Review: The Blade Itself

Title: The Blade Itself

Series: The First Law Trilogy #1

Author: Joe Abercrombie

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (severe), blood (severe), violence (severe), gore (severe), injury (severe), animal death, child death, animal injury, murder, war, body horror (mild), slavery (mentions), excrement (mentions), ableism, sexism, physical abuse (one scene, plus mentions of it happening in the past), torture, cannibalism (mentions), rape (mentions), unreality, colonization (mentions), xenophobia (mentions), vomit, classism, fire/fire injury, alcohol use

Back Cover:

The first novel in the First Law Trilogy and debut fantasy novel from New York Times bestseller, Joe Abercrombie.

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian — leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies.

Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he’s about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

Unpredictable, compelling, wickedly funny, and packed with unforgettable characters, The Blade Itself is noir fantasy with a real cutting edge.

Review:

I didn’t pick this book up entirely by choice. For Valentine’s Day, my local library did a “blind date with a book” promotion where they wrapped the books up in paper and just put a few facts about them on the front. I love the concept (I appreciate anything that gets me to try new things), so I knew I had to try one. Eventually I picked this one, and here’s all I knew about it until I got home from the library and opened the wrapping:

This is where the blind date with a book concept really comes in handy, because I had actually looked at this book on the shelf previously and decided it didn’t look interesting. The back cover introduced way too many characters and not enough plot, and it seemed like it was going to be very unclear what was actually going on and maybe a little dull. But since I had been convinced to check it out, I figured I might as well read it.

First of all, Joe Abercrombie is clearly a very good writer. This book was extremely well-written, and despite how many things are going on, it’s balanced well, and though the place is slow, it never gets dull. I did not find myself eager and enthusiastic about reading this story as fast as possible, but I also never considered putting it down. It seems strange to call a book full of as much death, violence, and bloodshed a pleasant reading experience, but it was – not slow or dense enough to lose interest, not enthralling enough to get me truly invested in anything that happened or anyone involved, no protagonists I disliked but also none I really loved. (Actually, while they were perfectly fine to read about, every protagonist was a terrible person in their own way.) I had quite a good time reading but didn’t get emotionally involved. It was the violent fantasy version of casual reading.

But then I finished it. And my husband asked if I liked it. And I realized how difficult of a question that actually was to answer. Because, as previously mentioned, I did have a good time reading it. And there were lots of really interesting aspects. Glokta’s experience of existing in a disabled person in a world that’s built for able-bodied people was intense and quite well-done. Bayaz’s wizardly shenanigans were entertaining and I liked that the history of the magic system was part of the story. And though it was violent, the violence never felt excessive or overdone, except in a way that made it clear that violence is always a tragedy, despite how the people who benefit from it may try to reframe it. So for that, it was good.

But then we come to the struggle that I really have no idea what was going on, plot-wise. There are a lot of point-of-view characters. There’s Logen, Jezal, and Glokta, as mentioned on the back cover. Despite being on the back cover, Bayaz isn’t a point of view character. There’s also the Dogman, a member of Logen’s old warrior band. And there’s Farro, who doesn’t get introduced until a third of the way throught the book, and who is 98% rage by volume, mostly feral, and whose primary goal in life is to commit as much murder as possible, with or without provocation. So there’s a lot of people running around doing things. But none of those things really coalesce into a plot. Glokta is doing his job; Jezal is shirking swordsmanship training and falling in love; Logen is tagging along after Bayaz, who definitely has plans but isn’t sharing them; the Dogman is traveling with the warrior band; and Farro is trying her best to commit a lot of murder, but is mostly being guided to somewhere by a magical old guy who also has plans but isn’t sharing them. There’s also two brewing wars, some internal politics driven by people who definitely have goals (but again, no indication as to what those are beyond “I want power”), a subplot with a swordsmanship contest that didn’t seem to have a point, and mostly just a lot of little things happening with no overarching plot or even protagonist goals. Farro’s story didn’t even meet up with any of the other characters until the last few chapters. And almost everybody felt like they were wandering through the story with no real goals or interest in doing much beyond live their lives. The only primary character who seems to have any sort of motivation or goal that could drive a plot is Bayaz – and as I said, he’s not telling.

This whole book really felt more like the setup than a story in and of itself – which is a very strange choice, considering that this book is over 500 pages long and there’s only two more books in the trilogy. (Although there are a bunch of standalone books, a second trilogy, and some short stories in the same world, so who knows what the thought process was here.) At the very end, something happened that felt like the inciting incident of an actual plot. So perhaps things will actually happen in the next book. I’m on the fence about reading it, though. On one hand, The Blade Itself was a perfectly fine read. On the other, it wasn’t any better than “perfectly fine”, and if the next book is anywhere close to this length, that’s an awful lot of pages to commit to when the story doesn’t even have an identifiable plot yet. I don’t regret the time reading this one, if for nothing else than exposure to something I wouldn’t have voluntarily picked up otherwise. But I don’t think I’ll be voluntarily seeking out book two, either.

The First Law World:

The First Law Trilogy:

1. The Blade Itself
2. Before They Are Hanged
3. Last Argument of Kings

The First Law standalone books:

1. Best Served Cold
2. The Heroes
3. Red Country

The Age of Madness Trilogy:

1. A Little Hatred
2. The Trouble With Peace
3. The Wisdom of Crowds

The First Law short story collections:

1. Sharp Ends
2. The Great Change (And Other Lies)

Review: Hellbent

Title: Hellbent

Series: Cheshire Red Reports #2

Author: Cherie Priest

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, injury, murder, mental illness, confinement, ableism, blood drinking, parent death (mentions), severe weather, excrement (mentions)

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of the previous book, Bloodshot.

