Between Two Fires (Christopher Buehlman)

Between Two Fires
Christopher Buehlman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Horror
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: In a France devastated by the Black Death and by encroaching English armies, excommunicated knight turned brigand Thomas struggles just to survive one more day, though he finds it harder and harder to remember why he needs to go on living at all. He's already lost everything that ever mattered to him - his title, his lands, his wife, his honor - and the horrors he witnesses and is party to make him feel like he's living through the end of days. Then he finds the girl in the tree. She is filled with a strange light and stranger purpose, as if she has been touched by a higher power... but in a world where devils walk abroad at night and Lucifer's army again storms the walls of Heaven while God stands either helpless or indifferent, how is Thomas to know whether that higher power is good or evil? Nevertheless, he finds himself traveling with her, witnessing miracles and atrocities, on the way to either ultimate salvation or eternal damnation.

REVIEW: I've read two books by Buehlman previously and been very impressed by both, so when I heard this one mentioned favorably on a podcast I listen to, I decided to give this title a try. As in his other works, Buehlman does not pull his punches, and in fact leans into them with gusto: this is not a story for the squeamish, for all that the horrors ultimately serve the greater story and atmosphere. Both the bleakness of a plague-riddled medieval Europe and the twisted visions of medieval ideas of Hell and damnation (and the equally terrifying inhumanity and might of Heaven's angels) are on full display, a surreal landscape both physical and spiritual for the characters to navigate and in which they often (and inevitably) lose their way. Thomas, first wounded gravely in battle and then unjustly stripped of both his lands and his hope of Heaven, has wrapped himself fully in the darkness and misery that surrounds him, but deep down has a core of inner goodness that even he cannot deny forever. The girl, clearly an instrument of forces beyond him, could be either evil or good, but it almost doesn't matter, as she gives him a purpose that he's been lacking too long, becoming a daughter figure who brings out his vestigial better nature. She herself does not precisely understand her own role in the greater quest, her childish naivete slowly worn down but never completely lost. Along the way, they gain and lose companions, enduring numerous setbacks and encounters with enemies human and otherwise, all while the devils around them grow stronger and more emboldened as humans often seem all too eager to indulge their own dark sides. At times reality melts and twists into nightmarish surreality, where the lines between what is happening and what is imagined are blurred to the point of nonexistence. There is, naturally, a strong religious vein running through the story, but it manages not to be as preachy and judgmental as many such stories. For all the darkness and raw, visceral horror, I devoured this book at a rate I haven't managed in quite some time (audiobooks notwithstanding).

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Armored Saint (Myke Cole) - My Review
Paradise Lost (John Milton) - My Review
The Merciful Crow (Margaret Owen) - My Review

The Stranger in the Mirror (Liv Constantine)

The Stranger in the Mirror
Liv Constantine
Harper
Fiction, Thriller
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Two years ago, the woman who calls herself Addison Hope was found wandering by a New Jersey highway, bruised and scratched and with no memory before she found herself there. Taken in by kindly trucker Ed and his nurse wife Gigi, she has slowly built a new life in Philadelphia, but - aside from a talent for photography - she has no more clue who she was than ever. Now, she's engaged to Gabriel, son of a wealthy art family, and trying to move ahead... but she's afraid that, even as she looks toward a future, her past will return to destroy her. Judging by the scars on her body and the violent, terrifying flashbacks she sometimes glimpses, that past may be more horrific than she can handle.
Outside Boston, psychiatrist Julian has spent two years searching for his missing wife Cassandra. She was always a bit fragile after a traumatic upbringing, but he never expected her to just disappear, leaving behind both him and their young daughter Valentina - a daughter who asks every day when Mom is coming home and why she left. He's running out of answers to give her, but he can't give up the hope of finding his wife.
Meanwhile, Gabriel's mother can't help wondering about the strange girl Addison, a veritable ghost whose arrival disrupted a promising engagement for her well-meaning but sometimes too-softhearted son. She begins making some discreet inquiries, hoping to determine whether this woman is who, or what, she claims to be...

