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space_and_sorcery's Reviews (66)
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I received this novel from Angry Robot Books, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.
Historical Fantasy always offers me the double joy of reading an interesting story and of learning something about aspects of the past I knew little or nothing about: in the case of The Judas Blossom, that past is represented by the westward expansion of the Mongol empire in the 13th Century.
Hulagu Kahn, grandson of the famous Genghis, is carrying forward his ancestor’s dream of an all-encompassing empire, and as we meet him he’s in the process of completing the conquest of Persia: unfazed by the attacks of the guild of the Assassins, bent on stopping his advance, he pursues his grand plan with ruthless efficiency, conquering city after city, each success culminating with the unleashing of his soldiers on the hapless inhabitants in a frenzy of murder and pillage. His one disappointment comes from the youngest of his sons, Temujin, whose warlike instinct are practically non-existent: trying to earn his father’s attention and respect, Temujin embarks on a quest that will lead him to wield an unexpected power that will ultimately test his mettle as a man.
Kaivon is a Persian general, angry at the defeat of his people but at the same time conscious that rebelling against the invading Mongol army would be a hopeless task. With an unexpected flash of intuition, Kaivon understands that such a mighty foe could be destroyed only from within, so he chooses to attach himself to Hulagu’s army and bide his time until he will find the proverbial chink in the armor of his enemy.
And finally, Kokochin is a young Mongol princess whose tribe has been utterly obliterated for refusing to obey the ruling Kahn: sold into slavery, she’s now the latest among Hulagu’s wives and at first she seems resigned to her fate, until she finds herself drawn into something bigger than herself and quite worthwhile, a means of getting revenge against Hulagu for all of her losses.
I completely (and happily) lost myself in The Judas Blossom, one of those well-balanced novels where plot and characterization blend seamlessly into a page-turning story of intrigue, politics and personal journeys that feel vivid and cinematic - and quite compelling, despite the brutal, unforgiving background depicted here, one where conquest and destruction are the rule of the day and stop at nothing to achieve the dream of an empire encompassing all the known world. There are several sections where the readers are made privy of the consequences of conquest: streets littered with debris and rotting corpses, beautiful homes or works of art wantonly destroyed by the ravaging conquerors, the worst of humanity exposed there for all to see.
The Mongols might be the main protagonists of the story here, but they are certainly not the heroes, nor is their leader Hulagu: if at first one might sympathize with him, targeted by assassins on one side and supported by faithful subordinates or by his loving “war wife” (the one who always follows him on campaigns) on the other, once we see him through other people’s eyes that image changes drastically. He is a man given to murderous fits of rage and possessed by the unyielding determination of fulfilling his grandfather’s dream, and to that end he’s ready to sacrifice everything and everyone. It’s in his dealings with his son Temujin that his worst qualities come to the fore, at the same time highlighting Temujin’s struggle to find his own way in a world where he does not fit. The young man’s journey is a heartbreaking one, because he does everything in his power to try and gain the recognition - if not the affection - of his father, and once he seems to find something that might prove his value (a threat that introduces the only element of magic in the story) he finally understands that he’s only a tool, and that his quest is a fruitless one. The moment when he decides to “never again to seek his father’s approval” is a poignantly touching one, and it also made me eager to see where this newfound realization will take this character next.
General Kaivon is a man divided: on one side he wants revenge for his people’s defeat and submission to the Mongol horde, on the other he’s fascinated by Hulagu’s determination, and his unstoppable drive. Kaivon plays a very dangerous game, and one that forces him to terrible compromises when he must play the part of the aggressor against people like his own, but at the same time he enjoys the cat-and-mouse strategy in which he’s able to sabotage the Kahn’s plans while acting the part of the faithful retainer. The role of the double agent is indeed a precarious one, particularly where Hulagu’s famous temper is concerned, and several of the passages where Kaivon plays out his schemes kept me on edge from start to finish: it will be interesting to see how - and how far - his plan will take him…
Princess Kokochin gained my sympathy from page one: alone and destitute, with few prospects aside being one of the many playthings for the Kahn, she discovers an unexpected way of finding her own path and exacting revenge for her lost family. I liked to see how daring she could be, and also how stubborn in pursuing her goals or defying the constrictions of her role and status, and I admired her composure in the dealings with Guyuk, the Kahn’s first wife and ruthless manager of his affairs. All of the main female characters in The Judas Blossom are strong, determined women who manage to promote their own agency in a male-dominated world, their best representation being the mysterious Twelve, a group of highly-placed conspirators who work in secret to thwart the Mongol aggression.
There are many layers in this novel, from the personal journeys of the various characters to the depiction of war and conquest to the political agendas and power posturing that create a vivid, vibrant world built on historical foundations and reinforced with engrossing fictional narrative: for such a large-scope story it turned out to be a compelling, well-paced read that ended with a huge twist which left me eager to know what will happen next. Highly recommended.
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Two years ago I was introduced, with Scales and Sensibility, to Stephanie Burgis’ new alternative version of the Regency Era, one where dragons are a fact of life and the ultimate fashion accessory for ladies of the ton. I was charmed by the adventures of spirited Elinor Tregarth and Sir Jessamyn, the dragon she came to adopt, so when Ms. Burgis contacted me with the ARC for the second book in this series I was delighted to go back to her imagined world.
Claws and Contrivances follows the adventures of another Miss Tregarth, Rose: the three sisters, orphaned after the death of both parents in a carriage accident, were sent to three different groups of relatives and while Elinor had the misfortune to be taken in by the insufferable Heathergills, Rose had better luck with the Parrys, a somewhat impoverished but loving family made of delightfully eccentric individuals: cousin Serena would love to live in a gothic setting, and looks for ghosts and ghouls behind every corner, while Georgiana aka Georgie is quite the tomboy, preferring riding breeches to flowing dresses; Beth, on the other hand, is the more reserved of the three, while Aunt Parry is a dedicated, distracted, ink-smudged novelist and Uncle Parry a noted dragon scholar.
