And apparently somehow May is already over, which means that the month's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Friday, May 26, 2023
The Thickety (J. A. White)
The Thickety: A Path Begins
The Thickety series, Book 1
J. A. White
Tantor Audio
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Kara Westfall was five years old when she learned how cruel her village of De'Noran could be - the night that she and her mother were both accused of witchcraft. Her mother did not survive, but Kara did... only to live as a pariah, same as her broken-hearted father and sickly kid brother Taff. The village is dedicated to the Path, the teachings of the savior who, two thousand years ago, sacrificed himself fighting a plague of witches and monsters who nearly destroyed the world. Now the rest of the world has apparently moved on, forgetting that magic was ever real, but those on the island of De'Noran know better: they live right next to the cursed wood of the Thickety, and can see with their own eyes the evil weeds and dark beasts that it spawns. To them, the Westfall family is still tainted by association, even after years have passed and neither Kara nor Taff have shown any signs of magic. Kara refuses to believe her mother was actually a witch. Witches are evil things, after all, and she knows her mother loved her, and no evil thing could possibly love.
Then the strange bird with the single eye draws her into the Thickety, to a buried book that whispers of great powers. A grimoire - possibly the very one that belonged to her late, doomed mother.
As Kara finds strange powers wakening within her, she begins to see her village in a new light. But magic is as much a curse as it is a gift, and if Kara isn't careful she could destroy everything and everyone she loves.
REVIEW: I read and enjoyed J. A. White's chilling standalone tale Nightbooks, so I figured I'd give this story a try. Like Nightbooks, it skews toward the dark side; while generally nongraphic, it doesn't shy away from danger or death, or the gray areas of morality that separate good from evil and right from wrong. After her innocence was shattered at a young age, watching her mother killed by her friends and neighbors (while her father stood by, apparently one of the very "witnesses" who turned her in to the town leader), she learned just how unfair and cruel the world could be, even as she strives to stay on the cultlike Path of the Puritan-like religion the islanders practice. No matter what she does, though, she and her brother are treated like monsters, shunned and bullied, while her father drifts in a state of deep depression that makes him more child than man. Kara can't help resenting his behavior, even as she struggles to keep him and her brother fed on an increasingly lifeless farm against increasingly insurmountable odds. For all that she can't bring herself to truly hate her tormentors, there's only so far a girl can be pushed, and she's just about at her limit when the odd little bird shows up to tempt her across the forbidden boundary into the Thickety.
Like everyone else in the village, she fears the Thickety, and has ample evidence from her own eyes of just why it's to be feared: the weeds and saplings at the forest's edge regrow almost overnight, and at least half the plants are toxic in some way. But there are also healing herbs to be found in the fringes, as Kara's mother taught her. This duality of nature is echoed throughout the book, from the neighbors who can be kindly (at least to each other) and cruel, the father who loves her yet inexplicably betrayed her mother, even to the magic that Kara discovers when she's led to the buried grimoire. There is, she discovers, great potential for good in it, chances to right wrongs and heal wounds and even explore the wonders of her world in a new and interesting way... but there's also a terrifying temptation with the power it offers, and a price to be paid. And even if Kara can manage to avoid the temptation, others in the village may not; she is not the only one in De'Noran consumed with resentment and frustration over the hypocrisy of the people and the Path. Through it all, she strives to protect her often-sickly brother Taff, born the very night the villagers killed their mother, even as she fears her very presence endangers him more than any illness. It's for his sake as much as her own that she pushes herself farther than she thinks she could go, endures things she did not believe she could endure - and wades into deeper, darker, and murkier magic than she knows is wise.
