Category Archives: Reviews

books, Reviews, science fiction, Space opera

Alliance (A Linesman Novel) by S. K. Dunstall.

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

 

First of all, can I squeee like a fangirl that the second book in this series if finally out? OMG OMG, I’m so happy!!!! Ahem, now that I got that off my chest, let’s proceed with the review, shall we? 🙂

 

I read and absolutely loved Linesman, the first book in this series, and you can read my raving review here if you want, so I had been waiting for Alliance with bated breath. I am happy to say that I haven’t been disappointed. I burned through that book in three days, and I would have finished earlier, but I had to work, eat, sleep, and exercise as well. I absolutely loved it! I would have given it 10 stars if I was judging books in a 10 star scale.

 

But let’s stop digressing and dive into the story, shall we?

 

Alliance picks up a few weeks after the end of Linesman. There’s been a major power shift in the different fractions that share the known space, with several words forming the New Alliance and going against Gate Union. The conflict hasn’t degenerated into a full blown war yet, but it’s mostly because Gate Union is confident that they can suffocate the New Alliance by cutting their access to the jump gates. And the New Alliance is still trying to figure out how to use the alien ships they had discovered in book 1. Because the problem is that Ean managed to link several human ships to the Eleven (the alien line ship), but he has no idea how to unlink them and let them move separately. They all jump together or not at all. Kinda hard to wage a war when your fleet can’t break formation isn’t it?

 

I love that we start this book exactly where the previous one left off, because this is such a complex word and Linesman raised to many interesting questions about the true nature of lines and the way linesmen interacted with them. I’m happy that the author chose to explore that further in Alliance. And we finally learn what line seven does! It’s not as useless as everyone had assumed for nearly 500 years, and proves to be quite crucial in some rather tense situations.

 

I also loved that we got more development into the relationship that grows between a captain and his or her ship. It was hinted in the first book that a captain bonds with his ship and that the lines end up reflecting a bit of the captain’s distinct personality. That’s why Captain Helmo immediately noticed when Ean touched on of the lines on the Lancastrian Princess without his approval in book 1.

 

In Alliance, we discover that captains pretty much bound with their ship for life, that’s why once you assume captainship of a ship, you never move anywhere else. Ship = Captain, hence the instances of “mad ships” when captains die in an accident or are killed, and why captains usually don’t survive the destruction of their ship.

 

And here comes Captain Selma Kari Wang, the only survivor of a vicious attack on her ship. She lost her legs, she lost her crew, she lost her ship, and with that, she lost her soul and her will to continue living. But to her dismay, the New Alliance wants to put her on the alien ship Eleven. Putting an experienced captain on a brand new ship is never done, but political struggles in the New Alliance play so that nobody asks her about her opinion on the matter. So she is sent on a ship she doesn’t want or care about, that nobody else understands either, when all she wants is to crawl in a hole and die.

 

Of course, she clashes with Ean, who has a dilemma now. He knows that the lines are more sentient than anybody has ever thought, and that ships need a captain and crew to be happy. But they need a good captain and a close-knit crew. He knows that the alien ships are lonely and crying to be manned and used. He knows that there is a deficit of captains out there and that the crewing of such a strategic ship will be mired in political jostling and problems. But he can’t accept a captain that doesn’t want or appreciate her ship, or who is borderline suicidal…

 

But those problems have to be put on the back burner when somebody seems very determined to kidnap Ean, and when Gate Unions keeps jumping suicide ships into the Eleven’s fleet in an effort to destroy it in one swift explosion.

 

All my favorite characters are back, some minor characters from book one get more development and step up to play major roles, and we are introduced to a few awesome new characters as well, like Selma Kari Wang.

 

The story is fast-paced and full of tense moments, so much so that I couldn’t put it down. I HAD to start the next chapter and see where the story was going as soon as finished the previous one.

 

So if you are looking for a cracktastic sci-fi series to start, I would recommend picking up Linesman and Alliance at the same time, and you are guaranteed at least a week of exciting reading.