While the family is waiting for Uncle Parry’s guest, a fellow dragon scholar, Rose stumbles on a dragon in one of the less-frequented rooms of Gogood Abbey: the poor creature is terrified and shows clear signs of previous abuse, but Rose’s gentle ways soon gain her the dragon’s trust - which seems to lead to the appearance of a second, equally traumatized creature… Determined to find the dragons’ owner, Rose tries to contact the Parrys’ new neighbor, Sir Gareth, but the arrival of the expected guest - the scholarly Mr. Aubrey we already met in the previous book - brings about a change of plans and the start of a delightful comedy of errors that soon takes on some romantic overtones mixed with a slowly unfurling mystery.
I don’t want to share more of the plot because to spoil it would be a great disservice: it’s enough to say that here you will find all the elements that have made Ms. Burgis’ stories such a joy to read, with plucky heroines, dastardly villains and gallant gentlemen - and of course the dragons, which feature quite abundantly in this story ;-) I was delighted to see the return of distractedly bookish Mr. Aubrey here: he might be oblivious to the usual social graces while his nose is buried in a book (and how could a bookworm like myself blame him?) but when he’s called to higher purposes he shows a remarkable strength of character, which becomes quite necessary considering that the shady Sir Gareth is the kind of villain we all love to hate.
Rose is an outstanding heroine, her selflessness and courage work well within the conventions of the era, but she also shows a capacity to transcend those conventions when she feels the need to protect those she loves - either her adopted family or the dragons she has taken responsibility for. And speaking of Rose, I have to commend once again Ms. Burgis’ skills in creating romantic scenes that not only develop in an organic way inside the story’s framework, but also feel extremely appealing even to an old, grumpily un-romantic reader like yours truly - to the point that I find myself rooting for the protagonists to reach the necessary happily-ever-after…
If you’re looking for an enjoyable, quick read where the comedy of manners successfully meets a magic background (and dragons, let’s not forget the dragons…) you need not look further than this series and its charming, engaging characters. And since there are three Tregarth sisters, I do look forward to the dragon-linked adventures of the third one, Harriet: I have no idea where Ms. Burgis will take the story next, but I know that it will be just as engaging and lively as the previous ones.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
After my positive encounters with Ronald Malfi’s Black Mouth, Come With Me and Ghostwritten I was eager to explore more of his works and settled on December Park, which promised to mix a coming of age story with a murder mystery focused on a serial killer. Unfortunately something must have been wrong with the blender, so to speak, because this novel did not totally work its magic on me this time.
December Park is set in the early ’90s in the small town of Harting Farms, on the Eastern Coast of the USA: Angelo and his friends Peter, Michael and Scott are looking forward to the end of school and to a summer of freedom, but when children start disappearing and one girl is found dead in a local park, a shadow falls over the town. As the abductor/killer, soon nicknamed the Piper, keeps going on undisturbed and the police seems to flounder in the absence of clues as to his identity or the fate of the missing kids, Angelo and Co., together with Adrian, a boy who came to live in Harting Farms only recently, decide to hunt for clues on their own and to uncover the Piper’s identity. What begins almost as a lark becomes increasingly risky as the five boys’ search moves to dangerous grounds and turns from the initial adventure into a potentially deadly obsession.
Let’s start with what worked for me, and worked well: December Park is, first and foremost, a coming of age story, and as such it portrays very well the journey these five sixteen-years-old kids undertake on this fateful summer. Told from Angelo’s point of view (one that for several reasons makes me think there is something of the author in his characterization), it shows the mix of childish impulses and yearning for adulthood that’s typical of their age. These are basically good kids despite a few “sins” like covertly smoking or enjoying Halloween pranks: the bond of friendship between them, which later on includes newcomer Adrian who is a somewhat weird kid, is a solid one and one of the best elements of the story, made even more real by the delightful banter that peppers their exchanges. I enjoyed seeing how they, bit by bit, manage to bring Adrian out of his shell and how he responds to them: being the newcomer and a solitary soul, he might have been the perfect target for scorn or abuse, but they bring him into their orbit and after a while he even becomes the main drive behind their search for the Piper. The atmosphere of a small, quiet town that still harbors a few secrets, and a few unsavory characters - like the older boy who loves to bully younger kids - is also rendered very well.
It’s intriguing to observe how the dread that falls over Harting Farms manages to keep young people and their parents apart: there is a certain sense of resignation, for want of a better word, in the way the adult population reacts to the disappearances; even Angelo’s father, who is a detective and therefore active in the investigation, looks more dejected than anything else. For their part the young people, or at least the five the story focuses on, appear instead obsessed with uncovering the identity of the Piper, to the point that they put their lives on the line more than once to solve the mystery. This divide is, however, one of the elements that did not work for me, because if on one side it helped in establishing the pall of dread over the town, on the other it did not feel realistic, particularly considering the impending danger: what the five accomplish, the risks they take more than once, all happen while the adults are virtually absent and unknowing, and I find it highly improbable that a community would be so deaf and blind to the antics of a group of teenagers, given the underlying circumstances.
And since I have now opened the “book of grievances”, I have to admit that the book feels too long, too meandering: given the matter at hand I would have preferred a tighter narrative, while here there is much space given to the five’s musings (which for some time amount to nothing since they have no clues at all) and to their endless cycling through the town’s streets. Still, this is a minor problem, and I easily solved it by skipping ahead in search of more interesting sections; the major one stands in the revelation of the Piper’s identity, because it comes out of the blue and to me it makes little or no sense at all.
