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.

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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 it's 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.

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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...).

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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.

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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.

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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...)

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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.

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