Spoilery Talk: Every Heart a Doorway

I reviewed Every Heart A Doorway tonight on twitter as so (Click on tweet to get the full review):

SF/F Review: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: https://t.co/oXHXuBJ8us Short Review:6.5/10, Enthralling World, ending didnt work 1/x

— garik16 (@garik16) August 4, 2016

I mentioned the ending was a problem in this review, quick blurb about that after the break.

Spoilery Talk, Star Wars Aftermath: Life Debt

I posted a quick review of Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt, the second in the "What happened after Return of the Jedi" books in the new canon that just came out this month.  See below.

Quick SF/F review on here for Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt https://t.co/NjlbheC8uY by Chuck Wendig. Short Review 6/10. (1/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 30, 2016

As a former big fan of the original Star Wars Expanded Universe, now known as "Star Wars Legends", and having written about Star Wars for this blog, I can't help but discuss spoilers for the book after the jump.

SF/F Spoilery Review: Last Song Before Night

Tonight's spoilery review is Last Song Before Night by Ilana C Meyer.


My twitter review can by clicking the following tweet:

SF/F Review: Last Song Before Night by @IlanaCT. https://t.co/T2ND422YUs Short Review: 8/10 - Really good despite some big problems (1/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 23, 2016

Spoilery Review below

SF/F Spoiler Review - Lightless

Tonight's review was Lightless - the review starts with this tweet (click to get the whole thread):

SF/F Book Review time!: Tonight Lightless by @C_A_Higgs https://t.co/rtPELMCGYQ Short Review: 8 out of 10, Very good despite a slow middle

— garik16 (@garik16) July 19, 2016

Spoilers below:
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Lightless is a hard book to describe without spoiling, which is presumably why the book jacket blatantly spoils one twist - Mattie still being on the ship instead of in the escape pod - and describes the plot like it's going to be a hannibal lector esque story with Ivan and Althea (which is not at all what happens, as Althea is tempted but still only has two interactions with Ivan while he's in captivity).  Mind you, Mattie not being in the escape pod is so obvious it's kind of laughable as a twist, which is why the book doesn't even dwell too much on it once it's revealed (as Mattie had already escaped).

But the twists aren't my real issue with the book (the AI twist is also fairly obvious the moment the book teases the fake AI on the thieves' ship).  The issue is with the book's middle, which is basically Ida examining Ivan while Althea finds more and more issues with the ship, which Ida ignores.  The problem is Ida is just awful.  This is obviously intentional, but well the whole middle of the book focuses so much on her, which is just a lot of an awful character.  Now this whole section is redeemed as Ivan's revelations in the interrogation become all relevant once the reveal of Constance as the Mallt-y-Nos is made.  But even that's kind of annoying since it makes Ida RIGHT when you kind of want her to be wrong to be taken down a peg.

I guess she's sort of taken down a peg since her interrogations are what enabled Constance to make her move in the first place, and because of her death, but it's kind of awful for her to have been right when she's such an awful character.  Again the ending makes everything worth it, dark as it kind of is, and the book would've been interesting and worth it if that ending was all there is, but apparently we're getting two more books following the Ananke, so this should be exciting.

SF/F Spoiler Review - Roses and Rot

This is a new thing for me.  If you follow me on twitter, you'll know I about once or twice a week review SciFi and Fantasy books on my twitter feed.  And I enjoy doing these reviews even if I think like maybe 5 of my followers actually care.

Still, Frequently I find myself taking some points off of books for things that are kind of spoilers - for example, books very often fail to stick the landing they set up, which can be a bit disappointing and hurt my review.  But it's kind of hard to talk about those issues without spoiling things, and for some of the books I've liked the most, I really don't want to spoil them.  So I'm going to try to now actually use this blog space to put up occasional short spoiler review discussions so I can express my thoughts on the books where I feel twitter is slightly incomplete.

So tonight's review was Roses with Rot.  The Twitter review is as follows:

SF/Fantasy Book Review: Tonight: @KatWithSword's Roses and Rot. https://t.co/9tmkrlP34z - Short Review: Amazing, 9 out of 10. (1/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

Long Review: Roses and Rot is really really good. Genre wise it'd probably be considered either Modern Fantasy or Modern Fairy Tail (2/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

Although it's kind of meta in that way, in that the main character and narrator writes based upon....fairy tails. But it doesnt matter (3/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

-this is a character story about two sisters and how far they're each willing to go for each other and themselves. And its really well(4/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

done - the 4main characters are all really well done as are most of the secondary characters. The book mostly isnt predictable either (5/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

I came real close to giving this a 10 out of 10, but for some minor plot things that nagged at me near the end. Again, it's really good(6/x)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

Also it's currently on sale as an ebook most places for $1.99. I cannot recommend it highly enough at this price. Definitely read this (7/7)

— garik16 (@garik16) July 6, 2016

Now for a quick spoilery review.  If you haven't read the book yet, please don't read this:
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Spoilery Comments:  So I came really close to giving this a 10 out of 10 (or maybe a 9.5) as I loved Roses with Rot, but it kind of fell off slightly shortly before the ending.  The book isn't quite setup like many books with a plot structure that builds the whole book to a climax - the book seems to do that in building toward the ceremony where the tithe is chosen, only for the plot of directly saving Marin to suddenly become the new objective in the last part of the book.  This is totally fine - except then part of the solution to saving Marin in that final part of the book involves the use of some classic fairy tale anti-magic techniques (most significantly, running water).

Here's the thing: The book previously makes clear that faeries in this universe aren't like the ones in the tales so those rules in the old tales don't apply (Evan specifically rebuts Imogen's thoughts on his sculptures being a problem for faeries, for example) - and so it's just kind of odd that 80% of the way through the book, they suddenly do and the only good reason Imogen wouldn't have thought they might is because well....Evan tells her they don't apply earlier!  It's kind of a cheap part of the ending. I kind of wonder if this wouldn't have bothered me if this was setup before the need for Imogen to interrupt Marin's ride ever came up (for example, like the fact that the tithe could be stopped was setup in the very beginning).

Other than that, my quibbles were minor - Beth's willingness to help Imogen against the Fae despite having little development is kind of random given her thoughts that the tithe is worth it, but that's minor.  I thought Janet was so bitchy and obviously demented that Marin shouldn't have listened to her when she revealed the truth about the Tithe, but that can be handwaved by Marin being under the magical influence of the Fae at that point - same with Marin so quickly forgiving Imogen after she's saved (when presumably Gavin reveals the truth while Imogen is unconscious) - this makes a lot more sense if the Fae's been clouding her thoughts up to that point.  And the idea the pretty damn happy ending every good character gets - even Marin who seemingly was lost without the Fae's help about a hundred pages before - might be a little cheap, but well....all the characters really deserve it. Especially Ariel who is awesome.

In short it's an awesome book with an ending that still feels good, even if some of the plot elements that lead up to it are maybe not set up perfectly.