When reading mysteries we - not unlike Angelo & friends - tend to consider the various people the author introduces, evaluating the clues and forming an opinion that might or might not be the correct one; and when the revelation occurs we can either congratulate ourselves for the powers of our intuition, or acknowledge that we were barking up the wrong tree. But what happens when we discover that the monster is someone we never saw before? Someone who was never part of the story? I felt a little cheated, to say the truth, and even more so because there is no explanation whatsoever for the reasons behind the Piper’s actions, or at least none that I could consider valid.
I keep thinking that as a coming of age novel December Park was a beautifully written story carried by five well-crafted, realistic characters who embarked on an “adventure” that proved formative and enlightening. It’s a pity that the final resolution marred this story with such an undeserved inconsistency….
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I received this novel from Orbit Books, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.
Once again RJ Barker has crafted a unique world that simply asks you to lose yourself in it, and this time around it’s been even easier to do so because the world - or rather its huge living forest - is an intriguingly complex and also dangerous one. Crua is home to a vast forest system that becomes ever more perilous the deeper one goes through it; wood is indeed the ruling element in this world where everything comes from trees: soldiers’ armor is made from wood, water is obtained from special vines, there is even a kind of floating vine that allows the easy transportation of heavy loads. But the forest unlocks its secrets reluctantly and going deeper into it - into the titular Wyrdwood - means that one might never be seen again.
Cahan du Nahere is a forester, a man deeply attuned to the woods he knows well, careful in taking only what he needs without succumbing to needless greed. He lives a solitary life on his farm, dealing with the memories of a painful past: when he was a child, he was trained by the high priest of the god Zorir to become its chosen one, but on Crua gods come and go with appalling ease and once a new god’s faith swept the land, Cahan was forced to hide from the winner’s acolytes. His quiet existence is soon upended when his clanless status and rumors of his past put him once again under the spotlight, threatening his survival. The chance encounter with Udinny, a delightfully outspoken monk and with Venn, a troubled youngster running from an uncertain destiny, will force Cahan to leave behind his cloak of anonymity and take an active part in the turmoil sweeping across the land.
It would hardly be a stretch to say that the world’s huge forests are more of a central character than the humans themselves. Crua is a harsh world, and a divided one - not just where politics are concerned (although ruthless power play is a recurring theme), but in a very physical sense, because of its axial tilt that condemns the north, where the action is set, to an endless winter, while the south enjoys a more balmy climate. And the forests represent much of the uncharted territories of this world, where plants and animal life act often as deadly predators; despite this terrifying prospect, these forests hold the reader’s attention through their aura of mystery: the part of the story where Cahan and Udinny venture deeply into the woods in search of a lost child is one of the more spellbinding in this first volume of the saga - we learn, though the awestruck eyes of Udinny, of the perils and the wonders of this world-within-a-world, of the many forms of trees, bushes and flowers and of the creatures that thrive in there, and the readers can share in Udinny’s fascination as the picture of this living, variegated forest takes shape and texture through the brilliant, cinematic descriptions.
The societal system is equally intriguing, despite the bleak living conditions described - and despite the fact that there are a number of details that get little or no explanation, and that require the readers to pay close attention, since the author does not waste any time in reader hand-holding: if village life is no picnic on Crua, to be clanless means finding oneself at the very bottom of the social scale, with no means of defense or hope of help should dire need present itself. The family units are structured around group marriages, where two or three couples bond raising the children together and often include a trion, a genderless person acting as a bridge between the various spouses. And then there are the Rai, elite soldiers (or rather, shock troops) enhanced by the presence of a cowl: this is the greatest mystery I encountered because very little is explained about cowls - they sound like symbiotic creatures that enhance the strength and the offensive and recuperative powers of the people they are connected to, but they also require a constant stream of energy that comes from the (mostly horrifying) death of chosen victims, conferring a shade of ruthless cruelty to the Rai. Still, I’m wondering about what cowls truly are, where they came from and so on, and I hope that the next books will shed more light on this detail.
As far as the characters are concerned, Cahan represents a mystery that is revealed in small increments through the second-person flashbacks interspersed between chapters: at first I wondered at what looked like his passive nature - when the local authorities grant the use of his property to a family of farmers, his rights being non-existent due to his clanless state, he gives in with appalling ease - but little by little I learned of his constant battle with the cowl he was gifted by Zorir’s priesthood, and with his refusal to give in to the cowl’s demands which would lead to violence and death. The cowl’s constant intrusion in his thoughts, its relentless “You need me” as soon as Cahan finds himself in dire straits, made me think of the lure of drugs for an addict, the endless tug-of-war between cravings and willpower, and put into sharper focus the man’s character and the wounds of his past.
Udinny could easily be Cahan’s polar opposite: talkative and open, eager to experience the world and totally given to the path of her goddess Ranya, who represents a sort of unifying spirit present in all living creatures. I enjoyed her constant questions as she and Cahan moved through the forest in their search of a missing child, and how she did her best to bring the man out of his self-imposed shell of silence and aloofness. It would not be too far from the truth to say that Udinny is a very welcome ray of sunshine in the overall bleakness of the story, and in this regard I have to admit that Gods of the Wyrdwood presents us with a far grimmer world than RJ Barker’s previous ones, which is an unusual feat considering how dark they were.