REVIEW: I figured I needed to vary the book diet a bit, and this thriller looked like a decent enough story (plus it was just long enough to fill a work day on audiobook). It started with some promise, albeit right from the gate it set "Addison" up as property to be claimed: she's at her engagement dinner with Gabriel, and simultaneously worries that she's stealing another woman's man (the former intended, Darcy, is also at the dinner) and that she has no idea if she's already someone else's wife. Meanwhile, Julian worries about his fragile lost wife who needs a man's protection (and a child's love) to justify her existence. Addison frets and worries and pokes at the holes in her memory (only to cringe back, often screaming, from what she glimpses in those holes), surrounded by a host of people who have bent their lives around her existence. The arrival of Julian seems to promise answers, but it's very quickly apparent to any reader with a remote sense of awareness (or has ever seen an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent) that there's more to the relationship than meets the eye. What comes next is a drawn-out string of torment and potential gaslighting that further reduces the nominal heroine into the role of helpless victim in need of outside rescue. When the truth is revealed, it is done with such repetition and hammering home of the twisted, psychotic nature of the culprit as to induce both numbness and eye-rolling: yes, I get it, I totally understand what happened, I do not need the past umpteen years related in painstakingly slow detail to understand, give me a little credit here for being able to connect the dots. Then it drags itself out past the climax with yet more flashbacks into a history that, frankly, no longer really mattered with the main issues resolved; it was just padding by that point, and relating trauma just for the sake of relating trauma. By the time I finished, I had gone beyond merely feeling blandly disappointed into actively irked at how my time was wasted; the whole story could've been maybe half as long if it hadn't dawdled and wallowed in Addison's helpless misery and crippling self-doubt, not to mention how it endlessly repeated itself for the sake of the one or two readers who may not have figured things out the first ten times they were explained. Being actively irked is an automatic ratings ding, hence the drop below three stars.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey) - My Review
Unflappable (Suzie Gilbert) - My Review
Comfort Me With Apples (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review

The Wizards of Once (Cressida Cowell)

The Wizards of Once
The Wizards of Once series, Book 1
Cressida Cowell
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In ancient times, long before the British Isles knew they were even British, a vast, wild, and dark forest covered the land. Within this forest were all manner of magical beasts and beings, as well as a race of human Wizards... until the Warriors showed up from across the sea, bearing iron that was immune to their Magic. Battle lines were drawn as trees were felled and deaths mounted, and Wizards and Warriors both learned from the cradle to hate one another. But in fighting each other, they forgot another threat: the witches, a race of the worst sort of Bad Magic. It is said they were exterminated centuries ago... but many things are said that are not entirely true...
Xar may be the son of the King of the Wizards, but even at thirteen his magic has yet to grow in - as his bully older brother never lets him forget. Tired of the looks of disappointment from his father, the boy has concocted a desperate plan, one that involves finding and trapping a witch and then using stolen Warrior iron (a simple saucepan, in truth, but iron nonetheless) to steal its magic for himself. Of course, his older brother gets wind of the plot and utterly humiliates him for his foolishness - but Xar may not be wrong, and his trap ends up catching something very interesting, if very dangerous.
Wish is everything her mother, Queen of the Warriors, cannot stand. She has a limp and but one good eye, instead of a sturdy and whole warrior body. She's untidy and has a wandering, inquisitive mind, instead of being tidy and following the Rules of her people. And now she's slipped out into the forbidden woods after a pet she isn't even supposed to have: a spoon that somehow acquired magical life. Worse, she took with her an even more forbidden object: an enchanted iron sword she discovered on her way out of the keep. Magic is strictly forbidden by her mother, and her bodyguard is at his wit's end trying to keep her in line, but Wish keeps defying everyone... until something very strange and malevolent chases her straight into a trap.
Wish and Xan hate each other at first sight, as befitting their upbringing, but another, greater evil is afoot. It may take the combined might of Wizards and Warriors to stop a truly terrible fate from befalling the land of Once, and everyone in it.

REVIEW: Given the target age, this is a fun and adventurous romp through a fantastical Dark Ages, one populated with wizards and warriors and trickster fairies and gentle giants and great lynx-like "snow cats" big enough to ride and more wonders - as well as darkly dangerous witches, not to mention the all-too-human problems of prejudices, misunderstandings, and the secrets kept by those in power to keep themselves in power. As with Cowell's other series (the popular How to Train Your Dragon series, loose source material for one of my favorite animated trilogies of all time), it walks a line between exaggerated humor and dangerous stakes, with a little more to it than its outwardly silly trappings might suggest; I felt that line was stuck to better in this series, personally. Once in a while it pulled a punch slightly and waded a bit deep into tangents for the sake of silly tangents, but overall it moved decently and wasn't too predictable, and it kept me entertained for a while as an audiobook at work (even if the sound effects and voices seemed overdone - though, again, I'm a few decades over the target age, and I expect kids would find it enjoyable to have their listening interrupted with bangs and blasts to punctuate action bits). Being entertained is really all I asked of it, and it delivered.

