Starter Villain (John Scalzi)

Starter Villain

John Scalzi
Tor
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION:

Thirtysomething Charlie's life is going exactly nowhere, and he knows it. Once a journalist, he's now divorced and living in his late father's house, barely scraping by as a substitute teacher. Soon, he may not even have the house, with his half-siblings fighting to have him evicted. If not for his cat Hera, he'd be alone in the world. Then his estranged uncle dies and everything changes.
He had only ever seen Jake once, but knew he was reasonably wealthy as the owner of a national chain of parking garages - at least, that's what he and most other people thought. When one of Uncle Jake's business partners reaches out to him, insisting he host the memorial service, Charlie notices some very unusual things. The floral arrangements all have nasty, even threatening messages like "Not Soon Enough" and "Rot in Hell" with them. The "mourners" seem to only be there to confirm that it's Jake's body and he is, in fact, dead (apparently he faked it at least once before). Then his home is blown up by an intruder - and that's when Charlie learns just what Uncle Jake's real business was. It turns out the old man was a supervillain, complete with volcano lair and henchpeople and hyperintelligent gene-modified cat spies, and like it or not Charlie has inherited the role - and all the enemies that come with it.

REVIEW:

I was hoping for something light and fun when I picked this up, especially after my previous read, which turned into a dark, heavy slog. That much, Scalzi delivered on, with a helium balloon-light tale... but there's basically nothing else here beyond the somewhat silly concept of the name.
From the start, Charlie is a hapless everyman of minimal personality. Even his jobs, formerly a journalist and currently a substitute teacher, barely come into play. You could swap him out with pretty much anyone, and while I understand that this is the plot role of an "everyman" it still made him feel too generic and flat to really care about. He's there to be the straight man (clever dialogue notwithstanding) as all manner of strange characters and circumstances occur around him, leading him through the story in a state of perpetual affable befuddlement until he comes out the other side little different than he went in. Oh, once in a while he sort of does something that affects things (or maybe not; many punches are either pulled or rigged in advance, and even the concept of "villain" is watered down even as it slams the reader in the face with how truly out-of-a-James-Bond-film monstrous the ultra-wealthy and -powerful are in reality), but for the most part he's just along for the ride, unable to step off but not really driving the plot forward. Everyone around him handles thorny details and blunts the corners for him as he wanders through life as the unexpected heir to an empire, and though Scalzi throws a bunch of words on the page describing that empire, most of it doesn't really matter because it means next to nothing to Charlie or the plot. Or maybe that was just me struggling to care.
There's a lot of clever dialogue and quips and banter that's ultimately so much pointless yammering, quite often talking around the point or delaying plot progress with digressions that were meant to be humorous but grew tiring quickly. (I actually found myself thinking that the whole story might've played better as a graphic novel, so the speech bubbles could just carry the tale without bogging down in words describing the rest of events in the panels.) It takes over halfway through the book for anything with any real stakes that I could feel to come into play, and even then Charlie was so hand-held and coddled by the plot and even his ostensible enemies that I really couldn't feel the peril or stakes; even comedy needs something like stakes, a reason to care about what happens, or it's just a string of vaguely amusing occurrences. By the end it becomes clear just how little Charlie or anything else I'd read ultimately mattered in how anything plays out, so there seemed minimal point to the whole digression in his unassuming and forgettable life... much like the experience of reading Starter Villain. It made be chuckle a bit as I read it, but it left no lasting impression.

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By Blood, By Salt (J. L. Odom)

By Blood, By Salt

The Land of Exile series, Book 1
J. L. Odom
Azimuth
Fiction, Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION:

