and there, I just got sick of everyone and everything long before then.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Race the Sands (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
Hard Reboot (Django Wexler) - My Review
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