The Six Deaths of the Saint
The Into Shadow collection, Story 3
Alix E. Harrow
Amazon Original Stories
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The servant girl was dying, sent out to the barn lest her sickly cries upset the rest of the household, when the Saint of War first came to her. Heeding Her call, the girl rises from her deathbed and finds herself whisked away by a Prince, who - heeding prophecy - trains her as his champion. The Saint whispers to her whenever her life is in peril, and by her blade the Prince becomes a King, her own name sung in praise and fear across the land as his loyal Devil upon the battlefield... until she learns the secret behind his power, and her own.
REVIEW: Part of a short story anthology by Amazon, this is a solid read, but the weakest tale by Harrow I've read thus far - which still makes it pretty good.
Never naming the girl or saint (or most of the characters), it places the reader both inside and outside the tale, switching between second and first person points of view in a way that gives the whole thing a nightmare edge. From the start, there's something ominous about the arrival of the Saint of War, a shadow over the blessing, but she is too convinced of the vision's purity, and too convinced of her own devotion to the Prince and his priestly companion, to doubt. Any sacrifice she makes, any life struck down, any blood shed is worthwhile if it serves the Prince, whom she thinks she loves... all but ignoring the faithful bowlegged kitchen boy who has followed her from the start, first as friend and then as squire. It's not until she starts noticing him that she truly begins to question her path - something that doesn't happen even when she discovers the true secret behind her blessing (which might more accurately be deemed a curse - I won't go into details for spoiler reasons). Other Harrow titles managed to have the women mature and grow mostly for their own sakes, not due to love (or lack of love) of a man. The ending is dark, inevitable, and cathartic.
It's not a bad story by any means, and it's short enough not to overwork its premise or overstay its welcome. I'm just used to Harrow delivering just a slight bit more.
You Might Also Enjoy:
King's Dragon (Kate Elliott) - My Review
The Once and Future Witches (Alix E. Harrow) - My Review
She Who Became the Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan) - My Review
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Saturday, April 25, 2026
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Matt Dinniman)
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 3
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Carl, Princess Donut, Mongo, and their new companion Katia barely survived the third floor of the apocalyptic dungeon whose outcome will determine the fate of humanity... and, in doing so, they made even more enemies than they already had. But their antics are earning them great ratings across the galaxy, and with it opportunities for lucrative sponsors - and the team is going to need every possible advantage they can get, because the fourth floor is a tangled mess... literally. The "Iron Tangle" is a vast network of railways, from old steam engines to modern monorails, running in endless loops. Among the labyrinth of landings is a puzzle to unravel before this floor, too, collapses and kills everyone who hasn't found a stairway down. Carl remains determined to save as many fellow crawlers as he can, but many people still don't trust him, others want to break up the dream team, and being on the top ten list has put a price on all their heads.
This book contains the third installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
REVIEW: The third installment maintains the momentum of the previous books, maintaining the action, the humor, and the tension. Carl and Donut are an inseparable team, but they still have secrets from each other, and Katia is still an unknown quantity in many ways; knowing that she came to them under misleading pretenses, can she be trusted to side with them when the chips are down? Their mentor/manager Mordecai, meanwhile, still has secrets from his long and storied history, making him a vital resource... but he, too, has his own agenda, and when a mishap knocks him out of the game for a good stretch of the dungeon, Carl and company must learn to stop relying on him so much. Meanwhile, the politics behind the dungeon "game" itself grow more perilous, as Donut and Carl have managed to make some very powerful enemies. And within the game, of course, there's a whole new slate of "mobs" to battle - and battle they must, if they mean to survive.
Amid all the action and achievements, Carl and his companions never lose sight of the true grim desperation of their circumstances. This is not fun and games for them, or a chance to be the video game hero of their childhood dreams, but a nightmare they cannot wake from, awash in a rising sea of blood, and the only way to keep one's head above water is to cling all the harder to that core of humanity - the thing the dungeon masters are truly trying to destroy in each and every crawler. At its core, the story is a tragedy, extinction and unimaginable depravity as entertainment, and not a single person or monster the team encounters isn't scarred by that. Every time Carl thinks he's found a way to outwit the system, though, the AI and the showrunners tighten the chains, but he discovers that resistance is indeed possible, and he is not as alone as he sometimes feels.
