books, Horror, Reviews

Crawlspace by Adam Christopher

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DNF at 35%

I understand all the bad reviews. This book deserves all of them. It took us almost 30% of the book to even get to the “stranding” part of the plot advertized in the blurb, and even then, things were progressing at a glacial pace.

My biggest issue, however, is that the characters don’t feel like people. They are just functions spewing out dialog with less emotional depth than a broom. I mean, their pilot sabotaged the cockpit door and is entering God knows what code into the mainframe, yet everyone just sits around and calmly watches him do it. Oh, there is talk of bypassing the lock and bringing a blowtorch, but it’s all written in such emotionless dialog that I don’t feel the urgency or the panic and confusion once the jump happened and things went sideways.

The pacing is also off. We get brief moments of action diluted with endless pages of explanations, descriptions, introspections from different characters, and lifeless dialog. We also get sudden POV jumps in the middle of the same scene with no warning or formatting distinction to indicate that we just hopped into the head of a different character. And with all of them sounding pretty much the same, this makes for a very confusing read.

I also hate the trope of withholding vital information from the characters (and by extension the reader) just for the sake of keeping up the suspense. In this case, by making Avery use the escape pod, and take away the only two people who knew what was really happening and the datapad with all the information. It’s a cheap trick that immediately puts me off wanting to continue with the story.

So I’m out. I came for cosmic horror and edge-of-your-seat suspense, and I almost fell asleep in my seat instead.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Death’s Flow (Flow Tales 1) by Victor Klayin

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Stars: 2.75 out of 5

There is a great premise there. The world is original and very interesting, and the rules of magic, of Flow, are fascinating. Unfortunately, none of it was fleshed out well enough to satisfy my curiosity.

And that’s what’s so baffling – the author gives us several info-dumps on the magic system by putting them into conversations between Arneth and Zaleck, but I still didn’t have a clear picture of the world the characters were navigating. Like, what is the government structure of the kingdom they live in? Is it a kingdom? Why can representatives of the “Death Kingdom” act here with such impunity? What even is this Death Kingdom and the flow casters that rule it?

Come to think of it, we don’t really get many clear explanations as to how flow casting really works. We are told that there are two types of casters: those who sense life energy, and those who draw on death energy, but then we never talk about the life casters again. We are told that flow casters can call on nature’s elements, but only once per element; how does that work exactly?

Maybe more of these questions will be answered in the next book, since this is only the first book in a series. As such, it has a thankless job of setting up a brand new world as well as introducing us to characters the readers should like enough to be willing to follow for several books.

That’s where the main weakness lies, at least for me. I didn’t particularly like Zaleck, and he is our main protagonist. It’s his coming-of-age story we are following. For most of the book, he comes across as a whiny and spoiled little brat. And then he suddenly gets this upgrade right at the end, where he becomes mature and badass. There was no organic progression to that point. He is irritating and mostly useless for 80% of the book, relying on Arneth and Vellis to save him over and over again, and then all of a sudden he survives the magical backlash that has been killing flow casters for centuries? That was rather unbelievable.

His whole characterization is rather wonky as well, especially at the beginning of the story. It feels like the author started with one backstory in mind for Zaleck, then changed his mind halfway through, but forgot to change the earlier bits to fit the new backstory.

For example, Zaleck follows a friend into the woods the day he gets captured, and the way that chapter reads, it seems like those two are good friends. Yet Zaleck never mentions that boy again, or even acknowledges that the boy was seriously hurt or possibly killed by his captors. And further into the book, when Zaleck talks about his childhood, he says that he didn’t have any friends, and that other kids were distant and even hostile to him because of his odd appearance. So if that was the case, who did he follow into the woods in chapter 1, and why?

