Category fiction
United States of Japan, by Peter Tieryas
Publication date – March 1, 2016
Summary: Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible Emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons – a shadowy group of rebels fighting for freedom. Their latest subversive tactic is to distribute an illegal video game that asks players to imagine what the world might be like if the United States had won the war instead.
Captain Beniko Ishimura's job is to censor video games, and he's working with Agent Akiko Tsukino of the secret police to get to the bottom of this disturbing new development. But Ishimura's hiding something… He's slowly been discovering that the case of the George Washingtons is more complicated than it seems, and the subversive videogame's origins are even more controversial and dangerous than either of them originally suspected.
Part detective story, part brutal alternate history, United States of Japan is a stunning successor to Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle.
Review: It's an old idea: What if the Allies didn't win World War II? But rather than have yet another story about how America gets taken over by Nazis and the valiant few resist, Tieryas takes a different approach and instead has America run by the Japanese instead. Geographically, this makes perfect sense. Politically, it would be easier for the Nazi government to leave North America (I assume Canada's probably involved in this too, though to be honest, I can't remember if it was mentioned in the story) to the Japanese when they themselves have Europe to contend with. Thus, the United States of Japan were born.
I expected to really enjoy this book. I like things involving Japanese culture, and even though I've been burned so many times in the past by inaccurate representation, I keep hoping and going back to Japanese-inspired fiction to see if this time, it gets better. And to be fair, Tieryas didn't do a bad job in this regard. It helps that most of the Japanese aspects involved fervent nationalism, the sort that could come out of any imperial regime, only with a particular Japanese flavour to it. Portrayal of life in Japan or typical Japanese culture was absent, largely due to the fact that this book did not actually take place in Japan. It took place in the United States, heavily influenced by Japan but not Japan itself. It was actually a rather clever way of getting around most of the issues I typically have with fiction involving Japan, and for that, I have to give Tieryas credit.
But I didn't end up enjoying the book as much as I expected, and partly due to those expectations, United States of Japan left me feeling more disappointed than anything. The story is mostly a mystery surrounding the idea that society is threatened by a video game that presents the question: what if the Allies had won World War II? Rather, the Japanese regime is threatened by the idea that anti-Japanese and pro-American sentiments might by stirred up by such an popular underground video game, and they want it hunted down and wiped out, and Captain Ishimura is apparently the man for the job. He tracks and censors video games for a living, so who better to judge what should be censored in this forbidden game? Together with a ruthless secret agent, he works to uncover the dark truth behind the video game and its disturbing origins.
So what was it that I didn't like about this book? So far everything I've mentioned sounds positive, even interesting. Partly, it was the characters themselves. While they felt distinct, distinguishable from each other in many ways, they also felt rather flat and largely lifeless, as though they were playing roles rather than being themselves through the whole story. I felt no connection to either of them, no particular interest in what they were doing or thinking. Not being able to connect enough to characters to find interest in their actions, which drive the entire story, can really spoil a book for readers.
Now, I'm aware that this was a personal experience and that many people probably won't have the same reaction when reading United States of Japan. It might have been a disconnect between myself and the writing style, which I found a bit lifeless, or it might have been that the characters themselves just didn't hold any particular appeal to me and wouldn't have done so even if they were written by somebody else whose writing I typically enjoy. That happens sometimes, and it's nobody's fault so much as it's just an accident of circumstance. I'm not blaming Tieryas for writing dull characters or for not having the writing chops to make his story interesting. On the whole, the concept behind the novel was a fascinating one, and one that was definitely worth exploring. It just didn't connect with me.
I did, admittedly, find the level of technology in the book more than a little unbelievable. I know that was part of the point, to play on some stereotypical images of superior Japanese technology and turn them into an in-universe reality, but there's only so far I can suspend my disbelief. I could probably accept advanced video game technology that rivals that of today's tech, even though this novel takes place in the 1980s. It takes a bit of mind-twisting, but it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility. The giant mechs that are used for military purposes, though? They're visually impressive, and they're a classic of Japanese sci-fi, but they're utterly unrealistic, and their presence in the story was actually a low point rather than a high point with lots of action.
Combine that with a lack of interest in the characters (leading to a lack of interest in plot progression, and in the end, no matter how good Tieryas's ideas or writing were, I just didn't feel engaged, or compelled to continue with any other books in the series. Shame, because Tieryas clearly has some creativity at play here, and the ability to think beyond the typical when it comes to thought experiments, but overall, I think I can safely say that this just wasn't for me.
By Adrian • Posted in 2018, 3 cups, fiction, Peter Tieryas, science fiction, United States of Japan
Fionn: Defence of Rath Badhma, by Brian O'Sullivan
Rating – 7/10
Publication date – February 18, 2014
Summary: Ireland: 192 A.D. A time of strife and treachery. Political ambition and inter-tribal conflict has set the country on edge, testing the strength of long-established alliances.
Following their victory over Clann Baoiscne at the battle of Cnucha, Clann Morna are hungry for power. Meanwhile, a mysterious war party roams the 'Great Wild' and a ruthless magician is intent on murder.
In the secluded valley of Glenn Ceo, disgraced druid Bodhmall and her lover Liath Luachra have successfully avoided the bloodshed for many years. Now, the arrival of a pregnant refugee threatens the peace they have created together.
Based on the ancient Fenian Cycle texts, the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series recounts the fascinating and pulse-pounding tale of the birth and adventures of Ireland's greatest hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill.
