The Full Moon Coffee Shop
The The Full Moon Coffee Shop series, Book 1
Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
Ballantine Books
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A schoolteacher turned screenwriter feels past her prime when her hot career turned to dust almost overnight, even as her latest relationship fizzles out. A movie director feels romantically stuck after breaking off an affair. A hairstylist enjoys her work but can't understand why it's been so draining lately. A tech entrepreneur keeps having things go wrong around him, threatening his business and his future. All four Kyoto residents need help... and all find themselves in a strange pop-up cafe under the light of the full moon, where the waitstaff are talking cats who may or may not be embodiments of the planets that influence fates. Here, they may find the insights they need to move forward, if they're willing to listen and learn.
REVIEW: Early on, this was a fun cozy fantasy novel with a nice central gimmick, if a strange one. The many lavish visual descriptions made me wonder if it was an adaptation of a manga or anime, while the flavors of each concoction offered by the friendly cats adds another layer of immersion. None of the characters are facing epic life-or-death decisions, but are stuck and frustrated in the ways many can relate to: careers going nowhere (or actively going backwards), trouble finding romance, just generally something being very wrong but unable to pin down what, let alone what to do about it. Using the power of astrology and natal charts, the cats offer insights into each character's personalities and where/why they're experiencing troubles, as well as hints about how to move forward. What started as a nice little cozy idea soon slides into something between brow-beating and a sales pitch for astrology as a vital tool to better one's life, to the point where I half expected business cards for an astrologist to be stuck in print editions of the book. This also makes some elements feel repetitive. The wrap-up tale also feels a little long, overexplaining itself and how it ties all of the characters together. While there was some nice imagery and it had a few enjoyable moments, I tired of this brew long before I finished drinking.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Star Cats: A Feline Zodiac (Lesley Ann Ivory) - My Review
Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi) - My Review
The Dragon Slayer with a Heavy Heart (Marcia Powers) - My Review
Friday, September 19, 2025
Extinction (Douglas Preston)
Extinction
The Cash and Colcord series, Book 1
Douglas Preston
Forge Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: At Erebus Resort, a private valley in Colorado, wealthy visitors can see resurrected giants from a lost age. Thanks to a team of scientists, cutting-edge technology, and the investment of a billionaire backer, mammoths, glyptodonts, and more roam freely for the first time in thousands of years. Each creation has been carefully gene-edited to lack aggression, making them as safe as any domestic animal to be around.
Until two visitors disappear while on a high-country honeymoon backpacking excursion through the park, leaving behind pools of blood large enough that nobody doubts their fate.
At the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Agent Frances Cash is eager to finally take the lead on a major case. Along with county sheriff James Colcord, she sets out to uncover what happened and if the culprit is animal or human. But it quickly becomes apparent that the Erebus staff knows more than they're letting on, that their cooperation has limits... and that the dead honeymooners are just the start of a far more dangerous spree.
REVIEW: With clear (and acknowledged) influence from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, Extinction explores the pitfalls of de-extincting lost species, particularly the slippery slope when arrogance crossbreeds with scientific breakthroughs and the brakes of ethics are cut by greed (to mix and mangle a metaphor).
Opening with the doomed honeymooners, the story then establishes its heroes, CBI Agent Cash and Sheriff Colcord. Each is initially a little skeptical of the other due to interdepartmental rivalries and the politics of the situation (in addition to some internal personnel friction, Erebus Valley is a political hot potato, a major revenue source for the state and backed by people too powerful to ignore but opposed by numerous very vocal groups, some of which have rather good points), but they share a dedication to the job and a determination to see it through, no matter whose toes get stepped on and how inconvenient the truth might ultimately be. The head of Erebus security, Maximilian, promises full cooperation and appears shocked by the murder, but it's clear early on that the company has more going on than they're revealing, and that their boss ultimately values the survival of the park and continuation of his de-extinction work over the safety of human beings. Meanwhile, the culprits grow bolder and more violent, their attacks more depraved, their ultimate plan expanding in scale, putting everyone in danger. In thriller fashion, events escalate through various action pieces and setbacks to an explosive finale that sets up the next installment (which has yet to be published).
What cost it in the ratings was a sense of needless plot and character sprawl, some people and elements never really justifying their page time by the end, their fates a little too predictable. I guessed early on what was behind the attacks, though some bits of the reveal still worked well. I also expected a little more to come of the mammoths and a few other resurrected creatures, which had brief sense-of-awe moments after a big deal was made of their presence but ultimately might as well have been just advanced animatronics or not even been there at all, which is not something I should be thinking after I was promised a park full of Ice Age creatures; it's a bit like thinking the dinosaurs might as well have not been in Jurassic Park.
Other than those nitpicks, it's a decent enough thriller with sci-fi trappings. I didn't mind the heroes, though I don't know if I need to read any more in the series.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) - My Review
The Tusks of Extinction (Ray Nayler) - My Review
Tyrannosaur Canyon (Douglas Preston) - My Review
The Cash and Colcord series, Book 1
Douglas Preston
Forge Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: At Erebus Resort, a private valley in Colorado, wealthy visitors can see resurrected giants from a lost age. Thanks to a team of scientists, cutting-edge technology, and the investment of a billionaire backer, mammoths, glyptodonts, and more roam freely for the first time in thousands of years. Each creation has been carefully gene-edited to lack aggression, making them as safe as any domestic animal to be around.
Until two visitors disappear while on a high-country honeymoon backpacking excursion through the park, leaving behind pools of blood large enough that nobody doubts their fate.
At the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Agent Frances Cash is eager to finally take the lead on a major case. Along with county sheriff James Colcord, she sets out to uncover what happened and if the culprit is animal or human. But it quickly becomes apparent that the Erebus staff knows more than they're letting on, that their cooperation has limits... and that the dead honeymooners are just the start of a far more dangerous spree.
REVIEW: With clear (and acknowledged) influence from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, Extinction explores the pitfalls of de-extincting lost species, particularly the slippery slope when arrogance crossbreeds with scientific breakthroughs and the brakes of ethics are cut by greed (to mix and mangle a metaphor).
Opening with the doomed honeymooners, the story then establishes its heroes, CBI Agent Cash and Sheriff Colcord. Each is initially a little skeptical of the other due to interdepartmental rivalries and the politics of the situation (in addition to some internal personnel friction, Erebus Valley is a political hot potato, a major revenue source for the state and backed by people too powerful to ignore but opposed by numerous very vocal groups, some of which have rather good points), but they share a dedication to the job and a determination to see it through, no matter whose toes get stepped on and how inconvenient the truth might ultimately be. The head of Erebus security, Maximilian, promises full cooperation and appears shocked by the murder, but it's clear early on that the company has more going on than they're revealing, and that their boss ultimately values the survival of the park and continuation of his de-extinction work over the safety of human beings. Meanwhile, the culprits grow bolder and more violent, their attacks more depraved, their ultimate plan expanding in scale, putting everyone in danger. In thriller fashion, events escalate through various action pieces and setbacks to an explosive finale that sets up the next installment (which has yet to be published).
What cost it in the ratings was a sense of needless plot and character sprawl, some people and elements never really justifying their page time by the end, their fates a little too predictable. I guessed early on what was behind the attacks, though some bits of the reveal still worked well. I also expected a little more to come of the mammoths and a few other resurrected creatures, which had brief sense-of-awe moments after a big deal was made of their presence but ultimately might as well have been just advanced animatronics or not even been there at all, which is not something I should be thinking after I was promised a park full of Ice Age creatures; it's a bit like thinking the dinosaurs might as well have not been in Jurassic Park.
Other than those nitpicks, it's a decent enough thriller with sci-fi trappings. I didn't mind the heroes, though I don't know if I need to read any more in the series.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) - My Review
The Tusks of Extinction (Ray Nayler) - My Review
Tyrannosaur Canyon (Douglas Preston) - My Review
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith (Rob Ronzetti)
The Cursed Cloak of the Wretched Wraith #3
The Horrible Bag series, Book 3
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Zenith Maelstrom never wanted to go back to the world of GrahBag after escaping the first time; he only returned to rescue his sister, and inadvertently became tangled up in a rebellion against the remnants of the Wurm's forces and the Wurm's last vestiges, the ravenous cloak known as the Wraith. Still, that was a problem for the people of GrahBag, not two outsiders from Earth, both of whom are just children. Only Apogee betrayed him, literally throwing him out of the nightmare world and sealing the gates. Worse, his parents are convinced that something terrible happened to him when he witnessed his sister's "abduction"; they discovered his journal recounting his earlier trips to GrahBag and think it's a record of nightmares triggered by the trauma. Zenith is running out of ways to stall them, and is growing more desperate to find a way back to GrahBag, especially as days on Earth are months or years there... only the portals in the bag are still sealed up tight.
Unexpectedly, one day he finds his chance when a new portal opens in an alley - a salty mouth spewing monster-filled seawater (and foul language). Zenith has nothing on him but the clothes on his back, but he knows better than to wait for a better opportunity, so he leaps through... only to find that things have gone from bad to worse. The world of GrahBag is literally coming apart at the seams, and while Apogee's rebellion is still fighting, the Wraith's minions have seized control of the Collectary tree whose chalk-slate leaves literally write (or erase) reality... and it won't be long before there isn't even a world for them to fight over.
REVIEW: The third and (presumed) final installment of the Horrible Bag series pulls the story back on track after a somewhat weaker middle book, delivering an action-packed, intense finale to a series that, for a middle-grade title, pulls off some surprisingly dark moments as Zenith and Apogee finally confront the Wraith and the consequences of their own actions.
Unlike the previous book, Zenith remembers full well what happened to his (once older, now younger) sister and the world of GrahBag, in part because he took a page from Apogee's book and carefully writes recollections down every day, with a doodle of the bag itself; if he doesn't see the bag, after a while the memories slip away to be replaced with a more mundane version of events. He hates seeing his parents devastated by his sister's disappearance, just as he blames himself for not getting her and his best friend home safely, but there's nothing he can do except make himself remember and wait for a chance to get back - only to find himself in literal hot water, emerging in GrahBag's notorious Scalding Sea. Things only get worse from there, as he learns he and his sister are in no small part responsible for why the world is falling into chaos around them; the Scribe of the Collectary has found Apogee's old physics book and is haphazardly inserting whatever scientific concepts strike his fancy into GrahBag's reality. Zenith encounters the personification of the Grandfather Paradox of time travel (who is, understandably, rather paranoid) and Shrödinger's Cat (complete with the box in which it both is and is not alive), the latter of which becomes a surprisingly helpful companion. Zenith tries once more to rescue his sister - refusing to listen when she tells him she does not need rescuing - but his efforts backfire terribly, leading to some interesting plot developments that ultimately expose the roots of the Maelstrom siblings' ties to GrahBag and the origins of the Wurm itself. Things come together for a rather satisfying conclusion that doesn't erase all the damage done or losses incurred, one which leaves just enough of a crack in the door for future installments.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
The Circus of Stolen Dreams (Lorelei Savaryn) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
The Horrible Bag series, Book 3
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Zenith Maelstrom never wanted to go back to the world of GrahBag after escaping the first time; he only returned to rescue his sister, and inadvertently became tangled up in a rebellion against the remnants of the Wurm's forces and the Wurm's last vestiges, the ravenous cloak known as the Wraith. Still, that was a problem for the people of GrahBag, not two outsiders from Earth, both of whom are just children. Only Apogee betrayed him, literally throwing him out of the nightmare world and sealing the gates. Worse, his parents are convinced that something terrible happened to him when he witnessed his sister's "abduction"; they discovered his journal recounting his earlier trips to GrahBag and think it's a record of nightmares triggered by the trauma. Zenith is running out of ways to stall them, and is growing more desperate to find a way back to GrahBag, especially as days on Earth are months or years there... only the portals in the bag are still sealed up tight.
Unexpectedly, one day he finds his chance when a new portal opens in an alley - a salty mouth spewing monster-filled seawater (and foul language). Zenith has nothing on him but the clothes on his back, but he knows better than to wait for a better opportunity, so he leaps through... only to find that things have gone from bad to worse. The world of GrahBag is literally coming apart at the seams, and while Apogee's rebellion is still fighting, the Wraith's minions have seized control of the Collectary tree whose chalk-slate leaves literally write (or erase) reality... and it won't be long before there isn't even a world for them to fight over.
REVIEW: The third and (presumed) final installment of the Horrible Bag series pulls the story back on track after a somewhat weaker middle book, delivering an action-packed, intense finale to a series that, for a middle-grade title, pulls off some surprisingly dark moments as Zenith and Apogee finally confront the Wraith and the consequences of their own actions.
Unlike the previous book, Zenith remembers full well what happened to his (once older, now younger) sister and the world of GrahBag, in part because he took a page from Apogee's book and carefully writes recollections down every day, with a doodle of the bag itself; if he doesn't see the bag, after a while the memories slip away to be replaced with a more mundane version of events. He hates seeing his parents devastated by his sister's disappearance, just as he blames himself for not getting her and his best friend home safely, but there's nothing he can do except make himself remember and wait for a chance to get back - only to find himself in literal hot water, emerging in GrahBag's notorious Scalding Sea. Things only get worse from there, as he learns he and his sister are in no small part responsible for why the world is falling into chaos around them; the Scribe of the Collectary has found Apogee's old physics book and is haphazardly inserting whatever scientific concepts strike his fancy into GrahBag's reality. Zenith encounters the personification of the Grandfather Paradox of time travel (who is, understandably, rather paranoid) and Shrödinger's Cat (complete with the box in which it both is and is not alive), the latter of which becomes a surprisingly helpful companion. Zenith tries once more to rescue his sister - refusing to listen when she tells him she does not need rescuing - but his efforts backfire terribly, leading to some interesting plot developments that ultimately expose the roots of the Maelstrom siblings' ties to GrahBag and the origins of the Wurm itself. Things come together for a rather satisfying conclusion that doesn't erase all the damage done or losses incurred, one which leaves just enough of a crack in the door for future installments.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
The Circus of Stolen Dreams (Lorelei Savaryn) - My Review
Nightbooks (J. A. White) - My Review
The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie (Freida McFadden)
The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie: A Satirical Novella
Freida McFadden
Hollywood Upstairs Press
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: She had the perfect marriage - until it was over. It's been weeks since Grant died in a fiery crash, and Alice still can't get his face out of her mind... because she's still seeing him everywhere, quite literally. In the grocery store, following her in traffic, walking down the street - everywhere. Either his ghost is haunting her in a bad plot twist, or something sinister is going on. To figure out what, Alice will have to unravel the secrets, the lies, and the secret lies of their life together, all without revealing her own deceptions, or ending up dead herself.
REVIEW: I've never actually read anything by McFadden before (though, ironically, I saw several of her books go through the library shipping center as I listened to this audiobook), but satires can be fun and the length filled a dead spot in my day. From the title and first words of the prologue, it's pretty clear that McFadden is presenting a satire of her own genre (and even her own works, as Alice is reading a Freida McFadden novel when her best friend comes over with yet another condolence casserole), offering up a trawler's worth of red herrings via an unreliable narrator and false starts and plot twists that may not make a lick of sense but make for catchy chapter break hooks. As Alice struggles to deal with seeing Grant everywhere and second-guessing her own memories, McFadden puts genre tropes through their paces, clearly having a blast while doing it. At one point she even slips in a reference to Spaceballs, which helped boost the short tale over some uneven pacing to a solid Good rating. The plot is a bit flimsy and the characters paper-thin, but it wasn't written to be a gripping, taut thriller. It set out to be a satire, and it made me chuckle, which is all a satire has to do. Anyone looking for more than that needs to lighten up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite) - My Review
Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero) - My Review
Lord of the Fly Fest (Goldy Moldavsky) - My Review
Freida McFadden
Hollywood Upstairs Press
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: She had the perfect marriage - until it was over. It's been weeks since Grant died in a fiery crash, and Alice still can't get his face out of her mind... because she's still seeing him everywhere, quite literally. In the grocery store, following her in traffic, walking down the street - everywhere. Either his ghost is haunting her in a bad plot twist, or something sinister is going on. To figure out what, Alice will have to unravel the secrets, the lies, and the secret lies of their life together, all without revealing her own deceptions, or ending up dead herself.