From the first few pages, where a young Kara is snatched from her bed by neighbors and forced to stand trial before the village, the plot moves at a decent clip, showing its darkness early on and only skewing darker as the tale unfolds. The villagers may be ignorant of much about magic and witches, but they aren't entirely wrong to fear the potential of magic or the power within the Thickety - truths driven home when Kara finds she's not the only one with the talent, building to a climax pitting her against everything she was raised to fear (and then some)... and an epilogue that reveals a final twist of the knife, setting up the next installment of the series and the next stage in her personal journey. It made for interesting, if occasionally chilling and brutal (especially given the middle-grade age range) listening. I wavered a bit on the rating, but wound up giving an extra half-star for not pulling its punches.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
The Thickety series, Book 1
J. A. White
Tantor Audio
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Kara Westfall was five years old when she learned how cruel her village of De'Noran could be - the night that she and her mother were both accused of witchcraft. Her mother did not survive, but Kara did... only to live as a pariah, same as her broken-hearted father and sickly kid brother Taff. The village is dedicated to the Path, the teachings of the savior who, two thousand years ago, sacrificed himself fighting a plague of witches and monsters who nearly destroyed the world. Now the rest of the world has apparently moved on, forgetting that magic was ever real, but those on the island of De'Noran know better: they live right next to the cursed wood of the Thickety, and can see with their own eyes the evil weeds and dark beasts that it spawns. To them, the Westfall family is still tainted by association, even after years have passed and neither Kara nor Taff have shown any signs of magic. Kara refuses to believe her mother was actually a witch. Witches are evil things, after all, and she knows her mother loved her, and no evil thing could possibly love.
Then the strange bird with the single eye draws her into the Thickety, to a buried book that whispers of great powers. A grimoire - possibly the very one that belonged to her late, doomed mother.
As Kara finds strange powers wakening within her, she begins to see her village in a new light. But magic is as much a curse as it is a gift, and if Kara isn't careful she could destroy everything and everyone she loves.
REVIEW: I read and enjoyed J. A. White's chilling standalone tale Nightbooks, so I figured I'd give this story a try. Like Nightbooks, it skews toward the dark side; while generally nongraphic, it doesn't shy away from danger or death, or the gray areas of morality that separate good from evil and right from wrong. After her innocence was shattered at a young age, watching her mother killed by her friends and neighbors (while her father stood by, apparently one of the very "witnesses" who turned her in to the town leader), she learned just how unfair and cruel the world could be, even as she strives to stay on the cultlike Path of the Puritan-like religion the islanders practice. No matter what she does, though, she and her brother are treated like monsters, shunned and bullied, while her father drifts in a state of deep depression that makes him more child than man. Kara can't help resenting his behavior, even as she struggles to keep him and her brother fed on an increasingly lifeless farm against increasingly insurmountable odds. For all that she can't bring herself to truly hate her tormentors, there's only so far a girl can be pushed, and she's just about at her limit when the odd little bird shows up to tempt her across the forbidden boundary into the Thickety.
Like everyone else in the village, she fears the Thickety, and has ample evidence from her own eyes of just why it's to be feared: the weeds and saplings at the forest's edge regrow almost overnight, and at least half the plants are toxic in some way. But there are also healing herbs to be found in the fringes, as Kara's mother taught her. This duality of nature is echoed throughout the book, from the neighbors who can be kindly (at least to each other) and cruel, the father who loves her yet inexplicably betrayed her mother, even to the magic that Kara discovers when she's led to the buried grimoire. There is, she discovers, great potential for good in it, chances to right wrongs and heal wounds and even explore the wonders of her world in a new and interesting way... but there's also a terrifying temptation with the power it offers, and a price to be paid. And even if Kara can manage to avoid the temptation, others in the village may not; she is not the only one in De'Noran consumed with resentment and frustration over the hypocrisy of the people and the Path. Through it all, she strives to protect her often-sickly brother Taff, born the very night the villagers killed their mother, even as she fears her very presence endangers him more than any illness. It's for his sake as much as her own that she pushes herself farther than she thinks she could go, endures things she did not believe she could endure - and wades into deeper, darker, and murkier magic than she knows is wise.
