Halfway through the year already... June's nine reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the Main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Friday, June 28, 2024
Dark Waters (Katherine Arden)
Dark Waters
The Small Spaces quartet, Book 3
Katherine Arden
G. P. Putnam's Sons
Fiction, MG Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's springtime in Vermont, but the chill still hasn't left Ollie, Brian, and Coco. Ever since last fall's field trip to a local farm went terribly wrong, the three kids have been haunted, quite literally, by the "smiling man" and his ghostly minions. Though they've plunged themselves into research on the supernatural - to the point their grades are slipping, and Brian's parents even threaten to keep him from seeing Ollie and Coco as possibly "bad influences" on their son - they have yet to find a way to break the monster's power... but, surely, there must be places even his hand can't reach, like the waters of Lake Champlain.
Coco's mother, an investigative reporter, gets them all tickets on a local sightseeing tour whose theme is "Champ", the legendary lake monster. The captain even claims to have seen it three times... not up close, but certainly there was something far too big to be a fish in the water. Still, it's a nice day to be on the lake... or it was a nice day, until Phil, the captain's nephew and one-time best friend of Brian, reels in a strange silvery sea "snake", and something massive attacks the boat, tearing out the engine and leaving them stranded by an island that isn't on any charts... an island that may not even exist in the ordinary world, but beyond the mists in the domain of the smiling man. Monsters, ghosts, and a local legend collide as the three kids, Phil, and Ollie's Dad and Coco's mother fight for survival - and this time, not everyone will make it out alive.
REVIEW: The third installment of the Small Spaces horror quartet steps up the threat and tension of the "smiling man" and the hauntings that have plagued the core trio for half a year now. This time, Brian steps to the forefront; his parents have noticed that he's not the same as he was before the strange disappearance at the farm, and are wondering whether his new friends are to blame. He himself starts to realize that he's been pushing people away, out of fear that any friends he makes or confides in might become targets of the supernatural forces that have taken a personal interest in himself, Ollie, and Coco. (This is also why they haven't told their parents what's going on; even given the high likelihood that the adults wouldn't believe them, they're all terrified of endangering their families.) When Brian has a run-in with Phil, who was his best friend before the fateful field trip, he realizes that the three of them may not actually be the only kids who remember what happened in the corn fields like they thought... and how much worse must it have been for Phil to not only remember having been turned into a living scarecrow, but not be believed and lose his one-time best friend Brian at the same time? Even as the group considers whether to draw Phil into their confidence, it seems the smiling man is reaching out once again, first with a cryptic warning and then with the sea serpent attack that strands everyone on the impossible island. This time, two adults are endangered as well, in a way that makes it impossible to ignore that what's going on is outside the bounds of normal reality, but it's still the kids who have to figure out how to escape this latest trap - a trap with ties to Lake Champlain's history and a mysterious shipwreck that eerily mirrors their own circumstances.
As before, Arden delivers some deep chills and thrills and tangible threat. The kids sometimes stumble and make mistakes, but do the best they can given the circumstances and the information they have. It builds to a very tense climax that changes the stakes dramatically, setting up the fourth and final installment. I will definitely be looking for the last book soon.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Ghost in the Third Row (Bruce Coville) - My Review
The Screaming Staircase (Jonathan Stroud) - My Review
The Small Spaces quartet, Book 3
Katherine Arden
G. P. Putnam's Sons
Fiction, MG Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's springtime in Vermont, but the chill still hasn't left Ollie, Brian, and Coco. Ever since last fall's field trip to a local farm went terribly wrong, the three kids have been haunted, quite literally, by the "smiling man" and his ghostly minions. Though they've plunged themselves into research on the supernatural - to the point their grades are slipping, and Brian's parents even threaten to keep him from seeing Ollie and Coco as possibly "bad influences" on their son - they have yet to find a way to break the monster's power... but, surely, there must be places even his hand can't reach, like the waters of Lake Champlain.
Coco's mother, an investigative reporter, gets them all tickets on a local sightseeing tour whose theme is "Champ", the legendary lake monster. The captain even claims to have seen it three times... not up close, but certainly there was something far too big to be a fish in the water. Still, it's a nice day to be on the lake... or it was a nice day, until Phil, the captain's nephew and one-time best friend of Brian, reels in a strange silvery sea "snake", and something massive attacks the boat, tearing out the engine and leaving them stranded by an island that isn't on any charts... an island that may not even exist in the ordinary world, but beyond the mists in the domain of the smiling man. Monsters, ghosts, and a local legend collide as the three kids, Phil, and Ollie's Dad and Coco's mother fight for survival - and this time, not everyone will make it out alive.
REVIEW: The third installment of the Small Spaces horror quartet steps up the threat and tension of the "smiling man" and the hauntings that have plagued the core trio for half a year now. This time, Brian steps to the forefront; his parents have noticed that he's not the same as he was before the strange disappearance at the farm, and are wondering whether his new friends are to blame. He himself starts to realize that he's been pushing people away, out of fear that any friends he makes or confides in might become targets of the supernatural forces that have taken a personal interest in himself, Ollie, and Coco. (This is also why they haven't told their parents what's going on; even given the high likelihood that the adults wouldn't believe them, they're all terrified of endangering their families.) When Brian has a run-in with Phil, who was his best friend before the fateful field trip, he realizes that the three of them may not actually be the only kids who remember what happened in the corn fields like they thought... and how much worse must it have been for Phil to not only remember having been turned into a living scarecrow, but not be believed and lose his one-time best friend Brian at the same time? Even as the group considers whether to draw Phil into their confidence, it seems the smiling man is reaching out once again, first with a cryptic warning and then with the sea serpent attack that strands everyone on the impossible island. This time, two adults are endangered as well, in a way that makes it impossible to ignore that what's going on is outside the bounds of normal reality, but it's still the kids who have to figure out how to escape this latest trap - a trap with ties to Lake Champlain's history and a mysterious shipwreck that eerily mirrors their own circumstances.
As before, Arden delivers some deep chills and thrills and tangible threat. The kids sometimes stumble and make mistakes, but do the best they can given the circumstances and the information they have. It builds to a very tense climax that changes the stakes dramatically, setting up the fourth and final installment. I will definitely be looking for the last book soon.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Ghost in the Third Row (Bruce Coville) - My Review
The Screaming Staircase (Jonathan Stroud) - My Review
The Legend of Hobart (Heather Mullaly)
The Legend of Hobart
Heather Mullaly
Favored Oak Press
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Young Hobart of Finnagen may be the seventh son of a pig farmer, but he dreams of becoming a hero. Unfortunately, he can only enter the King's School for the Education of Future Knights if three people testify to his heroic deeds on the May Day of his twelfth year, and his village is sadly devoid of damsels in need of rescue (they all practice martial arts and assure him the last thing they need is a rescuer), babies in need of saving from house fires (everyone's far too careful), or other good deeds in need of doing. Worse, Hobart's small size, stutter, and stumbling efforts whenever he does attempt acts of bravery have earned him nothing but scorn and bullying; the son of the local lord dubbed him Ho-brat and the name has sadly stuck (with the added surname "Bull Hat" after an unfortunate encounter with an angry bull). Even his family doesn't take him seriously when he tells him his dreams. With the days until May Day dwindling, Hobart decides only one deed will be heroic enough to not only get him into the school for knights, but silence his tormentors once and for all: slaying a dragon. Thus, he sets out on a quest of his very own... but what he finds along the way will make him reconsider everything he thought he knew about bravery, heroism, and what it means to be a knight.