REVIEW: I've never actually read anything by McFadden before (though, ironically, I saw several of her books go through the library shipping center as I listened to this audiobook), but satires can be fun and the length filled a dead spot in my day. From the title and first words of the prologue, it's pretty clear that McFadden is presenting a satire of her own genre (and even her own works, as Alice is reading a Freida McFadden novel when her best friend comes over with yet another condolence casserole), offering up a trawler's worth of red herrings via an unreliable narrator and false starts and plot twists that may not make a lick of sense but make for catchy chapter break hooks. As Alice struggles to deal with seeing Grant everywhere and second-guessing her own memories, McFadden puts genre tropes through their paces, clearly having a blast while doing it. At one point she even slips in a reference to Spaceballs, which helped boost the short tale over some uneven pacing to a solid Good rating. The plot is a bit flimsy and the characters paper-thin, but it wasn't written to be a gripping, taut thriller. It set out to be a satire, and it made me chuckle, which is all a satire has to do. Anyone looking for more than that needs to lighten up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite) - My Review
Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero) - My Review
Lord of the Fly Fest (Goldy Moldavsky) - My Review
Friday, September 12, 2025
The Twisted Tower of Endless Torment (Ron Renzetti)
The Twisted Tower of Endless Torment #2
The Horrible Bag series, Book 2
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Prepare for Battle! reads the note on Zenith Maelstrom's nightstand, but for the life of him he can't remember why he wrote it. Did it mean a game with his friend Kevin Churl? They've spent much of their summer together, except when Zenith has to watch his kid sister Apogee... but something in the back of his mind bothers him, like he's forgotten something very important. It's not until he finds Apogee in the basement trying to open an ugly old leather bag that he remembers about their terrible journey through the land of GrahBag - and how it's his fault that his sister is four years old instead of fourteen. He promised her when they left that he'd fix it, that they'd go back, but for some reason it's hard to hold onto that thought when he's in the real world and away from the horrible bag. Then Apogee forces his hand; she sneaks back through to the other world while he's asleep. With Kevin tagging along, he reluctantly goes back into the realm of monsters, only to find it's even worse than before. The Wurm lives on as a soul-sucking Wraith, and the very land seems to be dying. He and Apogee only barely escaped with their lives last time, and this time they may not be so lucky...
REVIEW: Taking up a short while after the previous volume ended, it also wastes little time getting going, though Zenith dithers a bit overlong once he realizes that he can't even trust his memories when he's out of sight of the horrible bag that's the portal to GrahBag. He also finds that he has two memories of the past, one in which Apogee is his protective kid sister and another where she's always been a little kid (the latter of which being the reality that their parents and the rest of the world accept)... which is he to believe? Which does he want? Part of him likes being the older sibling for once, while another doesn't feel at all prepared to protect a young kid as a big brother should (and as Apogee did when she was the big sister, as irritating as he sometimes found her). Worse, he realizes that, by abandoning GrahBag after their confrontation with the Wurm, he and his sister inadvertently made a bad place even worse; those who were loyal to the Wurm were outraged at the loss of their leader, while those who opposed it tried at last to revolt but lacked a leader, the instigator of the attack having fled their world after throwing it into utter chaos. What kind of person, let alone brother, is Zenith if he can't even face the consequences of his actions, however unintentional? As he reunites with old companions (and some old enemies), he finds new dangers and problems to solve; the titular Eternal Tower is a truly diabolical prison with mind-warping and devious traps. As before, there's a sense of very real danger for the kids, and Zenith has to take his lumps and learn lessons the hard way.
The story barely lost a half star for a sense of it being rushed, for Kevin's involvement feeling extraneous (he's sidelined pretty quickly and hardly mentioned afterwards), and for ending on an actual cliffhanger this time. I also get a bit irked by plot points that feel drawn out because people won't spit out what they know or what they need despite ample opportunity (regardless of target age). Still, I'm invested enough to finish off the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Tamora Carter, Goblin Queen (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Story Thieves (James Riley) - My Review
100 Cupboards (N. D. Wilson) - My Review
The Horrible Bag series, Book 2
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Prepare for Battle! reads the note on Zenith Maelstrom's nightstand, but for the life of him he can't remember why he wrote it. Did it mean a game with his friend Kevin Churl? They've spent much of their summer together, except when Zenith has to watch his kid sister Apogee... but something in the back of his mind bothers him, like he's forgotten something very important. It's not until he finds Apogee in the basement trying to open an ugly old leather bag that he remembers about their terrible journey through the land of GrahBag - and how it's his fault that his sister is four years old instead of fourteen. He promised her when they left that he'd fix it, that they'd go back, but for some reason it's hard to hold onto that thought when he's in the real world and away from the horrible bag. Then Apogee forces his hand; she sneaks back through to the other world while he's asleep. With Kevin tagging along, he reluctantly goes back into the realm of monsters, only to find it's even worse than before. The Wurm lives on as a soul-sucking Wraith, and the very land seems to be dying. He and Apogee only barely escaped with their lives last time, and this time they may not be so lucky...
REVIEW: Taking up a short while after the previous volume ended, it also wastes little time getting going, though Zenith dithers a bit overlong once he realizes that he can't even trust his memories when he's out of sight of the horrible bag that's the portal to GrahBag. He also finds that he has two memories of the past, one in which Apogee is his protective kid sister and another where she's always been a little kid (the latter of which being the reality that their parents and the rest of the world accept)... which is he to believe? Which does he want? Part of him likes being the older sibling for once, while another doesn't feel at all prepared to protect a young kid as a big brother should (and as Apogee did when she was the big sister, as irritating as he sometimes found her). Worse, he realizes that, by abandoning GrahBag after their confrontation with the Wurm, he and his sister inadvertently made a bad place even worse; those who were loyal to the Wurm were outraged at the loss of their leader, while those who opposed it tried at last to revolt but lacked a leader, the instigator of the attack having fled their world after throwing it into utter chaos. What kind of person, let alone brother, is Zenith if he can't even face the consequences of his actions, however unintentional? As he reunites with old companions (and some old enemies), he finds new dangers and problems to solve; the titular Eternal Tower is a truly diabolical prison with mind-warping and devious traps. As before, there's a sense of very real danger for the kids, and Zenith has to take his lumps and learn lessons the hard way.
The story barely lost a half star for a sense of it being rushed, for Kevin's involvement feeling extraneous (he's sidelined pretty quickly and hardly mentioned afterwards), and for ending on an actual cliffhanger this time. I also get a bit irked by plot points that feel drawn out because people won't spit out what they know or what they need despite ample opportunity (regardless of target age). Still, I'm invested enough to finish off the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Tamora Carter, Goblin Queen (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
Story Thieves (James Riley) - My Review
100 Cupboards (N. D. Wilson) - My Review
Thursday, September 11, 2025
The Teller of Small Fortunes (Julie Leong)
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Julie Leong
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The Shinn woman Tao travels far and wide across the land of Eshtera in her mule-drawn wagon, using her gifts of seeing to tell fortunes to farmers and villagers... but small fortunes only. Seeing big events carries too great a burden, and draws too big a price - something she has only tried once, and something she vows never to do again. This is part of why she travels; the royal Guild of Mages would love to get their hands on a seer, and they wouldn't care about the cost. The other part is that she never feels like she truly belongs in this land, her Shinn features marking her as a foreigner among the pale Eshterans for all that she barely remembers her native language. It is a lonely life, forever on the road and on the run, but at least she is free.
A chance encounter on the road lands her in the company of a pair of roving ex-mercenaries, one a "reformed" thief and the other desperately searching for the young daughter who disappeared while he was away on campaign. Tao doesn't want traveling companions, and if she did, she likely wouldn't have picked these two, but fate seems to have other ideas. Like it or not, Tao's solo journeys will have to wait, as she becomes more entangled in the lives of these strangers, and others encountered with them, than she ever intended... so entangled that her past, and the guild, may finally catch up to her.
REVIEW: This one was advertised as a "cozy fantasy", riding a current wave of the subgenre's popularity. It is, indeed, cozy, with fairly low stakes, a focus on characters and found family, and no real baddies or scary stuff. At some point, though, the blunted edges and rosy golden glow become a little tiresome, and fail to hide some weaknesses underneath the story.
Things start well and cozy enough, as Tao rides into a village and resolves her first crisis - missing goats - with minimal fuss, while establishing the world and how the people view "exotic" foreigners like herself, an Asian-analog race from across the sea, with whom relations have been fraught lately. Tao herself has an ambivalent relationship with her own heritage. On the one hand, she loves her memories of childhood and the father she lost too soon, while on the other she sees it as one more barrier between herself and the people around her, her features a permanent brand marking her as different and other, no matter how well she speaks the local tongue. Tao may lean into the trappings of her Shinn blood to promote her small fortune-telling business, but can't help regretting and resenting how it creates a barrier... though, of course, she tells herself she doesn't need or even want companionship anyway. It's only when given no other choice that she reluctantly accepts Mash and Silt, a solid soldier/little thief pair cut from the (over)familiar genre cloth as Leiber's classic duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as fellow travelers. They, too, don't intend to become close to the fortune-teller, but nevertheless they wind up warming up to each other as friends, each finding in the group something they were missing in their lives before. Tao strives to keep herself separate even as she works to help the others, but can't hold herself aloof forever, and is surprised to realize that she has wants and needs in her life as well - and that, much as she tries to embrace the lonely traveler life, she could really use a friend.
There is, from the outset (and throughout), a soft, warm glow of "cozy" about the whole story and the characters. Some lip service is given to rough pasts and inequalities and other grounding elements, but overall the world feels vague and hazy and bubble-wrapped, to the point where one can predict that, even when things look slightly bad, nothing will ever be particularly unpleasant or even vaguely discomfiting for very long. Some elements are too predictable early on, and others feel like pointless, page-eating tangents that never really deliver. The whole eventually started feeling like someone constantly hugging and coddling the reader, force-feeding them warm tea, always reassuring them that things will be all right even when it may look momentarily like it's not... and there are a few "surprises" where, honestly, nobody in the cast should've been that stupid for that long, even in a world this fuzzy-slipper cozy. By the end, it just felt too puffy and insubstantial and forcibly "feel all good all the time" to be really satisfying to me, though that probably says more about me than the story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Bookshops and Bonedust (Travis Baldree) - My Review
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Julie Leong
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The Shinn woman Tao travels far and wide across the land of Eshtera in her mule-drawn wagon, using her gifts of seeing to tell fortunes to farmers and villagers... but small fortunes only. Seeing big events carries too great a burden, and draws too big a price - something she has only tried once, and something she vows never to do again. This is part of why she travels; the royal Guild of Mages would love to get their hands on a seer, and they wouldn't care about the cost. The other part is that she never feels like she truly belongs in this land, her Shinn features marking her as a foreigner among the pale Eshterans for all that she barely remembers her native language. It is a lonely life, forever on the road and on the run, but at least she is free.
A chance encounter on the road lands her in the company of a pair of roving ex-mercenaries, one a "reformed" thief and the other desperately searching for the young daughter who disappeared while he was away on campaign. Tao doesn't want traveling companions, and if she did, she likely wouldn't have picked these two, but fate seems to have other ideas. Like it or not, Tao's solo journeys will have to wait, as she becomes more entangled in the lives of these strangers, and others encountered with them, than she ever intended... so entangled that her past, and the guild, may finally catch up to her.
REVIEW: This one was advertised as a "cozy fantasy", riding a current wave of the subgenre's popularity. It is, indeed, cozy, with fairly low stakes, a focus on characters and found family, and no real baddies or scary stuff. At some point, though, the blunted edges and rosy golden glow become a little tiresome, and fail to hide some weaknesses underneath the story.
Things start well and cozy enough, as Tao rides into a village and resolves her first crisis - missing goats - with minimal fuss, while establishing the world and how the people view "exotic" foreigners like herself, an Asian-analog race from across the sea, with whom relations have been fraught lately. Tao herself has an ambivalent relationship with her own heritage. On the one hand, she loves her memories of childhood and the father she lost too soon, while on the other she sees it as one more barrier between herself and the people around her, her features a permanent brand marking her as different and other, no matter how well she speaks the local tongue. Tao may lean into the trappings of her Shinn blood to promote her small fortune-telling business, but can't help regretting and resenting how it creates a barrier... though, of course, she tells herself she doesn't need or even want companionship anyway. It's only when given no other choice that she reluctantly accepts Mash and Silt, a solid soldier/little thief pair cut from the (over)familiar genre cloth as Leiber's classic duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as fellow travelers. They, too, don't intend to become close to the fortune-teller, but nevertheless they wind up warming up to each other as friends, each finding in the group something they were missing in their lives before. Tao strives to keep herself separate even as she works to help the others, but can't hold herself aloof forever, and is surprised to realize that she has wants and needs in her life as well - and that, much as she tries to embrace the lonely traveler life, she could really use a friend.
There is, from the outset (and throughout), a soft, warm glow of "cozy" about the whole story and the characters. Some lip service is given to rough pasts and inequalities and other grounding elements, but overall the world feels vague and hazy and bubble-wrapped, to the point where one can predict that, even when things look slightly bad, nothing will ever be particularly unpleasant or even vaguely discomfiting for very long. Some elements are too predictable early on, and others feel like pointless, page-eating tangents that never really deliver. The whole eventually started feeling like someone constantly hugging and coddling the reader, force-feeding them warm tea, always reassuring them that things will be all right even when it may look momentarily like it's not... and there are a few "surprises" where, honestly, nobody in the cast should've been that stupid for that long, even in a world this fuzzy-slipper cozy. By the end, it just felt too puffy and insubstantial and forcibly "feel all good all the time" to be really satisfying to me, though that probably says more about me than the story.
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Bookshops and Bonedust (Travis Baldree) - My Review
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Under the Whispering Door (TJ Klune) - My Review
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things (Rob Renzetti)
The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things #1
The Horrible Bag series, Book 1
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The ugly old black leather bag on the doorstep moaned; Zenith is sure of it. He doesn't know where it came from or who it was for or why it was left in front of the house, but he knows that it moaned when he first saw it. When he tries to pick it up, it pricks his finger - and seems to wake up, disgorging a monstrous thing of slime and hair and too many legs around a darkly beating heart. This is the last thing a boy who's already been grounded for mischief-making needs... and when the "shlurp" grabs his older sister and babysitter, Apogee, and pulls her back into the bag, Zenith has to get her back. Thus he finds himself leaping into the land of GrahBag, a world of surreal horrors, where every monster is worse than the last and even "friends" may turn out to be foes.
REVIEW: I needed a palate cleanser after the previous disappointing audiobook, and this looked like a quick way to fill out the rest of a work shift, having a great title that promised spooky shenanigans. Happily, it delivers in full.
Kicking off from the first sentence of the first page, the boy Zenith finds himself with a monstrous bag to deal with... and, soon, a monster from within the monstrous bag. Almost as bad is Apogee, the sister he used to be close to until an incident a few years back that transformed her from his comrade-in-mischief to a preteen prison guard/third parent who would rather lecture him about responsibility than play. As creeped out as Zenith is by the bag and the "shlurp" monster, he's initially more worried about how letting a horrible bag into the house will affect his grounding sentence, even as he wishes he could still confide in his sister. Before long, the matter is taken out of her hands when Apogee is abducted. Zenith wastes little time jumping into the bag afterward... and if he found the outside creepy, with its mismatched assortment of hides and leathers, the inside is even worse... and that's before he makes the transition to GrahBag proper, a place that makes nightmares seem downright quaint. Zenith tries to outwit and outthink the place, but the land of the sickly green skies and red sun always seems to have another twisted trick up its sleeve, and even when he thinks he's getting ahead, he may be digging himself into more trouble. He picks up a companion of sorts in the form of a little gargoyle, but he can't expect others to fight his battles or solve his problems. Nor is Apogee entirely helpless or stupid. The pacing's pretty quick (as one would expect from a middle grade title) and there are a few fun moments (and a few bits of crude humor - again, as one comes to expect from middle grade), but it also has genuinely creepy encounters and moments where Zenith must confront his own mistakes and fallibility. The ending sets up the conflict for the second book nicely, doing a good enough job baiting the hook that I've already downloaded the next two titles in the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Game of Sunken Places (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Shadows (Jacqueline West) - My Review
The Horrible Bag series, Book 1
Rob Renzetti
Penguin Workshop
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The ugly old black leather bag on the doorstep moaned; Zenith is sure of it. He doesn't know where it came from or who it was for or why it was left in front of the house, but he knows that it moaned when he first saw it. When he tries to pick it up, it pricks his finger - and seems to wake up, disgorging a monstrous thing of slime and hair and too many legs around a darkly beating heart. This is the last thing a boy who's already been grounded for mischief-making needs... and when the "shlurp" grabs his older sister and babysitter, Apogee, and pulls her back into the bag, Zenith has to get her back. Thus he finds himself leaping into the land of GrahBag, a world of surreal horrors, where every monster is worse than the last and even "friends" may turn out to be foes.
REVIEW: I needed a palate cleanser after the previous disappointing audiobook, and this looked like a quick way to fill out the rest of a work shift, having a great title that promised spooky shenanigans. Happily, it delivers in full.
