Tuesday, May 31, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Veiled Masters by Tim Pratt

 



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 14, 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.


The Veiled Masters is the third book in Tim Pratt's trilogy of stand alone tie-in books with the space opera board game "Twilight Imperium".  I've still never played - and had honestly never even heard of - Twilight Imperium, but I've enjoyed Pratt's other space opera work, and did enjoy both of his prior Twilight Imperium tie-in novels, especially the first one, The Fractured Void (see my review here).  That first book featured a bunch of really fun characters and humorous situations, particularly with its two antagonists - a fun loving secret agent from one faction and a serious but sarcastic security officer from another who got entangled (both platonically and romantically) - and the second book was also enjoyable, even if it lacked a lot of the humor.  So I was happy to get a copy of the third book for breezy enjoyable fun.  

And boy did I get that here, with a book that's probably my favorite of the trilogy.  And while this book remains stand alone, it's also in large part a reunion of the main characters from book 1, particularly those antagonists, who return in glorious fashion.  The result is a space opera novel that's a ton of fun - especially if you've read The Fractured Void and know the returning characters (although such foreknowledge isn't necessary) - and is exactly what I wanted.  

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Thursday, May 26, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Last Exit by Max Gladstone

 




Last Exit is the latest novel by author Max Gladstone, a major favorite of mine for his Craft Sequence books, as well as his Hugo/Nebula/Everything winning collaboration with Amal El-Mohtar "This is How You Lose the Time War".  Gladstone's work tends to have really enjoyable characters and dialogue, some really interest mechanics underlining his worlds, and a fascinating knack at putting those mechanics and characters together into explosive, surprising, and yet totally understandable conclusions.  And these books tackle some really strong themes too, such as that of capitalism, of selfishness vs coming together for one another, of the power of love, of the powerful vs the powerless, etc.  It's all really great and so I was super excited to hear about Last Exit, his new stand alone more modern fantasy novel that was coming out this year after a several year absence from publication.  

Last Exit is a very very different book than Gladstone's prior work, being a take (despite featuring a multiverse) on our own world instead of 2nd world fantasy.  More particularly, it's a darker take on some similar themes, featuring a team of broken individuals in a dying or horrifying real world, who are desperate to try and find a way to fix what they broke throughout the multiverse without letting their own cracks doom them once again.  The result is a fantasy horror that relies much more on descriptions of what the characters are feeling and seeing than witty dialogue, and this prose style is one that I often (and did here) bounce off of.  It's still a very interesting book and I suspect a lot of people will really enjoy it, but I didn't quite love it as much as I expected to, even as I got where Gladstone was going.  

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Wednesday, May 25, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: From Dust a Flame by Rebecca Podos

 





From Dust a Flame is a 2022 Young Adult Fantasy novel by author Rebecca Podos, who happened to be the editor of (and a contributor to) the recent Fools in Love anthology of YA Romance short stories that I happened to like a lot.  Still, I wasn't really that interested in exploring her longer fiction until I saw a review of this book on Tor.com, praising its take on "complicated relationships with Judaism, queerness, and becoming"* - a take that immediately piqued my interest.  Fantasy based upon Jewish Folklore, dealing with Judaism and Jewishness in general, as well as queerness and the modern world today is right up my alley, and I immediately reserved this book both at my e-library and my physical library.  

*That review, by Maya Gittelman, is undoubtedly better than mine and can be found here by the way.  

And I really really liked From Dust a Flame, which features a 17 year girl Hannah, who wakes up one day after her birthday with animal like traits that grow stranger and stranger every day, and goes on a journey with her brother Gabe to try and find some answers and a cure....and discovers her unknown Jewish heritage, one which holds answers to her past and future.  It's a really great coming of age story that deals not just with Jewish folklore, but also with the various things it means to be Jewish, as well as to be queer, and shows how generations of women can struggle with circumstances that force them to make dangerous and desperate choices.  So yeah this is a definite winner, and my only complaints about it probably stem from wanting more rather than anything less or different.  

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Monday, May 23, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: The Second Mango by Shira Glassman

 



The Second Mango is the first book in Shira Glassman's Jewish Fantasy Romance series of short novels/novellas (her "Mangoverse"), which feature LGBTQ characters at their heart.  For this book, that's lesbian Queen Shulamit and her new friend and bodyguard, the demisexual Rivka (who pretends to be a man named Riv), as they go out and search for a new love for the Queen and find adventure at the same time.  Jewish Fantasy Romance - especially adding in LGTBQ characters - is a way to really appeal to my interests, so I bought this when I first heard of it and it was on sale.