REVIEW: The Legend of Hobart is a light, amusing tale of a boy who wants to be a hero without quite understanding the term. Set in an idealized "once upon a time" fantasy land, it offers just enough peril to challenge Hobart and the companions he picks up along the way, providing setbacks and adventures and problems Hobart has to figure out with the four magic gifts granted by the old wise woman he consults on setting out. (Normally it's three gifts, but she's something of a nonconformist wise woman and gives him four... though whether Albert the cowardly talking horse is a gift or not is open to debate, even by Hobart.) Eventually, of course, he has his meeting with the dragon - but it goes without saying that things do not go the way he always imagined they'd go back in Finnegan. It's all a decently adventurous tale, especially for a younger reader, with some silly moments along the way, but I found the ending rushed, and it also seemed to forget a few things I was sure would come into play somehow.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Odd and the Frost Giants (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Have Sword, Will Travel (Garth Nix and Sean Williams) - My Review
A Darkening of Dragons (S. A. Patrick) - My Review
Heather Mullaly
Favored Oak Press
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Young Hobart of Finnagen may be the seventh son of a pig farmer, but he dreams of becoming a hero. Unfortunately, he can only enter the King's School for the Education of Future Knights if three people testify to his heroic deeds on the May Day of his twelfth year, and his village is sadly devoid of damsels in need of rescue (they all practice martial arts and assure him the last thing they need is a rescuer), babies in need of saving from house fires (everyone's far too careful), or other good deeds in need of doing. Worse, Hobart's small size, stutter, and stumbling efforts whenever he does attempt acts of bravery have earned him nothing but scorn and bullying; the son of the local lord dubbed him Ho-brat and the name has sadly stuck (with the added surname "Bull Hat" after an unfortunate encounter with an angry bull). Even his family doesn't take him seriously when he tells him his dreams. With the days until May Day dwindling, Hobart decides only one deed will be heroic enough to not only get him into the school for knights, but silence his tormentors once and for all: slaying a dragon. Thus, he sets out on a quest of his very own... but what he finds along the way will make him reconsider everything he thought he knew about bravery, heroism, and what it means to be a knight.
REVIEW: The Legend of Hobart is a light, amusing tale of a boy who wants to be a hero without quite understanding the term. Set in an idealized "once upon a time" fantasy land, it offers just enough peril to challenge Hobart and the companions he picks up along the way, providing setbacks and adventures and problems Hobart has to figure out with the four magic gifts granted by the old wise woman he consults on setting out. (Normally it's three gifts, but she's something of a nonconformist wise woman and gives him four... though whether Albert the cowardly talking horse is a gift or not is open to debate, even by Hobart.) Eventually, of course, he has his meeting with the dragon - but it goes without saying that things do not go the way he always imagined they'd go back in Finnegan. It's all a decently adventurous tale, especially for a younger reader, with some silly moments along the way, but I found the ending rushed, and it also seemed to forget a few things I was sure would come into play somehow.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Odd and the Frost Giants (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Have Sword, Will Travel (Garth Nix and Sean Williams) - My Review
A Darkening of Dragons (S. A. Patrick) - My Review
Thursday, June 27, 2024
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty)
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
The Amina al-Sirafi series, Book 1
Shannon Chakraborty
HarperCollins
Fiction, Adventure/Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Amina al-Sirafi was a legend of the Indian Ocean, a pirate queen whose adventurous reputation rivaled that of her father and grandfather before her. She stole, tricked, and fought her way through countless ports, and had more than one brush with the supernatural. But ten years ago, a tragedy of her own making made her walk away from the sea and her old crew. Now, she lives a modest and secluded life with her mother and young daughter, hiding from the many enemies she made during her seafaring career. But no legend can stay hidden forever; a determined old woman tracks her down and demands the help of the former pirate queen in tracking down a wayward granddaughter. A shady Frankish foreigner from distant Christian lands has been poking around after old manuscripts and purportedly magical relics, and has abducted the young lady for no doubt nefarious purposes, whisking her off across the sea. Amina wants nothing to do with relics or foreigners or any of this - she's surely too old for the swashbuckling life anymore, despite that tiny voice her head that still dreams of the sea - but the stranger threatens her family with exposure... plus she offers enough money to ensure her family's safety for generations. There's much about her story that strikes Amina as off, but she has no choice if she wants to keep her daughter safe, and surely it shouldn't be too tough to ask a few questions in some of her old haunts for some word of the Frank who claims to dabble in sorcery. (And, of course, the money doesn't hurt, either.)
She should have known that it wouldn't be that easy. She should have listened to her instincts warning her that this was no simple matter of a rich lady paying far too much to seek out a wayward girl. All too soon, Amina finds herself swept up in an adventure even wilder and more dangerous than any she faced before.
REVIEW: The cover and blurb promise a rollicking swashbucker with a fierce, clever, occasionally foul-mouthed lady pirate, and the story delivers in full. In the vein of Sindbad, Amina is an adventurer as much as a fortune seeker, as enthralled by new wonders and new lands as she is by treasure, sailing in a place and time that's a step to the side of our own history, a Crusades-era Indian Ocean that also holds sea monsters and demons and spirits from the numerous cultures and traditions along its shores. She tries to be a good person when she can, as faithful a Muslim as she can manage (especially after retirement), but has not led a blameless life and makes no excuses for her faults, carrying a burden of guilt underneath her confident swagger and smile. Since becoming a mother, her perspective and priorities shifted radically, but she still has that adventurer's soul, and still yearns for a life she told herself she outgrew. Thrust back onto the captain's bench of her beloved ship (which she still owns, though she handed over control to a former crewmate when she left), she cannot help but feel a bit thrilled at a chance to relive her glory days, despite the circumstances - circumstances that, naturally, get far, far worse than she bargained for very, very fast. But while she may be a bit rusty from retirement, and though her knee may twinge these days and her night vision's not as sharp, she is still, at heart, the same Amina al-Sirafi of legend and song, blessed with an abundance of wit and guile and luck (both good and ill)... all of which she'll need when it becomes clear that the Frank, the pale foreigner who may or may not have abducted a sheltered and bookish young woman, is no mere pretender to black magic. From start to finish, the story rolls along through wild wonders and great dangers and strange enchantments, punctuated by excerpts elaborating upon Amina's reputation and the reputations of her crewmates, all of whom are decently solid characters in their own rights, not mere props existing to bolster Amina's tale. The whole feels both fresh and classic, a great salty yarn of a tale that promises more adventures ahead.
All that said, I will say that I nearly knocked the rating back because of the audiobook presentation. The narrator had an annoying habit of mumbling and whispering several stretches of dialog, and at time leaning away from the mic to deliver asides (the story is being narrated to a scribe, and Amina is interrupted now and again by goings-on around them). Unless the listener is in a soundproof room, ambient noise is going to drown out those dropped-volume stretches even on earbuds; I had to keep cranking up volume to hear quiet and muffled bits, only to get my eardrums painfully blasted when normal volume returned.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Bloody Rose (Nicholas Eames) - My Review
Piratica (Tanith Lee) - My Review
The Amina al-Sirafi series, Book 1
Shannon Chakraborty
HarperCollins
Fiction, Adventure/Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Amina al-Sirafi was a legend of the Indian Ocean, a pirate queen whose adventurous reputation rivaled that of her father and grandfather before her. She stole, tricked, and fought her way through countless ports, and had more than one brush with the supernatural. But ten years ago, a tragedy of her own making made her walk away from the sea and her old crew. Now, she lives a modest and secluded life with her mother and young daughter, hiding from the many enemies she made during her seafaring career. But no legend can stay hidden forever; a determined old woman tracks her down and demands the help of the former pirate queen in tracking down a wayward granddaughter. A shady Frankish foreigner from distant Christian lands has been poking around after old manuscripts and purportedly magical relics, and has abducted the young lady for no doubt nefarious purposes, whisking her off across the sea. Amina wants nothing to do with relics or foreigners or any of this - she's surely too old for the swashbuckling life anymore, despite that tiny voice her head that still dreams of the sea - but the stranger threatens her family with exposure... plus she offers enough money to ensure her family's safety for generations. There's much about her story that strikes Amina as off, but she has no choice if she wants to keep her daughter safe, and surely it shouldn't be too tough to ask a few questions in some of her old haunts for some word of the Frank who claims to dabble in sorcery. (And, of course, the money doesn't hurt, either.)
