Grimpow: The Invisible Road
The Grimpow series, Book 1
Rafael Ábalos
Delacorte Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: It was winter in the mountains when the boy Grimpow stumbled across the stranger's body, frozen in the snow. When he and his companion and friend, the thief Durlib, investigate, they find silver coins, jewel-handled daggers, a message with a golden seal, and a small, strange stone that glows when Grimpow picks it up... a stone that lets him read the odd symbols on the man's message, though the boy is illiterate and the message is in code. Even more mysteriously, the stranger's body melts like frost on a spring morning after the discovery, as though bespelled.
He does not yet know it, but by taking the stone and the seal, Grimpow has begun a long and dangerous path, one that winds through long-lost histories of the Holy Land, the halls of the outlawed heretical Templar Knights, the centuries-long quests of alchemists, even the cruel and corrupted machinations of the King of France and the Pope. For that nondescript little pebble is the true Philosopher's Stone, an artifact that can lead a chosen mind along the Invisible Road to the Secret of the Wise and the very keys to creation itself - a stone for which many have died. At stake is nothing more or less than the future of humanity, whether people will rise above the age of superstition and brutal ignorance that grips whole nations, or whether all hope of enlightenment will be snuffed out like a candle.
REVIEW: Early on, it looked like Grimpow had promise, an old-school historical fiction yarn with fantasy elements incorporating alchemy and its pursuit of ultimate knowledge and the Philosopher's Stone (as much a symbol of pure wisdom and understanding as a physical object), weaving in real-world events and figures from early 14th century Europe and the corruption underlying the church and its persecution of the Knights Templar. There was a certain straightforward sense of adventure, or at least the promise of adventure, as the illiterate boy finds himself drawn on a path of learning and enlightenment. But it often drags its heels in details and repetition, not to mention numerous points where it felt like the author was lecturing the audience about the history of France, corruption in Catholicism, the origins and brutal ending of the Templars, and medieval secret societies and symbolism as embodied in alchemy and related pursuits and mystery cults. The story and characters often meander and dither without actively progressing the plot (when they aren't repeating themselves as though the reader hadn't been there with them the whole time and remembers full well such details as who Grimpow used to be before finding the stone, or what fate befel Durlib, or his time in the remote monastery studying with the monks who took him in, and so forth). Every so often, the tale manages to be exciting and even interesting, but by the end it had become far too tedious, the plot too orchestrated by Fate and Destiny. The conclusion was a non-event, though this may be explained by the fact that the book was intended to have a sequel, one which I only learned of when searching online and which was apparently never translated into English - a moot point, as I have no interest in pursuing Grimpow's adventures - or lack thereof - further.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Rebel Genius (Michael Dante DiMartini) - My Review
Merlin's Mistake (Robert Newman) - My Review
No Such Thing as Dragons (Philip Reeve) - My Review
Friday, July 11, 2025
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Kindling (Traci Chee)
Kindling
Traci Chee
Clarion
Fiction, YA Action/Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When nation fought nation on the Kindar peninsula, kindlers were the ultimate weapon: boys and girls with special gifts focused by balar crystals, unleashing powers to protect or destroy... but at a steep cost. For to use their magic, kindlers burned up their futures, days or months or years, few surviving past their teens. Thus, they were found and trained young, sacrificed as heroes in the name of glory - until the arrival of gunpowder and hand cannons rendered them obsolete almost overnight, followed by the end of the war with Amerand's victory. The long tradition of kindler warriors was outlawed as "barbaric", and those left alive were cast aside to wander in a world that no longer wanted or needed them.
In a small backwater near the mountains, a desperate young woman seeks help. Her village of Camas has been plagued by a pack of bandits who raid the mountain passes and keep her people on the very knife-edge of starvation with their raids and demands for tribute, to the point where they may not survive the coming winter on the scraps left behind. All ignore her pleas... all except for a handful of kindlers, all of whom have fallen on their own hard times, carrying their own scars. Can they remember and honor their old war codes to defend the helpless, or is the old age of heroes and magic truly gone from the land?
REVIEW: Kindling crosses the brutal reality of child soldiers with the familiar storyline exemplified by classics such as The Magnificent Seven, where a small band of antiheroes is gathered for one last shot at redemption (a shot where not everyone is guaranteed survival, let alone success), all told in a second-person present tense perspective (that's actually a first-person plural, from a sort of collective ghostly or spiritual host that focuses on each would-be hero in turn). Does it work? In general, yes, though at some point it started wallowing in its own trauma, gore, and helpless misery (not helped by rotating audiobook narrators who sometimes lean a little hard into the emotion and gulping, traumatic hesitations) to the point where it ultimately lost a half-star in the rating.
After a brief overview of the setup and setting, the tale opens with the classic trope of a stranger drifting into town and a young woman in distress (even though the latter's pleas are initially dismissed by the former, who doesn't want to get caught up in other people's problems when her own shoulders are nearly broken under the weight of her own troubles as it is). Not until a second stranger turns up - this one a former war hero of formidable skill - that the first character gets pulled into the plot/problem, drawn as much by the magnetism and authority embodied in the legendary "Twin Valley Reaper" as stubborn loyalty to the old kindler Codes of war that nobody, not even fellow kindlers, seems to remember, let alone honor; the leader of the mountain raider band is herself a former kindler, choosing to use her training to harass and kill innocent civilians rather than defend them. Of the seven would-be heroes, six of them cope with post-traumatic stress in various unhealthy ways, while the seventh is a cadet who was mere weeks from graduating and following her dream of becoming a true kindler on the battlefield when peace was declared and wrecked her future; this lattermost character was rather over-the-top in her childish innocence and eagerness to join her elders (in experience if not quite years; all of the characters are under 20, though war aged them all decades and kindlers were never expected to live to see their twentieth birthday anyway), actively envying their clearly broken lives and restless nights full of nightmares and completely ignorant why they'd resist finishing her training and letting her join them in slaughter even after she finally bloodies her blade and realizes (or seems to, for about half a minute) that death leaves a mark on the soul. (Why are they holding out on the big "secret" that binds them all like kin, she whines to them more than once, even as she sees them struggling...) All of them are looking to redeem themselves or prove something, to the ghosts of their past if nobody else, by joining the cause to defend Camas... and all fail themselves and their fellows more than once before finally coming together to show the village, the raiders, and the world that tried to erase them just what kindlers could do when united in common cause against evil.
You may notice a lack of names in this review; this was an audiobook I listened to, so I didn't catch spellings, and I'm having one heck of a time finding any but a couple names written down anywhere. They are distinct characters, and are generally interesting if not always likeable, save when they're repetitiously wallowing in their own miseries and clinging stubbornly to ideas and attitudes that not only aren't working but which might get other people killed. I was ready to smack each of them upside the head at least once, particularly when some terrible thing was happening or mere moments away from happening and they were lost in bad memories or doom-and-gloom observations instead of, y'know, actually doing something - even the wrong thing, just something - about the terrible thing. I get that this was part of the point, exemplified by how the power of kindling is quite literally about children being burned on the pyre of war for the sake of nations and leaders who not only consider their lives disposable, but who ignore and erase them as soon as it becomes politically convenient. Even given that, though, Kindling feels like it hammers those ideas, and the traumas of its characters, past the point of effectiveness, the end of the nail coming out the far side and catching up the story from telling itself.
You Might Also Enjoy:
War Girls (Tochi Onyebuchi) - My Review
The Builders (Daniel Polansky) - My Review
Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Traci Chee
Clarion
Fiction, YA Action/Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When nation fought nation on the Kindar peninsula, kindlers were the ultimate weapon: boys and girls with special gifts focused by balar crystals, unleashing powers to protect or destroy... but at a steep cost. For to use their magic, kindlers burned up their futures, days or months or years, few surviving past their teens. Thus, they were found and trained young, sacrificed as heroes in the name of glory - until the arrival of gunpowder and hand cannons rendered them obsolete almost overnight, followed by the end of the war with Amerand's victory. The long tradition of kindler warriors was outlawed as "barbaric", and those left alive were cast aside to wander in a world that no longer wanted or needed them.
In a small backwater near the mountains, a desperate young woman seeks help. Her village of Camas has been plagued by a pack of bandits who raid the mountain passes and keep her people on the very knife-edge of starvation with their raids and demands for tribute, to the point where they may not survive the coming winter on the scraps left behind. All ignore her pleas... all except for a handful of kindlers, all of whom have fallen on their own hard times, carrying their own scars. Can they remember and honor their old war codes to defend the helpless, or is the old age of heroes and magic truly gone from the land?
REVIEW: Kindling crosses the brutal reality of child soldiers with the familiar storyline exemplified by classics such as The Magnificent Seven, where a small band of antiheroes is gathered for one last shot at redemption (a shot where not everyone is guaranteed survival, let alone success), all told in a second-person present tense perspective (that's actually a first-person plural, from a sort of collective ghostly or spiritual host that focuses on each would-be hero in turn). Does it work? In general, yes, though at some point it started wallowing in its own trauma, gore, and helpless misery (not helped by rotating audiobook narrators who sometimes lean a little hard into the emotion and gulping, traumatic hesitations) to the point where it ultimately lost a half-star in the rating.
After a brief overview of the setup and setting, the tale opens with the classic trope of a stranger drifting into town and a young woman in distress (even though the latter's pleas are initially dismissed by the former, who doesn't want to get caught up in other people's problems when her own shoulders are nearly broken under the weight of her own troubles as it is). Not until a second stranger turns up - this one a former war hero of formidable skill - that the first character gets pulled into the plot/problem, drawn as much by the magnetism and authority embodied in the legendary "Twin Valley Reaper" as stubborn loyalty to the old kindler Codes of war that nobody, not even fellow kindlers, seems to remember, let alone honor; the leader of the mountain raider band is herself a former kindler, choosing to use her training to harass and kill innocent civilians rather than defend them. Of the seven would-be heroes, six of them cope with post-traumatic stress in various unhealthy ways, while the seventh is a cadet who was mere weeks from graduating and following her dream of becoming a true kindler on the battlefield when peace was declared and wrecked her future; this lattermost character was rather over-the-top in her childish innocence and eagerness to join her elders (in experience if not quite years; all of the characters are under 20, though war aged them all decades and kindlers were never expected to live to see their twentieth birthday anyway), actively envying their clearly broken lives and restless nights full of nightmares and completely ignorant why they'd resist finishing her training and letting her join them in slaughter even after she finally bloodies her blade and realizes (or seems to, for about half a minute) that death leaves a mark on the soul. (Why are they holding out on the big "secret" that binds them all like kin, she whines to them more than once, even as she sees them struggling...) All of them are looking to redeem themselves or prove something, to the ghosts of their past if nobody else, by joining the cause to defend Camas... and all fail themselves and their fellows more than once before finally coming together to show the village, the raiders, and the world that tried to erase them just what kindlers could do when united in common cause against evil.
You may notice a lack of names in this review; this was an audiobook I listened to, so I didn't catch spellings, and I'm having one heck of a time finding any but a couple names written down anywhere. They are distinct characters, and are generally interesting if not always likeable, save when they're repetitiously wallowing in their own miseries and clinging stubbornly to ideas and attitudes that not only aren't working but which might get other people killed. I was ready to smack each of them upside the head at least once, particularly when some terrible thing was happening or mere moments away from happening and they were lost in bad memories or doom-and-gloom observations instead of, y'know, actually doing something - even the wrong thing, just something - about the terrible thing. I get that this was part of the point, exemplified by how the power of kindling is quite literally about children being burned on the pyre of war for the sake of nations and leaders who not only consider their lives disposable, but who ignore and erase them as soon as it becomes politically convenient. Even given that, though, Kindling feels like it hammers those ideas, and the traumas of its characters, past the point of effectiveness, the end of the nail coming out the far side and catching up the story from telling itself.
You Might Also Enjoy:
War Girls (Tochi Onyebuchi) - My Review
The Builders (Daniel Polansky) - My Review
Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Alice Payne Arrives (Kate Heartfield)
Alice Payne Arrives
The Alice Payne series, Book 1
Kate Heartfield
Tordotcom
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In 1788, Englishwoman Alice Payne leads a secret life. By day, she's the respectable spinster daughter of a moneyed colonel, crippled in mind and body by the conflicts in the American colonies. By night, however, she is the Holy Ghost, masked highwayman and terror of the nearby roadways, mystique further enhanced by a clockwork automaton assistant... and if the fact that the Holy Ghost only ever strikes monstrous, wealthy leches hasn't been noticed by the constabulary, well, that is their problem, not hers. Besides, it's not like she's a robber only for thrills or vengeance; between the upkeep on the estate and her father's drinking and gambling problems, her ill-gotten gains are the only boundary between the Payne family and utter ruin. But one evening, what should be an ordinary robbery goes strangely awry when the carriage inexplicably disappears on the roadway. When Alice investigates, she discovers a strange clockwork device - and when she and her special friend Jane start poking around, they make a most marvelous discovery...
In 1889, Major Prudence Zuniga races to prevent the Austrian archduke's son from committing a suicide pact - again. For ten years, she's relived the same disastrous string of events over and over again, and all she's managed to do is change the name of the young woman he takes to the grave with him. It's part of an ongoing time war between two factions, the Farmers and the Guides, who each exploit time travel to reshape history as they each believe it "should" have gone... and both are doing little but mess everything up until the far future is nothing but utter, unlivable chaos. Her own life keeps getting rewritten, as does every soldier's, changes she only knows of due to a diary she keeps sequestered away in a secret spot of uncorrupted time. And she is tired of it. Unbeknownst to her superiors, she has a plan to sabotage the entire time travel network - a plan that involves making contact with a tinkerer in 1788 England...
Or, at least it did, until Prudence opens her portal in 2070 Toronto and the Holy Ghost rides out of history.
REVIEW: I had a specific window of time to fill at work, and this audiobook looked like it would do the job. A little steampunk, a dash of swashbuckling, a sprinkling of time travel hijinks... it sounded entertaining enough. Unfortunately, it never quite comes together before it hits the cliffhanger ending.
Things kick off with some promise, with Alice in her "Holy Ghost" role anticipating the thrill of another ambush on a scoundrel nobleman who deserves to have his purse lightened - but, even early on, there's something just a touch off-kilter. The style and writing, the actions and reactions of the characters themselves, often feel more like they belong in a young adult novel, as though they're in their teens or (at most) early twenties. But Alice is in her thirties, and other characters we meet are pushing forty or more. I kept having to remind myself of their ages, because my mind kept trying to roll them back. Anyway, the tale establishes a few separate times and the overall concept. Alice and Jane, ignorant of time travel (at first), are just trying to keep Alice's father and estate above water, even as Jane (her household companion and, more recently, lover) provides cover, having crafted the automaton that's become the Holy Ghost's signature... an automaton who really doesn't have much of a plot purpose, except to show that Jane is a proto-gearhead and introduce a little steampunk flair in a story otherwise lacking in steampunk anything. When Alice encounters the impossible device after the inexplicable carriage disappearance, she and Jane are quick to figure out that it's not fairy magic or deviltry but some manner of science - and, given the desperate state of the Payne household, Alice hardly hesitates to try using it for her own advantage.
Meanwhile, Major Prudence suffers one defeat too many in her efforts to change the would-be archduke's fate; when she's pulled from the operation, perpetually thwarted by manipulations from Guide enemies (which she, as a Farmer loyalist, derisively call Misguideds, though to be honest the lines between the two are rather blurry and hardly seem to matter from the standpoint of a timeline irretrievably polluted by meddling across the board), she becomes more determined than ever to pull the proverbial trigger in her secret project to bring down time travel. But one of her first efforts (that we see) is bungled quite spectacularly, only salvaged when a bystander leaps into the fray. Alice Payne rather bowls over Prudence insofar as adapting on the fly and taking charge, which is probably why the series is named after her, but Prudence still tries to cheat and manipulate her into becoming another tool in her plan. Somewhere along the way I started feeling like the author was trying to cheat and manipulate me as a reader, too... and when the whole thing ended on a cliffhanger, I was more certain of that than ever.
The story moves relatively fast (most of the time, at least), and has some nice parts and ideas. The time travel problems and politics, though, get a little convoluted and don't quite mesh well with the swashbuckling, vaguely steampunk parts. I just plain didn't like Prudence, though I ultimately wasn't especially attached to anyone, and don't feel compelled to find out what happens next.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Sky Coyote (Kage Baker) - My Review
Recursion (Blake Crouch) - My Review
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland) - My Review
The Alice Payne series, Book 1
Kate Heartfield
Tordotcom
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In 1788, Englishwoman Alice Payne leads a secret life. By day, she's the respectable spinster daughter of a moneyed colonel, crippled in mind and body by the conflicts in the American colonies. By night, however, she is the Holy Ghost, masked highwayman and terror of the nearby roadways, mystique further enhanced by a clockwork automaton assistant... and if the fact that the Holy Ghost only ever strikes monstrous, wealthy leches hasn't been noticed by the constabulary, well, that is their problem, not hers. Besides, it's not like she's a robber only for thrills or vengeance; between the upkeep on the estate and her father's drinking and gambling problems, her ill-gotten gains are the only boundary between the Payne family and utter ruin. But one evening, what should be an ordinary robbery goes strangely awry when the carriage inexplicably disappears on the roadway. When Alice investigates, she discovers a strange clockwork device - and when she and her special friend Jane start poking around, they make a most marvelous discovery...