There are some other narrative inconsistencies, but all in all, it was entertaining enough read. However, I do not care about Zaleck enough to pick up the next book in the series.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Moonblade by Nicholas Stevens

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

This book has a very unique premise – it’s a world of sentient animals with not a human in sight. Fun huh? According to their mythology, some great magical battle happened a long time ago that gave sentience to some animals while leaving others as animals. So we have sentient wolves and foxes as well as their normal animal counterparts. I couldn’t wait to see how such a society would evolve.

Unfortunately, I think that this quirk of all of our characters being bipedal animals was sorely underutilized. Apart from some mentions of Leran swishing his tail in irritation or twitching his ears, he might as well be a human instead of a wolf. He even prefers to ride horses instead of running on all fours, and my question here is: how? Wouldn’t his tail be in the way when he rides?

We have wolves and foxes, but also ravens and cranes, and antelopes, and other animals, but they all just behave like humans. Wouldn’t ravens be able to fly? Why not use them as aerial support or scouts? Also, birds have hollow bones, so they would not be able to wear heavy guard armor. Why not use the buffalo or other bovine species as heavy infantry?

Just working with the limitations and advantages of each animal species would have made this world so much richer, and made for a better book!

My biggest issue though, is that I started this book mildly irritated with Leran, and ended it hating his guts. He is an extremely unlikeable character. He is selfish and immature. And honestly, he causes almost all of the troubles in this book himself. He is so self-absorbed that nobody else matters. When his best friend dies protecting him, Leran wallows in self-pity and not once even wonders how his other friend feels about all this. I mean, she just lost her best friend as well, but Leran doesn’t even ask her how she is doing.

He spends the book lashing out at everyone who tries to reason with him or even show him the error of his ways, then going all “woe me” when everything goes wrong, and he gets people killed. And even then, his horror about getting people killed revolves around him – he failed, what will everyone think of him, he isn’t good enough, yada-yada. He never thinks of the actual people who lost their lives because he was so bone-headed.

Leran also reads as very immature for someone who is 28 years old. With all his mood swings and lack of impulse control, I pictured him more like a teenager.

The story itself moves at a pretty fast pace, and the fight scenes are pretty immersive, though the book suffers from a bit of tell, not show, especially when it comes to setting up the world and mythology.

All in all, I think it might appeal to a YA audience who like coming-of-age stories and are willing to overlook an unlikeable protagonist.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

books, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews, science fiction

The Never-Ending End of the World by Ann Christy

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Stars: 3 out of 5

The concept is really unique, and the consequences of the Looping are mind-boggling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this concept in any other book, game, or movie. The whole world is caught in time loops, be it humans, animals, or insects. etc. Basically, everything living is caught in time loops. These loops vary in length, and they don’t all start at the same time, but everyone repeats a loop from the past 2 days before the event that caused the looping. And everything that is tied to this loop – buildings, roads, objects, even nature – is also looping.

Then we have some people who are not looped. They just woke up one Saturday morning to a completely changed world, with their loved ones looped and no explanation as to what happened. And when they try to interact with their looped loved ones, the consequences are… disastrous. The loop breaks, the looped person flies into a rage and tries to kill them, then they die and vanish. A lot of non-looped people didn’t survive these first few moments of the looping. A lot died afterwards from starvation or from accidentally breaking a loop. The ones who did tried to build a new world in the non-looped cracks of the old one.

This story is fascinating and made for a very suspenseful read. Unfortunately, the book dragged a lot in the middle where seemingly nothing would happen between about 35 to 75%. Then it rushed towards the ending without much setup. Suddenly, things were happening; people who had seemed friendly and courteous were trying to kill the protagonists, and everything was going to hell in a handbasket.

I would have been more on board with this direction if the author had spent the middle of the book setting this up instead of descriptions of life in the settlement and nothing happening for years and years. Had they set up the conflict about the colliders earlier, Coco’s desertion would have felt more justified. As it stands, all those revelations come out the left field.