From the first few pages, where a young Kara is snatched from her bed by neighbors and forced to stand trial before the village, the plot moves at a decent clip, showing its darkness early on and only skewing darker as the tale unfolds. The villagers may be ignorant of much about magic and witches, but they aren't entirely wrong to fear the potential of magic or the power within the Thickety - truths driven home when Kara finds she's not the only one with the talent, building to a climax pitting her against everything she was raised to fear (and then some)... and an epilogue that reveals a final twist of the knife, setting up the next installment of the series and the next stage in her personal journey. It made for interesting, if occasionally chilling and brutal (especially given the middle-grade age range) listening. I wavered a bit on the rating, but wound up giving an extra half-star for not pulling its punches.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long)
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves
Meg Long
Wednesday Books
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Sena has lived all her seventeen years on the icy, storm-wracked world of Tundar - and spent the last five desperately trying to leave. It was bad enough when her mothers were alive; one of them was a proper Corporate Assembly citizen like most in the planet's only true city, the Ket, but the other was a "scavver", one of the feared and frowned-upon people whose ancestors defied corporate rule and fled to live in the wilderness. But they're dead now, killed in the annual race to the world's rich exocarbon deposits, which are only reachable during the planet's brief winter, and - thanks to technology-destroying ion storms - only by the low-tech means of sleds drawn by vonenwolves, genetic hybrids of Old Earth wolves and local doglike vonen predators. With her mothers died everything Sena ever loved. It's also why, even though the only real money to be had on Tundar is in the annual exocarbon races, she refuses to race herself, instead turning to thievery to try to secure money for passage off Tundar to... well, she doesn't even know, but anywhere has to be better than here.
She should've known it would all go wrong...
After a botched theft turns ugly, she flees - and winds up in the clutches of Kalba, the biggest syndicate boss of the Ket. He knows who she is, and who her mothers were... and how good they were with the vonenwolves, a skill he's certain she inherited. In exchange for her freedom, Sena has to patch up one of the man's prize fighting wolves. After her parents died, she wanted nothing to do with the animals, but now she has no choice. Against her will, she is drawn back into the world of the wolves and the races, the world that killed her family. This time, though, she won't be able to run and hide. She'll have to fight back - not just for herself, but for the she-wolf who becomes the closest thing to family she's had in five years.
REVIEW: Another audiobook found via Libby's "Random" sort function, Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves takes the raw Arctic thrills and dangers of dogsledding and transports it to an alien world of larger-than-life predators, inhospitable terrain, cruel corporate greed, and clever, half-feral wolf hybrids. The combination works surprisingly well.
Like many similar protagonists, Sena is a girl scarred by personal tragedy after already being hardened by a life of prejudice on a dystopian colony world governed by offworlder greed: those who don't risk their lives on the frequently-deadly race to the exocarbon fields stay back in dens like those run by Kalba and place bets on who will survive (which leads to significant violence and even sabotage on a race that's already deadly enough thanks to unforgiving terrain and Tundar's local predators, not to mention rumored attacks by the scavvers who famously despise the races and all the corporate avarice and folly they represent). It's to the author's credit that Sena comes across as credibly jaded, not just sulky and whiny (as some such characters do), even before her fateful encounter with the wounded wolf Iska... a wolf who shares the name of her late vonenwolf trainer mother (not a coincidence: the human Iska used to train wolves for Kalba). From the moment girl and wolf first see each other, it's clear there's a deeper bond, a spark of fate at work, though of course Sena resists, too full of unresolved grief and anger to allow herself to trust again... and, of course, the circumstances of their meeting, and her being forced to care for the animal, aren't exactly auspicious. Iska doesn't exactly leap at the chance to bond with a human, either, after a life of cages and pit fighting. But not everyone in the Ket is a monster, nor are all the racers greedy or foolish; a chance encounter with an offworld professor who hopes to study Tundar's unusual exocarbon becomes a lifeline when she needs it most, for all that she doesn't even know what to make of the strange man and his peculiar crew when they meet. It's hardly a spoiler that, despite her protests, she ends up drawn into the race itself, and that along the way she learns a lot more about herself, her wolf, and the fates of her mothers, but there are several unexpected twists and turns along the way, with tension and stakes building nicely and Sena (and the others) not above making some mistakes and missteps in their believably uneven growth along the way. This is not a story where victory or survival are at all assured for anyone, let alone easily won.
