Thursday, February 28, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan



The Demon's Surrender is the conclusion of the trilogy began by Sarah Rees Brennan in The Demon's Lexicon and continued in The Demon's Covenant.  I really enjoyed The Demon's Covenant when I got to it earlier this year, so while I waited about a year between going from the first book and the second, it only took me about a month to finish the series with this book.  Note that while in theory you could've started this series with the 2nd book, you really can't start with this book, as it deals with and wraps up plot hooks left open by the prior two books as a major part of its narrative.

As a trilogy-ender, The Demon's Surrender generally works, although it doesn't live up to its predecessor (it falls in the middle of the three books for me).  The characters for the most part remain excellent, and Brennan is phenomenal at witty dialogue and that totally continues here.  And the plot maintains a pretty strong pace with unpredictable moments here and there, with its new lead character (Sin, who was a side character previously) generally working....although not completely (I didn't quite buy the main romance honestly).

In short, I'm glad I read and finished this trilogy and will be back for more of SRB's works, but this isn't as clearly a winner as its predecessor.

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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty



The Kingdom of Copper is book two in S.A. Chakraborty's "Daevabad Trilogy" and the sequel to last year's "City of Brass" (which I reviewed here).  I really enjoyed The City of Brass - if there was any book where a Game of Thrones-esque comparison would make sense, it would be that one, but it was so much more than that: yes it featured a world of gray, where those who try to be lawful good tend to suffer, but it featured a world based upon islamic/arabic myth (djinn!, ifrit! marid!), great characters in their own right, an unpredictable (somewhat) plot, and avoided the problematic elements that mar Game of Thrones (no sexual assault or rape involved here).  It also dealt with serious issues, such as that of cycles of revenge, conquered peoples living among the conquerors in their former city, prejudice, racial discrimination and violent extremism, etc.  The book had some issues (mainly pacing), but it was a really strong start to a trilogy and I was really looking forward to the follow-up.

The Kingdom of Copper mainly doesn't disappoint and is an excellent continuation to the story. Taking place after a five year time-skip, the book increases the number of viewpoint characters to three (readers of the prior book can guess the new POV) and follows up strongly on all of the tantalizing cliffhangers/sequel-hooks left open by City of Brass.  And while the book is well longer than its predecessor, it uses its extra pages well and doesn't drag too much, and the characters remain really damn good and compelling.

Note: I read this book, like its predecessor, as an audiobook.  The audiobook reader is the same as for The City of Brass and she is really good, although the increased length of this book means the audiobook is 23 hours plus, which is well longer than my usual maximum limit for audiobooks, so if you'd - like me - prefer shorter audiobooks so that it doesn't take 2+ weeks to finish them, maybe stick to the print edition of this book.
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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James




Books with a lot of press tend to get some weird and outlandish comparisons - generally for the worse in my opinion.  Your average "Game of Thrones" or "Tolkien" comparisons tend to be a double-edged sword - they may get more interest from potential readers, but they set high standards for books to live up to, standards which the books tend not even to be trying to meet.  For that reason I'm generally put off by those comparisons, but Black Leopard Red Wolf - comparisons labeling the book an "African Game of Thrones" of "African Tolkien" be damned - has gotten so much advance praise from writers I have enjoyed that I had to put the book on reserve the moment I saw it become available from my local library.

The result is definitely interesting...although I'm not so sure it was to my tastes.  None of the above comparisons really work (The Tolkien comparison is easily the closest but even then it's really superficial) and the book is very much its own thing - a wildly creative fantasy drawing from African mythology.  That said, it's a particularly dark and brutal fantasy, with a not always enjoyable protagonist/narrator, with some long rants and diatribes coming from characters' mouths, as well as long and vivid descriptions which make this book hit the high 600 page-mark.

Note:  Trigger Warning:  Rape - rape exists as backstory for quite a lot of characters and happens to a bunch of characters (more male than female for whatever that's worth).  Slavery is a majorly present feature of this world as well.  While none of this is described in great detail in the present of the story, it's the type of world that I usually would not be interested in, and I suspect it may be a dealbreaker for many others. 
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Monday, February 25, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler



Ship of Smoke and Steel is the first of a new YA fantasy trilogy by Django Wexler, and the first dip of Wexler into the world of YA - his prior books have been considered either middle-grade or "adult" SF/F.  I haven't read Wexler's earlier works, so this is my first experience with his writing.  But based upon this book, I'll probably be checking out his other stuff eventually.

