Review: Dauntless

Title: Dauntless

Author: Elisa A. Bonnin

Genre: Fantasy (technically YA, but doesn’t feel specifically YA)

Trigger Warnings: Death (severe), violence (severe), blood, injury, gore, animal injury, animal death, mind control, betrayal, grief, parent death (mentions), emotional abuse (not of protagonist), murder (mentions), alcohol use (mentions), colonization, war, mental illness

Back Cover:

A teen girl must bring together two broken worlds in order to save her nation in this lush, Filipino-inspired young adult fantasy novel from debut author Elisa A. Bonnin.

“Be dauntless, for the hopes of the People rest in you.”

Seri’s world is defined by very clear rules: The beasts prowl the forest paths and hunt the People. The valiant explore the unknown world, kill the beasts, and gain strength from the armor they make from them. As an assistant to Eshai Unbroken, a young valor commander with a near-mythical reputation, Seri has seen first-hand the struggle to keep the beasts at bay and ensure the safety of the spreading trees where the People make their homes. That was how it always had been, and how it always would be. Until the day Seri encounters Tsana.

Tsana is, impossibly, a stranger from the unknown world who can communicate with the beasts – a fact that makes Seri begin to doubt everything she’s ever been taught. As Seri and Tsana grow closer, their worlds begin to collide, with deadly consequences. Somehow, with the world on the brink of war, Seri will have to find a way to make peace.

Review:

In my last library trip, I picked up two books, and this is actually the one I was less excited about. Both the cover and description seemed weak and just a tiny bit corny. However, the concept of the beasts that may not be as antagonistic as previously thought and the Filipino inspiration were enough that I decided to give it a shot.

And oh boy. It sucked me in within just a few pages and I blazed right through almost four hundred intense and rich pages. I had to go back and read paragraphs again sometimes because I would inadvertently skip huge chunks of the text in my excitement to find out what happens.

We’ll start with the simple – the world. The rainforest where people live on platforms on huge trees is not a very complicated setting, but it’s unique and vivid and very cool. There are some very neat details about society, as well, such as “marks” (which I gather are something like tattoos) to commemorate important things in your life and the way every city, town, and settlement is just … a single tree. There may not be a ton of depth to explore, but the breadth is spectacular. The characters do a lot of traveling and there are always new interesting sights for the reader and the characters. There was almost no exposition, but I still understand and appreciate the beautiful, lush, dangerous rainforest and the society built in the trees.

And in this society we have Seri and the valiants. Seri’s growth is spectacular. She starts off relatable in a quiet way. She ends up as an aide to a legendary commander not intentionally, but because she took the first opportunity she could to run away from the memory of something painful. But as the story goes on, just by virtue of doing her best and dealing with what’s put in front of her, she becomes the stuff of heroic legend – braver, more confident, and powerful (with just a touch of the overpowered protagonist trope I love). She’s in her late teens during this story, and it really feels like she matures into an adult.

Other valiants thread through the story, but Eshai is the one consistent through the whole book, and she played a much bigger role than I anticipated from the back cover. And I loved the whole concept of her. She’s a huge legendary folk hero, but in real life she’s disorganized, has a temper, good at what she does but still feels like she’s a little over her head, and not really excited to be a folk hero but if that’s the role she has to play she’s gonna do it. I also adored the dynamic between Eshai and Seri. It’s hard to describe, but it was very good.

If you like action, this book has quite a bit of action. Almost all of it is large-scale battles, with our protagonists and a bunch of unnamed or briefly-mentioned side characters facing off against beasts. The battles themselves are great – it’s warriors with superhuman abilities against beasts with other weird abilities, so it’s bound to be great. But this book also does something impressive: It makes these large-scale battles actually have consequences. Seri herself is rarely at risk of actually dying. But someone dies in every fight. And when they die, there are rites for the dead. There is grief and guilt and hurt. Even though we really don’t have much doubt that the people we care about will survive, even the deaths of minor characters have profound effects on our protagonists, and that makes the danger feel real and ensures the fights never feel cheap.

But after all of these great things, my absolute favorite thing is all the moral complexity in this story. At the beginning, everything is straightforward – the beasts kill people, so people need to defend against the beasts. But the more Seri learns about the beasts and Tsana’s people, the more unclear everything becomes. Maybe the valiant aren’t actually the good guys. There is eventually a single antagonist, but even there the morality isn’t strictly black and white – he may be doing horrible things, but I can understand his reasoning. The main tension for Seri is trying to do the right thing when it’s not clear what the right thing is, because for most of the book it’s very unclear what is right. Neither “side” is truly good or evil. There’s also a settler-colonization element that was good, if a little muddled.

This review got long, but that’s because there’s so many great things to say about it. It was a thrilling, engrossing read with a vibrant world, good characters with great growth through the story, and some really awesome battles. And it has a happy ending – I love a dangerous, violent book with a happy ending for the primary characters. I’m very glad I gave it a chance, because it was completely worth it.

Review: Shatter the Sky

Title: Shatter the Sky

Series: Shatter the Sky #1

Author: Rebecca Kim Wells

Genre: Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping, confinement, torture (mentions), injury, animal cruelty (mild), violence, fire, colonization (mentions)

Back Cover:

Raised among the ruins of a conquered mountain nation, Maren dreams only of sharing a quiet life with her girlfriend Kaia—until the day Kaia is abducted by the Aurati, prophetic agents of the emperor, and forced to join their ranks. Desperate to save her, Maren hatches a plan to steal one of the emperor’s coveted dragons and storm the Aurati stronghold.

