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.
Hard to put down while I read it; equally hard to believe once I finished it.
Beth Bradford is a CIA analyst who's been spending years searching for aHard to put down while I read it; equally hard to believe once I finished it.
Beth Bradford is a CIA analyst who's been spending years searching for a highly elusive Iranian spy they call the Neighbor. But suddenly she comes to a huge turning point in her life: her youngest child leaves for college; she and her husband sell their house; he announces that he's leaving her at the same time (their marriage had long been in trouble but she thought they were going to try to work things out). And worst of all for Beth: The CIA has abruptly put her out to pasture, taking her off the Neighbor case and sending her to teach new hires.
Well. Beth just KNOWS she's getting close to cracking the case and figuring out the Neighbor's identity. So she keeps pursuing the case as best she can, given that all of her access to confidential files has been revoked and her co-workers no longer even want to talk to her.
She's a stubborn woman, I'll give her that.
When Beth's suspicions turn to the wife of the family that moved into her old house and is integrating herself into the neighborhood, things start to heat up. But is Beth on the right track or not?
Overall it was a fun read with a lot of twists and turns, but I got a little tired of situation after situation with Beth sneaking around and ignoring all the rules while everyone seems to be out to thwart her. And the final revelations about what was really going on left me a bit unsatisfied.
It's a fun "beach" type read. I recommend it if you'd like a homegrown spy thriller with lots of tension and twists....more
On sale now! 4+ stars for this great fantasy/SF mashup.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke.
ThiOn sale now! 4+ stars for this great fantasy/SF mashup.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke.
This short novel is about the intersection between highly advanced technology and a society that views it as magic, along with the linguistic difficulties that prevent the local society's people from understanding the difference even when the anthropologist who's been studying them for years tries to explain it. Also it's about a quest to destroy a Lovecraftian demon/monstrous entity of some unfamiliar kind, and juggling non-interference rules (Prime Directive, anyone?) with less technologically advanced societies (and where those rules maybe should be tossed out the window). And emotional problems, and friendship. And did I mention the fascinating linguistic aspects?
Adrian Tchaikovsky is such a brilliant, versatile author - I never know what he's going to come up with next, but I know it'll be good. And I love these short stand-alone novels and novellas that he's been writing lately.
Full review to come (I'm working on it...). Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher 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
What’s a grumpy, misanthropic time traveling warrior to do? Governments and factions have misused time travel machines, each using their time machines to remake the past in the way they want it to be, over and over again. Time travel machines really are the ultimate weapon: if you go back far enough you can change history enough that your enemy never has a chance. Except that your enemy’s time traveling agents are cut off from those changes, so they’re still around to try to change history in a different way that favors them. And then there are Causality Bombs, “[f]or when regular time travel just can’t mess up continuity enough.” Now the past is irretrievably broken into shards and splinters.
So our surly main character, the last survivor of the time soldiers, has set himself up as a gatekeeper in a distant future to make sure it never happens again past his point in time. His tech allows him to pull all time travelers heading to the far future to stop in his particular place and time, where he can make sure they never go any further. And when that involves murdering said time travelers — he keeps guns, poisons and a feathery Allosaurus named Miffly just for this purpose (“she is ridiculously adorable when she’s not actually eating people”) — well, that’s just the way it goes. Until one day, when he gets an unpleasant surprise … from his future. Maybe, though, with the help of Miffly, he can solve this latest problem too.
One Day All This Will Be Yours, a new SF novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is wildly intelligent and imaginative, narrated by the main character with lots of irreverent and extremely black humor. You have to be able to enjoy a protagonist who, with no discernable regret, offs any number of innocent people in pursuit of what he views as the greater cause. One of the highlights is when he and a time-traveling antagonist engage in a battle in which each of them has pulled together an army of the worst villains they can find throughout human history: Stalin, multiple versions of Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Báthory, Vlad the Impaler, Ching Shih, and many, many more.
