Wednesday, July 29, 2020

SciFI/Fantasy Book Review: The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala


The Tiger at Midnight is the debut novel of author Swati Teerdhala, and first in a new YA* fantasy trilogy, one inspired by (per the marketing) ancient Indian history and (Hindu) myth.  Readers of this blog are well aware that I'm always excited to read SF/F based upon non White/European/American cultures, so I was intrigued when I first saw the sequel to this novel listed on a "new books coming out this Spring" and then found this first novel available in audiobook form on Hoopla.

*As I've noted before, one could argue this isn't YA since there's no schooling and the characters are somewhat out of their teens from what I can tell.  But it's marketed as YA, so that's what I'm going with, and there's nothing in this that I would think would be a problem for that audience.*

 And I really enjoyed The Tiger at Midnight, even if it never breaks out into a truly must read story.  The story features two lead characters both of whom have done some troubling things in their lives, and still feel it necessary possibly to do them if they are to help their peoples, in a land whose magic was torn apart seemingly by greed.  Both main characters are very solid and enjoyable and the plotting does take a few surprising turns along the way, keeping me interested enough to make me want to finish the book quickly in print after reading it for its first half in audiobook format.  I've already taken out the second book from the library and look forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Note:  I read this half in audiobook, half in print.  The audiobook reader is solid, so the book is worth a read in that format.

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Monday, July 27, 2020

SciFI/Fantasy Anthology Review: Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora: Edited by Zelda Knight & Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald


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 17, 2020 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.

 Dominion is an upcoming anthology of short fiction, ranging from short story to novelette length in size, featuring authors entirely from Africa or the African Diaspora.  It contains a set of authors with a certain amount of critical acclaim in various smaller awards, but who were mostly unknown to me (I've read a novel from one of the authors and that's it).  Reviewing anthologies is, as I have mentioned before often tricky because obviously story quality can vary from story to story, and depending upon the anthology, the themes that hold the collection together can be often be very loose, making the works not really feel like a collective whole (and if the collections are very large, it's not exactly easy to review every story).

Dominion could have been such a loosely themed anthology in that its collection is based upon its authors' background, but at the same time that background manages to ground many of the stories in some similar themes and ideas, even as the stories diverge wildly.  Some of the stories are very effective and interesting, covering a wide range of SciFi/Fantasy ideas, whereas a few fall flat - in particular two stories feel entirely incomplete, as if part of a larger series I can't seem to find anywhere.  But other than those two, this is a really different and interesting collection of stories with a worldview shaped by the authors' collective backgrounds and it's well worth your time.

 NOTE:  As I put up in the disclosure above, this book was read in a prerelease copy e-ARC, with at least one major omission: the book's cover promotes a foreword by Tananarive Due, but the foreword was not included in my copy.

TRIGGER WARNING:  Rape (kinda) and Domestic Abuse (Physical) in one story in particular.


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Saturday, July 25, 2020

A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 40-42 (Really Chapters 33-34)




Welcome back to my reread of K.B. Wagers' "A Pale Light in the Black!"  You can find the other posts in this reread here.  For those somehow seeing this post first instead of the others, A Pale Light in the Black is a space opera featuring a SF space version of the Coast Guard in an optimistic future universe.

Last time out, the crew arrived to the main event: The Boarding Games - and we ended with Max running into her older brother, who abandoned her years ago.  This time, we see the games get ready to begin, with a little extracurriculars between the NeoG and the Navy teams at a bar.....because of course.....


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Thursday, July 23, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn


Haunted Heroine is the latest novel by author Sarah Kuhn, and the fourth novel (and 5th installment) in her Heroine Complex series.  I have absolutely loved this series, which began with "Heroine Complex" several years ago, and was absolutely thrilled to hear that it would be continuing beyond the original trilogy.  Featuring Asian American superheroines in San Francisco who have to deal with their own anxieties, sudden and surprising romances (with some fun steamy sex scenes) - to go along with fantastic endlessly quotable dialogue and fun action sequences, the series was just absolutely a blast and so much fun, and I binge read each within a single day.  So I actually preordered this one rather than wait for it to come out from the library, and finished it within 14 hours of it downloading to my kindle app at midnight.

And the result is.....still fun, but a step down from its predecessors.  The book moves the setting to a private women only liberal arts school, and as such features classic college tropes, and is very fun in that regard - and remains nearly as quotable as its predecessor.  It also moves the perspective of the novel back to Evie (our protagonist from the original novel) and there it's a little less successful, with Evie's new emotional journey and character development feeling kind of duplicative of where it was in the prior novels.  Again this is still a really enjoyable novel that fans of the series will enjoy and I look forward to seeing the next novel (presumably shifting perspective back to Aveda), the series just has set some damn high standards.

Note:  Spoilers for the original trilogy are inevitable, but I don't know why you'd skip to this book when the others are so good.  Go read those first.


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Wednesday, July 22, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena



Hunted by the Sky is the debut novel by Tanaz Bhathena and the first in a new YA fantasy series (trilogy I think).  It's a novel with a setting inspired by medieval India and features a world with magical beings, gods, magic in general as well as a class divide based upon whether someone has or doesn't have magic.  It also features a pair of protagonists - a boy and a girl - whose childhoods have been shaped by the oppressive nature of this world and who have opposite dispositions as to what to do about it...but find their fates tied together anyhow.

And it works for the most part, with both of the main characters being very enjoyable and easy to like, and the plot providing an excellent amount of tension to keep everything moving.  It isn't a perfect debut - I didn't quite buy the romance between the two protagonists - but it's a solid first novel in a series and it ends with a cliffhanger that tantalizes more than enough to make me want more.


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Tuesday, July 21, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Book Review: The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher


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 6, 2020 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 Hollow Places is the latest horror novel by author T Kingfisher (the pen name of author Ursula Vernon).  It's also a spiritual successor to her highly acclaimed "The Twisted Ones", which took a line from an old classic horror story and expanded upon it into a modern quaint horror story in rural North Carolina.  As I've said before on this blog, I'm not really a horror fan (though I love Vernon/Kingfisher's work) but I enjoyed The Twisted Ones, even if it didn't quite scare me as much as it seemingly did for others.

The Hollow Places however, was genuinely scary for me, relying a bit less on jump scares (though there are some) and more on atmospheric horror.  It's another novel based upon a concept from an old horror story that I've never read, and it works really really well, with a very strong lead character and sidekick, and a plot that kept me mostly on edge throughout.  It's not nearly as witty at times as The Twisted Ones could be, but it still works incredibly well and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror.....


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Monday, July 20, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry


A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians is the first in a new historical fantasy duology by author H.G. Parry.  And I would heavily emphasize the word "Historical" in that description: this is a novel that covers the time period of the French and Haitian Revolutions, and features those very same events and very prominent characters just in a world altered by the existence of one major fantastical element: the existence of magic.  Of course given the events of the time period, the use of magic is restricted by nature of class and magic plays a role in the actions of enslavement....

Unfortunately, while I appreciated the work that went into the setup, I kind of found the whole package kind of cold in the end.  The story features four main characters, 2 in England, 1 in France, and 1 in Jamaica/Haiti, but mostly focuses upon the French Revolution and England, and while the existence of magic causes some changes in circumstance, events proceed pretty much exactly as historically foretold.  And the book doesn't do enough to actually make me care about the characters as a result, making it by the end feel kind of pointless?

Let me try to explain further in depth after the jump:

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