If Maren is to have any hope of succeeding, she must become an apprentice to the Aromatory—the emperor’s mysterious dragon trainer. But Maren is unprepared for the dangerous secrets she uncovers: rumors of a lost prince, a brewing rebellion, and a prophecy that threatens to shatter the empire itself. Not to mention the strange dreams she’s been having about a beast deep underground…

With time running out, can Maren survive long enough to rescue Kaia from impending death? Or could it be that Maren is destined for something greater than she could have ever imagined?

Review:

Occasionally when I plan to come back to a book, I actually do. This is one of those books. Although to be fair, I gave up on it not because of the book itself, but because the audiobook was so quiet that even on max volume I couldn’t hear it over the background noise at my job. When I put it down, I knew I hadn’t given the book a fair chance, so I told myself I’d pick it up again in a different format.

And I’m glad I actually did. It didn’t grab me immediately, but I wanted to at least get past the setup that I attempted to listen to via audio. And by the time I got through that, the world grabbed me and the inciting incident had gotten the actual story started.

This story starts out really simple. Maren is perfectly happy to play second fiddle to her bold, brave, adventurous girlfriend, and would really rather stay in her mountain village instead of traveling the world. Kaia gets very little characterization besides being bold, brave, and adventurous (and Maren being deeply in love with her). I appreciated the rich descriptions of the village, but I really wasn’t connecting with any of the characters.

Then Kaia got taken and Maren decided she was going to steal a dragon, and the story really started to pick up. Maren’s straightforward plan goes sideways really quickly, as it turns out stealing an entire dragon is not as easy as it seems. Plus there’s a whole lot of other stuff going on, and the reader gains awareness of it as Maren does. What starts as mild racial tensions turns out to be a whole anti-imperialist rebellion. What starts as a simple steal-a-dragon quest turns into learning the truth about how the emperor deals treats his dragons and those who care for them. What starts as a simple goal to rescue a girl taken by the Aurati eventually reveals the significantly darker reality behind the Aurati as an institution.

I blazed through this book in two days because it’s very good. The world is well-drawn, I love dragons, I love the unique and creative way dragons are managed in this world. Maren herself is a great character who does some fantastic growth, and I love the way the slow revelations about what is actually going on are revealed in parallel with her growth – the more Maren comes out of her complacency and takes risks, the more both she and I learned the truth of this world. It was just very well done. Plus, you know, it’s hard to go wrong with dragons.

I didn’t realize going into this one that there’s a sequel, but I’m glad there is. There’s definitely more adventure to be had here, and I want to see where it goes. And of course no YA fantasy featuring a rebellion is going to be complete until the rebellion is done. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

The Shatter the Sky series:

1. Shatter the Sky
2. Storm the Earth

Review: Godkiller

Title: Godkiller

Series: Fallen Gods #1

Author: Hannah Kaner

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Torture (severe), death, parent death, fire/fire injury (severe), gore, blood (severe), injury (severe), grief, body horror (mild), animal death, sexual content, violence, mind control

Back Cover:

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Formed by human desires and fed by their worship, there are countless gods in the world—but after a great war, the new king outlawed them and now pays “godkillers” to destroy any who try to rise from the shadows.

As a child, Kissen saw her family murdered by a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing them and enjoys it. But all this changes when Kissen is tasked with helping a young noble girl with a god problem. The child’s soul is bonded to a tiny god of white lies, and Kissen can’t kill it without ending the girl’s life too.

Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, the unlikely group must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favor. Pursued by assassins and demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning. Something is rotting at the heart of their world, and they are the only ones who can stop it.

Review:

I have heard nothing about this book anywhere – I’m pretty sure I found it through The StoryGraph’s (admittedly pretty great) recommendation algorithm. My library doesn’t even have a copy. But honestly, everybody should know about this book because it’s just so good.

First off, I’m already predisposed to like this concept. If you know anything about me, you know I’m a sucker for interesting, unique, or weird takes on deities and religion. A world where gods are formed out of human desire and sustained by their prayers and offerings, but are also outlawed by the king and hunted down and killed by god-killers, is right up my alley. There are so many fascinating little details, from the details of how a god is created to to the ways gods interact with the humans who give it life and offerings to the process of killing one. I found it fascinating, but even if you don’t, it doesn’t detract at all from the story.

And the story is pretty spectacular too. It starts out with Kissen, who lost her entire family and one of her legs to a god being petty and territorial. Fitted with a pretty cool prosthetic, she now makes a living hunting down and killing gods for coin – a bit like a Witcher if Witchers hunted gods instead of monsters. Then she meets Inara, a kid somehow bound to a small god. On their quest to figure out how to untangle the kid and the god, they join up with Elogast, a former knight on a very illegal quest from the king. Though having four point-of-view characters (Kissen, Inara, Elogast, and Inara’s god) gets annoying at times, it gets less annoying once all four are in the same spot headed in the same direction. And there really isn’t a perspective that could be removed without harming the story as a whole – as irritating as it got in the beginning, this story really does need all four narrators.

