Another month comes to an end, so once again I've archived and cross-linked the month's reviews at the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Friday, April 28, 2023
Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benton)
Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology
Michael J. Benton
Thames and Hudson
Nonfiction, Dinosaurs/Science
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since their discovery, dinosaur fossils have puzzled and fascinated people, spawning all manner of speculation. What kind of animals were they? How did they live? What did they look like? When did they first arise, and what made them die out? In recent decades, new discoveries and technologies have led to a veritable revolution in our understanding of the "terrible lizards", answering all manner of questions and leading to countless fascinating new ones.
REVIEW: I've had an armchair interest in dinosaurs since childhood (nothing remotely scientific or intelligent, naturally, more of a generalized awe and fascination). Lately, it seems like every other day I see a new article about an amazing find or reinterpretation, brought about by new methods of examining fossils and breakthroughs in other fields. Since most of my meager dinosaur library is rather dusty by now, I thought it high time to pick up something newer to see what's changed, and this looked like just the thing.
The author, a working paleontologist, has seen firsthand how the field has been radically transformed since the 1980's, and offers both personal and professional observations of the shifts and breakthroughs and debates. Using terminology friendly to the average reader, he explains such things as how the dinosaur family tree has been reinterpreted, how it was determined that dinosaurs were most likely warm-blooded, how new technology and tools borrowed from architecture programs helped answer questions about locomotion and bite strength and probable feeding strategies, even how similarities with bird feathers led to the first-ever determination of dinosaur colorations and patterns. All of this has transformed the field from something more speculative to somewhat harder science, though of course there remain innumerable questions to be answered, and some that will likely never be answered (barring time travel, of course). Several illustration plates and photographs are included, as well as graphs, though the latter are sometimes a bit over the head of the lay reader (at least, this lay reader). It culminates, of course, with a chapter on the dinosaurs' extinction and the wider acceptance of the massive meteor impact theory, though there is some indication the dinosaurs were already in some decline globally before then.
While the terminology and science and names could get a little thick now and again, on the whole Dinosaurs Rediscovered is a fascinating look at how far paleontology and dinosaur studies have come in a few decades, a revolution that is still ongoing. I might be stretching a slight bit with the extra half-star, but the subject is just so awesome (in both the technical "awe-inspiring" and colloquial "totally cool" senses of the word) I consider it earned.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Build a Dinosaur (Jack Horner and James Gorman) - My Review
Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor) - My Review
Your Inner Fish (Neil Shubin) - My Review
Michael J. Benton
Thames and Hudson
Nonfiction, Dinosaurs/Science
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since their discovery, dinosaur fossils have puzzled and fascinated people, spawning all manner of speculation. What kind of animals were they? How did they live? What did they look like? When did they first arise, and what made them die out? In recent decades, new discoveries and technologies have led to a veritable revolution in our understanding of the "terrible lizards", answering all manner of questions and leading to countless fascinating new ones.
REVIEW: I've had an armchair interest in dinosaurs since childhood (nothing remotely scientific or intelligent, naturally, more of a generalized awe and fascination). Lately, it seems like every other day I see a new article about an amazing find or reinterpretation, brought about by new methods of examining fossils and breakthroughs in other fields. Since most of my meager dinosaur library is rather dusty by now, I thought it high time to pick up something newer to see what's changed, and this looked like just the thing.
The author, a working paleontologist, has seen firsthand how the field has been radically transformed since the 1980's, and offers both personal and professional observations of the shifts and breakthroughs and debates. Using terminology friendly to the average reader, he explains such things as how the dinosaur family tree has been reinterpreted, how it was determined that dinosaurs were most likely warm-blooded, how new technology and tools borrowed from architecture programs helped answer questions about locomotion and bite strength and probable feeding strategies, even how similarities with bird feathers led to the first-ever determination of dinosaur colorations and patterns. All of this has transformed the field from something more speculative to somewhat harder science, though of course there remain innumerable questions to be answered, and some that will likely never be answered (barring time travel, of course). Several illustration plates and photographs are included, as well as graphs, though the latter are sometimes a bit over the head of the lay reader (at least, this lay reader). It culminates, of course, with a chapter on the dinosaurs' extinction and the wider acceptance of the massive meteor impact theory, though there is some indication the dinosaurs were already in some decline globally before then.
While the terminology and science and names could get a little thick now and again, on the whole Dinosaurs Rediscovered is a fascinating look at how far paleontology and dinosaur studies have come in a few decades, a revolution that is still ongoing. I might be stretching a slight bit with the extra half-star, but the subject is just so awesome (in both the technical "awe-inspiring" and colloquial "totally cool" senses of the word) I consider it earned.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Build a Dinosaur (Jack Horner and James Gorman) - My Review
Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor) - My Review
Your Inner Fish (Neil Shubin) - My Review
Never Say You Can't Survive (Charlie Jane Anders)
Never Say You Can't Survive
Charlie Jane Anders
Tordotcom
Nonfiction, Essays/Memoirs/Writing
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: These are trying times, no doubt about it. For many, the very foundations of our reality and the most basic things we have taken for granted have been snatched away, twisted beyond recognition or just plain smashed to pieces. It's tempting to just give up, to decide that there's no point in even trying to do something so seemingly frivolous as write or create. That, argues author Charlie Jane Anders, is precisely what one shouldn't do. This collection of essays covers a range of topics, from basic writing advice to using despair and anger to fuel creativity to understanding that creating escapes from reality and visions of other possible worlds is anything but a waste of time, even in times like these.
REVIEW: I've only read a few of Anders's works; while I like the ideas she explores, I find the stories themselves a bit hit-and-miss for my tastes. That said, I rather enjoyed this collection of essays about keeping the will to write alive even when so much is going so very, very wrong in the world. The writing advice itself is not altogether different from stuff I've picked up elsewhere, if delivered with solid style. The rest, particularly on perseverance though trying and dangerous times and learning to value one's own creativity even when the world at large diminishes it, is fresh and timely and well written (or spoken, as I listened to the audiobook version).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Art of War for Writers (James Scott Bell) - My Review
Write Good or Die (Scott Nicholson, editor) - My Review
Wonderbook (Jeff Vandermeer) - My Review
Charlie Jane Anders
Tordotcom
Nonfiction, Essays/Memoirs/Writing
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: These are trying times, no doubt about it. For many, the very foundations of our reality and the most basic things we have taken for granted have been snatched away, twisted beyond recognition or just plain smashed to pieces. It's tempting to just give up, to decide that there's no point in even trying to do something so seemingly frivolous as write or create. That, argues author Charlie Jane Anders, is precisely what one shouldn't do. This collection of essays covers a range of topics, from basic writing advice to using despair and anger to fuel creativity to understanding that creating escapes from reality and visions of other possible worlds is anything but a waste of time, even in times like these.