In the end there is only one of them left, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s Hitler. Basically because he’s been hiding in a bunker all this time. He pokes his head up, and I set Miffly on him. … It’s very therapeutic. And the thing about allosaurs is they can run really quite fast, and the thing about Hitlers is that they can’t, not really, or not for very long.
Tchaikovsky’s concept of time and causality being broken is uniquely executed here in One Day All This Will Be Yours. Our main character makes the most of his access to the past, both for pleasure and to enforce his idea of keeping the far future pristine. Of course, time travel fiction is replete with paradoxes, and everything here isn’t entirely logical — at least, my brain couldn’t quite wrap itself fully around this novella’s concept of time — but Tchaikovsky commits to it completely and pulls you along with him, immersing you in this fascinating and slightly loopy world until you really don’t care any more if it doesn’t altogether make sense.
My only qualm with One Day All This Will Be Yours is that its ending is remarkably abrupt, with reams of hanging threads and no real attempt at a wrap-up. I don’t think I fully get what Tchaikovsky was going for with that ending, other than (view spoiler)[that it certainly gives a “well, here we go again” type of impression (hide spoiler)], but even after a couple of rereads I’m still not a fan of it. As a whole, though, this novella is so very funny, creative and intelligent that I have to give it my strongest recommendation … at least if you’re a fan of dark, flippant humor.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!...more
3.5ish stars. This is a collection of fantasy and SF short stories by the very talented Ken Liu, many of them set in a future where humans choose to b3.5ish stars. This is a collection of fantasy and SF short stories by the very talented Ken Liu, many of them set in a future where humans choose to be “uploaded” into a virtual world, like a voluntary Matrix. Liu is great at focusing on relationships while also exploring ideas.
RTC. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!...more
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
Okay ... that was downright creepy! I’ll never look at a willow tree the same way again.
RTC.
Initial post: This is a "Read Now" book on NetGalley rightOkay ... that was downright creepy! I’ll never look at a willow tree the same way again.
RTC.
Initial post: This is a "Read Now" book on NetGalley right now, and T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) is amazing. So I think I'll read it even though horror novels aren't generally my thing. :D...more
A woman goes hiking with her dog in th4.5 stars. On sale this week! Final review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
The Call of the Wild (Singer):
A woman goes hiking with her dog in the northern California mountains, searching for the hidden settlement her father calls home. After a long search she finds the encampment — really a small town — but her father is gone, along with every other person who lived in Wild Sign. Some time later, two FBI agents pay a surprise visit to Anna and Charles Cornick in Aspen Creek, Montana. The agents lay their cards on the table: The FBI is looking for an alliance with the werewolves, and because of past interactions they’ve concluded that Anna is likely the Marrok, the werewolf who rules them all (which leads to an amusing scene with Bran Cornick, who is).
The agents suggest that the werewolves might be interested in helping to investigate the disappearance of the town of Wild Sign, especially since part of the town was located on land now owned by the Marrok’s pack, and originally owned by Leah Cornick, Bran’s mate. What the FBI agents don’t know, but Bran does, is that Leah has been singing disturbing music ever since April, the time of the last communication from someone living in Wild Sign.
Some type of great power is in the area of Wild Sign, and has been for at least two hundred years, Bran explains to Charles, bringing death and misery to the humans it meets. And now it’s waking up again.
So Anna and Charles, along with a third werewolf named Tag, who has some barely-controlled berserker tendencies but also a useful resistance to magic, take a road trip to the northern California wilderness to investigate the mass disappearance of the inhabitants of Wild Sign, and find out what it has to do with the long-ago, dark history of their alpha’s mate, Leah, and the mysterious werewolf Sherwood Post, who’s been haunting the pages of the last several books in this series.