Kicking off from the first sentence of the first page, the boy Zenith finds himself with a monstrous bag to deal with... and, soon, a monster from within the monstrous bag. Almost as bad is Apogee, the sister he used to be close to until an incident a few years back that transformed her from his comrade-in-mischief to a preteen prison guard/third parent who would rather lecture him about responsibility than play. As creeped out as Zenith is by the bag and the "shlurp" monster, he's initially more worried about how letting a horrible bag into the house will affect his grounding sentence, even as he wishes he could still confide in his sister. Before long, the matter is taken out of her hands when Apogee is abducted. Zenith wastes little time jumping into the bag afterward... and if he found the outside creepy, with its mismatched assortment of hides and leathers, the inside is even worse... and that's before he makes the transition to GrahBag proper, a place that makes nightmares seem downright quaint. Zenith tries to outwit and outthink the place, but the land of the sickly green skies and red sun always seems to have another twisted trick up its sleeve, and even when he thinks he's getting ahead, he may be digging himself into more trouble. He picks up a companion of sorts in the form of a little gargoyle, but he can't expect others to fight his battles or solve his problems. Nor is Apogee entirely helpless or stupid. The pacing's pretty quick (as one would expect from a middle grade title) and there are a few fun moments (and a few bits of crude humor - again, as one comes to expect from middle grade), but it also has genuinely creepy encounters and moments where Zenith must confront his own mistakes and fallibility. The ending sets up the conflict for the second book nicely, doing a good enough job baiting the hook that I've already downloaded the next two titles in the trilogy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Game of Sunken Places (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
The Shadows (Jacqueline West) - My Review
Mindswap (Robert Sheckley)
Mindswap
Robert Sheckley
Dell
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: College student Marvin grows bored with his life in a quaint town in upstate New York, a place so backwards in the intergalactic age that the people still travel by jet plane. He wants to see the wider worlds, but the only affordable way for someone of his limited means is a mindswap: transferring his consciousness instantaneously into another body on another planet, while the inhabitant of that body enters his own. What better way to experience another planet than in a body adapted to live there? Despite the warnings of his conservative family and friends, Marvin answers an ad from a Martian who wants an Earth vacation... but his plans go awry almost from the moment he arrives on the red planet. Ze Craggash was a crook who simultaneously sold his body to multiple travelers and has absconded with Marvin's Earth body in the confusion. Ordered to vacate his new host - a death sentence if he can't find another body to swap into - he turns to a down-on-his-luck Martian detective. Thus begins a series of increasingly desperate swaps, each taking him further and further from his home across the vastness of space.
REVIEW: As one might expect from a story originally published in 1966, Mindswap shows its age, even as it plays with some fun ideas and presents some moments of timeless satire and absurdity in the vein of Gulliver's Travels.
From the start, Marvin lets his enthusiasm and desperation to do something bold and adventurous before he gets too old and settled (and too much like the people around him in his backwards town) blind him to the potential drawbacks of mindswaps. To the rest of the world and the galaxies, mindswapping is as casual a means of travel as taking a plane or riding the subway; the odds of something going on are supposed to be infinitesimally small. So, of course, everything that can go wrong eventually does. Losing his human body and place on Earth is the least of his troubles before long, as he finds himself faced with numerous ridiculous situations that have potentially dire consequences for his survival. At some point, the absurdity starts overtaking the (admittedly thin) plotline, especially when his mind starts to crack from numerous swaps and he begins seeing his increasingly alien environs as caricatured, surreal locales from Earth... displaying at the same time some rather cringeworthy class, gender, and racial stereotypes that can't really be swept under the lumpy "author of his time" rug. (The audiobook narrator did not help with this, leaning hard into overdone accents to emphasize just what culture and ethnic group Sheckley was caricaturing.) It also starts to feel like Sheckley gave up all pretense of story and even satire to show off just how utterly bizarre he could get, to the point of completely derailing the final leg of Marvin's adventure and making this reader wonder what the point of it all was, as it ended up feeling like a waste of time.
While I could appreciate Sheckley's deadpan delivery of a strange far future and stranger situations, I just plain didn't enjoy it or care by the end, by which point even the laughs had dried up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Nonexistent Knight (Italo Calvino) - My Review
Midnight at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker) - My Review
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) - My Review
Robert Sheckley
Dell
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: College student Marvin grows bored with his life in a quaint town in upstate New York, a place so backwards in the intergalactic age that the people still travel by jet plane. He wants to see the wider worlds, but the only affordable way for someone of his limited means is a mindswap: transferring his consciousness instantaneously into another body on another planet, while the inhabitant of that body enters his own. What better way to experience another planet than in a body adapted to live there? Despite the warnings of his conservative family and friends, Marvin answers an ad from a Martian who wants an Earth vacation... but his plans go awry almost from the moment he arrives on the red planet. Ze Craggash was a crook who simultaneously sold his body to multiple travelers and has absconded with Marvin's Earth body in the confusion. Ordered to vacate his new host - a death sentence if he can't find another body to swap into - he turns to a down-on-his-luck Martian detective. Thus begins a series of increasingly desperate swaps, each taking him further and further from his home across the vastness of space.
REVIEW: As one might expect from a story originally published in 1966, Mindswap shows its age, even as it plays with some fun ideas and presents some moments of timeless satire and absurdity in the vein of Gulliver's Travels.
From the start, Marvin lets his enthusiasm and desperation to do something bold and adventurous before he gets too old and settled (and too much like the people around him in his backwards town) blind him to the potential drawbacks of mindswaps. To the rest of the world and the galaxies, mindswapping is as casual a means of travel as taking a plane or riding the subway; the odds of something going on are supposed to be infinitesimally small. So, of course, everything that can go wrong eventually does. Losing his human body and place on Earth is the least of his troubles before long, as he finds himself faced with numerous ridiculous situations that have potentially dire consequences for his survival. At some point, the absurdity starts overtaking the (admittedly thin) plotline, especially when his mind starts to crack from numerous swaps and he begins seeing his increasingly alien environs as caricatured, surreal locales from Earth... displaying at the same time some rather cringeworthy class, gender, and racial stereotypes that can't really be swept under the lumpy "author of his time" rug. (The audiobook narrator did not help with this, leaning hard into overdone accents to emphasize just what culture and ethnic group Sheckley was caricaturing.) It also starts to feel like Sheckley gave up all pretense of story and even satire to show off just how utterly bizarre he could get, to the point of completely derailing the final leg of Marvin's adventure and making this reader wonder what the point of it all was, as it ended up feeling like a waste of time.
While I could appreciate Sheckley's deadpan delivery of a strange far future and stranger situations, I just plain didn't enjoy it or care by the end, by which point even the laughs had dried up.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Nonexistent Knight (Italo Calvino) - My Review
Midnight at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker) - My Review
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) - My Review
Friday, September 5, 2025
The Wolf in the Whale (Jordanna Max Bordsky)
The Wolf in the Whale
Jordanna Max Bordsky
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the oldest times, the Inuit have lived in the land of the caribou and the white bear, telling stories of the ancestors and the spirits of the world around them. Omat, child of a fallen hunter, was born with the late man's spirit and the blessing of the great Wolf, a clear sign that she will become the next angakkuq, the shaman, of their small band, invoking the powers and guidance of the spirit world to keep the people safe. But even in their isolated settlement on the very eastern edge of the land, there are some who doubt her destiny; her soul is male, but her body female, and there are taboos about the roles of men and women that could threaten retribution from the spirit world if violated. She must prove herself always, even to her own milk-brother Kiasik, if she is to fulfill her destiny... but when she is ripped from her family and drug to the very edge of the vast open waters, Omat encounters a threat beyond anything she has imagined: a strange, pale-skinned people with gleaming blades and hair like fire, who bring their own warlike pantheon of gods to her shores. She will do anything to save her people... but the Inuit spirits and the Norse gods have already marked her as the herald of the end of days.
REVIEW: The Wolf in the Whale is inspired by the explorations of the Viking Leif Erickson and his warlike daughter, Freydis, who briefly established a settlement in what they called Vinland before abandoning the "New World" for over five centuries... a settlement whose time frame coincided with the eastward expansion of the Inuit. There is evidence that indiginous resistance was involved in Vinland's abandonment, though of course concrete details are almost impossible to ascertain over a thousand years after the events in question. From these historic threads and copious research into Norse and Inuit cultures, Bordsky deftly weaves in elements of religion and magic and very human culture clashes, turning the encounter into something worthy of a saga.
From the moment of her birth, Omat's grandfather Ataata recognizes the signs of a future shaman and heir to his position as leader and liaison with the spirits - a position that brings very real powers, but also carries great burdens, for the spirits of the Inuit can be fickle and tricky and even cruel. What Ataata doesn't realize is that Taqqiq, the Moon man, has foreseen Omat's destiny and already harbors great anger toward her from her first breaths. Meanwhile, Omat grows up raised as a boy and a man-to-be; it is only several chapter in that she and the reader realize that, though her soul is that of her father, her body is female. (She narrates her tale in the first person, concealing this as she sees herself as a boy.) This is not unheard of in their people, according to Ataata - after all, it is known that the souls of the dead return to be reborn in the living, so of course sometimes "boy" and "girl" souls end up in a different body - but it is rare enough that the others in her small, struggling settlement are uncomfortable at times with the arrangement, worried about breaking one of the strict taboos that could bring ill luck and doom upon them all when they are already much dwindled from when they first arrived in this new territory. Still, Omat is confident she can win her kin over, even successfully completing her vision quest to receive her spirit guides and shaman powers... until strangers arrive to destroy everything she has worked towards, and the spirits themselves betray her. Even that devastation pales in comparison to what she finds when she is essentially traded away to the cruel strangers, the coming of the Norsemen and the slaughter that changes everything. Even then, things might have been different if the men in the blue cloaks and great boats hadn't taken her milk-brother Kiasik captive when they sailed off, driving Omat to undertake a dangerous, even epic journey far from the lands and spirits she knows to find him again. Along the way, she encounters an outcast Norseman, Brandr, who challenges everything she thinks she knows about the strangers... and herself. Meanwhile, the spirits and gods play their own games, as usual thinking nothing of the mortals they use as game tokens and tools (even the Inuit spirits don't exactly coddle their humans, particularly the powerful entities behind the Moon and the Sun and the sea), while myths and stories form a framework for sharing knowledge.
There are times when the story threatened to slip in the ratings, some moments where I was prepared for the story to go one way and disappoint me, only for it to ultimately go another and pleasantly surprise me. That said, I'd definitely include a trigger warning for sexual assault, and one for canine fates. But Omat remains a strong, compelling hero/heroine throughout (she sees herself as both man and woman throughout, straddling the line between genders as a shaman straddles the line between the waking world and the spirit realm), far from flawless but rarely giving up for long and willing to learn from mistakes. Bordsky does a superb job bringing the world of the Inuit to life, as well as the Norse culture she so unexpectedly and violently encounters, making the people more than simple caricatures. It makes for a solid story of mythic proportions with ideas and images that linger well in the memory.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Eagle Drums (Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson) - My Review
The Leopard's Daughter (Lee Killough) - My Review
The Tiger and the Wolf (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Jordanna Max Bordsky
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the oldest times, the Inuit have lived in the land of the caribou and the white bear, telling stories of the ancestors and the spirits of the world around them. Omat, child of a fallen hunter, was born with the late man's spirit and the blessing of the great Wolf, a clear sign that she will become the next angakkuq, the shaman, of their small band, invoking the powers and guidance of the spirit world to keep the people safe. But even in their isolated settlement on the very eastern edge of the land, there are some who doubt her destiny; her soul is male, but her body female, and there are taboos about the roles of men and women that could threaten retribution from the spirit world if violated. She must prove herself always, even to her own milk-brother Kiasik, if she is to fulfill her destiny... but when she is ripped from her family and drug to the very edge of the vast open waters, Omat encounters a threat beyond anything she has imagined: a strange, pale-skinned people with gleaming blades and hair like fire, who bring their own warlike pantheon of gods to her shores. She will do anything to save her people... but the Inuit spirits and the Norse gods have already marked her as the herald of the end of days.
REVIEW: The Wolf in the Whale is inspired by the explorations of the Viking Leif Erickson and his warlike daughter, Freydis, who briefly established a settlement in what they called Vinland before abandoning the "New World" for over five centuries... a settlement whose time frame coincided with the eastward expansion of the Inuit. There is evidence that indiginous resistance was involved in Vinland's abandonment, though of course concrete details are almost impossible to ascertain over a thousand years after the events in question. From these historic threads and copious research into Norse and Inuit cultures, Bordsky deftly weaves in elements of religion and magic and very human culture clashes, turning the encounter into something worthy of a saga.
From the moment of her birth, Omat's grandfather Ataata recognizes the signs of a future shaman and heir to his position as leader and liaison with the spirits - a position that brings very real powers, but also carries great burdens, for the spirits of the Inuit can be fickle and tricky and even cruel. What Ataata doesn't realize is that Taqqiq, the Moon man, has foreseen Omat's destiny and already harbors great anger toward her from her first breaths. Meanwhile, Omat grows up raised as a boy and a man-to-be; it is only several chapter in that she and the reader realize that, though her soul is that of her father, her body is female. (She narrates her tale in the first person, concealing this as she sees herself as a boy.) This is not unheard of in their people, according to Ataata - after all, it is known that the souls of the dead return to be reborn in the living, so of course sometimes "boy" and "girl" souls end up in a different body - but it is rare enough that the others in her small, struggling settlement are uncomfortable at times with the arrangement, worried about breaking one of the strict taboos that could bring ill luck and doom upon them all when they are already much dwindled from when they first arrived in this new territory. Still, Omat is confident she can win her kin over, even successfully completing her vision quest to receive her spirit guides and shaman powers... until strangers arrive to destroy everything she has worked towards, and the spirits themselves betray her. Even that devastation pales in comparison to what she finds when she is essentially traded away to the cruel strangers, the coming of the Norsemen and the slaughter that changes everything. Even then, things might have been different if the men in the blue cloaks and great boats hadn't taken her milk-brother Kiasik captive when they sailed off, driving Omat to undertake a dangerous, even epic journey far from the lands and spirits she knows to find him again. Along the way, she encounters an outcast Norseman, Brandr, who challenges everything she thinks she knows about the strangers... and herself. Meanwhile, the spirits and gods play their own games, as usual thinking nothing of the mortals they use as game tokens and tools (even the Inuit spirits don't exactly coddle their humans, particularly the powerful entities behind the Moon and the Sun and the sea), while myths and stories form a framework for sharing knowledge.
There are times when the story threatened to slip in the ratings, some moments where I was prepared for the story to go one way and disappoint me, only for it to ultimately go another and pleasantly surprise me. That said, I'd definitely include a trigger warning for sexual assault, and one for canine fates. But Omat remains a strong, compelling hero/heroine throughout (she sees herself as both man and woman throughout, straddling the line between genders as a shaman straddles the line between the waking world and the spirit realm), far from flawless but rarely giving up for long and willing to learn from mistakes. Bordsky does a superb job bringing the world of the Inuit to life, as well as the Norse culture she so unexpectedly and violently encounters, making the people more than simple caricatures. It makes for a solid story of mythic proportions with ideas and images that linger well in the memory.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Eagle Drums (Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson) - My Review
The Leopard's Daughter (Lee Killough) - My Review
The Tiger and the Wolf (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Remnant Population (Elizabeth Moon)
Remnant Population
Elizabeth Moon
Random House
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since childhood, Ophelia has been told what to do with her life, forced to give up any dreams of creativity or education to be a housewife, mother and, for forty years, a colonist. But when the charter company, having struggled for decades with declining populations and no profits, loses their contract, the people are given just thirty days to pack up and leave... only Ophelia refuses to go. Even her own son considers her worthless (save as cook and cleaner), and the company actually wants to charge a fee for transporting a woman well past breeding (read: useful) age to another world. The septuagenarian is beyond tired of being told how worthless she is. All she wants is peace and quiet to tend her garden, and that can't happen until everyone else has left.
Alone in the abandoned village, Ophelia feels joy for the first time since she was a little girl. She can go where she wants, wear what she wants, do what she wants, whenever she wants. If she feels any loneliness, it's more than outweighed by the freedom of being the only human - the only self-aware being - on the entire planet.
Or so she thinks... until she overhears a transmission from a new colony ship that ends in disaster when a previously unknown species attacks their fledgling settlement - a species advanced enough to coordinate a battle plan and even use war machines and explosives.
But that ship landed over a thousand kilometers away. Surely, if any of the natives were nearby, someone in Ophelia's village would've spotted some sign of them long ago... wouldn't they?
REVIEW: This title is something of a classic, or at least a notable title, in sci-fi circles, featuring an older woman, widowed and a grandmother, as the unlikely point of contact with intelligent alien life. It offers a somewhat different lens on human and alien interactions, though at times it meandered and drifted and ultimately fell back on some tired ideas, enough to narrowly cost it a half-star.
From the start, it's clear that Ophelia, and the culture she's part of, is a throwback to mid-century gender attitudes: women are discouraged from becoming anything but homemakers, men regularly belittle and abuse even their own mothers, and the status quo is stringently and violently enforced when anyone dares to question it. Ophelia knows something is not right with this arrangement, that she has been deprived of something vital and essential, but has tolerated it for lack of options for most of her long life, until the cancellation of the colony charter offers an unexpected opportunity for escape - if not an unlimited one. Earth-based lifeforms need Earth-originated food sources grown or fed with Earth microbes, meaning that any plant or animal native to the colony world cannot be digested (a restriction that goes both ways). Still, there's plenty of gardens and seeds and livestock to support one old woman for however long she has left to live, and the company didn't bother removing the buildings or machinery that powered the village and the orbital weather satellite. Ophelia finds the empty place to be a paradise, freed at last to rediscover joy and whimsy. She doesn't hate her fellow humans (though she had no love for her late, abusive second husband, and her lone surviving son turned into a petty tyrant of the household in his cruel father's image), but she never felt like herself when she was around them, and revels in the chance to discover who she truly is at the twilight of her life. The story drags a little here as the old woman plots her escape and establishes new routines in the empty village. (There are also hints, now and again, that some other force is at work behind her unusually strong bond to the planet over her own kind, but it's never explicitly followed up on.)
