The Knight and the Moth (Rachel Gillig)

The Knight and the Moth

The Stonewater Kingdom series, Book 1
Rachel Gillig
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Romance
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION:

The young woman known as Six remembers nothing before she first drowned in the sacred spring of Aisling cathedral as a sickly foundling child. Now, as one of the sacred diviners, she and her five holy sisters dream prophetic visions of the Omens and their sacred stone objects for the paying faithful of Stonewater Kingdom, a small realm of five hamlets surrounded by hostile inhuman sprites. Only the Omens hold the monsters at bay and give the people hope, and only the diviners, drowning in the spring, can glimpse their will.
Or so Six always believed.
As they near their tenth year of service, the girls look forward to the freedom to come; each diviner only serves a decade before being released. They have only had passing glimpsese of the greater kingdom, but dream of great adventures and grand lives... until, one by one, they begin to disappear in the night. At last, only Six remains - and she cannot believe the abbess when the woman insists that the others just "ran away" without telling her. She flees, finding her way to the only ally she might have: Roderick "Rory" Myndacious, one of the young new king's most trusted guardsmen, who made quite an impression when he visited the cathedral with King Benjamin as part of the coronation rituals. Rory is brash, rude, and blasphemous - the perfect companion, in other words, when her enemies are the gods themselves.

REVIEW:

I've heard nothing but praise for Gillig and her books, and heard some intriguing things about this one, so I figured I'd give it a try. The opening pulled me in almost immediately, as a talking gargoyle lectures a bug caught in a spider web about morality in lieu of helping it free, and the whole concept of repeatedly drowning in a sacred spring to receive prophetic visions. This was a world I wanted to know more about, and the characters promised to be ones I'd enjoy exploring that world with. (The edition I got was also admittedly quite petty, a paperback with decorative page edges.) Unfortunately, as the tale unraveled, that promise frayed to bare threads, until the only reason I was turning pages was to get the thing over with.
The early parts at Aisling, the cathedral built upon the sacred spring where once the Omens came to unite the infighting humans against the many strange and deadly sprite creatures stalking the land that would become Stonewater Kingdom, were rather interesting. Six and her companions are, naturally, sheltered, convinced that their sacrifices are worthwhile and that they will be rewarded for their service, but they are not so strictly naïve (in some ways, at least) as to be insufferable; a few have been known to sneak out to the local fair now and again, and they aren't forbidden to "lie in the grass" with visitors so long as they're discreet. Six herself strives to be the perfect dreamer, the teacher's pet of the bunch, yet still feels very close to her sister diviners, as they spend their evenings concocting grandiose dreams of their adventures once they're free of the robes and the eye-covering shrouds they must wear day and night as part of their service. The meeting with Rory and young King Benjamin foreshadows troubling times ahead, and Six begins to consider questions and ideas she'd previously dismissed. There's a nice sense of growing horror as, one by one, her fellow diviners begin to disappear... and those remaining see a darker, colder side to their mother figure priestess, as she dismisses Six's concerns and withdraws even the minimal affection and love she ever showed them, until there's no choice but to flee - taking along the one talking gargoyle, which has several eccentricities but is unflinchingly loyal.
At this point, I was quite enjoying the ride, even if the writing itself felt weirdly dissonant. Descriptive passages could be quite poetic and distinct, while the dialogue was often casual and very modern sounding, even allowing for "translation convention" (the unspoken understanding that fantasy worlds are being "translated" by the author from whatever the native tongue is into an Earth language). And if the greater world and mythology beyond Aisling felt weirdly flat and thin, and if the gargoyle felt a little more like the sort of quirky "animal" companion that would mostly exist to sell merchandising if this were a movie than a character with anything like a pivotal role in the plot, well, it was early yet. Surely such things would be fleshed out along the way.
As one might surmise from the rating, such things were not satisfactorily fleshed out.
After a relatively strong start and her gutsy, heart-rending decision to flee the only home and "mother" she's ever known, Six too often reverts to being a passive follower in the wake of Rory, Benji, and Benji's chief knight Maude in their greater mission, which involves challenging the Omens themselves; Benji insists that he has proof that they're not the gods they claim to be, merely usurpers to power who have manipulated the whole of the kingdom, and his first act as king will be to end them and take the powerful stone artifacts they carry. Despite her dreams and service, Six is soon convinced that the Omens are much less holy and benevolent than she was raised to believe, but still, she feels weirdly passive much of the time, almost childlike (she has a weird quirk where she refuses to wear shoes, and I don't consider it a spoiler to say that, no, all the page count spent on her rejecting footwear never does lead to any greater plot point; she's just acting like one of those willful toddlers who just won't keep their shoes on, even in locations where shoes would be advisable). She's supposed to be rather strong, having worked with stone on the crumbling cathedral (all the girls were encouraged to have skills or hobbies), but acts quite weak many times. Rory's attraction does not quite feel organic. And, despite some nice descriptions, I never really got a sense of a full world or kingdom; the hamlets are full of flattened caricatures of extras (and the fact that they're hamlets at all, not even towns, makes the whole of Stonewater feel weirdly small - with no mention that I recall of a greater world beyond its boundaries), the sprites are just sort of there without rhyme or reason (save serving as an occasional threat; there's lip service given to how they're actually victims in a way, starving to death and becoming more aggressive, but they're only rarely shown to be a tangible threat, attacking at plot-convenient times and in plot-convenient ways). The gargoyle remains weirdly extraneous, comic relief that does something useful once in a blue moon, and only at the very end is any greater purpose given to it... too little, too late for me to really connect with it. By the end, I just wasn't buying the story or the twists like I should have were I properly invested in the tale, and the climax was just a massive brick dropped on everything, landing with a dull thud that obliterated anything like interest in continuing as it set up a very contrived complication.
In any event, I suppose I can place part of the blame for my disappointment on myself, for taking to heart all the hype I've heard. I suppose it just is not the right story for me, but it's nice that some people are evidently enjoying it. I shall be passing my copy on, in the hopes that it finds a more appreciative reader.

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An Enchantment of Ravens (Margaret Rogerson)

An Enchantment of Ravens
Margaret Rogerson
Margaret K. Elderberry Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The town of Whimsy exists in a perpetual summer, thanks to its proximity to the fairy courts and the influence of the Alder King. The immortal fair folk cannot get enough of crafted works - art, poetry, anything worked and shaped and made, even cooked food and brewed drinks - for all that they themselves cannot hold so much as a frying pan without risking death. In exchange for these works of mortal hands, they pay in kind with enchantments and blessings... though, as in anything related to the fae, one must be very careful what one asks, and how one asks it, lest a loophole be found. One must also be careful not to give offense, be impolite, or otherwise imply that life in Whimsy can feel less like a privilege and more like a trap... not even when the odd monster borne in the magical woods ventures into town and kills locals. Above all else, one must never delude oneself into believing that one is in love with a fairy; the Good Laws of the Alder King strictly forbid relations, with death for any offender.
A gifted artist since she could hold a brush, seventeen-year-old Isobel is renowned through the town of Whimsy and the fairy courts for her portraits. When her reputation spreads as far as the reclusive Rook, the Autumn Prince who has not been seen in the mortal realm for centuries, some see it as a testament to her skill and the greatest of fortune; after all, the more powerful the fair folk, the greater the gifts they might bestow. But ever since her parents were killed by a magical beast, Isobel has known better than to consider dealings with fairies as fortunate in any way, or to be tempted by their more extravagant promises; for payment, she keeps to strictly practical, useful enchantments, such as blessings on the household chickens or protections for her family. With the many immortals she has painted, the countless hours she's observed them, she knows better than anyone just how inhuman and empty they truly are within.
Rook is nothing at all like any fair folk she has painted before - but it's not until she paints his picture that she realizes why. Her brush captures the sorrow she sees deep in his amethyst eyes - and one thing no faerie ever shows, or would even admit to experiencing, is a mortal emotion. Rook is enraged, and demands she fix the "flaw" - snatching her away from Whimsy and bringing her into the heart of the fairy realm to do so. But a greater threat lurks here, in the endless woods and cruel courts, one that turns Isobel and Rook into unlikely allies... and, before either realizes it, the two become something more to each other, something that violates the Good Law itself.

