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: 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: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

Title: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

Series: Fred, the Vampire Accountant #1

Author: Drew Hayes

Genre: Paranormal/Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, body horror, blood, gore (mild), secondhand embarrassment, fatphobia

Back Cover:

Some people are born boring. Some live boring. Some even die boring. Fred managed to do all three, and when he woke up as a vampire, he did so as a boring one. Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort.

One fateful night – different from the night he died, which was more inconvenient than fateful – Fred reconnects with an old friend at his high school reunion. This rekindled relationship sets off a chain of events thrusting him right into the chaos that is the parahuman world, a world with chipper zombies, truck driver wereponies, maniacal necromancers, ancient dragons, and now one undead accountant trying his best to “survive.” Because even after it’s over, life can still be a downright bloody mess.

Review:

I picked this up mainly because of the author. The idea sounded okay, but I was really looking for my NPCs fix. I think that led me to have higher expectations than the book really deserved.

The writing here was solidly mediocre, which I expected. Like the Spells, Swords, & Stealth series, it wasn’t glaringly awful but it definitely wouldn’t be winning any awards. It did have some genuinely funny moments (although fewer than I’d hoped), but it also had a fair bit of secondhand embarrassment, which I hate.

Also, this book had no plot. I sometimes say a book had “no real plot” as a way of criticizing a weak, meandering, or unfocused plot, but in this case I’m being literal. There was zero overarching plot. It was more like a series of vignettes about the same characters combined into one volume. Said vignettes include:

• Fred goes to his high school reunion
• Fred and his girlfriend end up in a fantasy LARPing session on their way to the movies
• Fred and his girlfriend go to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving
• Fred and his friends track down a friend-of-a-friend’s missing mentor
• Fred and his friends attempt to rescue Fred’s kidnapped girlfriend

Admittedly, there were some supernatural shenanigans that made said vignettes slightly more interesting than they sound on the surface. Fred ends up in a legit jousting match in Vegas, the LARPing session is a little less imaginary than initially anticipated, and the story of Fred’s kidnapped girlfriend went in an interesting generational-trauma-allegory-with-body-horror direction that I did like. (However, not all of them hit the mark. The resolution to the case of the missing mentor especially was extremely anticlimactic and felt like a let-down overall.) But besides characters, there was nothing that connected the stories. Unless you count being a vampire who is also an accountant, which is a concept and not actually a plot.

It did get a little annoying that everyone seemed to know things about the world of supernatural creatures and just … nobody would think to tell Fred about it. He ended up making stupid decisions and getting embarrassed just because he lacked the knowledge about how the world worked. It’s a standard “the paranormal creatures live among us” Urban Fantasy-style world, but with some vaguely interesting details. My favorite part is that in this world, vampires are perfectly normal, but accountants are rare and interesting.

This book was occasionally witty and funny, and I’ll admit, the idea of a guy waking up a vampire and just going back to his accounting job was amusing. Objectively it wasn’t spectacular, or even all that great. It had some pretty big problems in my mind. All the same, it was fairly fun and entertaining enough to finish. I don’t plan to read the rest, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. If nothing else, they are light, fun, fairly silly reads, and sometimes you just need something like that.

The Fred, the Vampire Accountant series:

1. The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant
2. Undeath and Taxes
3. Bloody Acquisitions
4. The Fangs of Freelance
5. Deadly Assessments
6. Undeading Bells
7. Out of House and Home

Review: Storm Front

Title: Storm Front

Series: The Dresden Files #1

Author: Jim Butcher

Genre: Detective Noir/Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Sexual talk/discussion/innuendos (a lot), sexual content, sexism, gore (severe), death, blood, murder, body horror, domestic abuse (mentions), violence, drug use (mentions)

Back Cover:

Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he’s the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the “everyday” world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a—well, whatever. There’s just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks.

So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry’s seeing dollar signs. But where there’s black magic, there’s a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry’s name. And that’s when things start to get interesting.

Magic – it can get a guy killed.