I’m not going to comment on the plot much, for a couple reasons. One is that as simple as “go to this city and ask the wild gods how to solve the problem” sounds, the actual reality is significantly more complicated than that. The other is that for as strong as the plot is (and it is very good), it’s the characters that really sang for me in this one. Guilty and disillusioned knight only recently forced to stop hiding from the world and his own feelings; sheltered and scared only child of a noblewoman, uncertain about any of this but determined to be brave; god of little white lies, bound to a single child and desperate for more; and my absolute favorite, strong and broken and furious and violent and loyal and traumatized and all-around spectacular god-killer. The plot is great and the world is spectacular, but in such a way that the characters really shine.

I didn’t know going in that this was first in a series, but I’m very glad it is. The ending left so much open – the whole “burgeoning civil war” thing, whatever the hell the king is up to, how the god got bound to Inara in the first place, why Inara has the weird powers she has, what Kissen is going to do after that ending … And above all, I want to read more. Godkiller just came out, so I’m sure book two will be a long time coming, but I’m looking forward to it.

The Fallen Gods series:

1. Godkiller
2. Sunbringer
3. Not yet announced

Review: The Foxglove King

Title: The Foxglove King

Author: Hannah Whitten

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, injury, violence, gore, body horror (severe), betrayal, parent death, confinement/imprisonment, religious bigotry (minor), child death (minor), religious abuse, child abuse, emotional abuse, animal death, terminal illness (mentions), child neglect (mentions), vomit (mentions)

Back Cover:

When Lore was thirteen, she escaped a cult in the catacombs beneath the city of Dellaire. And in the ten years since, she’s lived by one rule: don’t let them find you. Easier said than done, when her death magic ties her to the city.

Mortem, the magic born from death, is a high-priced and illicit commodity in Dellaire, and Lore’s job running poisons keeps her in food, shelter, and relative security. But when a run goes wrong and Lore’s power is revealed, she’s taken by the Presque Mort, a group of warrior-monks sanctioned to use Mortem working for the Sainted King. Lore fully expects a pyre, but King August has a different plan. Entire villages on the outskirts of the country have been dying overnight, seemingly at random. Lore can either use her magic to find out what’s happening and who in the King’s court is responsible, or die.

Lore is thrust into the Sainted King’s glittering court, where no one can be believed and even fewer can be trusted. Guarded by Gabriel, a duke-turned-monk, and continually running up against Bastian, August’s ne’er-do-well heir, Lore tangles in politics, religion, and forbidden romance as she attempts to navigate a debauched and opulent society.

But the life she left behind in the catacombs is catching up with her. And even as Lore makes her way through the Sainted court above, they might be drawing closer than she thinks.

Review:

I took a long time to get through this book, but it wasn’t the book’s fault. I got about halfway through it and then got in a reading slump where I didn’t feel like reading anything – even though I really enjoyed the first half of this book. But eventually I got over the slump and kept going, and of course I finished this book because there’s so much to love.

If you’ve been following this blog for more than a month or two, you probably already know that two of my favorite things for books to have are absurdly powerful protagonists and weird, creepy, and/or otherwise unique religions, the more fanatical the followers the better. So you will not be surprised to find a large part of what I liked about this book is that it has both of them.

I’m going to start by talking about the religion, because it’s foundational to the world and the magic system that our protagonist uses. First off, there is only one god, the god of light and life – because the rest of the pantheon is dead. The rotting corpse of the goddess of death and darkness, murdered by the god of light some centuries past, is buried underneath the city. Magic spills from the corpses of dead gods, which means the city is full of death magic, called Mortem – although not as much as you would expect, because an order of monks given the ability to interact with Mortem by virtue of a near-death experience are in charge of channeling it into stones and plants and otherwise keeping it from killing people. Which, despite the the fact that all of the names for people and magical forces and everything are terrible in this book, is a fantastic premise. “The gods were real and now they’re dead but their power isn’t” is one of my absolutely favorite fictional religion concepts. “Dead goddess’s corpse buried under the city” is a FANTASTIC premise. I love it.

And then we come to our protagonist Lore, who is not only the most powerful Mortem-wieldier since the necromancers were murdered, but was born with this ability for reasons that don’t get explained until the end but definitely involve our dead goddess. She grew up in a smuggler gang helping her moms move illegal drugs around the city, so she’s scrappy and fierce. But she’s actually not all that great at hand-to-hand combat and doesn’t fall into plucky YA heroine tropes. (Despite Lore being twenty-three, this whole book has a distinctly older-end-of-YA vibe.) She’s clever and fierce and powerful, but she’s also determined to survive and generally makes smart choices, which I really appreciate.

This book also gets an award for having the only love triangle I have ever read that I didn’t loathe. I actually kind of liked it. Lore is attracted to the generally kind, highly loyal, fiercely religious young monk who is assigned to both protect her and keep her from escaping while she navigates the court. She’s also attracted to the incredibly handsome bad boy Prince Bastian, who is powerful in his own way and maybe not as bad as everyone keeps telling her. There was a bit of triangle-ing and confusing pining, but I think there were really two things that kept me from hating it. One is that both guys seemed like reasonable choices, for different reasons – I didn’t feel like one was the obvious good choice and the triangle was just unnecessary complication. The other reason is that Lore refused to let the romance be any more than a background element. She is far too practical to let something silly like two hot guys distract her from what’s really important: Stopping the serial mass murder going on, unraveling the complicated plot of theoretical magic and court politics that may or may not be causing the serial mass murder, and most of all staying alive. Lore did have real human emotions and romantic feelings, but she was also relentlessly pragmatic and set on her own self-preservation, which I really loved about her.