Review: I've read a couple of different stories now about this legendary hero, whose name goes through a different spelling just about every time (Fionn mac Cumhaill, Finn MacCool, it's all good…) Every story puts their own twist on the tale, whether going for accurate retelling or modern interpretation, and honestly, this is something that can make a story straddle that fine line between fresh and stale. You can only hear the same story told so many times, however many little differences there might be, before you grow tired of the story. However, it's the little differences, or sometimes big ones, that can make a retelling worth listening to, to see how it differs from old narratives and to see what it brings to the table.
Fionn tells the beginning of the story, with the birth of the great Irish hero, and the events that surrounded that birth. Mostly the surrounding events, really; aside from being born, the son of Cumhail doesn't really do anything here. We start off seeing his mother, still pregnant, fleeing from her enemies, making her way to Rath Bladhma, where her ex-husband's sister lives. Bodhmhall, a druid capable of premonition and sensing the life energies of things, reluctantly takes her in, giving her shelter and limited peace to birth her baby, whose life blazes brightly; Bodhmhall foresees that this baby will be great, but aside from that we don't really get any indication of destiny or what have you. Yes, a war party and a Tainted One are hunting down Muirne Munchaem and her baby, but there's only speculation as to why, and the reasons could be political as much as they could be supernatural.
Fionn is one of those historical fantasies where the fantasy aspect rarely comes into play. Bodhmhall's powers and the presence of the Tainted One are pretty much the limit of fantasy elements, and those are incorporated in such small ways that you could remove them entirely and the story wouldn't really change. If the reader is unfamiliar with any of the stories of Ireland's great hero, they might be left wondering what this is really all about. A woman flees her old home for her own reasons, seeks refuge elsewhere, and then a wandering war party attacks the settlement where she took refuge. Fionn could be summed up that way, and really, that does give you the gist of what happens. It feels a bit like the prequel to a much greater story than a part of that story in itself, the sort of thing you really only appreciate when you already know what comes next. Those unfamiliar with the legend might find Fionn a bit hard-going.
Despite that, the book does have a very obvious strength early on: the vivid detail. O'Sullivan heaps great amounts of detail on the reader, just this side of ponderous, but it leaves you feeling like you really know the land and its people when you finish the last page. You can practically smell the livestock of the settlement, feel the chill in the air, expect to hear certain voices from the distance. Even if you're not captivated by the story itself, you're taken in by the setting and the way it comes alive.
Plenty of Gaelic names and terms might confound readers, too, but honestly, I'm not holding this against the book or its author. We don't read fantasy novels to be confronted by the distressingly familiar — we read them, in part, to have our minds stretched a little bit. The words may be a mouthful, but that doesn't take away from the story. (And happily, when I checked the pronunciation guide on O'Sullivan's website, I discovered my guesses were often pretty close to how things were intended to sound anyway.)
Fionn: Defence of Rath Bladhma is a relatively short book that takes place over a short span of time, but never the less feels like it carries some weight. The characters are interesting and have decent variation, the tension and action work well to really set the whole scene, and in terms of writing style, O'Sullivan clearly has skill. I definitely wouldn't mind checking out more of his writing, at any rate. So while this book may not appeal to everyone, especially those who haven't encountered much in the way of Irish mythology before, it still is a good book, and it's worth giving a try.
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, brian osullivan, fiction, fionn, historical fantasy, history, Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, SPFBO
The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman
Summary: One thing any Librarian will tell you: the truth is much stranger than fiction…
Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it's already been stolen.
London's underground factions are prepared to fight to the death to find the tome before Irene and Kai do, a problem compounded by the fact that this world is chaos-infested—the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic to run rampant. To make matters worse, Kai is hiding something—secrets that could be just as volatile as the chaos-filled world itself.
Now Irene is caught in a puzzling web of deadly danger, conflicting clues, and sinister secret societies. And failure is not an option—because it isn't just Irene's reputation at stake, it's the nature of reality itself…
Review: There's something I love about books involving books. Maybe it's the joy of connecting with other bibliophiles, however fictional, and knowing that no matter what else may or may not click between me and the character, we have a shared love of books and that seems to bring a lot of people together. Throw in an appeal to my love of multiverse theory, and hot damn, you have a book with a concept set to keep me amused for hours!
Irene is a Librarian, and the Library is special. Existing outside of time and the regular known multiverse, it houses a nigh-impossible number of books from all those different worlds, from fiction to hundreds of different histories. After returning from a mission to acquire a new book, she expects a bit of a break, only to be handed a new book-retrieval mission along with a new assistant. What at first seems like it should be a relatively easy mission quickly turns into something vastly more complicated, with chaos magic and Fae and Kai's secret history and oh yes, the fact that an ancient ex-Library and current enemy to the Library seems to want that book for himself.
I find the world that Cogman sets up to be pretty fascinating. Or maybe it's better to say "worlds." We spend most of the book following Irene and Kai in an alternate world, old-timey London only with vampires and chaos magic and Fae making moves in high society. The book Irene has been sent to get is stolen, and so she teams up with Vale, a nobleman and detective, who also helps Irene and Kai adapt a bit more to society at the time, albeit in the form of infodumping now and again. There's a lot of little detail that goes into all this, hints at a larger world beyond that one city, and it's the subtleties that all come together to make something feel real and large and like you could really be there.
As for the Library itself, well, the idea of a vast repository of books from countless different worlds definitely strikes a chord with me. So too does the idea of the limited immortality that being a Librarian offers; time doesn't move within the Library, so while one is perusing the stacks, they don't age. This sounds great, but it has its drawbacks; early on it's mentioned that Irene's parents couldn't raise her within the Library, since she wouldn't grow from childhood to adulthood there. Irene suffers an injury at one point in the story, and she's reminded that she has to leave the Library to heal. Without the passage of time, she'd remain injured, her body literally incapable of repairing itself because that repair necessitated change.