REVIEW: I've only read a few of Anders's works; while I like the ideas she explores, I find the stories themselves a bit hit-and-miss for my tastes. That said, I rather enjoyed this collection of essays about keeping the will to write alive even when so much is going so very, very wrong in the world. The writing advice itself is not altogether different from stuff I've picked up elsewhere, if delivered with solid style. The rest, particularly on perseverance though trying and dangerous times and learning to value one's own creativity even when the world at large diminishes it, is fresh and timely and well written (or spoken, as I listened to the audiobook version).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Art of War for Writers (James Scott Bell) - My Review
Write Good or Die (Scott Nicholson, editor) - My Review
Wonderbook (Jeff Vandermeer) - My Review
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Fireborne (Rosaria Munda)
Fireborne
The Aurelian Cycle series, Book 1
Rosaria Munda
G. P. Putnam's Sons Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: For centuries, Callipolis was ruled by the Triarchy of the dragonborn: aristocratic families who bonded with dragons, making free use of dragonfire to enforce their laws or whims. When the Revolution breached the palace walls, every member of the three royal families was put to death... or so the rebels believed. In the bloody aftermath, First Protector Atreus strove to rebuild society, creating a realm where one's birth did not dictate one's destiny: all are given access to books (at least, those books deemed unlikely to plant dangerous ideas), and are tested into one of the four new classes, from the unskilled labor of Iron to the elite scholars of Gold (though many old patrician families seem peculiarly prone to end up with Gold bands). And, for the first time since the animals were tamed, children of any birth rank and any gender may be tested for bonding with dragons, giving the fledgling new nation an aerial fleet unlike any other in the civilized world. But, at only ten years old, this nation is still struggling to live up to its ideals, and their dragons have yet to mature enough to spark true flames. It is a dangerous and delicate time, one that could see Callipolis rise to unprecedented heights or be reduced to ash and ruin... and that fate will be determined by the choices of two unlikely dragonriders.
Antigone, or Annie, was a serf's daughter orphaned by the cruel Lord Stormscourge long before the Revolution. She grew up fearing and hating the dragons and their keepers - until she bonded with a dragon. Annie quickly becomes one of the best riders in the new corps, a serious contender for the spot of Firstrider. Many people still whisper that those born to serfdom can never rise to power themselves, that they're ultimately happiest when they have a lord to kneel to, but Annie is determined to prove to herself and the nation that she's worth far more than mere servitude... which makes her friendship with Lee all the more ironic, even tragic.
Lee tells everyone that he's another Revolution orphan from the Cheapside district, but in truth he was once Leon Stormscourge, sole surviving son of the noble Stormscourge line. As a boy, he dreamed of running away from Callipolis to the island of New Pythia, where other exiled royals fled - and where it is said they still seethe and plot to retake their lands and throw down the lowborn usurpers. But then he got to know fellow orphan Annie, and learned just what Triarchy rule had been like outside the palaces and estates he'd known as a child. Now few are as committed to Atreus's dream as Lee, and as a dragonrider he can protect that dream and see it thrive... unless anyone finds out that one of the top riders in the fleet is a hated dragonborn. Just when he thought his secret would remain safe, he is contacted by exiled relatives, beseeching him to join them in reclaiming their city and royal birthright in a coming attack.
Annie and Lee grew up friends despite their differences in birth and background, and through their dragons have only grown closer... but never have they, or their city, been tested as they will be in the days to come.
REVIEW: As one might suspect from the names, there's a distinct classical influence to the world and themes of Fireborne. The story sometimes gets lost in those influences and themes, wending through histories and political philosophies and in-world literary references, also leaning a bit hard into the brooding and the angst and the love interests - which, here, can be extended beyond the expected yearnings between teenaged characters (who have sworn vows never to marry or have children as part of their enrollment in the aerial corps, lest a new line of dragonborn rulers rise) to include an almost romantic patriotic passion for Callipolis... at least, the Callipolis as they envision it to be, the one espoused by Atreus and the new government (particularly the propaganda wing). The reality falls somewhat short of that vision, already starting to resemble the old regime in a few too many ways, causing more angst and conflict - particularly in Lee, whose choice to embrace the new Callipolis despite his heritage faces fresh challenges as he is forced to see just what he is ultimately defending. As the daughter of serfs, Annie already knew how rotten the world could be, but also let herself be lulled and blinded by the Revolution and the charismatic First Protector... and, admittedly, the new order does have some notable improvements, particularly for the lower classes, for all that its loftiest promises are often more illusion than truth. It's also because of the Revolution that she was able to find her purpose and strength in her dragon, and the impetus to push past the ingrained habits of generations of servitude to stand up and reach for a better future. Her relationship with Lee was always a complex one, even before she figured out his true origins, and it's tested further as new feelings develop between them... and new problems, as both vie for the Firstrider post and Lee is contacted by exiled family members who expect him to turn traitor. Meanwhile, other relationships, friendships and rivalries within the corps and the government that uses their young dragonriders as political tools/props, develop throughout the story.
This is, despite some action bits here and there and a few dragon sparring matches, ultimately more a story of relationships and talking and political (and personal) maneuvering than sweeping battles and dragon fighting. Sometimes it could be interesting, and sometimes it just felt like it was wallowing or preening or otherwise drawing attention to itself while not actually progressing anything. The dragons themselves, what I saw of them, are good for what they are, and decently utilized, though I wished they'd actually been on the page more; sometimes they felt conspicuously absent, especially given the deep empathetic nature of the dragon bond and the implied back-and-forth influence. (There's also one moment that I thought, given some throwaway lines earlier, should've elicited more of a response or had more plot relevance, but was brushed aside as a non-event and never mentioned again.) Things do eventually build toward a climax that was decently cathartic and more or less satisfying, despite a few elements that felt like they undercut some character growth and agency. Ultimately, I was just unsatisfied enough (and got just tired enough of the somewhat overdone emotional angst and wrangling) to trim a half-star from the rating, though there is a fair bit in this story that I did enjoy and thought worked decently.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey) - My Review
His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Windsworn (Derek Alan Siddoway) - My Review
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Five Total Strangers (Natalie D. Richards)
Five Total Strangers
Natalie D. Richards
Sourcebooks Fire
Fiction, YA Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: This Christmas, high school senior Mira just has to get back home to Pennsylvania. Last year, her aunt Phoenix died of cancer, a devastation that nearly destroyed Mira's mom, Phoenix's twin. She would've been home already, but her aunt's dying wish had been for Mira to continue pursuing her art education at a private California school, which meant living with her father on the west coast. But Mira knows her mother is going to need her more than ever this year, facing her first holiday without Phoenix, so she flies back east - straight into a nightmare.
When a blizzard threatens to strand her at the Newark airport, the girl despairs of getting home in time... until her seatmate from the flight, chatty college girl Harper, manages to snag one of the last rental SUVs available. Together with three others, all college students, they set out to try to beat the storm to their respective destinations - but the biggest danger they face might be something worse than the black ice and whiteout conditions. For all that they seem friendly, these are all total strangers, and strangers can carry the deadliest of secrets...
