I was a fan of Peter Clines’ The Fold a few years ago, so I jumped at the chance to read his latest book, The Broken Room, which comes out in a few weI was a fan of Peter Clines’ The Fold a few years ago, so I jumped at the chance to read his latest book, The Broken Room, which comes out in a few weeks. Hector, a down-and-out ex-Special Ops guy, is approached by a 12 year old girl, Natalie, who has escaped from a top secret facility called the Project. The horrible experiments they’ve done on her and other illegal immigrant children there have changed her in ways that aren’t entirely clear to Hector or even Natalie yet.
But the people who run the Project want Natalie back VERY badly, and they’re sending out their forces to get her back. Natalie calls in a favor Hector owed to a guy named Tim that Hector used to work with. Tim has been dead for a few years, but somehow Natalie seems to be communicating with him. It’s all very odd to Hector, but the marker he owed needs to be honored.
So Hector and Natalie go on the run. And things get more exciting—and more strange—from there.
The Broken Room is a little hard to describe; it combines science fiction with a fair amount of horror and gore, a little social commentary on the treatment of illegal immigrants and minorities, lots of action (slowing down only for flashbacks where Natalie’s past is explained), and some weird spookiness. I would’ve liked a little better explanation of some of the weird parts, like the seed pods: an effective bit of gross horror, but the logic of them escaped me a little.
This one will stick with me for a while. It’s a solid SF thriller adventure.
Full review to come! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC....more
Another compulsively readable SF thriller from Blake Crouch! This one focuses on the good and sometimes extremely bad consequences of genetic engineerAnother compulsively readable SF thriller from Blake Crouch! This one focuses on the good and sometimes extremely bad consequences of genetic engineering. It lags a little in the middle and (as usual) Crouch plays pretty fast and loose with the science, but I enjoyed the read.
There’s another boarding school for wayward children: one where those in charge are determined to make them deny the portal worlds that they once callThere’s another boarding school for wayward children: one where those in charge are determined to make them deny the portal worlds that they once called home. By any means possible.
But Cora is suffering severe trauma from her adventure in the Moors in Come Tumbling Down and decides that the only way to save herself is to transfer to the Whitethorn Institute. Even though Eleanor West advises her earnestly against it…
This new Wayward Children book opens up this series in some interesting ways, and I’m here for it, but it does leave us with some unresolved questions.
Full review to come! Thanks so much to Tor for the ARC!
Initial post: Look what landed on my doorstep today!! And I immediately started reading it, because I have no self-control at all where this series is concerned....more
... or, well, maybe not so small after all. :) Final review for this Nebula-award nominated novella, first posted oIt's a LitenVärld after all! [image]
... or, well, maybe not so small after all. :) Final review for this Nebula-award nominated novella, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
If you’ve ever gotten frustrated wandering through the endless maze of rooms that is IKEA, it’s not hard to imagine that there are hidden passages that lead, not to a secret shortcut to an exit, but to another world entirely. Nino Cipri’s novella Finna takes that concept and adds to it a timely set of social concerns, ranging from gender identity to the evils of capitalism generally and low-wage retail jobs in particular.
Ava is a sales associate at LitenVärld (Swedish for “small world”), the fictional equivalent of IKEA, down to the gigantic parking lot and blue-and-yellow box-shaped exterior, not to mention the labyrinthine interior layout. Ava is disgruntled because she’s been called in to work on her day off, when her only desire is to stay home, binge on Netflix and Florence and the Machine, and try to recuperate from her breakup with Jules (black and nonbinary) three days before. Ava’s workday goes from bad — colliding with Jules by the break room — to worse: a customer has lost her grandmother in the store. And she and Jules discover an odd-looking passageway in the Nihilist Bachelor Cube that’s not supposed to be there. (The creative names of the various store rooms, like Pastel Goth Hideaway and Parental Basement Dweller, are one of the humorous delights of Finna.)
Their manager Tricia calls an emergency meeting of all employees, and discloses that this appearance of a “maskhål,” or wormhole, in LitenVärld has happened before, often enough that the company actually has an instructional video and a piece of equipment called a FINNA (Swedish: “find”) to track down missing customers if you feed it one of their personal belongings. What the company doesn’t have any more is a team of employees trained to navigate the wormholes with the FINNA — cost-cutting measures, you know — so Jules volunteers to search for the missing woman and Ava, as the next-most-junior employee, is voluntold to go with them.
The linked worlds they find when they enter the portal are nightmarish echoes of LitenVärld: an orchard of carnivorous plants shaped like furniture, a food court that takes payment in blood, and more. But somewhere in this crazy multiverse Ava and Jules hope to find the missing grandmother … or at least an appropriate replacement for her from another universe.
The maze-like LitenVärld being a prime location for portals to alternative fantasy worlds is an unusual concept for SF/F, if not entirely unique; for example, somewhat similarly, Grady Hendrix also explored the nightmarish aspects of an IKEA-type store in his 2014 horror novel Horrorstör. Cipri carries this concept through into the finer details, like the company having a patented mechanical device as part of its standard equipment to locate missing customers, but having laid off the teams who specialized in these searches; and sending instead the two most junior retail employees working that day. And somehow the company has managed to keep this all secret since at least 1989 (apparently no one outside the company has ever taken a close look at that FINNA patent). Cipri also has a keen eye for the soul-killing details of low-end retail jobs, and their effect on the people stuck in those thankless jobs. Jules in particular is so downtrodden by their job that it’s clear that their volunteering to explore the wormholes is, at least in part, motivated by the hope of finding a better world to live in.
For my taste, Finna spends not enough time exploring these fantasy worlds and too much time focusing on the more mundane dysfunctional relationship of Jules and Ava, who are (understandably) dealing with depression and anxiety. It’s clear that the two of them still love each other and want to be together, but their personal issues have created seemingly insurmountable roadblocks to their finding happiness together. The science fictional aspects of Finna are very soft; Cipri is far more focused on their characters’ relationship and on current social issues.
Finna isn’t shy in the slightest about these social and political messages. It takes rather a sledgehammer approach to that messaging, with repeated anti-capitalistic jabs and main characters who are both diverse and queer. The only noteworthy characters who are signaled as being white are the villains, like LitenVärld manager Tricia, who has a “Midwestern manager-class haircut” with blond highlights (could anything indicate a “Karen” more clearly?), practiced plastic facial expressions, and an utter disregard for the wellbeing of the workers she manages. There’s also Mark and Dana, the obnoxious actors in the LitenVärld training video who later morph into a nightmarish horde of clones in one of the alternative worlds that Ava and Jules stumble into.
The messaging is so heavy-handed that it tends to overwhelm the plot at times. I think it’s fair to say that the appeal of Finna will vary for readers based to a great extent on both how appealing they find these messages and how much they enjoy reading explicitly message-driven fiction. If you think capitalism sucks and IKEA is a house of horrors, and you can get into the drama of queer exes chasing through the multiverse in search of a lost customer while dealing ineptly with the aftermath of their breakup … then I’d recommend Finna to you.
Feminism crashes into Sleeping Beauty, and Sleeping Beauty will never be quite the same. And that's not a bad thing. Also, Alix Harrow's writing is amFeminism crashes into Sleeping Beauty, and Sleeping Beauty will never be quite the same. And that's not a bad thing. Also, Alix Harrow's writing is amazingly good. I wish I could put together a sentence like that.
