At about a hundred pages (readers of this book will know why) in I was seriously contemplating the wisdom of my life choices and thinking I had made aAt about a hundred pages (readers of this book will know why) in I was seriously contemplating the wisdom of my life choices and thinking I had made a really bad call with this fantasy novel. I thought hard about bailing, but there are So.Many. very enthusiastic reviews that I decided to persevere.
And as you can see, I was won over by the end - I love the twists and turns and the wheels within wheels within wheels. But seriously, this is hardcore gruesome in parts and I can't recommend it to readers who are at all sensitive about child abuse, animal deaths and widespread mayhem and murder. Though murder isn't always what it seems here. :)
Evie Thomas, a high school senior, is so distressed by her father's cheating on her mother, and their subsequent divorce and his pending remarriage toEvie Thomas, a high school senior, is so distressed by her father's cheating on her mother, and their subsequent divorce and his pending remarriage to his affair partner, that she's soured on the whole idea of love. She even empties her bookshelves of all her very favorite romances, giving them away to the library and a Little Free Library box.
But the old woman who owns the Little Free Library gives her the gift of another book, called Instructions for Dancing, that leads Evie to a dance studio and, possibly, a chance at love. Frankly, she's not even looking for love, but the dance studio really wants her to join this amateur competition coming up.
And Evie has also suddenly developed a magical ability (not really a spoiler since this is in book's blurb and in the first 20 pages) to see a vision of a couple's most important past and future moments when she sees them kiss. The problem is, this magical ability is causing Evie more distress rather than less. It seems like every vision she sees shows the relationship ending sadly, even with heartbreak. It just confirms everything she thinks her dad's betrayal of her family has taught her.
This YA contemporary romance, set in our world with a dash of Zoltar-type fantasy (the characters even talk about the movie Big), has some surprising depth and heart, and some important things to say about love. But don’t go into it expecting all sweetness and light. Tears were shed, I’m just saying.
Nicola Yoon has a really delightful style of writing, with some quirky in-between chapters that give us insights into Evie's mind. The author's afterword also gives you some fascinating but painful insights into what was going on in Yoon's life that helped inspire this book. Diversity representation here: The main characters are black, and two of Evie's best friends are gay.
Minus points for giving Evie’s cheating father and the other woman too much of a pass in the end. I’m not saying she shouldn’t forgive him, I’m saying, don’t justify cheating. It’s a non-starter for me.
This is the second of the three Pride & Prejudice fanfics I indulged in last week. Another kind of odd one, but in a far different way, since this oneThis is the second of the three Pride & Prejudice fanfics I indulged in last week. Another kind of odd one, but in a far different way, since this one involves Elizabeth and Darcy having powerful magical abilities that are vital in England’s war with France. For the kind of magic they do, it's important to do it in pairs, with a magical Bonding. And this being Regency times, for an opposite sex Bonding, because of all the time the pair spends together, they need to be married. Yes, it's marriage of convenience time!
Elizabeth and Darcy do their typical "enemies to friends" thing. The big problem is that Elizabeth's magical training has been very unconventional, and maybe because of that or maybe for other reasons, the two of them can't magically bond. In fact, their magic seems to cancel each other out. Not a great thing when you're in the middle of mage wars with France.
Except for a couple of short scenes in Longbourn, this whole novel is set in the Mage Hall where Britain's war mages mostly live and train. And that leads me to my main issue with this novel: there's just really no good reason for this to be based on the P&P story and characters (other than that it probably catches the attention of Austen fans, so you sell more copies?). The plot is completely different in every conceivable way, and the characters ... well, if they didn't have the same names as the P&P characters, nothing in their behavior or in the story generally would have clued me into the fact that this is JAFF.