Ship of Smoke and Steel is a rather dark-ish young adult fantasy, with a heroine who wracks up quite a body count - and is more pragmatic than good about her killing.  Despite her seemingly cold ruthlessness, Wexler manages to make her very likable, and the world he creates around her is extremely well done.  To top it off, while the book is the start of a trilogy, it is a totally satisfying story on its own, which I always appreciate.  The book isn't perfect and hardly unique, but it works fairly well and is worth a read.


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Friday, February 22, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey




Skin Hunger is the first in an incomplete trilogy by Kathleen Duey, her "A Resurrection of Magic" trilogy.  Unfortunately, the author, due to medical issues I won't go into here, is unable to finish the trilogy, so the story will never actually be finished (a second book was published, but the third was still incomplete at the time of her ailment).  Still, a reviewer I like suggested the book and maybe its sequel were still worth reading, so I put it on my library reserve list, with the hope that what was complete would be a satisfying read on its own.

Unfortunately, that's not really the case.  Skin Hunger is certainly interesting, with a pair of main characters who are really well written and easy to root for, and a dual narrative structure that kept me interested throughout.  But it's clearly the first book in a longer story, with the story ending at a point that might represent the end of an arc of the longer narrative, but not one that allows it to stand alone.  So is this worth reading?  Hard to say, but definitely not if you'd like to read a story with some sense of a satisfying resolution.


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Thursday, February 21, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Edges (Inverted Frontier 1) by Linda Nagata




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the novel's release on April 2, 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way (if I'd not liked the book, I just would not have reviewed it). 

 Edges is the first in a new Sci-Fi Series* - the Inverted Frontier - by author Linda Nagata.  I've read Nagata's "The Red" trilogy, which was a fun and interesting MilSci trilogy that I enjoyed but didn't quite love, and her short story from last year which I ranked #2 on my Hugo list (The Martian Obelisk).  So when I saw this book pop up on Netgalley, I was interested to see how much I'd enjoy her work when it's not in a genre I have a history of not particularly caring for (MilSci)

 *Note: Edges is the first in a new trilogy/series which takes place in the same universe as Linda Nagata's "The Nanotech Succession" universe, and judging from the book summaries on Amazon, several characters and parts of this setting were first introduced in those books.  However, I haven't read any of those prior books and had no problem following along with this story, so there's no need to go read those earlier books to enjoy Edges, though I may go back and try to track those novels down anyhow.

Edges is a high-concept SciFi novel, and it works particularly well after perhaps a rough start.  Like some other books (Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy comes to mind), Edges shows no interest in holding the readers hand as it introduces SF concepts without much explanation whatsoever (although it's possible explanations are in prior works of this universe), and the result is that it's kind of an awkward read for its first 20%.  But the result in the end is really well done and definitely different from what I'm used to, so I look forward to seeing how this series plays out.

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Wednesday, February 20, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright




A Matter of Oaths is an interesting story in terms of its place in the genre - it's an LGBTQ friendly Space Opera with a PoC main character that was published in 1988, when such a thing was pretty unheard of.  In a way it can be seen as a SF equivalent to Swordspoint (by Ellen Kushner), but unlike that classic, A Matter of Oaths went largely unnoticed.  But it was rereleased in 2017 with a preface by Becky Chambers and a number of authors I like have shouted it out, so I was interested in seeing how it worked today, when these type of stories are, while not common, certainly no longer unusual.

The answer for me at least is that A Matter of Oaths is a solid Space Opera story, with a trio of really strong main characters, and an outline of a plot otherwise that is a bit more bare-bones than I would have liked.  There's a lot of interesting ideas here in this universe, and for better or for worse the story is mainly more interested in exploring the relationships between characters as they struggle to survive and figure out themselves.  But those relationships are really well done, which makes this a very solid book, even if it never really became more than that for me.


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Monday, February 18, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review A Passage of Stars by Kate Elliott




A Passage of Stars is the first book in Kate Elliott's* SF space opera Highroad Trilogy, the first series/trilogy she published, way back in 1990.  Readers of this blog (the few of you) or my twitter feed will know that Elliott is one of my favorite authors, and I've loved nearly everything I've read from her (Jaran, Crossroads,and Spiritwalker series rank among my favorite series....ever).  So naturally when I had extra Hoopla borrows to use at the end of last month, I opted to pick up the first book in this trilogy since I was pretty sure I'd be satisfied.

*The book was originally published under her Elliott's real name of Alis A. Rasmussen, but since the reissued e-book I read off Hoopla uses her pen name instead, I'm using that here.  