There are times when the Iron Tangle gets a little, well, tangled, a wash of trains and stations and numbers that feel impossible to keep straight, but it's not necessary to map it all out in one's head to follow the story. The number of side characters is also growing, along with their attendant entanglements. But things sort themselves out if one sits back and lets the tale unfold. Once more, it ratchets up to a tense, and not entirely bloodless or clean, finale, setting up the next adventure/dungeon nicely. Everyone's growing across the board, creating a dynamic team.
As for the bonus story, it adds another character from the book and yet another wrinkle. The whole is foreshadowing developments later down the line, but manages not to be too precious or coy about it. The "game" has always been much bigger than the poor crawlers forced to endure (or, almost inevitably, not endure) its torments, and the bonus story highlights the greater scope and the other lives the game masters are destroying.
It goes without saying that I'll be reading on eagerly, though I'm trying to pace myself; my budget's taken a real beating this month, and I don't want to outread what I've stockpiled of the series before I can buy more.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) - My Review
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
Caverns of Socrates (Dennis L. McKiernan) - My Review
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 3
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Carl, Princess Donut, Mongo, and their new companion Katia barely survived the third floor of the apocalyptic dungeon whose outcome will determine the fate of humanity... and, in doing so, they made even more enemies than they already had. But their antics are earning them great ratings across the galaxy, and with it opportunities for lucrative sponsors - and the team is going to need every possible advantage they can get, because the fourth floor is a tangled mess... literally. The "Iron Tangle" is a vast network of railways, from old steam engines to modern monorails, running in endless loops. Among the labyrinth of landings is a puzzle to unravel before this floor, too, collapses and kills everyone who hasn't found a stairway down. Carl remains determined to save as many fellow crawlers as he can, but many people still don't trust him, others want to break up the dream team, and being on the top ten list has put a price on all their heads.
This book contains the third installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
REVIEW: The third installment maintains the momentum of the previous books, maintaining the action, the humor, and the tension. Carl and Donut are an inseparable team, but they still have secrets from each other, and Katia is still an unknown quantity in many ways; knowing that she came to them under misleading pretenses, can she be trusted to side with them when the chips are down? Their mentor/manager Mordecai, meanwhile, still has secrets from his long and storied history, making him a vital resource... but he, too, has his own agenda, and when a mishap knocks him out of the game for a good stretch of the dungeon, Carl and company must learn to stop relying on him so much. Meanwhile, the politics behind the dungeon "game" itself grow more perilous, as Donut and Carl have managed to make some very powerful enemies. And within the game, of course, there's a whole new slate of "mobs" to battle - and battle they must, if they mean to survive.
Amid all the action and achievements, Carl and his companions never lose sight of the true grim desperation of their circumstances. This is not fun and games for them, or a chance to be the video game hero of their childhood dreams, but a nightmare they cannot wake from, awash in a rising sea of blood, and the only way to keep one's head above water is to cling all the harder to that core of humanity - the thing the dungeon masters are truly trying to destroy in each and every crawler. At its core, the story is a tragedy, extinction and unimaginable depravity as entertainment, and not a single person or monster the team encounters isn't scarred by that. Every time Carl thinks he's found a way to outwit the system, though, the AI and the showrunners tighten the chains, but he discovers that resistance is indeed possible, and he is not as alone as he sometimes feels.
There are times when the Iron Tangle gets a little, well, tangled, a wash of trains and stations and numbers that feel impossible to keep straight, but it's not necessary to map it all out in one's head to follow the story. The number of side characters is also growing, along with their attendant entanglements. But things sort themselves out if one sits back and lets the tale unfold. Once more, it ratchets up to a tense, and not entirely bloodless or clean, finale, setting up the next adventure/dungeon nicely. Everyone's growing across the board, creating a dynamic team.
As for the bonus story, it adds another character from the book and yet another wrinkle. The whole is foreshadowing developments later down the line, but manages not to be too precious or coy about it. The "game" has always been much bigger than the poor crawlers forced to endure (or, almost inevitably, not endure) its torments, and the bonus story highlights the greater scope and the other lives the game masters are destroying.