I love fairy-tale themed stories AND multiverse fiction, and this is such a fun combination of the two! Plus I've gained a new appreciation for novellas after reading so many doorstoppers in the last few years. So I started looking at this last night and somehow ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting.
RTC. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!...more
It’s alarming to wake up from a coma in completely unfamiliar surroundings, teth4.5 stars! On sale now. Review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
It’s alarming to wake up from a coma in completely unfamiliar surroundings, tethered to a bed by tubes and electrodes, with a computer voice quizzing you and robotic arms controlling your movements. It’s even more disturbing when you realize that you have no recollection of your name or your past life, and that there are two long-dead bodies in the room with you.
But gradually, through a series of flashback memories, Ryland Grace remembers that Earth is facing an extinction event: a Russian scientist discovered that a strange line has developed between the sun and Venus, and it’s causing the sun to lose energy at a rate that’s high enough to cause a worldwide ice age in the next few decades. Grace, a disgraced molecular biologist who abandoned academia to teach middle school science, was one of the scientists investigating the unique microorganisms, christened Astrophage, causing the sun’s disastrous decline in energy.
Now his explorations of his current surroundings lead him to the realization that he’s in a spaceship headed to the Tau Ceti star system, on a one-way trip in search of a way to save the Earth, and the other two members of his crew didn’t survive the medically-induced comas during the long voyage of the Hail Mary. But a major surprise awaits Grace at his destination: humanity isn’t the only race looking to the Tau Ceti system for a possible answer to the problem of Astrophage.
Andy Weir’s latest science fiction adventure, Project Hail Mary, marks a welcome return to form for fans of The Martian, after his lackluster second novel, Artemis. There’s the same hyper-focus on fine details of technology and science, one of Weir’s hallmarks, along with a series of critical events that our intrepid main character needs to overcome through a combination of scientific knowledge and inventiveness. Ryland Grace, who narrates the novel, also bears a distinct resemblance to Mark Watney: he’s an enthusiastically geeky and inventive scientist with an engaging voice and sense of humor, faced with a life-and-death situation.
“How did you do it? What killed it?” “I penetrated the outer membrane with a nanosyringe.” “You poked it with a stick?” “No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.”
But the stakes are higher here, the adventure more far-reaching, and there’s a subtle complexity to Grace’s character that is fully revealed toward the end, along with a (related) twist in the narrative that is logical but still managed to surprise me. Weir displays some subtleties in his writing in Project Hail Mary that go beyond his previous works of fiction. Weir also handles the dual timeline in this novel well, with the flashbacks flowing naturally as a result of Grace’s slowly-dispersing amnesia. These memories gradually fill in the background and reveal the full scope of the Astrophage problem and the reasons and hopes for Grace’s current mission, while the current timeline follows his adventures and mishaps once he reaches the ship’s destination … and beyond.
Much of Project Hail Mary is about Grace’s unanticipated friendship with another character who is tremendously pleasing in both his sheer alienness and his open-heartedness toward Ryland. While my practical mind debated the wisdom of Grace and the alien oversharing information about the location of their home worlds (I was deeply influenced by Murray Leinster’s classic novelette “First Contact” at an impressionable age), their developing trust and friendship is undeniably heartwarming.
Great books and movies are often marked by their attention to themes of love and redemption, and Project Hail Mary has both in spades. (I’m still trying to decide whether the title and the main character’s name are a deliberate call-out by Weir to “Hail Mary, full of Grace.” I’m inclined to think it is.) In any case, these compelling themes, plus a suspenseful, page-turning adventure and the inspiring scientific creativity of the characters (assuming you’re a reader who enjoys Weir’s attention to technical details in his plots), make Project Hail Mary a sure-fire hit for fans of The Martian … and may very well win him new fans.
Initial post: Just when I'd given up, my NetGalley request for this book got approved! This time Andy Weir came much closer to the magic that was The Martian. :)...more
In The Hidden Palace Helene Wecker returns to the richly-imagined world of The Golem and the Jinni, fin de siècle New York City, focusing on the Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities. Chava, an intelligent golem created by an evil-hearted genius, was set free by the unexpected death of her intended husband and master, left with the ability to hear the thoughts of all humans instead of just her master. The jinni Ahmad is released from the bottle that imprisoned him, but he is bound to tangible human form with no discernable way to remove the curse. Despite their opposite natures of earth and fire, golem and jinni are drawn together in a world where neither fits in, and both are hiding their true natures from the humans around them … at least, most of them.
As The Hidden Palace begins, Ahmad returns from his journey to Damascus, disheartened by the inability of his jinn people to remove the enchanted iron arm cuff that chains him to human form. He returns to the metal-smithing shop of Boutros Arbeely as a partner, while Chava is still the lead baker at Radzin’s Bakery, though as the years go by she worries that people are starting to notice that she never ages. Ahmad and Chava tentatively begin a new phase of their relationship, but their personalities — as different as their natures — lead to conflicts.
Wecker weaves several other characters and subplots into this novel, which stretches over several years in the early 1900s. A brilliant but neglected young Jewish girl, Kreindel Altschul, is drawn into her old-school (heh) rabbi father’s plans to create a huge golem to assist the Jewish people against their oppressors in eastern Europe. But Kreindel’s father is in ill health, and he lacks the skills of the magician who created Chava. Chava’s former friend Anna had her trust in Chava broken when she became aware of Chava’s monstrous nature and immense strength and has avoided Chava for years, but her son Toby is curious about his mother’s old friends, and haunted by persistent nightmares of a wicked magician that he can’t understand.
Wealthy socialite Sophia Winston, left with a debilitating physical chill from her brief affair with the jinni in the first book, breaks free of the strictures of New York high society and travels to the Middle East in search of a cure, protected by a pair of retired Pinkerton detectives. There Sophia meets a female jinni, or jinniyeh, called Dima, who has the unique ability to touch iron and a fascination with the stories she’s heard of the iron-bound jinni who lives in America. Dima promises Sophia a cure to what has ailed her for so long, but for a price.
I’m not sure what direction I thought Helene Wecker would go with this sequel to The Golem and the Jinni, but The Hidden Palace was surprising in some good ways. We meet all of our favorite characters from the first book, along with some new key viewpoint characters. Of the new characters, I especially loved Kreindel, who is stubborn and doesn’t always make wise choices or adapt well to her surroundings, but has immense strength of character and intelligence. Familiar characters face new challenges that flow from the prior conflicts and issues but take them in new directions. Chava gains special admission at the Teachers College at Columbia University, and eventually winds up teaching Culinary Science at the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews, where she crosses paths with a certain headstrong teenage girl and her massive golem that hides in the Asylum’s basement. One of the most delightful parts of this novel was just how dedicated and inspired Chava is as a teacher of young girls.
One of the things that impressed me most about The Golem and the Jinni was how vividly Wecker recreated historic New York City. Her world-building skills are marvelous, and in The Hidden Palace she weaves many historical events and people into her narrative, including T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), the torpedoing of the Lusitania, deadly tenement fires, and the calamitous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
The Hidden Palace is somewhat slower-paced; like the first book, it tends to meander between different subplots and take a lot of time to develop the story and build toward the final conflict. Those culminating scenes didn’t have quite the power or impact of those in The Golem and the Jinni. The resolution of a couple of the plotlines (Toby’s nightmares and the jinniyeh’s search for a kindred spirit) struck me as rather anticlimactic.