Wild Sign is the sixth novel in Patricia Briggs’ ALPHA AND OMEGA fantasy series, or the seventh if you count the 2007 introductory novella, Alpha & Omega (which you should) … or the eighteenth if you include the closely-intertwined MERCY THOMPSON series (which you also should). It’s a pleasure to see the way Charles and Anna have grown and changed, individually and as a couple, over the course of this series. Anna has grown far more confident, and she plays a vital role in increasing not just the peacefulness, but the happiness, of Bran’s entire wolf pack. Even when events occur in California that almost literally take her back to her time with the abusive werewolf pack in Chicago, where we first met Anna in "Alpha and Omega," the set-back is temporary. Charles has always been Anna’s protector, but he’s able to watch Anna take the initiative and take pride in her strength.
Tag is an interesting character in his own right, though I didn’t feel that we really got to know him all that well in Wild Sign. The real illumination for readers is in Leah’s newly-disclosed backstory and the insights given into her thoughts and personality. Leah, who’s always been defined by her selfishness and harsh coldness, is clearly in the process of getting a redemption arc here which, well, Briggs has bitten off a lot there. But it’s working for me. Leah’s story is both painful and humanizing for her character.
There’s also a cameo appearance or two by a new magical race in California that (I’m slightly embarrassed to admit) made me squee out loud. They’re a delightful addition to this series, and I hope we meet them again. Less pleasant, but equally compelling, are the black witches, including more of the Hardesty clan that has caused so much trouble for the werewolves in the last few books. They are truly, irredeemably evil … even to their own.
Wild Sign is a fascinating story, hard to put down. But, fair warning, the darkness and horror vibes are especially strong with this novel. The horror includes trigger-warning types of events, like (minor spoilers here) (view spoiler)[scenes with a mind-controlling rapist and with another old enemy of Charles whose backstory includes horrible crimes against children, incest is implied at another point, and something happens offscreen that I can best describe as tentacle sex (hide spoiler)]. Briggs grapples with serious issues in this series and this book in particular, and she never lets favorite characters off the hook. Still, there’s an underlying optimism and hopefulness that ultimately carries the day in Briggs’ books.
Some highly interesting events happen at the end of Wild Sign, especially with the epilogue, that open up all sorts of intriguing options for later books. I’m glad Briggs comes out with these MERCY THOMPSON and ALPHA AND OMEGA books about once a year! They make up one — or maybe two, depending on how you slice it — of my very favorite urban fantasy series.
Initial post: I've been approved for a NetGalley ARC, cheers!! I always get so unreasonably excited when I get a new Patricia Briggs book. Or maybe it's reasonably excited. :)...more
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.
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 Angel of the Crows is Sherlock Holmes fanfic … if Sherlock were an outcast angelOn sale June 23! Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
The Angel of the Crows is Sherlock Holmes fanfic … if Sherlock were an outcast angel called Crow, Dr. Watson (here named Dr. Doyle) had a paranormal affliction caused by an injury given him by an Afghani fallen angel, and Victorian England were filled with vampires, werewolves and other paranormal beings. In fact, Katherine Addison states in an author’s note at the end that The Angel of the Crows originated as Sherlock wingfic, a type of fanfic in which one or more characters have wings. It’s an idea with potential, but Katherine Addison squanders that potential by spending (I estimate) some eighty percent of the novel simply retelling several of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous adventures with a supernatural twist.
It begins immediately with the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, in which Holmes and Watson (Crow and Doyle) first meet and become flatmates, and works its way through four more adventures that will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s read many of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. The least well-known one is “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” and that one would only be called obscure by non-Holmes fan. The framing device for all of this is the search for Jack the Ripper: his murders are happening right while everything else is going on. Crow and Dr. Doyle can’t help but be interested, and interest leads to involvement.
It’s a reasonably interesting novel, even if you’re familiar with the source material, and Addison clearly did quite a bit of research into the Sherlock Holmes canon and Victorian-era crime, with a focus on the Jack the Ripper cases. But I found myself earnestly wishing that Addison had written a more original novel. In The Angel of the Crows, proper angels are tied to a habitation, like a cathedral or even an inn; Fallen angels cause disasters on the level of bombs; Nameless angels have lost their individual identity and their will along with their habitation. Crow is none of these, unique among angels. All this is explained as part of the background and world-building, but Addison never delves deeply into this aspect of the story or unlocks the potential of conflict with Fallen angels. Focusing more on these original ideas would have made for a more compelling novel.
