SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher

 

A Sorceress Comes to Call is the latest novel by T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) to be nominated for some major awards, in this case the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is ostensibly a fairy tale adaptation of "The Goose Girl", but honestly it's an incredibly loose adaptation if that and I completely missed the intent to be such an adaptation until I read other pieces explaining the connection. It's also kind of a regency novel in setting, but not really. Honestly, I felt like the novel was almost more one of Kingfisher's horror novels (another of her common genres) as it dealt with the horrifying implications of a powerful sorceress - who can bind minds, has an extremely scary familiar eek - and the two protagonists' attempts to get free of and to stop her from taking over. Again, I don't think this was meant as a horror novel - it's been a long running joke on social media that Vernon's fluffy romance novels have horrifying moments just because of how her imagination works - but I found it quite chilling and I had to put it down a whole bunch at times to take a break before continuing as a result.

Notably, the horror does work to keep the story intense and strong the story's two main characters - Hester and Cordelia - are excellent in their own very different ways: Cordelia, as the daughter of the sorceress who feels hopelessly alone, unable to break free of her mother and unable to figure out if there is any way of escaping, but who finds some key moments of bravery to take steps forward; and Hester, as the unmarried older sister of the Squire the sorceress wants to seduce and who is desperate to find a way, with the help of some friends and the man she loves, to stop the person she recognizes as "Doom" from getting her way. The story contains some of the trademark T Kingfisher wit in the dialogue, especially when Hester calls for allies, which I think most readers will enjoy, and overall the story ends in a very satisfying fashion. It's not my favorite T Kingfisher book, but it's a very good one and worth your time.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Saint Elspeth by Wick Welker

 

Saint Elspeth is a post apocalyptic sci-fi novel which is one of our finalists for this year's Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC4). The novel is a post apocalyptic story featuring as its main and only viewpoint character Dr. Elspeth Darrow, the only fully trained doctor left in the colony that has developed in what's left of San Francisco. It starts as a story of Elspeth attempting to maintain a reasonable level of medical treatment in the face of dwindling supplies and a colony leader who is getting increasingly fascistic and warlike and soon evolves into a story dealing with strange aliens, as Elspeth and her friends soon try to figure out what's going on with them and what that means for humanity.

It's written well, but oh my god is this book insanely cynical about humanity (I'd say it's mostly cynical about men, but there's only two female characters who get any sort of real page time, and the second one is herself paranoid and utterly cynical). The book postulates that the arrival of aliens doing nothing but just hanging around would be enough to cause nations to go mad and destroy the planet, and then later postulates that all men who would grow to lead the post apocalyptic settlements would turn into fascist wannabe cult leaders who are desperate to wage war on each other. In the face of all this is Elspeth, the rare character who despite her own depression and despair somehow manages to keep focusing upon healing and figuring things out so as to save the day, both from threats that are human and those that are inhuman and alien. I get that there's a theme about hope and healing and whatnot here, but god I couldn't help but keep being removed from this narrative not just by occasional issues with the tech levels of the setting, but really just from the dismal unbelievable cynicism about human nature all around (and yes I can say that even living in 2025).

Trigger Warning: A Suicide Attempt forms a major part of the story. This is not gratuitous and the book shows what is necessary for its themes and emotional beats to hit, so I think it's done as well as you could hope, but if this is a problem please be warned.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Yours Celestially by Al Hess

 

Yours Celestially is one of the six finalists in this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4), of which I am a Judge. The story takes place in an interesting future world, in which a company (Renascenz) has invented technology that allows those who use it to die, have their minds uploaded to an online server called "Limbo" and then seemingly be resurrected into a new body of their choosing. But during the delay period while someone is in Limbo, they interact with an AI called "Metatron" who tries to counsel them through their traumas before they resurrect. Using this setup, the story focuses upon two characters: Metatron, as they fall in love with one of the souls who are in Limbo and struggle with this new feeling, and Sasha, a resurrected person who is finding his new life even harder because he is seemingly getting hit with all of Metatron's pining and feelings for Rodrigo.

It's a setup that seems potentially really interesting and I wanted to like Yours Celestially a lot more than I did. But honestly, I struggled to keep going through this one and might've DNFed it if it wasn't a finalist for the SPSFC4 Crown. Specifically, I had problems really caring about Sasha, one of our two main protagonists, as his setting and the characters' he interacts with are only explained to a limited extent, to the point where I didn't really get why he cared about certain people or why those people cared about him (specifically his roommate Ivan). The romance with Sasha at its heart also really had a rough start, and while it gets better, it really isn't great. The Metatron chapters are better because it's a lot easier to care for them, but even there there's one character who's abusive in the middle of it which makes some of those chapters hard to read, and really felt like a betrayal of a book whose author seems to call it "hopepunk" in the foreward. Overall, I just have a hard time recommending this one, for reasons I'll expound further in the book.

TRIGGER WARNING: There is an abusive character in the book who reacts with rage and violence while in a virtual world and acted with real violence outside of it. Reading parts with that character can be rough, although the book kind of handles it well, even if I didn't like it. Also, one of the two main characters is recovering from a drug addiction.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Whiskey and Warfare by EM Hamill

 

Whiskey and Warfare is one of the six book that have made it to the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4) finals, of which I am a judge. The novel just to be clear has a terrible terrible name, which makes it sound like some humorous milsci novel (it's not at all). Instead, we have the story of an older woman in a scifi universe whose alien husband just passed unexpectedly, who struggles with PTSD from her final days as a do gooder space mercenary, and winds up getting back together with her old mercenary crew as they "coincidentally" fly through a planetary system where a group has seized power and started what sure seems to be a genocide. And so, while the story is not one where the ideas of good and evil are really ever complicated, we have a story of a group of women or femme-presenting soldiers struggles to do good despite an increasingly uncaring corporate-driven universe and despite the struggles that come with age and trauma.