Still, this is an engaging and touching novel, dealing with not just conflicts between people but also with themes of love and developing understanding and friendship, even when there are vast differences between us. Ahmad builds a beautiful and fragile secret construction inside the Amherst building, which may be the primary hidden palace of the story, but I think the title also alludes to the secrets and hidden strengths within the characters themselves.
Initial post: Look at this! A sequel to the wonderful fantasy The Golem and the Jinni! And I've just been sent the ARC, without even having asked for it (it warms my heart so much when publicists contact me to offer books I'm really excited about reading). So it's a happy day here in the Night Owl household. :)...more
A Beginning at the End is set in a near-future world where, in 2019, a deadly worldwide pandemic kFinal review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
A Beginning at the End is set in a near-future world where, in 2019, a deadly worldwide pandemic kills some five billion people, including seventy percent of the U.S. population. Johanna Moira Hatfield, a teenage pop music star known as Mojo, tired of being browbeaten by her stage father, Evan, uses the sudden panic at her Madison Square Garden concert to disappear into the crowd in search of a new life.
Six years later, in San Francisco in 2025, MoJo has a new name, Moira Gorman, a job, and a fiancé who she’s not really in love with, but he represents stability in a society that’s still fragile and unstable, as well as safety from her father, who’s still looking for his MoJo. Moira’s wedding planner, Krista Deal, has a somewhat similar backstory: Krista faked her own death years ago to escape her drug-addicted, dysfunctional mother. Wedding planning isn’t paying the bills, though, so when Krista hears that Evan Hatfield believes MoJo is in the San Francisco area and is offering a huge reward to anyone who can help him find her, she’s naturally interested … not realizing that her client Moira is MoJo.
Moira’s co-worker Rob Deal has his own set of tragic family issues: he lost his beloved wife to an accident during the pandemic years ago, but has never been able to bring himself to tell his seven-year-old daughter Sunny the truth about her mother’s death. Rob tells Sunny that her mother has been in medical treatment all these years, and while Sunny believes him, she’s beginning to act out. Her misbehavior at school threatens to lead to her being taken away from him by the powerful Family Stability Board. Rob’s a loner with no real friends, but perhaps his new acquaintance Krista Deal can testify to the Board as to his adequacy as a father (especially if he pays her a little money under the table)?
A Beginning at the End was published in early 2020, so it anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic (like another duology I recently read, Tosca Lee’s The Line Between and A Single Light). Here’s it’s not the actual disaster that Mike Chen is primarily focused on, but the aftermath and particularly the lives of this group of characters. What remains of society is being put back together in new ways: some cities are back to some semblance of normality, while others live in the lawless outskirts of society. People in general are still traumatized by the deaths of so many, including their friends and family, and the flu-like MGS virus remains a threat, with outbreaks of new variants.
Moira, Krista and Rob are emblematic of this sense of loss and distress. All three, not to mention Rob’s daughter Sunny, have serious issues to work through — though interestingly enough, their personal problems are only indirectly tied to the actual MGS pandemic. These characters are flawed but likeable, and the novel’s ultimately uplifting plot gives a timely nod to the benefits of found family (often over a problematic bio family).
A Beginning at the End is a quieter type of post-apocalyptic tale, more about interpersonal relationships and individual healing than about the larger changes caused by the worldwide pandemic. Like Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, this novel takes a more introspective approach to the aftereffects of a worldwide epidemic, but I found Mandel’s book more skillfully and lyrically told and much more compelling than A Beginning at the End, which felt rather plodding at times. The pacing and excitement picks up toward the end, but I didn’t find Chen’s characters quite interesting enough to justify all the time spent on their personal struggles, as opposed to exploring more deeply the broader, more intriguing changes in this post-apocalyptic society.
Charlaine Harris’s alternative history/urban fantasy GUNNIE ROSE series shifts to a new setting in this third book in the series, The Russian Cage, onCharlaine Harris’s alternative history/urban fantasy GUNNIE ROSE series shifts to a new setting in this third book in the series, The Russian Cage, one that was foreshadowed by the ending of the prior book, A Longer Fall. Lizbeth Rose, who makes her living as a hired gun or “gunnie,” receives an intentionally cryptic letter from her younger half-sister, Felicia. For the past year, Felicia has been living in what once was California, Oregon and Washington but is now the Holy Russian Empire, ruled over by a young, married Tsar Alexei — certainly a better fate for him than his actual historical fate of being assassinated at age thirteen by Soviet revolutionaries. He’s surviving his hemophilia with the help of magical blood transfusions from Grigori Rasputin’s descendants, which include Felicia (in fact, Lizbeth is also a grandchild of Rasputin, though she hides that fact from the Russians, telling them that she and Felicia share a mother rather than their Russian father).
Reading between the lines of Felicia’s letter, Lisbeth realizes that her on-and-off-again lover Eli, a Russian noble as well as a gifted magician or “grigori,” has been tossed into prison for political reasons. Felicia thinks that Lizbeth can do something to bust Eli out of jail, and Lizbeth can’t wait to try. Apparently finding out that Eli’s in trouble makes Lizbeth realize that her feelings for Eli are stronger than she’s previously been willing to admit, even to herself.
A four-day train ride later, she’s in the HRE’s capital of San Diego, getting the lay of the land from Felicia, Eli’s mother Veronika, and his friend Felix (who we met in A Longer Fall). Felicia’s life is more complicated — and dangerous — than Lizbeth had imagined, giving her qualms of guilt for sending Felicia to the HRE. There’s a conspiracy to take Tsar Alexei down, and Eli and the tsar’s other supporters are in the crosshairs. Eli’s family isn’t a whole lot of help: his older stepbrothers are antagonistic to him, and his mother and sisters are mostly helpless (1940s-era Russian society isn’t particularly encouraging of noblewomen being tough and resourceful, unless you’re a grigori). And no one seems to have any idea what crime Eli has been charged with. But Eli’s friend Felix, though oddly antagonistic toward Lizbeth, seems anxious to help get Eli out of jail, and Felix has some particularly interesting magical powers, as well as the beginnings of a plan.
Eli’s family and friends are intriguing characters, more complex than I initially would have guessed, and Charlaine Harris does a competent job of creating a believable Russian society in exile in western America, beset by political conspiracies and plots to unseat a tsar who is viewed as weak. The tsar’s wife Caroline, a Scandinavian princess, proves surprisingly useful to Lizbeth and Felix in their efforts to bring the royals’ attention to Eli’s plight.
There are a couple of notable breakdowns in plot logic, one involving Eli’s prison guard, a woman named Hubble who is supposedly a “null,” impervious to magical spells … except it ends up that she’s not, for no particularly good reason, and that seems to be simply an oversight by Harris. The other relates to a direction given by the tsar to Eli at the end, which simply didn’t make much sense from a plot perspective. It felt more like the author simply needed an excuse to move Eli in a certain direction, and perhaps that was the best reason she could come up with.
The plot of The Russian Cage takes some time to really get rolling, but the details, as they unfold, are intricate and interesting enough to keep the reader engaged, and the bloodstained climax toward the end is gripping. The dénouement in the last few chapters is far tamer, but it does provide a reasonably satisfying wind-up to the story of Lizbeth and Eli … at least for now.
