The month's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
Lovabye Dragon (Barbara Joosse)
Lovabye Dragon
The Girl and Dragon Books
Barbara Joosse, illustrations by Randy Cecil
Candlewick
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Picture Book/Poetry
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A princess, alone in a castle, dreams of a dragon friend, while a dragon, alone in a cave, dreams of a princess...
REVIEW: Another quick picture book read during down time at work... This is a quick, fun, cozy little tale told in lyrical prose and imaginative illustrations. Inevitably, of course, girl and dragon meet, becoming best friends. Not much of a plot, perhaps, but that's not really the point of picture books like this. It's about the flow of words and the idea of making friends with a dragon, an idea that still holds appeal to some of us whose childhood bedtime story days are long behind us.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Me and My Dragon (David Biedrzycki) - My Review
The Knight and the Dragon (Tomie DePaola) - My Review
The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend (Dan Santat) - My Review
The Girl and Dragon Books
Barbara Joosse, illustrations by Randy Cecil
Candlewick
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Picture Book/Poetry
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A princess, alone in a castle, dreams of a dragon friend, while a dragon, alone in a cave, dreams of a princess...
REVIEW: Another quick picture book read during down time at work... This is a quick, fun, cozy little tale told in lyrical prose and imaginative illustrations. Inevitably, of course, girl and dragon meet, becoming best friends. Not much of a plot, perhaps, but that's not really the point of picture books like this. It's about the flow of words and the idea of making friends with a dragon, an idea that still holds appeal to some of us whose childhood bedtime story days are long behind us.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Me and My Dragon (David Biedrzycki) - My Review
The Knight and the Dragon (Tomie DePaola) - My Review
The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend (Dan Santat) - My Review
Billy Summers (Stephen King)
Billy Summers
Stephen King
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Crime/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The war in Iraq may have trained Billy Summers to be a sniper, but he was a killer long before then, ever since one of his mother's string of loser boyfriends murdered his kid sister in front of him. After the war, it seemed only natural that he'd fall into life as an assassin, one of the best in the business. He told himself that it's not so different from what he did in the war, that the people he kills are bad themselves, but there's only so long he can repeat that and believe it. After this last hit, he's decided it's time to hang up his gun for good. Perhaps that's why he didn't ask the questions he should have asked: why this job needs such an extensive setup, months embedding himself in a small Southern town with an elaborate cover story about being an aspiring novelist under a tight deadline... or why the payout was so large for a target who, while no angel, hardly seemed to deserve the kind of attention he was getting. But something's sour about this whole deal, something that leaves him a fugitive from both the police and his former employers.
A man in Billy's position would be a fool to stick his neck out to help anyone, let alone the young woman dumped in the vacant lot one evening after a brutal attack. But he can't look away, not if he wants to believe that there's still a good person under all the bad he's done. Now, his quest for revenge and the money he's owed, as well as the truth about the hit he was hired for, carries the added complication of Alice, who could all too easily be pulled down by his bad life.
REVIEW: This is the first King title I've read without overt supernatural elements (aside from a few nods to his previous titles), but Billy Summers hardly needs demons or ghosts to live a haunted, cursed life. Scarred from a young age, every step he takes seems to carry him further from the normal, happy life other people appear to live, into a future where the best he can manage is to rationalize life as a hired gun by only taking hits on murderers or child rapists or other objectively terrible people. The cover story provided by his handler, that of a writer, taps into a latent dream of his own, and once he discovers the power of writing to relive (and rewrite) his past, he comes to understand what kind of life he might have had had he never had to pick up a gun to defend himself from the man who murdered his sister, or learned to snipe in a war zone. Even as he plans for his own escape from the dark side, though, he has to wonder if it's too late to ever be that other person or live that other life, and though not overtly superstitious, he keeps seeing signs of his own impending doom. Rescuing Alice marks a turning point, one (possibly last) chance to do the right thing. She repays that kindness by becoming the ally he didn't realize he needed - though, touched by her own trauma, she could too easily fall into the sort of life he himself is trying to escape from. Meanwhile, Billy can't seem to stop writing the story of how he became who he is, though even he isn't sure if it's the beginning of a new page or an epitaph. As usual, King delivers complex characters going through various levels of Hell, struggling and often failing yet unable to give up or walk away, even as tragedy seems all but certain. There are a few lulls and sidetracks, and one or two elements feel a little too coincidental, but it's always interesting, if often dark and sometimes brutal.
You Might Also Enjoy:
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) - My Review
The Shining (Stephen King) - My Review
I Am Still Alive (Kate Alice Marshall) - My Review
Stephen King
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Crime/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The war in Iraq may have trained Billy Summers to be a sniper, but he was a killer long before then, ever since one of his mother's string of loser boyfriends murdered his kid sister in front of him. After the war, it seemed only natural that he'd fall into life as an assassin, one of the best in the business. He told himself that it's not so different from what he did in the war, that the people he kills are bad themselves, but there's only so long he can repeat that and believe it. After this last hit, he's decided it's time to hang up his gun for good. Perhaps that's why he didn't ask the questions he should have asked: why this job needs such an extensive setup, months embedding himself in a small Southern town with an elaborate cover story about being an aspiring novelist under a tight deadline... or why the payout was so large for a target who, while no angel, hardly seemed to deserve the kind of attention he was getting. But something's sour about this whole deal, something that leaves him a fugitive from both the police and his former employers.
A man in Billy's position would be a fool to stick his neck out to help anyone, let alone the young woman dumped in the vacant lot one evening after a brutal attack. But he can't look away, not if he wants to believe that there's still a good person under all the bad he's done. Now, his quest for revenge and the money he's owed, as well as the truth about the hit he was hired for, carries the added complication of Alice, who could all too easily be pulled down by his bad life.