It goes without saying that I'll be reading on eagerly, though I'm trying to pace myself; my budget's taken a real beating this month, and I don't want to outread what I've stockpiled of the series before I can buy more.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) - My Review
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
Caverns of Socrates (Dennis L. McKiernan) - My Review
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
Ballantine Books
Fiction, SciFi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dr. Ryland Grace wakes on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there, let alone why he's there at all. Two corpses are all that remains of the rest of the crew. When he discovers that the nearest star isn't the sun he's known all his life, things get even stranger... but as fragmentary memories surface, he realizes just how dire his situation is.
It all started when the sun began dimming inexplicably. When the culprit was discovered to be a form of microscopic life entirely unlike anything seen on Earth, a top team of experts recruited Ryland - once a prominent scientist who wrote a controversial thesis on hypothetical extraterrestrial life possibilities, now a middle school teacher who shuns academia - to study the "Astrophage" and, hopefully, find a cure before reduced sunlight triggers a mass extinction event. But he was never supposed to be out here alone, especially not with fragmented memories.
Then he sees the flare of another engine, and he learns that he's not as alone as he thought he was... nor is Earth the only world in danger.
REVIEW: The movie based on this book, starring Ryan Gosling, has been dominating the box office and gets little but positive buzz everywhere I look, but I hear many people who read the book first grumble at what was trimmed. I have not seen the movie yet, but I just finished the book... and I have to say that there's quite a bit that could be cut that might've improved the reading experience, page-eating tangents that made the first half drag so bad I nearly gave up.
From the start, there's a certain "Gary Stu" vibe to Dr. Ryland Grace that, along with Weir's love of long scientific tangents into minutiae that seems to exist largely to show off how much thought he put into the intricacies of his ideas, overshadows the overall story and what should have been a gripping premise. The man can "science" anything better than anyone else, yet nobly prefers teaching children to pursuing academic accolades. When the world needs saving, though, he's plucked from obscurity as one of the earliest members of what will become Project Hail Mary, the desperate plan to save humanity (and a fair chunk of Earth's essential biome) from the effects of a dimming sun. Even here, among the best of the best, he shines as a top star despite insisting he's just an "everyman" scientist... and that was before he found himself literally as Earth's last, best hope.
Between working out his current situation on the spaceship and flashbacks to the origins of his predicament, a metric spitload of theories and experiments and science and tangents await... and when Ryland encounters the intelligent alien "Rocky" (not really a spoiler, given the movie trailers everywhere, and it's not the main twist anyway), he wastes yet more time and page count ensuring that the reader understands just how much consideration Weir put into designing a truly alien alien, not a green-skinned humanoid with a few bumps on their head. Thankfully, Ryland considers Rocky to be essentially another guy (the alien species doesn't actually have male or female sexes), dodging an old pulp cliché, though there's a bit of a "guy's club" undertone to the book that I couldn't quite guarantee was there yet couldn't quite not see, if that makes any sense.
As all this crawls across the page, past the halfway point, I found myself just picking at the book, not devouring it like I recall devouring Weir's The Martian - which also featured a fair bit of science but stayed focused on astronaut Mark Watney's survival predicament more than Project Hail Mary stays focused on that irrelevant little subplot of saving the planet. It's like there was half a story that was padded out with tangents.
Later on, the story (almost despite itself) builds up a decent momentum. Ryland actually makes a few humanizing mistakes. The scientific tangents focus a little more on the problem at hand, for all that I found myself skimming a few paragraphs now and again to get back to the plot itself. It comes down to a fairly solid wrap-up that leaves the door cracked for future developments.
The overall ideas should've earned Project Hail Mary four stars at least. Weir presents some interesting concepts and hypotheticals, and clearly put a decent amount of thought into things beyond "it looks cool" (not that there's anything wrong with that sort of story). One also has to admire a book that celebrates the possibilities of science, especially in an era where too many people (particularly those in power, despite how much of that power only exists because of science and the advancements in civilization that it creates) are actively rallying against it. But the book just could not overcome the slog of the first half when it came time for me to rate it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Calculating Stars (Mary Robinette Kowal) - My Review
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Dennis E. Taylor) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Andy Weir
Ballantine Books
Fiction, SciFi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dr. Ryland Grace wakes on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there, let alone why he's there at all. Two corpses are all that remains of the rest of the crew. When he discovers that the nearest star isn't the sun he's known all his life, things get even stranger... but as fragmentary memories surface, he realizes just how dire his situation is.