 

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

books, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews

Oasis (The Last Humans book 1) by Dima Zales.

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

This is the first book I read by Dima Zales and I must say that I’m impressed. I will definitely pre-order the second book in the series and check out his other works.

Theo is one of the Youths living in Oasis, the last stronghold of humanity on an Earth that has been destroyed by the Goo. Life is good in the Oasis. Everybody is happy and healthy, since all sicknesses, both physical and mental, have been eliminated.

So everything is sunny in Theo’s world… only Theo has a problem – for the past few weeks, he’s been hearing a voice in his head. His imaginary friend calls herself Phoe and insists that she is real and not a figment of his imagination. And to make things worse, his best friend Mason confides in him that he committed not one, not two, but three horrible infractions that would surely land him in a world of trouble with the Adults. 1. He fell in love with a girl. 2. He confessed to that girl. 3. He feels depressed because she rejected him in horrified horror.

They decide to sleep on it, but when Theo wakes up the next morning, Mason is gone and nobody in the Oasis remembers that he even existed, except him. That’s when Theo’s search for the truth begins as well as his race against the clock, because the Elders know that he is different from other Youths now and difference will not be tolerated.

I loved how fast paced this book was but how at the same time we were given just enough information to understand Theo’s world as well as the backstory. And it was dolled in in small chunks throughout the story so that the reader didn’t feel overwhelmed and bored by info dumps.

We begin our journey firmly in Theo’s head and it’s very easy to relate to his emotions and problems. He doubts his own sanity because of Phoe, and he doubts Phoe’s very existence as well, but his biggest problems is that he cannot talk to anyone about this because he will be punished for being different. And when Mason goes missing, he ends up utterly alone with nobody to turn to except Phoe. The reader goes through the journey with him, from his disbelief, to his growing horror the more he peels the veil of lies he’d been fed all his life and discovers the grizzly truth about Oasis.

It is true that apart from Theo and Phoe, not many other characters are particularly developed, but they don’t need to be. This story is centered around those two characters and their quest for the truth behind Phoe’s nature, so having an extended cast of characters would only have distracted the reader from that quest.

And while the story itself is nothing something new or earth-shattering, it’s very interesting nonetheless. Mr. Zales created a complex world, and all the revelations we discover throughout the book feel logical. At least, I never had a WTF moment while reading this, even if I had a few “why didn’t I think about that, it was staring me in the face” moments.

So if you want to read a different kind of dystopian story than the usual end of the world / postapocalyptic formula we see in many books of the genre, I would strongly recommend Oasis.  I’m very excited to read the next book in the series and see what Theo and Phoe will do now that they know the truth.

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

Characters, Creativity, Reviews, tv shows, writing

Signal – what Korean dramas can teach us about telling a compelling story AND keeping you on the edge or your seat.

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With this blog post, I want to continue my series of posts about what Asian dramas can teach us about storytelling. You can check out my first post about it here.

This time I want to use the example of Signal, an ongoing Korean drama that, so far, is the best example of a crime procedural done right. It tells us a compelling story which includes an overarching arc relating to the characters, but also the “cases of the day” so to speak and it manages to do so with so much heart and suspense that you can’t help but get invested in every case. More than that, it makes each hour long episode a heart-pounding, edge of your seat, adrenaline ride.

Signal, a Korean Drama by TvN.
Signal, a Korean Drama by TvN.

Here is a brief synopsis of Signal:

Park Hae-Young, a young profiler and detective in 2015, manages to connect with Lee Jae-Han, a detective from the past with the help of an old walkie-talkie. Together they try to solve cold cases.

That sounds intriguing, but nothing stellar, right?

Well let’s add some more details to that. The walkie-talkie only works at 11.23pm and stays on for about one minute. And it doesn’t do that every day either. Neither cop knows when the connection will be possible again.

