SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Last Dragon of the East by Katrina Kwan

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 8, 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.

The Last Dragon of the East is a fantasy romance (kinda) novel written by Katrina Kwan, a Chinese Canadian author, and is inspired by different Chinese myths - most notably that of the Red Thread of Fate that connects every person to their own "fated one" (soulmate). The book follows Sai, a young man who lives with his sick mother and can see people's Red Threads of Fate and who helps other people with that power by matching them up with their fated ones. Except Sai's own thread is mysteriously gray and frayed and when he is forced by the powerful Emperor out on a dangerous journey to find a legendary green dragon, Sai finds that his own thread is connected to that very same green dragon.

The result is a story that is really delightful, weaving in bits and parts of other Chinese Myths, an adventure to escape from the dangerous corrupt Emperor, and of course a romance between Sai and the Green Dragon Jyn. I said "kinda" romance above, because there really isn't the classic romance arc you usually see in a usual romance (Jyn and Sai are fated to be together as we know from the start after all), but the romance that we have here is very charming and enjoyable, helped along by Sai's voice and the excellent writing of Kwan. There are bits and parts here and there that are predictable and might not really make much sense if you think about it too hard, but I was so charmed by this novel that I didn't really mind.

More specifics after the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo

 

The Fox Wife is a new novel by Malaysian Chinese author Yangsze Choo, who previously received acclaim for her novels "The Ghost Bride" and "The Night Tiger". I'd only read the Night Tiger but I didn't quite love its tale that sort of featured a Chinese kind of Magical Realism and a couple of main characters whose plots didn't really intersect. That said, when a couple of my favorite authors gushed about a new book from Choo, I couldn't resist giving this book a try.

And The Fox Wife is a really interesting tale that is certainly both more overtly fantastical and a little more cohesive, featuring two main characters whose plotlines more expressly intersect: a fox woman named Snow who is seeking revenge on a human photographer and an older human man Bao who is an investigator who can always tell lies and is on an investigation in which that photographer's name and foxes keeps popping up. Set in the year 1908 and largely in China (other than flashbacks and a trip to Japan), the story features a trio of foxes with differing temperments, humans from different social classes and locales (rural vs urban), superstitions affecting families for generations, and people acting in a time where great change in rulership is on the horizon. And with its two pretty good main characters, Bao and Snow, we have a tale of regret about choices in their pasts - some they made deliberately, some they made because society made them - that haunts them until events here force them to come to terms with them (kinda). There's a lot here, and it's hard to explain, but I'll try more after the jump.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

 

It's hard to remember a fantasy novel more hyped in the national press than Fourth Wing.  The book, a romantic fantasy* novel, has even resulted in news articles proclaiming the birth of a "new" genre they've called "Romantasy", which really is a longstanding fantasy romance or romantic fantasy genre that fans in the know have enjoyed for years and years at this point.  But apparently it took this book, often described as combining romance with dragons, and some help promoting it (thank you BookTok) to really bring the genre to mainstream attention.  And so I couldn't help but be curious to see how the book itself was, even if I haven't really been a big fan of some of say BookTok's favorite other SF/F books (although just to be clear, this is not a self-published novel like some of those other BookTok discoveries).  

*You may note I list this as a "Romantic Fantasy" novel and NOT a "Fantasy Romance".  This is deliberate as romance novels are required to have a Happy Ever After or Happy For Now Ending.  Fourth Wing does not have that, but it is the first book of a trilogy so it's likely the series will end that way...but it doesn't really fit the definition for those seeking JUST a romance novel.  

And well, my thoughts on Fourth Wing are....mixed.  On one hand, the book is immensely predictable, features a romance that is just okay (the sex scenes are enjoyable if not super remarkable), and features a plot setup that feels like lazy dark fantasy writing: we have a government (probably hiding bad things) that establishes its dragon riding armies by having potential recruits face a training schedule that can not only get them killed...but also allows their fellow recruits to kill them as long as they follow nit-picky rules and thus promotes people being utter pscyhopaths, which makes little sense to go along with a bunch of other things in the setting.  But the main character Violet, who is forced by her general mother to undergo this training rather than be a scribe even though she is frail of body (with a possible weakened bone condition?), is very easy to root for and care about, and the writing style is very readable, such that it is kind of easy to get sucked in by the time you get through the book's first third (honestly, the beginning is rather rough).  So yeah, I can see why this book obtained a pretty large following, even if it's not nearly as good as many other books in the genre: it's fine, solid romantic fantasy.

More specifics after the jump: 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Thief by G.S. Jennsen

 

The Thief is a stand alone self published Sci-Fi novel from prolific author G.S. Jennsen. The novel is the 20th novel in Jennsen's shared space opera Amaranthe Universe and it features as its protagonist (I think) a side character from earlier books, even if the story itself is entirely stand alone and can be read without foreknowledge. This is a book entered into this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC4) and is at least Jennsen's second book that she's entered into an edition of this competition: Jennsen had previously entered an earlier book, Exin Ex Machina, into the SPSFC2 competition I also Judged, and I found that book to be solid if unexciting sci-fi. So I was curious to see how this more recent book in the series would play out.

And well, The Thief....is not great. The story is centered around Eren Savitas, who is essentially an interstellar spy for a multi species alliance, and who stows aboard an alien spaceship to catch a thief, only to find himself trying to stop a mysterious weapon from destroying that whole previously unknown alien species. The story's setting relies upon some premises that defy belief and more importantly, rely upon Eren essentially being the perfect spy/agent who can almost never do wrong, with the exception of some moments during a really badly done and cliche romance subplot with Eren's superior. There are some attempts at dealing with the now classic theme of stopping the cycles of revenge and violence here that aren't bad, but mostly this book struggles to maintain any source of tension that anything will go wrong for our hero or to make his actions to save the day actually intriguing. The result is a novel that features very readable prose but a plot I just rolled my eyes repeatedly at.

