June Site Update

The end of June, halfway through 2023, and the month's seventeen reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.

In trivial news, it has apparently been five years since I launched the redesigned site. I probably should've done something special to mark the occasion, but evidently I'm lazy.

First Watch (Dale Lucas)

First Watch
The Fifth Ward series, Book 1
Dale Lucas
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Humans, dwarves, elves, orcs and more... everyone who comes to Yenara City is looking for something, but only a few manage to find it. For Rem, he wanted a new start and a new life away from his nobleborn father in the north country, but so far all he's found is unemployment, sore feet, and a cell beneath the Fifth Ward watch headquarters - and he barely remembers the drunken brawl that landed him there. When he learns that they're missing a guard, Rem decides to take a chance and ask for a job. Amazingly, the captain agrees to give him a try. Thus Rem finds himself partnered with the dwarf Torval, a partnership already off on the wrong foot because it's Torval's regular partner and friend who is missing. It's clear that nobody thinks Rem has what it takes. That only makes Rem all the more determined to prove everyone wrong... but when the missing guard turns up dead in a canal, the wayward noble realizes just how far over his head he really is.

REVIEW: A police procedural set in a fantasy world, this kind of story could easily fall flat on its face, either trying too hard or simply not trying enough. In this case, it actually works. Something like a pilot episode, Lucas uses Rem's unfamiliarity with Yenara and the job as a way to introduce the reader to the setting and the characters in a way that never quite feels like an infodump, establishing a world of many humanoid races with all the diversity, friction, political complications, and prejudice that entails. Rem is the young idealist, determined to make his own way in the world after a childhood of privilege (and constant belittlement by his father); his decision to ask for a position with the Fifth Ward is borne as much out of that idealism as desperation to find a job. He soon gets some of that idealism knocked out of him, both by the city itself and by his reluctant partner/trainer Torval, who makes no secret of his skepticism about the new hire's suitability for guard work. Rem is no prodigy, either, messing up more than once and getting knocked down repeatedly, figuratively and literally. But he keeps climbing back on his feet, pulled into a murder investigation that leads all across the city, into various dark corners rife with corruption. Torval slowly warms up to his new partner as the two chase numerous clues through numerous complications, eventually revealing his own scarred past and what led him, a mountain dwarf, away from his clan and into the city. The story moves well, with plenty of action and characters who defy easy race- or species-based stereotypes. The case wraps up by the end of the book, though of course there's series potential in the concept and cast, and indeed there are more Fifth Ward books. I found myself enjoying it more than I expected to, and I might even pursue the next book or two. Yenara is the kind of city I wouldn't mind visiting again.

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The Jewel and Her Lapidary (Fran Wilde)

The Jewel and Her Lapidary
The Gem Universe series, Book 1
Fran Wilde
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: The singing gemstones of the Valley have great powers, but to hear them is to court insanity unless bound by metal and oaths. Thus, for generations, the ruling Jewels each had their bound Lapidaries at their side from childhood to death, harnessing powerful gems that can protect the lands and compel obedience and perform other great wonders... until the king's Lapidary betrayed the royal house and let the mountain warriors into the palace. Now, only one Jewel survives, the princess Lin, and her Lapidary Sima... but Lin had been meant to marry off to a foreign ally, and thus was never trained in the arts of ruling, let alone war or rebellion, while Sima's skills have never been tested beyond minor manipulations of paltry little gemstones with paltry little powers. How can they stop the invaders from enslaving the Valley and turning their magical gemstones toward global conquest?

REVIEW: The concept of this story and universe is wonderful, and I really wanted to enjoy this story. For some reason, though, I had a hard time getting into it and connecting with the characters or their world. After a brief opening entry establishing that this is a tale of long-ago (the opening is an excerpt from a travel guide to the Valley, written long after the events that form the meat of the tale), the reader is thrown head-first into the chaotic events following the poisoning of the entire royal house (save Lin) and their companion/slave Lapidaries (save Sima), a jumble of events in which the core concept of the singing stones and the Lapidaries and the oaths that bind them (quite literally, oaths inscribed in metal cuffs and rings) are chucked about haphazardly. From the start, the two have very little power over their circumstances, especially when they learn that their survival was no accident; the invading general wants her rule legitimized by a royal marriage of her son to Lin, and she needs a Valley-born Lapidary to control the last remaining royal gemstone, the one that can compel obedience and with which she might conquer not only the Valley resistance but the rest of the world. The fact that Sima is not skilled enough a Lapidary to wake the powerful stone is a detail the general does not care to hear, any more than she cares to negotiate with Lin for the safety and survival of the Valley people. I was spending so much time trying to juggle the worldbuilding and where the characters fit in to that and each other that I felt distanced from the emotions, from living in the story. The problems and eventual solution are deeply dependent on the customs of the Valley and the gemstone/Lapidary relationship, though there still seems to be a bit of a flaw in it. The whole felt rushed, too tightly packed with all the elements Wilde was trying to introduce, or like I'd missed a previous book in the universe and was already supposed to know more about the Valley and its world. Though undoubtedly intriguing, I never quite got past that feeling of being an outsider to the story, and don't know that I'll read on in the series.

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Ghost (Jason Reynolds)

Ghost
The Track series, Book 1
Jason Reynolds
Athenium
Fiction, MG General Fiction
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Middle-schooler Castle "Ghost" Cranshaw's been running for much of his young life. Sometimes it seems he never stopped running after his father tried to shoot him and his mother in their own apartment. Since then, it's been one long race away from the past, away from the pain, away from the shame of living in a poor part of town and seeing his mother work herself to exhaustion, away from jerks at school. But he's never had anything to run towards, until one day he's down at the park and sees a group of kids about his age running on purpose.
Before he saw the Defenders, Ghost didn't even know track was a real thing. Now, he just might have found a place where he doesn't have to run away or act out. Who knows? Maybe someday he'll be great at something and set a world record, like his friend at the corner store always says he will. But Ghost has had a lot of practice being on his own, and not much being on a team. Can a kid like him really find a better life and a better future with better friends, or is he doomed to keep running away from himself, all alone?

REVIEW: The first in a series about the runners of the Defenders track club, Ghost reads (appropriately) fast, yet still manages to build solid characters with some complexity and conflict to them. From the start, Ghost struggles to find a place and a way to fit in, hanging out at the edges of city basketball courts hoping to be chosen for a pick-up game, but he already has strikes against him with where he lives and what happened with his father. He already has a "file" in school, and it almost seems inevitable that that file will transmute into a police record when he's older... until he stumbles across the track meet and realizes he can do something other than hang out on the fringes or get pushed and bullied into exploding. The coach is initially a bit skeptical of this kid who turns up out of nowhere and unofficially challenges his best young sprinter to a race, but sees something in Ghost that the boy scarcely sees in himself... something Ghost ends up endangering, ironically, because of his keen desire to fit in with the other Defenders. In the coach, Ghost finds the father figure that was lacking even when his biological father was around, for all that Ghost doesn't really hate his dad; mixed feelings about difficult parents and authority figures form a theme through the book, which gives grown-ups more nuance than some middle-grade titles manage. There are no flat villains here, and there are no flat heroes, either, just humans coping (or failing to cope) with various obstacles and burdens and goals, even if they don't always cope healthily or well. Everyone has some secrets and shades of grey about them, mixed emotions and impulses that sometimes lead to mistakes. It's learning to step up and acknowledge mistakes, atoning for and learning from them, that separates the child from the adult, the boy from the man (for all that it's a test some grown men fail). As Ghost immerses in the world of track and the first truly supportive peer group he's found on his own, he at last is able to face his own demons, the ones he's been running from for years.
I ended up adding an extra star for how it managed to pack so much story into such a relatively short package without ever feeling overcrowded or infodumpy or tipping over the line into melodrama. By the end, everyone in the story, even relatively minor characters, felt like people, not just names on a page (or in the air, as I listened to the audiobook). I might actually try finding the other books in the series, and I didn't think I'd ever say that about a sports-based fiction book.

