SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Oath of Fire by K. Arsenault Rivera

 

Oath of Fire is the latest novel from K Arsenault Rivera, who previously wrote the epic fantasy/sapphic romance trilogy that began with The Tiger's Daughter. The Tiger's Daughter is honestly one of my favorite books ever, with its F-F romance being just incredible and the writing of the story bringing joy/tears to my eyes. So yeah, I had high hopes for Oath of Fire, even if I basically knew nothing of the story's inspiration: the tale of Psyche and Eros.

And Oath of Fire is an excellent queer and sapphic romance that does some really interesting things. The story makes Psyche a social worker/therapist who is well meaning but struggles with knowing the right thing to do and with being brave in talking to people, and who finds bits of relief through MMORPG playing and occasional instagram posts. When all seems to go wrong for her professionally, Psyche is sent an invitation to the Fae-like (and Greek god filled) wine-dark courts, where she becomes involved with and oathsworn to the mysterious masked Eros, whom she is drawn tremendously too despite her danger. There are parts here of this story that are predictable (as you'd expect from the story's origins) but Arsenault Rivera still manages to weave a tremendous romance with modern fantasy elements as Psyche gets more and more involved in this dangerous (and often sexy) romance, where one wrong word or move could get her killed. More specifics after the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: What Swims on Uncharted World 550 by R.B. Lovitt

 

What Swims on Uncharted World 550 is a short novel that is part of this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4). The novel is essentially a murder mystery on an alien planet with the story told from the perspective of a new scientist who arrives at an existing scientific expedition just in time to be there when members of the expedition start mysteriously dying off.

It's a book that's easy to read, with a twist near the end (I mean it is a mystery of course) that is decently set up, and yet I still wound up thinking just "huh" at the end of it. Basically it seems to be using the story for an idea and payoff that the story doesn't really earn, which makes it read well but not actually manage to be satisfying or super successful. Some better explanations, with some spoilers in ROT13, after the jump:

Fantasy Novella Review: Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Demon Daughter is the twelfth story in Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy "Penric & Desdemona" series. As I've said before, I've enjoyed the series - which focuses upon the unexpected combination of the inquisitive Penric & the ten-lived demon Desdemona in Bujold's World of the Five Gods - but have found the later installments hit or miss. Pen & Des's interactions through their mind and verbal talk are always fun/interesting, but at this point Bujold seems to alternate between stories that are interesting through new character developments and ones that are just more of the same and don't offer anything new.

Demon Daughter does offer some new character developments, although it does feel a little bit like a not fully fleshed out idea. The story focuses upon Pen & Des, along with Nikys, as they encounter a 7 year old girl - around the age of their own daughter - who was thrown overboard from a ship when she contracted a demon. Even more notably, the demon inside her is essentially a child itself, having existed only within a rat before her for the barest of moments, and as such is so pure that Des takes a maternal instinct towards her...which leads to internal conflict with Pen. As a story it's a bit heartwarming at times and the character relationships all work...but it also feels like a story on rails to a predestined end from early on, which takes some of the intrigue off of it.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice

 

Moon of the Turning Leaves is the stand alone sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, an earlier short novel by Waubgeshig Rice. That novel featured a post-apocalypse world where all electricity and communications devices went out and focused upon an Anishinaabe community who had to come together to survive in a dangerous winter, utilizing their old almost forgotten customs and facing hostilities from white interlopers who have their own more greedy ideas about how to survive. It was a really effective short novel.

Moon of the Turning Leaves is stand alone and takes place years later, when the community has been settled for a generation but is now suddenly realizing that the natural food supplies of fish and game in the area are running low. And so we have the story of a scouting party led by prior book protagonist Evan and his teenage daughter Nangohns, who is the village's best hunter and has known almost nothing but the Anishinaabe way of life that their village has promoted, as they search to see what else is out there and if their people's old homeland might still be suitable for them to relocate. None of the story that results will be that surprising to readers or feels that original and yet it is very well told and infused with the Anishanabe culture of the author and the characters, so it's well worth reading.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Wilderness Five by C.R. Walton

 

Wilderness Five is a self-published science fiction novel by author C.R. Walton which is an entry in this year's Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC4). The novel has a setup that seems almost like one of a Michael Crichton novel as it features a platform (Wilderness Five) in space where a new green place for people to live is being created with the aid of carefully controlled tech that speeds up evolution and growth....until others, such as an immortality seeking billionaire, decide to use less careful applications of science on the platform for their own selfish ends.

It's a story with an intriguing setup, if perhaps anti-technology at times (ala Chrichton) that tries to deal with ideas about evolution, sentience, and intelligence. Unfortunately, the final acts of the story devolve into an utter mess, with character decisions being nonsensical and the specifics of what's happening becoming utterly confusing and hard to figure out. I did manage to finish it, which is more than I can say for some SPSFC4 entries, but overall, Wilderness Five is a failure even if you are open to its themes.

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

 

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 August 20, 2024 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.

Rules for Ghosting is the debut novel for queer Jewish author Shelly Jay Shore. The book is advertised as a queer Jewish romance (and Jewish family drama) and that's exactly what it is - with a minor fantasy element of its protagonist being able to see ghosts. And so we get a story dealing with the rituals of a Jewish Funeral Home, our trans male protagonist Ezra dealing with new roommates and a crush on a hot recently widowed funeral home volunteer Jonathan, family drama incited by Ezra's mother admitting at the seder that she's actually in love with the Rabbi's wife, and oh yeah, one of the ghosts Ezra is now seeing everwhere is Jonathan's dead husband Ben. If that sounds like a lot and a mess, well, that's the point and honestly, that only makes the book feel more Jewish.

And as a Jewish SF/F and romance reader who reads a lot of queer works, well, I kind of loved Rules for Ghosting. The story deals with Jewish Guilt and Obligations and family messes in very realistic ways, has a really lovely romance between Ezra and Jonathan and doesn't do the annoying third act temporary breakup I hate in many romances, and just is pretty lovely in the end. I'm not sure how the book will work for non-Jewish readers (probably still pretty decent, but honestly who cares those readers have plenty of non Jewish romances to read) but for the Jewish and especially the Jewish and Queer romance fans, this one is definitely going to appeal.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ash by Grace Walker

 

Ash is a self-published science fiction novel that is the start of a new series/trilogy by 17 year old author Grace Walker, whose bio notes that her first trilogy was written at age 14. And let me tell you, for a 17 year old's self published work, Ash is very solid - the prose is written very well and is very readable and the main characters are certainly likable, with the story also containing some promise of exploration of serious themes. And the novel is short enough that readers will get through it fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, Ash isn't ultimately a satisfying novel because the book feels incomplete. As I'll explain more below, the book stops on a cliffhanger before the story really gets into anything, despite the reader knowing that certain events are going to happen, so it just winds up being kind of frustrating. And the book definitely could use a bunch of editing as it takes just too long to get out of the first act that is basically just preamble and probably could've used more time in the book's second act. There's a good novel in what is written here I think and an editor probably would've helped Walker tease it out, but Ash isn't there yet.