And lastly there is Venn, the young trion whose mother, a highly placed official, put in the unenviable position of being a cowled emissary of the current god. The young man, though, constantly refuses to give in to the violence necessary to bond with his cowl and it’s clear that he’s still suffering from PTSD from the experience she put him through when he was “gifted” with it. That nightmarish event informs his character in such a way that he’s able to resist the pressures exerted on him (and here I have to say that I completely despised his mother for what she put him through) until he discovers that a cowl is not always an instrument of death…
Where the story builds with something of a leisurely stroll, which includes Cahan’s and Udinny’s long journey through the forest, the last third of the novel moves with a hectic pace in preparation for an event that kept me on edge until its final resolution. The various narrative threads merge into an epic battle in which the themes of rebellion against injustice and prevarication meet those of friendship and found family that have been one of the strongest elements in previous RJ Barker stories. And while that epic battle was equally thrilling and heart-stopping, the final twist at the end of the novel left me both shocked for its unexpected revelation and eager for the next book in the series. One I look forward to with great enthusiasm.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I received this novel from Orbit Books, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.
After enjoying Megan O’Keefe’s The Protectorate trilogy, I was more than eager to see where she would take her readers next, and after reading this first volume in The Devoured Worlds series, all I can say is that this author managed to enormously improve from an already amazing starting point. The Blighted Stars is a complex novel based on many narrative threads that are handled with such skill that I never felt lost (something that happened at times with the equally complex The Protectorate) - such complexity, however, compels me to share more of the story than I’m used to in my reviews, but I will try to do so avoiding any spoilers.
In the future, humankind has made amazing breakthroughs but also lost a great deal: society is in the hands of five dominant families who control the economy and rule humanity through what looks like a feudal system. Mercator is the most powerful of these families: they hold the monopoly on the mining of relkatite, a material employed in the construction of space habitats and the cores of ships’ engines, among other things. Unfortunately it seems that wherever relkatite is mined extensively, the world falls prey to the shroud, a fungal growth that destroys all indigenous life: several worlds - also called cradles - have been lost to the shroud, including Earth, and a growing conservationist movement asking for a stop of relkatite mining is trying to oppose the Mercators’ expansion to other cradles.
Naira Sharp is the most vocal adversary of the Mercators: once the personal bodyguard - or exemplar - to Acaelus Mercator, the family’s head, she tried to stop the mining through a public hearing that she lost, thanks to the testimony of Tarquin Mercator, Acaelus’ son and a renowned geologist. Losing the battle also meant that Naira was put “on ice”: in this universe people’s minds can be transferred to a new body, which is printed by the evolutionary successors of our 3D printing machines. It’s a technique that insures virtual immortality, provided that you can pay the process of re-printing, and that the death of your previous print was not a violent one, because in that case the transferred consciousness “cracks” and becomes irretrievable. This also means that one’s mind - as is the case for Naira - can be stored indefinitely (“iced”) and never re-transferred into another body. Virtual death.
As the novel starts, Acaelus and Tarquin are orbiting Cradle Six, another promising world for the mining of relkatite, when something goes horribly wrong: Tarquin and a few survivors manage to shuttle down to the planet, and among them is also Naira Sharp, whose consciousness was transferred - thanks to the conservationist underground - into the body of Tarquin’s exemplar. The planet they find themselves on is already in an advanced stage of shroud predation, and it’s also infested by misprints, mindless creatures whose body printing went awry and whose instincts bring them to target the survivors. As the uneasy relationship between Tarquin and Naira grows into a tentative alliance, the two of them discover that many of their respective assumptions might be wrong and that humanity is facing a danger of frightening proportions.
As I said, I was completely engrossed in this story: there are so many narrative levels here, and I enjoyed them all. The whole concept of preserving human consciousness - or neural map - and transferring it to another body, is both fascinating and terrifying: if one can afford the expense, any time a body is damaged, or old, that individual can migrate to a brand-new one being so assured of near-immortality. But it’s not a perfect process, because multiple re-printings or a particularly gruesome death can affect the map and cause it to “crack” in the new body and bring the subject to madness - and even if the process is successful, where people are unable to upload their memories to the map, the new being might lose part of the experiences that occurred between the previous reprinting and the current one, and be a different person altogether. And all of the above does not even take into account the ramifications of suicide or euthanasia to preserve an individual’s map in the transition from a damaged print to a whole one - there is one sentence in the novel that to me summed up the various implications of the process:
People get to keep coming back, as long as they can afford to reprint. But I don’t believe the human heart has caught up with technology.
The society depicted here is equally fraught with contradictions: where on one side we see a star-faring humanity expanding through the universe, we have on the other a limited group of individuals ruling over their subjects with literal powers of life and death, asking for obedience and submission in exchange for the chance of a better life. Environmental, economical and political themes are also explored in a way that is never preaching but well-integrated into the story and the aspects of privilege and the relationship between ruler and subjects are woven into the narrative creating an intriguing whole that never suffers a moment of boredom.
The characters are equally well constructed and explored and I must applaud the way Megan O’Keefe treated the theme of enemies-to-lovers because I was not only captivated by the slow-burn development of the relationship between Tarquin and Naira, but I was actively rooting for it, something that does not usually happen to me, given my wariness toward any romantic entanglement in the stories I read. Tarquin is something of a naive individual, uncomfortable with the power his family exerts and more inclined toward academic studies rather than wielding that power and the privilege that come with it. Naira, on the other hand, had to fight for her survival all her life and she is a mixture of combat readiness and vulnerability that instantly endeared her to me. The way in which tentative banter and growing mutual respect turn the relationship between the two of them from bodyguard and charge to uneasy allies and to something more - united in a common front against the looming danger that might wipe out humanity as we conceive it - was a delight to behold and certainly one of the main strengths of the novel.
