The Relentless Legion
The Divide series, Book 1
J. S. Dewes
Tor
Fiction, Sci-FI
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Adequin Rake thought the greatest threat to humanity was the collapse of the known universe beyond the frontier of the Divide. Now, a greater threat might lie within the Core worlds, embodied in the megalomaniacal monarch Augustus Mercer. His increasingly fanatical attempts to purge humanity of the alien mutagen unleashed generations ago by the (mostly) vanished Viators have led to the creation of a bioweapon that will kill anyone bearing any trace of genetic contamination - a death toll that could eliminate over half the population, followed by equally monstrous projects to rebuild the species to Mercer's own vision of purity. With the exiled Sentinels and her trusted crew and allies, including Mercer's estranged grandson/failed clone Cavalon, the smuggler Corsairs, and the secret Viator tech in her upgraded atlas navigation system, Rake races to get ahead of Mercer's plot and engineer a cure for the mutagen... and, hopefully, rescue crewmate Jackin from their enemy's clutches before it's too late for his sanity, or his life.
REVIEW: I enjoyed the previous two installments of the Divide trilogy, but for some reason I didn't quite engage with this final(?) volume. Maybe it's just been too long since I read the others. Or maybe it was a vague sense that, for all the sometimes-breakneck action and plot twists and betrayals and revelations, it sometimes felt like it was trying too hard to pack in emotional gut-punches and surprises.
It picks up with little lag time, with Rake, Cavalon, and the captive Jackin all up to their necks (and over their heads) in the general chaos of both protecting the galaxy from the oncoming collapse of the known universe and keeping humans from finishing what the Viators started and exterminating themselves, this time under the increasingly powerful grip of Augustus Mercer and his eugenics-driven vision for the future... all while further burdened by emotional and physical scars from previous battles and failures and lives that went to Hell long before the current problems and secrets were dropped on their shoulders. That's an awful lot of plates to keep spinning, and more than once I felt attention whiplash as the story moved from one plate to another, from one frying pan to another fire. The many threads and threats from the previous installments are given little to no recap for the reader coming into things after a break, and it took me some time to settle back into something like a groove... and even then, I often felt like I was a few steps behind the plot as it raced ahead. Maybe that's why a few twists and events felt like they arrived out of nowhere to either complicate problems or offer a solution (and/or deliver fresh psychological wounds to further complicate character interactions). It builds up to a suitably explosive finale, one with some hooks left dangling for continuations (I'm reasonably certain this is just intended to be a trilogy, but it wouldn't be the first time a "trilogy" generated more volumes) but which wraps up most of the main issues and sets surviving characters on new trajectories, having grown and changed significantly since the reader first met them.
While there was a fair bit to enjoy and the story could never be said to lag, I just kept feeling that, for all the racing I did to keep up and re-immerse in the series and keep up with the many characters and plot threads whipping past, I never quite caught up as the story kept sprinting ahead of me, leading to a slight dip in the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Last Watch (J. S. Dewes) - My Review
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
The Stars Now Unclaimed (Drew Williams) - My Review
Monday, May 12, 2025
Thursday, May 8, 2025
Blood of the Old Kings (Sung-il Kim)
Blood of the Old Kings
The Bleeding Empire series, Book 1
Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, the Empire rose to power on a wave of blood and necromancy, using the corpses of sorcerers to power an array of war machines and other technology. The old kings were thrown down, the old nations subjugated, the old ways and magic lore destroyed, and every child tested for magic potential, to be taken away and eventually serve as power sources. But not all rest easy under the imperial boots that crush them...
Loran was an ordinary peasant woman in the conquered nation of Arland, until her husband and daughter were slaughtered by the Empire for "treason": singing a simple song to commemorate fallen heroes of days past. Driven by rage, grief, and desperation, she casts herself into the volcano where a great dragon lies bound, the dragon who was once companion to Arland's fallen king. She may have no royal blood, but vows to become king and avenge the deaths of her loved ones, and every Arlander who has fallen to the Empire. Thus the dragon grants her a sword made from its own fang, at the cost of one eye - a sword that grants powers and burdens she does not yet understand, but which may forge a legend for the ages, if she has the courage to wield them.
