Wednesday, August 31, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Holiday Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

 




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 August 30, 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.

Holiday Heroine is the sixth and final novel (not counting the one novella) in Sarah Kuhn's "Heroine Complex" series, as series which I have absolutely fallen in love with over the last few years.  The series, which began with Heroine Complex (Reviewed Here), features a trio of Asian American superheroines in a San Francisco that faced an unsuccessful demon invasion from another dimension....which resulted in some people getting superpowers and demonic forces possessing odd choices of normal objects - birthday cakes, wedding dresses, microphones, etc. - and causing havoc.  In this story we have our three major heroines, Evie, Aveda (Annie) and Bea, as they kick demon butt, deal with their own insecurities about their own lives and their romances, have steamy romances, and form their own families in their own very different ways.  The books are incredibly incredibly fun, at times incredibly sexy (with great sex scenes), and each deals with one of the main characters as they struggle with new circumstances and anxieties as they grow and change. 

Holiday Heroine is the second of these books to follow Bea Tanaka, maybe my favorite of the heroines, who is almost a YA heroine....she's college aged roughly unlike her older sister and friend, wants to prove herself as independent at times, and is just plain fun in how she approaches life...which got her in trouble when her empathy superpower turned into emotion/mind-altering, led her to being manipulated by a demon into almost supervillainous actions like sacrificing the girl her best friend was starting to like all the way back in Book 3, Heroine's Journey.  I loved Heroine's Journey, and it turns out, I loved this second Bea novel, as she deals with a long-distance relationship, what her heart truly wants in her relationship with Sam, Killer Kaiju, time traveling, and the holiday (Christmas) spirit that she loves so much...This is apparently the last installment there will be in the series, and if so, this is a great sendoff - super fun, sexy (oh yeah), and just charming in one last ride with the old characters I've come to love and the new ones here who are just as charming as the rest. 

More specifics after the jump.  Fair warning: Spoiler for the first five books may be below, but this is not really the type of series to be affected too much by you having too much foreknowledge. 

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Thursday, August 25, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Fault Tolerance by Valerie Valdes

 



Fault Tolerance is the third (and for now last) book in Valerie Valdes' space opera series - which began with Chilling Effect (reviewed here) and continued with Prime Deceptions (reviewed here).  The series is often essentially a comedic version of Mass Effect, following Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of the La Sirena Negra as they get into some zany and dangerous adventures.  The first two books were tremendous fun, featuring a ton of geeky references (even other than Mass Effect), really strong characters - ones who weren't the typical white guy ones - and just dialogue and plots that have both a ton of humor as well as some serious themes mixed alongside there.  So I pre-ordered this book months in advance (helped along by a B&N sale on pre-orders).  

And Fault Tolerance delivers exactly what I wanted - tremendous fun with lots of humor, some serious situations and themes, great characters and more.  This time around the stakes are higher than ever, with the entire universe under threat, and the only solution is for Eva and her crew to find a series of giant robots (mecha) they can supposedly pilot to save the day from an evil army of what are basically Transformers.  It's really well done, and the book ends with a finale that just perfectly fits this series, so if it's the conclusion of the story of these characters, well, I'll be very satisfied (and if not, I'll be right back for book 4).  

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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Book of Night by Holly Black

 






Book of Night is the first "Adult" novel by author Holly Black, known for her highly successful YA work, of which I've enjoyed what I've read (The Folk of the Air trilogy is really enjoyable).  It's kind of similar in that vein to Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House - both in that it is the first ostensibly "Adult" novel from a successful YA author and in that it features a cynical noirish protagonist in a woman desperate to move forward in some way while also finding herself drawn to trouble and wrong decisions.  I actually liked Ninth House a bunch, and well given my love of Black's YA stuff (which I think works just fine for adults), you'd think I'd really enjoy Book of Night.  

And well....Book of Night is solid, and enjoyable kind-of....and yet it never really clicked with me like I wanted, making me kind of nonplussed at the ending (which offers the possibility for a 2024 sequel while also working as a stand alone).  The world and atmosphere involved works somewhat well, and the main characters work well enough, but there's a number of leaps and assumptions here in the plot that just felt a bit like stretches too far, and I don't know, I guess the cynical dark world where a character who had a rough background just makes mistake after mistake until a final reveal just doesn't really do it for me anymore without much more thematically.  And I didn't really find much more here?  

Some more attempts at specifics after hte jump:

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Monday, August 22, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terminal Peace by Jim C. Hines

 


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 August 23, 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.
Terminal Peace is the long delayed* conclusion to Jim C Hines' fun space opera series "Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse", which began with Terminal Alliance a bunch of years back.  As you might imagine from the series title, this is a fun space opera series, in which humanity has fallen into feral monsters due to an unknown plague (explained in the series), cured somewhat and recruited by an alien alliance to help secure the galaxy as soldiers....only for the story to follow a series of Janitors/Sanitation-working humans who wind up in control of an alliance ship and forced to save the day repeatedly.  There's a lot of sanitation/toilet based humor, the characters all take names after various parts of pop culture that they don't quite understand the 20th/21st century context of for maximum humor, and well...it's a whole bunch of fun.