She should have known that it wouldn't be that easy. She should have listened to her instincts warning her that this was no simple matter of a rich lady paying far too much to seek out a wayward girl. All too soon, Amina finds herself swept up in an adventure even wilder and more dangerous than any she faced before.
REVIEW: The cover and blurb promise a rollicking swashbucker with a fierce, clever, occasionally foul-mouthed lady pirate, and the story delivers in full. In the vein of Sindbad, Amina is an adventurer as much as a fortune seeker, as enthralled by new wonders and new lands as she is by treasure, sailing in a place and time that's a step to the side of our own history, a Crusades-era Indian Ocean that also holds sea monsters and demons and spirits from the numerous cultures and traditions along its shores. She tries to be a good person when she can, as faithful a Muslim as she can manage (especially after retirement), but has not led a blameless life and makes no excuses for her faults, carrying a burden of guilt underneath her confident swagger and smile. Since becoming a mother, her perspective and priorities shifted radically, but she still has that adventurer's soul, and still yearns for a life she told herself she outgrew. Thrust back onto the captain's bench of her beloved ship (which she still owns, though she handed over control to a former crewmate when she left), she cannot help but feel a bit thrilled at a chance to relive her glory days, despite the circumstances - circumstances that, naturally, get far, far worse than she bargained for very, very fast. But while she may be a bit rusty from retirement, and though her knee may twinge these days and her night vision's not as sharp, she is still, at heart, the same Amina al-Sirafi of legend and song, blessed with an abundance of wit and guile and luck (both good and ill)... all of which she'll need when it becomes clear that the Frank, the pale foreigner who may or may not have abducted a sheltered and bookish young woman, is no mere pretender to black magic. From start to finish, the story rolls along through wild wonders and great dangers and strange enchantments, punctuated by excerpts elaborating upon Amina's reputation and the reputations of her crewmates, all of whom are decently solid characters in their own rights, not mere props existing to bolster Amina's tale. The whole feels both fresh and classic, a great salty yarn of a tale that promises more adventures ahead.
All that said, I will say that I nearly knocked the rating back because of the audiobook presentation. The narrator had an annoying habit of mumbling and whispering several stretches of dialog, and at time leaning away from the mic to deliver asides (the story is being narrated to a scribe, and Amina is interrupted now and again by goings-on around them). Unless the listener is in a soundproof room, ambient noise is going to drown out those dropped-volume stretches even on earbuds; I had to keep cranking up volume to hear quiet and muffled bits, only to get my eardrums painfully blasted when normal volume returned.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Bloody Rose (Nicholas Eames) - My Review
Piratica (Tanith Lee) - My Review
Friday, June 21, 2024
Secret Window, Secret Garden (Stephen King)
Secret Window, Secret Garden
The Four Past Midnight series, Story 2
Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: "You stole my story" are the first words out of the man's mouth - the last thing any writer wants to hear, but especially not Maine author Mort Riley. He has enjoyed decent success on the bookshelves, but his life is now in tatters, which is why he's living in the lakeside vacation cabin and his now-ex wife Amy is back in their home in Derry. Worse, the words have stopped flowing, and a writer without words is hardly a writer at all. And now this utter stranger, John Shooter, stands on the cabin doorstep threatening him over a short story he published years ago, claiming Mort somehow stole it from his home in a flyspeck of a town in Mississippi. It's a ridiculous claim, of course, but Mort needs proof, and he needs it fast. If he can't find it in three days, then John is prepared to seek "justice" in his own cold, cruel ways... ways that could involve his neighbors, his friends, and even Amy.
Originally part of the novella collection Four Past Midnight.
REVIEW: Another novella from the Four Past Midnight collection, Secret Window, Secret Garden opens with a writer's nightmare: a stranger, possibly a crazed fan, on the doorstep with accusations of plagiarism that could destroy what career and life Mort Riley has left. He scoffs at the claim, of course, but the manuscript John hands him - titled "Secret Window, Secret Garden" - is almost the mirror image of his own early story "The Sowing Season", about a man who catches his wife cheating and plots to murder her and hide the body in her garden, in ways that are very hard to ascribe to mere convergent literary evolution... made all the more surreal now, after Mort himself caught Amy in bed with a family friend, culminating in their recent divorce. But Mort has no idea who the man is, nor has he ever been to Mississippi. If anything, it's more likely that John read Mort's story in a magazine and either forgot when he wrote his own tale or deliberately mimicked the story - but, of course, now that he needs it, Mort can't seem to find the issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that "The Sowing Season" originally appeared in, and the furious stranger won't accept his word on the matter. It isn't long before John shows Mort just how seriously he's taking this... and Mort, driven to the brink of sanity already by the failure of his marriage and the block that threatens his future as a writer, finds himself responding with both paranoia and violence of his own. He resists reaching out to the local law enforcement - the "law" in the sleepy lakeside town where he's staying isn't particularly effective anyway - and when he does reach out to others, bad things tend to happen, as John always seems to be a step ahead of him. The situation spirals out of control along with Mort's sanity, which was already frayed long before his wife's affair. The result is, in typical King fashion, harrowing, gruesome, and tragic, a life disintegrating before the reader's eyes. It lost half a star for drawing itself out a bit long once the big twist was clear, and for lingering overlong in the aftermath, circling its point a few times too often before actually getting there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Shining (Stephen King) - My Review
Rough Draft (Michael Robertson Jr) - My Review
The Four Past Midnight series, Story 2
Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: "You stole my story" are the first words out of the man's mouth - the last thing any writer wants to hear, but especially not Maine author Mort Riley. He has enjoyed decent success on the bookshelves, but his life is now in tatters, which is why he's living in the lakeside vacation cabin and his now-ex wife Amy is back in their home in Derry. Worse, the words have stopped flowing, and a writer without words is hardly a writer at all. And now this utter stranger, John Shooter, stands on the cabin doorstep threatening him over a short story he published years ago, claiming Mort somehow stole it from his home in a flyspeck of a town in Mississippi. It's a ridiculous claim, of course, but Mort needs proof, and he needs it fast. If he can't find it in three days, then John is prepared to seek "justice" in his own cold, cruel ways... ways that could involve his neighbors, his friends, and even Amy.
Originally part of the novella collection Four Past Midnight.
REVIEW: Another novella from the Four Past Midnight collection, Secret Window, Secret Garden opens with a writer's nightmare: a stranger, possibly a crazed fan, on the doorstep with accusations of plagiarism that could destroy what career and life Mort Riley has left. He scoffs at the claim, of course, but the manuscript John hands him - titled "Secret Window, Secret Garden" - is almost the mirror image of his own early story "The Sowing Season", about a man who catches his wife cheating and plots to murder her and hide the body in her garden, in ways that are very hard to ascribe to mere convergent literary evolution... made all the more surreal now, after Mort himself caught Amy in bed with a family friend, culminating in their recent divorce. But Mort has no idea who the man is, nor has he ever been to Mississippi. If anything, it's more likely that John read Mort's story in a magazine and either forgot when he wrote his own tale or deliberately mimicked the story - but, of course, now that he needs it, Mort can't seem to find the issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that "The Sowing Season" originally appeared in, and the furious stranger won't accept his word on the matter. It isn't long before John shows Mort just how seriously he's taking this... and Mort, driven to the brink of sanity already by the failure of his marriage and the block that threatens his future as a writer, finds himself responding with both paranoia and violence of his own. He resists reaching out to the local law enforcement - the "law" in the sleepy lakeside town where he's staying isn't particularly effective anyway - and when he does reach out to others, bad things tend to happen, as John always seems to be a step ahead of him. The situation spirals out of control along with Mort's sanity, which was already frayed long before his wife's affair. The result is, in typical King fashion, harrowing, gruesome, and tragic, a life disintegrating before the reader's eyes. It lost half a star for drawing itself out a bit long once the big twist was clear, and for lingering overlong in the aftermath, circling its point a few times too often before actually getting there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Shining (Stephen King) - My Review
Rough Draft (Michael Robertson Jr) - My Review
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Woods Runner (Gary Paulsen)
Woods Runner
Gary Paulsen
Wendy Lamb Books
Fiction, MG Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before he could remember, Samuel has been drawn to the woods beyond the family homestead on the frontier of colonial America. His city-born parents barely venture out of sight of their cabin, but the boy thrives among the trees, learning to read trail sign as easily as letters. By the time he turns 13 in the year 1775, he's the main hunter in their small settlement. When rumors reach the farm about unrest in nearby Boston, Samuel doesn't expect it to matter. The homesteaders aren't rebelling against anyone, harmlessly tending their land, too far out of the way to be bothered by wars or politics.