There are a lot of mysteries to unravel in The Invisible Library, and I'm actually pretty happy to say that they don't all get tidied away at the end. We discover some of what's going on with Kai. We discover more about Alberich and his goals. We discover what's so special about the book Irene was sent to recover. But it seems like each answered question opens the door to a new room filled with related questions, but not in a way that frustrated me. Sometimes in books, questions get answered in a way that makes me ask, "But how does that make sense in regard to this?" or, "How does that all work when you take that into account?" Questions that make me think that plot threads are being awkwardly and obviously dangled in front of me, trying obviously to make me bite. But here the threads are dangled subtly. I have questions, yes, and I'm curious to see how the rest of the story will play out because there are definitely unresolved issues at play, but at the same time, enough was resolved that if I wanted to, I could just not read the rest of the series and still feel like I'd experienced a complete story within the first book. It's a rare novel within a series that can pull that off, sinking the hooks in so delicately, and I think it's worthy of some praise.
The Invisible Library is a great novel for those who love adventure and who love books, and who love seeing things they love meet and create new wonderful things. The pacing is pretty smooth, though it does get a little bogged down in infodumps and recaps now and again. The action is tight, the characters interesting even if they're note incredibly varied, and the story overall is pretty compelling. It's a series I will definitely continue with, if for no other reason than to feel a little bit more at home with characters who love books enough to devote a fraction of eternity to them.
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, 4 cups, fantasy, fiction, genevieve cogman, the invisible library
The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North
Summary: My name is Hope Arden, and you won't know who I am. But we've met before-a thousand times.
It started when I was sixteen years old.
A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A friend who looks at me and sees a stranger.
No matter what I do, the words I say, the crimes I commit, you will never remember who I am.
That makes my life difficult. It also makes me dangerous.
The Sudden Appearance of Hope is the tale of a girl no one remembers, yet her story will stay with you forever.
Review: Claire North writes some amazing genre-defying books. They seem to exist in that small range that can only really be called "speculative." It's not really sci-fi, it's not really urban fantasy, it's not really anything other than some amazingly-written "what if" stories that always engage me and get me thinking about things differently.
In The Sudden Appearance of Hope, we see through the eyes of Hope Arden, a woman who, for some reason, can't be remembered. Once she's out of sight, your brain will just filter her out, leaving you with the impression that you ate dinner alone, didn't meet a fascinating person, just generally went on with life without interacting with anyone. A few moments and gone are your memories of her.
Which is why she's such an excellent thief.
But Hope gets in a little over her head when she encounters Perfection, an app that transforms lives by incentivizing socially-approved improvements. Link your bank account so the app knows you're only purchasing vegan non-GMO food? Have 5000 points! Get a nose job so you look more attractive? Here's a coupon for an hour at the spa! But Perfection is insidious, and Hope's interest is sparked after it contributes to the death of someone she knew. She goes on a mission to steal the information and coding behind Perfection, to unravel its secrets, and in so doing, unleashes something terrifying and deadly against the app's most successful users.
If you're not a fan of stream-of-consciousness writing, then there'll be a lot about this book that doesn't appeal to you. We're seeing it all from Hope's perspective, not so much sitting on her shoulders and being inside her head, privy to her thoughts, and, as thoughts sometimes get, things aren't always coherent. Stops and starts, run-on sentences, inappropriate humour and random song lyrics, the rules of punctuation flying right out the window at times. And it's intentional. It's a pretty accurate portrayal of thought, especially when someone's frantic or stressed. Personally, I'm a fan of it. It's refreshing, especially after seeing so many first-person POV stories where characters notice too much random detail or think extremely coherently, which makes for a very clear mental picture for the reader, but never actually reads as if it's all coming from insider someone's head as it all happens. This stylistic choice may not appeal to everyone, but it definitely appeals to me.
North has superb ability to write a complex story with brilliant realistic characters who exist outside the mainstream for various reasons. When she wasn't tackling different kinds of immortality in Touch and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, here she's writing about not only someone who's not only an accomplished thief, but someone who by definition cannot exist within the mainstream when nobody ever remembers her. She goes into detail about the trouble this causes, from not getting service at a restaurant to not getting care at a hospital, to the constant loneliness caused by not being able to make friends or by having your own family forget you were ever part of them. Her story is heartbreaking, and her fire understandable. You may not always agree with her actions, but you can always see the motivation behind them.
This is an amazing book, and in the manner of amazing book, it's incredibly difficult to unpack. You've got themes of social engineering, racism, sexism, loss, suicide, risk-vs-gain, what people will do to survive, economic class struggles and the opportunity for advancement, whether it's right to encourage people toward a damaging ideal even if they want to be that damaged… There's a lot here about taking life into your own hands, for good or for ill, and it presents no clear side as unambiguously right or wrong. Morality wars with survival, advancement wars with acceptance, with all sides of the arguments having their pros and cons. North presents some interesting debates here, and over and over again I see it comes back to limits. What's the limit on what somebody should do to further their goals? Where do the lines get drawn?
Also interesting is that The Sudden Appearance of Hope doesn't really get a resolution at the end. You see the end of Byron's story more than you see the end of Hope's. Hope ultimately doesn't get what she wanted, and goes through hell in the process. It's less the story of Hope and more the story of how Hope participated in the destruction of a problematic app and social movement. Less her story and more her part in something else's story. Which is an uncommon approach to take, I think, but for my part, I think it worked well. Even if it left me feeling horrible for Hope in the end.