REVIEW: This is the first King title I've read without overt supernatural elements (aside from a few nods to his previous titles), but Billy Summers hardly needs demons or ghosts to live a haunted, cursed life. Scarred from a young age, every step he takes seems to carry him further from the normal, happy life other people appear to live, into a future where the best he can manage is to rationalize life as a hired gun by only taking hits on murderers or child rapists or other objectively terrible people. The cover story provided by his handler, that of a writer, taps into a latent dream of his own, and once he discovers the power of writing to relive (and rewrite) his past, he comes to understand what kind of life he might have had had he never had to pick up a gun to defend himself from the man who murdered his sister, or learned to snipe in a war zone. Even as he plans for his own escape from the dark side, though, he has to wonder if it's too late to ever be that other person or live that other life, and though not overtly superstitious, he keeps seeing signs of his own impending doom. Rescuing Alice marks a turning point, one (possibly last) chance to do the right thing. She repays that kindness by becoming the ally he didn't realize he needed - though, touched by her own trauma, she could too easily fall into the sort of life he himself is trying to escape from. Meanwhile, Billy can't seem to stop writing the story of how he became who he is, though even he isn't sure if it's the beginning of a new page or an epitaph. As usual, King delivers complex characters going through various levels of Hell, struggling and often failing yet unable to give up or walk away, even as tragedy seems all but certain. There are a few lulls and sidetracks, and one or two elements feel a little too coincidental, but it's always interesting, if often dark and sometimes brutal.
You Might Also Enjoy:
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) - My Review
The Shining (Stephen King) - My Review
I Am Still Alive (Kate Alice Marshall) - My Review
Monday, July 25, 2022
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett)
City of Stairs
The Divine Cities series, Book 1
Robert Jackson Bennett
Broadway Books
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: In ages past, the people of the Continent were blessed by six grand Divinities, whose miracles enabled great wonder and prosperity... and in whose names they spread across the world, conquering and enslaving every nation they encountered as inherently lesser people (for they had no Divinity of their own, so surely they were not truly as human as those of the Continent). All that ended when the Kaj of Saypur spearheaded a rebellion. He had, through some secret alchemy lost to time, learned how to kill a Divinity, and he took his fight to the very heart of their land: Bulikov, so-called City of Miracles, the very Seat of the World from which the six Divinities ruled. The moment the last Divinity fell, the very nature of the Continent changed. The climate collapsed, the landscape changed, and half of Bulikov vanished, the rest left twisted and scarred, with buildings pushed inside buildings and staircases climbing and descending to nowhere. Now, the Continent, former crown jewel of the world, is the land of the impoverished and desperate, no place moreso than Bulikov, and Saypur rules, outlawing even the mention of the Divinities or the learning of Continental history by Continental people. But just because a thing has been banned does not mean there are those who have not, through the generations, managed to remember... and their hatred only grows deeper with every passing day.
The murder of a Saypuri scholar, sent to study Continental histories and religious texts, brings the long-brewing troubles in Bulikov to a head. When a seemingly nondescript junior diplomat, Shara Thivani, arrives to investigate, it appears to be a simple case: the man's very presence, let alone his mission, was an outrage to every Continental man, woman, and child forbidden from even speaking the names of their former gods, so clearly a local finally snapped. But the more Shara digs, the more danger and deception she uncovers... and the less she comes to trust the histories she herself was taught, about the Kaj's victory and even the deaths of the Divinities. Bulikov has long been a bomb with an unlit fuse, one that could blow the whole of the world apart, and Shara's investigation has just struck a spark.
REVIEW: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I picked it up; to be honest, had I not got it as part of a random book bundle a while back, I don't know that I would've even thought to try it. But I was looking for something a little different, and the cover blurb promised that: a world where gods had been real but had been killed, where the oppressed rose up to become oppressors, and where a city could be broken in such a way that staircases lingered to nowhere in reality. So I figured I'd finally give it a try... and was quickly pulled into a unique, complex world built upon a clever conceit, populated by intriguing (yet hardly flawless) characters, and propelled by a murder mystery that becomes a diplomatic crises that bleeds into the ways history and religion can be warped to suit any purpose when told only by those with agendas... and how the past, no matter how hard one tries to bury it, always finds a way to reach up and strangle the present, especially when one refuses to admit it is there at all.
Shara comes to Bulikov under less than honest pretenses; she is a junior diplomat of sorts, and an agent with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (whose chief purpose seems to be keeping the Continent impoverished and needy lest they rise up to enslave the world again), but she was not dispatched in any official capacity. Rather, she was a student of the slain scholar, with her own interest in - borderline obsession with - Continental history and the Divinities about whom so little is officially known... and with one very personal complication in the city aside from a dead mentor, a prominent Continental city leader with whom she had an ill-fated relationship many years ago. Accompanying her is Sigrud, a towering "secretary" from the wild Dreylands with his own history and secrets... about the only person in Bulikov she can trust not to manipulate her for her connections or stab her in the back, or both. Together, Shara and Sigrud find themselves plunged into a web of deceit and desperation and danger, and the very real possibility that the claims of all Divinities being dead and gone forever might be exaggerated. The story takes several interesting turns, the investigation suffering some serious setbacks and Shara making a few missteps that cost her dearly (professionally and personally), before building to a truly epic climax and a conclusion that managed to kick the story over the top into the five-star range. Along the way, the tale deftly delves into themes of colonialism and empire, control of history and education as a means of controlling or oppressing populaces, the drift between cultural memory and truth, the corruption of faith and purpose over time... none of it heavy-handed, all of it interesting. I suppose I'll have to track down the next book in the series now, as this is a world I definitely want to revisit.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Master of Djinn (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone) - My Review
The Way of Kings (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
The Divine Cities series, Book 1
Robert Jackson Bennett
Broadway Books
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: In ages past, the people of the Continent were blessed by six grand Divinities, whose miracles enabled great wonder and prosperity... and in whose names they spread across the world, conquering and enslaving every nation they encountered as inherently lesser people (for they had no Divinity of their own, so surely they were not truly as human as those of the Continent). All that ended when the Kaj of Saypur spearheaded a rebellion. He had, through some secret alchemy lost to time, learned how to kill a Divinity, and he took his fight to the very heart of their land: Bulikov, so-called City of Miracles, the very Seat of the World from which the six Divinities ruled. The moment the last Divinity fell, the very nature of the Continent changed. The climate collapsed, the landscape changed, and half of Bulikov vanished, the rest left twisted and scarred, with buildings pushed inside buildings and staircases climbing and descending to nowhere. Now, the Continent, former crown jewel of the world, is the land of the impoverished and desperate, no place moreso than Bulikov, and Saypur rules, outlawing even the mention of the Divinities or the learning of Continental history by Continental people. But just because a thing has been banned does not mean there are those who have not, through the generations, managed to remember... and their hatred only grows deeper with every passing day.