The first adventure of Crow and Doyle, based on A Study in Scarlet, took up the whole first fifth of this novel, and was such a straight retelling of the original (at least, the London-based half of the original) that my jaw was literally dropping by the end of it. The Angel of the Crows does get progressively more creative as it goes along, as Addison includes more twists to the plots of the original Holmes stories. Occasionally an unexpected connection would make me laugh, like this one:
“Introductions!” the vampire said briskly. “My name is Moriarty.”
“Doyle,” I said and, having observed the vampire’s long, curved nails, did not offer to shake hands.
I appreciated Addison’s spin on The Hound of the Baskervilles plot, and she also gave most of the racist, sexist and other outdated parts of Doyle’s stories a much more modern spin. Even gender identity come into play, which would probably make old Arthur roll in his grave. I found myself gradually getting more invested in the story as I got deeper into it.
Still, for readers who are familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories that Addison wove into this novel, much of the element of mystery and surprise will be lost. Addison should have done much more to transform and subvert the original Holmes stories. I found myself looking forward to the interim chapters about Jack the Ripper, since those events were less familiar to me. Coming from the author who wrote the inventive book The Goblin Emperor, The Angel of the Crows was a bit of letdown.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!...more
Charlaine Harris’s GUNNIE ROSE series has already merged Old West, Russian magicA soft 3 stars here. Review first posted on www.FantasyLiterature.com:
Charlaine Harris’s GUNNIE ROSE series has already merged Old West, Russian magicians (called “grigori” in a nod to Rasputin), and alternative history; the setting is mid-twentieth century North America, in which the United States has fractured into multiple nations, including the “Holy Russian Empire,” with Tsar Alexei at its head, taking over what used to be California and Oregon. In A Longer Fall, the second book in the series, the pre-civil rights era deep South gets pulled into the mix.
Lizbeth Rose, a 19-year-old gunnie (gunslinger), is traveling by train with her new security crew from Texoma, the Texas region Lizbeth calls home, to Louisiana. Their crew of five is in charge of transporting and protecting a crate that contains … well, they don’t know, but it’s vastly important for some reason, and apparently everybody and their dog wants what’s in that crate. It’s all nice and boring — other than a gunfight that’s over as quickly as it began — until the train blows up. Their train car tumbles sideways, people with knives and guns and smoke bombs attack, and Lizbeth and her crew try desperately to save the precious crate from being stolen.
Now Lizbeth is stuck in the small town of Sally, Louisiana, trying to figure out how to complete her mission when all of the other members of the Lucky (or not) Crew are dead or injured. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, she immediately runs into Ilya (Eli) Savarov, the handsome grigori that she met and clicked with in the first book, An Easy Death … thus enabling Lizbeth and readers to enjoy a side of romance along with the grimmer task of tracking down the missing crate. But Eli’s own mission in Sally overlaps with Lizbeth’s in ways that Eli can’t or won’t explain.
Lizbeth’s task is made more difficult by the townspeople’s racism and sexism. While blacks are no longer slaves in Dixie, there’s segregation and widespread prejudice. Women are expected to fall within a certain mold; Lizbeth, to her deep disgust, finds that in order to be accepted in hotels and restaurants she has to wear a dress and nice shoes rather than her jeans and boots, and hide her guns in a purse or under her skirt.
I felt like A Longer Fall had a lot of potential that it didn’t quite reach. While the novel starts with, quite literally, a bang, the whole middle section of the story dragged badly, with Lizbeth and Eli just going from place to place, eating at restaurants (southern food impresses Lizbeth and she spends an undue amount of time describing her various meals), and having mostly-pointless meetings and lots of sex. What seems to be a friends-with-benefits relationship ends up much more fraught with feelings, but it’s never entirely clear why a deeper attachment has developed between Eli and Lizbeth.