And of course there is the mystery at the core of the story, one that is slowly uncovered through a series of well-placed twists and turns that keep the pace going at a good speed and move the story from adventure to fight for survival to horror and to breakneck runs through a shroud-infested terrain that will keep you on the edge of your seat for most of the book. As the start of a new series, The Blighted Stars manages to both lay the groundwork and to create the stage for what promises to be a no-holds-barred battle for survival against a pervasive, insidious foe - and I can’t wait to learn how that battle will be fought.
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I have to confess that when Alexander Darwin contacted me about reading and reviewing The Combat Codes I was initially dubious because of the martial arts angle which features prominently in the story, since it’s not exactly my cup of tea, but a swift research online showed me that there was a good measure of character development in the book, and that was enough for me to take the proverbial plunge. Now I’m very glad I accepted because this novel offered much more than I expected, both story-wise and where characters are concerned.
The world in which the story is set has a long, bloody history of violent wars between nations; presently they have been set aside thanks to Grievar Knights, dedicated warriors who act as champions for the various factions: they meet in ritual combat in the arena and any dispute is settled with the outcome of the fight.
“We fight, so the rest shall not have to.”
Grievars follow a set of rules, the Codes (each chapter starts with a quote from them, and is relevant to the events that take place in the story): they dictate not only the kind of moves allowed in combat, but also the moral tenets every fighter must adhere to, and these rules have been rigorously followed for a long time, but in recent times they have been abandoned in favor of more “modern” techniques and more performative physical enhancements.
Murray Pearson is a former Grievar Knight, once famous and powerful, now fallen into almost oblivion: he spends his days drinking and scouting for talent to be turned into Grievar champions in the prestigious Lyceum, the city’s academy where fighters’ skills are honed to perfection. Cego is a young boy barely surviving in the depths of the city: he has no memory of how he ended there, only flashes of a former life on a remote island, where he and his two brothers were taught the way of the Grievar by an old mentor. Captured and forced to fight in the slave pits, a travesty of the Grievar arenas, he catches Murray’s eye who sees an enormous potential in the boy and manages to get him enrolled in the Lyceum.
While he grows as a fighter and future Grievar, Cego starts to learn more about himself and his abilities, forms bonds of friendship with his team-mates and also deals with some unsavory characters who test his temperament and his respect for the Codes. Meanwhile, Murray is conducting something of an investigation into the dealings at the Lyceum, and both his search and Cego’s journey will take the readers toward a surprising revelation that will certainly lead to new and intriguing narrative paths in the next books of the series.
Where the novel’s structure holds a certain kind of familiarity - the old mentor, the young apprentice learning new skills, the school setting with its challenges, the adversarial bully, and so on - the story is carried by a very engaging prose that makes for a compelling reading, aided by the slow revelation of a very complex world in which elements of fantasy and science fiction seamlessly blend together to build the intriguing picture of a dystopian background in which technology and magic live side by side. One of the details I found most intriguing is the link between the Circles (the fighting arenas) and the substance from which they are built: depending on the base element, the Circle takes on a specific color and can exert an equally specific influence on the fighters - either in mind or body - and therefore influence the outcome of a fight.
Another intriguing facet comes from the “present” evolution of the fighting rules: the Codes seem to be slowly losing their impact on the style and mindset of the Grievars, the use of enhancing drugs taking the place of more intensive training or as a way of increasing stamina. Older Knights, like Murray, perceive this phenomenon as a departure from the honorable way of fighting they were taught, while the younger generations see it as a way of gaining an edge against their opponents. It’s interesting to see how a young person like Cego feels a compelling need to remain faithful to the Codes, while feeling the pressure to perform better and better and therefore be an asset for his nation - a dichotomy that will take an interesting turn as the story goes on…
And speaking of Cego, I enjoyed his coming-of-age journey, from the grim depths of the slave pits to the excellence of the Lyceum, from the loneliness of the outcast to the glory of championship and the rewards of friendship and found family: throughout all these experiences, he manages to retain a certain form of candor, a deep capacity for honesty and appreciation for friendship that quickly endeared him to me and made me follow his progress with keen interest. And since this leads to discussion of the combat itself, I have to say that I appreciated these descriptions as well, to my surprise: as I mentioned at the beginning of the review, martial arts are not within my sphere of interest, but I found the depictions of Grievar fights very well detailed and quite cinematic, so that it was not hard to see them in my mind’s eye and they ended adding to my enjoyment of the novel.
The momentous revelation at the end of the book represented a big surprise for me and while it did not close the story on an actual cliffhanger (for which I’m very grateful…), it did promise interesting developments for the future, so that I’m more than looking forward to the continuation of this series.