You Might Also Enjoy:
A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying (Kelley Armstrong) - My Review
How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Have Sword, Will Travel (Garth Nix and Sean Williams) - My Review

Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Children of Time
The Children of Time series, Book 1
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: One one blue world in an insignificant star system, millions of years of evolution and chance produced a prodigal, if destructive, species from nondescript ancestors. Now, Homo sapiens reaches out to the stars to repeat the process, only on their own terms. On terraformed planets seeded with Earth wildlife, an artificial nanovirus will, in theory at least, compress the ageless trial-and-error that created self-aware and technologically advanced humans into a few thousand years, uplifting a lucky population of primates to join humanity in exploring the vast and, thus far, empty void of space. Doctor Avrana Kern stands poised above one such world, about to trigger the process... but she has ignored the threat that has, for so long, held her kind back. She has ignored the discontent and desperation back home, the ideological schisms, and the increasingly violent calls to curb humanity's reach and ambition. Right on the very brink of her ultimate success, saboteurs destroy everything... everything except Kern, escaping into an orbital satellite with a hibernation chamber, and the nanovirus itself. But what can it possibly hope to do, on a planet without even the most basal primate to act upon? In the nature of life since the dawn of time, it will have to adapt - and it will do so in a way nobody could have possibly expected, when it discovers the vast, untapped potential waiting within invertebrate minds, particularly the species Portia labiata, known on Earth as jumping spiders.
Thousands of years later, the ark ship Gilgamesh has set out from a dying Earth with a remnant population of humans, one of a handful of hail-Mary passes into the unknown following old star charts salvaged from what came to be known as the Old Empire. Records of those days are sketchy, the ancients elevated to near-divine (or -diabolical) status in common culture, but provide the only hope for a future of the species. At last, they arrive at a green world - a world guarded by a satellite governed by a half-mad artificial intelligence. Nobody has heard from the other ark ships since departing Earth, and this planet - despite the angry satellite ghost of Kern and the bizarre monsters that appear to infest it - might be the only possible home for the displaced former masters of Earth. One thing humans have always been good at is species extermination and selfish survival... but they've never encountered an intelligence like the one waiting for them on Kern's World.

REVIEW: This is not the first tale to speculate on "uplifted" animals, but among the few (that I've encountered, at least) to extend that speculation to spiders, whose minds are surprisingly sophisticated and utterly alien to even mammalian thinking, let alone humans. Not being a huge fan of spiders myself (though jumping spiders never creeped me out like the web-spinners and wolf spiders), I was a bit iffy on this, but Tchaikovsky's spiders won me over, balancing a fine line between inhuman perspectives - their civilization, their strengths and weaknesses and cultural blind spots, come from somewhere between solid research and speculation - and necessary anthropomorphization for the sake of the human readers. By exploiting their natural abilities and those of the nanovirus that created them, they arrive at civilization by entirely different avenues than those taken by the species responsible for uplifting them, if not without their own setbacks and problems. The human cast, meanwhile, skips through their centuries thanks to suspended animation, with the primary point-of-view character, "classicist" Holsten Mason (an expert in "classic" Old Empire languages and history), being mostly a passive observer, often annoyingly so. He watches, through generations, as humans persistently echo the same strengths and weaknesses that led to both the rise of the Old Empire and its collapse (and Earth's eventual doom), tilting toward the latter as the stakes become more desperate. The common human fear of and revulsion for spiders kicks things up to a higher degree, even as the spiders struggle to grasp what little they see and learn of humans and their incomprehensible ways. It is inevitable that the two civilizations, one on the rise and one in decline, will clash, both desperate for the one thing they can both agree is top priority: their own survival. It wanders now and again, particularly on the Gilgamesh (I really got annoyed by Mason's lack of anything resembling a vertebral column; the spiders had ten times more backbone even without internal skeletons), and something about the end felt a little rushed, but overall I enjoyed the journey; I never expected to find myself rooting for spiders...

You Might Also Enjoy:
City (Clifford D. Simak) - My Review
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review

Where The Mountain Meets the Moon (Grace Lin)

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: The village shadowed by Fruitless Mountain is a poor and desperate place to be. Like the mountain itself, little grows, and what does grow takes backbreaking work for meager returns. Minli tires of hearing her mother's sad sighs at their poor fortune, finding some solace in her father's folk tales. At last, guided by advice from a goldfish, the girl sets out to find the Old Man in the Moon: in Ba's tales, he is the one who ties the red threads of fate and reads from the book of fortune, so surely, if anyone can change her family's sad state and bleak future, it is him. Her travels will take her far from her tiny shack and village, winding through tales old and new as she seeks to write a new story for her life.

REVIEW: This award-winning book weaves Chinese folk tales into a charming new story that feels like a beloved classic. Though Ma dismisses the old stories as worthless and impractical frivolities, filling her daughter's head with foolish ideas, the tales of Ba give Minli solace and comfort, not to mention a certainty that impossible things are possible if only one tries; ultimately, the true worth of a story is proven many times over, to both Minli and her parents. From magical goldfish to dragons to lion statues and more, Minli finds Ba's stories coming to life around her, and all of them ultimately connect to create a rich backstory for her adventure. Along the way, she learns the true meaning of family and fortune, as do her parents. It's a quick read with a timeless feel and solid ending that earns it an extra half-mark, quite enjoyable even for a grown-up.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Plain Kate (Erin Bow) - My Review
Dragon Rider (Cornelia Funke) - My Review
My Father's Dragon (Ruth Stiles Gannett) - My Review