There are a few points that wobble a bit. Mostly, I found Kalba to be a bit one-dimensional as a baddie, popping up - sometimes in the literal middle of nowhere - just when things couldn't seem to get any worse for Sena. Other side characters could also use rounding out a bit, or felt dropped by the wayside in the rush of the race. The ending also feels like the setup for a sequel that doesn't seem to exist (yet). But the heart of the story, the hard-won bond between a girl and her genetically hybridized wolf-dog amid the exhilarating dangers of the icy wilderness, is a solid one.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Flash Gold (Lindsay Buroker) - My Review
The Call of the Wild and White Fang (Jack London) - My Review
I Am Still Alive (Kate Alice Marshall) - My Review
Meg Long
Wednesday Books
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Sena has lived all her seventeen years on the icy, storm-wracked world of Tundar - and spent the last five desperately trying to leave. It was bad enough when her mothers were alive; one of them was a proper Corporate Assembly citizen like most in the planet's only true city, the Ket, but the other was a "scavver", one of the feared and frowned-upon people whose ancestors defied corporate rule and fled to live in the wilderness. But they're dead now, killed in the annual race to the world's rich exocarbon deposits, which are only reachable during the planet's brief winter, and - thanks to technology-destroying ion storms - only by the low-tech means of sleds drawn by vonenwolves, genetic hybrids of Old Earth wolves and local doglike vonen predators. With her mothers died everything Sena ever loved. It's also why, even though the only real money to be had on Tundar is in the annual exocarbon races, she refuses to race herself, instead turning to thievery to try to secure money for passage off Tundar to... well, she doesn't even know, but anywhere has to be better than here.
She should've known it would all go wrong...
After a botched theft turns ugly, she flees - and winds up in the clutches of Kalba, the biggest syndicate boss of the Ket. He knows who she is, and who her mothers were... and how good they were with the vonenwolves, a skill he's certain she inherited. In exchange for her freedom, Sena has to patch up one of the man's prize fighting wolves. After her parents died, she wanted nothing to do with the animals, but now she has no choice. Against her will, she is drawn back into the world of the wolves and the races, the world that killed her family. This time, though, she won't be able to run and hide. She'll have to fight back - not just for herself, but for the she-wolf who becomes the closest thing to family she's had in five years.
REVIEW: Another audiobook found via Libby's "Random" sort function, Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves takes the raw Arctic thrills and dangers of dogsledding and transports it to an alien world of larger-than-life predators, inhospitable terrain, cruel corporate greed, and clever, half-feral wolf hybrids. The combination works surprisingly well.
Like many similar protagonists, Sena is a girl scarred by personal tragedy after already being hardened by a life of prejudice on a dystopian colony world governed by offworlder greed: those who don't risk their lives on the frequently-deadly race to the exocarbon fields stay back in dens like those run by Kalba and place bets on who will survive (which leads to significant violence and even sabotage on a race that's already deadly enough thanks to unforgiving terrain and Tundar's local predators, not to mention rumored attacks by the scavvers who famously despise the races and all the corporate avarice and folly they represent). It's to the author's credit that Sena comes across as credibly jaded, not just sulky and whiny (as some such characters do), even before her fateful encounter with the wounded wolf Iska... a wolf who shares the name of her late vonenwolf trainer mother (not a coincidence: the human Iska used to train wolves for Kalba). From the moment girl and wolf first see each other, it's clear there's a deeper bond, a spark of fate at work, though of course Sena resists, too full of unresolved grief and anger to allow herself to trust again... and, of course, the circumstances of their meeting, and her being forced to care for the animal, aren't exactly auspicious. Iska doesn't exactly leap at the chance to bond with a human, either, after a life of cages and pit fighting. But not everyone in the Ket is a monster, nor are all the racers greedy or foolish; a chance encounter with an offworld professor who hopes to study Tundar's unusual exocarbon becomes a lifeline when she needs it most, for all that she doesn't even know what to make of the strange man and his peculiar crew when they meet. It's hardly a spoiler that, despite her protests, she ends up drawn into the race itself, and that along the way she learns a lot more about herself, her wolf, and the fates of her mothers, but there are several unexpected twists and turns along the way, with tension and stakes building nicely and Sena (and the others) not above making some mistakes and missteps in their believably uneven growth along the way. This is not a story where victory or survival are at all assured for anyone, let alone easily won.