A year or so into her isolation, she overhears, via the satellite feed, the disastrous second colony attempt and learns that the planet holds more dangerous surprises. Ophelia tries to tell herself that nothing has changed, that she'll likely pass away of old age before the native culture discovers her settlement... but even then, part of her knows she's lying to herself, that it's only a matter of time before she is found. The People are a reasonably interesting culture, not nearly so simple-minded or "primitive" as Ophelia initially believes, though once again things bog down a bit as she finds herself trying to communicate with utterly inhuman visitors. At first she sees them as almost childlike, partly because the only way she knows how to begin teaching them is the way every parent teaches their own children, through gesture and repetition, though soon she must concede that the People are far more intelligent than that, possibly even more precocious than humans with how quickly they grasp new ideas. Even as she makes progress, her peace has been broken, and it's inevitable that the greater spacefaring government and military will arrive at some point, which could be disastrous for all concerned.
Though there was plenty Remnant Population did right, in the end I found the excessive meandering and drifting had worn on my interest. I also felt that it undermined its own oft-repeated ideas of women breaking free of oppressive patriarchal (and ageist) cultures that expect them to be nothing more than submissive mothers and grandmothers when it ultimately wound up making Ophelia's maternal instincts the most vital part of her personality.
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Strange Dogs (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
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A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Elizabeth Moon
Random House
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since childhood, Ophelia has been told what to do with her life, forced to give up any dreams of creativity or education to be a housewife, mother and, for forty years, a colonist. But when the charter company, having struggled for decades with declining populations and no profits, loses their contract, the people are given just thirty days to pack up and leave... only Ophelia refuses to go. Even her own son considers her worthless (save as cook and cleaner), and the company actually wants to charge a fee for transporting a woman well past breeding (read: useful) age to another world. The septuagenarian is beyond tired of being told how worthless she is. All she wants is peace and quiet to tend her garden, and that can't happen until everyone else has left.
Alone in the abandoned village, Ophelia feels joy for the first time since she was a little girl. She can go where she wants, wear what she wants, do what she wants, whenever she wants. If she feels any loneliness, it's more than outweighed by the freedom of being the only human - the only self-aware being - on the entire planet.
Or so she thinks... until she overhears a transmission from a new colony ship that ends in disaster when a previously unknown species attacks their fledgling settlement - a species advanced enough to coordinate a battle plan and even use war machines and explosives.
But that ship landed over a thousand kilometers away. Surely, if any of the natives were nearby, someone in Ophelia's village would've spotted some sign of them long ago... wouldn't they?
REVIEW: This title is something of a classic, or at least a notable title, in sci-fi circles, featuring an older woman, widowed and a grandmother, as the unlikely point of contact with intelligent alien life. It offers a somewhat different lens on human and alien interactions, though at times it meandered and drifted and ultimately fell back on some tired ideas, enough to narrowly cost it a half-star.
From the start, it's clear that Ophelia, and the culture she's part of, is a throwback to mid-century gender attitudes: women are discouraged from becoming anything but homemakers, men regularly belittle and abuse even their own mothers, and the status quo is stringently and violently enforced when anyone dares to question it. Ophelia knows something is not right with this arrangement, that she has been deprived of something vital and essential, but has tolerated it for lack of options for most of her long life, until the cancellation of the colony charter offers an unexpected opportunity for escape - if not an unlimited one. Earth-based lifeforms need Earth-originated food sources grown or fed with Earth microbes, meaning that any plant or animal native to the colony world cannot be digested (a restriction that goes both ways). Still, there's plenty of gardens and seeds and livestock to support one old woman for however long she has left to live, and the company didn't bother removing the buildings or machinery that powered the village and the orbital weather satellite. Ophelia finds the empty place to be a paradise, freed at last to rediscover joy and whimsy. She doesn't hate her fellow humans (though she had no love for her late, abusive second husband, and her lone surviving son turned into a petty tyrant of the household in his cruel father's image), but she never felt like herself when she was around them, and revels in the chance to discover who she truly is at the twilight of her life. The story drags a little here as the old woman plots her escape and establishes new routines in the empty village. (There are also hints, now and again, that some other force is at work behind her unusually strong bond to the planet over her own kind, but it's never explicitly followed up on.)
A year or so into her isolation, she overhears, via the satellite feed, the disastrous second colony attempt and learns that the planet holds more dangerous surprises. Ophelia tries to tell herself that nothing has changed, that she'll likely pass away of old age before the native culture discovers her settlement... but even then, part of her knows she's lying to herself, that it's only a matter of time before she is found. The People are a reasonably interesting culture, not nearly so simple-minded or "primitive" as Ophelia initially believes, though once again things bog down a bit as she finds herself trying to communicate with utterly inhuman visitors. At first she sees them as almost childlike, partly because the only way she knows how to begin teaching them is the way every parent teaches their own children, through gesture and repetition, though soon she must concede that the People are far more intelligent than that, possibly even more precocious than humans with how quickly they grasp new ideas. Even as she makes progress, her peace has been broken, and it's inevitable that the greater spacefaring government and military will arrive at some point, which could be disastrous for all concerned.
Though there was plenty Remnant Population did right, in the end I found the excessive meandering and drifting had worn on my interest. I also felt that it undermined its own oft-repeated ideas of women breaking free of oppressive patriarchal (and ageist) cultures that expect them to be nothing more than submissive mothers and grandmothers when it ultimately wound up making Ophelia's maternal instincts the most vital part of her personality.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Strange Dogs (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Amid the Crowd of Stars (Stephen Leigh) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Saturday, August 30, 2025
August Site Update
Goodbye and good riddance, August... Another gruelling month ends, and more reviews archived on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, August 29, 2025
The Hungry Gods (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
The Hungry Gods
(Terrible Worlds: Innovations)
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Solaris
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the toxic ruins of civilization's collapse, there is little room for compassion or the weak... which is why Amri is so desperate to find fuel to bring back to the Rabbit tribe. Without close kin, she knows she is one bad harvest away from being sacrificed for the survival of the others. She pushes further than she knows she should, into the city ruins and into the territory of the bloodthirsty Seagulls - but instead of death at the hands of their champion Beaker, four great smoking fires roar out of the skies.
It is the end of the world as Amri knew it, and the beginning of one she and the other clans might not survive.
Those fireballs carry "Gods" from the long-lost golden age of humanity, returned from centuries in their distant space utopia. They intend to "fix" Earth... but each of the four have their own ideas how to go about doing that, mutually exclusive goals that only share a complete disregard for whatever life still clings to the worn-out planet. As Amri falls into the company of one of these new warring Gods, an artificially enhanced man known as Guy Vestin, she will need all her wits about her to navigate the changes ahead - but what chance does the littlest, weakest Rabbit stand when faced with the might of the world-changing Gods themselves?
REVIEW: The Hungry Gods takes the old-school trope of the technologically superior spaceman arriving on a primitive (and/or postapocalyptic) world and single-handedly saving it from itself by (re)starting civilization and becoming a veritable god among the worshipful, superstitious "savages" (a trope with clear roots in cringeworthy racism and colonialism), and knocks it firmly on its ear by the end. Told from the perspective of Amri, one of the first witnesses of the "Gods" descending - and one of the first survivors of their wrath, when one of the Gods lands right in the Rabbit village and wipes out her kin with the bioengineered plants and fungi that are meant to turn Earth into his vision of a new Eden - it clearly establishes the notion that, even if humans no longer can sustain civilization in the ruins left by their ancestors, they are not entirely stupid or mindless or hobbled by superstition. Amri knows full well that the ruins of the city were created by people, and also knows that the outcast "God" Guy is just a man, if a man with technology long lost to this reduced, exhausted Earth. Still, even if he is "just" a man, he is a force that is remaking her world, and she quickly realizes that the only way she is going to survive is by sticking by him and learning as much as she can about him and his one-time colleagues who are now his rivals. The other three "Gods" each have monstrous ideas about how to best re-imagine the ruins of Earth, and Guy - whose own vision and tech was sabotaged on the way - sets himself up in opposition to them... but what is his ultimate goal, and is it any less devastating to the people remaining on Earth? Do he and the others even see Amri and her kind as human, or just more obstacles or tools or biomass to be fed into their machinations? Like today's billionaires, Guy insists he is the only one who can lead the people out of "savagery" into a bright new age, but Amri can see how little he truly thinks of humans other than himself.
There are a few times where the story hits its themes a little hard on the head, but overall it moves well and makes its points clearly, with a truly satisfying conclusion. One thing that becomes abundantly clear throughout is that the greatest threat to the world's future is the people who insist that they, and they alone, can lead us there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Emergency Skin (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre) - My Review
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
(Terrible Worlds: Innovations)
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Solaris
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the toxic ruins of civilization's collapse, there is little room for compassion or the weak... which is why Amri is so desperate to find fuel to bring back to the Rabbit tribe. Without close kin, she knows she is one bad harvest away from being sacrificed for the survival of the others. She pushes further than she knows she should, into the city ruins and into the territory of the bloodthirsty Seagulls - but instead of death at the hands of their champion Beaker, four great smoking fires roar out of the skies.
It is the end of the world as Amri knew it, and the beginning of one she and the other clans might not survive.
Those fireballs carry "Gods" from the long-lost golden age of humanity, returned from centuries in their distant space utopia. They intend to "fix" Earth... but each of the four have their own ideas how to go about doing that, mutually exclusive goals that only share a complete disregard for whatever life still clings to the worn-out planet. As Amri falls into the company of one of these new warring Gods, an artificially enhanced man known as Guy Vestin, she will need all her wits about her to navigate the changes ahead - but what chance does the littlest, weakest Rabbit stand when faced with the might of the world-changing Gods themselves?
REVIEW: The Hungry Gods takes the old-school trope of the technologically superior spaceman arriving on a primitive (and/or postapocalyptic) world and single-handedly saving it from itself by (re)starting civilization and becoming a veritable god among the worshipful, superstitious "savages" (a trope with clear roots in cringeworthy racism and colonialism), and knocks it firmly on its ear by the end. Told from the perspective of Amri, one of the first witnesses of the "Gods" descending - and one of the first survivors of their wrath, when one of the Gods lands right in the Rabbit village and wipes out her kin with the bioengineered plants and fungi that are meant to turn Earth into his vision of a new Eden - it clearly establishes the notion that, even if humans no longer can sustain civilization in the ruins left by their ancestors, they are not entirely stupid or mindless or hobbled by superstition. Amri knows full well that the ruins of the city were created by people, and also knows that the outcast "God" Guy is just a man, if a man with technology long lost to this reduced, exhausted Earth. Still, even if he is "just" a man, he is a force that is remaking her world, and she quickly realizes that the only way she is going to survive is by sticking by him and learning as much as she can about him and his one-time colleagues who are now his rivals. The other three "Gods" each have monstrous ideas about how to best re-imagine the ruins of Earth, and Guy - whose own vision and tech was sabotaged on the way - sets himself up in opposition to them... but what is his ultimate goal, and is it any less devastating to the people remaining on Earth? Do he and the others even see Amri and her kind as human, or just more obstacles or tools or biomass to be fed into their machinations? Like today's billionaires, Guy insists he is the only one who can lead the people out of "savagery" into a bright new age, but Amri can see how little he truly thinks of humans other than himself.
There are a few times where the story hits its themes a little hard on the head, but overall it moves well and makes its points clearly, with a truly satisfying conclusion. One thing that becomes abundantly clear throughout is that the greatest threat to the world's future is the people who insist that they, and they alone, can lead us there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Emergency Skin (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre) - My Review
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Serendipity (Marissa Meyer, editor)
Serendipity: Ten Romantic Tropes, Transformed
Marissa Meyer, editor
Feiwel and Friends
Fiction, YA Anthology/Romance
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The matchmaker who doesn't expect to find their own match... the fake relationship that reveals real feelings... the vacation mix-up leaving two people sharing a room... the grand romantic gesture... In this anthology, several notable authors explore these and other tropes of young adult romance tales.
REVIEW: For all that I don't generally read many romances (especially romances that aren't crossovers with some other genre, such as sci-fi or fantasy), I'm familiar enough with the tropes and with rom-coms (also not generally my go-to entertainment, but ubiquitous enough I've absorbed the gist through cultural osmosis) to see what these stories were trying to do and where they were working to subvert them, even though some of the subversions didn't feel as subversive as I'd expected given the title and its promise of tropes "transformed". As one might expect, I enjoyed some tales more than others, though none were outright clunkers. The stories present a spectrum of personalities and attractions, with some cultural variations as well. All things considered, it made a nice break to change up my reading selections. As with all anthologies, I rated on a cumulative score.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Fix Up (Tawna Fenske) - My Review
The Love Con (Serissia Glass) - My Review
When Lightning Strikes (Brenda Novak) - My Review
Marissa Meyer, editor
Feiwel and Friends
Fiction, YA Anthology/Romance
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The matchmaker who doesn't expect to find their own match... the fake relationship that reveals real feelings... the vacation mix-up leaving two people sharing a room... the grand romantic gesture... In this anthology, several notable authors explore these and other tropes of young adult romance tales.
REVIEW: For all that I don't generally read many romances (especially romances that aren't crossovers with some other genre, such as sci-fi or fantasy), I'm familiar enough with the tropes and with rom-coms (also not generally my go-to entertainment, but ubiquitous enough I've absorbed the gist through cultural osmosis) to see what these stories were trying to do and where they were working to subvert them, even though some of the subversions didn't feel as subversive as I'd expected given the title and its promise of tropes "transformed". As one might expect, I enjoyed some tales more than others, though none were outright clunkers. The stories present a spectrum of personalities and attractions, with some cultural variations as well. All things considered, it made a nice break to change up my reading selections. As with all anthologies, I rated on a cumulative score.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Fix Up (Tawna Fenske) - My Review
The Love Con (Serissia Glass) - My Review
When Lightning Strikes (Brenda Novak) - My Review
Daindreth's Assassin (Elisabeth Wheatley)
Daindreth's Assassin
The Daindreth's Assassin series, Book 1
Elisabeth Wheatley
Book Goblin Books
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Amira was born with the gifts of her sorceress mother and the birthright of her royal father... until King Hyle bent the knee to an invading emperor and the sorceresses rebelled, fleeing at last beyond a deadly forest. Those of magical blood left behind were bound by cursed oaths into slavery, granted power only so long as they obey their master, and despite her noble birth young Amira was no different. Now, instead of being the princess in waiting, she is a bastard child of an annulled union and her father's private assassin. Her latest target, though, surprises even her, for the king has sent her against Archduke Daindreth, son of the empress and the intended groom of Amira's half-sister Fonra. It seems like just another curse-compelled murder - until Amira arrives at Daindreth's tent to find a half-demonic monster in man form, which she barely escapes.
Nobody is more surprised than Amira to learn that the monster was, in fact, Daindreth himself, victim of a terrible curse... a curse that, somehow, Amira's magic temporarily counteracted in their brief, desperate struggle. Then the archduke springs the greatest surprise: a last-minute substitution of betrothal, taking not Fonra as originally planned but Amira.
Compelled by her curse of obedience, the assassin is pulled into the vipers' nest of the imperial palace, brimming with impenetrable politics and scheming courtiers and vicious rumors swirling about long before she sets foot in the royal palace. Worse, Amira begins developing feelings toward her one-time target, even as she uncovers the terrible truth of Daindreth's curse - and the doom awaiting him and the whole of the empire if that curse isn't broken soon.
REVIEW: I've watched and enjoyed the author's videos on Instagram and YouTube for a while, and finally got around to trying one of her audiobooks via Libby and my local library; I figured if anything was going to break my recent middling-rated streak, it would be Wheatley's works. Did it? As one might surmise by the near-top-notch rating, yes, yes it did.
The tale kicks off fairly fast, as Amira is about to set out on her latest hated mission, establishing the world and characters and the generalities of magic and curses. She is not a flawless assassin or person, and - like everyone, even her enemies - has more to her than is initially apparent, adding some depth and room for growth. Even bound by her curse of obedience, she struggles against her bonds, finding ways to twist and subvert commands as best she can, even if she can't keep the blood from her hands; to directly defy an order is to risk death by magical strangulation. Killing Daindreth would at least free her innocent half-sister from a future as a powerless political pawn (at least for a while), so Amira isn't entirely opposed to her latest task... until she confronts the evil entity and becomes tangled up in things far more deadly and dangerous than she understands. But Daindreth the man, when not consumed by a flare-up of his curse, is not at all the odious beast she was expecting, for all that she's too experienced (and jaded) to take him at face value. It's the first of many surprises she encounters as her unexpected and unwanted betrothal whisks her away from her father's keep, off to the distant palace of the empress and a future that might be much shorter than anticipated if Daindreth's many enemies have their way.
Amira may struggle, but always does her best to confront each new challenge, never dithering or freezing (unlike some main characters I've encountered lately... not namin' names, here...). Along the way, romantic feelings start to develop - unwelcome, given Amira's situation and less-than-idealistic notion of humanity in general, one more complication and potential liability in a situation that already threatens to overwhelm her. The tale moves fairly well, and avoids the low-hanging fruit and obvious for the most part. The main drawback is that it ends at a pause in the larger arc, leaving much still in the air; I'm not sure if my library even has the next installment on Libby, let alone when I can get to it, given the hold lists and other life complications. Dang it...