The murder of a Saypuri scholar, sent to study Continental histories and religious texts, brings the long-brewing troubles in Bulikov to a head. When a seemingly nondescript junior diplomat, Shara Thivani, arrives to investigate, it appears to be a simple case: the man's very presence, let alone his mission, was an outrage to every Continental man, woman, and child forbidden from even speaking the names of their former gods, so clearly a local finally snapped. But the more Shara digs, the more danger and deception she uncovers... and the less she comes to trust the histories she herself was taught, about the Kaj's victory and even the deaths of the Divinities. Bulikov has long been a bomb with an unlit fuse, one that could blow the whole of the world apart, and Shara's investigation has just struck a spark.
REVIEW: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I picked it up; to be honest, had I not got it as part of a random book bundle a while back, I don't know that I would've even thought to try it. But I was looking for something a little different, and the cover blurb promised that: a world where gods had been real but had been killed, where the oppressed rose up to become oppressors, and where a city could be broken in such a way that staircases lingered to nowhere in reality. So I figured I'd finally give it a try... and was quickly pulled into a unique, complex world built upon a clever conceit, populated by intriguing (yet hardly flawless) characters, and propelled by a murder mystery that becomes a diplomatic crises that bleeds into the ways history and religion can be warped to suit any purpose when told only by those with agendas... and how the past, no matter how hard one tries to bury it, always finds a way to reach up and strangle the present, especially when one refuses to admit it is there at all.
Shara comes to Bulikov under less than honest pretenses; she is a junior diplomat of sorts, and an agent with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (whose chief purpose seems to be keeping the Continent impoverished and needy lest they rise up to enslave the world again), but she was not dispatched in any official capacity. Rather, she was a student of the slain scholar, with her own interest in - borderline obsession with - Continental history and the Divinities about whom so little is officially known... and with one very personal complication in the city aside from a dead mentor, a prominent Continental city leader with whom she had an ill-fated relationship many years ago. Accompanying her is Sigrud, a towering "secretary" from the wild Dreylands with his own history and secrets... about the only person in Bulikov she can trust not to manipulate her for her connections or stab her in the back, or both. Together, Shara and Sigrud find themselves plunged into a web of deceit and desperation and danger, and the very real possibility that the claims of all Divinities being dead and gone forever might be exaggerated. The story takes several interesting turns, the investigation suffering some serious setbacks and Shara making a few missteps that cost her dearly (professionally and personally), before building to a truly epic climax and a conclusion that managed to kick the story over the top into the five-star range. Along the way, the tale deftly delves into themes of colonialism and empire, control of history and education as a means of controlling or oppressing populaces, the drift between cultural memory and truth, the corruption of faith and purpose over time... none of it heavy-handed, all of it interesting. I suppose I'll have to track down the next book in the series now, as this is a world I definitely want to revisit.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Master of Djinn (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone) - My Review
The Way of Kings (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
Friday, July 15, 2022
How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge (K. Eason)
How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge
The Thorne Chronicles, Book 2
K. Eason
DAW
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Rory Thorne was born a princess, complete with fairy gifts (and the obligatory curse), but - after stopping a plot to usurp the throne of the Free Worlds of Tadesh, inadvertently inciting a rebellion, and fleeing to the newly-formed Consortium of liberated planets - she's hung up her crown, literal and otherwise. Along with her former royal bodyguards Zhang and Thorsdottir and Jaed Moss, once heir to a tyrant, they ply the fringes of space as privateers, deliberately avoiding politics (as well as the Tadeshi royalists, who would still love nothing more than Rory's head on a platter). But the multiverse has ways of reminding people who they really are, even when they're trying everything to avoid it. Her ship, the Vagabond, has just stumbled upon a derelict, a Tadeshi ship destroyed by weaponry the likes of which they've never seen... and carrying a revolutionary weapon that could destroy any biosphere it touches. But someone else wants very much to reclaim the weapon, the Protectorate of the warlike vakari - and, in an interesting wrinkle, the weapon itself has developed sapience and wants nothing to do with the utter destruction it was created to spread. As (former) Vizier Rupert and security expert Grytt race to intervene, Rory and her companions find themselves in an impossible situation. This time, there may be no fairy tale happy ending for the princess in distress...
REVIEW: After hearing the first installment of this (possible) duology on audiobook, an interesting mash-up of fairy tale tropes and space opera with more than a dash of humor in the narrative, I resorted to buying hard copies when I couldn't get the second installment through Overdrive in a timely fashion. Fortunately, it lives up to the high bar set by the previous book. Rory's efforts to avoid further responsibilities are rudley interrupted by the discovery of this new plot by the Tadeshi royalists, one that poses a threat to all inhabited worlds... but the greater threat may be the Protectorate, whose innate arithmantic abilities make the best human and known xeno masters look like preschoolers just learning their numbers. Even the Protectorate's current enemies, two species who are just reaching out to human space as the Protectorate's theological driven Expansion wars increase pressure on their borders, are light years (literally) beyond the best local magical technology, not even needing cumbersome tesser-hex gates to travel between star systems. The presence of Rose, the bioweapon that has no desire to harm, further drives home the fact that, whatever the outcome of Rory's encounter here, the multiverse as she and her friends (and even her enemies) know it is effectively as over as the world of precolonial natives staring down their first gunpowder weapon.
With these bombshells dropped on them, they nevertheless must rise to the occasion, if only to stave off the greater, coming conflict for a time and buy a little breathing room. While Rupert and Grytt try to thread the tricky diplomatic path between two potential ally factions with little love lost for each other, Rory and her crew wind up in the belly of the beast itself when a Protectorate ship arrives, first contact of a most hostile nature. They each bring their own attitudes and expectations into the encounter, the latter often dashing uselessly against the cliffs of a dark new reality, but must trust themselves and each other to find a way to survive. By the end, relationships and outlooks have shifted dramatically, as has the greater political landscape of the many worlds, and hard choices lead to hard sacrifices.