North tells the story well, captivates the reader and draws them in with vivid details and fascinating realistic characters. It's the kind of story that gets under your skin and forces a perspective shift, forces you to confront uncomfortable issues and face down the things you take for granted, pushing you outside your comfort zone. It's a story that stays with you long past the final page, keeping you asking questios and reconsidering what you once thought. It's a book that, similar to North's other novels, defies categorization, with the exception of being firmly in the You Should Read This, It's Good category. It's uncommon, special, and very much worth the time and effort you put into it. My hat's off to Claire North once again for telling so poignant a story!
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, 4 cups, claire north, fiction, speculative, the sudden appearance of hope
The Language of Dying, by Sarah Pinborough
Publication date – August 2, 2016
Summary: In this emotionally gripping, genre-defying novella from Sarah Pinborough, a woman sits at her father's bedside, watching the clock tick away the last hours of his life. Her brothers and sisters–she is the middle child of five–have all turned up over the past week to pay their last respects. Each is traumatized in his or her own way, and the bonds that unite them to each other are fragile–as fragile perhaps as the old man's health.
With her siblings all gone, back to their self-obsessed lives, she is now alone with the faltering wreck of her father's cancer-ridden body. It is always at times like this when it–the dark and nameless, the impossible, presence that lingers along the fringes of the dark fields beyond the house–comes calling.
As the clock ticks away in the darkness, she can only wait for it to find her, a reunion she both dreads and aches for…
Review: For being such a short book, The Language of Dying is impressively hard to review, especially from an SFF standpoint, since the fantastical elements are rather vague and may in fact not even be real. It reminded me very much of Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls, in the way that both involve characters coping with impending death, and both also ripped me to emotional shreds.
Her siblings are coming together to be with their father during his last days. The family is broken, breaking further, and all of them have problems of their own to deal with, but they come. And in times of grief, like this one, like times before, the protagonist of the novella finds herself staring out windows, drifting off, waiting for the return of the thing she saw as a child, the dark unicorn-like thing that calls to her.
I mentioned earlier that this novella is short, a hair over 100 pages, and it's impressive that Pinborough can tell so poignant a story in so little space. Not a word is wasted; you feel the weight of everything as the protagonist struggles with caring for her father, reuniting with her siblings, reflecting on her own traumatic past. Dealing with the guilt of wishing the pain was over for everyone, wishing her father's life would end so that the healing could begin, while also hating that he's dying and will soon leave everyone behind. Anyone who has been there for the death of someone or something you're close to understands this, though we don't often talk about it, and seeing it addressed so openly was, honestly, a bit of a relief. But it was also part of the gut-punch that The Language of Dying delivers. It forces the reader to confront the unpleasant realities of watching and waiting for someone to die, the internal and external struggles. It's not an easy read. It isn't meant to be comforting.
There are elements of fantasy to this book, though they're extremely downplayed. The story isn't about a woman who sometimes sees a dark mysterious beast. It's about a woman whose father is dying. And incidentally, also sometimes sees a dark mysterious beast. To say this book is primarily fantasy is like saying that this review blog is actually a cat blog because I mentioned a few times that I have cats. It's an element, but it's not the primary focus. And it's not entirely clear if the creature is real or whether it's the product of combining imagination with grief. It's left vague, open to some interpretation, and it works well. It means the novella is hard to categorize into a particular genre, but some stories defy those boundaries, breaking out to tell a story that can appeal to different people for different reasons.
The Language of Dying needs to be read. It's powerful and evocative, it's brutal and honest, it's painful and cathartic. It's so much story in so few words, and it's the sort of story that stays with you long past the final word. It seeps into you and alters you, and whether you read it for the speculative elements or because you're looking for literature that deals with death, you should still read it. It's one of those rare books that's an experience more than anything else, difficult to properly describe, but I can imagine the knowing nods that pass between people who have read it. For some experiences, no words are really needed.
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, 4 cups, fiction, novella, sarah pinborough, speculative, the language of dying
SPFBO Review: Larcout, by K A Krantz
Publication date – June 1, 2015
Summary: Blood-beings can be chattel or char.
Fire seethes through the veins of every Morsam, demanding domination and destruction. Combat is a hobby. Slaughtering the inferior blood-beings is entertainment. Life is a repetitious cycle in the prison fashioned by the gods. But mix-race abomination Vadrigyn os Harlo suspects the key to freedom lies with safeguarding the blood-beings; until her blood-born mother uses foreign magic to turn the Morsam against Vadrigyn. Betrayed, bound, and broken, Vadrigyn struggles against the dying of her essential fire. Yet the ebbing flames unleash the dormant magic of her mixed heritage…
The magic to destroy free will.
Seized by the gods and dumped in the desert nation of Larcout to stop history from repeating, Vadrigyn discovers her mother's legacy of treason and slaughter still festers. To survive the intrigues of the royal court, the roiling undercurrents of civil war, and the gods themselves, Vadrigyn must unravel the conspiracy behind her mother's banishment. But manipulating free will unleashes a torrent of consequences.
If she fails the gods, she will return to the Morsam prison, stripped of all magic and all hope.
If she succeeds, she can rule a nation.
Kasthu. Roborgu. Inarchma.
Live. Learn. Burn.
Review: I'm going to say it right up front: I wasn't initially sure I was going to enjoy Larcout. The opening chapters dump you right in the middle of things, gives you a plethora of new terms and alliances and relationships to learn and precious little context for them all, and then things change suddenly and the protagonist Vadrigyn is thrown into a new society with even more stuff to learn, and yes, it's very chaotic and unclear and at times I seriously felt like Larcout was actually book 2 of a series and the reason I was so lost in the beginning was because I missed some essential backstory from a previous novel.
Bear with things. The book definitely improves.