As a closing note, the author narrated the audiobook herself. She did an excellent job (again, unlike some narrators I've encountered... again, not namin' names...).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Graceling (Kristen Cashore) - My Review
Raybearer (Jordan Ifueko) - My Review
The Element of Fire (Martha Wells) - My Review
The Daindreth's Assassin series, Book 1
Elisabeth Wheatley
Book Goblin Books
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Amira was born with the gifts of her sorceress mother and the birthright of her royal father... until King Hyle bent the knee to an invading emperor and the sorceresses rebelled, fleeing at last beyond a deadly forest. Those of magical blood left behind were bound by cursed oaths into slavery, granted power only so long as they obey their master, and despite her noble birth young Amira was no different. Now, instead of being the princess in waiting, she is a bastard child of an annulled union and her father's private assassin. Her latest target, though, surprises even her, for the king has sent her against Archduke Daindreth, son of the empress and the intended groom of Amira's half-sister Fonra. It seems like just another curse-compelled murder - until Amira arrives at Daindreth's tent to find a half-demonic monster in man form, which she barely escapes.
Nobody is more surprised than Amira to learn that the monster was, in fact, Daindreth himself, victim of a terrible curse... a curse that, somehow, Amira's magic temporarily counteracted in their brief, desperate struggle. Then the archduke springs the greatest surprise: a last-minute substitution of betrothal, taking not Fonra as originally planned but Amira.
Compelled by her curse of obedience, the assassin is pulled into the vipers' nest of the imperial palace, brimming with impenetrable politics and scheming courtiers and vicious rumors swirling about long before she sets foot in the royal palace. Worse, Amira begins developing feelings toward her one-time target, even as she uncovers the terrible truth of Daindreth's curse - and the doom awaiting him and the whole of the empire if that curse isn't broken soon.
REVIEW: I've watched and enjoyed the author's videos on Instagram and YouTube for a while, and finally got around to trying one of her audiobooks via Libby and my local library; I figured if anything was going to break my recent middling-rated streak, it would be Wheatley's works. Did it? As one might surmise by the near-top-notch rating, yes, yes it did.
The tale kicks off fairly fast, as Amira is about to set out on her latest hated mission, establishing the world and characters and the generalities of magic and curses. She is not a flawless assassin or person, and - like everyone, even her enemies - has more to her than is initially apparent, adding some depth and room for growth. Even bound by her curse of obedience, she struggles against her bonds, finding ways to twist and subvert commands as best she can, even if she can't keep the blood from her hands; to directly defy an order is to risk death by magical strangulation. Killing Daindreth would at least free her innocent half-sister from a future as a powerless political pawn (at least for a while), so Amira isn't entirely opposed to her latest task... until she confronts the evil entity and becomes tangled up in things far more deadly and dangerous than she understands. But Daindreth the man, when not consumed by a flare-up of his curse, is not at all the odious beast she was expecting, for all that she's too experienced (and jaded) to take him at face value. It's the first of many surprises she encounters as her unexpected and unwanted betrothal whisks her away from her father's keep, off to the distant palace of the empress and a future that might be much shorter than anticipated if Daindreth's many enemies have their way.
Amira may struggle, but always does her best to confront each new challenge, never dithering or freezing (unlike some main characters I've encountered lately... not namin' names, here...). Along the way, romantic feelings start to develop - unwelcome, given Amira's situation and less-than-idealistic notion of humanity in general, one more complication and potential liability in a situation that already threatens to overwhelm her. The tale moves fairly well, and avoids the low-hanging fruit and obvious for the most part. The main drawback is that it ends at a pause in the larger arc, leaving much still in the air; I'm not sure if my library even has the next installment on Libby, let alone when I can get to it, given the hold lists and other life complications. Dang it...
As a closing note, the author narrated the audiobook herself. She did an excellent job (again, unlike some narrators I've encountered... again, not namin' names...).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Graceling (Kristen Cashore) - My Review
Raybearer (Jordan Ifueko) - My Review
The Element of Fire (Martha Wells) - My Review
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Servant Mage (Kate Elliott)
Servant Mage
Kate Elliott
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When the old kings reigned, mages of the five elements - fire, air, water, earth, and aether - were highly trained and celebrated members of society. But ever since the Great Liberation that overthrew the decadent and corrupt royal houses, magic is tightly controlled, with practitioners only allowed to learn a small fragment of their potential skills (that which serves the new government best), taught to fear the corrupting "demon" spirit inside them that grants them their powers. For all the August Protector's talk of creating a more equal and just society based on Virtues instead of bloodlines, many in this new, reformed world find themselves no better off than before... some, such as the mages, significantly worse.
Fellian has no love for the August Protector and the Liberationists, not since her mother and one of her fathers were publicly executed for "seditionist" activities. She was only spared because an oracle detected the fire magic within her. Now, she works off her indenture scrubbing latrines at a city inn by day and crafting magical Lamps by night. On the side, she still secretly teaches letters to those who wish to learn, a direct defiance of Liberationist decrees that restrict education to the most virtuous patriots. She's counting the moments until she earns her freedom to return the distant hills of her home. Then an inn guest makes her an offer she doesn't dare refuse, drawing her into the company of Monarchist rebels who seek to topple the August Protector and restore noble rule. Is this her chance at a future she hardly dared dream of, or is she walking deeper into danger?
REVIEW: There are authors I have an ambivalent relationship with as a reader, ones whose works I feel I should like, that I want to like, but for some reason I tend to feel let down by their stories more often than not, in some way I can't always articulate (which probably explains why I'm not exactly the world's best book reviewer, if I can't isolate and express my thoughts better). Kate Elliott is not at the top of that list by any means, but novellas like this remind me why she's on it, as for all the potential in the story premise and world going into it, I left it feeling subtly unsatisfied.
Things open on reasonably decent footing, as Fellian's situation and world are established in quick strokes that manage to avoid dull, intrusive infodumping... at least, at first. As the story progresses, though, there are more and more moments where she pauses to observe and think worldbuilding information for the benefit of the reader; her go-to reaction in stress tends to be lead boots. (I lost track of how often her feet or legs were described as "leaden", mostly so Fellian could stand uselessly and look around and describe things - even in the middle of high-stakes action - so the reader peering at the tale through her eyes got a full tour.) Things do at least happen, as Fellian is whisked from the inn halfway across the nation in the company of mages recruited to the Monarchist cause. She's all for undermining the August Protector and freeing herself from bondage, though at times Fellian parrots party-line ideas a little too readily for someone raised in the hinterlands by parents who were not loyal to the uprising, and having been partially educated in magic by someone outside the Liberationists and their strict, stifling, shame-infused system. The closer she and her companions get to their end goal, the more danger she's in - and the more she comes to question the ultimate motives and goal of their leader. Ultimately, she must decide where she means to stand in a politically fractured world, and what future she wants to work toward, though by then my interest was somewhat dimmed by distancing infodumps and tangled histories and relationships, and a general failure to really bond with Fellian enough to care where she ended up. I also found myself subtly irked that the cover misled me into thinking dragons would be more involved in the tale. (Aside from a somewhat-symbolic minor character/encounter, dragons are notably absent. Do not promise me dragons that you do not intend to deliver, authors and/or cover artists...) And the tail end drags out a little long, in a way that makes me wonder - along with all the worldbuilding crammed into a novella's page count - if Servant Mage was originally intended to be a full length novel or even a series but never quite fledged.
As I say too often, I've read worse. There are some interesting ideas, and when Fellian's not mired in leaden boots things happen. I just never felt drawn in like I'd hoped to be.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Kindling (Traci Chee) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
The Jewel and Her Lapidary (Fran Wilde) - My Review
Kate Elliott
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When the old kings reigned, mages of the five elements - fire, air, water, earth, and aether - were highly trained and celebrated members of society. But ever since the Great Liberation that overthrew the decadent and corrupt royal houses, magic is tightly controlled, with practitioners only allowed to learn a small fragment of their potential skills (that which serves the new government best), taught to fear the corrupting "demon" spirit inside them that grants them their powers. For all the August Protector's talk of creating a more equal and just society based on Virtues instead of bloodlines, many in this new, reformed world find themselves no better off than before... some, such as the mages, significantly worse.
Fellian has no love for the August Protector and the Liberationists, not since her mother and one of her fathers were publicly executed for "seditionist" activities. She was only spared because an oracle detected the fire magic within her. Now, she works off her indenture scrubbing latrines at a city inn by day and crafting magical Lamps by night. On the side, she still secretly teaches letters to those who wish to learn, a direct defiance of Liberationist decrees that restrict education to the most virtuous patriots. She's counting the moments until she earns her freedom to return the distant hills of her home. Then an inn guest makes her an offer she doesn't dare refuse, drawing her into the company of Monarchist rebels who seek to topple the August Protector and restore noble rule. Is this her chance at a future she hardly dared dream of, or is she walking deeper into danger?
REVIEW: There are authors I have an ambivalent relationship with as a reader, ones whose works I feel I should like, that I want to like, but for some reason I tend to feel let down by their stories more often than not, in some way I can't always articulate (which probably explains why I'm not exactly the world's best book reviewer, if I can't isolate and express my thoughts better). Kate Elliott is not at the top of that list by any means, but novellas like this remind me why she's on it, as for all the potential in the story premise and world going into it, I left it feeling subtly unsatisfied.
Things open on reasonably decent footing, as Fellian's situation and world are established in quick strokes that manage to avoid dull, intrusive infodumping... at least, at first. As the story progresses, though, there are more and more moments where she pauses to observe and think worldbuilding information for the benefit of the reader; her go-to reaction in stress tends to be lead boots. (I lost track of how often her feet or legs were described as "leaden", mostly so Fellian could stand uselessly and look around and describe things - even in the middle of high-stakes action - so the reader peering at the tale through her eyes got a full tour.) Things do at least happen, as Fellian is whisked from the inn halfway across the nation in the company of mages recruited to the Monarchist cause. She's all for undermining the August Protector and freeing herself from bondage, though at times Fellian parrots party-line ideas a little too readily for someone raised in the hinterlands by parents who were not loyal to the uprising, and having been partially educated in magic by someone outside the Liberationists and their strict, stifling, shame-infused system. The closer she and her companions get to their end goal, the more danger she's in - and the more she comes to question the ultimate motives and goal of their leader. Ultimately, she must decide where she means to stand in a politically fractured world, and what future she wants to work toward, though by then my interest was somewhat dimmed by distancing infodumps and tangled histories and relationships, and a general failure to really bond with Fellian enough to care where she ended up. I also found myself subtly irked that the cover misled me into thinking dragons would be more involved in the tale. (Aside from a somewhat-symbolic minor character/encounter, dragons are notably absent. Do not promise me dragons that you do not intend to deliver, authors and/or cover artists...) And the tail end drags out a little long, in a way that makes me wonder - along with all the worldbuilding crammed into a novella's page count - if Servant Mage was originally intended to be a full length novel or even a series but never quite fledged.
As I say too often, I've read worse. There are some interesting ideas, and when Fellian's not mired in leaden boots things happen. I just never felt drawn in like I'd hoped to be.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Kindling (Traci Chee) - My Review
The Elvenbane (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton) - My Review
The Jewel and Her Lapidary (Fran Wilde) - My Review
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Lockjaw (Matteo L. Cerilli)
Lockjaw
Matteo L. Cerilli
Tundra Books
Fiction, YA Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Bridlington is a quintessential small American town, the sort of place where goodly folks mind their own business and stay out of trouble... and where, too often, the cries of the outcasts are ignored in the name of keeping the peace. When young Chuck Warren, a bullied eleven-year-old boy, died in the old mill one night, Paz Espino saw what happened, but the grown-ups don't believe that she saw a monster in the shadows below the hole in the floor. She's branded a problem child, a troublemaker, and only her three best friends stick by her as the rest of the town turns their backs. But Paz is like a bulldog with jaws locked on a bone; she's determined to find and kill the beast, and if nobody else will help her, then she'll do it herself or die trying.
The young stranger blows into town with a cruddy old car, a mutt named Bird, an envelope of money, and no name. He's looking for a fresh start far away from home, and Bridlington seems as good a place as any. But from the moment he pulls up at the gas station, he gets a sense of hidden secrets and lurking danger, a sense that grows stronger after a strange encounter with a group of kids outside the convenience store. Taking the name Asher, he starts trying to build a new life, making friends with the right sort of people, but Bridlington is a town haunted by dark secrets - and the bill for looking the other way is about to come due...
REVIEW: In the vein of Stephen King's It where children are left to deal with the problems intentionally ignored (and sometimes openly exacerbated) by adults and generations past, Lockjaw exposes the "monster" underlying the veneer of civility, in towns small and large. Though at times effectively creepy and even surreal, sometimes it gets too clever for its own good with confusing timeline shifts and some exceptionally heavy-handed messages about silence in the face of injustices by the end.
Starting with young Chuck's doomed efforts to connect with a new group of outcast friends after being bullied on the playground, the tale goes to "Asher" and his seemingly carefree arrival in Bridlington with nothing but a dog for company. This is clearly a young man with secrets in his past, and it's just as clear that this small town has secrets of its own, even as he tries to ignore the pricklings of premonition that hang over his first introduction to the group of outcast kids. Other characters who become entangled in things include Paz's older sister, who has done everything in her power to distance herself from her peculiar sibling, and Beetle, a trans teen who is counting the seconds until he can escape to college and leave the whispers and cruelties of small town life in the dust. Creepy overtones and tension drift through the tale in a thickening miasma that sometimes obscures the plot itself, not helped by how the story jumps back and forth in time at random (it's possible this is an issue with the audiobook, that there is some hint in the printed version, because otherwise it comes across as an author trying to wow the reader with a two-by-four surprise that felt more like jerking me around for half the book), and eventually the promised supernatural/gory elements come to the forefront as the metaphoric chickens of Bridlington come home to roost. Asher, set up to be the main character, became my least favorite of the bunch, far too cagey with his past and shallow in his motives (the reason is later revealed, but by then my general dislike of his apparent shallow pursuit of popularity - even in the face of glaring red flags -had set in, plus even after the reveal he remained overreactive to an almost cartoonish degree when confronted with conflict, to the point of literally jumping around and denting his car door and needing to be socked in the face by another character to calm down). The latter parts feel drawn out to grind in the main lesson about the toxicity of brushing off bullying and abuse and intolerance as "not my business" and masking it as small-down politeness, and how the interest on those injustices compounds exponentially. The heavy hand of the Message smashes the reader in the face repeatedly by the end, to an almost numbing effect. This alone dropped it down to nearly three stars; the final half-star loss concerns the unnecessary cruelty of the fate of Bird the dog.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Pines (Blake Crouch) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck) - My Review
Matteo L. Cerilli
Tundra Books
Fiction, YA Horror
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Bridlington is a quintessential small American town, the sort of place where goodly folks mind their own business and stay out of trouble... and where, too often, the cries of the outcasts are ignored in the name of keeping the peace. When young Chuck Warren, a bullied eleven-year-old boy, died in the old mill one night, Paz Espino saw what happened, but the grown-ups don't believe that she saw a monster in the shadows below the hole in the floor. She's branded a problem child, a troublemaker, and only her three best friends stick by her as the rest of the town turns their backs. But Paz is like a bulldog with jaws locked on a bone; she's determined to find and kill the beast, and if nobody else will help her, then she'll do it herself or die trying.
The young stranger blows into town with a cruddy old car, a mutt named Bird, an envelope of money, and no name. He's looking for a fresh start far away from home, and Bridlington seems as good a place as any. But from the moment he pulls up at the gas station, he gets a sense of hidden secrets and lurking danger, a sense that grows stronger after a strange encounter with a group of kids outside the convenience store. Taking the name Asher, he starts trying to build a new life, making friends with the right sort of people, but Bridlington is a town haunted by dark secrets - and the bill for looking the other way is about to come due...
REVIEW: In the vein of Stephen King's It where children are left to deal with the problems intentionally ignored (and sometimes openly exacerbated) by adults and generations past, Lockjaw exposes the "monster" underlying the veneer of civility, in towns small and large. Though at times effectively creepy and even surreal, sometimes it gets too clever for its own good with confusing timeline shifts and some exceptionally heavy-handed messages about silence in the face of injustices by the end.
Starting with young Chuck's doomed efforts to connect with a new group of outcast friends after being bullied on the playground, the tale goes to "Asher" and his seemingly carefree arrival in Bridlington with nothing but a dog for company. This is clearly a young man with secrets in his past, and it's just as clear that this small town has secrets of its own, even as he tries to ignore the pricklings of premonition that hang over his first introduction to the group of outcast kids. Other characters who become entangled in things include Paz's older sister, who has done everything in her power to distance herself from her peculiar sibling, and Beetle, a trans teen who is counting the seconds until he can escape to college and leave the whispers and cruelties of small town life in the dust. Creepy overtones and tension drift through the tale in a thickening miasma that sometimes obscures the plot itself, not helped by how the story jumps back and forth in time at random (it's possible this is an issue with the audiobook, that there is some hint in the printed version, because otherwise it comes across as an author trying to wow the reader with a two-by-four surprise that felt more like jerking me around for half the book), and eventually the promised supernatural/gory elements come to the forefront as the metaphoric chickens of Bridlington come home to roost. Asher, set up to be the main character, became my least favorite of the bunch, far too cagey with his past and shallow in his motives (the reason is later revealed, but by then my general dislike of his apparent shallow pursuit of popularity - even in the face of glaring red flags -had set in, plus even after the reveal he remained overreactive to an almost cartoonish degree when confronted with conflict, to the point of literally jumping around and denting his car door and needing to be socked in the face by another character to calm down). The latter parts feel drawn out to grind in the main lesson about the toxicity of brushing off bullying and abuse and intolerance as "not my business" and masking it as small-down politeness, and how the interest on those injustices compounds exponentially. The heavy hand of the Message smashes the reader in the face repeatedly by the end, to an almost numbing effect. This alone dropped it down to nearly three stars; the final half-star loss concerns the unnecessary cruelty of the fate of Bird the dog.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Pines (Blake Crouch) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Three Quarters Dead (Richard Peck) - My Review
Sunday, August 17, 2025
For the Wolf (Hannah Whitten)
For the Wolf
The Wilderwood series, Book 1
Hannah Whitten
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, the magic of the Wilderwood was available to all who willingly laid a sacrifice beneath its branches... until the Five Kings struck a bargain to imprison the dark gods and monsters beneath their roots, diverting all power to that monumental and eternal task. But the forest would still bargain, if at a higher price. And when the Five Kings rode into the woods again, they became imprisoned in the Shadowlands too. Only the seemingly-immortal man known as the Wolf remains in the Wilderwood now, protecting the people from the shapeshifting monsters that slip free from the Shadowlands. For his service, he demands the second royal daughter of every ruler of Valleyda be sent to the Wilderwood, never to be seen again.