In 1889, Major Prudence Zuniga races to prevent the Austrian archduke's son from committing a suicide pact - again. For ten years, she's relived the same disastrous string of events over and over again, and all she's managed to do is change the name of the young woman he takes to the grave with him. It's part of an ongoing time war between two factions, the Farmers and the Guides, who each exploit time travel to reshape history as they each believe it "should" have gone... and both are doing little but mess everything up until the far future is nothing but utter, unlivable chaos. Her own life keeps getting rewritten, as does every soldier's, changes she only knows of due to a diary she keeps sequestered away in a secret spot of uncorrupted time. And she is tired of it. Unbeknownst to her superiors, she has a plan to sabotage the entire time travel network - a plan that involves making contact with a tinkerer in 1788 England...
Or, at least it did, until Prudence opens her portal in 2070 Toronto and the Holy Ghost rides out of history.
REVIEW: I had a specific window of time to fill at work, and this audiobook looked like it would do the job. A little steampunk, a dash of swashbuckling, a sprinkling of time travel hijinks... it sounded entertaining enough. Unfortunately, it never quite comes together before it hits the cliffhanger ending.
Things kick off with some promise, with Alice in her "Holy Ghost" role anticipating the thrill of another ambush on a scoundrel nobleman who deserves to have his purse lightened - but, even early on, there's something just a touch off-kilter. The style and writing, the actions and reactions of the characters themselves, often feel more like they belong in a young adult novel, as though they're in their teens or (at most) early twenties. But Alice is in her thirties, and other characters we meet are pushing forty or more. I kept having to remind myself of their ages, because my mind kept trying to roll them back. Anyway, the tale establishes a few separate times and the overall concept. Alice and Jane, ignorant of time travel (at first), are just trying to keep Alice's father and estate above water, even as Jane (her household companion and, more recently, lover) provides cover, having crafted the automaton that's become the Holy Ghost's signature... an automaton who really doesn't have much of a plot purpose, except to show that Jane is a proto-gearhead and introduce a little steampunk flair in a story otherwise lacking in steampunk anything. When Alice encounters the impossible device after the inexplicable carriage disappearance, she and Jane are quick to figure out that it's not fairy magic or deviltry but some manner of science - and, given the desperate state of the Payne household, Alice hardly hesitates to try using it for her own advantage.
Meanwhile, Major Prudence suffers one defeat too many in her efforts to change the would-be archduke's fate; when she's pulled from the operation, perpetually thwarted by manipulations from Guide enemies (which she, as a Farmer loyalist, derisively call Misguideds, though to be honest the lines between the two are rather blurry and hardly seem to matter from the standpoint of a timeline irretrievably polluted by meddling across the board), she becomes more determined than ever to pull the proverbial trigger in her secret project to bring down time travel. But one of her first efforts (that we see) is bungled quite spectacularly, only salvaged when a bystander leaps into the fray. Alice Payne rather bowls over Prudence insofar as adapting on the fly and taking charge, which is probably why the series is named after her, but Prudence still tries to cheat and manipulate her into becoming another tool in her plan. Somewhere along the way I started feeling like the author was trying to cheat and manipulate me as a reader, too... and when the whole thing ended on a cliffhanger, I was more certain of that than ever.
The story moves relatively fast (most of the time, at least), and has some nice parts and ideas. The time travel problems and politics, though, get a little convoluted and don't quite mesh well with the swashbuckling, vaguely steampunk parts. I just plain didn't like Prudence, though I ultimately wasn't especially attached to anyone, and don't feel compelled to find out what happens next.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Sky Coyote (Kage Baker) - My Review
Recursion (Blake Crouch) - My Review
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland) - My Review
Resurrection (Derek Landy)
Resurrection
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 10
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Five years ago, the impossibly powerful sorceress Darquesse devastated the magical city of Roarhaven before ascending to near-godhood and leaving this dimension behind... and Valkyrie Cain, who was once part of Darquesse, was left a shell of her former self. She still has magic, but of a wild and erratic sort never before seen by Sanctuary scholars, a magic she herself barely understands and controls. Not that she really wants to control magic anymore. She spent five years hiding out in rural America until assassins tracked her down, drawing her back to Ireland and the company of her one-time partner, Skulduggery Pleasant. A shadow organization known as the Anti-Sanctuary has been working for centuries to trigger war with the mortals; now, they're seemingly on the verge of success, potentially resurrecting a powerful new leader from the days of the war against Mevolent. The world needs saving again, and when the world needs saving Skulduggery and Valkyrie are expected to step up to the task - but can the traumatized young woman remember how to be a hero in time to stop disaster?
REVIEW: Apparently, the series originally ended after the previous installment, but Landy realized he had more stories to tell. However, even though Valkyrie has aged out of the Young Adult protagonist category, this book still pitches itself as being in that category, justified by the introduction of a "next generation" would-be hero: fourteen-year-old Omen Darkly, the overlooked brother of a prophesied "Chosen One", attending Roarhaven's first boarding school for young sorcerers, Corrival, in a not-so-subtle jab at a certain famous wizard-based series. This gives Resurrection a slight split personality, as on the one hand it wants to continue growing up and growing darker with Valkyrie as she struggles with PTSD and her wild magic, while on the other it's trying to be a light reset/reboot with younger characters who can't help but be bowled over by Skulduggery's sheer force of personality and the weight of series history. The two more or less work together, but at times can't help conflicting, and this (plus a matter of one subplot and bad timing) help explain the slight drop in the rating.
In the beginning, Valkyrie has returned to Ireland and her late uncle's estate, along with the dog Xena, but is still far from recovered, and far from eager to jump back in the world-saving game. She has trouble even visiting her family after six months in the country, still guilty over what she had to do to her kid sister Alice in order to secure the scepter of the ancients and still traumatized by the danger she put them all in. She also can't exactly stroll down the streets of Roarhaven without being the object of stares and hatred, as many still blame her for Darquesse's rampage (though there are a few who still worship the ascended sorceress - almost one subplot too many, here, as very little ultimately comes of that in this volume). Roarhaven itself is not the town it used to be, as China Sorrows has used her new power and influence to amass even more power and influence, even granting legitimacy to a "reformed" Church of the Faceless Ones and diminishing the role of the council and others who might stand in her way. Skulduggery, now an independent Arbiter working with Sanctuaries worldwide, could very much use his partner and friend Valkyrie Cain again as he seeks a missing undercover agent who tried to infiltrate the Anti-Sanctuary, but the Valkyrie he needs is not the one he has, and she may never be that person again... though that doesn't mean she's entirely helpless, even as she grapples with her traumas and growing list of enemies.
Necessity makes them reach out for more allies beyond China's reach, which leads them to Corrival and Omen. The boy used to try to live up to the example set by his brother Auger (a Harry Potter-like savior, if one who grew up in the magical community knowing full well that he was intended to be the hero, whose extracurricular exploits are glimpsed and hinted at but not explored in depth), but eventually gave up trying when even his own parents dismiss him as the "also-ran". Being contacted by no less a celebrity than Skulduggery Pleasant gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, he can be someone, maybe he can have his own adventures and be his own person, giving him the courage to step up and try even when the skeleton detective himself tells him he can go back to his safe and unseen existence. He is not a second Valkyrie, being his own character, though he's so much tied into the clearly-riffing-on-Harry-Potter Augur that he sometimes feels slightly out of step with the greater series universe.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Sanctuary mages progress their dark plot, which involves the literal resurrection of a former powerful mage - helped by a sorcerer with the power to turn anyone they touch into a temporary psychopath under his control, which leads to some serious complications and dark moments when he gets his hands on Skulduggery Pleasant (another development that forces Valkyrie to stand up and resume her reluctant heroine mantle, as her friend and partner becomes an enemy). As is typical for the series, the action just keeps coming, interspersed with some sharp dialog and humor and some dark twists. I just couldn't help wondering throughout what the series would've become had it been allowed to shake off the last ties to its young adult category.
One of the subplots, as mentioned, also helped contribute to the drop in the rating. It involves a mortal American president who was clearly inspired by the one currently occupying the nation's highest office (whose first regime coincided with its writing and release), using clandestine sorcerous connections to gain power and turn the nation into his own personal evil empire. The fact that the same occupant has returned, with more power than ever, destroying institutions and ideals that used to actually mean something to the very people gleefully and gloatingly kicking them down... As I mentioned before, timing made it very hard for me to even listen to a fictitious version of said occupant, facing the very real and not-fictional long-term damage and terror unleashed... I want to continue the series at some point, but now, today of all days, as a major portion of that cruelty is codified into law and literal actual not-in-an-Onion-satire-article merchandising is being sold glorifying a concentration camp on American soil... I just can't. (And if this is too topical and political for a book review, well, I'm livin' this nightmare and it's my blog, and I don't experience literature in a vacuum so my reality can't help bleeding into my reading.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
Skulduggery Pleasant (Derek Landy) - My Review
The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) - My Review
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 10
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Five years ago, the impossibly powerful sorceress Darquesse devastated the magical city of Roarhaven before ascending to near-godhood and leaving this dimension behind... and Valkyrie Cain, who was once part of Darquesse, was left a shell of her former self. She still has magic, but of a wild and erratic sort never before seen by Sanctuary scholars, a magic she herself barely understands and controls. Not that she really wants to control magic anymore. She spent five years hiding out in rural America until assassins tracked her down, drawing her back to Ireland and the company of her one-time partner, Skulduggery Pleasant. A shadow organization known as the Anti-Sanctuary has been working for centuries to trigger war with the mortals; now, they're seemingly on the verge of success, potentially resurrecting a powerful new leader from the days of the war against Mevolent. The world needs saving again, and when the world needs saving Skulduggery and Valkyrie are expected to step up to the task - but can the traumatized young woman remember how to be a hero in time to stop disaster?
REVIEW: Apparently, the series originally ended after the previous installment, but Landy realized he had more stories to tell. However, even though Valkyrie has aged out of the Young Adult protagonist category, this book still pitches itself as being in that category, justified by the introduction of a "next generation" would-be hero: fourteen-year-old Omen Darkly, the overlooked brother of a prophesied "Chosen One", attending Roarhaven's first boarding school for young sorcerers, Corrival, in a not-so-subtle jab at a certain famous wizard-based series. This gives Resurrection a slight split personality, as on the one hand it wants to continue growing up and growing darker with Valkyrie as she struggles with PTSD and her wild magic, while on the other it's trying to be a light reset/reboot with younger characters who can't help but be bowled over by Skulduggery's sheer force of personality and the weight of series history. The two more or less work together, but at times can't help conflicting, and this (plus a matter of one subplot and bad timing) help explain the slight drop in the rating.
In the beginning, Valkyrie has returned to Ireland and her late uncle's estate, along with the dog Xena, but is still far from recovered, and far from eager to jump back in the world-saving game. She has trouble even visiting her family after six months in the country, still guilty over what she had to do to her kid sister Alice in order to secure the scepter of the ancients and still traumatized by the danger she put them all in. She also can't exactly stroll down the streets of Roarhaven without being the object of stares and hatred, as many still blame her for Darquesse's rampage (though there are a few who still worship the ascended sorceress - almost one subplot too many, here, as very little ultimately comes of that in this volume). Roarhaven itself is not the town it used to be, as China Sorrows has used her new power and influence to amass even more power and influence, even granting legitimacy to a "reformed" Church of the Faceless Ones and diminishing the role of the council and others who might stand in her way. Skulduggery, now an independent Arbiter working with Sanctuaries worldwide, could very much use his partner and friend Valkyrie Cain again as he seeks a missing undercover agent who tried to infiltrate the Anti-Sanctuary, but the Valkyrie he needs is not the one he has, and she may never be that person again... though that doesn't mean she's entirely helpless, even as she grapples with her traumas and growing list of enemies.
Necessity makes them reach out for more allies beyond China's reach, which leads them to Corrival and Omen. The boy used to try to live up to the example set by his brother Auger (a Harry Potter-like savior, if one who grew up in the magical community knowing full well that he was intended to be the hero, whose extracurricular exploits are glimpsed and hinted at but not explored in depth), but eventually gave up trying when even his own parents dismiss him as the "also-ran". Being contacted by no less a celebrity than Skulduggery Pleasant gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, he can be someone, maybe he can have his own adventures and be his own person, giving him the courage to step up and try even when the skeleton detective himself tells him he can go back to his safe and unseen existence. He is not a second Valkyrie, being his own character, though he's so much tied into the clearly-riffing-on-Harry-Potter Augur that he sometimes feels slightly out of step with the greater series universe.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Sanctuary mages progress their dark plot, which involves the literal resurrection of a former powerful mage - helped by a sorcerer with the power to turn anyone they touch into a temporary psychopath under his control, which leads to some serious complications and dark moments when he gets his hands on Skulduggery Pleasant (another development that forces Valkyrie to stand up and resume her reluctant heroine mantle, as her friend and partner becomes an enemy). As is typical for the series, the action just keeps coming, interspersed with some sharp dialog and humor and some dark twists. I just couldn't help wondering throughout what the series would've become had it been allowed to shake off the last ties to its young adult category.
One of the subplots, as mentioned, also helped contribute to the drop in the rating. It involves a mortal American president who was clearly inspired by the one currently occupying the nation's highest office (whose first regime coincided with its writing and release), using clandestine sorcerous connections to gain power and turn the nation into his own personal evil empire. The fact that the same occupant has returned, with more power than ever, destroying institutions and ideals that used to actually mean something to the very people gleefully and gloatingly kicking them down... As I mentioned before, timing made it very hard for me to even listen to a fictitious version of said occupant, facing the very real and not-fictional long-term damage and terror unleashed... I want to continue the series at some point, but now, today of all days, as a major portion of that cruelty is codified into law and literal actual not-in-an-Onion-satire-article merchandising is being sold glorifying a concentration camp on American soil... I just can't. (And if this is too topical and political for a book review, well, I'm livin' this nightmare and it's my blog, and I don't experience literature in a vacuum so my reality can't help bleeding into my reading.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
Skulduggery Pleasant (Derek Landy) - My Review
The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) - My Review
Monday, June 30, 2025
June Site Update
2025 is half over and I still can't find anything good to say about it. Anyway, the month's eight reviews have been archived and cross-linked over on the main Brightdreamer Books page.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Dinosaurs (DK Smithsonian)
Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Life from Dinosaurs to Humans
DK Smithsonian
DK
Nonfiction, YA? Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life/Science
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: By the start of the Mesozoic - the "Age of Dinosaurs" - life in some form or another had been proliferating on Earth for several hundreds of millions of years, until a mass extinction event (not the first, but one of the most iconic) that ended the Permian Period. From the devastation would rise many grand, diverse plants and animals that would define an era... and the same would happen at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when the Cenozoic began. Using numerous diagrams, fossils, and reconstructions, this book charts life on Earth from the start of the Triassic to the appearance of modern humans.
Material in this volume was previously in Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life from DK Publishing.
REVIEW: I picked this up in the Barnes and Noble discount section because it included many non-dinosaur life forms (plants, insects, and invertebrates, as well as covering Cenozoic times) that are often glossed over in other books on prehistoric life I have... well, that, and I had a gift card that made it free to me. Considering what I paid for it, and the new-to-me material it covered, I can't say I'm entirely disappointed, but I can also say that I would've liked more.
After the overview at the start - giving a quick look at what evolution is, what fossils are, and how we know what we know about biomes that died out long before our own ancestors began walking upright, let alone writing science books - this book starts with the Triassic. I admit I'd hoped for a little on the pre-dinosaur life forms, which I have found frustratingly little on in armchair-accessible works, but at least this volume covers something more than the usual suspects, offering fossils and a few reconstructions of plants, invertebrates, and several non-dinosaur (or non-dinosaur-ancestral, as the "terrible lizards" themselves took some time to rise to dominance) entries. Some were interesting, but most feel like quick post-it notes that only tantalize, that don't always explore what's significant about this particular entry to justify inclusion over others... and a few are just plain irritating, showing only fragments while others that claim in the text to have excellent fossils aren't show well, or at all. More than once, I found places where text contradicted itself, likely the result of incomplete editing as content was revised over subsequent editions. And there are several scientific terms that the book throws around without including a glossary. Those frustrations aside, books like this rest largely on visual appeal, and Dinosaurs does deliver fairly well there. In addition to the bite-sized entries, there are several insets comparing extinct life forms to modern counterparts. This may not be the only book on dinosaurs and prehistoric life one will ever need (no such book exists that I'm aware of), but it's not a bad entry point or addition to a layperson's library on the matter.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benton) - My Review
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs (Riley Black) - My Review
Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor) - My Review
DK Smithsonian
DK
Nonfiction, YA? Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life/Science
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: By the start of the Mesozoic - the "Age of Dinosaurs" - life in some form or another had been proliferating on Earth for several hundreds of millions of years, until a mass extinction event (not the first, but one of the most iconic) that ended the Permian Period. From the devastation would rise many grand, diverse plants and animals that would define an era... and the same would happen at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when the Cenozoic began. Using numerous diagrams, fossils, and reconstructions, this book charts life on Earth from the start of the Triassic to the appearance of modern humans.