 And well, you can tell A Passage of Stars is one of Elliott's earliest works, but it's still very solid and enjoyable.  Like several of her other books, it starts slowly, before accelerating in the middle to a pretty great pace.  It reminds me quite a bit of an early template of her Spiritwalker trilogy, in that it features a strong female heroine placed into a world/universe she knows far less about than she realized and finds herself caught between actors with multiple hidden agendas, such that it is never quite clear how the book is going to resolve each of these seemingly incompatible plot points.  But while I'm not sure I enjoyed this as much as the first Spiritwalker book (Cold Magic), it's still really good and different in its own way with issues of discrimination and revolution on the forefront.


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Thursday, February 14, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett




Vigilance is the newest work from author Robert Jackson Bennett.  I learned about RJB when his "The Divine Cities" trilogy made the Best Series shortlist at last year's Hugos, and since then all four books of his I've read have been absolute gold.  Vigilance is a novella (listed at 192 pages in paperback) that deals with a more realistic future than the other RJB books I've read, taking place in a dystopian but realistic future of our world, rather than a fantasy world.*

*RJB's bibliography shows he has written books set in our world before, but I haven't gotten to them yet.*

 And holy cow is Vigilance a chilling look at a potential future of America, based upon our country's obsession with guns and its failure to deal with the implications of such.  Just tremendous.

More after the jump:


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SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold




The Flowers of Vashnoi (Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold

So I finished my readthrough of all 17-some books in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga last year, and I really enjoyed the series quite a bit, with several of the books (Memory, A Civil Campaign, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance) being particularly great.  Naturally, as I was doing this, Bujold actually releases the first new work in the series in a while - this novella set in between Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn.  And since it took a while for the audiobook to come out and none of my libraries would pick up the print/ebook edition, it was a long wait for me to suddenly actually complete the series in its entirety.

And naturally now I have.  As usual, this was read via audiobook, which is done by the excellent Grover Gardner - although Gardner has switched his accent for Enrique Burgos (who had a clearly Spanish accent back in A Civil Campaign) which was kind of annoying.  The novella also follows Ekaterin rather than Miles, which is a nice change - I missed her after her viewpoint disappeared after A Civil Campaign.  More on my actual thoughts on the content of this novella after the jump:

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Wednesday, February 13, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mirage by Somaiya Daud




Mirage is an interesting Young Adult Science Fiction novel that is the start of a new trilogy.  What makes it interesting is the book's theme of the evils of colonization from the perspectives of the colonized.  Our heroine is a kidnapped member of a subjugated people, two major side characters are subjugated nobles forced into different lives of subservience and the main antagonist is a person with ties to both the subjugated and conquering peoples. The result is a setting that provides a strong background for exploring the harms and tragedies of colonizing with relevance toward the real world.

The story itself is a bit more hit or miss, with the book having a bunch of interesting characters but taking an awful long time to actually do something with those characters - the main character basically has no agency of her own till halfway through the book and the book seems to end about fifty pages too soon, with things finally having come to a head as the reader probably expected for about half the book.  I'm interested to see where it goes from here, but it's another example of a book being built seemingly for a trilogy without trying to make the first volume satisfying on its own.


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Tuesday, February 12, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore



Blanca & Roja is a member of a genre that I've seen a lot recently - the alternate adaptation of one or more fairy tale stories, often in a way that puts these stories into modern settings or changes the characters to fit more modern values.  In this case, the book is a fusion of multiple fairy tale stories - Rose Red, Snow White, and Swan Lake most notably - although this fusion mainly exists to provide the background for the stories of the four main characters to proceed.

For Blanca & Roja is really a character-based story, mainly of the eponymous sisters, but also of boys Page and Yearling, as the quartet each tries to fight outside pressures - both human and supernatural - which attempt to define them as they try and discover themselves.  It's a story of romance and sisterly love.  And for the most part, it works fairly well, although it maybe bites off a little more than it can chew.


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Monday, February 11, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book of M by Peng Shepherd




The idea of what memories really mean to us and how much memories make each of us who we are is a fascinating idea that more than a few genre books have explored.  For example, Bethany Morrow's "Mem" deals with this very issue, and is a fascinating book to read (my review of that book can be found here).   The Book of M is another book that deals with this idea, through a supernatural plague that strips people of their shadows and then causes them to feel a pull toward forgetting, a pull which is harder and harder to resist.  It's an interesting concept in theory.

In execution, The Book of M is.......not good.  The book follows the paths of four main characters, but one character is clearly the lead, and when the characters converge, he takes center stage and the others start to orient themselves around him - which is annoying because he's not only the least interesting, he's also incredibly unlikable.  And the plot verges on outright silliness at times, culminating in an ending that might've had the biggest WTF moment I've had in a long time.

Yeah, I recommend skipping The Book of M and seeking the examination of the idea of how memories define us elsewhere.  But if you want to know more, after the jump I'll go a bit more in detail.