The Russian Cage is a fun adventure, less weighed down by the slavery and social issues that darkened A Longer Fall, not to mention the constant references to eating and sex that bogged down the pacing of that book. The GUNNIE ROSE series is worth reading if you have an interest in Old West-flavored urban fantasy, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but isn’t entirely. You do need to start with the first book, An Easy Death, and read the series in order.
It’s unnerving reading a book about a devastating pandemic at this point during the COVID-19 crisisFinal review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
It’s unnerving reading a book about a devastating pandemic at this point during the COVID-19 crisis, but in fairness, this near-future SF duology by Tosca Lee was published in 2019, so Lee gets credit for anticipating a timely topic. The first book, The Line Between, tells how Wynter Roth, a young woman in her early twenties, escapes from a doomsday cult and (obligatory spoiler warning for the first book here) is entrusted with some tissue samples that may help with the development of a vaccine against the growing pandemic. It’s a rapid onset dementia virus that is — unsurprisingly, since this is a science fiction novel — almost invariably deadly to those who catch it.
At the end of The Line Between, Wynter, her niece Truly, her new boyfriend Chase (with whom she fortuitously met up during her desperate travels), and a couple of family friends are lucky enough to befriend a doomsday prepper, Noah. Noah (with even more foresight than the author) shrewdly built a large, completely decked-out underground silo where sixty-three people, including Wynter’s group, are completely sealed in for six months, in the hope that when the automated door unlocks the pandemic will have passed.
A Single Light begins right where The Line Between left off. Wynter and the others tucked away in the hidden silo are adjusting to their restricted but safe life underground. At least everyone there is healthy, and there’s ample food, as well as a nightly broadcast from Noah, who remained aboveground to help guard their safety, among other reasons. But too soon, Noah’s video communications abruptly cease for an unknown reason. The close quarters and lack of any news from the outside world combine with fear and stress to cause serious problems for the hidden group, not least Wynter herself, especially when murder accusations against her — she was a busy girl in the first book — become public knowledge.
So it’s a relief when the silo’s electronic door opens after six months, though more than a little disturbing because it happens a few days before it was scheduled to open, and there’s no sign of Noah … or any other living person, for that matter. Wynter and Chase set off on an expedition to find out what’s become of Noah and our society, and to try to find some badly-needed antibiotics for a dying member of their group.
Through Wynter’s eyes, who tells this story in first person present tense, A Single Light shows the bleakness of a nation where society has crumbled. Most people are desperately seeking food and medication, while a few take advantage of the disintegration of the rule of law. There’s a hint of both Mad Max and The Walking Dead in Wynter’s and Chase’s travels. Their exploits were engaging and suspenseful, especially when they come to a large town that seems to have the medicine they need, but the town is ruled by a viciously cruel kingpin and his henchmen. The ending of A Single Light felt rushed, as Lee quickly wraps up various plot threads and pulls in a few new ones, in a somewhat scattershot approach.
Wynter is a character defined by her alarming impetuousness and dramatic tendencies, but also her undeniable courage and loyalty to her friends … at least those she can trust. At one point early on Chase is forced to divulge a surprising secret to the silo group. While I loved the new light this shed on his role in the story, I found Wynter’s reaction over the top. It’s not quite as bad as Bella’s shutdown in New Moon in the TWILIGHT SAGA, but close enough. She’s not my favorite type of character, but her reactions are understandable given her traumatic upbringing. The other inhabitants of the underground silo group are roughly sketched-in characters at best, but Wynter does meet a few more memorable people in the course of her travels, particularly Otto, a kindhearted mute man.
As in The Line Between, there’s a discernable spiritual element to this tale. For the most part it’s very subtle, surfacing only occasionally (it’s notable that there’s no indication Wynter ever has premarital sex) and becoming clearer toward the end. Also like the first book, A Single Light has an allusive title, suggesting the need for spiritual light in an increasingly dark world. A Single Light is an intriguing apocalyptic-type adventure, and a quick, gripping read.
3.5 stars.
Thanks to the author, Tosca Lee, for the ARC (and sorry it took me so long to get to it!)....more
4.5 stars! Here it is: the review I've been spending the last two months of solid reading (neglecting other books, not writing other reviews, ignoring4.5 stars! Here it is: the review I've been spending the last two months of solid reading (neglecting other books, not writing other reviews, ignoring my chores ...) working up to. Hope you all agree it was worthwhile. :) Review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
I feel a bit dazed as I finally emerge from a truly epic STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE marathon that lasted almost exactly two months, since that fateful September day when I decided I couldn’t turn down the offer of an advance copy of Rhythm of War, despite not having yet read any of the prior three books in this series (good intentions and all, but yes, the sheer page count was truly daunting). I’ve generally been of the opinion that epic fantasy is really not quite my thing, but Brandon Sanderson has been gradually bringing me around. If you are already a fan of epic fantasy, this series gets an extremely high recommendation from me … which you probably don’t need if you’re an epic fantasy reader, since you’re likely way ahead of me in getting into this series.
Rhythm of War is a giant of a book and, like the previous installments in the series, juggles a large cast of characters, most of whom are familiar from prior books in the series, and multiple plotlines — again, most of which were introduced earlier in the series, but take some large leaps forward in this volume, with a few twists and backflips along the way. Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar are still the most prominent main characters, but they’re joined by Adolin and Navani, who are both given some much-needed character development and more substantial roles in the overall plot.
Kaladin has been a favorite character since The Way of Kings, when I found myself skipping ahead just so I could read his chapters. Early on here, it becomes painfully clear just how much he’s struggling with the aftereffects of his many battles and his failures to protect those around him. Those scenes dragged on somewhat too long for my taste, but Rhythm of War has some powerful and even profound moments describing depression and PTSD.
Navani’s chapters were more uplifting and refreshing, despite the dangers of her situation. She finds herself a unique position where she can begin to exercise and develop her scientific talents more than ever before, but there’s a fascinating conundrum: will her scholarly efforts help her people or lead to their downfall? Navani’s perspective is distinct from others in this novel, exploring the advancing science of Roshar’s magical system. Her battles with the opposing forces are more intellectual and mental than physical.
Venli, a “listener” and one of the alien race of singers that’s native to the planet Roshar (and which has a fraught history with the human settlers who arrived several thousand years ago), also becomes a main viewpoint character. Through Venli’s and her sister’s eyes, and in a series of flashbacks, Sanderson explores more of the culture and society of singers and the effect of Odium’s power and schemes on them. And, of course, King Taravangian is still scheming as well, at least on his more intelligent days. Taravangian is an entirely unique character, one of my favorites, with an unusual blessing/curse and an unexpected set of skills and methods for dealing with it.
As the plot advances, Sanderson puts the reader through a roller coaster of emotions, including some exhilarating highs and terrifying drops. Sanderson is able to craft a war that feels real, showing the motivations of people (human or other) on both sides of the conflict. When the characters we’re rooting for win or lose a battle, we can see its effects clearly. It’s a staple of epic fantasy to have a large (even immense) scale of events that shorter series can’t attain, and Sanderson fully embraces this and uses the greater scale to its fullest effect.
It wouldn’t be a Sanderson book without at least a few major plot twists. When they came, they felt like events that you could’ve (perhaps should have) seen coming, though personally I didn’t manage to predict any of the major ones. Sanderson does a great job of answering questions while also raising new ones, and in Rhythm of War, Sanderson answers (at least in part) several longstanding questions, which naturally give rise to an equal number of new and equally compelling questions. Those, along with a few (okay, more than a few) unresolved plot threads, serve to keep expectations high for future books in this series.