Then Samuel comes home from a hunting trip to find the farms ablaze, most of his neighbors dead, and his parents missing - taken captive by redcoats.
Barely surviving an encounter with the English soldiers and their Indian scouts, Samuel is rescued by a group of Americans on their way to join up with the fledgling rebellion. The young man still wants no part in wars or violence, but the war has stolen away his family, and there's nothing he won't do to free them - even venture far from his beloved woodlands to the teeming throngs of English-held New York City.
REVIEW: Intercutting Samuel's story with historical facts on the American Revolution, Paulsen presents a side of the conflict that often gets brushed aside, the average colonist who never even thought about politics or rebellion until the brewing war trampled their lives and drew first blood. Though his parents are first-generation farmers learning as they go, Samuel has known no life but that of a woods runner, and despite all the books he reads and stories he's told by other homesteaders he could see no finer future for himself than spending his days among the trackless frontier forests, far from city folk and their troubles. The small settlement he's part of thinks that their indifference and insignificance will spare them having to choose a side, but they barely even hear of the Boston Massacre (communication being a slow and spotty thing in the late 1700's) before they wake to find redcoats at their door. Most are slaughtered outright, but Samuel's parents are taken captive... and thus begins Samuel's journey, not just from the woodlands to civilization, but from peace to war. From the outset, despite his misgivings over killing another human being, he is determined to do whatever it takes to get his parents back, even despite the great odds against him. He's never even seen a real town before, much less a proper city - and New York City is firmly in the grip of the British forces, where thousands of colonist prisoners languish in desperate, often deadly conditions, with minimal food and no medical care; more Americans died as prisoners of war than in combat during the Revolution, according to historical records... and even those records often gloss over civilian casualties. Through sheer grit and some luck, Samuel manages to rise to the occasion, though the experience leaves scars, not all of them physical. A relatively short tale, Woods Runner successfully evokes both the feeling of the long-lost primeval frontier wilderness and what it was like to quite literally have an international war turn up on the doorstep, ending a small and quiet dream of pastoral life in a single world-shattering moment.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sons Will Eat Today (Debra Borchert) - My Review
Thieving Forest (Martha Conway) - My Review
The Rifle (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Gary Paulsen
Wendy Lamb Books
Fiction, MG Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before he could remember, Samuel has been drawn to the woods beyond the family homestead on the frontier of colonial America. His city-born parents barely venture out of sight of their cabin, but the boy thrives among the trees, learning to read trail sign as easily as letters. By the time he turns 13 in the year 1775, he's the main hunter in their small settlement. When rumors reach the farm about unrest in nearby Boston, Samuel doesn't expect it to matter. The homesteaders aren't rebelling against anyone, harmlessly tending their land, too far out of the way to be bothered by wars or politics.
Then Samuel comes home from a hunting trip to find the farms ablaze, most of his neighbors dead, and his parents missing - taken captive by redcoats.
Barely surviving an encounter with the English soldiers and their Indian scouts, Samuel is rescued by a group of Americans on their way to join up with the fledgling rebellion. The young man still wants no part in wars or violence, but the war has stolen away his family, and there's nothing he won't do to free them - even venture far from his beloved woodlands to the teeming throngs of English-held New York City.
REVIEW: Intercutting Samuel's story with historical facts on the American Revolution, Paulsen presents a side of the conflict that often gets brushed aside, the average colonist who never even thought about politics or rebellion until the brewing war trampled their lives and drew first blood. Though his parents are first-generation farmers learning as they go, Samuel has known no life but that of a woods runner, and despite all the books he reads and stories he's told by other homesteaders he could see no finer future for himself than spending his days among the trackless frontier forests, far from city folk and their troubles. The small settlement he's part of thinks that their indifference and insignificance will spare them having to choose a side, but they barely even hear of the Boston Massacre (communication being a slow and spotty thing in the late 1700's) before they wake to find redcoats at their door. Most are slaughtered outright, but Samuel's parents are taken captive... and thus begins Samuel's journey, not just from the woodlands to civilization, but from peace to war. From the outset, despite his misgivings over killing another human being, he is determined to do whatever it takes to get his parents back, even despite the great odds against him. He's never even seen a real town before, much less a proper city - and New York City is firmly in the grip of the British forces, where thousands of colonist prisoners languish in desperate, often deadly conditions, with minimal food and no medical care; more Americans died as prisoners of war than in combat during the Revolution, according to historical records... and even those records often gloss over civilian casualties. Through sheer grit and some luck, Samuel manages to rise to the occasion, though the experience leaves scars, not all of them physical. A relatively short tale, Woods Runner successfully evokes both the feeling of the long-lost primeval frontier wilderness and what it was like to quite literally have an international war turn up on the doorstep, ending a small and quiet dream of pastoral life in a single world-shattering moment.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sons Will Eat Today (Debra Borchert) - My Review
Thieving Forest (Martha Conway) - My Review
The Rifle (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Godkiller (Hannah Kaner)
Godkiller
The Fallen Gods series, Book 1
Hannah Kaner
HarperVoyager
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In a world where gods are birthed by the desires and fears of humans, competition for offerings and worship can lead to bloody massacres and even war - which is why the new king of Middren, young Arren, banished them from his lands. Now, his knights stamp out shrines and mercilessly root out fledgling worshipers, while mercenary "godkillers" hunt down the deities themselves with weapons of briddite that harm immortals as mere metal cannot. It may seem harsh, but it's the only way to prevent another bloody war like the one that nearly destroyed Middren and has claimed more than one of its neighboring lands.
Kissen lost her family and a leg to fanatical worshipers of a fire god when she was but a girl, and has dedicated her life to destroying deities wherever she finds them. But when Inara, a sheltered daughter of a local noblewoman, comes to her for help, Kissen feels torn. The girl has somehow become bound to Skedi, a little god of white lies, though neither recalls how it happened. Killing the god will kill the girl, but letting it live goes against everything Kissen believes in, everything she's dedicated her life to as a godkiller. Then Inara's home is burned to the ground, her family murdered, and Kissen realizes there's something much larger and more dangerous going on than just one god-bound girl.
Elo was once Arren's best friend and most loyal knight, until their final battle against the god of war - the one that cemented Arren's rule, but left Elo devastated. Now a humble baker, he tries to forget his old friend and the past... until Arren himself turns up on his doorstep. In that final battle, the king took a blow to the heart that would have been fatal, save for the intervention of a fire goddess... but the flame she placed in his breast is fading. Arren can't seek a new miracle without revealing his greatest secret, so he begs Elo to undertake one last quest in his name.
There is only one place in Middren where answers might be found: Blenraden, the abandoned citadel where the final blow of Arren's war was struck. Here, the last of the kingdom's wild gods endure, the only deities with the strength to grant the favors needed by Kissen, Inara, and Elo - gods whose very nature makes them dangerous. But the gods may be the least of the dangers they face, in a land teetering on the brink of civil war under Arren's iron fist.
REVIEW: It seemed like a decent idea, and I remember hearing good things about Godkiller when it came out, so when I chanced upon a free-to-me copy I snapped it up. Unfortunately, this is another case where hype exceeded experience.