This being presented as a historical narrative written by an unnamed chronicler, hints are dropped about what comes next, enough that I suspect a third book in the works (even though I was under the impression that this was a duology), but - like the first installment - enough wraps up here to leave the reader satisfied. All in all, I greatly enjoyed this second adventure with Rory Thorne and her companions.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Crownchasers (Rebecca Coffindaffer) - My Review
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse (K. Eason) - My Review
Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
The Thorne Chronicles, Book 2
K. Eason
DAW
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Rory Thorne was born a princess, complete with fairy gifts (and the obligatory curse), but - after stopping a plot to usurp the throne of the Free Worlds of Tadesh, inadvertently inciting a rebellion, and fleeing to the newly-formed Consortium of liberated planets - she's hung up her crown, literal and otherwise. Along with her former royal bodyguards Zhang and Thorsdottir and Jaed Moss, once heir to a tyrant, they ply the fringes of space as privateers, deliberately avoiding politics (as well as the Tadeshi royalists, who would still love nothing more than Rory's head on a platter). But the multiverse has ways of reminding people who they really are, even when they're trying everything to avoid it. Her ship, the Vagabond, has just stumbled upon a derelict, a Tadeshi ship destroyed by weaponry the likes of which they've never seen... and carrying a revolutionary weapon that could destroy any biosphere it touches. But someone else wants very much to reclaim the weapon, the Protectorate of the warlike vakari - and, in an interesting wrinkle, the weapon itself has developed sapience and wants nothing to do with the utter destruction it was created to spread. As (former) Vizier Rupert and security expert Grytt race to intervene, Rory and her companions find themselves in an impossible situation. This time, there may be no fairy tale happy ending for the princess in distress...
REVIEW: After hearing the first installment of this (possible) duology on audiobook, an interesting mash-up of fairy tale tropes and space opera with more than a dash of humor in the narrative, I resorted to buying hard copies when I couldn't get the second installment through Overdrive in a timely fashion. Fortunately, it lives up to the high bar set by the previous book. Rory's efforts to avoid further responsibilities are rudley interrupted by the discovery of this new plot by the Tadeshi royalists, one that poses a threat to all inhabited worlds... but the greater threat may be the Protectorate, whose innate arithmantic abilities make the best human and known xeno masters look like preschoolers just learning their numbers. Even the Protectorate's current enemies, two species who are just reaching out to human space as the Protectorate's theological driven Expansion wars increase pressure on their borders, are light years (literally) beyond the best local magical technology, not even needing cumbersome tesser-hex gates to travel between star systems. The presence of Rose, the bioweapon that has no desire to harm, further drives home the fact that, whatever the outcome of Rory's encounter here, the multiverse as she and her friends (and even her enemies) know it is effectively as over as the world of precolonial natives staring down their first gunpowder weapon.
With these bombshells dropped on them, they nevertheless must rise to the occasion, if only to stave off the greater, coming conflict for a time and buy a little breathing room. While Rupert and Grytt try to thread the tricky diplomatic path between two potential ally factions with little love lost for each other, Rory and her crew wind up in the belly of the beast itself when a Protectorate ship arrives, first contact of a most hostile nature. They each bring their own attitudes and expectations into the encounter, the latter often dashing uselessly against the cliffs of a dark new reality, but must trust themselves and each other to find a way to survive. By the end, relationships and outlooks have shifted dramatically, as has the greater political landscape of the many worlds, and hard choices lead to hard sacrifices.
This being presented as a historical narrative written by an unnamed chronicler, hints are dropped about what comes next, enough that I suspect a third book in the works (even though I was under the impression that this was a duology), but - like the first installment - enough wraps up here to leave the reader satisfied. All in all, I greatly enjoyed this second adventure with Rory Thorne and her companions.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Crownchasers (Rebecca Coffindaffer) - My Review
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse (K. Eason) - My Review
Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Thursday, July 14, 2022
The Diviners (Libba Bray)
The Diviners
The Diviners series, Book 1
Libba Bray
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Evangeline "Evie" O'Neill never means to cause trouble... well, not bad trouble. But this time, she's gotten herself in a real pickle: not only did she get herself drunk (illegal, what with Prohibition on), but she let slip a shameful secret about a popular boy in town. She should've known better than to show off her little gift - her ability to glean secrets and memories from objects - but, well, it was a party, and there was alcohol, and it got her the attention she craved. In their small Ohio town, it's a scandal for the ages, and the only way her parents see out of the mess is to ship their wayward teenage daughter off to a bachelor uncle in New York City. This, for Evie, sounds like a dream come true. 1920's New York City is where it's all happening, a city of glitz and glamor, where anybody can become anything. Sure, Uncle Will's a stodgy old stick in the mud, running a dud of a museum dedicated to supernatural curiosities, but Evie's determined to make this city her own, joining in the flapper scene and sneaking out to speakeasies and living life to the fullest. If only she could shake the nightmares about her dead brother... Then the killings start, murders with occult overtones. When Uncle Will is called in as a professional consultant, Evie is plunged into the dark and dangerous side of the city, and a mad cult's prophecy about the end of the world that may be on the verge of coming true.
REVIEW: I had a very mixed reaction to this one. On the plus side, Bray establishes a strong sense of the times and the place, evoking the energy and the slang, as well as the dark undercurrents that resonate to this day (particularly the mutually incompatible ideas of what America is supposed to be, the irrationality of extremism, and the notion of eugenics and other means to "purify" the nation and eliminate "undesirable" or "weak" or "corrupting" elements of society). Evie's a girl of her time and in her moment, embracing the seemingly limitless possibilities of the city that never sleeps in the heyday of the 1920's. She's also rather selfish and somewhat dense and prone to simply not saying important things to draw out storylines, dancing around important revelations or plot points without daring to advance them. But, then, she's not the only one guilty of that charge. The book would've been about a third shorter if it hadn't spent so much time and energy setting up things that went nowhere (in this volume, at least), just being creepy and ominous for the sake of being creepy and ominous (to the point of tiresome repetition), or otherwise having people dither and waste page count by almost doing something but the deciding against it or putting it off or conveniently forgetting it. And even by the end, characters don't really learn to spit things out, and keep withholding vital information from those who most need to hear it. The plot itself, once it decides to get going (and when it decides to actually progress) is decently creepy and twisted, with ties to the occult craze and secret societies and doomsday cults built on warped belief systems, and comes to a satisfactory climax... after which the book lingers way too long on wrap-ups meant to hook me into the second volume. The titular "diviners", despite laborious introductions and dark portents of them being needed soon, don't even play into the story as much as one might expect. On the expectation that the second book, too, will burn a third or more of its page count simply setting up the volume after (or just letting plot points fizzle out), I don't expect I'll continue. Otherwise, it's not a bad story, with some interesting ideas; I just wish it had actually gone somewhere with more of them.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
The Diviners series, Book 1
Libba Bray
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Evangeline "Evie" O'Neill never means to cause trouble... well, not bad trouble. But this time, she's gotten herself in a real pickle: not only did she get herself drunk (illegal, what with Prohibition on), but she let slip a shameful secret about a popular boy in town. She should've known better than to show off her little gift - her ability to glean secrets and memories from objects - but, well, it was a party, and there was alcohol, and it got her the attention she craved. In their small Ohio town, it's a scandal for the ages, and the only way her parents see out of the mess is to ship their wayward teenage daughter off to a bachelor uncle in New York City. This, for Evie, sounds like a dream come true. 1920's New York City is where it's all happening, a city of glitz and glamor, where anybody can become anything. Sure, Uncle Will's a stodgy old stick in the mud, running a dud of a museum dedicated to supernatural curiosities, but Evie's determined to make this city her own, joining in the flapper scene and sneaking out to speakeasies and living life to the fullest. If only she could shake the nightmares about her dead brother... Then the killings start, murders with occult overtones. When Uncle Will is called in as a professional consultant, Evie is plunged into the dark and dangerous side of the city, and a mad cult's prophecy about the end of the world that may be on the verge of coming true.