REVIEW: There is no shortage of "romantasy" on the shelves these days, just as there's no shortage of fairies. This title, however, manages to avoid the more obvious traps many of those books fall into, presenting a reasonably competent heroine and fairies who retain the sharp edges and inscrutable, dangerous nature that makes relations with the fair folk - even casual meetings, let alone love affairs - so deadly.
In many books with the fae, there's an inherent power imbalance; aside from the usual weakness to iron, the fair folk are ageless, physically and mentally superior, innately magical, and unburdened with anything like what a human would recognize as morality (even if they are sometimes encumbered by their own peculiar customs and rituals), against which humans stand little chance. Here, however, mortals hold a couple advantages that puts them closer to a level playing field (if still often outmatched and easily duped by fae illusions and cunning). The biggest of these is humanity's ability to craft items, to change and shape natural things, something that is so antithetical to faerie nature that they could die if they even attempted to write a single letter or hold a sewing needle. Fairies can (and do) covet crafted items, but can never make them themselves, a "magic" they can never possess - and they burn with envy, even as they lust after mortal craftings. The other advantage, which can also be a disadvantage, is of course the range of human emotions. Fae have something like emotions, but not in a way humans readily recognize most of the time; more often than not they're simply mimicking or emulating rather than experiencing such things as joy or sorrow (though they do seem to have quite genuine streaks of envy and anger). The fairies see mortal emotions as weaknesses, and one thing their society will not tolerate is weakness in any form. This is what makes Isobel's "mistake" in Rook's portrait such a source of scandal and rage; by showing the sorrow that she saw in him, she was potentially showing the faerie world that the Autumn King is weak. Thus, his fury and his demand that she make it right... but there are games afoot in the courts that even Rook misjudges, putting them both at risk.
Neither Rook nor Isobel are perfect, and both make mistakes and missteps that cost them, but they also learn along the way. The dangers the two face are real, tangible, and occasionally terrifying; the fairies are only barely human beneath their glamours, more akin to predatory ghouls or conniving demons who delight in tormenting mortals even as they obsessively emulate humans - in part to mock, or simply to study their favored prey, but also out of an unspoken yearning toward something they can never truly understand. Only a few, such as Rook, even come close. The relationship between the two has sparks early on, but takes some time to spark a flame, yet even in the midst of attraction Isobel is never a helpless victim of her own hormones or emotions. She can (and does) step back and recognize what an unwise idea it is, even if the heart ultimately cannot be restrained. Rook, too, never forces the issue, and is as surprised as she is to find his own heart betraying him.
The story hits a few lulls and can be a touch repetitious in its description of fae cruelties, drawing out some torments and scenes, but only really stumbles with a climax that draws itself out a little too long for its own good. There are also some elements that were set up to be more meaningful or plot relevant than they ultimately were, such as Isobel's little "sisters", March and May; they used to be a pair of goats until fairy magic intervened, and they retain several goatlike traits (a streak for mischief and a tendency toward destructive behavior and even head-butting), but ultimately don't contribute anything meaningful to the plot. I get the feeling there's supposed to be a sequel at least, which may explain why parts of the ending feel unfinished. But it does more right than it does wrong, so I ended up forgiving it some weaknesses and gave it the solid fourth star in the ratings it came close to losing.

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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.

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Someone You Can Build a Nest In (John Wiswell)

Someone You Can Build a Nest In
John Wiswell
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror/Romance
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: When monster hunters wake Shesheshen from a peaceful winter hibernation in her ruined manorhouse lair, she is most upset. It's enough of a chore building a body from scraps of metal and remains of previous meals when fully alert, let alone when she's been slumbering deep in the hot spring pools for months. Still, she manages to kill and consume one of them, a truly horrendous oaf of a human in gilded armor - but not before she is struck by a diabolical crossbow bolt loaded with toxic rosemary. The wound makes it impossible to return to sleep, driving her out of her lair in search of food and straight into more trouble that nearly sees her killed. But she is rescued and healed by, of all things, a human woman named Homily.
It is clear that Homily has no idea who, or what, Shesheshen is. All the woman knows is that, like herself, she's an outcast. The monster is not used to being treated with anything but fear or anger by people, and doesn't know what to make of prey that does not act at all like prey. But, despite herself, she begins to grow fond of Homily - even as her own nature and instincts may spell doom for both of them, moreso when she learns the truth of who Homily is and why she has come to these lands.

REVIEW: It took me some time to consider what I thought of this book and how to rate it. Blending grotesque monster horror with romance and the dysfunctional dynamics of abusive family relationships, it generally works more than it doesn't, but also can't seem to help wallowing in its own pain and trauma and broken lives and sheer graphic gruesomeness.
From the opening, the reader is placed in the point of view of Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting creature of indeterminate nature, as a band of humans insists on picking a fight. She may consume the odd human now and again, using their organs and bones to give herself a temporary solid form, but she's far from the rabid demonic "wyrm" the hunters insist she is. She even has her own pet, a massive blue bear named Blueberry, whom she lovingly feeds entrails to after dealing with her unpleasant visitors. The gilded knight is from a noble family more than well known to her, who seem to have made her extermination their personal mission - but it's not until she is befriended by the ignorant young woman Homily that Shesheshen begins to understand why... and why just hiding out in her lair and hoping the whole matter blows over is not an option. Shesheshen struggles to understand humanity in general, but it's not until she is rescued and forced to spend time among them while not actively stalking her next meal that she feels compelled to make a genuine effort to connect... efforts complicated by her own instincts to not just feed, but find a suitable host body into which to place her parasitic egg sac. (Shesheshen tragically misunderstands her own childhood relationship with her "father", mistaking his "gifts" of warmth and shelter and, later, food for genuine love.) The more the monster learns of Homily's family, the less she likes about what they did to break the woman, and the more protective she becomes, but the lie upon which their budding relationship is built is a ticking bomb (one of many) that must inevitably blow up in Shesheshen's face.
Though there are some interesting notions and initially intriguing characters in this story, at some point it all begins to feel flat and stretched, kicking the reader in the face with Homily's over-the-top abusive family (and the woman's own traumatized reactions), how the monster Shesheshen is ultimately a more humane and just "human" than the flesh-and-blood species, how the real monsters are the ones wearing crowns and bearing swords and destroying the people and the land in pursuit of their own petty grievances, and how love can manifest in myriad ways among myriad people, even people who have been broken by those who should love them most. The story also never resists a chance to bathe in guts and gore and the inhuman biology of Shesheshen. The final parts in particular end up feeling drawn out, part of what made me shave the half-star off the Good rating.

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Heavenbreaker (Sara Wolf)

Heavenbreaker
The Heavenbreaker series, Book 1
Sara Wolf
Red Tower Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: The day Synali murdered her father was the day she meant to die. All her life, she lived in squalor with her mother in the Low Wards of the space station humanity has called home for over four centuries while Lord Hauteclare and his legitimate offspring lived in idle luxury on the upper decks... until the man, bidding for a spot closer to the Nova-King, decided to eliminate any potential blemishes on his publicly spotless reputation via an assassin. Killing Lord Hauteclare nearly destroyed Synali, and now that the deed is done she only wants to do one last thing: humiliate the man's House so publicly the Nova-King will have no choice but to dissolve it and send its members away in disgrace forevermore. To that end, she means to steal his steed and ride in the coming tourney. Steeds - massive mecha suits patterned off the machines that once saved humanity from the aliens who destroyed Old Earth and scattered the surviving stations across the galaxy - are the playthings of the noble Houses, their zero-gravity jousting matches among the few sports approved by the church, and the source of much of a House's fortune and prestige. If a lowborn bastard daughter was found piloting a steed, even if she was found dead in the saddle... well, Hauteclare would never survive the scandal.
She didn't expect to survive, albeit barely.
When she awakens, a stranger makes her an offer: he will train her to ride a steed for real, to enter in the coming championship tourneys. For every match she wins, he will eliminate one of the nobles who helped bring the assassin to her mother's doorstep. Each death will bring House Hauteclare closer and closer to permanent dissolution. At the end, he even promises Synali what she most wants, a clean death so she can join her mother in the afterlife. With literally nothing left to lose, Synali readily agrees. But there's a lot more to piloting a steed than anyone outside the Houses understands, and a lot more to her new sponsor/partner than she knows. Worse, now that she's irrevocably committed to her own death, she unexpectedly and painfully finally finds reasons to want to live - such as her future rival in the tourney, a noble who represents everything she hates about his class, but whom she can't get out of her mind.

