Friday, December 28, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer




Creatures of Want and Ruin is the second fantasy novel by Molly Tanzer that I've read this year, as this book is the stand-alone sequel to her Creatures of Will and Temper (Review Here).  This common thread in this series is the existence of demons who can commune with humans (diabolists) and have their own agendas, some more malevolent than others.  I very much enjoyed how this thread worked with Creatures of Will and Temper, so I have been looking forward to this sequel for a while, especially as the setting has moved to Long Island, where I'm from.

And Creatures of Want and Ruin is pretty good, albeit maybe not as good as its predecessor.  It's certainly a book that aims to be more relevant than the first book - whereas that book was an alternate take of "The Picture of Dorian Gray," this book features a struggle with an antagonist spreading hatred against the outsiders - foreigners and minorities - coming to Long Island and ruining the land (gee, wonder where that idea came from).  It works and the plot is well done, but the characters don't quite live up to those of the first book and the plot's clear black and white nature of things makes it just a small step down from its predecessor.

Note: As I mentioned above, this book is entirely stand-alone and reading the predecessor is completely unnecessary to enjoy this book - it takes place a few decades later on a different continent and while the events of the former book are very very vaguely referenced, this book doesn't even really spoil the first book either.  So you can start here or start with the first book without any problems.  


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Thursday, December 27, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terminal Uprising by Jim C Hines



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher, Daw Books, in advance of the novel's release on February 12, 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). 

Terminal Uprising is the second book in Jim Hines' "Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse" series and the sequel to last year's Terminal Alliance (Review Here).  As you may imagine from the series title, this is a pretty un-serious scifi story filled with jokes and as a result, the first book was a lot of fun.  That first book didn't really end with a cliffhanger but left several directions for the plot to go in future books, and so I was very much looking forward to seeing where Terminal Uprising took these characters.

In the end, Terminal Uprising is an enjoying second novel in the series, but felt a bit like a step back from its predecessor.  Don't get me wrong, the book is still fun and I really enjoy the characters and their development in this novel, but this book is a little less filled with jokes (at least it felt that way to me) and the story is a bit more grounded - literally in fact.  The result is still a solid novel that I can easily recommend to those who enjoyed Terminal Alliance, but it didn't quite take that step up I was hoping for.

Note:  If you don't read Terminal Alliance before this book, you're going to be a bit confused and really miss out on who these characters are, so you really shouldn't start this series with this book.  If you are the type to enjoy this type of story anyway, you'll enjoy Terminal Alliance, so there's no point of trying to skip ahead anyhow. 
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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Darkspell by Katharine Kerr




Darkspell is the second book in Katharine Kerr's long-running epic fantasy Deverry cycle, and the second book after "Daggerspell," which I reviewed earlier on this blog here.  Darkspell follows a similar formula to Daggerspell, alternating between a story set in the present day (of this world at least) and stories set in the distant past featuring prior incarnations of the main characters.  The book also features an increase in the amount of magic (or "Dweomer" as its known in this series) as our heroes come to face darker forces than the mortal men who served as the first book's antagonists.

The result is still a book I enjoyed, but one that works a bit less well than Daggerspell, as the alternating story structure didn't quite work as well this time around and just distracted from the more interesting present day story.  Also the dark magic users who serve as the antagonists fuel their magic through the use of rape, which is a trope that just makes the book feel as old as it actually is.  Overall the book still works and I'm going to continue the series shortly, but it's a slight drop-off from Daggerspell.


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




The Dreaming Stars is the second in Tim Pratt's "The Axiom" space opera series, after last year's "The Wrong Stars (which I reviewed here).  I really really enjoyed the Wrong Stars, which featured really great characters, an unpredictable plot with plenty of drama, and a lot of really funny humor.  With The Dreaming Stars, the entire great cast of the first book returns and the universe expands as our heroes get involved with another crisis that threatens to awake the dangerous aliens in the background of this whole series.

And again, I really enjoyed The Dreaming Stars, although perhaps a little less than I did its predecessor.  The story is maybe a little less humorous, but the characters remain excellent and their development really works and the plot is again excellent - although the book maintains the same pacing issues as the original.  I'd recommend if you can to avoid reading the official plot summary of this book if you enjoyed the first book in the series, as it kind of gives away some stuff that takes a while to happen, but even if you do, you should enjoy this book quite a bit as it still is pretty damn good.

Note: Spoilers for The Wrong Stars follow but are kind of inevitable:


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Tuesday, December 25, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Blade So Black by L L McKinney



A Blade So Black is the debut novel by author L.L. McKinney, and features a YA Urban Portal Fantasy novel that's a spin on Alice in Wonderland.  The novel is also features a black teenager as its protagonist, whose normal life (as opposed to her supernatural life) is heavily impacted by the discrimination and racism affecting blacks in America today.  The result, in theory at least, is a fantasy novel that features parts both familiar and unfamiliar to the genre.

Unfortunately, while A Blade So Black is definitely promising, it is very much the first in a series/trilogy, and it really feels that way.  Its main character is really good, as are some of the side characters, but the plot takes a while to get going, with the ending coming in a place that left a bit too much open to be very satisfying to me.  The romantic subplots of the book felt a little barebones too.  Still, the promise of this book's world and characters is enough to keep me interested in the sequel, even if I wasn't too thrilled with how this book winded up.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Imaro by Charles Saunders




Imaro is a swords and sorcery-style fantasy series of stories written by Charles Saunders originally back in the 1970s.  Meant to be an "anti-Tarzan," featuring a warrior in an alternate Africa in stories inspired by African history, culture and mythology, the stories were eventually cobbled together into a series of novels, which a little while after went out of print.  The "Imaro" that this review is of is of a new edition of the first novel published by Nightshade Books* back in 2006 (which revises the stories and replaces one due to it apparently carrying some disturbing implications given what has happened to its real life inspiration in Rwanda since the 1970s).