REVIEW: This is a fairly simple premise, as many of the most successful thrillers are: five apparent strangers thrown together and trapped by circumstance, endangered from without and within as they try to survive. Narrator Mira has been struggling with the death of her beloved aunt, also an artist, but has had to be the strong one to support her devastated mother. Christmas was always the big family holiday, so it being the anniversary of Phoenix's passing is sure to drop her mother back into the near-fugue state that she was stuck in a year ago - and it's not doing much for Mira, either, for all that she hasn't let herself process or feel her own grief fully. So she has plenty of reason to take a risk and jump in a car with four nice-seeming strangers, braving a major snowstorm to try to reach her mother. The others in the car each have their own secret motivations for taking such a risk as driving into the jaws of a major weather event, which come out as the storm worsens and stakes for survival are ratcheted up - and when strange things start happening, such as personal items going missing. Mira's gut tells her she's in danger, but from whom? Any of her traveling companions could be trouble, for all that they initially seemed so nice and stable when she met them at the airport. Occasional chapter intercuts hint at a greater threat to Mira in particular, that at least one of her carmates has a very personal vendetta, even as actions taken during the journey lead to other complications that put them all at risk. Between the stress of the blizzard, her inner turmoil, the skyrocketing risk factors, and increasing suspicions about just what kind of people she's stuck with, Mira soon realizes she doesn't know whom to trust or to fear anymore, or even if she can trust herself. Yet she can't just walk away into a blizzard; she's stuck in the car, same as everyone else, as the tension grows and things take one dire turn after another. As a pure "bad things happen and keep happening until the climax" level, Five Total Strangers does deliver.
Where it lost ground in the ratings is a little harder to quantify without spoilers, but it has to do with how some of those on-the-road complications play out, as well as some of the secret revelations. It started getting a bit hard to suspend disbelief over some of those elements. I'm also not entirely sure the story really needed the stalker angle, or to make Mira a particular target and in some greater danger. There were a few things that felt a trifle unsatisfactory at the end, strings that could've used tidying up (or maybe shouldn't have been there to begin with). While the overall story is indeed decently thrilling, those things bugged me just enough to shave a half-star.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Like Never and Always (Ann Aguirre) - My Review
An Unwelcome Guest (Shari Lapena) - My Review
In An Instant (Suzanne Redfearn) - My Review
Natalie D. Richards
Sourcebooks Fire
Fiction, YA Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: This Christmas, high school senior Mira just has to get back home to Pennsylvania. Last year, her aunt Phoenix died of cancer, a devastation that nearly destroyed Mira's mom, Phoenix's twin. She would've been home already, but her aunt's dying wish had been for Mira to continue pursuing her art education at a private California school, which meant living with her father on the west coast. But Mira knows her mother is going to need her more than ever this year, facing her first holiday without Phoenix, so she flies back east - straight into a nightmare.
When a blizzard threatens to strand her at the Newark airport, the girl despairs of getting home in time... until her seatmate from the flight, chatty college girl Harper, manages to snag one of the last rental SUVs available. Together with three others, all college students, they set out to try to beat the storm to their respective destinations - but the biggest danger they face might be something worse than the black ice and whiteout conditions. For all that they seem friendly, these are all total strangers, and strangers can carry the deadliest of secrets...
REVIEW: This is a fairly simple premise, as many of the most successful thrillers are: five apparent strangers thrown together and trapped by circumstance, endangered from without and within as they try to survive. Narrator Mira has been struggling with the death of her beloved aunt, also an artist, but has had to be the strong one to support her devastated mother. Christmas was always the big family holiday, so it being the anniversary of Phoenix's passing is sure to drop her mother back into the near-fugue state that she was stuck in a year ago - and it's not doing much for Mira, either, for all that she hasn't let herself process or feel her own grief fully. So she has plenty of reason to take a risk and jump in a car with four nice-seeming strangers, braving a major snowstorm to try to reach her mother. The others in the car each have their own secret motivations for taking such a risk as driving into the jaws of a major weather event, which come out as the storm worsens and stakes for survival are ratcheted up - and when strange things start happening, such as personal items going missing. Mira's gut tells her she's in danger, but from whom? Any of her traveling companions could be trouble, for all that they initially seemed so nice and stable when she met them at the airport. Occasional chapter intercuts hint at a greater threat to Mira in particular, that at least one of her carmates has a very personal vendetta, even as actions taken during the journey lead to other complications that put them all at risk. Between the stress of the blizzard, her inner turmoil, the skyrocketing risk factors, and increasing suspicions about just what kind of people she's stuck with, Mira soon realizes she doesn't know whom to trust or to fear anymore, or even if she can trust herself. Yet she can't just walk away into a blizzard; she's stuck in the car, same as everyone else, as the tension grows and things take one dire turn after another. As a pure "bad things happen and keep happening until the climax" level, Five Total Strangers does deliver.
Where it lost ground in the ratings is a little harder to quantify without spoilers, but it has to do with how some of those on-the-road complications play out, as well as some of the secret revelations. It started getting a bit hard to suspend disbelief over some of those elements. I'm also not entirely sure the story really needed the stalker angle, or to make Mira a particular target and in some greater danger. There were a few things that felt a trifle unsatisfactory at the end, strings that could've used tidying up (or maybe shouldn't have been there to begin with). While the overall story is indeed decently thrilling, those things bugged me just enough to shave a half-star.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Like Never and Always (Ann Aguirre) - My Review
An Unwelcome Guest (Shari Lapena) - My Review
In An Instant (Suzanne Redfearn) - My Review
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
Race for the Escape (Christopher Edge)
Race for the Escape
Christopher Edge
Delacorte Press
Fiction, MG Sci-Fi/Suspense
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ami's been looking forward to visiting The Escape since forever, and can't believe her father finally brought her. It's supposed to be the ultimate "escape room" adventure: along with a group of strangers, she'll have to find clues and solve puzzles to get out of a series of locked rooms. Even getting into the building itself is a puzzle. She can hardly wait to get started! But the host's directions - "find the answer, save the world" - are strangely ambiguous... and the first room nearly incinerates them before she and her four companions, all children about her age, manage to figure it out. Maybe The Escape is something more than just a fun game to solve. Maybe to fail here is to die for real - and possibly doom the world.