My biggest issue with this book, though, is the stylistic choice the author made to tell the story as a series of journal entries. I don’t particularly gel with that narrative style because it feels less personal than being in the characters’ heads in the moment. We read about the events that already happened, and the character is obviously alive to write about them, so there is no tension and fear for their well-being.

It also prevents me from bonding with the characters, so I don’t particularly care about their relationships with other characters either. Like Coco’s love for Jorge. She talks about it, but we don’t get to see the small, intimate moments that would make me care about this relationship. Same with Pam. Coco writes that she is devastated when the older woman dies because she was her best friend, but we, as readers, don’t get to see any of their interactions apart from a few sprinkled in the journal entries, so we don’t feel that impact.

The book keeps me at arm’s length, so I don’t care enough about any of the characters to be affected by their ultimate choice.

I will say that I liked the ending. Our little band of survivors finally break the world out of its loops, and it’s up to the rest of humanity to figure where to go from here.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

books, Horror, Reviews

Something Is Killing the Children: Hope Is a Knife by James Tynion IV, Kiersten White

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Stars: 3 out of 5

I read the Something is Killing the Children comic books, and I was fascinated by the violent and gory world James Tynion IV created. It’s brutal and unforgiving, and our main character, Erica Slaughter, has to be just as brutal and unflinching. The comic books are truly the story of a monster hunting other monsters.

I was intrigued to see how a full-length novel would tackle this world and the character of Erica herself. And the answer is… eh, it’s fine, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, all the ingredients of a good Something is Killing the Children are there – a small town down on its luck, with the typical small-town mentality and cliquishness. Everyone has skeletons in their closet. And yes, something is killing the children. And Erica is there to discover what it is, which child is causing it, and stop it once and for all.

The problem is that all of this has a lot less impact than the comics did. Yes, the ingredients are there, but the story itself feels half-baked. Like maybe the proportions were wrong, so the result looks like it should, but doesn’t quite taste right.

A lot of the plot points are a bit on the nose – the only rational and “good” family in town are people of color, and they are ostracized for it. The zealot priest with an almost cult-like following who turns out to be a sh!t human being in the end. His most devoted follower suddenly comes to Jesus and sees the error of her ways (not to mention how much of a scumbag the guy is) after worshiping the ground he walked on for most of the book. I mean, she literally turned from believing everything he said and deferring to him to actively opposing him in less than a chapter. As I said, a little bit too on the nose.

My biggest disappointment, though, is how Erica is portrayed in this book. In the comic books, she can be impulsive and brash, and she tends to run headfirst into danger, but she isn’t stupid. She has a pretty good head on her shoulders and good observation and deduction skills.

Here, she jumps to conclusions immediately after getting into town and seems to dismiss anything that would go against her initial theory. She literally can’t see the stuff that is staring her in the face. Seriously, I guessed who was summoning the monster almost from the first chapter she was introduced in, so why did the experienced monster hunter not pick up on all the clues faster?

Erica simply didn’t feel like the character from the comics. She felt more like a mimic wearing Erica Slaughter’s skin – she looked the part, but you couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease the more you read about her.

All in all, it was an okay story, but I would highly recommend starting with the comic books if you are unfamiliar with this universe.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my free copy.

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Shadow Saint (The Black Iron Legacy 2) by Garth Hanrahan

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Stars: 4.5 out of 5

Wars come and go, but the city of Guerdon persists. Many times conquered, it still stands, even when those conquerors have long turned to dust. This is a city that constantly evolves and reinvents itself. And those who seek to conquer or destroy it end up being assimilated whether they want it or not.

This book picks up a few months after the end of the previous book and the Gutter Miracle, when Cali and Spar hijacked the spell destined to free the Black Iron gods and created the New City. One might argue that this was more of a curse than a blessing, since Guerdon is in disarray now, and the alchemists’ guild is all but destroyed, just as the Gods war is coming closer and closer to its shores.