It all started when the sun began dimming inexplicably. When the culprit was discovered to be a form of microscopic life entirely unlike anything seen on Earth, a top team of experts recruited Ryland - once a prominent scientist who wrote a controversial thesis on hypothetical extraterrestrial life possibilities, now a middle school teacher who shuns academia - to study the "Astrophage" and, hopefully, find a cure before reduced sunlight triggers a mass extinction event. But he was never supposed to be out here alone, especially not with fragmented memories.
Then he sees the flare of another engine, and he learns that he's not as alone as he thought he was... nor is Earth the only world in danger.
REVIEW: The movie based on this book, starring Ryan Gosling, has been dominating the box office and gets little but positive buzz everywhere I look, but I hear many people who read the book first grumble at what was trimmed. I have not seen the movie yet, but I just finished the book... and I have to say that there's quite a bit that could be cut that might've improved the reading experience, page-eating tangents that made the first half drag so bad I nearly gave up.
From the start, there's a certain "Gary Stu" vibe to Dr. Ryland Grace that, along with Weir's love of long scientific tangents into minutiae that seems to exist largely to show off how much thought he put into the intricacies of his ideas, overshadows the overall story and what should have been a gripping premise. The man can "science" anything better than anyone else, yet nobly prefers teaching children to pursuing academic accolades. When the world needs saving, though, he's plucked from obscurity as one of the earliest members of what will become Project Hail Mary, the desperate plan to save humanity (and a fair chunk of Earth's essential biome) from the effects of a dimming sun. Even here, among the best of the best, he shines as a top star despite insisting he's just an "everyman" scientist... and that was before he found himself literally as Earth's last, best hope.
Between working out his current situation on the spaceship and flashbacks to the origins of his predicament, a metric spitload of theories and experiments and science and tangents await... and when Ryland encounters the intelligent alien "Rocky" (not really a spoiler, given the movie trailers everywhere, and it's not the main twist anyway), he wastes yet more time and page count ensuring that the reader understands just how much consideration Weir put into designing a truly alien alien, not a green-skinned humanoid with a few bumps on their head. Thankfully, Ryland considers Rocky to be essentially another guy (the alien species doesn't actually have male or female sexes), dodging an old pulp cliché, though there's a bit of a "guy's club" undertone to the book that I couldn't quite guarantee was there yet couldn't quite not see, if that makes any sense.
As all this crawls across the page, past the halfway point, I found myself just picking at the book, not devouring it like I recall devouring Weir's The Martian - which also featured a fair bit of science but stayed focused on astronaut Mark Watney's survival predicament more than Project Hail Mary stays focused on that irrelevant little subplot of saving the planet. It's like there was half a story that was padded out with tangents.
Later on, the story (almost despite itself) builds up a decent momentum. Ryland actually makes a few humanizing mistakes. The scientific tangents focus a little more on the problem at hand, for all that I found myself skimming a few paragraphs now and again to get back to the plot itself. It comes down to a fairly solid wrap-up that leaves the door cracked for future developments.
The overall ideas should've earned Project Hail Mary four stars at least. Weir presents some interesting concepts and hypotheticals, and clearly put a decent amount of thought into things beyond "it looks cool" (not that there's anything wrong with that sort of story). One also has to admire a book that celebrates the possibilities of science, especially in an era where too many people (particularly those in power, despite how much of that power only exists because of science and the advancements in civilization that it creates) are actively rallying against it. But the book just could not overcome the slog of the first half when it came time for me to rate it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Calculating Stars (Mary Robinette Kowal) - My Review
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Dennis E. Taylor) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
March Site Update
March apparently ends today, for anyone keeping track. Accordingly, the main Brightdreamer Books site has been updated with the month's reviews.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Pulling the Wings Off Angels (K. J. Parker)
Pulling the Wings Off Angels
K. J. Parker
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: When a struggling, sinning clerical student gets in deep with local thug Florio, the bully demands an unusual form of repayment: hand over the angel his grandfather is rumored to have trapped and hidden in a place even the Almighty Unconquerable Sun cannot see. It's all just a rumor, certainly. Despite his vocation, the cleric doesn't really believe in physically manifesting epiphanies or angels... until Florio breaks open the hidden vault and they're both standing face-to-face with the impossible. This could be their ticket to the life and afterlife of their wildest dreams... or it could be the sin that reserves their spot in the eternal fires of damnation.