Red has known her fate since childhood. While her older sister Neve will someday inherit the silver crown, she is no more than a sacrificial lamb for the Wolf, and nothing her sister or her handful of friends can do will change that fate - especially not once she showed the Mark of all Second Daughters, a sign of the eternal pact between the people and the forest that keeps the gods imprisoned. Some day, the Temple priestesses declare, the Wolf will relent and let the Five Kings free, but why should Red be any different than the other Daughters who have gone before? She cannot even bring herself to be angry anymore about her fate, though Neve has more than enough anger for them both: anger at their cold and distant mother, anger at the Temple and the old gods, anger at the Wilderwood, and anger at the Wolf and his demand for sacrifices.
What Red finds in the Wilderwood beneath the boughs of the white sentinel trees is not at all what she imagined. The Wolf is no evil beast, but a man who, like her, has been bound by bargains and magicks over which he has no control. Worse, the Wilderwood has sickened, sentinel trees disappearing into gaps through which monsters emerge, and he's running out of strength to hold the prison gates closed. As much as Red yearns to escape and return to her sister, she cannot ignore the dangers that would befall everyone and everything she ever loved should the Wolf and the Wilderwood fall. But there are those who would stop at nothing to release the five lost Kings of old - and there are those too blinded by anger and love to realize what they're about to destroy...
REVIEW: I had high hopes going into this one, for all that there are obviously some familiar tropes at play. For the most part, I enjoyed it, though it never quite rose to the level of my highest expectations.
From the beginning, the dynamics of the characters and the world are well established. Neve keeps trying to convince Red that she can escape her obligations, that she can run away, and even has some friends and allies on board with the plan, but Red remains dedicated... not out of a sense of duty to her kingdom or her royal mother (both of which have always treated her as a disposable object, keeping her at arm's length) or out of piety to the Temple (neither she nor Neve really believe the priestesses who promise that, someday, the sacrifice of the Second Daughter will free the Five Kings), but because of a darker secret, one that she fears will destroy the few people she truly does love if she were to remain in Valleyda. Even then, given the chance to fight and live or lie down and die in the Wilderwood, she chooses life - and learns that almost everything she has been taught about the place, and about the Wolf, is dead wrong. As she comes to terms with her new circumstances and the new dangers around her, Neve remains desperate to rescue her sister... and here things started to shake a bit for me. The princess allies herself with a fanatical priestess seeking to subvert the traditional Temple teachings in favor of a more pro-active approach to ending the Wolf's reign and freeing the Kings, a woman who is so clearly evil that even blind sisterly devotion can't possibly be enough to mask the insanity.
With no way to communicate, the sisters end up working at cross purposes, with the fate of the Wilderwood and the greater realm hanging in the balance. Despite some occasional meandering and muddy bits, plus a little too much brooding and angst (particularly on the part of the Wolf himself, teetering on the trope/cliché line a little too often), a reasonably satisfying ending is partially marred by cliffhanger elements without being a straight-up cliffhanger, setting up the second volume in the duology... one I'm not sure I'll pursue, if I'm being honest, because it showed every sign of repeating some of the stuff that started to wear on me in this book, particularly the tormented, brooding, angst-ridden soul being redeemed by the power of love. (I will say, in its favor, that For the Wolf had a rather pointed subtext about consent and listening to women; this would've been a novella had people - even those who were closest to her and loved her best - actually listened to Red and respected her choices rather than barging ahead, convinced they knew better than she did what she really needed...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scriber (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Silver in the Wood (Emily Tesh) - My Review
The Wilderwood series, Book 1
Hannah Whitten
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, the magic of the Wilderwood was available to all who willingly laid a sacrifice beneath its branches... until the Five Kings struck a bargain to imprison the dark gods and monsters beneath their roots, diverting all power to that monumental and eternal task. But the forest would still bargain, if at a higher price. And when the Five Kings rode into the woods again, they became imprisoned in the Shadowlands too. Only the seemingly-immortal man known as the Wolf remains in the Wilderwood now, protecting the people from the shapeshifting monsters that slip free from the Shadowlands. For his service, he demands the second royal daughter of every ruler of Valleyda be sent to the Wilderwood, never to be seen again.
Red has known her fate since childhood. While her older sister Neve will someday inherit the silver crown, she is no more than a sacrificial lamb for the Wolf, and nothing her sister or her handful of friends can do will change that fate - especially not once she showed the Mark of all Second Daughters, a sign of the eternal pact between the people and the forest that keeps the gods imprisoned. Some day, the Temple priestesses declare, the Wolf will relent and let the Five Kings free, but why should Red be any different than the other Daughters who have gone before? She cannot even bring herself to be angry anymore about her fate, though Neve has more than enough anger for them both: anger at their cold and distant mother, anger at the Temple and the old gods, anger at the Wilderwood, and anger at the Wolf and his demand for sacrifices.
What Red finds in the Wilderwood beneath the boughs of the white sentinel trees is not at all what she imagined. The Wolf is no evil beast, but a man who, like her, has been bound by bargains and magicks over which he has no control. Worse, the Wilderwood has sickened, sentinel trees disappearing into gaps through which monsters emerge, and he's running out of strength to hold the prison gates closed. As much as Red yearns to escape and return to her sister, she cannot ignore the dangers that would befall everyone and everything she ever loved should the Wolf and the Wilderwood fall. But there are those who would stop at nothing to release the five lost Kings of old - and there are those too blinded by anger and love to realize what they're about to destroy...
REVIEW: I had high hopes going into this one, for all that there are obviously some familiar tropes at play. For the most part, I enjoyed it, though it never quite rose to the level of my highest expectations.
From the beginning, the dynamics of the characters and the world are well established. Neve keeps trying to convince Red that she can escape her obligations, that she can run away, and even has some friends and allies on board with the plan, but Red remains dedicated... not out of a sense of duty to her kingdom or her royal mother (both of which have always treated her as a disposable object, keeping her at arm's length) or out of piety to the Temple (neither she nor Neve really believe the priestesses who promise that, someday, the sacrifice of the Second Daughter will free the Five Kings), but because of a darker secret, one that she fears will destroy the few people she truly does love if she were to remain in Valleyda. Even then, given the chance to fight and live or lie down and die in the Wilderwood, she chooses life - and learns that almost everything she has been taught about the place, and about the Wolf, is dead wrong. As she comes to terms with her new circumstances and the new dangers around her, Neve remains desperate to rescue her sister... and here things started to shake a bit for me. The princess allies herself with a fanatical priestess seeking to subvert the traditional Temple teachings in favor of a more pro-active approach to ending the Wolf's reign and freeing the Kings, a woman who is so clearly evil that even blind sisterly devotion can't possibly be enough to mask the insanity.
With no way to communicate, the sisters end up working at cross purposes, with the fate of the Wilderwood and the greater realm hanging in the balance. Despite some occasional meandering and muddy bits, plus a little too much brooding and angst (particularly on the part of the Wolf himself, teetering on the trope/cliché line a little too often), a reasonably satisfying ending is partially marred by cliffhanger elements without being a straight-up cliffhanger, setting up the second volume in the duology... one I'm not sure I'll pursue, if I'm being honest, because it showed every sign of repeating some of the stuff that started to wear on me in this book, particularly the tormented, brooding, angst-ridden soul being redeemed by the power of love. (I will say, in its favor, that For the Wolf had a rather pointed subtext about consent and listening to women; this would've been a novella had people - even those who were closest to her and loved her best - actually listened to Red and respected her choices rather than barging ahead, convinced they knew better than she did what she really needed...)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scriber (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - My Review
Silver in the Wood (Emily Tesh) - My Review
Friday, August 8, 2025
The Storyteller's Death (Ann Davila Cardinal)
The Storyteller's Death
Ann Dávila Cardinal
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Fantasy/General Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Isla was eight years old and a thousand miles away when her beloved father died. She'd been sent to stay with her mother's relatives, the sprawling Sanchez family, in Puerto Rico as she had been every summer, and her mother didn't tell her about the death until she returned to New Jersey. Since then, her life has crumbled around her, as her mother escapes into alcohol and she struggles to stay afloat. Her only safe haven is her summers in Puerto Rico, in the home of her stern great-aunt and under the judgemental eye of her iron-fisted grandmother. Here, she loves listening to the vivid tales woven by her elders, stories of colorful ancestors and relatives and their seemingly larger-than-life exploits, adventures, and incidents, where truth and fiction often blend.
It wasn't until her grandmother passed away many years later that Isla began seeing those stories come to life around her, vivid recreations that play out daily.
Is it some sort of hallucination or daydream? Is her mind finally cracking under the many stresses of her life? Or has Isla inherited a gift - or a curse - that has passed down the Sanchez line for generations... and, with it, shouldered the burden of stories that the dead demand be shared with the living?
REVIEW: After a middling reading selection in July, I wanted to start August out on a better note, so I thought I'd switch up genres a bit; while The Storyteller's Death may technically have fantastic elements, it's more in the "magic realism" sense that shades into general or even literary fiction more than straight-up fantasy. (Also, this was part of a "great library read" via Libby.) By the end, though, I found the middling streak unfortunately continued.
The story, which is ostensibly told by an older Isla about her formative years and experiences, opens with an eight-year-old girl encountering the face of impending death; a relative across the street from her tia's house where she stays in summers offers hospice care to elderly, dying family members, and she ventures into the "forbidden" room... not that this is her first encounter with infirmity, what with her father hospitalized in New Jersey. There's promise in this opening, if no real hint of how any of it ties in to the concept that was promised in the blurb (the whole "stories coming to life around her" thing). But from there the story drags its feet and meanders through Isla's miserable childhood, her dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic single mother and how it costs her opportunities for normalcy and friends, and how it's only in Puerto Rico that she has anything like the love and support and freedom she craves. Slowly, she comes to realize that there's a lot more to the island, the Sanchez clan (more of a dynasty), and class and race divides than her half-white outsider viewpoint initially sees, a point first driven home when she befriends the son of a laborer and is firmly berated by her great-aunt for fraternizing with "those" people. More foot-dragging and meandering ensues, with some foreshadowing and a sprawling cast of relatives and friends and not-friends, and eventually Isla encounters her first experience living through a story after her grandmother passes away. The Sanchez family is not big on sharing secrets, let alone discussing potential mental illnesses or supernatural events, so Isla struggles to figure out what is going on and to whom she can reach out - not at all helped by the weight the Sanchez name carries, which makes reaching out to others problematic, even if it seems they might be the only ones with the answers she needs. Eventually, she figures out what's going on and what she can do about it, but the visions only grow more vivid with each new encounter, to the point where they can actually inflict harm, even if she can't physically alter events. Belatedly, she encounters the one story that proves most pivotal to her family and her current situation, a particularly stubborn tale that becomes a mystery she needs to unravel... a mystery where she and everyone else conveniently forget something previously established (that stories, or rather the memories encapsulated in the stories, can be colored or outright fabricated by the deceased storytellers, and thus can't be trusted to reveal unvarnished truths). At some point, someone mentions how the threads Isla unearths in her research begin to sound as tangled and implausible as a telenovela - which, unfortunately, predicts the ultimate truth she uncovers (I don't deal in spoilers, but let's just say I found it stretched credulity to the point of being almost cartoonish). Along the way, Isla does a fair bit of growing up, learning to find her voice and her place and what it means to be a Puerto Rican, a Sanchez, and - most importantly - herself.
There are several good parts in the story. It paints a vivid, textured picture of what the island was like in the 1980's, and the disillusionment that comes with discovering the complexities and darkness hiding in the family tree, as well as realizing, to quote how Douglas Adams put it in The Salmon of Doubt, "how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left". The living stories were intriguing, but - and admittedly this comes from the fantasy reader in me, who can't help poking at general fiction or crossovers looking for deeper magic - I'd hoped more would come from them, and more explored about the whole concept, particularly how they could be solid enough for Isla to be physically harmed by them even though she alone experiences them; that point ultimately felt like an excuse to lend urgency to solving the mystery, because the story that gets "stuck" involves a firearm with a potentially-lethal-to-her bullet. I found the whole thing felt just a little too long for the story it told, some of the revelations and resolutions a little too forced.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Clap When You Land (Elizabeth Acevedo) - My Review
Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
Ann Dávila Cardinal
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Fantasy/General Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Isla was eight years old and a thousand miles away when her beloved father died. She'd been sent to stay with her mother's relatives, the sprawling Sanchez family, in Puerto Rico as she had been every summer, and her mother didn't tell her about the death until she returned to New Jersey. Since then, her life has crumbled around her, as her mother escapes into alcohol and she struggles to stay afloat. Her only safe haven is her summers in Puerto Rico, in the home of her stern great-aunt and under the judgemental eye of her iron-fisted grandmother. Here, she loves listening to the vivid tales woven by her elders, stories of colorful ancestors and relatives and their seemingly larger-than-life exploits, adventures, and incidents, where truth and fiction often blend.
It wasn't until her grandmother passed away many years later that Isla began seeing those stories come to life around her, vivid recreations that play out daily.
Is it some sort of hallucination or daydream? Is her mind finally cracking under the many stresses of her life? Or has Isla inherited a gift - or a curse - that has passed down the Sanchez line for generations... and, with it, shouldered the burden of stories that the dead demand be shared with the living?
REVIEW: After a middling reading selection in July, I wanted to start August out on a better note, so I thought I'd switch up genres a bit; while The Storyteller's Death may technically have fantastic elements, it's more in the "magic realism" sense that shades into general or even literary fiction more than straight-up fantasy. (Also, this was part of a "great library read" via Libby.) By the end, though, I found the middling streak unfortunately continued.
The story, which is ostensibly told by an older Isla about her formative years and experiences, opens with an eight-year-old girl encountering the face of impending death; a relative across the street from her tia's house where she stays in summers offers hospice care to elderly, dying family members, and she ventures into the "forbidden" room... not that this is her first encounter with infirmity, what with her father hospitalized in New Jersey. There's promise in this opening, if no real hint of how any of it ties in to the concept that was promised in the blurb (the whole "stories coming to life around her" thing). But from there the story drags its feet and meanders through Isla's miserable childhood, her dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic single mother and how it costs her opportunities for normalcy and friends, and how it's only in Puerto Rico that she has anything like the love and support and freedom she craves. Slowly, she comes to realize that there's a lot more to the island, the Sanchez clan (more of a dynasty), and class and race divides than her half-white outsider viewpoint initially sees, a point first driven home when she befriends the son of a laborer and is firmly berated by her great-aunt for fraternizing with "those" people. More foot-dragging and meandering ensues, with some foreshadowing and a sprawling cast of relatives and friends and not-friends, and eventually Isla encounters her first experience living through a story after her grandmother passes away. The Sanchez family is not big on sharing secrets, let alone discussing potential mental illnesses or supernatural events, so Isla struggles to figure out what is going on and to whom she can reach out - not at all helped by the weight the Sanchez name carries, which makes reaching out to others problematic, even if it seems they might be the only ones with the answers she needs. Eventually, she figures out what's going on and what she can do about it, but the visions only grow more vivid with each new encounter, to the point where they can actually inflict harm, even if she can't physically alter events. Belatedly, she encounters the one story that proves most pivotal to her family and her current situation, a particularly stubborn tale that becomes a mystery she needs to unravel... a mystery where she and everyone else conveniently forget something previously established (that stories, or rather the memories encapsulated in the stories, can be colored or outright fabricated by the deceased storytellers, and thus can't be trusted to reveal unvarnished truths). At some point, someone mentions how the threads Isla unearths in her research begin to sound as tangled and implausible as a telenovela - which, unfortunately, predicts the ultimate truth she uncovers (I don't deal in spoilers, but let's just say I found it stretched credulity to the point of being almost cartoonish). Along the way, Isla does a fair bit of growing up, learning to find her voice and her place and what it means to be a Puerto Rican, a Sanchez, and - most importantly - herself.