Once I hit the three-quarter mark the plot started progressing more rapidly, but the ending carries its own set of problems. A “white Savior” theme that had been simmering since the mid-point of A Longer Fall reached full boil, complete with what’s arguably a resurrection scene. If that was intentional symbolism, it was oddly done, particularly since there’s such an incongruence between a public message of brotherly love and nasty private behavior. And after this brief pause for a rousing rendition of “All You Need is Love,” the plot jumps straight back to killing people. It’s cynical and muddled, and prior plot and character development wasn’t enough to fully justify the final twist. In fact, a lot of the key plot turns needed more foundation-building, fleshing out details and exploring motivations more deeply, to make them really work. As it is, the plot relies too much on coincidences and a critical bit of deus ex machina action to move it along.
While the main plot is wrapped up in the end (although I can’t help but wonder how permanent the magic-driven resolution will be), the romantic relationship is left hanging. It’s seemingly dead but since there’s at least one more book pending in this series, it’s safe to assume Eli will be back again. I’m still interested in seeing where the series goes next — the Holy Russian Empire is my guess — but my expectations are tempered.
One final comment: It’s never clear what the title of A Longer Fall has reference to, and when I contacted Harris on GR to ask, she demurred (“I’m having too much fun reading all the guesses”). Since I haven’t actually seen any guesses about this title online, even after searching, I’m hoping some other readers of this book will share their thoughts and ideas!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC for review!
Content notes: gritty and violent, with torture and murder; sex scenes are non-explicit; a couple of F-bombs....more
The small colony of humans on the planet Pax, who left Earth a couple of hundred years earlierFull review, finally! First posted on FantasyLiterature:
The small colony of humans on the planet Pax, who left Earth a couple of hundred years earlier, have established a cooperative relationship with at least some of the sentient plant life on Pax, as well as a group of nomadic aliens called the Glassmakers, as related in Semiosis. Their technology now is more Stone Age than Information Age; Pax is deficient in metals. So it’s out of the question to return to or even communicate with Earth, which is 55 light years away. But Earth hasn’t forgotten about Pax.
In this sequel, Interference, a scientific expedition of thirty people from Earth makes plans to travel to Pax to see what has become of the colony. Different members of the expedition have varying reasons for going, ranging from scientific curiosity to a desire to escape the culture of Earth, where women are confined to submissive, secondary roles. But Karola has an especially compelling reason to escape Earth: she’s discovered that she’s a secret clone of a now-dead woman who is so hated on Earth for her crimes against humanity that men create clones of her for the sole purpose of psychologically torturing this woman in effigy, so to speak, until the clone dies. Karola is willing to do anything to get on the expedition to Pax and so escape the fate that the Earth government has in store for her … and she does.
It’s an intriguing beginning, but Karola has only a minor role in the rest of Interference, as author Sue Burke’s focus shifts to the broader question of how the arrival of the new group from Earth affects the inhabitants of Pax, and vice versa. Many misunderstandings ensue, as well as some understandings. Stevland, the highly intelligent rainbow bamboo plant who helps govern the Pax colony, considers whether to let the Earth visitors know of his existence, and how to arrange to send his seeds to Earth when the visitors leave. Meanwhile, the Earth group has its own in-fighting and drama to deal with.
Interference explores the relationships between various beings — plant, humans, and Glassmakers — but does so on a fairly high level. With the exception of its much-later epilogue (which opens the door for a third book that, according to Burke, may or may not get written), Interference doesn’t jump between different time periods and generations in the same way that Semiosis did, but Burke still frequently switches between different characters’ points of view. As a result, it’s difficult to feel particularly attached to any of the characters, with the exception of Stevland.