Vadrigyn is half-breed being of fire, proudest of her Morsam heritage but undeniably related to the Larcoutian woman who raped Vadrigyn's father in order to produce her. The violent life in Agenwold is what she knows, owning blood-beings as chattel, ruling over weaker things. Until she's suddenly thrust into life in the Jewelled Nation, among blood-beings like her mother, forced to confront the other side of her heritage and to uncover the truth behind the mystery that is and was her mother. Larcout is something of a fantasy murder mystery in that regard, and it's certainly a well put together one, full of intrigue and detail and some fascinating and frustrating cultural elements that Vadrigyn must wade through to solve the puzzle.
Krantz certainly put a lot of detail into the world in Larcout. The gods of the world have their particular nations, so that Larcout is both a place and a divine being. There are also elemental associations, with Jos, for instance, being of water, and Larcout seemingly being of earth (it's never stated explicitly, but when you've got people who can telekinetically move rocks and who have precious stones sprouting from their foreheads and who turn to sand when they die, I think it's safe to assume). The culture that Vadrigyn encounters when she finds herself in the land her mother came from is stratified and rigid, with gender inequality and class issues and full of tricky politics and alliances that need to be maneuvered around. Some things definitely felt more developed than others, but it's clear that Krantz put the effort in and didn't just make a fantasy analogue for a real-world culture and then call it a day. I find myself appreciating that more and more in the books I read.
If there's any flaw I found with Larcout, it's in the descriptions, or rather the lack thereof. I never felt like I had a really clear mental picture of things. I could tell you a little bit about what Dhaval looks like, or Vadrigyn, or a Grethmondor, or where Vadrigyn sleeps, but for the most part, I've honestly got no clue. Some details were mentioned, but for me it seems they didn't really coalesce into a clear thing for me. However, personality-wise, I feel pretty familiar with a number of characters, because Krantz writes plenty of dialogue and all the characters have fairly distinct personalities, even if you don't get to see them that often. I can tell you a few personality traits of just about everyone who got a name in the book.
A few other reviewers commented on the book's lack of balance, and I feel I have to agree. The narrative vs dialogue issue is an example of it, and the one that stood out the most to me while reading it, but in retrospect, I think that might be in part because of the writing being a bit uneven. When it's on, it's on. It's crisp and witty and you have a good understanding of what's happening, even if you can't always picture the finer details. And then other parts feel rushed or glossed over or inconsistent, and that might be a considerable part of what left me feeling unable to establish a good mental picture.
Despite that, though, Larcout was undeniably creative, and enjoyable to read even when I felt a bit lost, and once I let myself sink into the story I found myself compelled to keep pushing on, wanting to know more of the mystery that Vadrigyn was working to uncover. The threads of intrigue were strong, there were twists and turns to keep it all interesting, and it was endlessly entertaining to see Vadrigyn's personality be at odds with the culture of the people around her. This is a book I think could be utterly brilliant if it was smoothed out and polished a bit more, but as it stands, it's still a book worth checking out if you're in the mood for something a little bit different and have the patience to push past the first few chaotic chapters.
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, fantasy, fiction, k a krantz, larcout, Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, SPFBO
Certain Dark Things, by Silvia Morena-Garcia
Summary: Welcome to Mexico City… An Oasis In A Sea Of Vampires…
Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is busy eeking out a living when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life.
Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, must feast on the young to survive and Domingo looks especially tasty. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous, Atl needs to escape to South America, far from the rival narco-vampire clan pursuing her. Domingo is smitten.
Her plan doesn't include developing any real attachment to Domingo. Hell, the only living creature she loves is her trusty Doberman. Little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his effervescent charm.
And then there's Ana, a cop who suddenly finds herself following a trail of corpses and winds up smack in the middle of vampire gang rivalries.
Vampires, humans, cops, and gangsters collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive?
Review: I like vampires. I've had a weird obsession with them since I was around 7 years old. But I don't like a lot of vampire fiction that I've encountered recently, because so much of it follows the same paranormal-romance formula, or else portrays vampires in a way that just really doesn't work with what I want to read. It's a matter of personal taste, obviously, because what doesn't work for me apparently works wonders for hundreds of others, but it does mean that I tend to get quickly burned out on vampire fiction when I dare to pick up a new novel.
However, Certain Dark Things was an incredible and refreshing surprise, showing me uncommon aspects of vampire lore across different cultures and presenting blood-drinkers as more than just dark tortured broody souls waiting for a vivacious woman to show them how wonderful unlife can be when they're not spending it alone. The different vampires in Moreno-Garcia's novel are reminiscent of ones from White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade, at least in the sense of having different clans and offshoots, each with different abilities, weaknesses, strengths, and heritage. And that, to me, made them seem real, well-established, like I could be looking into a hidden part of the real world because culture matters and myths matter and honestly, taking into account that so many cultures have vampiric legends in them just makes sense. It gives you a solid foundation to build upon, and weirdly works to give mostly-Western audiences something they may not have even encountered before, making them old look new and fresh.
Though the book has multiple different viewpoints, the story is primarily about Atl, a vampire with Aztec heritage, who is on the run after her family was murdered. She encounters Domingo, who becomes enamoured of her, and wants to help her despite the danger this puts him in. Chasing Atl is Nick, member of the clan that killed Atl's family, out to finish the job and torture Atl just for kicks. On the other side is Ana, a cop trying to stand against the corruption in the system, trying to keep her city clear of the vampires who have raised their heads, and falling in with gangs in order to do it. But for all the different characters, everything swirls around and centres on Atl; it's all about her. Domingo's fixation on her, Rodrigo's attempt to track her down, Nick's violent obsession, Ana's attempts to find both her and Nick before more damage can be done. It wasn't merely a case of converging storylines; without Atl, there would be no story.