Sanderson is justly lauded for his intricate and imaginative magical systems, but I need to give a shout out to the literary structure of these books as well. The five-part organization of each of the books in this series, interspersed with brief “interludes” from other, often unfamiliar characters; the frequently obscure (at least initially) quotes and epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter; the way the prologue and epilogue of each book echo the others but shed new light; and more. The amount of thought and work that has gone into this series, on multiple levels, is truly impressive. They're just so intelligently written.
Overall, Rhythm of War is a strong addition to the STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE and, for the first time, it feels like there’s an end in sight to the series, however distant it may be. If I have any real complaints, it’s that the immense length of these books doesn’t feel entirely justified to me; I tend to think that Sanderson could have edited them down by, say, three or four hundred pages without really taking anything material away from the experience. Still, the STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE is easily my favorite series of epic fantasy to date (yes, I have in fact read a few others). Being introduced to these characters and this world has been an illuminating and enjoyable experience, and I look forward to the STORMLIGHT books still to come.
Initial post: ARC received from the publisher!
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Also I have had to sign my life away if I violate the NDA, so my lips are sealed until November. ;)...more
The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful… [N]o matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.
So Adeline LaRue has been told by Estelle, the old woman who lives in her small French village, but Addie has never been good at following the rules. Unlike her friend Isabelle, she dreams of freedom rather than settling down with a husband and children. She evades matrimony until she is 23, far past the normal age of marriage in rural France in 1714, but then the jig is up: her parents order her to marry the unappealing man (to be fair, Addie hasn’t found any man appealing) whose wife recently died in childbirth and who now needs a mother for his three children.
Addie calls on whatever gods might listen, and doesn’t notice — and barely cares when she does notice — that day is gone and it is now dark. She is desperate not to be tied down to a man she hardly knows and saddled with his children, so she agrees to give her soul to the dark figure who appears to her, as soon as she is done with her life and “doesn’t want it any more.” And suddenly, she’s at liberty, only minutes before her planned wedding.
The catch is that the darkness, as she calls this ancient god or devil, has given the monkey’s paw treatment to Addie’s wish to be free and not belong to anyone else. Now no one, even her parents, remembers her at all. Anyone who sees her will completely forget her as soon as a door closes between them. Out of sight is literally out of mind. And many more ramifications, as Addie begins to explore the boundaries of her ill-thought-out deal. She has all the time in the world to do so — she no longer ages either. The lack of real human connection almost brings her down.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue shifts between Addie’s life in modern New York City and flashbacks to her past, as she navigates her way through the years. The cruel dark god, whom she eventually names “Luc,” checks in with her occasionally, cheerfully admitting that it was in his best interest to make her new life unpleasant. Still, he’s the only one who remembers Addie … until she meets Henry Strauss in 2014, who recognizes her even after she’s walked out of his bookstore (and his line of sight) with a stolen book.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a fascinating twist on the “sell your soul to the devil” theme. V.E. Schwab examines the day-to-day effect that such a bargain would have on your life, as Addie explores all the nooks and crannies of her curse, searching out ways to avoid the worst of its effects.
She will learn in time that she can lie, and the words will flow like wine, easily poured, easily swallowed. But the truth will always stop at the end of her tongue. Her story silenced for all but herself.
Addie gradually learns to find some sense of safety and even the limited companionship of others, though ephemeral. But always, always there’s the fact that no one will ever remember her once she’s out of their sight for even a moment. When she meets Henry, with his inexplicable ability to remember her for more than a day, a powerful connection quickly develops between them. But is it another curse, or a blessing?
The pacing was pretty languid for the first quarter of the book or so, as Addie struggles to come to terms with her new life in eighteenth century France, and (in other chapters) rather aimlessly meanders around twenty-first century New York. But Addie’s stubborn determination is winning, and it’s interesting to see the ways she finds to deal with her restrictions. More importantly, Schwab’s evocative writing is stellar, laden with lovely imagery, symbolism and deeper meanings.
Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines.
At the beginning of each section of the book, there are intermittent pages with line drawings and detailed descriptions of valuable works of art. Schwab’s purpose in including them is initially unclear, but eventually it becomes apparent just how much these artworks illuminate Addie’s story. And although I’m not entirely on board with the meta aspects of the ending, it’s otherwise a killer ending that first had tears running down my face and then made my jaw drop.
There’s an explicitly feminist theme running through the pages of this book, showing the need for the power of choosing and forging your own life’s path, and the importance of being truly heard and remembered. But it’s also about love and its different facets. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue balances darkness and light, deep despair and hopefulness. It’s a marvelous achievement.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!...more
In Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark melds two types of horror, Lovecraftian monsters and the bloody r4+ stars. Review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
In Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark melds two types of horror, Lovecraftian monsters and the bloody rise of the Ku Klux Klan in 1922 Georgia, as a group of black resistance fighters take on an enemy with frightening supernatural powers.
As Ku Klux Klan members march down the streets of Macon, Georgia on the Fourth of July, Maryse Boudreaux, who narrates the story, watches from a rooftop with her two companions, sharpshooter Sadie and former soldier Cordelia “Chef” Lawrence, a bomb expert. They’ve baited a trap for the “Ku Kluxes,” who are hellish demons that hide in disguise among the Klan humans, taking over the bodies of the worst of them. The trap works, but the silver pellets and iron slags contained in the bomb aren’t enough to kill the three monsters that rise out of the wreckage and their human outer veneers. It takes more to kill a Ku Klux.
Since The Birth of a Nation had come out seven years earlier, in 1915, susceptible white folk surrendered to the spell of hatred woven by the groundbreaking silent film with its message of white supremacy and KKK heroism, lending manpower to the KKK and spiritual power to evil demons. Now The Birth of a Nation is getting a grand rerelease at Stone Mountain, a Georgia park honoring the Confederacy, in a few days. The spirits that frequently commune with Maryse let her know that this will cause a massive rise of evil and hatred, a rift that the demonic powers can use to fully inhabit and take over our world.
Ring Shout is little hard to wade through at times, with lots of idiomatic speech. Otherwise, though, this is powerful stuff. H.P. Lovecraft’s eldritch monsters and, more, his infamous racism lend themselves well to a plot centered on the infiltration of the KKK — and from there, our world — by unearthly, destructive powers that use our weaknesses against us. Opposing them are lively, earthy blacks and their sympathizers, many of whom have their own supernatural connections, primarily arising out of African traditions and folklore. Among these are Maryse’s magical sword and the Ring Shout, a ritual gathering involving song and dance. It’s “about surviving slavery times, praying for freedom, and calling on God to end that wickedness.”
Clark’s novella also points out the seductive power of hatred and rage, and how they can twist good to bad. “A righteous anger and a cry for justice,” Maryse realizes, aren’t the same thing at all as hate.
These monsters want to pervert that. Turn it to their own ends. Because that’s what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself. Make you into something like them.
In Ring Shout, Clark deftly uses a historical and fantastical setting, characters and motifs to create a novella that’s both timeless and timely, with a powerful message for all.