REVIEW: Race for the Escape has a fairly straightforward premise - five strange children thrown together in a "game" that turns out to be somewhat more dangerous than advertised, with only their collective wits to get them out alive. It generally delivers on its promise of an action-filled adventure tale, playing out like a real life video game, only without save points or cheat codes or extra lives (as Ami finds out when a fellow companion fails to escape one puzzle room). Themes of extinction and environmental degradation start sneaking in to the puzzles, adding extra layers and urgency to the host's cryptic demand that the kids "find the answer" and "save the world". From the start, there's a surreal edge to things that makes one question just what is real and what is staged, and things get increasingly strange the further Ami ventures (and the more companions fall by the wayside), and making the disbelief harder to suspend. Then it reaches the ending, which I'd guessed before then, but the reveal still felt a bit like a bait-and-switch... and the Answer itself has a logic hole that the target audience might not see, but this obsolete child does. (I can't discuss specifics without spoilers, though I will say it both saddened and irked me.) For what it is, it's not bad, and there are some nicely-done sequences and suspense (when it works), but ultimately I felt let down by the story as a whole.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Willodeen (Katherine Applegate) - My Review
Only You Can Save Mankind (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Full Tilt (Neal Schusterman) - My Review
Christopher Edge
Delacorte Press
Fiction, MG Sci-Fi/Suspense
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ami's been looking forward to visiting The Escape since forever, and can't believe her father finally brought her. It's supposed to be the ultimate "escape room" adventure: along with a group of strangers, she'll have to find clues and solve puzzles to get out of a series of locked rooms. Even getting into the building itself is a puzzle. She can hardly wait to get started! But the host's directions - "find the answer, save the world" - are strangely ambiguous... and the first room nearly incinerates them before she and her four companions, all children about her age, manage to figure it out. Maybe The Escape is something more than just a fun game to solve. Maybe to fail here is to die for real - and possibly doom the world.
REVIEW: Race for the Escape has a fairly straightforward premise - five strange children thrown together in a "game" that turns out to be somewhat more dangerous than advertised, with only their collective wits to get them out alive. It generally delivers on its promise of an action-filled adventure tale, playing out like a real life video game, only without save points or cheat codes or extra lives (as Ami finds out when a fellow companion fails to escape one puzzle room). Themes of extinction and environmental degradation start sneaking in to the puzzles, adding extra layers and urgency to the host's cryptic demand that the kids "find the answer" and "save the world". From the start, there's a surreal edge to things that makes one question just what is real and what is staged, and things get increasingly strange the further Ami ventures (and the more companions fall by the wayside), and making the disbelief harder to suspend. Then it reaches the ending, which I'd guessed before then, but the reveal still felt a bit like a bait-and-switch... and the Answer itself has a logic hole that the target audience might not see, but this obsolete child does. (I can't discuss specifics without spoilers, though I will say it both saddened and irked me.) For what it is, it's not bad, and there are some nicely-done sequences and suspense (when it works), but ultimately I felt let down by the story as a whole.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Willodeen (Katherine Applegate) - My Review
Only You Can Save Mankind (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Full Tilt (Neal Schusterman) - My Review
Thursday, April 13, 2023
Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan)
Age of Myth
The Legends of the First Empire series, Book 1
Michael J. Sullivan
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since time before memory, mortal men and women have lived in Rhuneland, the wild lands beyond the river, forbidden to cross into the lusher, green realm of the Fhrey - the beings that have long been worshiped as gods, and who in turn see humans as despicable animals. It was only desperation that led Raithe and his father to cross the waters in search of better lands to homestead, the older man counting on good will earned fighting in one of the Fhrey's occasional wars... but things go terribly wrong, and soon there are two dead bodies on the ground: one Raithe's father, and one a Fhrey lord. With those deaths ends many human lifetimes of relative peace between the races, and even as Raithe and a former slave of the fallen lord flee into the wilderness, the repercussions spread.
In the fortified hill settlement of Dhal Rhen, the widow Persephone was once the most powerful woman, second chair at the side of her chieftain husband... a husband who is now dead, slain by a vicious brown bear prowling the forests, a bear that already killed her last surviving son. Displaced from her home by the new chieftain and his ambitious wife, who wastes no time spreading dark rumors about Persephone, her future couldn't be much worse - but the young seer from the woods, Suri, comes bearing grim news. Dark times are coming, the seer warns, terrible threats that may well end not only Dhal Rhen but humanity's tenuous toehold on survival. Someone has angered the godlike Fhrey, who are turning their near-divine powers and wrath upon the people of Rhuneland, a brave (or foolish) warrior who already has been dubbed the God Killer... a man who turns up in Dhal Rhen just as Persephone and the settlement could use the disruption the least.
Back in the capital of the Fhrey, the rise of a new thane brings with it a tangle of politics and grievances as one clan among them seeks to secure a stranglehold on power, for now and the future. Rumors of a human killing a Fhrey lord on the barbaric frontier only further feed what could become a grand conflagration, threatening to split apart the monarchy, the capital, and perhaps the world itself.
REVIEW: I've heard decent things about Sullivan's other series (the Riyria Chronicles books), so when I found this title available through Libby - the start of a new series, technically related to Riyria but self-contained - I decided to give it a try. As promised by the cover and blurb, Age of Myth is an epic fantasy with many familiar trappings dating at least back to Tolkien, set in a world where humans have yet to enter the Bronze Age and where superstition mixes and mingles with true powers and inhuman beings, often in unpredictable ways; not every dark shadow is a demon or lurking witch, but not every omen is a false alarm, either. The Fhrey are cruel elven beings, exceptionally long lived and highly cultured, who barely consider human beings as more than bipedal rats despite the possibility of them being distantly related. Even among their own kind, there are hierarchies and prejudices that belie their seemingly more evolved veneer, with Fhrey proving every bit as manipulative and prone to lies (to each other and themselves) as the lowest of humans, not to mention every bit as prone to hubris. The humans (or "Rhunes" as they're often called, a Fhrey word that has crept into common mortal languages as part of the overall - if generally distant - Fhrey dominance of the world) are consumed by their own struggles, for power and mere survival, with everyone in the story pulled into at least one machination or another. Most are convinced of the divinity of the Fhrey, even though they also worship less tangible gods and spirits, and even though the capriciousness of divnities is well known, many are convinced that their adherence to the Fhrey treaties means that the anger of the near-immortal beings will spare them. Meanwhile, greater threats and portents loom over everyone, the promise of a coming storm that will remake (or destroy) the worlds of Rhune and Fhrey alike if they can't stop their squabblings to notice the danger. Of such grand, world-altering movements are epic fantasies made, but without the human (or human equivalent) elements, they can fall flat as easily as they soar. Sullivan presents a collection of decent, if not wholly original, characters to move things along and give the world life, and if they sometimes felt a little too familiar, they did a decent enough job keeping the story moving. There are few lulls in the plot, and it all builds to a solid climax that sets up future complications and installments in the series. The whole makes for a fairly good epic fantasy with an old-school feel, set in a nicely lived-in world of magic and myth.