Well, perhaps that's not entirely accurate. For all that the story spins itself out around Atl, the other characters who take the spotlight feel fully realized, capable of carrying on their own stories even if Atl's wasn't the focus. Ana's story of trying to keep her cool on a police force full of people who don't take her seriously, trying to raise her daughter to have options and opportunities in life even when Ana herself has to go without, would be a compelling enough story even if you didn't bring vampires into it. Ditto for Domingo; he felt like a real person, with passions and interests and problems beyond just what you see for the brief time during which the book takes place. You read Certain Dark Things and you feel like you're getting a glimpse into the lives of real people who go beyond the book's pages, and they suck you in and keep a tight hold on you as their stories unfold.
I could read books like this forever. In fact, reading Certain Dark Things has made me want to track down more of Moreno-Garcia's writing so that I can wrap myself in that evocative prose again. She weaves a wonderful story, full of rich detail and incredible characters that you want to read about even if you hate. I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not reading her work sooner.
This book made me love vampires again. And that's no small feat given that I've become so jaded in recent years, more than half convinced that I'd never find vampire stories that appealed to me ever again. But here it is in all its dark violent glory, exactly what I'd been craving for so long. It took me to new locales and let me look into a culture I've only ever really seen in travel guides, dropped me right into the streets and let me look at the good and the bad in equal measure. Certain Dark Things pressed all the right buttons for me, and I know it'll be one that I read again, whenever I need to refresh my lifelong love of bloodsucking fiends. If you're a fan of vampires, or just enjoy different perspectives on common themes, or hell, if you just love some dark gritty fiction that happens to involve the undead, then you need to read this book. You won't regret it.
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, 4 cups, certain dark things, fiction, silvia moreno-garcia, urban fantasy
SPFBO Review: Paternus, by Dyrk Ashton
Publication date – March 24, 2016
Summary: Gods, monsters, angels, devils. Call them what you like. They exist. The epic battles between titans, giants, and gods, heaven and hell, the forces of light and darkness. They happened. And the war isn't over.
17 year old Fi Patterson lives with her stuffy English uncle and has an internship at a local hospital for the aged. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, misses her dead mother, wonders about the father she never knew. One bright spot is caring for Peter, a dementia-ridden old man whose faraway smile can make her whole day. And there's her conflicted attraction to Zeke — awkward, brilliant, talented — who plays guitar for the old folks. Then a group of very strange and frightening men show up for a "visit"…
Fi and Zeke's worlds are shattered as their typical everyday concerns are suddenly replaced by the immediate need to stay alive — and they try to come to grips with the unimaginable reality of the Firstborn.
"Keep an open mind. And forget everything you know…"
Review: Paternus has so many elements that I enjoy, particularly my love of stories that involve deities all over the place. No idea why that's a thing I enjoy, but it is. And if you're like me in that regard, well, you'll probably have a grand old time with Paternus, because it has a mess of deities and mythology-mixing all over the place. It plays fast and loose with myths from many regions and religions, and what first looked like a complicated mess slowly ordered itself into a impressive array of twists that actually made sense.
And when you consider the scale of some of the things Paternus deals with, that's something worth mentioning.
But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. The story primarily centres around Fi, a young woman working at a hospital, who seems to have a particular bond with a patient named Peter, who doesn't really react to anyone except her. Life seems relatively normal, until the hospital is attacked by a group of extremely violent people — who are not exactly human — who are after Peter. Fi and Zeke (the guy Fi has a crush on) flee the hospital with Peter, who slowly seems to be coming to his senses and reacting to things around him, and the three of them have to stay alive long enough to figure out just what it is their pursuers want. Mixed in are chapters told from the perspective of gods or mythological figures, such as Tanuki, who see signs that the excrement if about to hit the rotating blades very soon, in what could be an epic battle of gods.
If that description thrills you, I can't blame you. It was actually a bit difficult to come up with a brief teaser like that without spoiling a fair bit of what gets revealed in the book's pages. Ashton juggles a lot of very complicated elements and brings them together into a seamless whole by the end, and what starts off as a chaotic beginning that throws you right into the deep end makes a whole lot more sense by the time you reach the final chapters. In that regard, it's a book with decent re-read value. It would be good to go back and read it again with the knowledge I have now, to see which aspects make more sense now that I fully understand what's happening. I have to give Ashton credit where credit is due; that's not an easy thing to accomplish, and I think it was done quite well.
Many of the problems I have with this book occur early on, and they're small things, but they're things that wouldn't stop nagging at me. There are two that spring instantly to mind. 1) Fi's gay coworker, who embodies gay stereotypes in an uncomfortable way, talking constantly about sex and being gossipy and hitting on every attractive guy and actually saying, "Ew," multiple times during a conversation — which he himself started — in which breasts were mentioned. Given that he was the only explicitly gay character, this portrayal was awkward and uncomfortable to read. 2) The mention that Edgar, Fi's prim-and-proper British uncle, pronounces potato as po-tah-to. In the "proper English manner." I seriously kept waiting for the reveal that Edgar was just trolling Fi over that word, because seriously, no British person I have ever encountered pronounces it that way. And I am British. The whole "toMAYto/toMAHto poTAYto/poTAHto" thing is not meant to be taken as a serious representation of the differences between North American and British English.
See? Small things, none of which are particular relevant to the story, but they bugged me. I can't say for certain, but to me they felt like Ashton was trying to write elements he wasn't entirely familiar with, and they didn't work well. Which is surprising because that goes against the sheer level of detail that goes into the rest of the work. Maybe that's why those small things felt so jarring to me. They seemed out of place, and had greater impact due to context.