As a resident of the imperial Capital, the young man Cain feels no strong ties to his native Arland and little outright animosity towards the Empire. Instead, he uses his cleverness and many connections to help out others who, like him, come to the city with little but the clothes on their backs, trying to make new lives for themselves in a complicated place. When his friend and former mentor Fienna is found murdered, Cain sets out to discover the culprit, only to find himself chasing a plot that could destroy the Capital and strike a mortal wound to the very heart of the land.
Arienne was taken to the Imperial Academy when she was just ten years old after she was determined to have the potential for magic in her blood. Here, she's taught little that could actually be called magic, just enough to potentially make her useful as a sorcerer engineer designing Imperial machinery, before her eventual fate as a Power generator after death. It's not a future she wants, but not one she sees a way out of... until a voice starts talking to her, offering bits of real magic even as it convinces her to break into a forbidden chamber in the Academy and thence escape... now bearing the living corpse of a dead sorcerer in a room inside her mind. She does not trust Eldred, but she cannot deny that she needs his help, especially when rumors reach her of an upstart would-be king stirring up trouble in her former homeland of Arland.
REVIEW: With some interesting imagery and different cultural roots (being translated from a Korean novel), Blood of the Old Kings was a novel I felt like I should have enjoyed. At times, I did enjoy it. But the more it wound on, the less I cared about it or its characters or world, until I realized I was just listening to reach the end and not out of any particular emotional investment.
The opening is quite strong, as common-born Loran dares to confront the bound royal dragon of Arland in its volcanic prison, making a vow she has no idea how she will keep but unable to stand by meekly while the Empire continues to bleed the life and hope from the land. Her sacrifice of an eye allows the dragon to share her vision and speak in her mind, as well as granting other powers that increasingly bind her to the great being as she sets out to fulfill her apparent destiny. Destiny becomes a big driving factor of much that unfolds, to the point of almost becoming a deus ex machina to see characters through impossible situations, but early on it's just a slight background noise under the main stories. The reader, in turn, meets the young problem-solving city dweller Cain, who doesn't particularly care for politics or the various lands crushed by the Empire so much as how it personally affects him and the city he now calls home, as well as the people in it, and also the runaway sorcery student Arienne as she breaks into the hidden chamber and "rescues" the corpse of Eldred... having to step past the skeletal remains of another student who heard the dead sorcerer's call and failed in the task. They each have different but ultimately vital roles to play in the events that unfold, all driven by the currents of destiny... and all somehow feeling strangely like the plot of an anime or maybe manga series, somewhat exaggerated and orchestrated to create visual and emotional spectacle in increasing escalation to near-godlike stakes where nothing really seems to matter because destiny has dictated it all anyway (though I'm sure it would look awesome in an illustration or animated). There's something oddly episodic about it, as it keeps reminding the reader of events and revelations that occurred barely a chapter or scene previously, and again later on, as though it had been originally released in serialized installments. The characters also become more exaggerated and less grounded as the stakes raise around them, their speech and actions becoming more grandiose. The story itself has some interesting turns and worldbuilding; it's not quite so simple as the Empire being bad and the old kings being good. But at some point I realized I just wasn't connecting with the characters or the world they lived in, as they seemed less and less real to me and more like caricatures going through stylized motions. The ending feels like a letdown, driving home how much destiny was ultimately more in control than the actions or inactions of any of the characters, which ultimately dropped the whole experience into the three-star Okay territory. It just wasn't my cup of cocoa, though there were parts and moments that worked well.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djèlí Clark) - My Review
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams) - My Review
The Bleeding Empire series, Book 1
Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, the Empire rose to power on a wave of blood and necromancy, using the corpses of sorcerers to power an array of war machines and other technology. The old kings were thrown down, the old nations subjugated, the old ways and magic lore destroyed, and every child tested for magic potential, to be taken away and eventually serve as power sources. But not all rest easy under the imperial boots that crush them...