You Might Also Enjoy:
King's Dragon (Kate Elliott) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
Dragon Wing (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman) - My Review
The Legends of the First Empire series, Book 1
Michael J. Sullivan
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since time before memory, mortal men and women have lived in Rhuneland, the wild lands beyond the river, forbidden to cross into the lusher, green realm of the Fhrey - the beings that have long been worshiped as gods, and who in turn see humans as despicable animals. It was only desperation that led Raithe and his father to cross the waters in search of better lands to homestead, the older man counting on good will earned fighting in one of the Fhrey's occasional wars... but things go terribly wrong, and soon there are two dead bodies on the ground: one Raithe's father, and one a Fhrey lord. With those deaths ends many human lifetimes of relative peace between the races, and even as Raithe and a former slave of the fallen lord flee into the wilderness, the repercussions spread.
In the fortified hill settlement of Dhal Rhen, the widow Persephone was once the most powerful woman, second chair at the side of her chieftain husband... a husband who is now dead, slain by a vicious brown bear prowling the forests, a bear that already killed her last surviving son. Displaced from her home by the new chieftain and his ambitious wife, who wastes no time spreading dark rumors about Persephone, her future couldn't be much worse - but the young seer from the woods, Suri, comes bearing grim news. Dark times are coming, the seer warns, terrible threats that may well end not only Dhal Rhen but humanity's tenuous toehold on survival. Someone has angered the godlike Fhrey, who are turning their near-divine powers and wrath upon the people of Rhuneland, a brave (or foolish) warrior who already has been dubbed the God Killer... a man who turns up in Dhal Rhen just as Persephone and the settlement could use the disruption the least.
Back in the capital of the Fhrey, the rise of a new thane brings with it a tangle of politics and grievances as one clan among them seeks to secure a stranglehold on power, for now and the future. Rumors of a human killing a Fhrey lord on the barbaric frontier only further feed what could become a grand conflagration, threatening to split apart the monarchy, the capital, and perhaps the world itself.
REVIEW: I've heard decent things about Sullivan's other series (the Riyria Chronicles books), so when I found this title available through Libby - the start of a new series, technically related to Riyria but self-contained - I decided to give it a try. As promised by the cover and blurb, Age of Myth is an epic fantasy with many familiar trappings dating at least back to Tolkien, set in a world where humans have yet to enter the Bronze Age and where superstition mixes and mingles with true powers and inhuman beings, often in unpredictable ways; not every dark shadow is a demon or lurking witch, but not every omen is a false alarm, either. The Fhrey are cruel elven beings, exceptionally long lived and highly cultured, who barely consider human beings as more than bipedal rats despite the possibility of them being distantly related. Even among their own kind, there are hierarchies and prejudices that belie their seemingly more evolved veneer, with Fhrey proving every bit as manipulative and prone to lies (to each other and themselves) as the lowest of humans, not to mention every bit as prone to hubris. The humans (or "Rhunes" as they're often called, a Fhrey word that has crept into common mortal languages as part of the overall - if generally distant - Fhrey dominance of the world) are consumed by their own struggles, for power and mere survival, with everyone in the story pulled into at least one machination or another. Most are convinced of the divinity of the Fhrey, even though they also worship less tangible gods and spirits, and even though the capriciousness of divnities is well known, many are convinced that their adherence to the Fhrey treaties means that the anger of the near-immortal beings will spare them. Meanwhile, greater threats and portents loom over everyone, the promise of a coming storm that will remake (or destroy) the worlds of Rhune and Fhrey alike if they can't stop their squabblings to notice the danger. Of such grand, world-altering movements are epic fantasies made, but without the human (or human equivalent) elements, they can fall flat as easily as they soar. Sullivan presents a collection of decent, if not wholly original, characters to move things along and give the world life, and if they sometimes felt a little too familiar, they did a decent enough job keeping the story moving. There are few lulls in the plot, and it all builds to a solid climax that sets up future complications and installments in the series. The whole makes for a fairly good epic fantasy with an old-school feel, set in a nicely lived-in world of magic and myth.
You Might Also Enjoy:
King's Dragon (Kate Elliott) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
Dragon Wing (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman) - My Review
Friday, April 7, 2023
The Ballad of Perilous Graves (Alex Jennings)
The Ballad of Perilous Graves
Alex Jennings
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The summer night when Doctor Professor, piano-playing sorcerer of the magic-infused city of Nola, appeared outside Perry and Brendy's home - far outside his usual stomping grounds - was the night everything changed for the kids... and not for the better. With the eccentric neighbor girl Peaches, who lives alone (save her collection of animals, including a house horse) and has super strength and other powers, they find themselves called to a greater purpose. Someone has stolen songs from Doctor Professor's piano, the Mess Around - and it's the magic of songs that creates and powers and protects Nola. With the terrible forces of a great Storm gathering, the trio - along with others, both in Nola and its mundane mirror known as New Orleans - must undertake a dangerous quest, into layers of dream and memory and other realities, seeking powerful magical artifacts and unlocking dangerous gifts, all while being hunted by deadly haints and others who would see Nola burn to ashes and drown in the sea.
REVIEW: This was billed as a wild, strange tale of music and magic and a modern, New Orleans twist on age-old themes. It started out exactly that, with opening pages that grabbed me like few books have of late. Young Perry (Perilous) Graves and his kid sister Brendy have lived in Nola their whole young lives, taking the strangeness of the place - the floating graffiti tags and their bizarre devotees who slowly transform into something other than human, the zombies and haints and talking humanoid Animals, the floating vehicles acting as city buses, the peculiar club where it's possible to breathe underwater, the songs that power daily life and Nola's very existence - for granted. Their friend Peaches takes after Pippi Longstocking, down to her casual super strength, missing sea captain father, and irreverent worldview (plus a general distrust of all things grown-up). Together, they have adventures that might be written off as mere childhood imagination in other stories, but are acknowledged as very real, and only vaguely noteworthy, in Nola. The magic-mirror version of New Orleans is, as mentioned in the hype, a "love letter" to the city, and particularly the jazz music that runs through its streets like lifeblood; without those jazz tunes, there literally would be no city, as Doctor Professor (and other sorcerers) used their music to create and preserve Nola against the Storm, which is itself the embodiment of every hurricane, literal and metaphoric, that has tried to throw down New Orleans for centuries. Even by Nola's standards, things get very strange (and very dangerous) very fast when Doctor Professor's songs go missing - each taking embodiment as a person, some of whom no longer remember that they are the very songs that form the warp and weft of the city's unreal fabric. Not all of the songs are benevolent or even merely benign, either, particularly the cold-blooded killer Stagger Lee. Meanwhile, a former graffiti tagger from New Orleans finds himself called back to the city he fled as a teen, having turned his back on his art when it started doing strange things... only he's not just him, he's also an echo in Nola, and he'll have a very important part to play... maybe?