Things start on a promising, if dark, note, as young Kissen and her family are being hauled away by neighbors who have turned away from the beneficial ocean god of their island home in favor of the promises of wealth and glory made by a fire god... a fire god who demands human sacrifice. Scarred and godmarked by the experience, it makes for a great origin story for our future godkiller. But the rest of the book somehow lacks the spark (no pun intended) of that first chapter. The world of Middren feels weirdly flattened and hard to believe in: this is a kingdom that was nearly razed to its foundations when the old queen fell in with a particularly violent cult, in a world where gods regularly turn cultish and violent and throw mortal lives away in their own petty struggles, all within memory of most people alive (and actively ongoing beyond Middren's borders, so one doesn't even need a history lesson to know this)... yet an apparently large percentage of people keep running back to gods and resent being told that maybe there's a reason to be cautious about where and how one spends one's faith. The core characters become hard to believe in, as well, sometimes behaving irrationally given their history and situations, with little to no chemistry between them. So many of the events that formed them and their relationships are in the rear view mirror that the book keeps looking back over its shoulder, in a way that made me wonder if maybe Kaner should've just written the prequel instead. Kissen goes from being understandably embittered to just plain unlikable and crude for the sake of being crude. Elo's pining for the best friend (clearly more than just a friend to him, though that's brushed aside in manufactured sexual tension with Kissen, because apparently that trope must be shoehorned in every story even if it makes no sense for the characters involved) and the life he walked away from almost trails into comedy territory it gets so repetitive. Speaking of repetition, more than one plot point and event and emotional beat is repeated multiple times, apparently because I, as the reader, was not expected to remember things from just the previous chapter (or previous repetitions), enough that it really started grating on me. All of this kicked me out of the tale enough for me to realize that I've seen many of the key concepts at play here in other stories that I found more immersive, such as Terry Pratchett's Small Gods or Charles Edward Pogue's book and film Dragonheart; even the oft-repeated imagery of King Arren bearing the severed stag head of the war god, symbol of his victory and rule, put me in mind of the Miyazaki animated film Princess Mononoke. The climax had some nice moments, but it lost a fair bit of impact for me as I had long since stopped caring about the world and only had minimal concern about the fates of the characters involved. It all serves to set up a sequel, but I don't expect I'll follow up on that.
Godkiller had some nice ideas and lots of potential, with a few standout moments that worked. It also tended to avoid easy wins; people pay for mistakes and for victories, sometimes for the rest of their lives. There's some decent exploration of the dangers of fanaticism and how even the smallest and most seemingly-benign faiths can metastasize into something deadly and monstrous, twisting people into disposable tools of someone (or something) else's agenda. But my lack of engagement with the world and characters just kept kicking me out, and I kept thinking instead of how I'd seen similar ideas explored more successfully elsewhere.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Black Sun Rising (C. S. Friedman) - My Review
American Gods (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Small Gods (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
The Fallen Gods series, Book 1
Hannah Kaner
HarperVoyager
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In a world where gods are birthed by the desires and fears of humans, competition for offerings and worship can lead to bloody massacres and even war - which is why the new king of Middren, young Arren, banished them from his lands. Now, his knights stamp out shrines and mercilessly root out fledgling worshipers, while mercenary "godkillers" hunt down the deities themselves with weapons of briddite that harm immortals as mere metal cannot. It may seem harsh, but it's the only way to prevent another bloody war like the one that nearly destroyed Middren and has claimed more than one of its neighboring lands.
Kissen lost her family and a leg to fanatical worshipers of a fire god when she was but a girl, and has dedicated her life to destroying deities wherever she finds them. But when Inara, a sheltered daughter of a local noblewoman, comes to her for help, Kissen feels torn. The girl has somehow become bound to Skedi, a little god of white lies, though neither recalls how it happened. Killing the god will kill the girl, but letting it live goes against everything Kissen believes in, everything she's dedicated her life to as a godkiller. Then Inara's home is burned to the ground, her family murdered, and Kissen realizes there's something much larger and more dangerous going on than just one god-bound girl.
Elo was once Arren's best friend and most loyal knight, until their final battle against the god of war - the one that cemented Arren's rule, but left Elo devastated. Now a humble baker, he tries to forget his old friend and the past... until Arren himself turns up on his doorstep. In that final battle, the king took a blow to the heart that would have been fatal, save for the intervention of a fire goddess... but the flame she placed in his breast is fading. Arren can't seek a new miracle without revealing his greatest secret, so he begs Elo to undertake one last quest in his name.
There is only one place in Middren where answers might be found: Blenraden, the abandoned citadel where the final blow of Arren's war was struck. Here, the last of the kingdom's wild gods endure, the only deities with the strength to grant the favors needed by Kissen, Inara, and Elo - gods whose very nature makes them dangerous. But the gods may be the least of the dangers they face, in a land teetering on the brink of civil war under Arren's iron fist.
REVIEW: It seemed like a decent idea, and I remember hearing good things about Godkiller when it came out, so when I chanced upon a free-to-me copy I snapped it up. Unfortunately, this is another case where hype exceeded experience.
Things start on a promising, if dark, note, as young Kissen and her family are being hauled away by neighbors who have turned away from the beneficial ocean god of their island home in favor of the promises of wealth and glory made by a fire god... a fire god who demands human sacrifice. Scarred and godmarked by the experience, it makes for a great origin story for our future godkiller. But the rest of the book somehow lacks the spark (no pun intended) of that first chapter. The world of Middren feels weirdly flattened and hard to believe in: this is a kingdom that was nearly razed to its foundations when the old queen fell in with a particularly violent cult, in a world where gods regularly turn cultish and violent and throw mortal lives away in their own petty struggles, all within memory of most people alive (and actively ongoing beyond Middren's borders, so one doesn't even need a history lesson to know this)... yet an apparently large percentage of people keep running back to gods and resent being told that maybe there's a reason to be cautious about where and how one spends one's faith. The core characters become hard to believe in, as well, sometimes behaving irrationally given their history and situations, with little to no chemistry between them. So many of the events that formed them and their relationships are in the rear view mirror that the book keeps looking back over its shoulder, in a way that made me wonder if maybe Kaner should've just written the prequel instead. Kissen goes from being understandably embittered to just plain unlikable and crude for the sake of being crude. Elo's pining for the best friend (clearly more than just a friend to him, though that's brushed aside in manufactured sexual tension with Kissen, because apparently that trope must be shoehorned in every story even if it makes no sense for the characters involved) and the life he walked away from almost trails into comedy territory it gets so repetitive. Speaking of repetition, more than one plot point and event and emotional beat is repeated multiple times, apparently because I, as the reader, was not expected to remember things from just the previous chapter (or previous repetitions), enough that it really started grating on me. All of this kicked me out of the tale enough for me to realize that I've seen many of the key concepts at play here in other stories that I found more immersive, such as Terry Pratchett's Small Gods or Charles Edward Pogue's book and film Dragonheart; even the oft-repeated imagery of King Arren bearing the severed stag head of the war god, symbol of his victory and rule, put me in mind of the Miyazaki animated film Princess Mononoke. The climax had some nice moments, but it lost a fair bit of impact for me as I had long since stopped caring about the world and only had minimal concern about the fates of the characters involved. It all serves to set up a sequel, but I don't expect I'll follow up on that.