REVIEW: I had a very mixed reaction to this one. On the plus side, Bray establishes a strong sense of the times and the place, evoking the energy and the slang, as well as the dark undercurrents that resonate to this day (particularly the mutually incompatible ideas of what America is supposed to be, the irrationality of extremism, and the notion of eugenics and other means to "purify" the nation and eliminate "undesirable" or "weak" or "corrupting" elements of society). Evie's a girl of her time and in her moment, embracing the seemingly limitless possibilities of the city that never sleeps in the heyday of the 1920's. She's also rather selfish and somewhat dense and prone to simply not saying important things to draw out storylines, dancing around important revelations or plot points without daring to advance them. But, then, she's not the only one guilty of that charge. The book would've been about a third shorter if it hadn't spent so much time and energy setting up things that went nowhere (in this volume, at least), just being creepy and ominous for the sake of being creepy and ominous (to the point of tiresome repetition), or otherwise having people dither and waste page count by almost doing something but the deciding against it or putting it off or conveniently forgetting it. And even by the end, characters don't really learn to spit things out, and keep withholding vital information from those who most need to hear it. The plot itself, once it decides to get going (and when it decides to actually progress) is decently creepy and twisted, with ties to the occult craze and secret societies and doomsday cults built on warped belief systems, and comes to a satisfactory climax... after which the book lingers way too long on wrap-ups meant to hook me into the second volume. The titular "diviners", despite laborious introductions and dark portents of them being needed soon, don't even play into the story as much as one might expect. On the expectation that the second book, too, will burn a third or more of its page count simply setting up the volume after (or just letting plot points fizzle out), I don't expect I'll continue. Otherwise, it's not a bad story, with some interesting ideas; I just wish it had actually gone somewhere with more of them.
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Ring Shout (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
Friday, July 8, 2022
Borderline (Mishell Baker)
Borderline
The Arcadia Project series, Book 1
Mishell Baker
Saga Press
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Like countless other women and men, Millie came to Los Angeles with stars in her eyes and dreams in her heart... only to lose everything in a single moment, a failed suicide attempt that took her legs, her coveted spot at the UCLA film school, and her fledgling career as a director just starting to get noticed on the festival circuit. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, she's been surviving day by day in rehab, slowly learning the coping mechanisms that would let her return to a normal life, little as she even knows what "normal" is anymore. Then a strange woman arrives with an even stranger job offer. About half a dozen red flags at least are waving all around the situation, but Millie doesn't see many (or any) other options. Thus she finds herself drawn into the Arcadia Project: the secret liaisons between the human world and the fey, charged with keeping knowledge of magic hidden and preventing rule breaches that might result in humanity being squashed like bugs by an irate faerie queen. Her trial run is supposed to be fairly routine, informing a fey viscount that he's overstayed his visa and needs to return to his world. Unfortunately, this job turns out to be anything but routine, plunging a still-unstable Millie in way over her head in a dark plot that could destroy everything, and everyone, it touches.
REVIEW: I have middling luck with urban fantasies like this, so I didn't go into it with high expectations. (To be honest, I mostly chose it because pickings were a bit slim on Overdrive.) Those expectations were, happily, soon exceeded, in a story with magic and mystery and danger and flawed, hurting characters who aren't ever magically (metaphorically or literally) fixed, but who have to navigate their broken world with the sometimes-faulty tools they have on hand. Millie isn't always a likeable heroine, but she is determined, and even when she gets overwhelmed she manages to pick herself back up. (She also recognizes, if belatedly, when she hurts others with her iffy coping skills, and does what she can to make amends.) The supporting cast all has problems of their own to cope with, problems that they, too, often struggle and occasionally fail to handle well. The fey here aren't just bored partiers visiting our world for fun, or on dark secret missions; there's a very real need for fey and human worlds to interact, as without fey magic humans would have no inspiration or creativity, and without human logic and stability most fey just drift, lacking focus or object permanence or even memory. Every human has a bond, whether they know it or not, with a particular fey, their "echo"; meeting one's echo can spark a powerhouse career, such as the one enjoyed by a key player and one of Millie's personal heroes, David, a director who once lit Hollywood on fire but is in the waning days of his glory. This adds extra, interesting dimensions to the otherwise generic urban fantasy template of "hidden fey in the modern human world". The plot moves at a decent pace, only occasionally lingering overlong in self denial or misery or deliberate stupidity by the characters; even though I saw a couple twists coming, it was more in the anticipatory sense and less in the "dear gods, how obvious can you be - and how stupid are the characters for not seeing it?" sense. It all comes together, the plot and the characters' hard-won growth and even the cost of their lingering scars, in a rather satisfying, if somewhat bittersweet, way by the end. There's just a certain magic to this story that really worked for me, placing it above many other urban fantasies.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Bedlam's Bard (Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams) - My Review
The Arcadia Project series, Book 1
Mishell Baker
Saga Press
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Like countless other women and men, Millie came to Los Angeles with stars in her eyes and dreams in her heart... only to lose everything in a single moment, a failed suicide attempt that took her legs, her coveted spot at the UCLA film school, and her fledgling career as a director just starting to get noticed on the festival circuit. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, she's been surviving day by day in rehab, slowly learning the coping mechanisms that would let her return to a normal life, little as she even knows what "normal" is anymore. Then a strange woman arrives with an even stranger job offer. About half a dozen red flags at least are waving all around the situation, but Millie doesn't see many (or any) other options. Thus she finds herself drawn into the Arcadia Project: the secret liaisons between the human world and the fey, charged with keeping knowledge of magic hidden and preventing rule breaches that might result in humanity being squashed like bugs by an irate faerie queen. Her trial run is supposed to be fairly routine, informing a fey viscount that he's overstayed his visa and needs to return to his world. Unfortunately, this job turns out to be anything but routine, plunging a still-unstable Millie in way over her head in a dark plot that could destroy everything, and everyone, it touches.