I also felt confused by the early presence of chapters talking about what was happening with other gods. Some made sense, and get revisited as the story goes on. The stuff with Tanuki and Arges, though? Gets a few chapters early on (usually during those chapters I was far more interested in getting back to what Fi was up to), and then dropped like a hot potahto for the vast majority of the book, only to be picked up again at the very end. And considering those chapters initial got equal page time with Fi's chapters, they at first seemed a lot like unimportant filler, and ultimately pretty forgettable.
Other than that, the book's biggest flaw is that it infodumps a lot. Which I didn't mind so much, because it was infodumping about things I was legitimately interested in and hadn't necessarily figured out for myself. And it made sense in context, too, as Fi and Zeke are encountering all of this world-shattering stuff for the first time and they needed it all explained to them. So I think in that regard it's a flaw-that-isn't, because while it's a good rule of thumb to not infodump on your readers, there is a time and place for it every once in a while, especially in such a complicated situation where the characters are just as confused as the readers. Everybody needs to catch up.
Paternus has action by the barrel, and in that regard it's a surprisingly quick read once you get into the meat of the story. I love the way mythology was toyed with. I love the idea of a primal being that may or may not be what we call God, that is capable of loving all things and creating some of the best and worst that the world could offer. I love the sheer level of detail that went into crafting the mythos, and I respect the work it must have taken to have it come together and make sense in the end. It's not a perfect book, but it has a lot going for it, and I enjoyed the time I spent with it. Ashton has a lot of skill as a writer and storyteller, and I look forward to seeing what else he might do in the future.
By Adrian • Posted in 2017, dyrk ashton, fiction, paternus, Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, SPFBO, urban fantasy
The Nature of a Pirate, by A M Dellamonica
Summary: The third novel in the Stormwrack series, following a young woman's odyssey into a fantastical age-of-sail world
Marine videographer and biologist Sophie Hansa has spent the past few months putting her knowledge of science to use on the strange world of Stormwrack, solving seemingly impossible cases where no solution had been found before.
When a series of ships within the Fleet of Nations, the main governing body that rules a loose alliance of island nation states, are sunk by magical sabotage, Sophie is called on to find out why. While surveying the damage of the most recent wreck, she discovers a strange-looking creature—a fright, a wooden oddity born from a banished spell—causing chaos within the ship. The question is who would put this creature aboard and why?
The quest for answers finds Sophie magically bound to an abolitionist from Sylvanner, her father's homeland. Now Sophie and the crew of the Nightjar must discover what makes this man so unique while outrunning magical assassins and villainous pirates, and stopping the people responsible for the attacks on the Fleet before they strike again.
Review: I've said before that I have yet to read anything by Dellamonica that I dislike. Her latest novel, The Nature of a Pirate, fits firmly into my expectations, and I think is the best of the series so far. It doesn't quite have the magic that the first book held for me, the wondrous discovery of a new world, but the story really comes to a head, and this was a real page-turner and such an amazing read for me.
Sophie Hansa is firmly set on dragging Stormwrack into the age of curiosity, introducing greater scientific procedures into the world, at least in regard to forensics and crime-solving. She studies samples of animals and plants, trying to figure out this world that is slowly unfolding before her. Culture and politics, however, are still a lost art to her, and she makes plenty of missteps along her journey, but it's the science of things she's primarily interested in, the biology and forensics. So when she's thrown into the middle of a mystery involving ships that bleed, forbidden magical constructs, and the possibility of it all leading to war, she goes to the task like any mildly obsessive and headstrong person would.
And I love reading Sophie for those traits. She's in that excellent position to allow the reader a bit of ignorance and explanation, because Sophie herself isn't familiar with Stormwrack in the way that those who have grown up there are. Cultural missteps are bound to happen. Lack of historical or legal context. That sort of thing. Sophie being from this world, called Erstwhile, has a distinctly modern approach to things, and that works well to ground the reader, making it easier to ride on Sophie's shoulder as she encounters new things and sees them similarly to how we ourselves would, in all their baffling glory. And her penchant for brutal honesty, calling things how she sees them, is great to read.
I have great respect for the level of detail that Dellamonica put into this novel — the whole series, really, but here it just seemed so overwhelming to keep track of, from a writer's perspective. Writing a secondary world is always a complicated affair when you're trying to make it stand out from the crowd, and Dellamonica definitely succeeds in that regard. But it's more than just an Age-of-Sail world. There are multiple nations, all with their cultural idiosyncrasies that are expressed and considered in the text. Not only that, but Sophie's efforts to bring modern science into Stormwrack when Stormwrack doesn't have facilities and technology that we consider modern means improvising, researching early breakthroughs in certain fields and recreating old methods and refining them along the way. Some of my favourite parts of the novel involve Sophie and Bram trying to figure Stormwrack out, and devise experiments and modifications to see how things work and what can be done. It's creative, it's impressive, and it speaks to a whole load of behind-the-scenes work that all comes together to create a breathtakingly detailed and realistic story.
Every time I write a review for these books, I find the story very difficult to describe. Not because it's loose and all over the place. The writing's tight, the direction clear, and it's a thrill ride to be on with the characters. No, it's hard to describe because there's so much of it. Sophie's project to introduce fingerprint records to Stormwrack. The frights that are destroying ships. Sophie's ongoing issues with her birth father. The mystery behind a slave she suddenly owns. So many plot threads intertwine and play off each other, some important, some less so, some seeming unimportant until they zoom to the forefront halfway through the novel. Another point in Dellamonica's favour; for all that the story has a lot of elements to juggle, not once does it get overwhelming of confusing, beyond the confusion you're supposed to feel because characters themselves haven't figured out exactly what's going on either.