REVIEW: It sounded like a decent space adventure with a little romantic sizzle, and it started out with great promise, as Synali - a young woman who has clawed her way up from nothing, breaking her mind and spirit and body to get to this moment of perfect vengeance - is standing over the body of her uncle and preparing for what she expects to be her last moments in this life. This, I thought, is the sort of main character I want to follow through a book.
I wish I knew where she went, because she disappeared long before the halfway point, replaced with someone else who had her name and her backstory but was too wrapped up in pain and angst and forbidden lust and all-around stubborn refusal to notice what was right in front of her face to live up to the promise from those first pages.
The world she inhabits starts out on shaky ground - the exiled remnants of humanity have found themselves in orbit around a gas giant, and are slowly trying (and failing) to terraform it (though I'm not sure how that would work on a gas giant, unless humanity meant to live suspended in the atmosphere), while reverting to a weird mishmash of dystopian high-tech and pseudo-historical lifestyles... including what are basically literally castles on a space station - and only gets less plausible as I lost interest in the main character and started poking at the edges and tugging threads. The author also seems prone to repeating passages and emotional beats and descriptors ad nauseam (if I ever read about eyes the color of redwood and platinum hair again, someone will experience pain), and the tourney matches are all far too long, especially when it's a foregone conclusion that Synali will suffer greatly and unimaginably in the first one or two passes before miraculously pulling a victory out of the steed Heavenbreaker's thrusters (if I ever read another "dramatic" countdown again... more pain will happen). The plot starts to resemble a patchwork quilt of random ideas and notions snatched from other franchises that don't always fit together: a cup of Metropolis, a dash of Dune, a generous pour of The Hunger Games... even Watership Down gets lifted and slapped into a future so far removed from Earth that it's unclear if rabbits even survive on the station, let alone novels about them (though the culture and vocabulary and symbolism are chock full of references that seem very anachronistic in a setting where Earth is far more myth than concrete cultural memory). There's also a heavy Christian church presence for little reason except perhaps to explain why a highly advanced civilization like this one presumes to be has completely abandoned anything like birth control, even among the nobles to whom bastard children are still considered the ultimate stain. Then again, attitudes toward gender and sex, despite some nods to women as steed riders and scientists, seem very much rooted in the past (or maybe that's the reason for the church presence, to explain why women are still considered the sinners entirely to blame for men's apparently uncontrollable urges and even violence toward them). Even the one woman rider most firm in her belief in old knightly ideas of honor, above and beyond personal emotions and entanglements, inexplicably degenerates into a cliche fit of petty jealousy once she's in an engagement that even she admits is all about household obligation and not at all about emotion... at least, not until she realizes that her intended spouse has feelings for the wrong woman.
Anyway, amid all this mismatched mishmash of too-familiar snap-together parts and a setting that seems far more about aesthetics and mood than anything like plausibility or even internal consistency (much like the characters themselves), everything winds up being drawn out way too long as everyone wallows in extreme emotions and manufactured angst and turmoil (and yet another long countdown and arena match between giant mechs and attempts at witty banter by color commentators), building up to a climax... and no resolution. Yes, after all that, after slogging it through to the end hoping against hope for an ending that pulls it all together and delivers some sort of payoff, the story ends on a cliffhanger. But a cliffhanger only works if I care whether anyone actually is rescued before they lose their grip and plummet to their doom. By then, I could not have cared less. Despite the early promise and some potential in the story here and there, I just got sick of everyone and everything long before then.

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Whatever for Hire (R. J. Blain)

Whatever for Hire: A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count)
The Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series, Book 5
R. J. Blain
Pen and Page Publishing
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Sometimes, cat shifter/sphinx Kanika wonders if naming her one-woman mercenary business Whatever for Hire was a mistake. Sure, she gets calls about bounty hunting and private investigations and various "gray areas of the law" jobs, but she also ends up rescuing cats from trees for a measly fifty bucks. Still, money's money, and she needs money, seeing as how she likes luxuries like a meal now and again. But when things go wrong, a muttered oath brings none other than the Devil himself to make an appearance... and, not for the first time in her too-interesting life, she finds herself on the wrong end of a diabolical bargain.
If it hadn't been for that bargain, she never would've taken the next job that came up: someone wanting a relative/business rival abducted and kept out of the way for a few months. And thus she never would've ended up in the company of Malcolm Findlay Stewart, the world's sexiest firefighter (who also makes a habit of rescuing kittens and puppies from blazes) and the man who tempts her to shatter her personal moral codes about getting involved with clients or targets and bury the pieces in an unmarked grave. She would've listened to the warning voice in the back of her head that told her there was a whole lot more going on than a simple family feud... something important enough to draw the attention of the Lord of Hell himself.

REVIEW: Yet another random audiobook selection via Libby and my library, I picked it because it looked like it could be fun... or, admittedly, it could be terrible. Comedy, after all, can be a very hard target to hit, and when it goes wrong, it often goes very wrong. I mostly grabbed it as filler; I like having multiple options downloaded. But the first audiobook selection of the workday disappointed me, so I queued up this one - and was off on what turned out to be an exciting ride, full of nice twists, snappy dialog, decent characters, and - yes - some nice sizzle (even if the sex scenes are strictly fade-to-black), along with healthy doses of humor, all built on a surprisingly solid story arc that kept me interested from start to finish.
Kanika's a graduate of the school of hard knocks, which can give her a chip on her shoulder but also makes her rather good at survival and improvising plans on the fly, talents that come in handy for an independent mercenary. She was forced to run away from her only relative in America after the woman tried to sell her off to the highest bidder - and that was before she hit adolescence and her magical nature was revealed, though as shifters go she's hardly a prodigy; as often as she ends up as her "true" self, the Egyptian sphinx, she ends up as the image of Bastet, Cleopatra, or an anthro "sex kitten" woman in a miniskirt and stiletto heels. This being a world in which magic's return is just another part of daily modern life, her ability isn't exactly unusual; many people manifest some form or another of magic these days, and some statistics even put the number of true, undiluted H. sapiens on a path to possible extinction unless the magic goes to sleep again in a few decades. Like any cat, she's got more than her share of pride, as well as a curious streak that can (and does) land her in all sorts of trouble. Add this to a colorful past that's more alluded to than spelled out, one where she's on a casual first-name basis with Lucifer, and Kanika's story is guaranteed to be wild. Her relationship with Malcolm starts out rocky, to say the least - abduction isn't exactly the cornerstone of a healthy relationship, something Kanika ruefully reminds herself of more than once - but they come to respect and rely on each other quickly when it becomes clear that they have mutual enemies. They're both also grown-up enough to understand concepts like consent (and delayed gratification; even when it's clear the attraction is mutual, they're both capable of putting off physical intimacy until they aren't in immediate danger). As the pair navigate an ever-growing list of problems, Kanika also has to deal with periodic check-ins by the Devil, plus a few other immortals who insist on complicating her life, part of ulterior motives that become clear later on.
There are a few threads left dangling by the end, subplots that may get tied up in other installments (I'm pretty sure all the series titles are standalones, but there may be crossover storylines or characters). The main bits, though, wrap up in a fairly satisfactory manner. Ultimately, Whatever for Hire delivers everything its title and blurb promised me, a nice little snack of a tale.

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The Silver Metal Lover (Tanith Lee)

The Silver Metal Lover
The S.I.L.V.E.R. series, Book 1
Tanith Lee
Tantor
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Jane has lived her sixteen years under the shadows of her mother Demeta and her privilege. The world often overwhelms and confuses her, so she welcomes others who tell her what and how to think and shape her life for her, even if she never seems to be anyone's priority and isn't even sure she likes the circle of friends she runs with, many of whom are petty, selfish, and cruel in that way of the idle rich. Jane never stops to ask what she wants for herself... until she sees the silver man on the theater steps - no, not a man, but a new line of robot by preeminent manufacturer Electronic Metals. Unlike the clunky, more functional variety she's used to, many of which are little more than a box with a screen, Silver walks and talks like a human, and can even play instruments and sing, as well as perform any other task a human master might desire to make them happy. From the first time she sets eyes on Silver, Jane finds herself beset by feelings so strange and so big she doesn't even know what they are. Is it fear? Is it hate? Or - God and the heavens help her - is it love? And is she merely projecting when she sees similar emotions in his fox-bright mechanical eyes looking back at her?
She doesn't dare tell anyone what she feels, or thinks she feels. But she cannot shake the notion that, despite everything she knows about robots, there's something more to this one. Even if she is right, though, this is a love seemingly doomed before it starts. Because Silver, when all is said and done, is just property, a prototype exhibition piece far beyond even her generous allowance... and in a world where so little is left to humans alone, so few jobs for the seething masses beneath the ivory towers of the wealthy that haven't already been replaced, a robot that displays true creativity and perhaps even a soul - that is essentially indistinguishable from a person - may well be one step too far.