Also, while time for Hae-Young is linear, for Jae-Han it’s not. The first radio transmission connecting the two detectives happens in August 2015 for Hae-Young and in August 2000 for Jae-Han. At that time, Hae-Young has no idea what’s going on and thinks this transmission is a giant hoax, but Jae-Han knows exactly whom he is talking to and even calls the present detective by name, like they had spoken several times before. The next transmission Hae-Young gets though connects him with a Jae-Han from 1989, back then just a rookie cop, and it’s Hae-Young’s turn to persuade the other detective that he is not pulling his leg.

Moreover, Lee Jae-Han, the cop from the past, went missing shorty after that very first (or very last, depending on the point of view) transmission in August 2000. His official file says that he had been under investigation for embezzling money and fled the country, but the more Hae-Young digs into that, the more he suspects that it was just a carefully crafted cover up. So this is the first mystery driving this series. What happened to Jae-Han and what can both cops do to change his fate?

And finally, any changes made in the past tend to generate a ripple effect that leads to unforeseen (and often disastrous) consequences in the present.

Butterfly effect.
Butterfly effect.

When Hae-Young warns Jae-Han about the location of the next victim of a serial killer, Jae-Han manages to save her, but because of that the killer accelerates his killing spree and 3 more people die that were alive in the unaltered version of events. And one of those new victims was someone Jae-Han liked.

When Jae-Han begs Hae-Young to give him some tips about a string of burglary cases that remained unsolved even in 2015 and uses those profiling tips to catch the culprit, the repercussions are even more severe – the culprit’s daughter dies in front of his eyes in the past and he goes on a revenge killing in the present that takes the life of another cop…

This sense of immediate repercussion adds urgency and suspense to the stories, because you never know if by messing with time, the protagonists will make things worse or better. They might save lives, but they might make it so that more lives are lost as well. So both have to choose just how much to reveal and how much to leave out during each of their radio transmissions.

Timey wimey stuff
Timey wimey stuff

What adds to the suspense of this series is the fact that all the cases, even the case of the day, are tied to the members of the cold case squad one way or another either by what happened in the past or by the ripple effect of the time-altering intervention, so the viewer can’t help but be emotionally invested in the investigation because all the main characters in this series have their own backstories and lives which we get only small glimpses now and then, but which make them more than just “member X of the cold case squad” but real people with their own problem, aspirations, and heartaches.

Take the very first case, for example. Fifteen years ago, a 10 year old girl was kidnapped from in front of her school and found dead a few days later. The culprit was never found and the statute of limitation on that crime expires in 3 days. This case is very important for Hae-Young, because he was the only witness of that kidnapping, because he was the girl’s classmate and happened to see a woman lead her away. He even went to the police station right away, but nobody would talk to a 10 year old boy. He came back year after year, but nobody was interested to listen to what he had to say. That case shaped his character – he became a profiler and a cop to right a wrong, but he despises cops he works with, because in his experience, they are more worried about closing cases quickly and looking good in the public eye than actually trying to find the truth. So he doesn’t mince his words and clashes with most of his colleagues. There is no love lost between him and the other detectives, even though his profiling instincts (and the help of a magic walkie-talkie) help them solve cases.

This is how you make a series that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let you go – engaging characters that feel like real people instead of walking labels, intricate and interesting story with stakes that are actually important for the characters, and a certain amount of unpredictability that is still consistent with the inner logic of this created world.

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Midnight Taxi Tango (Bone Street Rumba book 2) by Daniel Jose Older.

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

This is the second book in the series, but it can be read as a standalone without problems. I haven’t read the first book in the series, Half-Resurrection Blues, but the important points of what happened in it were mentioned in book 2, so I didn’t feel lost and confused. Plus, from what I understood, Midnight Taxi Tango covers a different story, so prior knowledge of the world and the characters is not needed.

I really enjoyed this book. More than I thought I would based on the description, actually, and it was all thanks to the wonderful characters Mr. Older has created. They are real. They are larger than life. And their emotions are sincere. You can’t help but root for them and follow them along in their search for the truth.