REVIEW: I have middling luck with urban fantasies like this, so I didn't go into it with high expectations. (To be honest, I mostly chose it because pickings were a bit slim on Overdrive.) Those expectations were, happily, soon exceeded, in a story with magic and mystery and danger and flawed, hurting characters who aren't ever magically (metaphorically or literally) fixed, but who have to navigate their broken world with the sometimes-faulty tools they have on hand. Millie isn't always a likeable heroine, but she is determined, and even when she gets overwhelmed she manages to pick herself back up. (She also recognizes, if belatedly, when she hurts others with her iffy coping skills, and does what she can to make amends.) The supporting cast all has problems of their own to cope with, problems that they, too, often struggle and occasionally fail to handle well. The fey here aren't just bored partiers visiting our world for fun, or on dark secret missions; there's a very real need for fey and human worlds to interact, as without fey magic humans would have no inspiration or creativity, and without human logic and stability most fey just drift, lacking focus or object permanence or even memory. Every human has a bond, whether they know it or not, with a particular fey, their "echo"; meeting one's echo can spark a powerhouse career, such as the one enjoyed by a key player and one of Millie's personal heroes, David, a director who once lit Hollywood on fire but is in the waning days of his glory. This adds extra, interesting dimensions to the otherwise generic urban fantasy template of "hidden fey in the modern human world". The plot moves at a decent pace, only occasionally lingering overlong in self denial or misery or deliberate stupidity by the characters; even though I saw a couple twists coming, it was more in the anticipatory sense and less in the "dear gods, how obvious can you be - and how stupid are the characters for not seeing it?" sense. It all comes together, the plot and the characters' hard-won growth and even the cost of their lingering scars, in a rather satisfying, if somewhat bittersweet, way by the end. There's just a certain magic to this story that really worked for me, placing it above many other urban fantasies.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Bedlam's Bard (Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon) - My Review
Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams) - My Review
Thursday, July 7, 2022
Year Zero (Rob Reid)
Year Zero
Robert Reid
Del Rey
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: First contact. It is often imagined as a light appearing in the sky, or a cryptic signal detected by determined scientists in the dead of night. Instead, it started with a broadcast of the 70's sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter"... or, more specifically, the theme song. The Refined League of alien species - those evolved and mature enough to set aside aggression, interact with one another, and pursue the many forms of pure arts, from sculpture to macrame - had never heard such angelic tones as those produced by humans. Many actually died of ecstasy upon hearing it. Some quirk of our evolution apparently left us with this one, savant-like skill... and, while our species was considered far too primitive (and with too abysmal a fashion sense) to merit open contact, our music rendered every other recording artist obsolete overnight, copies spreading to every nook and cranny of every inhabited world - and the universe would never be the same.
If only they'd read the fine print...
Nick Carter may share a name with a member of the pop band Backstreet Boys and a surname with one of the founders of his law firm, but he's anything but famous or powerful himself. He's just a middling-to-lowly entertainment lawyer, and if office rumors are true his head's going to be on the chopping block soon. So when the bizarre duo - a busty nun and red-haired man dressed as a mullah - come to his office, he figures he has nothing to lose by hearing them out; for all he knows, it's a test by his boss to see how he handles the unexpected. But the tale they spin is all too real. Aliens, apparently, are hooked on human music. They're so hooked, in fact, that most every sentient being has millions of illegal copies of Earth songs on their person at any given moment... and they've just realized that that makes them liable for major fines. As in, bankrupt reality several times over and leave Earth - a primitive planet, not even formally contacted by our neighbors yet - with all the money of everyone, everywhere, everywhen major. Some people haven't taken that news too kindly, and are in fact willing to "encourage" our self-destruction just to absolve the debt. Nick started the day worried that he'd soon be out of a job. Now, if he can't do some fancy legal acrobatics in a hurry, his entire planet will be losing its future existence.
REVIEW: Year Zero feels like a throwback comic sci-fi... not always in a good way. The premise is both clever and silly, dealing with the labyrinthine laws governing music sharing and copyright and the utter futility of expecting any of it to make anything but the most nihilistic of sense. Nick (and a handful of other humans who get sucked into the plot, including his indie musician neighbor, his self-serving greedy cousin, and his courtroom shark boss) thankfully spends little time on the obligatory "is it a prank?" dithering before jumping in with both feet, pitting his middling legal experience and skills against a seemingly impossible intergalactic legal knot. Helping, and often hindering, him are the alien siblings "Frampton" and "Carly" (ever since the Kotter Moment, around which alien society literally rearranged their calendar, taking Earth musician names has been a universal fad). He and the other characters - especially the aliens - are little deeper than the paper they're written on, skewing into old-school cliches that are more than a little stale and dusty (especially the women, who were, to be mild, clearly written by a man). The humor often skews silly and a bit slapstick, with some sharp digs at laws, the music industry, and other topics... humor thick enough to stop the plot at more than one point and wallow in what it thought was funniest. The narrator of the audiobook version did not necessarily help with this, often choosing silly voices and sometimes dropping into near-inaudible ranges for choked whispers. For all that, it did move decently and took some unpredictable, wild turns on its way to a reasonably clever and satisfactory conclusion... and then it lingered way, way too long on an epilogue that may or may not have been trying to test the waters for sequel potential, but which certainly overstayed its welcome once the joke was clear. While I've read worse, this one just wasn't quite up my alley, and I got tired of the flat characters (and not just the literally two-dimensional alien ones).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams) - My Review
The Last Human (Zack Jordan) - My Review
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Robert Reid
Del Rey
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: First contact. It is often imagined as a light appearing in the sky, or a cryptic signal detected by determined scientists in the dead of night. Instead, it started with a broadcast of the 70's sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter"... or, more specifically, the theme song. The Refined League of alien species - those evolved and mature enough to set aside aggression, interact with one another, and pursue the many forms of pure arts, from sculpture to macrame - had never heard such angelic tones as those produced by humans. Many actually died of ecstasy upon hearing it. Some quirk of our evolution apparently left us with this one, savant-like skill... and, while our species was considered far too primitive (and with too abysmal a fashion sense) to merit open contact, our music rendered every other recording artist obsolete overnight, copies spreading to every nook and cranny of every inhabited world - and the universe would never be the same.