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My first, and so far only encounter with Mark Lawrence’s works was with Prince of Thorns and while I liked the story I did not exactly enjoy it: not so much because of the grimness, with which I’m already familiar thanks to writers like Martin or Abercrombie, but because the main character, Jorg, was so steeped in his search for vengeance that I could not find in him any redeeming quality. Those feelings were so overwhelming that I could not bring myself to move forward with the series - or to read anything else by this author. Until now. Exactly ten years after my not-so-happy encounter with Jorg, and after reading so many positive reviews from fellow bloggers, I decided to try again with a novel from Mark Lawrence and settled on Prince of Fools - and this choice proved quite felicitous…
Prince Jalan, tenth in the line of succession in the realm of Red March, does not care for power: his only interests are wine, women and gambling - the latter putting him more often than not in serious trouble, as does his flitting from one willing female to the next. In the course of his umpteenth mad dash to avoid the enraged relative of one such female, he barely escapes a deadly trap set by the Silent Sister, the crone who sits besides the queen’s throne and that few can see, and in so doing he becomes inextricably and magically entangled with Snorri, a Viking warrior brought to Red March as a prisoner. The two of them set off for a quest across the world looking for the means to undo the spell - a quest that also entails Snorri’s search for the fate of his family. As their journey progresses, they become aware of the impending danger from the Dead King and his army of reanimated corpses, and of the fact that the spell binding the two of them might be more than a “simple” inconvenience…
The tone and mood of Prince of Fools conquered me immediately: where Jorg’s journey represented something of a dark descent into hell, Jalan’s story - even though it is not always sunny and fun - was a more relaxing blend of drama and humor, mostly due to the happy-go-luck attitude of the protagonist. Jalan is quite open about his shortcomings, almost proud of them, a self-centered guy affected by Peter Pan Syndrome who is quite happy about this state of affairs, and hoping for it to go on indefinitely. He is therefore the perfect foil for Norse warrior Snorri, a man firmly set in his honor code and totally filled with a love for adventure and battle that Jalan cannot comprehend. In the young prince’s own words:
With Snorri troubles were always put front and centre and dealt with. My style was more shove them under the rug until the floor got too uneven to navigate, and then to move home.
This difference is further stressed once they are bound by the spell that forces them to stay together (increasing the distance between them causes enormous discomfort and might even lead to death) and that’s expressed with encroaching darkness for Snorri and blinding light for Jalan. Two halves of the same whole, different and yet complementary - and probably destined to some higher purpose. But the journey, either the physical one or the road toward mutual understanding and friendship, is not an easy one and their travels are punctuated by Snorri’s cheerful acceptance of hardships and Jalan’s constant whining about lack of comforts. Or willing women…
More than once I was somehow reminded of that older movie, The Defiant Ones, starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, where two escaped convicts bound by a chain are forced to cooperate to survive. Jalan and Snorri are equally bound to each other and observing their forced companionship turn first into grudging acceptance and then respect and friendship constitutes the main delight of this story. The journey also reveals their true characters behind the outward mask they are both wearing: Snorri’s bluster hides a deep-seated pain mixed with regrets, and under Jalan’s self-absorption there is a good person, capable of kindness and empathy, mostly revealed through his reactions to Snorri’s tale of woe.
Characters always represent what makes or breaks a story for me, and in this respect Prince of Fools is a winner, but in this case the world-building works just as well because I found this imaginary world both intriguing and fun. Looking at an online map for the novel, I discovered that the background is loosely based on the European continent, with Jalan’s Red March taking a space that includes the westernmost part of Northern Italy and the southern coast of France: mentions of Rome and Florence further strengthen the resemblance, as do, for example, the names for the realm of Rhone (which roughly corresponds to central France) or the descriptions of the northern territories from which Snorri comes, that are clearly the area constituted by Sweden and Norway. The constant references to the ancient Builders and the destructive event of the Thousand Suns clearly point to this world as being a post-apocalyptic one in which memory of the past has been all but erased, the few surviving notions twisted and turned into legends that open the road for some tongue-in-cheek humor, like the mention of the train, which has now become some sort of mythical beast or that of a famous Viking ship whose name was “Ikea”…
Even though this novel lost me for a short while, when the start of Jalan and Snorri’s journey felt somewhat erratic and lacking some focus, it still managed to keep me reading on because of the constantly evolving relationship between the two main characters, and once the story reached its climatic peak I was totally onboard and fully invested in it - I might have waited a decade to get back to this author’s works, but now he has my full attention and my eagerness to see where the journey goes. And maybe - who knows? - I might even give Jorg another chance…. ;-)
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This third installment of what has quickly become my favorite Urban Fantasy series played with some of the narrative threads explored in the previous books and moved forward in a very intriguing and quite satisfactory way, offering the by now familiar mix of humor and drama while at the same time delving deeper into some of the main characters, bringing to the surface a few unexpected facets of their personalities.
The team at the Stranger Times is undergoing a period of unsettling changes: Hannah Willis, the assistant editor who was carving her own niche at the paper, just resigned abruptly, with no other explanation that she’s considering going back to her cheating husband - and to better gather her thoughts on the matter, she booked a stay at a new-age-oriented, exclusive spa where she will learn how to put her life into perspective. The newspaper’s owner sends a very strange lady, Betty Cavendish, to replace Hannah and Betty promptly asserts her rule by fending off easily editor Banecroft’s bullying attitude and keeping poor Grace occupied (or rather distressed) by requiring a financial inventory. But it’s chief editor Vincent Banecroft who shows the biggest changes, because he’s become obsessed with his wife’s ghost, whose voice calls to him through the apparition of another ghost, young hopeful Simon, and asks him for help: consumed with the need to contact her and convinced that she might still be alive, Banecroft loses any interest in the Stranger Times’ proceedings and sets on a road to hell that might cost him much more than the paper he manages…
Unlike the previous two books in the series, Love Will Tear Us Apart does not follow the team as a whole but rather sends them all in different directions, engaged in different adventures, and that gives them a chance to experience some individual growth as characters: such is the case, for example, of shrouded-in-mystery Stella whose bizarrely awkward partnership with Betty takes her for once out of the confines of the paper - even though it’s for a very harrowing grave-robbing expedition; she also turns into a more hands-on member of the team when the infamous Loon Day comes around once again and the Stranger Times is literally inundated by a mob of more or less crazy people eager to share their tales of the uncanny with the staff.