Back Cover:

Vampire thief Raylene Pendle doesn’t need more complications in her life. Her Seattle home is already overrun by a band of misfits, including Ian Stott, a blind vampire, and Adrian deJesus, an ex-Navy SEAL/drag queen. But Raylene still can’t resist an old pal’s request: seek out and steal a bizarre set of artifacts. Also on the hunt is a brilliant but certifiably crazy sorceress determined to stomp anyone who gets in her way. But Raylene’s biggest problem is that the death of Ian’s vaunted patriarch appears to have made him the next target of some blood-sucking sociopaths. Now Raylene must snatch up the potent relics, solve a murder, and keep Ian safe – all while fending off a psychotic sorceress. But at least she won’t be alone. A girl could do a lot worse for a partner than an ass-kicking drag queen – right?

Review:

For as lackluster as this back cover is, I enjoyed Bloodshot enough to be excited about reading this book. I’m not generally an urban fantasy fan, but I found Raylene a well-done snarky protagonist and surprisingly well-rounded for a badass vampire thief, and the whole book to be more action thriller than urban fantasy mystery. It’s like urban fantasy lite, and I enjoyed it.

This book, though, leans heavier into the urban fantasy elements of the series. Raylene interacts with multiple vampire Houses, she’s hunting down some magical artifacts, and of course there’s the whole sorceress thing. But despite that, it didn’t really have an urban fantasy feel to me. I think that’s because every other urban fantasy I’ve read has had some variety of romance (often a somewhat unhealthy romance), and even though the back cover tries to imply that Raylene and Adrian are going to get together, they are most definitely not. And I think having the first book be so light on the urban fantasy elements helped ease me in, as well.

It’s a general tendency of sequels to be just not quite as good as the first book. That’s not really the case here. Bloodshot and Hellbent are both well-written, well-plotted, interesting, and enjoyable to read. Raylene herself is still great. She is, as I’ve said, remarkably more full and well-written than I anticipated. Her snark works, she’s experiencing some growth, and I love her dynamic with the unique cast of characters she’s surrounded with. She’s dynamic and quite fun to read about, and she’s a large part of the reason why I’ve enjoyed this series.

Plot-wise, there’s a lot happening, but it’s balanced very well and all of it is enjoyable. In many ways, it exactly the same plot as last book – someone wants Raylene to obtain something, but someone else wants that to not happen. Last time, Ian wanted her to get some records and the government didn’t want her to do that. This time, she gets a job to steal some magical bones, and the sorceress who also wants them doesn’t want her to do that. But this one manages to make itself unique in a few ways: First, a single slightly-crazy sorceress uses much different Raylene prevention methods than the federal government. And second, this book leans harder into the urban fantasy aspects of the story. It becomes clear that there’s other supernatural creatures than vampires in this world (although none of them actually show up on-page, they’re mentioned). Raylene interacts with people from three different vampire Houses, and actually visits one House’s house. And there’s a sort-of subplot that’s a little bit trying to figure out who murdered a particular guy (although figuring out the answer requires less “figuring out who did it” and more “walking into the correct room while doing something else,” so it doesn’t really count as a mystery in my mind).

And now that I’ve finished expressing that I found this book quite good and an enjoyable read, I want to comment on the unusual aspect of it – which is that it doesn’t at all continue the plot from Bloodshot. At the end of that book, the main plot points were resolved, but there was still one antagonist on the loose who needed to be hunted down and dealt with. The implication was that this was the setup for the rest of the series, and Raylene and company would be working on tracking down and doing something (possibly murder) to the rest of the people involved in Project Bloodshot. But besides a mention at the beginning of this book that the events of the last book happened and there was at least one guy still out there, nothing in this book had anything to do with any of that.

This wouldn’t be a problem if there were more books. But there are only two Cheshire Red Reports books, and this one is over a decade old. Cherie Priest has said on her website that she may in the future write a third book in the series, but at this point there’s just the two. Which leaves the whole thing feeling incomplete. Sure, this book wrapped up really well, even resolved a few sub-plots from book one, and left the characters in an overall good place to end a series. But that one major thread left over from book one – that the guy behind Project Bloodshot is still on the loose and Raylene and company intend to hunt him down – is really bothering me. Even just one more book to resolve that would make this feel more complete as a series. Or it’s possible that I’m the only one bent out of shape by that one unresolved thing and everybody else is fine with the way it ended. Who knows.

This complaint really has nothing to do with this book, which I very much enjoyed. This series just feels incomplete with that one major thread left hanging, and I would love to see a third book come out at some point to resolve it. And if Cherie Priest ever decides to take up this series again and write more than one additional book, that works for me, too – I enjoy this series and would be happy to spend a few more books in it.

The Cheshire Red Reports:

1. Bloodshot
2. Hellbent

Review: Night Watch

Title: Night Watch

Series: Discworld #29 (City Watch #6)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, murder, injury, war, torture, fire, pregnancy (mentions), animal death (mentions), animal cruelty (brief), police brutality

Spoiler Warning: This book is 29th in the series, but reading beyond this point will expose you to only the mildest spoilers of the previous City Watch books.

Back Cover:

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is back in his own rough, tough past. He must track down a murderer, teach his young self how to be a good cop and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There’s a problem: if he wins, he’s got no wife, no child, no future.

Review:

I am not generally into books about time travel shenanigans. Not because I have anything against time travel in particular, but it just seems to be rare to have it done well, or at least in a way that I find enjoyable to read about. But, as usual, Sir Terry pulled it off.

