A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan 2) by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

The second book was just as good as the first one. I loved every minute of it, even if the more I learned about the Empire, the more I felt like it was a terrifying place to live in, especially if you chose to serve it.

I mean, the whole motto of the Empire is “You are the Empire”. While that could be uplifting to some to think that they are a small part of a bigger whole, in reality, it just means that they are just a cog in a huge machine that is the Empire and that they can be easily disposable and replaceable. Oh, and it’s assumed that they would dedicate their whole lives to safeguarding that Empire. Since it is in constant danger of destruction from the Leviathans who come ashore every year, I wouldn’t think that it’s a very nice place to live. The psychological toll must be enormous, especially in the cantons closest to the sea walls.

Din and Ana are an absolute joy to follow in this book as well. Din especially has a lot going on with him in this story – from a financial crisis not of his making but one that he feels responsible for, to trying to decide what he wants to do in life. I understand that he feels stuck. the Iudex wasn’t his first choice of assignment, and the more crimes he solves with Ana, the more he despairs about his purpose. What’s the point of investigating crimes when it won’t rectify the wrongs? The victim is already dead, the family devastated, lives broken to the point where they can’t be fixed. He feels like no matter what he does, he isn’t making a difference, unlike the Legion who has a concrete enemy to fight on the walls.

I am glad that by the end of this book Din made peace with his life and finally understood that the Iudex also matters, maybe even more than the Legion, even if theirs is a thankless job. Because, as Ana said, let the Legion defend the Empire, but it’s the Iudex’s duty to make sure there is an Empire left worth defending.

This book is also darker and seems more desperate than the first one, though the inclusion of Malo brought much-needed levity to an otherwise pretty bleak story. I liked her, and I hope that we see at least a little more of her in the next book as well. 

We also learned a bit more about Ana and what was done to her, which is again… horrifying. This is a cruel world where surviving another wet season justifies a lot of atrocities perpetrated against their own people. 

I am looking forward to the next book in the series. Hopefully, we will learn a bit more about the Leviathans and where they come from (or why they come ashore every year).

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Hanged Man (The Tarot Sequence 2) by K.D. Edwards

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Stars: 5 out of 5

The biggest strength of this series is the characters. Yes, the worldbuilding is phenomenal – complex, but plausible, with rules that make sense and breaking which has real consequences. I enjoy discovering more facets of that layered world with each new book. But the characters, oh the characters… they make the story better in every sense of the way.

I love Rune and Brand and their bond. Yes, they are Scion and Companion, but they are also so much more than that – brothers, best friends, the two last shards of a shattered throne standing back to back against the rest of the world. Heck, they are almost two pieces of the same soul. I love their bickering, because it never feels malicious, and their love for each other shines through every action they take, even if sometimes those actions are ill-advised. 

But it’s not just Rune and Brand, I love Addam and his unwavering support of Rune, as well as his love for his younger brother Quinn. and Quinn, oh Quinn… such an adorable little Prophet who still perfectly encapsulates what it means to be a teenager. 

And we get a few other additions to Rune’s found little family, and they are just as fantastic. I love Corrine, and I’m glad she didn’t have to sacrifice herself. And Ana will be a force to reckon with when she grows up. It will be rather hilarious to see Rune try to navigate the choppy waters of parenthood with this one. He will have to grow a spine and learn to put his foot down, otherwise she will run circles around him. And Ciarran was back, so that is always a plus because I love him to pieces.

This book is also much darker than the first one. I mean OMG, the scenes on the Declaration are nightmare fuel. No, I’m serious, I had nightmares about that battleship after I finished this book. I am glad that the man (if you can call that monster that) has been dealt with. His death wasn’t even close to the torment he deserved for what he put all those souls through for decades. 

I am glad that Rune finally claimed his seat at the Arcanum because he realized that he is not just Rune Saint John, he is Lord Sun, and people depend on him now other than Brand.  People who will need the protection of his house and name, which means he needs to reclaim that house. Of course, this comes with a lot more problems – they are an official house now, so they can be officially attacked and raided. They need to build a compound, they will need to create alliances, they will need funds, they will need to play politics. In other words, everything Brand hates, and Rune has been avoiding until now.

I am looking forward, to and also dreading the next book in the series because things will get darker as Rune comes closer and closer to discovering who ordered the massacre of his family all those years ago. I am just hoping that in the end, all of them will still be alive and standing, but most importantly, happy, because they deserve it.

Onwards to the next book in the series!

Wild Massive by Rob Hart

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DNF at 35%

I loved the blurb for this book – a giant building as a representation of a multiverse with each floor being a different slide of reality and elevators traveling between them for those who knew how to find the shafts and summon them? Yes, please! An Association of various species, civilizations, or floors controlling most of the bottom floors and reaching ever higher and higher up? And with probably nefarious intentions? Sign me up for this! A plot to destroy several floors or possibly a good chunk of this building? Heck, yeah!

Well, the more I read, the more disappointed I got. This is not a small book. It clocks are almost 500 pages, and I made it a quarter of the way through, and you know what? I still don’t know what this story is supposed to be about. It’s aimless. It’s wandering and meandering all over the place. It’s like the author had all these wonderful ideas and just dropped them all in the same pot and stirred it, hoping that it would make for a good soup. Unfortunately, it didn’t, at least for me. 

The whole book feels disjointed. I’m a quarter of the way through, and I still don’t know what the stakes are, or if there even are any stakes. There are too many characters and most of their motivations are still unclear to me. I mean, I’m almost to the middle point, shouldn’t I know what these different people want by now? I still don’t know what Clarissa wants apart from being left alone in her elevator. Or why the shape-shifters are so hell-bent on destroying the Association. I mean, the only thing that is mentioned is that the Association took one of their own hostage. Isn’t an all-out war a bit of an overreaction? 