There are a few points that wobble a bit. Mostly, I found Kalba to be a bit one-dimensional as a baddie, popping up - sometimes in the literal middle of nowhere - just when things couldn't seem to get any worse for Sena. Other side characters could also use rounding out a bit, or felt dropped by the wayside in the rush of the race. The ending also feels like the setup for a sequel that doesn't seem to exist (yet). But the heart of the story, the hard-won bond between a girl and her genetically hybridized wolf-dog amid the exhilarating dangers of the icy wilderness, is a solid one.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Flash Gold (Lindsay Buroker) - My Review
The Call of the Wild and White Fang (Jack London) - My Review
I Am Still Alive (Kate Alice Marshall) - My Review
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Cities (Monica L. Smith)
Cities: The First 6,000 Years
Monica L. Smith
Viking
Nonfiction, Cultures/Geography/History
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few things exemplify modern life quite like a city, but even the newest, brightest, most advanced city can trace the roots of nearly everything that keeps it running back to the very beginning, to the first (known) cities in the Middle East, in Asia, in Central and South America even. Archaeologist Monica L. Smith takes a look at what prompts humans to develop urban lifestyles, so very different from our long evolutionary history of hunting and gathering and even agricultural village existence, and how many innovations and technologies go into making them survive and thrive, sometimes outlasting the cultures that founded them.
REVIEW: I was looking for something different for the day's audiobook selection at work, so I hit the Random function on Libby and scrolled until something looked vaguely interesting. I've played a few city builder games in my time, and many of my favorite books involve cities past, present, future, and imagined, so I decided to give this one a try.
As promised, it's a nice introduction to the subject, outlining what defines a city, how similar they often are even across vast geographic and cultural (and temporal) distances, and why it's highly unlikely (save massive population and/or climate collapse) that we'll ever abandon the idea altogether; they seem to take on lives of their own, once founded, and even when cities are abandoned the survivors tend to be absorbed by other cities. She views cities as an inevitable outgrowth of our species's inherent tendencies toward innovation and cooperative ventures, and the massive efforts that we're apparently willing to undertake to keep them running seem to argue in favor of their benefits outweighing their costs. Smith doesn't just draw from the "usual suspects" of Middle Eastern and European examples, citing cities around the globe that all ultimately have quite a lot in common, enough that distant explorers could, with minimal trial and error, generally navigate city life and recognize the basics of organization no matter where they traveled. Of course, there are some drawbacks to cities and city life, but Smith focuses more on the benefits, and the innovations that go into overcoming the drawbacks (while acknowledging that some, such as inequalities in opportunity and quality of life, seem to be persistent bugs). She even praises "conspicuous consumption", particularly in the middle class, as part of what makes cities so great. (I'm not entirely sure that an argument that boils roughly down to "we've always had conspicuous consumption and massive waste so we shouldn't be worried about continuing the trend" is a completely convincing argument in its favor, especially as we're staring down increasing scarcity and the unprecedented disruptions of catastrophic climate change that are no longer just over the horizon but standing right outside the metaphoric city gates, but I'm not the archaeologist...)
It's a book aimed at us undereducated lay readers, so it's not an in-depth examination (which would take far, far more than one book to tackle anyway), but it's still an intriguing look at a feature of civilization that many of us take for granted, and how far back "modern" city features like fast food and night life and middle management bureaucracies can be traced in the archaeological record.
On a closing note, one downside: it does fire up the ol' itch to replay my classic city builder games... I was so, so close to reaching the rank of pharaoh in Pharaoh/Cleopatra, and I was just about getting the hang of Children of the Nile...