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Winterhouse (Ben Guterson)

Winterhouse
The Winterhouse series, Book 1
Ben Guterson
Henry Holt and Co.
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Mystery
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since her mother died, Elizabeth Somers has been living with a distant aunt and uncle in the town of Drear, and her life is every bit as dreary and miserable as that name implies. No wonder she spends most of her time reading books; she loves words, loves puzzles and anagrams and stories, which are so much better friends than the people around her. Books never judge her for being an orphan, or for being poor. Then, out of the blue, one day she gets home from school and finds her aunt and uncle gone on an unexpected holiday. A note taped to the gate contains a bus ticket, three dollars, and a note that she's to spend the winter break at a hotel she's never heard of, some place called Winterhouse. Without anyone else to call on or anywhere else to go, Elizabeth reluctantly goes to the bus station. She's just certain this hotel is going to be as dismal as everything else in her life.
Much to her surprise, Winterhouse is the most wonderful place she's ever seen, a grand old mountain hotel with all sorts of stuff to do, a massive library chock full of books to read, concerts and movies and lectures and even art galleries to see - and, she quickly finds, a tantalizing puzzle to solve. There's a secret in Winterhouse behind all the wonders, a secret beyond the ordinary, with roots going back to the hotel's founding and the family that has managed it for generations... a secret that might just bring the mighty edifice down around everyone's ears, if a clever girl can't solve the mystery before the new year.

REVIEW: Winterhouse promises a fun, puzzle-filled adventure with a touch of magic around the edges, and delivers in full. Elizabeth, the bookish loner, may not be the most original of middle-grade heroines, but she's a decently written and reasonably competent one, her love of word games and puzzles and reading giving her a strong skill set to draw on in unraveling the mysteries of Winterhouse. She finds a sidekick and the first friend she's made in a good long while in Freddy, a young inventor who is also spending the holidays alone at the hotel, but they aren't the inseparable duo some books present: Freddy may be another bibliophile who can think up anagrams on the fly and solve word ladders (the process of changing one letter at a time to turn one word into another, like "head" to "tail") with ease, but he doesn't care to be drug as deep into the hotel's mysteries as Elizabeth feels compelled to go, putting a strain on the relationship that prompts her to complete some legs of the adventure alone. As one might expect in books like this, there's also an eccentric and generally kindly mentor figure, the hotel proprietor Norbridge Falls, and the old hotel librarian, plus antagonists in the form of a pair of unsavory guests who take an unusual, sinister interest in both Elizabeth and the mystery she's trying to crack. Winterhouse itself makes a great setting for the adventures, a place of joy and wonder and just a hint of something more beneath the surface, like something out of a dream. The plot moves decently fast, with Elizabeth experiencing some troubles and setbacks and moments of self-doubt, but always managing to rise to the occasion, even when she can't get anyone else to listen. There are a few points where Elizabeth is a little too obtuse for too long, and once in a while the baddies could be a trifle plot-convenient in when and how they pop up, but overall it's an enjoyable romp with enough danger around the edges to give it some heft. As the first in a series, it's a given that a few threads are left dangling at the end, and it does follow a by-now-familiar young adult fantasy adventure formula in some respects, but overall it gets solid marks.

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Tyrannosaur Canyon (Douglas Preston)

Tyrannosaur Canyon
The Wyman Ford series, Book 1
Douglas Preston
Forge Books
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Tom Broadbent was just out for a backcountry ride in the New Mexico wilderness when he heard the gunshots from the nearby canyons. He finds a dying stranger who only lives long enough to press a bloody notebook into his hands and extract a promise to deliver it to the man's daughter, Robbie. Who was he, and what was he after in the canyonlands that got him killed? The only clue is the notebook, but it's just a bunch of numbers he can't make head nor tails of, and the detective on the case doesn't exactly strike Tom as up to the challenge. As he investigates, he finds himself pulled into a deadly plot involving fossil thieves, lost treasures, secret codes, cutthroat academic rivalries, a novice monk with an unusual past, a murderous ex-con on a single-minded mission, a rogue dark ops agency, and a secret dating back to the days of the dinosaurs... all of which could make for many more bodies in the New Mexico desert in the here and now.

REVIEW: The blurb promises action and intrigue and secrets set against the harsh backdrop of the New Mexico deserts, and on that level it does deliver, I'll admit. There's a definite surfeit of testosterone about the plot, the few women shunted to the side for much of the tale (though they do come into their own later, the writing and the plot can't help objectifying them to the point of eye-rolls more than once). This isn't the kind of story that runs on deep complexity or nuance. Tom's the sort of fellow who could have ridden straight out of an older Western where the white hat hero is always unquestionably on the side of morality and truth; he willingly puts his life on the line, as well as the life of his wife, all because he made a promise to a dying man and he's the kind of man who doesn't break a promise, no matter what. His wife is, of course, a knockout in the looks department who gives riding lessons to special needs children and - inevitably - needs rescuing at some point, though she does actually step up and do a little more than I'd expected of her at the start (not quite enough to be truly independent, though). Ex-con Jimson Maddox may only be an agent for another man, but he takes his duty seriously, in his own way as committed to his word as Tom is, if with far less moral fiber and being far more likely to assault and kill in pursuit of his goals. Behind Maddox is a frustrated curator at a museum with his own reasons for blurring the lines of good and evil in pursuit of what he wants... and he does not even quite know what he's waded into with this scheme until it's too late and other, even darker and deeper entities are at work. Meanwhile, Tom has found an ally in Wyman Ford, an ex-CIA agent who fled to monastic life after a tragedy (and a fridged wife, because of course); the fact that this is the first book in a series about Ford shows just how long he retains "sidekick" status before shifting to the forefront. With a skeptical detective becoming more and more suspicious of Tom's evasions (Tom not trusting the man to solve the Sunday crossword, let alone the murder of the unknown prospector in the canyon), everyone ends up in a deadly game of cat and mouse (or cats and mice) in and around the "Maze", an area of forbidding canyons and rocks and abandoned mines that can prove deadly even to experienced desert hikers. As for what everyone is after... well, the name of the book is Tyrannosaur Canyon and covers on various editions feature a prominent fossil, so that's a sizeable clue, but there's more to it than just a potentially career-making find. Indeed, there's more to it than any one player in the plot knows or understands, all the pieces slowly coming together in a story where it's clear author Preston did extensive research. It all involves, as mentioned previously, plenty of action and intrigue (and testosterone), with some betrayals and deceptions and such along the way.
All that said, it came very close to losing a half-star. For all that it is pretty much what it says it is on the cover, at times I found myself pushed out of the story, or at least shoved a little to the side. I can't quite put my finger on why, but it has something to do with how the characters tend to feel a bit flat beyond all that action, how women (when they showed up) have a way of being turned into inherently weaker, inherently objectified things and only belatedly rising as people with backbones, and how, at some point, a sense of action movie implausibility and fatigue sets in; how far can you push people beyond the limits of human endurance before even heroes of an action story fail to endure? There was also a bit of tug-of-war going on between Tom Broadbent, evidently a character from previous Douglas Preston novels (which I have not read) and Wyman Ford for alpha lead of the tale, which sometimes made the story feel like a snake with two heads; it can't possibly go in both directions it wants to go at the same time. Still, despite this (and a sense that the story might've benefited from a little trimming now and again, and the characters from a little less flat white hat/black hat characterization), I will say again that it does deliver on its promises, and I've definitely read far worse, so I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