Review:

Detective noir is not my genre. My awareness of the tropes and the general ideas and structure comes from media making fun of the genre rather than anything from the genre itself, and the only thing I’ve previously read that’s even close is This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us, which I don’t think really counts. I picked this up because my husband thought I’d like it, and I finished it because it was just interesting enough to be better than the hassle of trying to download a new book on crappy work wifi.

Dresden himself is an unapologetic sexist, though he calls it “a commitment to old-fashioned values.” The book itself doesn’t treat women any better, either. The female characters in this book are murdered for being sexy, using sex for evil, using sex appeal to manipulate people, abused for not being sexy enough, or not sexy but could be with a little effort. Every description of a woman focuses on her curves, how feminine her lips are, the shape of her breasts, and either how sexy she is or how sexy she could be if she tried. An encounter with a vampire left the impression that the most horrifying thing was that her nice human boobs were rotted and saggy in her vampire form. Even Detective Karrin Murphy, a Chicago police officer who Dresden works with a lot and who he claims to have some kind of friendship with, is mainly described by commenting on her feminine shape and how she could be sexy if she wasn’t so focused on being a cop.

Which leads us perfectly into how absolutely obsessed this book was with sex. The murder victims are murdered over sex. The antagonist is obsessed with sex. Dresden’s magical assistant is obsessed with sex. The plot hinges on who is having sex with who and where. If you had no contact with humans besides this book, you would be forgiven for assuming that the only thing humans ever think about is sex. My biggest problem with books targeted for adults is that it seems like the authors are afraid that if they don’t put in enough sex, the book will get categorized as Worthless Children’s Literature. Storm Front cranked that up to eleven – I don’t think there’s a single page that doesn’t have either “I’m a hard-bitten exhausted detective man,” gristly gory death, or sex. Often more than one.

All that said, the book was not entirely awful. I was curious enough about the connection between Dresden’s two cases (the double-murder and a missing husband case – I’m genre-savvy enough to know they had to be connected somehow) that I did want to find out how the mystery ended. And the urban fantasy elements kept me from being entirely bored with the detective bits. But detective noir is still not my genre, and I’m not sex-obsessed enough to be interested in reading more. I didn’t completely hate this book, but I’m not reading any more of this series.

The Dresden Files series:

1. Storm Front
2. Fool Moon
3. Grave Peril
4. Summer Knight
5. Death Masks
6. Blood Rites
7. Dead Beat
8. Proven Guilty
9. White Night
10. Small Favor
11. Turn Coat
12. Changes
13. Ghost Story
14. Cold Days
15. Skin Game
16. Peace Talks
17. Battle Ground
18. Twelve Months
19. Mirror Mirror

Review: Alif the Unseen (DNF)

Title: Alif the Unseen

Author: G. Willow Wilson

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Sexual content, misogyny, sexism, racism, colorism

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: 29%

Back Cover:

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God,” as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground.

When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.

Review:

As seems to be the theme for most of my DNF books lately, there are a lot of things in this book that, in theory, I should have liked.

• Middle Eastern settings, especially ones that are heavy on Islamic religious life.
• Independent hackers going against the government, with what might become some hacker vs. hacker action.
• Jinn in the modern world.
• Mixing the high-tech of hacking with the ancient magic of jinn.

Those are all promises I thought the back cover was making, and I was excited. But either I saw promises that weren’t actually there or the back cover writer deliberately played with my expectations, because that was not at all what I got.

My biggest complaint and the reason that I didn’t want to finish this book is that the book isn’t really about hackers or jinn or any of that stuff – it’s mostly about Alif’s dick. It’s made clear that Intisar, Alif’s aristocratic lover, is actually smart and interesting, but that doesn’t seem to be as important to Alif as his mental picture of her as beautiful and sexy, and then discovering she was in fact beautiful and sexy when he finally got her to take off her burqa for him, and then taking her virginity (but religiously it was okay because they signed a marriage license he printed off the internet) and then fantasizing about having her sexy body all to himself if he could marry her. There was hacker stuff and government agents after him and all that in the background, but Alif was more focused on Intisar deciding to marry someone else instead of him and receiving “looks that went straight to his groin” from other women than any of that running for his life nonsense. The magic jinn book actually showed up pretty early on but Alif was bound and determined to avoid that plot point at any costs.