Loran was an ordinary peasant woman in the conquered nation of Arland, until her husband and daughter were slaughtered by the Empire for "treason": singing a simple song to commemorate fallen heroes of days past. Driven by rage, grief, and desperation, she casts herself into the volcano where a great dragon lies bound, the dragon who was once companion to Arland's fallen king. She may have no royal blood, but vows to become king and avenge the deaths of her loved ones, and every Arlander who has fallen to the Empire. Thus the dragon grants her a sword made from its own fang, at the cost of one eye - a sword that grants powers and burdens she does not yet understand, but which may forge a legend for the ages, if she has the courage to wield them.
As a resident of the imperial Capital, the young man Cain feels no strong ties to his native Arland and little outright animosity towards the Empire. Instead, he uses his cleverness and many connections to help out others who, like him, come to the city with little but the clothes on their backs, trying to make new lives for themselves in a complicated place. When his friend and former mentor Fienna is found murdered, Cain sets out to discover the culprit, only to find himself chasing a plot that could destroy the Capital and strike a mortal wound to the very heart of the land.
Arienne was taken to the Imperial Academy when she was just ten years old after she was determined to have the potential for magic in her blood. Here, she's taught little that could actually be called magic, just enough to potentially make her useful as a sorcerer engineer designing Imperial machinery, before her eventual fate as a Power generator after death. It's not a future she wants, but not one she sees a way out of... until a voice starts talking to her, offering bits of real magic even as it convinces her to break into a forbidden chamber in the Academy and thence escape... now bearing the living corpse of a dead sorcerer in a room inside her mind. She does not trust Eldred, but she cannot deny that she needs his help, especially when rumors reach her of an upstart would-be king stirring up trouble in her former homeland of Arland.
REVIEW: With some interesting imagery and different cultural roots (being translated from a Korean novel), Blood of the Old Kings was a novel I felt like I should have enjoyed. At times, I did enjoy it. But the more it wound on, the less I cared about it or its characters or world, until I realized I was just listening to reach the end and not out of any particular emotional investment.
The opening is quite strong, as common-born Loran dares to confront the bound royal dragon of Arland in its volcanic prison, making a vow she has no idea how she will keep but unable to stand by meekly while the Empire continues to bleed the life and hope from the land. Her sacrifice of an eye allows the dragon to share her vision and speak in her mind, as well as granting other powers that increasingly bind her to the great being as she sets out to fulfill her apparent destiny. Destiny becomes a big driving factor of much that unfolds, to the point of almost becoming a deus ex machina to see characters through impossible situations, but early on it's just a slight background noise under the main stories. The reader, in turn, meets the young problem-solving city dweller Cain, who doesn't particularly care for politics or the various lands crushed by the Empire so much as how it personally affects him and the city he now calls home, as well as the people in it, and also the runaway sorcery student Arienne as she breaks into the hidden chamber and "rescues" the corpse of Eldred... having to step past the skeletal remains of another student who heard the dead sorcerer's call and failed in the task. They each have different but ultimately vital roles to play in the events that unfold, all driven by the currents of destiny... and all somehow feeling strangely like the plot of an anime or maybe manga series, somewhat exaggerated and orchestrated to create visual and emotional spectacle in increasing escalation to near-godlike stakes where nothing really seems to matter because destiny has dictated it all anyway (though I'm sure it would look awesome in an illustration or animated). There's something oddly episodic about it, as it keeps reminding the reader of events and revelations that occurred barely a chapter or scene previously, and again later on, as though it had been originally released in serialized installments. The characters also become more exaggerated and less grounded as the stakes raise around them, their speech and actions becoming more grandiose. The story itself has some interesting turns and worldbuilding; it's not quite so simple as the Empire being bad and the old kings being good. But at some point I realized I just wasn't connecting with the characters or the world they lived in, as they seemed less and less real to me and more like caricatures going through stylized motions. The ending feels like a letdown, driving home how much destiny was ultimately more in control than the actions or inactions of any of the characters, which ultimately dropped the whole experience into the three-star Okay territory. It just wasn't my cup of cocoa, though there were parts and moments that worked well.