*It appears that the second book was also revised and released by Nightshade Books, but that book doesn't seem to have an ebook edition and is now out of print like its original, so I'm unlikely to continue with this series.  

 The result is a novel that is an interesting twist on the sword and sorcery genre, which is not really a genre I usually read (it's not really in favor these days I don't think).  The stories included in the novel are very well written, rarely predictable in their plots and for obvious reasons avoid some of the racial implications of stories like Tarzan.  On the other hand, the stories do have some....unfortunate gender implications which were common to the other types of books in the genre, which these days is not particularly satisfying and will turn off some readers.


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Monday, December 24, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Black Parade by Kyoko M




The Black Parade is the first in an urban fantasy/paranormal fantasy series by Kyoko M, with this book being currently available for free on Amazon.  Whereas other such series might include vampires or fae[ries], The Black Parade features Angels and Demons from Christian mythology alongside our woman of color protagonist.  And its the type of book that some readers might consider just a little bit "trashy" in its plot featuring romance/sexual-tension between that protagonist and a literal archangel.

And you know what?  It might be a bit "trashy" but it's oh so much fun.  The book has some pacing issues and things get a bit silly at times and the power levels of characters never seem to be consistent or make sense and none of that really matters in the end because our heroine is terrific, the dialogue is great (and peppered with fun references) and again to repeat myself its all so much fun.  Not every book needs to be a work of art to be worth reading, and The Black Parade is definitely worth reading.

BONUS:  Also in this post will be quick review of Kyoko M's "The Deadly Seven: Stories from The Black Parade" which is sort of a 200 pages collection of deleted scenes from this novel that take place between parts 2 and 3 of this novel.  
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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Serpentine by Cindy Pon




Serpentine is a YA Fantasy novel (first in a duology) by Cindy Pon which was released a few years back.  It's a coming of age story and romance in a world inspired by Chinese mythology (with battles between demons and monks), but perhaps more importantly its a story of girls with a sisterly bond in a world that threatens them both.

And I enjoyed Serpentine a lot as a result.  The sisterly-bond between this book's heroine and the girl she grew up with, ostensibly as a servant, is really lovely, and the romance works really well as a secondary subplot.  And while the plot is a little bit by the numbers and predictable, it works functionally well with these excellent characters.  The result is a fun and different YA fantasy novel that's well worth your time and whose sequel I anticipate getting to next month.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mem by Bethany Morrow




Mem is a short novel (the audiobook was under 5 hours and the ebook appears to be around 190 pages) by Bethany Morrow but its one that is absolutely full of exploring its central ideas: the issues of personhood and memory, and more specifically how much of a person is in their own memories and experiences.  It explores that idea through an alternate version of early 20th century Montreal where researches have discovered the ability to extract memories from people, and those memories then come to exist in short lived beings called "Mem"s, which can act out those memories for onlookers.

And then there's the book's central protagonist, known to the world as "Dorothy Extract-1," but to herself as Elsie, the world's only Mem who for some reason never shows signs of fading and has the ability to think for herself and create new memories, like a normal human being.  Through her experiences both in the past and in the book's present, where she faces the possibility of her erasure, the book weaves a compelling story about its central ideas before coming to a satisfying, but tragic end.

Note:  I read this as an audiobook, and the reader is very very good.  It's again short for an audiobook, only 5 hours, but worth your time in that format.  

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Friday, December 21, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bookburners Season 4 by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Brian Francis Slattery, Mur Lafferty, and Andrea Phillips



Bookburners is an urban fantasy series from Serial Box Publishing, a publisher that essentially publishes stories in "Seasons" of ten or more episodes, as if they were seasons of a TV show.  Bookburners was the first one of these series I read, and I've already reviewed Seasons 2 (here) and 3 (here) on this blog over the past two years (my review of season 1 you can find somewhere on my twitter account).

And well, the Bookburners series has always been one of the most fun fantasy series I've read over the past few years, providing light (usually) stories with characters who are a lot of fun as they deal with their own issues....as they also try to contain the dangers of magic around the world as agents of the Vatican.  After a merely solid Season 2 - which kept the really fun characters but had a merely okay overarching plot - Season 3 of this series took a step forward, with an excellent overarching plot for these fun characters to navigate, one that massively shifted the status quo.

Season 4 takes that new status quo and runs with it, generally for the better.  The overall antagonists of the season are not the series' best, but the new status quo allows for a lot of fun new adventures for the team and man do I still love all of these characters so damn much.  There's no way one should start the series with Season 4 (just like a TV show), but this season justifies the decision for a new reader to jump in with Season 1 if they haven't already.

Note:  Like all Serial Box products, Bookburners is built to be read piecemeal, like episodes of a TV show on a weekly basis.  However, I read this season in a collection over a couple of days, like it was a single book, as I have two of the last three seasons, and this may color my impressions differently than someone reading this as originally published.  

