Saturday, September 28, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell




The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell (Witches of Lychford book #2)

The Lost Child of Lychford is the sequel to Paul Cornell's "Witches of Lychford" (reviewed on this blog here), and the second in what will soon be a four novella series.  The series features three women - a young vicar, a young skeptic once touched by magic, and an old woman experienceed in the craft - who have to come together to stop invasions of the supernatural in a quaint English town.

I enjoyed the first of these novellas quite a bit - it was short and not mind-blowing in any way, but its main characters were strong and had depth and the story, while somewhat predictable, was executed really well.  And The Lost Child of Lychford is similar, if a little stronger I think, in the way its plot continues the story of these three excellent women facing the supernatural in an incredibly creepy way, as this invasion features the mysterious enemy targeting the three of them deliberately and meticulously, which Cornell writes in fantastic fashion.

Again, I read this novella as an audiobook - and while the reader is good, for some reason the reader is not the same one as the reader from the first audiobook, which is a bit distracting.


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Thursday, September 26, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Isle of Blood and Stone by Makiia Lucier




Isle of Blood and Stone is a YA fantasy by author Makiia Lucier, and the first of a duology of books - the second of which just came out in August.  It's a stand-alone novel mind you, featuring a solid interesting fantasy world, with a pair of excellent main characters, who struggle to discover a truth long hidden, whose revelation they know will almost certainly only bring pain.  It's a pretty solid setup, and I'm certainly interested in reading the second half of this duology later this year.

Unfortunately, the execution falters a bit along the way, especially by the book's end, where the book wraps things up insanely quickly in a way that is hardly very satisfying.  The book includes some fantastical elements that generally go nowhere and its romantic subplot isn't particularly enthralling, even if it's fine.  Essentially what we have here is the skeleton of a perfectly good young adult fantasy, but not the execution needed to take this beyond fine.

More specifics after the jump:

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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Forbidden Stars by Tim Pratt



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 8 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

 Tim Pratt's "The Axiom" trilogy made a pretty damn strong first impression with "The Wrong Stars" (Review Here), featuring an excellent mix of humor and space opera (with a little romance along the way).  The story featured a misfit cast of characters as the crew of a ship discovering a looming Universal Threat from a highly advanced but dormant species of aliens, and the resulting work was a pretty close to perfect lighthearted story that made me crack up and smile while still posing serious consequences for our heroes.  I didn't quite love as much the second book, The Dreaming Stars (Review Here), quite as much, as I felt the book lost a bit of the oddball humor and charm that I loved about the first - it was still pretty good mind you, just not as good.

The Forbidden Stars continues this downward trend and accelerates it, to my disappointment.  The book focuses far more than its predecessors in a single character's perspective and features a far less interesting conflict for most of its duration.  Moreover, not only does the book lose much of its humor, but it feels for much of it like a completely different type of book altogether: one following a hyper competent military-esque agent waging a one woman war on an oppressive underestimating enemy.  There's nothing wrong with that type of plot and its competently executed, but it's not what I've come to expect from the first two books in the series, and even executed nicely it feels kind of generic as a result.


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Monday, September 23, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Whispers of Shadow & Flame by L Penelope




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 1 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Whispers of Shadow & Flame is the second book in author L Penelope's "Earthsinger Chronicles" series, after her first book, Song of Blood & Stone (Reviewed Here).  Both Song and this book were originally self-published, but are now being rereleased by a traditional publisher, with this second book coming out this coming month.  I liked Song a little - it was a solid fantasy romance story, featuring strong themes of racial prejudice and the issue of refugee camps in a country bordering a totalitarian government that seem a little more relevant now than even just a year ago.  Still, I felt Song felt utterly barebones at times, with very little depth to the setting outside of its themes, and a personal conflict that felt rather weak and predictable overall.  I may have skipped this second novel, had I not see it come up on NetGalley for a potential review.

And Whispers of Shadow & Flame definitely course corrects on the issues of its predecessor - the setting this time around is far deeper, with the story featuring far more characters of importance and really exploring the world over the course of its plot.  It's actually not a sequel per se - the book takes place during the same time period as Song, but in the neighboring totalitarian nation instead, dealing with characters dealt with but not really seen in that first book. And I really enjoyed these characters for the most part, as well as the romance that develops, but the book has two issues: a bifurcated plot where one plotline is much stronger than the others, and an ending that well....isn't an ending, but instead a cliffhanger for a third novel.