Azelta has been a debt soldier, a veritable slave, for thirteen years, assigned to the Maurowan imperial army company of the Black Wrens. His crime? Being a penniless, homeless boy in a Maurowan city - and being a "jackal," as the Mashevi people are known. Many desert cultures have been cast under Emperor Riada's shadow and those of the bloodthirsty Maurowan gods, but the Mashevi had the audacity to resist, if unsuccessfully. Now, even though Azelta has proven himself an exemplary soldier and earned the captain's trust, even allowed to wear a blade (normally forbidden for jackals), he will never be a full person, never be a citizen, not even after finishing out his debt sentence in seven more years. He will always and forevermore be just a jackal, a subhuman... unless he takes a bold chance at something more.
No empire is without political struggle and rivalry, and the Maurowans are no different. The Emperor's quiet brother has become a nexus of rumor and speculation by those who would oust Riada, a focus of brewing rebellion, and those forces have reached the Black Wren. Riada now wishes to quell all questions of his might and the power of the crown (and their gods) by sending soldiers into the wild southern reaches of the Sahr to capture a "jinn," one of the rumored devil creatures said to dwell there, which even the native cultures fear. If Maurowans can capture a devil, if the empire can prove it can dominate even these monsters, surely none will question their righteous, divine rule ever again. But the jinn the Black Wrens finally capture is nothing at all like anyone expects - and in it Azelta sees the opportunity he has waited over a decade to find.

REVIEW:

I gave this a try because I was looking for something a bit different and I saw it recommended on a BookTube channel I was skimming. At first, it seemed to deliver that, an epic in the making with a richly realized setting and myriad intricate cultures that mix and (mostly) clash in numerous ways. The writing also had a somewhat poetic overtone, with frequent intriguing turns of phrase. If it seemed to be taking its own sweet time getting to anything like what the back cover promised in the way of a plot, and if the characters seemed far more defined by whom they hated and dehumanized and plotted against and the faiths they clung to (or considered blasphemous)... well, it was early on, and surely I'd grow to, if not love, at least be invested in the fate of someone.
I kept waiting for that investment to materialize. Given the rating, it's not much of a spoiler to say that it never did.
The author draws on their background as a linguist and experiences as a serving Marine to create some truly impressive cultural work. Each character sees almost a different world from their points of view, often lowering those of other cultures to mere "its" rather than men or women. Even those who are cordial with Azelta are too ready to slip back into calling him a "jackal" and ask him to keep his head down and bide his time and maybe someday he'll earn the respect that the vast majority of the world will never give him because of his accent and skin tone and beliefs and all the other markers that show him to be a despised Mashevi. Even other cultures that have been stomped down by the Maurowan empire (and as an aside, I really struggled at the start with how similarly "Mashevi" and "Maurowan" scanned) hate the jackals, seemingly above and beyond all other peoples of the desert, with the exception of the "jinn" of the Sahr, a race so secretive and hated that they're made out to be literal devils. How burdened Azelta is, how stiffly loyal to the nebulous god of his people (the only one that only goes by God, oddly enough) and the customs of a culture he has been isolated from for the majority of his life, how unjust the whole world is to him in particular, yet see how he perseveres and bites down on the bitterness, how superior he surely is in spirit to the men surrounding him. (And it is almost exclusively men; there are only a few women involved at all, and of them they serve basically no purpose and seem utterly forgotten about by the end - save one, the Sahr "jinn," who is a cunning and selfish and devious being and possibly the only one more tormented than Azelta, though specifics of her origins and goals are maddeningly vague... and it's strongly implied that, if she really is a "devil" and "damned," then of course she must've deserved it.)
In any event, things slowly meander up to the expedition to the Sahr lands, which has some nicely stark and tense moments even before they encounter the hostile natives... and then they actually capture the "jinn" and the tale bogs right back down again, going back to wallowing in misery and the many clashing cultures, pretty much all of whom hate everyone else for not being like themselves and only are "friends" so long as they can use a body, if that long.
Throughout, the author plays their cards far too close to their chest on several accounts, shutting me out from too much and preventing me from actually caring about anyone or wanting them to succeed. While the players could be interesting initially, I eventually found them more frustrating than intriguing, especially when I was clearly not being allowed enough information to figure out why any of it could possibly matter. So what if the coup succeeds or fails? So what if Azelta is executed for impunity or not? So what if the Sahr woman is actually a damned soul who only wants to confront the god or gods who cursed her... or maybe not? Toward the very end were a few revelations that would've meant a lot more if they'd been built up properly, but the little buildup had happened way at the beginning of the book, so I'd long forgotten about it and had to do some mental backtracking to figure out why I should find the revelations important. It's like springing the punchline to a joke several days after offhandedly muttering about chickens crossing roads; by the time the listener even remembers the question, the laugh just isn't really going to be there. And by the conclusion the whole thing had taken certain plot turns that made me suspect that it had been intended to be more religious fiction than the fantasy epic I'd thought it was (something about a tormented potential leader of a scattered culture persistently placing faith in the only deity named "God" among packs of idol-worshipping heathens seeking specifically to oppress and exterminate the faithful... but maybe I'm reading too much into it, perhaps for lack of actually finding specific in-book characters or things to hold my interest long enough to maintain suspension of disbelief and separation from my own world).
It's this last point, the sense of bait-and-switch, that ultimately sank the rating below the flat Okay. While I could appreciate the detailed cultures created and how each person had their own particular beliefs and moralities reflected in their chapters, I just felt alienated by all the backstabbing and front-stabbing and general, seemingly insurmountable prejudices and hatred that soured everyone and everything. The whole lot of them could've been swept off the map in a sandstorm and it would've made the tale much brighter. (And, seriously, would it have killed the author to write one woman who actually mattered and wasn't implied to be literally cursed and damned by whatever god or gods ruled the world? Why bother including female characters at all, if that's all they are?)