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Wednesday, December 19, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Huntress by Malinda Lo




Huntress is a stand-alone distant prequel to Malinda Lo's "Ash" (reviewed here), her YA alternate (F-F romance) take on Cinderella.  Huntress is no longer a spin on a famous fairy tale, but instead is a pure F-F romance and fae fantasy journey tale taking inspiration from East Asian myths and traditions.  It's also a significantly longer book than Ash, which I found quite beautiful but perhaps a bit too short to be satisfying.

Huntress is, as a result, a book I enjoyed quite a bit more than Ash, which is saying something considering I enjoyed Ash.  The romance between the two leads is lovely well done and the other characters in the book are also excellent, with the plot taking turns that surprised, despite everything kicking off with a prophetic vision.  Would definitely recommend this book to YA readers, as well as others.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri



Empire of Sand is the debut novel from author Tasha Suri, and the first in a new fantasy series drawing largely upon Indian history, epics and myths for its setting.  The book has been very heavily hyped up by the sources I read, so I've been looking forward to it for a while, and my library happily complied by buying four copies.  And well, I intended to read it over the weekend and instead finished it in a single day.

So as you might expect, I enjoyed Empire of Sand quite a bit.  The story features an impressively different main heroine than what you might expect from the cover (the dagger on the front is very misleading) but I really enjoyed her, and the worldbuilding is fantastic.  Add in themes of family, love, the winners and losers of colonization, the conflicts between duties and vows, as well as the power of sacrifice, and there's a lot contained within this book - and yet it all comes together quite well despite the book being just over 400 pages.


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Tuesday, December 18, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr




Daggerspell is the first in Katherine Kerr's long-running (currently 15 books) Deverry Cycle.  This book is something of a genre that I've basically avoided, or at least not sought out, over my return to genre reading - an epic fantasy based upon celtic myths in the classic epic fantasy mold - with humans, elves, dwarves (well one dwarf, but hints of more), and wizards, as well as battles between lords in castles, etc.  Still, when the series was recommended by one of my favorite authors, Kate Elliott, I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm rather glad I did do that - Daggerspell stands out and is clearly distinct from say the works of Tolkien which it definitely called to mind in its tone.  Not only was one of our central protagonists a woman, but the story is in some respects a romance, and this first book merely hints at an epic magical destiny without it actually being the central focus of the plot.  The book is also kind of an anthology of related novellas in the same fantasy world, with it telling three stories in different time periods, but the combination of such works to tell a story that is really interesting and that I enjoyed quite a bit, with the result being that I expect to pick up the second book in the series soon.


Note: I read this as an audiobook, as the first four books in the series (which form their own apparently complete arc) were just released by Tantor Audio and thus are now available as part of the Hoopla Library collection.  I have mixed feelings about reading the book in this way: on one hand, the reader is very good and I enjoyed her, on the other hand without the ability to quickly go back, I got a little lost at first at who was who in the flashbacks until I took out an ebook loan of this same book for reference.  So you might be better off with an ebook version of this book rather than the audiobook to avoid confusion.  Just a thought.  

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Monday, December 17, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: From Unseen Fire by Cass Morris




From Unseen Fire is a fantasy novel and the first in a series by debut author Cass Morris.  The book takes as its setting an alternate version of Rome, known as Aven, complete with Latin names and gods, but with magic being a common element of this world.  As such, how the world works, both within the borders of the Aven Empire and without is clearly altered as the presence of magic affects both the actions and the laws by which the characters must act.  Note that despite the presence of magic, the existence of real Roman features such as slavery are still very much in play in this book and this isn't the type of book to try and change that - our characters are generally members of the upper class of Aven/Roman society, and that's where their interests lie (and with the fate of the Empire itself).

The result is certainly interesting, although it's a bit too much of a first novel in a series for my liking - the book does resolve general plot threads so it's still a bit satisfying but clearly so much more is going to come in this series that the appetite isn't quite whetted by this book.  Still, the characters are very good and the chemistry between them is very strong, and the plot does take some surprising but pleasing turns.  I will probably be back for the sequel.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Time's Children by D.B. Jackson




Time's Children is the first in a new series, the Islevale Cycle, by author DB Jackson, featuring a fantasy world and the impact of time travel.  I honestly don't read a lot of time travel stories (this is I think the third book this year, and the first to be more than 200 pages long) but Islevale differs from the usual such story by having the time travel be in a fantasy world.  More than that, it features a very interesting version of time travel as well as an interesting overall magic system to fill up this fantasy world.

The problem is that for all that worldbuilding, Time's Children never quite gets enough of its plot going to be a satisfying experience.  It's a 500 page book in paperback that is very much the first novel in a series, and somehow it doesn't get enough page-length to really explore some of the concepts it sets up.  These concepts remain fascinating as a whole, and the characters and plot are interesting enough that I do want to read onwards, but it's a frustrating way to finish a book.  Thankfully the sequel will be out in under six months.


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Friday, December 14, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Vita Nostra by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko (Translated by Julia Hersey)




Vita Nostra is one of the most strange science fiction or fantasy books I've read all year.  It's also one of the more remarkable books I've read all year.  The book is the first in a stand alone trilogy - each of the books apparently has similar themes, but otherwise has little to no connection to the others -  originally published in Russian by Ukrainian authors Sergey and Marina Dyachenko in 2007.  And its incredibly engrossing even as its the book gets stranger and stranger as it goes on.