The characters were solid, the story was delightfully twisty, the magic and religion were amazing, and the conspiracy, like a good conspiracy, turned out to be much darker and much wider-reaching than I anticipated. The only thing I didn’t actually like was the ending. It seemed far too straightforward after how complex and layered the rest of the book had been, and felt very anticlimactic. The love triangle didn’t even shake out very well because Lore did make a choice, sort of, but the nuanced relationships she had built with both men seemed to entirely vanish after the climax. Despite how much they had all been through together, they seemed cold and distant, like they were back to being total strangers again. On the whole, it felt unsatisfying.

A somewhat unsatisfying ending doesn’t negate how much I enjoyed the rest of the book, though. World, plot, characters, setting, religion, atmosphere, romance, character dynamics – up until the climax and resolution, they were all fantastic. It’s dark, it’s twisty, there’s a love triangle I didn’t hate, it’s got a dead goddess and creepy monks and creepier nuns and a massive conspiracy, and on the whole, it’s a very good book.

Review: Assassin of Reality

Title: Assassin of Reality

Series: Vita Nostra #2

Author: Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

Genre: Magical Realism

Trigger Warnings: Body horror, death, infidelity (mentions), sexual content (off-page), suicidal thoughts (severe), car crash (major), bullying (minor)

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of the first book, Vita Nostra. (But honestly if you haven’t read Vita Nostra yet go do that, it’s spectacular.)

Back Cover:

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the highly acclaimed Vita Nostra takes readers to the next stage in Sasha Samokhina’s journey in a richly imagined world of dark academia in which grammar is magic—and not all magic is good.

In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail.

However, Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha’s dark mentor, finds a way to bring her out of the oblivion and back to the Institute for his own selfish purposes. Subsequently, Sasha must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate and is forced to do what few are asked and even less achieve: to succeed and reverberate—becoming a part of the Great Speech and being one of the special few who dictate reality. If she fails, she faces a fate far worse than death: the choice is hers.

Years have passed around the Institute—and the numerous realities that have spread from Sasha’s first failure—but it is only her fourth year of learning what role she will play in shaping the world. Her teachers despise and fear her, her classmates distrust her, and a growing love—for a young pilot with no affiliation to the school—is fraught because a relationship means leverage, and Farit won’t hesitate to use it against her.

Planes crash all the time. Which means Sasha needs to rewrite the world so that can’t happen…or fail for good.

Review:

I have made no secret of how much I loved Vita Nostra. I knew it was first in a series, but most likely due to the books originally being written in Russian, I could find no information online about any other books in the series existing, let alone when they came out. So I was absolutely delighted to stumble on book two, Assassin of Reality, completely by accident while browsing the library. However, I was a little nervous to start reading it, for a couple reasons:

1. Vita Nostra set a spectacularly high bar, and there was a solid chance book two just wouldn’t live up to it.
2. It has been almost two years since I read Vita Nostra, and reading a sequel so long after the original book usually results in the sequel being less enjoyable just because I’ve forgotten so much of the first book.
3. I got this copy as a physical book, and after going back to reading physical books after reading audiobooks almost exclusively for two years, physical books are just less immersive in general.

So I picked up this book full of hope that it would live up to its predecessor and concern that for a variety of reasons, it wouldn’t.

Let’s get the big question out of the way first: Did Assassin of Reality live up to the high expectations that Vita Nostra set? Not really. But that doesn’t make it bad – and it wasn’t for the reasons I expected.

Assassin of Reality has so many of the things that I loved about Vita Nostra. Impossible studies, a weird and vaguely incomprehensible magic system that seems to have definite yet undefinable rules, an intimate view of a character who may or may not be going mad (although we’re pretty sure she’s not going mad at this point), time as an inconvenience that can be changed and molded and is nowhere close to immutable, teachers by turn human and decidedly not human, a character so absurdly powerful that some faculty would rather see her dead than upend the balance. In many ways, there’s a lot to enjoy, and I did enjoy.

But it was also significantly less than Vita Nostra. It felt less bizarre and surreal, even though the events were objectively even more bizarre and surreal, because I’m not experiencing this wild and off-kilter world for the first time anymore. It’s also significantly shorter – which in some ways makes sense, since Vita Nostra covered three years at the Institute while Assassin of Reality only covers one. But it also did the story a major disservice. The main story here is Sasha grappling with her place in the universe and the strange cosmology of the Great Speech, to the detriment of everything else. The impossible studies got shoved to the side. Relationships with former classmates were almost nonexistent at the start and completely dissolved by the end. Even conflicts with teachers and the actual logistics of being in school were glossed over, to the point where I think she entirely skipped the spring semester? The story did, at least, even if Sasha didn’t. For a book that’s supposed to be about Sasha’s last year in an impossible school before she either becomes omnipotent or ceases to exist, it spends a whole lot of time watching her go through a magic version of a petulant teenager phase.