3.5ish stars. Kitty Norville is a werewolf radio disk jockey who is, in my mind at least, kind of like Mercy Thompson's and Kate Daniels' less well-kn3.5ish stars. Kitty Norville is a werewolf radio disk jockey who is, in my mind at least, kind of like Mercy Thompson's and Kate Daniels' less well-known little sister, which is a little unfair to Kitty since her first book predates both of the others'. But they all inhabit comparable urban fantasy worlds with werewolves, vampires and other magical goings-on. Kitty's world just never grabbed me quite as much as the others.
Kitty's Mix Tape is a collection of short stories set in this world, Carrie Vaughn's way of wrapping up the 16- book Kitty Norville series. Some of the stories are odd and ends (the two blue moon short shorts were kind of head-scratchers) or slice-of-life types of stories. Several of them star secondary characters from the series, like Rick the vampire master. There are some definite 4-star level stories in the mix here: I especially enjoyed "The Beaux Wilde," a Regency-era tale about a lonely young woman who's an empath and three "Wilde" brothers who unexpectedly move into the neighborhood, and "Defining Shadows," about Detective Jessi Hardin's efforts to solve a gruesome magical crime.
Full review to come. Thanks to Tachyon and NetGalley for the ARC!...more
The mindbending adventures of the necromancers continue! Full review, first posted on www.FantasyLiterature.com (along with 3 others from my co-reviewThe mindbending adventures of the necromancers continue! Full review, first posted on www.FantasyLiterature.com (along with 3 others from my co-reviewers there!):
Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to the Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated fantasy Gideon the Ninth, is incredibly ambitious, decidedly wordy, and highly confusing for about three-quarters of the book, at which point Tamsyn Muir (finally!) begins to gradually pull back the curtains.
Harrowhark, the heir of the declining Ninth House, a talented necromancer, and Gideon’s frenemy, has left the planet of Canaan House in the company of the Emperor (aka “God”) and his few remaining elite necromancer warriors called Lyctors, including Ianthe from Gideon the Ninth. As they travel toward an impossible-to-win war with a Resurrection Beast and its hordes of giant insectoid soldiers called Heralds, Harrow navigates a complex web of conspiracies and not knowing for certain who is on her side and who wants her dead.
On top of that, Harrow is struggling with a slower-than-usual process of attaining her full powers as a Lyctor, along with a mental illness that seems to be warping her view of reality. The first clue that all is not as it seems: As Harrow recalls the events at Canaan House, she remembers her cavalier as being not Gideon, but her original Ninth House cavalier Ortus … who reportedly had died in a spaceship bombing many months ago. In what may not be entirely a coincidence, one of the Lyctors who makes a regular play at assassinating Harrow — though it’s possible he’s just trying to put her out of her misery — is also named Ortus.
Most of Harrow the Ninth alternates chapters between Harrow’s travels and interactions with the God-Emperor and other Lyctors, which are told in second person POV (for what is actually a very good reason, made clear much later in the book), and a peculiar retelling, told in third person, of Harrow’s experiences at Canaan House, … peculiar because these past events play out so differently in this retelling. What is reality? (And, just to make matters more interesting, there are several chapters told in first person POV at the end.)
It’s been about five months since I read Gideon the Ninth, and if I had known when I started Harrow what I know now, I would’ve stolen Gideon back from one of my kids and at least reread the last 50 or so pages and refamiliarized myself with the characters, including the ones I thought were dead and gone (see above re: altered retelling of events at Canaan House).
Harrow the Ninth is both fascinating and frustrating, and it often made my brain hurt. Most of it was a difficult and opaque read because Muir is deliberately hiding the ball on so much from the reader for so long, and I’m a reader who thrives on understanding the overall context and scheme of a novel. Some mystery is good, but I felt that the confusing section (which is about the first 350 pages) should have been trimmed down by about a hundred pages.
On the positive side, Muir is unquestionably a talented author with a gift for words, and her prose was often a joy to read even when it wasn’t at all clear what was going on.
Then everything changed, forever. Harrowhark fell in love.
“Falling” was not the right term, precisely. It was a long process. She more correctly climbed down into love, picked its locks, opened its gates, and breached its inner chamber.
I also still love the interplay between fantasy and SF in these books, where necromantic magic takes places in a rather decrepit science fictional setting. The last 150 pages were excellent and truly enjoyable: they’re action-packed and, more importantly, some of the key questions raised in this series are finally answered (though, fair warning, Muir replaces those with several new questions). And clearly both of these first two LOCKED TOMB books would benefit from a reread. Time permitting, I’ll do that before I tackle the upcoming third book, Alecto the Ninth.
If you loved Gideon the Ninth I’d definitely recommend Harrow the Ninth, despite its challenges; if you weren’t a big fan of the first book, I’d probably give this one a pass.
On sale this week! 4+ stars, maybe even 4.5. Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com (along with my co-reviewers' Jana and Kelly's additioOn sale this week! 4+ stars, maybe even 4.5. Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com (along with my co-reviewers' Jana and Kelly's additional reviews, which are well worth reading!):
Dr. Evelyn Caldwell is a geneticist specializing in cloning, at the pinnacle of her career: The Echo Wife begins with a banquet at which she is given a prestigious award. At the same time, Evelyn is at a low point in her personal life. She’s a prickly loner and a workaholic, and her husband Nathan has recently left her for another woman. What makes matters far worse is that Nathan, a far less brilliant scientist than Evelyn, has stolen Evelyn’s research to clone Evelyn herself to grow himself a new wife, Martine, using programming methods to make Martine a softer, more submissive version of Evelyn. Nathan even finds a way around the sterility built into the foundation of the cloning process. Martine is pregnant, while Evelyn had adamantly refused to have a child in the earlier days of her marriage to Nathan.
So Evelyn lashes out at Martine, using her cruelest words, and it raises enough questions in Martine’s mind that later that evening she asks Nathan whether he cares what she wants for herself. In the resulting violent fight between Nathan and Martine, Nathan ends up dead. Martine has no one to turn to but Evelyn, and Evelyn reluctantly helps because her entire career could be torpedoed if the truth about Martine comes out. So between them they clean up the mess and bury Nathan’s body, but now there’s a new problem: how are they going to explain Nathan’s disappearance? Well, Evelyn is the world’s foremost expert in cloning …
On one level, Sarah Gailey’s The Echo Wife is a science fiction thriller, a compelling read that kept me glued to my chair until far into the night. There are some shocking but logical plot twists, and unnerving disclosures about all of the main characters. Flashbacks to Evelyn’s childhood, especially her interactions with her intellectually gifted but abusive father, help to show why she’s developed into a cold, career-obsessed person with a venomous tongue. It also becomes apparent to Evelyn that, though she was fully aware of Nathan’s tendency to cut corners, she never really knew who he was. Meanwhile, Martine is struggling with many of the limitations that Nathan has programmed into her, and Evelyn isn’t sure whether to be pleased or alarmed when Martine is able to bypass her conditioning.
The soft science fictional aspects of The Echo Wife are the weakest part of the plot. Conveniently, Evelyn’s cloning technology allows her to create a fully adult clone in a hundred days, one that is physically indistinguishable from the person who was cloned … at least, after some physical “conditioning” is done on the clone’s body to give it the scars, broken bones, etc. to match the original person. (Evelyn takes an unholy amount of pleasure in conditioning the Nathan clone’s body and having Martine participate in that process.)