Material in this volume was previously in Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life from DK Publishing.
REVIEW: I picked this up in the Barnes and Noble discount section because it included many non-dinosaur life forms (plants, insects, and invertebrates, as well as covering Cenozoic times) that are often glossed over in other books on prehistoric life I have... well, that, and I had a gift card that made it free to me. Considering what I paid for it, and the new-to-me material it covered, I can't say I'm entirely disappointed, but I can also say that I would've liked more.
After the overview at the start - giving a quick look at what evolution is, what fossils are, and how we know what we know about biomes that died out long before our own ancestors began walking upright, let alone writing science books - this book starts with the Triassic. I admit I'd hoped for a little on the pre-dinosaur life forms, which I have found frustratingly little on in armchair-accessible works, but at least this volume covers something more than the usual suspects, offering fossils and a few reconstructions of plants, invertebrates, and several non-dinosaur (or non-dinosaur-ancestral, as the "terrible lizards" themselves took some time to rise to dominance) entries. Some were interesting, but most feel like quick post-it notes that only tantalize, that don't always explore what's significant about this particular entry to justify inclusion over others... and a few are just plain irritating, showing only fragments while others that claim in the text to have excellent fossils aren't show well, or at all. More than once, I found places where text contradicted itself, likely the result of incomplete editing as content was revised over subsequent editions. And there are several scientific terms that the book throws around without including a glossary. Those frustrations aside, books like this rest largely on visual appeal, and Dinosaurs does deliver fairly well there. In addition to the bite-sized entries, there are several insets comparing extinct life forms to modern counterparts. This may not be the only book on dinosaurs and prehistoric life one will ever need (no such book exists that I'm aware of), but it's not a bad entry point or addition to a layperson's library on the matter.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benton) - My Review
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs (Riley Black) - My Review
Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor) - My Review
Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Great Texas Dragon Race (Kacy Ritter)
The Great Texas Dragon Race
Kacy Ritter
Scholastic
Fiction, MG Adventure/Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For all thirteen years of her life, Cassidy Drake has loved three things: her family, her home state of Texas, and dragons. She grew up on her parents' sanctuary for the beasts, who are too often misunderstood, hunted, or - even worse - abused and exploited, particularly by the world's energy corporations. Many of the rescues on the Drake ranch were former "workers" for FireCorp, the biggest company and the one with the worst reputation for how they treat dragons, for all that their public relations people sweep it under the rug. Corporate money keeps buying up small ranches and sanctuaries, but her father has held out... only now bills are piling up faster than donations are coming in. When Grandma falls ill, that may be the last financial straw on the sanctuary's back - unless Cassidy can pull off a miracle.
Like her mother before her, Cassidy is a talented rider, tamer, and racer. She has the stats to enter the biggest challenge in the state: the Great Texas Dragon Race. Part speed race, part endurance trial, part scavenger hunt, the Race draws competitors from across the country, with a prize purse big enough to end the Drake ranch's financial problems for years... only, ever since Cassidy's mother died from a venomous dragon's bite, her father's been reluctant to let her take risks, not even for the good of the family and their dragons. Besides, the winners are almost always the corporate sponsored riders, with the best training and the best equipment, not outsiders - and especially not outsiders riding scarred, undersized dragons like her favorite mount Ranga. But Cassidy Drake doesn't see another choice, and she's never backed down from a challenge - not even a challenge that has claimed the lives of far more experienced dragon riders, with far more experienced dragons.
REVIEW: This is far from the first story to riff on the classic "underdog girl and her overlooked horse" formula with fantastic creatures and wild competitions. The alternate Earth it creates, with various sizes and species of wild dragons alongside mundane critters, also isn't a first, and in this case is probably best not poked at too hard for plausibility holes. But The Great Texas Dragon Race does present a decent, high-energy story with a protagonist who isn't flawless, in a world that isn't as morally black and white as she first imagined... and it has dragons, who may be only a step or two removed from "scaly puppy" or "scaly pony" territory (where dragons are just bigger, scalier, and more incendiary pets/companions/mounts), but still make for some nice peril and adventure.
From the start, Cassidy Drake is a bold personality, more at home in the saddle of a dragon than anywhere else. She already dreams of entering the big Race, both because of her inherent competitive nature and because her late mother Aurora was once a victor, and much of Cassidy's young life has been spent trying to live up to Mom's reputation (spurred in part by grief and childhood guilt; she was there when Aurora was struck by a venomous wild drake, but was too young and scared to get help). She has less than a week to convince her father, though, and he's stubbornly overprotective of her. When an executive of FireCorp starts poking around the ranch, she's initially confident that, once again, the Drakes will keep the wolves at bay and protect their many charges... but when her beloved grandmother, the glue that holds their little family together, falls suddenly ill and needs expensive testing and treatment, the girl only grows more determined (aided and abetted by Grandma, who believes in the girl more than she even believes in herself). There's a touch of plot convenience here and there to even get her, a late entrant, into the race to begin with, but once she's there she has to find her own way through and fight her own battles - and fail, more than once. She resists making alliances or friends among other competitors; eventually there can be only one winner, but the early stages at least can go easier with a little help, or at least knowing that not everyone else is actively looking to stick a knife in her back. Plus the FireCorp sponsored riders are clearly working together from the beginning, leaving those without corporate backers at a disadvantage right out of the gate if they can't pull together. Worse, one of the FireCorp riders, a boy named Ash, keeps trying to befriend her - and letting her guard down once almost costs her everything. But there's more to his story than she knows, just as there's more to the other racers and the Race itself than she knows, and one of the many things Cassidy has to learn is to listen now and again. This is a whole different league than the regional races she and Ranga have run, and Cassidy is in over her head for some time before she learns to tread water, let alone swim. Along the way, she has to re-evaluate just what she stands for and why she's competing, and whether victory should be something more than just a prize purse at the end.
More than once, there's a sense of other characters existing to help or hinder the main character specifically (particularly most of the "baddies" in the FireCorp riding group). As mentioned previously, there are also some issues of plausibility if one looks too closely or too critically at the world in general and the race in particular; the often-potentially-deadly nature of the challenges feel like something one would find in a Harry Potter world where wizards with magic are not far away and can potentially bespell an antagonized wild dragon in an emergency (or can at least possibly magick up a cure to critical injuries inflicted along the way) or in a more dystopian place like Panem from The Hunger Games, where the amped-up spectacle and deadly nature of the competition is the point, not in a world that's more or less our own but with dragons. But on the whole the story doesn't slow down enough for too much introspection or examination, and Cassidy's a bold enough personality, undertaking a wild enough adventure, to generally make things work, especially for the target audience.
You Might Also Enjoy:
House of Dragons (Jessica Cluess) - My Review
Dragonsdale: Skydancer (Salamanda Drake) - My Review
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
Kacy Ritter
Scholastic
Fiction, MG Adventure/Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For all thirteen years of her life, Cassidy Drake has loved three things: her family, her home state of Texas, and dragons. She grew up on her parents' sanctuary for the beasts, who are too often misunderstood, hunted, or - even worse - abused and exploited, particularly by the world's energy corporations. Many of the rescues on the Drake ranch were former "workers" for FireCorp, the biggest company and the one with the worst reputation for how they treat dragons, for all that their public relations people sweep it under the rug. Corporate money keeps buying up small ranches and sanctuaries, but her father has held out... only now bills are piling up faster than donations are coming in. When Grandma falls ill, that may be the last financial straw on the sanctuary's back - unless Cassidy can pull off a miracle.
Like her mother before her, Cassidy is a talented rider, tamer, and racer. She has the stats to enter the biggest challenge in the state: the Great Texas Dragon Race. Part speed race, part endurance trial, part scavenger hunt, the Race draws competitors from across the country, with a prize purse big enough to end the Drake ranch's financial problems for years... only, ever since Cassidy's mother died from a venomous dragon's bite, her father's been reluctant to let her take risks, not even for the good of the family and their dragons. Besides, the winners are almost always the corporate sponsored riders, with the best training and the best equipment, not outsiders - and especially not outsiders riding scarred, undersized dragons like her favorite mount Ranga. But Cassidy Drake doesn't see another choice, and she's never backed down from a challenge - not even a challenge that has claimed the lives of far more experienced dragon riders, with far more experienced dragons.
REVIEW: This is far from the first story to riff on the classic "underdog girl and her overlooked horse" formula with fantastic creatures and wild competitions. The alternate Earth it creates, with various sizes and species of wild dragons alongside mundane critters, also isn't a first, and in this case is probably best not poked at too hard for plausibility holes. But The Great Texas Dragon Race does present a decent, high-energy story with a protagonist who isn't flawless, in a world that isn't as morally black and white as she first imagined... and it has dragons, who may be only a step or two removed from "scaly puppy" or "scaly pony" territory (where dragons are just bigger, scalier, and more incendiary pets/companions/mounts), but still make for some nice peril and adventure.
From the start, Cassidy Drake is a bold personality, more at home in the saddle of a dragon than anywhere else. She already dreams of entering the big Race, both because of her inherent competitive nature and because her late mother Aurora was once a victor, and much of Cassidy's young life has been spent trying to live up to Mom's reputation (spurred in part by grief and childhood guilt; she was there when Aurora was struck by a venomous wild drake, but was too young and scared to get help). She has less than a week to convince her father, though, and he's stubbornly overprotective of her. When an executive of FireCorp starts poking around the ranch, she's initially confident that, once again, the Drakes will keep the wolves at bay and protect their many charges... but when her beloved grandmother, the glue that holds their little family together, falls suddenly ill and needs expensive testing and treatment, the girl only grows more determined (aided and abetted by Grandma, who believes in the girl more than she even believes in herself). There's a touch of plot convenience here and there to even get her, a late entrant, into the race to begin with, but once she's there she has to find her own way through and fight her own battles - and fail, more than once. She resists making alliances or friends among other competitors; eventually there can be only one winner, but the early stages at least can go easier with a little help, or at least knowing that not everyone else is actively looking to stick a knife in her back. Plus the FireCorp sponsored riders are clearly working together from the beginning, leaving those without corporate backers at a disadvantage right out of the gate if they can't pull together. Worse, one of the FireCorp riders, a boy named Ash, keeps trying to befriend her - and letting her guard down once almost costs her everything. But there's more to his story than she knows, just as there's more to the other racers and the Race itself than she knows, and one of the many things Cassidy has to learn is to listen now and again. This is a whole different league than the regional races she and Ranga have run, and Cassidy is in over her head for some time before she learns to tread water, let alone swim. Along the way, she has to re-evaluate just what she stands for and why she's competing, and whether victory should be something more than just a prize purse at the end.
More than once, there's a sense of other characters existing to help or hinder the main character specifically (particularly most of the "baddies" in the FireCorp riding group). As mentioned previously, there are also some issues of plausibility if one looks too closely or too critically at the world in general and the race in particular; the often-potentially-deadly nature of the challenges feel like something one would find in a Harry Potter world where wizards with magic are not far away and can potentially bespell an antagonized wild dragon in an emergency (or can at least possibly magick up a cure to critical injuries inflicted along the way) or in a more dystopian place like Panem from The Hunger Games, where the amped-up spectacle and deadly nature of the competition is the point, not in a world that's more or less our own but with dragons. But on the whole the story doesn't slow down enough for too much introspection or examination, and Cassidy's a bold enough personality, undertaking a wild enough adventure, to generally make things work, especially for the target audience.
You Might Also Enjoy:
House of Dragons (Jessica Cluess) - My Review
Dragonsdale: Skydancer (Salamanda Drake) - My Review
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
This is Our Story (Ashley Elston)
This is Our Story
Ashley Elston
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Mystery/Thriller
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Five teenage boys, united by wealth, influence, and wild streaks broad as an interstate, were at the private River Point Hunting Club after one of their notoriously raucous parties when they decided to go into the woods in the wee hours to try their luck with the local deer.
Only four returned.
Due to the power embodied in the families of the suspects, the district attorney Mr. Gaines is eager to see the death of Grant written off as an unfortunate hunting accident. There's no way to know which of the boys actually fired the rifle that killed him, as they all admitted to using it for target practice earlier, and there seems to be no solid evidence to go on when the only eyewitnesses are the only suspects, each backing up the stories of the others. Five boys, dark woods, deer... surely, it was all just a terrible mistake. Thus, the case lands on the desk of an aging public defender, Mr. Stone, in the expectation that he'll do little more than give the appearance of considering charges before giving up. But the DA underestimated the old man... and his intern, Kate Marino.
A gifted photographer and member of her school newspaper and media club, Kate dreams of going to school in New York City, and hopes that an internship in a law office - courtesy of her best friend Reagan's family contacts, and helped by her own mother working for Mr. Stone - will make the resume of a small-town girl stand out. But her time there has taught her a certain cynicism about the notion of justice... until young Grant's death and the case of the "River Point Boys" (as the foursome come to be known in local media) land on Mr. Stone's desk. She never told anyone, but she and Grant had met briefly some weeks before his death, and had been texting each other almost nightly - communication that Kate had hoped would spark into something real, until they had a falling-out the night before the tragedy. Now, she has a chance to help see justice be done. But investigating Grant's death is more dangerous than she realizes, unearthing secrets and corruption that spread far behind the bounds of teenage hijinks to infiltrate through her whole town... secrets that have already proven deadly once...
REVIEW: At the start, this looked like a nice, thrilling, potentially twisty tale, unraveling stories and unearthing motives and stopping a killer (or killers) from getting away with cold-blooded murder, a case complicated by friendships and rivalries and class divides; Kate and her friends are firmly on the opposite side of the tracks and town influence as the River Point Boys and their well-connected families, who have their fingers on the scales of justice from the start. Kate's not-quite-illicit, not-quite-romantic (yet) relationship has an air of potential narrator unreliability, adding another wrinkle, in addition to giving the girl extra incentive to step a little beyond her minor role as intern in figuring out whodunit. But it isn't long before Kate's potential as an investigator is undermined by her intellect dropping to single digits partway in, compromised by a growing attraction to one of the suspects, whom she trusts too readily given the circumstances and her earlier skepticism about the River Point Boys. She does increasingly boneheaded things, taking increasingly implausible risks, to the point where I started to wonder just what she'd been doing as an intern in a law office for all these months. Heck, I wondered if she'd ever caught five minutes of any given law show on TV, because the things she ended up doing were so monumentally inept that I can't believe she understood a single, solitary thing about anything. Meanwhile, the story keeps teasing the reader with interludes from the killer's point of view (written in a way to obscure their identity), in what starts as a nice way to raise tension but eventually becomes just tiresome. At some point, despite herself, the motive and culprit are unmasked, but not before Kate's ineptitude jeopardizes literally everything she's spent the entire novel working towards... after which she does even more inane things. I only finished because I didn't feel like swapping audiobooks by the time I lost all faith in Kate's ability to do anything but trip over her own metaphoric feet. The earlier parts worked well enough to barely keep it afloat at the Okay line of three stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Like Never and Always (Ann Aguirre) - My Review
One Of Us Is Lying (Karen M. McManus) - My Review
Five Total Strangers (Natalie D. Richards) - My Review
Ashley Elston
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Mystery/Thriller
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Five teenage boys, united by wealth, influence, and wild streaks broad as an interstate, were at the private River Point Hunting Club after one of their notoriously raucous parties when they decided to go into the woods in the wee hours to try their luck with the local deer.
Only four returned.
Due to the power embodied in the families of the suspects, the district attorney Mr. Gaines is eager to see the death of Grant written off as an unfortunate hunting accident. There's no way to know which of the boys actually fired the rifle that killed him, as they all admitted to using it for target practice earlier, and there seems to be no solid evidence to go on when the only eyewitnesses are the only suspects, each backing up the stories of the others. Five boys, dark woods, deer... surely, it was all just a terrible mistake. Thus, the case lands on the desk of an aging public defender, Mr. Stone, in the expectation that he'll do little more than give the appearance of considering charges before giving up. But the DA underestimated the old man... and his intern, Kate Marino.
A gifted photographer and member of her school newspaper and media club, Kate dreams of going to school in New York City, and hopes that an internship in a law office - courtesy of her best friend Reagan's family contacts, and helped by her own mother working for Mr. Stone - will make the resume of a small-town girl stand out. But her time there has taught her a certain cynicism about the notion of justice... until young Grant's death and the case of the "River Point Boys" (as the foursome come to be known in local media) land on Mr. Stone's desk. She never told anyone, but she and Grant had met briefly some weeks before his death, and had been texting each other almost nightly - communication that Kate had hoped would spark into something real, until they had a falling-out the night before the tragedy. Now, she has a chance to help see justice be done. But investigating Grant's death is more dangerous than she realizes, unearthing secrets and corruption that spread far behind the bounds of teenage hijinks to infiltrate through her whole town... secrets that have already proven deadly once...