REVIEW: First published in 1981, the futuristic Gilded Age of the The Silver Metal Lover feels strangely fresh and relevant in a time when "artificial intelligence" has damaged so many creative careers (though, unlike the robots in this book, AI has nothing like self-awareness or independent creativity); for all that the masses rallying against yet another threat to the meager livelihoods and niches left to living humans sometimes seem like fearful peasants, one can understand just why they're so desperate and feel so unheard by the wealthy and the tech firms that keep pushing more and more of them over the brink into inescapable poverty. Lee also envisions a future that is casually accepting of nonbinary individuals, though even in a society this tolerant, expressing amorous feelings for what most regard as a jumped-up appliance counts as a step over the line of propriety.
Early on, Jane comes across as sheltered and spoiled, immature and weak-willed, and that is exactly what she is. Raised by a mother who didn't really want an independent daughter with a mind of her own but some sort of living doll or status symbol - Demeta constantly undermines her independence and confidence, and treats motherhood as a task that can be done more efficiently without all that pesky sentiment or exhausting listening, even relying on prepared color and body type charts to arrange the "proper" hair style and nutrient levels to produce Jane's optimal look - and surrounded by "friends" who largely seem incapable of caring for other people, not even themselves in some cases, the deck is stacked against Jane in any way except wealth. She literally has grown up in a castle in the sky, a lofty skyscraper among the clouds over the city, and has a habit of feeling the pains and emotions of those around her, possibly because she has never really been allowed to have any feelings or even opinions of her own. When she sees the robot Silver, she doesn't even recognize the emotion she's struck with, reacting like a small child whose feelings are too big to process: she lashes out verbally and runs away, physically ill. Slowly, clumsily, she begins to parse those big feelings, and in the process begins to grow up and think on her own. It's not easy or simple for her, though, when she has had virtually no healthy, mature role models in her life. And even when she does name the thing she's feeling, how can she possibly hope that those feelings can be reciprocated by a machine? Silver, for his part, tells her this more than once... but he is kind and patient, and it eventually becomes apparent that, yes, there is something a little more to him than his makers envisioned (hardly a spoiler - I mean, can you really read the Description and not think that'll be a plot point?). He does some growing and changing and self-discovery, too, so the relationship eventually becomes less lopsided than it starts. Jane sacrifices a lot in the name of love... though much of what she gives up, she soon realizes had no true worth to her at all, as she starts seeing her life and her world with new eyes. The life she rebuilds on her own has the feel of a waking dream, something so beautiful and perfect that it cannot seem destined to last.
My feelings on the book wavered throughout. At first, the immature heroine was a little offputting, as were her companions, the friends and distant mother, who kept her so childish she couldn't even recognize her first brush with love. Once it dug into the complicated relationship between Jane and Silver, though, the story strengthened. Neither Jane nor Silver forget that he is technically a piece of hardware, yet both are somewhat aware from the start that their bond is atypical, and both are changed significantly. Both also are clear-eyed enough to see just why people, especially the ever-increasing numbers of the poor, view tech like Silver as a very real threat, though the truest danger to their bond comes from elsewhere. Some bits at the end finally knocked a half-star back off the rating, as it ventures into metaphysical territory and also starts seeming stretched out. Other than that, though, it held up much better than many of its contemporaries.

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Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros)

Fourth Wing
The Empyrean series, Book 1
Rebecca Yarros
Entangled
Fiction, Fantasy/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Violet Sorrengail never wanted to be a dragon rider. Her mother, sister, and brother all bonded with great beasts and developed powerful sigils - unique abilities sparked from the melding of human mind and dragon magic - but Violet was always more at home in the libraries with her father, the scribe... or, at least, she was until he died, not long after an army of traitors killed her brother and nearly tore the empire apart. Even then, Violet wanted nothing more than to join the scribes. It's not like she's up to the challenges of riding anyway, with her frail constitution and weak joints. But her mother has decided that Sorrengails are dragon riders, and demands she enroll in Navarre's dragon corps in her twentieth year.
Just getting to Basgaith, training academy for aspiring riders, is a deadly test. The physical conditioning alone might kill her. If not, the other students might finish the job; there are far fewer dragons willing to bond a rider than there are cadets, and culling the weak links from the ranks is as much a part of training as their lessons. Bearing the name of the great General Sorrengail will only put a larger target on her back, particularly when her weak physical condition becomes all too apparent. But the greatest danger of all may come from an unexpected place: Xaran Riorson, a third-year wingleader of the Fourth Wing. Tall, lean, impossibly handsome, and impossibly dangerous, he has every reason to hate Violet and the Sorrengail name; his father was the leader of the failed rebellion, and was said to have killed Violet's beloved brother in the final battle - after which Violet's own mother executed the man. From the moment they lay eyes on each other, sparks fly... but are they sparks of hatred, or something else? Even as she struggles to untangle that knot, Violet starts seeing hints that all is not as it seems, in Basgaith or the greater nation of Navarre.

REVIEW: I've been hearing a lot of decent buzz about this book, and was somewhat surprised to actually find it available via Libby and my library. It promises a melding of fantasy, action, danger, and romance (plus dragons), and delivers on pretty much all accounts.
From the first pages, Violet's rocky relationship with her successful dragon rider mother is abundantly clear, as is her own thwarted desire to become a scribe like her father. Her sister offers what help she can, but can't arrange what she most wants, a way out; even if she sneaks away to the scribes, she'd be found and drug back, plus she'd have added yet another black mark to the family name (after being born "fragile", prone to pulled muscles and popped joints and broken bones). Having resigned herself to go, and probably die for her efforts (the mortality rate even for more fit cadets is high, so her expecting to die in Basgaith isn't an exaggeration), she finds something she never expected, a fighting spirit in her own sheltered heart. When a longtime family friend steps up to help protect her in her first year, even trying to arrange a way for her to get back to the libraries and scribes, her appreciation of his efforts starts turning to frustration, as she starts learning what she is capable of when push comes to shove. And pushed and shoved she is, indeed; she makes her first enemy before setting foot in Basgaith proper, and faces setbacks and dangers aplenty. Every step forward, she has to earn with her own blood, sweat, and tears (but especially blood). Xaran and the other children of executed rebels - all of whom were marked when their parents were killed, all of whom were forced to come to Basgaith in the not-so-secret hope that the dragons would do them in (hopes thwarted when, despite what Navarre's leaders anticipated, the dragons instead bonded with some of them, but then humans consistently overestimate their understanding and "control" of the beasts) - add more complications, particularly when Violet's heart (and other regions) keep fighting with her brain over how to react to the brooding, enigmatic man. She never is a victim in this or other relationships, though, and actively rejects efforts to coddle, manipulate, or pigeonhole her. Even at her weakest points, she owns her actions and decisions.
All of this may seem familiar as far as it goes, and if I'm being fully honest it is, but it still plays out decently. A familiar story can still be enjoyable, after all, and I cared enough about the characters and their situation to enjoy it. Several of the supporting cast members also embody familiar roles and tropes, doing their jobs in the plot competently enough to get a pass and not tip over into cliche territory (though sometimes they were barely a step away from the edge).
It's worth pausing here briefly to talk about Navarre's dragons. Rather than "scaly puppies" or "horses with wings", the dragons of this world are well and truly dragons, great scaled firebreathers with their own enigmatic minds, keeping their own counsels, and only allowing humans limited glimpses into their world. Still, they are loyal to their riders, needing humans as much as humans need them to survive in this world of magic and danger, for all that they sometimes don't quite seem to understand people or their limitations.
Getting back to the story itself, as Violet and her fellow cadets earn their proverbial stripes at Basgaith, they explain the world of Navarre and the dragons and the ongoing battles with the enemy nation of griffin riders to the reader, showing that the harshness of their training isn't just for show; as riders, they can look forward to battles and violence and a high probability of an early grave. The high death toll of the academy is almost negligible compared to what full-fledged riders deal with on a daily basis. Along the way, hints crop up here and there that the official party line may not be the entire truth, though it takes a while for Violet to connect the dots. (In her defense, being targeted for murder by her classmates does make a somewhat valid reason for distraction.) There's also the expected thawing of relations with Xaran, though there are still secrets in his past that he carefully conceals with deflections and nonanswers... secrets that may bite them both as the story moves toward the climax.
Here is where Fourth Wing almost lost a half star, with a few surprise revelations right at the end that, rather than baiting the hook for the next installment, instead put a foot over that line it kept walking, the one between trope and cliche. I decided to forgive it those late stumbles, though, and a few other quibbles (and the odd eye-roll) throughout. While it may not be stunningly original, Fourth Wing did its job in entertaining me, and there were some pretty decent dragons.

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Ice Planet Barbarians (Ruby Dixon)

Ice Planet Barbarians
The Ice Planet Barbarians series, Book 1
Ruby Dixon
Berkley
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Georgie never believed in aliens, until she woke to find herself in the cargo hold of a spaceship, along with a half-dozen other young women. Whoever the strange little green men are (or their brutal orange guards), they aren't the catch-and-release type of abductors. Instead, they're more the catch-and-sell-off-to-unknown-aliens-for-unknown-reasons type... and none of the captives want to think too much on what it might mean that they only went after young, single Earth women. But Georgie's not the kind to go down without a fight. And when a problem with the abductors' ship leads them to drop the human cargo off on an iceball planet, she's not going to pass up the chance to escape. Only she finds more than she bargained for when she's snared by the massive blue barbarian. He has horns and armored skin and even a tail, his eyes glow green, and the biting cold that's slowly killing her hardly seems to phase him, but darned if he isn't the hottest thing she's ever seen. But she has to get back to Earth, hopefully before the abductor aliens come back to reclaim their "cargo". She can't afford to lose her heart to a big blue brute.
Vektal doesn't know what to make of the strange thing dangling in his hunting snare. It looks sort of like a person, if small and pale and soft and with too many fingers - nothing at all like a proper sa-khui. Where could she have come from, and what's she doing here? But his khui, the symbiotic life form in his heart, tells him this is his life-mate, future mother of his kits, and the khui are never wrong. Now, he just has to convince the strange woman of that. No easy task, when she can't speak his language and doesn't even have her own khui. But there are other ways of talking than mere words...