Round about this point is where things started to get too surreal and confusing for my tastes, and also about when I generally stopped liking the characters as much. Perry had a magical gift, but turned his back on it after a scary encounter... and, for poorly-described reasons, never told anyone, even his beloved parents or sister, why, making his reluctance to pick up his gifts again even when the fate of the city and everyone one and everything he loves is on the line irritating. Brendy starts out a competent party member, but at some point devolves into barely a sidekick. Peaches always felt like an exaggeration, so later attempts to humanize her fell flat. The whole plot becomes convoluted and almost impossible to follow, wending through visions and dreams and bizarre locations that may or may not exist and other versions of reality, as there seems to be no internal logic to any of it save whatever seems strangest at the time. Rules and restrictions pop up out of nowhere to be ignored or forgotten later. Songs and people drift through like the floating, hallucinatory graffiti tags in Nola's streets. It takes on the sheen of a fever dream. At some point, I just couldn't buy into any of them, even for the sake of the increasingly thin storyline. The whole things started to feel like one of those jazz numbers where the musicians just go completely off the rails and wander all over the place except anywhere in the vicinity of a recognizable tune, seeming to almost take pride in the sound of their own instruments and how they're so deliberately being Wild and Original and Not At All Like A Regular Melody, and the more lost the audience is about where (if anywhere) they might be going, the more proud they are... which is a perfectly legitimate way to play, but not one that I personally like listening to, let alone reading about. As for the ending... it felt weirdly inconclusive, but reality itself had been bent and broken and folded over and thrown out and recycled and deformed and otherwise rendered utterly meaningless even in story context, so how could I bring myself to care about what happened to Nola or anyone in it?
Despite the high praise and high promise and the undoubtedly unique New Orleans flavor, The Ballad of Perilous Graves is just not my kind of music.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
The Black God's Drums (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Alex Jennings
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The summer night when Doctor Professor, piano-playing sorcerer of the magic-infused city of Nola, appeared outside Perry and Brendy's home - far outside his usual stomping grounds - was the night everything changed for the kids... and not for the better. With the eccentric neighbor girl Peaches, who lives alone (save her collection of animals, including a house horse) and has super strength and other powers, they find themselves called to a greater purpose. Someone has stolen songs from Doctor Professor's piano, the Mess Around - and it's the magic of songs that creates and powers and protects Nola. With the terrible forces of a great Storm gathering, the trio - along with others, both in Nola and its mundane mirror known as New Orleans - must undertake a dangerous quest, into layers of dream and memory and other realities, seeking powerful magical artifacts and unlocking dangerous gifts, all while being hunted by deadly haints and others who would see Nola burn to ashes and drown in the sea.
REVIEW: This was billed as a wild, strange tale of music and magic and a modern, New Orleans twist on age-old themes. It started out exactly that, with opening pages that grabbed me like few books have of late. Young Perry (Perilous) Graves and his kid sister Brendy have lived in Nola their whole young lives, taking the strangeness of the place - the floating graffiti tags and their bizarre devotees who slowly transform into something other than human, the zombies and haints and talking humanoid Animals, the floating vehicles acting as city buses, the peculiar club where it's possible to breathe underwater, the songs that power daily life and Nola's very existence - for granted. Their friend Peaches takes after Pippi Longstocking, down to her casual super strength, missing sea captain father, and irreverent worldview (plus a general distrust of all things grown-up). Together, they have adventures that might be written off as mere childhood imagination in other stories, but are acknowledged as very real, and only vaguely noteworthy, in Nola. The magic-mirror version of New Orleans is, as mentioned in the hype, a "love letter" to the city, and particularly the jazz music that runs through its streets like lifeblood; without those jazz tunes, there literally would be no city, as Doctor Professor (and other sorcerers) used their music to create and preserve Nola against the Storm, which is itself the embodiment of every hurricane, literal and metaphoric, that has tried to throw down New Orleans for centuries. Even by Nola's standards, things get very strange (and very dangerous) very fast when Doctor Professor's songs go missing - each taking embodiment as a person, some of whom no longer remember that they are the very songs that form the warp and weft of the city's unreal fabric. Not all of the songs are benevolent or even merely benign, either, particularly the cold-blooded killer Stagger Lee. Meanwhile, a former graffiti tagger from New Orleans finds himself called back to the city he fled as a teen, having turned his back on his art when it started doing strange things... only he's not just him, he's also an echo in Nola, and he'll have a very important part to play... maybe?
Round about this point is where things started to get too surreal and confusing for my tastes, and also about when I generally stopped liking the characters as much. Perry had a magical gift, but turned his back on it after a scary encounter... and, for poorly-described reasons, never told anyone, even his beloved parents or sister, why, making his reluctance to pick up his gifts again even when the fate of the city and everyone one and everything he loves is on the line irritating. Brendy starts out a competent party member, but at some point devolves into barely a sidekick. Peaches always felt like an exaggeration, so later attempts to humanize her fell flat. The whole plot becomes convoluted and almost impossible to follow, wending through visions and dreams and bizarre locations that may or may not exist and other versions of reality, as there seems to be no internal logic to any of it save whatever seems strangest at the time. Rules and restrictions pop up out of nowhere to be ignored or forgotten later. Songs and people drift through like the floating, hallucinatory graffiti tags in Nola's streets. It takes on the sheen of a fever dream. At some point, I just couldn't buy into any of them, even for the sake of the increasingly thin storyline. The whole things started to feel like one of those jazz numbers where the musicians just go completely off the rails and wander all over the place except anywhere in the vicinity of a recognizable tune, seeming to almost take pride in the sound of their own instruments and how they're so deliberately being Wild and Original and Not At All Like A Regular Melody, and the more lost the audience is about where (if anywhere) they might be going, the more proud they are... which is a perfectly legitimate way to play, but not one that I personally like listening to, let alone reading about. As for the ending... it felt weirdly inconclusive, but reality itself had been bent and broken and folded over and thrown out and recycled and deformed and otherwise rendered utterly meaningless even in story context, so how could I bring myself to care about what happened to Nola or anyone in it?
Despite the high praise and high promise and the undoubtedly unique New Orleans flavor, The Ballad of Perilous Graves is just not my kind of music.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
The Black God's Drums (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
The Scavenger Door (Suzanne Palmer)
The Scavenger Door
The Finder Chronicles, Book 3
Suzanne Palmer
DAW
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since running away from home at fifteen, Scotsman Fergus Ferguson has traveled to numerous worlds, met a wide variety of aliens, endured a number of escapes, and found all manner of missing items for various clients, but the one thing he never counted on finding was a kid sister he never even knew he had. On his trip back to Earth to tie up loose ends, Fergus learns about Isla, now a teen not much older than he was when he fled Earth - a teen who has grown up practically idolizing her brother's adventurous lifestyle, so different from the future envisioned for her by relatives. Maybe if he sticks around Scotland this time and spends some time with her, he can discourage her from making the same mistakes that led him to his risky existence (and to numerous scars, not to mention the peculiar "gift" by even more peculiar aliens that gives him unusual energy abilities)... but once a finder, always a finder.