So as a fantasy novel (first in a series, apparently, though this works reasonably well as a standalone read) it's not bad. Not great either, but not bad. Just not reminiscent of P&P in any meaningful way....more
Spiderlight is a fantasy quest that starts out with a strong Dungeons & Dragons/Lord of the Rings type of feel ... except, more spiders. GIANT spidersSpiderlight is a fantasy quest that starts out with a strong Dungeons & Dragons/Lord of the Rings type of feel ... except, more spiders. GIANT spiders. Shelob-type spiders.
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Battling the Mordor-type nest of spiders are a group of adventurers, led by a priestess of light. They're looking to force the spiders to give them two things that will help them in their quest to defeat the otherwise unbeatable Dark Lord: a fang of the spider queen and help in finding a Secret Spider Path to the Dark Lord's castle in the heart of his dark realm. Getting the fang is relatively easy. Help to find the path ... well, that turns out to require that one of the spider gang, Nth, go with them. The group's magician kinda/sorta turns Nth into a humanoid being, you know, for communication purposes, and also probably so they don't have to worry about hauling a giant spider around the country with them.
It all feels familiar at first, although (hello: Adrian Tchaikovsky) rather better written than your run of the mill fantasy quest story. But since this is Tchaikovsky (and based on some GR friends' reviews) I was pretty certain that the author had something up his sleeve. I kept expecting the narrative to jump to a bunch of role-playing humans.
And there was a surprise. Just, not what I expected.
Interesting story with great and very flawed characters....more
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
In the 2020 portal fantasy Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker (a pseudonym for the prolific Seanan McGuire), two children, Avery and Zib, climbed a granite wall that had inexplicably appeared in the road and were transported to a magical world, the Up-and-Under. It’s much like the land of Oz but with far sharper teeth, and Avery and Zib are anxious to find their way home to our world. They are told to follow the improbable road to the Impossible City, and there ask the Queen of Wands for help getting home.
Following the improbable road is easier said than done, with mudslides, dangerous rulers, and misunderstandings and hurt feelings hindering their path. Worse yet, the Queen of Wands has disappeared, upsetting the balance of power and endangering the entire Up-and-Under. But along with the dangers there are new friends, like the brave Crow Girl and Niamh, a drowned girl from a city beneath the sea ice, not to mention Avery and Zib’s growing friendship for each other.
As Along the Saltwise Sea begins (after a long introductory chapter that recaps the first book), Avery, Zib, the Crow Girl and Niamh, bedraggled and footsore from walking the improbable road for so long, drink from a well of water and then, for no particularly good reason, tumble down to the bottom of the well. Some helpful kelp (at least Niamh calls it helpful; the children aren’t so sure) pulls them underwater and eventually to a cave that leads — after another too-long walk — to a beach and an empty cottage. It would certainly be too much to expect the exhausted children to pass up the chance to sleep in a clean, comfortable bed.
When a ship appears the next morning, captained by the owner of the cottage, our uninvited guests find they have a debt to pay off to the pirate queen, Captain Alas. As members of her crew on the ship Windchaser for the next week, they sail off toward more adventures and, hopefully, toward their goal of finding their way home. But there are storms and dangers at sea, and on the ship there’s a narrow staircase that appears and disappears, and a tattered, underfed woman locked behind a door at the top of the stairs, who nobody on the ship wants to talk about.
Along the Saltwise Sea is the second book in THE UP-AND-UNDER series and, like many second books in a series, suffers from Middle Book Syndrome. The ongoing story of Zib and Avery’s journey is pleasant and occasionally even exciting, and sailing on the Saltwise Sea in a pirate ship makes for a nice change of pace from walking the improbable road. But in the end, little forward plot movement actually happens in this book.
If you enjoyed Over the Woodward Wall and are agreeable to more magical adventures that don’t as yet have an ending in sight, you’ll like Along the Saltwise Sea too. The wise, perceptive narrator is still narrating insightfully — I do very much enjoy the nuggets of truth that are strewn along the path. And the characters are appealing even when (and perhaps even especially when) they’re afraid and lash out at each other. Avery and Zib are on a long quest here, both physically and in their personal growth, and for now the reader needs to just relax and enjoy the journey.