There are several good parts in the story. It paints a vivid, textured picture of what the island was like in the 1980's, and the disillusionment that comes with discovering the complexities and darkness hiding in the family tree, as well as realizing, to quote how Douglas Adams put it in The Salmon of Doubt, "how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left". The living stories were intriguing, but - and admittedly this comes from the fantasy reader in me, who can't help poking at general fiction or crossovers looking for deeper magic - I'd hoped more would come from them, and more explored about the whole concept, particularly how they could be solid enough for Isla to be physically harmed by them even though she alone experiences them; that point ultimately felt like an excuse to lend urgency to solving the mystery, because the story that gets "stuck" involves a firearm with a potentially-lethal-to-her bullet. I found the whole thing felt just a little too long for the story it told, some of the revelations and resolutions a little too forced.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Clap When You Land (Elizabeth Acevedo) - My Review
Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
Thursday, July 31, 2025
July Site Update
Well, there's another 31 days of miserable existence I'll never get back... reading (generally) excepted, of course. The month's reviews have been archived over on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, July 25, 2025
North of Boston (Elisabeth Elo)
North of Boston
Elisabeth Elo
Pamela Dorman Books
Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: As the adult child of a turbulent marriage, Pirio Kasparov has struggled but built a reasonably decent life for herself in Boston. The perfume company founded by her parents is doing well, and will someday pass to her if her stubborn Russian-born father ever relinquishes his control. Her best friend since boarding school days, Thomasina, isn't doing nearly so well, too frequently found at the bottom of a bottle, but Pirio does what she can to help her and her son Noah. Ned, Thomasina's ex and Noah's father, had just left a large commercial outfit for the freelance life aboard a lobster boat, with Pirio riding along to help bait traps and get him started (not that she has a particular interest in fishing, but she's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to try, and for all his faults Ned has been a great father).
Neither one saw the freighter until it was slicing Ned's small vessel in two.
While Ned was lost, Pirio managed to survive for four hours in the near-freezing waters north of Boston before being rescued. The news treats her as a novelty, while the Navy wants to investigate her unusual ability to endure extreme water temperatures. But Pirio can hardly care about those things, not with Noah's father dead - and not with that little itch in the back of her mind that the "accident" was anything but accidental. Disappointed by official investigations that seem content to brush the matter aside and spurred by her cynical and suspicious father, she starts poking around on her own. Little does she suspect what a hornet's nest her inquiries will kick up...
REVIEW: This debut thriller melds elements of commercial fishing, corruption, perfume making, immigrant diaspora, and the lasting scars of troubled childhoods and abusive relationships, set in a solidly realized Boston and starring an interesting, proactive, and somewhat flawed heroine. It also feels like the start of a series that never took off, and thus one that never got a chance to fully explore its characters or situations, making some parts feel oddly extraneous by the end.
Keeping a fairly good pace throughout, Pirio's incredible survival in frigid Atlantic waters gives her some local notoriety in the middle of a deeply personal tragedy; Ned and her school friend Thomasina may have been over as a couple, but the man always did right by his son Noah, also much beloved by Pirio, and the breakup was not exactly a one-sided matter. That notoriety gets her noticed by the Navy (a subplot that sorta sputters out after verifying something Pirio suspected but needed proof of before believing), and also gives her some "street cred" when she starts investigating the matter of who sank Ned's boat. At first, she thinks it's a tragic accident, maybe a "hit and run" as is not uncommon on a sea with many small vessels sharing space and shipping lanes with behemoths, neither of which can exactly brake on a dime. But when strange occurrences follow her first questions, she realizes that there's more to it than mere happenstance; Ned was targeted, and someone wants very much for the matter to be forgotten. Pirio is reasonably clever in her investigations, if sometimes reckless, though that's in keeping with her character. Along the way, she also has to help with Noah as his mother spirals into self-destruction and cope with her own headstrong father's mortality catching up to his outsized will and personality, one more complication in a relationship that has been nothing but complicated. Memories of her mother, a woman with her own problems but who left an indelible mark on Pirio's life (as well as a legacy of the wondrous complexities of scent; she was the one who started formulating the perfumes that would become the backbone of the family's minor empire), make her fractured family relations all the more bittersweet, though her quest to find justice for Ned helps bring some unexpected closure on that front. Along the way are numerous clues and dangerous characters, some close calls and dead ends, culminating in revelations that have far-reaching implications and put Pirio and her friends in far more danger than she ever intended. There are hints and potentials for romance, but for the most part the book is free of entanglements of the heart; she may feel some attractions, but knows her current quest must take precedence. The conclusion leaves some questions and threads loose in a way that feels intentional, as though Elo was leaving the door open for more stories about Pirio and her companions. Overall, it kept me entertained.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Hemlock Island (Kelley Armstrong) - My Review
Adrift (Paul Griffin) - My Review
Whalefall (Daniel Kraus) - My Review
Elisabeth Elo
Pamela Dorman Books
Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: As the adult child of a turbulent marriage, Pirio Kasparov has struggled but built a reasonably decent life for herself in Boston. The perfume company founded by her parents is doing well, and will someday pass to her if her stubborn Russian-born father ever relinquishes his control. Her best friend since boarding school days, Thomasina, isn't doing nearly so well, too frequently found at the bottom of a bottle, but Pirio does what she can to help her and her son Noah. Ned, Thomasina's ex and Noah's father, had just left a large commercial outfit for the freelance life aboard a lobster boat, with Pirio riding along to help bait traps and get him started (not that she has a particular interest in fishing, but she's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to try, and for all his faults Ned has been a great father).
Neither one saw the freighter until it was slicing Ned's small vessel in two.
While Ned was lost, Pirio managed to survive for four hours in the near-freezing waters north of Boston before being rescued. The news treats her as a novelty, while the Navy wants to investigate her unusual ability to endure extreme water temperatures. But Pirio can hardly care about those things, not with Noah's father dead - and not with that little itch in the back of her mind that the "accident" was anything but accidental. Disappointed by official investigations that seem content to brush the matter aside and spurred by her cynical and suspicious father, she starts poking around on her own. Little does she suspect what a hornet's nest her inquiries will kick up...
REVIEW: This debut thriller melds elements of commercial fishing, corruption, perfume making, immigrant diaspora, and the lasting scars of troubled childhoods and abusive relationships, set in a solidly realized Boston and starring an interesting, proactive, and somewhat flawed heroine. It also feels like the start of a series that never took off, and thus one that never got a chance to fully explore its characters or situations, making some parts feel oddly extraneous by the end.
Keeping a fairly good pace throughout, Pirio's incredible survival in frigid Atlantic waters gives her some local notoriety in the middle of a deeply personal tragedy; Ned and her school friend Thomasina may have been over as a couple, but the man always did right by his son Noah, also much beloved by Pirio, and the breakup was not exactly a one-sided matter. That notoriety gets her noticed by the Navy (a subplot that sorta sputters out after verifying something Pirio suspected but needed proof of before believing), and also gives her some "street cred" when she starts investigating the matter of who sank Ned's boat. At first, she thinks it's a tragic accident, maybe a "hit and run" as is not uncommon on a sea with many small vessels sharing space and shipping lanes with behemoths, neither of which can exactly brake on a dime. But when strange occurrences follow her first questions, she realizes that there's more to it than mere happenstance; Ned was targeted, and someone wants very much for the matter to be forgotten. Pirio is reasonably clever in her investigations, if sometimes reckless, though that's in keeping with her character. Along the way, she also has to help with Noah as his mother spirals into self-destruction and cope with her own headstrong father's mortality catching up to his outsized will and personality, one more complication in a relationship that has been nothing but complicated. Memories of her mother, a woman with her own problems but who left an indelible mark on Pirio's life (as well as a legacy of the wondrous complexities of scent; she was the one who started formulating the perfumes that would become the backbone of the family's minor empire), make her fractured family relations all the more bittersweet, though her quest to find justice for Ned helps bring some unexpected closure on that front. Along the way are numerous clues and dangerous characters, some close calls and dead ends, culminating in revelations that have far-reaching implications and put Pirio and her friends in far more danger than she ever intended. There are hints and potentials for romance, but for the most part the book is free of entanglements of the heart; she may feel some attractions, but knows her current quest must take precedence. The conclusion leaves some questions and threads loose in a way that feels intentional, as though Elo was leaving the door open for more stories about Pirio and her companions. Overall, it kept me entertained.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Hemlock Island (Kelley Armstrong) - My Review
Adrift (Paul Griffin) - My Review
Whalefall (Daniel Kraus) - My Review
Thursday, July 24, 2025
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man (Emmanuel Acho)
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
Emmanuel Acho
Flatiron Books
Nonfiction, History/Memoir/Politics
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Is racism really a problem in modern times? Can Black people to be racist? What about "reverse racism" against whites? Why can't we all just stop seeing color - won't that make the problem go away? Former football player and current sports commentator and podcast host Emmanuel Acho answers questions about race that many white people hesitate to ask.
REVIEW: If nothing else has become glaringly apparent in the decade since Barack Obama's presidency, it's that American racism is not only alive and well, it's become emboldened enough to step from the shadows and openly feast on whatever progress has been made since at least the 1960's. Acho does not pretend to speak to the experience of all Black Americans, but he does honestly and thoroughly explore a number of topics related to racism, from the personal prejudices and biases that seep into daily life and color decisions to the systemic racism built into the institutions that govern all aspects of our public existence, going all the way back to the nation's founding and persisting to the present day. He even addresses "that" word, its volatile history and if it's ever okay for someone outside the community to use it. It makes for an interesting, candid, and frequently depressing and infuriating look at the many faces, many forms, vexingly persistence, and adaptive mutability of a problem that underlies so many of today's challenges, challenges that threaten everyone but that share common roots.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? (Keith Boykin) - My Review
Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) - My Review
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi) - My Review
Emmanuel Acho
Flatiron Books
Nonfiction, History/Memoir/Politics
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Is racism really a problem in modern times? Can Black people to be racist? What about "reverse racism" against whites? Why can't we all just stop seeing color - won't that make the problem go away? Former football player and current sports commentator and podcast host Emmanuel Acho answers questions about race that many white people hesitate to ask.
REVIEW: If nothing else has become glaringly apparent in the decade since Barack Obama's presidency, it's that American racism is not only alive and well, it's become emboldened enough to step from the shadows and openly feast on whatever progress has been made since at least the 1960's. Acho does not pretend to speak to the experience of all Black Americans, but he does honestly and thoroughly explore a number of topics related to racism, from the personal prejudices and biases that seep into daily life and color decisions to the systemic racism built into the institutions that govern all aspects of our public existence, going all the way back to the nation's founding and persisting to the present day. He even addresses "that" word, its volatile history and if it's ever okay for someone outside the community to use it. It makes for an interesting, candid, and frequently depressing and infuriating look at the many faces, many forms, vexingly persistence, and adaptive mutability of a problem that underlies so many of today's challenges, challenges that threaten everyone but that share common roots.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? (Keith Boykin) - My Review
Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) - My Review
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi) - My Review
Democracy in Retrograde (Sami Sage and Emily Amick)
Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives
Sami Sage and Emily Amick
Gallery Books
Nonfiction, Politics
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's no secret that the state of America's democracy is dire. Voting rights are under attack, the very notion of who is or is not a citizen has been thrown into the shredder, and the party that pushed a literal, televised insurrection has grasped the levers of power. Institutions and guardrails are being destroyed at exponentially increasing rates, and those doing the destruction aren't even trying to hide the anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional roots of their motivations. Is it too late to stop the complete collapse of the country we thought we knew? The authors offer ideas for finding hope and motivation even in the darkest times.
REVIEW: This book was published in July 2024. At that time, I would've agreed that there was, indeed, some chance of at least limiting damage from the bad actors who have successfully infiltrated the system and grasped control of the media narrative to push their messaging and drown out opposition. I'm not at all certain of that anymore, one year later. In any event, the authors explore ways to connect with like-minded individuals and build intentional communities - ideally in-person communities, as so much of the internet has been siloed into echo-chambers and ultimately compromised (many online public spaces being actually in the hands of private individuals pushing their own agendas and influence, rewarding outrage and divisiveness) - in order to work toward change. They discuss the different ways people can contribute: not everyone is a leader, but most everyone can likely find something useful to do, some place where their interests and passions intersect with a need. As usual, though, there are those of us who fall through the cracks; I lack access to in-person communities, for one, and for another I lack anything tangible to contribute. I'm also congenitally invisible, so even in the off chance I found a place to show up I'm not particularly useful except as an inert object. Still, ideas like these are likely the only way to turn anything around or, as I sadly suspect will be more likely, eventually rebuild anything from the rubble that will eventually be left to whoever or whatever manages to survive what's coming.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Never Say You Can't Survive (Charlie Jane Anders) - My Review
Let This Radicalize You (Kelly Hayes and Miriame Kaba) - My Review
What Unites Us (Dan Rather and Elias Kirshner) - My Review
Sami Sage and Emily Amick
Gallery Books
Nonfiction, Politics
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's no secret that the state of America's democracy is dire. Voting rights are under attack, the very notion of who is or is not a citizen has been thrown into the shredder, and the party that pushed a literal, televised insurrection has grasped the levers of power. Institutions and guardrails are being destroyed at exponentially increasing rates, and those doing the destruction aren't even trying to hide the anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional roots of their motivations. Is it too late to stop the complete collapse of the country we thought we knew? The authors offer ideas for finding hope and motivation even in the darkest times.
REVIEW: This book was published in July 2024. At that time, I would've agreed that there was, indeed, some chance of at least limiting damage from the bad actors who have successfully infiltrated the system and grasped control of the media narrative to push their messaging and drown out opposition. I'm not at all certain of that anymore, one year later. In any event, the authors explore ways to connect with like-minded individuals and build intentional communities - ideally in-person communities, as so much of the internet has been siloed into echo-chambers and ultimately compromised (many online public spaces being actually in the hands of private individuals pushing their own agendas and influence, rewarding outrage and divisiveness) - in order to work toward change. They discuss the different ways people can contribute: not everyone is a leader, but most everyone can likely find something useful to do, some place where their interests and passions intersect with a need. As usual, though, there are those of us who fall through the cracks; I lack access to in-person communities, for one, and for another I lack anything tangible to contribute. I'm also congenitally invisible, so even in the off chance I found a place to show up I'm not particularly useful except as an inert object. Still, ideas like these are likely the only way to turn anything around or, as I sadly suspect will be more likely, eventually rebuild anything from the rubble that will eventually be left to whoever or whatever manages to survive what's coming.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Never Say You Can't Survive (Charlie Jane Anders) - My Review
Let This Radicalize You (Kelly Hayes and Miriame Kaba) - My Review
What Unites Us (Dan Rather and Elias Kirshner) - My Review
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen (Jim C. Hines)
Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen
Jim C. Hines
Jim C. Hines, publisher
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since her best friend Andre vanished without a trace, twelve-year-old Tamora Carter has struggled to cope. Was he kidnapped? Did he run away? Have the police given up already? At least she has an outlet for her frustrations in roller derby. But one day, after practice, she finds something very strange behind the skating rink: a pair of real, live goblins! They claim they came here from another world, but won't tell her where - though a portal immediately makes Tamora suspect that their appearance may have something to do with Andre's disappearance. Maybe the reason he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth is that he really did vanish, at least off this Earth. With help from some unexpected allies, Tamora sets out to unravel the mystery, locate the portal, and get her best friend back - but the goblins aren't the only threats she'll have to watch out for, and it's going to take more than roller derby trash talk to win against real magic.
REVIEW: After some disappointing reads this month (and other disappointments and stresses in general, including a major appliance failure), I just wanted something simple and straightforward. Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen delivers exactly what it promises, with a gutsy girl who will stop at nothing to bring her best friend home, even if it means facing down goblins and pixies and even a dragon - and worse. If there's not a whole lot more to it than that, well, it never promises more.
From her first appearance in a roller derby match as one of the Grand Ridge Honey Badgers (game name: T-Wrex), Tamora is no shrinking violet of a character, a girl with strength and guts and the grit to get back up when knocked down, even if she sometimes doesn't listen and forgets that there is no "I" in a team. During and after the game, the reader learns about the disappearance of Andre and two other kids from town some weeks back, and how it's gnawing at her, part of what drives her recklessness on skates. The goblins quickly cue her (and the reader) into the fantastic elements of the story, and the overall tone; though they jeer and threaten, their stilted language and silly appearance and behavior promise blunted corners and nothing too horrific, for all that the threats become real as Tamora digs deeper to figure out what's going on and what it has to do with her missing friend. This is, ultimately, like the other side of a portal fantasy, as Andre and two other kids have been whisked away to a fantasy world (hardly a spoiler, when goblins turn up in the first chapter and the portal concept is quickly established after that) and she must work to help bring them home before something terrible happens to them. Joining her is her older brother Mac, a nonverbal autistic boy who mostly speaks using a tablet computer, and the twin sister of one of the other missing kids who seems to have a lingering, if subconscious, psychic connection to the trio. Tamora starts and remains the primary driving force of the adventure, even when she learns that she can't do it all herself and needs a team to succeed. Her father even becomes an ally rather than an obstacle or non-character (as is common in middle-grade fantasies), and actually trusts his daughter. Her half-Korean heritage becomes a strength, particularly when it comes to the quirks of the language translation spells that allow people from the nameless fantasy world to communicate in English. Things move pretty well, with Tamora and her companions facing many dangers, sometimes stumbling but always climbing back up on their feet to keep trying. It all wraps up reasonably well, without too many surprises (at least for grown-ups reading it), leaving some "sequel potential" as the saying goes should Hines ever decide to pursue it. (This was originally a Kickstarter project, so I have no idea if he's intending to write more or not.) It's enjoyable for what it is, offering characters interesting enough to care about and plenty of fun, sometimes perilous adventure.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Fairy Metal Thunder (JL Bryan) - My Review
Goblin Quest (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
The Divide (Elizabeth Kay) - My Review
Jim C. Hines
Jim C. Hines, publisher
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since her best friend Andre vanished without a trace, twelve-year-old Tamora Carter has struggled to cope. Was he kidnapped? Did he run away? Have the police given up already? At least she has an outlet for her frustrations in roller derby. But one day, after practice, she finds something very strange behind the skating rink: a pair of real, live goblins! They claim they came here from another world, but won't tell her where - though a portal immediately makes Tamora suspect that their appearance may have something to do with Andre's disappearance. Maybe the reason he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth is that he really did vanish, at least off this Earth. With help from some unexpected allies, Tamora sets out to unravel the mystery, locate the portal, and get her best friend back - but the goblins aren't the only threats she'll have to watch out for, and it's going to take more than roller derby trash talk to win against real magic.