In a sense, Vita Nostra is a subversion - in a major way - of the scifi/fantasy "chosen one goes to a magical/scifi school to learn about a new strange world."  And I do mean a major subversion, this is a school whose methods involve pain and terror, with disastrous consequences for its students' families if they fail to meet up to the standards set for them.  But the book is far more than that, a book about language, about change and metamorphosis (the trilogy is known as the "metamorphosis cycle") and about love and fear, in a package that left me a bit flabbergasted as to what I'd just read when I finally finished.


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Thursday, December 13, 2018

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



The Wrong Stars is the first in Tim Pratt's "The Axiom" space opera series, which began in 2017 with this book and continued this year with the sequel, "The Dreaming Stars."  However, unlike a lot of space opera, The Wrong Stars isn't a novel of extreme seriousness - instead the book is almost a comedy, with funny dialogue, settings, and characters resulting in some pretty big laughs.  The story is still serious at times with some real stakes, but the light tone and humor never subsides.

The result is a book that's a lot of fun and a real blast overall which has made me feel kind of silly for not getting to this book sooner.  The characters are excellently done, the story takes some unpredictable turns after a fairly predictable start, and again the light tone and humor had me cracking up repeatedly.  I'll definitely be back for the sequel, which I've already reserved on Intra-Library Loan.

Note:  This was read as an audiobook and the reader is very good.  So if you want a book in that format, it is recommended.
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Wednesday, December 12, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan




Girls of Paper and Fire is a Young Adult fantasy novel that's been fairly well promoted (the book has a foreword by James Patterson and is part of a line of his, so yeah).  It's also seemingly the first in a new series/trilogy, with a cliffhanger ending, although it's reasonably satisfying as a complete novel.  It's also a novel featuring only young women as protagonists fighting against racial (kind of) and sexual oppression, and a F-F romance at its heart, which piqued my interest.

And it's a promising start to a series with a really nicely done romance and a very good lead protagonist.  Still the pacing is a bit slow and the tension this builds is kind of hard to read due to it relying in large part on sexual violence.  If you can get through that element of this book, Girls of Paper and Fire is a nicely done fantasy/romance story and worth your time, but that element is not a minor part of this story. 

Trigger Warning - Rape, Physical abuse of Women:  While it's never directly shown, this book features our main characters as humans taken from their homes (with varying decrees of willingness) to be called as a concubine for a demon king on nights he chooses them.  This includes our main protagonist, who is definitely not willing.  The lack of showing anything prevents it from ever being gratuitous - and this very system is part of what our heroines are fighting against, but it was incredibly hard for me to read a chapter knowing a character was being called in to serve that fate and I imagine for many with such traumatic experiences, it will be too much.  

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Tuesday, December 11, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Brilliant Death by Amy Rose Capetta




The Brilliant Death is a young adult fantasy novel - presumably the first in a series - by Amy Rose Capetta.  More interestingly (although this is naturally becoming more common) it features as its protagonists two genderfluid protagonists with a major plot point being the romance between them as they each discover the truths about themselves and who they are.  This is a story where our heroine pretends to be a boy in order to get what he wants - only unlike in traditional stories, she isn't really pretending to be anybody she isn't and the transformation is real.

And it's such a delight really.  I tore through The Brilliant Death and had to stop myself from finishing it in one day as I wanted to read more and more about its characters discovering the wonders of themselves and of the magic of their world...in between being in the middle of a plot between a ruler of the country against the five mafia-esque families who rule the individual territories.  This isn't just a romance and journey of self-discovery, it's also a story filled with magic, mafia, and plots and it works really really well.

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Monday, December 10, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Fury by Rachel Vincent




Fury is the conclusion of Rachel Vincent's urban fantasy "Menagerie" trilogy, which began with the interesting Menagerie (Review Here) and the completely unnecessary Spectacle (Review Here).  I mean that last bit for real by the way - Spectacle is not worth anyone's time and if you were interested in Menagerie, I'd recommend skipping straight to Fury and getting a one paragraph spoiler of Spectacle rather than wasting your time with that book (I'll provide that paragraph after the jump).  Fury finally deals with the questions posed by the background given in Menagerie, the issue of the mysterious "Surrogates" who 30 years prior caused parents across the United States to murder all of their children while they slept.

It's....a mixed bag honestly.  The book is definitely different from its predecessors - our heroes are on the run not in captivity dealing with the threats of humans to cryptids, and the story is split into two points of view rather than multiple, so it's a more refreshing read for sure.  And the main heroine remains a strong lead, as do some of the other secondary characters.  Still, certain events that are treated as a mystery by the protagonists for large parts of the book are fairly obvious to the reader from the beginning, which is annoying and the result is a book that seems to stand still for a bit too long before moving in the direction the reader will probably have expected right all along.  There was a lot more promise in the setup made in Menagerie I think that isn't met here, and the result is solid but unremarkable.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria



Beneath the Citadel is a Young Adult Fantasy novel from author Destiny Soria.  It's a fantasy story featuring a world where the main characters are a group of teens fighting against a fascist regime that relies upon prophecies and foresight to counter every possible opposition.  It's also a story where the main romance is M-M, featuring characters with great insecurities and mental distresses (one character suffers from panic attacks), and magic of fun and varied types.

And it's pretty damn good.  The book has a lot of major characters and each is well differentiated and feel not only believable but interesting in their actions, even if the reader may not love all of them.  Combine that with a twisty plot that maintains the reader's interest throughout, and I really enjoyed Beneath the Citadel and look forward to more from the author in the future.