I've been a fan of Shannon Hale for years, ever since reading The Goose Girl and Princess Academy, not to mention the romantic comedy Austenland, so II've been a fan of Shannon Hale for years, ever since reading The Goose Girl and Princess Academy, not to mention the romantic comedy Austenland, so I try to check out almost everything she writes. But I had some trouble getting into this one at first and set it aside for about a year. It's different - low fantasy rather than high - and the main character is very lost at first. Once I finally decided to just read it, though, I thought it was excellent!
Josie is a high school senior, an excellent singer who dropped out of school to pursue her big dream of being on Broadway. It didn't work out. She ended up staying in New York several months to try to make it work, going deep into credit card debt and ashamed of where she's ended up. Now she's a nanny for a 4 or 5 year old girl in Missoula, Montana, whose divorced mom travels most of the time, and trying to pay back her debt without her mother finding out.
An intriguing bookseller loans Josie a few books and she ends up getting lost in these stories ... literally: sinking into a dream world where she's the main character. It's more fun and fulfilling than her real life. And then there's Josie's struggles to figure out where her relationships are at with her high school boyfriend and her queer best friend. What to do?
Josie's angst and poor choices were a little much for me at first (the reason I set this book aside for months) but once the plot gets rolling it's fascinating, an unusual low fantasy novel with some really great insights into life and friendship. Recommended for people who like YA coming-of-age novels with a touch of fantasy.
Full review to come! Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC....more
4.5 stars. This is such a fun, fascinating mashup of a murder mystery, humorous boy-band dynamics and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The boy band here is a4.5 stars. This is such a fun, fascinating mashup of a murder mystery, humorous boy-band dynamics and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The boy band here is a group of five half-human, half-animal young men, all with very different personalities and quirks. The murder victim is their overbearing band manager, who's found clawed to death after a party in a hotel where lots of people were high and/or drunk. He was a truly awful person that lots of people wouldn't mind seeing dead. Everyone's a suspect!
Daryl Gregory is brilliant when he's on. Half a star off because the science fiction parts are so totally unbelievable; you just kind of have to roll with it. But it's otherwise a very smart, funny book with some great personalities and a solid murder plot to back it up.
Full review to come! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy of the ebook.
Content advisory: Sex, drugs, some gore, and F-bombs litter the pages like confetti. I still got a kick out of it. ...more
3.5 stars. I was chatting with one of my Goodreads friends the other day about Charlaine Harris's older books, which led me to Sookie Stackhouse #1 he3.5 stars. I was chatting with one of my Goodreads friends the other day about Charlaine Harris's older books, which led me to Sookie Stackhouse #1 here. When I realized the Kindle version of this book was only $2.99, I couldn't resist. This urban fantasy series features Sookie, a rural southern gal who waits tables in a bar for a living and considers her telepathy talent a "disability." In fairness, hearing people's thoughts does makes life tougher for her, and forget about romantic relationships.
Sookie is thrilled to meet a real vampire in the bar one night (they're recently come out to the public), and even more excited when she starts talking to Bill (Bill the Vampire? Okayyy...) and realizes that she can't read his mind. But she can see when he's about to run into some possibly deadly trouble, and takes it upon herself to save Bill ... which gets her into trouble herself, so Bill has to save her in turn, and so it starts. In the meantime, someone is killing women who sleep with vampires, and unfortunately Sookie's telepathy isn't doing her any good here. Also all of a sudden Sookie's boss Sam is acting interested in her ("Why now after all this time?" she insightfully asks him). There's something different about Sam too, and it's not just the bedroom eyes he's giving her.
It's kind of similar to Twilight (this book does predate that one by about three years), but with a lot more steam and a much less silly heroine. There are some pretty good scenes in it: "Bubba" the vampire was amusing, and Eric the Viking vampire was appropriately alarming. Sookie was a real character to me, but Bill felt rather flat.