Stormwrack is a world I could constantly — if you'll excuse the pun — dive into and never be bored reading about. I love the characters, from Sophie's headstrong intelligence to Garland's reserved politeness to Verena's desire to prove herself. They're whole people, able to stand on their own and tell their own stories. I love the cultures built in the flooded world. I love the little linguistic quirks that get thrown in, pieces of a puzzle to solve. Dellamonica is a fantastically skilled writer, at the top of her game, and I can't imagine her coming down from those heights any time soon. Do yourself a favour and pick up this series soon if you haven't already. It's absolutely worth the time you'll spend reading it.
By Adrian • Posted in 2016, 5 cups, a m dellamonica, fantasy, fiction, the nature of a pirate, urban fantasy
SPFBO Review: Assassin's Charge, by Claire Frank
Summary: A cold-hearted assassin. A boy with a price on his head.
Rhisia Sen is one of the Empire's highest paid assassins. Living a life of luxury, she chooses her contracts carefully, working to amass enough wealth so she can leave her bloody trade. She is offered a new contract on the outskirts of civilization, and almost refuses—until she sees the purse. It could be the last job she ever has to take.
But when she reaches the destination, she discovers her mark is a child.
The contract, and her reputation, demand she kill the boy—if she can banish his innocent face from her mind. But another assassin has been sent to kill her, and a notorious bounty hunter is on her trail. She doesn't know why the boy is a target, or why her former employer wants her dead. Saving the child could be her only chance at survival.
Review: Rhisia Sen, better known as Rhis, is an assassin. She's not picky about who she kills, so long as she gets paid. When she's offered a job with an extremely high payment, one that could let her retire comfortably, she takes the chance. Until she realises that her mark is only a young boy, and that she's reached her limit: she can't bring herself to kill a child. So she takes the boy with her to protect him from the people who want to kill her (probably the Emperor himself, but definitely someone within the Emperor's palace), and in so doing she has to dodge others chasing the boy, chasing her in order to kill her, and generally making her moment of compassion prove very costly indeed.
Assassin's Charge is definitely a quick-moving book, jumping from event to event pretty smoothly and pulling the reader along with a very strong, "What happens next?" feel to it. From the early scenes where we get introduced to Rhis's profession, to her flight with Asher, to her multiple attempts to escape pursuit and gain her freedom, the whole thing is fairly fast-paced and it makes for a quick and engaging read.
But the book does have its weaknesses, and they're both complaints I had through the whole novel. The first is that absolutely no conclusive reason is ever given for Asher's contract. The Emperor wants him dead. The best reasons anyone can come up with is because he might possibly be descended from a race of people that the Emperor couldn't conquer. Maybe. There's a lot about Asher that has no explanation, and there are a lot of hints at some larger scheme, but nothing ever actually comes of it. It was extremely frustrating, and it felt a lot like there was no reason for it. Like the only purpose to someone wanting Asher dead was to lead Rhis on this grand adventure from city to city, trying to protect him. And that felt very flimsy.
My second complaint is that it was very hard to pin Rhis down as a character. From the first dozen chapters, she feels very solid in my mind, and I know who she is and how she feels when reading her. She does her job with cool efficiency, likes her comforts, doesn't take crap from people. Then she has her crisis on conscience and refuses to kill Asher, coming up with this plan that I still don't fully understand the logic behind that involves taking Asher with her as leverage to get the contract against her cancelled. As she spends more time with Asher, and with Rickson later on, she changes from someone who's done years of assassinating with a relatively clear conscience and who doesn't mind blackmailing people into someone who feels bad that her servants might not make enough money (which is something she previously and explicitly stated she doesn't care about), and gets teary-eyed over reunions with people she hasn't seen for a few weeks.
And I'm not saying that people can't ever change in response to circumstance. They absolutely can, and do. But Rhis's transformation seemed reminiscent of numerous other stories I've read and seen where children awaken some sort of "caring" ability in people. Often this is done as some attempt to state that being around kids makes people want to be parents, and thankfully this didn't seem to be the case here, but it seems like the catalyst for Rhis getting in touch with her sensitive and emotional side does seem to be protecting the kid she has little reason to protect. It does from, "I draw the line at killing kids," to, "I have to protect this boy no matter what, and along the way I'm going to develop relationships I previously didn't want, and go out of my way to solve a mystery that really has nothing to do with me." The driving force behind the plot stemmed from Rhis's desire to do these things, but there's nothing that really shows how she developed the desire. I think it's just meant to be taken as a given that being in someone's presence for long enough will make you care about them, but that isn't true for everyone, and it doesn't seem to mesh with the Rhis we see at the beginning of the novel.
The world in which this all took place seemed fairly fleshed out and developed, though, and that was nice to see. It wasn't all a hue voyage of discovery, either, since Rhis has been quite a few places in her time and so wasn't about to gape at the marvels of some new city. As such, new places weren't given grand and overblown descriptions, though the detail given is certainly enough to get a basic mental image. I felt like this was a story that took place within a world, rather than a story that partly existed only to show off the worldbuilding skills of the author, if that distinction makes any sense. The worldbuilding was there, absolutely, but it was a backdrop to the story at hand, making it seem all the more real.
Assassin's Charge is a novel I definitely have mixed feelings about. It's not a bad novel. The author's writing skill is evident, and Frank knows how to write something that will keep readers turning the pages. But for all that, I'd say its biggest weakness is that despite it being a fast-paced adventure, it lacks real motivation for any of that fast-paced adventure to play out, and the motivations it does give don't really stand up well to being poked at. It works well so long as you don't question anything, and just take what you're told at face value. It's a quick fun read on the surface, and really, it doesn't have to be any more than that, though I do prefer my novels to have a bit more depth to them, and I think that's why this didn't resonate so well with me.
By Adrian • Posted in 2016, assassin's charge, claire frank, fantasy, fiction, Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, SPFBO