I think a lot of that has to do with the character of Commander Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Due to some unfortunate wrong-place, wrong-time magical happenstance, Vimes ends up in his own past – the Ankh-Morpork of many decades ago, when he had just joined the Watch and things were, objectively, much worse than they are now. But one of the things that I appreciate most about Commander Vimes is that he is a relentlessly practical man. I recognize a kindred spirit in that, but it also means that the situation may be weird and fairly unpleasant, but he gets right on with dealing with it, with very little pining or philosophizing and absolutely no dithering or worrying about paradoxes.

That’s not to say that he’s emotionless, though. In fact, what makes Vimes so stellar as a character to me throughout this whole series is that he is competent, practical, and stays focused on the problem(s) in front of him instead of wasting time with excessive introspection or philosophizing, but he also has a strong set of personal values, cares deeply for the people around him, and feels his emotions intensely. He doesn’t do the introspection on the page because he doesn’t need to; he already knows himself thoroughly and is in control. To use the cliché, he is in touch with his feelings, but though they may tempt him to act against his values, they never control him. In so many ways, he is a paragon of positive masculinity – competent, principled, practical, honorable, caring, willing and able to experience great depth of feeling, never letting his feelings overrule him. He’s the rare character who is great to read about as a character, and also someone I think I would like, or at least respect, in real life.

Apparently this is the Sam Vimes Appreciation Review. That does make sense, because he really is the star of this book. Sure, there’s the whole time travel thing. There’s the murderer he’s tracking who also got zapped into the past and has the same future knowledge that Vimes does. There’s the fact that this point in the past is a particularly sticky one for Ankh-Morpork. There’s the sheer delight of a character being spectacularly good at what they do (some of it because Vimes has future knowledge, but much of it because he’s just a really, really good watchman). All of that is quite enjoyable to read. But this is a book that pushes Commander Vimes to his limits, and that means that he, as a character, is really what carries this story.

The Discworld series doesn’t generally shy away from getting dark in places. But this book is probably the darkest that I’ve read so far, and since the City Watch sub-series tends to be less funny in general, it’s not tempered with humor into something darkly funny. It’s just dark. Not at all in a bad way, to be sure. As I said, these events push Vimes to his limit, and it’s hard to do that without delving into some darkness. But even in terms of sheer numbers of deaths and injuries, this has got to be one of the more violent Discworld books. It’s not unnecessary violence when it comes to the plot, but it definitely goes (and takes Commander Vimes to) some very dark places.

I can’t necessarily say that Night Watch has replaced Interesting Times as my favorite Discworld book. The two are so different in mood, tone, theme, and content that it’s hard to do a direct comparison. But I can definitely say that Night Watch is among my favorite Discword books. If you like Commander Vimes as a character, love stories where protagonists are pushed to their limits, or just enjoy the very specific trope where a character is sent back in time and has to relive a difficult part of their life from a new perspective, I think you’ll agree.

The Discworld Series:

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Equal Rites
4. Mort
5. Sourcery
6. Wyrd Sisters
7. Pyramids
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Eric
10. Moving Pictures
11. Reaper Man
12. Witches Abroad
13. Small Gods
14. Lords and Ladies
15. Men at Arms
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
24. The Fifth Elephant
25. The Truth
26. Thief of Time
27. The Last Hero
28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
29. Night Watch
30. The Wee Free Men
31. Monstrous Regiment
32. A Hat Full of Sky
33. Going Postal
34. Thud!
35. Wintersmith
36. Making Money
37. Unseen Academicals
38. I Shall Wear Midnight
39. Snuff
40. Raising Steam
41. The Shepherd’s Crown

Review: Notorious Sorcerer

Title: Notorious Sorcerer

Series: The Burnished City #1

Author: Davinia Evans

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, injury, violence, police brutality, confinement (brief), unhealthy marriage, classism (a lot), alcohol use, body horror (mild), sexual content

Back Cover:

Since the city of Bezim was shaken half into the sea by a magical earthquake, the Inquisitors have policed alchemy with brutal efficiency. Nothing too powerful, too complicated, too much like real magic is allowed–and the careful science that’s left is kept too expensive for any but the rich and indolent to tinker with. Siyon Velo, a glorified errand boy scraping together lesson money from a little inter-planar fetch and carry, doesn’t qualify.

But when Siyon accidentally commits a public act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight. Except the limelight is a bad place to be when the planes themselves start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send the rest of the city into the sea.

Now Siyon, a dockside brat who clawed his way up and proved himself on rooftops with saber in hand, might be Bezim’s only hope. Because if they don’t fix the cascading failures of magic in their plane, the Powers and their armies in the other three will do it for them.

Review:

This was one of my less-researched picks. It made it onto my reading list somehow, but by the time I grabbed it from the library I’d forgotten what it was really about or why. The only thing I knew about it was there was some kind of magic involved (obvious from the title) and the protagonist was queer in some capacity.

So I went in with very little context. But to be fair, I don’t think more context would have necessarily helped with my primary complaint – I had no idea what was going on with this world. The names were all long and hard to keep straight, especially since most characters had a first name, a last name, and a title, each of which could be used for the same character in different contexts. I got better at it as the story went on and I spent more time with the characters, but almost every name in the book at some point gave me a moment of “wait, do I know this person?” And the worldbuilding was clearly detailed and done with a lot of care and thought, but I also had a really hard time figuring things out. Part of the city fell into the sea, but I think it’s still around just a couple hundred feet lower than the rest of the city? I don’t really understand how the Bravi tribes work or what their role actually is in the city. There’s a huge class divide between the azatani and everyone else, but I’m not clear what defines an azatani or even whether it’s a racial category or a title. The magic system is fascinating and complicated but there’s a clear difference between alchemy, which is acceptable but regulated, and sorcery, which is very illegal (and I think “magic” is a separate third thing, maybe?).