Basically this is kind of an urban fantasy beach book, a supernatural southern murder mystery with a large side of romance. I prefer Kate Daniels and Mercy Thompson, but if this kind of thing is your literary jam, you could do a lot worse. I think I'll pass on the rest of the series, though....more
A warmhearted fable of love, acceptance and found family for our time. Review first posted on www.FantasyLiterature.com:
You’re a second-class citizen,A warmhearted fable of love, acceptance and found family for our time. Review first posted on www.FantasyLiterature.com:
You’re a second-class citizen, viewed with suspicion if you have magical powers in TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea. Magical children are confined to orphanages that are overseen by the rigid bureaucracy of the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). One of DICOMY’s most diligent, rule-abiding caseworkers is 40-year-old Linus Baker, a pudgy and — though he barely admits it to himself — deeply unhappy gay caseworker who lives in a lonely apartment in a city where it’s always raining and overcast.
One day Linus receives a special, top secret assignment from DICOMY’s Extremely Upper Management: travel to an island orphanage for a month to investigate an orphanage of six children who are particularly uncommon in their magical aspects, as well as the orphanage’s master, Arthur Parnassus, who is viewed as problematic by Extremely Upper Management for reasons they are (at least at first) unwilling to share with Linus. And they want detailed, thorough weekly reports from Linus while he’s there.
So Linus packs up his cantankerous cat Calliope, farewells his nosy neighbor, and travels by train from the gloomy city to the sunny seashore, and then to Marsyas Island. At first he’s overwhelmed by the extremely unusual and even dangerous children in the orphanage on the island. They include six-year-old Lucifer (“Lucy”) whose father is the devil himself, an intelligent wyvern, a grumpy and bearded young female gnome, a painfully shy shapeshifting boy, a winged forest sprite, and an amorphous green blob with black teeth named Chauncey. They’re overseen by their mysterious but charming guardian Arthur, to whom Linus finds himself reluctantly attracted.
Linus tries hard to stick with his objectivity and his hefty book of rules and regulations, but it’s difficult when he realizes that Lucy has a good heart despite his inherited affinity for evil, and the gnome Talia adores gardening and has a soft core under her extremely crusty exterior, and Chauncey’s earnest goal in life is to be the best bellhop ever (somewhat difficult for a blob, but he manages to practice on Linus). And when Arthur is so charming. But there are still things that Arthur and DICOMY haven’t told Linus yet.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is a sweet, heartwarming story that focuses on diversity, acceptance and love. It’s marketed as adult fantasy, and the main character and his love interest are both middle-aged. But it’s written on a middle-grade level: simplistic and straightforward writing, obvious symbolism, no adult/R-rated language or content, and overt moralizing.
Hate is loud, but I think you’ll learn it’s because it’s only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you’re not alone, you will overcome.
Affirmative messages in literature are nice, but I enjoy them a lot more when they’re subtle. The House in the Cerulean Sea is the fantasy counterpart to the SF novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: short on plot tension and complexity (especially considering it’s an adult novel); long on positive feelings and inclusiveness. But the characters are charming and the children have an engaging quirkiness. Lucy in particular is an interesting character; he wants to be loved, adores old-fashioned records, and struggles with terrible nightmares, but has a penchant for terrifying people and saying truly awful things. It’s amusing when the hippie employee of the record store in the Marsyas village treats Lucy with equanimity.
“Who’s the square?” J-Bone whispered.
“Mr. Baker,” Lucy whispered back. “He’s here to make sure I don’t burn anyone alive with the power of my mind and then consume their souls from their smoking carcass.”
“Rock on, little dude,” J-Bone said, offering a high five which Lucy gladly accepted. “I mean, I hope that doesn’t happen to me, but you do you.”