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Elric of Melnibone (Michael Moorcock)

Elric of Melniboné
The Elric Saga, Book 1
Michael Moorcock
Audio Realms
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: The people of Melniboné are an old and often cruel race, trained since childhood in many dark and mystical arts lost in the Young Countries of ordinary men. Once, they ruled the world with their golden war barges and their dragons, but today they are a diminished nation, rarely venturing beyond the Dragon Isle... and, to many, the latest emperor is yet further proof that the days of Melniboné are near an end. Born an ill-omened albino, Elric is afflicted by terrible weakness, to the point where he can barely stand upright without his draughts and potions. But what's worse in the mind of the other nobles is the apparent weakness of his mind, for he alone of the entire nobility, perhaps his entire race, questions the morality of their sorcery and their rule. Many whisper that the Dragon Isle deserves a stronger leader, one who will lead them back to days of conquest and glory: someone like Elric's cousin Yrkoon, whose brash manners and bloodlust are everything the people of Melniboné used to be in ages past. Even as Yrkoon makes open bids to usurp the Ruby Throne, the barbarians of the Young Countries make unprecedented attempts to assault the very Dragon Isle itself. In desperation, Elric turns to old powers and ancient grimoires long untouched... and finds himself drawn into a game of gods and elementals and demonic forces, a game in which even an emperor such as himself is but a pawn.

REVIEW: Since his appearance in 1961, Elric has been an iconic character in fantasy, the brooding, doomed emperor of a fading people who rarely faces anything but terrible choices. More introspective and moody than Conan, his physical strength and swordsmanship forever dependent on medicines and magics and (later) the assistance of a cursed item, it's clear from the start that there will never be a truly happy outcome for him or Melniboné's population, who seem half-aware that they are relics of a bygone era and yet cling to their old traditions and prejudices all the harder. To be the emperor of such a people is to be the captain of a sinking ship, but to be an emperor like Elric - who actually contemplates how they fell so far and whether they might survive if they became more introspective, moral, and adapted to the emerging world of ordinary humans - is to paint a target on one's back. Not that he's a paragon of virtue himself, for all his moral wrestling; he thinks nothing of watching captives tortured to gruesome deaths, he reaches out to forbidden lords of chaos in times of need, and given the chance he concocts truly horrific retribution for enemies. He is, after all, the product of a cold and cruel people whose main driving nature is personal pleasure, followed closely by keeping lessers, be they barbarians of other nations or lower ranks of their own race, firmly in their place and on their knees. Any perceived virtue in him is most often by comparison to his surroundings, as charcoal will look lighter compared to solid black. Elric's journey was always rough and lonely, and even the love of his life, fair Cymoril (Yrkoon's sister, whom the villain openly lusts over to drive home just how depraved and evil he is), doesn't quite understand him, for all that she sees the doom upon him before he does. When faced at last with open betrayal, he finds himself on an unexpected path, one in which it becomes clear that he is but a plaything of forces greater than himself. Yet, still, he can't stop brooding and second-guessing his own instincts, resulting in some truly boneheaded moments from the Melnibonéan emperor. Things twist and wend through wild, strange, primeval wonders and dangers of an elder age, until the story reaches an ending where Elric's torments and journey are still just beginning.
While there's plenty of action to go around and some interesting mind's eye candy here and there, the story unfortunately shows its age in many ways. Women don't really exist save as objects to threaten or abduct, even when they're on the page and the narrator is in their thoughts. Yrkoon is such an obvious, cruel, crude villain it was almost laughable, save when Elric proved repeatedly oblivious to the true threat posed by him (even after the open betrayal, Elric makes excuses). Elric himself so clearly does not fit what it means to be a Melnibonéan that one wonders why he wasn't ousted some time ago, or why he didn't voluntarily abdicate and vanish into self-imposed exile; he was never going to fit in among his own kind, even when he tries to live up to their selfish and cruel ideals. I also found myself annoyed by the audiobook production I listened to, with constant overbearing background music and sound effects. While I can appreciate the iconic nature and impact of the character and his world, I think Elric just dates a little much for me to really enjoy his adventures.

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Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green)

Blue Moon Rising
The Forest Kingdom series, Book 1
Simon R. Green
Roc
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: As the second son of King John of the Forest Kingdom, Prince Rupert has always known he was superfluous at best and a potential threat to succession at worst. Never mind that he had no aspirations to power himself; he could always be used as a tool and a means to divide the realm just by virtue of his bloodlines. When his father sent him on a quest to slay a dragon and "prove himself worthy of the throne", everyone - even Rupert - knew the truth: he was being sent off to exile (if he was smart and just ran away) or his death (if he was foolish enough to cross the deadly, demon-infested Darkwood in search of an actual dragon). But Rupert is nothing if not dutiful, so off a-slaying he rides upon his talking unicorn steed... only the quest doesn't go nearly how anyone, least of all Rupert, might have expected. For one thing, the dragon is far nicer than anyone in the royal court. For another, there's a wayward princess, Julia, who is better with a blade than half the castle guardsmen. On the way back home, the four of them - prince, princess, unicorn, and dragon - make quite an adventuring foursome... but they return to find a realm overrun with demons and beset by treachery. While Rupert was away, the Darkwood was spreading its influence. With an ill-omened Blue Moon rising, the Wild Magic of the land is in ascendance, swallowing the High Magic that remains to humanity and threatening to remake the world into something primordial, chaotic, and utterly devoid of light, hope, and mortals.
Once, Rupert was the last man the Forest Kingdom needed. Now, he and his unlikely companions may be its only hope of survival.