Note: You can start the series with this book and you'll probably be okay doing so.  The book references characters from the prior book on occasion, but they never really actually show up on screen, outside two greater powers who lurk on the periphery.  That said, some of the concepts of this world were explained in greater detail in the first book, so you might be a little lost at first if you try it.  

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Thursday, September 19, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Suicide Club: A Novel About Living by Rachel Heng




Dystopian fiction is a classic extension of the SciFi/Fantasy Genres - for example, a quick search of my own book reviews just this year reveals 8 works with dystopian settings that I've read and reviewed this year, and I'm not exactly searching them out.  Obviously these settings allow for writers to explore futures that seem both horrifying and possible for us in our own lifetimes, and the stories within these settings, while sometimes still being fun to read, naturally can be read as messages to the reader - even more than how basically any fiction serves as a message to the reader.  If you're one of those people (sigh) who for some reason thinks "message fiction" is evil and is a problem, Dystopian SciFi is almost certainly not for you.

Suicide Club is dystopian Science Fiction of a most classic sort, leaning heavily into the horrors and hypocrisy's of its dystopia, with the main characters' struggles being against the bounds of this dark future rather than merely being set amongst it - a 1984 comparison here is not inapt, honestly, if you want a classic example of this type of book.  It has two strong lead characters, a plot that works rather well and will keep readers on their toes, and an interesting dystopian setting that will raise questions for any reader.  And yet....Suicide Club has so much in it, that its messages become kind of muddled, to the point where I'm not quite sure what the author was trying to say, and I suspect that readers of different political persuasions might have some very different takeaways from it, which isn't ideal.

I'll try to go more in depth on this after the jump.  Note that I read this as an audiobook, so if I get any spellings of characters/places/ideas wrong, that's why, but the reader was very good and is recommended. 

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Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Spoilery Discussion: The Unkindest Tide and Seanan Mcguire's October Daye Series


If you couldn't tell from the name of this post, this is a post where I'm going to vent my thoughts about the October Daye series as a whole, and my speculations as to where things are going.  I'll also be talking about spoilers in The Unkindest Tide that I tiptoed around in my review post.  So if you're interested in the series, and haven't read all 13 books, don't read any further.

For my non-spoiler review of The Unkindest Tide, see THIS post.

You have been warned.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Unkindest Tide by Seanan McGuire




I've said this quite a few times, but Seanan Mcguire's October Daye series is one of my favorite ongoing series out there.  I first got interested in the urban fantasy series when the first ten books were in the Hugo Packet 3 years ago and I intended to read only a few of them for voting purposes....only to binge read them all within a week.  I've read each of the next two books on the day they were released, so uhhhh yeah, I love this series, although I did think the most recent book - Night and Silence - was a bit of a lowpoint of the series for being really repetitive of past adventures.

The Unkindest Tide is however a terrific return to form, with the book paying off on plot threads that have been dangling since Book 5 in a creative and interesting way and moving our characters and world in some really interesting directions.  As usual, I would not suggest this book as a starting point for the series - despite the first chapter being nearly entirely devoted to recap, the book relies heavily on past story developments to work.  But this book is yet another good reason for newcomers to try and get into the series, as it's producing works that range from solid to great nearly every year.

Note: This book also contains a short novella "Hope is Swift", which I will quickly review below as well.

Note2: This will be as spoiler-free a review as possible.  I will post a spoilery thoughts post for this book as well, so if you're interested in my spoiler-filled thoughts, wait for that, and if you want to post in comments, do so there


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Tuesday, September 17, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep




Protect the Prince is the second in Jennifer Estep's "Crown of Stars" trilogy, after last year's "Kill the Queen."  Kill the Queen was a very fun fantasy story that I enjoyed quite a bit - a great example of a book being very frequently predictable and tropey (with one exception) but working really well due to very solid execution.  There was nothing about Kill the Queen that would stand out upon reflection, but it read really well and again, I enjoyed it plenty, so I was very excited to eventually get my hands on the book's sequel.

Protect the Prince is that sequel, and it's once again enjoyable....but its lost just a bit of its charm in the second go-around.  Again the book is executed fairly well, to make up for some very very predictable plot elements, with solid characters and an enjoyable setting, so I don't want to sound too negative - but there isn't much evolution here in how things develop, so the predictability of certain elements becomes a bit more grating than in book 1.  I'll still be on board for the trilogy's conclusion, but I'm a little disappointed this book didn't take a leap from its predecessor.