You Might Also Enjoy:
Abandoned Places (Lesley and Roy Adkins) - My Review
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
The Lost City of the Monkey God (Douglas Preston) - My Review
Monica L. Smith
Viking
Nonfiction, Cultures/Geography/History
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Few things exemplify modern life quite like a city, but even the newest, brightest, most advanced city can trace the roots of nearly everything that keeps it running back to the very beginning, to the first (known) cities in the Middle East, in Asia, in Central and South America even. Archaeologist Monica L. Smith takes a look at what prompts humans to develop urban lifestyles, so very different from our long evolutionary history of hunting and gathering and even agricultural village existence, and how many innovations and technologies go into making them survive and thrive, sometimes outlasting the cultures that founded them.
REVIEW: I was looking for something different for the day's audiobook selection at work, so I hit the Random function on Libby and scrolled until something looked vaguely interesting. I've played a few city builder games in my time, and many of my favorite books involve cities past, present, future, and imagined, so I decided to give this one a try.
As promised, it's a nice introduction to the subject, outlining what defines a city, how similar they often are even across vast geographic and cultural (and temporal) distances, and why it's highly unlikely (save massive population and/or climate collapse) that we'll ever abandon the idea altogether; they seem to take on lives of their own, once founded, and even when cities are abandoned the survivors tend to be absorbed by other cities. She views cities as an inevitable outgrowth of our species's inherent tendencies toward innovation and cooperative ventures, and the massive efforts that we're apparently willing to undertake to keep them running seem to argue in favor of their benefits outweighing their costs. Smith doesn't just draw from the "usual suspects" of Middle Eastern and European examples, citing cities around the globe that all ultimately have quite a lot in common, enough that distant explorers could, with minimal trial and error, generally navigate city life and recognize the basics of organization no matter where they traveled. Of course, there are some drawbacks to cities and city life, but Smith focuses more on the benefits, and the innovations that go into overcoming the drawbacks (while acknowledging that some, such as inequalities in opportunity and quality of life, seem to be persistent bugs). She even praises "conspicuous consumption", particularly in the middle class, as part of what makes cities so great. (I'm not entirely sure that an argument that boils roughly down to "we've always had conspicuous consumption and massive waste so we shouldn't be worried about continuing the trend" is a completely convincing argument in its favor, especially as we're staring down increasing scarcity and the unprecedented disruptions of catastrophic climate change that are no longer just over the horizon but standing right outside the metaphoric city gates, but I'm not the archaeologist...)
It's a book aimed at us undereducated lay readers, so it's not an in-depth examination (which would take far, far more than one book to tackle anyway), but it's still an intriguing look at a feature of civilization that many of us take for granted, and how far back "modern" city features like fast food and night life and middle management bureaucracies can be traced in the archaeological record.
On a closing note, one downside: it does fire up the ol' itch to replay my classic city builder games... I was so, so close to reaching the rank of pharaoh in Pharaoh/Cleopatra, and I was just about getting the hang of Children of the Nile...
You Might Also Enjoy:
Abandoned Places (Lesley and Roy Adkins) - My Review
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
The Lost City of the Monkey God (Douglas Preston) - My Review
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
An Ember in the Ashes (Sabaa Tahir)
An Ember in the Ashes
The Ember in the Ashes series, Book 1
Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Generations ago, the warrior Martials invaded the kingdom of the Scholars, grinding the people under their heels and breaking their spirits, even forbidding them from learning to read. Some still fight back, but it's been years since the Resistance was anything but a minor nuisance... not since the days of Laia's parents, who were betrayed and murdered. Laia and her older brother Darin live with their grandparents, but while Laia is afraid all the time, her brother Darin keeps taking risks - risks that, one terrible night, bring the Martial soldiers and a terrible Mask enforcer to their door. Now her grandparents are dead, Darin is imprisoned, and Laia is on the run, cursing herself a coward for not staying to fight. In desperation, she turns to the Resistance, but they demand a steep price for their help: posing as a slave, she must infiltrate Blackcliff Academy, the terrible fortress where Masks are trained to be heartless, faceless elite soldiers. It's an assignment that has seen innumerable rebels tortured and killed, but it's Laia's only chance to free her brother.