Seeing Arthur’s dedication to helping Lucy find and accept the good in himself, and to creating a family with all of these difficult and unusual children — and with Linus as well, if he’ll let go of some of his rigid ideas — is at the heart of The House in the Cerulean Sea. It’s a warmhearted, straightforward fable of love, acceptance and found family for our time....more
Best Penric and Desdemona story yet! Penric is accused of being a spy when he travels to another country (well, in fairness, he kind of is), is thrownBest Penric and Desdemona story yet! Penric is accused of being a spy when he travels to another country (well, in fairness, he kind of is), is thrown into a dungeon and barely escapes with his life, and then kind of goes off on his own version of the mission.
It looks like Desdemona and the gods support him ... but that may or may not be enough when there are lots of people out to get both Penric and the people he's trying to help.
My only complaint is that this is really only half of the story. It continues in the next novella in this series, Mira's Last Dance. Which I luckily already have on my Kindle app ready to fire up!
Third in the series of Penric fantasy novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, and I'm kind of getting into these! Penric, scholar and sorceror (courtesy of Third in the series of Penric fantasy novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, and I'm kind of getting into these! Penric, scholar and sorceror (courtesy of Desdemona, the demonic spirit that shares his body), Penric's fishing expedition with his friend Inglis (the shaman from the prior book, Penric and the Shaman) gets interrupted by Locator Oswyl, who wants Penric's and Inglis's help with another murder case. The body of a sorceress has been found in a remote wood, with two arrows in her back, and no sign of what happened to the valuable demon that she hosted.
As far as they can tell from their investigations, everyone liked the sorceress, so they have a hard time telling who killed her and what their motive was. The other half of the investigation - what happened to her demon and where is it now - offers a few more clues. As they get deeper into the case, one part of the case begins to illuminate the other.
For a murder mystery this was ... well, not as twisty as I might have expected or hoped. But otherwise I enjoyed this adventure of Penric and Desdemona. They're interesting characters with an appealing, odd friendship. ...more
3.5 stars. These Penric fantasy novellas are by the wonderfully talented Lois McMaster Bujold (I highly recommend her Vorkosigan Saga SF series!). The3.5 stars. These Penric fantasy novellas are by the wonderfully talented Lois McMaster Bujold (I highly recommend her Vorkosigan Saga SF series!). They've been sitting on my Kindle app for several months but I think their time has finally come. :)
Penric is the younger son of country gentry who, through a mishap in the first novella in this series, Penric's Demon, found himself unexpectedly sharing his body and mind with a 200 year old demon ... a spirit of chaos but not necessarily evil. To make matters more interesting, the demon, who Penric names Desdemona, gives Penric magical powers - making him a powerful sorceror - as well as knowledge from the ten women who previously hosted the Demon.
It's now 4 years after the events of the first book, and Penric is now a fully-fledged sorceror as well as a scholar, working for the local "Princess-Archdivine," who's kind of a efficient and stern but kind motherly figure. When a detective or "locator" shows up seeking a sorceror's help in finding a runaway shaman who apparently murdered his good friend then ran away, the Archdivine volunteers Penric. It's the beginning of a couple of unusual friendships and an interesting investigation for Penric and Desdemona.
I'm not as familiar with this Five Gods world as maybe I should be, so I got a little lost in the details of shaman magic and how it works with animals ... which is kind of important here. The novella length feels a little short, but that means I can pop them down in a single sitting. Bujold always writes well, even if I still prefer her SF to her fantasy.
Still, I have like eight more Penric novellas to go, and maybe I'll be a true believer by the end of it. :)...more
4.5 stars. Elegantly written Asian-inspired fantasy novella, nominated for a Hugo award, that was far, far better than I expected.
A traveling NB cleri4.5 stars. Elegantly written Asian-inspired fantasy novella, nominated for a Hugo award, that was far, far better than I expected.
A traveling NB cleric, Chih, makes their way to an isolated villa where the empress In-Yo, who recently died, once lived in exile. Now, many years later, it's inhabited only by the empress's now-elderly servant, called Rabbit. While Chih examines the old records and artifacts, Rabbit gradually unfolds the story of In-Yo to Chih and their talking hoopoe bird companion. She was a princess from a northern kingdom that lost a war, and was given away in marriage (read: hostage) to the southern empire, one of the many wives of the emperor. But In-Yo isn't quite as helpless and accepting of her fate as she might at first seem.