Note:  I read this book as an audiobook and the reader is very good, so I would recommend the book in that format.  


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Friday, December 7, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Beyond the Empire by K.B. Wagers




Beyond the Empires is the conclusion of K.B. Wagers' first trilogy, the Indranan War Trilogy, following her debut novel "Behind the Throne" and the follow-up "After the Crown."  The trilogy began as what I'd call a Political SciFi Thriller and then expanded to full on Space Opera, featuring as its heroine, Hail Bristol, a galactic gunrunner who is forced to take the throne of a multi-planet Empire, only to deal with threats to her reign both from within and without, as a neighboring Empire begins to make moves towards war.  And the first two books' characters and their plots have been really really enjoyable, so I have barreled through this trilogy quite quickly and was glad the third book was available so readily thanks to inter-library loan.

That said, Beyond the Empire is a bit of a let down as an ending for the trilogy.  The story tries to both expand this universe further and to start solving various loose plot threads dangling from book 2 at the same time, and it often feels like some plot threads are resolved incredibly easily just to get them out of the way.  Moreover the final ending is just plain silly.  But still, the characters remain mostly excellent and I was happy to have yet another book with them, even if it couldn't live up to the prior two books.  It may not have been the conclusion I hoped for, but I'm certainly glad to have found and read this entire trilogy and look forward to the completion of its successor trilogy over the next few years.


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Thursday, December 6, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix by Julie C Dao




Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix is the sequel to last year's "Forest of a Thousand Lanterns," which I read last month.  That book was a take on the Evil Queen/Snow White story using East Asian mythology as a background instead of a Western one, and despite a predictable ending, was an excellent version of the story.  This book takes place after a time skip and tells the second half of the story (again cribbing from Snow White along with other East Asian imagery).

The result is a very good novel, albeit one that is perhaps a little less original than its predecessor. That's perhaps a little simply due to the fact that the first book was essentially an origin story of a villain, whereas this book's protagonist is unquestionably a heroine from the very beginning.  Regardless however, it's still a well done story with some fascinating characters and a sprawling plot filled with folk tales and adventure.

Note:  Spoilers for the ending of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns are inevitable in the rest of this review.  I don't think it will affect much of your enjoyment of that book to see these spoilers, but fair warning anyway.  Still, if you're interested in this series, start with the first book before this one.  
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SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Book Review: Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton




Strange Grace is a YA Fantasy Horror novel by Tessa Gratton, who I'd previously been introduced to earlier this year with The Queens of Innis Lear.  Like that book (an alternate version of King Lear), Strange Grace is a dark fantasy book, with the story essentially being a fantasy horror story and like that book, Gratton is excellent at setting the atmosphere as dark and fantastical...and somewhat creepy.

It's also a book not interested in pursuing just conventional relationships, with its three main characters forming a love triangle romance that is more polyamorous than anything.  For the most part this works, some early speedbumps notwithstanding, and the result is a story that is arguably as much romance as horror.  That's probably why I enjoyed this book so much, when horror really isn't my thing.


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Wednesday, December 5, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Fall of Io by Wesley Chu

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher, Angry Robot Books, in advance of the novel's release on January 1, 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). 

The Fall of Io is the fifth book in Wes Chu's Quasing universe that began with the Lives of Tao trilogy (The Lives of Tao, The Deaths of Tao, The Rebirths of Tao) and the second book in this new Io trilogy, which began with 2016's "The Rise of Io."  I read all four of those books within the span of a week back in 2017 and liked the Tao trilogy a lot - it was a really fun action series with some great characters and dialogue and I was looking forward to the continuation of this universe.  And while I didn't love The Rise of Io as much as its predecessors, I was disappointed that a sequel didn't seem to be coming back when I read it.

Two years later, The Fall of Io appeared on Netgalley and Amazon and I got really excited - and was even more excited when I got an ARC from the publisher.  And that excitement was justified honestly; whereas The Fall of Io is on par with the best of the Tao trilogy, and a really really fun book thanks to some great characters, great dialogue, and some fun action scenes.  Now I can't wait for the next book in this series and hope there will be further books beyond that.

For those who missed these books, they follow a world where secretly for centuries an alien race (the Quasing) who shipwrecked on earth ages ago has been involved with human history, with their energy forms merging with human bodies, resulting in those aliens being able to talk to the humans within their own heads.  The aliens got into a civil war - with half (the Genjix) wanting to drive humanity to deadly conflict while the other half (the Prophus) wished to help humanity peacefully.  The Tao trilogy followed Roen Tan, a young man (at the start) who accidentally becomes the host of a Prophus Quasing named Tao, and has to fight to save humanity from the Genjix.  The series was incredibly fun because Tao was hyper-competent (and had been inside the heads of some of the most famous humans in history) and the witty dialogue between Roen and Tao, as well as the other characters, was a lot of fun.

The Io series is a new trilogy set two decades or so later after the Tao trilogy, featuring a young woman named Ella Patel who comes into contact with a Quasing named Io accidentally.  But where Tao was hyper-competent, Io is at best incompetent, having only guided hosts in the past to ignominious deaths.  The result is a very less competent partnership with a very different vibe.

Note:  You can start the Quasing books with either the first Tao book (The Lives of Tao) or the first Io book (The Rise of Io), but starting with this book will have you very lost.  Honestly I wouldn't even start with the first Io book - these two books are better enjoyed if you understand the references to the Tao books, as a few major characters recur from there.  