Godkiller had some nice ideas and lots of potential, with a few standout moments that worked. It also tended to avoid easy wins; people pay for mistakes and for victories, sometimes for the rest of their lives. There's some decent exploration of the dangers of fanaticism and how even the smallest and most seemingly-benign faiths can metastasize into something deadly and monstrous, twisting people into disposable tools of someone (or something) else's agenda. But my lack of engagement with the world and characters just kept kicking me out, and I kept thinking instead of how I'd seen similar ideas explored more successfully elsewhere.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Black Sun Rising (C. S. Friedman) - My Review
American Gods (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Small Gods (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Friday, June 14, 2024
Age of War (Michael J. Sullivan)
Age of War
The Legends of the First Empire series, Book 3
Michael J. Sullivan
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The impossible has happened: the many human tribes have united under a single keening to face the threat of Fane Lothian and the Fhrey race... none other than Persephone of Dhal Rhen. The next step will require them to place more trust than ever in the exiled Galantian warriors and their leader Nyphron - a man who has made little effort to mask his own ambitions to replace Lothian on the Forest Throne. Nyphron was once the commander of the garrison at Alon Rhyst, the Fhrey city at the Grandford gorge between human and elven lands. He is confident that his name still holds enough weight to convince the residents and soldiers to allow him to return despite him being an exile, even if they're unlikely to go so far as to actively take up arms and support the humans. At Alon Rhyst, they'll control a chokepoint between the realms, and they'll be taking the coming war to the Fane instead of waiting for Fhrey armies to sweep across Rhuneland toward them. With that advantage, and with their new weapons - secrets of iron stolen from the dwarfs, bows and arrows and the world's first archers, and Suri, the first human known to have mastered the magical Art once exclusively wielded by the Fhrey clan of Miralyith - the humans just might stand a slim chance of surviving Fane Lothian's wrath. But, though the Fhrey are no gods (as humans long believed), they are still formidable foes, and even the greatest of sacrifices may not be enough to endure the might of the elven empire.
REVIEW: The third volume of this epic series marks a pivotal point in the history of the world. It was the beginning of the end of an era when Raithe became the first human to strike down a Fhrey lord, revealing the elves to be mere mortals after all. Now, as Persephone, the survivors of Dhal Rhen, and the rest of humanity marches toward open warfare with their former masters, so much has changed, yet they still have a long way to go to begin to stand a chance against the ancient civilization of the Fhrey, even notwithstanding the threat of their magic; one half-wild girl outlier, no matter how innately talented, cannot stand alone against an entire clan of mages who have trained for centuries. As greater changes move through human society - iron tools, arrows, the wheel, and other innovations, often the work of the prodigal young woman Roan - the characters find their own roles and futures changing in ways they never imagined. Raithe has gone from being the lone survivor of a clan with an unsavory reputation to a hero... and from the man who once wanted nothing more than to turn his back on his fellow humans, to run away and live out his days far away from elves and wars and responsibilities, to a man willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his race - and for Persephone, whom he still loves, even if her new rank and responsibilities (and some missteps on his part) move her further and further away from his reach. Persephone, meanwhile, is still getting used to the burden of leadership; it was one thing to be wife of a chieftain, and later the chiefain herself of her small clan, but quite another to be keening of all the humans... a keening in a time of unprecedented change and a coming war that may well see the Rhunelands swept clean of her kind. She finds herself increasingly torn between love and duty, feeling every loss yet forced to move forward if those losses are to have any meaning. The rest of the core cast also find their roles and lives shifting. None of them are the simple villagers they were at the start of the first book, and not everyone is guaranteed a happy ending.
On the Fhrey side, the spoiled Prince Manwyndule of the Fhrey has, predictably, not learned as much as he should have after the events of the previous book, already editing his memories to a version he prefers to live with. Like his father, he still sees humans as little more than flies to be swatted away, not taking the threat before them seriously; he's more indignant than alarmed that things still haven't been resolved, though he's sure war will be an interesting, even fun little excursion (and perhaps a chance to finally impress his father, whose disappointment in his presumptive heir is palpable in every moment they're together).
As before, the plot moves along at a decent enough pace, though there are a few times when people seem to dither and drag out moments that call for more alacrity. There are also a few surprises I didn't see coming - in a good way, not in an eye-rolling are-you-kidding-me way. The ending sets things up for an exciting next installment, which is apparently a pivot to a second trilogy. Which is a good thing, as the book would've lost a half-mark if it had left things where they are. (According to a foreword, Sullivan almost did that; I suppose, if I'd read the original Riyria books first as I was probably supposed to, I would be able to infer the events in the gap between the ending of Age of War and the beginning of the original series. But he looked at his work and realized it wasn't finished, and so wrote on. Thus, I will read on.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan) - My Review
The Legends of the First Empire series, Book 3
Michael J. Sullivan
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The impossible has happened: the many human tribes have united under a single keening to face the threat of Fane Lothian and the Fhrey race... none other than Persephone of Dhal Rhen. The next step will require them to place more trust than ever in the exiled Galantian warriors and their leader Nyphron - a man who has made little effort to mask his own ambitions to replace Lothian on the Forest Throne. Nyphron was once the commander of the garrison at Alon Rhyst, the Fhrey city at the Grandford gorge between human and elven lands. He is confident that his name still holds enough weight to convince the residents and soldiers to allow him to return despite him being an exile, even if they're unlikely to go so far as to actively take up arms and support the humans. At Alon Rhyst, they'll control a chokepoint between the realms, and they'll be taking the coming war to the Fane instead of waiting for Fhrey armies to sweep across Rhuneland toward them. With that advantage, and with their new weapons - secrets of iron stolen from the dwarfs, bows and arrows and the world's first archers, and Suri, the first human known to have mastered the magical Art once exclusively wielded by the Fhrey clan of Miralyith - the humans just might stand a slim chance of surviving Fane Lothian's wrath. But, though the Fhrey are no gods (as humans long believed), they are still formidable foes, and even the greatest of sacrifices may not be enough to endure the might of the elven empire.
REVIEW: The third volume of this epic series marks a pivotal point in the history of the world. It was the beginning of the end of an era when Raithe became the first human to strike down a Fhrey lord, revealing the elves to be mere mortals after all. Now, as Persephone, the survivors of Dhal Rhen, and the rest of humanity marches toward open warfare with their former masters, so much has changed, yet they still have a long way to go to begin to stand a chance against the ancient civilization of the Fhrey, even notwithstanding the threat of their magic; one half-wild girl outlier, no matter how innately talented, cannot stand alone against an entire clan of mages who have trained for centuries. As greater changes move through human society - iron tools, arrows, the wheel, and other innovations, often the work of the prodigal young woman Roan - the characters find their own roles and futures changing in ways they never imagined. Raithe has gone from being the lone survivor of a clan with an unsavory reputation to a hero... and from the man who once wanted nothing more than to turn his back on his fellow humans, to run away and live out his days far away from elves and wars and responsibilities, to a man willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his race - and for Persephone, whom he still loves, even if her new rank and responsibilities (and some missteps on his part) move her further and further away from his reach. Persephone, meanwhile, is still getting used to the burden of leadership; it was one thing to be wife of a chieftain, and later the chiefain herself of her small clan, but quite another to be keening of all the humans... a keening in a time of unprecedented change and a coming war that may well see the Rhunelands swept clean of her kind. She finds herself increasingly torn between love and duty, feeling every loss yet forced to move forward if those losses are to have any meaning. The rest of the core cast also find their roles and lives shifting. None of them are the simple villagers they were at the start of the first book, and not everyone is guaranteed a happy ending.
On the Fhrey side, the spoiled Prince Manwyndule of the Fhrey has, predictably, not learned as much as he should have after the events of the previous book, already editing his memories to a version he prefers to live with. Like his father, he still sees humans as little more than flies to be swatted away, not taking the threat before them seriously; he's more indignant than alarmed that things still haven't been resolved, though he's sure war will be an interesting, even fun little excursion (and perhaps a chance to finally impress his father, whose disappointment in his presumptive heir is palpable in every moment they're together).
As before, the plot moves along at a decent enough pace, though there are a few times when people seem to dither and drag out moments that call for more alacrity. There are also a few surprises I didn't see coming - in a good way, not in an eye-rolling are-you-kidding-me way. The ending sets things up for an exciting next installment, which is apparently a pivot to a second trilogy. Which is a good thing, as the book would've lost a half-mark if it had left things where they are. (According to a foreword, Sullivan almost did that; I suppose, if I'd read the original Riyria books first as I was probably supposed to, I would be able to infer the events in the gap between the ending of Age of War and the beginning of the original series. But he looked at his work and realized it wasn't finished, and so wrote on. Thus, I will read on.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Long Price Quartet (Daniel Abraham) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan) - My Review
Friday, June 7, 2024
Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger! (M. T. Anderson)
Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger!