REVIEW: At the start, this looked like a nice, thrilling, potentially twisty tale, unraveling stories and unearthing motives and stopping a killer (or killers) from getting away with cold-blooded murder, a case complicated by friendships and rivalries and class divides; Kate and her friends are firmly on the opposite side of the tracks and town influence as the River Point Boys and their well-connected families, who have their fingers on the scales of justice from the start. Kate's not-quite-illicit, not-quite-romantic (yet) relationship has an air of potential narrator unreliability, adding another wrinkle, in addition to giving the girl extra incentive to step a little beyond her minor role as intern in figuring out whodunit. But it isn't long before Kate's potential as an investigator is undermined by her intellect dropping to single digits partway in, compromised by a growing attraction to one of the suspects, whom she trusts too readily given the circumstances and her earlier skepticism about the River Point Boys. She does increasingly boneheaded things, taking increasingly implausible risks, to the point where I started to wonder just what she'd been doing as an intern in a law office for all these months. Heck, I wondered if she'd ever caught five minutes of any given law show on TV, because the things she ended up doing were so monumentally inept that I can't believe she understood a single, solitary thing about anything. Meanwhile, the story keeps teasing the reader with interludes from the killer's point of view (written in a way to obscure their identity), in what starts as a nice way to raise tension but eventually becomes just tiresome. At some point, despite herself, the motive and culprit are unmasked, but not before Kate's ineptitude jeopardizes literally everything she's spent the entire novel working towards... after which she does even more inane things. I only finished because I didn't feel like swapping audiobooks by the time I lost all faith in Kate's ability to do anything but trip over her own metaphoric feet. The earlier parts worked well enough to barely keep it afloat at the Okay line of three stars.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Like Never and Always (Ann Aguirre) - My Review
One Of Us Is Lying (Karen M. McManus) - My Review
Five Total Strangers (Natalie D. Richards) - My Review
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Admiral (Sean Danker)
Admiral
The Admiral series, Book 1
Sean Danker
Roc
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The moment he wakes on the floor of a derelict spacecraft, surrounded by strangers in Evagardian military uniforms, he knows something has gone terribly wrong... especially when he is informed that he was pulled from a malfunctioning sleeper pod that designated him as an admiral. He is nothing of the sort - and what he really is hardly seems to matter anyway. His three rescuers, green cadets every one, don't belong on this vessel any more than he does; they were en route to assignment on the flagship of the empire, and have no idea how they ended up on this run-down old junker of a freighter. Worse, it seems that something has gone terribly wrong: the power is gone, the engines are dead, the gravity feels strange, and nobody answers the comms. The "Admiral" and his companions of circumstance may not trust one another, but they'll have to band together to figure out what happened if they are to have any hope of surviving, let alone escaping.
REVIEW: Sometimes I'm just in the mood for a straightforward story, so this one, from the description, seemed right up that alley: a small isolated crew facing a mysterious threat, the book equivalent of a popcorn space thriller flick in the vein of numerous Alien knock-offs, which even if it can't come close to the inspiration can at least entertain. But this thriller just does not deliver, playing out less like Alien and more like one of those video games where it takes too long to get to the meat of the action and game play becomes repetitious as threats basically recycle and scale up endlessly.
The main character, who never gets a name, wakes to confusion and an imminent threat. It immediately gave me vibes of SyFy's space adventure series Dark Matter (another victim of the channel's infamously overzealous axe before it could conclude its arc, curse them), making me wonder/hope about whether his memories might be similarly compromised... but, no. Everyone else knows who they are, even if they don't know why they're here, and it's the Admiral who, despite narrating the entire story, is playing games with the reader by deliberately omitting his own past and identity. This little dance routine, perpetually teasing but never revealing like an obnoxious kid playing keep-away on the playground, grows tiresome very fast, even when the author tries to distract by throwing everyone into danger from the start. Forced to overcome their mutual distrust for the sake of mutual survival, the four begin exploring, finding few answers but innumerable new problems, with little to no down time to process each development. The near-constant stress and adrenaline rush also grows tiresome, not helped by characters that feel like stock-bin archetypes (including one who, naturally, starts to fall for the theoretically charming and likely dangerous Admiral, because of course). As for the dangers, there's only so much running around on a derelict ship from one crisis to another, then across a desolate alien landscape doing the same, that can occur before reader burnout sets in, particularly when I started growing indifferent at best to the characters whose survival was on the line. None of this was helped by Danker's efforts to shoehorn in galactic history and politics (which was hindered rather than helped by the Admiral's continued smug refusal to let the reader know who the heck he was) around the edges of the endless dangers piling up on the crew's backs. Eventually, the real face of the danger is revealed (not a huge surprise, really), but even that loses its shock value when it becomes just more and more of the same basic threat, eventually inflated to just plain unbelievable degrees. Then it ends in a way that made much of the effort that went into character building feel pointless, though it does finally answer some questions about the Admiral... even if by then I'd long since stopped caring.
In its favor, the story does not drag its feet (even if it's sometimes running itself in circles), and it more or less delivers exactly what it promises, a sci-fi thriller with nonstop action and "mystery" (if in that subset of the genre where the actual nature of said "mystery" is just a thin veneer of the usual Big Scary Threat in the Dark material where specifics don't really matter so long as there's sufficient action involved in evading death). I just never felt engaged by it, not even in a popcorn-flick way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Scourge Between Stars (Ness Brown) - My Review
Retrograde (Peter Cawdron) - My Review
Beacon 23 (Hugh Howey) - My Review
The Admiral series, Book 1
Sean Danker
Roc
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The moment he wakes on the floor of a derelict spacecraft, surrounded by strangers in Evagardian military uniforms, he knows something has gone terribly wrong... especially when he is informed that he was pulled from a malfunctioning sleeper pod that designated him as an admiral. He is nothing of the sort - and what he really is hardly seems to matter anyway. His three rescuers, green cadets every one, don't belong on this vessel any more than he does; they were en route to assignment on the flagship of the empire, and have no idea how they ended up on this run-down old junker of a freighter. Worse, it seems that something has gone terribly wrong: the power is gone, the engines are dead, the gravity feels strange, and nobody answers the comms. The "Admiral" and his companions of circumstance may not trust one another, but they'll have to band together to figure out what happened if they are to have any hope of surviving, let alone escaping.
REVIEW: Sometimes I'm just in the mood for a straightforward story, so this one, from the description, seemed right up that alley: a small isolated crew facing a mysterious threat, the book equivalent of a popcorn space thriller flick in the vein of numerous Alien knock-offs, which even if it can't come close to the inspiration can at least entertain. But this thriller just does not deliver, playing out less like Alien and more like one of those video games where it takes too long to get to the meat of the action and game play becomes repetitious as threats basically recycle and scale up endlessly.
The main character, who never gets a name, wakes to confusion and an imminent threat. It immediately gave me vibes of SyFy's space adventure series Dark Matter (another victim of the channel's infamously overzealous axe before it could conclude its arc, curse them), making me wonder/hope about whether his memories might be similarly compromised... but, no. Everyone else knows who they are, even if they don't know why they're here, and it's the Admiral who, despite narrating the entire story, is playing games with the reader by deliberately omitting his own past and identity. This little dance routine, perpetually teasing but never revealing like an obnoxious kid playing keep-away on the playground, grows tiresome very fast, even when the author tries to distract by throwing everyone into danger from the start. Forced to overcome their mutual distrust for the sake of mutual survival, the four begin exploring, finding few answers but innumerable new problems, with little to no down time to process each development. The near-constant stress and adrenaline rush also grows tiresome, not helped by characters that feel like stock-bin archetypes (including one who, naturally, starts to fall for the theoretically charming and likely dangerous Admiral, because of course). As for the dangers, there's only so much running around on a derelict ship from one crisis to another, then across a desolate alien landscape doing the same, that can occur before reader burnout sets in, particularly when I started growing indifferent at best to the characters whose survival was on the line. None of this was helped by Danker's efforts to shoehorn in galactic history and politics (which was hindered rather than helped by the Admiral's continued smug refusal to let the reader know who the heck he was) around the edges of the endless dangers piling up on the crew's backs. Eventually, the real face of the danger is revealed (not a huge surprise, really), but even that loses its shock value when it becomes just more and more of the same basic threat, eventually inflated to just plain unbelievable degrees. Then it ends in a way that made much of the effort that went into character building feel pointless, though it does finally answer some questions about the Admiral... even if by then I'd long since stopped caring.
In its favor, the story does not drag its feet (even if it's sometimes running itself in circles), and it more or less delivers exactly what it promises, a sci-fi thriller with nonstop action and "mystery" (if in that subset of the genre where the actual nature of said "mystery" is just a thin veneer of the usual Big Scary Threat in the Dark material where specifics don't really matter so long as there's sufficient action involved in evading death). I just never felt engaged by it, not even in a popcorn-flick way.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Scourge Between Stars (Ness Brown) - My Review
Retrograde (Peter Cawdron) - My Review
Beacon 23 (Hugh Howey) - My Review
Friday, June 13, 2025
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons (Peter S. Beagle)
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons
Peter S. Beagle
Saga Press
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: There is no greater act of heroism than the slaying of a dragon... granted the dragon is one of the great beasts of legend, big enough to devour a horse or man, and the hero is of noble birth. Those who exterminate the smaller pest species, the ones that infest walls and crawl spaces, are considered little better than vermin control - and Robert, recent inheritor of his father's trade, is tired to his bones of it. He hates having to kill dragons, hates seeing them butchered in the dragon markets; he even keeps a few as pets, rescued from traps when he can manage it, and knows full well how intelligent they really are. But, as the main breadwinner of the household now that his father is dead, he can't exactly run away to pursue a more prestigious trade. And it's not like he'll ever have to take on any of the great, legendary species, the ones that haven't been seen in generations and whose slaying would make him an instant celebrity, not in a little kingdom like Bellemontagne. He may be unfortunately talented at extermination, but he's no hero.
Princess Cerise, like all princesses, knows she'll have to marry a prince at some point... but, despite the seemingly-endless stream of candidates riding to the castle, has yet to find any remotely interesting enough to consider. She has other dreams, such as teaching herself to read, and can't be bothered with the dull-witted braggarts strutting around court. Then she meets a handsome stranger, and for the first time finds herself smitten. Only Prince Reginald seems reluctant to actually propose. He left his home in order to prove himself to his father and kingdom through adventure and an act of heroism, and despite his wanderings has yet to so much as rescue a kitten. Before he'll ask for Cerise's hand, he is determined to find and slay a great dragon - a feat that will require a little help from his ever-patient valet Mortmain and the kingdom's best, and most reluctant, exterminator and dragon expert, Robert.
REVIEW: Like many fantasy readers, I read and enjoyed Beagle's classic The Last Unicorn. I also adore dragons. So, crossing Beagle's storytelling and prose with dragons... this should've been a no-brainer of a favorite tale. Unfortunately, while there are several decent elements at play here, I just was not feeling the magic in this story of reluctant dragon slayers and unexpected destinies.
After a prologue that foreshadows a darker danger on the horizon, it opens with solid promise as the reader meets Robert (or Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, his full given name) at home, a dragon exterminator who keeps little dragons as pets in a house full of children and a widowed mother. It's clear he hates his job (even though it's also clear early on that there's a reason that he's needed; unlike rats, a dragon can spit fire and even deliver a venomous bite, so they're hardly a benign presence), and just as clear that he sees no viable way out of following in his late father's footsteps, for all that he seems to feel an empathy for his victims that his father never did. The reader also meets Prince Reginald and Mortmain, the latter increasingly despairing over how the former has yet to fulfill the traditional royal quest of earning heroism and prestige away from home. Reginald, for his part, doesn't even really want to be a hero (or get married, even), and knows that he could slay a thousand dragons without earning the respect, let alone love, of his cruel warlord father. Princess Cerise has taken to treating the selection of a suitor as a job interview of sorts, giving each day's batch a number and an interview (which more often than not sends the would-be fiances packing, though some determined hangers-on linger in the hopes of changing her mind). She would much rather be out in the woods teaching herself to read (though the lower class girls like Robert's sisters are expected to study while the boys are expected to labor or apprentice, apparently royal women are to be kept illiterate, not the only head-scratching bit of contradictory worldbuilding in the tale) than dealing with most of them... especially when her parents can't help but stick their noses into her selection process. Eventually, after some excessive meandering, the characters end up together on the quest to find and slay a large mountain dragon, a journey undertaken reluctantly by Robert, not just because he'd rather not kill dragons if he can help it (and traveling to a wild dragon's domain specifically to kill it, for no other reason than ego, falls well outside that line), but because Cerise's blinding crush on Reginald evokes a kernel of jealousy, for all that he knows full well that lowly exterminators have as much chance of marrying a princess as the vermin-ranked dragons he exterminates. By this point I was, frankly, finding the characters mildly irritating and obtuse, all in their own ways, and was just waiting for the story to really take off - which it does, rather explosively, when what was supposed to be a (relatively) choreographed and routine hunt goes terribly awry. Even after that, though, there's a tendency for things to derail and wander, visiting too many side characters on too many side tangents, not all of which ultimately justify the "screen time" they take from the core trio. (There are also some odd vibes around women that tends to reduce their roles and minimize their efforts, where even Cerise's attempts to help the guys comes across as more a complication or irritation than an asset, and another side character's chief contribution to a relationship was bickering. Why bother including women at all, if that's all they are to a writer, stubborn little girls who need to love a man in order to begin to grow up, and even then are better off sitting to the side of the action?) Even the dragons, while initially interesting, start feeling oddly plot-convenient in the threat level they ultimately present and what they can or cannot (or will or will not) do. The big climax takes far, far too long to unfold and involves some serious handwaving on plausibility, even fantasy-world-with-dragons-and-wizards plausibility. By the end, I was thinking that Robert and his world's many dragon species ultimately felt a little too much like a muddled reworking of Hiccup and the dragons of Berk from the animated How to Train Your Dragon trilogy.
I liked some parts of this book; some of the descriptions were effective, and Robert's early conflicts over admiring and empathizing with the creatures he is obligated to exterminate, that nobody else sees as anything but scaly rats, has a lot of promise. But somehow I lost track of that promise and that spark as the story went on, a feeling that wasn't helped by the audiobook narration.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green) - My Review
Domesticating Dragons (Dan Koboldt) - My Review
Peter S. Beagle
Saga Press
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: There is no greater act of heroism than the slaying of a dragon... granted the dragon is one of the great beasts of legend, big enough to devour a horse or man, and the hero is of noble birth. Those who exterminate the smaller pest species, the ones that infest walls and crawl spaces, are considered little better than vermin control - and Robert, recent inheritor of his father's trade, is tired to his bones of it. He hates having to kill dragons, hates seeing them butchered in the dragon markets; he even keeps a few as pets, rescued from traps when he can manage it, and knows full well how intelligent they really are. But, as the main breadwinner of the household now that his father is dead, he can't exactly run away to pursue a more prestigious trade. And it's not like he'll ever have to take on any of the great, legendary species, the ones that haven't been seen in generations and whose slaying would make him an instant celebrity, not in a little kingdom like Bellemontagne. He may be unfortunately talented at extermination, but he's no hero.
Princess Cerise, like all princesses, knows she'll have to marry a prince at some point... but, despite the seemingly-endless stream of candidates riding to the castle, has yet to find any remotely interesting enough to consider. She has other dreams, such as teaching herself to read, and can't be bothered with the dull-witted braggarts strutting around court. Then she meets a handsome stranger, and for the first time finds herself smitten. Only Prince Reginald seems reluctant to actually propose. He left his home in order to prove himself to his father and kingdom through adventure and an act of heroism, and despite his wanderings has yet to so much as rescue a kitten. Before he'll ask for Cerise's hand, he is determined to find and slay a great dragon - a feat that will require a little help from his ever-patient valet Mortmain and the kingdom's best, and most reluctant, exterminator and dragon expert, Robert.
REVIEW: Like many fantasy readers, I read and enjoyed Beagle's classic The Last Unicorn. I also adore dragons. So, crossing Beagle's storytelling and prose with dragons... this should've been a no-brainer of a favorite tale. Unfortunately, while there are several decent elements at play here, I just was not feeling the magic in this story of reluctant dragon slayers and unexpected destinies.