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Tuesday, December 4, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield



Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield

Alice Payne Arrives is a new novella from Tor.com featuring a story featuring time travel.  Like some other Tor.com novellas (Binti, All Systems Red), it's actually the first in a series (the sequel comes out in March) of novellas, telling a longer story over the course of multiple publications.  Still, unlike those other two novellas I mentioned, Alice Payne Arrives is more clearly the first in a series, ending on a pretty major cliffhanger.  The result is intriguing and fun (our main heroine is a mixed-race woman from the 18th century whose relationship with another woman who likes to tinker with tech gets tested when she gets involved in a time travel conspiracy/war) but isn't wholly satisfying.


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Some Suggestions for SciFi/Fantasy Books for People to Read For Some of My Followers on Twitter (Part 3):

Last year on twitter, I was asked by a hockey follower about suggestions for books for people new to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre and I wrote up a quick post with some suggestions based upon my dive into the genre over the past three years (that post can be found here).   This year I wanted to do another such post, but I wanted to do something a little more specific: offering suggestions based upon what my followers on twitter might be looking for.

So I asked on twitter for what people were looking for in Science Fiction and Fantasy Books they seek to read.  This is my third column (the First can be found here, and the Second can be found here) where I offer suggestions in response to some of the answers you gave me on twitter.  Note that I still am taking requests on twitter, so feel free to tweet me with what you'd like to see for me to make suggestions in future posts.

Today's post will deal with two more twitter followers with different requests:  Books written by "ladies about ladies" and books that are epic in scope.  More after the jump.

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Monday, December 3, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi




Ascension is a SciFi book that has a lot of ideas and doesn't quite succeed at putting all of them together in a way to make them all payoff.  And yet Ascension succeeds with a lot of ideas, and the resultant book is one that I really liked.  In a way, Ascension reminded me a bit of Becky Chambers' A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, in that it features a crew of misfits in a journey through space, with our viewpoint character trying to find her place amongst them as one of their family.  Unlike Chambers' work, Ascension does have a clear underlying plot and focuses largely on our lead protagonist a lot more than the rest of the cast.

The result however is a work that I enjoyed a lot, with a cast that's a lot of fun and whose learning to like and then love each other is a joy to read.  Not everything the book does works, as the plot kind of goes a bit off the deep end in the end, but the characters are a joy and I really want to read more about this crew (the book is subtitled as if it's the first in a series, but there's no sign of a sequel a few years later).


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ash by Malinda Lo



Ash is a middle-grade fantasy novel by Malinda Lo that features a different take on the Cinderella story, one in which the central romance for our heroine is a queer romance.  Middle Grade books, sometimes folded into Young Adult literature and sometimes not, have proven an interesting type of book for me to review: as you might imagine, some of these books feel a bit too childish* for me as an adult whereas others feel like something I think I enjoy as much as I would have when I was younger.

*Note:  I am not using "Childish" here to mean "bad," as much as I mean that adults like myself are clearly not the target audience and will not enjoy it as much.  There's no problem with that - kids and teens need those types of books!  But I'm not going to recommend them to adults.  

 I wouldn't call Ash "childish" by any means, but I did feel like it's a book that I would've enjoyed a lot more at a younger age.  It's a smart subversion of the Cinderella story, although I honestly enjoyed the book the most the further it diverged from the most well known version of the fairy tale.  All in all its a lovely story, but its rather short and the ending felt a little too easy, so while young adult readers will enjoy this, older readers will probably find it cute but skippable.


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Friday, November 30, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: After the Crown by K.B. Wagers




After the Crown is the second book in K.B. Wagers' Indranan War trilogy, which began with "Behind the Throne" (which I reviewed HERE).   I'd said in my review of that book that I couldn't quite describe well why I enjoyed that book so much, because the book never really fit into a clear genre mold (political scifi was kind of the best fit, but even then it wasn't the greatest).  That book's tag-line boasted that its heroine was like a mixture of Han Solo and Princess Leia, but the comparison didn't quite fit, even though I really enjoyed the book.

In this book, the second book in the trilogy, that comparison actually works a lot better, as the book definitely takes on Star Wars vibes as our Heroine is forced to work with criminals and smugglers to fight against those who would try to destroy her people.  We're very much into space opera mode here, and the transformation of genre works beautifully.  The result is an expansion of the universe the story takes place in that feels natural, with more excellent characters introduced and old ones developed, and a really fun plot that surprises on a few occasions.


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Thursday, November 29, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mage Against the Machine by Shaun Barger




Mage Against the Machine is one of the science fiction/fantasy books with an obvious selling hook: it's a hybrid of The Terminator and Harry Potter!  Marriage of SciFi and Fantasy concepts into a single book is hardly that unusual in the genre - 2016's "All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders is an example of it done wonderfully for example.  Still, Mage Against the Machine wears its influences, particularly that of The Terminator, on its sleeve.

It's not wholly successful unfortunately, as the book takes way too long a time to merge its two elements and features one main character who is kind of a jerk and hard to like.  It's also a very very dark book with few moments of lightness whatsoever - if this book isn't quite "grimdark," it's really close.  The result is a book that shows elements of promise, but never quite fulfills them and as a result I can't really recommend it too highly.