But those characters are also why I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, Carlos got on my nerves way too much. I understand that he is going through a rough time – he’d killed the brother of the woman he loved, and she in turn tried to kill him then ran off into the sunset. I get it. What got on my nerves is how whiny he is about it. He spends most of the book either brooding about that, or trying to look for her, or brooding about his lost memories. And when the shit hits the fan and he realizes that both his woman and his babies (that he had never seen before) are in danger, he totally loses his shit. It takes the vigorous intervention of the other two protagonists to wipe him back into shape… I can live with brooding, but it gets old real fast.

Not to mention, that I really didn’t like his reaction when he learned a certain uncomfortable truth at the end of the book. I won’t mention it here because it’s a huge spoiler, but Carlos, man, why to be a douche to the woman you love…

So thank God for Kia and Reza, the other two protagonists who share the POVs in this book, because those two women are absolutely amazing. Though, kicking ass and taking names, but without becoming a cliché. Without them to kick Carlos in the nuts every now and then or drag him along kicking and screaming, he wouldn’t have made it to the end of the story.

I loved that they both had their own character and back story and agency, and never became the standard kickass female who suddenly transforms into a damsel in distress in need of rescuing by the male protagonist by the end of the book. No, both Kia and Reza did their fair share of rescuing instead. And they were the ones who collectively killed the big bad in the end, not Carlos. Kudos to strong women how they are supposed to be! I wish there were more of them out there.

And I need to mention the world these characters inhabit as well, because I found it quite interesting. It’s urban fantasy, so it’s New York pretty much like our own, but with the addition of ghosts and other unsavory supernatural entities, like the Resurrected (people who were killed, but inexplicably came back to life, or half-life, again), and the creepy bug-guys who are the baddies in this book. And those supernatural entities try to stay hidden, so most of the normal people don’t know they exist, especially since very few people have the ability to see ghosts.

What I liked about the ghosts in this world is that they are not just forlorn and powerless souls who spend their time mourning their deaths. They have powers, they can interact with the living world if they want to, and they can be deadly. So it makes sense that there would be an Agency responsible for keeping the ghostly activity in check. Though after finishing this book, I’m not so sure that their intentions are all that honorable…

Anyway, I would recommend this series for anyone who likes urban fantasy and is looking for a new take on the genre. And I am definitely looking forward to the next book, though Mr. Older, please make Carlos finally grow some balls? Or let’s just ditch him and focus on Kia and Reza. On, and that awesome librarian as well!

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

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

City of Blades (The Divine Cities) by Robert Jackson Bennett.

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Stars: 5 out of 5

Before I dive into this review, I need to mention that I absolutely loved the first book in the series City of Stairs, which I also reviewed. So I opened City of Blades with a certain amount of trepidation. Would it live up to the hype of the first book or would it leave  me disappointed? Well, I’m happy to say that this book is everything I loved in book 1 and then some!

Imagine a world where gods are as real as the mortals who worship them. Where they actually listen and respond to their worshipers. Where miracles are part of the everyday life. Where divine intervention is as common as rain or wind. This is the Divine Empire who ruled the continent and its colonies with a firm and bloody hand  for millennia…

Until Saypur, a small insular nation, invented a weapon that could kill the Divinities. Now the Empire crumbles as its gods lie dead and its great cities are in ruins, with entire chunks simply vanishing into oblivion when the miracles sustaining them stopped working. Saypur firmly believes in science and technological progress and everything remotely divine is outlawed, and worship is a crime deserving capital punishment.

The first book dealt with the aftermath of that great war that saw the death of all Divinities and changed the world in some spectacular ways. The second book asks another important question. Each God had created some kind of afterlife for their worshipers, so what happens to those afterlives and those countless souls when that Divinity dies? And what happens to the dead now that there is no afterlife waiting for them?

The protagonist of this book is someone we’ve already met in City of Stairs – General Turyin Mulaghesh, and I must say that she is just as kick ass as she was in the first book, but now that we can actually look inside her head, she also because a lot more human and endearing.