So while the world was quite detailed and vibrant, I really didn’t have any idea of how it worked, or the rules of the magic system, or anything. (Although part of the plot of the book is figuring out that hte old rules of the magic system didn’t work anymore, so I’ll forgive that one.) But the weird part about the story, and I guess what best illustrates how enjoyable it really is, is that I didn’t mind all that. Sure, I wasn’t really sure how all the pieces of the world fit together, but even the confusing parts were just relentlessly cool. Daring street gangs getting up to hijinks, plucky underdogs who happen to be really good at what they do, and of course a whole lot of high-stakes magical shenanigans – it was a ton of fun. I enjoyed Siyon, I enjoyed the magical adventure, I enjoyed that it felt like a “protagonist has a big goal but accomplishing it is way more complicated than initially thought” plot and an “I only wanted to do this one small thing how did it get so out of hand” plot at the same time. I even in some ways enjoyed trying to fit new pieces of information into the story and the world.

This is a hard book to review because it absolutely has some pretty major flaws. Normally I wouldn’t even finish a book where I felt like I couldn’t get a handle on the world. But somehow this book managed to be so absolutely stellar in every single other aspect – plot, characters, romance, descriptions, the writing itself, coolness factor, being just plain fun and interesting to read – that it downgraded “I have no idea how this fantasy world works” from a dealbreaker to a minor annoyance. Which says a lot about the quality of the book itself, I think. This is also the author’s debut novel, so I have extremely high hopes for future books overcoming the worldbuildling issues. I fully intend to read book two.

The Burnished City Trilogy:

1. Notorious Sorcerer
2. Shadow Baron
3. Currently untitled

Review: Strike the Zither

Title: Strike the Zither

Series: Kingdom of Three #1

Author: Joan He

Genre: Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Death, injury, blood, violence, war, parent death (mentions), terminal illness, alcohol use (mentions), child death (mentions), vomit (mentions), animal death (mentions)

Back Cover:

The Chinese classic Three Kingdoms reimagined with a lady Zhuge Liang.

The year is 414 of the Xin Dynasty, and chaos abounds. A puppet empress is on the throne, and three warlordesses each hope to claim the continent for themselves.

Only Zephyr knows it’s no contest.

Orphaned at a young age, Zephyr took control of her fate by becoming the best strategist of the land and serving under Xin Ren, a warlordess whose loyalty to the empress is double-edged—while Ren’s honor draws Zephyr to her cause, it also jeopardizes their survival in a war where one must betray or be betrayed. When Zephyr is forced to infiltrate an enemy camp to keep Ren’s followers from being slaughtered, she encounters the enigmatic Crow, an opposing strategist who is finally her match. But there are more enemies than one—and not all of them are human.

Review:

I didn’t realize when I picked this up that I’d already read one book by this author before – or at least attempted to read, as I DNF’ed Descendant of the Crane in 2021. But the back cover on this one sounded much more interesting, and I didn’t DNF the other book for being bad, just because I wasn’t able to get into it – which could very easily have been more about my mood than the book itself. So I gave this one a shot.

And at first, I was really glad I did. I didn’t love the world-building – I’ve read too many fantasies set in actual ancient China, so this Chinese-inspired world felt like a discordant mishmash of ideas instead of a cohesive world, but I could live with that. What I did like was Zephyr, who was clever, calculating, always three steps ahead of everyone else (a trait I love in a character), and some intriguing combination of dedicated to her warlordess and desperate to prove herself useful. And even though the plot involved a lot of politics, it wasn’t slow and managed to involve a fair bit of action and intrigue along the way.

The back cover really doesn’t tell you much about what’s in the book. The infiltration happens almost immediately, and while Crow is definitely an antagonist, he’s not really a major player in the story. Just about every bit of the story you think you’re going to read wraps up in part one. Then in part two things go way off the rails, and that’s where I started to really struggle.

My big criticism of the story itself is that it sacrifices background for speed, and that blunts any potential emotional impact. I don’t disagree with the choice – a long setup would have done the story a disservice. But often the reader finds out about crucial pieces of information the moment they’re supposed to be connected to an emotional moment, so the emotions have to share my attention with the process of mentally putting this new information into the overarching picture of the book. This also makes the big revelation at the start of part two feel unexpected, but in a jarring, random way. I may have had a different experience if I’d read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Chinese classic that this series is based on, but I haven’t. So maybe this is true to the original, but it was still difficult for me.

The problem I had with part two, and the reason I won’t be continuing the series, is definitely a case of it’s not the book, it’s me. A major event at the end of part one and a character’s response to it at the beginning of part two resulted in one major character ending up in the body of another major character. I do not like body-swapping. I can’t even really explain why, it just makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s worse if the body-swapped characters try to pretend that they are the person whose body they’re in, which also happens here. So I spent most of part two wanting to leave the situation but also hoping that the characters would get back to the right bodies, because I was sure I would start to like it again once the body-swapping thing was fixed. But based on the ending and reading the back cover for the sequel, I think the characters are likely to stay in the wrong bodies until near the end of book two. And I do not want to deal with that.

On the whole, this is not a bad book by any means. It had a lot of aspects that didn’t do it for me, personally, but that’s not a judgement on the book itself. I’m having a hard time expressing any sort of overall opinion about it because the biggest thing I didn’t like about it (and quite possibly the smaller thing I didn’t like as well) were all matters of personal opinion. I like the ideas, it’s well-written, and it kept my interest despite being fairly politics-heavy. It just has some elements that aren’t for me, personally – but might be for you.