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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch




The Book of Joan is a hell of a book, that packs a LOT into its short length (it's under 300 pages, and the audiobook is under 8 hours).  A SciFi story that takes the story of Joan of Arc, as well as several other real life people (Christine Pizan and Jean du Meun) into a post-apocalyptic SF world, the Book of Joan tells a story of the importance of control over one's own body, reproduction, and of life in general.  Note that you don't need to have a familiarity with any of the real life people transplanted through time in this story in order to read this book (I didn't really with most of them).

The result is a fascinating book that has a ton of ideas that it is not afraid to put front and center.  If you're looking for a good "story" or an interesting plot, The Book of Joan is probably not for you - Yuknavitch's characters and story move in ways that are clearly meant to get her ideas across (complete with character dialogue that often sounds like it was taken from essays) rather than in ways that are meant to form a cohesive plot without holes.  But somehow, it works, and the characters themselves work, so it's definitely worth a look for anyone willing to read this type of work.

Note:  This was another book I read as an audiobook, and the reader is very good, so it's worth your time if you're looking for a book in that format.

Trigger Warning:  There's no rape in this book but violence toward bodies is a major act of the antagonist, so if that's an issue, it might be a concern for some readers.


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Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Some Suggestions for SciFi/Fantasy Books for People to Read For Some of My Followers on Twitter (Part 2):

Last year on twitter, I was asked by a hockey follower about suggestions for books for people new to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre and I wrote up a quick post with some suggestions based upon my dive into the genre over the past three years (that post can be found here).   This year I wanted to do another such post, but I wanted to do something a little more specific: offering suggestions based upon what my followers on twitter might be looking for.

So I asked on twitter for what people were looking for in Science Fiction and Fantasy Books they seek to read.  This is my second column (the first can be found here) where I offer suggestions in response to some of the answers you gave me on twitter.  Today's post will deal with two answers that are pretty much exact opposites, so the book suggestions are going to be very different:


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Monday, November 26, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terra Nullius by Claire G Coleman




Terra Nullius is a speculative fiction novel published in 2017 in Australia that was brought this year to the US by Small Beer Press.  Small Beer Press is a small mostly SF/F publisher that publishes what is usually less typical and sometimes more "literary" SF/F works, and I've yet to find a book (this is the 5th book I've theirs I've read) published by SBP that isn't at least rather interesting (and usually tough to review).  In fact "interesting" underrates my opinion of these books, which I've generally reviewed as being either "worth a read" or "must read."  And Terra Nullius is an example of the latter category - this is a must read book.

Note that I said "must read" and not "enjoyable" - Terra Nullius is not a book to be enjoyed and it doesn't want to be.  Coleman is a Wirloman Noongar (Indigenous Australian) woman and it is the experiences of the Indigenous Australian peoples that forms the background for this novel - and as you would imagine if you know what happened to the Native peoples around the world when Europeans came to colonize, the result is incredibly brutal.  But all of this brutality serves a purpose, and when the book pulls the rug out from under the reader with its twist halfway through, it creates a truly shocking and powerful book that really should be read by everyone.

Trigger Warning:  This is a rough book, with physical abuse of both children and adults being present, as one might imagine from the subject matter.  Sexual abuse and rape in its usual form is not present, although forced reproduction is a plot point.  None of this content however is gratuitous (and mostly occurs off screen) and it is all justified by the story.

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Friday, November 23, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ignite the Stars by Maura Milan




Ignite the Stars is a Young Adult Science Fiction book that I assume is the start of a series by debut author Maura Milan.  I can't actually recall how I heard of the book (I tend to bookmark books that I see mentioned or recommended around the internet by sources/authors I trust and often don't get to those books till months afterwards, well after I'd forgotten about the initial rec in the first place).

But I'm glad I did, as I enjoyed Ignite the Stars a bit for its three main characters, who all wind up being really well done, even if they begin perhaps as some standard archetypes.  The plot is moderately predictable - I predicted one twist rather early although a second "twist" I expected to happen never occurred, and yet again its very well done and made me want to read more in this universe.  And that's a pretty big complement right there.


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Wednesday, November 21, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Song of Blood and Stone by L Penelope




Song of Blood and Stone is a book, the first in a series, that was originally a self published book a few years back, before a re-release this year by an actual publisher (there was a self-published sequel as well, but I'm not sure if that's also being rereleased).  The first in a fantasy romance series, it features a world in which a country filled with magic and a country that has gotten by solely with technology, each divided by a magical barrier that has been the only thing preventing all out wars that have broken out in the past.

But more specifically, this is a fantasy romance, featuring, as these stories tend to do, two people from very different backgrounds, whose duties find themselves on opposite sides, falling in love.  Or at least that's the tagline of this book.  To me unfortunately, the conflict between love and duty felt like no conflict at all given how stark the characters' choices were, and the story's lack of descriptions at times made the book feel a little more bare-boned than I'd like.  A very functional fantasy romance here, but not quite much more than that.


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Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Some Suggestions for SciFi/Fantasy Books for People to Read For Some of My Followers on Twitter (Part 1):




Last year on twitter, I was asked by a hockey follower about suggestions for books for people new to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre and I wrote up a quick post with some suggestions based upon my dive into the genre over the past three years (that post can be found here).   This year I wanted to do another such post, but I wanted to do something a little more specific: offering suggestions based upon what my followers on twitter might be looking for.

So I asked on twitter for what people were looking for in Science Fiction and Fantasy Books they seek to read. In this post, and in some future posts, I'm going to take a look at some of those answers and offer some suggestions in response.

