Friday, September 28, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: Deadline by Stephanie Ahn




Deadline is a novella that serves as the first book in a new Urban Fantasy series by Stephanie Ahn.  It's only available as an ebook currently on Amazon, though you can read it with Kindle Unlimited if you're a subscriber.  And if you are, I would definitely recommend it, as it's a really fun start to a new series in the genre, featuring a lesbian (disgraced) blood witch in New York City dealing with demons, monsters, and other more....interesting beings.

*Deadline is marketed as "Book 1" of this new series, raising questions of whether it should be considered a novella or novel.  Due to its brief length (under 190 pages), I'm counting it as a novella, although it's on the border, and I'd be unsurprised if sequels reach a length more typical of a novel series - like one of the other urban fantasy series I read, Annie Bellet's 20 Sided Sorceress.

 Note: As this book makes clear in its author's note at the start, this book is definitely meant for adults and contains a significant scene containing consensual BDSM play.  If you have a problem with that, stay away.

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Thursday, September 27, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells




  The Wizard Hunters is the first of Martha Wells' "The Fall of Ile-Rien" trilogy, a trilogy of books set in her less well known fantasy world of Ile-Rien.  I've sung high praises of Wells' work quite a few times on this blog, from her Raksura books to her Murderbot series, and have even enjoyed one previous book in the world of Ile-Rien, the stand-alone The Death of the Necromancer (Review Here).  The Wizard Hunters requires no prior knowledge of any prior Ile-Rien book (although it features the daughter of TDotN's protagonists and fans of that book will enjoy some call backs) and forms an excellent start to a new fantasy trilogy.

   The Wizard Hunters features a very different protagonist from its predecessor: Tremaine Valiarde, ex-playwright, daughter of master thief Nicholas and master actress Madeline (from TDotN), but who lacks the confidence of either.  Moreover, the world it features is very different - Ile-Rien has advanced technologically another step, but much of the plot takes place in a parallel world which is much more primitive, with the native people there wielding bows and swords rather than guns and fearing any magic whatsoever.  It's almost a portal fantasy....except the portal our characters go through isn't from our world to another world, but between two different fantasy worlds altogether, and the result is a story with compelling heroes, interesting villains, and an all round satisfying plot even as it leaves open questions for the rest of the trilogy to solve.

Note:  I read this book as an audiobook, and the audiobook reader is excellent.  Worth your time in this format.

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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Temper by Nicky Drayden




Temper is Nicky Drayden's second novel, after last year's "The Prey of Gods" (Which I reviewed here).  The Prey of Gods was a scifi/fantasy hybrid novel set in South Africa which featured a ton of crazy ideas all mashed together (AIs, Ancient Demigods, mind control ethics, genetic engineering issues, among just a few) that somehow worked to create a pretty strong book.  With Temper, Drayden seems to be going with a more conventional story at first - the story features only one point of view character (who tells the story in first person) - even if the setting for the story is incredibly far out there from what we might think of as the norm.

That setting should be a hint to readers - while this novel may begin as a seemingly more conventional humorous SF/F horror story, it expands throughout into many many directions until it becomes far more ambitious than even The Prey of Gods, with ideas being thrown around like crazy.  The problem is that, unlike in her first novel, Temper has a massive pacing problem:  these ideas get added at a seemingly exponential rate as the plot gets further in, with its final act becoming so incredibly complicated so as to get overwhelming for the reader, and to make it hard to really grasp what Drayden is getting at with each of these ideas.

More after the Jump:

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Monday, September 24, 2018

Spoilery Discussion for Night and Silence and the October Daye Series as a whole.



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 Night and Silence that I tiptoed around in my review post.  So if you're interested in the series, and haven't read all 12 books, don't read any further.

For my non-spoiler review of Night and Silence, see THIS post.

You have been warned.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Night and Silence (October Daye #12) by Seanan McGuire




Night and Silence is the twelfth book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, a fae/urban fantasy series set in San Francisco.  October Daye is one of my favorite ongoing series that I read right now, and I've looked forward to this book for quite some time.  The series can always/usually be counted on to give you fun characters and dialogue (even if the situations they find themselves in sometimes get very dark), plots that are interesting and twisting and often have roots in events from way back earlier in the series, and a lot of creative use of Fae and magic.

Alas, Night and Silence might be my least favorite October Daye book in quite some time, maybe of the series itself.  This is not due to any problem necessarily with the book in isolation, but due to the fact that the plot of the book is well....very very similar to that of some prior works in the series, particularly Book 5 (One Salt Sea) to a major extent and Book 9 (A Red-Rose Chain) to a lesser extent.  The book answers one major question the series had previously posed, but the answer was one I'd guessed (the danger of seeding plot points within past books is that reveals are guess-able), even if the method of reveal was a little surprising.  That's not to say the book wasn't enjoyable - I've already reread it three times lol - but it was disappointing in that it felt a bit like a retread and a placeholder for the series.

Note 1: If you couldn't figure it out, the twelfth book in this series is not a great starting point for new readers.  In theory, new readers could skip books 1-5 and commence with Book 6, I guess, but readers are strongly advised to begin the series from the beginning (even though I think books 1-2 are among the weakest volumes due almost certainly to McGuire still getting her bearings)

Note 2: This post will necessarily contain some spoilers for prior books in the series, but I will be spoiler free for Night and Silence itself. For a spoilery discussion of this book, see THIS post.

Note 3:  Like the prior two books in the series, Night and Silence comes with a bonus novella attached.  That novella's plot is even more of a direct response to the events of this book however, so while I will vaguely discuss it below, I will not be including it in the plot summary:

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Saturday, September 22, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani



Memories of Ash is the successor to Intisar Khanani's earlier fantasy novella, Sunbolt (reviewed here).  Unlike Sunbolt however, Memories of Ash is a full novel as opposed to a novella.  More importantly, Memories of Ash feels a lot less derivative than its predecessor - it still shares some themes with Robin McKinley's "Sunshine" but the plot feels more inspired and less like a rip-off - and the result is a story that feels a little more fresh and surprising.  I'm not sure if future books in this series are coming, but I hope they do, because I have enjoyed these stories so far.  That said, the book has a satisfying ending in case future books do not come, even if it mostly sets up future plot arcs.

Note:  As I said in my review of Sunbolt, that novella felt very much like the prologue to a longer series, and this book reads more like Book 1 in a series thereafter.  As such, you can read this book without reading Sunbolt and I don't think you'll have much trouble, though you'll miss a little bit. 

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Thursday, September 20, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Planetside by Michael Mammay




Planetside is a MilSci mystery novel written by Michael Mammay.  I've stated before that MilSci is generally not something I'm that interested in - the only ongoing MilSci series I read is Marko Kloos' Frontlines series - but I was interested from the author's promo on Scalzi's blog and Kloos blurbed Planetside, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Unfortunately, Planetside didn't fulfill my expectations.  The MilSci elements were fine in general, but the book also tries to work as sort of a noir mystery, and the tone of the story as told by the main character just didn't work for me.  And then there's the ending which, hoo-boy, I'm going to have some spoilery discussion in ROT13 after the jump to discuss that.  If you enjoy MilSci a lot you might enjoy Planetside, but if you're like me and don't have a particular love for the subgenre, you might want to pass on this one.

Note:  I read Planetside as an audiobook, and the audiobook reader is incredibly dry.  As such, it's hard for me to tell if my negative feelings towards the main character are due to the bad reader or just not liking how he's written.  If you're interested in this book therefore, I recommend picking up the print edition instead of the audiobook.

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