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September Site Update

One more month washed away like so much sand in a storm... Both reviews have been archived and cross-linked over on the main Brightdreamer Books archive site.

Enjoy!

The Knight and the Moth (Rachel Gillig)

The Knight and the Moth

The Stonewater Kingdom series, Book 1
Rachel Gillig
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Romance
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION:

The young woman known as Six remembers nothing before she first drowned in the sacred spring of Aisling cathedral as a sickly foundling child. Now, as one of the sacred diviners, she and her five holy sisters dream prophetic visions of the Omens and their sacred stone objects for the paying faithful of Stonewater Kingdom, a small realm of five hamlets surrounded by hostile inhuman sprites. Only the Omens hold the monsters at bay and give the people hope, and only the diviners, drowning in the spring, can glimpse their will.
Or so Six always believed.
As they near their tenth year of service, the girls look forward to the freedom to come; each diviner only serves a decade before being released. They have only had passing glimpsese of the greater kingdom, but dream of great adventures and grand lives... until, one by one, they begin to disappear in the night. At last, only Six remains - and she cannot believe the abbess when the woman insists that the others just "ran away" without telling her. She flees, finding her way to the only ally she might have: Roderick "Rory" Myndacious, one of the young new king's most trusted guardsmen, who made quite an impression when he visited the cathedral with King Benjamin as part of the coronation rituals. Rory is brash, rude, and blasphemous - the perfect companion, in other words, when her enemies are the gods themselves.

REVIEW:

I've heard nothing but praise for Gillig and her books, and heard some intriguing things about this one, so I figured I'd give it a try. The opening pulled me in almost immediately, as a talking gargoyle lectures a bug caught in a spider web about morality in lieu of helping it free, and the whole concept of repeatedly drowning in a sacred spring to receive prophetic visions. This was a world I wanted to know more about, and the characters promised to be ones I'd enjoy exploring that world with. (The edition I got was also admittedly quite petty, a paperback with decorative page edges.) Unfortunately, as the tale unraveled, that promise frayed to bare threads, until the only reason I was turning pages was to get the thing over with.
The early parts at Aisling, the cathedral built upon the sacred spring where once the Omens came to unite the infighting humans against the many strange and deadly sprite creatures stalking the land that would become Stonewater Kingdom, were rather interesting. Six and her companions are, naturally, sheltered, convinced that their sacrifices are worthwhile and that they will be rewarded for their service, but they are not so strictly naïve (in some ways, at least) as to be insufferable; a few have been known to sneak out to the local fair now and again, and they aren't forbidden to "lie in the grass" with visitors so long as they're discreet. Six herself strives to be the perfect dreamer, the teacher's pet of the bunch, yet still feels very close to her sister diviners, as they spend their evenings concocting grandiose dreams of their adventures once they're free of the robes and the eye-covering shrouds they must wear day and night as part of their service. The meeting with Rory and young King Benjamin foreshadows troubling times ahead, and Six begins to consider questions and ideas she'd previously dismissed. There's a nice sense of growing horror as, one by one, her fellow diviners begin to disappear... and those remaining see a darker, colder side to their mother figure priestess, as she dismisses Six's concerns and withdraws even the minimal affection and love she ever showed them, until there's no choice but to flee - taking along the one talking gargoyle, which has several eccentricities but is unflinchingly loyal.
At this point, I was quite enjoying the ride, even if the writing itself felt weirdly dissonant. Descriptive passages could be quite poetic and distinct, while the dialogue was often casual and very modern sounding, even allowing for "translation convention" (the unspoken understanding that fantasy worlds are being "translated" by the author from whatever the native tongue is into an Earth language). And if the greater world and mythology beyond Aisling felt weirdly flat and thin, and if the gargoyle felt a little more like the sort of quirky "animal" companion that would mostly exist to sell merchandising if this were a movie than a character with anything like a pivotal role in the plot, well, it was early yet. Surely such things would be fleshed out along the way.
As one might surmise from the rating, such things were not satisfactorily fleshed out.
After a relatively strong start and her gutsy, heart-rending decision to flee the only home and "mother" she's ever known, Six too often reverts to being a passive follower in the wake of Rory, Benji, and Benji's chief knight Maude in their greater mission, which involves challenging the Omens themselves; Benji insists that he has proof that they're not the gods they claim to be, merely usurpers to power who have manipulated the whole of the kingdom, and his first act as king will be to end them and take the powerful stone artifacts they carry. Despite her dreams and service, Six is soon convinced that the Omens are much less holy and benevolent than she was raised to believe, but still, she feels weirdly passive much of the time, almost childlike (she has a weird quirk where she refuses to wear shoes, and I don't consider it a spoiler to say that, no, all the page count spent on her rejecting footwear never does lead to any greater plot point; she's just acting like one of those willful toddlers who just won't keep their shoes on, even in locations where shoes would be advisable). She's supposed to be rather strong, having worked with stone on the crumbling cathedral (all the girls were encouraged to have skills or hobbies), but acts quite weak many times. Rory's attraction does not quite feel organic. And, despite some nice descriptions, I never really got a sense of a full world or kingdom; the hamlets are full of flattened caricatures of extras (and the fact that they're hamlets at all, not even towns, makes the whole of Stonewater feel weirdly small - with no mention that I recall of a greater world beyond its boundaries), the sprites are just sort of there without rhyme or reason (save serving as an occasional threat; there's lip service given to how they're actually victims in a way, starving to death and becoming more aggressive, but they're only rarely shown to be a tangible threat, attacking at plot-convenient times and in plot-convenient ways). The gargoyle remains weirdly extraneous, comic relief that does something useful once in a blue moon, and only at the very end is any greater purpose given to it... too little, too late for me to really connect with it. By the end, I just wasn't buying the story or the twists like I should have were I properly invested in the tale, and the climax was just a massive brick dropped on everything, landing with a dull thud that obliterated anything like interest in continuing as it set up a very contrived complication.
In any event, I suppose I can place part of the blame for my disappointment on myself, for taking to heart all the hype I've heard. I suppose it just is not the right story for me, but it's nice that some people are evidently enjoying it. I shall be passing my copy on, in the hopes that it finds a more appreciative reader.

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Dragonborn (Struan Murray)

Dragonborn

The Dragonborn series, Book 1
Struan Murray
Dutton
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:

Alex's mother and father couldn't have been more different, but they loved each other - and Alex - very much. Dad was all laughter and stories and long nights watching the stars in "their" forest, a patch of woods near their home. Mom was all rules and structure and order, and when Alex's father died she only grew more restrictive. Lately, though, the girl has grown restless, like there's a burning scream deep inside that she can't seem to get out. Perhaps it's grief; it was only a few years ago Dad died, and all Alex has left of him is a small bag full of "treasures," little trinkets attached to various memories of her father. It's not until the strange, towering man appears in the woods and starts asking uncomfortable questions about that terrible night that Alex begins to wonder if there's something more to it... if perhaps the "scream" is something bigger, something fiercer, something out of one of Dad's magical stories: a dragon.
Unable to deny the truth anymore, Alex is whisked off to the hidden isle of Skralla, one of many "invisible" places where remnants of old magic and ancient beasts and beings persist in this age of humanity. Here, among other children (or "drakes") like herself, she must learn how to be a dragon, how to become the being of power and scale and flame and force that she truly is beneath her human form... but Alex has never been good with change. And her timing could not possibly be worse, as ancient forces are stirring that could rekindle the old war between dragons and humans. How can Alex find and make peace with her inner dragon when it seems the whole world is about to burn to ash?