The Kingdom of Three Duology:

1. Strike the Zither
2. Sound the Gong

Review: Bloodshot

Title: Bloodshot

Series: Cheshire Red Reports #1

Author: Cherie Priest

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (severe), blood (severe), violence (severe), injury (major), murder, medical trauma (mentions, not protagonist), body horror (mild), grief (mild, not protagonist), homophobic slur (once, from bad guy), anxiety/panic attacks, transphobic language (mild, from ignorance not malice), fire (mentions), guns

Back Cover:

VAMPIRE FOR HIRE

Raylene Pendle (AKA Cheshire Red), a vampire and world-renowned thief, doesn’t usually hang with her own kind. She’s too busy stealing priceless art and rare jewels. But when the infuriatingly charming Ian Stott asks for help, Raylene finds him impossible to resist—even though Ian doesn’t want precious artifacts. He wants her to retrieve missing government files—documents that deal with the secret biological experiments that left Ian blind. What Raylene doesn’t bargain for is a case that takes her from the wilds of Minneapolis to the mean streets of Atlanta. And with a psychotic, power-hungry scientist on her trail, a kick-ass drag queen on her side, and Men in Black popping up at the most inconvenient moments, the case proves to be one hell of a ride.

Review:

My literary coming-of-age was in the mid-to-late aughts and early 2010s, beginning around the height of the vampire/paranormal romance era of YA literature and spanning its decline and the rise of dystopia as the hot new teen genre. But despite having a lot of available options for vampire books, I didn’t read many vampire books. Vampires just were not interesting to me.

This provides a little bit of context for part of why I didn’t expect to like this book. The other parts are that I generally don’t tend to enjoy books where solving a mystery/doing detective stuff is a major element, and urban fantasy is not my genre. I also picked up Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker many years ago, but never finished it as I found it lame and disappointing. But at a family gathering a few years ago, I somehow got to talking about books with one of my husband’s cousins, and she recommended this one. I had my doubts, but I do generally attempt to read books that are recommended to me. So while I fully expected to find it uninteresting, poorly written, and/or leaning towards the pulpy/trashy side, I gave it a shot. And, as you might expect from the fact that this isn’t a DNF review, I was pleasantly surprised.

While the standard urban fantasy elements are kept to a minimum (limited, in fact, to two characters being actually vampires and some references to the existence of vampire “Houses” and their politics), the thrust of the plot is a mystery. Raylene is trying to track down and steal some papers. However, it feels less like a detective story and more like an action movie because the government picks up pretty quick that someone is after information they’d rather not have anyone find. So yes, Raylene is trying to follow clues and find what she needs, but this also involves breaking into secure government bases, running across rooftops and rappelling down buildings to evade government agents, and generally feels more like Jason Bourne than Perry Mason. I may not be a fan of straight-up detective stories, but I can appreciate a good old-fashioned following the trail of clues when the antagonists are government agents who aren’t afraid to get into a firefight.

But what really carried the story was Raylene herself. I’ve read my fair share of snarky narrators with lots of commentary, and most of them quickly get annoying, frustrating, or boring. But Cherie Priest actually pulls it off. Raylene is snarky and sarcastic and intersperses the actual telling of the story with a ton of commentary, a “voicey” quality that puts her as a character, not the plot or action, at the heart of the story. And I think it works. “I’m a vampire, a famous thief, and you can hire me to steal things for you” leaves a lot of opportunity to create a more flat character, which can work in a plot-focused story. But Raylene is full of nuance and flaws. She may be really good at what she does, but she also has pretty bad anxiety which leads to overpreparedness, as well as a deep well of compassion that she tries to convince herself doesn’t exist and a reckless, almost self-destructive streak that she doesn’t yet recognize. Plus, her extreme confidence in her vampirism-enhanced physical abilities gives her a dash of that absurdly powerful protagonist trope that I love so much. I didn’t expect such a nuanced character with such an enjoyable voice, and I was surprised and delighed by how much I enjoyed following her through this story. There’s a lot of opportunity for growth in future books, and I think that could be really great to watch.

Speaking of future books, I didn’t know going into this that it had a sequel – although I probably could have suspected, because what urban fantasy book is a standalone these days? Regardless, this book stopped at a reasonable ending point, but the story itself is definitely not over. I’m not entirely sure if I so much care about how the story ends, but I do want to see what happens with Raylene personally. This is one of those books that nobody would call a masterpiece – it’s good and well-written, but it’s not deep or profound or thought-provoking. What it is, though, is enjoyable, engaging, and entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, and I will be reading book two, if for no other reason than I really like Raylene.

The Cheshire Red Reports series:

1. Bloodshot
2. Hellbent

Review: Thief of Time

Title: Thief of Time

Series: Discworld #26 (Death #5)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), body horror (arguably), abandonment, injury (mentions), unreality, existential horror, mental illness, suicide, ableism

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-sixth in a series, but neither the book nor the review contain spoilers of any previous books (but knowledge of the previous books will make this review make more sense).

Back Cover:

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed.

And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it’s wasted (like underwater — how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time.

But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time, for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone’s problems.

Thief of Time comes complete with a full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous).

Review:

This book is a strange reading experience and not exactly easy to review. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good. But it’s hard to put into words my thoughts on the matter.