The SEMIOSIS DUOLOGY creates an intriguingly alien planet, and one does get a good feel for the many unfamiliar dangers that humans might face on such a strange world, as well as the difficulties that are created when people (or aliens) with different motivations, cultures and worldviews collide. Though there are some exciting scenes, the book felt overly long. I felt like it took forever to finish Interference. As I noted in my review of Semiosis, I find Sue Burke’s prose to be merely serviceable, and I didn’t see any noticeable improvement in Interference. Fans of Semiosis will likely be happy with this sequel, but if you weren’t all that enthusiastic about that book, Interference isn’t likely to change your mind.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!...more
The Wayward Children books have turned into such a great series ... and here's #5! Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Eleanor West’s H
The Wayward Children books have turned into such a great series ... and here's #5! Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children was an island of misfit toys, a place to put the unfinished stories and the broken wanderers who could butcher a deer and string a bow but no longer remembered what to do with indoor plumbing. It was also, more importantly, a holding pen for heroes. Whatever they might have become when they’d been cast out of their chosen homes, they’d been heroes once, each in their own ways. And they did not forget.
Come Tumbling Down, the fifth installment in Seanan McGuire’s WAYWARD CHILDREN YA fantasy series, returns to the conflicted relationship between twins Jack (Jacqueline) and Jill Wolcott, in a some-months-later sequel to where we left them at the end of Every Heart a Doorway. (Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a prequel that tells their story in much more detail, though it’s the second book published in the series.) To recap — spoiler alert for the first and second books here — as children Jack and Jill had found their way to a portal world called the Moors, where Jack was raised by a … if not mad, at least highly peculiar … scientist, and Jill was raised by a master vampire to be his daughter and heir, before they returned to our world and spent some time turning the Home for Wayward Children upside down. When they returned to the Moors at the end of Every Heart a Doorway, Jill was dead at Jack’s hand, but Jack was confident that she could resurrect her sister once they returned to the Moors and, perhaps more important, that because Jill had died and been brought back to life, she would no longer be able to be turned into a vampire.
But Jill is not in the least repentant of her lethal lifestyle, and she and her adoptive vampire father have thought of an ingenious way to get around this limitation. What she’s now done is beyond the pale — not only is it ruining Jack’s life, pushing her to the edge of a mental breakdown, but it’s likely to lead to an imbalance of power and deadly warfare in the Moors world. So Jack, with her girlfriend Alexis, returns to the Wayward Children home to get help from her old friends. Did Eleanor say “no quests”? Oh well!
Come Tumbling Down didn’t quite reach the heights of my favorite books in the series, Down Among the Sticks and Bones and In an Absent Dream, but it comes quite close. McGuire does a great job examining Jack and Jill’s deeply troubled hearts. Jack, brilliant but burdened with OCD, has found joy in the mad scientist lifestyle, at least until the most recent troubles. She calls herself a monster, and in some ways that’s true, but she’s more or less a good-hearted person, if obsessive and demanding. Jill, though, is on a whole different level.
Jill had always been the more dangerous, less predictable Wolcott, for all that she was the one who dressed in pastel colors and lace and sometimes remembered that people liked it when you smiled. Something about the way she’d wrapped her horror movie heart in ribbons and bows had reminded him of a corpse that hadn’t been properly embalmed, like she was pretty on the outside and rotten on the inside. Terrifying and subtly wrong.
Joining Jack on her quest to set things right again in Jack’s life and in the Moors world are several familiar faces, including Kade (the one-time goblin prince), Christopher (who longs for the magical skeleton world of Mariposa), Cora (the former mermaid with the blue-green hair) and Sumi. They all bring their unique characters and talents to the story. The most delightful was Sumi, whose flighty behavior and off-the-wall comments conceal a sharp mind. She calls the crimson moon in the Moors “the sugared cherry on the biggest murder sundae in the whole world” and is serenely confident that one day she’ll find her way back to the world called Confection, where the gummy worms will eat her body when she dies.
Come Tumbling Down is a quest type of adventure novel, mixing together friendship and horror. It’s lifted above the norm by the quirkiness of the characters, by the tragedy of the broken relationship between twin sisters Jack and Jill, and by Seanan McGuire’s insightful commentary. She muses on what would have happened if Jack had become the vampire’s protégé rather than Jill, and the ruthless business tycoon Sumi would have become if she hadn’t found the door to Confection as a young girl. And she shows us how wayward children can be heroes. Sometimes, even, the monsters are the heroes.