REVIEW: I've heard some talk of this book around, so when I saw it available as an audiobook via Libby - and when I needed a relatively short title to fill out the end of a work day - I figured I'd give it a try. I've read (and listened to) other romance titles (and erotica, which this leans strongly toward), so why not? Considering that I didn't have high expectations going in, I was actually pleasantly surprised.
Initially, this looks to be a typical erotic sci-fi romp where sexy young Earth women hook up with hot aliens who seemed to have evolved primarily to pleasure said Earth women in ways no mere Homo sapiens man could manage. To be fair, that is the basic plot arc (no real spoiler, that; it's right in the title and cover art and blurb). But Georgie actually has some moxie in her. As the leader of the abductees, mostly because nobody else steps up to the plate when a leader is needed, Georgie spearheads their initial escape attempt and later explorations of the ice world. She's not just talk; she does hard things and makes hard decisions, thinking of the needs of others and not just herself. (Well, she does reserve some selfishness in regards to intimate interspecies relations, but she keeps her pants on, or at least puts them back on, when the others need help). Vektal, for his part, is also a leader of his people, but doesn't know at all what to make of the first human woman he's ever set eyes on; his people don't even have the concept of aliens. He initially takes her for something weak, and compared to him she is - physically, at least - but he comes to understand that there's a lot more to her than her diminutive (compared to him) physique. Despite the fated-mate aspect of the tale, consent is actually discussed and a key part of the plot; Vektal's race may be a bit fuzzy on the term, given how the khui determine much of their lives (including their life-mates, though before finding that one special person they aren't expected to be celibate), but Vektal never forces the issue and is willing to learn for the sake of love, even being willing to give Georgie up if she ultimately chooses her home over his.
The story moves pretty fast, and throughout has both action and humor. There's a certain self-awareness beneath the words, a bit of a wink and acknowledgement that never denies its genre or ambitions; this is not high literature or deep philosophy, but a sex-filled alien adventure, and never pretends to be otherwise. As for the expected erotic explorations between humans and sa-khui, they're suitably steamy (and more than a bit over-the-top, intentionally). It ultimately lost a half-star for leaning a bit too hard into the fated-mate (and breeding) aspect, and just not being quite my cup of cocoa in the long run. But it definitely rose above my expectations, and I've read far worse stories, with far flimsier characters and romances.

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Witchmark (C. L. Polk)

Witchmark
The Kingston Cycle, Book 1
C. L. Polk
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Like countless other men and women of Aeland, Miles went away to war in distant Laneer only to return permanently scarred in mind and body... but his scars hide a deeper secret, powers that would have him branded a witch and locked away in an asylum lest he go mad with it. He actually ran away from home to join the army to keep his greedy noble family from turning him into a veritable slave, exploiting his power for their own purposes. Instead, he uses his magic, along with his medical training, to serve as a psychiatrist in a veterans hospital in the capital city of Kingston, trying to help fellow veterans who suffer from trauma-born delusions with strikingly similar symptoms. He believes he's managed to avoid suspicion, keeping a low profile and trying to limit how much power he uses in his job and life, until a stranger brings a dying man to his hospital - a dying man who knows what Miles is, and pleads for his help. Reluctantly, Miles teams up with the handsome stranger, one Mr. Tristan Hunter, to investigate... only to find a conspiracy much deeper and bigger than he expected, and secrets that make his own pale in comparison.

REVIEW: Witchmark crafts an interesting retro-flavored fantasy world, one with carriages and bicycles and "aether"-powered lights and gadgetry bringing rapid changes even as the nation relies upon noble-born Storm-Singer mages for its prosperity (while condemning any with magic born to lesser classes as witches, because clearly only blue bloods have the fortitude to properly use power of any sort) and populating it with characters who usually aren't flat or simplistic or obvious in their strengths or failings. Miles has a conflicted past that has left him with lots of trauma, learning to hide himself and downplay his abilities as a matter of survival; when caught in something much bigger that demands much more of him, he hesitates and stumbles before finding his way out of the tidy little bolthole he's made for himself. His attraction to Tristan is immediate, but there are secrets and barriers there, one major one being that Tristan is not as human as he first appears; he is an Amaranthine, somewhere between faerie and angel in nature and reputation, and he has come to Aeland with a very grave mission that might help or hurt Miles's search for a killer. Meanwhile, Miles hasn't been quite as successful as he thought in escaping the notice of his family and would-be captors. Even the sister who claims to love him does not understand him, and his father never bothers to understand anything about anyone save how they can be used or broken, depending on whether they serve his political ambitions or impede them. The investigation wends through the streets and classes of Kingston and even into the motivations behind the just-ended war in Laneer, hitting several walls and breakthrough moments and ruffling some very dangerous feathers before coming to a dramatic climax.
At times, the politics and social issues feel tangled, and Miles's family could be tooth-grinding, plus every so often I wanted to shake Miles to make him step up to the danged plate and not scurry off into hiding from the plot or his own feelings. Overall, though, the story moved well and had a decent payoff. I might end up following the series through the next book at least.

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Swordheart (T. Kingfisher)

Swordheart
T. Kingfisher
Red Wombat Studio
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Romance
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: A widow in her thirties, despised by her in-laws (mostly for not getting a child by her short-lived husband, making her a worthless burden as far as they're concerned), Halla had minimal expectations in life, especially when the only one who would take her in was eccentric old Uncle Silas. Now that he has passed, she expects to be cast out in the street - but the man left her his fortune and his house full of oddities. Suddenly, shrewish old Aunt Malva and her spineless son Alver, who had no use for her before, find they do, indeed, have a purpose in mind: marry her to Alver, then kill or incapacitate her while they take control of the inheritance. Halla's objections get her locked in her room until she "sees reason" (or until they can get her declared too feeble-minded to make her own decisions). She sees no way out of the predicament save taking her own life - but the old sword she grabs, part of the late Silas's clutter, has other plans...
Centuries ago, mercenary Sarkis was cursed into the steel after a terrible defeat. Ever since, he is bound to serve the sword's master, following it from hand to hand through the years. Be they good or evil, Sarkis has no choice. Even death cannot release him; a fortnight later, when the blade is drawn, he reappears, healed in body if not necessarily in spirit. When he finds himself summoned to the waking world once again, he expects to find battle, or a warlord. He does not expect a tearful, desperate woman about to be married off against her will. This is, perhaps, the most ignoble waste of his talents he's ever been forced to endure, but rules are rules: she drew his sword, so she is, for all intents and purposes, his master, and he is bound to help.
Halla has never met anyone like Sarkis, and vice versa. After their inauspicious meeting and escape, they set out to find help from the Temple of the White Rat, which specializes in untangling thorny knots like the one she finds herself in... a journey with numerous dangers, from followers of a fanatic god to bandits. The greatest danger, though, may come from within, two wounded hearts who may not recognize their chance until it's too late.

REVIEW: Though technically part of a larger world, I read (or listened to, rather) it as a standalone. Maybe that was part of the problem, but I doubt it, because my issues with the book have very little to do with the worldbuilding, a passably interesting fantasy land with the usual pseudo-medieval aesthetics, a handful of gods and goddesses in uneasy coexistence (particularly in relation to the fanatical followers of the "Hanged Mother"), and magic and mystery around the edges. Nor was it necessarily with the main story arc, which - when it didn't bog itself down in somewhat silly diversions, not helped by Halla's tendency to babble and do, frankly, stupid things for the sake of doing stupid things - was also interesting enough to keep me reading (or listening).
What cut a full fourth star from the rating was the romance angle, particularly the beyond-stale, well-into-fossilized cliche of a woman having to be romantically and sexually naive so her True Love in some way owns her pleasure and satisfaction, being the only one to induce either. Even when the woman is a widow, it's emphasized how uninterested her late husband was in matters romantic or carnal, how little she actually cared about him, because apparently there is only ever one person a body can ever truly love. (Some books go so far as to make said woman childish in appearance, too, just to drive home the creep factor with the older male love interest introducing her to sex; fortunately, that wasn't the case here, even if Halla is almost impossibly sheltered and naive about people in general to the point where she often behaves with a childish guilelessness.) She's also supposed to be smarter than her demeanor lets on, her off-putting streams of questions a form of camouflage to get people to dismiss and ignore her (instead of bullying or hurting her), but to be honest that silly/stupid demeanor runs far deeper than it ought to for a grown woman. As for Sarkis, he's a gruff, grizzled, put-upon soldier, worn down by unwanted immortality and service through the centuries, often to less than pleasant masters. He finds himself drawn to Halla, the first person to treat him as a human rather than a tool in far too long... and despite the fact that she could make a career out of blundering into danger, to the point where one honestly wonders how she made it to her third decade with all her limbs. But he's also hiding a secret that could threaten everything... one that, naturally, doesn't come out until The Wrong Time to trigger the low point of despair before the climax. I was grinding my teeth in annoyance with both of them at this point; so much of the angst between them could have been resolved if they just opened their mouths for something other than a silly question. It also feels like it wants a sequel, but there appears to be no sign of one.
Between my annoyance at the romance dithering and Kingfisher's overuse of Halla's babbling (and Sarkis's irritation with said babbling, which lost its humor early on and just made me wish I could fast-forward to when the plot moved again), Swordheart fell to a bland three-star Okay rating, which is a shame because I liked some of the secondary characters and the world, and the rest of the tale could've easily carried four stars. I'm on the fence about reading on in this world, unless I can get some assurance that the parts I found annoying aren't replicated.