This review is a lot more scathing than I feel about the book, to be honest. While reading, I did enjoy it. It was absorbing and engrossing, and I genuinely wanted to keep reading through the whole thing. But looking back, I think there’s a lot of potential that was wasted. There’s nothing wrong with a story about Sasha grappling with her place in this cosmology and having a complicated romance with a guy who has no idea about any of the magical weirdness Sasha is involved in. But having those be the focus of the story to the exclusion of everything else left it not as strong as it could have been. Because of events at the end of Vita Nostra, Sasha has to start her education almost completely from scratch, and she takes on the nearly omnipotent Farit Kozhennikov head-on, and yet those are background elements. I can’t help but notice how it could have been so much more.

That said, it was still a solid read. I didn’t understand much of it, but I expected that and don’t really feel the need to understand. The world is still wonderfully bizarre, and getting weirder as Sasha gets more powerful. I hope she does finally manage to take Farit Kozhennikov down. And I do legitimately want to find out what happens next. So I will be reading the next book, whenever I can find it. But if you want to read Vita Nostra and then not bother with the rest of the series, that’s fine too. Let’s be real, this doesn’t feel like the kind of story that will have a tidy ending, anyway.

The Vita Nostra series:

1. Vita Nostra
2. Assassin of Reality

Review: A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

Title: A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

Series: The Salvagers #1

Author: Alex White

Genre: Science Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (major), blood (major), gore, violence, injury, guns, grief, genocide, war (in the past), betrayal, sexual content (off-page), romantic partner death (in past), murder

Back Cover:

A crew of outcasts tries to find a legendary ship before it falls into the hands of those who would use it as a weapon in this science fiction adventure series for fans of The Expanse and Firefly.

A washed-up treasure hunter, a hotshot racer, and a deadly secret society.

They’re all on a race against time to hunt down the greatest warship ever built. Some think the ship is lost forever, some think it’s been destroyed, and some think it’s only a legend, but one thing’s for certain: whoever finds it will hold the fate of the universe in their hands. And treasure that valuable can never stay hidden for long …

Review:

This is the first novel I’ve read in print format in at least two years. I have read a few physical books and ebooks in that time, but they were all nonfiction or short story collections. Every novel has been an audiobook until this one. And as someone who used to keep a stack of books literally as talk as my waist next to my favorite childhood reading chair and spend hours reading up to seven physical books per week, it’s an absolutely bizarre experience to discover that hard copies in my hand just aren’t as immersive as audiobooks. So I’ll admit that I struggled a lot with this book, largely because of the format.

But that wasn’t the only reason A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe and I had a rough beginning. I’m a lover of speculative fiction, but I’ve always leaned more towards the fantasy side. I have found some really good scifi, especially recently, but cool scifi stuff isn’t enough to keep me interested – I need plot and characters and other stuff to get immersed in. And this book starts off really slow. The “finding a legendary ship” thing is a catalyst for part of the beginning, but it doesn’t really kick in until the middle. I was going to say that the beginning is setup, but it really isn’t. The beginning has stuff happening, just without much of a real focus.

This story has two protagonist: Boots (the washed-up treasure hunter) and Nylah (the hotshot racer). Boots is angry and rude and mean, but I didn’t mind her all that much. She’s not someone I would like to spend time with in real life, but she was fine as a character. Nylah, though, started the book as the kind of cocky, punchable asshole that I really, really hate in real life and in books. She got some character growth earlier on that helped, and she was incredibly powerful, so by the end I didn’t mind her, but the beginning was difficult. There’s also a host of other characters, including a spaceship crew who definitely get enough page time and development to be called secondary protagonists, but who I don’t really have much to say about. They’re all good, don’t get me wrong – I don’t think there’s a single weak or badly-done character in this book – but there’s nothing to say about them that could add to this review.

The world was an interesting fusion of scifi and magic. It’s your classic spacefaring, mutli-planet, fancy tech, faster-than-light spaceship travel kind of intergalactic science fiction world, but also a world where almost everyone has some type of magic and magic can be used to fuse with, alter, power, and enhance technology as well as just doing straight magic stuff. And the fusion was great. It was cool seeing cybersecurity as a psychic battle between people with tech magic and an evolving AI defense system. It made for some badass fight scenes. And really, it gave my fantasy-loving side something to really enjoy in this otherwise fairly ordinary scifi world and made the whole thing that much better.

Now, you might get this far and think, So this is a pretty solidly okay book, right? And you’d be wrong. This is a really, really good book. And the reason is because somewhere in the middle, the whole “hunting the legendary missing ship” thing finally kicks in. And I loved it. When it starts, the reasons for wanting to find the ship are small – Boots is trying to save her own skin, the rest of the crew wants a payday, and Nylah didn’t even want to be involved but got dragged along for the ride. But as they journey across the universe, exploring massive and unsettling abandoned places (my favorite) and getting chased by an unbelievably powerful assassin, they begin to put together a deadly conspiracy with its roots in a genocidal war decades earlier and its culmination fast approaching. It was thrilling, engaging, and brilliant, plenty of scenes with the absurdly powerful protagonist trope that I adore … I loved it deeply and read it in two sittings. Whatever else my criticisms of the book, once the plot got rolling it really got rolling.