First of all, Thief of Time is part of the Death sub-series, and I have struggled with nearly every book in the series for various reasons (although, in the case of Hogfather, that reason was more the circumstances in which I read the book than the book itself). In this case, the book doesn’t follow the same pattern of most of the Death books, wherein Death has a crisis about not being human and makes a stupid decision and the rest of the book is spent trying to fix what he screwed up. In fact, it feels weird to call this a Death book at all, since Death is hardly in it. I think there were Rincewind books that had Death in more scenes than Thief of Time. However, Death’s granddaughter Susan (who is at this point a favorite of mine) does show up and is pretty crucial to the ending, so maybe that’s why it counts? Regardless, Death is not actually a major player in this book.

There are actually a lot of players in this book. If you had to name protagonists, you would probably identify Lopsang Ludd, apprentice History Monk who somehow already seems to know the time tricks the monks are supposed to be teaching him, and Jeremy, obsessive and extremely talented clockmaker with some kind of mental illness. But there’s a definite third-person omnicient vibe in this story. Even if you only count characters who have point-of-view scenes, there’s also Death, Susan, Lu Tze the janitor monk, Nanny Ogg, Myria LeJean the … well, you should just read about that one, Ronnie the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and probably a few others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. And each of those has a cast of secondary characters that only sometimes overlaps. There’s a lot of characters happening. None of them were bad and I liked all of them in their own way, but the frequent jumping between characters and places sometimes left me feeling a bit unfulfilled, like I wanted more out of the scene I just had before it switched to a different scene.

And now that I’ve covered the basic bookish stuff that feels like I should at least say it, let’s get down to the weirdest thing about this book: It does not feel like a Discworld book. It is funny, sure, and full of Sir Terry’s signature wit, but in a way that’s gently amusing, not laugh-out-loud hilarious. Even though the fate of the entire world and existence is at stake, it lacks true urgency. Instead, it’s slightly slower than you would expect for a book so full of characters and stories, it’s thematically rich, and above all it’s deeply philosophical. It pokes fun at a lot of ideas, but it also meditates on the nature of time and what it means to be (or become) a human being. I have really enjoyed most of the Discworld books I’ve read. Many of them have had interesting themes worth thinking about. But this is the only one where I really felt like it was touching on something real and meaningful and was actually expanding the way I think.

I really do not know what to make of this. Out of all of the books in this series, I really want this one to become a movie. I want to study it for the wisdom it contains. It’s a silly funny fantasy story while simultaneously giving me that expanded, slightly-off-kilter feeling of really good magical realism. I’ve learned so much. I know nothing. There are layers of meaning here that I haven’t yet unpacked. A very confused monk apprentice is following his master the janitor on a quest to smash a really fancy clock. Meaning is a glass clock, clear as a mountain stream yet distorted and obscured by joints and angles. This is a Discworld book.

I have maintained for most of my Discworld reading experience that Interesting Times is my favorite. Rincewind is still one of my favorite characters, and not only is it the best of his books, it’s so far the best combination of thematic depth and laugh-out-loud humor. But this one … it is so strangely, confusingly, almost unbelievably good. It does not feel like a Discworld book. It feels momentous. It feels like a book that wins literary awards and deserves them, and like Lu Tze is a powerful monk in the humble guise of a janitor, Thief of Time is a powerful work in the humble guise of a simple funny fantasy story. It hits so far above its weight class and goes so much deeper than it claims that I have no idea how to properly convey what I’m feeling. It’s a good and enjoyable story, but it’s so much more than that. I feel closer to enlightenment having read this. It is such a dramatic departure from anything I expected from a Discworld book, but it is so, so good.

The Discword Series:

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Equal Rites
4. Mort
5. Sourcery
6. Wyrd Sisters
7. Pyramids
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Eric
10. Moving Pictures
11. Reaper Man
12. Witches Abroad
13. Small Gods
14. Lords and Ladies
15. Men at Arms
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
24. The Fifth Elephant
25. The Truth
26. Thief of Time
27. The Last Hero
28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
29. Night Watch
30. The Wee Free Men
31. Monstrous Regiment
32. A Hat Full of Sky
33. Going Postal
34. Thud!
35. Wintersmith
36. Making Money
37. Unseen Academicals
38. I Shall Wear Midnight
39. Snuff
40. Raising Steam
41. The Shepherd’s Crown

Review: The Truth

Title: The Truth

Series: Discworld #25 (Industrial Revoluion #2)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, murder, body horror, drug use (mentions), fire/fire injury, alcohol use (mentions), blood, injury, classism (background element)

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-fifth in a series, but despite that does not contain spoilers of previous books.

Back Cover:

There’s been a murder. Allegedly.

William de Worde is the Discworld’s first investigative journalist. He didn’t mean to be – it was just an accident. But, as William fills his pages with reports of local club meetings and pictures of humorously shaped vegetables, dark forces high up in Ankh-Morpork’s society are plotting to overthrow the city’s ruler, Lord Vetinari.

Review:

It seems like every Discworld book that takes place in Anhk-Morpork somehow involves a threat to overthrow Lord Vetinari. Most of them so far have been City Watch books and had the Watch thwarting the plot. In this case, though, despite the Watch definitely being present, it was investigative journalism that uncovered the answer.

The Truth is the second of Discworld’s “Industrial Revolution” books. In the first one, Moving Pictures, the Discworld got introduced to movies and Hollywood Holy Wood glitz and glam. In The Truth, the Discworld gets journalism. The thing I love most about it is that it happens entirely by accident. There’s something really appealing to me about stories where the protagonist didn’t mean to do all that, they just had a good idea for something small and it got out of control. Which is exactly what happened with William de Worde, who didn’t actually intend to become a journalist, he just thought a moveable-type printing press would make his letter-writing easier and it spiraled from there.