And boy was I glad I did, because The Second Mango is just so so so much fun.  Both lead characters - insecure Queen Shulamit, still a young woman at heart who means well but is a bit naive about the world and also desperate to find another lesbian woman after her last love disappeared (in a world which where such love isn't common), and Rivka, a strong bodyguard woman who has trauma from what happened to the only man she ever loved, are really great and fun, and the story does a great job telling their pasts and allowing them to have adventure.  The book doesn't really have that much conflict or really much of an antagonist, which I guess is the only strike against it, but it's just so so so charming that I really don't care.  

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Thursday, May 19, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor

 




Akata Woman is the third book in Nnedi Okorafor's award winning Nsibidi Script series of young adult fantasy novels, which began with Akata Witch and continued with Akata Warrior.  The series follows Sunny, an African albino teen whose family returned to Nigeria from the US, as she discovers she has the power of juju, and learns about the magical world of juju with her three teenage friends, all of whom have families that actually know about the magic.  There she discovers her own power, learns about herself and her spirit face Anyanwu, and with her friends Sunny finds herself facing off against dangerous Masquerades and juju using powers to cause harm.  It's a very enjoyable African myth inspired fantasy series, even if I haven't quite loved it as much as say the typical Hugo Voter.  

Akata Woman continues the story of Sunny as she grows closer to adulthood (hence the title), and has to deal with the consequences of her actions and those of her ancestors, and as a result it's what feels like a much darker and difficult tale.  But it still works, even as it puts Sunny and her friends through the ringer and further confronts them with real world events more than any prior book in the series (up through COVID).  There's one minor issue in the plotline regarding Sunny's abusive father that I didn't like, but otherwise, this is yet another winner of a book in this series, and if you liked Akata Witch or Akata Warrior, this will also be a book for you.

Trigger Warning:   Physical abuse by a parent to a child.  


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Wednesday, May 18, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Smoketown by Tenea D. Johnson

 




Smoketown was the debut novel from Tenea D. Johnson, and a novel that won the Parallax Award from the Carl Brandon Society (A group dedicated to promoting PoC written works in SF/F) back in 2011.  It's a short novel, just around 200 pages, featuring a future where jungle has reclaimed a city in Kentucky and resulted in a new city-state....which in response to a Pandemic 25 years ago took measures to eliminate all birds from the City and became somewhat of a police state in response.  And then you have both cyberpunk - nanomachines, virtual reality devices that give you the senses and experiences of the person who recorded it - and fantastical magical elements as well.  Oh and we have a bit of F/F romance and mysticism based in a fictional religion in here to boot.

The result is a novel that is interesting, but honestly might be a bit too short in my opinion to really totally work, leaving me a bit more non-plussed than I hoped.  The biggest main character (out of the three point of view characters) has a solid story of regret and guilt and of learning to move forward in life with love while still remembering the past at the same time.  That said, the story is a bit muddled by the two other main characters - a man investigating the past of the epidemic, and whether as he suspects the blaming of birds and resultant ornithophobia is merely a cover and a scared old scion of a rich company that was once/is the most powerful corporation in the city - such that it doesn't really come across as strongly as I'd hoped.  The result is definitely interesting, but not in a way that fully lands as much as it should.  

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Tuesday, May 17, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Together We Burn by Isabel Ibañez

 




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 31, 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.


Together We Burn is the latest from Young Adult Fantasy Writer Isabel Ibañez, whose last duology was the Bolivian-culture inspired Woven in Moonlight/Written in Starlight.  Both books in that duology dealt with pretty predictable and well-trodden themes, but the culture showed was interesting and the second book dealt with those themes in some pretty surprising ways, with its protagonist being antagonistic to start and realizing her wrong and the horrors of the cycles of oppression in the less obvious way.  So I was definitely curious in trying this next work, which trades the Bolivian inspiration for a Spanish one, taking the bullfighting culture and replacing it with dragon-fighting instead.  

And Together We Burn is fine - a perfectly solidly executed YA fantasy featuring a girl desperate to save her family and its name in a dragon-fighting/dancing business, while also trying to deal with a potential romance and a conspiracy to take her family down.  At the same time, it's also incredibly generic and predictable - the mystery antagonist turns out to be the obvious one any reader will have seen a million times, the romance isn't anything special, and the resolution of things comes in a way you'll likely expect as well.  There's something that's often comforting in predictability or doing the same thing over and over in many novels, but you usually need something stand out in character or setting or something to accompany that predictability, and that's not here, leaving a very solid but not special book here.  

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