Is A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe perfect? Definitely not. And there’s some things that I just didn’t like about it (e.g. Nylah at the beginning) that other readers may not find irritating or may even like. But the details are great, the world is pretty neat, and once the plot gets going it’s absolutely fantastic. On the whole it’s a very good book. But I don’t intend to read the rest of the series. Part of that is because everything seems to imply that the rest of the series is focused on dealing with the rest of the people involved in the big conspiracy, and that just sounds less interesting to me. And part of it is because this book wrapped up really well. There’s definitely room for a sequel, but it doesn’t feel like it requires one. It was a good, satisfying adventure, and I feel no need to read on.

The Salvagers series:

1. A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe
2. A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy
3. The Worst of All Possible Worlds

Review Shorts: Wayward Children Stories

I am a big fan of the Wayward Children series. My only problem is that the series is still ongoing, so I have to wait for the next book to be published before I can read more. So imagine my delight to discover that not only are there three Wayward Children short stories, they’re all available to read for free on Tor.com! Here’s some mini-reviews of the three of them – plus links to where you can read them for yourself.

In Mercy, Rain (Wayward Children #2.5) by Seanan McGuire

See it on The StoryGraph here

Read it on Tor.com here

Jack seems to get an inordinate amount of time in the Wayward Children series, but I really don’t mind because she and her world of the Moors are great. This story is very short and incredibly atmospheric, and really reminds me of the early books in the series (which, since it’s meant to be set just after book two, makes perfect sense). It feels like a single scene of how Jack met her girlfriend Alexis that Seanan just couldn’t make fit in Down Among the Sticks and Bones but that she liked and thought was important, so she added some context and rich descriptions to the beginning and called it a short story. And personally, I think it worked very well. The Moors are fascinating anyway, and this reveals some details (or just reminded me of details that I forgot) and provides some more characterization for Jack’s mad-scientist mentor. It’s a fast, dark, and wonderful read and I enjoyed it very much.

Trigger Warnings: Death, child death, mental illness, body horror, romantic partner death (mentions), emotional neglect

Juice Like Wounds (Wayward Children #4.5) by Seanan McGuire

See it on The StoryGraph here

Read it on Tor.com here

In my review of In an Absent Dream, I complained that the book was too short because one of Lundy’s friends straight-up died and you only find that out in dialogue after the fact. I guess Seanan McGuire heard my complaints, because this is the story of the great quest that lead to that death. As anticipated, it was wrenchingly sad, although I think it would have had even more impact if I’d read it directly after In an Absent Dream. It was also very lyrical and heavy on the feelings of being a child – specifically the invincibility and belief that nothing truly bad is going to happen to you – but significantly less atmospheric than I expected. Which is a disappointment, because I love the goblin market that Lundy goes to and I wanted to spend more time there. But this is a short story, not a full book, and for what it is it really works. Fantastical and heartwrenching, as every Wayward Children story tends to be.

Trigger Warnings: Injury, death, child death, blood, body horror (mild)

Skeleton Song (A Wayward Children Story) by Seanan McGuire

See it on The StoryGraph here

Read it on Tor.com here

Christopher has been in several of the Wayward Children books so far, mainly the ones set at Eleanor West’s actual school, but he’s never been a major character. I mentioned in my review of Come Tumbling Down that I wouldn’t mind if he got his own book. But he got his own short story and honestly that’s good enough. His adventure in Mariposa, the world of music and dancing skeletons, is very straightforward and follows the pattern of the other stories set in the magical worlds – though it was light on how and why he came through the door in the first place and focused more on what he found there and how he fell back out. Every wayward child’s world is a place that connects to their struggle in our world, but Christopher having an illness heavily implied to be terminal and walking through a door into a world where death is not only not to be feared, but is a beginning of something better beyond the bounds of flesh, is the most obvious one so far. This is like a shortened and condensed version of a full Wayward Children book and I think it could have easily been made longer, but it also works as a short story. And if you’re missing your Wayward Children fix, it’s definitely worth reading.

Trigger Warnings: Death, body horror (mild), terminal illness (mentions)

The Wayward Children series:

1. Every Heart a Doorway
2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones
3. Beneath the Sugar Sky
4. In an Absent Dream
5. Come Tumbling Down
6. Across the Green Grass Fields
7. Where the Drowned Girls Go
8. Lost in the Moment and Found

Review: Zeus is Dead (DNF)

Title: Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure

Series: Zeus is Dead #1

Author: Michael G. Munz

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping, injury, blood (mentions), stalking, religious fanaticism (mentions)

Note: Trigger warnings in DNF books only cover the part I read. There may be triggers further in the book that I did not encounter.

Read to: Page 105

Back Cover:

You probably saw the press conference. Nine months ago, Zeus’s murder catapulted the Greek gods back into our world. Now they revel in their new temples, casinos, and media empires—well, all except Apollo. A compulsive overachiever with a bursting portfolio of godly duties, the amount of email alone that he receives from rapacious mortals turns each of his days into a living hell.

Yet there may be hope, if only he can return Zeus to life! With the aid of Thalia, the muse of comedy and science fiction, Apollo will risk his very godhood to help sarcastic TV producer Tracy Wallace and a gamer-geek named Leif—two mortals who hold the key to Zeus’s resurrection. (Well, probably. Prophecies are tricky buggers.)