REVIEW: I openly admit I picked it up based on the cover art of the edition I found in Half Price Books, with bright rainbow colors, an old-school fantasy adventure feel, and a dragon. First published in 1991, this is the kind of story I don't see that often these days, a lighter take on/subversion of familiar fantasy tropes that nonetheless has a decent plotline (not just a series of one-liners) and enough heart and unpredictability to make for a reasonably engaging read. The characters may not be hugely deep, but have enough inner conflict and complexity and undergo enough pain and growth to make them more than one-note placeholders, even if they do sometimes behave a little foolishly to further a plot point or two. The villains aren't quite as obvious as one might expect, either. As for the world, it's a decent enough backdrop for an adventure, if not much more than that; this isn't one of those detailed epic fantasy realms where you feel you could walk into the page, but more like a serviceable stage setting for the story to play out upon. Green's writing style could be a bit irritating, tending to drift between character viewpoints and pull back to omniscient now and again; I'm used to works where the camera doesn't wander quite so much mid-scene. Toward the end, a few developments felt contrived, and one or two never came to fruition as it felt they should... but, then, this is just the first in a series, even if the setup for continuation feels slightly tacked-on; it could've easily resolved in one volume with some minor tweaks. (Will I pursue further volumes? I wouldn't rule it out, though I also wouldn't say it's the top of the priority list. This is the kind of story that makes a nice, lighter read between heavier material, not necessarily one I want to binge several volumes of in one gulp.) On the whole, considering that I picked it up off the clearance rack at Half Price Books, it earns a solid four stars for delivering the entertainment that the cover promised, and just a little more.

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Any Sign of Life (Rae Carson)

Any Sign of Life
Rae Carson
Greenwillow Books
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi/Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Teenager Paige Miller thought a basketball scholarship meant her future was secure, at least as far as college. Beyond that... so many possibilities, so little time. Until one night she goes to bed early with the flu and wakes up six days later, alone in a dead world.
While she was unconcious, a virus swept the globe with terrifying speed, with a mortality rate near 100%. Her family is dead in their beds, the neighborhood thick with crows feeding on the bodies of her neighbors. At night, where she should see the glow of lights from the city of Columbus, all she sees is darkness. It's enough to make her give up, but Paige Miller doesn't do despair, and she didn't become one of the top high school basketball players in the state by giving up. Along with the neighbor's dog, she sets out in search of food, shelter, and survivors, not necessarily in that order.
But even as she begins her search, something nags at her. She may only be in high school, but she lived through the COVID lockdowns. She knows pandemics don't work like this, taking out an entire planet in a handful of days; they need months to spread, at the very least. It's almost as though it wasn't a natural virus at all, but something else... but spread by whom? Or rather, spread by what?

REVIEW: Even before the COVID pandemic, viral apocalypses weren't new in fiction, but there seems to be a natural resurgence in the subject lately. This title makes a solid entry in the subgenre. From the moment Paige wakes up and realizes something is very, very wrong, she manages to be a fairly competent protagonist, not beyond a few mistakes but generally not head-smackingly stupid ones. She draws on years of athletic training and focus to regain her strength and push ahead in the face of unimaginably devastation and horror and fear, helped by the neighbor's Sheltie dog (who may be too small for much in the way of physical defense, but provides much-needed moral support and warnings of danger). The dangers of a suddenly-uninhabited world are many and varied, from animals going feral to gas explosions to the problem of so many unburied bodies rotting in open air... and that's before the true antagonists make their appearance. (It's not a huge spoiler, as it's implied on the cover blurb even, that there is a decidedly unnatural element to the apocalypse.) Along the way, Paige finds a few other survivors and the truth about what's going on. There are some sparks between her and Trey, the first other human she finds, but both of them are capable of tapping the brakes on any potential romance or runaway hormones until they aren't literally fleeing for their lives, the kind of restraint even grown-up books sometimes lack. This may not be the future Paige and her companions counted on, but it's the one given to them, and be damned if they're going to throw it away without fighting for it. Things wobble occasionally, particularly toward the climax, and it feels like it almost wants to set up a sequel. Overall, though, it's a good apocalyptic thriller with sci-fi overtones.

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0.44 (H. A. DeRosso)

0.44
H. A. DeRosso
Dreamscape Media
Fiction, Western
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Dan Harland never set out to be a hired gun, but few people do. He was just a cowhand on a frontier ranch until fate found him outdrawing an outlaw with his trusty 0.44 gun. Not even thirty yet, Harland already has a name and a reputation, and the harder he tries to escape it, the more impossible it becomes, until he has no choice but to simply start taking money to kill. This latest job should be routine, and for all that "routine" sickens him, he needs money the same as anyone else, and it's never personal... until it is. As usual, Harland insists on a face-to-face shooting - and, this time, he shouldn't win. The man outdraws him, but doesn't fire. It's almost like he wants to die. Unsettled, Harland does the one thing no hired gun should ever do: he starts asking questions. In the process, he kicks up a hornet's nest worth of trouble that may well end his life when it's barely begun.

REVIEW: This 1953 Western is considered a classic, melding Western themes with a noir atmosphere. A sense of doom hangs over Dan Harland from the first pages, as he broods over a life gone wrong even as he prepares to kill a stranger in cold blood. His target understands him better than he himself does in their brief conversation before the draw, an encounter that deeply unsettles the reluctant gunslinger and prompts him to dig into the question of who hired him and why. He tracks the matter back to a small town riddled with secrets and lowlifes, uncovering a tangled web of deception and darkness and some secret figure pulling the strings. When people ask him why he's there, why he's bothering when he made his kill and got his pay, what he possibly thinks he'll acccomplish, he doesn't answer, and that's in part because he himself doesn't understand why he feels so compelled to do this one thing, atone for this one life taken out of all the lives that have ended by his bullets. What, truly, can he hope to gain? Certainly not a salvation that he knows is beyond his reach, or a chance at a clean and straight life that perhaps would never have been his even if he'd never fired his gun in the first place. It's a dark fate that hangs over his head, as inescapable as nightfall and Death itself. As one might expect from a Western and a pulp-style book from the 1950's, there's a certain implausibility if you dig too deep and look too hard, and the women characters aren't exactly deep or nuanced... but, then, the males aren't generally much deeper. It all comes together in a climax that sees the various threads resolved, the culprit revealed, and Harland's fateful journey coming at last to a conclusion. All things considered, I've read worse, and there is something oddly compelling about the noir flavor in the Western setting.

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Restart (Gordon Korman)

Restart
Gordon Korman
Scholastic
Fiction, MG General Fiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The fall is the first thing Chase Ambrose remembers when he wakes up in the hospital... and the only thing he remembers. He was falling from - where? Why? And who are these people in his room who seem so happy he's back? The doctor tells him he was unconscious for four days, and that, aside from a concussion and a shoulder injury (and the amnesia), everything's fine. But Chase knows from the start that not everything is, in fact, fine. His kid stepsister's clearly afraid of him. His mother's walking on eggshells. And when he finally gets back to school - apparently he was the captain of the football team? - he gets a lot of strange, scared looks from teachers and students alike, and the only ones to greet him as friends are brash bullies. Just who was Chase Ambrose in the thirteen years he can't remember... and is he destined, despite his best efforts, to become that monster again?