Mulaghesh is a woman adrift – she quit her post as General and went into early retirement, but the problem is that she doesn’t know how to be anything but a soldier. So all she can do is slowly drink herself to death and hope that alcohol will keep the nightmares at bay and let her sleep once in a while. When Shara offers her a chance to get back into action, she gripes and whines, but goes anyway.

I love Turyin. She is tired and disillusioned, and tormented by the past battles she fought and the people she killed. And then she lands in Voortyashtan, a city in ruins, a city whose god is dead, a city that is most hated by the Saypuri because Voortya was the goddess of war and death whose Sentinels terrorized their land for centuries. Only certain events let her believe that the goddess of death might not be as dead as she seems, and that the dead themselves don’t want to stay quiet anymore.

I think City of Blades is a bit darker than City of Stairs, because it deals with darker topics, like the meaning of war and when our actions done during war time cross the line between necessity and into atrocity. It deals with death and loss and hope and redemption. Our protagonist is broken and the city in which she arrives is broken as well, but maybe both can glue some pieces together and find a semblance of peace by the end of the story…

I am in love with this world! I want to know more about it, I want around Bulikov and Voorthyashtan, I want to read the old stories and have a chat with Shara over a steaming cup of a spicy Saypuri drink. And it’s all thanks to Mr. Bennett’s wonderful imagination and amazing writing. My only complaint is that I’m done with book 2 and I have to wait a year for book 3. Write faster Mr. Bennett!! 🙂

I am a fervent advocate of this series and I will recommend it to everyone who wants an original world populated by interesting characters and who wants to read a gripping story that asks some thought-provoking questions.

And you don’t need to have read City of Stairs to enjoy City of Blades, because it can be read as a standalone, but I would highly recommend reading both books.

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

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Broken Dolls by Tyrolin Puxty.

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

 

I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. The premise sounded rather quirky, so it could have gone either way for me. I’m so glad that I decided to give it a chance though, because it was blast to read! In some places Broken Dolls reminded me of another excellent book I had read – The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath, which I have reviewed here. It has the same quirky and slightly psychedelic feel to it.

 

This is the story of Ella, and Ella is a doll, though she knows that she has been human before, she just doesn’t remember what it was like or anything from her past life. All she knows is the dusty attic and the big chest she lives in, the old tape recorder she plays with during her Imagination Time, and the ancient black and white TV she watches sometimes. The only person she ever interacts with is the Professor, who, even though he always tells her that she is special, nevertheless forbids her from leaving the attic and never explains anything.

 

She doesn’t remember how long she’s been a doll, but her peaceful and boring life changes when the Professor creates Lisa, another living doll. Lisa is a Goth and a rebel and she remember her human life. And she will stop at nothing to get her human body back and make the Professor pay for what he’s done to her.

 

At first, Ella thinks that Lisa is crazy and is scared of her, but then Ella meets Gabby, the Professor’s granddaughter and everything changes. Gabby is sick and Ella has the sinking feeling that the Professor will try to change her into one of his living dolls. And Ella will do everything in her power to save her new friend. So the good little dancing doll rebels for the first time in her memory.

 

What I loved about this book was its unpredictability. You start the book with the idea that you have the plot pretty much figured out – crazy evil Professor praying on little girls and turning them into dolls for his crazy evil pleasure. And for the first part of the book, Mrs. Puxty does a good job to cultivate that assumption… until she starts slowly revealing little details that make us doubt what’s going on and wonder if what we are seeing is perhaps not the whole truth. And in the end we discover that all of our assumptions were wrong and the villains are not who we had expected. What can I say? That was brilliant!

 

Nobody is who they seem to be when we first meet them, apart maybe for Gabby, but she is a 10 year old child, so not really capable of much deception. So it was fun for me to discover different sides to all these characters and to constantly have to revise my opinion of them. And the best part is that the author does those reveals in a very natural way that flows seamlessly with the story.