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Monday, November 19, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri




The Book of Hidden Things is an example of a SF/F subgenre that's always hard to define: the story that offers the possibility of fantastical elements but never makes it clear whether or not those elements are real.  What it most definitely is is a story about friendship between a bunch of middle-age men whose lives have not gone in directions they really anticipated, and what that friendship still means.  Which is not to say that this is a sober book at all, as events spiral out of control fairly quickly.

And the result is a pretty impressive novel, that frequently takes turns that surprised me in where the plot was going.  Note that this is not a "light" novel (as the trigger warning below should make clear) - events get pretty damn dark as the story progresses.  But the character work of the main characters (and one side character) is really well done and the setting is incredibly well done as well, resulting in a book that is well worth your time.

Minor Trigger Warning: Animal Cruelty, both off-page and on-page.

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Friday, November 16, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Spectacle by Rachel Vincent


Spectacle is the sequel to Rachel Vincent's Menagerie (Review Here), and the second book in a trilogy.  Menagerie set up an interesting dark fantasy setting, where a tragedy in the past caused by mysterious creatures has caused the United States to pass laws in fear removing all rights from Cryptids - creatures out of myth like Minotaurs, Succubi, etc - which had previously lived alongside humanity in peace.  Menagerie was a bit brutal, but had a satisfying ending that left a number of aspects of the setting untouched, making me interested in seeing where Vincent would go in the sequels.

In the case of Spectacle, the answer to where Vincent is taking this world is "nowhere new."  Rather than exploring a new corner of this world, the plot takes us into an area of this world that is just alluded to in Menagerie, but is still very damn similar to the conflicts at heart in the first book - just much more extreme.  This book sets up a change in the characters' situations that should result in a new plotline for the third book which just came out....but there was no reason why the first book's ending couldn't have done something similar.  Essentially Spectacle fails to justify its own existence, which is a major failure of any book.

TRIGGER WARNING:  I mentioned in my review of Menagerie that while occasions of physical abuse occurred on-page in the story and rape in the past was alluded to, no rape was present in the book.  That is NOT the case with Spectacle - while no rape is shown on-page, there is a LOT of it alluded to in this book, as well as other non-consensual activity.  If Menagerie hadn't existed already, I'd have said this book barely manages to walk the line as to justify the inclusions of these horrors, but the presence of the prior book makes me think otherwise here.  Read with caution.

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Wednesday, November 14, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner




Sisters of the Winter Wood is......interesting.  On the surface its a fantasy book that seems designed to appeal to me - it's a story of two Jewish sisters in circa 1900 Eastern Europe, combining events that actually happened in this location with fairy tale and fantasy stories.  And its certainly not a hard book to read quickly - the book contains 91 "chapters" but I managed to read through them dozens at a time (it helps that some of them are as short as a single page).

But the execution of its ideas - well I don't really think it works.  The book tries an interesting formatting gimmick with half of its chapters without ever explaining why it does so, and while I can guess the reasoning, the result is a bit of dissonance from the other half of the book. The book's story conclusion also I'm not really sure works in a satisfying fashion.  In short Sisters of the Winter Wood might be worth a try, but I wouldn't recommend it that highly.

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Tuesday, November 13, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Element of Fire by Martha Wells




Readers of this blog will know of my love for Martha Wells, who's my fourth most read author over the past three years.  The Element of Fire is where it all began as her first published novel (from 1993) as well as being the first book in her Ile-Rien setting.  I've read every other Ile-Rien book, some of which referenced the events in this book (so I was very mildly spoiled), and loved them all, so I was really excited to read where it all began.

As expected, The Element of Fire is very good, with its world filled with quite a few interesting characters in a really well done fantasy setting featuring Fae, Sorcerers, and Sword Fighting.  It's probably my least favorite of the Ile-Rien books because its main protagonist is the least interesting of the three such protagonists, but it is still incredibly absorbing and the secondary protagonist, heroine Kade Carrion, is up there with the best of them.

More after the jump:


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Monday, November 12, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland




A Conspiracy of Truths is an odd kind of book.  Based on its description on Amazon, it might seem like a new sort of new version of the Scheherazade-type story -  where our hero is imprisoned and threatened with death but tries to get out of the situation by telling stories to his captors.  But this book is not simply a collection of stories with a framing device, but rather a political satire in a fantasy world.

Is it a good satire?  Harder to say, as the book doesn't just pick one target to satirize, but through its five rulers and their affiliated forces and bureaucracies, it mocks quite a lot, some more effectively than others.  Still, it's a book that is easily to get into, with some pretty funny moments along the way, and is thus worth a try.

More after the Jump:

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Friday, November 9, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers




Behind the Thrones is the first book in K.B. Wagers' "The Indranan War" trilogy.  I came to this book backwards - having read the first book (There Before the Chaos) in the sequel trilogy to this one first, I then saw my local library carried this book, so I took it out.  As a result of reading the most recent book first, I did have some foreknowledge of what is going to happen in this book, but it wasn't enough to really affect my enjoyment of the story at all.

And I enjoyed Behind the Throne a decent bit.  It's a SciFI Political Thriller with the potential to turn into Space Opera (just like There Before the Chaos), but it doesn't quite turn into such here, with the action being confined essentially to a single planet after the beginning.  Still the characters are well done and the plotting is solid, and the writing is such that I basically couldn't put this down till I finished it in one day.


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