REVIEW: Are bullies born or made - and can they ever be redeemed or "cured"? That question is at the heart of Restart, and the heart of Chase's inner dilemma.
Though he has no memory of it, he and his two best friends were notorious not only in their junior high but in the town at large. He hasn't even reached high school and he's already on the verge of having a permanent criminal record. As is all too common, the adults who should be able to stop such behavior back down, under pressure from parents or school boards or the fear of lawsuits or simply rationalizing that the benefits to the school (Chase and the others being star athletes) outweigh the reign of terror and lifelong scars left by bullies. The problem feeds on itself, as the bullies keep getting away with increasingly atrocious behavior and their victims see them getting away with it and feel even more helpless (or even maybe like they must deserve it, if nobody will help them)... which is how we end up with grown adults who behave in monstrous ways being rewarded by society and the victims admonished to not "rock the boat" by calling out their appalling, harmful behavior. Even Chase's father, an ex-jock reliving his glory days vicariously through his son, all but comes out and says he approves of Chase's bullying behavior, the old "boys will be boys" and "it toughens kids up" excuses that ring so hollow to those literally chased out of their schools and homes after being targeted. It takes a literal knock to the skull for Chase to break the cycle. The boy who walks out of the hospital does not seem to be the same one who tied kids to tether ball poles or set off cherry bombs during a piano recital, and the more he learns about what he did, the more horrified Chase becomes about the old him, the monster him... even as he starts finding hints of that old self resurfacing.
The book switches viewpoints to other characters in several chapters, as Chase's former victims are first confused by the change, then slowly come to accept that there might be a decent person emerging from the "alpha rat"... even as Chase's old friends worry that the "new" Chase will get them into far more trouble over one of their last stunts. It misses a bit of an opportunity as it doesn't try to explore the roots of Chase's behavior, but then there really isn't a valid excuse for behavior like pulling the head off a kid's favorite toy or casually knocking a stranger into a fountain hard enough to require stitches. Even his old friends, in their point of view chapters, don't seem to know why they're behaving like they are; they just feel entitled to it, and see bullying as an acceptable way to entertain themselves and get what they want (and why shouldn't they, when they're never stopped and are even rewarded for it... when they know that even the principal of their school will accept the flimsiest of excuses not to actually have to deal with the problem, victims and property damage be damned?). As the tale unfolds, Chase and the others must grapple with the central question of whether a leopard can truly change his spots... or, rather, whether the bully Chase was the real Chase all along, any changes wrought by trauma being temporary aberrations. Unlike the vast majority of his real-life counterparts, Chase actually confronts the damage he has done and lives he has wrecked, and faces the judgment of his peers (and the grown-ups around them). There are some humorous moments and some serious moments and some moments of harsh self-reflection where easy answers just do not exist. The ending feels a little neat, and as mentioned previously I think Korman sidestepped some potentially rich ground to dig into, even lightly, over what actually started the bullying cycle in Chase and if mere amnesia can short-circuit that root cause. (There is possibly a little bit implied in his father's myopic fixation on football as the ends that justify all behaviors, but that alone doesn't seem sufficient given the severe escalation of old Chase's terrible behavior.)
Overall, I decided to round up to a solid Good rating, though anyone who has ever been on the wrong end of bullies (hand raised, here) will likely recognize just how much literary license Korman employed to come up with a remotely satisfactory conclusion...

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Northwind (Gary Paulsen)

Northwind
Gary Paulsen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fiction, MG Adventure/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: After his mother died in childbirth, with no father named or known, the boy Leif grew up as little better than a thrall among the seafaring folk, first on the docks and then on the ships, until at last he and a handful of others were sent to a small camp to smoke fish and wait for the return of the seal hunting crew. Only the crew never returned, and the only ship that came was an ill-omened vessel of dead and dying strangers who so poison the air with their brief presence that soon everyone falls ill. With the last of his strength, Old Carl sends young Leif away in a dugout cedar canoe, telling him to head north, always north, and never return to this cursed place. For the first time in his often-wretched young life, Leif finds himself alone... and for the first time, he must learn who he truly is, what he is made of, and if he can survive the wild, unforgiving world in which he wanders.

REVIEW: This is, I believe, the last story published by the late Gary Paulsen, and his ability to bring the wilderness to life, in all its wonders and glories and dangers, remains clear. Set in an unspecified prehistory in Nordic lands, Northwind is a coming-of-age journey for a young man who has lived his whole life next to the sea, on the sea, surrounded by the sea, but has never truly experienced the sea until thrust upon it in the little dugout canoe. As in other Paulsen titles, Leif's adventures are as much about his failures and moments of quickly-dashed hubris as they are about his successes and discovering the marvels, the borderline-spiritual connection with the natural world - not just the animals, but the winds and waters and living currents, the very pulse of the sea itself. Unlike some of Paulsen's other stories, there isn't a clear goal for Leif to drive for; he's not trying to return to the village he came from, where he'd just be a veritable slave again, or any other particular destination. His journey falls somewhere between exploration and spirit quest, potentially one he will never finish even in a long lifetime. This lack of goal makes the ending feel a little anticlimactic, almost like Paulsen may have planned for a sequel or series or simply another part of this book but (for obvious reasons, unfortunately) never finished the thought. Still, even a somewhat inconclusive tale by Gary Paulsen is a beautiful thing, a poetic ode to nature and a way of life and thinking that sadly seems endangered.

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Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck)

Three Quarters Dead
Richard Peck
Speak
Fiction, YA Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: High school is always tough, but sophomore Kerry feels especially invisible. Her best friend since forever left for boarding school and is drifting away, making new friends, while Kerry feels utterly unseen at Pondfield High. Then, seemingly out of the blue, senior Tanya invites her in to her exclusive little clique of herself, Natalie, and Makenzie. Tanya, the "Queen of Now", has her finger on the pulse of everything: every student, every parent, every teacher, every relationship started and ended, all the news that's fit to gossip about and the secrets too shameful to whisper. She's far too cool and powerful to want to hang out with a nobody sophomore like Kerry... but Kerry, starstruck, doesn't want to ask too many questions, not now that she finally has something like friends, now that she's finally been seen.
A car crash takes the three away in an instant, taking away everything that made high school, that made her life, worth anything. Tanya had become the center of her world, as she was the center of the Pondfield social scene. What is Kerry possibly going to do without her, or Natalie and Makenzie?
Then she gets a text, telling her to come to the city for a meeting. The text, impossibly, comes from Tanya.
Is it a hoax? Is it a cruel joke? Is Kerry delusional in her grief? Or is the Queen of Now someone, or something, too powerful for even death?

REVIEW: High school is Hell in many ways, and the social scene can eat a body alive, especially an awkward girl like Kerry. Even a chance at a friend, let alone popularity, is enough bait to tempt her into Tanya's trap, even though from the start she seems to understand that the girl isn't particularly nice, and doesn't really care about other people as anything but potential tools. If your self-image is poor enough, even being a tool is considered better than being invisible, and people like Tanya know how to use tools and keep them damaged and off-balance enough to never develop enough self worth to stand up and walk away. Kerry stands less chance than the fly in the spider's web, and even when she gets chances to break free, she just tangles herself deeper. And that's before the car crash and the text... It's hardly a spoiler that, no, the text is not a hoax. If Kerry was out of her depth with the living Tanya's clique, she's somewhere in the Mariana Trench with what she finds when she follows that text... and even more helpless, even when she sees more than ample evidence of Tanya's cruelty and lies. Indeed, Kerry's persistent inability to help herself starts to grate at some point. Yes, I get that peer pressure is a monster, that some teens are particularly susceptible, but in a character I need to see some hint of an attempt at a spine now and again. The events unfold with nightmarish lucidity, time stretching and shrinking like pulled taffy before the real agenda becomes clear, with Kerry falling deeper and deeper under Tanya's influence. The ending's decent, at least, but I could've done with more effort on Kerry's part to stand up and fight back, more reason to root for her against the monsters she tried to think of as friends.