As with most other Discworld books, this one has some interesting themes and questions. The big obvious one is journalism – the nature of the press, what is considered news, journalistic judgement, what people want to read versus what “the public” needs to know, and some very pointed and un-subtle digs at tabloids. And if the title didn’t make it painfully obvious, it also mulls over the nature of truth and how journalism and printing affects the perception of what’s true. (It also tried to say something about privilege during the climax, I think, but that one was very muddled.) This book has a lot of interesting themes and ideas, but it is not particularly subtle about them.

I’m not often much for mystery plots, but I didn’t mind this one. Part of that is because it’s less of “a mystery” than many smaller mysteries in a trench coat. William is trying to untangle all the pieces of who framed Lord Vetinari. But there’s also a cast of fascinating characters and strange happenings to keep that from feeling too mystery-heavy. The talking dog is back, and he’s at least in an interesting situation this time, even if he’s no more likeable. There’s a vampire on staff at the newspaper who takes photographs and is experimenting with using flashes of darkness instead of light to take pictures. There’s the New Firm, a pair of hit men who go by the names Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip. They start out somewhat comedic (at least in Mr. Tulip’s desperate attempts to pick up a drug addiction, consuming all sorts of weird and unpleasant things along the way), but turn into one of the darkest plot lines I recall happening in a Discworld book. And there’s also the Watch, trying to do their jobs with all of William’s meddling.

The Truth is definitely less funny than some of the other Discworld books, but it was entertaining the whole way through and quite fun at times, even if I didn’t end up actually laughing. It has interesting things to say (even if they are SIGNIFICANTLY less subtle than I’ve come to expect from Sir Terry) the plot is solid and kept my interest, the cast of characters was strong, and the ending wrapped everything up neatly, including a few plot threads I had forgotten about. On the whole, it’s an enjoyable, if a bit in-your-face, entry into both Discworld canon and the Industrial Revolution arc.

(And as a note that’s only relevant to the audiobook, my favorite Discworld narrator Nigel Planer has still been replaced with some guy named Steve, the guy who did a terrible job on Carrot’s voice in The Fifth Elephant and also did a terrible job on Death’s voice in The Truth. It’s not relevant unless you read the audiobook, but I am not a fan of Steve.)

The Discworld series:

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Equal Rites
4. Mort
5. Sourcery
6. Wyrd Sisters
7. Pyramids
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Eric
10. Moving Pictures
11. Reaper Man
12. Witches Abroad
13. Small Gods
14. Lords and Ladies
15. Men at Arms
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
24. The Fifth Elephant
25. The Truth
26. Thief of Time
27. The Last Hero
28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
29. Night Watch
30. The Wee Free Men
31. Monstrous Regiment
32. A Hat Full of Sky
33. Going Postal
34. Thud!
35. Wintersmith
36. Making Money
37. Unseen Academicals
38. I Shall Wear Midnight
39. Snuff
40. Raising Steam
41. The Shepherd’s Crown

Review: He Who Drowned the World

Title: He Who Drowned the World

Series: Radiant Emperor duology #2

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Violence, blood, injury, death, bullying, self-harm (graphic), grief (severe), sexual content (explicit), misogyny, ableism, sexual assault, miscarriage, infidelity, murder, child death, parent death (mentions), suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, homophobia, that complicated sexual trauma where you have sex when you don’t really want to as a means to get something else

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of the first book, She Who Became the Sun.

Back Cover:

How much would you give to win the world?

Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband—and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history—and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him.

All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…

Review:

This is a hard book to review. Not because it was bad, or even because I’m ambivalent about it – on the contrary, it was spectacular and I loved it. Even having read the first book nearly two years ago, it didn’t take me long to get back into the story. It kept me engaged throughout and even got my heart speeding up in a few particularly tense scenes. It was, above all, astonishingly good.

And I think that’s a large part of what makes it hard to review. I can’t share all the emotions it made me feel by writing about it. To get the full experience, you have to read it yourself. It’s vivid and intense and full of twists I didn’t see coming but probably should have and the kind of book that leaves you completely exhausted at the end because you’ve been feeling so much along the way.

Another part of what makes this hard to review is how utterly dark it is. The first book was dark, too, don’t get me wrong. Zhu is not a good person. She is ruthless and ambitious and claims she is willing to sacrifice anything to reach her goal, and this book puts that to the test. This is also a book where Zhu starts to challenge the bounds of a likeable character. In the first book, she was ruthless and ambitious and violent and did a lot of really horrible things. But in the context of a world that would rather let her starve than inconvenience a man, it didn’t seem unreasonable. In this book, she had reached some measure of security – though still under threat, she was one of the four dominant military and political powers of the area. But her ambition to be the greatest kept her pushing onwards, even as she destroyed others in the process. She was still a dynamic, compelling character and I never really stopped rooting for her, but as the book progressed I found myself repeatedly confronting the reality of her actions and not really being sure how to feel about them. In some ways, it feels weird to even apply moral judgements here, though I can’t fully explain why. But eventually both I and Zhu were looking at the consequences of her ambitions and wondering if it was really worth all that.

(Yet another thing I appreciate about this series: None of the women in these books – whether or not you want to count Zhu and her ambiguous gender identity as a woman – are shamed for their ambition or treated any worse than the men for their crimes. The society is blatantly misogynistic, but the narrative refuses to be.)

General Ouyang was a major player in the last book, and he still is in this one, but to a lesser degree. Some of that is because of his arc. Following on the events from the climax of book one, his is an equal but opposite story to Zhu. While Zhu’s ambitions propelled her to further heights, Ouyang’s relentless pursuit of revenge drove him to further lows. Zhu’s resolve clarified as Ouyang’s mind descended into chaos. I found myself mainly feeling compassion as he destroyed himself on the teeth of his own self-loathing. I wish he could have had a better ending, but he was so far gone that I think he got the best he could.