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Monday, September 16, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Anthology Review: Of Wars, and Memories and Starlight by Aliette de Bodard




Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is the first anthology of short fiction by French Vietnamese SciFi/Fantasy author, Aliette de Bodard.  de Bodard is a multi-award winning author in the genre, and, more personally, is one of my favorite authors. de Bodard's work is often written in one of her several universes - most notably her Xuya universe based upon a Chinese/Vietnamese-based Empire in space or her Dominions of the Fallen universe featuring a ruined Paris torn apart by fallen angels and Vietnamese dragons - although its nearly always stand alone and pretty much always deep in themes and symbolism. 

This anthology is a pretty good representation of de Bodard's work, with many stories based in her Xuya universe, featuring themes of the impact of colonization, of the meanings and duties towards family, of memories and grief, the horrors of war, and more.  The final two stories are novellettes, one old and one all new, based in the Dominion of the Fallen universe and are a lot more fun to close things out.  Overall, you can't really do wrong with de Bodard's work, and this is a good example of why.


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Thursday, September 12, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey




In the Night Wood is a short dark contemporary (not urban) fantasy novel by author Dale Bailey.  I hadn't heard of the book until it picked up a nomination for the World Fantasy Award, but I like to try and read through all of the works that pick up notable nominations, so I quickly reserved the book from the library.*

*The book is also available from Kindle Unlimited, but I didn't have time to read it right away, so having it on hold from the library actually not only supported my library but gave me a greater chance of reading it.

 And well, In the Night Wood has the framework of a dark fantasy or even horror novel work, but I don't quite think it pulls it all off in the end.  Like I said, the novel is short, but it packs a ton of revelations and resolutions into its final pages to the point where the ending feels abrupt and unearned, despite a ton of setup before those final pages.  It isn't helped by the character work, which is fine but unexceptional, and the book's refusal to have characters talk to each other honestly for way way too long just to keep them in the dark.  The imagery of the book is written well, so I can see how it got the award nomination, but it just didn't work for me.


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Wednesday, September 11, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: City of Lies by Sam Hawke




There is a pretty common trope in fiction - and especially SciFi/Fantasy fiction - of stories about main characters who grow up in privilege and are forced through a story/adventure to confront that privilege.  It's a classic of the genre, especially when the protagonist characters are members of royalty, typically living in an isolated castle with little contact whatsoever with the commoners they ostensibly rule.  But as anyone who's paying attention these days may have noticed, privilege is a very real thing even in a world - like ours - in which people don't live in isolated castles, causing a lot of problems as the very real problems of others remain hidden from view to those with the power to change - or prevent change - these problems.

I use this preamble, because this trope is heavy in City of Lies, despite the lack of royalty involved, as the story of a fantasy city-state dealing with both treachery from within and the uprising of the under-privileged lower classes to the great surprise of the main characters.  If you find the amount of ignorant privilege of the lead characters believable - and I lean towards this view though it's pretty close - then City of Lies is a pretty solid, verging on pretty damn god, fantasy story dealing with politics, class-conflict, espionage, poisonings, magic, etc, to go along with a few very interesting lead and minor characters.  If you find the amount of privileged espoused here to be a bit too incredible, then the whole thing doesn't work.  I think it does work - barely - and is worth a read, and while this is the beginning of a longer series/trilogy, City of Lies works as a stand-alone in case you were worried about starting a new series and not wanting to go further.

Note: I read this as an audiobook, and the two readers are excellent.  That said, if I misspell names and concepts below as a result, that's why.

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Tuesday, September 10, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman




Genevieve Cogman's "Invisible Library" series is the rare kind of series for me: it's a series that I wouldn't necessarily consider the best of the SciFi/Fantasy (it's a hybrid) genres....and yet also a series that is so so so damn hard for me to put down once I get into it.  It'd taken me a single day to read each of the first two books in the series so far, so when my library said that this book, which is the third book in the series, was available immediately, I deliberately avoided starting it until I was sure I could afford to spend a single day to burn through it....

And yeah, it took me only one day again to burn through The Burning Page.  Like its predecessors, the book is incredibly well paced, with the book using its multiversal setting of multiple fantasy and scifi based worlds to pose some really interesting challenges for our hero...who remains just so so great as she tries to work her way through them all.  And again, the book is just incredibly fun and creative, culminating in a collision between our protagonist and antagonist that is so so well done.  Yeah, I love this series still and The Burning Page is an excellent installment within it.