I received a free ebook for review from the publisher and NetGalley. Thanks so much!
Initial post: I HAVE THE ARC! *does happy dance* *throws confetti in air* Update: And I read the whole thing in one evening. #noregrets...more
This contemporary romance novel is ... a lot like The Hating Game. Except with most of the wit and humor sucked out.
26 year old Emmie Echavarre is a cThis contemporary romance novel is ... a lot like The Hating Game. Except with most of the wit and humor sucked out.
26 year old Emmie Echavarre is a copywriter at a power tool distributor called Nuts & Bolts. She's surrounded by men in the workplace, so she acts a lot tougher than she really is to make sure she gets respected ... and it works, mostly. But the hardest person for her to get along with is handsome Tate Rasmussen, who's in charge of the company's social media and treats her with unrelenting hostility. Until he doesn't, but by that time Emmie's got a LOT of residual resentment to work off.
A soft 3 stars for me. I enjoyed it well enough while I was reading it, but it's derivative and forgettable. I never completely bought into the relationship here, especially Tate's initial meanness, which felt really unwarranted and inexcusable in a work setting. Again, The Hating Game did a lot better job of making you understand the guy's point of view when he was acting rude, and I had issues with it even there.
On the plus side: diversity representation. Okay then! That's great, but not enough to bump this up to a "recommend" rating.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
3.5 stars. Sarah Eden, a well-known author of clean historical romances, shifts gears in this unusual twist on the genre: a cat-and-mouse game between3.5 stars. Sarah Eden, a well-known author of clean historical romances, shifts gears in this unusual twist on the genre: a cat-and-mouse game between Elizabeth Black and Fletcher Walker, two Victorian era authors of “penny dreadful” novels.
[image] Victorian-era penny dreadful novel
They really were a penny! And in all likelihood the writing was dreadful too, although I understand the dreadful part is actually referring to the scary villains and monsters that usually populated these thriller-type books. :)
Fletcher is trying to unearth the identity of a “Mr. King,” who’s overtaken Fletcher as the best-selling author of penny dreadful novels. It’s not just pride; Fletcher, who was once a street orphan himself, needs the money to help fund his secret organization of men committed to helping rescue and educate London’s street children. (What exactly Fletcher and this organization plan to do about Mr. King, other than maybe ask him to join their group, isn't entirely clear. It sort of seems like they have something ominous in mind but ... maybe not?)
Anyway, Fletcher asks Miss Elizabeth Black, headmistress of a respectable girl’s school and author of “silver-fork” novels, to help him track down Mr. King - never dreaming that Elizabeth IS Mr. King. Besides the socially-approved silver-fork novels, she has a fondness for writing the more sensational penny dreadful novels ... and plus they make her way more money, which she ALSO needs to help fund her girl's school. Elizabeth, determined to keep her secret from him - it would ruin her socially and professionally if it became known - agrees to “help” Fletcher, really intending to mislead him. Hah!
There's a subplot about people devoted to trying to improve the lot of poor children and teens in London (spoiler alert: the villains who prey on the poor take exception to having their schemes interfered with) and just a little romance, complete with the trope (view spoiler)["I'll resist falling in love with you and hurt your feelings by avoiding you with no explanation, because I'm not good enough for you" (hide spoiler)].
These chapters about Fletcher and Elizabeth alternate with chapters from the pulpy novels that the two of them are currently writing, in which monsters of various types abound. It’s occasionally a bit slow, the main characters are almost too altruistic to be true, and the other characters are pretty one-dimensional, but overall it’s a fun and quite different kind of book if you like light historical romances. I enjoyed seeing how the chapters from Fletcher’s and Elizabeth’s penny dreadful novels tied into the main plot ... especially when it happened on purpose. :)
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Thank you!...more
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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