Also, why did the Association suddenly eradicate all the Brilliant? What are they hoping to achieve or prevent by this? What do the other various human and non-human entities at play in this Building hope to achieve? I have no clue.

There is no central theme or danger to overcome that I am aware of. And thus, it just feels like a pointless romp through a variety of strange environments. Yes, they are varied and mostly amazing, but I came for a story, not a sightseeing tour.

Also, the tone of the book is off-putting – it gets serious when describing some of the things that happen, and some pretty messed up things actually happen. But then, all of a sudden, we get something humorous or ridiculous that completely clashes with what happened before. If the author was attempting to write a satire, he failed. For good satirical books that also have a lot of heart and tell compelling stories, I would suggest reading anything by Terry Pratchett.

As it stands, I will not continue with this story, because I’m bored, I don’t care about the multitude of characters I am forced to follow, and it’s way too long.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Stone Cold Magic (Ella Grey 1) by Jayne Faith

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Stars: 2 out of 5

This was a promising start, and I enjoyed the first three-quarters of the book, but it went downhill after that for a few reasons.

I think first and foremost, at least for me, is that I grew to despise the protagonist. She was mildly irritating at first, but I chalked it off to her upbringing and a recent traumatic experience she went through. The longer I read though, the more I understood that no, this was just how Ella truly was. 

She is extremely selfish, and she is very passive-aggressive when she wants others to do something for her, which is… all the time. She never pauses to think about the consequences of her actions to herself or anyone else she drags into the messes she creates. And, as I said, she gets passive-aggressive when they try to say no, or just brushes off their concerns like they are not important or valid. Because they aren’t to her, either important or valid, because nothing is more important to Ella than Ella. 

Case in point, when Damien, a guy who she met barely a few days ago, tells her that he is not comfortable breaking into a highly fortified compound on a pretend inspection because he doesn’t want word of this to get to his very influential family, she just… brushes this off? And the weird part is that he still goes with her. Why? Why is she portrayed as this special snowflake that all men (even gay men) fall over themselves to help and coddle? 

She also suffers from the TSTL (too stupid to live) syndrome, because she thinks with her hormones, not her brain. Like the decision to keep the reaper’s soul, even though it’s devouring her, just because she saw a vision of someone who might or might not have been her missing brother. Now she is persuaded that this soul is the only way she’ll find him. Erm, why? Did she exhaust any other means of searching for him? Because it doesn’t look to me like she tried all that hard. She even flat-out refused help from a licensed private investigator. Really? 

Or deciding to infiltrate a secure compound to “liberate” a gargoyle with a human stuck in it. All this with only 8 people, none of which are aware that she is planning a kidnapping instead of a simple inspection to make sure the boy is still alive. And the worst part is, there are no consequences for any of that. Ella does the most stupid and hair-brained things and the author just rewards her for this. 

In the end, I didn’t care about whether Ella and co freed Nathan from his stone prison, or whether she would survive the reaper’s soul. In fact, I was rather rooting for the reaper to win her over, so that I didn’t have to read about her anymore. Needless to say, I won’t continue with this series.

Balancing the Scales (Twenty-Sided Sorceress 10) by Annie Bellet

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5

This was a decent final book in a series that I truly appreciated, though it feels like the series as a whole lost its focus once they defeated Samir. The confrontation with Samir was built up to and anticipated in so many previous books that it felt cathartic once it was done. I would honestly been happy if the series had just ended there. The other books before this one felt like filler or side-quests for Jade and the crew now that they had defeated the final boss. And pulling the First and the big bad for this last installment felt… rather anticlimactic, I guess? 

I mean Samir had been built up as this big bad during the course of all the books in the series, and he had done some horrible things both to Jade and to her friends. He was bad, we hated him, so we rooted for Jade to finally triumph while also keeping her freedom and saving the lives of her found family. 

The First though? We didn’t even know he existed until 3 books ago. His motivations are vague to non-existent. His powers are… rather underwhelming.  So he can control shapeshifters… But only a certain number of them at once, and he must be close enough to exert that control. So he used to be able to see the future, but he is so arrogant about it that he doesn’t even doubt the visions he had almost half a century ago. This makes him a rather laughable opponent instead of a real villain to be feared.

I also didn’t particularly appreciate the fact that they turned Alec into a damsel in distress for this book. I mean, you have a badass shapeshifter character that can compel other shapeshifters into shifting with his roar alone. Who is a strong and capable fighter… and the only use you find for him is to make him a hostage to keep Jade properly motivated? That’s wasted potential right there. 

Same with Harper and her other friends. It almost seemed like the author didn’t know what to do with them anymore, and she really wanted to have Jade be the lone hero for this final confrontation with the First, so everyone else is relegated to inconsequential tasks. Again, lost potential for collaboration, comradery, and all in all-in-all badassery during the final battle and even before. 

All in all, though, I am happy that Samir’s heart has been properly eaten and digested so that Jade’s amulet doesn’t have to be this McGaffin that everyone wants anymore. It was also fun to see the Mother of vampires, though her character was greatly underused. I don’t know if the author was planning a spin-off series or more books about Jade, but it feels like she just appeared to solve a problem, and hasn’t been heard since.

I also liked that even though the seal is broken, the world hasn’t ended. In fact, a new life started for some of the characters involved.

I am happy I happened across these books and decided to stick with them til the end.