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The Spare Man (Mary Robinette Kowal)

The Spare Man
Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor
Fiction, Mystery/Sci-Fi
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: Heiress Tesla Crane had hoped for a nice, relaxing cruise to Mars aboard the luxury liner Lindgren, honeymooning with her new spouse, retired detective Shan. She could use it; a terrible accident with one of her company's prototypes left her half-crippled in pain and scarred by PTSD, something neither the nerve blockers nor her service dog, the terrier Gimlet, can entirely alleviate. But she has a handsome and brilliant and supportive husband, a first-class suite, and some of the best cocktails in the system. It should be a good time.
Then a woman is murdered - and, impossibly, her husband is a prime suspect.
Tesla just wanted to lie low and enjoy some time incognito as a happy newlywed, but when it's clear the shipboard security officer has already made up his mind, she realizes it's up to her (and Gimlet) to clear Shan's name by finding the real killer. But someone who killed once and got away with it isn't the type of person to sit around and wait to be unmasked...

REVIEW: I loved what I've read of Kowal's alternate history Lady Astronaut stories, as well as her standalone Ghost Talkers. The concept of this one, crossing the Nick and Nora Charles banter-based sleuthing story with a futuristic spaceship setting, sounded like it could've been great fun. And it should've been fun. It really should have been fun. I don't know if I was just in the wrong headspace, or if I just don't enjoy this kind of story in print, but for whatever reason almost nothing in this book worked for me, try as I did to make it work.
First off, I knew there would probably be some challenges integrating the inherently different elements here. The Nick and Nora model relies on a certain retro vibe, sipping cocktails and trading glib banter with certain implied social and gender roles. The setting, though, is a spaceship, in a future where, even if class equality is as nonexistent as it is today, gender roles have broadened and changed radically; indeed, the story goes out of its way to point out how the ship security officer is considered practically a relic of the Neolithic for throwing around attitudes about gender and disabilities that should've died in the 1980's. With their old-school banter and gestures and cocktail habits, Tesla and Shan just plain feel out of place, even with the Lindgren inexplicably feeling like a luxury cruise ship from yesteryear, down to the live stage magician doing the same tired tricks that were old hat when the original Nick and Nora Charles were about. This disconnect isn't helped by the utter lack of viable chemistry between Tesla and Shan; their banter often feels forced and ill-timed, their constant newlywed nuzzling and pawing at each other always seeming to happen right when they really should be doing something else (as in one time, when they have a stranger waiting for them in the other room, they darned near strip down and go at it on the bed when they really should be more focused on how this person can help them investigate and, say, clear Shan's name of the murders so they can make out without a third party waiting on them...). Of course, I'm not entirely sure how close the married couple really is; Shan claims to be a retired detective, yet hasn't told his own wife why he retired - and this is a man she keeps claiming can read her feelings and moods like a book, and vice versa. Isn't this the kind of thing husbands and wives should tell each other in a solid relationship - even before vows are exchanged and they're on their honeymoon? Naturally, Shan does a lot of investigating for a "retired" detective, but progress for both him and Tesla is uneven, stumbling over a long list of crewmembers and suspects whose names and connections became a blur (and I'm used to reading epic fantasy doorstoppers, so juggling names shouldn't be an issue, but I was just so distracted by how nothing seemed to click together here that I just could not do it). Gimlet weasels her way into almost every possible scene, in the reader's face almost as much as a real attention-loving little pooch who doesn't always need to be there (her "service dog" services fall by the wayside as she becomes more useful as a distraction). I like dogs, don't get me wrong, but I don't always want one underfoot when I'm trying to keep track of the plot. Things happen, Tesla experiences pain and gets re-traumatized, Shan gets beat up by shipboard security during "interrogation" (did I mention that he has a bad broken rib and black eye and is in serious pain, as is she, when they're nearly tearing each other's clothes off in that earlier "make the stranger wait because hormones" scene? I know newlyweds can be a little eager, but as a reader I could only wince, not finding acute pain particularly arousing.), the official investigator is so clearly biased and incapable of actually looking at evidence that it went beyond funny to tooth-grinding in the space of a couple chapters (is he on the take? Nope, just incompetent, because you can't have a competent investigator around if "amateur" sleuths are going to solve things), subplots complicate things unnecessarily, and yet more cocktails are mixed and banter traded before the final unmasking of the true culprit and the book finally trudges over the finish line.
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to enjoy some light banter with a nice little mystery. I really, really did. And there were moments that almost rose to my expectations. But at every turn I kept running nose-first into parts that didn't fit and moments that didn't work and characters who never came alive beyond the trope/stereotype that inspired them. I pushed myself to the halfway point hoping it would finally click, then pushed myself to the end just to get it out of the way. Any book that I'm making myself read just to get it out of the way suffers a ratings hit, unfortunately.

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Nightwings (Robert Silverberg)

Nightwings
Robert Silverberg
Tantor Audio
Fiction, Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: There was a time when humans walked among the stars, working veritable miracles of science, considered equals among the many sentient races of the galaxy. Now, Earth is in its twilight years, the world a broken and faded memory of itself, the people living in cities riddled with remnants of former days of glory. A series of self-inflicted disasters devastated the climate and civilization, and though we haven't regressed completely to a planetbound existence, we're far from the giants we once were - and, technically, our planet is no longer our own, although the new legal owners have yet to arrive.
For over a thousand years, the Guilds of Earth have kept wary watch upon the skies, preparing as best they can for the impending invasion, but some have started to believe it's never going to happen. An aging Watcher, traveling with a winged Flier and a mutant member of the reviled underclass Guildless, has traveled far across the remnants of the world, and comes at last to the city of Roum, were fragments as old as the First Cycle of civilization itself can still be seen (though that's more the provence of the Rememberer Guild). He is here when at last the ancient threats come true, and the Invaders arrive to find our spirits as broken as our planet. As the Watcher struggles to find a purpose in this new, occupied world where his guild is no longer needed, he starts to wonder if he is seeing the last guttering embers of human civilization - or the first sparks of a new and rising glory.