You Might Also Enjoy:
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djèlí Clark) - My Review
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams) - My Review
Friday, May 2, 2025
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Seanan McGuire)
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear
The Wayward Children series, Book 10
Seanan McGuire
Tor
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Born to a mother who fled the hospital without even giving her a name, Nadya was raised by Mother Russia in an orphanage along with other unwanted children. She may have had only one full arm at birth, but never missed what she never had, never saw herself as lesser or weaker, not even when the foreign couple arrived and whisked her off to the faraway land of Colorado - that is, until her new "parents" fit her with a prosthetic arm. It's clumsy, it's painful, it's heavy, and it's not something she needed or even asked for... but, then, what she wants or needs doesn't seem to matter, not to people who seem more in love with a concept of a daughter than the real girl they carried halfway around the world from her home. One of her few solaces is the turtle pond near her home. The turtles never judge her, never tell her she's incomplete or wrong.
It's because of the turtles that she falls through the door beneath the pond.
One moment, she's plunging beneath the murky waters. The next, she finds herself by the banks of a great river - facing a massive, malevolent frog that devours her false arm in one snap and nearly does the same to her before she flees. A kindly talking fox leads her to another river, where she meets the people of Belyyreka - a people who keep great speaking turtles as companions and have a city beneath the waters of the vast River Wild. As a Drowned Girl, she has been welcomed into their society, and soon feels more at home here than ever she did in America or even Russia. But she is still young, still wild and unsettled and prone to push and prod at boundaries, and still a child from beyond a door - and, amid the dangerous currents and lurking monsters and strange rivers, the world she left behind may still someday come calling for her again.
REVIEW: I've been enjoying the "origin" tales in this series a bit more than the main arc books, and this is another interesting, sometimes emotional backstory of a student from Eleanor West's boarding school for former portal adventurers, the girl Nadya. Rejected at birth by a young woman who never wanted to be a mother, let alone a mother to a one-armed child, she refuses to be bent or broken or made to feel less by anyone, for all that she still feels the lack of love and family keenly. At first, she has hopes that the American couple who adopt her might become a family, and she forms a slight bond with her father, but soon realizes the truth behind her adoption, the role she was acquired to fill - both a loving, perfect daughter and a grateful foreign orphan to parade before their church peers. Since she happened to not have a full complement of arms, well, her "loving" parents will fix that, too, and surely she'll be overflowing with gratitude and devotion for them then! Themes of ableism underlie the tale (not to mention themes of cultural prejudices), as Nadya becomes the companion of a Belyyreka turtle with a cracked shell who has also been told just what they can and cannot do because of their "disability". The world of the rivers is intriguing, a place of different layers and densities of water, some of which can be breathed as air (the whole world itself is beneath the waters of a vast lake), others of which will drown a person as easily as water on Earth; the turtles can swim through it all, so they essentially fly about the city, and carry boats and people up to the surface of the river as well as down below. I enjoyed it, though the end felt a bit abrupt and it lacked some of the heft and depth of a few earlier series entries, if that makes any sense.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ocean Meets Sky (The Fan Brothers) - My Review
Every Heart a Doorway (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea (Axie Oh) - My Review
The Wayward Children series, Book 10
Seanan McGuire
Tor
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Born to a mother who fled the hospital without even giving her a name, Nadya was raised by Mother Russia in an orphanage along with other unwanted children. She may have had only one full arm at birth, but never missed what she never had, never saw herself as lesser or weaker, not even when the foreign couple arrived and whisked her off to the faraway land of Colorado - that is, until her new "parents" fit her with a prosthetic arm. It's clumsy, it's painful, it's heavy, and it's not something she needed or even asked for... but, then, what she wants or needs doesn't seem to matter, not to people who seem more in love with a concept of a daughter than the real girl they carried halfway around the world from her home. One of her few solaces is the turtle pond near her home. The turtles never judge her, never tell her she's incomplete or wrong.