While the previous book was a book of the poor and the forgotten, the little people eking out a living in the shadows of the mighty city, this book is about politics… and spies. Nobody, apart from Cali, Eladora, and Spar, understands what happened in Guerdon, and how the Gutter Miracle came to be. So all other countries sent their spies to find out. Oh, and to also find out what came of the dreaded bombs that destroyed a Goddess so thoroughly that her valley is virtually dead now.

The pace of this book is slower, since there is a lot of politicking and cloak-and-dagger intrigue, but that didn’t make it less interesting. It shows us a different facet of this multidimensional world. We also learn a lot more about the God War and the horrors the mad gods bring to the world and even their own followers.

And of course, we get to spend a bit more time with some of the characters from the first book, and discover what they are up to now. We get to meet new protagonists as well, and they were just as endearing. I will definitely continue with this series.

books, Horror, Reviews

Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5

October is the best time for spooky horror, and there is nothing spookier than getting stranded in the middle of nowhere on a rainy night, with your car disabled and no phone service. Yet that’s exactly the situation Ellie, Henry, and a few other strangers find themselves in. At first, finding an open dive bar with a strangely friendly bartender and a silent, solitary guest feels like a blessing, or at least a reprieve from the elements, but nothing is as it seems. There are monsters lurking in the trees, and isn’t that bartender a little bit too friendly?

Even though the book features POVs from several different characters, I might argue that Ellie is the main protagonist in this story, and her POV is the only one written in the first person, while everyone else is third person. We also learn a lot more about her past than we do about the other characters. Well, we learn a bit more about Henry, but almost nothing about the old man who gets killed by a rabid dog. In fact, I’m still a bit puzzled about his inclusion in this story. It almost seems like his ordeal was written for pure shock value for Ellie and Henry, which does him a big disservice.

I would say that the lack of attention given to the characters other than Ellie and, to a lesser degree Henry, made me dock a star off my rating. As I already mentioned, the old man is barely a footnote in the story. The young couple is a bit more fleshed out, while the gay stockbroker is a walking caricature of a narcissist. Just from seeing the lack of depth to their characterizations, I could predict who would survive to the end of the book and who wouldn’t, which killed part of the suspense for me.

All in all, I liked the premise behind the story and the reason why all these characters ended up in that car pile-up on a rainy road, and subsequently in the dive bar. It’s one messed-up situation, which made me hate the bartender even more. Just the idea that the woods outside of the bar would show you your biggest fear is… well, terrifying. And I will not go into any more details because I don’t want to spoil the book.

I had fun reading this story, and I rooted for the characters to survive and break out of this vicious little pocket universe. I will definitely recommend this as a spooky read for a spooky season. Oh, and think twice before taking an unfamiliar road at night.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

books, Fantasy, Grim Dark, Reviews

The Daughters’ War (Blacktongue 0) by Christopher Buehlman

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

This was a very dark introduction to the Blacktongue series, but I liked it all the same.

This book is a definition of grimdark fantasy. It’s brutal and, at times, hopeless. The world is harsh and unforgiving, and mankind, or kynd, battles a foe that can’t be reasoned with or bargained with. A foe for whom we are just food. Kynd is cattle to be hunted down and either butchered for meat or drugged with poisons until they are no better than cattle, unable to think for themselves.

The battles are brutal and graphic. You can really feel just how overwhelming the goblin horde is, how foreign and lethal their magic is, and how little kynd can do to oppose it now that all the horses are dead. Even the formidable corvids are an experimental species that are just as likely to turn against their handlers as to kill goblins.

The descriptions are vivid and often poignant. Take the description of the city, for example. We really get to walk its streets with Galva and her brother and see its beauty… only to watch it be defiled by goblins as kynd armies are caught by surprise and overrun.

I really liked Galva, our main protagonist. She is brash and prone to quick judgment sometimes, and she still has a lot to learn, but she her heart is in the right place. She loves all of her brothers, even the one who always falls short. So his betrayal is a blow both to her and the reader, and her revenge afterwards feels justified.