*The delay is explained in the back of the book as due in large part due to Hines' struggle with losing his wife during that time.  

Terminal Peace continues the story of the EDFS Pufferfish and Captain Marion "Mops" Adamopolous and her crew and manages to conclude the trilogy in an enjoyable, poignant, and well immensely satisfying volume.  It even adds in sort of a sob-story that made me tear up a bit, especially when combined with the author's note, and deals with some serious themes of free will, predestination, and well, lots of cleaning and alien humor to continue to keep the fun going along the way.  Is it some profound work?  No, of course not - again this is the silly side of space opera, and it knows it.  But it still pulls it
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Thursday, August 18, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi

 




Bitter is a young adult novel by author Akwaeke Emezi and a prequel to their novel, Pet, which came out in 2020 and was highly acclaimed (for good reason).  Pet featured a utopian City in which humans and mysterious Angels had together managed to eliminate the "monsters" of society, those who had abused and oppressed others for their own greed and prejudice - only for the story to feature the discovery by its protagonist Jam - a teen trans girl - of a new monster.  By contrast, Bitter promises to show how that utopian world - the City of Lucille - came about, with a spotlight on Jam's mother Bitter.

It's a very different story - whereas Pet was about the vigilance needed to ensure that oppression, cruelty, and wrongs don't return (and the importance to always remember so as to never forget what led to such evils), Bitter is about what it may take to get the world there....and what parts people may play in making that better world.  It's a story that takes on the idea that everyone MUST be on the frontlines of the fight and instead submits that each person should do whatever they're able, with backline roles and other less open support being just as important.  And it's a story that suggests the price of revolution may involve horrors from those with good intentions....ones which must be tamed as much as used, if not fought against.  A really interesting and well done short book.  

More specifics after the jump:

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Wednesday, August 17, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire

 




 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 September 6, 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.

Be the Serpent is the sixteenth book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series of urban fantasy novels, one of my favorite continuing series that I currently read.  As you might expect from the sixteen book in a series, you can't really start the series here, even as this is the beginning of a new act in this Fae Fantasy series: with the fifteenth book finally featuring October "Toby" Daye getting married and getting a pretty seemingly happy ending.  But well, if you've read this series for a while, and you know Seanan McGuire, you should know that such happy endings (see Book 6, Ashes of Honor, Book 10, Once Broken Faith, etc.) never last too long, as McGuire follows them up by putting Toby through more traumatic experiences than ever before....although those novels tend to be thrilling and strong so you never really feel too hoodwinked about having the rug pulled out of you.  

And man is Be the Serpent no exception, with McGuire taking the happiest ending Toby has ever had and forcing her to deal with the greatest tragedy yet.  The story honestly begins in a bit of a frustrating fashion for the first third - not because it's bad or slow or anything, but because a lot of the drama relies upon a mystery that invested readers of the series (of which should be most of the readers at this point) will have guessed the answer to already, so it feels like it takes a bit too long for Toby to catch up.  Once she does however, this novel becomes incredibly dark, strong and thrilling, and concludes with an ending that is just breathtaking and will leave you desperate for the next novel to see how things shake out - as for the first time I can remember in the series, this book ends with a genuine cliffhanger, and it's one that will leave you gasping.  

Note: This post will contain spoilers for Books 1-15 only.  Spoilery discussion of THIS book and speculation about the future of the series, will go in a separate post that will be posted after this book is released - which can be found here.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Tinderbox by W.A. Simpson

 




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 August 16, 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.     

Tinderbox is a debut epic fantasy novel from author W.A. Simpson courtesy of small press Flame Tree Publishing. It's the type of novel whose description would usually make me skip it - seriously the summary that shows up on its publishing page and on NetGalley, which kind of feels like word salad, with each sentence being an incomplete thought and it all feeling stilted and just odd to read.  Still something about it's cover intrigued me a little bit, so I did wind up requesting it on NetGalley anyhow to see if its contents were better than what it's description suggested. 

And the answer is - sort of: Tinderbox is a folk tale inspired (as in Grimm Fairy Tale type tales - such as the classic ) epic fantasy story with a pair of very enjoyable lead characters, who I did in fact grow to care for.  It also is overly complicated, throwing together way too much in there to the point where it's original antagonist is out of focus for nearly all of the book and then winds up being far less threatening than he should be in the end, and does have a bit of that stilted dialogue and descriptiveness within its full pages.  This is the type of novel that probably could've used a better editor to form a really good novel, as the core of that is definitely here, just muddled.

Trigger Warning:  Attempted Rape

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