 

I also loved Ella, even though I came to hate her by the end. Well, hate is kind of a strong word. Let’s just say that I disliked the person she was when she wasn’t a doll. I won’t go into many more details because that would be a spoiler, so to know more, you need to pick up this book and read it for yourself.

 

The book is also well written and the story was fast paced and kept me on the edge of my sit. I devoured it in one day because I just couldn’t put it down! It’s also not very long, only about 150 pages, so that helped.

 

Anyway, I would definitely recommend this book. You want something fast-paced and interesting to read while curled up on your couch with a cup of hot chocolate? Broken Dolls is a book for you.

 

PS. I have received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Deep in the Hollow by Brandy Nacole.

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

 

Apart from a few little gripes about the last part of the story, I really loved this book.

 

Jo is a typical teenager faced with very untypical circumstances. A year ago she witnessed the death of her boyfriend Bryce and the circumstances were less than ordinary. Something attacked them at the overlook and pushed Bryce over the stone wall and into the hollow. Problem is, nobody believes her. In fact, everyone in the little town seems to think that she killed her boyfriend. So Jo turned from the leader of the cheering squad and popular girl into the school pariah. Only Jo isn’t as crazy as everyone thinks, and monsters do exist. And this one isn’t done with her yet…

 

I loved Jo. She has a very distinct voice and is a very interesting and believable character. How do you deal with a tragedy like that when you are barely 18 and struggling with your life as it is? She has PTSD and survivor guilt, and recurring nightmares of the thing that attacked her and Bryce that fateful night. So much so that she’s almost persuaded herself that she is slowly going crazy.

 

And it doesn’t help that the police thinks she’s guilty, and that everyone in school think the same. Even her parents bailed and left town, abandoning her with her older brother. Her brother tries to help, but the big problem is that he doesn’t believe her when she says there’s a monster haunting her dreams and think that it’s all due to depression.

 

How do you cope with that and not break? How do you keep on living when everyone around you would rather wish you slunk away and quietly died somewhere out of sight? Even adults would crack under that pressure. So I really admire Jo for hanging on in there and for finding the courage to do what’s right when the truth comes to light.

 

All these trials have made her cynical, with a rather gloomy outlook at life, but she still possesses a wry sense of humor that gives us a glimpse of the firecracker she used to be before tragedy ripped her life apart.

 

The story itself is suspenseful and interesting as well. I love the way it deals with difficult themes like loss and grief and the need to move on (and the guilt that arises when you are starting to move on). I liked how the author managed to show the stifling atmosphere of a little town where everybody knows everybody and rumors spread at the speed of sound. And where deep dark secrets are kept from generation to generation.

 

SPOILER!!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

 

 

 

 

 

The gripe I had mentioned earlier has to do with the coven that comes into the limelight in the last part of the book. First, it felt like it popped into existence almost out of nowhere. Second, the members of the coven were way too bat shit crazy to be believable. I mean how can they function and appear normal in everyday life when they fly off the handle like it was depicted in the scene on the overlook?

 

But apart from that, it was a very enjoyable read, and I would love to see this book turned into a series.

 

PS. I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

books, Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews, Urban fantasy

City of Light (An Outcast Novel) by Keri Arthur.

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

I had only read one book by Keri Arthur before – Memory Zero, and I hadn’t been particularly impressed by it (you can read my review if you are interested), so I had been a bit apprehensive to pick up another book by her. But the premise looked interesting and I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories when they are well written, so I decided to give this one a try.

Boy am I glad I did! I devoured this book in two days and I would have been done earlier if I didn’t have to stop for things like work, sleep, and food.

So what is City of Light about? Well, it has your traditional plethora of supernatural species like ghosts, shifters, vampire, and demons, but the world they inhabit is rather unusual. It’s a world where the very fabric of reality had been thorn by bombs that had ended the war between humans and shifters. Humans lost, but the bombs opened gateways into a different realm which demons and wrights use to invade our reality. So in the end, nobody won. What remains of the human and shifter population now lives in heavily fortified cities that are constantly bathed in light to prevent vampires from infiltrating them. Only fools or those who have a death wish risk staying outside of their protective walls at night.