REVIEW:

I freely admit the cover art by the talented Devin Elle Kurtz influenced my purchase, here. But... seriously, just go to a bookstore or do a quick search online and look at that gorgeous cover. And the endpapers in the hardback edition. Add in a blurb that promised plenty of dragon antics, and the money practically flew out of my pocket. So, did the story within hold up to that lofty promise? In general, yes, though there were some points that held it back a bit.
The setup here has many familiar parts: the twelve-year-old with the parent who died under mysterious circumstances and the other parent clearly keeping secrets, a birthday where the whole illusion comes crashing down, a hidden world of magic and monsters, the sanctuary/school and new host of friends and enemies, the discovery of a strange power and a terrible threat... they're tropes for a reason, and they tend to work more than they don't here. Alex is believably hesitant to embrace her dragonish self, and must find her own way to survive and succeed in an island filled with rowdy and truly dangerous companions; the ancient war left a deep resentment of all things human that lingers centuries later in the "Slumberers," the dragons who have been in human form so long that they've forgotten their true selves, even producing new generations ignorant of their true fire. The one human boy on the island, an orphan that the Skralla leaders didn't have the heart to turn away (they're hopeful that they can avoid another all-out war by learning to live with humans), is often bullied and in danger, and a dragon girl like Alex who can't or won't change is hardly a step above that on the rung of dignity. The teachers here do not coddle or intervene (save in cases of deadly harm), but they don't come from a place of aloofness or malice: life as a dragon is inherently dangerous, and a sheltered drake rarely survives to become a full-grown dragon, so the best way they can help the young ones is to make sure they learn how to defend themselves early on without expecting someone else to protect them. Though Alex has one friend, it doesn't help her find the confidence she truly needs, or the secret to becoming her true self - something nobody can really help her with, especially not when they apparently find it so easy.
Meanwhile, she learns some about the greater magical world and Skralla, and the nearby (by magical standards) hidden city of Undwin... places that are presented in what feels like a breathless rush, making them seem like blurs rather then solid, detailed settings. The whole story often has a breakneck feel to the pacing; I recall only a few times when the story slows down enough for the emotions and real sense of wonder to sink in. The dragons themselves are nicely described, in sensory details that make them feel very dragonish indeed; these aren't just "scaly puppies" but fiery, fearless, full of raw elemental power, the embodiments of forces beyond humanity's feeble reach. But other parts of Alex's expanded world sometimes feel just kinda thrown together with minimal follow through, such as the kaiju-like monsters that periodically attack Undwin and the menagerie of magical beasts kept on Skralla that feels more like a sideshow attraction and/or callback to other "hidden magical world" stories, a checkmark on the worldbuilding list - well, it's a hidden magical world, so there's gotta be a menagerie of dangerous magical beasties nearby - than a genuine and organic thing.
Other areas of the tale break away into more original territory, particularly as Alex must find her own way of surviving among dragons while stuck in human form and as she explores her "gwimmer," a rare gift that in her case lets her talk to the spirits of deceased dragons (not really a spoiler if it comes up early in the book). The latter is where Alex really shines. As the tale builds to the climax, some twists play out that I was expecting, but not quite in the way I thought they would, pleasantly surprising me. Alex also explores her own grief and must confront the issue of whether clinging to her memories and treasures is truly helping her cope, lending some weight to her journey. The ending offers some closure even as it sets up the next book in the series.
By the end, I'd enjoyed it much more than I didn't. I am very, very pleased with the dragons Murray created and featured. If the story had steered away from the more comfortable and familiar waters and trusted itself to chart its own course, and if it eased off on the throttle now and again to give itself a chance to breathe, it would've risen a bit in the ratings; I expect the target audience would likely rate it higher. I wouldn't rule out reading on... especially if I get sucked in by the cover art again.

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