If only they'd read the fine print...
Nick Carter may share a name with a member of the pop band Backstreet Boys and a surname with one of the founders of his law firm, but he's anything but famous or powerful himself. He's just a middling-to-lowly entertainment lawyer, and if office rumors are true his head's going to be on the chopping block soon. So when the bizarre duo - a busty nun and red-haired man dressed as a mullah - come to his office, he figures he has nothing to lose by hearing them out; for all he knows, it's a test by his boss to see how he handles the unexpected. But the tale they spin is all too real. Aliens, apparently, are hooked on human music. They're so hooked, in fact, that most every sentient being has millions of illegal copies of Earth songs on their person at any given moment... and they've just realized that that makes them liable for major fines. As in, bankrupt reality several times over and leave Earth - a primitive planet, not even formally contacted by our neighbors yet - with all the money of everyone, everywhere, everywhen major. Some people haven't taken that news too kindly, and are in fact willing to "encourage" our self-destruction just to absolve the debt. Nick started the day worried that he'd soon be out of a job. Now, if he can't do some fancy legal acrobatics in a hurry, his entire planet will be losing its future existence.
REVIEW: Year Zero feels like a throwback comic sci-fi... not always in a good way. The premise is both clever and silly, dealing with the labyrinthine laws governing music sharing and copyright and the utter futility of expecting any of it to make anything but the most nihilistic of sense. Nick (and a handful of other humans who get sucked into the plot, including his indie musician neighbor, his self-serving greedy cousin, and his courtroom shark boss) thankfully spends little time on the obligatory "is it a prank?" dithering before jumping in with both feet, pitting his middling legal experience and skills against a seemingly impossible intergalactic legal knot. Helping, and often hindering, him are the alien siblings "Frampton" and "Carly" (ever since the Kotter Moment, around which alien society literally rearranged their calendar, taking Earth musician names has been a universal fad). He and the other characters - especially the aliens - are little deeper than the paper they're written on, skewing into old-school cliches that are more than a little stale and dusty (especially the women, who were, to be mild, clearly written by a man). The humor often skews silly and a bit slapstick, with some sharp digs at laws, the music industry, and other topics... humor thick enough to stop the plot at more than one point and wallow in what it thought was funniest. The narrator of the audiobook version did not necessarily help with this, often choosing silly voices and sometimes dropping into near-inaudible ranges for choked whispers. For all that, it did move decently and took some unpredictable, wild turns on its way to a reasonably clever and satisfactory conclusion... and then it lingered way, way too long on an epilogue that may or may not have been trying to test the waters for sequel potential, but which certainly overstayed its welcome once the joke was clear. While I've read worse, this one just wasn't quite up my alley, and I got tired of the flat characters (and not just the literally two-dimensional alien ones).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams) - My Review
The Last Human (Zack Jordan) - My Review
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Friday, July 1, 2022
Swordheart (T. Kingfisher)
Swordheart
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Studio
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Romance
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A widow in her thirties, despised by her in-laws (mostly for not getting a child by her short-lived husband, making her a worthless burden as far as they're concerned), Halla had minimal expectations in life, especially when the only one who would take her in was eccentric old Uncle Silas. Now that he has passed, she expects to be cast out in the street - but the man left her his fortune and his house full of oddities. Suddenly, shrewish old Aunt Malva and her spineless son Alver, who had no use for her before, find they do, indeed, have a purpose in mind: marry her to Alver, then kill or incapacitate her while they take control of the inheritance. Halla's objections get her locked in her room until she "sees reason" (or until they can get her declared too feeble-minded to make her own decisions). She sees no way out of the predicament save taking her own life - but the old sword she grabs, part of the late Silas's clutter, has other plans...
Centuries ago, mercenary Sarkis was cursed into the steel after a terrible defeat. Ever since, he is bound to serve the sword's master, following it from hand to hand through the years. Be they good or evil, Sarkis has no choice. Even death cannot release him; a fortnight later, when the blade is drawn, he reappears, healed in body if not necessarily in spirit. When he finds himself summoned to the waking world once again, he expects to find battle, or a warlord. He does not expect a tearful, desperate woman about to be married off against her will. This is, perhaps, the most ignoble waste of his talents he's ever been forced to endure, but rules are rules: she drew his sword, so she is, for all intents and purposes, his master, and he is bound to help.
Halla has never met anyone like Sarkis, and vice versa. After their inauspicious meeting and escape, they set out to find help from the Temple of the White Rat, which specializes in untangling thorny knots like the one she finds herself in... a journey with numerous dangers, from followers of a fanatic god to bandits. The greatest danger, though, may come from within, two wounded hearts who may not recognize their chance until it's too late.
REVIEW: Though technically part of a larger world, I read (or listened to, rather) it as a standalone. Maybe that was part of the problem, but I doubt it, because my issues with the book have very little to do with the worldbuilding, a passably interesting fantasy land with the usual pseudo-medieval aesthetics, a handful of gods and goddesses in uneasy coexistence (particularly in relation to the fanatical followers of the "Hanged Mother"), and magic and mystery around the edges. Nor was it necessarily with the main story arc, which - when it didn't bog itself down in somewhat silly diversions, not helped by Halla's tendency to babble and do, frankly, stupid things for the sake of doing stupid things - was also interesting enough to keep me reading (or listening).