REVIEW: After some disappointing reads this month (and other disappointments and stresses in general, including a major appliance failure), I just wanted something simple and straightforward. Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen delivers exactly what it promises, with a gutsy girl who will stop at nothing to bring her best friend home, even if it means facing down goblins and pixies and even a dragon - and worse. If there's not a whole lot more to it than that, well, it never promises more.
From her first appearance in a roller derby match as one of the Grand Ridge Honey Badgers (game name: T-Wrex), Tamora is no shrinking violet of a character, a girl with strength and guts and the grit to get back up when knocked down, even if she sometimes doesn't listen and forgets that there is no "I" in a team. During and after the game, the reader learns about the disappearance of Andre and two other kids from town some weeks back, and how it's gnawing at her, part of what drives her recklessness on skates. The goblins quickly cue her (and the reader) into the fantastic elements of the story, and the overall tone; though they jeer and threaten, their stilted language and silly appearance and behavior promise blunted corners and nothing too horrific, for all that the threats become real as Tamora digs deeper to figure out what's going on and what it has to do with her missing friend. This is, ultimately, like the other side of a portal fantasy, as Andre and two other kids have been whisked away to a fantasy world (hardly a spoiler, when goblins turn up in the first chapter and the portal concept is quickly established after that) and she must work to help bring them home before something terrible happens to them. Joining her is her older brother Mac, a nonverbal autistic boy who mostly speaks using a tablet computer, and the twin sister of one of the other missing kids who seems to have a lingering, if subconscious, psychic connection to the trio. Tamora starts and remains the primary driving force of the adventure, even when she learns that she can't do it all herself and needs a team to succeed. Her father even becomes an ally rather than an obstacle or non-character (as is common in middle-grade fantasies), and actually trusts his daughter. Her half-Korean heritage becomes a strength, particularly when it comes to the quirks of the language translation spells that allow people from the nameless fantasy world to communicate in English. Things move pretty well, with Tamora and her companions facing many dangers, sometimes stumbling but always climbing back up on their feet to keep trying. It all wraps up reasonably well, without too many surprises (at least for grown-ups reading it), leaving some "sequel potential" as the saying goes should Hines ever decide to pursue it. (This was originally a Kickstarter project, so I have no idea if he's intending to write more or not.) It's enjoyable for what it is, offering characters interesting enough to care about and plenty of fun, sometimes perilous adventure.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Fairy Metal Thunder (JL Bryan) - My Review
Goblin Quest (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
The Divide (Elizabeth Kay) - My Review
Friday, July 18, 2025
The Last Dragon on Mars (Scott Reintgen)
The Last Dragon on Mars
The Dragonships series, Book 1
Scott Reintgen
Aladdin
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Throughout the cosmos, every heavenly body, from the brightest sun to the smallest moonlet, manifests an avatar in the form of a dragon. When Earth's dragon Gaia decided her world needed life, she sacrificed herself, eventually enabling humans to evolve and take her legacy to the moon and other worlds - but nowhere else in the entire solar system had a habitable biosphere. Clearly, in order to terraform a place, the world's dragon avatar must die... but why must it be a self-sacrifice? Would it really matter how they died? Through war and treachery, humans slaughtered the great dragon Ares of Mars, to claim a second planet for themselves. Only with his last breath, Ares cursed his world. Now, there is air, and with it plants and animals, but the soil is barren, the skies lashed with killer storms, and every living thing that sprung from Ares's death is half-mad with hatred for humans, an infection that even spreads to imported pets and livestock. Earth's children may live on the planet, but it will never be theirs.
The night the boy was born on Mars, the great moon dragon Luna flew overhead, giving his mother the perfect inspiration for his name... the last gift she would ever give him. Years later, the orphaned Lunar Jones lives with a dozen other children, scraping the storm-torn wastes beyond the city gates for scrap and relics that will keep them all fed for another day on a world that's slowly dying around them. Fleeing another crew while fighting over a prize, he ends up in a forbidden military zone - and discovers an impossible secret: a dragon. And when young Dread chooses Lunar as his dragoon, the captain mentally bonded to the near-godlike being, the scrapper finds himself plunged into a new world that's far more dangerous than any storm-wracked wasteland, with stakes higher than he can imagine - for, if he and Dread fail the challenges that lie ahead, the last vestiges of Mars will fail with them.
REVIEW: I'd heard good things about this book, and the concept sounded very fun. Dragons as living avatars of heavenly bodies - able to power "dragonships" that turn the transit time from Earth to Mars into mere hours? A future with tech so advanced that power generators can spontaneously generate complex machinery and matter from microchip blueprints? How cool is all that? Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be rather less cool the more I read, until by the end I was left with a bitter, ashen taste in my mouth that managed to drop the rating below three stars.
Early on, I rather enjoyed the ideas and the world, and was willing to roll with the implausibilities for the sake of a good story - and it did indeed start out good. Lunar's the sort of scrappy underdog character that's a genre staple for a reason, fighting not just for his own survival but the found family back at the "relocation house" (basically an orphanage where Martian children wait for one of the meager apprenticeships or jobs to open up and pluck them out of poverty). He even extends his protective instincts to members of the rival crew that left him for dead, when he finds they also abandoned one of their own to die in the wilderness. When he discovers Dread in a cavern beneath the base, he also discovers one rogue general's off-the-books mission and a collection of young elite soldiers, all hand-picked and trained from early childhood in the hopes that the growing young dragon would choose one of them as his dragoon... but, instead, as implied by the foreshadowing of Luna's presence over his birth, it's Lunar who gets the honor. This does not instantly transform him into a flawless hero, though. He stumbles, he fumbles, he tries to become someone he isn't... and Dread is not some all-powerful and wise god, being young and inexperienced and possibly a touch mentally unstable, with terrifying bursts of rage out of the blue where he even threatens Lunar's life. The boy has to earn his place and his title, as well as the respect of the soldiers who become his crew - and, of course, when the inevitable major crisis hits, he and the rest find themselves subject to a trial by literal fire as the fate of Mars hangs in the balance. Along the way are memorable encounters with numerous dragons, all of which are more akin to Greco-Roman deities than humans: immensely powerful beyond human understanding, but with outsized personalities and flaws, prone to ever-shifting alliances and rivalries and bickering in which fragile mortal lives can easily be extinguished as casually as swatting a gnat. Sure, several parts are strongly reminiscent of other works (dragons bearing full crews in harness reminiscent of Naomi Novik's Temeraire, the elite military school where an unconventional underdog must prove themselves like in Orson Scott Card's classic Ender's Game, etc.), but The Last Dragon on Mars should have been a gripping, wild ride through a fantastic solar system... so what went wrong?
From early on, I had a slight itch in the back of my mind about the idea of Earth's avatar dragon/essentially-goddess Gaia sacrificing herself for life... and not just for life, but seemingly for humans. (Did dinosaurs even exist in this alternate solar system, or is this more of a Creationist take that glosses over any other species than H. sapiens, and by extension the many rich and wondrous biomes that came before us, as either nonexistent or irrelevant because "chosen by the Creator"?) Then Luna, devoted to the will and memory of Gaia (as all moons tend to be devoted to their "masters", their planets), decides to help humans. She chooses to let herself be seen and make contact with the mortals, explaining concepts of mental bonds and what dragons could do when paired with human innovation and technology (the "dragonships" and more), encouraging them to spread through the solar system even knowing that there are no other habitable worlds out there and there won't be any unless one of her kin is also willing to sacrifice themselves as Gaia did.
Why would she do this? Why would this not lead to trouble? This is never questioned, because the right of Gaia's blessed mortals to go wherever they want to, to plant their flag on whatever soil - no matter how hostile - and call it their own, is undisputed.
When Ares (understandably) refuses to give the children of Earth his planet Mars, the humans and Luna conspire to slaughter him in cold blood... which makes him the bad guy. I get that Lunar was born long after the original would-be colonists struck down Ares, but still, the growing sense that humans are somehow owed the planet - and, by extension, anywhere else they choose to go - simply by virtue of being humans... does anyone else smell more than a little "manifest destiny" doctrine, here? Couple that with how Lunar's first-person narration kept throwing in anachronistic references that seemed out of place for his character and his situation - such as comparing one woman's ponytail to swinging like a clock pendulum in a far future world where pendulum clocks would likely be obscure ancient history, or casually dropping a reference about how he and his companions are expected to save an entire planet while being younger than the driving age on Earth (which assumes that teenagers on Earth still undergo the rite of passage of learning to drive a motorized vehicle, that driving ages have not changed in hundreds of years, and that a Martian boy living a hand-to-mouth hardscrabble life with minimal access to education would know or care about a bit of trivia like that) - and later developments that enforce the "divine right of kings" in a rigid social hierarchy of unquestioned masters and obedient servants (with trouble coming when the servants dislike cruel, harmful treatment from their master and try to change the status quo), and I found my suspension of disbelief plummeting through the stratosphere.
By the end, despite some high-adrenaline space battles and world-shifting stakes, I no longer cared what happened to the people or the dragons... which was just as well, as the last twist almost had me groaning as it took the very last vestigial flutter of suspension of disbelief and stomped it flat. After the early promise and wonderful concepts, little was left but ashes and disappointment... though I will admit the dragons could be quite awesome.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragons in the Stars (Jeffrey A. Carver) - My Review
Dragonhenge (Bob Eggleton and John Grant) - My Review
Arabella of Mars (David D. Levine) - My Review
The Dragonships series, Book 1
Scott Reintgen
Aladdin
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Throughout the cosmos, every heavenly body, from the brightest sun to the smallest moonlet, manifests an avatar in the form of a dragon. When Earth's dragon Gaia decided her world needed life, she sacrificed herself, eventually enabling humans to evolve and take her legacy to the moon and other worlds - but nowhere else in the entire solar system had a habitable biosphere. Clearly, in order to terraform a place, the world's dragon avatar must die... but why must it be a self-sacrifice? Would it really matter how they died? Through war and treachery, humans slaughtered the great dragon Ares of Mars, to claim a second planet for themselves. Only with his last breath, Ares cursed his world. Now, there is air, and with it plants and animals, but the soil is barren, the skies lashed with killer storms, and every living thing that sprung from Ares's death is half-mad with hatred for humans, an infection that even spreads to imported pets and livestock. Earth's children may live on the planet, but it will never be theirs.
The night the boy was born on Mars, the great moon dragon Luna flew overhead, giving his mother the perfect inspiration for his name... the last gift she would ever give him. Years later, the orphaned Lunar Jones lives with a dozen other children, scraping the storm-torn wastes beyond the city gates for scrap and relics that will keep them all fed for another day on a world that's slowly dying around them. Fleeing another crew while fighting over a prize, he ends up in a forbidden military zone - and discovers an impossible secret: a dragon. And when young Dread chooses Lunar as his dragoon, the captain mentally bonded to the near-godlike being, the scrapper finds himself plunged into a new world that's far more dangerous than any storm-wracked wasteland, with stakes higher than he can imagine - for, if he and Dread fail the challenges that lie ahead, the last vestiges of Mars will fail with them.
REVIEW: I'd heard good things about this book, and the concept sounded very fun. Dragons as living avatars of heavenly bodies - able to power "dragonships" that turn the transit time from Earth to Mars into mere hours? A future with tech so advanced that power generators can spontaneously generate complex machinery and matter from microchip blueprints? How cool is all that? Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be rather less cool the more I read, until by the end I was left with a bitter, ashen taste in my mouth that managed to drop the rating below three stars.
Early on, I rather enjoyed the ideas and the world, and was willing to roll with the implausibilities for the sake of a good story - and it did indeed start out good. Lunar's the sort of scrappy underdog character that's a genre staple for a reason, fighting not just for his own survival but the found family back at the "relocation house" (basically an orphanage where Martian children wait for one of the meager apprenticeships or jobs to open up and pluck them out of poverty). He even extends his protective instincts to members of the rival crew that left him for dead, when he finds they also abandoned one of their own to die in the wilderness. When he discovers Dread in a cavern beneath the base, he also discovers one rogue general's off-the-books mission and a collection of young elite soldiers, all hand-picked and trained from early childhood in the hopes that the growing young dragon would choose one of them as his dragoon... but, instead, as implied by the foreshadowing of Luna's presence over his birth, it's Lunar who gets the honor. This does not instantly transform him into a flawless hero, though. He stumbles, he fumbles, he tries to become someone he isn't... and Dread is not some all-powerful and wise god, being young and inexperienced and possibly a touch mentally unstable, with terrifying bursts of rage out of the blue where he even threatens Lunar's life. The boy has to earn his place and his title, as well as the respect of the soldiers who become his crew - and, of course, when the inevitable major crisis hits, he and the rest find themselves subject to a trial by literal fire as the fate of Mars hangs in the balance. Along the way are memorable encounters with numerous dragons, all of which are more akin to Greco-Roman deities than humans: immensely powerful beyond human understanding, but with outsized personalities and flaws, prone to ever-shifting alliances and rivalries and bickering in which fragile mortal lives can easily be extinguished as casually as swatting a gnat. Sure, several parts are strongly reminiscent of other works (dragons bearing full crews in harness reminiscent of Naomi Novik's Temeraire, the elite military school where an unconventional underdog must prove themselves like in Orson Scott Card's classic Ender's Game, etc.), but The Last Dragon on Mars should have been a gripping, wild ride through a fantastic solar system... so what went wrong?
From early on, I had a slight itch in the back of my mind about the idea of Earth's avatar dragon/essentially-goddess Gaia sacrificing herself for life... and not just for life, but seemingly for humans. (Did dinosaurs even exist in this alternate solar system, or is this more of a Creationist take that glosses over any other species than H. sapiens, and by extension the many rich and wondrous biomes that came before us, as either nonexistent or irrelevant because "chosen by the Creator"?) Then Luna, devoted to the will and memory of Gaia (as all moons tend to be devoted to their "masters", their planets), decides to help humans. She chooses to let herself be seen and make contact with the mortals, explaining concepts of mental bonds and what dragons could do when paired with human innovation and technology (the "dragonships" and more), encouraging them to spread through the solar system even knowing that there are no other habitable worlds out there and there won't be any unless one of her kin is also willing to sacrifice themselves as Gaia did.
Why would she do this? Why would this not lead to trouble? This is never questioned, because the right of Gaia's blessed mortals to go wherever they want to, to plant their flag on whatever soil - no matter how hostile - and call it their own, is undisputed.
When Ares (understandably) refuses to give the children of Earth his planet Mars, the humans and Luna conspire to slaughter him in cold blood... which makes him the bad guy. I get that Lunar was born long after the original would-be colonists struck down Ares, but still, the growing sense that humans are somehow owed the planet - and, by extension, anywhere else they choose to go - simply by virtue of being humans... does anyone else smell more than a little "manifest destiny" doctrine, here? Couple that with how Lunar's first-person narration kept throwing in anachronistic references that seemed out of place for his character and his situation - such as comparing one woman's ponytail to swinging like a clock pendulum in a far future world where pendulum clocks would likely be obscure ancient history, or casually dropping a reference about how he and his companions are expected to save an entire planet while being younger than the driving age on Earth (which assumes that teenagers on Earth still undergo the rite of passage of learning to drive a motorized vehicle, that driving ages have not changed in hundreds of years, and that a Martian boy living a hand-to-mouth hardscrabble life with minimal access to education would know or care about a bit of trivia like that) - and later developments that enforce the "divine right of kings" in a rigid social hierarchy of unquestioned masters and obedient servants (with trouble coming when the servants dislike cruel, harmful treatment from their master and try to change the status quo), and I found my suspension of disbelief plummeting through the stratosphere.
By the end, despite some high-adrenaline space battles and world-shifting stakes, I no longer cared what happened to the people or the dragons... which was just as well, as the last twist almost had me groaning as it took the very last vestigial flutter of suspension of disbelief and stomped it flat. After the early promise and wonderful concepts, little was left but ashes and disappointment... though I will admit the dragons could be quite awesome.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragons in the Stars (Jeffrey A. Carver) - My Review
Dragonhenge (Bob Eggleton and John Grant) - My Review
Arabella of Mars (David D. Levine) - My Review
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