After a prologue that foreshadows a darker danger on the horizon, it opens with solid promise as the reader meets Robert (or Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, his full given name) at home, a dragon exterminator who keeps little dragons as pets in a house full of children and a widowed mother. It's clear he hates his job (even though it's also clear early on that there's a reason that he's needed; unlike rats, a dragon can spit fire and even deliver a venomous bite, so they're hardly a benign presence), and just as clear that he sees no viable way out of following in his late father's footsteps, for all that he seems to feel an empathy for his victims that his father never did. The reader also meets Prince Reginald and Mortmain, the latter increasingly despairing over how the former has yet to fulfill the traditional royal quest of earning heroism and prestige away from home. Reginald, for his part, doesn't even really want to be a hero (or get married, even), and knows that he could slay a thousand dragons without earning the respect, let alone love, of his cruel warlord father. Princess Cerise has taken to treating the selection of a suitor as a job interview of sorts, giving each day's batch a number and an interview (which more often than not sends the would-be fiances packing, though some determined hangers-on linger in the hopes of changing her mind). She would much rather be out in the woods teaching herself to read (though the lower class girls like Robert's sisters are expected to study while the boys are expected to labor or apprentice, apparently royal women are to be kept illiterate, not the only head-scratching bit of contradictory worldbuilding in the tale) than dealing with most of them... especially when her parents can't help but stick their noses into her selection process. Eventually, after some excessive meandering, the characters end up together on the quest to find and slay a large mountain dragon, a journey undertaken reluctantly by Robert, not just because he'd rather not kill dragons if he can help it (and traveling to a wild dragon's domain specifically to kill it, for no other reason than ego, falls well outside that line), but because Cerise's blinding crush on Reginald evokes a kernel of jealousy, for all that he knows full well that lowly exterminators have as much chance of marrying a princess as the vermin-ranked dragons he exterminates. By this point I was, frankly, finding the characters mildly irritating and obtuse, all in their own ways, and was just waiting for the story to really take off - which it does, rather explosively, when what was supposed to be a (relatively) choreographed and routine hunt goes terribly awry. Even after that, though, there's a tendency for things to derail and wander, visiting too many side characters on too many side tangents, not all of which ultimately justify the "screen time" they take from the core trio. (There are also some odd vibes around women that tends to reduce their roles and minimize their efforts, where even Cerise's attempts to help the guys comes across as more a complication or irritation than an asset, and another side character's chief contribution to a relationship was bickering. Why bother including women at all, if that's all they are to a writer, stubborn little girls who need to love a man in order to begin to grow up, and even then are better off sitting to the side of the action?) Even the dragons, while initially interesting, start feeling oddly plot-convenient in the threat level they ultimately present and what they can or cannot (or will or will not) do. The big climax takes far, far too long to unfold and involves some serious handwaving on plausibility, even fantasy-world-with-dragons-and-wizards plausibility. By the end, I was thinking that Robert and his world's many dragon species ultimately felt a little too much like a muddled reworking of Hiccup and the dragons of Berk from the animated How to Train Your Dragon trilogy.
I liked some parts of this book; some of the descriptions were effective, and Robert's early conflicts over admiring and empathizing with the creatures he is obligated to exterminate, that nobody else sees as anything but scaly rats, has a lot of promise. But somehow I lost track of that promise and that spark as the story went on, a feeling that wasn't helped by the audiobook narration.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Blue Moon Rising (Simon R. Green) - My Review
Domesticating Dragons (Dan Koboldt) - My Review
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Riot Baby (Tochi Onyebuchi)
Riot Baby
Tochi Onyebuchi
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Young Ella Jackson's always had odd ways about her, which she calls her Thing - which is how she knows that the day her baby brother is going to be born that there is going to be trouble in Los Angeles. She sees it, the same way she sees the hidden lives and eventual fates of passersby on the street, but she can do nothing to stop it. At least, not yet...
Kevin, or "Kev", was a bright boy growing up in Harlem, where the Jacksons moved after the Los Angeles riots in 1992. His sister's Thing is growing more powerful, consuming more and more of her and placing a greater burden on their overworked single mother. They're not just visions and nosebleeds anymore, but fits that fling objects around the room and even hurt anyone nearby. Maybe his bright mind can use science to understand it someday, and help everyone. But it's almost impossible to grow up in their neighborhood and not be pulled into problems, especially as algorithmically-driven police practices lead to more and more kids and teens landing in cuffs daily. Sure enough, by the time he's eighteen, Kevin is behind bars.
After disappearing for several years, Ella is slowly mastering her ever-growing Thing. She starts to visit her brother, in person and via astral projection, even as the system that sent him to jail and crushed so many non-white lives continues to grow stronger and more invulnerable to change and protest. Something has to change, and soon - and maybe the Jacksons are the ones to start it.
REVIEW: This 2020 novella was clearly a direct response to growing protests and demands for accountability on the disproportionate incarceration rates, assaults, and deaths of non-white people at the hands of law enforcement, and how all the petitions and demands and rage and calls for regulation ultimately seem incapable of stopping a system where the racism and violence are evidently essential components, considered features and not bugs to those with the actual power to change things. (See also: how things are going in June 2025...) It embodies a sense of anger and frustration, asking what it will take to truly end the suffering and the increasing spread of the police state into every aspect of existence.
It starts with Ella as a girl getting glimpses of the future, where a neighbor's infant boy won't live past the age of ten thanks to random gang violence and where the failure to convict the cops who beat up Rodney King are about to ignite the powder keg of rage running through the streets, a rage with roots running back through America's history of segregation and centuries of justice perverted and denied and promises of a better future forever deferred. That Kev was born on such a violent day is an omen of sorts, though whether that omen is good or bad depends on one's point of view. At first, the boy looks to be a bright star in his community, a leader who might effect peaceful change, but all too soon the unrest and injustice that sparked the Los Angeles riots in 1992 manifest in their new home. Ella, her "Thing" growing more unstable with her own growing frustration and anger, disappears to spare her family from powers she cannot yet control - leaving Kev without a big sister as he grows from an idealistic boy into a young man who becomes another victim of a society that seems designed to drive him and those like him straight into a prison cell. As he learns to survive in this new reality, he begins showing hints of his own powers, particularly after Ella reaches out to him after years away... yet, still, Kev has some faint hope that he can someday escape the brand of convict and find peace and freedom and the better future everyone tells him he'll have someday. Meanwhile, Ella undergoes her own journey to understand her Thing, which becomes entwined with understanding her mother's struggles and crushed dreams and the overall anger simmering underneath the Black communities, and perhaps a reason she was gifted with the Thing. Around the edges are hints of how technology is evolving to crush people with even more ruthlessness, with an even greater reach and ultimate control over a populace with fewer and fewer ways to resist. It builds to a moment of decision where the Jackson siblings must choose which future to pursue, and how much they are willing to sacrifice to get there.
For a novella, there are a few places that felt unfocused and meandering, but on the whole it's a strong, sometimes devastating exploration of the harm wrought by the current system and the need for tangible change beyond soundbites and slogans and vague hopes that if one just plays along and is polite enough that things will get better in a never-to-be-reached "someday" beyond the horizon.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi) - My Review
War Girls (Tochi Onyebuchi) - My Review
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - My Review
Tochi Onyebuchi
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Young Ella Jackson's always had odd ways about her, which she calls her Thing - which is how she knows that the day her baby brother is going to be born that there is going to be trouble in Los Angeles. She sees it, the same way she sees the hidden lives and eventual fates of passersby on the street, but she can do nothing to stop it. At least, not yet...
Kevin, or "Kev", was a bright boy growing up in Harlem, where the Jacksons moved after the Los Angeles riots in 1992. His sister's Thing is growing more powerful, consuming more and more of her and placing a greater burden on their overworked single mother. They're not just visions and nosebleeds anymore, but fits that fling objects around the room and even hurt anyone nearby. Maybe his bright mind can use science to understand it someday, and help everyone. But it's almost impossible to grow up in their neighborhood and not be pulled into problems, especially as algorithmically-driven police practices lead to more and more kids and teens landing in cuffs daily. Sure enough, by the time he's eighteen, Kevin is behind bars.
After disappearing for several years, Ella is slowly mastering her ever-growing Thing. She starts to visit her brother, in person and via astral projection, even as the system that sent him to jail and crushed so many non-white lives continues to grow stronger and more invulnerable to change and protest. Something has to change, and soon - and maybe the Jacksons are the ones to start it.
REVIEW: This 2020 novella was clearly a direct response to growing protests and demands for accountability on the disproportionate incarceration rates, assaults, and deaths of non-white people at the hands of law enforcement, and how all the petitions and demands and rage and calls for regulation ultimately seem incapable of stopping a system where the racism and violence are evidently essential components, considered features and not bugs to those with the actual power to change things. (See also: how things are going in June 2025...) It embodies a sense of anger and frustration, asking what it will take to truly end the suffering and the increasing spread of the police state into every aspect of existence.
It starts with Ella as a girl getting glimpses of the future, where a neighbor's infant boy won't live past the age of ten thanks to random gang violence and where the failure to convict the cops who beat up Rodney King are about to ignite the powder keg of rage running through the streets, a rage with roots running back through America's history of segregation and centuries of justice perverted and denied and promises of a better future forever deferred. That Kev was born on such a violent day is an omen of sorts, though whether that omen is good or bad depends on one's point of view. At first, the boy looks to be a bright star in his community, a leader who might effect peaceful change, but all too soon the unrest and injustice that sparked the Los Angeles riots in 1992 manifest in their new home. Ella, her "Thing" growing more unstable with her own growing frustration and anger, disappears to spare her family from powers she cannot yet control - leaving Kev without a big sister as he grows from an idealistic boy into a young man who becomes another victim of a society that seems designed to drive him and those like him straight into a prison cell. As he learns to survive in this new reality, he begins showing hints of his own powers, particularly after Ella reaches out to him after years away... yet, still, Kev has some faint hope that he can someday escape the brand of convict and find peace and freedom and the better future everyone tells him he'll have someday. Meanwhile, Ella undergoes her own journey to understand her Thing, which becomes entwined with understanding her mother's struggles and crushed dreams and the overall anger simmering underneath the Black communities, and perhaps a reason she was gifted with the Thing. Around the edges are hints of how technology is evolving to crush people with even more ruthlessness, with an even greater reach and ultimate control over a populace with fewer and fewer ways to resist. It builds to a moment of decision where the Jackson siblings must choose which future to pursue, and how much they are willing to sacrifice to get there.
For a novella, there are a few places that felt unfocused and meandering, but on the whole it's a strong, sometimes devastating exploration of the harm wrought by the current system and the need for tangible change beyond soundbites and slogans and vague hopes that if one just plays along and is polite enough that things will get better in a never-to-be-reached "someday" beyond the horizon.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi) - My Review
War Girls (Tochi Onyebuchi) - My Review
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - My Review
Friday, June 6, 2025
The Sword-Edged Blonde (Alex Bledsoe)
The Sword-Edged Blonde
The Eddie LaCrosse series, Book 1
Alex Bledsoe
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Eddie LaCrosse wasn't always a sword-jockey for hire out of a mudhole of a town on the outskirts of nowhere, but there's a reason he turned his back on his home and history. Now, he's content to slide past his prime years working out of his little office above a tavern, solving problems for clients at a rate of 25 gold pieces a day (plus expenses). He's on the trail of a missing princess who had reputedly fallen in with a rough crowd when Eddie is approached by a stranger with ties to his past, bearing an invitation he can't refuse.
Phil was Eddie's best friend when one was just a crown prince and the other a son of a baron - but Eddie walked away from that life after a tragedy shattered their world. Now a king, Phil reaches out to his old friend with a desperate request. His wife, Queen Rhiannon, has been accused of a gruesome crime that reeks of dark magic, one that claimed the life of their infant son. But Phil cannot believe that she did it. He begs Eddie to investigate and find out what happened, and why. Little does the sword-jockey suspect just what a dark and winding road this investigation will take him down, one that leads back to the horrors of his own past and traumas he has done his best to forget, but which fester to this day.
REVIEW: Part fantasy, part mystery, The Sword-Edged Blonde strikes a balance between two genres in a story that sometimes feels a little too throwback for its own good. Eddie LaCrosse is somewhere between a private investigator and sword for hire, haunted by a traumatic past, though he still retains enough of a moral compass to sometimes bend the parameters of his jobs in the name of greater justice. The world he inhabits is fairly standard old-school fantasy fare, with fractious kingdoms and seedy taverns and winding back alleys and the glint of blades in the night, if with no actual magic... at least, not at first. Eddie himself doesn't actually believe in magic or the land's numerous gods - or that's what he tells himself, despite some peculiar instances in his past. It hardly needs to be mentioned that, by taking the job of clearing the queen's name on behalf of his childhood friend, Eddie is forced to confront that past and face truths he'd rather not admit to himself. The investigation is at least as much about flashbacks and his own personal history as it is about following a tricky trail of clues and hunches deep into society's darkest corners, starting with the mysterious and unknown origins of Queen Rhiannon and why someone would potentially frame her for murder. Along the way (past and present), he deals with various characters of often-questionable motives and morality... and more than one woman who falls into tired stereotyped roles; even though Eddie claims to be not particularly sex-driven, he can't seem to help evaluating females by attractiveness, and they seem prone to finding him alluring. Skirting spoilers, there is a certain preternatural element that, despite Eddie's denials, becomes more prevalent and harder to dismiss as the tale unwinds, seemingly centered around Eddie in particular. After numerous setbacks and beatdowns, he finally wends his way to the culprit and unravels the mystery. For the most part, it works, though I admit to being subtly irritated by the prevalence of "male gaze", even on the supposedly strong women Eddie encounters. That, and a sense that one or two elements of the wrap-up felt a little out of nowhere (and one or two other elements felt underexplored), were just enough to hold it back in the ratings, but only barely.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jhereg (Stephen Brust) - My Review
Fanuihl (Daniel Hood) - My Review
First Watch (Dale Lucas) - My Review
The Eddie LaCrosse series, Book 1
Alex Bledsoe
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Eddie LaCrosse wasn't always a sword-jockey for hire out of a mudhole of a town on the outskirts of nowhere, but there's a reason he turned his back on his home and history. Now, he's content to slide past his prime years working out of his little office above a tavern, solving problems for clients at a rate of 25 gold pieces a day (plus expenses). He's on the trail of a missing princess who had reputedly fallen in with a rough crowd when Eddie is approached by a stranger with ties to his past, bearing an invitation he can't refuse.
Phil was Eddie's best friend when one was just a crown prince and the other a son of a baron - but Eddie walked away from that life after a tragedy shattered their world. Now a king, Phil reaches out to his old friend with a desperate request. His wife, Queen Rhiannon, has been accused of a gruesome crime that reeks of dark magic, one that claimed the life of their infant son. But Phil cannot believe that she did it. He begs Eddie to investigate and find out what happened, and why. Little does the sword-jockey suspect just what a dark and winding road this investigation will take him down, one that leads back to the horrors of his own past and traumas he has done his best to forget, but which fester to this day.
REVIEW: Part fantasy, part mystery, The Sword-Edged Blonde strikes a balance between two genres in a story that sometimes feels a little too throwback for its own good. Eddie LaCrosse is somewhere between a private investigator and sword for hire, haunted by a traumatic past, though he still retains enough of a moral compass to sometimes bend the parameters of his jobs in the name of greater justice. The world he inhabits is fairly standard old-school fantasy fare, with fractious kingdoms and seedy taverns and winding back alleys and the glint of blades in the night, if with no actual magic... at least, not at first. Eddie himself doesn't actually believe in magic or the land's numerous gods - or that's what he tells himself, despite some peculiar instances in his past. It hardly needs to be mentioned that, by taking the job of clearing the queen's name on behalf of his childhood friend, Eddie is forced to confront that past and face truths he'd rather not admit to himself. The investigation is at least as much about flashbacks and his own personal history as it is about following a tricky trail of clues and hunches deep into society's darkest corners, starting with the mysterious and unknown origins of Queen Rhiannon and why someone would potentially frame her for murder. Along the way (past and present), he deals with various characters of often-questionable motives and morality... and more than one woman who falls into tired stereotyped roles; even though Eddie claims to be not particularly sex-driven, he can't seem to help evaluating females by attractiveness, and they seem prone to finding him alluring. Skirting spoilers, there is a certain preternatural element that, despite Eddie's denials, becomes more prevalent and harder to dismiss as the tale unwinds, seemingly centered around Eddie in particular. After numerous setbacks and beatdowns, he finally wends his way to the culprit and unravels the mystery. For the most part, it works, though I admit to being subtly irritated by the prevalence of "male gaze", even on the supposedly strong women Eddie encounters. That, and a sense that one or two elements of the wrap-up felt a little out of nowhere (and one or two other elements felt underexplored), were just enough to hold it back in the ratings, but only barely.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jhereg (Stephen Brust) - My Review
Fanuihl (Daniel Hood) - My Review
First Watch (Dale Lucas) - My Review
The Dying of the Light (Derek Landy)
The Dying of the Light
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 9
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: For some time, the Irish teen Valkyrie Cain has known that she might be responsible for the end of the world. Somewhere in her own mind resides Darquesse, an unimaginably powerful and unimaginably amoral sorceress, predicted to destroy Earth and everything on it... and, no matter how she and her friend and mentor Skulduggery Pleasant try, the clairvoyants' premonitions remain the same. After the war between the Sanctuaries and the attack of the warlocks, the worst has come to pass, and Valkyrie's dark self has taken full control of her body and her powers.
Stephanie was once nothing but an unthinking reflection, a simulacrum used to cover for Valkyrie's increasingly-frequent absences from her mundane home and mundane family, but somewhere along the way it developed a glitch, becoming an independent being determined to take over the ordinary life that Valkyrie seemed so willing to toss away in pursuit of the more exciting world of magic. But it - she - has enough of Valkyrie's personality and training to not be able to turn her back on a world in need of saving, even helping defend the magical city of Roarhaven from Darquesse's attack. She may have no soul or powers of her own (save a god-killing weapon bonded to her through blood), but she's determined to do what she can to help Skulduggery and the others fight back, even if it means killing the original Valkyrie Cain.
The final showdown is coming...