What cut a full fourth star from the rating was the romance angle, particularly the beyond-stale, well-into-fossilized cliche of a woman having to be romantically and sexually naive so her True Love in some way owns her pleasure and satisfaction, being the only one to induce either. Even when the woman is a widow, it's emphasized how uninterested her late husband was in matters romantic or carnal, how little she actually cared about him, because apparently there is only ever one person a body can ever truly love. (Some books go so far as to make said woman childish in appearance, too, just to drive home the creep factor with the older male love interest introducing her to sex; fortunately, that wasn't the case here, even if Halla is almost impossibly sheltered and naive about people in general to the point where she often behaves with a childish guilelessness.) She's also supposed to be smarter than her demeanor lets on, her off-putting streams of questions a form of camouflage to get people to dismiss and ignore her (instead of bullying or hurting her), but to be honest that silly/stupid demeanor runs far deeper than it ought to for a grown woman. As for Sarkis, he's a gruff, grizzled, put-upon soldier, worn down by unwanted immortality and service through the centuries, often to less than pleasant masters. He finds himself drawn to Halla, the first person to treat him as a human rather than a tool in far too long... and despite the fact that she could make a career out of blundering into danger, to the point where one honestly wonders how she made it to her third decade with all her limbs. But he's also hiding a secret that could threaten everything... one that, naturally, doesn't come out until The Wrong Time to trigger the low point of despair before the climax. I was grinding my teeth in annoyance with both of them at this point; so much of the angst between them could have been resolved if they just opened their mouths for something other than a silly question. It also feels like it wants a sequel, but there appears to be no sign of one.
Between my annoyance at the romance dithering and Kingfisher's overuse of Halla's babbling (and Sarkis's irritation with said babbling, which lost its humor early on and just made me wish I could fast-forward to when the plot moved again), Swordheart fell to a bland three-star Okay rating, which is a shame because I liked some of the secondary characters and the world, and the rest of the tale could've easily carried four stars. I'm on the fence about reading on in this world, unless I can get some assurance that the parts I found annoying aren't replicated.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Beguilement (Lois McMaster Bujold) - My Review
Sword-Dancer (Jennifer Roberson) - My Review
Warbreaker (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Studio
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Romance
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A widow in her thirties, despised by her in-laws (mostly for not getting a child by her short-lived husband, making her a worthless burden as far as they're concerned), Halla had minimal expectations in life, especially when the only one who would take her in was eccentric old Uncle Silas. Now that he has passed, she expects to be cast out in the street - but the man left her his fortune and his house full of oddities. Suddenly, shrewish old Aunt Malva and her spineless son Alver, who had no use for her before, find they do, indeed, have a purpose in mind: marry her to Alver, then kill or incapacitate her while they take control of the inheritance. Halla's objections get her locked in her room until she "sees reason" (or until they can get her declared too feeble-minded to make her own decisions). She sees no way out of the predicament save taking her own life - but the old sword she grabs, part of the late Silas's clutter, has other plans...
Centuries ago, mercenary Sarkis was cursed into the steel after a terrible defeat. Ever since, he is bound to serve the sword's master, following it from hand to hand through the years. Be they good or evil, Sarkis has no choice. Even death cannot release him; a fortnight later, when the blade is drawn, he reappears, healed in body if not necessarily in spirit. When he finds himself summoned to the waking world once again, he expects to find battle, or a warlord. He does not expect a tearful, desperate woman about to be married off against her will. This is, perhaps, the most ignoble waste of his talents he's ever been forced to endure, but rules are rules: she drew his sword, so she is, for all intents and purposes, his master, and he is bound to help.
Halla has never met anyone like Sarkis, and vice versa. After their inauspicious meeting and escape, they set out to find help from the Temple of the White Rat, which specializes in untangling thorny knots like the one she finds herself in... a journey with numerous dangers, from followers of a fanatic god to bandits. The greatest danger, though, may come from within, two wounded hearts who may not recognize their chance until it's too late.
REVIEW: Though technically part of a larger world, I read (or listened to, rather) it as a standalone. Maybe that was part of the problem, but I doubt it, because my issues with the book have very little to do with the worldbuilding, a passably interesting fantasy land with the usual pseudo-medieval aesthetics, a handful of gods and goddesses in uneasy coexistence (particularly in relation to the fanatical followers of the "Hanged Mother"), and magic and mystery around the edges. Nor was it necessarily with the main story arc, which - when it didn't bog itself down in somewhat silly diversions, not helped by Halla's tendency to babble and do, frankly, stupid things for the sake of doing stupid things - was also interesting enough to keep me reading (or listening).
What cut a full fourth star from the rating was the romance angle, particularly the beyond-stale, well-into-fossilized cliche of a woman having to be romantically and sexually naive so her True Love in some way owns her pleasure and satisfaction, being the only one to induce either. Even when the woman is a widow, it's emphasized how uninterested her late husband was in matters romantic or carnal, how little she actually cared about him, because apparently there is only ever one person a body can ever truly love. (Some books go so far as to make said woman childish in appearance, too, just to drive home the creep factor with the older male love interest introducing her to sex; fortunately, that wasn't the case here, even if Halla is almost impossibly sheltered and naive about people in general to the point where she often behaves with a childish guilelessness.) She's also supposed to be smarter than her demeanor lets on, her off-putting streams of questions a form of camouflage to get people to dismiss and ignore her (instead of bullying or hurting her), but to be honest that silly/stupid demeanor runs far deeper than it ought to for a grown woman. As for Sarkis, he's a gruff, grizzled, put-upon soldier, worn down by unwanted immortality and service through the centuries, often to less than pleasant masters. He finds himself drawn to Halla, the first person to treat him as a human rather than a tool in far too long... and despite the fact that she could make a career out of blundering into danger, to the point where one honestly wonders how she made it to her third decade with all her limbs. But he's also hiding a secret that could threaten everything... one that, naturally, doesn't come out until The Wrong Time to trigger the low point of despair before the climax. I was grinding my teeth in annoyance with both of them at this point; so much of the angst between them could have been resolved if they just opened their mouths for something other than a silly question. It also feels like it wants a sequel, but there appears to be no sign of one.
Between my annoyance at the romance dithering and Kingfisher's overuse of Halla's babbling (and Sarkis's irritation with said babbling, which lost its humor early on and just made me wish I could fast-forward to when the plot moved again), Swordheart fell to a bland three-star Okay rating, which is a shame because I liked some of the secondary characters and the world, and the rest of the tale could've easily carried four stars. I'm on the fence about reading on in this world, unless I can get some assurance that the parts I found annoying aren't replicated.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Beguilement (Lois McMaster Bujold) - My Review
Sword-Dancer (Jennifer Roberson) - My Review
Warbreaker (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
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