Previous recordings taken of the original person’s brain — again, it’s suspiciously opportune that Evelyn has an older recording of Nathan’s brain — are sufficient to implant a full set of memories into the clone’s brain, including physical abilities that one might think would take a clone much longer to master, but somehow at the same time the scientist is able to modify those recordings to emphasize certain personality traits and memories and remove others. Gailey tosses around a few scientific phrases like “telomere financing” and “cognitive mapping,” but still, there’s an awful lot of handwaving surrounding the science and methodologies of cloning.
What does strike me as brilliant, however, are the psychological aspects of The Echo Wife. The main characters, as mentioned above, are all deeply flawed, but their shortcomings as well as their positive personality traits make them fascinating and multilayered personalities. There are also larger themes and issues woven into the story. The humanity and human rights of clones are one key element: Clones are viewed by Evelyn and the world generally as mere “specimens,” disposable for any or no reason (and in fact they are almost always disposed of after a few months), despite the fact that they are living, intelligent beings. But the more Evelyn gets to know Martine, the less she is able to rationalize this worldview … and yet so much of her career depends on it.
Another message, perhaps more subtle, concerns patriarchy and its evils, displayed by both Nathan, who blithely disposes of women who don’t meet his needs, and by Evelyn’s father, who physically abuses females who don’t obey him ... and even(view spoiler)[, in the end, by Evelyn herself. "I am not a monster" she insists ... but, isn't she, at least a little? As one of my co-reviewers on FanLit so astutely pointed out: "The way [Evelyn] fought so hard against becoming her browbeaten mother, only to find herself exhibiting characteristics of her abusive father instead, was believable and chilling. So, too, was the ease with which she slipped into taking Martine’s programmed domestic tendencies for granted, because, of course, life is so much easier when you have someone taking care of the home for you." Brilliant insight - and of course that calls back to the book's title, and also explains why the ending is disturbing. (hide spoiler)]
When I first read The Echo Wife, I was caught up in the suspense aspect of the novel and the twists of the plot. On my second read, I found it equally gripping, but for completely different reasons, more connected to the themes and the internal struggles and psyches of Evelyn and Martine. It’s an unusual, thoughtful and unsettling thriller, well worth the read.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the free review copy!
Update #1: Rereading because I should’ve written my review back when I first read this about six months ago, and I didn’t... it’s more twisty than I remembered, and the characters are really interesting!
The Witness for the Dead is the long-hoped-for sequel to Katherine Addison’s marvelous and unusual 2014 fantasy, The Goblin Emperor, in which we met Maia, a half-goblin, half-elf young man who unexpectedly inherited the throne of the elf kingdom when his father, the emperor, was killed along with his brothers in an airship explosion. Thara Celehar, an elven prelate and a Witness for the Dead, was a minor character in that novel who investigated the airship accident at Maia’s request and eventually was able to unearth the truth of why it occurred.
The Witness for the Dead is more of a companion novel set in the same world, rather than a direct sequel, so it can be read as a stand-alone book, but it’ll give you a better grounding in this world if you read The Goblin Emperor first. This book picks up with Thara’s life some time after he has left the elven court, leaving behind a slight cloud of scandal — Thara is gay, and his married lover was executed for murdering his own wife. Thara has now moved to the city of Amalo and taken up his calling again as a Witness for the Dead.
A Witness for the Dead wears several hats, including murder investigator, priest and funeral director, but Thara also has the unusual magical ability to touch a dead body and sense memories and impressions from the spirit of the person who died. When a woman’s body is pulled out of the canal in Amalo, Celehar is asked to investigate to find out who she is — which doesn’t take too long — and who killed her and why, which is far more difficult to determine. For one thing, her bones aren’t telling Thara anything really useful, so he has to rely on other, more mundane investigative methods. For another, the woman was an opera singer who had an unfortunate habit of making an enemy of nearly everyone around her. One of her enemies is the in-house composer for the Vermilion Opera, Mer Pel-Thenhior, to whom Celehar is rather reluctantly attracted.
There are a couple of other interesting subplots that help to liven up this murder mystery novel. One involves a missing pregnant woman whose family believes that her husband killed her, eventually leading to a trail of questionable deaths. The other subplot concerns the wealthy Duhalin family whose patriarch has died, leaving behind some greedy heirs who are disputing which of two wills is the real one and which is the forgery. When Celehar announces his finding, based on touching the grandfather’s cremated ashes, it has repercussions for him as well as for the Duhalin family members.
To try to avoid the resulting trouble, Celehar is packed out of town and told to take care of a ghoul problem in a small mining town two days’ journey away. Ghouls start out eating dead meat but sooner or later switch to killing and eating the living. Celehar’s talents include the ability to quiet and rebury ghouls (more permanently the second time around), but the journey turns out far more exciting and dangerous than he expected.
Actually I found both of these subplots more intriguing than the main plotline. The opera singer’s scandalous ways couldn’t quite make up for the plodding nature of Celahar’s investigation. The main beauty of The Witness for the Dead isn’t in the main murder mystery plot, which is serviceable but not particularly memorable, but in Addison’s extraordinarily fine world- and character-building.
Like The Goblin Emperor, The Witness for the Dead is somewhat slow-paced but lovely in its detailed world-building. Addison has created a richly-imagined, steampunk-flavored fantasy world, slightly touched by magic, and brimful with vivid, realistic details, like stray cats that impatiently wait for handouts and teahouses with fragrant, exotic offerings. There’s a wide variety of skin tones and eye colors, especially due to the mixing between goblins and elves, which is far more prevalent here than in Maia’s court.
Addison’s characters are well-rounded and realistic. Thara Celehar is a particularly complex soul: he’s humble and shy, tending toward melancholy and isolation, and on the edge of poverty. At the same time, he’s a decent, kindhearted man who’s resolutely determined to be honest and to do his duty, even in the face of daunting opposition. He’s also rather awkward and ill-at-ease with others, even with the charming part-goblin Pel-Thenhior … who is, unfortunately for Thara, one of the chief suspects in the opera singer’s murder.
The Witness for the Dead isn’t as brilliant or delightful as The Goblin Emperor (few books are), but it’s still well worth reading if you were a fan of that book and have been longing to return to that world. If Addison writes more stories or novels set in this world, I’ll definitely be there for them.
3.5 stars. Now on sale! Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a surprisingly warmhearted fa3.5 stars. Now on sale! Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a surprisingly warmhearted fantasy novella set in a war-torn Asian country. It’s a queer take on wuxia, a time-honored genre of Chinese fiction based on heroes skilled in the martial arts, frequently in superhuman, fantastical ways (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or even Kung Fu Panda).
One day, in a small coffeehouse, a customer angrily accuses his waitress of using jampi witchcraft on him. The quarrel degenerates, a handsome bandit intervenes, dishes fly, daggers are pulled. In the aftermath, the waitress, Guet Imm, gets fired from her job and tracks down the bandit’s gang in their camp outside of town, and somehow convinces the bandits’ leader to let her join their group, promising help with cooking and cleaning. Guet Imm is a former nun with a shaved head from a burnt-out tokong. She’s not much of a cook … in fact, she can’t cook at all, nor will she sleep with the men (it would require a cleansing sacrifice to her goddess, in the form of chopping off their dicks). She does, however, manage to “part the men from their filthy clothes and launder them, in the teeth of the men’s appalled resistance.”