REVIEW: The ninth installment of the Skulduggery Pleasant series wraps up the Darquesse storyline in characteristically explosive fashion, ratcheting up the already-high stakes with nearly every chapter while running a parallel story whose connection isn't clear until later on. With Valkyrie out of the picture, subsumed into her subconscious by Darquesse, the reflection Stephanie must step up to heroism, even as Skulduggery and others remain a little unsure how to react to her (especially given the actions she took to gain her independence; like Valkyrie, Stephanie is willing to go to extreme measures to get what she wants). Even she doubts herself at times, lacking Valkyrie's magic and deep-rooted recklessness; unlike the original girl, the reflection has no desire to be a hero or live an exciting life, more than happy to be the ordinary Irish girl with her ordinary family who looks forward to an ordinary life. Unfortunately, to get to that ordinary future (and to ensure said future is even going to exist), she has to navigate the hazards of the magical world and a threat that even Valkyrie failed to defeat. Meanwhile, Darquesse plots her rise and revenge, gathering some powerful allies (or rather tools of convenience, as the dark sorceress hardly considers other beings, even sorcerers, as anything like her peers)... some of whom begin to have their doubts. Twists and turns aplenty await, as well as numerous betrayals and other surprises, not to mention the return of several familiar faces. Several times I encountered what I was sure was going to be the finale, because there was no way Landy could kick things even higher, only to realize the book wasn't even half over and there was still a long, wild stretch of the roller coaster ahead. Not everyone makes it to the end, and there are many sacrifices on the way to a conclusion that marks a major transition in the greater series. I'm still enjoying this series immensely, and look forward to what comes next.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Casting Shadows (J. Kelley Anderson) - My Review
Skulduggery Pleasant (Derek Landy) - My Review
Nevermoor (Jessica Townsend) - My Review
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 9
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: For some time, the Irish teen Valkyrie Cain has known that she might be responsible for the end of the world. Somewhere in her own mind resides Darquesse, an unimaginably powerful and unimaginably amoral sorceress, predicted to destroy Earth and everything on it... and, no matter how she and her friend and mentor Skulduggery Pleasant try, the clairvoyants' premonitions remain the same. After the war between the Sanctuaries and the attack of the warlocks, the worst has come to pass, and Valkyrie's dark self has taken full control of her body and her powers.
Stephanie was once nothing but an unthinking reflection, a simulacrum used to cover for Valkyrie's increasingly-frequent absences from her mundane home and mundane family, but somewhere along the way it developed a glitch, becoming an independent being determined to take over the ordinary life that Valkyrie seemed so willing to toss away in pursuit of the more exciting world of magic. But it - she - has enough of Valkyrie's personality and training to not be able to turn her back on a world in need of saving, even helping defend the magical city of Roarhaven from Darquesse's attack. She may have no soul or powers of her own (save a god-killing weapon bonded to her through blood), but she's determined to do what she can to help Skulduggery and the others fight back, even if it means killing the original Valkyrie Cain.
The final showdown is coming...
REVIEW: The ninth installment of the Skulduggery Pleasant series wraps up the Darquesse storyline in characteristically explosive fashion, ratcheting up the already-high stakes with nearly every chapter while running a parallel story whose connection isn't clear until later on. With Valkyrie out of the picture, subsumed into her subconscious by Darquesse, the reflection Stephanie must step up to heroism, even as Skulduggery and others remain a little unsure how to react to her (especially given the actions she took to gain her independence; like Valkyrie, Stephanie is willing to go to extreme measures to get what she wants). Even she doubts herself at times, lacking Valkyrie's magic and deep-rooted recklessness; unlike the original girl, the reflection has no desire to be a hero or live an exciting life, more than happy to be the ordinary Irish girl with her ordinary family who looks forward to an ordinary life. Unfortunately, to get to that ordinary future (and to ensure said future is even going to exist), she has to navigate the hazards of the magical world and a threat that even Valkyrie failed to defeat. Meanwhile, Darquesse plots her rise and revenge, gathering some powerful allies (or rather tools of convenience, as the dark sorceress hardly considers other beings, even sorcerers, as anything like her peers)... some of whom begin to have their doubts. Twists and turns aplenty await, as well as numerous betrayals and other surprises, not to mention the return of several familiar faces. Several times I encountered what I was sure was going to be the finale, because there was no way Landy could kick things even higher, only to realize the book wasn't even half over and there was still a long, wild stretch of the roller coaster ahead. Not everyone makes it to the end, and there are many sacrifices on the way to a conclusion that marks a major transition in the greater series. I'm still enjoying this series immensely, and look forward to what comes next.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Casting Shadows (J. Kelley Anderson) - My Review
Skulduggery Pleasant (Derek Landy) - My Review
Nevermoor (Jessica Townsend) - My Review
Sunday, June 1, 2025
(Delayed) May Update
Another month of All The Things coming together in a bad way, with no end in sight to Things pilin' on... Anyway, May's reviews are now archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, May 30, 2025
Dragon Champion (E. E. Knight)
Dragon Champion
The Age of Fire series, Book 1
E. E. Knight
Tantor Audio
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Deep under the mountain, under the loving and watchful eye of a green dragonelle, five eggs hatched - but, within minutes, driven by instinctive male rivalry, one would be dead, another crippled and pushed from the egg shelf. The Gray male emerged victorious, against all odds. Grays are usually not expected to survive in mixed clutches; they are unusual dragons, lacking the heavy protective scales of the other dragon colors, but making up for the deficiency with greater speed and stealth, all of which young Auron will need.
The world is no longer a good place for dragons. The humanoid species who once looked to them for protection from dark, marauding blighters now take up arms against them, and every year fewer wings can be seen in the skies above the world. When dwarven raiders at last find the hatchlings' sanctuary, only Auron and one of his sisters escape the slaughter, both too young to have their flames, let alone their wings - and before long he and Wistala are forced to separate. Thus begins the journey of the Gray drake, a journey that will take him to the far corners of the land, often in strange company and confronting stranger enemies, searching for a way to save his kind from extinction.
REVIEW: Told from the perspective of dragons in a fantasy world that has long regarded them as monsters, Dragon Champion draws clear influence from old-school yarns like The Hobbit and Watership Down... not always in good ways. Like those stories, it creates a sprawling world of various races and species who mingle and clash, wading into legends and lore and poetry (and occasional attempts at archaic language) and conflicting accounts of history - and, like those stories, it seems more than happy to relegate all females of all cultures and species to subordinate roles barely a step above inanimate objects (with so few exceptions that one can count them on the fingers of one hand with multiple leftovers, and even those characters are often undermined by ultimately desiring nothing but to be wives and mothers), to the point where I sometimes wondered if the original target audience was young boys still at the "girls have icky girl germs" stage.
The tale starts with some promise (if with the "no girls allowed" club sign already prominent), with the eventful hatching and struggle among the three males, introducing the dragon world as one red in tooth and claw from the first breaths outside their shells - at least for the males, who are the only ones with remotely interesting or distinct personalities. Even though Auron is a gray, scaleless (though more than once descriptions mention scales on him) and considered weak by some, his parents are proud of his unexpected dominance over both Copper and a Red brothers (girls are all greens, because heavens forfend there be anything like variety among females) - though the former is merely wounded, left to fend for himself in the crevices and cracks in the cavern corners. Scaleless he may be, but he's expected to make up for it by being quick and clever. After some dithering and further worldbuilding and dragon lore, outsiders turn up to shatter Auron's peaceful (by dragon standards) world, leaving only Auron and his sister Wistala - both too young to breathe fire or fly, with only the stories of their parents and mental images passed on from parent to child (which include some ancestral memories, sometimes; there's some plot convenience over what can and cannot be passed along mind-to-mind). Here, Wistala surprises Auron by actually being useful as they struggle to hunt and survive in the harsh world outside the caverns, while still being pursued by the humanoid hunters who destroyed their home. Maybe she will turn out to be a worthy companion and a challenge to traditional dragon roles, where females are often considered little but things to mate with and raise eggs? Not so fast; it isn't long before they split up and Auron finds himself captured by elves and dwarves. It is the first of many encounters that will shape the young drake, showing him the bad and the good of the world, in adventures that can sometimes feel clunky and forced to impart some particular wisdom or lesson upon the Gray before shoving him along to the next thing. He soon learns that not only are dragons increasingly endangered in this world, but that there may be some innate flaw in his kind being exploited by their many enemies - a flaw that one aged black dragon (who may or may not still be alive) could teach him about. Meanwhile, a threat to all intelligent beings arises in the form of a human "mage" and his fanatical drive for racial purity, a somewhat heavy-handed baddie repeating real-world xenophobic talking points in a way that many adult readers would likely roll their eyes at for being overused. Eventually, Auron's quest to save his species inevitably must run head-first into the larger threat to the world... but not before numerous side-tracks and violent, gory encounters engineered for maximum violence and gore, and some creepy moments where a maturing but lonely drake begins feeling inappropriate urges toward a human girl he helped raise after she was orphaned. (Because not only are female dragons regarded as little but mates and mothers by male dragons, but females of any species are evidently lumped into the same category...) None of this was helped by the audiobook presentation, and a narrator who, by choice or direction, made some... unusual vocal choices when voicing the characters. His efforts to make wolves howling announcements - how they communicate between packs across long distances - sound like cliché howls in particular almost made me give up on this audiobook, yet another oddly juvenile signal in a book that does not seem to have been marketed as a juvenile read and which contained content that doesn't seem to track with juvenile books, yet which always feels a step away (at most) from being a boy's adventure tale.
There are, in truth, some interesting ideas and some solid potential in Dragon Champion. Despite some anachronisms in what Auron did and did not understand about the greater world, the dragons here are beings of fire and flight and fury, often to their own detriment, and each of the species have inherent flaws that contribute to the overall chaotic, unraveling state of things. Unfortunately, the story keeps tripping itself up by being too retro in the wrong ways, offering the sheen of classic epic fantasies without the sense of solid foundation or depth, with a main character who has a way of coming across as a plot-shaped object and whom I ultimately never quite cared about, in a world that kept reminding me that, as a female reader, I really wasn't that welcome on its adventures anyway.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
Dragoncharm (Graham Edwards) - My Review
Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy (Tui T. Sutherland) - My Review
The Age of Fire series, Book 1
E. E. Knight
Tantor Audio
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Deep under the mountain, under the loving and watchful eye of a green dragonelle, five eggs hatched - but, within minutes, driven by instinctive male rivalry, one would be dead, another crippled and pushed from the egg shelf. The Gray male emerged victorious, against all odds. Grays are usually not expected to survive in mixed clutches; they are unusual dragons, lacking the heavy protective scales of the other dragon colors, but making up for the deficiency with greater speed and stealth, all of which young Auron will need.
The world is no longer a good place for dragons. The humanoid species who once looked to them for protection from dark, marauding blighters now take up arms against them, and every year fewer wings can be seen in the skies above the world. When dwarven raiders at last find the hatchlings' sanctuary, only Auron and one of his sisters escape the slaughter, both too young to have their flames, let alone their wings - and before long he and Wistala are forced to separate. Thus begins the journey of the Gray drake, a journey that will take him to the far corners of the land, often in strange company and confronting stranger enemies, searching for a way to save his kind from extinction.
REVIEW: Told from the perspective of dragons in a fantasy world that has long regarded them as monsters, Dragon Champion draws clear influence from old-school yarns like The Hobbit and Watership Down... not always in good ways. Like those stories, it creates a sprawling world of various races and species who mingle and clash, wading into legends and lore and poetry (and occasional attempts at archaic language) and conflicting accounts of history - and, like those stories, it seems more than happy to relegate all females of all cultures and species to subordinate roles barely a step above inanimate objects (with so few exceptions that one can count them on the fingers of one hand with multiple leftovers, and even those characters are often undermined by ultimately desiring nothing but to be wives and mothers), to the point where I sometimes wondered if the original target audience was young boys still at the "girls have icky girl germs" stage.
The tale starts with some promise (if with the "no girls allowed" club sign already prominent), with the eventful hatching and struggle among the three males, introducing the dragon world as one red in tooth and claw from the first breaths outside their shells - at least for the males, who are the only ones with remotely interesting or distinct personalities. Even though Auron is a gray, scaleless (though more than once descriptions mention scales on him) and considered weak by some, his parents are proud of his unexpected dominance over both Copper and a Red brothers (girls are all greens, because heavens forfend there be anything like variety among females) - though the former is merely wounded, left to fend for himself in the crevices and cracks in the cavern corners. Scaleless he may be, but he's expected to make up for it by being quick and clever. After some dithering and further worldbuilding and dragon lore, outsiders turn up to shatter Auron's peaceful (by dragon standards) world, leaving only Auron and his sister Wistala - both too young to breathe fire or fly, with only the stories of their parents and mental images passed on from parent to child (which include some ancestral memories, sometimes; there's some plot convenience over what can and cannot be passed along mind-to-mind). Here, Wistala surprises Auron by actually being useful as they struggle to hunt and survive in the harsh world outside the caverns, while still being pursued by the humanoid hunters who destroyed their home. Maybe she will turn out to be a worthy companion and a challenge to traditional dragon roles, where females are often considered little but things to mate with and raise eggs? Not so fast; it isn't long before they split up and Auron finds himself captured by elves and dwarves. It is the first of many encounters that will shape the young drake, showing him the bad and the good of the world, in adventures that can sometimes feel clunky and forced to impart some particular wisdom or lesson upon the Gray before shoving him along to the next thing. He soon learns that not only are dragons increasingly endangered in this world, but that there may be some innate flaw in his kind being exploited by their many enemies - a flaw that one aged black dragon (who may or may not still be alive) could teach him about. Meanwhile, a threat to all intelligent beings arises in the form of a human "mage" and his fanatical drive for racial purity, a somewhat heavy-handed baddie repeating real-world xenophobic talking points in a way that many adult readers would likely roll their eyes at for being overused. Eventually, Auron's quest to save his species inevitably must run head-first into the larger threat to the world... but not before numerous side-tracks and violent, gory encounters engineered for maximum violence and gore, and some creepy moments where a maturing but lonely drake begins feeling inappropriate urges toward a human girl he helped raise after she was orphaned. (Because not only are female dragons regarded as little but mates and mothers by male dragons, but females of any species are evidently lumped into the same category...) None of this was helped by the audiobook presentation, and a narrator who, by choice or direction, made some... unusual vocal choices when voicing the characters. His efforts to make wolves howling announcements - how they communicate between packs across long distances - sound like cliché howls in particular almost made me give up on this audiobook, yet another oddly juvenile signal in a book that does not seem to have been marketed as a juvenile read and which contained content that doesn't seem to track with juvenile books, yet which always feels a step away (at most) from being a boy's adventure tale.
There are, in truth, some interesting ideas and some solid potential in Dragon Champion. Despite some anachronisms in what Auron did and did not understand about the greater world, the dragons here are beings of fire and flight and fury, often to their own detriment, and each of the species have inherent flaws that contribute to the overall chaotic, unraveling state of things. Unfortunately, the story keeps tripping itself up by being too retro in the wrong ways, offering the sheen of classic epic fantasies without the sense of solid foundation or depth, with a main character who has a way of coming across as a plot-shaped object and whom I ultimately never quite cared about, in a world that kept reminding me that, as a female reader, I really wasn't that welcome on its adventures anyway.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
Dragoncharm (Graham Edwards) - My Review
Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy (Tui T. Sutherland) - My Review
Thursday, May 29, 2025
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Ballantine Books
Nonfiction, Autobiography
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Long before she became known internationally for her poetry and civil rights activism (among other accomplishments), Maya Angelou was a young girl sent far away from her mother, to live in the segregated town of Stamps, Alabama with her grandmother and disabled uncle. Here, in Mama's store, with only her brother Bailey as confidant, she would learn lessons that would shape her later life.
REVIEW: I'm sufficiently ignorant and unsophisticated to only have a passing familiarity with Angelou and her works; this audiobook was another part of my admittedly-haphazard effort to patch over the innumerable knowledge holes in my brain. Given the direction of recent events, where books like this are being challenged and removed from too many public spaces (anyone who plays semantics Twister to pretend that's not actually "banning" books or throttling the spread of ideas can kindly find another book review blog to follow, thanks), I figured it was high time to try it. Displaying a poet's ability to deeply and vividly evoke a time and place and life, Angelou weaves stories of her childhood, stretching from Jim Crow Alabama to St. Louis and California as she and her brother move between homes and relatives. Along the way, she has memorable encounters with colorful characters, while also experiencing the dark, twisted legacy of racism and classism (and sexism) in their innumerable guises, plus some personal traumas. Alongside the pain and despair and rage, she also experiences moments of hope and solidarity and beauty, the many threads and experiences coming together as she grows up and begins to build a future for herself that challenges the boundaries others would put around her. It makes for an interesting, inspiring, if sometimes depressing and harsh, read... and the fact that so many in 2025 still actively seek to shut books like this away, along with the questions it forces one to ask of oneself and the things it forces one to see about the world around us, is all one needs to know about how far America has failed to progress since Angelou's youth.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) - My Review
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi) - My Review
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - My Review
Maya Angelou
Ballantine Books
Nonfiction, Autobiography
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Long before she became known internationally for her poetry and civil rights activism (among other accomplishments), Maya Angelou was a young girl sent far away from her mother, to live in the segregated town of Stamps, Alabama with her grandmother and disabled uncle. Here, in Mama's store, with only her brother Bailey as confidant, she would learn lessons that would shape her later life.