He was just supposed to be finding some lost sheep, a favor more than a proper job, when he stumbles upon an unusual metal fragment - a fragment that seems oddly active to his energy sense. All of the sudden, a lot of people are very, very interested in him, the kind of people who skulk in surveillance vans and kick down doors to get what they're after. On the run with Isla (who of course won't be left behind), Fergus must reach out to friends old and new as he struggles to grasp just what he's stumbled into and how he's going to get out of it with his increasingly-patchwork skin in tact... and, oh, yeah, without that little bit of metal driving him insane and potentially destroying the solar system, not necessarily in that order.
REVIEW: The third installment of the Finder Chronicles maintains the active pacing and adventurous, occasionally humorous tone of the previous books, presenting another seat-of-the-pants life-and-death outing for Fergus that once again sees him at just the right place and time (or wrong place and time) to save or endanger entire worlds. It builds on events from the first two books, with several cameos and callbacks, even as Fergus himself is growing and changing through his adventures. The discovery of a sister feels a bit like a chance to leave some sort of a legacy, as well as a chance for a secondhand do-over - if he can convince Isla to stick to her university studies and stay planetside, at least. But, naturally, a young girl already chafing at stagnant life in a small Scottish town - one related to Fergus, no less - isn't going to be satisfied with a safe and comfortable little life, not when there's an entire galaxy out there to see and aliens to meet and adventures to be had... and not when the stakes are the survival of Earth at least and the rest of the solar system at most. She manages to not be deadweight, though she does have a lot to learn about the world beyond the Scottish pub where she's been raised, and what being a finder/freelance adventurer truly entails beyond the daydreams of a lonely girl. It's a messy, dirty, often bloody business that skirts the gray areas of legality (when it doesn't outright jump into the shadows), which sounds a lot more fun than it truly is when there are professionals with guns hot on one's heels. By the time the truth gets through to Isla, though, she's in too deep to get out... and she already recognizes that there are bigger issues at foot than whether she's having fun. Fergus, meanwhile, becomes increasingly convinced that he can't keep this lifestyle up forever if he wants to live a natural lifespan, even though finding things (and solving life-and-death problems by the seat of his exosuit) is so much a part of him he doesn't even know what he'd do without it. That may be little more than a philosophical question, though, if he can't figure out the alien metal fragments, who wants them so desperately, and how to stop them from reassembling themselves into Something Very Bad... a problem made more complicated by his alien "gift" that interacts in a most disturbing manner with the dangerous artifacts. Problems and enemies keep ratcheting up, building to an intense and somewhat emotional climax - and then on to an ending that's close to a cliffhanger. Honestly, it almost shaved a bit off the rating, to be left in that manner, but the rest of the story kept it afloat at the same level as the previous Finder books, so I gave it the same rating, on the (hopefully not naive) theory that there will, indeed, be a fourth installment and proper closure if/when the series comes to an end.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
Finder (Suzanne Palmer) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
The Finder Chronicles, Book 3
Suzanne Palmer
DAW
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since running away from home at fifteen, Scotsman Fergus Ferguson has traveled to numerous worlds, met a wide variety of aliens, endured a number of escapes, and found all manner of missing items for various clients, but the one thing he never counted on finding was a kid sister he never even knew he had. On his trip back to Earth to tie up loose ends, Fergus learns about Isla, now a teen not much older than he was when he fled Earth - a teen who has grown up practically idolizing her brother's adventurous lifestyle, so different from the future envisioned for her by relatives. Maybe if he sticks around Scotland this time and spends some time with her, he can discourage her from making the same mistakes that led him to his risky existence (and to numerous scars, not to mention the peculiar "gift" by even more peculiar aliens that gives him unusual energy abilities)... but once a finder, always a finder.
He was just supposed to be finding some lost sheep, a favor more than a proper job, when he stumbles upon an unusual metal fragment - a fragment that seems oddly active to his energy sense. All of the sudden, a lot of people are very, very interested in him, the kind of people who skulk in surveillance vans and kick down doors to get what they're after. On the run with Isla (who of course won't be left behind), Fergus must reach out to friends old and new as he struggles to grasp just what he's stumbled into and how he's going to get out of it with his increasingly-patchwork skin in tact... and, oh, yeah, without that little bit of metal driving him insane and potentially destroying the solar system, not necessarily in that order.
REVIEW: The third installment of the Finder Chronicles maintains the active pacing and adventurous, occasionally humorous tone of the previous books, presenting another seat-of-the-pants life-and-death outing for Fergus that once again sees him at just the right place and time (or wrong place and time) to save or endanger entire worlds. It builds on events from the first two books, with several cameos and callbacks, even as Fergus himself is growing and changing through his adventures. The discovery of a sister feels a bit like a chance to leave some sort of a legacy, as well as a chance for a secondhand do-over - if he can convince Isla to stick to her university studies and stay planetside, at least. But, naturally, a young girl already chafing at stagnant life in a small Scottish town - one related to Fergus, no less - isn't going to be satisfied with a safe and comfortable little life, not when there's an entire galaxy out there to see and aliens to meet and adventures to be had... and not when the stakes are the survival of Earth at least and the rest of the solar system at most. She manages to not be deadweight, though she does have a lot to learn about the world beyond the Scottish pub where she's been raised, and what being a finder/freelance adventurer truly entails beyond the daydreams of a lonely girl. It's a messy, dirty, often bloody business that skirts the gray areas of legality (when it doesn't outright jump into the shadows), which sounds a lot more fun than it truly is when there are professionals with guns hot on one's heels. By the time the truth gets through to Isla, though, she's in too deep to get out... and she already recognizes that there are bigger issues at foot than whether she's having fun. Fergus, meanwhile, becomes increasingly convinced that he can't keep this lifestyle up forever if he wants to live a natural lifespan, even though finding things (and solving life-and-death problems by the seat of his exosuit) is so much a part of him he doesn't even know what he'd do without it. That may be little more than a philosophical question, though, if he can't figure out the alien metal fragments, who wants them so desperately, and how to stop them from reassembling themselves into Something Very Bad... a problem made more complicated by his alien "gift" that interacts in a most disturbing manner with the dangerous artifacts. Problems and enemies keep ratcheting up, building to an intense and somewhat emotional climax - and then on to an ending that's close to a cliffhanger. Honestly, it almost shaved a bit off the rating, to be left in that manner, but the rest of the story kept it afloat at the same level as the previous Finder books, so I gave it the same rating, on the (hopefully not naive) theory that there will, indeed, be a fourth installment and proper closure if/when the series comes to an end.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
Finder (Suzanne Palmer) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Chasing Helicity (Ginger Zee)
Chasing Helicity
The Chasing Helicity series, Book 1
Ginger Zee
Disney Hyperion
Fiction, MG Adventure
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Thirteen-year-old Helicity Dunlap has been drawn to weather her whole life, obsessing over clouds the way some people - like her father and her older brother Adam, who just landed a football scholarship - obsess over sports. To pursue a career in meteorology, though, she'll need better grades in math and science... and the day of the summer picnic, she just found the letter from her middle school advising against her taking advanced classes next year in both. She just wanted to clear her head with a ride on her horse Raven, up to the hills above their home - only to witness the storm that will destroy her small Michigan town, and her life.