Note: I read this as an audiobook, which has two readers: a male reader for most of the story, whenever it's narrated by three of the four major characters and a female reader for the fourth major character.  The male reader (James Fouhey) is....only okay, and reads in a way that is kind of dry, but the female reader (Emily Woo Zeller) is very good and actually seems to more act out the feelings of the character she's narrating.  So reading this in audiobook instead of print (if you don't take my advice and skip this one) is not a bad idea.


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Thursday, February 7, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: This Cruel Design by Emily Suvada




This Cruel Design is the second book in Emily Suvada's cyperpunk thriller series (a trilogy I suspect?) that began with "This Mortal Coil" (which I reviewed here).  For those who missed my review of that book, I had some mixed feelings - mainly positive, but still mixed - about the story, which had a breakneck pace and threw out so many damn ideas and barely devoted any time to exploring them.  The resulting story was definitely interesting and hard to put down though, so I'd hoped that the sequel could keep up the best aspects while actually devoting time to some of the issues raised, to make a truly fascinating and great book.

Well, This Cruel Design definitely keeps up the breakneck pace and is hard to put down, but it's....kind of a trainwreck.  The book honestly actually pushes the pace, with the story never taking a moment to breathe at all and instead rushing from one crazy plot point/twist to the next.  And well, some of these ideas thrown around, especially with the book doing little to develop them, just seem kind of silly.  I'm kind of curious how the next book will go and I may check it out - because this series is definitely not boring, but it's not good either, and someone who hasn't started the series may want to look elsewhere.

NOTE:  Spoilers for This Mortal Coil are impossible to avoid below.  Proceed at your own risk:


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Wednesday, February 6, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman




The Invisible Library is the first in a fantasy series by Genevieve Cogman which after a new release this year, is now at 5 books and counting.  This is a series in which our heroine travels throughout a multiverse in which some worlds have magic, some have just science, some have a mix of both, and things like chaos exist to throw even crazier fantastical elements into the mix, meaning there's a lot of ideas that can be thrown around in a single book.  It's also a series in which the central character works (naturally) for a Library, and isn't trying to save a world or anything.  I'd heard some raves about the series from the people I pay attention to, so I've always been meaning to get to the series at some point.

And now having read the first book in the series, I can definitely see why the series is well liked.  The setting allows for a lot of fun and crazy situations without the book seeming to go too off the rails, and the characters are really nicely done.  And the fact that the lead character is totally competent from the start and isn't seeking to save the world is a really nice change from many other stories.  And with an ending that's satisfying while also providing some pretty nice sequel hooks, I will definitely be trying out the second book in the series probably some time next month.


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Tuesday, February 5, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass




Shadow Blade is the first in an urban fantasy trilogy from author Seressia Glass.  In a classic fantasy trope, the story involves an ancient battle between the Light and Shadow - in which our heroine is a warrior on the side of Light - a Shadow Chaser - who fears possibly succumbing to the influence of darkness.  In a less common version of the trope, the heroine and secondary protagonist both draw power from faith in Egyptian Gods, despite the story taking place in modern day Atlanta.

The result is a story that had elements reminiscent of quite a few other older works, but which combined those elements into an interesting and different way.  The story could probably have used another 50 pages - the central romance and the ending are a little rushed - but it's a fun marriage of elements into a very solid urban fantasy story.  Unfortunately, my library doesn't have the rest of the trilogy, so I might not get to the sequels any time soon, but I do plan on checking them out eventually.


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Monday, February 4, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Wonder Engine by T Kingfisher



The Wonder Engine is the second half of T Kingfisher's (the pen name for author Ursula Vernon's non-children fic) Clocktaur War duology, which began with "The Clockwork Boys" (Review Here).  I enjoyed The Clockwork Boys a bit, but complained in that review that the book wasn't satisfying on its own - that it felt too much like the first half of a more complete story, which was a bit frustrating considering its short length.  I enjoyed it quite a bit in parts, but it just wasn't enough for me.  So this book had additional pressure for me as a reviewer, as it had to not only be satisfying on its own but be satisfying enough to justify my read of its predecessor.

And it does, oh it does in spades.  The characters in this book remain tremendous and only grow more so, the dialogue contains numerous gems, and the plot goes in directions that are sometimes predictable and sometimes not but always make sense, and the whole thing wraps up in an enormously satisfying package.  I still wish that the two books were united as one (they'd be ~500 pages, which would be shorter than a recent book I finished by 200 pages!), but The Wonder Engine is satisfying both as a conclusion to the overall story and its own book, which is a damn good achievement (Not that I would recommend starting here).


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