REVIEW: I'm sufficiently ignorant and unsophisticated to only have a passing familiarity with Angelou and her works; this audiobook was another part of my admittedly-haphazard effort to patch over the innumerable knowledge holes in my brain. Given the direction of recent events, where books like this are being challenged and removed from too many public spaces (anyone who plays semantics Twister to pretend that's not actually "banning" books or throttling the spread of ideas can kindly find another book review blog to follow, thanks), I figured it was high time to try it. Displaying a poet's ability to deeply and vividly evoke a time and place and life, Angelou weaves stories of her childhood, stretching from Jim Crow Alabama to St. Louis and California as she and her brother move between homes and relatives. Along the way, she has memorable encounters with colorful characters, while also experiencing the dark, twisted legacy of racism and classism (and sexism) in their innumerable guises, plus some personal traumas. Alongside the pain and despair and rage, she also experiences moments of hope and solidarity and beauty, the many threads and experiences coming together as she grows up and begins to build a future for herself that challenges the boundaries others would put around her. It makes for an interesting, inspiring, if sometimes depressing and harsh, read... and the fact that so many in 2025 still actively seek to shut books like this away, along with the questions it forces one to ask of oneself and the things it forces one to see about the world around us, is all one needs to know about how far America has failed to progress since Angelou's youth.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) - My Review
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi) - My Review
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - My Review
Friday, May 23, 2025
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland wanted to enjoy the hike along the Appalachian Trail, one of many recent weekend outings planned by her divorced mother to rebuild a family bond with Trisha and her angry older brother Pete... but from before they left the house, Mom and Pete were fighting. They never stopped fighting, no matter how much Trisha tried to play the peacemaker, tried to swallow her own feelings and smile and defuse the tension. It's like they don't even realize she's there, listening to the terrible things they say to each other. At last, she couldn't stand it anymore. Even a quick bathroom break off the trail would be a welcome respite. She just took a few paces into the brush, far enough not to be seen by any passing day hikers.
She thought she knew the way back...
Soon, Trisha realizes that she must have taken a wrong turn - but the Appalachian Trail is wide and well traveled, and surely she can find it if she just keeps going. Only minutes become hours, and she has to admit that she's hopelessly lost in the wilderness, having few supplies in her pack and no more survival skills than scraps she's read in books or learned from a mother who was far more city than country. To keep her spirits up, she uses her Walkman to listen to radio broadcasts of her favorite baseball team, the Red Sox, and her favorite player, closing pitcher Tom Gordon. She even imagines him there with her, giving her encouragement. But when she realizes that she's not as alone as she thinks, that something of inhuman patience and malevolence stalks her, she finds herself facing a threat that not even her hero can help her escape...
REVIEW: Reading like a cross between Gary Paulsen's classic Hatchet and, well, Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon drops an ordinary girl into an extraordinary situation, one where wilderness survival is complicated by supernatural elements. Not that nature needs any help to be deceptive and deadly on its own, especially to an inexperienced kid who never anticipated anything more strenuous than the "moderate to difficult" day hike Mom planned that morning, and most especially to one already distracted by her own anxieties. Some small part of her almost wanted to get lost when she left the trail, just to get away from Mom and Pete... only Trisha never meant it so literally. From denial to determination to find her own way back to panic to practical (if scared) acceptance, Trisha makes some mistakes but tries to get her head together and think her way out of her bad situation - and that's before the animal instincts wake to alert her of her stalker, often more feeling than physical entity, which seems to be herding her deeper into the wilderness and toying with her along the way. As a coping mechanism, an inner voice - often dark, but sometimes helpful - speaks up to guide her, and her imagined companion Tom Gordon offers company that becomes more tangible as her physical and mental conditions deteriorate. As is often the case with these tales, Trisha does a lot of growing up in her time alone... though, this being Stephen King, there is no guarantee that she'll survive long enough to apply the hard-won wisdom of the wilds. Amid the terrors and failures are moments of peace and beauty, and Trisha learns to see and appreciate those, too, even as everything else goes wrong. The whole may not be top-notch Stephen King, but makes for a solid, often gruesome tale of survival and finding inner strength in unexpected places.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Canyon's Edge (Dusti Bowling) - My Review
The Body (Stephen King) - My Review
Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland wanted to enjoy the hike along the Appalachian Trail, one of many recent weekend outings planned by her divorced mother to rebuild a family bond with Trisha and her angry older brother Pete... but from before they left the house, Mom and Pete were fighting. They never stopped fighting, no matter how much Trisha tried to play the peacemaker, tried to swallow her own feelings and smile and defuse the tension. It's like they don't even realize she's there, listening to the terrible things they say to each other. At last, she couldn't stand it anymore. Even a quick bathroom break off the trail would be a welcome respite. She just took a few paces into the brush, far enough not to be seen by any passing day hikers.
She thought she knew the way back...
Soon, Trisha realizes that she must have taken a wrong turn - but the Appalachian Trail is wide and well traveled, and surely she can find it if she just keeps going. Only minutes become hours, and she has to admit that she's hopelessly lost in the wilderness, having few supplies in her pack and no more survival skills than scraps she's read in books or learned from a mother who was far more city than country. To keep her spirits up, she uses her Walkman to listen to radio broadcasts of her favorite baseball team, the Red Sox, and her favorite player, closing pitcher Tom Gordon. She even imagines him there with her, giving her encouragement. But when she realizes that she's not as alone as she thinks, that something of inhuman patience and malevolence stalks her, she finds herself facing a threat that not even her hero can help her escape...
REVIEW: Reading like a cross between Gary Paulsen's classic Hatchet and, well, Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon drops an ordinary girl into an extraordinary situation, one where wilderness survival is complicated by supernatural elements. Not that nature needs any help to be deceptive and deadly on its own, especially to an inexperienced kid who never anticipated anything more strenuous than the "moderate to difficult" day hike Mom planned that morning, and most especially to one already distracted by her own anxieties. Some small part of her almost wanted to get lost when she left the trail, just to get away from Mom and Pete... only Trisha never meant it so literally. From denial to determination to find her own way back to panic to practical (if scared) acceptance, Trisha makes some mistakes but tries to get her head together and think her way out of her bad situation - and that's before the animal instincts wake to alert her of her stalker, often more feeling than physical entity, which seems to be herding her deeper into the wilderness and toying with her along the way. As a coping mechanism, an inner voice - often dark, but sometimes helpful - speaks up to guide her, and her imagined companion Tom Gordon offers company that becomes more tangible as her physical and mental conditions deteriorate. As is often the case with these tales, Trisha does a lot of growing up in her time alone... though, this being Stephen King, there is no guarantee that she'll survive long enough to apply the hard-won wisdom of the wilds. Amid the terrors and failures are moments of peace and beauty, and Trisha learns to see and appreciate those, too, even as everything else goes wrong. The whole may not be top-notch Stephen King, but makes for a solid, often gruesome tale of survival and finding inner strength in unexpected places.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Canyon's Edge (Dusti Bowling) - My Review
The Body (Stephen King) - My Review
Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Armageddon Outta Here (Derek Landy)
Armageddon Outta Here - The World of Skulduggery Pleasant: The Definitive Story Collection (So Far)
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 8.5
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA? Adventure/Collection/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: A hardened posse of war veterans hunts a fugitive dark mage across the American Western frontier... a childhood dare involving a "haunted" house has dire consequences decades later... a man haunted by visions of a peculiar machine may be the conduit for a world-ending event... a string of seemingly random deaths is linked by a cursed pen... These and more tales explore the world and characters surrounding Dublin's infamous skeleton detective Skulduggery Pleasant and his friend and apprentice Valkyrie Cain.
This collection includes the previously-reviewed story Apocalypse Kings.
REVIEW: This collection of 22 stories is billed as 8.5 in the series, but some elements of the later tales constitute spoilers for coming events; I suspect it would fit better elsewhere in the timeline. (There are also a few that were apparently written for special events based on group participation or guest-submitted character ideas. They played out fine in Landy's tales, though my first thought was that he was flirting with the "evidently written entirely by the fans" territory that some authors venture into, and there are a few people in that particular pool that one would do better not to be around... but I digress.) Some slot into the main timeline, while others are essentially standalone side adventures, but all work quite well and maintain Landy's particular blend of humor, wonder, intrigue, horror, and tragedy.
Starting with a tale set in 1800's South Dakota and ending with events taking place after (what I presume occurs in) Book 9 (or maybe later; I'm currently only up through Book 8 in the main arc), the stories are presented roughly in chronological order. Several of them only involve the lead duo of Skulduggery and Valkyrie as side characters. A few could've been complete standalones with minor reshaping, particularly "Get Thee Behind Me, Bubba Moon", which features mortal kids inadvertently stumbling into a dark magical secret left behind by a cultist when a traditional neighborhood rite-of-passage dare goes awry; even the tone almost felt more like a standalone, more serious and introspective as the main character finds himself dealing with impossible events. Landy demonstrates his writing range across these tales, some being shorter and sillier (but never embarrassingly goofy), some being longer and much darker. Often, the tales involve tragedy in some form or another, a loss of innocence if nothing else (and it's often more than just that), reflecting how even fleeting contact with the magical world always comes with a cost, a cost often much, much greater than even willing parties anticipate. The world of Skulduggery Pleasant is not a whimsical wonderland but a shadowed realm of sharp edges and sharper teeth with roots firmly in the horror genre, even if the earlier entries lampshade those roots and there's never a shortage of humorous quips. Nobody is safe, not even innocent bystanders, and good hearts and good intentions are no guarantee of a happy ending... or even a survivable ending. The tales varied a bit but were generally strong.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Carnacki the Ghost Finder (William Hope Hodgson) - My Review
Apocalypse Kings (Derek Landy) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 8.5
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA? Adventure/Collection/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: A hardened posse of war veterans hunts a fugitive dark mage across the American Western frontier... a childhood dare involving a "haunted" house has dire consequences decades later... a man haunted by visions of a peculiar machine may be the conduit for a world-ending event... a string of seemingly random deaths is linked by a cursed pen... These and more tales explore the world and characters surrounding Dublin's infamous skeleton detective Skulduggery Pleasant and his friend and apprentice Valkyrie Cain.
This collection includes the previously-reviewed story Apocalypse Kings.
REVIEW: This collection of 22 stories is billed as 8.5 in the series, but some elements of the later tales constitute spoilers for coming events; I suspect it would fit better elsewhere in the timeline. (There are also a few that were apparently written for special events based on group participation or guest-submitted character ideas. They played out fine in Landy's tales, though my first thought was that he was flirting with the "evidently written entirely by the fans" territory that some authors venture into, and there are a few people in that particular pool that one would do better not to be around... but I digress.) Some slot into the main timeline, while others are essentially standalone side adventures, but all work quite well and maintain Landy's particular blend of humor, wonder, intrigue, horror, and tragedy.
Starting with a tale set in 1800's South Dakota and ending with events taking place after (what I presume occurs in) Book 9 (or maybe later; I'm currently only up through Book 8 in the main arc), the stories are presented roughly in chronological order. Several of them only involve the lead duo of Skulduggery and Valkyrie as side characters. A few could've been complete standalones with minor reshaping, particularly "Get Thee Behind Me, Bubba Moon", which features mortal kids inadvertently stumbling into a dark magical secret left behind by a cultist when a traditional neighborhood rite-of-passage dare goes awry; even the tone almost felt more like a standalone, more serious and introspective as the main character finds himself dealing with impossible events. Landy demonstrates his writing range across these tales, some being shorter and sillier (but never embarrassingly goofy), some being longer and much darker. Often, the tales involve tragedy in some form or another, a loss of innocence if nothing else (and it's often more than just that), reflecting how even fleeting contact with the magical world always comes with a cost, a cost often much, much greater than even willing parties anticipate. The world of Skulduggery Pleasant is not a whimsical wonderland but a shadowed realm of sharp edges and sharper teeth with roots firmly in the horror genre, even if the earlier entries lampshade those roots and there's never a shortage of humorous quips. Nobody is safe, not even innocent bystanders, and good hearts and good intentions are no guarantee of a happy ending... or even a survivable ending. The tales varied a bit but were generally strong.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Carnacki the Ghost Finder (William Hope Hodgson) - My Review
Apocalypse Kings (Derek Landy) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Friday, May 16, 2025
Confessions of an Imaginary Friend (Michelle Cuevas)
Confessions of an Imaginary Friend: A Memoir by Jacques Papier
Michelle Cuevas
Rocky Pond Books
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Jacques Papier has always felt invisible; teachers ignore his raised hand, nobody picks him for teams at recess, and his parents even have to be reminded to set a place for him at the table. If not for his twin sister and best friend Fleur, he'd wonder if he even existed at all.
It isn't until he talks to the roller-skating cowgirl at the playground - a girl nobody else seems to notice - that he begins to realize that he's imaginary.
Driven to an existential (or nonexistential) crisis by this discovery, Jacques seeks out other imaginary friends as he tries to figure out just who, and what, he really is, a journey that will lead him far from his beloved sister Fleur on an adventure beyond even his own imagination.
REVIEW: Clearly inspired by the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" with some elements of Toy Story, this tale of an imaginary friend discovering his true self and purpose beyond the girl who created him is surprisingly touching while still being whimsical, exploring the ways in which imagination takes on a (literal) life of its own as it enables people to become better selves, even beyond the mind that sparked it.
Written from Jacques's point of view (and narrated with a light French accent in the audiobook version), the imaginary boy starts out feeling invisible in the way children often do, only it's clear to everyone but Jacques that there's more to it than that. Still, Fleur has more than enough love and belief to sustain them both... which is why, in addition to being increasingly upset by how he's overlooked, Jacques becomes very cross when he overhears their parents talking behind closed doors, concerned about Fleur's imaginary friend. She never kept secrets from him before - he knows because they keep a detailed map of their world, and all the secrets they've discovered in it. Nowhere on that map is a place for an imaginary friend! In retaliation, he tries to come up with his own imaginary friend, a dragon-herring, which doesn't go well and leads to a tipping point where the Papiers demand Fleur get rid of her nonexistent brother. (This, in turn, ends up leading to a psychiatrist when Fleur decides that Jacques is no more invisible and imaginary than she herself feels, and goes to extreme lengths to prove her own nonexistence to her skeptical parents.) Forced to confront his own reality, Jacques finds a community of other imaginary friends, and comes to understand that his kind can be both a help and a hindrance to the children they're with; some are just playmates, but others are signs of deeper problems, more enablers than healers, and not all of them are helpful, as he learns the hard way when he sets out on his own on the dubious word of another imaginary being. Through a series of mostly-amusing adventures and child companions, all of which involve some reinvention of himself, Jacques learns what it means to be an embodiment of imagination, and just what kind of friend he is meant to be. The ending kicked the rating up a half-notch with a moment of pure wonder and beauty (and a much better ending than the song that inspired the protagonist's name).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Crenshaw (Katherine Applegate) - My Review
Day Dreamers (Emily Winfield Martin) - My Review
The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend (Dan Santat) - My Review
Michelle Cuevas
Rocky Pond Books
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Jacques Papier has always felt invisible; teachers ignore his raised hand, nobody picks him for teams at recess, and his parents even have to be reminded to set a place for him at the table. If not for his twin sister and best friend Fleur, he'd wonder if he even existed at all.
It isn't until he talks to the roller-skating cowgirl at the playground - a girl nobody else seems to notice - that he begins to realize that he's imaginary.
Driven to an existential (or nonexistential) crisis by this discovery, Jacques seeks out other imaginary friends as he tries to figure out just who, and what, he really is, a journey that will lead him far from his beloved sister Fleur on an adventure beyond even his own imagination.
REVIEW: Clearly inspired by the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" with some elements of Toy Story, this tale of an imaginary friend discovering his true self and purpose beyond the girl who created him is surprisingly touching while still being whimsical, exploring the ways in which imagination takes on a (literal) life of its own as it enables people to become better selves, even beyond the mind that sparked it.
Written from Jacques's point of view (and narrated with a light French accent in the audiobook version), the imaginary boy starts out feeling invisible in the way children often do, only it's clear to everyone but Jacques that there's more to it than that. Still, Fleur has more than enough love and belief to sustain them both... which is why, in addition to being increasingly upset by how he's overlooked, Jacques becomes very cross when he overhears their parents talking behind closed doors, concerned about Fleur's imaginary friend. She never kept secrets from him before - he knows because they keep a detailed map of their world, and all the secrets they've discovered in it. Nowhere on that map is a place for an imaginary friend! In retaliation, he tries to come up with his own imaginary friend, a dragon-herring, which doesn't go well and leads to a tipping point where the Papiers demand Fleur get rid of her nonexistent brother. (This, in turn, ends up leading to a psychiatrist when Fleur decides that Jacques is no more invisible and imaginary than she herself feels, and goes to extreme lengths to prove her own nonexistence to her skeptical parents.) Forced to confront his own reality, Jacques finds a community of other imaginary friends, and comes to understand that his kind can be both a help and a hindrance to the children they're with; some are just playmates, but others are signs of deeper problems, more enablers than healers, and not all of them are helpful, as he learns the hard way when he sets out on his own on the dubious word of another imaginary being. Through a series of mostly-amusing adventures and child companions, all of which involve some reinvention of himself, Jacques learns what it means to be an embodiment of imagination, and just what kind of friend he is meant to be. The ending kicked the rating up a half-notch with a moment of pure wonder and beauty (and a much better ending than the song that inspired the protagonist's name).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Crenshaw (Katherine Applegate) - My Review
Day Dreamers (Emily Winfield Martin) - My Review
The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend (Dan Santat) - My Review
Bury Your Gays (Chuck Tingle)
Bury Your Gays
Chuck Tingle
Tor Nightfire
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Growing up, Misha never could've imagined he'd find success as a Hollywood screenwriter, but now - with a rising career penning horror movies and TV shows and an Oscar nomination for a live-action short - his dreams are coming true... almost. Deep down, he's still the scared boy who can't even come out of the closet to his family, though he's been dating Zeke for over a year and his works are heavily queer-coded. At its heart, though, the film industry still clings to traditional ideas, particularly the notion that openly gay characters don't get happy endings... thus, his latest argument with his agent over his hit supernatural show Travelers, when he's ordered to either closet the lead detective duo or kill them off in the season finale. Misha has invested too much of himself in the storyline to betray the characters (and the audience) like that; it's too much like betraying himself and the boy he used to be, who longed to see people like himself on TV. Thus, he fails to heed his agent's warnings about the consequences of defying the studio board - and that is when things start going very, very wrong for him, as monsters out of his own works begin stalking him.