Elias was born a bastard son of one of the oldest Martial families, but grew up among the nomadic desert Tribes, blissfully unaware of his noble blood... until one of the uncanny, feared Augurs arrived to whisk him away. For years, he's endured training at Blackcliff, his chief tormentor none other than the mother who once left him in the wilderness to die. But it's almost over; as soon as he graduates, in just a few days, he plans to escape back to the deserts that were once his sanctuary, disappearing among the Tribes again. At least, that was the plan, until the Augurs arrive at the academy again with a chilling announcement: the line of the old Emperor is failing, and thus the Trials for a successor are to commence immediately. Worse, Elias himself is named one of the four Aspirants. Elias is already sick to his soul over what he's done just to survive training as a Mask; the thought of being Emperor over a nation as utterly cruel and broken as this one is more than he can stand.
One a slave, the other a soldier... Laia and Elias might hold the keys to each other's freedom - if dark forces from the Empire's past don't rise up and crush them, and everything they love, first...
REVIEW: I've heard little but great things about this series, so I figured I'd give it a shot. The story starts moving almost from the first page, filling in a dark, cruel world of militant conquerors, ineffective rebels, and two characters trapped by circumstances far beyond their control. Laia has lived in fear ever since her parents were killed; she has no love for the Empire and wants to be more like her mother, once known as the Lioness of the Resistance, but every time she gets a chance to act she freezes or flees even as she curses herself for being a coward. Elias hates everything about his existence, from the blood that ties him to the sadistic Commandant of Blackcliff to the silver mask that he refuses to let bond to his skin (as it is supposed to, part of being an elite Mask enforcer) to the horrible things he's being trained to do and will be expected to keep doing for the rest of his life. Neither see a way out of their respective traps, and every act they take only gets them into worse situations: Laia's desperate plea for help from the Resistance, playing on her parents' reputation, only lands her in the terrible clutches of the Commandant, who takes perverse pleasure in mutilating her slaves, while Elias's plans to flee are disrupted by an Augur's slender promise that only by enduring the Trials can he ever truly find freedom from the Empire's clutches. Naturally, from the moment the two meet, sparks fly - and everything around them keeps getting exponentially worse and more dangerous, building to an explosive ending that sets up the next stage of the series.
That's all well and good, and enjoyable, but there are some pitfalls along the way that cost it in the ratings. Laia's too often a victim, and too often refuses to even notice or think about things that are so obvious I felt like shaking her to get her to stop whining about how cowardly and useless she's being. Mostly she's just too naive for too long, which gets her into lots of trouble where she's reduced to damsel-in-distress/object status. Elias, too, could be irritatingly obtuse. The characters surrounding both too often feel flat, with only vague hints given to any sort of depth or existence beyond their relevance to the main characters. This was especially true of the villains; I was almost surprised there wasn't a puppy pit in Blackcliff where they went to kick puppies just to further grind in how despicable and gratuitously cruel they were. The part that really started annoying me, though, the one that nearly drug the rating down another half-mark, was when both Elias and Laia (and a few other characters, too, but mostly them) decide to turn into lovesick hormonal twits at the worst possible times, mooning about uselessly when their lives are quite literally and quite immediately in danger. I get that they're teenagers underneath it all, and sometimes the heart (or other organs) can be nigh impossible to ignore, but still, one might think that sheer survival might be a matter of concern, after the earlier parts of the book drove home the life-and-death stakes.
The ending redeemed things somewhat, and I might pursue the series through another book. And, as mentioned, there's quite a bit I did enjoy about this story. I just wish it had eased up some on the hormonal detours in the later bits, when the characters (and the reader) least needed the distraction...
You Might Also Enjoy:
Red Rising (Pierce Brown) - My Review
Graceling (Kristen Cashore) - My Review
Rebel of the Sands (Alwyn Hamilton) - My Review
The Ember in the Ashes series, Book 1
Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Generations ago, the warrior Martials invaded the kingdom of the Scholars, grinding the people under their heels and breaking their spirits, even forbidding them from learning to read. Some still fight back, but it's been years since the Resistance was anything but a minor nuisance... not since the days of Laia's parents, who were betrayed and murdered. Laia and her older brother Darin live with their grandparents, but while Laia is afraid all the time, her brother Darin keeps taking risks - risks that, one terrible night, bring the Martial soldiers and a terrible Mask enforcer to their door. Now her grandparents are dead, Darin is imprisoned, and Laia is on the run, cursing herself a coward for not staying to fight. In desperation, she turns to the Resistance, but they demand a steep price for their help: posing as a slave, she must infiltrate Blackcliff Academy, the terrible fortress where Masks are trained to be heartless, faceless elite soldiers. It's an assignment that has seen innumerable rebels tortured and killed, but it's Laia's only chance to free her brother.