I have to admit I got an ARC of this book last year and it joined the stack of "maybe-read" unrequested ARCs, partly because — true confessions here — I'm getting a little tired of the endless focus on angry-feminist/queer-character fantasy. Some of it's good, but a lot of it is message fiction and I'm not into being preached at in my fictional reading. But when it made the list of Hugo nominees, I dusted off my copy and jumped into it. And ended up seriously enjoying it! Nghi Vo's writing is lovely and evocative, and there's a lot going on under the surface with both the characters and the plot. It's like a delightful puzzle box.
Full review to come. Thanks to Tor for the ARC!...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.
3 stars for this Nebula and Locus award-nominated fantasy novel. Review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Regency romance gets both a fantasy and3 stars for this Nebula and Locus award-nominated fantasy novel. Review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
Regency romance gets both a fantasy and a feminist twist in C.L. Polk’s The Midnight Bargain. Beatrice Clayborn’s family has fallen on hard times and, as a final, last-gasp strategy for recouping the family fortunes and position, has spent money they don’t really have to rent a reasonably townhome in a good part of town, buy fashionable outfits for Beatrice (making her younger sister Harriet envious), and otherwise get Beatrice ready for the Bargaining Season, when the country’s gentry gather to make matches.
Despite her family’s strained finances, Beatrice is an attractive marriage prospect because of her strong magical abilities. The catch: As soon as she is married, she’ll have a metal collar locked around her neck that nullifies her magic, and it will be kept on her until her childbearing years are over, with her husband holding the only key, because the spirits attracted by magic are so extremely dangerous to unborn fetuses. The prospect appalls Beatrice: she’d much rather give up marriage and become a full-fledged mage.
When Beatrice lucks upon a grimoire that could hold the key to her future, she loses it to a rival young woman magician, Ysbeta Lavan, who has far more wealth and social status. As the two sorceresses face off, Beatrice seeks the help of a spirit to get the book back from Ysbeta. Part of the spirit’s price for helping is experiencing a kiss while sharing Beatrice’s body … and hey, there’s Ysbeta’s handsome and kind brother Ianthe. Attraction strikes like lightning, as it usually does in Regency romances, and Beatrice is soon faced with a seemingly-impossible choice between love and her family’s well-being, on the one hand, and her deeply desired destiny as an independent woman and mage, on the other.
Polk hits the subjugated women and oppressive patriarchy angles hard in The Midnight Bargain. Beatrice’s 15-year-old sister Harriet argues eloquently for the charms of a social season, lovely clothing, and “proper” behavior, but it’s abundantly clear that Beatrice is never going to be happy fitting into a highborn woman’s typical place in this society. Almost none of the men in her world — and in fact, very few women, for that matter — have sympathy for Beatrice’s dilemma and desires to be a practicing mage rather than a wife and mother. And as Beatrice makes a series of reckless and sometimes ill-thought-out choices, aided and abetted by Ysbeta, it was hard for me to sympathize with her as much as I wanted to.
The social themes in this novel are on the heavy-handed side, but there’s a strong scene toward the end between Beatrice and her mother, who wants to prepare her for the shock of wearing the magic-suppressing collar, that humanized her mother greatly and helped to clarify the awfulness of what married women are forced to do in this society. With all the angst of the plot, it was a bit of a shock to hit the last few chapters, when Polk waves the author wand and everything and everyone (at least, everyone important) suddenly and rather dubiously fall into place for a happily-ever-after ending....more
4 strong stars for this Nebula award-nominated novella! It's currently on a Kindle sale for 99c, or you can (at least for now) read it online for free4 strong stars for this Nebula award-nominated novella! It's currently on a Kindle sale for 99c, or you can (at least for now) read it online for free, starting here: https://magazine.metaphorosis.com/sto...