All of the characters in this book are interesting, even if not all of them are endearing. I wept for the corvid knights as they made their last stand on that bridge against overwhelming odds. I was heartbroken when I learned the fate of Galva’s youngest brother. This war destroyed her family and took everyone she cared about away from her in the end.

All in all, this was a very strong introduction to this world and this series, and I can’t wait to read the next book.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

books, Military science fiction, Reviews, science fiction

Crying Wolf by Doug Joseph

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DNF at 75%

I tried to finish this book, I really did, but I can’t force myself. I don’t understand where the 5-star reviews came from, but I would guess it’s from people who have no clue about how the military in general and the Navy (be it Earth Navy or space Navy) function.

I am a military spouse. I lived the life, I know the rules, and I know how these men and women talk and behave. And let me tell you, this ain’t it. The characters in this book behave more like they are the crew of a civilian cruise ship than a Space Navy battleship on a special mission. I mean who lets an Ensign address the Captain of the ship by first name? What is the deal with first names on a naval ship? Since when is that a thing? I can tell you that I never knew anybody’s first names in the service. It was either rank and last name or call sign.

Also, all the conversations in this book are way too casual. All of the characters read as civilians on a cruise ship instead of elite military.

Plus, most of the characters are just plain dumb. Why did it take this long to look at the drone footage they took at the stranded ship? The captain should have ordered a review of all of them immediately after the ship imploded. He also should have interrogated Temkin immediately and asked all the hard questions. Instead, he pussyfoots around his “feelings”. Dude, that ship imploded, and before it did, there were signs of a shootout. And your only survivor tells you a story that’s too strange to believe. He should be in the brig. A message should have been sent to High Command immediately with all details and a request for assistance.

Most of the characters fail to arrive at obvious conclusions because otherwise the plot wouldn’t happen. I mean, why does it take them weeks to even think about checking their mainframe for a cyber attack? Your ship has been throwing suspicious errors left and right, a med robot went murderous, yet nobody went on high alert until the Martian frigates collided.

The author also tends to overexplain everything ad-noseum. First the Captain says something to one character, then he explains almost the same thing to another, then they say they will do something… before they go ahead and do it. The action drags, the dialogue between characters is painful to read, and the story is propelled forward only because nobody can think logically in this future, it seems.

I will not be recommending this book.

books, Horror, Native American, Reviews

Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina

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3.5 out of 5 stars

I liked this book less than Indian Burial Ground. From what I understand, Sisters of the Lost Nation was actually published first. I can say that the writing quality improved a lot between the two books.

This book shines a light on a very hard issue of addiction, exploitation, and lack of resources that Native Americans face in this country. People can get hurt or killed on the rez, and the law enforcement in the next town over would just shrug and do the bare minimum. Women and girls go missing, and nobody even pretends to make an effort to find them. It’s hard to read about, especially considering that even though the Indigenous tribe in this book is fictional, the issues are very much real.

The story itself, though… well, let’s just say that it took me a very long time to get into it. I think the author’s choice to jumble the timeline was a mistake. We are just getting to know Anna and her sister, as well as the other characters, and we jump from Day 30 to Day 4, back to Day 15, etc., in the first few chapters. This creates confusion.

More importantly, it makes Anna feel neurotic, because the Anna on Day 4 behaves completely differently than the Anna on the day Grace goes missing. Yet they are literally in back-to-back chapters. I couldn’t paint a clear image of who Anna actually is and what makes her tick until the timeline finally streamlined. And I admit that I didn’t like Anna very much until then either. And most of it was due to the time jumps back and forth and all over the timeline.

I also wasn’t particularly impressed with the ending. I felt like the author very much wanted to have a happy ending to this rather bleak story, but it felt forced rather than earned. In my opinion, a more realistic ending would have given this story an even bigger impact.

PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

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