Soon an overflowing inbox will be the least of Apollo’s troubles. Whoever murdered Zeus will certainly kill again to prevent his return, and avoiding them would be far easier if Apollo could possibly figure out who they are.

Even worse, the muse is starting to get cranky.

Discover a world where reality TV heroes slay actual monsters and the gods have their own Twitter feeds: Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure!

Review:

Picture this: You’re on page 105. You’re nearly a quarter of the way through this book. At this point, you’re pretty sure you know what the plot is. You’re not really sure which option is going to be the actual antagonist, and you’ve only recently gotten a feeling that you’ve found the protagonist – although you hope not, because this suspected protagonist has a severe case of Unlikeable. That’s my experience with this book. Is it wildly creative, full of fun and entertaining ideas, and downright zany at times? Absolutely. Is it populated by a solid and likeable (or at the very least, interesting) cast of characters? Not so much.

Let’s start at the beginning, because this book sure didn’t! Everything in the first seven chapters is setup, with a wide cast of Olympian gods and various mortals introducing the world, the return of the gods, how things changed, and the foundations of the actual plot (I think? I’m about 90% sure resurrecting or not-resurrecting Zeus will be the central conflict here). A character in chapter seven gets re-introduced as “a.k.a. the young woman from chapter four” and even though I think it was supposed to be for comedic purposes, it was actually very helpful because there are so many characters running around that I can’t keep them straight. (So many, in fact, that I couldn’t even always tell how many were on the page – the scene right before I stopped reading was weirdly confusing until the last line revealed that there was a whole fourth character involved that I somehow missed.)

If you read the back cover, it feels like Apollo is going to be the protagonist here. But that’s definitely not true. Judging from the first seven chapters, nobody stands out as protagonist material, but you could make good arguments for Apollo, Hermes, or even that one rebellious college student priest of Hecate. There was a TV producer introduced on page 17 that I thought could be a protagonist, but then she disappears for fifty pages and comes back as a completely different person on page 71 to be set up as the reluctant love interest. (Or they could be two different characters that have the same name. There’s zero connection between the later character and the one from the scene on page 17 besides name and occupation so it’s hard to tell.)

It isn’t until chapter eight that someone shows up who actually has protagonist potential. There’s a Prophecy about him, making all the gods interested for various purposes, which definitely seems like a symptom of being a protagonist. But his introductory scene consists of him being annoying, awkward, and unable to stand up to a rude lady who stole his coffee. And then one scene later he turns into a stalker, putting a very, very creepy and uncomfortable angle on producer-lady’s reluctant love interest role. And he’s not the only person who seems to think producer-lady will come around if they just ignore her “No,” so I really don’t like where that seems to be going. The stalker getting the girl is never a good look, especially if the stalker is supposed to be a hero.

I think what bothers me most about how terrible the characters are is how good everything else is. I love the concept of the Olympian gods descending into the modern world and how much chaos that makes. I love that Zeus had to die to make it happen (and the question of why he demanded no-contact with mortals in the first place). I love the dynamics between the Olympians, the competing factions, the mixed reactions to Zeus’s murder, the mystery of who actually did it and how. I love how modern humans react to the gods, from wholehearted embrace to casual acceptance to ignoring to religious nutjobs going full anti-Olympian militia. There was the potential for some very interesting commentary about modern religious beliefs and behaviors. I love the variety of weird monsters now unleashed on the world. The plot, with various Olympian factions working to ensure Zeus either returns or stays dead, was solid. Even the writing style, though it did have a distinctly amateurish feel, managed to be genuinely humorous at times.

But, the characters. As much fun as the world is, as solid as the plot is and as light and fun as the writing is as a whole, it’s the characters that drive a story. And these characters all suck. They range from bland and forgettable to caricature without substance to “I would punch this person in the face if I met them” unlikeable assholes. (Or stalkers. I still can’t get over that the likely-protagonist-hero is straight-up stalking someone and everybody, including the woman he’s stalking, seems to view it as irritating but nothing more. It really bothers me that nobody in this book seems to notice or care how INCREDIBLY GODDAMN AWFUL AND CREEPY it is.) There was not a single character I could connect to, care about, or even be willing to follow around for the rest of the book. I really do think there’s a lot of potential in this story. It just needs a whole new cast of characters to realize it.

The Zeus is Dead series:

1. Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure
2. Zeus is Undead: This One Has Zombies

Review: The Fifth Elephant

Title: The Fifth Elephant

Series: Discworld #24 (Anhk-Morpork City Watch #5)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, violence, injury, blood (mentions), fantasy racism, transphobia (obliquely), man-in-a-dress jokes, police entrapment, body horror (mild)

Spoiler Warning: This book is 24th in a series, but contains only mild spoilers of previous City Watch books.

Back Cover:

Sam Vimes is a man on the run. Yesterday he was ambassador to the country of Uberwald. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don’t ask). Sam is out of time, out of luck, and already out of breath.

Review:

I found this one of the better City Watch books. Not that others were particularly bad, but the City Watch sub-series is significantly less funny overall than many of the other Discworld sub-series and tends to tackle a lot of bigger, heavier political issues, which I generally find less interesting. Despite also having more than its fair share of political commentary, though, I enjoyed The Fifth Elephant quite a lot.