Lord Shea Ashcroft, a government minister, faced with a rioting crowd of protestors in the capital city, makes the call to have the military fall back rather than killing the protestors — and innocent bystanders —with poisonous gas. Some people praise his mercy, but half the city now lies in ruins from the mob’s violence, and the queen is not so appreciative of his decision. Shea is shipped off to the border city of Owenbeg as punishment, charged with overseeing the finishing of construction of a colossal tower to protect the border against enemy airships. The tower is already a thousand feet high, with plans to add another thousand feet on top.
Things get complicated for Shea in Owenbeg, on both a personal and a political level. The duke of Owenbeg, his military commander, and the chief engineer of the tower all resent Shea, especially when Shea makes it clear that he won’t just rubberstamp others’ decisions regarding the tower. The builders are using Drakiri antigravity devices, a foreign technology, to help stabilize the immense tower, but Shea is convinced that no one in charge fully appreciates how dangerous these devices are. Shea’s seen that danger himself, when he and his dead sister Lena experimented with the devices years ago.
The Drakiri people seem to understand the danger, but they are immigrants in the kingdom with little power or influence. The duke’s half-Drakiri lover Lena, who shares his beloved sister’s name and reminds Shea strongly of his sister in her appearance and spirit, tells Shea that the tower is more dangerous than he realizes. He’s dubious about the old Drakiri legends of a “Mimic Tower” that she shares with him, but as Shea’s personal interest in Lena grows, the stakes with the tower and its Drakiri devices grow too, along with the conflicting agendas of the different characters.
Tower of Mud and Straw, recently nominated for the Nebula award in the novella category, tells the poignant story of a man haunted by his past and what (and more importantly who) he has lost, which resurfaces and finds echoes in his present relationships and concerns. Shea Ashcroft is a man of conscience and courage, doing his best to make the right decisions. But right and wrong aren’t always clear, and his choices, even if they were the best ones he was able to make with the knowledge he had at the time, often come back to bite him.
Shea frequently talks to his sister in his mind, shedding light on his motivations and the pain of his memories.
Something has broken in me, I think. Or maybe was broken. Maybe I broke it myself, to steady myself against disappointment. We go to great lengths to avoid pain, Lena, and we lose important things in the process.
Tower of Mud and Straw is primarily a gaslamp fantasy, but there’s a dollop of science fiction here, along with a dash of surrealism and even a snippet of horror. The surrealistic element didn’t meld all that well for me with the rest of the tale, or perhaps it simply needed more development than Barsukov was able to give it in the novella format. Similarly, the Mimic Tower makes for an intriguing symbol of Shea’s echoing and reechoing troubles, but then it’s never explained in the end. But other than these fairly minor quibbles, I was fully on board with this tale.
This is a frequently dark, or at least bittersweet, novella: there are good and well-intentioned characters here (not all, but enough), but people hurt each other and tragic events happen. It’s a morally complex story, and Barsukov tells it well, even poetically at times, with a nuanced take on the characters and the events of the plot. Tower of Mud and Straw is a thought-provoking novella that doesn’t stop with the easy answers. It’s well worth reading.
I read the short story "Mr. Death" because I’m pretty much interested in everything Alix Harrow writes. I wasn’t expecting to have to hide my face so I read the short story "Mr. Death" because I’m pretty much interested in everything Alix Harrow writes. I wasn’t expecting to have to hide my face so my husband wouldn’t ask me why I was crying.
Sam Grayson, who died at age 44 from lung cancer, was offered an alternative to crossing the river of death into the great beyond. His reaper, Raz, offers him a job as a Junior Reaper with the Department of Death. It becomes Sam's job to escort the souls of people who have died across the river where they disperse and become part of the endless cosmos of love.
Though it can be a tough job, all goes well with Sam until he's given the job of overseeing the death of Lawrence Harper, who is only 2 1/2 years old, and suffers from an undiagnosed heart ailment. And Sam has never really recovered from the death of his own son Ian at a young age.
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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