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The Night Raven (Sarah Painter)

The Night Raven
The Crow Investigations series, Book 1
Sarah Painter
Siskin Press
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery/Romance
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Like the rest of her family, Lydia Crow was born with magic... but hardly anything worth the name, save a sensitivity to spirits and auras. It's just as well her magicborn father and mundane mother raised her away from London and the four magical Families who, despite diminished powers, still hold sway over the city's shadier sides. Lydia never meant to return, until her job with a Scottish private investigation firm took a bad turn and she needed somewhere to get away to that wasn't her parents' house. Fortunately, Uncle Charlie has a vacant property, an apartment above a defunct cafe, that could use a tenant. She knows full well that there's no such thing as a free favor, not even for family (and especially not for Family), but the "rent free" part of the deal is enough to convince her to trust him just this once.
Within half an hour, she's met the resident ghost and survived an assassination attempt, and finds herself seriously rethinking her life choices.
Apparently, even though she and her father turned their backs on the Crows, the Crows never turned their backs on her... and anyone with ties to that Family in London is going to be a target. When Lydia learns that her young cousin has disappeared, the attempted murder takes on a sinister new light. She may only have a year of formal training, but she is still an investigator, and the cops clearly can't be trusted with Crow business, not when magic's likely involved. Despite her misgivings about delving deeper into Family affairs, Lydia takes on the case. But there's a lot she doesn't know about the state of the magical Families of London and the particulars of Uncle Charlie's management of the Crows, and what she doesn't know might very well be the death of her.

REVIEW: There is nothing inherently wrong with this book. It's your typical urban fantasy set in London, with a brash and conveniently single heroine dealing with magical secrets and crime while juggling a forbidden attraction, in this case a local police detective, and various colorful friends and acquaintances/rivals. In fact, it's so typical that basically nothing stands out in my memory about it at all. Lydia checks every box in the generic urban fantasy investigator heroine list, down to near-perpetual horniness and regularly getting drunk with her best friend (a suburban mother who really doesn't do anything for the plot except show Lydia the kind of normal life she could've had if she hadn't been born a Crow, the kind of life heroines apparently must want for themselves simply because they will never have it) and gifts that are actually quite powerful despite her repeated denials, though never powerful enough for her not to need rescuing by males. The case seems to mostly be an excuse for this "pilot episode" book to introduce the series concept and presumed regulars; she sort of wanders in circles a lot, doing some rather boneheaded things, before eventually finding her way to a vaguely bait-and-switch conclusion. I suppose I was simply supposed to be intrigued enough for the next episode/book in the series (I was not). While there's nothing inherently wrong with the formula this book was written to, it's just a formula I don't find interesting, that I've seen too many times, and just plain didn't care about Lydia enough to see what she investigates next.

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Carry On (Rainbow Rowell)

Carry On
The Simon Snow series, Book 1
Rainbow Rowell
St. Martin's Griffin
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Simon Snow was a wretched orphan in modern London, with no clue who he was or where he belonged, if anywhere... until he erupted with magic that burned his latest foster home down (while sparing the occupants, transporting them blocks away). That was when the Mage, leader of the Coven of English mages, found him and whisked him off to the Watford School of Magicks. That was when Simon learned that he might be the answer to an ancient prophecy about the "Chosen One", the most powerful magician to ever live, who will save the magical world from a terrible threat. And that was when Simon discovered he had a deadly enemy in a magic-nullifying force known as the Insidious Humdrum. Well, two enemies: in his first year at Watford, he was paired with the world's worst and most evil (and almost certainly vampiric) roommate in the body of Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch-Grimm.
Baz is descended from two long lines of powerful Old Families. Simon is still an orphan of unknown parentage. Baz is impeccably groomed and a top Watford student in every subject. Simon is neither. Baz has perfect command of his powers, while Simon just explodes at random despite his best efforts. And Baz has spent the past seven school years trying to humiliate, endanger, and kill Simon and his friends, genius Penelope and beautiful girlfriend Agatha. He even tried to feed Simon to the chimera in the Wandering Wood. This year, Simon's last at Watford, he can't imagine what the beastly Baz has in store for him. Except what Baz has in store is nothing, because he's gone missing.
Simon should be relieved. Instead, he can't stop thinking about his roommate and enemy. Is this Baz's most devious plot yet to end Simon Snow, or is his roommate in trouble - and, if so, why does he find himself caring so much? Then Baz's dead mother visits their room, charging Simon with helping her son avenge her death... if he can find both the boy and the killer. Meanwhile, the clock ticks down on Simon's prophecised destiny, and the Humdrum only grows bolder by the minute, yet Simon's protector and mentor the Mage is more scarce than ever. This final year at Watford is going to be his most explosive yet, in more ways than anyone can possibly imagine.

REVIEW: I read and very much enjoyed Rowell's standalone novel Fangirl, about a young woman who finds strength and comfort in a fictional fantasy franchise about Simon Snow (with clear nods to Harry Potter). According to the end notes, when Rowell finished that book, she couldn't let go of Simon, whose story was alluded to in clips from both "canon" work and the character's fanfic, so she decided to write his story. This is an unusual approach to writing a story, particularly a fantasy story. I'm still processing how well that paid off.
Simon Snow is a standard Chosen One, in the vein of Harry Potter and innumerable other heroes (and heroines) in middle grade and young adult franchises, a boy who finds himself at the center of everything despite not really having heroic qualities other than a refusal to give up, even in the face of near-impossible odds. Even his friends and enemies recognize him as the center of their universe, as though they somehow understand that they're part of a story written about Snow. This adds an interesting dimension to the tale, which is much more about how Snow and the others try to define their own lives, relationships, and futures under intense pressure and trying circumstances than about the impending war between mages and the threat of the Humdrum, but it also makes the magical elements feel like extraneous complications (even as they subtly satirize the subgenre). Indeed, the magical world itself feels almost deliberately thin and vaguely defined, like a children's game that the teenaged characters are bound to grow out of; the mages here operate more like a secret club than a hidden world (albeit a club that conceals vampires and dragons and other unnatural threats), and some mages even give up their powers and inclusion in that club to live a happier life among the "Normals". Magic is based on language and popular phrases or even nursery rhymes that gain (and lose) power over the years, about as loose and plot convenient as any spell at Hogwarts, but which can also be stripped from an area by the Humdrum's predations. There's also implied deep political schisms and struggles within the magical community, over who has power over the Coven and who even gets trained; the Mage staged a revolution of sorts, but struggles to hold onto the reins of power with increasingly draconian efforts... more background clutter. The story is written (deliberately) as if it is the final installment in a longer franchise, where the rules and dynamics were already established and only the odd hint and nod is made to that establishment as things rush toward the series finale of Simon dealing with his roommate Baz and the Humdrum. It's not really a spoiler that Simon and Baz discover their relationship is less about being mortal enemies and more about unexplored attraction, though - again, because this was written as a finale to a series nobody has read - I didn't entirely buy the transition, especially on Simon's part. (Simon overall is a flimsier character than Baz, again likely deliberately, as his main function in his world is to be a Chosen One who may or may not survive his confrontation with the Humdrum.) Meanwhile, best friend (and Hermione equivalent) Penelope struggles to help Simon prepare for his final battle and deal with the Baz "truce", while Simon's ex-girlfriend Agatha realizes she needs to learn to define herself as someone other than the hero's pretty companion/object to save, a need that may drive her to reject everything about her life, even magic. The story as a whole takes on an odd, surreal quality as it builds to a somewhat-telegraphed final revelation and fight, lots of threads and timelines flying together at last (and, again, hinting at a lot of establishment that happened "off camera" and which the reader can only guess at).
In the end, even after long thought, I'm not quite sure what to think about the experience. There's a lot to appreciate and admire; it is, after all, a totally different approach to the subject, oddly compelling, and I admit I'm curious about where Rowell intends to take things now that the main "franchise" story is resolved and the characters are left to deal with lives and relationships that have been distorted by cataclysmic events and prophecies. There's also a fair bit that just didn't work for me. I wound up giving it back the half-star it almost lost, though, for sheer ambition and willingness to approach the familiar, Harry Potter-like story tropes from an entirely different, borderline self-aware angle, and because I think I might want to read on someday.