Tiger is a déchet – a bread of humanoid super soldier created by humans in a last ditch effort to turn the tide of the war in their favor. As far as she knows, she is the last surviving déchet, because shifters hunted them down and eradicated them mercilessly during and after the war. For over a hundred years after the war, Tiger lived in an old bunker with only a few hundred déchet ghosts for company only venturing out into the light-filled city when she needed food or supplies. And she would have been perfectly content to live another hundred years like that, but   the impulse to save a human child hunted by vampires turns her quiet life upside down. Now her sworn enemies become her reluctant allies, her long lost friend might have become her enemy, and something really shady is brewing in the world outside her bunker.

I absolutely loved Tiger! She is a kickass heroine who can literally kick ass and doesn’t need a man to rescue her. In fact, she does the rescuing of the said man a few times herself, which is a nice reversal on the usual trope. I also like how complex her character is and that the author let us get into her head and really understand what makes her tick. Like her overwhelming need to protect children for example, no matter whether they are human, shifter, or déchet. It could have been written off as just heightened maternal instinct or something, but there is a really good explanation for that instead.

I love this broken and dangerous world that Keri Arthur has created. It was well introduced and set up and I enjoyed exploring it. It’s interesting to see that the war between humans and shifters basically ended in their mutual defeat, because the demons that pour out of the holes they had thorn in their reality don’t care who they kill. So the erstwhile enemies had to become reluctant allies to survive in this new world. And it is a harsh world where light is your only protection against painful death. Where most of the planet is left to roaming vampires and humans and shifters hide behind silver-reinforced walls of a few cities.

I was really invested in the story of City of Light as well. I thought it was interesting and well-paced and kept you on the edge of your sit until the end. I won’t say anything else about it to avoid spoilers.

So why did I only put 4 stars instead of 5? Because of the ending. It felt really rushed. It left a lot of things unresolved. I understand that it’s the first book in a new series and that there needs to be a bigger story that would flow from book to book, but it felt like the author had a set maximum word count for her book and just cut off the story when she reached it. It’s not even a cliffhanger per se, the story just kinda stops mid-stride…

But nevertheless I sincerely recommend this book to everyone who loves post-app and urban fantasy! The heroine is badass and the world is interesting. I will definitely be looking forward to the next book.

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

Reviews, tv shows

White Christmas – Korean mini-series.

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Stars 5+ out of 5

 

Today I am stepping away from tradition and reviewing not a book, but a TV series, and a Korean TV series to boot. Well, this series is an absolute masterpiece so I couldn’t help by share it on my blog, because more people should be able to watch it. I just wish it was more readily available on official streaming services.

 

Susin High School, nicknamed “Prison High” or Alcatraz by both students and staff, is an elite school attended by the top 1% of students in Korea. During the 8 days of Christmas break, 8 students decide to stay behind instead of going home like everybody else. Seven of them have received a threatening black letter, while the eight one has motives of his own. Stuck with them is the PT teacher who volunteered to supervise them during the break and a psychiatrist whose car crashed on the mountain road nearby. When a record snow fall blocks the roads leading to the school, they are cut off from the rest of the world for 8 days, and there might possibly be a killer in their midst.

 

At first, this show sounds like a typical teenage slasher movie – 8 students, 8 days of isolation, who will survive at the end? Or like one of the Agatha Christi mysteries – 10 people stuck together and a letter threatening to kill one or 7 of them. So it might just be a “whodunit” movie. And for the first 2 episodes, it seems to be exactly that – the students try to figure out why they received that letter and who sent it.

 

… and then the story suddenly changes and the stakes go way up and it’s not just a matter of who sent the letter, but a desperate fight for survival for everyone involved.

White Christmas
Meet the students

Are monsters born or are they created? That’s the main question this show seeks to answer by pitting all the characters against their worst fears and pushing them to their breaking points.