This sub-series is definitely about Vimes almost completely now, and I enjoy it. He’s gruff and gets stuff done and is a cop to his core. Everything keeps conspiring to get him out of his comfort zone, though, and it’s always entertaining to see him apply cop logic and strategies to situations where most of us wouldn’t even think to apply it. Vimes has a hammer, so every situation looks like a nail, and somehow it just seems to work. In this book, his hammer of Watch mindset gets aimed at diplomacy.

This book is heavy on the themes. The art of diplomacy, the nature of lies and truth and how we define each, and power and the difficulties of wielding it well are big in this one. But so is the power of belief, traditions, and even the Ship of Theseus quesion. The power of belief has been a big theme in a lot of Discworld books lately – I don’t know if there’s a reason, but it’s interesting.

But just because there’s a lot of themes doesn’t mean there aren’t entertaining things happening. Because there are so many things happening:

• The Mystery of the Stolen Scone!
• The complicated politics between werewolves, dwarves, and dwarves!
• A prison break!
• Fun facts about werewolves!
• Not-so-fun encounters with werewolves!
• The Watch attempts to function with both Vimes and Carrot gone!
• Carrot and Angua have some Relationship Concerns(TM)!
• Vimes has to do a diplomacy!

The book even managed to have a bit of a trans rights message without having any actual trans characters, which was a wild experience. I appreciate the message (slightly muddled as it is) and that whole plot thread was fascinating from a story perspective, but I’m not sure how I feel about it with modern eyes. Actually, I’m not sure it was supposed to be a trans-positive message in the first place, but it definitely comes across that way in 2023.

This review has been more descriptive than commentative, and that’s because I don’t have much to say about this one. (Except that I don’t like the new audiobook narrator. My favorite Discworld narrator Nigel Planer got replaced by some guy named Steve, and Steve did a terrible job with Carrot’s voice. But that’s only relevant if you read the audiobook, so I digress.) The Fifth Elephant was entertaining, enjoyable, and a good read all around, but there really isn’t much to note. It’s just, on the whole, good.

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: Carpe Jugulum

Title: Carpe Jugulum

Series: Discworld #23 (Witches #6)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), blood, injury, violence, religious bigotry (mentions, in past), body horror (mentions, comedic), animal death (mentions), mind control, fatphobia, body shaming

Spoiler Warning: This book is 23rd in a series, but contains spoilers only of previous Witches books, especially Lords and Ladies.

Back Cover:

In a fit of enlightenment democracy and ebullient goodwill, King Verence invites Uberwald’s undead, the Magpyrs, into Lancre to celebrate the birth of his daughter. But once ensconced within the castle, these wine-drinking, garlic-eating, sun-loving modern vampires have no intention of leaving. Ever.

Only an uneasy alliance between a nervous young priest and the argumentative local witches can save the country from being taken over by people with a cultivated bloodlust and bad taste in silk waistcoats. For them, there’s only one way to fight.

Go for the throat, or as the vampyres themselves say…Carpe Jugulum.

Review:

I have struggled with the Witches sub-series in almost every single book. (Except for Equal Rites, but I read that one several years before I really got into the Discworld books so I don’t think it counts.) I love the ideas, but I don’t so much love the characters or the plots. And that sentiment held with Carpe Jugulum.

Granny Weatherwax is still a mean old lady and one of my biggest issues with the series. Her excessive pride gets in the way so much and she’s incredibly frustrating. But I’m also not used to a Granny who can be scared and defeated and run away, which is also what happens here. There’s a dichotomy between everyone expecting Granny is indomitable and will fix it and the reality of her genuine limitations. It was a weird and not exactly pleasant experience to watch her be mean and prideful while running scared.

This was not a very character-centric story. They were there, but more as vehicles to push the story along than for actually getting any focus. Nanny Ogg was herself, as usual. I loved seeing Magret with a spine, but she was a very minor character. I liked Agnes, but she didn’t get any more nuance or growth here. A random priest of Om who gets dragged along on the witches’ antics got more focus as a person than any of the other characters (although to be fair, his religious consternation was extremely relatable).

The plot had some really good ideas. It was mainly “vampires are trying to take over and need to be stopped,” but these are, in true Discworld style, not your ordinary vampires. They flipped the tropes on their heads, and were neat for that. But the vampires themselves were obnoxious, and the plot dragged until the end. The climax and conclusion were really good, but everything before that was honestly a bit dull.

Reading this book, I generally felt like I was missing the point. There’s so many elements – religion, the power of names and words in general, royalty, tradition, the power of belief, and probably more – but they’re all mixed up together so there was no obvious central theme. I feel like there was supposed to be some point to the first three-quarters of the story, before it actually got entertaining in the last quarter, but I couldn’t find it. The humor traded Sir Terry’s wit and quips for humor in trope subversion, which didn’t always land. And I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to get out of this.

For a Witches book, it’s not bad. I generally find the subseries less fun than other Discworld books. But at least with this one, I never felt the urge to DNF it, and I did quite enjoy the last quarter of it. So on the whole, it’s fine. Not spectacular, but I’ve certainly read worse Witches books.

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