In the aftermath of the tornado, Helicity loses her home (reduced to kindling by the winds), her horse (panicked and fled), and maybe even her family. Her brother Adam's in the hospital with a broken arm that may end his football career before it can even begin, and as invisible as Helicity felt before, that's nothing compared to the guilt she feels now: Adam was going to look for her when the storm warnings went out, but she'd drained her phone battery on storm pictures before she could text him that she was okay. But out of the wreckage comes an unexpected opportunity, when a meteorology professor from the local community college asks for any photos or videos of the storm - both of which she has in her cell phone. This might be the start of a wonderful new path for Helicity, one that will lead her to a life she could truly love - but, with her father angry at her and her family and town in turmoil, what will that opportunity cost her?
REVIEW: This is another case of opportunistic reading (or listening, rather) on the Libby app based on whatever happened to be available when I needed to reload options. Written by a chief meteorologist for a national news network, it shows a true love for the phenomena of weather and a respect for the unpredictable power of storms. Helicity's very name (meaning a helix-like spin, like that seen in storms) evokes the power of a gathering hurricane or tornado, a name bestowed in honor of a late physicist grandmother whom she never met, but among her family she feels as invisible as the wind, what with her brother's sports scholarship dominating the dinner table talk. After the storm, her father's one of the loudest voices shouting down the meteorologist seeking more information about the twister, whom many in the down see as a useless opportunist out to exploit the people's suffering for minimal (if any) tangible benefit; if the scientists were really so smart, why couldn't they do a better job predicting the monster that smashed their homes and wrecked their lives, and why do they only ever show up after the fact? But the moment Helicity sets eyes on the woman, she feels the spark of connection, like she's looking at her own future - or the future she hardly dared to let herself want. If she does want it, she's going to have to fight for it, something she's not used to doing. As Helicity delves deeper into the world of meteorology and storm chasing from the inside, she learns the true stakes and scope of what it means to study the weather and follow storms... and learns too how risky it is even for seasoned professionals. Even when she gets what she wants, she may not be ready for the real thing.
There's also a subplot about Adam, the brother whose injury causes her so much guilt and has potential to derail his life, but not in the way that she and her family initially feared... a subplot that's left entirely unresolved by the end, among a few other notes that felt a bit too up in the air. This sense of incompleteness is partially explained by this being the first book in a series, but even then, something about the book felt a bit unbalanced, leaving me just unsatisfied enough to shave a half-star off the rating. Other than that, though, it's a nicely gripping story of a girl discovering her passion and finding the courage to pursue it in the face of numerous setbacks, with characters who aren't usually quite as simple or flat as they might seem at first and conflicts that feel genuine, along with some solid science on weather phenomena that manages to inform without ever feeling like a lecture.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ill Wind (Rachel Caine) - My Review
Airborn (Kenneth Oppel) - My Review
The Cay (Theodore Taylor) - My Review
The Chasing Helicity series, Book 1
Ginger Zee
Disney Hyperion
Fiction, MG Adventure
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Thirteen-year-old Helicity Dunlap has been drawn to weather her whole life, obsessing over clouds the way some people - like her father and her older brother Adam, who just landed a football scholarship - obsess over sports. To pursue a career in meteorology, though, she'll need better grades in math and science... and the day of the summer picnic, she just found the letter from her middle school advising against her taking advanced classes next year in both. She just wanted to clear her head with a ride on her horse Raven, up to the hills above their home - only to witness the storm that will destroy her small Michigan town, and her life.
In the aftermath of the tornado, Helicity loses her home (reduced to kindling by the winds), her horse (panicked and fled), and maybe even her family. Her brother Adam's in the hospital with a broken arm that may end his football career before it can even begin, and as invisible as Helicity felt before, that's nothing compared to the guilt she feels now: Adam was going to look for her when the storm warnings went out, but she'd drained her phone battery on storm pictures before she could text him that she was okay. But out of the wreckage comes an unexpected opportunity, when a meteorology professor from the local community college asks for any photos or videos of the storm - both of which she has in her cell phone. This might be the start of a wonderful new path for Helicity, one that will lead her to a life she could truly love - but, with her father angry at her and her family and town in turmoil, what will that opportunity cost her?
REVIEW: This is another case of opportunistic reading (or listening, rather) on the Libby app based on whatever happened to be available when I needed to reload options. Written by a chief meteorologist for a national news network, it shows a true love for the phenomena of weather and a respect for the unpredictable power of storms. Helicity's very name (meaning a helix-like spin, like that seen in storms) evokes the power of a gathering hurricane or tornado, a name bestowed in honor of a late physicist grandmother whom she never met, but among her family she feels as invisible as the wind, what with her brother's sports scholarship dominating the dinner table talk. After the storm, her father's one of the loudest voices shouting down the meteorologist seeking more information about the twister, whom many in the down see as a useless opportunist out to exploit the people's suffering for minimal (if any) tangible benefit; if the scientists were really so smart, why couldn't they do a better job predicting the monster that smashed their homes and wrecked their lives, and why do they only ever show up after the fact? But the moment Helicity sets eyes on the woman, she feels the spark of connection, like she's looking at her own future - or the future she hardly dared to let herself want. If she does want it, she's going to have to fight for it, something she's not used to doing. As Helicity delves deeper into the world of meteorology and storm chasing from the inside, she learns the true stakes and scope of what it means to study the weather and follow storms... and learns too how risky it is even for seasoned professionals. Even when she gets what she wants, she may not be ready for the real thing.
There's also a subplot about Adam, the brother whose injury causes her so much guilt and has potential to derail his life, but not in the way that she and her family initially feared... a subplot that's left entirely unresolved by the end, among a few other notes that felt a bit too up in the air. This sense of incompleteness is partially explained by this being the first book in a series, but even then, something about the book felt a bit unbalanced, leaving me just unsatisfied enough to shave a half-star off the rating. Other than that, though, it's a nicely gripping story of a girl discovering her passion and finding the courage to pursue it in the face of numerous setbacks, with characters who aren't usually quite as simple or flat as they might seem at first and conflicts that feel genuine, along with some solid science on weather phenomena that manages to inform without ever feeling like a lecture.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Ill Wind (Rachel Caine) - My Review
Airborn (Kenneth Oppel) - My Review
The Cay (Theodore Taylor) - My Review
Saturday, April 1, 2023
(Delayed) March Site Update
A day late and the usual dollar short (it's been one of those capital-W Weeks around here), but I finally got the March reviews archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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