It's because of the turtles that she falls through the door beneath the pond.
One moment, she's plunging beneath the murky waters. The next, she finds herself by the banks of a great river - facing a massive, malevolent frog that devours her false arm in one snap and nearly does the same to her before she flees. A kindly talking fox leads her to another river, where she meets the people of Belyyreka - a people who keep great speaking turtles as companions and have a city beneath the waters of the vast River Wild. As a Drowned Girl, she has been welcomed into their society, and soon feels more at home here than ever she did in America or even Russia. But she is still young, still wild and unsettled and prone to push and prod at boundaries, and still a child from beyond a door - and, amid the dangerous currents and lurking monsters and strange rivers, the world she left behind may still someday come calling for her again.
REVIEW: I've been enjoying the "origin" tales in this series a bit more than the main arc books, and this is another interesting, sometimes emotional backstory of a student from Eleanor West's boarding school for former portal adventurers, the girl Nadya. Rejected at birth by a young woman who never wanted to be a mother, let alone a mother to a one-armed child, she refuses to be bent or broken or made to feel less by anyone, for all that she still feels the lack of love and family keenly. At first, she has hopes that the American couple who adopt her might become a family, and she forms a slight bond with her father, but soon realizes the truth behind her adoption, the role she was acquired to fill - both a loving, perfect daughter and a grateful foreign orphan to parade before their church peers. Since she happened to not have a full complement of arms, well, her "loving" parents will fix that, too, and surely she'll be overflowing with gratitude and devotion for them then! Themes of ableism underlie the tale (not to mention themes of cultural prejudices), as Nadya becomes the companion of a Belyyreka turtle with a cracked shell who has also been told just what they can and cannot do because of their "disability". The world of the rivers is intriguing, a place of different layers and densities of water, some of which can be breathed as air (the whole world itself is beneath the waters of a vast lake), others of which will drown a person as easily as water on Earth; the turtles can swim through it all, so they essentially fly about the city, and carry boats and people up to the surface of the river as well as down below. I enjoyed it, though the end felt a bit abrupt and it lacked some of the heft and depth of a few earlier series entries, if that makes any sense.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ocean Meets Sky (The Fan Brothers) - My Review
Every Heart a Doorway (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea (Axie Oh) - My Review
Last Stand of Dead Men (Derek Landy)
Last Stand of Dead Men
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 8
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: After narrowly defeating the latest threat to the world in the form of Argeddion and his mad plan to grant nearly limitless magic to the entire mortal population of Earth, the Irish Sanctuary had hoped to finally be free from the scrutiny of the Supreme Council of other magical sanctuaries, who see the recent chaos in their part of the world as a threat to the entire magical community. Unfortunately, they thought wrong. Saboteurs are caught trying to destroy the Accelerator, the machine used to artificially boost sorcerous powers - saboteurs with ties to the Supreme Council itself, an apparent bid for a complete takeover of the Irish mages by outsiders who have long coveted the land as a natural cradle of magic. Even as they grapple with this threat, someone has been stirring up the warlocks and the witches against mortals. Skulduggery and Valkyrie are sent to investigate the warlock problem - a dangerous mission, especially with the cold, dark voice in Valkyrie's head, the nigh-unstoppable Darquesse who is prophesied to destroy the world, growing more insistent every day...
REVIEW: This series just keeps on ticking and does not stop... In another astounding installment packed with twists, turns, action, wonder, danger, and humor, Valkyrie Cain and Skulduggery Pleasant once more stand between the world and utter destruction - but, as the cast and the threats have grown, they are not alone. Other players have equally pivotal roles, both in dealing with the impending threat of a warlock invasion and in the Sanctuary war that's about to kick off in a big way. Everyone has grown and changed through the series - even "Stephanie", the malfunctioning reflection used by Valkyrie to cover for her many absences from her mundane mortal life and family, which has become self-aware enough to covet the girl's existence and take drastic measures to be with them... and self-aware enough to defend her family, even when the threat is Valkyrie herself. Other returning characters include the one-time would-be "zombie king" Scapegrace and his inept minion Thrasher, who again risk being one-note comic relief characters but who also undergo some transformations of their own, and the dogged mortal reporter Kenny who first stumbled across evidence of the existence of magic a few books back and refuses to let go of the story of a lifetime, even when it plunges him into the middle of an all-out mage war. By the end, the cast has undergone some notable alterations (skirting spoilers with that vague phrase) and the story has been set on a new trajectory. I expect I won't be waiting another month to space out this series like I have been; I have to know what happens next...