Elias was born a bastard son of one of the oldest Martial families, but grew up among the nomadic desert Tribes, blissfully unaware of his noble blood... until one of the uncanny, feared Augurs arrived to whisk him away. For years, he's endured training at Blackcliff, his chief tormentor none other than the mother who once left him in the wilderness to die. But it's almost over; as soon as he graduates, in just a few days, he plans to escape back to the deserts that were once his sanctuary, disappearing among the Tribes again. At least, that was the plan, until the Augurs arrive at the academy again with a chilling announcement: the line of the old Emperor is failing, and thus the Trials for a successor are to commence immediately. Worse, Elias himself is named one of the four Aspirants. Elias is already sick to his soul over what he's done just to survive training as a Mask; the thought of being Emperor over a nation as utterly cruel and broken as this one is more than he can stand.
One a slave, the other a soldier... Laia and Elias might hold the keys to each other's freedom - if dark forces from the Empire's past don't rise up and crush them, and everything they love, first...
REVIEW: I've heard little but great things about this series, so I figured I'd give it a shot. The story starts moving almost from the first page, filling in a dark, cruel world of militant conquerors, ineffective rebels, and two characters trapped by circumstances far beyond their control. Laia has lived in fear ever since her parents were killed; she has no love for the Empire and wants to be more like her mother, once known as the Lioness of the Resistance, but every time she gets a chance to act she freezes or flees even as she curses herself for being a coward. Elias hates everything about his existence, from the blood that ties him to the sadistic Commandant of Blackcliff to the silver mask that he refuses to let bond to his skin (as it is supposed to, part of being an elite Mask enforcer) to the horrible things he's being trained to do and will be expected to keep doing for the rest of his life. Neither see a way out of their respective traps, and every act they take only gets them into worse situations: Laia's desperate plea for help from the Resistance, playing on her parents' reputation, only lands her in the terrible clutches of the Commandant, who takes perverse pleasure in mutilating her slaves, while Elias's plans to flee are disrupted by an Augur's slender promise that only by enduring the Trials can he ever truly find freedom from the Empire's clutches. Naturally, from the moment the two meet, sparks fly - and everything around them keeps getting exponentially worse and more dangerous, building to an explosive ending that sets up the next stage of the series.
That's all well and good, and enjoyable, but there are some pitfalls along the way that cost it in the ratings. Laia's too often a victim, and too often refuses to even notice or think about things that are so obvious I felt like shaking her to get her to stop whining about how cowardly and useless she's being. Mostly she's just too naive for too long, which gets her into lots of trouble where she's reduced to damsel-in-distress/object status. Elias, too, could be irritatingly obtuse. The characters surrounding both too often feel flat, with only vague hints given to any sort of depth or existence beyond their relevance to the main characters. This was especially true of the villains; I was almost surprised there wasn't a puppy pit in Blackcliff where they went to kick puppies just to further grind in how despicable and gratuitously cruel they were. The part that really started annoying me, though, the one that nearly drug the rating down another half-mark, was when both Elias and Laia (and a few other characters, too, but mostly them) decide to turn into lovesick hormonal twits at the worst possible times, mooning about uselessly when their lives are quite literally and quite immediately in danger. I get that they're teenagers underneath it all, and sometimes the heart (or other organs) can be nigh impossible to ignore, but still, one might think that sheer survival might be a matter of concern, after the earlier parts of the book drove home the life-and-death stakes.
The ending redeemed things somewhat, and I might pursue the series through another book. And, as mentioned, there's quite a bit I did enjoy about this story. I just wish it had eased up some on the hormonal detours in the later bits, when the characters (and the reader) least needed the distraction...
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