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Monday, September 9, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Gossamer Mage by Julie E. Czerneda




The Gossamer Mage is a stand-alone fantasy novel from established SF/F author Julie E. Czerneda, featuring a fantasy world in which magic is non-existent except in a single country which serves as the story's setting.  More significantly, it's a world where magic, said to come from the Deathless Goddess, has a significant cost - the lives of those who wield it in various forms, and yet those with the "Gift" find themselves unable to reject it despite the consequences.  This setting forms the background for a fascinating story of a series of characters, whose reactions to the magic vary in significant ways.


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Thursday, September 5, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Velocity Weapon by Megan E O'Keefe




Velocity Weapon is the first in a Space Opera trilogy by author Megan O'Keefe, which tries some really interesting things through its several viewpoint characters.  I don't love the "Space Opera" genre label, because it tends to be used for practically any SciFi story that either takes place in space or involves space ships that isn't blatantly MilSci (And even sometimes then).  The result is that space opera is sometimes used to describe books whose scope isn't particularly big despite the expansive setting and sometimes used to describe books which are completely epic in scope.

Velocity Weapon is definitely the start of a trilogy that is perhaps better described as "Epic SciFi," with the story jumping back and forth between large stretches of space and time repeatedly, to tell a story that concerns the fates of entire planets and beyond.  And it works, managing to tell a story with some interesting characters, some decent plot twists, and a pace that moves along nicely despite the book being 500+ pages long.  The book has some issues - most significantly in how it has one subplot that frustratingly interrupts the action repeatedly in order to set up future books - but if you're looking for some epic scifi, there's some good stuff here.


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Wednesday, September 4, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 10, 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Thousand Doors of January is the first novel of author Alix E. Harrow, who just won this past year's Hugo Award for Best Short Story.  That story, A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies, is a powerful story about a lost boy among adults who have the tools (a magic book hidden away by a librarian) that can help them find their way and while it wasn't my pick for the Hugo, it certainly was not unworthy of the award.  That story was actually the first I'd heard of Harrow, who's apparently written a short list of short fiction over the past few years, but it was impressive enough as a story for me to be interested when her first novel showed up for request on NetGalley.

And The Thousand Door of January shares some themes with that short story but uses those themes in different ways to create a very different tone, ending on an optimistic if little bittersweet tone.  It takes a not unfamiliar take on portal fantasy, marries it to a conflict between the status quo of the past and change of the unknown future, and centers the story around a young heroine who is really well done.  And more, a heroine whose story I really cared about, which is one of the best things I can say about a story.


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Tuesday, September 3, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold





Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold

Knife Children is a novella released just this year by legendary SF/F author Lois McMaster Bujold, acting as a distant sequel to her "The Sharing Knife" fantasy romance series.  I really enjoyed The Sharing Knife, particularly in its central romance between protagonists Dag and Fawn, even if I do think it avoided dealing with certain interesting issues the series brought up.  So you'd think I'd be excited to read this sequel novella.

Unfortunately, the sequel novella doesn't feature the original romantic duo, but instead with side character Barr Foxbrush. And particularly, with a specific aspect of the original series that I found very problematic (and not rare in Bujold's works) - with a supposedly "good" character dealing with the results of his own sexual crimes.  The result is very much what I feared - written excellently with Bujold's usual excellent craft, but in the furtherance of a premise that is, when thought about, INCREDIBLY problematic....at best.


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Monday, September 2, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey




Magic for Liars is a story that got a lot of praise from sources I trust when it came out.  Its author, Sarah Gailey, has been nominated for four Hugo Awards over the past three years (including my pick for this year's award for Best Short Story).  Still, the only longer form work of Gailey's that I've read was their "River for Teeth," which was an exaggerated kind of nuts story (Hippos being used for a heist on the Mississippi!) that I didn't quite love, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Magic for Liars, which is clearly a very different kind of book.

And yeah, it is very different, and it is uses its mix of genres - a noir detective/magic-school mashup - to extremely interesting effect.  You'll note I use the word interesting rather than "good," because I'm not really sure how much I liked Magic for Liars, to be honest.  The characters are all strong and the plot and setting is well done, let's be clear - this is a well crafted book.  But it's an incredibly cynical book from start to finish, ending with a major oof, and I'm not really sure it's something I'd want to read again.


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