The part where I really checked out of this book was a scene where Alif and his friend Dina are running from a government agent and he starts shooting at them. Alif tackles Dina down so she won’t get shot and ends up on top of her, and he takes the time to be aroused by feeling the shape of her body through her clothes, despite only being that close to her to shield her from bullets and they may both be about to die.

I expected – and wanted – hacker versus hacker option, jinn magic in the modern age, a high tech cat-and-mouse game in a Middle Eastern security state. Instead, I got an uncomfortably sex-fixated protagonist who focuses more on his dick than the stuff in the story I was actually interested in. I’m not sure exactly what this book is trying to be, but it definitely didn’t succeed in being interesting.

Review: Neverwhere (DNF)

Title: Neverwhere

Author: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Blood, attempted murder, death of animals, child death (mentioned/implied), death of parents, nudity (mentions), sexual content (mentions), toxic relationships

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: 25%

Back Cover:

Under the streets of London there’s a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.

Review:

Everything in this review is based on a sample size of the three Neil Gaiman books I’ve actually read (this one, American Gods, and Anansi Boys), but discounting American Gods as an outlier since it was, you know, actually enjoyable. So feel free to take this whole review with a grain of salt.

Now that that’s said – I hope Neil Gaiman is okay.

Excepting American Gods, the two books of his I’ve read feature protagonists who are spineless, vaguely depressed young men with mediocre-to-horrible corporate jobs, dating strong-willed, domineering, beautiful women whom they let walk all over them. In this book, Richard made his first independent choice when he defied his girlfriend to help a girl bleeding in the street, and even though it was only about 15% of the way into the book I was SO READY for her to go.

I think Richard was the reason I didn’t end up finishing this one. I could not bring myself to care about him. There were some vaguely interesting things happening around him – a very weird homeless girl named Door, people who seem to be able to talk to rats, sewer tunnels going places sewer tunnels could not logically go – but Richard himself was so boring. He didn’t even have enough personality to actively hate – the best I could manage was aggressive indifference.

It’s funny to me that the same things I hate about Richard in Neverwhere – the bland generic everyman-ness, seemingly existing for the sole purpose of being the reader’s avatar through a weird and magical world – I didn’t mind at all in Shadow in American Gods. I think part of it was the spineless-man-with-domineering-girlfriend aspect, which is a horrible dynamic and not one Shadow was part of since he was a widower.

I think the other part is agency. I’m always complaining about characters having agency. Whether they’re forced into dealing with something by the plot or by their own dealings, whether their actions make things better or worse, the only thing I require of characters is that they take actions of their own volition. I’ve stopped reading because characters did their best to avoid acting and because characters were prevented from taking any action. The one and only action Richard chose to take was to help the bleeding girl against his girlfriend’s wishes, and then he pretty much got dragged along for the rest of what I read. And I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything happening since it was all happening to him instead of him actually being involved in the story.

Review: Cemetery Boys (DNF)

Title: Cemetery Boys

Author: Aiden Thomas

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, death, blood, ghosts, death of parent, injury to animals (mention)

Note: In DNF books, warnings listed only include the amount of book I read. There may be other triggers further on that I did not encounter.

Read To: 30%

Back Cover:

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

Review:

I like to think I am a forgiving reader. Sometimes I will look past a lackluster world for amazing characters, or mediocre characters for a stellar plot. But very rarely will I finish a book where none of the elements are strong enough to grip me. And unfortunately, that’s what happened with this book.

I really did like the idea. I am not usually into gendered magic systems, but I’ll put up with it for trans-affirming gendered magic. Yadriel’s family has magic in their blood – the women can heal and the men can summon spirits trapped on earth and release them to the afterlife. Yadriel is a trans boy and the gendered magic gave him boy magic but his hyper-traditional family won’t let him do the ritual to become initiated into magic as a boy. He decides to prove himself, summons a spirit to release, the spirit doesn’t want to be released until he finishes some unfinished business, and Yadriel falls for him. Death magic, getting a transphobic family to accept your gender, and falling in love with a dead guy are all a good start.