Hannah herself is undergoing some momentous changes: her meeting with a very different ex-husband Karl ends with her booking a stay at the Pinter Institute, an exclusive retreat where she experiences a very shaky start by falling flat on her face. The Institute is a strange place, to say the least, run by plastic-faced personnel that are just a half-step short of being robotic, and poor Hannah is subjected to the strangest remedies that go from hot yoga to other… ahem… intrusive therapies that should help her “find herself” but sound too weird even to someone used to the madness of the Stranger Times.
As for Banecroft, he is a man obsessed: since making contact with the voice of his departed wife, he has been so concentrated on unraveling this mystery that he left everything else unravel around him, including his own well-being. I have to admit that I felt deep compassion for this loudmouthed, uncouth character whose manners are as inexcusable as his own personal hygiene, and I followed the narrative thread concerning his quest with great trepidation. This search brings him into contact with a couple of previously encountered characters - Cogs, the compulsive truth-teller living on a boat and his talking dog Zeke, who are given a good deal of narrative space here and offer some of the most amusing pages in a story that walks on the uneasy balance between mystery and fun.
If it might seem that all these diverging narrative threads could be a recipe for a confusing read, think again, because CK McDonnell does weave them quite masterfully into a cohesive whole that evolves into a veritable page-turner once the story establishes its “legs”: the shortish chapters, which move from one character to the other, encourage you to keep reading, and as the questions and the revelations pile up it becomes almost impossible not to let oneself be swept up in the current of events. Thankfully, there are some stops where readers can catch their proverbial breath, because in this third book of the series you will find the very welcome return of the “sensationalist articles” encountered in the firs volume: from the “discovery” of the origin of spam telephone calls in outer space to an accusation of plagiarism directed at Stephen King, these newsflashes offer the chance for a relaxing laugh before delving again into the plot’s twists and turns.
And as far as the plot is concerned, I’m aware I said next to nothing about it, but to do so would run the risk of spoiling your enjoyment, so I will only say that some of the threads that started in the previous two books reach here their - quite satisfactory - fruition, and prepare the ground, or so I hope, for future stories set in the quirkiest newspaper I ever learned about. And I will welcome those stories with unabashed delight….
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
For this year’s Wyrd & Wonder I wanted to take the opportunity to read some of the fantasy books that have been languishing for a while on my TBR, and the first that came to my attention is this first volume in Devin Madson’s Reborn Empire series: with hindsight, I can’t believe I waited so long before losing myself in this magnificent saga that from the very start proved to be a compelling read peopled with amazing characters. The novel seems to throw the readers into the middle of things and it takes a while to get one’s bearings: a brief search taught me that there is a prequel trilogy to this series and that explains the sense of “missing information” one feels at the beginning, but don’t fear - the author has a way of conveying the necessary details through some well-placed dialogue that brings readers up to speed quickly and allows them to connect with the narrative with no problem at all.
The story is told through three different POVs which represent the three main cultures sharing this world - not only that, but each of them is narrated in the first person, gifting the characters with very distinctive personalities that in turn help depict the different milieus they come from, three civilizations that have been at odds with each other for a long time. Through the eyes of Princess Miko we experience the Kisian empire, a realm reminiscent of feudal Japan: Miko and her brother Tanaka are the children of the ruling Kisian emperor - or rather that’s the cover story, since they are in reality the offspring of the previous ruler, whose actions caused him to be branded a traitor and be killed. The two are waiting for Tanaka to be named heir and meanwhile have to navigate the dangerous waters of court intrigue; an impulsive act from Tanaka causes a political upheaval that rekindles the hostility with neighboring Chiltae, launching both countries on the path of war and forcing Miko to act against her cultural and social boundaries and take her destiny - and that of Kisia - into her own hands.
Chiltae offers the well-known medieval fantasy setting, complete with a powerful clergy and their dangerous Blessed Guards. Cassandra Marius is a Chiltaen citizen and a prostitute who also doubles as a hired assassin: there is something very mysterious, and also very wrong with her, since there is a constant, nagging voice in her head that seems to come from a very different personality, one capable at times to take control of her body. Add to that the fact that she can hear the “call” of the dead and you have a very fractured personality that, however, seems able to function well enough to ensure her survival. Hired by an enigmatic individual to assassinate two people in exchange for the promise of a cure for her “ailment”, Cassandra accepts only to discover that her target is a highly placed one, and that she is a quite expendable pawn in a convoluted political game.
Rah e’Torin is the captain of a band of Levanti, nomadic tribes of the plains living in virtual symbiosis with their horses. He and his people have been exiled like many others before them and in their search for a place to call their own they are captured by the Chiltaens who forcibly enroll them in their war against Kisia. Once reached the main camp, Rah discovers that his old friend and mentor Gideon is at the head of the Levanti conscripts, which forces the younger man to come to terms with the compromises their new condition imposes on the old way of life, and to choose between survival and the adherence to Levanti codes of conduct.
When novels are written with multiple POVs, it’s easy to find one or more who are the reader’s favorites at the expense of the others, but such was not the case with We Ride the Storm, because I enjoyed all three characters in equal measure, and the constantly raising stakes of their different destinies made me care for them in a way I seldom experience: as the buildup of events carried them forward, showing more and more nuances in their psychological makeup and turning their individual situation ever more difficult, I found myself unable to stop turning the pages to learn what would happen next.
Even though I enjoyed all three POVs, Miko is the character who shows a major evolution in the course of the book: her culture requires women to defer to men in all matters, and although she can envision a future as ruler of Kisia, she is ready to accept a secondary role to her brother Tanaka, and it’s only when disaster strikes that she finds the moral and physical strength necessary to lead her people in the struggle against the Chiltaen invasion.
[…] I had lived in a prison made of people with more power. I did not want to be afraid anymore. I wanted to sit on the throne of my ancestors and make them proud.