And honestly, this works really well. While the story features a very familiar core - the gang of do-gooder soldiers getting back together again after years apart, remembering why they work well together, and having perhaps one last mission (or well maybe not, as this is the first in a series) together against desperate odds - the use of the older (and queer) protagonists, who each struggle with issues of age, grief, disability, infirmity, and trauma, very much works to separate this one from the norm. And Hamill's writing makes each of the characters, especially but not limited to protagonist Maryn, really likable and interesting and ends the novel in a satisfying way that also promises more should one want to continue with the series.

More specifics after the jump.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee

 

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 June 4, 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.

Moonstorm is the first in a new Young Adult Science Fiction (Mecha) trilogy written by author Yoon Ha Lee. I believe this is Lee's first work in the YA space - Lee has previously written adult novels (Machineries of Empire, Phoenix Extravagant) and middle grade novels (the Dragon Pearl trilogy), but never YA. As someone who has greatly enjoyed Lee's work, which often deals with fascinating themes of Empire and of colonization and competing powers and cultures, I was eager to see him ply his trade in YA (which I also read a lot of).

But any review of Moonstorm is going to struggle for this reviewer because the book's setup feels almost like a more junior version of the Machineries of Empire trilogy - for example, here the Empire fights a battle over its own definition of gravity which is strengthened by the beliefs of its own people. The book has a very solid YA Protagonist in Hwa Young, a girl taken from her destroyed homeworld and adopted into the Empire, where she becomes pressed into service against her former people as one of the Empire's lancer (mecha) pilots. But a large portion of the plot feels very paint by numbers in classic YA fashion despite the typical themes and concepts Lee throws in. A new YA reader who hasn't read any of Lee before might really find this fascinating and like it, but even they might find themselves calling what will happen way too early. More specifics after the jump.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire

 

Installment Immortality is the 14th mainline* novel in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid urban fantasy series: which follows the Price/Healy family as they attempt to safeguard Cryptids (creatures not believed by science) from the monster hunting Covenant of St. George and other often inhuman threats. This is also the second novel to center around former Crossroads ghost Mary Dunlavy, as she figures out who she is after the death of the Crossroads and the explosive events of the last book. As people should know, I'm a rather big fan of this series, so I managed to grab this book to read despite being way way behind on my TBR, although I have mixed feelings about how dire events in the series have gotten the last few books.

*McGuire releases InCryptid short stories on her Patreon, and one of those short stories was itself a novel, hence me using the word "mainline" to not mess with the count.

And I really liked Installment Immortality for the most part as it took the characters' struggling with some pretty tragic events, trauma and grief, and managed to examine it at the same time it also managed to give us some of the better parts of InCryptid: the encounters with the different Cryptid communities (in this case also some of the ghost communities) and how they work and survive in a human dominant world. In some ways it felt like a Rose Marshall book at times with its focus on the various types of ghosts (not really a problem for me), and the attached novella dealing with a spoiler character's grief over last book also worked really well. InCryptid fans will enjoy this one and people who haven't tried out the series will only have more reason to (although do NOT start here).

Spoilers for book 13 - Aftermarket Afterlife - and earlier books are below, so if you haven't read those books, be FOREWARNED. Also, this is not a good place to start this series, which has a few earlier jumping on points (Books 1, 3, and 6 work well in particular, plus online short stories).

Video Game Review: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

 

Anyone who follows me on social media or this blog and sees my rare video game playthrough talk may know two things: one I love JRPGs and two, I rarely play anything that is a major new game, with most of my gaming over the last few years being dedicated to the Trails series. But I follow a bunch of people in the video game sphere, and they would not stop talking and hyping Clair Obscur, a brand new RPG, with inspirations from Final Fantasy, that was released by a brand new French Studio to massive critical and seemingly financial success. And so, with a gaming laptop that was only a year old, I decided to give it a try, even despite some things that I suspected would cause me to not be in love with the game - particularly the game's reliance upon reflex-based dodge and parry mechanics in the middle of its Turn Based Gameplay.

I'm pretty glad I did, despite the dodge and parry mechanics being a major issue for me (as I'll go into later, I basically eschewed the tighter parrying mechanics entirely and tried to just get by with dodging and by using various other techniques to limit the damage from failing to dodge). Clair Obscur has a largely really great story (I think the ending is a failure, but everything leading up to it, especially the characters and plot development is excellent) and combines that with largely excellent gameplay that kept me enraptured....I picked this one up under the promise that the game was on the shorter scale for JRPGs and only 30 hours long and probably played closer to 70 hours since I did an extremely large percentage of the side content. The battle system is largely excellent, even if it does get to insanely unbalanced in the final act (a problem in a lot of JRPGs, such as my favorite series Trails), and much of the way the game works is intriguing and rewards someone who just wants to find one more thing to keep the game going. There's a lot of things that don't work in the gameplay as well, many of which feel like the things a more experienced game maker might've fixed, but the complaints are - except for one bit - mostly minor annoyances that I forgot about a short time after getting past them. This game is highly acclaimed and for largely good reason, so I definitely recommend it.

More specifics after the jump - note that I won't be talking graphics or music really down below as those aren't my things, but the graphics here are very good (even if I found them a bit too dark for my taste at times) and the soundtrack is incredibly French but also incredibly excellent and I have been listening to the OST for quite some time.