Is it an elaborate hoax or particularly committed stalker? Is his mind cracking? Or is he up against something far more dangerous and powerful than he can imagine?
REVIEW: The entertainment industry can be downright brutal, moreso for those who lie outside the norms and push the wrong envelopes in the wrong (read: likely to lose money) way. As shareholders and algorithms gain power over more and more aspects of creativity and output, it becomes even more brutal, to the point where original ideas and outlier voices are nearly eliminated (see also: why everything seems to be a remake or reboot or lightly-redressed version of the same stuff). Even when Hollywood appears to make progress on issues like LGBTQIA+ representation, that progress is often little more than window dressing, and all too often the maxim of "bury your gays" - eliminating non-straight characters, not allowing them to lead or have happy endings - seems to hold true. Here, Tingle presents one half-closeted creator who dares stand up for himself and his artistic freedom, only to find out the hard way how little the system (and the studio's bottom line) tolerates defiance by the people it sees as mere profit-generating property.
From the start, there's an ominous air as Misha drives into the Harold Brothers studio lot for his meeting with his agent. On the one hand, he seems to be living the dream of countless would-be creators who come to Los Angeles in general and the dream of the boy he used to be in particular, the one who grew up watching Harold Brothers cartoons and popular TV shows and started telling stories to himself to get through the hardest times of his life. On the other, the feeling of something off-kilter, something even predatory, sets in early, even before he gets the news from his agent that he's being ordered to ax the queer love story he's been slowly laying the groundwork for in his TV series that's meant to come out in the open with the season finale, and if he won't ax the story, he has to ax the characters living it. He grew up watching Hollywood tease audiences with "queer-baiting" only to weasel out of their own plot developments and clear story beats, betrayals that left a very bitter taste in the mouth of a boy who was still figuring out his sexuality but knew on an instinctive level that a punch had been deliberately pulled - or, rather, the punch had been redirected into his face, and the faces of a good chunk of the viewing audience, by studios that consider queer viewers lucrative enough to string along but not lucrative enough to openly validate or embrace. Most of the horror stories Misha pens, the ones that built his career, have roots in his past, and seeing them come to life on screens big and small has been a triumph, but an incomplete one if he's not allowed to follow through on the stories that are most important to him, such as the relationship at the heart of his popular TV show. He knows defiance will have a cost, even for a current studio darling (his Oscar nomination makes him a temporary golden boy), but is too furious to consider how steep that cost might be... and even then, he can't begin to imagine the collateral damage to his friends and even total strangers who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, as his own monsters appear to be coming to life around him.
Even as Misha finds himself literally fighting a system that wants to erase, or defang and minimize, certain ideas and content, he also must confront an industry that seems intent on erasing humans from the creative equation altogether; in the first scene, as he enters the studio lot, he watches a big poster going up advertising a blockbuster movie starring an actor who died three years ago - an actor whose performance was created entirely from CGI and AI via a secret proprietary process, and the first such performance to earn an Oscar nomination. The fact that the actor in question would never have played a villain role when alive only makes it that much more of a betrayal to the spirit of the late artist, a dismissal of humanity in favor of marketing and dollar signs... one that audiences and academy voters seem all too willing to validate. The decision to kill the core storyline on Misha's show is also spurred by the number-crunchers on the nebulous board of directors behind the studio, based on algorithms and projected demographic appeals and other data points and analytics and other ways to maximize shareholder returns while minimizing actual creativity and humanity. By refusal to comply, Misha becomes a threat to the bottom line, and soon learns that even a proven track record of popularity and profitability is no shield from a board that smells a chance at even more profit (and hardly wants to encourage defiance in any of its property - Misha and the rest of the creators and actors and other employees being mere objects of little more consequence than office chairs or potted plants). Facing a rising tide of horror that threatens his safety and his sanity, he must dig deep into his own convictions and his own reasons for creating art in the first place, as well as learn to trust his friends; just as movies take a team to create, Misha will need a team if he is to survive the horror movie that his life quickly becomes.
Things move fairly well, and even the few lulls are filled with tension and backstory to fill things out. There are several twists and (often dark) turns, and some real pain revealed in both the here-and-now events and Misha's backstory, the events that led to him using horror as a medium to explore and process traumas. His friends sometimes feel a little flat and convenient, but ultimately form a decently solid team, though Misha must ultimately be the one to drive things forward, even through his failures. Along the way, Tingle plays with horror tropes, sometimes turning them on their ear and sometimes having Misha's attempts to outsmart them falling apart as he underestimates the forces set against him. It ends on a solid and satisfactory note.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Borderline (Mishell Baker) - My Review
Pageboy (Elliot Page) - My Review
Camp Damascus (Chuck Tingle) - My Review
Chuck Tingle
Tor Nightfire
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Growing up, Misha never could've imagined he'd find success as a Hollywood screenwriter, but now - with a rising career penning horror movies and TV shows and an Oscar nomination for a live-action short - his dreams are coming true... almost. Deep down, he's still the scared boy who can't even come out of the closet to his family, though he's been dating Zeke for over a year and his works are heavily queer-coded. At its heart, though, the film industry still clings to traditional ideas, particularly the notion that openly gay characters don't get happy endings... thus, his latest argument with his agent over his hit supernatural show Travelers, when he's ordered to either closet the lead detective duo or kill them off in the season finale. Misha has invested too much of himself in the storyline to betray the characters (and the audience) like that; it's too much like betraying himself and the boy he used to be, who longed to see people like himself on TV. Thus, he fails to heed his agent's warnings about the consequences of defying the studio board - and that is when things start going very, very wrong for him, as monsters out of his own works begin stalking him.
Is it an elaborate hoax or particularly committed stalker? Is his mind cracking? Or is he up against something far more dangerous and powerful than he can imagine?
REVIEW: The entertainment industry can be downright brutal, moreso for those who lie outside the norms and push the wrong envelopes in the wrong (read: likely to lose money) way. As shareholders and algorithms gain power over more and more aspects of creativity and output, it becomes even more brutal, to the point where original ideas and outlier voices are nearly eliminated (see also: why everything seems to be a remake or reboot or lightly-redressed version of the same stuff). Even when Hollywood appears to make progress on issues like LGBTQIA+ representation, that progress is often little more than window dressing, and all too often the maxim of "bury your gays" - eliminating non-straight characters, not allowing them to lead or have happy endings - seems to hold true. Here, Tingle presents one half-closeted creator who dares stand up for himself and his artistic freedom, only to find out the hard way how little the system (and the studio's bottom line) tolerates defiance by the people it sees as mere profit-generating property.
From the start, there's an ominous air as Misha drives into the Harold Brothers studio lot for his meeting with his agent. On the one hand, he seems to be living the dream of countless would-be creators who come to Los Angeles in general and the dream of the boy he used to be in particular, the one who grew up watching Harold Brothers cartoons and popular TV shows and started telling stories to himself to get through the hardest times of his life. On the other, the feeling of something off-kilter, something even predatory, sets in early, even before he gets the news from his agent that he's being ordered to ax the queer love story he's been slowly laying the groundwork for in his TV series that's meant to come out in the open with the season finale, and if he won't ax the story, he has to ax the characters living it. He grew up watching Hollywood tease audiences with "queer-baiting" only to weasel out of their own plot developments and clear story beats, betrayals that left a very bitter taste in the mouth of a boy who was still figuring out his sexuality but knew on an instinctive level that a punch had been deliberately pulled - or, rather, the punch had been redirected into his face, and the faces of a good chunk of the viewing audience, by studios that consider queer viewers lucrative enough to string along but not lucrative enough to openly validate or embrace. Most of the horror stories Misha pens, the ones that built his career, have roots in his past, and seeing them come to life on screens big and small has been a triumph, but an incomplete one if he's not allowed to follow through on the stories that are most important to him, such as the relationship at the heart of his popular TV show. He knows defiance will have a cost, even for a current studio darling (his Oscar nomination makes him a temporary golden boy), but is too furious to consider how steep that cost might be... and even then, he can't begin to imagine the collateral damage to his friends and even total strangers who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, as his own monsters appear to be coming to life around him.
Even as Misha finds himself literally fighting a system that wants to erase, or defang and minimize, certain ideas and content, he also must confront an industry that seems intent on erasing humans from the creative equation altogether; in the first scene, as he enters the studio lot, he watches a big poster going up advertising a blockbuster movie starring an actor who died three years ago - an actor whose performance was created entirely from CGI and AI via a secret proprietary process, and the first such performance to earn an Oscar nomination. The fact that the actor in question would never have played a villain role when alive only makes it that much more of a betrayal to the spirit of the late artist, a dismissal of humanity in favor of marketing and dollar signs... one that audiences and academy voters seem all too willing to validate. The decision to kill the core storyline on Misha's show is also spurred by the number-crunchers on the nebulous board of directors behind the studio, based on algorithms and projected demographic appeals and other data points and analytics and other ways to maximize shareholder returns while minimizing actual creativity and humanity. By refusal to comply, Misha becomes a threat to the bottom line, and soon learns that even a proven track record of popularity and profitability is no shield from a board that smells a chance at even more profit (and hardly wants to encourage defiance in any of its property - Misha and the rest of the creators and actors and other employees being mere objects of little more consequence than office chairs or potted plants). Facing a rising tide of horror that threatens his safety and his sanity, he must dig deep into his own convictions and his own reasons for creating art in the first place, as well as learn to trust his friends; just as movies take a team to create, Misha will need a team if he is to survive the horror movie that his life quickly becomes.
Things move fairly well, and even the few lulls are filled with tension and backstory to fill things out. There are several twists and (often dark) turns, and some real pain revealed in both the here-and-now events and Misha's backstory, the events that led to him using horror as a medium to explore and process traumas. His friends sometimes feel a little flat and convenient, but ultimately form a decently solid team, though Misha must ultimately be the one to drive things forward, even through his failures. Along the way, Tingle plays with horror tropes, sometimes turning them on their ear and sometimes having Misha's attempts to outsmart them falling apart as he underestimates the forces set against him. It ends on a solid and satisfactory note.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Borderline (Mishell Baker) - My Review
Pageboy (Elliot Page) - My Review
Camp Damascus (Chuck Tingle) - My Review
Monday, May 12, 2025
The Relentless Legion (J. S. Dewes)
The Relentless Legion
The Divide series, Book 1
J. S. Dewes
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Adequin Rake thought the greatest threat to humanity was the collapse of the known universe beyond the frontier of the Divide. Now, a greater threat might lie within the Core worlds, embodied in the megalomaniacal monarch Augustus Mercer. His increasingly fanatical attempts to purge humanity of the alien mutagen unleashed generations ago by the (mostly) vanished Viators have led to the creation of a bioweapon that will kill anyone bearing any trace of genetic contamination - a death toll that could eliminate over half the population, followed by equally monstrous projects to rebuild the species to Mercer's own vision of purity. With the exiled Sentinels and her trusted crew and allies, including Mercer's estranged grandson/failed clone Cavalon, the smuggler Corsairs, and the secret Viator tech in her upgraded atlas navigation system, Rake races to get ahead of Mercer's plot and engineer a cure for the mutagen... and, hopefully, rescue crewmate Jackin from their enemy's clutches before it's too late for his sanity, or his life.
REVIEW: I enjoyed the previous two installments of the Divide trilogy, but for some reason I didn't quite engage with this final(?) volume. Maybe it's just been too long since I read the others. Or maybe it was a vague sense that, for all the sometimes-breakneck action and plot twists and betrayals and revelations, it sometimes felt like it was trying too hard to pack in emotional gut-punches and surprises.
It picks up with little lag time, with Rake, Cavalon, and the captive Jackin all up to their necks (and over their heads) in the general chaos of both protecting the galaxy from the oncoming collapse of the known universe and keeping humans from finishing what the Viators started and exterminating themselves, this time under the increasingly powerful grip of Augustus Mercer and his eugenics-driven vision for the future... all while further burdened by emotional and physical scars from previous battles and failures and lives that went to Hell long before the current problems and secrets were dropped on their shoulders. That's an awful lot of plates to keep spinning, and more than once I felt attention whiplash as the story moved from one plate to another, from one frying pan to another fire. The many threads and threats from the previous installments are given little to no recap for the reader coming into things after a break, and it took me some time to settle back into something like a groove... and even then, I often felt like I was a few steps behind the plot as it raced ahead. Maybe that's why a few twists and events felt like they arrived out of nowhere to either complicate problems or offer a solution (and/or deliver fresh psychological wounds to further complicate character interactions). It builds up to a suitably explosive finale, one with some hooks left dangling for continuations (I'm reasonably certain this is just intended to be a trilogy, but it wouldn't be the first time a "trilogy" generated more volumes) but which wraps up most of the main issues and sets surviving characters on new trajectories, having grown and changed significantly since the reader first met them.
While there was a fair bit to enjoy and the story could never be said to lag, I just kept feeling that, for all the racing I did to keep up and re-immerse in the series and keep up with the many characters and plot threads whipping past, I never quite caught up as the story kept sprinting ahead of me, leading to a slight dip in the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Last Watch (J. S. Dewes) - My Review
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
The Stars Now Unclaimed (Drew Williams) - My Review
The Divide series, Book 1
J. S. Dewes
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Adequin Rake thought the greatest threat to humanity was the collapse of the known universe beyond the frontier of the Divide. Now, a greater threat might lie within the Core worlds, embodied in the megalomaniacal monarch Augustus Mercer. His increasingly fanatical attempts to purge humanity of the alien mutagen unleashed generations ago by the (mostly) vanished Viators have led to the creation of a bioweapon that will kill anyone bearing any trace of genetic contamination - a death toll that could eliminate over half the population, followed by equally monstrous projects to rebuild the species to Mercer's own vision of purity. With the exiled Sentinels and her trusted crew and allies, including Mercer's estranged grandson/failed clone Cavalon, the smuggler Corsairs, and the secret Viator tech in her upgraded atlas navigation system, Rake races to get ahead of Mercer's plot and engineer a cure for the mutagen... and, hopefully, rescue crewmate Jackin from their enemy's clutches before it's too late for his sanity, or his life.
REVIEW: I enjoyed the previous two installments of the Divide trilogy, but for some reason I didn't quite engage with this final(?) volume. Maybe it's just been too long since I read the others. Or maybe it was a vague sense that, for all the sometimes-breakneck action and plot twists and betrayals and revelations, it sometimes felt like it was trying too hard to pack in emotional gut-punches and surprises.
It picks up with little lag time, with Rake, Cavalon, and the captive Jackin all up to their necks (and over their heads) in the general chaos of both protecting the galaxy from the oncoming collapse of the known universe and keeping humans from finishing what the Viators started and exterminating themselves, this time under the increasingly powerful grip of Augustus Mercer and his eugenics-driven vision for the future... all while further burdened by emotional and physical scars from previous battles and failures and lives that went to Hell long before the current problems and secrets were dropped on their shoulders. That's an awful lot of plates to keep spinning, and more than once I felt attention whiplash as the story moved from one plate to another, from one frying pan to another fire. The many threads and threats from the previous installments are given little to no recap for the reader coming into things after a break, and it took me some time to settle back into something like a groove... and even then, I often felt like I was a few steps behind the plot as it raced ahead. Maybe that's why a few twists and events felt like they arrived out of nowhere to either complicate problems or offer a solution (and/or deliver fresh psychological wounds to further complicate character interactions). It builds up to a suitably explosive finale, one with some hooks left dangling for continuations (I'm reasonably certain this is just intended to be a trilogy, but it wouldn't be the first time a "trilogy" generated more volumes) but which wraps up most of the main issues and sets surviving characters on new trajectories, having grown and changed significantly since the reader first met them.
While there was a fair bit to enjoy and the story could never be said to lag, I just kept feeling that, for all the racing I did to keep up and re-immerse in the series and keep up with the many characters and plot threads whipping past, I never quite caught up as the story kept sprinting ahead of me, leading to a slight dip in the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Last Watch (J. S. Dewes) - My Review
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
The Stars Now Unclaimed (Drew Williams) - My Review
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)