After a somewhat rocky start, Guet Imm becomes friends with one of the bandits, Tet Sang, who is the right-hand man of the handsome leader of the bandits. But trouble is brewing, and it has to do with something secret that the roving bandits are planning to sell, as well as personal secrets that some of the characters are keeping.
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is set in the pre-industrial era, in a period called the Protectorate, in an mythical Asian country that, according to Cho’s website, “draws on both the semi-mythic China of wuxia and the Malaya of the Emergency.” Zen Cho, a Chinese Malaysian author, frequently uses Malay names and words in this novella, like tokong (a Malay temple), jampi (incantation or spell) and pahala (reward). Though the setting is a mix of cultures, it feels cohesive and organic to the plot.
The story focuses on Guet Imm and Tet Sang. While Tet Sang may be concealing the bigger secrets, Guet Imm is, I think, the heart of the tale. She combines wide-eyed earnestness with a sarcastic sense of humor, and a serene and profound faith in her deity with a canny understanding of human nature. Cho’s dryly humorous prose lends itself well to the affectionate bickering between the characters.
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a pleasant read, more understated and tranquil than one might expect from a story about a group of bandits and stolen treasure that’s set in the midst of political turmoil. It’s more about interpersonal relationships and finding oneself and one’s family, than heart-pounding adventure and martial arts fighting, although there’s some of that as well. Zen Cho knows both wuxia traditions and Asian history and culture, and that shines through. I’d recommend it if you’re a fan of either wuxia or queer fantasy.
Over the Woodward Wall began its life as an imagined book, existing merely as a set of excerpts “quoted” at the end of certain chapters in Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame. But these excerpts were compelling enough that McGuire decided to use them as the building blocks for an actual fantasy series, using the pseudonym A. Deborah Baker (the alchemist credited with authoring this book in Middlegame).
Avery and Hepzibah (“Zib”) are two “very different, very ordinary” children who live on the same ordinary street but don’t know each other at all. They’re as far apart as A and Z in their personalities: Zib is free-spirited and adventurous, with a mass of frizzy, untamed hair; Avery is cautious, neat and sensible. One morning, on their walk to school, they find themselves faced with a stone wall that blocks their way. When they climb to the top of the wall, their town disappears and they find themselves in a strange, fantastical land, the Up-and-Under, filled with even stranger creatures. Immense candy-colored owls speak to them; a girl breaks up into crows and then reforms.
A boulder unfolds into a man and advises Avery and Zib to follow the Improbable Road to the Impossible City, and ask the Queen of Wands there to help them get home. There’s both wild adventure and deadly danger before them, and they’ll need each other to get back to their home world. But they need to escape the dangers of this world, and especially keep out of the clutches of the cruel Page of Frozen Waters and her master, the King of Cups.
There’s a sense of familiarity to Over the Woodward Wall, and it’s not just from the excerpts that appeared in Middlegame, which McGuire has woven into the text of this book. The parallels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are obvious, and the story has the same episodic, meandering plot, though the actual details are different and the dangers are more pressing. Stylistically it fits in more with McGuire’s WAYWARD CHILDREN series, where children wander through a magical portal into a fantasy world that follows an unfamiliar set of rules. The wise and insightful omniscient narrator, a voice that McGuire uses to such good effect in her WAYWARD CHILDREN books, also makes an appearance here.
Over the Woodward Wall was referenced in Middlegame as the basis for a completely different worldview, one that L. Frank Baum was intentionally diverting readers away from when he wrote his OZ books. In that sense, Middlegame set up expectations that Woodward Wall doesn’t quite live up to, at least in this first book of the UP-AND-UNDER series. I have to admit I expected something more from Woodward Wall based on the groundwork laid in Middlegame. Middlegame was mind-blowing and wildly creative; Over the Woodward Wall, despite its fantastical Oz-like setting, is somewhat mundane in comparison, never rising to the same imaginative heights.
Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable and whimsical fantasy portal tale, with the perceptive narrative voice doing most of the heaving lifting in making this story better than your standard run-of-the-mill fantasy adventure. The reader can see Zib and Avery begin to subtly change as a result of their growing friendship and their frequently life-threatening escapades, with Zib learning that all adventures aren’t wondrous and delightful, and Avery learning that he can be more courageous and daring than he would have guessed. Perhaps they’ll meet in the middle of the alphabet by the time they make their way out of the Up-and-Under.
Over the Woodward Wall ends mid-tale: it’s not quite a cliff-hanger, but the overall story arc is clearly unfinished. The adventures of Avery and Zib in the Up-and-Under are just beginning.
I received a free ebook for review through NetGalley. Thanks!
Original post: This is a companion book to Middlegame and I am SO interested to see what she does with it! I may just have to read Middlegame again....more
The spooky adventures of Lucy and Oliver Tinker continue in The Alchemist’s Shadow, a sequel to last Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
The spooky adventures of Lucy and Oliver Tinker continue in The Alchemist’s Shadow, a sequel to last year’s middle-grade haunted house novel by Gregory Funaro, Watch Hollow. The Tinker family — 11-year-old Lucy, 12-year-old Oliver, and their father — are settling in at the rural Rhode Island mansion, Blackford House, where they vanquished a supernatural foe in Watch Hollow. The Tinkers, originally the caretakers of Blackford House, now own the home, complete with its enormous clock that magically powers the house. At least, the Tinkers thought they owned the house, until the orphaned 12-year-old part-Japanese Kojima twins, Agatha and Algernon, show up with their British governess to take up residence, claiming that they’re the rightful heirs to the prior owner.
That’s bad enough, but within a day or so a terrifying minotaur-like monster appears in their beloved house, the twins’ governess disappears (killed by the monster, the children suspect) and the house itself begins to gradually transform into a labyrinth. After all, as Agatha observes, what’s a labyrinth without a Minotaur? Brick and wooden walls turn to grayish stone and seal off passageways, trapping the children in dangerous situations. Lucy and Oliver reluctantly realize that they’ll need the help of the twins to escape the new dangers that threaten to destroy their treasured magical house … and perhaps even them.
The Alchemist’s Shadow is a suspenseful, fast-paced story, if not quite as charming as the first book. The appealing carved wooden animals who form a part of the house’s magic clock, and who come to life, move and talk under the right (magical) conditions, play a lesser role in this sequel. The plot is a little disjointed and jumpy and doesn’t always make complete sense, like when the children decide to split their group apart in the now-haunted and monster-infested house. It felt like a horror film with teenagers inexplicably going off on their own when a killer’s on the loose. Still, there’s a lot to be said for scenes like the dining room chairs sprouting eyes and jagged teeth and chasing the kids around like a pack of wild dogs.
The children in The Alchemist’s Shadow include a couple of particularly memorable characters. Lucy is deeply devoted to her wooden clock animal friends. She’s impulsive, excitable, and struggles with making friends in her new town and getting along with other kids. Algernon doesn’t speak at all, due to the past trauma of losing his parents in a car accident. He always carries around a sinister-looking marionette called Samurai Kenzo, or Kenny. Lucy, steeped in the magical atmosphere of Blackford House, is convinced that Kenny is watching her and planning some evil.
Younger readers who like exciting, creepy tales should enjoy The Alchemist’s Shadow. It’s scary, but shouldn’t be too intense for all but the most sensitive middle-grade readers. There’s a heartwarming message of love and unselfishness that wraps up the story, along with a last-minute twist that opens the door for the next book in this series.
I received a free review copy from the author. Thank you!...more
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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