And the transphobia in this book is really well done (if you can say that about something like transphobia). Yadriel’s family isn’t malicious at all, they’re just stuck in tradition and don’t make an effort to understand. They still love him, but only their idea of him and they don’t want to learn that who he actually is is anything other than what they expect him to be. And Maritza was an interesting addition – someone who accepts and affirms Yadriel as he is, but thinks she completely understands transphobia because she’s vegan and their family doesn’t understand that either.

And then we get to all the things I did not like.

First, the characters. Yadriel wanted to be an official brujo so badly he did the ceremony himself – a good start. But when the spirit he summons has its own opinions, he wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything without looking to other people (mainly Maritza) for instructions, and when he didn’t get instructions he did his best to avoid acting. Maritza’s entire role seemed to be to deny Yadriel the instructions he wanted and then watch with amusement as he’s forced to figure his own stuff out. Julian swung wildly between “stubborn asshole jock” and “ADHD toddler with too much sugar” with no rhyme or reason, and whatever romance is being set up between Yadriel and him seems to be based on “he’s hot” because Yadriel seems to view him as inconvenient at best and active opposition at worst. (Although it could be an enemies to lovers romance, who knows.) Despite three very real ticking clocks, Yadriel avoided acting at all costs, and Maritza has no skin in the game and is just along to laugh at Yadriel.

The magic system actually isn’t bad, but there’s no worldbuilding around it. Yadriel’s family is a big extended Latinx family and his house is in the family graveyard, but there’s nothing beyond it besides “This graveyard is in Los Angeles, you know all about Los Angeles.” It feels like the family graveyard is an island disconnected from the real world it’s supposed to be in, and I have no idea how the magic fits into the world outside of the family graveyard, or if it actually is confined to the graveyard.

The plot does bring in a mystery of who killed Julian and how Yadriel’s cousin died, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested. It was mainly Yadriel’s refusal to act that frustrated me so much. It isn’t terrible or even unreadable (if I had been in a more magnanimous mood while reading I may have finished it), and it definitely has some good things to say about transphobia, but perhaps I am just not as forgiving a reader as I think I am.

Review: Shadowshaper

Title: Shadowshaper

Series: Shadowshaper #1

Author: Daniel José Older

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, kidnapping, body horror, gore, racism, misogyny (mild), police brutality (mentions), grief (mild), body shaming

Back Cover:

Come to the crossroads, to the crossroads come

Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears . . . Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.

Where the powers converge and become one

With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one — and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secret. Now she must unravel her family’s past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for herself and generations to come.

Review:

I didn’t really have high expectations for this book. I’ve been in a reading slump when it comes to fiction, I only picked it because it was available immediately at the library, and I fully expected this to end up on my “this may not be a bad book but I’m not in the mood so I’ll come back to it later” pile.

And then it turned out to be really, really good.

The plot is fairly straightforward. It doesn’t take Sierra long to figure out who’s behind the dead shadowshapers, and there aren’t really any twists. The emphasis of this story is on magic and community, which are intertwined. Magic infuses the spirits of the dead into art, and shadowshaping is part of Sierra’s family history and legacy. One of the things that I love so much about this book is that even though shadowshaping was kept from Sierra, she refuses to keep it a secret. Her community of family and friends is strong, and when she discovers this magic she doesn’t think twice about sharing it with her friends. Shadowshaping magic is community magic, and she shares it with her community.

Also, the magic is pretty awesome. The spirits get put into art, from paintings to sculptures to music to stories, and Sierra draws and paints. When she needs help from the spirits, her artwork comes to life and helps her. The descriptions in this book are beautiful and vivid, which just makes the artwork coming alive even more awesome.

There are so many fantastic things in this book. Epic street murals, strong friendships, spirits both friendly and terrifying, a cute romance, fascinating magic, and an absolutely epic final battle. I loved the interplay between shadowshaping and community, and Sierra’s strong community is pretty much the only reason she managed to do as much as she did is because she relied on her community and they were there for her.