REVIEW: Though this book feels like it might be in the same far-future milieu as the Majipoor books, it appears to be a standalone title, which is probably just as well. This is mostly a story of thinly-veiled religious concepts about sin, rebirth, and redemption, even if it cloaks it in terms like "the Will". The setting itself has some nice, imaginative (if rather dystopian) ideas, though it's saddled with certain markers of when it was written: old white guys lusting after barely-legal girls, women being either shy, delicate flowers of purity or selfish, vain, power-hungry vessels of pure lust and irredeemable sin, and a casual assumption that of course humans are divinely blessed above all else, that there is an aware Will guiding all, and the promises of primarily Abrahamic religions will eventually come to fruition even if the religions themselves have been lost to history. For all that, the story does at least acknowledge the deep and lasting damage done by cultures who consider themselves superior treating others as animals (or worse), plus warnings about attempts to control or alter global climates that have eerie resonance as we barrel headlong toward catastrophe in the here-and-now, and how the bill for both sins may be delayed but eventually comes due with interest. The Watcher is not always the most sympathetic of characters, though he does have to come to terms with his own faults, as well as those of his world. Around him are characters who are more archetype or symbol or metaphor to convey the Message than rounded individuals. I suspect that, if I were more literate in religion, I would see even more messages and symbolism pretty much everywhere and in every event, as that angle grows exceptionally heavy-handed the further into the tale one wanders. The ending... no spoilers, but I almost groaned out loud, as Silverberg dispenses of the sledgehammer and resorts to a metaphoric pile driver to pound the Lesson and Message home.
As I mentioned, there are some decent ideas and images, and there's something vaguely compelling about the fantastic vision of the future it presents. I just have a very limited tolerance for Message stories, particularly ones that seem primarily designed to gently soothe readers of a particular (assumed) cultural and religious persuasion that, yes, they really are the best and their Truth is the only Truth.

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Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws (Adrienne Mayor)

Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities
Adrienne Mayor
Princeton University Press
Nonfiction, Folklore/History
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: For all the copious amount of studies dedicated to history, there are still plenty of things that have fallen through the cracks, things that are either dismissed as falsehoods or misinterpretations or simply lack sufficient interest to tempt researchers. Author Adrienne Mayor shines a light into some of these overlooked nooks and crannies, unearthing a treasure trove of oddities and wonders and peculiar moments and factoids, from the often-forgotten roles of Native Americans and enslaved Africans in early American fossil hunting to possible explanations for persistent reports of "flying snakes" in Middle Eastern deserts, from tales of ancient poisons to "mad honey", even to the long histories of such peculiar human recreations as tourism, mountain climbing, and faking fossils.

REVIEW: There's a tendency to dismiss previous generations and cultures as lessers: less sophisticated, less able to discern truth from fiction or reality from illusion, less intelligent or worthy. Previous generations may not have been splitting atoms or launching interplanetary probes or live-streaming their pet cats being spooked by cucumbers, but they had the same basic brain structure as modern humans, and were at least as capable of understanding the world around them, as well as wondering how it worked and where they fit into it. Yet for too long, the idea that Ancient Greeks may have recovered fossils and attempted to reconstruct extinct animals, for instance, was dismissed out of hand. Other references fell by the wayside as being too inconsequential or vague to be worth pursuing, such as the possible identity of those "flying snakes" in places where true gliding snakes couldn't live, or the truth hidden in traveler's tales of tiny orange "birds" highly prized for their toxicity. Author Mayor digs into these little factoid nuggets with varying degrees of depth and success, from the ancient world to more recent times, touching on topics such as the domestication of ferrets (the chosen pet for rodent control before cats spread from Ancient Egypt), the classical personalities of the winds, tales of ancient "giants", the mysterious origin of the mammoth foot examined by famed naturalist Cuvier, early anti-vaxxers, and more. There are some odd omissions and numerous places where I wish there were more information presented, and some of the essays just seem of drift or end without seeming to make much of a point or reaching a conclusion. And there were places where it felt like she'd lost track of the main theme of the book, which was supposed to be classical and historical oddities and not waxing nostalgic about pets. Also - and this is not the fault of the author - the audiobook was supposed to have a PDF file I could download with images from the printed edition, but searching Libby has yielded no such addendum (I've seen them on other audiobooks, so I don't know what's going on with this one; I even checked with my tablet and my PC).
If someone is looking for in-depth explorations of the subjects mentioned here, then this book is only going to serve as a starting point; an extensive bibliography cites Mayor's sources for further investigation. If someone is just looking for a quick glimpse of unusual, often overlooked or forgotten or dismissed bits of history and folklore, then this is just what they're after. I wavered a bit, but wound up landing on the side of the full fourth star for the breadth of unusual topics covered, even if the depth could be lacking (sometimes frustratingly so).

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The Athena Protocol (Shamim Sarif)

The Athena Protocol
The Athena Protocol series, Book 1
Shamim Sarif
HarperTeen
Fiction,YA Action/Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: With a pop star mother and an unknown father, Jessie Archer was never going to have a normal life... but she never could've predicted just how unusual it would turn out to be. After an early graduation from traditional schooling, she was first recruited by a program training operatives for covert agencies, until she was invited to join a special project her now-retired mother helped found. The Athena Protocol is an off-the-books, technically extralegal organization dedicated to exacting justice for those that the world governments seem unwilling or unable to help, most notably women and girls left to the mercy of traffickers and terrorists. Jessie's prodigal tech skills make her a top agent of the small team - until one mission pushes her too far, and she finds herself breaking the Protocol's strict "no kill" rule. The bullet that ended a monstrous man's life also effectively ends her days as an Athena Protocol agent, just before they're due to take down a major international trafficker operating out of Belgrade.
Jessie fumes. She knows it was wrong (at least on some level) to have pulled the trigger, but the team needs her help if they're to have any hope of taking down their latest target. Using some back door code she left behind in the Protocol servers, she starts doing some independent research... and stumbles onto a much bigger, much darker plot. Worse, these new revelations mean the team may be in more danger than they realize. She may no longer be an Athena agent, but Jessie's not about to see friends and family walk into a trap, nor is she about to let another monster get away with destroying untold lives. She hops a plane to Belgrade, intent on conducting her own mission... but, while worrying about the danger to her ex-teammates, she forgot to worry enough about the danger to herself...

REVIEW: The Athena Protocol is exactly what it promises to be: a girl-oriented action tale of spies and secret missions and taking down bad guys with deception, stealth, and cool James Bondian gadgetry. Like the rest of the Protocol, adults and fellow teen/young adult agents alike, Jessie came to the agency with both talent and baggage, and work in the field tends to magnify both... especially when so much of their work starts to feel like slapping duct tape over cracks in a vast dam, the growing weight and pressure of the monstrosities committed against women and girls growing ever larger daily and the effects of their efforts seeming to grow less and less significant in a world that just plain does not seem to care - a world that too often rewards the monsters with yet more power and chances to abuse and kill. Jessie reaches this breaking point on the opening mission, but its only after she gets booted from the Protocol - by her own mother, even, one of the triad of founders - that she understands just how much her work does indeed matter, and how much it meant to her in particular. She does not, to her credit, immediately go full-on rogue; she keeps trying to work with the system that no longer wants to work with her, and only ends up going solo when she has no other alternative. Even through her investigation in Belgrade, she crosses paths with her former coworkers and can't help inserting herself to help. Along the way, she works through some personal issues about her job and her complicated history with her mother, even as she finds herself confronting some significant complications in the form of the attractive daughter of her mark, who may or may not be an innocent bystander in the man's myriad crimes. Things twist and turn through the streets of Belgrade, the digital footprints of money laundering across national borders, even through conflicted encounters with the Protocol's members, with plenty of action and a heroine who isn't beyond some missteps and mistakes but who never comes across as gullible or bumbling to further the plot. Actually, refreshingly, nobody is reduced to that level; they're all competent, strong people doing the best with the information they have. Even when the leadership ejects Jessie from the Protocol, it's an entirely understandable decision from their point of view, as even Jessie admits to herself once she calms down... and the leadership, to their credit, does actually listen to her when she brings them sufficient evidence for what she uncovers in her independent investigations. It wraps up with some nice twists and a decently satisfactory resolution that isn't without some tears and guilt and heartbreak, setting up the next book in the series. I enjoyed it. It's the kind of story that would make a solid TV or film adaptation, actually.