This book, being the last in the series, was an ending for every character, though not all of them died. Writing-wise, their endings made sense, fit with their arcs, and felt narratively satisfying. On a personal level, so many of them deserved better. Xu Da deserved better. Ma deserved better. Ouyang deserved better. Even Baoxiang deserved better (he deserved better last book, and even before – he is yet another case of an antagonist who I really just feel bad for).

And this brings me to the final reason this book is so hard to review: There is just too much to say. I haven’t said anything about Baoxiang’s story, even though he was a point of view narrator. I haven’t talked about the gender politics involved in this story, or the absolutely spot-on depictions of that very specific and hard-to-define type of sexual trauma where you have sex when you really don’t want to or with someone you don’t want to have sex with as a means to get something else, or the theme of being seen in a gendered body (and, to a lesser extent, a visibly disabled body), or how it’s paced so well that it feels like so much is happening without ever feeling rushed or monotonous, or the really awesome historical setting, or the ghosts.

If I talked about every amazing thing in this book, I could go on forever. But I’ve focused this review mainly on the characters, because despite all the action and adventure and ghosts and politics and invasions, this is a story about these characters and how their actions, good, bad, or otherwise, shape (and often end) the lives of the people around them and, ultimately, the course of history. This feels like a book (and, honestly, a series) that you could keep re-reading and discover something new every time. (It helps that these books are long.) So few sequels live up to their predecessor, but this one does – but it’s also unique to the point where I can’t say whether She Who Became the Sun or He Who Drowned the World is better because they’re both so good for different reasons and in different ways.

I’m running out of eloquent ways to say “this is an amazing book, you should read the whole series,” so there you go. This is an amazing book. So was the first one. You should read both – especially if you like stories that show your emotions no mercy.

The Radiant Emperor duology:

1. She Who Became the Sun
2. He Who Drowned the World

Review: Dream Runners

Title: Dream Runners

Author: Shveta Thakrar

Genre: Portal Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Memory loss, violence, blood (mentions), death, parent death (mentions), grief, panic attacks, confinement, forced marriage

Back Cover:

Seven years ago, Tanvi was spirited away to the subterranean realm of Nagalok, where she joined the ranks of the dream runners: human children freed of all memory and emotion, charged with harvesting mortal dreams for the consumption of the naga court.

Venkat knows a different side of Nagalok. As apprentice to the influential Lord Nayan, he shapes the dream runners’ wares into the kingdom’s most tantalizing commodity. And Nayan has larger plans for these mortal dreams: with a dreamsmith of Venkat’s talent, he believes he can use them to end a war between nagas and their ancient foe, the garudas.

But when one of Tanvi’s dream harvests goes awry, she begins to remember her life on Earth. Panicked and confused, she turns to the one mortal in Nagalok who can help: Venkat. And as they search for answers, a terrifying truth begins to take shape—one that could turn the nagas’ realm of dreams into a land of waking nightmare.

Review:

I didn’t have high expectations when picking this one up. It gave me “mediocre YA romance” vibes, and I can’t really explain why. But I am a sucker for books featuring mythologies I’m not super familiar with, and for as interesting as Indian mythology is, I don’t know a whole lot about it. So I decided to give it a chance.

In many ways, this book does fall a little flat. The narrative assumes a base knowledge of Indian terms and phrases that I just don’t have, so I was frequently nudged out of immersion by an unfamiliar term and have to either Google or guess at the meaning. The descriptions were largely limited to color and shape, and occasionally size and shininess, making a visually rich world that lacked the multisensory richness that would have made it feel truly engaging. Aside from Tanvi and Venkat, the characters were well-rounded but largely uninteresting. And I guessed the big devastating twist really early.

But most of these things I only really noticed in retrospect. I read through Dream Runners fairly quickly and stayed engaged the whole time. And that’s because there is one thing this book does spectacularly well: emotions. Tanvi and Venkat alternate narration and both had different but vivid emotions they were going through. Tanvi especially, as she went through confusing, painful emotional process of emerging from the dream runner mental state and regaining her memories, had such vivid, realistic, engaging feelings that they covered over a multitude of confusing terminology and lifeless descriptions. The sheer emotionality of this story hit the perfect balance – it was sharp and intense without tipping over into corny and melodramatic. Regardless of the other flaws in this book, the emotional aspect is spot-on.

There was also an interesting theme of sisterhood and conflict running throughout the book. A large part of Tanvi’s journey as she gets her memory back is her sister – memories of her, her sister as she is now, seven years later, and the ongoing conflict between them. For most of the book, the naga and garuda conflict felt like an irritating distraction from what actually should be an emotional, personal story. But when it comes to a head in the climax, it actually ties into the theme of conflict between sisters.

I also have to briefly mention the romance (because it’s a YA book featuring one female and one male protagonist, there can’t not be a romance). I kept picturing Venkat as significantly older than Tanvi, so it felt a little weird for that. But the romance part was short, sweet, and very, very minor, which I appreciated. It added to the ending, but neither character spent too much time dwelling on it while they were supposed to be doing other stuff, which I think is generally the right way to do romances.

Ultimately, the book as a whole seemed a little flat. It was good, but not great; entertaining, but not engrossing. The world was solid and had good potential, but seemed to be missing a fundamental richness that would make it feel full and vibrant. But the plot on the whole was good, if a little predictable, and the emotions were spectacularly done. It’s certainly not the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s perfectly good.