(In tangentially related developments, I'll be undergoing my own notable alteration in the coming months regarding employment, which will likely leave me with less audiobook time as so much of my listening happens at work; I don't know if I'll have a chance to clear the whole series by the time that takes effect or not, but I'll be doing my level best to try. 2025 just has to destroy everything remotely decent and stable in my existence, apparently.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom (Leah R. Cutter) - My Review
Playing With Fire (Derek Landy) - My Review
The Thickety (J. A. White) - My Review
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 8
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: After narrowly defeating the latest threat to the world in the form of Argeddion and his mad plan to grant nearly limitless magic to the entire mortal population of Earth, the Irish Sanctuary had hoped to finally be free from the scrutiny of the Supreme Council of other magical sanctuaries, who see the recent chaos in their part of the world as a threat to the entire magical community. Unfortunately, they thought wrong. Saboteurs are caught trying to destroy the Accelerator, the machine used to artificially boost sorcerous powers - saboteurs with ties to the Supreme Council itself, an apparent bid for a complete takeover of the Irish mages by outsiders who have long coveted the land as a natural cradle of magic. Even as they grapple with this threat, someone has been stirring up the warlocks and the witches against mortals. Skulduggery and Valkyrie are sent to investigate the warlock problem - a dangerous mission, especially with the cold, dark voice in Valkyrie's head, the nigh-unstoppable Darquesse who is prophesied to destroy the world, growing more insistent every day...
REVIEW: This series just keeps on ticking and does not stop... In another astounding installment packed with twists, turns, action, wonder, danger, and humor, Valkyrie Cain and Skulduggery Pleasant once more stand between the world and utter destruction - but, as the cast and the threats have grown, they are not alone. Other players have equally pivotal roles, both in dealing with the impending threat of a warlock invasion and in the Sanctuary war that's about to kick off in a big way. Everyone has grown and changed through the series - even "Stephanie", the malfunctioning reflection used by Valkyrie to cover for her many absences from her mundane mortal life and family, which has become self-aware enough to covet the girl's existence and take drastic measures to be with them... and self-aware enough to defend her family, even when the threat is Valkyrie herself. Other returning characters include the one-time would-be "zombie king" Scapegrace and his inept minion Thrasher, who again risk being one-note comic relief characters but who also undergo some transformations of their own, and the dogged mortal reporter Kenny who first stumbled across evidence of the existence of magic a few books back and refuses to let go of the story of a lifetime, even when it plunges him into the middle of an all-out mage war. By the end, the cast has undergone some notable alterations (skirting spoilers with that vague phrase) and the story has been set on a new trajectory. I expect I won't be waiting another month to space out this series like I have been; I have to know what happens next...
(In tangentially related developments, I'll be undergoing my own notable alteration in the coming months regarding employment, which will likely leave me with less audiobook time as so much of my listening happens at work; I don't know if I'll have a chance to clear the whole series by the time that takes effect or not, but I'll be doing my level best to try. 2025 just has to destroy everything remotely decent and stable in my existence, apparently.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Clockwork Fairy Kingdom (Leah R. Cutter) - My Review
Playing With Fire (Derek Landy) - My Review
The Thickety (J. A. White) - My Review
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
April Site Update
It's a day early because of the likelihood of tomorrow being Not Good (job related, because 2025 wouldn't be 2025 if anything remotely hopeful or decent remained in my life), but the month's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books website.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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