A Pals in Peril Tale, Book 4
M. T. Anderson
Beach Lane Books
Fiction, MG Action/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When last we left our plucky pals - ordinary girl Lily Gefelty, Katie Mulligan (young heroine of haunted Horror Hollow), and Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut - they were in the Vbngoom monastery in the high mountains of exotic Delaware, having just thwarted an evil criminal network's plans to loot the place and turn it into a cheap tourist trap. Now they face the peril of escaping Delaware's many dangers and countless spies in order to get back home to their drab home town of Pelt. But the autocrat in charge - His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autocrat of Dagsboro, who has long coveted the hidden monastery and its many secrets, secrets that could give him and his vast spy networks unlimited powers and ensure his cruel reign lasts forever - isn't about to let the foreign meddlers and their monk friends slip free without an extended stay in one of the state's many well-appointed interrogation rooms. Fortunately, the Vbngoom head monk has contacts inside the Delaware resistance, who promise aid in the form of Agent Q. Unfortunately, nobody knows what Q looks like... or whether one agent, no matter how good or no matter how many cool spy gadgets they may have, will be enough to help them escape.
REVIEW: The fourth installment of the hilarious series turns its attention to spy novels, as the imperiled pals deal with Delaware's devious spy network with the not-always-helpful-help of "Agent Q", a boy no older than themselves but with the arrogance of someone ten times his size. More wondrous (and not so wondrous) sides of the exotic realm of Delaware unfold, with everything from airship cities to sapient lobsters to state-sanctioned game shows unmasking traitors to the autocrat, though it does still sometimes feel like its repeating itself and could've used a fresh setting. Katie's crush on the young monk Drgnan (it was explained in the previous volume that there is a severe shortage of vowels in the autocrat's mismanaged state) gets some follow-through... along with the first hints of unease by Lily, who doesn't want to be jealous of her best friend finding some happiness but can't seem to stop that squirmy feeling in her belly when she sees them holding hands. Jasper Dash, meanwhile, is a bit unsettled to see some of himself reflected in the egocentric Q, another young hero of a book series who relies on all sorts of sciencey gadgetry and insists in saving the day. The story has a few more breather moments for incremental character growth, but is still fairly relentless in its action and its humor, more than once hiding just a little sliver of something sharper beneath the silly surface. I expect I'll polish off the fifth and final volume in the future.
(Edit - Apparently, there is actually a sixth installment, but my library's Libby service doesn't have it... dang it...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Whales on Stilts (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Mac Barnett) - My Review
The Name of This Book is Secret (Pseudonymous Bosch) - My Review
A Pals in Peril Tale, Book 4
M. T. Anderson
Beach Lane Books
Fiction, MG Action/Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When last we left our plucky pals - ordinary girl Lily Gefelty, Katie Mulligan (young heroine of haunted Horror Hollow), and Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut - they were in the Vbngoom monastery in the high mountains of exotic Delaware, having just thwarted an evil criminal network's plans to loot the place and turn it into a cheap tourist trap. Now they face the peril of escaping Delaware's many dangers and countless spies in order to get back home to their drab home town of Pelt. But the autocrat in charge - His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autocrat of Dagsboro, who has long coveted the hidden monastery and its many secrets, secrets that could give him and his vast spy networks unlimited powers and ensure his cruel reign lasts forever - isn't about to let the foreign meddlers and their monk friends slip free without an extended stay in one of the state's many well-appointed interrogation rooms. Fortunately, the Vbngoom head monk has contacts inside the Delaware resistance, who promise aid in the form of Agent Q. Unfortunately, nobody knows what Q looks like... or whether one agent, no matter how good or no matter how many cool spy gadgets they may have, will be enough to help them escape.
REVIEW: The fourth installment of the hilarious series turns its attention to spy novels, as the imperiled pals deal with Delaware's devious spy network with the not-always-helpful-help of "Agent Q", a boy no older than themselves but with the arrogance of someone ten times his size. More wondrous (and not so wondrous) sides of the exotic realm of Delaware unfold, with everything from airship cities to sapient lobsters to state-sanctioned game shows unmasking traitors to the autocrat, though it does still sometimes feel like its repeating itself and could've used a fresh setting. Katie's crush on the young monk Drgnan (it was explained in the previous volume that there is a severe shortage of vowels in the autocrat's mismanaged state) gets some follow-through... along with the first hints of unease by Lily, who doesn't want to be jealous of her best friend finding some happiness but can't seem to stop that squirmy feeling in her belly when she sees them holding hands. Jasper Dash, meanwhile, is a bit unsettled to see some of himself reflected in the egocentric Q, another young hero of a book series who relies on all sorts of sciencey gadgetry and insists in saving the day. The story has a few more breather moments for incremental character growth, but is still fairly relentless in its action and its humor, more than once hiding just a little sliver of something sharper beneath the silly surface. I expect I'll polish off the fifth and final volume in the future.
(Edit - Apparently, there is actually a sixth installment, but my library's Libby service doesn't have it... dang it...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Whales on Stilts (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Mac Barnett) - My Review
The Name of This Book is Secret (Pseudonymous Bosch) - My Review
Thursday, June 6, 2024
Heavenbreaker (Sara Wolf)
Heavenbreaker
The Heavenbreaker series, Book 1
Sara Wolf
Red Tower Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The day Synali murdered her father was the day she meant to die. All her life, she lived in squalor with her mother in the Low Wards of the space station humanity has called home for over four centuries while Lord Hauteclare and his legitimate offspring lived in idle luxury on the upper decks... until the man, bidding for a spot closer to the Nova-King, decided to eliminate any potential blemishes on his publicly spotless reputation via an assassin. Killing Lord Hauteclare nearly destroyed Synali, and now that the deed is done she only wants to do one last thing: humiliate the man's House so publicly the Nova-King will have no choice but to dissolve it and send its members away in disgrace forevermore. To that end, she means to steal his steed and ride in the coming tourney. Steeds - massive mecha suits patterned off the machines that once saved humanity from the aliens who destroyed Old Earth and scattered the surviving stations across the galaxy - are the playthings of the noble Houses, their zero-gravity jousting matches among the few sports approved by the church, and the source of much of a House's fortune and prestige. If a lowborn bastard daughter was found piloting a steed, even if she was found dead in the saddle... well, Hauteclare would never survive the scandal.
She didn't expect to survive, albeit barely.
When she awakens, a stranger makes her an offer: he will train her to ride a steed for real, to enter in the coming championship tourneys. For every match she wins, he will eliminate one of the nobles who helped bring the assassin to her mother's doorstep. Each death will bring House Hauteclare closer and closer to permanent dissolution. At the end, he even promises Synali what she most wants, a clean death so she can join her mother in the afterlife. With literally nothing left to lose, Synali readily agrees. But there's a lot more to piloting a steed than anyone outside the Houses understands, and a lot more to her new sponsor/partner than she knows. Worse, now that she's irrevocably committed to her own death, she unexpectedly and painfully finally finds reasons to want to live - such as her future rival in the tourney, a noble who represents everything she hates about his class, but whom she can't get out of her mind.
REVIEW: It sounded like a decent space adventure with a little romantic sizzle, and it started out with great promise, as Synali - a young woman who has clawed her way up from nothing, breaking her mind and spirit and body to get to this moment of perfect vengeance - is standing over the body of her uncle and preparing for what she expects to be her last moments in this life. This, I thought, is the sort of main character I want to follow through a book.
I wish I knew where she went, because she disappeared long before the halfway point, replaced with someone else who had her name and her backstory but was too wrapped up in pain and angst and forbidden lust and all-around stubborn refusal to notice what was right in front of her face to live up to the promise from those first pages.