I really enjoyed this book, despite the plot being simple and twistless. There is a trilogy of Shadowshaper books, and even though this one wrapped up completely and could be read perfectly fine as a standalone, I might pick up the next book just to spend some more time with these characters doing this magic.

The Shadowshaper series:

1. Shadowshaper
2. Shadowhouse Fall
3. Shadowshaper Legacy

Review: Full Fathom Five

Title: Full Fathom Five

Series: The Craft Sequence #3

Author: Max Gladstone

Genre: Urban Fantasy Legal Thriller, sort of

Trigger Warnings: Unreality, death, blood, medical procedures, torture, body horror, mind control/outside forces controlling your body

Spoiler Warning: This book is third in a series, but since I haven’t read any of the other books, any spoilers of the rest of the Craft Sequence are purely accidental.

Back Cover:

On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren’t conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods—perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World. When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she’s grievously injured—then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear—which will crush her, if Kai can’t stop it first.

Review:

It’s a little weird of a decision to jump into the middle of a series without reading the previous books, but I had good reasons. First, the Craft Sequence is a bunch of stand-alone books (and a few games, weirdly) in the same world with a few repeating side characters but no overarching plot across books. Second, I read the descriptions of some of the other books but Full Fathom Five sounded the most interesting. I’m a sucker for unique takes on deities, and a person who makes gods to order was too good of an idea to pass up.

That said, the Craft Sequence doesn’t seem to be a great book to jump into wherever. The world in this book is rich and fascinating and well fleshed out … somewhere that isn’t on the page. Things are thrown in here and there that hint at there being much more history and culture and technology and whatnot than you actually get to see, and I ended the book mostly confused about whether this . Honestly, reading the link I put explaining the genre (relink here) and playing one of the Craft Sequence choose your own adventure mobile games helped me understand more about the world than this entire book did. I highly recommend both; the game is free with ads.

That is my only criticism of the book, though, and it probably is partially my fault for skipping the first few books. I adored the idea of building gods, and Kai as a priestess who creates made-to-order idols for people to keep their souls safe from the more dangerous actual gods. I loved seeing Kai work in her job and work to uncover what exactly is going on with all of these idols dying. There’s a lot of twisty turns and surprises, and Kai is stubborn and a rulebreaker and that makes her fun. She somehow manages to be shocked and surprised a lot yet still end up plotting three steps ahead of everyone else. I can’t really put into words all the coolness that is Kai in this story.

Izza is another point-of-view character who isn’t even mentioned in the back cover. She’s a street kid who steals in order to eat, and she wants to leave the island because she’s almost old enough that getting caught would get her put in a Penitent – horrific stone exoskeletons that subject you to physical and mental torture until you submit to the law. She’s also the street kids’ storyteller, the one who talks to the gods that come to them and leads the mourning ceremonies when those gods die. She’s not essential to Kai’s plot, but she has her own story and provides more perspectives on the central issue of gods and idols and maybe-deities dying, plus another interesting cast of characters and settings on this god-creating island.

There is a lot to this book, and in some ways I’m not surprised worldbuilding got mostly left out because everything else wouldn’t have fit otherwise. Even lacking much of the context of the world, it was a fantastic adventure with a fantastic premise and fantastic characters, and I love so many of the ideas that went into this book and this world. I may read some other Craft Sequence books just to see what happens. (And maybe play some more of the mobile games. The one I linked previously is a TON of fun and very replayable.)

The Craft Sequence:

There are two potential “orders” for this series – the order in which they were published, and the chronological order within the world. I’ve listed them below in publication order, and you can put them in chronological order from the numbers in the title (except Ruin of Angels, which is last. This article explains more.

1. Three Parts Dead
2. Two Serpents Rise
3. Full Fathom Five
4. Last First Snow
5. Four Roads Cross
6. Ruin of Angels

Review: Anansi Boys

Title: Anansi Boys

Author: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Nudity, death of parents, hospitals, blood, kidnapping, guns, police/being arrested, heterosexual sex (implied), rape by deception

Back Cover:

God is dead. Meet the kids.