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Hunt the Stars (Jessie Mihalik)

Hunt the Stars
The Starlight's Shadow series, Book 1
Jessie Mihalik
Harper Voyager
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In the wars between the Federated Human Planets and the telepathic Valoffs, Octavia "Tavi" Zarola became a war hero for all the wrong reasons, in a mission that was anything but the glorious victory her superiors declared it to be. She and her surviving squadmates have been bearing the burden of that lie ever since, even years into a fragile peace. Aboard their private ship Starlight's Shadow, they pick up odd jobs across the settled galaxy, barely scraping by... but, even desperate as their finances are, Tavi hesitates when a man wants her to find a stolen family heirloom. The reason? The man is the infamous Valovian general Torran Fletcher. No human who fought them can feel anything but hatred for his kind, and the feeling is clearly mutual, especially when her "war hero" status precedes her. There's an active bounty for her head on his homeworld of Valovia - where she'll have to go if she's fool enough to take the job, even if it's not a trap. But something about him is hard to dismiss out of hand, and not just because of his devastating good looks. His story and his desperation ring true, and the money he's offering is all too tempting. Despite her better judgement, Tavi agrees to Torran's terms - plunging herself and her crew into a job where nothing is as it seems, and where one wrong move could shatter the fragile peace and plunge the galaxy into all-out war again.

REVIEW: A jaded warrior fallen on hard times, a rough ship with a ragtag and eccentric crew, a galaxy on the brink of interstellar war, aliens conveniently human enough to enable interspecies carnal relations that don't tip into bestiality... If I'm being fully honest, this audiobook came close to losing half a star for sheer familiarity. Hunt the Stars isn't exactly built with stunningly original parts or with particular depth or intricacy in worldbuilding or characters, on the romance end or the space opera end. But it's not trying to be stunningly original or particularly deep. It's trying to be an interstellar romance with devastatingly handsome and beautiful leads (both of whom have the requisite wounded pasts and trust issues to overcome) and a plot with enough action and complications and heated encounters to keep things interesting between their first encounter and the end of the book. At that, I must say it succeeds, with a solid, if not necessarily memorable, tale. Tavi's heart is immediately smitten by Torran, but her head is smart enough to recognize the danger he represents, and the holes in his story. Torran does indeed have secrets, but not the ones she expects. There's some personal and cultural clashes as the two struggle to navigate their new working relationship, both dancing around the edge of their attraction. Given their respective histories in the war, I'd almost have expected a little more hesitancy in that on both ends, but, well, it is a romance, so certain developments are inevitable. (I will say, though, that I found the relationship finale a bit drawn out, especially given that the non-romance plot had already concluded; it felt like Mihalik was just drawing out word count at that point before setting up the sequel. It seemed like something must've been out of balance between the general action/space opera arc and the relationship arc, when the conclusion of one sapped my interest in the conclusion of the other...) In any event, while I doubt I'll bother with the next book in the series, Hunt the Stars is a perfectly competent, somewhat steamy story of interstellar romance and intrigue, enough so that I went ahead and gave it the full fourth star of a Good rating despite some minor quibbles.

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Unflappable (Suzie Gilbert)

Unflappable
Suzie Gilbert
Perch Press
Fiction, General Fiction/Humor/Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: When environmental activist and animal lover Lune Burke's marriage hit the rocks, her billionaire magnate husband Adam decided to try wooing her back to their Florida estate with a gift: Mars, the male bald eagle she helped rehabilitate as a teenager in Pennsylvania. In taking the animal from its sanctuary home, he callously and unthinkingly separated the bird from Banshee, its mate... and ended any chance of reconciliation with Lune. Rather than let Adam hold the eagle hostage to get her to come back home, Lune reaches out to her friends in the animal rehabilitation community, plotting a daring birdnapping that breaks at least a dozen state and federal laws as she seeks to get Mars back to Banshee and both out of Adam's reach. All she needs is an accomplice, at least for the first leg of the trip - someone with a car big enough to hold a bald eagle-sized animal cage. Someone like Ned, the tech nerd who only showed up at the animal rehabilitation facility where she volunteers because his company forces their employees to do community service activities, but who happens to drive a classic convertible with the perfect back seat for Mars. Thus begins a cross-country flight from the law and from Adam's goons, and one nerd's baptism by fire into the close-knit world of wildlife activism.

REVIEW: Unflappable is just what it promises: a road trip romance starring a misfit couple who inevitably develop feelings for each other, a grasping man whose definition of love is possession, and a colorful cast of side characters (and animals), with an animal rehabilitation and conservation theme.
Lune is much like the eagle she loves: mishandled as a child in ways that leave her psychologically scarred, longing for nothing but a freedom that the world in general and her husband in particular seem determined to deny her. Like a wild animal, even the threat of a cage is enough to send her on the attack, be that cage tangible or intangible. Ned, her companion of circumstance, doesn't know or particularly care about animals in general or birds in particular; he was just at the rehab clinic to check off a box of his employment requirement, not to get roped into a crazy cross-country trek with a razor-clawed protected species in the back seat of his classic car. Along the way, he inevitably comes to understand just what all these strange people he meets are fighting for, if largely driven by his growing feelings for the peculiar Lune, and finds himself taking risks he never imagined for a bird he only ever develops a grudging tolerance of. They find themselves on the wrong side of the law, though the agent pursuing them can't help having mixed feelings about the whole affair, and on the wrong side of Adam, who never met an obstacle he couldn't outspend or outbludgeon. In a way, Adam's obsession with Lune is almost tragic; by his selfish, materialistic standards, what he feels and does for her count as love, and he just cannot comprehend how Lune is never going to be the pretty pet on the diamond leash and pedestal that he wants her to be. The very thing about her that first attracted him - her wild freedom and complete defiance of his expectations, her rejection of the money and the lifestyle he leads - is the very thing that's in their way, the very thing he keeps trying to destroy with his possessive behavior.
The road trip involves numerous encounters with numerous eccentric characters, some more helpful than others, and close scrapes with both the wildlife agent and Adam's thugs. The plot moves pretty well, with few people being outright obtuse to prolong or complicate things, and some memorable wildlife encounters. The weakest part, though, is the ending, which feels a little too drawn out and loses some of its impact. I also found the audiobook presentation, which changes off between male and female narrators almost at random, a bit odd, but I got used to it. All in all, I got what I expected out of this story.

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The Love Con (Seressia Glass)

The Love Con
Seressia Glass
Berkley Books
Fiction, Romance
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Ever since high school, Kenya Davenport has been a power cosplayer, using makeup, prosthetics, and costuming to recreate favorite fictional characters or mashing them up into original creations. Unfortunately, her parents have never understood her passion, insisting she give up her dream and get a "real" job with her engineering degree. When her best friend Cameron Lassiter, who shares her loves of cosplay, gaming, anime, and comics, tipped her off about a new reality competition - Cosplay or No Way, pitting cosplayers against each other for a grand prize of $100,000 and a chance to work on a Hollywood blockbuster fantasy film - it seemed like the answer. If she can prove, on national television, that she has what it takes to turn her "childish fantasy" into a real career by winning, maybe they'll finally understand. Amazingly, she made it to the final round... but the last challenge throws a wrench into the works. She has four weeks to design a pair of costumes for the finale: one for her, and one for the significant other she does not have, having broken up with her last boyfriend some time ago. Under pressure, on camera, she names the first person who comes to mind: Cam.
Cam was working late at his fledgling fabrication shop, Make It Works, watching his best friend since high school make her way to the final round on Cosplay or No Way when he hears his name. He has had feelings for Kenya for a while, but they've never dated, and the one time he floated the idea in their college days she friendzoned him hard. But now she's telling all of America that they're an item. When she comes back to Atlanta, film crew in tow (because of course they want to film the entire design process, and likely drum up some domestic drama for ratings), she explains that it's just a pretend romance. The producers had been trying all season to cast her as the mean, fat Black woman stereotype; the judges likely didn't even think she had ever dated when they set the final challenge, let alone dated a blonde hunk like Cam. She also needs his help if she's going to fabricate two costumes in four weeks, a job that would usually take months. For the sake of their friendship and the competition, Cam agrees to be the perfect fake boyfriend.
Cosplay may be all about make-believe, but there's nothing fake about the feelings that spark between Cam and Kenya, even when the cameras aren't rolling...