 

I loved everything about this show. It’s only 8 episodes long but it manages to introduce us to all the characters and show us why they are who they are and behave like they do. More than that, it manages to make us care about those 8 students even if we still don’t like some of them. They are real, they are human, and we get them. So it’s becomes particularly painful to see them each face their own “monster in the corner” and slowly break down.

 

I think that we have the excellent writing and directing to thank for that, but also the talented actors, all of whom were unknowns at the time this series was filmed. All of them went to have successful acting careers afterwards. They really owned their characters and managed to portray all the good and the bad in them so realistically that you can’t help but root for them until the end.

 

The cinematography is top notch as well. Everything you see on the screen has a hidden meaning. The school itself is a huge building made of glass and concrete. It looks light and cold by day and threatening and suffocating by night. It’s all sharp angles and stark modern furniture. It’s so sterile and cold that it looks more like a hospital than school… Or a prison, since there are CCTVs everywhere, even in the student dorms.

 

There are also several shots of our characters in front of mirrors which echo something one of the characters says, “Your faces when alone and the faces you show to others are different.” So it’s rather ominous and fitting that all of them get to see several reflections of themselves, one of which might be a monster.

mirrors

… And I could rant about this series on and on, but I will refrain myself because mentioning anything else would be spoilery.  So buy it and watch it. You will not regret it at all. It’s only 8 hours long but you will be at the edge of your sit through all of it.

PS. For US readers (and I think Europe also), this drama has been licensed and is available on the streaming site Viki.com – White Christmas.

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy, YA

The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden.

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

 

I actually loved this book a lot more than I thought I would. It’s well written and even though it takes the tragedy that was hurricane Katrina and uses it as a plot device, it’s well done and not used only to wring tears from the readers.

 

In fact, when this book starts, the Storm, because the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in this book was so big that it didn’t even have a name, is already over. The protagonist and her family are left to pick up the broken pieces of their lives that were left in its wake.

 

What I loved the most about this book is the description of New Orleans. You can see that the author loves this city and knows a lot about its history and mythology. New Orleans is alive and vibrant on these pages, even when it’s broken and flooded and full of death and rot. It’s still a city unlike any others, full of magic and religion and voodoo, full of quirky people who speak a strange mélange of French, English, and Creole. A city that will party and sing even when the world is ending just to prove to it that it’s still alive. Laissez les bons temps rouler.

 

I loved all the quirky characters this books is populated with. The inhabitants of the Vieux Carre all feel like one big dysfunctional but loving family. Those are the die hards, the ones who came back as soon as the city was deemed safe enough to return because they simply couldn’t imagine their life anywhere else. And you can feel their love for their beautiful (if destroyed) city through all their words and actions. Kudos to the author for showing that.

 

I also liked Adele, the main protagonist. Yes, she is seventeen and dreams of boys and dresses and first love, but when push comes to shove, she demonstrates a surprising level of maturity and determination. More importantly, she acts instead of reacting. Love protagonists like that! I love that she is no damsel in distress either and prefers to resolve her own problems herself instead of waiting for someone else to do that for her. And that she takes matters personally when people she cares about are hurt.

 

So by now you are probably wondering why I gave The Casquette Girls only 4 stars out of 5 if I liked this book so much? Well, the thing that didn’t work for me was the love story. My first gripe is purely subjective and personal – I don’t like love triangles. But I hate it even more here because it didn’t really feel like a love triangle until the last fourth of the book. For most of it, Addie had feelings for Nico and a developing friendship with Isaac… but then all of a sudden it shifts, but not really. So it felt like Addie settled for the second best because the first choice was unavailable. This is not fair to Adele and not fair to Isaac, because both are great characters.

 

But since it’s the first book in a series, I am willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt on that account and hope that she either develops that relationship better in the future books or resolves it in a way that makes sense.

 

All in all, this is a wonderful book that I would definitely recommend. If you want to read a story of magic, vampires, old family secrets, and new friendships, all set in the magical city of New Orleans, this book is definitely for you.

 

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