Fat Charlie Nancy’s normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn’t know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother.

Now brother Spider’s on his doorstep — about to make Fat Charlie’s life more interesting… and a lot more dangerous.

Review:

The StoryGraph lists this book as “American Gods #2,” but the only thing it really has in common with American Gods is the idea that gods live among people and the god Anansi, who shows up briefly in American Gods and is the father who drops dead at the beginning of Anansi Boys. That’s it.

Aside from Anansi/Mr. Nancy himself, there’s a whole new cast of characters – Fat Charlie, his newly-discovered brother Spider, Charlie’s fiance Rosie, Rosie’s mother, Charlie’s boss Grahame Coats, Daisy who gets involved purely by accident, and a few others with supporting roles who only show up briefly.

Before I go too much farther, this series of texts I sent to my husband pretty much sums up my experience reading this book.

Anansi Boys: Don’t like the main character as much as I liked Shadow, but it’s still pretty good

Towards the beginning, about an hour in

Anansi Boys update: I hate all these characters

Somewhere in the middle

Probably going to finish Anansi Boys after all, there’s finally something interesting

About 70% in

Not nearly as good as American Gods

After finishing it

Shadow in American Gods wasn’t really a fully fleshed-out character, but more of an audience surrogate that we could follow around through the world. The characters in Anansi Boys are a lot more fleshed out, and I disliked every single one of them.

• Charlie was spineless, ambitionless, and upset that things in his life are going badly while at the same time doing next to nothing about them. You could probably find his picture in the dictionary next to the entry for “pusillanimous.”
• Spider is an asshole. He’s an incredibly charming asshole, partly due to god-powers from being the son of a god, but he has no regard for other people’s feelings. Not really in the sense that he enjoys hurting people, but more in that he’ll take what he wants and it won’t even cross his mind that other people might have feelings about it.
• Rosie is a do-gooder in the most derogatory sense, the kind of person who wants to feel like she’s helping people but she does the deciding about what helps and if it actually makes your situation worse, too bad, she thinks she did good and she’s very proud of herself about it.
• Rosie’s mother is every evil mother-in-law and controlling mother stereotype and actually supposed to be unlikeable, so I don’t feel too bad about disliking her.
• Grahame Coats is a slimy weasel of a financial advisor and he’s supposed to be unlikeable too.

To be fair, “I hate all these characters” was not entirely accurate. I didn’t hate Daisy, but she wasn’t in enough of the book for me to particularly like her, either. And Charlie had some major character growth in the last 15% of the book and ended up being not so bad. Spider also got better in the last 15%. Before that, though, it was a struggle. Spider shows up on Charlie’s doorstep and decides he’s going to live with him for a while, they clash and Rosie gets caught in the crossfire, Spider screws up Charlie’s life, and about 60% through Charlie tries to find a magical way of throwing Spider out since non-magical ways weren’t working and that’s when things finally get going.

Women in general really get the short end of the stick in this book. There are some old ladies Charlie knew growing up who know things that might help but aren’t telling him because reasons, there’s Rosie’s mother the horrid old crone, there’s Rosie herself (who I’ll talk about in just a second), and there’s Daisy whose main role seems to be “Charlie’s happy ending needs a girl and this one is convenient.” Those are all the female characters in this book. The older women get some agency (even though it’s to either be withholding information for who-knows-why or being a horrible and miserable person), but the two younger women don’t. Rosie especially gets screwed over – Spider spends one day pretending to be Charlie, falls for Rosie, and uses his god powers to keep her thinking he’s Charlie so he can keep having a relationship with her. There is absolutely rape by deception in this book, even though none of the characters seem to notice or care.

There are a few twists towards the end, and as I’d expect from Neil Gaiman they are pretty good. But they don’t cover over the multitude of things I dislike in this book. I really only picked this up because A, my husband owned a copy, and B, I loved American Gods so much I was hoping for more. I did finish it, and the end was good, but I’m not really sure it was worth going through the beginning and the middle to get there.