More after the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle

 

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 May 14, 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.

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons is a new novel by legendary Fantasy Author Peter S. Beagle (of The Last Unicorn fame). The novel features multiple point of view characters but largely focuses upon Robert, a man who has taken over his father's trade of dragon extermination (dragons being usually about as big as cats or dogs in this world and largely being pests who hole up in places. But Robert feels a connection with dragons - seemingly being able to understand them - and sees them as creatures he would rather save than kill and would rather do anything else if he could. Naturally when he gets roped into the affairs of a prince who is forcibly being sent to adventure by his valet and a princess who wants to get the prince to love her and he sees a chance to leave the dragon extermination procession by helping them....things go very very differently than he expects.

It's a world with dragons - both the small pest like type and the large scary type - and wizards and royalty and commoners and it's done quite well, with all of its main characters being pretty well sketched out and enjoyable. The first half of the story almost feels more like a comedy, due to the hilarious bits of misunderstanding between all the royal main characters - Prince Reginald just wants to kind of find adventure and has no interest in marriage or princely duties, his valet Mortmain wants desperately to make him act like a prince and aims to betroth him to the Princess, the Princess Cerise wants Reginald to love her as he's the only prince who seems genuine....etc. etc. It's all rather amusing and then around the midway point we switch to a story dealing with fantasy adventure, large dragons, and an evil wizard...which is itself fun and interesting but doesn't quite stand out as well and kind of feels very generic and ends rather abruptly, to the point I had to reread the ending twice to make sure I hadn't missed a plot point. The result is a book that's enjoyable and yet isn't quite either the heartwarming or fun fantasy adventure or screwball royal comedy it seemed poised to be.

Fantasy Novella Review: The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi

 

The Truth of the Aleke is the sequel to Moses Ose Utomi's The Lies of the Ajungo and the middle novella in Utomi's Forever Desert trilogy. It takes place 500 years after The Lies of the Ajungo, which was a really good novella following a protagonist who sets out into the desert from an oppressed city to find water for his mom, only to discover the world he knows was lies and who then in the triumphant-esque climax takes action to end the true source of that oppression (I'm trying to leave out some spoilers here). I liked that novella a lot so I put this novella on my list to try to read as soon as it came out, even if its description made it sound a more spiritual successor and stand-alone than a sequel.

That assumption was wrong - The Truth of the Aleke is a true sequel, despite the centuries that have passed since the first work, and tries to very deliberately set up another world dealing with potential oppression from outsiders and then use the parallels to the first novella to surprise readers who are expecting more of the same. It's an interesting result, with a strong lead character, but I found the final swerve of this book kind of too abrupt to work fully for me. That said, it's an interesting way of portraying cycles of oppression and the idea of how truth is what those in power portray, which is a central theme of this series. More specifics below the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Flight Risk by Cherie Priest

 

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 November 15, 2022 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.

Flight Risk is the second book in Cherie Priest's "Booking Agents" series of light fun mysteries that star widower detective Grady and amateur and weak psychic Leda (book 1 was Grave Reservations). Book 1 was a fun buddy cop-ish kind of mystery, except unlike the classic version of that genre there wasn't really any conflict between the leads as they wound up working together in book 1 to solve both a serial killing with ties to Leda's past. There also wasn't any real hint of romance between the leads, despite the obvious potential for that (one's a widower, the other's love was murdered). But the mystery was enjoyable and the book's humor and fun was really great at times, so it was an excellent light read and I was hoping the sequel would carry that over.

The good news is that Flight Risk remains the same sort of light mystery fun as its predecessor: the main characters remain excellent and the book is still very enjoyable, even if there really aren't any standout jokes this time. At the same time, there still remains a weird disconnect in chemistry between the two leads, and while the book is short enough to never drag, it never really manages to be more than lightly enjoyable entertainment (especialy as its mystery kind of peters out). I needed a fun light read when I read this and Flight Risk delivered, but at the same time it feels like there are a lot of books just like this out there, so it doesn't really stand out too much from the pack.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Anubis War by David R Packer

 

The Anubis War is a Military Science Fiction novel (MilSF) novel self-published by author David R. Packer and it's also an entrant in this year's Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4), of which I am a Judge. The novel is short and also the first in a series, although it has a complete arc kinda, and features a soldier Vasco coming out of retirement to join a mission on behalf of the Polity to conquer a distant human colony and bring it back under the empire's control. So you have some pretty classic themes here of Anti-Imperialism and Anti-Colonialism underlining a book which to some extent features a ginormous overwhelming military force facing off against guerillas with more skill than the Empire expects.

Unfortunately, while the core themes and ideas of The Anubis War may be good, the book is derailed by a number of poor choices. First, the book is kind of obsessed with the military tech that is used by both sides and spends pages upon pages going through it and how warfare is conducted and nearly all of it does not actually matter...and this slows the pacing and makes the book a slog at times. Second, the main character isn't very interesting and none of the other characters are really ever developed beyond simple archetypes (backstabbing Intelligence Agent Friend, Greedy Warlord Commander, Mysterious Supersoldier who says cryptic comments from a long lost land, etc.). Third, the plot requires kind of a level of belief in the stupidity and intelligence of various forces to the extent that honestly broke credibility. And all of the above is done without any subtlety to a ridiculous extent. I'm not the biggest fan of MilSF, but I doubt even the biggest MilSF fan will find the Anubis War among their favorites.