The world she inhabits starts out on shaky ground - the exiled remnants of humanity have found themselves in orbit around a gas giant, and are slowly trying (and failing) to terraform it (though I'm not sure how that would work on a gas giant, unless humanity meant to live suspended in the atmosphere), while reverting to a weird mishmash of dystopian high-tech and pseudo-historical lifestyles... including what are basically literally castles on a space station - and only gets less plausible as I lost interest in the main character and started poking at the edges and tugging threads. The author also seems prone to repeating passages and emotional beats and descriptors ad nauseam (if I ever read about eyes the color of redwood and platinum hair again, someone will experience pain), and the tourney matches are all far too long, especially when it's a foregone conclusion that Synali will suffer greatly and unimaginably in the first one or two passes before miraculously pulling a victory out of the steed Heavenbreaker's thrusters (if I ever read another "dramatic" countdown again... more pain will happen). The plot starts to resemble a patchwork quilt of random ideas and notions snatched from other franchises that don't always fit together: a cup of Metropolis, a dash of Dune, a generous pour of The Hunger Games... even Watership Down gets lifted and slapped into a future so far removed from Earth that it's unclear if rabbits even survive on the station, let alone novels about them (though the culture and vocabulary and symbolism are chock full of references that seem very anachronistic in a setting where Earth is far more myth than concrete cultural memory). There's also a heavy Christian church presence for little reason except perhaps to explain why a highly advanced civilization like this one presumes to be has completely abandoned anything like birth control, even among the nobles to whom bastard children are still considered the ultimate stain. Then again, attitudes toward gender and sex, despite some nods to women as steed riders and scientists, seem very much rooted in the past (or maybe that's the reason for the church presence, to explain why women are still considered the sinners entirely to blame for men's apparently uncontrollable urges and even violence toward them). Even the one woman rider most firm in her belief in old knightly ideas of honor, above and beyond personal emotions and entanglements, inexplicably degenerates into a cliche fit of petty jealousy once she's in an engagement that even she admits is all about household obligation and not at all about emotion... at least, not until she realizes that her intended spouse has feelings for the wrong woman.
Anyway, amid all this mismatched mishmash of too-familiar snap-together parts and a setting that seems far more about aesthetics and mood than anything like plausibility or even internal consistency (much like the characters themselves), everything winds up being drawn out way too long as everyone wallows in extreme emotions and manufactured angst and turmoil (and yet another long countdown and arena match between giant mechs and attempts at witty banter by color commentators), building up to a climax... and no resolution. Yes, after all that, after slogging it through to the end hoping against hope for an ending that pulls it all together and delivers some sort of payoff, the story ends on a cliffhanger. But a cliffhanger only works if I care whether anyone actually is rescued before they lose their grip and plummet to their doom. By then, I could not have cared less. Despite the early promise and some potential in the story here and there, I just got sick of everyone and everything long before then.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Race the Sands (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
Hard Reboot (Django Wexler) - My Review
The Heavenbreaker series, Book 1
Sara Wolf
Red Tower Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The day Synali murdered her father was the day she meant to die. All her life, she lived in squalor with her mother in the Low Wards of the space station humanity has called home for over four centuries while Lord Hauteclare and his legitimate offspring lived in idle luxury on the upper decks... until the man, bidding for a spot closer to the Nova-King, decided to eliminate any potential blemishes on his publicly spotless reputation via an assassin. Killing Lord Hauteclare nearly destroyed Synali, and now that the deed is done she only wants to do one last thing: humiliate the man's House so publicly the Nova-King will have no choice but to dissolve it and send its members away in disgrace forevermore. To that end, she means to steal his steed and ride in the coming tourney. Steeds - massive mecha suits patterned off the machines that once saved humanity from the aliens who destroyed Old Earth and scattered the surviving stations across the galaxy - are the playthings of the noble Houses, their zero-gravity jousting matches among the few sports approved by the church, and the source of much of a House's fortune and prestige. If a lowborn bastard daughter was found piloting a steed, even if she was found dead in the saddle... well, Hauteclare would never survive the scandal.
She didn't expect to survive, albeit barely.
When she awakens, a stranger makes her an offer: he will train her to ride a steed for real, to enter in the coming championship tourneys. For every match she wins, he will eliminate one of the nobles who helped bring the assassin to her mother's doorstep. Each death will bring House Hauteclare closer and closer to permanent dissolution. At the end, he even promises Synali what she most wants, a clean death so she can join her mother in the afterlife. With literally nothing left to lose, Synali readily agrees. But there's a lot more to piloting a steed than anyone outside the Houses understands, and a lot more to her new sponsor/partner than she knows. Worse, now that she's irrevocably committed to her own death, she unexpectedly and painfully finally finds reasons to want to live - such as her future rival in the tourney, a noble who represents everything she hates about his class, but whom she can't get out of her mind.
REVIEW: It sounded like a decent space adventure with a little romantic sizzle, and it started out with great promise, as Synali - a young woman who has clawed her way up from nothing, breaking her mind and spirit and body to get to this moment of perfect vengeance - is standing over the body of her uncle and preparing for what she expects to be her last moments in this life. This, I thought, is the sort of main character I want to follow through a book.
I wish I knew where she went, because she disappeared long before the halfway point, replaced with someone else who had her name and her backstory but was too wrapped up in pain and angst and forbidden lust and all-around stubborn refusal to notice what was right in front of her face to live up to the promise from those first pages.
The world she inhabits starts out on shaky ground - the exiled remnants of humanity have found themselves in orbit around a gas giant, and are slowly trying (and failing) to terraform it (though I'm not sure how that would work on a gas giant, unless humanity meant to live suspended in the atmosphere), while reverting to a weird mishmash of dystopian high-tech and pseudo-historical lifestyles... including what are basically literally castles on a space station - and only gets less plausible as I lost interest in the main character and started poking at the edges and tugging threads. The author also seems prone to repeating passages and emotional beats and descriptors ad nauseam (if I ever read about eyes the color of redwood and platinum hair again, someone will experience pain), and the tourney matches are all far too long, especially when it's a foregone conclusion that Synali will suffer greatly and unimaginably in the first one or two passes before miraculously pulling a victory out of the steed Heavenbreaker's thrusters (if I ever read another "dramatic" countdown again... more pain will happen). The plot starts to resemble a patchwork quilt of random ideas and notions snatched from other franchises that don't always fit together: a cup of Metropolis, a dash of Dune, a generous pour of The Hunger Games... even Watership Down gets lifted and slapped into a future so far removed from Earth that it's unclear if rabbits even survive on the station, let alone novels about them (though the culture and vocabulary and symbolism are chock full of references that seem very anachronistic in a setting where Earth is far more myth than concrete cultural memory). There's also a heavy Christian church presence for little reason except perhaps to explain why a highly advanced civilization like this one presumes to be has completely abandoned anything like birth control, even among the nobles to whom bastard children are still considered the ultimate stain. Then again, attitudes toward gender and sex, despite some nods to women as steed riders and scientists, seem very much rooted in the past (or maybe that's the reason for the church presence, to explain why women are still considered the sinners entirely to blame for men's apparently uncontrollable urges and even violence toward them). Even the one woman rider most firm in her belief in old knightly ideas of honor, above and beyond personal emotions and entanglements, inexplicably degenerates into a cliche fit of petty jealousy once she's in an engagement that even she admits is all about household obligation and not at all about emotion... at least, not until she realizes that her intended spouse has feelings for the wrong woman.
Anyway, amid all this mismatched mishmash of too-familiar snap-together parts and a setting that seems far more about aesthetics and mood than anything like plausibility or even internal consistency (much like the characters themselves), everything winds up being drawn out way too long as everyone wallows in extreme emotions and manufactured angst and turmoil (and yet another long countdown and arena match between giant mechs and attempts at witty banter by color commentators), building up to a climax... and no resolution. Yes, after all that, after slogging it through to the end hoping against hope for an ending that pulls it all together and delivers some sort of payoff, the story ends on a cliffhanger. But a cliffhanger only works if I care whether anyone actually is rescued before they lose their grip and plummet to their doom. By then, I could not have cared less. Despite the early promise and some potential in the story here and there, I just got sick of everyone and everything long before then.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Race the Sands (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
Hard Reboot (Django Wexler) - My Review
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