REVIEW: This very short novella was likened to The Good Place in the blurb on back, which was one of my favorite shows of all time; the humor was sharp, the characters flawed but trying, and the ultimate message - that change was possible, that justice could be achieved, that broken systems can be repaired - was hopeful and uplifting. So, despite being an atheist-leaning agnostic myself, and admittedly influenced by the free-to-me price, I decided to give Parker's little jaunt a try.
As one might surmise from the rating, I did not enjoy it.
This novella promises petty cruelty and bullying right in the title, and the book delivers throughout. There's just a mean-spirited nature to the whole story that put me off almost from the start and never went away. Everyone in it is slimy, conniving, selfish, cruel, and utterly unaccountable to anyone but themselves. God is a bully running a rigged system, the angel's a jerk, and the story natters around in theological paradoxes where all the answers end in damnation and hopelessness. Is a world without a supreme deity pulling the strings better than one lorded over by a rat bastard who openly admits there's no way to win His inherently contradictory game? Not really, no, and any justice or vindication is hollow and short-lived. Instead of The Good Place's optimism, I got a bunch of snarky and unpleasant people being snarky and unpleasant and ultimately damned no matter what they do or don't do, so why bother.
Maybe if I were more of a theology student myself and were more personally invested in the religious debates and their histories (which Parker was obviously parodying in this alternate world), I'd have found it more amusing. But I'm not, and I didn't. This one can't go in the giveaway bag fast enough...
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wish List (Eoin Colfer) - My Review
How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur) - My Review
Envy of Angels (Matt Wallace) - My Review
K. J. Parker
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: When a struggling, sinning clerical student gets in deep with local thug Florio, the bully demands an unusual form of repayment: hand over the angel his grandfather is rumored to have trapped and hidden in a place even the Almighty Unconquerable Sun cannot see. It's all just a rumor, certainly. Despite his vocation, the cleric doesn't really believe in physically manifesting epiphanies or angels... until Florio breaks open the hidden vault and they're both standing face-to-face with the impossible. This could be their ticket to the life and afterlife of their wildest dreams... or it could be the sin that reserves their spot in the eternal fires of damnation.
REVIEW: This very short novella was likened to The Good Place in the blurb on back, which was one of my favorite shows of all time; the humor was sharp, the characters flawed but trying, and the ultimate message - that change was possible, that justice could be achieved, that broken systems can be repaired - was hopeful and uplifting. So, despite being an atheist-leaning agnostic myself, and admittedly influenced by the free-to-me price, I decided to give Parker's little jaunt a try.
As one might surmise from the rating, I did not enjoy it.
This novella promises petty cruelty and bullying right in the title, and the book delivers throughout. There's just a mean-spirited nature to the whole story that put me off almost from the start and never went away. Everyone in it is slimy, conniving, selfish, cruel, and utterly unaccountable to anyone but themselves. God is a bully running a rigged system, the angel's a jerk, and the story natters around in theological paradoxes where all the answers end in damnation and hopelessness. Is a world without a supreme deity pulling the strings better than one lorded over by a rat bastard who openly admits there's no way to win His inherently contradictory game? Not really, no, and any justice or vindication is hollow and short-lived. Instead of The Good Place's optimism, I got a bunch of snarky and unpleasant people being snarky and unpleasant and ultimately damned no matter what they do or don't do, so why bother.
Maybe if I were more of a theology student myself and were more personally invested in the religious debates and their histories (which Parker was obviously parodying in this alternate world), I'd have found it more amusing. But I'm not, and I didn't. This one can't go in the giveaway bag fast enough...
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wish List (Eoin Colfer) - My Review
How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur) - My Review
Envy of Angels (Matt Wallace) - My Review
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