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The Magicians (Lev Grossman)

The Magicians
The Magicians series, Book 1
Lev Grossman
Viking
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Teenaged Quentin Coldwater may be a certified genius, already interviewing for a top college when he's still just a junior in high school, but he couldn't be more miserable. His parents barely bother noting his existence, his longtime crush Julia is now dating their mutual friend James, and his future, like the world, looks like a story he'd rather not keep reading. Even though he's technically too old for such things, he still rereads the popular Fillory series obsessively, tales of English children who find their way to a magical land time and again to play heroes and be kings and queens before coming back to Earth... and even though he knows better, he can't help believing (wishing? hoping?) that Brooklyn is just the starting point, that there's really magic and other worlds out there, a quest just waiting to be stumbled upon, and that an insecure lonely sad sack like himself can actually find a purpose and a place to belong. But he's only a hop, skip, and jump away from being a legal grown-up. High time he grew up.
Until he finds a passage to an invisible magical school, and is offered a chance at his wildest dream: to become a real magician.
Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic is nothing like the storybooks have prepared him for. Real magic isn't just waving a wand and shouting nonsensical words. It stretches mind and body and spirit to the breaking point and beyond, loaded with tedious studies and practice, with countless ways to go wrong. There are sacrifices, naturally, and nothing comes without cost. And rather than being the smartest kid in the room as he's used to, he's just one unremarkable student among dozens. But Quentin Coldwater isn't about to turn down this chance. After all, if secret schools and hidden societies of magicians walking among us are real, who knows what else is? Maybe even magical lands from storybooks... magical lands where he can still find that purpose and place to belong that all the magic in the world can't seem to find for him...

REVIEW: One of the most popular fantasy trilogies of recent years (popular enough to spawn a reasonably successful TV show, which I confess I haven't gotten around to), The Magicians is part homage to, part subversion of, and part dig at other popular fantasy franchises, particularly Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. Unlike either of them, for most of the book there really isn't a quest or a villain or big mystery to drive the story: it's mostly just Quentin, struggling to learn the wonders and dangers of magic and navigate the eternally perplexing, pain- and disappointment-riddled labyrinth of growing up. In some ways, that's a strength, and a deliberate poke at franchises that rely on external factors to shove their young protagonists into maturity. In other ways, it turns the tale into an interminable slog as the reader must follow a not-always-likeable (or -interesting) Quentin as he self-sabotages and fumbles and flails (and drinks and sleeps and whines) his way through adolescence.
Things start reasonably fast, after establishing Quentin's pathetic, dissatisfied existence as third wheel in a former three-way friendship that's become a romance-plus-one. For all his brains and scholastic accolades, he's an abject failure at life itself; part of why he clings so hard to the Fillory books is because some part of him has never given up hope that the reason he can't seem to get the hang of life or growing up is because he's still got a date with a coming-of-age quest via portal fantasy, and the validation that comes with saving a fantasy world. Shortly thereafter, he does indeed find his portal (of a sort), discovering that he is in fact as special as he hoped he was: he has the latent talents that will allow him to learn magic. At first, it's everything he wanted and more, for all that it's not nearly as whimsical or bubble-wrapped as fantasy stories often portray a magical education, plus every single person in the school is who he was: the "smartest kid", academic overachievers used to standing out, now among equals for possibly the first time.
Here, the story enters something of a holding pattern or glide. As mentioned, there are only vague hints of anything like a greater arc or plot driver, as it focuses on Quentin awkwardly figuring out Brakebills, his classes, and a social scene that's all too familiar from home. The starry-eyed sense of wonder mostly fades as the drudgery sets in, but he still clings to a hope that magic will answer the deep, nameless, restless need that's always kept him from being happy... and when that doesn't happen, he turns to drinking with friends (and ill-advised hookups that lead to a fumbling form of romance; if nothing else, this book makes a serious argument for magical schools having compulsory neutralization of sexual urges during matriculation, as people thinking with organs other than their brains leads to innumerable problems). If it hadn't been an audiobook, I might have set it aside for a while, but I was at work without much else to keep my brain busy, so I kept pushing ahead. And I will admit there was something compelling about Quentin's growth (or lack thereof; neither he nor many of the other characters mature in a meaningful way, stuck in a state of listless, dissatisfied, frankly selfish mental adolescence) and the way magic was depicted, not as a grand adventure or automatic ticket to happiness or fulfillment but as just another tool, one that can no more conjure a fulfilled life from nothing than a hammer can build a dream house just by existing. In many ways, magic is an empty promise that complicates more than it solves, in Quentin's life and the lives of other magicians. The greater mage world is implied, but it's nowhere near the robust, independent "world within a world" of Rowling's wizards or other "wainscot" fantasies; it's more of a fringe community, people who have studied and partially mastered something so strange that they struggle to know quite know what to do with it.
It's as Quentin is facing this bleak truth that the final phase of the book kicks in, the one that ties it all back to the Fillory series that kicked off his obsession with magic to begin with... only he's not some young, naive schoolboy summoned to save a vaguely whimsical other world (and learn about himself in the process), but a somewhat misanthropic student of actual magic who has messed up his life so thoroughly he's basically grasping at straws, hoping against hope that, in another world, miracles are still possible that the rigors of Brakebills magic couldn't accomplish - the miracle to make him into someone he actually likes, with a future worth looking forward to. It's not exactly a spoiler to say things don't go as planned, even as he and his acquaintances (I hesitate to call anyone in this book "friends", as they're generally too self-absorbed and -destructive for that term) get to live out their childhood dreams. Even in the middle of wonders, they still bicker and stew and hurt each other, as Quentin proves himself singularly worthless for far too long. I get that part of this was deliberate, another rebuttal of the portal fantasy tropes it was consciously deconstructing, but at some point it also got annoying. There's more moping and emotional immaturity, as Quentin processes (or rather, at least partially fails to process) everything, and then the ending... just sort of happens out of the blue, setting up the next installment and leaving me on the fence as to whether I want to bother continuing the journey.
There are parts I found intriguing about this book, and I can see why it struck such a chord, a somewhat cynical retort to portal fantasies and magical schools. It had just enough of that intrigue and interest that I was able to justify that extra half-star. At times, though, The Magicians felt more like it was missing the point of those fantasies and schools, like the guy who can't help shouting that Santa doesn't exist just to watch kids cry as the iron boot of reality stomps a little more wonder and hope out of their worlds. The wonder and hope are kinda half the point, and smugly demonstrating that they may not be plausible in grown-up reality doesn't necessarily make you the clever one. Sometimes it just makes you the jerk with the boot who can't stand seeing other people enjoy things you either have outgrown or were never capable of liking to begin with.

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