Cassandra is a complicated person in many ways and - sadly - her chapters don’t enjoy the same narrative space as the other two protagonists (although with three more books in the series my hope of learning more is still strong) but what little we see is quite intriguing and also offers one more mystery to be explored in the person of the weird Witchdoctor, who might be the one to solve the puzzle of the mysterious “She” who shares Cassandra consciousness.
Rah is the character for whom I felt a great deal of compassion: both as the leader of his band of outcasts, and then as a conscripted soldier for the supercilious Chiltaen, he desperately tries not to compromise his principles, finding it ever so difficult when even his hero Gideon seems to have bargained his honor in exchange for vague promises of freedom. Rah’s faithfulness to his moral compass is both admirable and sad, because it’s clear that he’s living through a time of change and one has to wonder if that change is going to trample him it its wake.
As a series opener, We Ride the Storm is an amazing story that wonderfully blends excellent characterization and masterful world-building, but it’s also a very emotional journey through the experiences of three very different people who in the course of the story become so alive and real that it’s almost impossible to forget they are fictional characters. At the end of this first volume, all three are left on the brink of… something - be it good or bad - that compels me not to wait too long before moving forward with their journey. I have rarely felt so impressed by a new discovery as I have been with Devin Madson’s writing, and I know I have just found a new favorite author for my reading “adventures”.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Paladins are soldiers (holy berserkers) called to the service of various gods, or Saints, and Stephen is one of those serving the Saint of Steel: one day his god dies, and Stephen, alongside his comrades, falls prey to blind rage and starts attacking everyone in sight. Only a handful of these paladins survive the ordeal, and they are always on guard for the return of the madness; presently, three years later, these surviving Paladins are affiliated to the Temple of the White Rat, an order dedicated to public services like law and medicine, where they hope to remain useful while dealing with the heavy psychological consequences of their god’s death.
One night Stephen meets, in very… well, awkward circumstances, a woman fleeing from the acolytes of the Hanged Mother cult: her name is Grace, she is a talented perfumer and a person with whom the paladin feels immediately at ease, able to forget for a while the heavy burden of his past. Grace also has a painful past to deal with, and the two of them meet again in weird circumstances while their mutual attraction grows despite the constant comedy of errors plaguing their encounters. All the while, the city lives in fear of a brutal assassin who leaves severed heads (and no bodies) in his wake and political intrigue further muddies the waters, adding to the burden of troubles for the two would-be lovers.
I had a lot of fun with Paladin’s Grace: it was all that I’ve come to expect from a story by T. Kingfisher, and more. It even surprised me by putting a romance at the core of the novel and making me enjoy it, which is so very unusual since it’a a theme I tend to avoid, but the growing relationship between Stephen and Grace was so fun to follow that I felt completely invested in it and ended up rooting for these two people so badly hurt by life’s hard blows that they deserved some happiness…
Grace is the typical Kingfisher heroine: a very human, very relatable mix of strength and vulnerability, someone who has learned to fend for herself in a world that too often proved hostile and cruel, always ready to take away what she had managed to gain through hardship and sacrifice. Despite the difficult baggage that she carries, Grace is still capable of humor that comes delightfully across in her inner musings, and she also learned the kind of self-sufficiency that turned her into a very independent woman - granted, she’s terribly shy and still suffers from a certain sense of inadequacy, but she knows to rely only on herself:
Rescue was bad. People who wanted you to be vulnerable and grateful tended to get very angry when you stopped being vulnerable and didn’t act grateful enough.
Which makes Stephen’s not-so-smooth attempts at taking care of her all the harder. He’s laboring under some heavy baggage himself, constantly battling with the depression caused by the death of his saint and with the underlying fear of going berserk again and wreaking irreparable havoc. The only moments when he feels that burden lifted are those he spends with Grace: one might say they are both broken people who find in each other the possibility of healing their wounds and becoming whole again - and that’s probably the reason I found the romance in this story so intriguing, so real and worthy of cheering on.
Secondary characters are just as captivating as the main ones, particularly the members of the Temple of the Rat: from brother Francis the healer, whom we meet at the start of the novel, to Bishop Beartongue, an older woman whose no-nonsense attitude blends with tongue-in-cheek humor that made me happy for every scene in which she appeared, to lawyer Zale whose apparent offhand attitude hides a keen intellect, they all incarnate an ideal of service to others that counterbalances the darkness of the social and political background in which the story is set. Getting to know them, and their attitude toward humanity, it’s not surprising that they were the ones to offer the broken paladins a home and a reason to go on living. Fellow paladin Istvhan is another wonderful character I enjoyed reading about: a mix of brotherly concern and hands-on advice, he’s the perfect foil for Stephen’s uncertainties - not to mention one of the recipients of his brother-in-arms’ knitted socks. Yes, you read me correctly, Stephen knits socks in his spare time: after all even warriors need a hobby, don’t they? And let’s not forget either Marguerite, Grace’s landlady, friend and accomplished spy in incognito, and Grace’s pet - something of a cross between a cat and a ferret, as far as I understand it - which fills the by-now-expected role of animal companion that seems to be a fixed element in all Kingfisher books.
There is a great deal to enjoy in Paladin’s Grace besides the amorous fumblings from Grace and Stephen: the required political games typical of the setting offer an interesting background that at some point morphs into intense courtroom drama, and the dreadful mystery about the severed heads is not fully resolved, making me hope that more will be explained in the next two books of the series, but what comes to the fore more intensely is the message that even damaged people can find a way of overcoming the injuries from the past and find in others the strength to face the future - hopefully a better one. It’s indeed a powerful message, one that makes this already enjoyable story something more than just a story…