REVIEW: Romances make nice palate cleansers, I find, and this one had the extra interest of the cosplay sideline; I've never indulged, but always found it an interesting hobby. The Love Con hits the usual romance novel notes, but (no offense intended to romance fans) one generally doesn't read romances for unpredictable originality in the plots. It's characters, their interactions, and the individual ups and downs of their relationship (which, being a romance, one can generally predict the outcome of) that make or break these stories. On those levels, The Love Con proves satisfying. Kenya has been fighting her whole life against expectations: not just the expectations of a society that has a particular Idea of how large Black women are and what they can and cannot do, but against parents who, while they may mean well, cannot understand how their demands are hurting more than they're helping. She's always had Cam in her corner, though, ever since they met in high school, but never let herself think of him as anything more than a friend, the wayward son of an alcoholic father, whom her parents took under their wing when he needed a family most. Cam, meanwhile, has carried a candle, if not a full-blown torch, for Kenya for years, but never knew how to broach the subject after the one failed attempt. Pretending to be her boyfriend may be a back door into a real relationship. But even he is taken by surprise by the strength of emotions that their fake romance unearths. Along the way, they have to contend with jealous exes, Kenya's disapproving parents (who made her promise that, if she didn't win, she'd give up her fledgling cosplay career and "grow up"), and a reality film crew intent on stirring up drama. The leads are pretty well matched, with some solid interactions and believable insecurities, and of course there's rising heat as they realize how real the fake romance has become. Glass also treats cosplay and fandom respectfully, as the passions and commitments they are. A few of the twists are a little too telegraphed, and there were a couple threads and ideas that seemed underplayed or forgotten, but all in all The Love Con offers exactly what it says on the label.

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Let's Get Textual (Teagan Hunter)

Let's Get Textual
The Texting series, Book 1
Teagan Hunter
CreateSpace
Fiction, Humor/Romance
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: College senior Delia just broke up with her long-time boyfriend Caleb, and though it was an amicable and mutual split, it never feels great to go back to sleeping alone. Maybe that's why, when a stranger mistakenly texts her, she chose to reply instead of simply deleting it... which is how she "met" Zach. Their text exchanges soon become the highlight of her days. He's clever. He's nerdy. He shares her sense of humor. But will their sizzling chemistry translate to the real world, or is this strictly a textual relationship?

REVIEW: This was a quick audiobook, a bit of a palate-cleanser between my usual genre reads. Romances can have some great dialog and character interactions, and Let's Get Textual delivers some truly fun exchanges between Delia and Zach... and if the power imbalance between the two (he's a young, wealthy, successful entrepreneur already, while she's a struggling college senior with zero clue what she's going to do with the degree she's a semester away from earning) becomes a bit glaring, they both seem mature enough to actually be capable of an adult relationship, instead of giggling teens forever playing games or leaping to ridiculous conclusions... at least, at first. There also, oddly enough, doesn't seem to be much in the way of a story, the usual complications and greater goals outside the relationship that drive the average (or average in my limited reading experience, at least) romance plot; for the most part, it's just Zach and Delia getting to know each other and developing their connection - and, yes, there's heat and innuendo almost from the start, but they're both adults about it and capable of waiting until they're more sure of their relationship before making that leap.
Not long after that progression, though, Delia takes a serious nose-dive in intelligence and maturity, when a cardboard villain character and a manufactured crisis (which is barely hinted at until it reaches said crisis point) creates a manufactured response that completely flies in the face of how she behaved toward Zach earlier and made me seriously doubt whether she was, in fact, mature enough to handle a relationship after all. How she deals with that setback becomes increasingly ridiculous - as her own friends point out - and also turns a pet into a pawn in a relationship, which is an automatic ratings knock. (I was already somewhat iffy about the pet baby goat subplot; just because an animal's "cute" doesn't mean it's an ideal pet, let alone an ideal impulse purchase... especially since she's the one fawning over baby goat pics and Zach's the one who goes and buys one because her apartment doesn't allow pets. There's just something about treating a living animal, especially an animal that's not really meant to be a cuddly housepet and will undoubtedly outgrow its "cute" phase very quickly, as a toy or prop - then turning that prop into an object in a stupid emotional tug of war between grown adults - that really rubs me the wrong way.) So, while I enjoyed the fun interplay between Delia and Zach and almost laughed out loud at some of their text exchanges, I found myself very put off by the final stretch of the story, enough to drive the rating down significantly.

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Deal with the Devil (Kit Rocha)

Deal with the Devil
The Mercenary Librarians series, Book 1
Kit Rocha
Tor
Fiction, Action/Romance/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: After the solar flares that devastated global civilization, nations crumbled into hardscrabble remnants of themselves. Too many city and state governments found themselves at the mercy of the TechCorps, elite private organizations who rule with iron fists and artificially enhanced soldiers. For the average citizen, life is cruel and hard and continues only at the whim of forces beyond their control... but some few manage to slip the leashes of their masters and go underground, quietly working against the TechCorps and the criminal networks that spread to fill the power vacuum across America.
Nina was once one of three clone siblings, trained as a unit for special ops, until one disastrous mission left her the last one standing. Faking her death, she fled to a nondescript neighborhood in Atlanta, where she and two friends work to create something like stability and hope and community. Together, they help the people by distributing books and media beyond the strictly controlled (and profit-driven) official TechCorps outlets, providing shelter and medicine, even helping locals preserve food from their meager farms and gardens (most of which are illegal for not using patented TechCorps crops and seeds). When Nina gets word that a stash from the Rogue Library of Congress - a group of renegade librarians who, during the collapse of the old world, defied orders and compiled everything they could in hidden and sealed vaults for future generations - she knows it could mark a real turning point, the chance to bring so much lost knowledge back to the people and maybe break the chains binding the world. She also knows that it may well be too good to be true, but she cannot resist the hope... or the handsome messenger.
Knox was captain of the Silver Devils, a unit of artificially enhanced Protectorate soldiers crafted and mercilessly trained to enforce TechCorps rule, until his masters pushed too hard and stole too much. Now he and his men are on the run - but they can't run forever. They'll die in a matter of weeks if they can't figure out how to disable the killswitch in their enhancements, a built-in failsafe against disobedience. His team found a promising lead in a rogue specialist, but she was kidnapped, and the abductors demand a ransom: the capture and return of Nina. What at first seemed like a simple, if cold-blooded, equation - a stranger exchanged for a friend and the future of his men - soon becomes far too complicated. Knox has never met anyone like Nina before, never felt anything like she makes him feel. Can he really betray this woman and her friends? Does he even have a choice?

REVIEW: This book makes its promises pretty early on and up front, offering a dystopian post-apocalyptic world as backdrop for a decently steamy romance, with a healthy dose of action and angst and banter among side characters. Nina, Knox, and most of the characters in the book have suitably traumatic backstories that render them physically superior but emotionally ill-equipped to deal with the prospect of True Love, thrust into a plot that ensures betrayal and heartbreak and second-guessing of one's own heart (and a few opportunities for sex even while they wrestle with their inner angst over whether they're even capable of love). They have distinctive personalities and mesh well together, even when they have personality clashes. It also contains a decent level of actual action, not just the promise of action; these are all mercenaries in a post-apocalyptic world, and their travels are suitably and inherently dangerous. (Some stories set up "dangerous" worlds and neglect the actual dangerous part.) So, on those levels, the story more or less works.
The "less" parts, unfortunately, really started to bug me.
More than once, the characters - all ostensibly tactically trained - stumble into traps so obvious they might as well have been red X's under cartoon boxes propped on sticks. (Seriously, when I - someone about as tactically aware as a clod of dirt - spot a trap before the military "expert" characters, something's wrong.) There were also far, far too many times where someone was on the verge of saying something exceptionally important, only for another character to barge in right as they were opening their mouth and stop the conversation before it starts. A few times, yes, understandable, but it just kept happening. I especially got irked how the same characters would've had ample time to talk if they hadn't wasted so much time before opening their mouth wrestling with the same angst-riddled Issues they'd already wrestled with before. Another trick that started out interesting but soon felt like so much wasted time was the author's insistence on interlude notes and memos from the outfits that created Nina, Knox, and the other characters, which didn't ultimately add much that the story itself didn't tell me and just became clutter. Add in a few twists that felt rather cliche and stale and an ending that, given the high level of action and violence preceding it, felt weirdly flat and rushed (followed by an eyeroll-worthy "twist" setting up a conflict for the next installment), and I wound up feeling distinctly unengaged.
There are many parts here that work well, and should've elevated it to a Good rating, but it just starts feeling too stretched and over the top.

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